Charles the Bold

by Yves Beauchemin

  “He’s a genius, that boy,” she remarked one evening to Sylvie. “He’s got two heads rolled up in one!”

  Sylvie smiled as though she were the one being praised, but she couldn’t help replying:

  “Not hard to tell you don’t live with him … You’d sing a different song then, let me tell you. Last night I practically had to drag him off to bed.”

  The Fats Dubé episode made Charles do some hard thinking. He discovered to his horror the exact meaning of the word queer, and decided he would nip his reputation for being one in the bud. Following Henri’s example, he leapt at every opportunity to fight with the other children in his class, even provoking fights when none seemed on offer. As a result, he spent a lot of time in the principal’s office. He even managed to punch Fats Dubé in the eye twice, right in the schoolyard, which earned him some respect among his peers and inspired the flatulent virtuoso to find himself another punching bag.

  Above all he set about minimizing his scholarly successes in the eyes of the other pupils. He pretended complete indifference towards his studies, which he in fact adored. Mademoiselle Laramée, who saw through this ruse, sighed deeply for him but refrained from stepping in, contenting herself with encouraging his progress without making too great a fuss over it.

  Her meeting with Wilfrid at the end of the semester did not leave her with a favourable impression of the carpenter; she found him crude, coarse – and smelling of beer (which to her was the purest essence of debauchery). Wilfrid obviously considered the meeting a waste of time and gave only a cursory glance at his son’s report, which she placed on the table in front of him before beginning their discussion. But when she stated that Charles was doing very well in class and even appeared to be an exceptionally gifted pupil, his face brightened.

  “We’ve always had a good head for figures in our family,” he said. “Charles is a real Thibodeau.”

  “I trust you’re doing your best for him. A child like Charles is a gift from God, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re doing everything we can, don’t worry.”

  Then his eyes went dull again and drifted towards the clock.

  Ginette Laramée’s worst fears were confirmed: towards the end of the school year Charles began to be bored in class. He yawned during the sometimes interminably repetitious explanations she had to give to the class dunces, which he had understood the first time, and he became more and more restless. Or else he fell into an absent reverie, gazing out the window, seemingly soaring off to some faraway land. One day she caught him with a knife, carving a word into the top of his desk: Boff.

  Her hand fell on the back of his neck, and she shook the child briskly.

  “Exactly what is that, young man?”

  “It’s the name of my dog, Mademoiselle,” he replied, smiling angelically.

  The class broke into loud laughter.

  “Very funny. If you go on behaving like this, you’ll end up in the doghouse yourself.”

  And for the first time she made him stand in the corner with his face turned towards the wall.

  Out of desperation, not knowing any other way to keep his flagging interest alive, she decided to start a Class Journal, and named him Editorin-Chief. He was given permission to attend to his professional duties during class, as long as he had finished his regular work. She thought that would keep him occupied until June. The day the report cards were handed out – which was also the first day of summer vacation – Charles ended up first in the class, far ahead of the others, despite the extra work.

  That afternoon Mademoiselle Laramée handed out small gifts to the students. She also had them draw prizes from a box. Henri pulled out a fluorescent green ball, Charles a small plastic truck. Just before three o’clock the pupils were given permission to leave early; the halls filled with the sound of running feet and the stairwells rang with excited voices. There was a traffic jam outside Mademoiselle Laramée’s classroom. Charles was about to thrust his way into it when the teacher called him back.

  “Charles,” she said, smiling tightly, “I have a special gift for you.”

  Charles let out a cry of joy and tore at the wrapping. It was a book.

  “Alice’s Advan …”

  “Adventures,” corrected the teacher.

  “… in Wonderland.”

  He looked up at her, his face smiling but serious.

  “Alice … that was my mother’s name,” he said.

  “I know.”

  The woman’s face tightened even more, and the corners of her mouth began to twitch.

  “Thank you very much, Mademoiselle. It’s a beautiful book. I’ll start reading it tonight, or maybe tomorrow, but no later than that.”

  “I think you’ll like it. I bought you a children’s edition, of course. If you stumble over any words you can ask someone to help you with them. But I don’t think there’ll be many.”

  “Yes, Mademoiselle.”

  The classroom was empty. Henri was impatiently waiting for him out in the hall.

  “Have a good vacation. Have fun. And come back to us in September in good health.”

  With these words Mademoiselle Laramée’s face softened, and she gave Charles a warm hug.

  Taken aback, Charles retreated several steps, waved awkwardly, then ran out of the room.

  8

  His second year at Saint-Anselme Elementary was an almost unmitigated disaster. He’d been happily expecting to see Mademoiselle Laramée again at the head of his classroom. Instead, his new teacher was Séverine Cotruche.

