Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather (3 page)

‘We don’t choose our path, others choose it for us.’

His doctoral dissertation was there before him, in water maintained at a constant temperature of thirty-two degrees Celsius. This was vital. His academic survival depended on that water
remaining at the same temperature. If it were to drop, some of the fish might change direction and thereby destroy the entire premise of his dissertation.

His research came to the attention of the President of the Mathematical Society of Canada, based in Calgary, Alberta, a very cold place.

‘Come and see us when you’ve finished with your fish; for us it’ll be a change from thermal mathematics!’

Through the window, Boris Bogdanov watched as his two young neighbours sat down on the steps outside the door to the building adjacent to Julie’s. One of them was holding
a video camera. Their eyes were glued to the tiny monitor. Boris turned away from the window, put his book down on his untidy desk and with one finger dreamily stroked the wall of the aquarium. He
could tell by touch alone that the water was at the right temperature.

Because fish change direction in cold weather.

THAT’S WHEN I UNDERSTOOD

‘This is great! How do you rewind?’

‘Let me do it, you’re gonna break my video camera!’

‘
Let me do it . . . You’re gonna break my video camera . . .
’

‘I’m not in the mood to mess around.’

‘
Not in the mood to mess around . . .
Whatever! Take your video camera.’

Alex is like his dad, he always gets annoyed for no good reason. I don’t hold it against him. It can’t be easy to live with a single parent. When he was little, Alex used to say his
mum was coming back. Now he never talks about it. It’s a subject you avoid around friends who don’t have a mum. It’s not always easy, because among themselves kids talk about
their parents a lot. The hardest time is Mother’s Day. Then I avoid Alex. I wouldn’t know what to say to him. He’s easy to avoid then because he doesn’t go outside. And no
one knows whether he’s heard from his mother because no one asks him.

‘Why didn’t you zoom? You can’t see how the point got big – like
that
!’

I looked at the gap between his thumb and forefinger. Five centimetres! Only Alex would try and make you believe such a thing. At times like this, there’s no point picking a quarrel with
him. No matter how hard you try to show him he’s wrong, he’ll find an explanation for why he’s right. It makes things really hard at school, especially with the teachers. The
other reason for not picking a fight with Alex is that he is a full head taller than me, even if I’m only one year younger. He knows he can smash my face in, no sweat – I agree with him
there. It’s so obvious who’s strong and who’s weak, you can’t do anything but stay friends. Alex gets in a fight at least once a week, on principle.

‘Keeps you fit and it’s good for your reputation!’

I have to confess I like Alex’s reputation. Since everyone at school knows I’m his best friend, no one bugs me. With him arguments are always reduced to basics.

‘First you hit, then you think!’

But while everyone at school has seen him hit, we have yet to see him think. In the school corridors everyone says he’s crazy. And that he’s proud of it. I know him, though, and
he’s not crazy, he’s not proud – that’s just his armour. Kids are cruel to each other. He just has to be even crueller. Death to anyone who teases him because he
doesn’t have a mum. Sometimes he gets good grades. Well, he would – when he can, he copies from me.

It was his idea that I should hide behind a car and film him while he was taking the kitten back to his neighbour. It was our third attempt. He was never satisfied with the result.

‘Why didn’t you zoom in on her tits?’

Two days earlier he had told me the angle was wrong. Four days earlier the neighbour came out fully clothed. The hard part was figuring out when she’d be in her bathrobe. She doesn’t
lead a normal life. She never gets up at the same time, and you never see what time she comes home. Summer’s cool because she stays in her bathrobe for ages and she often goes to sunbathe on
her balcony out at the back. Even my dad knows about it. I’ve seen him looking at her.

Alex gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder.

‘I can’t wait until tomorrow.’

He raised his chin. Just thinking about it made him happy. We looked down the street. The old guy who lives next door to us went out with his little dog. He lives with another guy who looks just
like him, with very short white hair and a very long moustache.

‘My dad doesn’t like those guys.’

‘Does he know them?’

‘No.’

