The Extinction Club (35 page)

“But why would you bring stamps up here if you don’t … I mean, what do stamps mean to you exactly?”

What do they
mean
to me? Cancelled trips. A record of a past moment, a past transaction, literally stuck in time. “I don’t give them much thought. That’s all in the past now.”

“So why did you bring that one album?”

Collectors, I once read, acquired physical matter to substitute for what they lacked in the spiritual department. “You already asked me that.”

“You avoided the question.”

“I brought it to … to try again.”

“Try what again?”

Happiness. “Years ago my psychotherapist suggested I get a hobby—to help me stay dry, stay sane. That’s why I brought it. To try again.”

“So you’re no longer a collector or dealer? You just … stopped one day?”

“After my mom died, I stopped doing pretty much of everything.” And have had a foot in the hereafter ever since. It’s the mother, they say, who stands between the son and death.

“Except alcohol,” she said.

I thought of stopping the interrogation, but the truth was I didn’t mind it. Céleste was asking me questions that few had asked before. “Right.”

“What was she like? Your mom. Was she American?”

She was a beautiful Frenchwoman who became an alcoholic to endure a workaholic. “No, French. She was … well, beautiful. With a kind and loving heart. And a touch of madness.” A family trait.

“And your girlfriend? What was she like? Like your mother?”

“Not in the least.”

“What was she like?”

“French. Beautiful. With a touch of madness.”

Céleste smiled. “But without the kind and loving heart.”

“Correct.”

“What was your father like? Was he a good man?”

I looked up at the ceiling, to see what might be written there about the kind of father I had. His mission, it seemed, was to heap distinction upon himself, and indistinction upon his son. Rightly so, in both cases. “He was a good man, yeah. Absolutely. His mission in life was … well, lofty. He won all kinds of humanitarian awards.”

“What’d he do when he retired? Did he keep busy?”

He became addicted, it seemed, to the pizzazz and foofaraw of auctions and black-tie balls. “Yeah, he was a workhorse, he never stopped. He raised money for paediatric oncology institutions, for sick kids in New Jersey, Manhattan, the outer boroughs, Long Island, Westchester. That kind of thing.”

“Paed onc? All that does is keep babies alive so they can pass on their bad genes. It’s Darwin in reverse.”

Was this more ventriloquism, her grandmother speaking?

“And he treated you well?” she asked.

“Of course.” Count to ten. “How about you? Did your grandmother treat you well?”

“Of course.”

“She wasn’t too strict, didn’t push you too hard?”

“You can still love someone who pushes you hard. Venus and Serena Williams still love their father. I think.”

Snow began to fall that evening as I sat serenely in the living room, in a large grey armchair whose springs had gone. Moon was sprawled across my lap, her motor running. My coverless paperback was open on top of her.

Céleste, along with two or three cats, was on the uppermost floor, under the mansard roof, in an attic refuge a squad of inspectors could never find. You had to go through a
hall closet to get to it, ducking under clothes, to a small drywall door, then up a flight of dark stairs. She had renovated the space herself: white wall-to-wall carpet, hyacinth-and-hummingbird wallpaper, an antique wicker chair and a rocking horse with a mop for a mane and a marble for its one eye. Behind one of the walls, embedded in pink insulation, was a cache of documents: photographs, videos, DVDs and court documents, all relating to the Bazinet poaching ring. Along with Gervais’s boots and rubber gloves. Céleste had pried open a nailed panel to show everything to me. Why? “In case something happens to me,” she explained.

“You’re not afraid of them burning the whole place down?”

“Yes, I am.”

Despite the streams of frigid air, Céleste would stick her telescope out the attic window and peer through it for hours, drawing constellations in her sketchbook or trying to find Apophis, the next asteroid scheduled to collide with Earth.

I was feeling good in my new home, my castle over a bog. It was the holiday season and I wanted to sit back, feel the peace on earth and mercy mild. Or lie back, shut my eyes and wake up deep into next year. Forget that a war was raging inside my head, that time was running out, that the future loomed like a cliff. The police would soon be here, with questions about a missing girl or missing ranger or my impersonating a missing ranger. Child Care, or whatever it’s called up here, would also come calling, as would a certain Alcide Bazinet …

I gently placed my hand on Moon’s flank, feeling the motion of her breathing, then heard a soft harrumph followed by a purr that sounded like a distant motorcycle. Cats have over a hundred vocal sounds, according to Céleste, while dogs have only ten.

