For Sure (52 page)

“Well, 'ow are we gonna do dat, den? Are we just gonna be talkin', an' whenever we runs up against an Acadian word, we stops to see wot we's gonna do wid it, or de udder way, we starts wid
A
an' we goes troo de whole of de dictionary 'till we gets to
Z
?”

“Alphabetical order would probably be best, but using which dictionary? I believe that's a valid question.”

“Alphabetical order! Dat's de word I was lookin' fer . . .”

In a list in a small notebook whose pale green cover is bound by a metal spiral across the top: so what
que
, so what
si que
, how come
que
, what if
que
, whenever
que
, whatever
que
, wherever
que
, whoever
que
,
si
ever
que
, as long
que
, never mind
que
, which
que
. The last two annotations are not in the same ink as the others.

Étienne continued his inquiries on the subject of the tent nation. He questioned Ludmilla on the subject one day as he was turning the pages of
Babar's Castle
in his godmother's office:

“Auntie, does you know wot de tent nation is?”

“Tenth nation?”

Ludmilla wondered, as her husband had previously, if her godson might have been listening to the international news.

“No, de tent nation, in prayer. Der a nation, an' dey lives in a tent. An' we don't want to go der.”

Ludmilla could not think of any prayer that mentioned tents, unless it was an old Jewish prayer she didn't know.

“Is it a prayer to Moses?”

“No.”

Étienne did not pursue it any further; he turned another large page.

A principle of constance exists also in pyschoanalysis.

“Are you tellin' me dat dey were mastermindin' de whole ting to make it 'appen widout anybody knowin' dat dey masterminded it?”

The list of automatic corrections for common errors in Spanish (modern Spanish) is not available. The component is not installed. Do you want to install it now? Yes. No.

Étienne had occasionally accompanied his Granny Thibodeau in her Stations of the Cross in the church at Dieppe. Most of the time, she took the trouble to explain to the boy what was happening to Jesus.

“'Ere Veronica's wipin' his face on account o' de blood dat's flowin' down. Does you see 'is blood runnin' down?”

“From 'is nose?”

“From all over, on account o' de crown o' thorns.”

While his grandmother recited her prayers in a low voice and moving her lips, Étienne looked at the imposing stain glass windows depicting the story of a nun receiving roses. He also liked to run his fingers in the crevasses of the sculpted rosettes that decorated the wooden benches.

“'Ere, ee falls fer de second time.”

Just as there are propane hogs that are strictly speaking salamanders.

“Dad, how come dey kilt Jesus?”

“On account of he was too clever fer dem.”

. . .

. . .

“Who was it built 'is cross, den?”

“Awh, a carpenter from around dose parts, most likely.”

. . .

. . .

“Do we got crowns o' thorns 'round 'ere?”

“If we do, I never seen any.”

. . .

. . .

“How come dey put a diaper on 'im?”

“Well, dey couldn't leave 'im bare naked, could dey. An', to shame 'im, I suppose.”

. . .

. . .

“Was ee cold?”

“Dat's not a country where it's cold most o' de time.”

. . .

. . .

“Are you afeard of de tent nation?”

“Afraid o' who?”

“De tent nation.”

Terry put his newspaper down.

“Whose nation?”

“De tent nation. Granny says it in 'er prayers.”

“Granny says dat? Tent nation?”

“Yes. An' lead us not into tent nation.”

Scrap paper, brand new paper. Memo pad (recycled). Newspapers, flyers, magazines. Useful cardboard, useless cardboard. Egg cartons. Tim Hortons cartons. Special little cards (drawings, birthday wishes). Wrapping paper, Christmas wrapping. Brown paper bags. Shopping bags with handles. Paper for shredding. Carbon paper. Wax paper. Post-its. Stickers. Recyclable envelopes. Notebooks. Construction paper. Newspaper for
papier
-
mâché
. Lousy books. Catalogues.

The cover cracks as you open it, demands attention, demands special care. The first page, the bastard title page, reads:

PRÉCIS

de

L'HISTOIRE MODERNE

And on the verso, in uneven print quality:

~~~

PARI
S
— IMPR
IM
ERIE B
ON
AVENTURE ET DUCE
SSOIS

55, quai des Grands-Augustins

~~~

Poor feng shui can make (reveille — reverie) difficult. The Freudian slip here involves no more than the addition of the
r
and dropping the
ll
, causing no shift in chromatic range. In French (
le
réveil
—
le rêve
) the slip involves more: the erasure of the
i,
the only colour, red, differentiating the two words. Coincidence?

“Listen to dis one: ‘Life is a complicatedness; I have decided to spend my life in thinking about it.'”

Zed's curiosity was piqued. Terry elaborated:

“Ee was twenty-three years old when ee's writin' dat.”

Zed seemed to think about it for a moment.

“So den . . .
complicatedness
, dat's a real word?”

Terry replied, even as he continued to leaf through the pages:

“Looks like it.”

“How is it den dat, in school,
difficult
was always de proper word?”

