The Death of Marlon Brando

by Pierre Gobeil

  It hurt at the moment, and then after, nothing else. I had the impression that someone had gone looking for something in my body. But nothing more. That’s the way it was.

  September came about like the big lash of a whip that somebody very nasty would give. And it was as if, and exactly as if, we hadn’t been prepared for it.

  That morning at school, it hurt when I walked. Less than yesterday, okay. But when I had to run during recess, and once again when I had to bend over to tie up my laces, I felt a pain that wasn’t that strong. Okay, but it was still a real wound. I think that it was swollen, and if it’s not healed by the medical check-up date at the beginning of the year, I think I’ll have to speak to a doctor about it. I hope I won’t have to. That requires explanations and I prefer not to. I know it would be necessary for my health, but I prefer not to, that’s all. And I don’t care about my health right now.

  With the beginning of the new year, our teacher asked us to read excerpts from our compositions. The others burst out laughing when my tongue got caught on my front palate and something came out that sounded like a burp. And yet, at first, it was nothing. But in my head, there were the words he’d said: “lookin’ forward to goin’ back to school…” and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was raining, too. “Goin’ back to school” like “It’s the end, he said…” about the woman living by the edge of the river. These were words that were not mine.

  While getting into the school bus, because of something leaking – I had the impression something was leaking in my underwear – I had to sit down alone because I thought that it would smell. I was especially afraid of this, however, Marc and my friend Louis Levasseur didn’t notice a thing.

  In my composition, I wrote:

  My project fell through because it had to fall through.

  I also wrote:

  For his grandeur only and so that the tragedy remained as it should up until the end, the word that I was looking for must have been fatum.

  But my teacher, who is new and doesn’t know yet that I’m a specialist in historic inventions, said these sentences weren’t mine. Hold on tight: it’s a new teacher who corrects the work done during the summer and who gave me a bad grade while my neighbour on the left – yes, we have girls in our class – got an A. She began her composition with: “Oh! The pretty beautiful summer that we’ve had…” I swear I’m not inventing anything. Even if that’s all that I could manage to read over her shoulder. Her subject was, of course, the summer holidays. This is what everyone always talks about in September. And I’d bet that for next year’s composition, if we continue to have revolutionary teachers, it’ll be the same thing once again. It was raining. And I wondered if despite all this rain, the mounds of oats could be saved.

  I took up my assignment again, making it longer. I thought this way I could rid myself of the issue. By following the entire structure of the movie, I wrote:

  He said to me: “Come… I’ve got somethin’ to tell ya. Come… Come right away. After, it’ll be too late.” He said: “Ya know yer handsome?”

  My teacher said that I was getting off topic. My teacher said that I was digressing and I was neglecting my hero.

  I said: “But…”

  She did exactly what the one from last year did: “Tut-tut.”

  I said: “It was the rain…before…after…” I said: “The trail, like in the movie, is the big river…” I said: “The monster is him. The Ornithorhynchus… the one floating on the river…”

  She said: “…a shirt with sleeves?”

  I said: “Yes. And boots…and that hides in the same places as kids.”

  She said:

  “Tut-tut” and, ignoring all her “new pedagogy” techniques in order to make fun, she took the class as her witness. She said:

  “Children…I think that the Ornithorhynchus in this absurd story gets clothes from department stores and, since our young friend seems to have abandoned his plan, Mister Marlon Brando has surely gone back to Hollywood.” The students laughed.

  In my composition, I didn’t write:

  The war is lost. I didn’t speak. I stood there, just next to the room attached to the house and the wind blew as the autumn wind blows. They had just finished supper. Yes, I think that in the addition, the Shadows were eating their dessert like they do when they don’t go out. It was Sunday and they don’t go out on Sunday. I didn’t dare enter. My hands were covered in mud and I didn’t know how to say: “May I go wash up?” All of a sudden, I had forgotten that the verb “to be able to” had that form.

  At supper, I wasn’t hungry. And as I was to help myself, I just took a little plate and that was enough. I thought: “If I want more, I can always take more.” I thought: “The others are going to say”…but I wasn’t hungry enough to take another helping and the Shadows just ignored me. They’re at the age where they only look after themselves. And I said it like it was.

  At supper, I sat down at the table and when he arrived, I stopped talking. It was getting late. There was no salad left and I’ve already said that the last days of summer are short. I can also say that the darkness comes quickly at this time…earlier than at the beginning of the summer, that’s for sure. I didn’t find the words. I stopped talking. As for the monster, the monster’s breathing and the sadness of the monster who says I’d like to drown myself, I didn’t talk about them.

  They wouldn’t have believed me. He’d say Windsor, he’d say Detroit… and when he’d say Windsor or Detroit, it was as if it were much better over there. I’ve already said that the monster must have known the power of words.

  He was bigger and stronger; he kept saying words in English, words in French… I didn’t know how to fight back.

  He kept saying that he had relatives in Windsor, always ready. He kept saying that there wasn’t nothin’ but treeless fields around these parts.

  The worst thing was my problem with words. For some time now, my voice, my tongue, my lips and my mouth don’t respond to my orders like before the summer. It’s odd to say this. It hurts me and it surprises me. I still have my Petit Illustré, but at school the teacher says: “Speak louder.” At home they say: “He’s pouting today…”

  It’s funny; it’s hard to say and almost always unexpected. Sometimes, it’s too far away, and sometimes, it’s just on the edge of my lips and it comes out all at once. And it’s so surprising that the others don’t have the time to understand what I had to say, and I can’t do anything about it. And yet, that’s the way it is. I try to analyze it, but…all things considered, it’s better not to think about it too much, I think. When I think about it, it’s worse than when I don’t think about it. That’s what I’ve noticed.

