The Years of Fire (10 page)

“What have you been up to, eh?” Lucie said, looking at him suspiciously. “What have you done to your mouth?”

She bent over and looked at his teeth.

“Would you like to tell me what you’ve been chewing on, you little devil? Your mouth is full of blood! And you’ve broken a tooth! Come on, show me, show me what you’ve done. Bad boy!”

Resigned to his fate, Boff led Lucie back to Charles’s room. Lucie looked around but didn’t see anything amiss. She checked the furniture in the rest of the house and, still finding nothing, let Boff go outside.

It was Charles who discovered the disaster at suppertime. There was no doubt who the perpetrator had been. Furious, he went outside to look for Boff, but the dog was nowhere to be found. He would have to go back to work at the pharmacy without giving Boff the punishment he deserved.

“Poor little Hachiko,” he murmured, devastated. “How am I going to fix you up? And why did he do this to you, the bloody idiot? If Monsieur Michaud sees you like this he’ll never give me another present!”

He made a few deliveries. An old woman on rue Wurtele, who hobbled to the door on legs that looked like two hams stuffed into a pair of brown sausage casings, gave him a fifty-cent tip, but he was so wrapped up in dark thoughts that he barely thanked her. At eight o’clock things began to wind down at the pharmacy and, swallowing his pride, he decided to phone Blonblon. He was the only one he could think of who could save Hachiko. For once, Blonblon was home. He kindly agreed to have a look at the bronze dog that very night, and the two boys arranged to meet at nine by the Frontenac station.

Two or three times as they were walking to his house, Charles came close to asking his friend how he had met Caroline, but since the young swain hadn’t brought up the subject and hence offered no opening into which to insert such a question, he thought it best to keep his curiosity to himself.

“Hmm,” said Blonblon after taking a long look at Hachiko. “He really mangled this thing. I wonder what got into him?”

“Who knows. The bugger hasn’t shown his face around here since. He knows what he’ll get when he does.”

Blonblon continued his examination, then declared in a serious, thoughtful tone that he believed it would be possible to repair the statue with automobile body putty and a lick of paint, but that he couldn’t do it without a photograph of the original. Maybe Monsieur Michaud would have one.

“I’ll go ask him right away,” Charles said.

Parfait Michaud was a great reader and an assiduous music- and film-lover, and always stayed up late, so there was no risk of bothering him by turning up on his doorstep at nine-thirty at night.

Charles hurried over to the notary’s house while Blonblon and Céline went into the Fafards’ backyard to look for Boff, whose absence was beginning to worry them.

Amélie opened the door wearing a turquoise kimono with pink tassels and a scarf that gave off a strong scent of camphor oil and lemon.

“He’s out visiting a friend,” she said, strangely reserved. “I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

She put a hand to her head, heaved a deep sigh, and shut the door. Disconcerted, Charles stood on the porch for several seconds wondering if he had been wrong about coming over so late, then slowly made his way back home. The evening was ending the way it had begun – detestably.

At the corner of Gascon Avenue he automatically looked up at Médéric-Martin Park and thought he saw Boff in the distance, lying beside a chain-link fence. Could it be that his fear of being punished had made him run away from home? Ordinarily he never came this far from the neighbourhood. Charles called to him a few times, then, since the dog didn’t move, he ran towards him. He hadn’t gone twenty steps before the animal jumped up and ran to the other end of the park.

Charles ran after him. “Boff! Boff!” he called. “Come back here! I’m not going to hurt you!”

He was no longer certain that the dog was Boff. After a few minutes he stopped, out of breath. The dog had disappeared somewhere up rue de Rouen, which hummed faintly across from where he stood. Resuming the chase, he hurried to the street, arriving in time to see the dog, nose to the ground, disappear between two houses about fifty metres down. Charles called a few times without success, then recrossed the street, certain now that he had been mistaken. Boff would never have wandered this far away. He would have come home by now, penitent and excited, ready to take his punishment and trying to regain Charles’s favour with pathetic little whimpers.

