The Years of Fire

by Yves Beauchemin

  “Give me a break. You make me sick, you do. Your mouth is like a sewer talking to me.… I’m going to give you two little pieces of advice, Wilfrid.”

  He pushed Thibodeau back on the bed and sat down beside him. Then he grabbed his cheeks, stretched them as wide as they would go, and brought Thibodeau’s face close to his.

  “First: you have nothing more to do with Charles. At all. Understood? Get that into your thick skull. And two: don’t ever come anywhere near my store. Never mind the wide innocent eyes, I’m not as stupid as you think I am. And if you’re ever unfortunate enough as to forget what I just told you, I’m going to come after you, you snivelling little rat, and when I catch you I’m going to personally shove my hand down your throat and pull your guts out through your mouth. Are we clear about that?”

  And to give added force to his words he smacked Thibodeau across the face so hard his nose began to bleed.

  17

  Charles and Céline had returned to the house. Lucie pretended she didn’t notice their amorous looks. She was equally discreet about asking her daughter what she had been up to.

  When Fernand came home he took Charles and Lucie into the living room and closed the door. They were in there for a good hour. Boff stretched himself out in front of the door and scratched at it from time to time. Finally, losing patience, Henri seized the dog by the collar and took him outside for a walk.

  When Charles came out of the room he looked chastened but happy again, almost serene. Lucie’s eyes were red from crying, and Fernand looked as haughty and beneficent as Jupiter, ruler of Olympus; it was hard to believe that this was the same man who, ten months earlier, had slit his wrists.

  After consulting with Parfait Michaud, Fernand and Charles agreed that the twelve hundred dollars would be donated to the Portage Rehabilitation Centre. Charles quit his job at the pharmacy, and Henri Lalancette was circumspect enough not to ask any questions. René De Bané, whose business had expanded significantly over the previous few months, was visited in the middle of the night by the police and became an overnight guest of the State, spending a lot of time being interviewed. Three days later, a ten-thousand-dollar bail bond put him back on the street while he awaited trial, but Montreal seemed to have lost much of its appeal for him, and he fell into a fit of melancholy from which neither pool nor beer could lift him. He decided to find a new line of work; he had a fertile imagination and an inexhaustible supply of energy, and he was sure that several avenues would suggest themselves to him before too long.

  Charles returned happily to his quiet, regulated life; everyone in the Fafard household acted as though the episode involving the trafficking of prescription drugs had never taken place. His love for Céline was new and delicious and went a long way towards easing his feelings of remorse. They flared up occasionally, however, and when they did, nothing and no one could relieve his mind.

  “You needn’t beat yourself up over it too badly,” Blonblon said to him one day when he was feeling particularly depressed. “After all, you did what you did for a good reason.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything! If a man kills his wife with a butcher knife because she’s been unfaithful, you can say he did what he did for a good reason, but he’s still a monster!”

  Blonblon smiled and patted him affectionately on the shoulder. Despite his fondness for Charles, he was having trouble understanding the reason for his sadness. After a disastrous love affair, he too had taken up with a new girlfriend, and everyone knew that new love went a long way towards calming the soul.

  Blonblon had only recently discovered the pleasures of sex, the cement that bonded two hearts together, and the euphoria in which he bathed from morning to night had somewhat removed him from the troubles of humanity. He forced himself to listen to Charles, but all the time he was thinking of Isabel, the young Chilean student he’d met in a department store. He was fascinated by the beauty of her eyes. Her father had been a gynecologist in Chile, but as a political refugee he was now driving a taxi until the Quebec College of Physicians deigned to allow him to practise his profession.

  Blonblon was proud of his conquest and had wanted to introduce her to Charles more than once, but Charles always backed out of the dates Blonblon tried to set up for the four of them.

  “I’m not in the mood tonight,” he would invariably say. “Maybe next week.”

  And he would stay home with Céline, or go out with her to visit one of their friends, who would lend them their apartment.

