The Years of Fire Read online

  Praise for Charles the Bold

  “ ‘The author of The Alley Cat in peak form,’ says the publisher’s press release. For once, this praise is no exaggeration.”

  – La Presse

  “Charles is a kind of Oliver Twist and this is a very Dickensian story with a peculiarly Quebecois spin.… We’re willingly drawn along on the narrative, bouncing from episode to episode as Charles ages. The near-magical coincidences of history with the turning points in Charles’s life, together with the sentimentally charged symbols, characters and events, give this book a sparkle that counterbalances the tragedies and drudgeries Charles endures. This is a book to be read for the pleasure of it, for the characters we come to know and worry over, for the genuine suspense of all his childhood crises.”

  – Michel Basilières, Toronto Star

  “Beauchemin’s exceedingly readable and enchanting novel brings to life an indomitable child who survives and prospers despite his rough crossing.… A consummate storyteller, Beauchemin has been compared to Dickens, Rabelais and Balzac – just the captain to navigate us through the rough waters of an unforgettable character’s life.”

  – Elizabeth Johnston, Globe and Mail

  “Charles the Bold is a truly astonishing work. A beautifully crafted portrait of the artist as a young child, of a boy seeking shelter in a world over which he holds little power, and of a Quebec awakening to a new political reality. From the yellow dog to Fernand Fafard, this is a novel overflowing with unforgettable characters. I never wanted it to end, and when it did, I wanted to leap immediately into Wayne Grady’s luminous translation of the next volume. I only hope that Charles the Bold will claim its place as one of the great works of Canadian literature.”

  – Madeleine Thien

  “This is a delicious book to read – Beauchemin at his best.”

  – Radio-Canada

  “The book of the fall! A literary event.”

  – Le Soleil

  “Charles the Bold is a daring, fascinating, funny, intense, sad story.”

  – Raymond Beauchemin, Montreal Gazette

  “You’re in good hands with one of Canada’s best storytellers.”

  – Winnipeg Free Press

  Praise for The Years of Fire

  “Here’s a warm welcome to volume two of the life and times of Charles the Bold, Yves Beauchemin’s Dickensian serial salute to his beloved Montreal.… While I thoroughly enjoyed Charles the Bold, I simply loved The Years of Fire.… [T]his intentionally Balzacian portrait of a time and place gets the Montreal of my own early years exactly right – so much so that reading this book was, for me, a trip home.… Beauchemin’s storytelling gifts are as strong as they’ve ever been here.… [T]his installment hits the ground running and never looks back. It’s a fast, fun, touching ride.… Here’s something genuinely serious and important that’s neither pretentious nor boring. How often do we get that?”

  – Toronto Star

  “Yves Beauchemin’s second novel in the Charles the Bold series … does not disappoint.… Beauchemin’s consummate descriptive skill places us in the hands of an expert storyteller.… As he did in the first volume, Beauchemin effortlessly aligns our sympathies with Charles.”

  – Elizabeth Johnston, Globe and Mail

  “Beauchemin weaves powerful themes through his hero’s tale.… Beauchemin still revels in deft and humorous description.… With his vivid cast of characters, a hero you can love even when he’s screwing up, and a dynamic sense of history, Beauchemin may just be Canada’s Dickens.… [R]eaders of this volume will be eager for the next.”

  – Winnipeg Free Press

  “The Years of Fire is one of those ‘great books’: It is replete with passion, greed, ambition, hatred, yes, all in combat, mano-a-mano, with virtue, love, friendship, genius and integrity. No wonder Beauchemin is considered Quebec’s Balzac.”

  – Montreal Gazette

  “Wayne Grady’s translation captures the good-humoured tone of the original, and usually successfully finds equivalents for the slang and turns of phrase that gave the original much local colour.”

  – Quill & Quire

  Original title: Charles le téméraire

  Copyright © 2007 by Éditions Fides

  Published under arrangement with Éditions Fides, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  English translation copyright © 2007 by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  Translated from the French by Wayne Grady

  This translation comprises the second half of Charles le Téméraire: Un temps de chien.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Beauchemin, Yves, 1941-

  [Saut dans le vide. English]

  The years of fire / Yves Beauchemin ; translated by Wayne Grady.

