He was in this state of hesitation when there came a light tap on his door.
“It’s me, Céline. Am I disturbing you?”
“Come in,” he called, surprised and slightly annoyed.
“You’re studying? Sorry, I can come back later.”
“No, no. Come in, it’s okay.”
She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Boff’s head when he came over to greet her.
“Papa and Mama have gone out to a movie. I don’t know where Henri is. I felt like talking to someone.”
“She feels the same way I do,” Charles thought. He smiled, intrigued. This didn’t sound like her. “She’s here to find out where I’ve been.” His promise to tell her “one of these days” must have seemed too vague.
“Are you finished your homework?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Almost. I still have my French to do. It’ll only take me fifteen minutes. French is one of my better subjects. Like it is for you.”
She sighed, looking down at Boff and scratching behind his ear. The dog sighed too, and pressed against her leg, eyes half closed in ecstasy.
“I feel at loose ends tonight, I don’t know why. I don’t like it.”
“Me too. It happens sometimes.”
Her openness touched him. There was something else, as well, something physical that pushed the image of the Blond Angel to the back of his mind and replaced it with a new mixture of pleasure and nervousness. For the first time he clearly pictured himself taking Céline in his arms, hugging her and kissing her passionately. He had to cross his legs.
“Whenever I feel like this,” Céline continued, without seeming to notice his discomfort, “I run a really hot bath, slide down into the water up to my neck, and try to clear my mind of all unpleasant thoughts.”
Now he imagined her lying in the tub, her lovely legs stretched out, her arms floating gently, her face perfectly relaxed, eyes softened in a dream state. Ravishing.
“Hmm,” he said, also feeling the urge to confide. “I have a different method. Two different methods, in fact.”
He told her about Amélie Michaud’s Christmas Room. He’d never told anyone about it before, except Blonblon, and Marlene one day when he was feeling low. Céline listened to him, entranced by the strange story. She made him describe the room in minute detail and begged him to ask Amélie if she could see it.
“And what’s the other method?” she asked.
This one he’d never told anyone about, and he hesitated to speak of it now. But she urged him with such insistence that he gave in and opened one of the secret doors in his heart, being careful, however, to describe it as one of his childhood methods, one that he hadn’t resorted to for a very long time. He told her about the little yellow dog, the heroic efforts he’d made to save its life at the daycare; he described its death, and the cherry tree under which he’d buried it fourteen years ago. When things had become really unbearable (not often, perhaps, but unforgettable when it happened), he’d gone to sit near its grave, and the gentle presence of the dog – he imagined it, of course, he wasn’t crazy enough to believe in its actual presence – seemed to hover about in the empty yard, and each time he had felt mysteriously comforted by it. Under that cherry tree he’d always found the solution to whatever problem was troubling him.
Céline’s face took on a thoughtful expression that he hadn’t seen before. He was flattered. She asked him the address of the daycare and said she would visit the little yellow dog the next day – as long as Charles didn’t mind, of course.
“You don’t need my permission.” He laughed. “I don’t own the place, after all …”
They went on talking for a long time. Céline told him about things that happened at school, what she was reading, about her friends and what they were into, often quite different from the things that interested her. She talked about her plans for the future (she wanted to become either a nurse or a schoolteacher, but really dreamed of being a doctor). Then she told him some of the things that caused her concern: she was very worried about her father, and the fact that her mother was becoming more and more irritable as her work at the hardware store wore her down, and the state of open warfare that existed between herself and her chemistry teacher. Charles thought she was leading up to asking him questions and was immediately on his guard.
But all she did was ask him how he was feeling, and she put the question with such faith and affection that his suspicions soon faded away.
“Me? Hmm. Things could be going better, I suppose, but I guess they aren’t so bad. You know what? For some time now I’ve been thinking about living alone, in an apartment by myself. It’s not that I don’t like living here, but I sometimes need to be alone, I don’t know why. It’s just a gut feeling I get.”
She looked disappointed and sad.
“What would you live on?”
“I don’t know.”
It was getting late and she had to get back to her homework. She said good night and was leaving the room when he caught her arm, then leaned towards her and kissed her on the cheek.
They looked at each other and laughed, both of them turning red, and then she left.
When he went to bed he felt a delicious contentment pervading his body, as though he had just accomplished something difficult and good. But when he woke up in the middle of the night the Blond Angel was back in his thoughts, smiling at him with an air of gentle reproach. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked himself, exasperated with his own sense of guilt. “I’m not forcing her to take those bloody pills!”
His tossing and turning woke up Boff, who looked at him worriedly.
“All right, go back to sleep, old thing,” he said, petting him. “You’re not the one who’s done something wrong.”
After an interminably long discussion with himself, during which he alternately agreed with and violently opposed his own rationalizations, he fell into an exhausted slumber, just as a thin shaft of sunlight was falling on Hachiko.
A few days later he met with René De Bané to settle his accounts; the sudden trip must have been a profitable one, because De Bané looked happy, relaxed, even seemed to have put on weight, and was his usual amiable, cheerful self. Charles told him with some trepidation that the young woman on rue Rachel owed him money, but to his great surprise De Bané didn’t become angry; all he did was give a sigh of resignation.
