A Very Bold Leap (3 page)

As he walked Céline home, he could already anticipate the insomnia that awaited him, the excruciating stretch of interminable minutes ticking slowly by through the solitude of the night, the hopeless search for the one position, the new method of breathing, the elusive comforting thought that would finally carry him off into dreamland.

When he awoke it was still dark. Boff was sitting up in the middle of the bed, gazing at him with an expectant eye and gently beating his tail against the blankets to remind him of food. Charles’s first thought was to go and have breakfast with Fernand and Lucie. He missed them. But he resisted the idea as a matter of pride. He had his own coffee maker, a toaster that, though
somewhat the worse for wear, toasted bread like a flame-thrower, and bread, butter, and jam.

He got up, dressed, and went over to the bedroom window to look down into the yard. The big, brown dog was already at its post beside the drum. Who had taken it down so early? He then heard footsteps on the stairs, slow and heavy, as though whoever was treading the steps was carrying the entire world on his shoulders, and he recalled Saint-Amour saying he took the dog outside and tied it up himself every morning. Charles’s expression tightened and his face flushed with anger. He rushed to his door and burst out into the hall just as the former barber arrived at the top of the stairs, out of breath, his frail hand gripping the banister tightly. The two men looked at each other in silence for a moment, then the old man, somewhat taken aback, squeezed out a weak smile.

“Do you know who I am?” Charles asked him abruptly.

Saint-Amour was too out of breath to reply. He simply shrugged and shook his head.

“I’m Charles Thibodeau. Does the name ring a bell?”

The old man’s face lit up and he slapped his thigh. He leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath.

“Charles?” he finally said in a small, husky voice. “Is it really you? I can hardly believe it! You’ve changed so much! I’d never have recognized you in a million years! How strange that we are now neighbours … I’m delighted to see you again.”

The old man’s response left Charles at a loss, disgusted, and vaguely alarmed. What was this? Senile forgetfulness? Instinctive hypocrisy? For seconds he didn’t know what to say. He eyed the former hairdresser, who maintained his thin smile despite the fact that the effort of talking had exhausted him again.

“Listen to me, you piece of crud,” Charles finally burst out. “You know I could lodge an official complaint against you at any time. Any time, do you understand what I’m saying? Little boys don’t know that, but when they grow up they find out things. Never speak to me again, understand? Never! If you say one word to me I’ll send you flying head-first down these stairs. You got that?”

Ten days passed, during which Charles had no occasion to carry out his threat. He looked for another apartment but found nothing suitable. He also looked for a job. The Canadian Postal Authority sent him a letter telling him that, unfortunately, it was unable to retain his services at that time. But he at last settled down to his adventure novel, spending four or five hours a day at it. The story had changed completely. It still took place in Montreal but in the 1970s, and recounted the courageous efforts of a young police officer, a member of the Criminal Investigation Unit who had helplessly witnessed the rape of a young woman by three men in a remote corner of the La Ronde amusement park. Despite the wishes of the victim, who refused to lay charges against the men, and unknown to his superiors, our hero launched himself on the trail of the rapists.

The work went slowly. Descriptions gave him brain cramps, and he had to stop every few sentences to verify certain technical details. But writing gave him a deep feeling of satisfaction, unlike anything he had done before.

Céline read the rough draft of Chapter One and was transported. There was no doubt about it: Charles was headed for a huge success as long as he kept it up to the end.

As for Conrad Saint-Amour, he seemed to have barricaded himself in his apartment since his encounter with Charles in the hallway. Most mornings there was not even a sign of the dog in the backyard. Gradually, Charles became accustomed to the presence of his horrible neighbour, and his zeal for finding a new apartment abated. Daily visits from Céline, who brought with her the heady delights of heedless love, and the less frequent appearances of Steve and Blonblon, slowly lessened in Charles’s mind the painful effects of the old pederast’s proximity.

On the 4th of November, Charles worked on his novel until three o’clock in the morning, after which he made himself something to eat, shared his meal with Boff — who wolfed down the crusts of a huge banana-and-peanut-butter sandwich in two gulps — then went to bed, exhausted but satisfied with the night’s results. He fell immediately into a profound sleep. He was sitting at his typewriter, still pounding out the chapters, but now with a marvellous effortlessness; the sheets of paper were luminous and multicoloured, and they
piled up on the table at a ridiculous rate until they formed a column of light that reached all the way to the ceiling, in fact pushed through the ceiling, until suddenly he was enveloped in a cloud of suffocating dust and bits of plaster; a sharp pain in his shoulder woke him up with a start.

