Charles the Bold

by Yves Beauchemin

  MICHEL:

  Hey, guys! Don’t get yourselves in a knot. If the supervisor sees you, you’ll both end up in the principal’s office.

  FIRST PUPIL:

  He called me a dirty pig!

  MICHEL:

  You’re not a pig and as far as anyone can tell, you’re not dirty, either. (To the second pupil) Why did you call him that?

  SECOND PUPIL:

  He said my sister smells like piss.

  MICHEL:

  (Frowning) Well, does she?

  SECOND PUPIL:

  No! I mean … okay, maybe sometimes she does (general laughter from the onlookers). But (shaking his fist at the first pupil) it’s none of his goddamn business!

  MICHEL:

  (Unmoved) And that’s what you were fighting about? It’s no big deal! When I eat a hamburger, I smell like onions. So what?

  FIRST PUPIL:

  (Sarcastically) Better to smell like onions than piss!

  MICHEL:

  (Turning on first pupil) Once, when I was in Grade One, I had diarrhea (renewed general laughter), and my teacher sent me out of class because I had an accident (more laughter, cries of Phew!). I cried then, but now it doesn’t bother me! (To first pupil) Tell your mother to pay more attention to your sister, make sure she washes a bit more often, the whole thing will blow over. (Back to first pupil) When you were a baby, you smelled like piss, too. So did I. Everyone smells like piss at some time in their lives. It’s really nothing to get excited about.

  Everyone called him Blonblon; it was a slightly mocking nickname, but it also held an appreciable dose of affection. Madame Robidoux, his teacher, called him “the diplomat,” or sometimes even “the priest” or “the missionary,” which always made him wince. He had a sister who was much older than he was, just finishing high school. His mother was a real estate agent and the sole supporter of the family, since his father, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, had been confined to the home for many years; it was perhaps from having grown up with a handicapped parent who required constant care and attention that he had acquired his penchant for looking after others and making sure that harmony reigned, hardly a common trait in someone his age.

  More than once Charles was on the point of telling him about the scene with the stomach pains, but each time the words stuck in his throat. He had Blonblon over to his house two or three times, but his father’s unpredictable behaviour – he had by then lost his job completely and dwelled in a world full of foul moods in which his dependence on alcohol had become more and more obvious – discouraged Charles from making it a habit. He settled for seeing Blonblon at Henri’s house, where Blonblon, with his good manners and his preference for quieter games, was an instant hit with the Fafard parents. He had a calming influence on their own son, and even on Charles.

  Charles’s route to and from school was always along rue Bercy. At a certain point his attention had for some time been drawn to a brass plaque attached to the front of one of the nicer houses, on which could be read:

  PARFAIT MICHAUD

  NOTARY

  The plaque intrigued him for several reasons. How could anyone go around calling himself Parfait? Even if his parents had had the ridiculous notion of calling him Perfect when he was born, he surely could have changed it when he grew up! And then what was a notary, anyway? To judge by the house this Parfait Michaud lived in, whatever he did for a living must bring in a fair amount of money; which again was strange, because he’d never seen anyone either entering or leaving the premises. The whole thing was a mystery to him.

  “What’s a notary?” he asked Sylvie one day.

  “Someone who pushes paper for a living,” she replied.

  “What kind of paper?”

  “Oh, you know, contracts, wills, things like that.”

  “What’s a will?”

  “When a person dies … Oh, I’ll explain it to you some other time. I’m not in the mood today.”

  “Madame Laramée, what’s a notary?” he asked his teacher the next day, unsatisfied with Sylvie’s reply.

  The teacher told him that a notary was someone whose work consisted in putting things down on paper that two parties had agreed to, especially important transactions such as buying or selling houses, transferring money, debts, loans, and so on.

  Charles concluded that being a notary must be an extremely uninteresting way to make a living, and that anyone who even came near such a person would immediately drop dead of boredom.

  Which was a completely erroneous conclusion, at least in Parfait Michaud’s case.

