One Saturday afternoon, while he was colouring on the living-room floor with Alvaro, two men came into the apartment with a stretcher to take his mother away. She had had a very bad night. Before leaving, she called him into her room and hugged him for a long time, crying, kissing him again and again on his cheek and his forehead, making him promise to be good, to take his bath every night and to eat all his dinner. He nodded without saying anything, feeling a huge emptiness opening up inside him. Standing beside the bed, his face dejected, his eyes red and swollen, blinking from exhaustion, Wilfrid watched them and rubbed his chin with his hand. He went out with his wife and the two ambulance drivers, and Lucie Fafard came over to look after Charles until his father returned.
Charles went back into the living room, where Alvaro was waiting for him and started colouring again as though nothing had happened. This time, however, his friend’s fooling around, drawing horns on the figures in the colouring book, adding extra arms and antennas in the silliest places, didn’t make him laugh. He was trying to keep the picture of his mother alive in his head, but it was as though her face were evaporating away, leaving nothing behind but a sort of cold, grey dust and an unbearable sadness.
From then on, Charles’s life was different in every possible way. At the end of each day, instead of going straight home after leaving daycare, he went to wait for his father in a restaurant called Chez Robert, on rue Ontario, not far from the apartment. Signs in the restaurant announced that it specialized in Canadian Cuisine, had Daily Specials and a Take-Out Menu, and that the place was Fully Licensed. Robert himself had long ago taken off with an English osteopath who walked with a slight limp but was otherwise not bad-looking, leaving his wife the business and debts amounting to three times more than the restaurant was worth. Rosalie Guindon had taken it in stride; she moved in with the cook, who by a strange coincidence was named Roberto and was three times the man her ex-husband had been, and the two of them had worked hard for five years paying off the debts and getting the restaurant back on its feet. It was now a profitable business. Wilfrid knew the owner well and, after a few months, became friendly with one of the waitresses, Sylvie Langlois. She was a fine-looking woman of thirty-eight with a definite fondness for beer.
Charles would be at the restaurant every day at five-thirty, seated in a booth with a glass of milk (courtesy of Rosalie), and watching television or listening to the conversations of the other customers, who consisted of a wide variety of really interesting types. Monsieur Morin was a long-time regular, a retired bachelor who came in every night at a quarter to six on the dot, ordered the soup of the day, a half club sandwich (no fries), and a bowl of rice pudding (he didn’t like to eat much in the evenings). Then he would play a few hands of solitaire, all the while teasing Rosalie about her weight, always finding new ways to draw attention to it, with Rosalie for her part always finding new ways to shut him up. Both of them enjoyed the exchange immensely. Monsieur Victoire came in most days for his “end-of-the-day beer,” giving Charles a big smile and sometimes ruffling his hair, then settling in to his torrid, clownish courtship with the waitresses, especially the blushing Liette, who was only eighteen and frightened easily, to the great enjoyment of the customers. Charles didn’t understand much of what was said, but he laughed along with everyone else, mostly at Monsieur Victoire and his antics. But some nights he was quiet, as though he had retreated into himself, slouched in the booth, looking sad and vaguely annoyed at everything.
When it wasn’t too busy in the restaurant, Rosalie would come over and pick him up and sit him on her knee:
“You’re thinking about your mother, aren’t you, poor little fella. It’s tough for a kid your age to go through something like that. But everything will be all right in the end, you wait and see. Everything always works out for the best, one way or another.”
Sometimes Sylvie came over, too, but she never picked him up and put him on her knee. She just smiled at him for a few moments, her eyes blinking against the smoke from her cigarette.
If Wilfrid was late getting there, it was understood between him and Rosalie that Charles would be given his supper. Charles quickly learned that if he wanted to fit in at Chez Robert, he would have to be not only well behaved but also pleasant and useful; he would also have to be generous with compliments about the meals he was served. When he finished eating, he would go around to the tables collecting ashtrays and emptying them in the trash. Rosalie was amused and impressed, and began calling him “Tom Thumb, my little waiter.”