Boff was scratching at him with powerful claws and barking in his ear. With difficulty, Charles sat up in bed, his head alarmingly heavy and his brain so befuddled he had no idea where he was. He was seized by a fit of coughing, his throat made raw by acrid smoke that seemed to fill the room. For several seconds he stayed where he was, not knowing what to do, while the dog, now looming above him, began to nip at his legs.

Suddenly Charles leapt to his feet, grabbed the dog in his arms, and hurried off into the darkness, his eyes burning with smoke and a new fit of coughing wracking his lungs; he banged into furniture, ran up against a wall, tipped over a chair, feeling his way desperately towards what he hoped was the door. All the while, rising up from the ground floor, he heard a heavy rumbling sound made up of crackling and sucking and low whistling. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself at the top of the stairs, now filled with even thicker smoke, and let himself tumble down them, holding the silent, inert dog against his body with all his remaining strength. A blast of hot air hit him square in the face, and he heard shouting as though from a great distance, then hands gripped his legs and dragged him outside.

He vomited again and again, then stood up. Supported by a fireman, he watched in dazed amazement as the building turned into a blazing wall of fire. He suddenly realized Boff had disappeared, and turned frantically around, shouting his name. He heard a feeble bark and, looking down, saw his dog lying on the ground behind him. Then he heard muffled laughter, and saw someone pointing a finger at him. A plump woman with a maternal, compassionate face, looking embarrassed, handed him a bathrobe and a pair of slippers. He realized he was naked, standing in the street in an icy drizzle that was trickling down his body. Rivers of steam rose above the burning building among twisted cords of smoke.

The circumstances under which the building had caught fire were so obscure that an inquest lasting six hundred years wouldn’t sort them out.

Which is how things happen in Montreal, a rather unusual city in which modern urbanization often proceeds through methods that are almost occult. Two days after the fire, a bulldozer appeared and erased every sinister trace of the conflagration; the following Saturday, the gap where the building had been was as flat and smooth as a football field. All that was missing was grass. Before a week had passed, a layer of asphalt, warm and odoriferous, covered the terrain, and the city had been enriched by yet another parking lot. The automobile had hacked off one more chunk of Montreal’s old soul. Parking lots were springing up everywhere, with such implacable regularity that one wondered how long it would be before they took over the greater part of the city and citizens would find themselves stacked into three or four hundred skyscrapers rising like pylons above an immense checkerboard interlaced by highways and enveloped in smog, with only a few spindly trees, planted here and there at great cost, to perpetuate the illusion to some that they still lived in a space designed for humans.

Charles had watched the fire burn until the small hours, interrogated off and on by gawkers who exclaimed at the account of his narrow escape and went to give old Boff a vigorous petting. Boff, looking morose, never moved from the side of his master. No one had seen Conrad Saint-Amour, and it was assumed he was still in the building. Towards six o’clock in the morning, the back of the structure collapsed, and when the smoke cleared they could see, perched atop a heap of smouldering rubble, an incinerated corpse enfolded in the carcass of an easy chair.

A
refrigerator was slowly making its way up the stairs, lumbering from side to side like an amiable bear, its top sprinkled with flakes of snow that took on fresh whiteness in the glow from the ceiling fixture. Two hairy arms protruded from its flanks and hugged its porcelain midriff, and two feet, shod in massive workboots that flared out at the tops, stomped heavily on the stair treads, taking them one at a time.

“We should have removed the handrail,” said a voice coming from somewhere under the fridge. “The darn thing’s mangling my elbows!”

Charles went down a few steps to lend a hand to the unhappy contraption, but it fended him off.

“No, no, no! Stay where you are! There’s no room for two of us down here! We’d only be working against each other!”

The refrigerator continued its laborious ascent, then, entering the apartment through the wide-open doorway, made its way inch by inch down a narrow hallway.

“Oof!” grunted the hardware-store owner as he set down the appliance, the weight of which seemed to make the floor sag.

Charles went up to him and smiled, extending his hand. “Thanks, Fernand. This is really great of you. I owe you one.”

Although the words sounded formulaic, Charles’s gratitude was sincere, and Fernand returned the smile.

“Don’t mention it, my boy. Glad to be of help. Now you can do your own cooking. And not a minute too soon!”

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Papa?” Céline called from the far end of the hallway. “I’ve just made a pot.”

The hardware-store owner accepted the offer with a grunt and looked around the kitchen. It was small enough, and dirty, but well lit by a large window above the sink. Boff, who was stretched out on a grimy strip of linoleum before a radiator, opened one languid eye and then closed it again.

Fernand Fafard sank down on a kitchen chair and pointed his huge index finger at the kitchen table, where Céline had placed a sugar bowl and a cream pitcher on the yellow formica top. He touched the table thoughtfully.

“This came from the other apartment, then?”

“Yes, and the coffee maker,” replied Céline.