  One morning as Charles was walking to school, an incident took place that made him change his opinion.

  He was walking with Henri and four more or less skeletal dogs that had been following them for a while despite the fact that he had nothing to give them except two miserable crusts of bread, the only food he had in his pocket that morning. But his charm seemed to compensate for the meagreness of his offerings. He had just stopped to pet a large, black, mastiff-like dog that was particularly affectionate when the animal let out a howl of pain and took off down the street. A stone had hit it in the paw.

  Fats Dubé appeared from behind a hedge on the other side of the street, accompanied by his two henchmen, and began to laugh.

  “You asshole!” shouted Charles in fury. “Leave my dogs alone!”

  “Your dogs stink!” one of the henchmen yelled back.

  “And so do you!” added the other.

  A volley of stones made the other three dogs take off, also howling in pain.

  One of the stones struck Henri on the forehead. Unmindful of the blood that was staining his shirt, he chased after the boy who had thrown it, who lit out like an arrow for the safety of the school grounds. Charles remained where he was, without his protector. He picked up a stone and threw it, hitting Dubé on the elbow. Fats let out a cry and vigorously rubbed his arm. Not finding any stones of his own, he ran towards Charles, his second henchman close behind, intent on giving Charles the beating of the century. Charles threw another stone, missing his target, then stood stoically awaiting his destiny. There was no question of running away. His honour was at stake. In seconds the two bullies had stripped him of his school bag and emptied it onto the sidewalk; then Fats Dubé sat on Charles and calmly began strangling him while his henchman stood beside them kicking Charles in the ribs. Fats began experiencing difficulties with his left ear, because Charles was attempting to detach it from Dubé’s head with his teeth. Nonetheless, his attempts to suffocate Charles were bearing fruit; he was on the point of claiming complete victory when he suddenly felt a sharp pain on his backside that made him let go of his quarry. Someone was whipping him! Charles disentangled himself and the two boys stood up, panting. Dubé’s henchman had run off. A tall, thin man in a dark blue, pinstripe suit, holding a fishing rod, grabbed Charles’s assailant by one arm and shook him.

  “You hooligan! Don’t let me catch you at it again! Torturing animals, and then fighting two against one! You should be ashamed! Go smartly, now. I’ve got my eye on you! Next time, I’ll call the police!”

  The scene had taken place before the notary’s house. On the doorstep, with the door wide open, stood a small woman wearing a purple turban, nodding her head approvingly. Charles guessed that the unknown man was her husband, and also the notary.

  Fats Dubé had ran off, sheepishly, although he turned round from time to time to cast furious looks at the man with the fishing rod.

  Charles would have preferred tasting his victory without having had help, but he nevertheless bowed towards his deliverer.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, dusting off his jeans and windbreaker. “And the dogs thank you, too.”

  The man smiled and held out his hand.

  “You strike me as a good little guy,” he said. “I’ve seen you passing the house a good many times with your herd of wild dogs. Are they all yours?”

  “No, sir. My own dog stays at home.”

  “Where d
o they all come from?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. From all over, I guess.”

  “In any case, they seem to be fond of you. You feed them, I shouldn’t wonder?”

  “Not always. When I can. I didn’t have much to offer them today.”

  “Then they must like the way you are with them. I can see why they feel safe with you. Have they been following you about for a long time?”

  “Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir, but I have to go now or I’ll be late for school.”

  “If those hooligans bother you again, just ring my doorbell. My name is Parfait Michaud. I’m almost always home.”

  “And when he isn’t,” called the turbaned woman from the porch, “I am.”

  Weeks went by and summer came. Charles finished second in his class, to Ginette Laramée’s consternation; she would have liked him to have finished first. On the last day of school, just before the class was dismissed, she gave him a present, as she did to each of her pupils. It was an illustrated edition of the better-known fables of La Fontaine. The cover showed a fat crow perched in a tree with a piece of cheese in its beak, staring down at a perky red fox who was winking up at it.