  “Charles, listen to me,” Céline said to him one day. “It’s over. Let it go.” It worried her to see him fall so often into these bouts of sadness. “Why do you keep going back to it? Turn the page, throw the book away, get on with your life. Charles, I’m begging you.… When I see you like this, I feel as though I can never make you happy.”

  “Oh, no, Céline, it’s not that at all. Believe me,” he said, taking her in his arms and covering her with kisses. “What you do for me isn’t nothing! Quite the contrary. If you hadn’t come looking for me that day, where would I be now? I might not even be alive!”

  “And where would I be?” Céline said. “In a nuthouse, probably, crazy as a loon. Charles, Charles, you’re too hard on yourself.… You can’t accept that you made a mistake. How are you ever going to live with yourself?”

  The young man’s face darkened.

  “If you’d had a father like mine, you’d understand.”

  “But he’s not your father any more!” she cried, exasperated. “He hasn’t been for eight years!”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Charles sighed, taking her in his arms (and on the verge of tears). “Be patient, Céline. I’ve been through so much. It’s bound to take time.”

  But summer came and Charles found that time wasn’t healing any wounds. He finished his fifth year of secondary school with honours, and an essay he wrote on “Future Choices for Quebec” had been circulated among all the teachers. Céline adored him, and his love for her deepened each day, assuming an intensity that amazed and delighted him. And yet the episode of the Blond Angel and the life he had fallen into continued to torment him.

  One night he felt he had to talk about the whole thing with someone who would give him good advice. Not knowing any psychiatrists or psychologists, he decided he would go and see Parfait Michaud.

  He found the notary home alone, sitting with a glass of port, wearing blue jeans and a flowered T-shirt, thumbing through the Grand Robert dictionary looking up the origin of the expression “knight of industry,” which had come to his attention earlier that evening. Amélie had left a week earlier for a month’s stay in a health spa, one that specialized in thalasso-therapy, energy transfers, deep breathing, and other forms of holistic medicine that were supposed to bring about the total rejuvenation of one’s being to anyone who had the means to pay for the treatments.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that the couple were getting along well.

  Michaud had been given all the details about Charles’s misadventures, but, being a discreet man, he had judged it best not to intervene directly. He knew that Fernand and Lucie had things well in hand. He would have liked to have seen Charles, to whom he had always felt a deep attachment, and he was sorry that the young man’s friendship for him had seemed to weaken over the years. And so his welcome to Charles was so joyful it gave the latter the courage to bring up the delicate subject he wanted to discuss.

  “Madame Michaud is well?” he asked, as a way of easing into the conversation.

  “Oh, you know her, Charles. She’s only well when she isn’t thinking about herself.… As soon as she turns her attention to her health everything goes off the rails. Deep down, she only lives to be sick. Her health is killing her.”

  He told Charles that he’d been a bachelor for a week and would be until the tenth of August, and that, all things considered, he wasn’t minding it much at all.

  Charles gave a knowing smile and began to take unexpected pleasure in their “manly” convers
ation. Michaud, encouraged by Charles’s smile, began making more and more obvious allusions to the kind of freedom his wife’s absence was affording him.

  “Marriage, Charles,” he concluded cleverly, “is the most noble of institutions. The only problem with it is that it goes totally against human nature.”

  Charles laughed, although such a remark a few years ago would have scandalized him. Now he was fortified by the indestructible love between himself and Céline, as well as by the example of Fernand and Lucie. He could laugh because he knew the notary was wrong.

  Michaud, curious about Charles’s visit and wanting to put him at ease, brought out the port bottle and another glass, which he filled to the brim.

  Charles had never tasted port before and found it delicious; the notary refilled his glass. Two red patches warmed Charles’s cheeks, and his eyes became bright and ardent. He found his old friend more charming and humorous than ever, and he was sorry he had been avoiding him for so long. How many good times had he let slip through his fingers? He promised himself that from now on he would visit the notary more often.