One night Wilfrid phoned the restaurant to say he had an emergency at work and wouldn’t be able to get there until ten o’clock, and he asked Sylvie if she could take his son back to the apartment (he had given Charles his own key that very morning), make sure he brushed his teeth, and put him to bed. Rosalie was vehemently against this idea, and she and Roberto talked about it in the kitchen. Charles didn’t know Roberto that well, because he was always either busy in the kitchen or else standing at the back door getting some fresh air. So he didn’t know that he had captured Roberto’s heart as well. After a long discussion it was decided that Charles would sleep in the restaurant until his father arrived. And rather than risk the restaurant’s reputation by having someone asleep in one of the booths, Roberto decided to put him under the counter. All he had to do was move a few cases of pop and three huge tins of mustard; Rosalie ran to her house to get a comforter for a mattress, and a blanket and pillow. Charles stretched out under the counter near the cash register, studying the comings and goings of countless nylon-clad legs, as happy as a seal swimming in a school of fish.
The next week Charles spent the better part of two nights under the counter. Rosalie began grumbling about it under her breath, since both nights coincided with Sylvie’s nights off.
“He must think we’re a couple of idiots,” she said to her partner. “And Sylvie, too!”
“Maybe, Rosie, but he pays up,” replied the pragmatic Roberto. “Last week he gave us five dollars for three junior dinners. Can’t complain about that.”
“I can complain if I want to. It’s a question of principles. That’s no way to bring up a kid. I was at the cash a little while back and I heard this sniff coming from under the counter. I bent down and the poor little thing was crying. Not loud, mind you, trying his best not to disturb us. You know who he was thinking about as well as I do. No one’s told him yet, but he knows his mother’s on her way to her grave. No more mother, and now his father’s hardly around. Some future, I’d say.”
Roberto waved his greasy hand (he’d been kneading the pizza dough):
“And I’d say djou’re making a mountain outta a molehill, Rosie.”
“What do you mean? Thibodeau needs that kid like he needs a hole in the head. Oh, he’s not a bad sort, I’ll give him that, but he’d sell his son or give him away without a moment’s hesitation, just like that, good riddance! In half an hour he’d’ve forgotten he ever had a son. He doesn’t have a father’s instinct, that’s what I’m saying. I’ve known a few men in my time, Roberto, and they don’t all have your sweetness of heart, you big softie. How many men do you know who’d let themselves be fleeced by their girlfriends like you do?”
“Hey, we agreed not to talk about that.”
“Sorry.”
Roberto’s eyes had flashed with anger, then quickly softened:
“Life ain’t so easy for him, Rosie. His wife dying, a four-year-old kid to look after, his own family keeping outta sight, his mother-in-law too far away to be any good to him, and on top of that he has to make a living like everyone else!”
“You forgot to mention Sylvie,” Rosalie said tersely as she went back to the cash. “He’s banging her while his wife’s fighting for her life.”
Roberto gave a tired sigh and went back to his pizza dough. Women, he thought. Whenever you want to make sure you’ve been misunderstood, all you have to do is ask them! Poor Wilfrid, he didn’t ask to be in his shoes … Having a sick wife for a few months don
’t turn a guy into a saint, you know. The body has needs, goddamnit! Rosalie’s criticisms had brought out his penchant for male bonding.
Still, two hours later, when he was sitting at the counter in the almost empty restaurant, sipping a beer and thinking about the carpenter, he was definitely annoyed when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder:
“Hey, there, Roberto!” Wilfrid said in that rejuvenated, triumphant voice that always comes, even to a tired man, after an hour or two in bed with a woman. “How’s business? My boy didn’t get under your feet, did he? Here,” he added, slipping a ten-dollar bill into Roberto’s shirt pocket. “For taking such good care of him these past coupla weeks.”
“No, no, no, that’s much too much,” Roberto protested, keeping the money, his previous estimate of the carpenter having swiftly returned.