“Brigitte, Brigitte,” he said. “Always the same old story.… Okay, I’ll go see her. What can you do, eh? She’s an artist, for Chrissakes.”
Charles asked about her and learned that her name was Brigitte Loiseau and that she was an actress. Like most performers, she was struggling frantically to rise above obscurity, and in the meantime was living a very hard life.
“An actress?” Charles repeated. He felt a surge of admiration.
The Blond Angel’s wings had suddenly become much larger in his mind. Brigitte Loiseau … what a pretty name! He imagined she must be enormously talented, have a profound and complex sensitivity, be obsessed by an ideal that was all but impossible to reach. Poor woman! With all the discouragement of all the things that got in her way, no wonder she took drugs. But he believed that success waited around every corner. If only he had had more courage he’d have gone to her and smothered her with encouragement, assured her that a woman as beautiful and talented as she was would sooner or later be adored by everyone.
Weeks passed. De Bané began leaning on Charles – ever so lightly, of course – to bring him more and more merchandise. Autumn was coming on, he said, and with the shorter days the need for his product became greater among his clientele. His accomplice, however, far from acceding to the pusher’s request, had started cutting down on his deliveries. Something in the way Henri Lalancette was behaving, a certain speculative expression that came over him at times, an indirect question here and there coming out of nowhere, had recently aroused Charles’s suspicions. And then last week he’d caught the pharmacist going through his coat po
ckets – “Just looking for some matches,” he’d said, reddening, his boss who didn’t smoke. Charles was convinced that, despite all his care, his days as a sweet-swindler were numbered and he would soon have to close up shop. Not that he would be all that sorry, since he had already reached the limits of his own self-disgust.
Once he even felt the chill of catastrophe pass over his head. He had delivered three dozen Valiums (after having replaced them with fakes) to an old woman on rue Bercy, a woman who was known for the generosity of her tips and her somewhat senile gentleness, and just as he was leaving she called him back.
“Sorry to take up so much of your time, young man, I meant to mention this to you earlier but it completely slipped my mind.… I wonder if you would do me a small favour.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Charles said, courteously.
“It’s just that … well … oh dear, how can I put it? I don’t want to cause Monsieur Lalancette any trouble, but it’s just that … these pills, for some time now I’ve not found them working as well as they used to.… They don’t seem to be doing me any good when I take them, if you understand me.… I always take two before going to bed and usually sleep right through until morning … unless I drink too much fruit juice during the evening, which I know I shouldn’t.… Anyway, lately I’ve been having the devil of a time getting to sleep, and last night, well, I could hardly even close my eyes … I must have checked my alarm clock three hundred times …”
Charles listened to her without comment, but his throat grew suddenly very dry and scorched, like asphalt under a hot sun.
“So would you be kind enough, my dear young man, to ask Monsieur Lalancette to give me some better pills the next time? Not different pills, you understand, just better ones?”
Charles gave her a big smile.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll tell him as soon as I get back.”
He left, feeling very worried. If the old woman had called Lalancette instead of talking to Charles, he would have been in trouble up to his neck.
He went back to the woman’s apartment and told her that there had been a mistake on the label, that he had to take back the pills he’d given her and bring her a different bottle. Very surprised by this, she gave him back the envelope, still sealed, and launched into a lengthy tirade about the dangers of allowing one’s attention to wander. Fifteen minutes later he brought her back a different envelope and apologized profusely for the mistake.
When he returned to the pharmacy half an hour later, Henri Lalancette gave him a lingering look. Charles didn’t dare ask him any questions. Maybe it was just a coincidence? But from then on he felt as though he were walking on a rotten plank across a deep crevasse.
14
One November afternoon, Charles and Blonblon were having a smoke in the student cafeteria by the main entrance to the school. Blonblon had two pieces of news to announce:
1. He was having a tooth filled in two days.
2. After having gone through a long emotional desert, he had just fallen in love again.
Both were making him feel frightened, but the second was much worse than the first. He was afraid of being disappointed again. Charles chided him gently for his fearfulness and told him jokingly that he should take something to relieve his anxiety.
“Keep your bloody stupid jokes to yourself,” came Blonblon’s terse response, and he turned away with such a tight-lipped expression that Charles had to laugh.
“Come off it, Blonblon. You’re acting like an old maid, for Chrissakes. What’ve you got in your glass there, holy water?”
“I’d sooner drink a hundred gallons of horse piss than do what you’re doing, pal.… You’ve got a hell of a nerve laughing at me. You should be ashamed of yourself. I’ve told you this before and I’ll tell you again: this is not going to end up well. I’m warning you.”
Charles was angry, but he told Blonblon that in a few weeks he wouldn’t have to listen to his sermons any longer. He was going to tell De Bané that their little deal was over. All he needed was another five hundred dollars to give to his father.
Blonblon shrugged.
“If you think your pusher is going to let you go that easily.… Does the word ‘blackmail’ mean anything to you? Or how about ‘kneecapping’?”
