For Sure (5 page)

Carmen and Josse had wasted little time looking for a name for their bar. The Babar seemed the obvious choice. No one could come up with a good reason not to use it, although there were doubts.

“Wot if yer not supposed to use dat name? Like if someone was to call der bar Charlie Brown, don't you tink pretty soon dey'd be gettin' sued?”

“Dat may be in de States. I doubts de French'd come after us. Mostly dey doesn't even know we exist, and dem dat does have got lots better tings to do den bodder wid a wee bar some place out in the wilds of Canada.”

In addition to English and French, Scrabble is played in Greek, Arab, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, German, Polish, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Flemish, Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, Turkish, Greek Cypriot, Icelandic, Afrikaans, Russian, Anglo-Chinese, Anglo-Japanese, Malay, and Braille. Obviously, the number of tiles and the letter values vary from one language to another.

Terry learned a great deal merely from browsing La Pléiade's web site: to be published by this, arguably the most prestigious, publisher in the world, amounts to a kind of consecration (when der's a bit o' real gold on de cover, you knows dey isn't foolin' around) — few writers have gained entry to La Pléiade during their lifetimes (Gracq? in me whole life, I never heard dat name) — founded in 1931 by Jacques Schiffrin and André Gide (hurrah! at last a fellow I heard of) — bought by Gallimard (naturally, dey owns everythin') — Volume III of Aragon's poetry goes for $130 (Jesus, how many volumes does dat boy got?).

In French, the tiles, those small wooden squares on which Scrabble's letters are printed, are sometimes called caramels. A valuable letter is worth more than four points. A phoney is an unacceptable word. The tiles are mixed in the bag, each player draws seven, which he or she places on the rack, and then tries to make the most of by exploiting the high-value letters, occasionally ending up with a phoney.

Some time later, Josse burst into Carmen and Terry's place in a state of great excitement. She was hiding something behind her back.

“Yous'll never guess!”

Unable to contain herself any longer, she showed them the object. Carmen and Terry were enraptured.

“Well, don't that beat all!”

“Where did ya find it?!”

“Out where dey sells dem antiques on John.”

Terry took the small Babar lamp from Josse, for a closer look.

“She's chipped, but der's nuttin' wrong wid dat. Goes wid de rest.”

But Carmen had no desire to decorate the Babar with a bunch of secondhand junk:

“Sure an' are we gonna fill up de place wid old stuff all chipped and faded?”

“Naw. I only meant if der's a bit of old stuff, it goes wid de whole idea of de lofts, recycling an' all dat.”

Carmen nodded, and took up the statuette in turn.

“Wouldn't be so bad if we could get our hands on a couple more.”

Josse was bursting with pleasure:

“I found dem! Googled Babar din't I, and der dey was! On eBay! Secondhand an' bran' new! We could set a few down on de tables. Not on all of dem, just here an' der, so long as it's in keeping wid de décor. If dat's wot we want, I mean . . .”

Coincidence? The fact that the alphabet is sometimes referred to as the ABCs, and that these three letters,
a
,
b
, and
c
, the first three of the alphabet are together the first letters of 38 percent of the names of colours in the pourpre.com web site's dictionary and 23 percent of those of Wikipedia's List of Colours?

As Étienne had more or less appropriated Aragon's
Blues
and “I Sing to Pass the Time,” while “Elsa” had become Carmen's song, Terry decided to learn another just for Marianne. He sang it for her one evening in her bedroom, with Étienne in attendance, since it was a première and he'd been there for the others. The song Terry had chosen was slightly more difficult than the earlier ones because it included some unusual vocal embellishments, which Terry wanted to reproduce as well as possible. He launched into “The Stranger” like a clown on a highwire, and soon had the kids laughing. At the beginning of the third verse, when Terry sang:
I took the hand of an ephemera / She followed me into my house . .
. Marianne imagined that this was how Terry had become her dad, and she paid even closer attention to what followed all the way to the end of the song.

The progression of the category “Useful Details” into “Interesting Details” is itself interesting. Whereas with useful details, one is justified in asking useful to whom, useful for what, in the case of interesting details, we ask ourselves interesting to whom, and why interesting. From an indirect object we shift into subordinated and coordinated clauses. The beginning of writing, in a sense.

But there was no denying it: Freud's works had not been published by La Pléiade. Ludmilla seemed hurt by this omission; she disappeared into the small office at the back of the bookstore like a fox retreating into its den.

“Everyting dat Freud wrote was published in French by dis here publisher. Nuttin' of his was published by La Pléiade.”

Terry handed Camil Gaudain the scrap of paper on which he'd written the address of Freud's publisher.

“You're sure?”

Camil Gaudain's surprise was comforting to Terry and, in a way, legitimized Ludmilla's dismay.

“Ya. Ludmilla was a dog's age surfin' on de Internet she couldn't believe it.”

Jean de Brunhoff's
Babar's Travels
was published by La Librairie Hachette in 1939. The original version was subsequently reprinted, notably in October 1979, in Hachette's Lutin Poche, L'école des Loisirs paperback edition. Recopied here (and translated) without permission, the first page reads as follows:

Babar the young king of the elephants

and his wife Queen Celeste

have set out in a hot air balloon

on their honeymoon.

“Au revoir! See you soon!”

the elephants shout

as the balloon floats out of sight.

Babar's little cousin Arthur

is still waving his beret.

Old Cornelius, acting chief of the elephants

whenever the king's away, thinks:

“Let's hope they don't have an accident!”

