The Extinction Club (22 page)

“I didn’t read your journal. But is it true?”

“Yes, it’s true! Now just shut up about it, all right?”

“So why are you on a diet?”

“I just told you to shut up about it. Some things aren’t logical, okay? And there are some things that you’ll never understand. That aren’t in your
range
. Because you don’t think straight, you think curved. So please don’t talk anymore. I’m burned out talking to you.”

XV

Nile put me in a bad mood so now I’m going to get on my “pulpit,” my “soapbox,” which Grand-maman said is my second-biggest fault. She said that pulpits & soapboxes are not for 13-year-olds, that you have to be older, you have to have earned it. But now I’m 14 going on 15 & I’ve earned it.

Here’s my argument “in a nutshell”: that the Wildlife Ministry in this province is not interested in fighting poachers. To do this, they’d have to hire more agents & make the laws tighter. But they won’t, because they don’t want to make the hunters mad, the people they really work for. As Inspecteur Déry told me, “We serve hunters like welfare departments serve welfare bums.” Ask any ranger in this province & he’ll say the same thing. The Ministry makes money from selling permits & the tourist industry makes money from the killing of animals, legal or illegal — outfitters, guides, lodges, hotels, airlines. They just don’t want to mess with that.

In Quebec there’s not a lot of enforcement looking over your shoulder. It’s pretty much open season. In the past 5 years, one out of 3 rangers has been fired. And it’s the good ones they let go! Most of the ones they keep, who’ve got seniority, have spare tires from sitting behind desks, filling out tables & charts. We should put radio collars on them instead of animals to see how far their butts get from their chairs.

Some of them — surprise, surprise — have been investigated for taking bribes from poachers or gangs fronting as hunting guides. There are 2 agents in Ste-Mad who’ve been on the take for almost 30 years. They pick up their monthly pay packet or drug sack on some back road & agree to stay out of X areas for X number of days. Everyone knows who they are: the Déry detectives, père & fils. So why doesn’t somebody blow the whistle? Because Dery’s other son is a biker. The last guy who blew a whistle got his hands placed in the door jamb of a Ford Bronco. Others end up in hunting accidents or drowning accidents or snow burials inside running cars.

I’ve calmed down now, so I’ll talk about something else. About some mischief I got into last night.

I had this major nicotine fit and really gave it to Nile because he won’t let me smoke. I lost control, totally — I went berserk, I even hit him! I couldn’t sleep because of this so I decided to get up in the middle of the night and apologize. Plus I was afraid, I have to admit, that he’d change his mind about taking me with him to the rectory.

I crawled over to Nile’s bed on my hands & knees. I put my hand on his stomach & it went up & down & he didn’t even wake up! Then I leaned over & bit the top part of his ear & he still didn’t wake up! Then I ran my finger along his cheek, which had spines & prickles like a cactus, or porcupine. This made him open his eyes, but he didn’t even act surprised, he just asked if I was all right, if I needed anything. “A cigarette,” said I. When he frowned I yelled, “I’m kidding!” And I was. I didn’t really want to
smoke — it’d probably just make me throw up. Anyway, I started to say I was sorry for “blowing a gasket,” but Nile interrupted me right away.

“You want to hear a story?” said he, wiping his eyes and yawning. “A true story. Set in Paris. I was just dreaming about it.”

I nodded. I did want to hear a true story, especially if it was about Nile in Paris.

“Do you want the light on or off?” said he.

“Off,” said I.

“Do you want to go back to your bed to hear it? Or stay here?”

“Stay here,” said I.

It was near Christmas, he recounted, and his father had promised to take him to a stamp exhibition at the Grand Palais. Nile was like, 7 or 8. On the way his father stopped at a hospital to get something & said he’d be back in 2 seconds. He parked at the back of the hospital & left Nile alone in the car, with the keys in the ignition. He wasn’t gone for 2 seconds, he was gone for 2 hours. Nile couldn’t get out of the car & into the hospital to look for his dad because 4 teenage boys appeared out of nowhere & surrounded the car. First they wrenched the Jaguar ornament off the hood & then started banging on the windows when they saw Nile crouching in the front seat. They all pushed their flattened noses against the glass & made faces
at him. One of them then stood on the hood & urinated all over the windshield. And then another stood on the trunk & urinated on the back window. Nile was petrified. He didn’t know how to drive a car, but he tried to. But all he managed to do was to put the car in reverse & bang it against the hospital wall. With four boys on top of the car, laughing & shouting in French & Arabic. So he then pushed on the horn until they got angry & one of them smashed in the passenger window with a rock. A hospital guard, meanwhile, had come to investigate the banging sound of the car hitting the hospital wall. The boys took off. The guard wanted to call the police, not to report the gang but to report the father. He wanted the father charged with negligence. And he would have been if he hadn’t been such a bigwig doctor.

