The Years of Fire (13 page)

And on he went with the usual banalities that parents hand out to their children in the naive conviction that experience is something that can be transmitted from one generation to the next, and that the fact that they are right is all the justification they need to impose their views on their offspring.

In the end, Fernand asked Charles to stay away from the pool hall during the week, before his studies – to say nothing about other aspects of his life – began to suffer. Charles argued that he was in the top percentile at Pierre-Dupuy, that he was getting good marks, and that it wasn’t as if hanging around the house every night would make his marks go up. Pool halls were not healthy places for kids to hang out, Fernand objected. They were for layabouts and welfare bums and people with shady pasts. The only things he would learn there were bad habits – like smoking, for example, he added with a bitter smile, which, though it was probably the least damaging thing he could pick up, would sooner or later ruin his health.

His health was his business, Charles countered, he had the right to do with it what he wanted. And as for those kinds of people Fernand spoke of, he’d never seen anyone like that in the Orleans. He invited Fernand to come and judge for himself what kind of place the Orleans was.

“Nothing to be done,” sighed Fernand when he joined his wife in the kitchen. “Everyone has to make their own mistakes, I guess, if they’re going to learn about life. I just hope the mistake he’s making isn’t too serious.”

“Who says he’s going to make mistakes?” Lucie said. “You always let your temper get the better of you, my poor Fernand. You go flying off the handle, you say things you don’t mean, and you get people’s backs up. Does it make you feel any better? Let him do what he has to do, at least for a while. He’ll get over it. He has a good brain in his head. Have a bit of confidence in him. We’ll keep an eye on him, of course. There’ll always be time to grab him by the scruff of the neck if he starts doing anything foolish.”

Morning break had just begun; students spread out in front of the school’s main entrance were talking and smoking in the heavy rumble of the Grover factory working at top speed across the street. The ancient brick building with its enormous dusty windows seemed to vibrate at such times, as though it were about to explode from the sheer effort of expending so much energy.

Suddenly a large black cat with a gold collar came out from between two parked cars. It seemed disoriented. The end of its tail was broken and one ear was in tatters. After sniffing a tire for a few seconds, it ran out into the street in front of a speeding delivery truck. A shriek arose from several nearby students, and a small group gathered around the animal. Its hind leg had been crushed. Splayed out on the asphalt, it stared up at the onlookers with a bewildered eye as a trickle of blood ran down its side. One grinning student tossed an empty cigarette pack at its head.

“Hey! You idiot!” shouted Blonblon. “Leave the poor thing alone! Don’t you think it has enough problems without you pestering it?”

Two or three girls muttered their agreement. Blonblon kneeled down before the cat, which reared up onto its three good legs and started spitting and growling at him, ferociously defending what little remained of its life. Blonblon pushed some of the students out of its way, giving it room to escape, and the cat dragged itself off.

Just then Charles came up, cigarette lighter in one hand and the other reaching into the inside pocket of his windbreaker. When he saw the gathering he stopped, curious to know what was going on. The smartass who’d thrown the cigarette pack was giving Blonblon a hard time, shouting at him and digging his finger into Blonblon’s chest. Someone filled Charles in on what had happened. He looked around for the cat, which had disappeared between two buildings, and then went over and stepped between Blonblon and the smartass.

“Take a hike, man,” he said to the latter. “I want to talk to him. It’s important. You can pound the shit out of him later.”

The smartass went on shouting for a few seconds, then went off in a huff with two of his comrades.

“Would you like to make a few bucks?” Charles asked Blonblon. “Monsieur Michaud has just bought a whole library. Nearly a thousand books. He wants us to move it for him and put it on shelves.”

“When?”

“Tonight, if that’s cool, or else over the weekend.”

“Not tonight,” Steve interrupted, joining the two boys and looking at Charles with a secretive smile. He seemed bubbling over with barely suppressed excitement. “Tonight, my friend, we’re going to play pool, you and I, and I don’t think you’ll want to miss it. No, I don’t think you’ll want to miss one minute of it, may my dick fall off if I’m wrong!”

And he laughed as though already enjoying the fun that was in store for Charles. Charles looked at him in surprise and some irritation, wondering what clever trick Lachapelle had up his sleeve. But the latter took himself off, still laughing, after telling Charles to be at the Orleans at seven-thirty.

Blonblon had already wandered off to look for the cat. Ever since he’d been struck by lightning he hadn’t had much time for the frivolities of this world. All he cared about was love. The cat was nowhere to be found.

For the rest of the day Charles scratched his head trying to figure out what it was that Steve had lined up. It could only be some kind of trick. At three o’clock, the biology teacher, Monsieur Belzile, noticing Charles’s preoccupied air, asked him to come up to the board and write down the principal functions of the liver. Charles stood at the board for a long time, completely befuddled, which delighted his classmates, then went back to his desk, smiling bravely but blushing to the roots of his hair, knowing for the first time in his life what it was like to be a complete dunce.

He walked into the pool hall around seven. As usual, Nadine gave him a big smile from behind the bar, filling him (also as usual) with a quivering, timid rapture. Obviously she thought he was attractive and that the three years that separated their ages did not in theory mean they couldn’t go out together (provided, of course, that he could somehow supplant the owner). But he was paralyzed by her beauty. On top of which, and causing him no small amount of confusion, there was a certain hardness in her mannerisms and in her expression that told him that, despite her youth, she had already seen her share of life, and she was not afraid of it. As a result, when he was around her he felt he was still a bit of a child.