Charles continued along Gascon, which ran beside the park towards rue de Rouen. Across the street, a man and a woman came out of a house and began walking in his direction. He stopped, taken aback. He recognized the man as Monsieur Michaud. The tall, stooped body, that way of stepping as though afraid of crushing something or of getting his feet wet, could only belong to his friend and mentor the notary. He didn’t know who the woman was. The couple were talking in a friendly, animated way, the way people do after two or three glasses of wine, and they had not yet seen him. Charles had the feeling that the notary would not be pleased to run into him at this moment, and, seeing a hedge to his right, he
quickly hid behind it. And not a minute too soon, because the notary and his companion decided at that moment to cross the street and were headed straight for him. He studied the woman from his hiding place; she seemed much younger than Monsieur Michaud, pretty enough, but with a kind of sugary sweetness and a way of holding her elbows to her sides and swaying her hips that reminded Charles of an actress in a French comedy. She leaned into her companion and whispered something in his ear.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” cried Michaud, giving a great laugh (Charles had never heard him laugh like that). “You always have such wonderful ideas, you know, my sexy little temptress!”

And, putting his arm around her waist, he planted a kiss on her cheek.

Charles waited until the two were gone, then slowly walked to his house, thinking furiously. Céline came up to him looking worried. Boff had not returned. Blonblon had gone home.

“I don’t want to scare you, son,” said Fernand, coming out of the living room with a newspaper in his hand (Trudeau and Chrétien smiling, looking down), “but it’s possible someone has taken him.”

“No, Papa, Boff is too smart for that!” said Henri, coming up behind his father. But even he didn’t look convinced.

Charles put his hands on his hips. “I’ll bet my bottom dollar he’s out there hiding under the shed.”

He went out into the yard and called. Several minutes went by, but no dog appeared.

“Boff!” he called, now becoming as alarmed as the others. “Come out from hiding, Boff! There’s a good boy! I know you’re out there.… I won’t punish you … not much, anyway!”

He looked around the yard, then with a deep sigh bent down and put his head under the shed. No doubt about it, this had been a rotten day. And his encounter with the notary certainly hadn’t improved it. He felt as though he’d been deceived, and it left a bad taste in his mouth. But at the same time, Monsieur Michaud’s arch, somewhat humorous mannerisms,
which Charles had known for many years and had grown quite fond of, now took on a mysterious importance. And that only troubled him more.

Boff was not seen again until ten o’clock the next morning. It must have been hunger that brought him home, unless it was the need to expiate his guilt. Charles and Henri were out taping notices to the telephone poles in the neighbourhood, giving Boff’s description and their telephone number.

When Charles came home and saw him stretched out on his bed looking contrite, it was all he could do to stop himself from running to him with a cry of joy. But with a serious, theatrical gesture he seized the statue of Hachiko and waved it under the dog’s nose.

“Boff, what’s this? Why did you do this, eh? Don’t you know what this statue means to me? I love Hachiko. And now I don’t know if it can even be repaired!”

He then took Boff’s muzzle in his hand, but all he did was give it a rough shaking. Céline, who was watching from the doorway, sympathized with Charles’s leniency and showed it by coming over and rubbing his back, which sent a shiver all the way down to his heels.

That evening Blonblon showed up with a box of auto putty and a can of spray paint. He spent a long time repairing the statue, because the hole required a great deal of filling that was difficult to mask. A photo would have been useful, he said. Charles pretended that the notary hadn’t had one. But after a while Hachiko looked as good as new, almost. Charles was happy with the result, and this time he put the statue on top of his dresser where he knew Boff couldn’t get at it. Then the two friends went off to tour the neighbourhood on their bicycles.

