The Years of Fire

by Yves Beauchemin

  “Why are you blushing like that?” she asked him, surprised. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing at all,” he stammered, pocketing his tip. He said goodbye and hurried off, saying he was swamped with work.

  The second time was three days later, and had an even greater effect on him.

  The customer lived in Frontenac Towers, and Charles was delivering to him for the first time. The man must have been hard of hearing, or perhaps asleep, because after three rings there was still no answer. Charles was about to leave when he heard the patter of footsteps and the door opened. An old man stood before him, looking so decrepit, his eyes filled with such anguish, that Charles was struck dumb.

  “At last,” the man croaked. “Not a minute too soon. How much do I owe you?”

  Charles showed him the bill stapled to the bag, and reaching into his pocket the old man painfully withdrew an old, cracked, leather wallet with a brass clasp and tried to open it. But his hand trembled so much he couldn’t manage it. He finally asked Charles to open the wallet for him and take the money.

  “Take fifty cents for yourself,” he said. “Yes, yes, take it, take it, you’ve earned it. Thank you, thank you so much.”

  He closed the door and Charles stood in the corridor without moving. He could hear the man’s lightly flapping footsteps retreating into the apartment. Then he turned and made his way slowly to the elevator, deeply disturbed. The old man was clearly in a bad way. How would he manage without his medication? How long would his torment last? Who knew? Maybe without it he would become suicidal? It wasn’t unusual with old people, Monsieur Lalancette had told him. Riddled with sickness and a dozen infirmities, very often alone in the world, one day they decide to end it all with a single stroke, and Wham! Just like that. Well, in this case the pills wouldn’t do it, but he could slit his wrists, or throw himself from a window.

  He mulled over these dark thoughts all the way to the lobby, then stopped, unable to take another step. The idea of leaving the man at the mercy of his illness drained the strength from his legs and made his stomach heave. He knew it would haunt him for days to come, and might even force him to give up his little fiddle. And he didn’t want that!

  A few minutes later he was ringing the old man’s doorbell again.

  “A mistake?” said the man, in alarm. “But I’ve already taken two pills!”

  He began to shake so violently that he had to lean against the doorpost.

  “That’s all right, sir,” Charles assured him, trying to hide his confusion. “It was the right drug, but a weaker prescription. I just got the bills mixed up. I’m very sorry. I’ll take back the ones I gave you, and I’ll bring you the right pills right away. It won’t take me ten minutes, I promise. Trust me.”

  The old man looked at him as though in a daze, his arms hanging down, his face twitching; he seemed on the verge of breaking down.

  “Please, sir,” Charles said, growing impatient. “Make up your mind, for heaven’s sake. Do you want the right pills or don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes, I want them,” the man babbled, and hurried back into the apartment. There came the sound of a heavy object falling, and then a deep groan, and then the man reappeared. The front of his trousers was wet.

  “But … how did you … realize …?”he asked, handing Charles the half-torn bag.

  “I just did, that’s all,” Charles replied briskly, turning on his heels.

  Now he wished he hadn’t gone back. What would he tell Monsieur Lalancette if the old fool phoned the drugstore? You feel pity for someone you don’t even know, and sure as hell you end up landing in trouble. Idiot!

  He switched the pills in the washroom of a nearby restaurant and returned to the old man’s apartment. This time the man took the bag without thanking him, muttering something about being sorry he’d given Charles such a large tip. But he didn’t call the pharmacy, and the affair ended there. Charles, however, promised himself never again to give in to feelings of compassion – and he kept his promise.

  Sometimes even scumbags keep their word. De Bané kept his. He paid Charles upon delivery of the merchandise, every cent he owed him. He didn’t ask too many questions, seemed to be in an excellent frame of mind, but no longer invited Charles to eat with him in restaurants, saying that it wasn’t a good idea for them to be seen together too often. Charles knew that there was another, simpler reason: Why keep hustling someone when you’ve already got what you wanted from him? In any case, he would have refused the invitation, since keeping company with the drug dealer had become repulsive to him and he tried to avoid it whenever possible. He had come to hate the sight of De Bané.

