*
The day before the taping of Bouillon de culture, Camil and I wandered the streets of Paris, taking time to adjust to the accents and intonations while the French, who probably took us for American tourists, replied to us in English more often than we would have liked. When we were tired, we stopped in the cafés.
“It’s mighty strange. You’d think they couldn’t hear us.”
“I know.”
“Maybe, just before they hear us, they see us and something doesn’t fit right in their heads.”
“Are you thinking we look as bad as all that, then?”
“Don’t know. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much.”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“Could be they don’t hear anyone at all.”
“Well, there is that.”
*
Terry went through all the routine checks not once but five times before casting off and giving the Beausoleil-Broussard its head in the open water of Le Coude, at the foot of Terre-Rouge. The river was brimming over with water that day and allowed for a true aquatic excursion rather than a long muddy slide. The sun was shining and so before they reached Fox Creek, they had all stopped shivering. At this first stop in the tour, the guides gave a brilliant account of Acadia’s past, present, and its future, all to the rhythm of the waves of settlement and unsettlement in the Petitcodiac marshes. Even Terry was swept up in the tale. As he piloted the Beausoleil-Broussard toward the second and last stop of the tour, the site of the aboiteau, Terry realized that seeing this familiar landscape through the eyes of foreign delegates enhanced his own understanding. For the first time, he felt pleased to have been selected to pilot the excursion.
A typical Acadian snack of front-door-garden soup, rapûre, and apple dumplings had been planned at the Clapet restaurant following the boat’s passage through the giant aboiteau. At the gate, before the boat actually went inside the dike, the guides made their presentation on the ancient but efficient technique of draining marshes. After the presentation, as usual, the Beausoleil-Broussard waited for an artificial current to generate, and allow it to enter the aboiteau and rejoin its own history. Once inside the enormous wooden chamber covered in earth and hay, further explanations were offered regarding the very latest technology park engineers had designed to create the impressive reproduction.
*
Once we were in the Bouillon de culture studios, things began to go very quickly for Camil and me. In the blink of an eye, I found myself under French television lights, as though I were in a dream full of illogical and surprising transitions. Finally, the famous TV host turned to me.
“. . . this book in which you not only admit to being an agoraphobe, but you embrace the disease. Really!”
“Well, you know, as your own Professor Jean Delay put it so well, every nervous disease is a revolution.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, because on the evolutionary scale, on the biological scale, if you will, everything is a matter of adaptation. Everything develops in response to the environment, to the surroundings. The changes may be infinitely small and gradual but once they take root, they are there for a very long time. From the point of view of such an astounding biological rootedness, with all the innumerable layers of life of which we are the repositories, any failure to adjust, no matter how insignificant, represents a real movement of resistance. What’s surprising and a source of joy is that we still have the strength and specificity to react. And these are the attributes we admire in revolutions: their strength and specificity.” For a split second I was almost frightened. I hadn’t expected to become inflamed so quickly. I was afraid of what would follow. And so, I suspect, was Bernard Pivot.
“Say, you people in Acadia have been reading more than Antonine Maillet!”
“That’s right, we don’t limit our reading to Antonine Maillet. But her work helps us a great deal in reading ourselves as a people. Not all revolutions are bloody. Some even go unnoticed. One day, just like that, we realize they’ve happened.”
“But let’s get back to your book and agoraphobia.” At this point, Monsieur Pivot remarked that in France the disease, when it isn’t associated with some neurovegetal disorder or other, is better known under different names, such as spasmophilia or chronic fatigue syndrome. “This fear of open spaces then, this need to be enclosed, wouldn’t you prefer to be cured of the illness rather than cling to it and brandish it like some revolutionary banner?”
“It’s difficult to ignore the fact that women are its primary victims. How can we accept that? I therefore advocate in favour of a democratization of agoraphobia. We must work to share this disease equally among men and women.”
“You’re a feminist?”
“How can anyone not be for the happiness of women, as well as that of men, children, the elderly . . .”
“But let’s get back to my earlier question: wouldn’t you prefer to be cured than to carry your revolutionary banner?”
“It’s true that agoraphobia is anything but convenient. I even had trouble getting here to your program.”
“Really? As bad as that?”
“Yes, the airplane, the corridors, the crowds, the leaning buildings . . .”
“Leaning buildings?”
“Yes, on some street corners. It’s rather peculiar.”
“But it can be cured . . .”
“Apparently, some people are cured.”
At this point, Bernard Pivot did what I was hoping he would; he opened my book and read an excerpt. He selected the bit about Hercules and the birds on the shores of Lake Stymphalus. Then he asked me, “Are you implying here that Acadia destroys the traveller?”
“One would have to be ignorant of Acadian history to claim Acadians are not travellers. Although in my case, it may be true. But even if the traveller is dead, the voyage continues.”