  “Monsieur Michaud,” he said suddenly, “I have a question to ask you.”

  “Call me Parfait, Charles, please, as I’ve asked you many times before. That is, after all, what I am.”

  And he burst out laughing, as though his old joke had just leapt to his lips for the first time.

  “You know about everything that’s happened to me, don’t you?” Charles went on, becoming serious.

  “Is that what you came here to talk about?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so?”

  Charles hesitated and glanced at his glass. The notary reached for the bottle of port.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough to drink.”

  Michaud uncorked the bottle anyway and refilled his own glass.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  The notary took a sip and swished the port around in his mouth with a small smile, his eyes half closed. His visitor waited in silence.

  “And so, Charles?”

  “Well, what I’d like to know … is … well, what do you think of me, Monsieur … Parfait?”

  “You mean, as a result of this business?”

  “Yes.”

  Michaud brought the glass to his lips again, but hesitated a moment before drinking as he thought about his response.

  “Well, to be honest with you, Charles, I think you behaved … ahem … like a complete asshole. Pardon my language, but there’s really no other word for it.”

  The pink patches on Charles’s cheeks turned pinker, bordering on red, and he sucked in his breath quickly.

  “That being said,” Michaud went on, “everyone sooner or later behaves like an asshole. I’ve even acted like an asshole a few times myself, and I can’t swear it won’t happen again. What’s important, however, is that you learn something from your own stupidity. And I think that’s what you’ve done, haven’t you?”

  “I can’t stop learning from it,” Charles sighed.

  “Only imbeciles don’t learn from their mistakes. They’re like fish who manage to get themselves off the hook by thrashing about like mad, and then five minutes later chomp down on another hook. Well, it’s their own tough luck, I say. And of course what’s also important, in my view, is the question of motive. Are you sure you won’t have another drop of port?” he said, interrupting himself. “Just a drop to dampen the bottom of the glass?”

  Charles held out his glass and the promised drop became a cascade.

  “In effect, it’s all there, my dear boy,” continued Michaud after refilling his own glass (by now his hand had become rather heavy). “As I mentioned earlier, Fernand and Lucie have told me your story. If I’d learned that you had become involved with trafficking simply to make a fast buck, I’d’ve been mightily disappointed in you, I don’t mind admitting it, because I would have had to say to myself, ‘Charles has turned into one of those little street urchins that every Montreal neighbourhood turns out. What a waste. I thought he was going to make something of himself some day. I was wrong.’ But that wasn’t the case, praise God.”

  “Do you think Fernand and Lucie have the same opinion as you do?”

  “I’m sure they do. In fact they told me so themselves, in their own words. In any case, if they thought you were a criminal you’d know it by now, and you wouldn’t have come here tonight to ask me that question.”

  “And yet, I almost killed a woman.”

  “Without meaning to, Charles, without meaning to! Hmm … I’m not happy about the way you’re seeing this.… Let’s look at the thing as it really happened, shall we? It was she who seems to have wanted to kill herself. But she failed to do so. And to whom does she owe her life? To you, Charles. To you. That’s what you must not forget. I hope you will always bear that in mind.”

  Charles jiggled the glass of port in his hands, staring down at the gently dancing liquid. He saw the actress talking to him, sitting across from him, wearing her blue silk dressing gown, her long hair tied back with a ribbon to which she’d pinned a tiny bouquet of dried flowers. He heard her deep, resonant voice echo in his ear, warm with the friendship she had been offering without even being aware of it.

  And for the first time in a long time, instead of grimacing at the memory, he smiled.

  “I think the moment has come for you to learn something from life.” The notary stood up, slightly wobbly, from his desk. He walked over and stopped at the shelf on which were ranged the most beautiful editions of the literary masterworks. “I think, young man, you’re ready for an intensive treatment of The Human Comedy. You are familiar with The Human Comedy, are you not?”

  “By Balzac? I haven’t yet read anything by him.”