  One day he asked himself who, among all the people he had known, had inspired the most hatred in him: Conrad Saint-Amour, the diddler? Gino Guilbault, who exploited young children in other ways? Robert-Aimé Doyon, the sadistic school principal? Or De Bané? De Bané came close to bumping Saint-Amour into second place. But he had an advantage over the pederast: thanks to De Bané, Charles’s bank account was growing swiftly. By the beginning of July, he had already saved the handsome sum of six hundred dollars.

  But there was another presence that weighed on him more and more, and it was one he was forced to endure: his own. Charles now had to consider himself as much a criminal as De Bané. Small-time, maybe, but a criminal nonetheless. Down there with pickpockets, counterfeiters, bootleggers, and people who hustled magic potions that guaranteed long life. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he was probably worse than those other figures of the underworld. Because of him, sick people were being deprived of their medications, and at the same time a lot of other people were becoming more and more addicted to tranquilizers. Monsieur Lalancette had often criticized the easy way such drugs were handed out; for several years doctors had been prescribing them for just about everything. It was a handy way for them to get rid of patients quickly, so they could see more in the course of a day and thereby increase their income. But for many people the sedatives were extremely necessary. And dear little Charles was depriving them of it. That his intentions were honorable had nothing to do with it; by doing what he was doing, he was dirtying his hands. As an old customer at Chez Robert had once told him, you can’t walk in butter without getting grease on your feet.

  One day, while returning from a delivery, he bumped into Jean-René Dupras, his old French teacher from Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur. Charles had always liked this man, who had helped him on the rocky road of his high school career. Dupras had married and already had two children. His face was a bit puffy, and there were crow’s feet around his eyes, but he still looked young. He shook Charles’s hand effusively, as though he were an adult, and even invited him to join him for a coffee in a nearby restaurant. They talked for twenty minutes, and Charles came within an ace of telling him about his problems, but his courage failed him. He didn’t want to lower himself in his former teacher’s eyes.

  The very sight of pills, any pills, disgusted him. In the pharmacy he averted his eyes from the jars and tubes, which to him held nothing but reproaches. For some time now, Fernand had been taking sleeping tablets and multivitamins, in the hope of regaining some of his energy. Lucie kept them in one of the kitchen cupboards, next to the glasses and plates, a cupboard that was constantly being opened. Charles moved them to the spice drawer so that he wouldn’t have to see them so often.

  Lucie had been keeping an anxious eye on Charles. His natural and easy happiness were gone, buried under a heavy sadness. He barely spoke at the dinner table, sitting there with a sullen and closed expression on his face, and getting up with his plate barely touched, only to stuff himself with sweets later on. “I’ll bet his father is back in the picture,” she told herself one day. But she could not get him to talk about what was bothering him. He completely shut her out.

  During the night he kept waking up with a jerk, seized by an inexpressible anguish. His stomach churned, his feet felt frozen, his heart pounded. He tossed in his bed feeling
as though his room were just a thin shell spinning far out into interstellar space, beyond the possibility of return. He even thought about taking one of the pills that he’d been stealing from patients. Once, at the very edge of panic, he took a Librium. A delicious feeling of indifference spread through him, but in the morning he woke up in such a state of mental confusion that he promised himself he’d never touch another drug.

  He was haunted by a terrifying thought: that his father would burn down the hardware store before he could contact him, leaving Charles burdened by the guilt of his odious actions without the solace of knowing that they were being put to some good use. He had to let his father know as soon as possible that he was working for him, and that the money he’d tried unsuccessfully to extort from Fernand would soon be falling into his lap. After their last encounter, however, Charles was afraid to go near him. And yet time was running out. He remembered Blonblon’s offer to act as an intermediary. Reconciliation was impossible, of course, but he might ask Blonblon to go with him. With a witness present, his father might be forced to restrain himself and to listen.

