The Years of Fire

by Yves Beauchemin

  “I can’t wait to give this good news to Charles,” she said to herself when she’d hung up the phone.

  She made a second call, this time to her mother, who was sick with worry but had had to go to the hardware store anyway, as she did every morning. She greeted Céline’s call with a volley of reproaches. Céline tried to reassure her, but it took some doing.

  “I’m with Charles, Mama. He’s not feeling too good, but I think he’s coming around. He doesn’t want to see anyone right now.… Yes, Mama, of course we’re in Montreal, where did you think we were? … No, he doesn’t want anyone to know where he is.… Yes, I’ll tell you everything, I promise. Even better, he’ll tell you himself. Why am I mixed up in this? Don’t worry, you know me, I’ve always behaved responsibly, haven’t I? I’ll call you back later in the day to fill you in on what’s happening. Tell Papa not to worry, there’s nothing bad going on, nothing to get worked up about. Tell him that, okay? And can you call the school, tell them we’re not coming in today? You’re a dear. Hugs and kisses. See you soon!”

  She was eager to get back to Charles, but she thought it better to let him sleep since he was in such a pitiful state. She also realized she hadn’t had anything to eat and her stomach was growling. She asked for a hot chocolate and an order of toast, which was brought to her by an old, grumpy-looking man whose chin was covered with grey hairs, and who was chewing his lips distractedly, trying to discern whether or not his son had been telling him the truth about his car accident the previous night.

  She’d never eaten with such appetite. She had just enough money with her to leave a tip, albeit a large one. Through the window she saw rue Rachel bathed in a joyful, wavering light, as though it were shaking in the warm wind that had begun blowing over the city. She left, saying a cheerful goodbye to the old man, who barely acknowledged it.

  Nothing remained of winter but a few long, thin crusts of grey ice melting in black rivulets along the pavement and flowing down the rain gutters. She was walking slowly towards the hotel, taking singular pleasure in flexing the muscles in her thighs and calves, when the troubling thought suddenly occurred to her that Charles, far from sleeping, was probably waiting for her, stretched out on a bed in a hotel room that only the two of them knew about. Still thinking that his actress had died! She was sorry she’d stopped to eat; it was cruel of her not to have hurried back to his side. He’d been counting on her more than anyone else in the world. The thought filled her with a boundless joy and renewed strength, and convinced her that she would overcome any obstacle between Charles and his happiness – and, a small voice added tenderly, her own happiness with him. The blow he had just suffered had robbed him of his peace of mind, and she was suddenly annoyed with herself for taking such a selfish pleasure in helping him to recover from it. “You’re nothing but a little egotist,” she thought. “He was about to run off to South America, and here you are bathing in the milk of human kindness. You should be ashamed of yourself. Hurry, now! Get back to him! Can’t you see he’s suffering?”

  Ten minutes later she was in the lobby of the hotel, completely out of breath. It was a small room, with walls covered in pink wallpaper that was peeling in several places. Behind a huge counter with flaking veneer a man with a crisp, mobile, and joyful face, and hair carefully combed over the top of his head to hide his bald spot, was speaking on the telephone; he smiled at her and gave an acknowledging nod of his head.

  Stunned and almost put off by his welcome, she climbed a beautiful, massive oak staircase, sumptuously carved but lacking all its banisters. Her erstwhile joy began to fade and turn to dust, crumbling into nothing. What kind of place was this? Were the rooms rented by the hour? How did Charles know about it? Had he brought girls here? She almost turned and left the building, but her legs continued up the stairs despite her feelings of disgust. She had to tell him about Brigitte. She couldn’t let him run away to the ends of the earth over a misunderstanding.

  Suddenly, her mind changed again. Now she couldn’t care less what kind of place this was, or if Charles had brought a hundred or ten thousand girls here. Only one thing mattered: that she see him, take him in her arms, reassure him, console him, and tell him how important he was to her.