The streets had been baking all day, and even though the sun had set an hour earlier, the walls, sidewalks, and pavement still radiated a stifling heat. Blonblon said he was thirsty and suggested stopping somewhere for a soft drink. They had turned their backs on the Blue Bird, feeling it was
their duty to boycott the place, and so they headed to Villa Frontenac, a restaurant across from the metro station that had been famous for almost thirty years for serving the best smoked-meat sandwiches in Montreal East.

“My treat,” Charles said, feeling glad to be with Blonblon again.

After their sandwiches and fries, Charles suggested a bowl of ice cream for dessert, and, after a brief moment of polite reticence, Blonblon accepted.

For a while the two boys ate in silence, absorbed in the pleasures of their dessert. From time to time Blonblon looked up and smiled at Charles, who gave a little smile of contentment in reply. But it was not unadulterated; Charles was feeling bad for having lied to Blonblon about Monsieur Michaud. Last night’s unexpected meeting with the notary still haunted him, and he felt the urge to confide in someone. Who better to lend an ear than Blonblon?

After using his spoon to carefully scrape the last fragments of nuts and almonds from the far reaches of his bowl, then taking a long drink of his 7-Up, he let out a deep sigh and looked his friend in the eye.

“Blonblon,” he said, “there’s something I need to tell you. I didn’t go to Monsieur Michaud’s last night.”

Blonblon gave him a surprised smile.

“I mean, I went there, but he wasn’t home. But I did see him a short time later, in the street.”

He gave Blonblon the details of his encounter.

“So what do you think, Blonblon? It makes me sick to think about it,” he went on without waiting for an answer. “Cheating on his wife when she’s home in bed with a migraine. That sucks, doesn’t it? I never thought he was like that. He’s done a lot for me, Blonblon – without him, who knows where I’d be right now? – and he has a lot of fine qualities, I know that as well as anyone. But to see him with his arms around that little … tart, I mean, jeez, what I mean is … I …”

He stopped talking, tears welling up in his eyes.

Blonblon chewed his lip thoughtfully, then he, too, scraped the bottom of his bowl with his spoon.

A man sitting in a booth across from them was listening in on their conversation. He was bald and thick-lipped and had a scar on his left cheek that would have suited a pirate in a B movie; he listened with a strange smile, and every so often he rubbed the tip of his nose.

“Well, Thibodeau,” Blonblon said with a seriousness Charles hadn’t seen in him before, “here’s what I think …”

He pushed his bowl away and took a drink of his root beer, in which the bubbles had started to slow in their ascent to the surface.

“… I think that love is the strongest force in the universe. No, listen to me! I know what I’m talking about. That girl might have seemed like a tart to you, but Monsieur Michaud is Monsieur Michaud and you are you. When love hits you between the eyes, my friend, watch out, there’s nothing you can do about it. You don’t think. Common sense just flies out the window, believe me. I wouldn’t have been saying this a month ago, but now I can. Did you know that I have a girlfriend, Charles?”

“Everybody knows.”

“Henri saw us together, is that it? I thought so.”

“Your mother told me, too.”

“Oh yeah? It doesn’t matter, I’m not trying to hide anything. Her name is Caroline. Caroline Maltais. I’ll introduce you one day soon.”

And with a quiver in his voice, as though his life depended on each word he was saying, he launched into the story of his love life.

The affair had got off to a bad start. Caroline Maltais lived on the same floor as he did, but at the opposite end. He didn’t run into her very often, and truth be told he hadn’t paid much attention to her. Then one day, about a month and a half ago, he’d been waiting for the elevator on the ground floor when she came into the lobby with three of her friends; the small group huddled in a corner whispering and he had the strong impression that they were talking about him. Two or three times a phrase made it to his ears, along with a few stifled giggles: “Goldilocks.” They could have been referring to his hair, which was blond and fairly curly, but Goldilocks was also the name of a girl in a fairy tale his parents used to
read to him when he was young, and that really cut him to the quick: could they possibly think he was effeminate? Then the elevator door opened and he entered it without even bothering to turn around, determined to snub these little idiots the next time he saw them.