The Death of Marlon Brando

by Pierre Gobeil

  How? I don’t know. No doubt after having snooped about, kept an eye out and picked up bits of conversation that people exchanged. And because he’s on the lookout, he knows everything about everybody and anyone, and he tells me this repeatedly while saying that I should watch my back. Be wary of others, for sure. If I were to believe everything he said, I should be afraid of everyone. Even of my friend Louis because he’d said while holding the photo in his hands that it must smell good. I remember that we laughed – we were together with Marc – the three of us, leaning against the school wall, hidden with our hands full of texts in English. We couldn’t read them, and so we just imagined. We were saying to each other that one day we’d buy a car and we’d go to the United States. The end of our trip would be Texas. We’d already measured the distance between our village and the border, and already we’d found a used car that would go a hundred miles an hour at times.

  All three of us were leaning up against the wall and were making plans: Texas!

  As for the rest of the United States, it wasn’t important…as I knew that over there, there were gas stations where you can get gas all night long.

  He said: “Ya see full well that I’m informed. Huh…Yer not sayin’ nothin’. Magazines of the sort where ya see everythin’. Me, I got some too. Photas in colour, I got some. Do ya wanna see them? Yer interested huh…? Ya pretend that ya don’t bother with that, but yer interested in seein’ the li’l girls. On the page in the middle, one of ’em is peein’. Ya jealous? Ya’d like to have a phota like that, wouldn’t ya, huh…? Yer jealous of my colour photas. If yer good, I’ll show ya some… Ya’ll see. Beautiful photas. The one on the page in the middle, it folds out. If I had an apartment to me alone, I’d attach it above my bed…and in the evenin’ I’d lay down underneath it. It’d be like havin’ drops fall on my face.”

  He was acting like someone sleeping. He was opening his mouth and acting like he was snoring. He kept saying “phota” and I think that he spent ten minutes, not one less, stuck on this word, which, for goodness sake, is hardly difficult to pronounce: “photo.”

  He was saying: “I’ll show ya…” and laughed all by himself like he often does, when he covers his mouth with his hand as if he doesn’t want to show off his dentures. He was making fun as he sometimes does. He kept saying while laughing: “We all know, us, the bare truth, yer not interested in that stuff. Us, barely old enough…” and he kept on laughing and insisting on the bare of barely, which meant us, the three boys. I said:

  “Stop sleeping and get your butt in gear if you don’t want my father to show up and find the work not done. You spend your day dragging your heels. My father’s going to clean your clock. Wait, you’re going to see.”

  He was laughing to himself as he often does. With his hand in front and his false teeth behind. I turned around and went running down the hillside. At the bottom is the farm; there are people there and things are happening. People live down there.

  The others, the boys and the girls of the house, go out on Saturdays and other nights too, but most often on Saturday evening, you’d have to say. I asked: “Why on Saturday?…” and they said: “We don’t know. The others go out on this day, too, and we like it when there’s lots of people.”

  Me, I said: “And why on Saturday?” They didn’t know. They said that for them, they like it when there are lots of people. For him, it’s the opposite, I think.

  What’s remarkable about him is that he doesn’t go out with the other boys and girls his own age. If Mother tells him that he can leave for once, he shakes his head, groans and says that he’s tired. He manages to let the others leave and stays there. What I understood right away was that because of this situation, when the others go dancing, Mother and Father go to bed early, us, we end up alone together, him and me. I wanted to go read on the veranda, but he said:

  “Come an’ play cards.” He said: “Hey, do ya know that one, the game of Queen of Spades?” He said: “I’m gonna get the nu’deck of cards. There’s Pepsi in the fridge. Wait… we’re gonna have some fun.”

  The others, they’re Shadows. You know that they’re there or that they already have been there, but you don’t know much else about them. They cross the house and the farm, a bit like the Abandoner does, and respond to laws that I haven’t quite yet been able to understand. Like Saturday evening for example, they’re not there. On Saturday night, they systematically abandon the one they call “The Cake Eater.”

