The Years of Fire

by Yves Beauchemin

  “Thanks,” Charles said, and left.

  He made the rounds of the neighbourhood, going from tavern to bar, from bar to brasserie. A friendly sun was gently warming the city; the streets, swept as they were by a tepid breeze, seemed wider and more spacious than usual; there was a clarity in the air that made everything seem lighter. It was the kind of weather that seemed to make everyone look younger and enliven even the most modest corner. The light seemed to come from all directions at once, from the walls and the sidewalks, from the leaves on the trees, even from the hydro poles lining the streets. As occasionally happens for totally inexplicable reasons, the streets and sidewalks teemed with beautiful women, dressed and coiffed in a thousand exciting ways, each with her own particular beauty and her own small imperfections that only made her more desirable. They had ways of drawing attention to the fine line of their mouths, or to their eyes or breasts, the curves of their calves and thighs, the contours of their bare feet in expensive sandals, of leaving behind a phosphorescent trail of wistful looks. Moved by such exquisite abundance, Charles could hardly stop turning around and sighing. He regretted not having anyone to share his impressions with. In his mind he saw Céline’s foot curved seductively on the chair rung, and his lips tingled with the desire to kiss it.

  The city trembled with a furious joie de vivre that passed into him and blended in a bizarre way with the anger that was causing him to track Wilfrid down. Several times he was tempted to drop the whole thing, give himself over to this vague, sun-filled drunkenness that was rising within him, but he shrugged off the feeling with disdain. He had to find his father and cancel him out once and for all, with a positive equal to his father’s negative, as though the whole thing were a simple algebraic equation; when you came right down to it, it was a problem of mathematics. That was no doubt how Fernand and Lucie saw it, and that was how he must see it, too.

  Around eleven o’clock he decided to use the metro and buses to save time, since his fruitless quest was taking him farther and farther from his starting point. He went from place to place, sticking his head into bars and taverns, taking a quick look around, asking his question and always getting more or less the same answer: yes, they all knew Wilfrid Thibodeau, some vaguely, others quite well, but no, they didn’t know where he was living at the moment. He wasn’t the kind of guy who talked much about his personal life.

  After a while he had the strange feeling of going into and out of the same place, over and over. Whether it was the Bienvenue Tavern on rue Amherst, or the Chez Baptiste Brasserie on Mont-Royal, or the Baudrias Tavern on Rachel, or the Donaldson Bar on Ontario, it was always the same decor: grey-tiled floor, captain’s chairs, one pool table, varnished pine walls, yellowish light, air filled with smoke. It was Wilfrid Thibodeau’s world, a checkerboard of identical squares through which his father made his way, performing exactly the same ritual each time: a large Molson’s here, a Take-5-for-50-ale there, until the final belch brought up with its odour of fermented hops the soul of a drinker whose throat was perpetually dry.

  At one o’clock he was tired, impatient, fed up with so many perfect legs and tanned shoulders, and starving. He went into the Famous Smoked Meat Restaurant at the corner of Saint-Denis and Mont-Royal, the “modern” facade of which was stuck brutally onto a beautiful, old, brick building.

  He was just finishing his Cottage Pudding when he suddenly remembered that for a long time his father used to hang out at a bar with the grandiose name Les Amis du Sport. He checked the telephone book to make sure the place still existed, then paid his bill and headed for the metro. On his way he passed a second-hand shop, in the window of which was a small switchblade knife that caught his eye. He went in and bought it. It had a smooth leather-and-polished-wood handle that fit nicely into the palm of his hand. “Maybe it’ll bring me luck,” he said, rubbing it and slipping it into his pocket.

