For Sure (38 page)

“Well den, name dem if you can.”

“De comma, period, semi-colon, colon, exclamation mark, question mark, ellipsis, parentheses, quotation marks . . .”

He began again, this time counting them out on his fingers:

“De comma, period, semi-colon, exclamation mark, question mark, colon, parentheses, quotation marks, ellipsis . . . dat makes only nine . . .”

. . .

“Awh! De dash!”

“Ten . . .”

. . .

. . .

“I knows de hyphen's not one of dem.”

“Not? An' why not, pray tell?”

“It's more of an accent, like.”

“An accent! It don't look nuttin' like an accent!”

. . .

. . .

“Well, now it's gonna bodder me all de time until I finds de one dat's missin'.”

“How about de apostrophe, den?”

“Naw, dat's not one eider.”

. . .

“I sure hope dis isn't gonna ruin me game, ha ha.”

Unless the expression “
à tout bout de champ
” taken literally as “at every end of a field,” refers to a more or less demarcated entrances on the ends of every field, thanks to which the farmer or owner can access that section of his land with horsepower, whether motorized or the other kind, or with a camper.

Élizabeth arrived home to the phone ringing. She accepted the invitation without hesitation.

“Élizabeth, dis 'ere is Étienne and Ludmilla . . .”

Immediately from the start of the evening, it was as though they had all been friends for years. As a result, Terry felt comfortable explaining to Élizabeth how Marianne had come to ask her to be her godmother.

“But don't be feelin' obliged . . . I mean, you hardly know us, or you may not be stayin' round 'ere fer long . . .”

As he said this, Terry realized that he'd more or less laid down his expectations for the role of a godfather or godmother, and he was relieved that no one took up this line of conversation. Unless, Zablonski had intentionally changed the subject.

“So, Étienne, you really want Ludmilla and me to be your godmother and godfather?”

Étienne was brimming with happiness:

“Dad said you'd be takin' me fishin'?”

Zablonski was caught unawares, but quickly regained his composure:

“Of course! Obviously! Fishing, well, that's a classic!”

Zed took advantage of the moment to prompt Marianne:

“I does too, I do! An' you, Marianne? Do you take me, Zed, to be yer godfawder, fer better an' fer worse?”

Marianne thought Zed's question was funny, but she answered him without hesitation:

“Yeth!”

Élizabeth chimed in:

“And me, Marianne, you still want me to be your godmother, since it seems to please God?”

Even if she didn't quite understand it all, Marianne was enjoying the part they'd given her, and she answered gladly:

“Yeth!”

And, with Carmen's approbation, Terry concluded:

“Well den, dat's dat!”

Ludmilla and Étienne raised their glasses to mark the moment, and the others followed suit. Le Petit Étienne jumped for joy:

“Hurray! Now everyone's all fixed up!”

7. Accidents that concern the musician (_ _ _ _ _ s).

Dream of another anonymous character: all the members of her family are busy cleaning house, throwing away things that have degraded over time, gathering together what might be sold or given away, putting away what needs to be put away. The mood is good. The house is big, the numerous children cross each other's paths often as they work. Some discover long-lost objects, others plunge back into long-forgotten moments of their lives. Little by little, the residence becomes lighter, airier. The interior structure of the building takes shape, its architectural particularities emerge in a new light. Standing in the middle of the kitchen and drying a pan, the mother watches one of her children go down into the basement: something remains buried, and will have to be dislodged.

Virer casaque
. The word
casaque
is derived from the Turkish word
kazak
meaning “adventurer.” From the occupation of the individual, the word
kazak
gradually came to designate the tabard or coat worn by the horsemen known by the Russian word for a member of the cavalry,
cossack
or
cosaque
in French. By extension, the French expression “
à la cosaque
” came to mean “brutally,” whereas “
tourner casaque
” means to change allegiance or turncoat. In Acadia, “
virer casaque
” becomes more brutal and ultimately means “to become mad.”

On Tuesday afternoon, as things were running smoothly, Terry dropped into the Babar to say hello to Carmen before going upstairs for a nap. But once in the bar, he couldn't refuse The Cripple's invitation to have a drink and chat a while, especially since the children were away with the Després grandparents in Grande-Digue for a few days, and Terry had more free time than usual. Once their drinks were served — a beer for Terry and a triple twelve-year-old Scotch neat for The Cripple — the quinquagenarian drew a small flask of clear water equipped with a dropper from his pocket.

“Easter water. I've an old auntie who never fails to bring me some.”

The Cripple raised the flask up to the light:

“You won't be findin' purer dan dis 'ere. Der aren't too many streams left where you can find it anymore. Dis one 'ere comes from Painsec.”

Terry thought it must be holy water.

“Dat's de first time I sees a body puttin' holy water in 'is Scotch.”

The Cripple laughed as he continued to study the clear water:

“Holy?! Sure, directly from on high!”

The Cripple let three drops of Easter water fall into his glass and put the flask away. They talked for a bit about this and that, and then The Cripple leaned over and looked directly down into the bottom of his glass, which he hadn't touched.

“Wot is it yer expectin' to happen?”

“I don't rightly know. It's sometin' I got to sense.”

Terry hesitated; he didn't want to annoy his friend:

“Sense like feel or sense like sniff sniff?”

The Cripple laughed, imagining how strange his little habits must seem to Terry. And the more he thought about it, the more he laughed. An open belly laugh, infectious as all hearty laughter is, because Terry too was laughing now, and across the room, Carmen wondered what it was the two of them found so funny.

