The Years of Fire

by Yves Beauchemin

  “Damn,” he suddenly cried, looking at his watch. “I’m going to be late for work!”

  His cheek didn’t look too bad; it might have been caused by a severe toothache. He left the restaurant, hurrying past the complaints of the owner, who was standing behind the counter with a dishcloth in his hand grumbling about people who came in to use his washrooms without bothering to order so much as a cup of coffee, and went down into the Papineau metro station. The large ceramic fresco inside the station – with its strong, bold colours showing Louis-Joseph Papineau, the fiery politician with the distinctive tuft of hair, standing before a monument during a skirmish in the 1837 Rebellion – sent a surge of warmth to his face. He stopped, took a deep breath, stuck out his chest, and smiled. He, too, had triumphed. He had the knife in his pocket to prove it. And the hundred-dollar bills were in the kitchen with the old man. He would do even better than Papineau, he would see his victory through to the end, even though at the moment he had no idea what that end might be.

  Sitting in the subway car, he rubbed his throbbing right temple and tried to think up a story to explain the state of his face to Monsieur Lalancette.

  In the seat across from him a young woman in a black dress was showing off her splendid legs. They were pink and glowing with health. From time to time she wiggled her feet in their black open-toed shoes with enormous high heels. He watched her from the corner of his eye, her pretty face, her legs crying out for love and passion for life. He suddenly wanted to involve this woman in the victory he had just won over his father, but how he would do that he didn’t know. Should he sit beside her and chat her up? Simply smile at her, or wink? Follow her off the metro and speak to her? His wounded cheek made the venture seem risky. A few seconds later he would arrive at the Frontenac station, where he had to get off. The train began to slow down, and the brakes came on.

  Suddenly he was gripped by a transport of joy: he knew what he was going to do. He leaned forward on his seat, ready to leap up. The second the doors began to open he threw himself on the young woman, kissed her on both cheeks, and dashed off the train under the dumbfounded gaze of the other passengers; the car filled with bursts of laughter, and the victim, astonished, intrigued, and a little alarmed, began talking animatedly to a woman sitting beside her.

  Charles, meanwhile, had reached the street level, once again out of breath. He checked to make sure no one was following him, then set off rapidly towards rue Ontario, looking around with great satisfaction. It had definitely been a good day. Couldn’t have been better. Every obstacle in his way had melted before the sheer force of his will. A fierce joy seized him and he jumped in the air and clapped his hands, nearly frightening to death an old woman who had been shuffling along trying to remember the recipe for stewed rhubarb.

  On the morning of November 7th, 1982, a neighbour who hadn’t spoken three words to Madame Michaud in as many years suddenly felt compelled to stop her on the street to tell her that she had seen her husband the previous evening in the company of the former manager of the Woolworth’s store on Mont-Royal, a woman who, one might say, was in no immediate danger of being made a saint. In any case, the way she’d been holding his arm and laying her head on his shoulder left not a shred of doubt as to the intimate nature of their relationship. Minutes later, Parfait Michaud was subjected to a raging torrent of abuse, during which accusations of infidelity and threats of revenge alternated with fits of weeping, great sobs, appeals for pity, and shortages of breath, all of which led up to the grand finale of a spectacular nervous breakdown. She calmed down slightly with the application of a cold compress and a few inhalations of Ventolin, after which she was able to drag herself off to bed, declaring, however, that she was in no condition to even think about making lunch, and in any case she had no intention of doing so.

  Michaud sat at his desk, trying, without notable success, to concentrate on the will of an important businessman who had made his fortune manufacturing sexy lingerie. Certain clauses in the will had given him pause to reflect, just as certain phrases from Amélie’s tirade were still ringing in his ears. He tried to look at himself objectively, and ended up considering himself by turns a hypocrite, a swine, a sexaholic, a lecher, a whoremonger, and a plethora of other epithets the delineation of which would be too shocking for sensitive ears.