“It’s worth that and much more,” Wilfrid replied, stooping under the counter.
Charles was so sound asleep that his father had to carry him home in his arms. He took off the boy’s shoes and put him to bed fully clothed, careful not to wake him.
After work he’d gone to the hospital to visit Alice, and the look she had given him when he left had stayed with him as though printed on his forehead. The idea of spending another evening alone in the apartment with his son had filled him with despair. So he’d called Sylvie. She’d invited him up to her place, they’d had a few beers, and before long they’d ended up in bed as usual. And all the while the look Alice had given him continued to haunt him. He’d tried his hardest to play the energetic, passionate young lover, but Sylvie wasn’t deceived:
“You aren’t really here with me tonight, are you, my pet. Maybe you should have spent the evening somewhere else.”
And he hadn’t known what to say.
“Good God,” he said now, looking down at his son, lost in sleep, one arm draped over the side of the bed and his hand half-open, “what am I going to do with you from now on?”
And for a long while he sat in a chair tipped back beside the rumbling refrigerator, smoking one cigarette after another, trying without success to come up with an answer to his question.
4
Charles was zigzagging around the playground, arms outstretched, chasing his friend Freddy like a fighter plane closing in on an enemy aircraft, when Mélanie appeared at the door.
“Your father’s here,” she called. “He wants to talk to you.”
He walked towards the daycare, dragging his feet through the dead leaves that were beginning to litter the ground. Why do they always do this whenever I’m having fun? Having fun was hard enough these days.
Wilfrid Thibodeau was waiting for him in the vestibule. Charles looked at him in astonishment. His father seemed to have aged incredibly since that morning. How had he gotten so old so quickly? His forehead was wrinkled, his cheeks had sunk in, his skin was the colour of old cardboard that had been lying in the street, and his eyes, his eyes … you could hardly see them! They were half-closed, hidden behind red and swollen eyelids.
“Mommy wants to see you,” he said in a low voice. And then turning towards the door he motioned Charles to follow him.
The car sped through the nearly deserted streets. Sitting next to his father in Alice’s seat, Charles found the rumbling of the motor vaguely disturbing. Minutes passed. Wilfrid looked directly ahead, silent and impassive. They turned a corner onto a busier street and were forced to slow down. A huge, red-and-white tanker truck, the kind that delivered furnace oil, was blocking their passage. It kept stopping and emitting loud sighs, which made Wilfrid Thibodeau keep his foot on the brakes.
“Mommy isn’t doing very well, Charles,” he said suddenly, his voice soft and higher-pitched than usual. Charles barely recognized it. He didn’t like the sound of it. To fill the silence that followed, and to prevent his father from saying anything else, he reached out and pressed the button that turned on the radio.
The music was suddenly interrupted by a special news bulletin. A man announced in serious, solemn tones that a group of terrorists calling themselves the Quebec Liberation Front had just kidnapped a British diplomat somewhere in Montreal. The police were making inquiries. The prime minister of Canada and the premier of Quebec would be issuing statements later in the day.
“What’s a diplomat, Papa?”
“What? Oh, it’s a man who works for one country in another country.”
“And British? What’s that?”
“The English. Not the English who live here, the English in England.”
Charles sat back in his seat, satisfied. He imagined three cowboys with red polka-dotted bandanas pulled up over their faces and carrying huge six-guns, making off with a man wearing over-sized glasses and a red tie, his face showing no emotion even though tears were welling up in his eyes.
“Goddamned criminals,” his father grumbled between clenched teeth. “I hope they squash the sons of bitches like bugs.”
The music came back on and Charles returned to his imaginary scene, in which one of the criminals was pulling the diplomat along by his tie. But the Englishman was pulling back, his face turning as red as a ketchup bottle. Suddenly the car stopped in a parking lot, and Charles got out and followed his father. They went up one steep street and turned onto another, much bigger street, this one flanked by an enormous park with trees that had already lost half their leaves. On the right was Nôtre-Dame Hospital, where they were helping his mother get better.