So what happened? When Nile’s father arrived there was an emergency, a man hit by a car, and because it was Christmas time the hospital was short-staffed. Nile’s father attended to the man immediately. And forgot his son was in the car.

“Did you ever forgive him?” said I.

“Of course. But my mother didn’t.”

“Did he save the man’s life?” That would’ve been the perfect ending to the story.

“No, he died.”

After we each had a bowl of porridge, Nile gave me a gift. A pair of snow-white swans. Some sort of gypsum, I think. Satin
spar or alabaster. SO beautiful. I tried to jump out of bed & hug him or maybe even kiss him, but I got a huge spasm in my leg & knocked over my tray table & fell on the floor. Nile picked me up in his arms like I was a feather.

I asked him why he was so nice to me, apart from the smoking ban, and why he was helping me. “Delusions of sainthood, I guess,” said he. I asked why he gave me things like this, hoping he’d say he’d fallen madly in love with me, but he said the swans were given to him by an Indian anarchist (I think I know who he means — is he having an affair with her?) & that thinking about me helps him stop thinking about other things. But he didn’t say what those other things were.

I asked if he’d ever suffered from mental illness & he said he was born with a nervous breakdown.

“No, seriously,” said I.

“You really want to know?” said he.

“Yes,” said I.

“I spent 3 years in an institution.”

This surprised me & even scared me & I didn’t know what to say.

“And another 2 as an outpatient. In a halfway home for the half-crazy.”

“Why? I mean, what’s wrong with you, Nile?”

“It’s never really been … fully diagnosed.”

“Schizophrenia?”

“In that family, a poor cousin maybe. If you throw in depression. It has to do with a bicameral mind, which you’ve probably heard of. No? It’s what cavemen used to have, where one part of the brain seems to be speaking & a second part that listens & obeys. Which is why man invented gods — to explain the voices. But that, as they say, is another story. My problem is … let’s just say it’s an exciting challenge to medical science.”

“What was it like there, being in the …”

“In the nuthatch, the cracker factory? The whole thing’s a big gap in my life. A big grey gap. Two years of tranqs & TV & plastic utensils. And seeing the institution’s motto in my dreams: ‘Gib mir deine Hand,’ which I think is from the Beatles. Two years with analysts as nuts as I was, going nowhere together. And ‘safety-coated’ whenever I became … oversensitive, shall we say, to the misbehaviour of strangers.”

“A straitjacket, you mean?”

“Every time I smell chlorine I’m reminded of it.”

“This was in … Paris?”

“Frankfurt. In Paris I was in rehab.”

Good God, I thought I had it bad. “And what was it like … I mean, with the other patients …”

“I had a private room, thank God. Or rather thanks to my dad. So I could usually avoid Dieter the Drooler, Manfred the Masturbator, and Ursula the Urinatress. And an octogenarian who thought he was one of the psychotherapists, who wiped his snot on every available surface.”

“Oh my God! This reminds of when I went to school.”

“Me too, come to think of it.”

“And your being there … Did it have anything to do with … you know, your father?”

“My father? When he left me in the car in Paris, you mean? Hell no, I got over that in two days. My haywireness is nobody’s fault. Not my father’s, not my mother’s. I was born with a tangled electrical mess in my head, that’s all — which D & A made worse. So if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s my own.”

I didn’t know what to say. “You were born in Paris, right?”

“No, Neptune.”

This was a joke, a “running gag” I think, even though his face was serious. “So that’s why they locked you away? Because you’re an extraterrestrial?”

“Well done. You finally guessed my secret.”

   XVI