  Charles thanked her with a smile, which pleased her greatly; then, in a rush of affection, he took her hand; the gesture made her weak in the knees, like a convent girl receiving her first kiss.

  “Wait a bit,” she said, “there’s something I want to show you.”

  She finished distributing her gifts, wished each of her pupils a good vacation (“Be careful, have a lot of fun and come back to us in one piece”). Then, when everyone but Charles had left, she opened her desk drawer, took out a parcel wrapped in brown paper and gave it to Charles.

  “A little something extra for you. I bought it for my nephew,” she explained, which was a white lie, “but he’s grown so much it’s much too small for him. I hope you like it.”

  It was a blue cotton shirt, very smart, with shiny, dark-blue buttons. Charles looked at it, surprised and a bit embarrassed, suspecting that the nephew was a fiction.

  “Thank you, Mademoiselle Laramée,” he said with a somewhat forced smile. “It’s very nice. I promise to take good care of it.”

  She leaned towards him and kissed him on both cheeks, a highly unusual gesture for her.

  “Off you go, my boy, and have a good holiday. And keep reading every day. It’s a good habit to get into.”

  And with hasty, awkward movements she began to arrange the papers on her desk.

  13

  Charles guessed that the blue shirt had been the result of an impulse of pity. For some time he had been what modern specialists might call clothing challenged: shapeless socks, thread-bare elbows, underwear about to give up the ghost. Wilfrid’s financial problems had been transferred to his son in ways that were becoming increasingly visible, and it was apparent that the state of Charles’s clothing was no more important to the carpenter than it was to his companion. Lucie Fafard often brought up the matter with her husband, but neither of them dared become involved for fear of rubbing their neighbour’s fur the wrong way.

  Wilfrid was supplementing the money he was collecting from Unemployment Insurance by doing odd jobs under the table around the neighbourhood. A large portion of his earnings, however, were translated into alcohol. Towards the middle of July, a violent argument broke out between him and Sylvie. As he was sitting in the kitchen, beer in hand, she told him she was “fed up with supporting a drunkard,” that it was “high time you got up off your ass and looked for a job,” and that, if in two weeks’ time nothing had been done about it, she’d be “out of here so fast you won’t see my tail lights for dust!”

  Depressed by her relentless criticism, he decided to go down to the Amis du Sport, an institution he’d been supporting for the past few years, to think things over.

  It was there that, after drinking three beers (in an excess of heroism he’d decided to limit his daily intake to that number), he made the acquaintance of a certain Gino Guilbault, known to his friends as Loose Lips; he was an affable, dapper man who looked upon the world with an energetic optimism. Complaining, deep sighing, stomach ulcers, insomnia, all of that he left to the world’s defeatists, hypochondriacs, and other professional depressives. The first time Wilfrid noticed him in the bar he liked what he saw: marine-coloured suit with yellow stripes, sky-blue silk tie shot with gold threads, thick, lustrous hair swept back from his temples. A big, red-faced man who glowed with health and self-confidence, he was sitting by himself with six draughts of beer on the table in front of him, drinking them one by one with deliberate satisfaction. A large, red boil shone softly on one of his cheeks, but, unlike most blemishes, this growth lent his face a sympathetic and unpretentious air, drawing attention from the slight asymmetry of his mouth and its quivering lips.

  He glanced up at the carpenter and smiled, said something pertinent about the state of the weather, and invited him to join him at his table. Wilfrid didn’t need to be asked twice. The promise he’d made to himself about the three beers didn’t extend to those he got for free.

  Introductions made, Gino Guilbault smiled warmly and declared that the beer sitting before them on the table was their common property.

  “A nice, quiet spot,” he added after a contented sigh, his arm sweeping the bar in an all-inclusive gesture. “A fella can come in here and drink his beer in peace and be left alone with his thoughts. You come here often?”

  “When I have the time,” Wilfrid replied cautiously.