INTERPROSE:
v. trans. — 2005/2013; from
inter
and
prose
.
A
. 1. To let another speak while one waits to see if one has an opinion on the subject.
“If only he'd really listened that would have been alright, but no, he was interprosing.”
(Daigle) 2. To remain silent because one is unable to get what one would like to say into the conversation. “
She was talking so fast and loud that one could only interprose.”
(Daigle)
B
. Fig. To savour the silences in the midst of conversation. “
She enjoyed their company because she always felt free to interprose.”
(Daigle)

“On account of my age?”

“Maybe, a little, but not just that.”

In the pause that followed Zed had time to worry and even to ask himself what it was that attracted him to older women (he'd not forgotten the crush he'd had on Ludmilla).

“A lot of things will surprise her, I think.”

Zed kept silent, waiting.

“The way people are kind and receptive, for example.”

Jus dat? Really? All things considered, he too preferred to avoid the subject, and to defer onto his people what might be wrong between the two of them.

“Is dat so? Are we really as wonderful nice as all dat den?”

Examination for Advanced Research course (RES 4993): describe all the necessary stages in a research project to determine 1) to what degree Chiac is essentially a geographical variation, an isolated language, a lalanguage; 2) if the normalisation of Chiac might threaten the existence of English, the Uralo-Altic languages, the Dravidian languages; 3) if the Polynesian languages, meridional Slav and the languages of the Oubangian sub-group are under threat of contamination by Chiacisized English.

“Ee knows a shocking lot of stuff, ee does. A real chucklehead!”

Terry was in an expansive mood, so that Carmen did not have to prod him.

“Ee says de whole idea of morality began when a gang of brudders killed der fawder. Like, in our house we were all boys. So it's as doh de five of us boys, we get togeder an' kill our dad.”

“An' why would you be doin' such a thing?”

“On account of he was standin' in de way of us sleepin' wid our mudder.”

!

“Alright, so now our dad's dead, well den we get to feelin'
guilty
like.”

“Well I should hope so!”

Carmen did not correct Terry's use of the English word
guilty.
Because sometimes she grew weary of being the party pooper.

“So, den, to rectify dat, we starts to
idealize
our fawder. An' dat's where de
totem poles
come from, an' even de idea of God an' all of dat.”

Terry's use of the English word
idealize
confirmed Carmen's momentary resolution.

“So den . . . de
guilt
. .
.
how do we say dat in French again?”

“
Coupable
.
Se sentir coupable.”

Carmen had replied even though the exact word,
culpabilité
, escaped her.

“Alright den. So . . . feelin' guilty, dat was de first ting. De second, dat was de whole ting wid incest. Not, mind you, directly de fact of a boy sleepin' wid 'is mudder. 'Twas more de fact dat de brudders are killin' each udder over who's gonna sleep wid der mudder. An' dat's when, fer der own protection, dey decides dat sleepin' wid yer mudder's against de law.”

!

“Fer boys, anyway . . .”

?!

A moment of doubt. Go back and leaf through
Just Fine
to check on the number of Terry's brothers. Nor is this the first time I forget something from one book to the next. For the sake of clarity, I should mention here that the characters of Terry and Carmen first appeared in
Just Fine
, where they became a couple, and have never left the stage since. They reappear in
A Fine Passage
and in
Life's Little Difficulties
, a novel in which the story centres on the transformation of an old warehouse in Moncton into a small centre of cultural activity, with lofts, artists' studios and small shops for people to loiter in, like Didot Books and the Babar.

“What about your parents? Won't they be a little bit surprised?”

“Inside der own heads, most likely. Only der's a lot dat's changed atwixt me an' dem since I organized de lofts. Maybe dey seen more who I am really, I mean aside from bein' der boy.”

. . .

“I never know'd me real dad. Didn't bodder me all dat much really. Only, sometimes, I didn't get along all dat well wid de one I got.”

“How old were you when you met your second father?”

“Six years old.”

. . .

“Things're better now. He's proud of me, even doh sayin' so don't come easy to him.”

“That's normal. Few fathers really live up to expectations.”

“Maybe so. Still, der's some dat know wot to do bedder dan udders.”

“Yes, that's true.”

“Awh, fer sure, it depends on a whole lot of tings. Dat's why it don't bodder me all dat much . . . most of de time, anyhow.”

. . .

“Let's just say it's been a long while since I bawled over it.”

Which means that only 19 of 2,401 titles in
La Bibliothèque idéale
contain the word
love
or a derivative thereof. This is less than 1 percent of the total. Someone ought to complain.

Carmen couldn't sleep.

“How was ee sayin' that, again? Without a law against incest, culture can't . . .”

Terry, who'd been on the edge of sleep, stepped back from the precipice and retraced The Cripple's explanation in small steps:

“Widout . . . de law against . . . incest . . . culture . . . could . . . not have . . . detached . . . itself . . . from nature. Dat's 'ow he put it: detached itself.”

“An' nature, that's the animal in us, an' all that?”

“Exactly. Instinct, biology. All dose tings dat happens widout us even tinkin' 'bout it… I tink.”

. . .

. . .

“That's how I feel about the Babar. If it were all the time just artists comin' in there t'wouldn't work. All those artists would end up smotherin' each other, an' the rest of us along wid 'em. It takes all sorts of folks to make it work, to keep it goin'.”

. . .

“I like the way ee says that 'bout culture, how it detaches itself from nature. It's like I can see it happenin'.”