‘Then why doesn’t he like them?’

‘Just doesn’t.’

‘They’re brothers.’

‘How do you know?’

‘That’s what my dad told me.’

‘Has he ever arrested them?’

‘My dad hasn’t arrested anyone in a long time . . .’

Alex didn’t look at me. That’s the advantage of a kid with no mum. He doesn’t want anyone asking him questions so he doesn’t ask any either. The old guy disappeared
around the corner. It was beginning to get dark.

‘Hey, show me again!’

I rewound. We saw Julie open the door. It was incredible how you could see her breast when she bent down. Alex was especially interested in her nipples.

‘Why didn’t you zoom?’

If I didn’t zoom it was because I liked seeing the whole breast better.

‘What are you two still doing out?’

Even Alex jumped when he saw my dad standing in front of us. I never knew I could switch my new video camera off so fast.

‘What sort of nice things have you been filming?’

We didn’t move. Alex turned to look at me, and I nodded. We must just keep quiet. After a while my dad understood he wasn’t going to see anything. He turned towards our
apartment.

‘Is Mum home yet?’

‘No, Dad, I haven’t seen her.’

He looked around, worried. He rubbed his chin. You could tell he was wondering where she was. Then he started walking towards our door. He looked sad.

‘Don’t be long, the Christmas tree is waiting . . .’

‘Coming, Dad.’

I got up and turned to Alex.

‘See you tomorrow.’

He looked at my video camera. I could read his lips.

‘Don’t forget to bring it tomorrow . . .’

I winked at him and followed my dad. But I didn’t leave Alex just because my dad was looking sad. Truth is, I love burning the Christmas tree. When I was little I would watch him do it. I
had to wait till I was eight before he let me put the branches into the fire. They catch fire quickly, so it’s true that it can be dangerous. It’s really beautiful when the flame
suddenly surrounds the dry needles. But the best thing of all is the sound. I never get tired of hearing that sharp crackling. Once the tree has burned and the decorations have been put away in the
basement my mum serves the
galette des Rois
, the Kings’ Cake. She’s the one who started the tradition in our family. She found out about it during a trip to France when she was
younger and went there to study. Nowadays she makes the best
galettes
on earth. I love her almond filling. She puts in extra because she knows I love it. Then there’s the bean. The
one who gets it is the king or the queen. When you’re king you get to choose your queen and if you’re queen you choose your king. So every year my mum has been the queen.

‘Where’s Mum?’

‘Out with friends.’

‘Aren’t you going too?’

‘No, they’re her friends.’

‘What’s she doing?’

‘She had some things to take care of. She won’t be long.’

My mum had things to take care of on
galette
day, the night before we go back to school? I didn’t believe it for a second. I knew my dad was lying. There was something wrong with
the situation. He noticed that I’d gone all thoughtful. I could feel his arm go round me, his hand on my shoulder. We stayed like that for a moment. Then we took turns putting tree branches
into the fireplace.

‘We make a good pair, don’t we?’

‘Dad, can I take my video camera to school tomorrow?’

‘Out of the question! That’s the ideal place to get it stolen.’

He looked at his watch and at the same time squeezed my shoulder even harder. He was worried.

Slam!

Mum was home at last. She was out of breath. My dad leaped up as if he’d been caught red-handed with his arm around me. In Mum’s hand was a flat white cardboard box.

‘I didn’t have time to make the
galette.
I stopped to get one at
Première Moisson
; they’re the best in town. Smell that!’

I leaned over and sniffed the box. I should have said something like,
Mum, yours are the best in town!

But I was angry at her for not making one.

‘You’re right, it does smell good.’

She seemed disappointed for a second. She smelled the box.

‘Right. I’ll heat it up.’

My dad followed her into the kitchen. I stayed by the fireplace. There were always a few branches that were still green, that had dodged the flames. I held them right up against the embers, one
by one, mercilessly, so that none would survive.

‘I’m not really in the mood to play the queen this evening!’

‘It’s not for us, it’s for him.’