  His life with Amélie had begun with all the delights of young love, but they had long ago turned rancid. She had always had her little ways, unimportant in themselves. At first he had found them amusing; but eventually they had taken root and grown until they’d completely engulfed the personality of the young woman he had married when he was twenty-two, a woman full of imagination and spirit. They had turned her into a cranky hypochondriac, useless to herself and to others, and had made their last fifteen years together a waking nightmare. He had thought of leaving her many times, but he hadn’t, whether out of pity, or fear, or laziness, he couldn’t say.

  In the end he had decided to lead a double life, as sad and banal as that solution seemed to him. In the parts of Montreal he frequented he’d heard himself referred to as “Notary Trop Chaud,” a pun on his name that plunged him into a state of self-loathing; he felt as though it were not only his name but the honour of his profession that was being maligned, especially since it was a profession that he’d practised with such meticulous zeal. It reminded him of hearing a busker in the metro a few months before butchering Schubert’s “Ave Maria” on a saxophone, giving it a lot of trills and splutters to a pre-recorded piano accompaniment. It was like seeing the Holy Virgin do a striptease. “Life is ugly,” he sighed. “And I’m ugly! No wonder God has washed His hands of humanity. We’re not worth the trouble …”

  He stood up, went to the window, and stood looking out over rue Bercy with his hands behind his back. Three men walked by, two young and one old. The two younger men passed the older one without looking at him. All three seemed to him to be nondescript, vaguely grey in the face, undistinguishable, washed out, absorbed in their own petty thoughts. A young woman appeared at the corner pulling one of those small, wire shopping carts. She had a pretty mouth and lively eyes. He looked away; no more pretty women for him! It was time for him to develop other interests. “But you already have other interests, imbecile!” he scolded himself. “Music, books, your work.… They aren’t enough, though, that’s the problem … they never were enough.… Maybe you should have had … I’m only guessing here … children.”

  Which made him think of Charles. There was a time when he would have adopted Charles himself, if he’d been more forthright and had had enough presence of mind. He thought of the time about a year ago, when he had asked Charles and his friend Michel Blondin to help him shelve his new library. The two boys had worked very hard and very carefully, but Charles, who was ordinarily so talkative and warm, had seemed distant, hard to draw out of himself, and a few times the boy had given him an almost ironic look, as though he’d wanted to say something. Michaud had been intrigued.

  When they were about to leave, Charles had stood in front of the shelves, examining each book in turn.

  “Is he any good, Balzac?” he’d asked.

  “Good?” Michaud had replied. “You absolutely must read him before you die, otherwise you go straight to Hell.”

  “The Physiology of Marriage. Is that a novel?”

  “Umm … no. It’s a sort of treatise, or pamphlet, if you like. Pretty strong stuff.”

  Charles had turned to him then, as though he’d been waiting for this moment for some time.

  “There are those who think physiology is more important than marriage.”

  And he’d raked Michaud with the pitiless look that adolescents reserve for adults who have disappointed them.

  “Yes, well.… That’s how it goes sometimes,” Michaud had babbled.

  “Human nature not being perfect …”

  But he’d suddenly understood that Charles knew about his double life and had decided to confront him with it before he’d come to term
s with his own anger.

  Since that conversation he had had almost no contact with Charles. Two or three chance meetings in the street, cut short, and one other, a few months ago, when Charles had turned up at the house to borrow Louis Fréchette’s Legend of a People, which he’d needed for an essay. He’d stayed no more than a couple of minutes. He apparently couldn’t wait to leave.

  And so, along with the ruin of his marriage, he had also watched his reputation suffer, a further ruin that risked costing him a friendship that meant the world to him. All for the futile and fleeting pleasures of being with women of uncertain virtue. The few times he’d met a woman of any worth, the affair had been brief …

  Michaud paced back and forth in his office, hands thrust deep in his pockets, absently following a row of roses printed on his carpet. Then he sat again at his desk, looked at the bizarre document he’d been asked to go over, and tried to become absorbed in it. But soon he looked up, checked the clock, and sighed. Céline Fafard, Fernand’s daughter, was going to be there in a few minutes. She’d called the night before to make an appointment, without saying why. He could still hear her thin, high voice on the phone. It was the first time a fourteen-year-old had asked to consult with him as a notary public. Of course it would be today (Fate again, the idiot), when he was so depressed he didn’t know how he would be able to manage an interview that might well concern a matter of some delicacy, as he had quickly realized.

