The Years of Fire (5 page)

Charles ran home to tell Lucie the bad news, not thinking for a second that his presence in the middle of the afternoon would cause her even more concern. But she wasn’t there, probably out shopping. He wandered from room to room for a few minutes, tried to read, watched a bit of television, but his thoughts were scattered in all directions like a handful of dust tossed to the four winds. Not knowing what else to do, he went back to the restaurant.

But he found the door locked. A notice, hurriedly scrawled in large, red letters on a piece of cardboard, read:

There was another surprise waiting for him at the end of the afternoon: Lucie had not been shopping earlier that day, she’d been working at the hardware store. She was going to be working there now, six days a week. Business at the store had continued to drop off, and Fernand had had to lay Clément off because he couldn’t afford to pay his salary. Lucie was taking his place. They told Charles about it as though it were all a normal part of doing business, but Charles wasn’t taken in. There was a distinctly sombre feeling in the house. Lucie, exhausted from her first day on the job, made a kind of back-of-the-fridge supper and, for the first time since coming to live with the Fafards, Charles pushed his plate away without finishing it. The meal was tossed into the garbage, and Fernand told his wife to go lie down in the living room while he cleaned up the kitchen. As he worked, he sang bits of an old hit of Fernand Gignac’s:

But even he was preoccupied, his mind wandering and his voice taking on a wistful tone that pierced the heart; it was clearly not roses he wanted but something else, something more essential, and something that Fate was refusing to let him have.

Although Henri had been kind to Charles all afternoon, that evening he barely spoke to him. From time to time he would cast Charles a look that the latter found strange, almost malevolent, a kind of reproach. But for what? Charles wondered if Henri regretted having become his adoptive brother, since it meant that Fernand had had to pay five thousand dollars to that swine of a carpenter who had fathered him. The thought gave him such a stab of pain that he took Boff into his room and spent the rest of the evening lying on his bed, curled up with his dog in a state of despair that reminded him sharply of those terrible years he’d believed were behind him forever.

Céline knocked on the door and asked him to help her with her homework, but her voice sounded so worried that he knew it was only a pretext.

“Leave me alone, Céline,” he sighed after a moment. “I don’t feel like seeing anyone right now.”

The day had started with such bravado, such glory, and now look how it was ending. In misery.

Steve happened to telephone him towards the end of the evening and, despite the lateness of the hour, managed to persuade him to go out. They rambled along rue Ontario for a while, pushed by a brisk wind; Charles told his friend about the unhappy incident at Chez Robert earlier that day, then confided his worries about the hardware store, which seemed headed inevitably into bankruptcy.

For once, Steve didn’t try to turn everything into a joke. He listened to Charles gravely and attentively and did his best to raise his spirits. Then he stopped walking and turned to face his friend.

“You’re really stressed out, man. That’s not good. All those dark thoughts, they’ll only bring you down. I’ve got something that’ll fix you up.”

Charles looked at him, taken aback.

“We’ve got to find us a quiet space, my man, where we can blow our minds. Know what I’m saying?”

And from the pocket of his windbreaker he took a small plastic bag filled with some kind of brown substance. Charles knew what it was immediately. He’d been seeing the stuff around for some time. He’d even been invited to “have a toke” a few times, but for some reason he’d always put it off.

“It’s better than tobacco, Thibo, my man. Those dark thoughts will just vanish into thin air. You might even see things from a thousand light-years away. You’ll be so laid back you won’t believe it!”

Charles smiled nervously. He felt as though he’d already been to the moon and back that day, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on another “trip.” But Steve was insistent, and soon they found themselves on the bench in the little park on rue Coupal, which at that hour was dark and deserted.

Charles took a drag and started coughing. Steve teased him, then encouraged him to try again. Then before he knew it, all of life’s difficulties
seemed to have lifted from his shoulders. He was on a high plateau that extended smoothly and peacefully before him as far as he could see. He stood up and began walking, his nose to the wind, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, laughing at the way his feet moved.

On December 20th, 1979, the Lévesque government laid before the National Assembly the wording of the question for the referendum on Quebec sovereignty. The idea of a public referendum on separation had been feeding stormy debates within the Parti Québécois for some time. Many were of the opinion that the election of an openly separatist government had itself been enough justification for a declaration of Quebec’s independence, and for the beginning of negotiations with Ottawa to bring it into effect. They were called the hard-liners. The moderate faction were diametrically opposed to this view, urging a much more gradual approach. According to them, the election of a sovereigntist government had to be followed by a period of good governance, in order to inspire confidence in the electorate. Once that confidence was gained, voters could be appealed to by means of a referendum to determine the political future of Quebec.

In 1973, Claude Morin, known as “the father of phasing-in,” a former senior Quebec bureaucrat and a very influential figure among the
independentistes
(although revelations of his secret contacts within the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would discredit him a few years later), had presented the idea of a referendum to the Parti Québécois leadership, and it had been rejected. The next year, however, he had put the idea forward again and it had been adopted. From then on the referendum project had been an essential plank in the party’s platform.