Gosh, my parents couldn’t even be bothered to keep their voices down. I could hear everything.

‘You’re right.’

‘And your apartment?’ he asked.

‘It’s no good.’

‘What do you mean, it’s no good?’

‘They’re keeping it another month. The work on their new house isn’t finished.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Well, there’s the cottage . . .’

‘But how will you get to work?’

‘I thought that maybe you could go to the cottage . . . Just for the first month . . .’

That’s when I understood.

THEY LOVE EACH OTHER

It had been dark for a while by now. Boris Bogdanov watched from the window as Julie left her house. Beneath her half-buttoned winter coat she was wearing a very short skirt.
The taxi had been waiting for a few minutes already. She quickly climbed in and the taxi sped away.

Boris Bogdanov sat down across from his aquarium and on a sheet of paper he carefully recorded the trajectory of one of his fish. His entire theory rested on his initial conviction. So before he
could reach a hypothesis he must be sure his proof was well founded.

‘
Da . . . da . . . da . . .
’

Research is very complicated, but the logic behind it is simple. Everything must be proved. If you maintain that Melanie can wee standing up, before you can prove that she wees standing up,
first you have to prove that Melanie exists. If she doesn’t exist, how can you maintain that she’s having a wee? That is why Boris Bogdanov had to make sure, first and foremost, that
his fish always swam in the same direction, over the same course. He had drawn the trajectories of each of his fish on a sheet of paper, using a different colour for each one. He ended up with an
enormous four-coloured knot, and with this he hoped to prove that each fish’s path depended on the paths of all the other fish.

Perhaps he should have paid more attention to Melanie having her wee. At least he could have had Melanie to talk to, because even with four fish it can seem really lonely when you feel like
having a chat. The loneliness of the long-distance researcher.

There was classical music coming from the apartment across the way. Simon and Michel were sitting on their big sofa, luxuriating in the music. An LP was going round and round
on a high-end stereo system. The interior design was tasteful, borderline rococo, with a dominant red note.

Before them on a little table was a bottle of Chivas Royal Salute 21 Year Old. Tonight, just like every night, they would drink two carefully measured glasses. The bottle lay in its blue velvet
box, its neck adorned with a fine golden cord tied with a sailor’s knot. At one hundred and fifty-nine dollars a bottle in the shop at the Rare Spirits Society, they took good care of it. An
all-white Maltese bichon, 4 Year Old, was whimpering in her wicker basket.

‘Simon took you out three hours ago. Patience, my friend!’

Simon and Michel had been living together for ten years, but they never went out together. It was as if they were in hiding. Everyone in the neighbourhood thought they were brothers. With their
short-cropped white hair and elegant moustaches, they resembled each other a great deal.

They had met eleven years earlier. Simon was a psychoanalyst, and he had received Michel on his couch. Michel had gone into therapy for a malaise he could not explain. He was uncomfortable in
his role as father and husband. He loved his only son, who was eighteen; he loved his wife, and they had been married for twenty-five years, but deep down something was not right. He didn’t
feel well, as though he weren’t really himself. Only his job at the weather office, Météo Canada, made him happy. He was a hurricane specialist, working on a matrix for
predicting the precise path of these natural predators. Simon, too, was married, and had two daughters, sixteen and nineteen.

As time went by, they found they had things in common. Simon knew he must never get close to a patient. But the more Michel opened up to him, the more Simon understood him. They liked the same
things. They began to wish they could share them. They simply felt good together. More and more, they felt unhappy if they spent too much time apart.

‘Michel, I have two tickets for Alain Lefèvre with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. I shouldn’t normally go out with a patient, but it’s at Place des Arts, it’s
not far from here . . .’

They went further than not far. Both got divorced at the same time and their families took it very badly. Particularly Simon’s; he was Jewish. The psychologists’ association of
Quebec had never found out he was living with a former patient and they did not want it to get out. Whenever Simon took Pipo for a walk, Michel stayed home to cook. They had decided to keep their
happiness to themselves, all the better to savour it.