  Les Amis du Sport was squeezed into the angle formed by the intersection of Logan and de Lorimier, near the Papineau metro station. It took Charles twenty minutes to get there. It seemed a notch or two above the level of the places he’d already visited that day. For once the grey-tiled floor was clean; the chairs had cushions and the arms were padded. Two ceiling fans circulated a measure of fresh air in the room, and a third fan installed in a wall expelled the stale air. Above the bar there was an imposing diorama in the style of the Bourgault brothers, depicting an old-time sugaring-off party. There were half a dozen customers in the bar, two sitting at one table, four others talking quietly at the counter. Charles didn’t recognize any of them. Suddenly he felt like having a cold beer, and he sat at a table by the wall beside a varnished wooden drum, hoping no one would make a fuss about his age; above his head was a TV screen with the sound turned off, showing a baseball game. A young waitress came over. She had wide hips, round arms, and a cold eye, and she looked him over suspiciously.

  “How old are you?” she said.

  “Eighteen. You want to see my ID?” And he turned red, as though someone had just pulled his pants down.

  She looked hesitant, then gave a slight shrug and took his order.

  “And bring me a ham sandwich, too, please,” he added, although he didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry.

  “Please” was a word she didn’t often hear from customers, and she gave him a light smile. In a somewhat softer voice she asked if he would like mustard or mayonnaise.

  “Mustard,” he said.

  “Hot or regular?”

  “Hot.”

  She smiled again and went off to the kitchen with a spring in her step.

  “She might be going to tell the owner,” Charles thought, and his cheeks turned fiery red once more. He thought about running out, but that would have been acting like an idiot. Instead, he stretched out his legs and sat facing into the room.

  Several minutes went by. Complicated business, he thought, making a ham sandwich.

  “Robert Bourassa?” exclaimed one of the four men at the counter. “That’s bullshit! I wouldn’t have that guy for a doorman! A worm could teach him something about standing up for himself. He made me feel ashamed the whole time he was in power! And what did he leave behind when he got out? A few hydro dams in James Bay, and that’s it! We need him like we need a hole in the head!”

  Amused, Charles listened to their conversation. Then, looking up, he noticed that the wall was plastered with photographs of all the famous people who had been in the bar; one of them was of the businessman Pierre Péladeau, shaking hands with a man who had a kind of puzzled smile on his face.

  The waitress placed his sandwich on the table, along with a glass and a bottle.

  “Three-fifty,” she said.

  Charles paid her and took a bite of his sandwich before realizing he could hardly swallow it. Why on earth had he ordered the stupid thing? He felt miserable. He’d wasted five whole hours, and it was almost time for him to go to the pharmacy. Meanwhile, Fernand and Lucie were still worried sick. Maybe tonight would be the night the hardware store burned down. He looked feverishly about him, fighting for air.

  Two tables away, an old man with yellowed, ill-fitting skin was reading a newspaper in a cloud of smoke. He had a cigar in his mouth and was wearing a wig that gave him the air of a much younger man. He looked ridiculous, but not formidable. Charles leaned towards him.

  “Excuse me, sir, but have you been coming here for a long time?”

  “Thirty-two years, my boy. Longer than you have, I’d say.” He laughed.

  “Yes, in fact this is my first time here. It seems like an okay place.”

  “It’s got its good points,” the old man agreed.

  “Tell me,” Charles said, after taking a drink of beer, “have you ever run into a man named Wilfrid Thibodeau?”

  “He and I had a drink together in here just last night, my friend.”

  “Oh yeah? It’s just that I’m trying to locate him.”

  A few minutes later, having replied in the vaguest possible terms to his c
urious neighbour’s questions about why he was trying to track down the carpenter, Charles learned that his father had been living for the past two weeks in a small rooming house on rue Parthenais, across from the famous prison and not two minutes’ walk from Les Amis du Sport. His amiable informant, whose name was Oscar Turgeon, even knew the address – he began fumbling through his pockets looking for his notebook – because he’d lent his car to Thibodeau when he was moving his things, “the back seat folded down, you see, there’s a small tear in the fabric on the left side but it isn’t too noticeable.” Charles wrote the address on a paper napkin, thanked the man, and left the tavern, his heart pounding.