  When it gets dark out, I have trouble sleeping, just like when our dog was hit by a car. It was an old dog that didn’t have a pedigree or anything, but I saw it lifeless on the edge of the gravel between a layer of asphalt and the dirt ditch, and I had trouble sleeping that night. I must say I was much younger. Slowly, I used to bring my hand to my mouth and would bite down on my fingers. [17] My mouth would open and close for no reason and my fishbowl, once the lights were out, was cold and sad just like in the depths of the sea.

  Autumn brings with it something unchanged which would make us believe that after the summer storm, life has once again become what it was before.

  I’ve already said it, but I believe that it’s important to come back to it. The worst wasn’t the pain in my underwear: the worst was the problem that I had with words.

  My voice, which before hummed beautifully like a spinning hula-hoop, has become rough and raspy for some time now – it’s stupid to say, but there you have it – often I don’t know how to speak and how to stop talking either…and this, in equal proportion. This is at least what I think. And I make mistakes with words. Instead of this one, it’s that one that comes out. Most often, it’s a similar word but that doesn’t mean anything at all. And I don’t know when to speak.

  Yesterday, I said valeur (value)
instead of voleur (robber), vrai (true) for plaie (wound), jeune (young) instead of juste (just)…when I wanted to say: “It’s not just or right.” Today, I said “a decision” when I wanted to say “a denunci-ation”…and all this worries me, I think. But I can’t say it, no more than when we were in summer.

  For the rest of my body, it’s alright. I walk, I watch, I go to school and I don’t cry.

  My fate is tied to the colonel’s in my plan.

  I didn’t say this, like the hero in my war film: I was stuck. Washington and the U.S. sergeant on one side, the Abandoner and the Ornithorhynchus on the other. I am Marlon Brando.

  I didn’t write, either:

  I believe they killed me.

  Endnotes

  [1] Couchette is a mispronunciation of fourchette, meaning “fork.” Bacul is a dialectal word from the North of France used to speak of a “singletree,” commonly referred to in French as un palonnier. This term designates a wooden bar swung at the center from a hitch on a plow or wagon and hooked at either end to the traces of a horse’s harness. Caltron is a deformation of carton, meaning “cardboard box.” These terms are mentioned again in subsequent pages.

  [2] In the original French, the word used is “taisance” – an in-vented word – derived from the verb taire – to make silent or to be quiet (in its reflexive form). This verb is a homonym of terre, land or earth in French.

  [3] This is a reference to Germaine Guèvremont’s 1945 classic novel, Le Survenant. It has been translated as The Outlander.

  [4] The word used in French is tarie, which contains the same letters as the verb taire (to be quiet).

  [5] The verb in French is pouvoir. It can also be a masculine substantive le pouvoir, which means “power.” Elsewhere in the novel, Charles forgets certain conjugations of the verb and is thus effectively “disempowered.”

  [6] Zezon is a term that the author used as a young boy, which means “dumb.” Petuite is a term no longer used, meaning “vomit.” Jouquer is a verb used in Quebec and the West of France, which means “to perch on something.”

  [7] The term used in French is rallonge. According the author, he chose this term, as he felt cuisine d’été was too long. A “summer kitchen” is a room, often attached to a house, in which food is prepared so as not to contribute to the heat in the main building.

  [8] The French verb nettoyer means “to clean.” See Note 1 for an explanation of the other words.

  [9] The verb in question is venir, meaning “to come.” This verb is used by certain people in Quebec to speak of an orgasm. In France, the verb jouir is used to this effect.

  [10] The term used in French is risée. This term can also mean “laughing stock.”

  [11] Mon voleur translates as “my thief.” Nouère is an old form of the word noir, meaning “black.”

  [12] The term used in French is faucheuse. This term can also refer to the “grim reaper.”

  [13] Capharnaum was a fishing village situated on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. The village is mentioned several times in the New Testament. The term is also used in French to refer to a messy, cluttered and obscure place. The term was used by Homais, the pharmacist in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857), in order to designate his medical cabinet. In Quebec literature, the term is used by Léon Chicoine in Gérard Bessette’s Le Libraire (1960) to refer to the secret room filled with censored books in his bookstore.

  [14] The term used in the French is joual. This word, which designates colloquial French in Quebec, is a deformation of the word cheval, meaning “horse.” The coinage of the term is often associated with journalist André Lauren-deau.

  [15] The term used in French is queue, meaning “tail.” This term is also used to designate a penis. Although Charles and Him are dealing with a mare, the masculine gender for horse in French and the usage of the neutral pronoun ça while referring to the animal evoke this appendage, especially given the sinister nature of this scene.

  [16] The term used in French is ange cornu, meaning “horned angel.” This term is however a homonym of ange corps nu, meaning “naked angel body.” As such, we chose “li’l devil” as it would seem to refer in an ironic fashion to the diabolical nature of the future event.

  [17] In French, the expression se mordre les doigt (to bite one’s fingers) is used to express “regret” and is the equivalent of “to kick oneself.”

  Table of Contents

  COVER

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  The Death of Marlon Brando

  Endnotes

  Guide

  Cover

  Contents