For Sure (6 page)

“If you know how to get der, I figure yer old enough to go on yer own den, fer sure.”

Cited without permission from the Gallimard catalogue concerning La Pléiade: “All the books are printed in Garamond, on bible paper, and leather bound with gold lettering. A different colour has been selected for each era: tobacco for the twentieth century, emerald green for the nineteenth, blue for the eighteenth, venetian red for the seventeenth, Corinthian brown for the sixteenth, purple for the Middle Ages, green for Antiquity; sacred texts are bound in grey, anthologies in China red.”

“Well, anyways, ain't de French always 'ad a revolutionary streak runnin' troo dem since de whatchamacallit de French Revolution?”

“An' what, pray tell, does dat have to do wid legal copyright?”

“On account of if der's some way dey can prove dat Babar belongs to de people, well dey'll do it fer sure, and den der could be a Babar on every street corner, no problem.
Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité
, remember?”

“Those French're even more rimmed dan I tot.”

Acadians are often criticized — and not least by each other — for pronouncing words containing an
è
as though it were an é.
Père
(pair) and
mère
(mair) for example, are often pronounced
pére
(payr), and
mére
(mayr)
.
Of course, this is actually the old French pronunciation. But such ways of speaking seem old fashioned in the ears of the Other, as though this inability to adapt to modern French was evidence of a failure to adapt to modern life itself.

Having answered the door and greeted Le Petit Étienne, Zablonski was surprised:

“Terry's not with you?”

“No. I'm old enough.”

“Yes, of course you are.”

Before closing the door, the painter glanced down the hall, thinking Terry might have followed the child at some distance, just to be sure he'd arrived at his destination safely. But he saw no one. After which, he admired the candour of the little fellow who proceeded to take his usual place at the end of the room by the large windows looking out over the sun drenched city.

It is too soon to speak of the Other.

At first Le Grand Étienne had some difficulty imparting his knowledge to Le Petit Étienne. He thought he'd begin initially with a basic differenciation: warm colours and cold colours. Wrong. Le Petit Étienne described as warm all the colours Le Grand Étienne classified as cold and as cold all those supposedly warm. The artist came at the problem in various ways, but none seemed to work. In the end, just to avoid having to declare this first pedagogical exercise a failure, the painter declared:

“Well, really, it's not that important.”

Le Petit Étienne did not disagree. The master decided that a light snack might soften the learning curve. He fetched milk and cookies, putting on some music on the way, and came back to sit by his pupil, next to the large windows where they could watch the comings and goings in the neighbourhood. It was this pause that allowed him to break through the impasse. Le Petit Étienne had a question:

“Which colour is
vert
laine
?”

Vert laine
? Green wool? Étienne Zablonski tried to think where the boy had seen green wool.

Freud's massive oeuvre defies simplification. Which explains the need for a roundabout approach. First impression: after several months in Paris, at age 30, Freud returns to Vienna convinced that, as the eminent Charcot had argued, the study of anatomy was complete, the era of neurosis was at hand.

The small and more or less scientific survey on perceptions of the colour of vowels was taken up at the Babar, which had subscribed to
L'Acadie nouvelle
as a service to the clientele. A few lines on the survey had appeared as filler in the newspaper.

“As wot, you say?”

“Filler.”

“An' wot's dat, I'd like to know.”

“A short article in a newspaper. Not more than a paragraph or two usually. To fill in the space.”

“Wot d'ya mean, ‘fill in de space'? Wot space are we talkin' about?”

Claude Garamond created the first type foundry independent of a printer. A Parisian, Garamond (1499–1581) probably based his roman characters, which are the basis for all classical typefaces, on the type of Geoffroy Tory, Alde Manuce, and Francesco Griffo. The subsequent appearance of Baskerville type in England and Didot in France rendered Garamond all but invisible for more than a century, but the National French Press relaunched the style at the beginning of the twentieth century, at the time of the World's Fair. Today, publishers increasingly prefer Garamond to Times New Roman, which was designed for the
London Times
.

This was Marianne's second sore throat in as many months.

“Could be the same one that wasn't completely cured de first time.”

“Like a relapse, you mean?”

Carmen envied Terry's use of the French word
rechute
for “relapse” rather than slipping into the English, as he might have done. His vocabulary seemed to be improving lately.

“You think she ought to see the doctor?”

Terry wasn't sure. He wasn't the type to run off to the doctor at the slightest malaise.

“T'isn't as doh she's complaining all de time. Her nose's hardly runnin' at all.”

“It doesn't seem normal, a sore throat that's not a cold. Can kids that age be catchin' mono?”

Terry turned to Marianne:

“Marianne, did you go off an' kiss somebody an' not tell yer mum or dad?”

Marianne looked from her dad to her mum.

“Dad's just pullin' yer leg, me beauty. Come on over 'ere to yer mum.”

Marianne did not need to be asked twice; she walked into Carmen's outstretched arms.

“Seems to me she's a whole lot quieter too, not jumpin' all over everything all de time.”

Terry knew what Carmen meant.

“Anyways, one ting's fer sure, she's not havin' 'er tonsils out.”

He used the English word
tonsils
.

“An' why's that?”

“Dey discovered tonsils is what processes our emotions an' memories while we's sleepin'.”