  Madame Cotruche was of medium build, a bit on the heavy side, with varicose veins in her calves, hair like steel wool tied up in a bun, elbows constantly in motion (often requiring dexterity to get out of their way), and magnificent blue eyes meant to express adoration but more often reflecting a severe and narrow-minded gravity; she was married, the mother of three children, and had the maternal instincts of a telephone pole. She had been a teacher at Saint-Anselme for twenty years, twenty years she considered to have been totally wasted – an opinion that would have been shared by her pupils, if anyone had asked them. Like most of the other teachers, she had heard Mademoiselle Laramée singing Charles’s praises, but she had also heard about the boy’s tendency to wildness and smart-ass tricks, his ability to turn a classroom upside down if he weren’t dealt with firmly and with a great deal of imagination.

  “I’ll bring him down a peg or two if he tries any of his shenanigans on me,” she promised herself the day school resumed, watching Charles as he took his seat and exchanged greetings with his neighbours; when he looked up at her, she was sure she saw a distinct shiftiness in his eyes.

  The first days of the school year are generally peaceful; teachers and pupils use them to get to know one another, establish alliances, detect secret weaknesses. In Grade Two, however, the terror of the unknown that had pumped through so many young breasts the year before, had turned so many throats to cardboard and sometimes brought tears to their eyes, were long forgotten. A child of seven or eight already considers himself a veteran and looks disdainfully down upon the timidity of those just beginning their academic careers. Madame Cotruche’s reputation had preceded her. Most of the pupils hated her before they even met her, and with the others the honeymoon lasted only a day or two; by Thursday of that first week, her piercing, exasperated voice was already resounding in the classroom.

  Charles hated her as much as the other pupils, and he resolved to let her know it. On Friday he had his first detention. On Monday he was sent to the principal’s office, and the next day had to copy out fifty times: “I am an idiot who laughs at everything.” Three months later his report card showed that he was barely keeping up.

  A truce was arranged, organized secretly by Mademoiselle Laramée, who called Charles into her classroom after school one afternoon and tried to get him to control his displeasure. “Listen, Charles,” she told him, “in Grade Three you’ll have Madame Dupuis and Mademoiselle Deneault, both of whom are kin
d and good teachers. And they can’t wait to have you in their class. Force yourself to be good, my dear. Ten weeks isn’t so long.” The next day, apropos of nothing, she told Madame Cotruche about Charles’s lamentable home life, about which she’d learned from the boy himself, and succeeded in winning her over somewhat by making a few pointed references to the teacher’s “vast experience and excellent pedagogical judgment.”

  In December, Charles checked his headlong descent to the bottom of the class and ended the term with creditable results. But on January 6, 1975, everything came apart.

  The week started badly. A wave of intense cold descended over the city, and the reports said it would set record lows and last for several days. Every day after school, Charles found Boff half frozen to death in his doghouse and begged his father to let the dog stay inside until the cold front had passed. But Wilfrid stuck to his guns:

  “What, so he can destroy the rest of the place? A dog’s a dog, it’s used to being miserable. He’s lived outside for years and it hasn’t killed him. I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

  Finally, at the suggestion of Monsieur Fafard, whose son Henri had told him about Charles’s problem, Wilfrid agreed to install a hundred-watt light bulb in Boff’s doghouse, beneath a false floor, thereby affording the dog a modicum of warmth. With his usual helpfulness, Fafard even chipped in an extension cord. Boff no longer shivered, but he still kept an envious eye on the apartment windows.

  The day after the light bulb was installed, coming back from the Fafards’ with his young master, the dog found a package of rotten meat in a garbage can and swallowed it in a single gulp. Two hours later he was seized by a sudden bout of diarrhea that threatened to turn him inside out. There was no point in even trying to have the dog stay inside until he was better. Charles stood by the kitchen window and looked down at his pet, slumped in the doghouse in the middle of the snow-covered yard, surrounded by yellowish splotches that bore mute testimony to the violent upheavals that were taking place within the poor spaniel’s intestinal tract. Neither was there any use in pleading to take the dog to a vet; Wilfrid had already declared that vets were too expensive.

  “If he dies, I’ll get you another one. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of stray dogs in Montreal.”

  And so it was that when Charles arrived at school he was already in such a state of frustration and worry that it was impossible for him to remain quiet or still for more than two minutes at a time. In order to dispel the anguish that was wracking his guts, he decided to become the funniest kid in the world. His first attempts were received with varying degrees of success, but at nine-forty-five, taking advantage of Madame Cotruche’s turned back, he threw a piece of chalk that hit her square in the back of the neck and propelled her into a fit of sneezing that went on for a good ten minutes.

  This was followed by an unprecedented flurry of jubilation in the class. Half an hour later, Sylvie received a telephone call from the school principal, telling her that Charles’s behaviour in class was causing them more and more concern.

  “I would like to meet with you to discuss this problem,” he added.

  “He’s not my kid. Talk to his father. I’ve put up with enough already.”

  When Wilfrid arrived home at five o’clock, Sylvie told him what had happened. Charles, shaking with fear, had shut himself in his room. The carpenter’s face turned a dangerous shade of red, but he managed to keep himself under control.

  “Bring him out here,” he said to Sylvie.

  Charles stood in front of his father, breathing rapidly, his bowels turning to water, but with a tiny smile of defiance on his lips.

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t hit you again,” his father said in a heavy, almost lazy voice, “but you don’t leave me any choice. Come here. I said, Come here!”