From the Telefunken upstairs came a carol sung divinely by a boys’ choir:

’Twas in the moon of wintertime when all the birds had fled

That mighty Gitchi Manitou sent angel choirs instead;

Before their light the stars grew dim

And wandering hunters heard the hymn …

“The Huron Carol,” which I hadn’t heard since I was a boy, since … I put my head back and listened. Images of a school in France, a brick prison six hundred kilometres from the Seine, circa ’74 …

“What a divine carol! Written by Jean de Brébeuf, the patron saint of Canada, as I’m sure you all know. What you may not know is that Brébeuf’s bones are buried not far from Midland, Ontario, at the Martyrs’ Shrine. He was tortured to death, I shudder to relate—stoning, slashing with knives, a collar of red-hot tomahawks, a baptism of scalding water, and finally burning at the stake. Because he was so brave and showed no signs of pain, his heart was eaten by the Iroquois. Okay. Our next song, our final carol of the evening, was requested by …”

The radiohead’s words unleashed a chain of images inside me—of red knives and tomahawks and hearts—so the next song didn’t register until halfway in. It too was sung by a boys’ choir, perhaps the same young angels, and it too took me back, this time to the Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Chapel:

… But with the woes of sin and strife

The world has suffered long;

Beneath the angel strain have rolled

Two thousands years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love song which they bring;

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing …

“It Came upon a Midnight Clear.” Which the phone in the kitchen savagely interrupted. Moon lazily raised her head, her eyes like wet shiny pennies. I let it ring at least twenty times before displacing cat and book.

“Please accept without obligation, express or implied,” said a thuggish baritone, “my best wishes for a socially responsible, non-addictive and environmentally safe celebration of the winter solstice holiday as practised within the traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, but with respect for the religious or secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or for their choice not to practise religious or secular traditions, and furthermore for a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uneventful New Year, viz. the generally accepted calendar year, including, but not limited to, the Christian calendar, but not without due respect for the calendars of other cultures. The aforesaid wishes are extended without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.”

This was law-school stuff, which Volpe reeled off annually in the cause of high wit. “Same to you.”

“You freezing your ass up there? Do they have central heating in Quebec?”

I paused to listen to his radio, to “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms.

“No, not yet,” I replied. “It was so cold yesterday I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets.”

Count to five. “Does that sort of thing pass for wit up in Canada? That could be the lowest lawyer joke ever told.”

“Yeah, it’s … my brain really isn’t—”

“I bring you glad tidings.”

“My ex is dropping all charges.”

“Uh, well, no. Not that good. But still good. You ready?”

“I am.”

“The French novelist and publisher have withdrawn their lawsuit.”

As if I cared. “And why is that?”

“You really don’t know?”

I had a pretty good idea. The book was bad enough, tawdry enough, to make it to the pharmacy racks. “I saw the book at Walmart.”

“
A Vacation to Die For
is number six on
The New York Times
bestseller list! Doubleday has bought paperback rights. Doubleday! And one of the Coen brothers has asked about film rights. You say they owe you a percentage of sales?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen percent stateside. Twenty world.”

“Nile, you’re a goddamn genius. Send me the contract. I’ll make sure you get what’s owed. Every last cent.” His words were suddenly indistinct amid sudden whuffling sounds, as though he’d just clamped the receiver between jaw and shoulder.

“What’d you just say?” I asked.

“I’ll make sure you get every last cent.”

“No, before that.”

“Send me the contract.”

“Before that.”

“I said you’re a goddamn genius.”

“Say it again.”

“You’re a goddamn genius. A chip off the old block. God, how your father bragged about you. God, how he loved you.”

I stopped walking circles around the garbage can, paused for one, two, three heartbeats. “He what?”

“Got another call.”

PART THREE

POST-CHRISTMAS

Fails my heart, I know not how,

I can go no longer …

   XXIV   

T
he days after the twelve days of Christmas have always been a dreary and dismal time for me, so it was no surprise when some dreary and dismal things began to happen, here in the Quebec woods, on the thirteenth day of Christmas.