“And my statue of Hachiko, along with a few dishes and two pots,” Charles said sadly. “That’s about all I was able to salvage.”

The beginnings of his novel, all his notes, and even his typewriter had suffered the same tragic fate as the library in Alexandria. The fire had, however, had one favourable result: it had melted the chill that had settled in between Charles and the hardware-store owner.

On the morning in question, Charles, still numb and exhausted, had gone to the Michauds’ to ask for their hospitality. Amélie had made him take a hot bath, then sat him at a table with a towel over his head above a steaming bowl of eucalyptus oil, “to get the pneumonia out of your lungs,” as she said, convinced he had contracted the disease.

While Charles slept, Parfait Michaud had called the Fafards to tell them about the disaster, and ten minutes later the hardware-store owner was at their door, like a fireman arriving too late but determined to fight the fire anyway. It was all Parfait could do to prevent his friend from waking Charles up and bringing him back to the Fafards’ house. Under such circumstances, Fernand said fervently, a son should be in his father’s house.

“Let him sleep, Fernand, please. The boy can barely stand on his two feet.”

“You promise to call me the minute he wakes up? Promise, swear to it, cross your heart? I’m making this a point of honour, Michaud.”

And he made the notary recount once again everything he knew about what had happened the previous night. Then he returned to the store to let Lucie come to the Michauds’ to hear the story for herself.

The next day Charles agreed to return temporarily to the Fafards’;, and Fernand took the following measures:

1. He found a three-and-a-half-room apartment, quite comfortable and at an affordable rent, at the corner of Dufresne and Champagne. Charles would be living on the same street as the Fafards, but far enough from the house and the hardware-store owner that he would feel completely free and independent, which is what he wanted.
   

2. Taking Victor with him, he made a sweep of the area’s junk shops and second-hand stores, and in two hours replaced almost all of Charles’s furnishings; he intended it to be a gift, but Charles insisted on paying him back immediately.
   

3. Knowing that Wilfrid Thibodeau was capable of anything, he called Liliane, the carpenter’s former mistress, to get the name of Thibodeau’s employer in Winnipeg, then called there to make sure that Charles’s father had in fact been in Manitoba on the day of the fire. That being confirmed, he went down to the police station to find out how the inquiry into the cause of the fire was proceeding, where he succeeded only in increasing the blood pressure of everyone present and in unleashing a few choice but ineffectual epithets.
   

4. He topped off his day at dinner, just as dessert was being served. After much clearing of his throat and playing with his utensils, and looking as awkward as a teenager the first time he had to bare a buttock to a nurse, he offered Charles a part-time job at the hardware store.
   

Deeply touched, and to Fernand’s great relief, Charles accepted on the spot. The hardware-store owner had dreaded another instance of Charles’s spirited independence, but in fact Charles was very nearly at the end of his savings, and the job offer fitted in perfectly with his plans to become a writer. Fernand’s offer and Charles’s acceptance marked the final reconciliation between the two men.

The following night, Fernand invited Charles out to a tavern for a beer. Charles agreed, although he was astonished; Fafard hardly ever set foot in such an establishment. He went feeling somewhat apprehensive. “What does he want to say to me?” he wondered. “I’ll bet he’s going to put me to sleep with a sermon about Céline, about the difference between sex and love.”

After a long preamble about traffic holdups, delivered in a distracted, preoccupied way that reinforced Charles’s fears, Fernand emptied his glass in
one swallow, struggled with an irruption of gas for a few seconds (a brief skirmish that was settled in the hollow of his fist), smiled at Charles, stretched his legs, leaned back slightly in his chair, folded his massive hands on the table, and sighed.

“I owe you an apology, my boy.”

“An apology?” said Charles, surprised.

“Yes, an apology. I misjudged you.”

“In what way?”

“About your… choice of work. I mean… this idea of yours to write books.”

Charles gave a small, ironic smile.

“The other night,” Fernand continued, “I got a phone call from Parfait. We talked for about an hour. I think it was the longest phone call I’ve ever had in my life. You know how much I hate talking on the telephone. Anyway, he told me a few things I didn’t know.”

“Like what?”

“Well, you’re going to laugh at me because you probably know them already. But I always thought that books were written by people who were starving to death, you know, the kind of people who lived on welfare and wrote books as a pastime so they didn’t have to go looking for real jobs. In other words, it was a shameful occupation for a man who had any self-respect. But Parfait showed me that the very opposite was the case.”

“How did he do that?”

“Well, it was easy, really. He gave me the names of people who had made a lot of money, who even became very rich, by writing novels. There’s this Michenon guy, for example …”

“Michenon?”

“Yes, Michenon. You’ve never heard of him?” Fernand asked dubiously.