Fourth possible title:
Point du tout
(with the double meaning of a “Point in the Whole” and “Nothing at All”)
.
The
tout
or “the whole”
refers to a plenitude, and every fragment is a point
,
a moment in time or a position within that whole.
Un point du tout
(
A Point in the Whole
) would no doubt be clearer, but the addition of the article
un
would obscure the current and lovely use particularly in Acadian Nova Scotia of
point
instead of
pas,
to express the negative. For example: “
ce n'était point beau
('twasn't one bad bit nice)
.
” The
point
is also a needle prick and a punctuation mark, a period. As is evident from the above, such a title would not have pleased the translator.

“‘De human race is once an' fer all an' inherently doomed to suffering and ruin'. But dat's not de one I's lookin' fer.”

Zed was in no hurry, and prepared to wait for Terry to find the passage that had struck him.

“I should've written it down.”

. . .

“I could swear 'twas somewhere's 'round 'ere.”

Zed leaned over to read the name of the author, saw Schopenhauer, and quickly decided not to try to pronounce it.

“Awh, 'ere she is! ‘It is bad today, an' it will be worse tomorrow; an' so on till the worst of all.'”

Zed agreed that it would be difficult to imagine a bleaker outlook on life. Terry was completely bowled over.

“An' to tink how many artists 'ave taken 'im as der inspiration!”

Try as I might, I can't seem to find other titles to add to
La Bibliothèque idéale
.

Terry was still shaking his head when he dropped the Schopenhauer book gently down on the low table.

“Fer dis fellow, de words
a happy life
was a contradiction in terms. Ee said dat life ‘ad it's own idea of wot she wants an' where she wants to go, and she uses us just as she pleases to get der, an' when she's done wid us, she tosses us aside, more or less.”

Zed's eyebrows arched for a long moment. When they finally descended, he simply said:

“You read a whole lot dese days, don't ya?”

Further evidence that Freudian slips often obey the rule of colour: the life of a (décor/heros) lasts seven years. The words
décor
and
heros
are exactly identical in colour.

“You knows me. I's never gonna be a success wid dem high-dollar qualities.”

Cocteau says that beauty is always accidental, in the sense that it collides violently with our habits. He compares it to a car accident in its tendency to transfix, to be much discussed and little understood. Reread the above.

Étienne could not believe it:

“Not like dat, Mum!”

Carmen knew this was going to take a bit of explaining:

“'Tisn't your usual kind of mirror, see.”

Étienne realized the seriousness of the affair when his mother knelt down to place the mirror in the back of Marianne's closet with its reflecting surface facing the wall.

“Dis 'ere's a feng shui mirror. It's fer blocking de waves comin' out from behind de toilet.”

?

“Der not good waves, an' der comin' straight at Marianne's head.”

??

“De backwards mirror'll send dem back de udder way.”

???

Satisfied with her installation, Carmen crept backwards on all fours out of the closet, then straightened up, took Étienne by the hand, and led him into the bathroom to show him how the drain pipe behind the toilet bowl was aimed directly at Marianne's bed.

“But Mum, der's a wall!”

“A wall's not enough. De waves can go troo walls. Only a mirror can stop dem.”

Étienne only knew about one kind of wave.

“Does I got waves, Mum?”

“No, yer room's alright. It really only needs a plant, only I 'aven't found de right sort yet.”

“Plants give off waves as well?”

“Fer sure! All kinds o' waves. De one we're gonna put in yer room gives off waves of good luck.”

“I already got good luck.”

“Do you now?”

“Well sure! On account of me rabbit's foot!”

“Dat's de troot. Only, a person can't have too much good luck, now can ya.”

“Awh.”

In
Life's Little Difficulties
, Pomme imagined a hockey team called the Moncton Accidents, to commemorate the accidents particular to that city, for example, oversized trucks getting stuck under the Main Street viaduct. The team would be sponsored by an insurance company. The idea came to him during a spontaneous party that had erupted at the Zablonskis'.

The author as presented on the title page:

M. MICHELET,

Membre de l'Institut,
professeur d'histoire au Collège de France,
chef de la section historique aux Archives nationales

And as one would expect, the work carries the seal of approval of the University Council and is prescribed for courses in modern history in all colleges and public schools:

OUVRAGE ADOPTÉ

Par le Conseil de l'Université,

ET PRESCRIT POUR L'ENSEIGNEMENT
DE L'HISTOIRE MODERNE DANS LES COLLÈGES
ET DANS TOUS LES ÉTABLISSEMENTS
D'INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE.

~~~

Family name, team's name, Christian name, tribal name,
nom de terre
(name of land), religious name,
nom de guerre
, the war without a name. Pen name, artists' name, street name, brand name, what in the name of God?, ship's name, what's in a name? name of the father, name of a tool, name of a tool, not to know the names of tools.

For several days, Étienne had been practising heads or tails.

“Yer gettin' der. You catch it a whole lot more often dan you did in de beginnin'.”

Terry had encouraged his son to persist by generously replacing the coins that rolled out of reach during the exercise.

“Dey're not always flippin'.”

“Ya have to give 'er a bigger push wid yer tumb, watch.”

Terry showed Étienne how to put more into the thumb's movement and a little less in the arm's. But he missed the coin coming down, and it rolled away behind the TV.

“See dat, even I don't always get it.”

“If I keeps on wid practisin', could be I'll get better'n you, eh, Dad?”

“Could be. You best keep on practisin'.”