  The next minute she was standing in front of the door marked 206. Despite the pounding in her ears she registered the silence of the dusty, shabby corridor with its dented walls. At the far end a window was filled with light, which made the place seem slightly less horrid. She waited until her breathing returned to normal, raked her fingers through her hair a few times, and gave three light taps on the door.

  She heard bedsprings creaking, then the dull thud of bare feet on the floor, crossing the room; the door opened and Charles was standing there wearing jeans and an undershirt, his cheek marked by a diagonal pink crease. He looked half asleep and still troubled; the sun crowned the dishevelled hair on his head with gold. He seemed to her more handsome than ever. Her mind emptied of every other thought.

  “Come in,” he said, yawning.

  He closed the door behind her, yawned again, and picked his shirt off the back of a chair and put it on without buttoning it up. Céline looked around the room. It was quite small, but clean enough, with cheap furniture that had been badly treated by a long list of careless clients. The curtains were faded green, and the linoleum floor was doing its best to look like ceramic tiles.

  “Well?” Charles said, becoming anxious again. “Any news?”

  Céline smiled. “Yes. And it’s good news. Your Blond Angel isn’t dead, Charles. She’s in the hospital, and they say she’s getting better.”

  She leaned tenderly into him.

  “And so you can start getting better, too. You looked so forlorn when I left you. But that’s over now.”

  He remained silent, responding weakly to the pressure of her arms. He rested his head on her shoulder. Céline felt warm tears running down her neck.

  “No, no, Charles,” she said softly. “It’s all over now. Now maybe life really can go back to the way it was.”

  The next thing they knew they were wrapped in a passionate embrace, standing in the middle of the room, whose spareness had suddenly taken on a kind of solemnity, soon dissipated by the shafts of brilliant sunlight that poured in through the window. Then, without knowing exactly how it had come about, Céline found herself in the bed, being smothered in kisses and caresses. She laughed ecstatically, and a bit fearfully.

  They continued to kiss, parting from time to time to exchange wondering looks and to murmur the thousand little nothings that come to lovers’ lips when they are making love. Outside they could hear the constant hum of traffic, the honking of car horns; the steady noise seemed kind to their ears, and slightly mocking.

  “You will be careful, won’t you Charles?” she whispered in his ear. “I’m not very used to this.”

  He smiled tenderly and, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, kissed her lips.

  “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, and only what you want me to do.”

  A long time passed.

  The sky had begun to darken; the shape and colour of objects in the room softened in the shadows of evening.

  At five o’clock Charles had left the room to find a restaurant, and had come back with two white boxes tied with string, each containing a club sandwich buried under a pile of steaming french fries. Now both boxes were on the floor beside the bed, empty.

  Céline was asleep, curled up against Charles’s side. He was lying on his back, staring up at the darkened ceiling, careful not to move a muscle for fear of waking her. Occasionally a frown passed over his face. The contrast between the horrors of the previous night and the bliss of the one that had just begun was so violent that he was finding it too painful to contemplate.

  Henri was curious when he saw that Charles wasn’t in school that day. He expected to run into him at home at lunchtime and find that he’d been home sick in bed, or off doing God-knew-what. Henri himself would have dearl
y liked to know what. But Charles wasn’t at home, and he had left no word of explanation for his absence. Henri hadn’t seen him since the previous night, and he remembered that Charles had left the house right after supper with that chimpanzee, Steve Lachapelle, whom he’d started hanging around with again. Charles had had that impatient, preoccupied look that he’d been carrying around for the last little while. Was the chimpanzee involved in Charles’s drug business? Maybe Charles had spent the night with Marlene. Or someone else. Or maybe he’d got himself in trouble.