When they entered the hospital’s foyer, a violent commotion started up in Charles’s head. The criminals and the diplomat vanished as though carried off by a blast of wind and were replaced by a vision of his mother: Alice, thin and pale, lying still on her bed, eyes closed and barely breathing. He felt pain and fear take over his entire body. It took an enormous effort to keep walking behind his father, who was moving quickly towards the elevators. If it were up to him, he would have waited quietly in the foyer, huddled against a wall.
Wilfrid pushed softly on the half-opened door and, taking his son by the hand, entered a darkened room that was bathed in a bluish light. In the bed nearest the door, an old woman was making a strange clacking sound with her teeth as she breathed from a tube taped under her nose. Charles went past without looking at her and stopped at the second bed.
There another woman was sleeping. She looked very thin, with her arms lying at her sides. Wilfrid pulled a chair close to this bed, picked Charles up and sat him on the chair so he could have a better view of the woman. Charles vaguely recognized his mother’s hair, but the rest of her was completely changed. Could this really be his mother? Maybe they’d gone into the wrong room, and Alice was waiting for them somewhere else, smiling. He looked at her in a daze. With her lined face, her thin, shiny nose with its flared nostrils, and her bony, pointed chin she looked almost threatening to him. He didn’t know what to do or think about this. He turned and looked at his father.
“We’ll wait for her to wake up,” Wilfrid murmured with a sad smile.
Gradually a strange impression took hold of Charles’s mind. He imagined that the bluish shadow filling the darkened room like smoke was coming from his sleeping mother’s face, that the shadow would spread throughout the hospital, then envelop the city and eventually the whole world, shutting all the light out of their lives forever. His eyes filled with tears and he began to shake.
“Mama,” he said quietly, “Mama, wake up …”
Suddenly Alice opened her eyes and looked at him. A languid smile, still thickened by sleep, appeared on her lips, and she slowly lifted one of her arms. Charles jumped out of his chair and, kneeling on the bed, leaned over his mother and put his arms around her neck.
“Careful, you’ll smother her,” Wilfrid said, reaching to pull the child away.
“Leave him,” Alice said with surprising force. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen him. My poor little boy,” she murmured tenderly in his ear. He sniffed and nuzzled against her face like a young animal that has returned numbed with terror f
rom a long, lonely voyage. They stayed entwined in an exchange of sighs and incomprehensible monosyllables while the carpenter, his hand suspended in mid-air, watched them with a kind of intimidated amazement. Mother and son remained immobile for several minutes, until suddenly the young woman’s body relaxed, and her arms fell listlessly back onto the bed. Charles sensed that he was making it hard for her to breathe, and so he half sat up. His father picked him up gently and sat him back on the chair. Alice had closed her eyes, and a calm expression was momentarily softening the terrible gauntness of her face.
“You’re going to get better, Mama,” Charles declared with a happy assurance. “But you have to eat more: you’re much too thin!”
Alice nodded weakly and smiled, keeping her eyelids closed. At last she had seen her son again. Life had granted her her final wish and now had no more to offer; from now on, all her strength would be devoted to hollowing out a blessed emptiness inside her in which she could bury her suffering.
Her funeral was held on the twentieth of October, 1970, at Saint-Eusèbe-de-Vercil Church, on rue Fullum. The few mourners were spread out in the cavernous though somewhat shabby nave, through which wafted the faint odour of incense, dust, and mildew: her family, one or two co-workers from the garment factory, and half a dozen neighbours, including the hardware-store owner Fafard and his wife, Lucie. The priest stood at the railing, a little to the left of the ultramodern altar that had been placed in front of the old altar with its golden, sculpted figures, that was forgotten now at the end of the chancel. Charles, who was seated a few metres away between his father and his grandmother, watched, wide-eyed, as the priest gave the funeral oration. He was a squat, thickset man, with a grave face and slow gestures; specially rich blood must keep his stomach round, Charles thought, and its weight could be heard in his unctuous, sonorous voice.
Charles the Bold Page 4