  Me, the one who always finds cards boring, I must say that I like playing his game. It’s so simple. You can learn to play it in less than two minutes and then it’s smart. In fact, you pretend that it’s smart because I’m of the opinion that chance does eighty percent of the work, and observation the rest. Nothing to do with intelligence in that case, then. This is what I believe. But him, seeing that I was winning regularly, he said: “Huh, so yer brilliant…”

  He kept repeating “so yer brilliant…”

  Once he said: “So yer handsome.” I got up and finished my Pepsi in one gulp. That was the first time he’d said this.

  The evening was mild, humid and, because of the clouds, night came quickly. We found ourselves together in the addition where it was still hot. The light, which was nothing other than a bulb suspended from a wire, was swinging when a breeze came in and dried the drops that were hanging from his nose.

  He was drenched for no reason. We’d stopped playing. The radio had stayed on, but there was no music. It was a talking radio. Like him. I’ve already said that when he was with me, he never stopped talking. I can also say that his habit of talking to the animals had turned into long monologues that a listener isn’t quite able to grasp. He kept saying:

  “Hey, that there blue, it suits ya well. Is that there a new shirt? Where’s it that ya got it? It’s a nice blue. I’ll have to get myself buyin’ the same one.”

  He kept saying, too: “I dunno if it’d be too li’l for me. Do ya wanna let me try it?”

  I already said that he was the only big person who would act like a child. He’d drink his Pepsi, make noises while swallowing and sometimes when laughing too much – he’d laugh all by himself. As for me, I wouldn’t unclench my teeth as a thin web of cola and saliva trickled down his chin.

  He said: “Tomorrow, if ya want, I gotta go get the bay mare. Would ya like that?” He said: “Would ya like that, to go horse ridin’ for a long time? Let’s go out the whole day…after we’ve set out the canisters.”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday,” I said to him, “and we have to go to Church. After, I have something…”

  He said: “Right away after dinner if ya want. We’ll go up to Clos-à-Julie, then I’ll brin’ you the leather saddle. Yer father wants to have the mare down there because she’s gonna foal pretty soon. Ya wanna? Say yes, right away.”

  I answered no, that tomorrow I’d go into town with my father. That we’d go right away after dinner and that we might get back late. In general, when my father goes to town, he isn’t back before eight o’clock in the evening. I told him that we’d leave right away after mass and that if my mom didn’t have the time to prepare a lunch for us, we’d go to a restaurant.

  He said: “That ain’t right at all. Because it ain’t no spot for kids over there, an’ then he ain’t got the time to look after ya. Yer father, he won’t wanna take ya over there. I’m sure a that.” He continued:

  “In the cities, it’s dangerous for kids. Ya never know what could happen. Never in a hundred years. Ya should watch yer back.”

  He said: “We’re gonna have another game of cards,” then he added: “Never in a hundred years is yer father gonna wanna find himself stuck with a kid over there.”

  I said no and went outside onto the veranda first and then into the courtyard, and then onto the paved road and onto to the dirt trail that goes up to the top. It was nighttime. You could figure out what season it was, although it was no longer one, by the sounds of the world more so than by the mild wind, the rustling breeze or the t
urmoil that I imagined was surrounding me.

  It was no longer the summer and it wasn’t yet autumn either. I didn’t have a word that I could use to name this period. A dog was barking all alone. Flapping wings becoming sometimes no more than a simple whistle, and especially the noise of the air in the dry leaves. This all seemed to announce the end of a moment in time. In a few days it would be back to school, in a few months Christmas, and then, after the spring…then again, more summers.

  Images were coming one after the other in a regular fashion, but slowly, like in the morning when, without warning, they’ll start to jump on my toes. Like fingers on the keys of a piano.