Because Acadian French is replete with old words and archaic expressions, it is perhaps the strong and often insidious presence of English that lends Chiac its particular character, and especially the clearly English pronunciation of these words. Someone from France can say they've put their car in the
parquigne
without a second thought, but an Acadian would feel like a showoff pronouncing it that way. Acadians quite naturally say “parking” exactly as they've heard it hundreds of times from the mouths of the Anglophones that surround them.

We are dealing here with a musical, rhythmic, and aesthetic rupture. Often this mix of two languages is unnoticed, but equally often it offends the ear and defies understanding. It's all a question of balance. For example, take the phrase “
je vas aouère besoin d'un troque ou d'un vãn pour haler mon botte ennewé
(Least ways, I'll be needin' me some body's truck or van to haul me boat).” Here at least the sentence seems to maintain a consistent sonic register. On the other hand, a vague menace lurks beneath the surface of the sentence: “
si que je sw
Ä©
tch la l
Ä©
ght bãck õn pis que la maison ẽxplode, expecte pas d'aouère ẽver ãgain d'autres outils pour Father's Day
(if I goes to switch on de light and de whole house blows up, don't you expect no more o' dem tools fer Fadder's Day).”

Find out if there are bloodlines linking Terry Thibodeau and the Francis Thibaudeau who designed the first recognized classification of typographical styles in 1921.

“To start wid, ee got aggressive like, den after a bit ee started wot dey calls panic attacks. After dat, 'twas a great big gaffer of a belly ache, so bad ee tot he'd got appendicitis. His wife drives 'im to de hospital in de middle of de night, and all. Sure, but de doctors couldn't find nuttin'. 'Til dey figured 'twas on account of 'is wife was preggies. The boy 'ad all de same side effects: worrying, belly ache, a burnin' rage to defend 'is kind, de whole kid an' kaboodle. Well, de doc asks 'im, did ee gain some weight lately, and sure enuf, ee'd took on five pounds. Dat was it den, ee had to be preggies, too. Ee was gettin' bigger jus' like 'is wife, even doh ee wasn't eatin' no more dan before. Pretty warped, eh?”

The word
character
when referring to a letter involves more than simply the sign. It also designates the environment of the letter, i.e., the spaces on either side and between the lines, as well as its relationship to its neighbours. The disposition on the same page of characters of different typefaces, sizes and other specifications will create, or not, depending on the typesetter's talent, a particular desired effect, which is what the art of typography is all about.

Terry had nevertheless taken the trouble to modify one or two of Aragon's phrases to avoid traumatising the children. His own modesty of course played a part in this. In “The Stranger,” to avoid any suggestion of incest — after all, he'd dedicated the song to Marianne — he changed the words to place dragonflies on her dress and butterflies in her hair, which helped to transform the original meaning of the verse. In the phrase
Cut my throat and the peonies
in “I Love You So
,”
he replaced his throat with roses, which somewhat attenuated the barbarism so that he could keep the line
Hurry bring me my wine my blood
, because he did not want to shelter the children from all primitive feelings nor transform Aragon's texts into innocent nursery rhymes; the kids already knew enough of those.

Thus the expression “read between the lines” is not purely figurative.

“Potatoes sold pretty well back den; well der weren't much to eat and not a whole lot o' choice. Dese days it's a whole udder kettle of fish. Folks're eatin' all sorts o' tings aside from potatoes. An' I'm not jus' talkin' 'bout dose dat's afeared of puttin' on a few pounds. So . . . fer sure, dey's gotta find some udder way to sell all dem potatoes. Like makin' bags smaller and more appealin' like, if youse catch me drift. And der's different sorts o' potatoes, 'cause it's like wine dese days, folks're startin' to know der different sorts o' potatoes. Potatoes fer makin' mashed'r no good fer boiled cod, an' potatoes ya want baked in yer oven or microwave, well dose ain't de same neither . . . Right, now what was I sayin'? Awh yeah! Potatoes you want fer bakin' an' dose wot you're usin' in yer fricassée, well dey ain't de same yer gonna be usin' to make fries.”

Gradually a slew of terms and phrases became widespread, terms like
libido
,
oral stage
,
anal stage
,
sadism
,
narcissism
, the
unconscious
,
Oedipal complex
,
desire
,
ambivalence
,
lapsus
,
guilt
,
pleasure principle
,
reality principle
, the
ego
, the
id
, the
superego
,
aggressivity
,
death drive
,
neurosis
,
psychosis
,
anxiety
,
defense mechanism
,
conflict
,
repression
,
inhibition
,
resistance
,
overdetermination
,
transference
,
projection
; all notions that have become part of our contemporary mental toolbox.

On the wall by the entrance hang a dozen or so backpacks of various sizes and colours. Those down close to the floor are smaller and livelier in colour. All together they make a pretty picture. Étienne got two new packs this September: one for the pool and one for his colouring course with Étienne Zablonski. “Course” may be exaggerating a bit, but it does dress up nicely and elevate slightly those weekly hours of babysitting Zablonski has offered Terry and Carmen. Wednesday afternoons therefore, the renowned painter Étienne Zablonski tries to teach some basic notions of visual art to the Le Petit Étienne Thibodeau.

“You don't need to bring me, Dad; I can get der on me own.”

Terry quickly concealed the concern that had gripped him at the thought of letting the little one roam the hallways of the lofts on his own. Once over his initial surprise, he sought to encourage his son's resourcefulness: