Charles the Bold

by Yves Beauchemin

  In early August, Blonblon joined Guilbault’s team, but he quit after three weeks, discouraged by the hard work. When Charles worked the Frontenac metro station, Blonblon would sometimes keep him company, run errands for him. But Charles was so caught up in his work he barely paid attention to his friend, and the visits trailed off and eventually ended altogether.

  In any case, Charles soon stopped going to the Frontenac station. Monsieur Saint-Amour had spotted him there. Charles saw him coming down the street one day, walking slowly, his shoulders hunched over, his eye sweeping the sidewalk in front of him; in his shapeless brown suit, bulging here and there in odd places, he looked like a sack of potatoes with feet. His face was dark and creased, also like a potato, an old potato someone had forgotten in a corner somewhere, over which had grown a thin layer of mould, separated down the middle by a furrow.

  “Charles, dear boy! What are you up to these days? No longer working at Chez Robert, I’ve noticed.”

  “No,” the boy replied coldly.

  “Ah, that’s too bad. My pizzas are cold by the time I get them now … I miss you, you know. You must come to see me one of these days … And – have you forgotten? – I still have that little surprise I promised to show you. Will you come?”

  “I’ll try,” he said evasively, “but I have a lot of work to do, you know.”

  And turning away, he put on his forced smile and approached a large woman who was walking with the candid yet slightly stiff air of a nun.

  Saint-Amour turned up every day in the early afternoon and bought a chocolate bar, always taking advantage of the situation to hold Charles’s hand a little too long, or to pat his back; then, standing off to one side, he would watch the boy with his creepy eyes. By the fifth day Charles was so put off by these attentions that he told his boss he wanted to move to a different location, because a stranger was making advances to him. Guilbault was outraged; he said he’d go for the pervert “from zero to sixty in three seconds flat!” He’d run into those “little carrot-lovers” before, he said. But Charles, having little confidence that such methods would actually settle the matter, politely refused Guilbault’s offer, saying the stranger hadn’t really done him any harm, and that for the time being he’d just as soon work somewhere else.

  As September drew near, Charles was earning twenty-five dollars a week, sometimes more. He took Lucie’s advice and opened a savings account at the Saint-Eusèbe Credit Union. Wilfrid had been following his son’s career with a great deal of interest for some time, and one fine morning demanded that Charles pay him half of his earnings, since he himself was still out of work and could no longer make ends meet. From then on, he said, Charles should be “paying for his keep.”

  “I’m the one he should be giving money to,” Sylvie declared in a voice that brooked no reply. “After all, who do you think pays for everything around here?”

  Wilfrid grumbled a bit but didn’t dare argue with her. And so every Monday night Charles gave Sylvie part of his earnings. At least she used the money for the household, and sometimes even secretly returned some of it to Charles.

  “I wish I could give it all back to you, Charles,” she said to him one day, giving him a rare peck on the cheek, “but the way your father goes through money, I really need it.”

  School was about to re-open. Charles was going into Grade Four. One night, while he was eating dinner (again!) at the Fafards’, Fernand set down his cutlery on his carefully wiped plate (he ate at the same rate as Napoleon) and asked him, apropos of nothing, if he intended to go on selling chocolate bars for much longer.

  “I’d like to stop,” said Charles, his face clouding over, “but I’m not sure my father would let me.”

  “Hmmm,” said Fernand, frowning. “It’s funny, though, isn’t it … You know, with your studies and everything … at least … You can’t serve two masters and all that … Something to think about, anyway.”

  He looked at his wife helplessly.

  Guilbault had been thinking about the same problem for some time. It always came up when school started in September, and he always had to find individual solutions to it. Usually he let his average salespersons go without making much of a fuss, but he went to great lengths and exercised much ingenuity to hang on to his best sellers for as long as possible.

  Two days before Charles and Fernand had their somewhat short conversation, Guilbault was walking along rue Ontario with Charles in search of a nourishing but inexpensive lunch, when Charles stopped suddenly at a bicycle-store window and gazed ecstatically at a superb ten-speed in metallic blue, equipped with pedal traps. A light bulb went on in the businessman’s brain.

  “You like that bike, Charlie?”

  “Do I ever! Mine’s pretty busted up and the gears don’t work too well …”

  “It’s a beautiful bike, that’s for sure … Hey!” he said as though struck by a sudden inspiration, “why don’t I buy it for you? You can pay me back, a little bit every week. That way you don’t have to wait to buy it.”

  Charles turned to him with a look of burning desire.

  “I don’t know what my father would say … It’s seventy-nine dollars!”

  “I’ll fix it with your father, don’t worry about that. Come on! Gotta raise your gun when the geese are overhead, eh? Otherwise all you get to eat is baloney …”

  When Charles left the shop, he was walking on air. The shop-owner had put the bicycle aside for him until the next day; Guilbault had arranged to speak to the carpenter about it that very night.

  “So, you’re happy?” asked the businessman with his crooked smile.

  Charles looked at him without speaking, too emotional to say anything.

  “Thank you, Monsieur Guilbault,” he finally managed. “You have done me a great favour. Thank you, thank you so much!”

  Guilbault gave a little coo of satisfaction and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “If there’s ever anything else I can do for you, Charles, don’t be shy about asking!”

  They walked along the street talking animatedly, like two friends. Charles was already riding his new bicycle in his mind, and the businessman was calculating how many weeks it would take for his little salesman to pay off the debt. With a bit of luck he might be able to make it last until mid-winter, maybe longer. His smile broadened, and a saucy little smile played at the edges of his lips.

  The rupture, however, was fast approaching. And it would be brutal.

  14

  School started on the seventh of September. Charles gave it all the attention his job as an itinerant salesman would allow, which meant not much. In fact, it took almost all the energy he had just to stay awake in class. His teacher, Madame Jacob, who was new to the school, pigeonholed him as a professional slacker and relegated him to a place among her least promising pupils.

  She was a woman in her mid-forties, nervous, very emotional, and slightly out of sync with the other teachers at Saint-Anselme Elementary. She wore makeup like a supermodel, dyed her hair blonde with platinum highlights, kept it in a style of meticulous disarray, dressed in flamboyant outfits, with enormous, diamond-studded rings on fingers tipped with false nails painted pink. Twenty times a day she peered anxiously into her compact, as though looking for signs of slow decline in her overblown beauty. Within three days her pupils, in their usual cruel and perceptive way, were calling her Minoune – a term that could mean either a somewhat plump and pampered cat or an old car that has outlived its usefulness.

  They thought they’d found in her the ideal outlet for their overflowing energy. Minoune quickly disabused them of that notion. She may have been a hypersensitive coquette, but over the years she had nonetheless developed an incredibly efficient means of self-defence; the gaze with which she swept the class seemed to be all-seeing. She could hear the slightest whisper, and her false fingernails would sink like talons into the arm or neck of an undisciplined child.

  Charles had never before met a woman who was so much the grande dame. He imagined she
must have been enormously wealthy, and wondered what she was doing teaching school. A few days after school started, he gathered up enough courage to go up to her during recess and try to sell her some chocolate bars. She gave a shy, almost disdainful laugh and bought three, which confirmed Charles in his suspicion that she was rich.

  “ ‘For the Support of the Sainte-Justine Hospital Centre for the Hearing Impaired,’ ” she read on the label. “Do you have hearing problems, Charles?”

  “No, not at all, Madame.”

  “So why are you selling these bars?”

  “To help those children who do have problems, and also to make a bit of money for myself.”

  “I see. Do you sell very many?”

  “I do all right,” he said with a modest smile. “Last weekend I sold eighty-seven.”

  She looked at him a moment, fiddling with one of her rings, then adopted the condescending, slightly detached air with which adults sometimes address future low-income earners (and what country doesn’t need them?).

  “Well, don’t waste too much time on them,” she said. “You have to keep up with your studies, you know.”

  Charles had recently changed his opinion on that subject. What was most important to him from now on was to make money, as much money as possible. With money you could buy a bicycle on credit. You could treat your friends. With money you could help your father (a bit), who was on Unemployment. Of course he didn’t have much choice in that matter, as Sylvie had made sufficiently clear.

  But school didn’t solve any real problems, nor did it give him any real pleasure, or at least very little. Only money did that. And to make money, he had to work.

  The next Saturday morning he dashed joyfully down the staircase and into Gino Guilbault’s purple Lincoln, which was parked in front of his building. In the back seat a young girl was squeezed in between two enormous boxes of chocolate bars.

  “Hi there, Charlie my boy!” cried the businessman happily as Charles took his place in the front passenger seat. “You look in fine fettle this morning! Sleep well?”

  “Very well, Gino.”

  “Well, let the Devil fart in my nose if you don’t sell forty bars today!”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Charles, I want you to meet Josiane. She’s new. She’s still a bit nervous, so I’m going to put her in a spot not far from you so you can help her out if she needs anything, okay?”

  Charles turned around and said hello in his friendliest voice. “There’s nothing to it, you’ll see,” he added. “All you have to do is be nice to people, that’s usually all it takes. And you’re a girl. It’s even easier for girls.”

  Josiane gave him a tight-lipped smile, pressed her knees together, and looked away. The boxes on either side of her made her look tiny. Charles felt sorry for her, and told himself he’d help her as much as he could.

  By lunchtime he had already sold eighteen bars, while Josiane had sold only three. Charles went over to her and was busy teaching her a few tricks of the trade when the purple Lincoln pulled up in front of them. When he heard how few sales the girl had made Guilbault frowned, but quickly hid his annoyance behind his affable demeanour.

  “Hey, hey, Josiane,” he said, patting her on the head, “what’s with the long face? You’re going to frighten off the pigeons! Let’s see you smile, you’ll get the hang of it” – or else you’ll go back to the welfare centre so fast it’ll make your head spin, he added to himself. “Come on, the two of you, I’ll treat you to a couple of hot dogs at the Greek place across the street. You’ll work better on a full stomach!”

  It was in the greasy spoon that events suddenly took an unexpected turn. After making short work of a club sandwich, which unfortunately came with a chicken bone that almost got caught in his throat, Guilbault excused himself from the table to make a phone call. A few seconds later, Charles also got up to go to the washroom.

  The washrooms were down a narrow hallway in which the payphones had been installed. Charles had to pass the businessman, whose back was to him and who was absorbed in a serious conversation. Charles went into the washroom and took his place before the urinal – and heard his name being mentioned by Guilbault as clearly as if the man were standing beside him. He listened in on the conversation.

  “I tell you, my friend,” the businessman was saying warmly while Charles listened, wide-eyed, “if I could lay my hands on two or three more kids like little Thibodeau I could retire in five years and live like a king in the lap of luxury. Not a word of a lie, that kid makes me an average of a hundred bucks a week! Can you believe it? But what am I going to do?” he sighed. “How am I going to find more like him? I have to look, and who’s got the time for that? … Why not? Right now I’ve got thirty-four kids, Serge! Do you have any idea what that means? On any given day this one quits, that one gets sick, another one can’t keep his money straight, another one goes to the wrong street, another one has a breakdown, and another one is stealing bars from me. I’d need two heads and eight arms … On the other hand, if you came in with me, Serge my boy, I’d have more time to recruit better sellers … Everything’s in place, I tell you! I’m beginning to get the hang of it, after all this time! And then, my friend, we’ll be rolling in more dough than the guy who invented rubbers.”

  Quietly, Charles left the washroom, overcome by a feeling of dread, the cause of which he only vaguely grasped. He passed Guilbault, who was still on the phone, and sat back down at the table. He looked without appetite at his cold hot dog. Had Josiane been left alone too long? She was looking at him silently, her mouth twisted and her eyes shining with tears.