  No use trying to read the will. He got up and went into the kitchen to make himself an espresso. Amélie was still snivelling in her bed, probably on the point of going to sleep. He raised his demitasse to his lips just as the doorbell rang.

  “It’s her,” he said.

  Minutes later she was sitting in front of his desk, smiling but evidently nervous. She was a pretty young woman already, with magnificent eyes, cheeks perhaps a little on the bright side, but a fine, graceful, small nose and an intelligent look about her. She appeared to be a lot more serious than most people her age. Two or three years from now, when her face filled out a bit and her features became firmer, when the sensual curve of her lips was more accentuated, she was going to make a lot of young men very happy indeed – or perhaps just one man, if that was what she wanted.

  “I came because I wanted to talk to you about Charles,” she began, coming directly to the point, blushing slightly but with a determined air about her.

  “Charles,” said Michaud, smiling and joining the tips of his fingers together under his chin. The coincidence surprised him, as he had just been thinking about Charles himself.

  “It’s … it’s about a Christmas present I want to get him.”

  “Aha. I see you like to plan ahead. And you want me to chip in for it, is that it?”

  “No, no, nothing like that!” she exclaimed, confused. “I have enough money.… I want to give him a book, but I don’t know which one. I thought since you and he know so much about books, and you are always lending them to him, you could give me some advice. It’s not easy to choose a gift for someone,” she said seriously, “when you really want to make them happy.”

  “Yes, of course,” agreed the notary, trying to be friendly and warm. “Often we give presents that would make us happy if we got them, and don’t really think of what would make the other person happy. In other words, we remain egotists even when we’re trying to be altruists.”

  “Exactly,” Céline said, impressed by the elegant way he had put the problem.

  Michaud was consumed by a salacious curiosity. “Do you give him presents like this every Christmas, Céline?” he asked.

  “No. In fact, this is the first time. That’s why I want to make sure it’s the right present.”

  Her cheeks flushed pink again and she looked away.

  “Would I be prying,” replied the notary, in his most mollifying, paternal tone, “if I asked you why you want to give him a present this particular year?”

  He took a swallow of coffee to give her time to think about her answer. But she replied instantly.

  “Because I love him. And I want to show him that I love him.”

  The notary was jubilant. The conversation had lifted him into a state of happiness that made him forget the depths into which his day had plunged him.

  “There are less … costly … ways of doing that,” he said pleasantly. Céline gave a little irritated pout.

  “I’m not about to throw my arms around his neck, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “What would he think of me?”

  “You know, my dear Céline, girls often forget how shy boys can be. I myself was very shy when I was Charles’s age. Sometimes you have to give them a little nudge. Things often go well, after that.”

  Céline shook her head, annoyed.

  “That’s not like me,” she said. “First I want to give him a present.”

  The notary agreed that in matters of the heart it was better to follow one’s own inclinations. The best strategy, after all, was the one that came most naturally.

  “How much money do you have to spend?”

  “About thirty dollars.”

  She had to have been saving her pennies for months, he thought. She probably should keep some of it, but she seemed ready to spend everything she had to show Charles how much she loved him. Michaud was surprised and touched by the candour with which she was speaking to him.

  “You love him that much?” he asked.

  “I do,” she said, her eyes filling with a dreamy sadness. “Ever since I was young … and especially since he came to live with us. I thought for a while I would get over it, but in fact the opposite has happened. So, what book do you think I should buy, Monsieur Michaud?”