“What, a little pipsqueak like him? Piss on him! Anyway, I’m quitting my job at the pharmacy soon.”
But he thought better of giving his reasons for coming to that decision.
“Really?” said Blonblon, relieved. “You’re giving it all up? When do you see your father again?”
“Soon. And after that it’s goodbye, asshole. I never want to see him again. I’ll have earned a bit of peace!”
“Are you going to get him to sign something?”
“Saying he promises he’ll never do anything bad again?” laughed Charles. “Get real, Blonblon. I think I’ve found a much better way to make him keep his word.”
Blonblon conceded that with people like Wilfrid Thibodeau a signature wasn’t worth much, and he asked Charles what better way he had found.
“There are people who like nothing better than doing little useful favours,” Charles replied with a sardonic smile.
Blonblon was careful to hide his indignation. In his most affable, conciliatory manner, to which he owed his status as schoolyard peacekeeper, he acknowledged that the most important thing for Charles was to get as far away from this quagmire as he could before he drowned, and he offered to go with Charles the next time he visited his father.
“Won’t be necessary, old chum. As soon as I give him the dough he’ll be as gentle as a little lamb.”
Lately when Henri Lalancette looked at Charles, the boy saw the word “MISTRUST” emblazoned in flaming letters across the older man’s forehead. Why hadn’t he been fired ages ago? Charles asked himself that question every day. Then the answer came to him, in two separate episodes.
One night, on returning from making a delivery, he’d gone into the pharmacy through the rear door and interrupted a conversation between Lalancette and Rose-Alma. He’d heard only a few words, but they were enough: the cashier was defending him warmly, based on the indelible impression he had made on her since he’d first started working there, and about which she could not be wrong.
The next day, a Saturday, Monsieur Lalancette had called Charles into his office just before closing time.
“I need to have a word with you, young man,” he’d said in a solemn tone, and pointed to a chair facing his desk.
Charles turned pale and sat down silently, certain that he had been found out and he was going to be squashed like a worm on the sidewalk.
“The College of Pharmacists has just sent around a directive to all its members,” Lalancette continued, still speaking gravely. “As we do every year, we’re required to warn our employees about pharmaceutical products.”
Charles could feel himself turning red. He’d been wrong; his skin was worth less than a worm’s.
“I haven’t done it in your case,” Lalancette went on, “but I’ve decided recently that we’d better follow the rules, hadn’t we? So that if anything goes wrong I needn’t blame myself.”
Then, in a neutral, professorial tone, and using what he called a “totally hypothetical” example, he gave Charles a long list of the disastrous consequences – for legitimate patients who relied on the drugs, for abusers of drugs, and also for anyone caught supplying the latter with illegally acquired medications – attendant upon the trafficking of pharmaceutical products.
Charles understood what Monsieur Lalancette was saying. He was unable to rid himself of his suspicions concerning Charles’s honesty, but neither was he able to prove that his suspicions were grounded, and so he was issuing a desperate warning under the guise of fulfilling some fictional directive. His subterfuge was motivated by friendship, perhaps even a feeling of tenderness. Charles heard him out in silence, deeply touched, forcing himself to maintain control over his emotions. His guilt became more and more acute, but
he couldn’t allow it to make him alter his conduct. He had undertaken to save Fernand and Fernand’s business and he couldn’t go back on it now. There was something else, too. He took a certain amount of pleasure from his successful trickery, from the subtle, simple pulling of wool over another person’s eyes, a practice that was new to him but which he was now perfecting with the attention and passion of an artist.
He resolved, however, to be even more cautious. From then on he would switch only two or three pills per subscription. Business fell off sharply, and De Bané complained loudly.
“You want to go to prison in my place?” Charles retorted angrily.
“I hear you, chum, but it seems to me you could do a tiny bit better, eh?”
“I do what I can. I’m being watched like a hawk, I tell you. I’m going to have to quit my job at the pharmacy. My nerves are shot, they have been for some time. I’m not sure how much longer I can take it.”
Charles’s declaration had an extraordinary effect on De Bané’s mood. He became solicitous. He begged Charles not to make any decisions on the spur of the moment. He promised to be more patient, adding that his concern was not solely for any loss of revenue he himself might suffer, but also for Charles. He even offered Charles a few odd jobs to get him by until things at the pharmacy returned to normal, such as, let’s see, making a few small deliveries here and there, which would keep the money flowing for Charles and also give De Bané a bit of breathing space. For the past few weeks he’d been working on a very promising project that was eating up all his time.
“Never again,” Charles told him. “Once was enough.”
The discussion ended on that note for the moment.
But De Bané returned to the offensive a few weeks later, and by then Charles was less adamant. What had happened was this. Wilfrid Thibodeau’s demands for more money had increased with his need for more alcohol, and he was beginning to get impatient with the tiny amounts his son had been bringing him. One day, after an exasperated Charles had explained once again that his source of revenue had begun to dry up and there was nothing he could do about it, the carpenter growled at him.
The Years of Fire Page 23
