The Years of Fire (20 page)

He placed them in a small pile to one side, stroked them thoughtfully for a moment with his forefinger, then took one bill from the pile and put it in his shirt pocket. He pushed the rest towards Charles.

“I’m keeping one to teach you a lesson about being polite, kid. You shouldn’t talk to me like that. Now get out, I’ve had enough of you for now. Come back when you’re in a better mood.”

His eye fell to the floor and to the knife that had fallen out of Charles’s pocket. He bent down and picked it up, then looked at it, smiling nastily.

“So, what do you know, as witch blade.… Nice one, too.… What were you going to do with it, stick it in my guts?”

“Give it back,” murmured the adolescent, his voice hoarse.

Thibodeau flicked open the blade and slid the end of his index finger along the edge, then gently pushed the tip into the palm of his hand.

“A real nice little knife,” he said, standing up. “Could come in real handy.”

He turned the knife over and over in his hand, looking steadily at his son, who had become livid.

“I think I might keep this little baby too.”

Suddenly Charles sprang at him, pushing him violently backward. The carpenter fell onto his chair and went over, hitting his head on the
refrigerator door with a dull crack. Running around the table, Charles threw himself on the man and began pounding him with his fists as hard as he could. Thibodeau let out a shout of fury and punched at the boy’s face with his free hand, kicking at him with his feet. The table overturned with a crash and banknotes fluttered everywhere. The two continued fighting, more and more violently. The carpenter, still unable to get back on his feet, cried out in pain and smashed his fist into his son’s head. Charles didn’t let up. The knife rolled onto the floor. Charles threw himself at it, then bounded for the door. The next instant he was running down the sidewalk, followed by demented shouts from his father, who was standing in the doorway shaking his fist.

Charles ran as far as de Maisonneuve, then slowed down, out of breath, avoiding an elderly couple with their Pekingese who had stopped to watch him. He made his way to Sainte-Catherine, saw a restaurant, went in, and locked himself in the men’s washroom. His right cheek was red and beginning to swell, and a blue mark was appearing at the corner of his eye. Other than that he appeared to be in one piece. He made a compress with a wad of paper towels soaked in cold water and held it to his cheek, brushed his hair in place, and lit a cigarette. His heart pounded with despicable joy.

“Damn,” he suddenly cried, looking at his watch. “I’m going to be late for work!”

His cheek didn’t look too bad; it might have been caused by a severe toothache. He left the restaurant, hurrying past the complaints of the owner, who was standing behind the counter with a dishcloth in his hand grumbling about people who came in to use his washrooms without bothering to order so much as a cup of coffee, and went down into the Papineau metro station. The large ceramic fresco inside the station – with its strong, bold colours showing Louis-Joseph Papineau, the fiery politician with the distinctive tuft of hair, standing before a monument during a skirmish in the 1837 Rebellion – sent a surge of warmth to his face. He stopped, took a deep breath, stuck out his chest, and smiled. He, too, had triumphed. He had the knife in his pocket to prove it. And the hundred-dollar bills were
in the kitchen with the old man. He would do even better than Papineau, he would see his victory through to the end, even though at the moment he had no idea what that end might be.

Sitting in the subway car, he rubbed his throbbing right temple and tried to think up a story to explain the state of his face to Monsieur Lalancette.

In the seat across from him a young woman in a black dress was showing off her splendid legs. They were pink and glowing with health. From time to time she wiggled her feet in their black open-toed shoes with enormous high heels. He watched her from the corner of his eye, her pretty face, her legs crying out for love and passion for life. He suddenly wanted to involve this woman in the victory he had just won over his father, but how he would do that he didn’t know. Should he sit beside her and chat her up? Simply smile at her, or wink? Follow her off the metro and speak to her? His wounded cheek made the venture seem risky. A few seconds later he would arrive at the Frontenac station, where he had to get off. The train began to slow down, and the brakes came on.

Suddenly he was gripped by a transport of joy: he knew what he was going to do. He leaned forward on his seat, ready to leap up. The second the doors began to open he threw himself on the young woman, kissed her on both cheeks, and dashed off the train under the dumbfounded gaze of the other passengers; the car filled with bursts of laughter, and the victim, astonished, intrigued, and a little alarmed, began talking animatedly to a woman sitting beside her.

Charles, meanwhile, had reached the street level, once again out of breath. He checked to make sure no one was following him, then set off rapidly towards rue Ontario, looking around with great satisfaction. It had definitely been a good day. Couldn’t have been better. Every obstacle in his way had melted before the sheer force of his will. A fierce joy seized him and he jumped in the air and clapped his hands, nearly frightening to death an old woman who had been shuffling along trying to remember the recipe for stewed rhubarb.

On the morning of November 7th, 1982, a neighbour who hadn’t spoken three words to Madame Michaud in as many years suddenly felt compelled to stop her on the street to tell her that she had seen her husband the previous evening in the company of the former manager of the Woolworth’s store on Mont-Royal, a woman who, one might say, was in no immediate danger of being made a saint. In any case, the way she’d been holding his arm and laying her head on his shoulder left not a shred of doubt as to the intimate nature of their relationship. Minutes later, Parfait Michaud was subjected to a raging torrent of abuse, during which accusations of infidelity and threats of revenge alternated with fits of weeping, great sobs, appeals for pity, and shortages of breath, all of which led up to the grand finale of a spectacular nervous breakdown. She calmed down slightly with the application of a cold compress and a few inhalations of Ventolin, after which she was able to drag herself off to bed, declaring, however, that she was in no condition to even think about making lunch, and in any case she had no intention of doing so.