  He walked along a row of modest, one-storey, brick buildings that seemed to be shrinking away from the enormous black rectangle that was the Parthenais Prison, a strange and hideous mass that had landed in the neighbourhood like a spaceship signalling an alien invasion. The idea that his father would be living across the street from it brought a furtive smile to his lips; it was a solution he heartily endorsed. But a tightness in his throat made him draw in his breath: he was standing in front of the building in which his father lived. In a few minutes it would all be over. If he had enough courage to go through with it.

  8

  Wilfrid Thibodeau had had a headache for the past three days. Nothing worked, not Aspirin, not hot and cold compresses, not even the huge, yellow pills the convenience store owner’s wife had given him the night before that were supposed to perform miracles. A buzzsaw was cutting the top of his head off, and some sadist was pressing on the back of his neck, causing an oily sort of nausea that wouldn’t let him eat enough to keep a bird alive. Alcohol worked, a bit, for a while, but since he had to meet a contractor later that afternoon who might have a job for him at a Jean Coutu pharmacy, he’d decided to stay off the booze until after the interview was over, just to improve his chances.

  He was slumped over the kitchen table, vaguely listening to a song on the radio and begging for something to put an end to his torture, when a relatively happy thought entered his head. As it was the first in a long time, he let it hang around for a while.

  The convenience store owner’s wife had been friendly to him. He barely knew her, had hardly been civil to her until last night when she gave him the pills. But her friendliness could be useful to him. Her husband was a fat tub of lard who looked half asleep most of the time and muttered nothing but idiocies. She must have lost interest in him ages ago. Maybe she needed a man. And a woman who needed a man was easy on the purse strings when she found a man who could please her. She wasn’t much to look at herself, mind, but so what? These were tough times, he couldn’t afford to be choosy. He could look around for a younger chick when he had a bit of scratch in his pocket.

  At that point the saw started buzzing through his head again. He should try not to think, turn himself into a board or a bag of cement. Or sleep. The goddamn pain had kept him awake most of the night. He folded his arms on the table and put his head down sideways, closed his eyes, and tried to relax. After a few minutes a kind of numbness began to dull the saw’s teeth, and he was on the verge of falling asleep when the doorbell rang.

  “Who the hell could that be?” he muttered, getting up. “I’m not expecting anyone.”

  Through the muslin curtain left on the door by some previous tenant he saw a tall young man standing on the porch, but he couldn’t make out his face.

  He opened the door and stood there for a few seconds without saying anything.

  “Is it you?” he whispered, his voice sinking to the back of his throat. “Hello. What do you want?”

  Charles made a strange sound, a mixture of surprise and pity, but said nothing. Then, finally, he said, “Can I come in? I want to talk to you.”

  From the tone of his voice, Thibodeau could tell whatever Charles had to say to him wouldn’t be good. He frowned, then forced himself to smile, and slowly closed the door behind his son.

  “I was on my way out. But I can give you a couple of minutes.”

  He shuffled back into the kitchen, slightly bent over, his arms hanging by his sides. “He’s sick,” Charles said to himself. “Maybe really sick. He’s almost an old man. What I have to say to him isn’t going to help much.”

  There was a yellow formica table with chrome legs at the centre of the tiny room, and three chairs covered with vinyl in the same colour. The bright light that reigned outside was hardly penetrating the greasy panes of the single window above the filthy sink. The counter was full of empty bottles, a few kitchen utensils, dirty plates, and a plastic bag in which some shirts were soaking in bluish-grey water. It was an allegory of chaos. The stink of burnt fat, cigarette smoke, and stale beer permeated the air.

  Thibodeau pulled out a chair. “Have a seat,” he said.

  He sat down across the table with a deep groan.

  “Okay, so what brings you here?”

  Charles tried to think of a way to begin.

  “You don’t look very well. Are you okay?”

  “Splitting headache. Three days now. It’s killin’ me, for Chrissakes.”

  “Go see a doctor. It’s free.”

  Thibodeau nodded and his face twisted with pain. His eye clouded over and he rubbed his forehead. Then suddenly he looked up at Charles, his eyes clear, incisive, arrogant.