This made Bernard Pivot laugh. I like to hear Bernard Pivot laugh. Then he picked up my book again, opening it this time to page 102. “What about this feeling of detachment, this Acadian sixth sense? You don’t have it either?”
“No, not much anymore. I’m more likely to go the way of page 97. A fossil.”
“Don’t you mean a monument? Like that granite cube?”
Now I was the one to laugh. And to be taken by surprise.
“Ooh la la! Lacan! Somebody! Help!”
*
More than once the Petitcodiac had demonstrated that it wasn’t always willing to be harnessed, and so it wasn’t surprising that something would go wrong that day. The real and artificial currents collided with full force and, when the sluice gate couldn’t reopen, the Beausoleil-Broussard, which was supposed to remain enclosed within the giant aboiteau for no more than ten minutes, was stuck there for close to an hour. First there was general consternation but this was soon followed by astonishment that such a problem had never happened before. It was only when the dignitaries realized that their cellphones had ceased to function that the situation became truly serious.
Terry could communicate with technicians on land by marine radio and tried with them to find a way to extricate the little band of futurists from this historic mess. He followed their instructions, went through a series of basic checks, but, in the end, there was nothing to be done. They would simply have to exercise patience and wait for the currents to stabilize and the complex mechanisms to return to their normal operations.
Terry had just settled in and set himself to exercise patience when the writer in the French delegation stepped into the cabin. He entered without a word and began to look through the small aperture that afforded a glimpse of the light and the fields beyond the dam.
“I’ve got no vein.”
Slightly taken aback and unsure of the meaning of the French expression, Terry didn’t risk a response but cast a furtive glance at the Frenchman’s wrists
just in case.
“It doesn’t wear you out?”
Terry hesitated. “You mean, am I tired?”
The Frenchman thought Terry had simply misheard his question. “It doesn’t bother you . . . to be stuck like this, locked in?”
Terry fumbled for a simple answer. “No. I must be used to it.”
“I hate it. It gives me the balls.”
Terry tried to imagine what having the balls could mean. Nor did he have any idea what size of balls to imagine. He thought simultaneously of mothballs and of billiard balls. As the man stood there beside him in silence, Terry began to feel some kinship with him and wanted to lend him some encouragement. “Shouldn’t be too long, I figure. They’ve found the problem.”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“You mind if I haul one?”
Terry saw the pack of cigarettes in the delegate’s hand and understood. Almost no one had the right to smoke in public anymore in Canada, but Terry didn’t have the heart to break it to this pale and drawn man clearly in need of some air. Instead, he stepped forward, opened a small side window and closed another behind him. “Try to blow your smoke over that way.”
The man offered him one but Terry wouldn’t allow himself such a breach of conduct with the park director on board.
“. . .”
“. . .”
All the same, Canada is a beautiful country. All those wide open spaces.”
“Yeah. Most people like it.”
“. . .”
“Well, to tell the truth, there’s times I find it all too big really. It never ends.”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Terry.”
“Thierry?”
“Terry. Terrence. Terrence Thibodeau.”
“Terrence Thibodeau. Is that a typical Acadian name?”
“Hard to tell. I guess so.”
*
The words were pouring out of my mouth as though they’d been dying to get out. From the corner of my eye, I could see Camil in the audience. I couldn’t quite read his look of astonishment: should I restrain myself or press on?
Bernard Pivot was quick to take up the challenge. “In this book, you also deal with the difficult and confusing relations between Acadia and France ... You describe an incident that takes place on the river . . . Hang on while I get the pronunciation of that name right.” He leafed through Just Fine until he found the page. “Here it is . . . the Pe-tit-co-di-ac River. There’s a delegation of officials on board a pontoon boat. Among them are some Frenchmen, including a writer. And only the writer takes the trouble to go up and speak to the young captain of the boat. Are you saying that only writers are sensitive to life and ordinary people around them?”
“Maybe. I suppose we have to try to maintain a myth or two. But you can’t forget that this particular writer is anxious and that he approaches Terry, the commonest of mortals, precisely in the hope of clinging to some part of reality.”
“Well alright, let’s talk about young Terry, a very likeable character who wonders if one can survive without having read the Bible. But perhaps we should be talking instead about his uncle, Alphonse Thibodeau, the minister of culture who is also a lover of wine.”
“Yes, we Acadians have taken a liking to wine.”
“This minister, does he really exist, or is he a fictional character? Because, in your book — I don’t know if this is a common style in your country — one can’t easily distinguish the real from the fictional.”
“Alphonse Thibodeau, minister of culture, is a fictional character.”
“But you do have a minister of culture . . .”
“Hmm yes . . .”
“And what does he or she do exactly?”
“Oh, lots of things. They’re responsible for municipalities and housing, for example.”
“Oh? And who’s responsible for language, for the arts?”
“Well, everyone I suppose, and no one.”
“And this works?”