Michaud sat at his desk, trying, without notable success, to concentrate on the will of an important businessman who had made his fortune manufacturing sexy lingerie. Certain clauses in the will had given him pause to reflect, just as certain phrases from Amélie’s tirade were still ringing in his ears. He tried to look at himself objectively, and ended up considering himself by turns a hypocrite, a swine, a sexaholic, a lecher, a whoremonger, and a plethora of other epithets the delineation of which would be too shocking for sensitive ears.

His life with Amélie had begun with all the delights of young love, but they had long ago turned rancid. She had always had her little ways, unimportant in themselves. At first he had found them amusing; but eventually they had taken root and grown until they’d completely engulfed the personality of the young woman he had married when he was twenty-two, a woman full of imagination and spirit. They had turned her into a cranky hypochondriac, useless to herself and to others, and had made their last fifteen years together a waking nightmare. He had thought of leaving her
many times, but he hadn’t, whether out of pity, or fear, or laziness, he couldn’t say.

In the end he had decided to lead a double life, as sad and banal as that solution seemed to him. In the parts of Montreal he frequented he’d heard himself referred to as “Notary Trop Chaud,” a pun on his name that plunged him into a state of self-loathing; he felt as though it were not only his name but the honour of his profession that was being maligned, especially since it was a profession that he’d practised with such meticulous zeal. It reminded him of hearing a busker in the metro a few months before butchering Schubert’s “Ave Maria” on a saxophone, giving it a lot of trills and splutters to a pre-recorded piano accompaniment. It was like seeing the Holy Virgin do a striptease. “Life is ugly,” he sighed. “And I’m ugly! No wonder God has washed His hands of humanity. We’re not worth the trouble …”

He stood up, went to the window, and stood looking out over rue Bercy with his hands behind his back. Three men walked by, two young and one old. The two younger men passed the older one without looking at him. All three seemed to him to be nondescript, vaguely grey in the face, undistinguishable, washed out, absorbed in their own petty thoughts. A young woman appeared at the corner pulling one of those small, wire shopping carts. She had a pretty mouth and lively eyes. He looked away; no more pretty women for him! It was time for him to develop other interests. “But you already have other interests, imbecile!” he scolded himself. “Music, books, your work.… They aren’t enough, though, that’s the problem … they never were enough.… Maybe you should have had … I’m only guessing here … children.”

Which made him think of Charles. There was a time when he would have adopted Charles himself, if he’d been more forthright and had had enough presence of mind. He thought of the time about a year ago, when he had asked Charles and his friend Michel Blondin to help him shelve his new library. The two boys had worked very hard and very carefully, but Charles, who was ordinarily so talkative and warm, had seemed distant, hard to draw out of himself, and a few times the boy had given him an
almost ironic look, as though he’d wanted to say something. Michaud had been intrigued.

When they were about to leave, Charles had stood in front of the shelves, examining each book in turn.

“Is he any good, Balzac?” he’d asked.

“Good?” Michaud had replied. “You absolutely must read him before you die, otherwise you go straight to Hell.”

“The Physiology of Marriage
. Is that a novel?”

“Umm … no. It’s a sort of treatise, or pamphlet, if you like. Pretty strong stuff.”

Charles had turned to him then, as though he’d been waiting for this moment for some time.

“There are those who think physiology is more important than marriage.”

And he’d raked Michaud with the pitiless look that adolescents reserve for adults who have disappointed them.

“Yes, well.… That’s how it goes sometimes,” Michaud had babbled.

“Human nature not being perfect …”

But he’d suddenly understood that Charles knew about his double life and had decided to confront him with it before he’d come to terms with his own anger.

Since that conversation he had had almost no contact with Charles. Two or three chance meetings in the street, cut short, and one other, a few months ago, when Charles had turned up at the house to borrow Louis Fréchette’s
Legend of a People
, which he’d needed for an essay. He’d stayed no more than a couple of minutes. He apparently couldn’t wait to leave.

And so, along with the ruin of his marriage, he had also watched his reputation suffer, a further ruin that risked costing him a friendship that meant the world to him. All for the futile and fleeting pleasures of being with women of uncertain virtue. The few times he’d met a woman of any worth, the affair had been brief …

Michaud paced back and forth in his office, hands thrust deep in his pockets, absently following a row of roses printed on his carpet. Then he
sat again at his desk, looked at the bizarre document he’d been asked to go over, and tried to become absorbed in it. But soon he looked up, checked the clock, and sighed. Céline Fafard, Fernand’s daughter, was going to be there in a few minutes. She’d called the night before to make an appointment, without saying why. He could still hear her thin, high voice on the phone. It was the first time a fourteen-year-old had asked to consult with him as a notary public. Of course it would be today (Fate again, the idiot), when he was so depressed he didn’t know how he would be able to manage an interview that might well concern a matter of some delicacy, as he had quickly realized.

No use trying to read the will. He got up and went into the kitchen to make himself an espresso. Amélie was still snivelling in her bed, probably on the point of going to sleep. He raised his demitasse to his lips just as the doorbell rang.

“It’s her,” he said.

Minutes later she was sitting in front of his desk, smiling but evidently nervous. She was a pretty young woman already, with magnificent eyes, cheeks perhaps a little on the bright side, but a fine, graceful, small nose and an intelligent look about her. She appeared to be a lot more serious than most people her age. Two or three years from now, when her face filled out a bit and her features became firmer, when the sensual curve of her lips was more accentuated, she was going to make a lot of young men very happy indeed – or perhaps just one man, if that was what she wanted.

“I came because I wanted to talk to you about Charles,” she began, coming directly to the point, blushing slightly but with a determined air about her.