  Blonblon would surely be amazed to see how much money Charles had, and how much he expected to make in the future. It would be necessary to tell him where it came from – that he was selling drugs. Too risky? Not really. His friend would never betray him. He was as incapable of such an action as he was of flapping his arms and flying up into the sky. Several times Charles had been tempted to confide in Marlene, who was also a close friend, but each time he’d held back. Marlene was a nice girl, but she could never keep anything to herself. Blonblon, on the other hand, was correctness and generosity pushed to its ultimate extreme, which was innocence. If he’d been born thirty years earlier, he might have become a missionary in Africa or at the North Pole. And who was to say he might not yet end up like that? There were times when there seemed to be a kind of light emanating from his eyes, the kind that had doubtless suggested the haloes that were often depicted around the heads of saints. And if it weren’t for the fact that he had fallen in love with a woman – and deeply in love – he could easily have been mistaken for a saint. Since he had started stealing drugs, Charles hadn’t seen much of his friend. A kind of uneasiness had crept over their friendship. When there are things going on that friends can’t talk to one another about, other words don’t come easily. Luckily, ruptures healed quickly with Blonblon.

  Half an hour later, as if summoned on some telepathic telephone, Blonblon knocked on Charles’s door. Charles opened it joyfully and ushered Blonblon into his room, where Boff, rudely awakened, shook himself mightily and, wagging his tail, jumped down from the bed to be petted.

  “You’re getting fat, poor thing,” said Blonblon, scratching the dog behind the ears, “and you’ve got white hairs growing all over your chin.”

  Charles patted Boff’s flank.

  “He must be twelve years old,” he said. “Almost an old man. But his teeth are still good, that’s for sure. The other day he tore half of Céline’s bathrobe to shreds when she refused to give him a piece of chicken.”

  Blonblon knelt in front of the dog and looked him in the eye.

  “You’re a bad boy, you know that. You ought to get a boot up your ass when you do things like that!”

  “If I hadn’t been there I think Fernand would have skinned him alive.”

  Sensing that he was being talked about, and not kindly, Boff whimpered quietly; his head filled with images of torn cloth, furious faces and waving hands, and the sound of his name being shouted, accompanied by cries and angry phrases; he stood and stared apologetically at the floor, waiting for Charles’s and Blonblon’s attention to move on to something else.

  “How is Monsieur Fafard doing?” Blonblon asked.

  “Not too well. The doctor says he’s depressed. He hardly goes to the store any more. Lucie has to take care of everything, and the strain is beginning to show on her. I might have to drop out of school to give her a hand. Unless …”

  Charles looked at a loss. He took out a pack of cigarettes and then slipped them back into his pocket, since it was absolutely forbidden to smoke in the house.

  “In fact,” he went on, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Blonblon. You’re the only one I can turn to.”

  And sitting on the edge of his bed, he began to describe the curious rescue mission he had begun a month earlier. Blonblon listened, flabbergasted and struggling to control his indignation. He let Charles go on without a single interruption. Then, when Charles was finished his story, he merely let out a long sigh.

  “You find the whole thing disgusting, don’t you?” Charles said.

  Blonblon scratched his knee, then the tip of his nose, searching for the right words. He was also trying to put some order to his thoughts.

  “No, Charles,” he said at last. “Not disgusting. That’s not what disgusting means. You’re an idiot! For Christ’s sake, open your eyes! You’re in shit up to your eyeballs, man! I wouldn’t give two cents to be in your skin right now. This De Bané can do whatever he wants with you. Do you realize that? Do you realize you could go to prison, Charles? You can’t help Fernand from prison! And if you’re caught, who could help you? No one, my friend. No one.”

  Charles tried to convince his friend that there was no problem, that if De Bané tried to rat on him he would simply return the money, and if he didn’t, once he’d made enough to pay off his father he’d give up stealing drugs.

  Blonblon shook his head sadly.