  And he smacked Charles across the face so hard that the boy was thrown back against the wall.

  Charles bit his lip and leaned against the wall, his face scarlet and twisted with pain. Then he burst into sobs and ran back to his room.

  Wilfrid sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the counter, a strange expression on his face. Sylvie took the chair across from him and lit a cigarette.

  “A bit heavy-handed, don’t you think?” she said after a pause. “You’re going to end up turning him against you for good.”

  “He’s already turned against me.”

  “You could find some other way to punish him. After all, he’s only eight.”

  “I don’t know any other way to put the pig-headed little bugger in his place. You saw the way he looked at me when he came out of his room! He was mocking me! You said yourself he’s been sent to the principal’s office three times already this month. When I was his age, my parents woulda beat the living crap outta me for a quarter of what he gets away with. And I toed the line at school. The teachers were hardly aware I was there. I did my homework, I learned my lessons, and I minded my own business.”

  Sylvie, shaken, nodded slightly and stood up, having remembered that it was time to get supper ready.

  Charles appeared at the kitchen door in a state of tearful fury aimed at both of them; his cheek was bright red and so swollen that his whole face looked off-kilter.

  “I’m not eating with you! I’m leaving this place! I don’t want to see either of you again! Do you understand! I don’t want to see you ever again!”

  And he turned and ran to the vestibule. Wilfrid jumped up to go after him, but Sylvie held him back.

  “Let him go,” she said quietly. “He’s had his say. The cold will bring him back soon enough.”

  Charles, crying at full throttle now, pulled on his coat and boots and went slowly down the stairs. The porch steps were coated with ice and a glacial wind wrapped itself cruelly around his tense body, making him feel even stiffer. But his cheek hurt less in the cold air; a violent shiver went through him, slowing him down a bit.

  Reaching the sidewalk, he turned towards rue Ontario, passed the restaurant without looking in, and turned left into the alley that ran behind his building. He soon found himself at the fence at the back of his yard; Boff was on the other side, maybe dying of cold. Lifting a large board, Charles crawled into the yard and ran to the doghouse. Seeing him, the animal raised its head and feebly wagged its tail, not having enough strength to stand.

  Kneeling down, Charles wrapped Boff in his arms and cried. Suddenly he came to a decision. He undid the dog’s collar, slid his hands under its chest, and, lifting it up, carried it with difficulty to the gate and out of the yard. In a few minutes he was in front of the Fafards’ house. He climbed heavily up the front steps and, freeing one hand, pressed the doorbell.

  When the door opened, it was Céline, Henri’s sister, who was standing there. He barely knew Céline, had spoken to her only two or three times, in the way boys have of showing supreme indifference to girls their own age.

  “What do you want?” she asked. “Are you giving us a dog? Quick, come inside. It’s freezing!”

  He followed her in, his bravado suddenly fading; the warmth made his cheek throb again. There was the sound of voices and laughter coming from the kitchen.

  “What’s wrong with Boff?” Céline asked, standing in front of him.

  “He’s sick.”

  She put her face close to him and then recoiled:

  “Phew! He stinks!”

  Boff gave a small whimper and shifted in Charles’s arms. Charles put him down on the rug.

  “I came to see Henri.”

  Céline looked down at the dog, which was lying slumped on the rug looking half dead, then ran off towards the kitchen. After a moment her father came out to the hallway, an apron wrapped around his waist.

  “Well, look who’s here! How’s it going, Charles?”

  “Okay,” Charles said, smiling with some difficulty. “But Boff has diarrhea. He’s very sick.” Then, some of his courage having returned, he added: “Could you keep him here with you for a while, Monsieur Fafard, u
ntil he gets better? My father won’t let him in the house. But he’s so weak he’ll die if we leave him out in the cold.”

  The hardware-store owner bent down to look at the dog and stopped when he caught sight of Charles’s face.

  “Great balls of fire! What’s happened to your cheek?”

  Charles looked away.

  “I fell.”

  Fernand kept looking at him.

  “Must have been a strange kind of fall,” he couldn’t help remarking, but seeing Charles’s discomfort he decided not to press it. “Hmm. He doesn’t look too-too good, your Boff … What’s wrong with him?”

  “He ate some bad meat he found in the garbage.”

  “Oh-oh. Maybe he should be looked at by a vet, eh?”

  “I don’t have any money,” Charles said, sobs filling his throat.

  “There there there, no need to cry. Makes the devil laugh, as my father used to say. All in good time. First we’ll take him down to the basement, let him lie beside the furnace, he’ll be snug as a bug in a rug, eh, Boff? Then we’ll make a little phone call.”

  Lucie Fafard came out to the hallway, attracted by the conversation. Seeing Charles she stopped short and brought her hands to her mouth; a discreet sign from her husband, however, told her that it was better to say nothing for the moment.

  Boff, his energy renewed by the warmth of the house, had managed to get on his feet and was sniffing the carpet.

  “Hey!” cried Henri, suddenly appearing behind his mother, followed by Céline, “what’s up with you, Charles? What’s wrong with …”