“You should come and judge for yourself.”
“There’s so much more we could discuss about this book, many metaphors and allusions that would be fascinating to explore, the painting by Bruegel the Elder, for example, and the Dieppe Landing with its tirade about heroism. And then there’s the bit on the impact of tourism on ancient myths, like Sisyphus and the impossibility of leisure. And there are the symbols of the snail, the triangle, and the Trinity.” Monsieur Pivot lifted his gaze from his notes and looked at me. I was afraid he was about to question me on the Trinity thing. Had I really written something about that? “And those sections on astrology . . . if I understand correctly, this book belongs under the influence of the twelfth house, which would be, in fact, the temptation of autobiography.”
I found the remark extremely pertinent. “Indeed. I hadn’t thought of it, but you’re absolutely right.”
“This autobiographical temptation is quite widespread today . . .”
“Yes. It’s the wretched soul telling his or her story, as Raymond Carver describes it so well in ‘Blackbird Pie.’ For my part, I have to admit the autobiographical angle bothers me a bit. I would have preferred to avoid it, but I couldn’t manage it. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to hide, I couldn’t hide the truth, the painful truth, in a fictional character, much as it embarrasses me to expose myself this way.”
“One cannot escape one’s time.”
“True. I can’t remember who it was that said artists don’t have as much freedom as we’d like to think, that freedom is not absolute, that each era gets its share of freedom and even artists must be satisfied with that amount. I remember now: it was Kandinsky, I think.”
XXIII
TERRY THOUGHT HE’D told Carmen the whole story of his half-hour with the anxious Frenchman in the helmsman’s cabin of the boat. But, as days went by, he realized there were always bits left to tell. “He asked me what the Petitcodiac looks like in winter.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Well, I had to think about it. Never had reason to describe it before. You don’t often go describing something everybody can see for themselves.”
“Well, what did you say, then?”
“I said the river doesn’t freeze, though it does get filled up with snow and ice all around, and there’s something like a big wall of earth and ice going up on either side. And while I was telling it to him, it came to me that that’s the time the river’s really and truly most beautiful. When it looks like nothing else, just water running along between two walls of earth and ice and sometimes a bit of mist floating just above.”
“You think he could imagine it?”
“Well, I can’t say, really. Probably not.”
“. . .”
“But, he did give me his card.”
“His card?”
Terry took out the business card and gave it to Carmen.
She studied it and handed it back. “Better keep it. You never know.”
Terry took the card back and returned it to the little slot in his wallet from which he had taken it. “I wonder where Creuse might be.”
*
Camil had truly enjoyed watching the taping of Bouillon de culture. During the rest of our trip, he repeated several times how glad he was he’d agreed to come along with me. “And I really enjoyed listening to you. What you have to say is really interesting. I think you’re brilliant. Seriously. I can’t believe you really come from our parts.”
“Well, to tell the truth, sometimes it would be a lot easier if I was just normal.”
“Oh, we Acadians have trouble standing out. You’d think we were afraid of shining.”
It was noon and hunger had begun to gnaw at us. We walked into an ordinary-looking caf
é.
“I think I’ll just have a hot dog in a baguette.”
“Good idea. When in Paris . . .”
*
After Élizabeth’s departure, Hans wandered a while over the surface of the globe and the surface of things in general. He didn’t actively seek out new destinations but was content to imagine contexts and atmospheres, climates and sonic backgrounds. He watched life unfold, allowing himself to be swept along and inspired by it. Worlds drifted through his mind. Some called out to him; others let him pass. Life without an ultimate goal seemed worthwhile in itself. There seemed to be value in the very lightness of life, as fragile as it was demanding in its equilibrium. He took the time to enjoy it without really analyzing it, without really attempting to describe it. He allowed himself to be penetrated by whatever sought to penetrate, he veered whenever called upon to veer, and he always ended up somewhere. When all was said and done — several days or several weeks later — he found he liked the fact that the world was round. Quite simply.
*
I was chewing on my merguez sausage and ruminating on our recent conversation. I felt bad about giving Camil the impression I wasn’t proud of myself or happy with my lot in life. Of course, I enjoyed his compliments. But I kept remembering a discussion I’d had with the hairdresser who’d cut my hair a few weeks before the trip.
“You write books? Really? Geeeee . . . I had no idea any one was doing that sort of thing round here.”
“Oh yeah, there’s a few.”
“Really? Wowww . . .”
The incident made Camil laugh, although it must be said, he laughed easily. It was as though life was always tickling him. “Well, sure. It’s true, sometimes the level does get pretty low. So low it crashes.” He ordered two more glasses of wine, and added, “And why do you think I went and changed my name? Just to be different. But I’m not a good model for anyone, I should’ve gone a whole lot further.” He raised his glass, tapped mine, and made his toast. “To Steppette!”
Just Fine Page 10