  And I could see myself getting old. I could see myself already grown-up. I already was, all things considered, since I’d walk during the night without asking for permission to do so. Wasn’t this a privilege reserved for big people…along with having money in your pocket and the power to defend yourself?

  How much time do I still have to wait? I was doing the calculation in my head. I was imagining myself in a few years travelling with a backpack filled with utensils, cards, compasses, and a whole bunch of different objects easy to carry and absolutely necessary to anyone looking to make it big. I wanted Texas. Because on the globe in his room, it’s the second-biggest state in the whole of the United States. And, I like that it’s far.

  At night sometimes, because of nothing at all, I’d feel intoxicated. I used to dream of short-story picture books, of epic adventures and of quests; I would have liked to believe that everything and anything is possible. To be able to say anything and everything and tell all, for example. How long do I still have to wait? In my composition, I spoke about a beast that’s spying on me. None of this has left me satisfied.

  One time in my bed, I heard steps on the floor and I raised my head. He was there, in the door frame giving onto the hallway, and wasn’t saying anything. I couldn’t see his face because of the half-light coming in and he stayed still…but I knew that it was him. He didn’t say anything maybe, I’m not sure. Perhaps I heard his breathing, which was shallow and as if he were tired. But, how can you tell or know? I’d lowered my head and after a few attempts to get to sleep, I said:

  “What are you doing there?” I said: “You’re not going to bed?” I said: “Are you crazy?…” and he didn’t answer.

  His body, which was still at first, started to swing slowly, regular-like, and was accompanied by breathing; this also slow and regular at first. Then it became quicker and staccato-like, falling in time and harmony with the movement of his body, which was leaning up against the door frame.

  I said: “You dancing?”

  I said: “You jiggin’?”… and, since he didn’t respond, I lay back down again on my bed. Once again I tried to sleep, but it was difficult and I just couldn’t. Knowing that he was there, him, standing there, without saying a word, and fidgeting, with his breathing getting heavier and heavier…

  When I rolled over on my side, I heard a groan, not that loud but still surprising. And before I had the time to roll over to see what was happening, he’d disappeared into his room or elsewhere…I don’t know. He’d disappeared and I slept. I can rest in that case, but I can’t sleep when someone’s watching me.

  As for his origins, he said that he came from Ottawa, but we knew that he came from farther away; from French-speaking Ontario, is what my father knew. Meanwhile, my mother said: “…from over there…” My mother had said: “From the north?…” and my father responded: “No, from French-speaking Ontario, but from the south…” and then added before leaving: “As for the land, you can tell that he knows his stuff.”

  I’m talking here about the beginning. When he’d just arrived with his bags; when he was still nice, when he worked hard, without rambling on, and this even when he was all alone and I was there. I remember that in the spring my father and my brothers went to get him at the train station. When they got back, my father introduced me to him, as he was going to be “the hired man of the house” for a certain time.

  My father had said:

  “Him, he’s the youngest of the boys, the one with his nose always in a book…” and the other one, the unknown farmhand, didn’t say anything. It was like he didn’t even look at me. He dragged his bags and I just noticed a glance from him that put me ill at ease. Because I was already fragile, and could already recognize a hypocritical look when I saw one.

  During the first few days, he was mysterious. He had an accent and the neighbours wanted to come see the “stranger,” hear him speak and find out what was new. He was different and seemed content to have the others take an interest in him.

  Also, in his bags, he showed me an object that you wouldn’t expect to find there: a golf umbrella. It was among his clothes, which were old and torn for the most part, that he’d brought from Windsor in Ontario or in Detroit, I don’t really know – he kept saying Windsor and that he had relatives always ready in Windsor – a coloured umbrella that had come from the south, like something that had been lost.

  And there was another thing in his bags. A globe of the earth, which he never used, and books that he never opened…but which pointed to the fact that he was not as innocent as he claimed to be, and that caught my attention from the start, whether I wanted it to or not.