  “I don’t suppose you came here to talk about my health. Go ahead, spit it out.”

  Charles blushed and fidgeted in his chair.

  “You know why I came to see you.”

  Thibodeau looked at him with a smile playing lightly on his lips. The shrunken sufferer was gone and had been replaced by a clever fox with dangerous teeth.

  “The other day I heard you made some sort of threat to Fernand,” Charles continued. “And then they found that gas can.” His face hardened. “It made me feel sick! I couldn’t believe you’d sunk so low!”

  He stood up, shoved his shaking hand into his pocket, and took out his wallet: a small object fell out onto the floor, but neither of them noticed.

  Thibodeau gave a low whistle. A pile of hundred-dollar bills had fallen onto the table with a faint rustle.

  “You want money, go ahead, take it!” Charles cried theatrically. “You can have it all, everything I’ve got: fifteen hundred dollars. But that’s the end of it! If you ever come back again, you’ll have to answer to me.”

  A shudder went through his body and stuck in his throat, and he didn’t think he could go on talking.

  The carpenter remained seated and stared impassively at Charles. He stretched out his arms along the table as though to rake in the money, then, in a low voice full of calm disdain, he murmured, “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “And you,” shouted Charles, shaking with anger and fear, “you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  A moment passed. In the apartment above them someone switched on a radio full-blast, then quickly shut it off.

  “Take your money,” Thibodeau said, his voice still calm, “and get the hell out of here.”

  “I’m not leaving until you promise to stop bothering Fernand.”

  He couldn’t stop trembling, and his voice came out in sobs. The carpenter smiled again and, still sitting down, began counting the hundred-dollar bills. The sight of them seemed to be having a certain effect on him.

  “My, my,” he said, almost to himself. “You’re right. Fifteen hundred smackeroos.”

  He placed them in a small pile to one side, stroked them thoughtfully for a moment with his forefinger, then took one bill from the pile and put it in his shirt pocket. He pushed the rest towards Charles.

  “I’m keeping one to teach you a lesson about being polite, kid. You shouldn’t talk to me like that. Now get out, I’ve had enough of you for now. Come back when you’re in a better mood.”

  His eye fell to the floor and to the knife that had fallen out of Charles’s pocket. He bent down and picked it up, then looked at it, smiling nastily.

  “So, what do y
ou know, as witch blade.… Nice one, too.… What were you going to do with it, stick it in my guts?”

  “Give it back,” murmured the adolescent, his voice hoarse.

  Thibodeau flicked open the blade and slid the end of his index finger along the edge, then gently pushed the tip into the palm of his hand.

  “A real nice little knife,” he said, standing up. “Could come in real handy.”

  He turned the knife over and over in his hand, looking steadily at his son, who had become livid.

  “I think I might keep this little baby too.”

  Suddenly Charles sprang at him, pushing him violently backward. The carpenter fell onto his chair and went over, hitting his head on the refrigerator door with a dull crack. Running around the table, Charles threw himself on the man and began pounding him with his fists as hard as he could. Thibodeau let out a shout of fury and punched at the boy’s face with his free hand, kicking at him with his feet. The table overturned with a crash and banknotes fluttered everywhere. The two continued fighting, more and more violently. The carpenter, still unable to get back on his feet, cried out in pain and smashed his fist into his son’s head. Charles didn’t let up. The knife rolled onto the floor. Charles threw himself at it, then bounded for the door. The next instant he was running down the sidewalk, followed by demented shouts from his father, who was standing in the doorway shaking his fist.

  Charles ran as far as de Maisonneuve, then slowed down, out of breath, avoiding an elderly couple with their Pekingese who had stopped to watch him. He made his way to Sainte-Catherine, saw a restaurant, went in, and locked himself in the men’s washroom. His right cheek was red and beginning to swell, and a blue mark was appearing at the corner of his eye. Other than that he appeared to be in one piece. He made a compress with a wad of paper towels soaked in cold water and held it to his cheek, brushed his hair in place, and lit a cigarette. His heart pounded with despicable joy.