  “Is something wrong?” Charles asked her.

  She shook her head, but two tears rolled down her cheeks and into her mouth, where they joined a paste of mustard-coloured hot-dog bun. Then Guilbault came back rubbing his hands together.

  “What’s the matter, kids?” he said, surprised by the long faces. “You get run over by a hearse or something?”

  Charles pushed his plate away and said he wasn’t hungry. Josiane did the same. The businessman looked from one to the other, more and more mystified.

  “ ’Fess up, you two. Have you had a falling out?”

  It was only after Guilbault had left with the sobbing Josiane – she’d insisted on being taken home – that Charles knew without a shadow of a doubt that for the past two months he’d been working for peanuts for a crook who was filling his own pockets, and that the only needy children he was helping existed in the businessman’s imagination. He was overcome by rage; his back broke out in a cold sweat and his shoes felt as though they were red hot. He went on selling chocolate bars as though nothing were wrong, however. After a few minutes his rebellion gave way to a cold, calm determination to get revenge. He would have the perfect opportunity that same day.

  At six o’clock the sun was setting and the city was bathed in a cool breeze. By that time there were few pedestrians on the streets. Charles shivered and suddenly felt extremely tired. His stomach had been grumbling for an hour, and he decided he’d call it a day. He’d begun outside the Frontenac station, then, after Josiane left, he’d gone door-to-door up and down the neighbouring streets (a good strategy on weekends) and now found himself at the corner of Logan and de la Visitation. He bought a bag of potato chips to stave off his hunger and began to walk home, hoping that Sylvie would be there and that supper would be waiting for him. He balanced his nearly empty chocolate bar box on one finger and felt his pocket bulging with bills and coins. “He’s not going to get a penny of it, the bloody thief!” he told himself between clenched teeth for the twentieth time that day.

  He had just turned onto rue Ontario when the purple Lincoln pulled up and kept pace beside him as he walked.

  “Come on, hop in!” Guilbault cried happily. “Save some shoeleather.”

  Charles hesitated a second, then climbed in when Guilbault insisted he take his place in the car. Prudence cautioned him to hide his anger, but he didn’t know if he h
ad enough strength.

  “Where were you off to?”

  “Home.”

  “You’re quitting early!”

  “I’m tired,” Charles said without looking at the man.

  “It’s true, it’s tiring work,” agreed Guilbault, patting the boy’s knee sympathetically.

  A small explosion, like a gunshot, accompanied the final syllable of Guilbault’s sentence. Charles looked at him. Guilbault had stopped at a red light; his face had taken on a greenish tinge and was stretched out of shape, contradicting the sympathy he was trying to show. His left hand alternated between his stomach and his mouth, massaging the former in large, circular movements, and at the same time trying to cover the latter, from which erupted a series of deep, cavernous burps.

  “It’s that goddamned club sandwich I had at noon,” he finally said. “Doesn’t want to stay down. That bloody chicken was an old hen when my grandfather was being … ’scuse me … potty trained … It’s sitting in my gut like a lump of cold porridge …”

  He tried to whistle, but gave it up.

  “How many bars did you sell today?”

  “Forty-four.”

  “That’s good, Charlie my boy! And it’s only ten after six! A little more … ’scuse me … effort and you might beat your record of fifty-one, eh? What say we go to a restaurant? We can put a little lead back in your wings, and I can have a cup of hot tea. Help clean out my system. What do you say?”

  “No thanks. I don’t feel like it.”

  Guilbault, still rubbing his stomach, looked at the boy out of the corner of his eye. He was surprised, but he didn’t say anything. His instinct told him it was better not to insist.

  “Okay, whatever you say … Nothing like a good home-cooked meal prepared by your … urrrp! … mother.”

  “I don’t have a mother,” Charles couldn’t help saying in an acid voice, still looking straight ahead.

  Guilbault looked at him more carefully.