  The notary sat back in his chair. “That is the question, as our dear old Hamlet would say.” And he stared at the ceiling, the picture of deep concentration.

  But no ideas came into his head. He slid the candy dish towards Céline and offered her a caramel, which she accepted, then took one for himself and put it in his mouth. Then he got up from his chair and sauntered along the rows of books on his shelves, running his eyes over their titles, bending down and standing up with tiny exhalations of breath. Céline watched him, her hands clasped on her lap, with a faint smile of astonishment. She had never met anyone like him in her life. He was gentle, impressive, and a bit ridiculous, all at the same time.

  “Got it!” he cried suddenly. “But it might be a tad expensive …”

  “What is it?”

  “The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant,” he said. “The Albin Michel edition, in two volumes, printed on fine paper. It’s beautiful, a real treasure. They might sell each volume separately. I remember Charles read The House of Tellier, a collection put out by Livre de Poche, and liked it very much. Shall I call a bookstore for you?”

  He found what he wanted after three calls. The volumes were sold separately, for twenty-two dollars each.

  “That’s perfect, then,” Céline decided. “I’ll go get the first one right away. Could they hold it for me, please?”

  Excited, she leaped to her feet in a transport of joy and ran her hands along the edge of the desk, as if she were caressing it.

  “If you like, I could pick it up for you, my dear. I have to go downtown tomorrow anyway.”

  “Are you sure he’ll like it? I mean, really like it?”

  “I’m sure, yes,” replied the notary, squeezing his eyes shut with a satisfied smile.

  She thanked him effusively, reached into her pocket, and took out three ten-dollar bills. He took two of them.

  “Keep some for yourself,” he said. “I’ll see if I can get a discount. I’m a regular customer at Champigny’s, and they sometimes do me favours.”

  Céline was on her way to the door when she turned back, suddenly stricken by a horrible thought that brought down the corners of her mouth.

  “You promise you won’t tell him about my visit? He would laugh at me, I know it.”

  “Céline, my sweet little Céli
ne,” he replied gravely, placing a hand on her shoulder, “at my age one knows love when one sees it. There is nothing so beautiful – or so terrible. Do you think I’d be so mean as to do such a thing?”

  Wilfrid Thibodeau hadn’t been heard from for several months. It seemed he had disappeared from the neighbourhood. Had he left the city, or even the country? Charles told himself that the sacrifice of his money might not have been in vain after all. But thoughts of his father continued to haunt him. What hole was he hiding in? Had he gone back north to work? His victory still filled him with pride, but it was beginning to seem a little too easy. He couldn’t believe that his father wasn’t out there somewhere, planning his revenge.

  One cold and windy Saturday in March he decided to go to the Amis du Sport, to see if he could find Oscar Turgeon, the elderly gentleman who had given him his father’s address. He was pulling on his gloves in the vestibule, looking out at the gusts of snow sweeping down the street, when Céline came down the hallway, still in her pyjamas (she’d been sleeping in).

  “Where are you going?”

  Ever since Christmas, when she’d blushingly given him the Maupassant short stories (which he’d devoured in three days), there had been a pact of silence between them. Embarrassed at not having a Christmas present for her, he had waited until New Year’s Day to give her, almost secretly, a handsome silver bracelet with inlaid agates that he’d bought her – after great deliberation and scrutiny and much consultation with Marlene – at Parchemin’s Jewellery Store in the Berri-de Montigny metro station. Céline had worn it every day since.

  “I’m going to find out what’s happened to my father.”

  “Where?”

  “A bar. The Amis du Sport, on Logan.”

  He’d told her about his encounter with his father. No one but she and Blonblon knew about the fight. He hadn’t brought Henri in on the secret because he thought Henri was too much of a blabbermouth. Charles had made both Blonblon and Céline swear they’d never say anything about it to Fernand or Lucie; with his hotheaded temper, Fernand would no doubt run off to Thibodeau’s place and force him to return what was left of his son’s fifteen hundred dollars, if anything was left of it at all.