Speaking of Catholicism: despite the Quiet Revolution and despite all the Quebeckers who fiercely reject the religion as an evil, repressive and authoritarian force that is best left in our shady past, it's still increadibly influential as a muse for Quebecois literature. It's only more recently, with the emerging generation of atheist or at least non-practicing writers, that religion has been tossed aside as a principal subject of the national literature. But even these young writers have grown up in the shadow of the hugely glorious and desolately empty churches on the corner of practically every street, now being zoned as residential and converted to condos. (How creepy is that? I'm not sure I would feel so comfortable living in a ex-church...)
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| This is the one down the street from my house: Notre-dame-de-sept-douleurs |
Crimes is one of those not-really-about-religion-but-still-catholic-inflected novels, with the main character falling desperately in love with the loval vicar. There's an eager confessional scene, a stealing-from-the-offering-basket scene, a plot twist involving a Mary statue crying blood, the whole nine yards.
But anyways. The question of the day. In reference to a brothel that got raided by police. It is a brothel which is situated around the corner from the courthouse, primarily frequented by lawyers and judges. Here's the phrase:
À l'intèrieur, les policiers ont repandu de l'eau de Javel sur les vêtements d'apparat et les souliers à talons compensés brodés de dragons de Shanghai.
What I'm wondering about is "vêtements d'apparat". I think that it means something like "ceremonial garb" or "ceremonial clothing" but is it referring to the girl's little black dresses that they wore as the uniform of their trade (ceremonial garb?), or does it mean the clothing the judges may have been left behind as they tried to escape the crackdown? I mean, I think that it means the girls clothing, but does that make sense in this context?
vs.
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