The hard-liners considered the moderates to be a bunch of wimps, hiding their lack of courage behind a smokescreen of complex stratagems and endless negotiations. The moderates, in turn, treated their adversaries as a gang of fanatics. Whatever the truth of the matter, it was the moderates who were carrying the day.

After having let the debate drag on year after year, René Lévesque’s mandate was drawing to a close and he had finally come to a decision. And so, on December 20th, 1979, the referendum question was sent out to every newspaper in the province.

After having read the question three times while standing in an aisle of his hardware store, Fernand turned pale, then violently red, then gave a long groan that would no doubt have caused little stir in a jungle but which produced a very marked effect in the store. He then shut himself in his office and informed everyone that he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

He stayed there for three hours, and no one ever knew what he did. But that night at home he declared to Lucie that Quebec was being run by fools, and that he’d have to be a fool himself to let them go ahead on such a disastrous course of action without doing anything about it.

“There’s a special meeting tonight in Claude Charron’s riding,” he said. “We don’t live in that riding, but I’m going to go to that meeting, and I’d like to see anyone try to stop me!”

At eight-thirty he was already there, seated in the second row. Despite the fact that it was a bad time for political meetings, there was a large crowd present. Everyone was in high spirits, associating the coming emancipation of Quebec (of which they had no doubt whatsoever) with the upcoming Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. Fernand shot surly glances at those around him and groaned, but quietly this time, because he felt quite alone surrounded by such naive people, with their delighted faces.

Minister Claude Charron arrived and was greeted by fists raised in triumph. He walked in smiling, calling out greetings, galvanizing the faithful. The meeting got underway. It obviously had to do with the referendum. Some attendees expressed misgivings, but most wanted the referendum to be held as soon as possible – even the next day. One old gentleman, an almost perfect replica of Colonel Sanders, with flowing white hair and white goatee, proposed holding a contest for the creation of a national anthem.

Claude Charron burst out laughing.

“Maybe we should wait until we have a nation,” he said.

At nine o’clock, Fernand made his way to the microphone, his legs a little wobbly.

“Sorry to rain on your parade, but in my view this referendum question should be tossed into the garbage. Has anyone really read it? One hundred and fourteen words! By the time you get to the end of it, you’ve forgotten how it started! And complicated! It’s asking people for permission to come back later and ask them for their permission. And all that after negotiations with Ottawa, and no one in the room knows how they’ll turn out. In fact, with all due respect, Mister Minister, the whole thing smells of fear. Fear and petty-minded calculation. Just you wait: that whoreson Trudeau is going to accuse us of trying to pull the wool over the people’s eyes. In this kind of dealing, Mister Minister, just like in all important things in life, you have to be clear and concise. These twistings and convolutions will kill the cause. That’s all I have to say.”

He sat down. The room had fallen glacially silent. Someone sniggered behind his back, and Colonel Sanders shot him a withering look, as though he had just assassinated the national mascot in the public square. Claude
Charron was slightly embarrassed (did he share some of Fernand’s misgivings?); he cleared his throat and then, in that familiar, comforting, infinitely seductive voice for which he was famous, spoke to the assembly.

“I think, my friends, that you will all agree with me when I say that this is no longer the time for endless discussion and analysis. It’s time to spit on our hands and get the job done! Of course nothing is perfect, of course we could go back to the drawing board and come up with a better way of explaining the problem of the future of Quebec to Quebeckers. But, as far as I’m concerned, that would be a case of spending so much time polishing the pot that we never have time to make soup … and we’d die of hunger! No, my friends, there’s a fresh wind a-blowing, we’ve got one hell of a crew, and Canada has made it clearer than ever that the only way they want to see us Quebeckers is on our knees with our hands out. Well, now’s the time to act! Let’s go forward! And long live sovereignty!”

The hall broke out into delirious applause. In three minutes Fernand’s intervention had been swept aside, forgotten. Despite his anger he stayed until the meeting was over. Leaving early would have drawn attention to his defeat. But he was also gnawed by doubts. What if he were wrong? But how could he be wrong when he was just using common sense? Could complicated arguments convince someone of such a simple thing?

When the meeting was over and as the hall was emptying he succeeded in having a few last words with Claude Charron.

“René Lévesque likes you, Monsieur Charron. Everyone knows he considers you next in line for premier. I’m begging you, get him to change the question before it’s too late.”

“Listen to me, my good man,” replied the politician, smiling broadly. “This is politics, not Hollywood. You can’t just rewind the film and start over. You have to keep going forward, doing the best you can with what you’ve got. If you’re so unhappy with the question, well then, stay home on voting day. But I guarantee you,” he said, taking Fernand’s hand with a big smile, “that by then you’ll be out there with the rest of us, voting YES!”