  “That’s what they all say, Charles, that’s what they all say.” Charles blushed and leapt to his feet.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not just anyone, you know! I’ve seen what other people are like. When I decide to do something, I do it. I’m not going to let that asshole tell me what to do. I do what I want. And only what I want.”

  He sat down just as sharply as he had got to his feet, and a strange, pleading look came over his face.

  “But I need your help, Blonblon, if I’m going to carry out my plan. I absolutely need you to help me. You can’t refuse to do what I ask.”

  And he begged Blonblon to go with him to his father’s. For a long time they continued their conversation, speaking in low voices. Boff, lying on the floor with his muzzle between his paws, watched the two of them with an anxious, puzzled look. He’d never seen them so serious, so tense. Every so often he beat his tail on the floor to bring a bit of levity back into the room, but neither of them noticed. He gave a deep sigh and went to sleep. He barely looked up when Charles and Blonblon left the room, merely half opening one eye in time to see that Charles looked relieved and Blonblon looked worried.

  11

  Fernand lay on his bed staring up at the ceiling. The heat and humidity filling the room had robbed him of whatever strength he’d been able to muster during the night. Outside the window a faint breeze gently stirred the branches of the basswood tree, and their shadows on the ceiling formed a black-and-white lacework pattern that he’d been studying with satisfaction for a long time.

  At eight o’clock he’d eaten breakfast, then dressed, with the firm intention of going to the hardware store. He knew full well that Lucie was becoming exhausted after weeks of picking up his slack, and that it wouldn’t be long before she reached the limit of her endurance. But the heat and the humidity had fallen so suddenly over the city, and the three cups of coffee he’d drunk to give himself a lift had had the opposite effect, completely draining his limited resources. Feeling like a huge barrel of boiling water, he’d decided the best thing he could do would be to go back to bed, take a load off his feet. He’d been fast asleep in seconds.

  He’d been awakened by the sound of a door closing. He recognized the voices of Charles and his friend, Michel Blondin. They went into Charles’s room and started a lengthy discussion, the details of which he couldn’t catch. All he could make out was a low murmur, but there was something in their tone that told him they were talking about him. It was the tone people used when they talk
ed about the recently dead, or someone whose business had just failed, or a pregnant woman who had just lost her baby. He listened, still unable to make out individual words, staring up at the pattern of light and shadow on the ceiling, and the certainty that he was completely and utterly finished came over him more strongly by the minute. If he had been told he had AIDS, that new sickness that was killing people by the thousands, the effect on him couldn’t have been worse.

  The boys finally left the house, and Fernand was once again alone. Totally alone. As alone as if the Earth had suddenly become depopulated, or as if he’d been sealed in a barrel and dropped to the bottom of the ocean. Unbearably alone. He realized now that he had always been like this, even when the frenetic activity that had become his way of life shielded from him the stultifying reality of his loneliness. He was alone and he was finished. The faint breeze that stirred the curtain, the damp mattress beneath him, the mahogany bedroom furniture, the delicate rose-coloured walls, the play of light and shadow on the ceiling, all of that was nothing but a delusion, a cruel deception, orchestrated by God-knew-who to keep him from grasping the lamentable futility of his situation.

  He sat up on the bed, unable to breathe. He had to do something, it didn’t matter what. He couldn’t go on like this. A groan escaped his lips, a groan directed at no one because there was no one there to hear it. He stood up, wobbly on his feet, hands outstretched as though he were blind, and left the room. Boff appeared in the hallway and, when he saw Fernand, began emitting small, plaintive noises.

  “Go away, dog,” Fernand murmured under his breath.

  He made his way to the kitchen and opened the door to the backyard. Boff followed him, and he booted the dog outside, which launched Boff into such a state of stupefaction that he urinated on the porch. Then Fernand went into the bathroom. He leaned both hands on the sink and breathed heavily, staring at himself in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. What he saw horrified him. Who was this? Not Fernand Fafard, surely? Not this foolish old man with the hollow cheeks, the forehead glistening with sweat, the dazed look of someone searching for something he had no hope of ever finding?