He looked around the room. Only three of the tables were being used, and Steve hadn’t arrived yet. But just then he heard Steve’s voice coming up the stairs. High-pitched, excited, slightly weird. Who could he be talking to? There was a burst of laughter. A girl’s laughter. Then Lachapelle stood at the door, bracketed by two plump brunettes who were about the same height as him, not bad-looking. Charles recognized them from school, but he couldn’t remember their names.

“Hey, Thibodeau! Here already?”

He looked down at his companions, who were laughing as hard as they could.

“You know Marlene Jobidon? No? She’s in the same class as Henri. And Agatha Forcier?”

“One of my uncles owns the Blue Bird,” she said, as though that were one of her personality traits.

“Oh really? I didn’t know that,” Charles said, not knowing how else to respond.

They began chatting about this and that. Every now and then Charles looked questioningly at Steve, who assumed an innocent air and went on telling joke after joke, making the girls laugh and generally bringing them up to his own level of excitement. He explained that Marlene and Agatha had expressed an interest in learning how to play pool. “So I said that you and I were pretty good with our sticks” – here the girls broke into laughter again – “and we’d be happy if they joined us to make a foursome.”

Renewed hilarity from Agatha and Marlene.

After discreetly ensuring that Charles was willing to split the cost, Steve went over to the cash to arrange for a table. Charles had never seen him in such a lively mood. He heard Nadine telling Steve that the owner had gone out for the evening.

“Far out!” said Steve. “Bring us four drafts.”

But she refused him outright. If the pool hall lost its licence would he be able to get them a new one?

They started playing. Charles soon realized that teaching Marlene how to play pool was nothing but a pretext for bringing them together. Certain intimacies shared between Steve and Agatha suggested that their acquaintance was already fairly well advanced. Of the two, Charles would have preferred Agatha for himself. Marlene was altogether too pudgy: pudgy cheeks, pudgy chin, pudgy nose, pudgy behind, even the tips of her shoes seemed pudgy. But her skin was superb, like cream, and she had a frank, easy laugh that was a pleasure to listen to. There didn’t seem to be anything complicated about her. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, Charles set about imitating his friend. When Marlene succeeded in putting a little backspin on the cue ball, however accidentally, he kissed her on the cheek. When she made a second decent shot, she let him kiss her lips.

Charles felt a strange sensation spread through him, a mixture of curiosity, lust, and fear. The others were obviously running the show, but
it was without malice; clearly his companions wanted nothing more than to have a good time. But part of him would have liked his friend to leave him alone in his innocence, to let him go on being a child, instead of making him feel that his illusions were being shattered every minute by the gestures and pleasantries shared by Steve and the two girls.

The next day, during one of their final bike rides of the season (since snow would soon be putting a stop to them for a few months), Steve would tell him that Marlene had had her eye on him for a long time, and had even bet Agatha that she would pluck his cherry before the week was out. The two girls had talked to Vicky, Steve’s stepsister, and she had passed the word on to Steve. The latter, after having spent a few highly enjoyable hours with Agatha at Marlene’s place, had agreed to set something up, and the idea of a game of pool had seemed the best way to put their plan into action.

They had just racked the balls for a second game when René De Bané appeared. His arm was in a sling and his face looked as though it had been pummelled with a pair of baseball cleats. The surprising and, to some extent, unfortunate thing was that for once he appeared to have a real story to tell, but he was in much too foul and uncommunicative a mood to tell it. When she saw him, Nadine gave an exclamation of surprise and asked him what had happened.

“Nothing you’d be interested in,” he muttered.

The look he gave her told her that if she pressed him she’d be sticking her head into a lion’s mouth. He ordered a beer and took it over to a table by the bar, where he sat staring darkly into his glass.

One of the pool players saw him, went over to say hello, and also remarked on his devastated face. But before he could ask him about it, De Bané suggested he go outside and play in the traffic on Boulevard Metropolitain. After two or three beers, however, his mood seemed to lift a little; he stood up, beer in hand, and leaned against a pillar watching the somewhat lively game that Steve and Charles were playing with their two friends.

“René,” Steve ventured, “what happened to you?”

“Accident at work,” was all the jack-of-all-trades would say. In an obvious effort to change the subject, he added, “If you’d taken that last shot
off the rail you’d have dropped the seven in the corner pocket, no sweat.”

“What kind of accident, René?” Steve persisted. “You fall down a chimney or something? Did a bus suddenly decide to give you a peck on the cheek? I mean, shoot, you don’t often see a face as mangled as yours.”

“Accident at work, I told you. I’ll tell you about it some other time. I don’t want to talk about it just now. You kids,” he went on, settling into a vaguely philosophical bitterness, “you don’t know what it’s like to work for a living. When you get to know a bit about life you’ll realize it’s not always a bed of roses. Pushing pencils all day, that’s nothing. A pastime for pussies!”

“I’ve been working since I was eight years old,” Charles said, irked.

“Oh yeah? So you don’t just push pencils, you sharpen them from time to time, eh?”

Agatha and Marlene laughed.

“No, I delivered pizzas for Chez Robert, my friend. I also sold chocolate bars on the street, and now I’m working as a delivery boy for Lalancette Pharmacy.”

At this news René De Bané abruptly changed his attitude. He congratulated Charles for his courage and energy, delivered a paean of praise for any youngster who at least partly paid his own way while still going to school, and questioned Charles assiduously about his work at the pharmacy. How long had he been working there? How did he like the owner? Did he get along well with him? Was business good? And so on.

“It’s your shot, Charles,” Marlene interrupted, taking him by the arm. In the process she managed to run her hand along his thigh.

“You’re ruining our concentration, René,” Steve said sourly.

“Sorry, guys, sorry … didn’t mean to butt in.… Hey, who wants a beer?