  “You have to make the time! Make the time, I say!” replied Guilbault joyously. “We only live once! Even if we had three lives, time would still be a precious commodity!”

  To this Guilbault added several other philosophical considerations of a similar profundity. Then, after apprising himself of his companion’s trade and expressing his deep and abiding admiration for carpenters, he began to speak of his own occupation. Gino Guilbault ran a small charitable company. He sold chocolate bars and gave the majority of his profits to organizations dedicated to the welfare and protection of youth, such as the Boy Scouts, 4-H Clubs, various camps for handicapped or destitute children, sports organizations for the underprivileged, and so on and so forth. Children, both boys and girls, sold the chocolate bars for him, and his company – a modest affair, he hastened to make clear – was at that time in the process of recruiting new salespersons.

  Wilfrid’s eyes lit up. “How much do these kids make?” he asked.

  “Twenty-five cents a bar. It may not seem like much, but an enterprising boy or girl can make up to ten dollars a day. Girls make a little more, in fact. Do you have children?”

  “One, a boy.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Nine.”

  “A good age. Not too old, not too young. Smart kid?”

  “Too damned smart,” Wilfrid said with a puff of paternal pride accentuating his red nose and cheeks. His face, softened by alcohol, took on an expression of grave solemnity. He launched into a flattering description of Charles, doubtless for the first time in his life.

  “Perfect, perfect, just the kind of employee I’m looking for. He’ll make a lot of money, just you wait and see! It’ll be good for him, good for me, good for everyone.”

  He searched the inside pocket of his jacket and gave Thibodeau a card.

  CHOCO CHARITIES

  Society for the Aid of Destitute Youth

  738-9014

  “We work hard at doing good”

  “Tell him to give me a call tomorrow. His hours will always be after school and on weekends. We don’t want to interfere with his studies, naturally.”

  “Don’t you have an address?” asked the carpenter, surprised.

  “No, I’m always on the move. I spend my days on the street, at my suppliers, in the metro stations, places like that. But I have a secretary who takes all my messages.”

  Wilfrid finished his own beer, and Guilbault told him to help himself to the glasses sitting so invitingly under
his eyes, and even nudged one of them towards the carpenter’s hand.

  When Wilfrid arrived home that night around eleven, a bit rubbery in the legs, the apartment was completely dark. He made his way as silently as he could towards his bedroom and stood for a moment leaning in the doorway. A gentle light came in through the parted curtains and fell on the sleeping Sylvie. Because of the heat and humidity, she had thrown off the sheet and blanket, and was lying on her back with her legs apart, snoring lightly. Wilfrid smiled, went over to the bed and slid his hand under her nightgown to caress her breast. Her eyes opened suddenly, and she pushed his hand away, grumbling.

  Disgruntled, he went out into the kitchen and discovered that there was no more beer in the fridge. He flopped down on a chair, leaned back against the table, legs outstretched, and suddenly remembered there was a heel of scotch left in a bottle in the cupboard above the fridge. The next moment he had the bottle out and made the happy discovery that it was a third full; he drained it in one long, satisfying guzzle. A deep sense of well-being spread through his body, and he looked around the kitchen with a benevolent eye.

  Despite his fatigue he did not feel like sleeping. A vague desire welled up within him, a sort of purposeless and causeless elation that also contained an element of piercing sadness and even anger that had to be held in check at all costs, by constantly moving about, by acting, by doing something, anything.

  He stood up with difficulty and went into Charles’s bedroom and sat down heavily on the side of the bed. The boy breathed a deep sigh and smacked his lips, but didn’t awaken. Wilfrid looked at him in the orange light from a Mickey Mouse nightlight installed in the plug beside the dresser; every so often the boy’s eyelids fluttered, or his lips contracted slightly, or his head turned from side to side. But he remained on his back, one arm hanging over the side of the bed, hand open like that of a beggar. He had always slept like that, and it had always bothered the carpenter; he felt as though the hand were there as a reproach to him.

  “Charles!”