Charles thought for a moment. “I wonder if he meant Simenon.”

“Simenon, that was it! I was getting his name mixed up with another writer, an American — Michener, that’s who it was, James Michener, the guy who cranks out books as thick as Kleenex boxes that everyone snaps up and they make films out of…”

“Yes, that’s the one,” said Charles, “although I’ve never read him myself.”

“And then there’s that other American, I think his name is King or something …”

“Stephen King, probably.”

“That’s it. And there were others, French, English, even German, but I can’t remember all their names. As you know, literature has never been my strong point. I’m not proud of it, but what can we do, we all come into the world with the brains the Good Lord gave us, and we do the best we can with what we’ve got. I’ve never seen much point in reading novels and that kind of thing. But that has nothing to do with what I wanted to tell you. What I want to say is …”

He hesitated, looking for the right words.

“What I want to say, Charles, is that I used to think that your idea of writing books was a bit like — and I don’t mean to upset you here, the last thing I want is to cause you any sorrow — but I thought it was a bit like your idea of selling drugs. But I’ve changed my mind on that,” he added quickly, seeing that Charles’s face was turning red with indignation. “I mean a complete hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. I don’t think anything like that anymore, I give you my word of honour. And it’s all because of Parfait. He opened my eyes, made me less stupid, if you like, or in any case gave me a new perspective, as they say at those fancy meetings.”

The smile on Charles’s face had turned slightly sour.

“Surely Parfait must have gone on to tell you that you can count on the fingers of one hand the people who make a lot of money from writing books. They’re the exceptions, practically miracles. Did he not?”

Fernand looked at Charles for several seconds, at a loss for words, his conviction visibly crumbling.

“Not in so many words, no,” he replied, regaining his worried look. “Mostly he said it was luck. And that there’s not much you can do about luck, except work as hard as you can and hope with all your heart. He said that if writing novels was guaranteed to make a person a millionaire, there’d be a lot more novels out there. People would be chaining themselves to typewriters! Anyway, my view,” he added, once again choosing his words carefully, “is that if this writing thing doesn’t work out the way… that you would, well…”

“Give up writing novels and do something else.”

“Exactly! That’s what I thought. After all, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and it’s not like you to stick at something that will…”

“… make me miserable …”

“More or less,” Fernand acknowledged, somewhat disconcerted by the cold, ironic smile on Charles’s face.

“Well, you’re absolutely right, Fernand. The day I realize that I’m a lousy writer and my books are a pile of boring tripe, I’ll throw my typewriter out the window and open a car wash, or something like that.”

The two men regarded each other in silence, slightly embarrassed. Then they both raised their glasses at the same time and took a long drink.

“You know, Charles,” the hardware-store owner couldn’t help adding, “if I didn’t consider you to be my own son, I mean my real son, I wouldn’t worry about you as much as I do. But you are my son, as much as Henri is. Even though I’ve known for some time now that you and Céline … that you’re …”

“Sleeping together,” Charles finished, calmly insolent.

“Whatever,” said Fernand, feeling more and more uncomfortable. “As you know, I’ve never tried to stand in your way, even though you’re both still minors.”

“Thanks,” Charles said sarcastically. “Very kind of you.”

“Don’t mention it. I’ve always thought that from about the age of fourteen or fifteen a child who’s been reasonably well brought up is able to judge for himself how he’s going to get through life, and that his parents are wasting their breath trying to … Am I right, Charles?” he asked suddenly, looking uneasily into the young man’s eyes.

“I love Céline,” Charles replied simply, but in a firm and serious tone. Two red splotches appeared on his cheeks.

“That’s what I wanted to hear… that takes a great weight off…. It makes me think you’d never do anything to hurt her. She’s my only daughter, after all, and you know how I feel about her. I wouldn’t want anyone to … you know, harm her.”

“I love her,” Charles said again. “So stop worrying.”

Fernand smiled noncommittally and patted Charles on the shoulder. Then he turned to a waiter who was passing behind him and ordered more beer.

“Dear boy,” he sighed, “if parents could control what they worry about, the world would be a much better place…. Wait until you’re a father yourself, you’ll see what I mean.”

He drummed his fingers on the table.

“But you’ve told me you love her. That’s good enough for me. I can’t ask for more than that.”

At that, Fernand’s former good spirits returned; with the help of the beer, his cheerfulness took on a joyful exuberance. Some people who knew him
from the store came in, said hello to him, joked a bit, then sat down at the next table. A fat man with closely cropped hair and a military jaw, his shirt buttoned askew and tufts of grey hair poking through holes in his tattered undershirt, laughed uproariously, slapping his thighs and calling Fernand by his first name (although he was completely unknown), and addressed him as “Captain.” Before long the conversation came around to politics.