  He ate his lunch, a bowl of soup and a piece of pâté, and went back to school. At one o’clock Charles still hadn’t shown up. Henri became more and more alarmed, and wondered what he should do. By rights he should tell his parents, or at least his mother. He waited until the afternoon break and called the hardware store. It was Lucie who answered. He learned that Céline had called earlier in the afternoon to say she was with Charles, who wasn’t in very good shape. The news rocked Henri: not only was Charles sinking into the black pit of his drug business, but he was dragging his sister down with him! He mumbled a few indistinct words to his mother and hung up, to Lucie’s consternation. Her surprise increased two hours later when Henri turned up at the store looking fraught.

  “Where’s Papa?” he asked.

  “In his office. What’s the matter? Henri, tell me what’s going on, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I have to talk to Papa.”

  He left without another word. His interview with Fernand lasted half an hour. Henri told him everything he knew about Charles’s doings, and about Wilfrid Thibodeau’s role in the whole affair. At the mention of Thibodeau, Fernand’s face contorted into a look of ferocity reminiscent of certain African masks, and his eyes turned into burning coals. But he remained silent. When Henri was finished, Fernand stood up, as imposing as a statue, with his powerful hands leaning on the edges of his desk.

  “Thank you for telling me about this, son,” he said. “I would have liked to have been favoured with this information a little sooner, it would have made things a lot easier, but I can see how it was hard for you to do anything at the time. The next time I hope you’ll be a little more forthcoming.”

  And he gestured that Henri could leave.

  When she saw her son leaving the store looking pale but relieved, Lucie hurried into the office.

  “Is someone finally going to tell me what’s going on around here?” she said angrily.

  If she was going to say anything else, the words caught in her throat. She was stopped in her tracks by the expression on her husband’s face. A moment went by. From the store there came the sound of a customer laughing.

  “Come on, Fernand, talk to me, for the love of God,” she whispered.

  “Charles has been acting like an idiot,” Fernand replied heavily. “He has been for months, now.”

  And he told her briefly what Henri had told him.

  Lucie tottered on her feet, and if Fernand hadn’t had the presence of mind to push a chair under her she would have sat on the floor. She didn’t move for a moment, merely sat there with her arms dangling and her head down, as though knocked senseless; then she began to sob, her shoulders shaking, crying with all her heart while pressing the Kleenex Fernand had hastily handed her to her mouth and nose so as not to be heard by the customers.

  She wiped her eyes and patted her face and took two deep breaths, and appeared to have regained her calm.

  “Céline is with him, he won’t do anything rash for the time being. There’s no need to worry about that now.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Céline has a good head on her shoulders,” Fernand said, nodding.

  “She told me they’d be home later tonight.”

  “Good. Meanwhile, I’ll go and take care of someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Wilfrid Thibodeau,” her husband replied, pulling on his jacket. He raised a hand to silence her.

  “No,” he said. “Not a word. For now I’ve got to concentrate on settling his hash.”

  He left the hardware store, slamming the door so hard that a light bulb above the cash register burst and sent sparks flying everywhere, something that had never happened before and was talked about for a long time.

  16

  Wilfrid Thibodeau was in a particularly gallant mood that day. He was helping Liliane unhook her brassiere when the doorbell rang. The lovers exchanged surprised glances. Neither of them was expecting anyone, and in their uneventful lives sudden visitors rarely bore good news.

  “Don’t answer it,” Liliane advised him, adjusting her straps.

  The bell rang again. Then the carpenter remembered that one of his buddies from the tavern had promised to drop by that day to pay him the fifty bucks he owed him. He knew from long experience that if he were ever to see that money he’d better answer the door right away. “I’ll go see,” he said, pulling on his trousers. “Don’t answer it, I tell you. Sure as shit it’s my husband.” Wilfrid looked at his watch.

  “Your husband’s having his treatments right about now.”

  He went to the door, pulled the curtains, and looked out. He saw no one.

  Even as he was unlocking the door he had a vague presentiment that he was making a mistake, but curiosity and the idea of the fifty dollars won out.

  The next second he found himself face to face with Fernand Fafard, who was glaring at him with his eyes bugged out of his head.

  “Are you alone?” Fafard asked, stepping inside with a strange smile on his lips.