Terry said
processes
in English.

“Sorry, don't know the right word fer
processes
.”

This information about tonsils worried Carmen.

“Go on! Are ya serious?”

“Dat's wot I read.”

Carmen fell silent. Gently caressing Marianne, she was trying to think what effect having her own tonsils out when she was six years old might have had on her.

“Well, I suppose it don't make sense tonsils would be useless after all.”

“
Amygdales
!” Terry exclaimed, picking up on Carmen's use of the French for tonsils.

“Dat's de word I's lookin' fer.”

This book is typeset in __________________. (This information is usually found at the end of the work.)

Once Étienne Zablonski had understood that the
vert laine
Le Petit Étienne was talking about was not green wool, but rather Verlaine the poet, and after Zablonski had explained that
verveine
was not about green veins but rather a plant with which one makes tea, and that no, or perhaps actually, there may be a colour called
orange à m
è
re
, though he Zablonski was not aware of it, but if there was, probably the words meant not mother's orange but rather
orange amère
or bitter orange, called in Acadian French
orange
aigre
, or
haigre
— he'd also heard it pronounced
haigue
3
— well, once he'd understood all that, the painter Étienne Zablonski went to the back of his loft to bring out a rare object from his distant past.

At least two rumours contributed to discrediting the work of Freud: first, that he used heroin; and second, that he was involved in an incestuous relationship with his daughter.

The largest consensus emerged around the letter
o
. No fewer than 61 responders associated the letter
o
with the colour orange. Ten responders declared it to be red, eight blue, seven black, six yellow, three pink, two white, two purple, and one each green, grey and violet. No one answered “nothing” or “I forget.”

As a rule Terry made up his own mind about which books to read. He mostly relied on his instinct to guide him. But when it came to Freud, he was stymied by the sheer number of books the founder of psychoanalysis had written, not to mention the multitude of volumes written about him and his works. Terry sought guidance from Ludmilla.

“Many authors get lost in the details of his interpretations rather than simply noting the originality of his approach for the time.”

So it was something to do with a bygone era? Terry didn't feel like reading a whole lot of dusty old books.

“Are you sayin 'twould be too old, today?”

“
The Interpretation of Dreams
will give you a good idea of his work. Especially since he wrote very well. He took great care with his writing style.”

This was the first time Terry had heard of such a thing. To have a writing style. To work on your writing style. Of course. It made perfect sense. Why should it surprise him? Ludmilla added:

“
Psychopathology of Everyday Life
is also quite interesting, though a trifle long.”

They were obliged to cut their conversation short because a customer was waiting at the cash.

Here I'd like to point out that the list of authors in La Pléiade includes an Acadian. The sinologist Charles Le Blanc, a native of northern New Brunswick who, with the Frenchman Rémi Mathieu, co-edited the second volume of
Philosophes taoïstes
(
Daoist Philosophers
), and the first volume of
Philosophes confucianistes (Confucian Philosophers)
. An eminent scholar, needless to say.

Le Petit Étienne stared wide-eyed at the old colour chart Le Grand Étienne laid out before him. Almost a hundred years old and designed by the famous silk manufacturers of Lyon, the chart displayed close to 500 colours in narrow silk strips, each one appropriately named and numbered. As he admired the work, Le Petit Étienne could not restrain himself from fingering the occasional strip.

Freud had the distinct impression, which he did not conceal, that he was bringing Americans the plague on his only voyage to the United States, in September 1909. Invited to receive an honorary doctorate from Clark University in Worcester, Massachussetts, Freud made the trip by boat, accompanied by Jung and Ferenczi. Though his works had won over adherents in most of Europe's great metropolises, and even in New York, his ideas remained popular with only a minority and scandalized most everyone else. One of the happy memories Freud retained from that voyage was the fact that his steward on board happened to be reading
Psychopathology of Everyday Life
, since Freud had written that book with the express purpose of rendering his science accessible to a broader public.

The customer wanted to buy two paperbacks,
Petits malentendus sans importance
(
Little Misunderstandings of No Importance
) by Antonio Tabucchi, and
Comment je suis devenu stupide
(
How I Became Stupid
) by Martin Page, but she also asked for several other books not on the shelves. Terry happily grabbed an order form from under the register.
 

“
The first one is
Un jour nous aurons des peintres
(
One Day We'll have Artists)
by . . .”

But Terry jumped:

“It's not over der wid de art books? Seemed to me . . .”

He walked toward the back of the bookstore, searched for a bit, but returned emptyhanded.

“No. I was sure we had a copy left. Must've sold it.”

Terry returned to the order form and wrote the title and name of the author without asking the customer to repeat it. The name of Annie Cohen-Solal had stayed with him since he'd heard a discussion of her book on television.

“I'd also like
Exercises de style
(
Exercises in Style
) by Raymond Queneau. Gallimard Jeunesse recently published an illustrated version; that's the one I'm looking for.”

Terry added a note in the column “Comments” on the form.

And I'd like
Poèmes épars
(
Scattered Poems
) by Gaston Miron.

“Dee Gaston Miron?”

“Yes.”

“Wah, I'll be . . . I tot he'd published only de one book
L'homme rapaillé
(
The March to Love
).”

“Yes. This is a new one, recently published posthumously.”