  “Well, the time has come, young man. It’ll open your eyes and shore up your soul for life’s approaching battles, as our old spiritual leaders used to say. You’ve already had one battle, but there’ll be others.”

  He took down five huge, red tomes bound in stiff canvas boards, and placed them on the floor at the young man’s feet.

  “I just bought it in the Pléiade edition. These here are part of the ‘Intégrale’ collection, brought out by Les Éditions Seuil. They’re quite lovely too, but I find them a bit cumbersome, although the price was right. Are you going straight home?”

  Charles nodded.

  “Good. Take them with you. A present from me.”

  Charles was speechless. When he found his tongue he protested that he didn’t deserve such a gift.

  “Nonsense, nonsense, it’s nothing. No need to thank me. But read them soon – all of them, no skipping! You’ll have your preferences, as I have mine; parts of them will strike you as slightly boring, but others will sweep you away like a hurricane. I defy you to read through the whole of The Human Comedy without coming away with a more self-assured and intelligent view of life.”

  He leaned against the bookshelf. The tiring day, combined with the port, had suddenly turned his legs to rubber.

  “That’s one of the benefits of great books,” he went on, his chin raised high as though he were addressing a vast audience. “The most important, of course, is the pleasure we derive from them. Oh yes, Charles, read The Human Comedy and it won’t let you down, I promise you. You’ll learn to appreciate the effects of passion, greed, ambition, egotism, and hatred thrown into fierce hand-to-hand combat with virtue, love, friendship, genius, integrity, and what have you!”

  His voice, carried away by an access of lyricism, became nasal, trembling, and rose at times to its highest pitch.

  “Literature, my dear, young friend, is concentrated life served to its readers in the comfort of their armchairs (to paraphrase Musset). It is the fruit of a million experiences, a tenth part of which one wouldn’t normally live long enough to have. Through literature we participate in a sort of eternity; it makes us like God: omnipresent, existing everywhere and in every time! Literature doesn’t necessarily mak
e us wiser – that would be asking too much, and it depends, does it not, on what we carry around in our heads – but sometimes it can help us to be a little less stupid.”

  He continued in that vein for several minutes. Charles listened with a slight smile on his lips, but gradually the notary’s fervour broke through his reserve and he recognized in it his own love of books, expressed though it was with an eloquence and precision he himself could never have attained. From being mannered and a bit ridiculous, the notary had become sublime.

  “Right,” he said suddenly, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. “I guess I let myself be carried away. Whew! It’s tiring! I’m not twenty years old any more. Let’s deal with more tangible things for a moment. I’ll go find you two large plastic bags to take your books home in. But first, a last little drop of port!”

  This time Charles declined strenuously. Whenever he had too much alcohol he had the disagreeable impression that reality broke down bit by bit, and he felt obscure forces sloshing around within him trying to gain ascendancy. It made him think of his father, and he was overcome by a sense of horror that immediately rendered him sober.

  Michaud drank a last glass of port and sank into his chair, feeling suddenly calm, almost melancholy. Then he got up, left the room, and returned with two bags.

  “I have a great deal of faith in the Balzac treatment,” he said to Charles, placing his arm around his shoulders and conducting him to the door. “You are an intelligent young man, and also a very sensitive one. Balzac will do wonders for you, I’m certain of it.”

  “So am I,” said Charles. “I still don’t know how to thank you.” He seemed unable to express his gratitude except by being exceedingly polite. “I’ll start reading the Comedy first thing tomorrow morning, I promise. And I’ll ask Céline to read it, too.”

  The notary smiled with delight and patted Charles several times on the back.

  “Come more often, Charles,” he said with a sudden show of gravity and emotion. “We hardly see each other any more! If you knew how much pleasure.… No, no, don’t worry, I won’t get drunk on port every time you come by. Tell me what you think of Balzac. I’ll be all ears, dear boy. In the meantime, to bed with me, old butt of Malmsey that I am! I’m half asleep already!”