  During the first few days, his funny words, his unusual objects and his hardiness at work made it so that we liked him. My father kept saying: “As for the land, you can tell that he knows his stuff…” and, as for me, I was happy because my mother, who was asking questions about his origins, had said: “We’re lucky to have stumbled on him.”

  It was like, in one sense, my mother had sensed the fall from her kitchen.

  I woke up and realized it was Sunday. And at pretty much the same time, I thought that it was the last day of summer vacation and that it was the last few days of summer. Contrary to my routine, I stayed in bed for a long time without doing anything and without saying anything. I was lost in my thoughts, which I would certainly have trouble classifying. They weren’t sad, okay, but they weren’t exactly joyful, either. It would be difficult to name all of them and the right word to describe them perhaps doesn’t even exist in my dictionary. What I can say about this is that they were coming to me regularly and slowly, one after another without trying to impose themselves and without trying to hang onto one another, either. I just let them go and watched my thoughts…but without being able to truly name them.

  Then a ray of sunlight came in and stopped on the edge of my blanket. Suddenly, it caught fire, and suddenly, I was hot. It was truly daytime now. I pulled the cover under my chin, and at the other end, as if it were something far away, my feet appeared. Both of them looking funny, and both different; both strangers to one another and as if opposed to one another, you’d say. The first one had toes that were more interesting and lively, while the second one was stumpy, wiser and all folded up in its sleep, not yet ready to get up. I spent some time looking at my thoughts jump about on my toes, from one to the other. They were like fingers on the keys of a piano, and then I got up and went downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. And then into the addition…and then, everywhere on the farm.

  It was during the summer vacation, which would last for some time still. I walk, I watch…and I know that I walk and I watch. I speak, I say hello, I keep quiet and I know how to say nothing. What remains of the sun and the summer is here. It’s Sunday and it’s early in the morning. And I find myself thrown into another, almost normal day in the month of August, with the birds flying next to one another from our courtyard to our neighbour’s just across the way. This Sunday, it’s an end-of-summer morning; the foliage is still green and rustles noisily as if it wanted to warn us that a beast was hiding in the surroundings. But nothing more, and to those that don’t pay attention to this sort of thing, you’d say that there was nothing there. There you have it. I don’t know what else to say. I’m not capable of naming it more precisely, either. In this long French composition that is
my summer homework assignment, you could say that words don’t serve me well and that my dictionary is a tombstone at the bottom of the water. I walk, I watch, and for me, until tomorrow, it’s still the summertime.

  Today, the best thing I can do is to keep working on my composition, structured like a movie. At the house, they say that I’m funny. Today, the best thing that I can do is to wait, like in the film, for the monster to come up the river. But nothing else.

  In the morality course in school, I’ve certainly tried to say that I’m being watched, but my teacher said: “Tut-tut… You read too many books. Charles, all the people around you love you…” and it didn’t go any further.

  There you have it. If I don’t speak, I’ve just given the reason why. Speaking, it seems to me, wouldn’t do anything anyway, and furthermore, speaking, as I’ve already said, is reserved for those who don’t have anything to say.

  During the first few days, I remember he didn’t say a thing. During the first few days, he worked non-stop, and in order to get him to come to the table and eat my mother had to call him several times. He’d then sit shyly and not say anything…without looking at anyone, either. At that time, I think that if he’d wanted anything, he wouldn’t have asked for it.

  He would eat quickly, too, holding the edge of his plate, and the Shadows said that it was as if he were afraid there wasn’t enough to eat.

  After, he’d get up from the table, without excusing himself or anything, then go and sit down in a corner all alone.

  That was when he was still antisocial, when he’d say nothing to the others. Although at times, he started telling me things about his past. When he came to get me at the village barbershop a few weeks after his arrival, he’d said that Ontario was warmer than here and that the land was richer there and there were fruits and golf courses everywhere. As for me, I just kept looking around and didn’t believe it.