  Without waiting for a reply, he pushed his way to the centre of the kitchen.

  “There’s someone here,” the carpenter said angrily after a second’s hesitation.

  “Get rid of whoever it is. I’ve got something to say to you, man to man.”

  When the carpenter didn’t move, he placed a massive hand on the man’s bony shoulder and repeated what he’d said, only this time more loudly.

  “Go tell your visitor to leave.”

  “And what if I don’t want to speak to you, eh?” said Thibodeau, looking up at Fernand with a fearful yet impudent face.

  “It’s all the same to me. But you’re going to hear what I have to say. I’ve got a few things you might find interesting.”

  And turning Thibodeau around, he marched him rapidly across the room.

  Liliane came out of the bedroom, her hair dishevelled, her lower lip thrust forward, as though she didn’t know whether to bite or cry for help. But the sight of Fernand soon told her that caution was required.

  “Who’s he?” she growled in a low, vicious voice.

  “No one. I’ll see you later. I need to talk to him.”

  She snatched her bag from the kitchen table and, as she passed Fernand, shot him a ferocious look. With her mouth tightly shut and her upper lip curled up, her expression was so comical that Fernand couldn’t help but smile.

  The door slammed shut. Just then the sink emitted a kind of gurgle, as though it had been drinking beer with Thibodeau and his girlfriend and was feeling the effects deep in its bowels.

  “Okay, so what do you want?” the carpenter demanded, throwing himself onto a chair without bothering to offer one to his guest.

  “You’re going to give me back the money Charles gave you. All of it.”

  Thibodeau gave a long, silent laugh. “What money?” he said.

  “I’m a busy man, Wilfrid. Don’t waste my time.”

  And he took a step forward.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Thibodeau, but there was a slight tremor in his voice.

  Fernand stared at him for a moment, gave a slight grimace, and then calmly grabbed him by the waist and lifted him, as easily as if he were a screwdriver or a box of toothpicks. He carried him over to the stove and sat him down on it. Thibodeau kicked his feet like a little boy in a dentist’s chair.

  “Where’s the money?” shouted Fernand, squeezing Thibodeau’s shoulders until he cried out in pain. Making a vise of his
thighs, he immobilized Thibodeau’s legs.

  “Someone’s been telling you fairy tales, Fernand,” exclaimed the latter, his voice sounding pathetically sincere. “I don’t have any money. All I get’s my unemployment insurance.”

  Fernand stared at him straight in the eye, waited a moment, then said, “Right. I see you need a little inspiration.”

  And reaching behind Thibodeau he turned a dial on the stove.

  “Don’t be crazy, Fernand! Stop! Turn it off! Turn it off, for Chrissakes! Ow, Jesus, you’re burning my ass, Ow, ow! You have no right to do this!

  I’m gonna call the.… Okay, okay! Lemme down. Okay! Take your money and for Chrissakes leave me alone!”

  Fernand released him and he jumped down from the stove, slapping at his buttocks. The smell of burnt cloth filled the room.

  Fafard crossed his arms and watched with amusement as Thibodeau feverishly checked to see if his nether parts had been fried.

  “Okay, enough fooling around, Wilfrid. You’ve still got all your manly parts. Now get the money. Where is it?”

  “I … I spent most of it, you know,” Thibodeau said, giving him a look of hatred and fear.

  Fernand grabbed him by the belt.

  “You want me to put you back up on the stove, Wilf? I know a great recipe for braised bollocks.”

  “All I got is twelve hundred!” Thibodeau cried, pushing Fernand’s hands away. “That’s all I got left! I’ll let you have it right now. It’s in my dresser.”

  Fernand accompanied him into the bedroom, where he took the thick pile of banknotes. He counted the money carefully and put it in his pocket.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of your son like that.”

  “He came to me, after all. He’s old enough to know what he’s doing.”

  “And what about you? Aren’t you old enough to know this money wasn’t falling out of the sky?”

  “I don’t know nothing about where he got it.”