  Translation of volume 2 in the Charles the bold trilogy: Un saut dans le vide.

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-276-1

  I. Grady, Wayne II. Title. III. Saut dans le vide. English.

  PS8553.E172S3813 2007 C843′.54 C2006-904214-4

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  A Douglas Gibson Book

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Other Titles from Douglas Gibson Books

  THE STORY SO FAR

  CHARLES THIBODEAU, born in 1966 in the east end of Montreal, experienced a hard early life. His mother, Alice, died when he was four. A few years later, his father, Wilfrid, a carpenter with a drinking problem, treated him so badly that, with the help of a local notary, he was taken in by kind neighbours, Lucie and Fernand Fafard. This was a godsend for Charles and his dog, Boff, since the Fafard children, Henri (a boy of his age) and his younger sister, Céline, were fond of Charles, as was his good friend Blonblon.

  Charles is very bright and a keen reader, but by the time he begins classes at Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur Secondary School, his adventures have already earned him the nickname “Charles the Bold.”

  1

  There was no student revolt at Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur School, at least not at mid-term. The school’s principal, Monsieur Robert-Aimé Doyon, was a small, lively man with piercing eyes, a firm jaw, and even firmer ideas, which were as integrated with each other as bricks in a wall. He wanted his school to be a bastion of discipline, hard work, and cleanliness. He considered the establishment of such a cult his personal duty, and he imposed it upon ev
eryone who passed through his school, whether regularly or only occasionally. His subdued but steely voice drew instant attention and respect. He forbade his teachers to wear beards or moustaches, had metal flanges screwed to the stair handrails to discourage anyone from sliding down them, and flew into such cold rages at the sight of a poorly swept hallway or a scrap of paper lying on the grounds that the caretaker had become a ghostly insomniac who made tours of inspection in the middle of the night. The poor travelling salesman who stood before him with a shirt button unfastened, or his tie knot slightly askew, or his shoes less than impeccably polished had his attention politely but firmly drawn to his deficiency at the start of any meeting. And if the same salesman was so imprudent as to adopt some of the overly familiar sales strategies that were practised in America – calling the client by his first name, for example, or resting a hand on his shoulder while telling an off-colour joke – the principal would fix him with his famous cold stare and ask, icily, “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

  It was therefore not a good idea to be sent to Robert-Aimé Doyon’s office on any disciplinary matter. Students who entered his precinct did so with the pallor of a French nobleman climbing the steps to the guillotine, and left looking overwhelmed, and with a fairly full timetable. As a result, the teachers at Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur felt no particular warmth towards their principal, though each was well aware that the man’s despotic approach made their jobs a lot easier.

  The students were no less keen to get through their time at Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur and move on to their next level of education. Pierre-Dupuy High School was just down the street, and was a stark contrast to their own school; it was co-ed, for one thing, and seemed possessed of an infinitely more relaxed attitude. The fascination the high school exerted on the younger students had increased when a fire broke out in the building the previous winter, caused by a student with an acetylene torch, and completely demolished the building’s fifth floor. And then there were the stories told about the high school’s famous shower rooms, in which students were obliged to shower in groups, naked, whether they liked it or not.

  After class, the students of Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur would gather discreetly on rue Fullum, across from Pierre-Dupuy, to watch the “big kids” leaving their enviable school. It was a way of preparing themselves for the new life that awaited them. They would observe the expressions, learn the swear words, and study the behaviours that were current among high school students. Thus it was that one afternoon Charles received his first hormonal shock.

  The large, rubber-boned student whose ego had received a bruising in the scuffle with Charles at the Sacred Heart statue earlier in the year had slowly developed a kind of friendship with him. He had the somewhat picturesque name of Steve Lachapelle, and he lived with his mother and two sisters (his father having taken off several years before). Like many of his fellow students, Lachapelle came to school two out of three days with an empty stomach, a mouth full of saliva, and his attention scattered to the four winds. Charles and Henri had noticed this and from time to time shared their lunches with him. Despite his name, Lachapelle was a real devil. He was in school only because the law forced him to be, and so all he wanted to do was play tricks on his comrades, have a few laughs, and get out as soon as he was legally able to get a “good job” that paid “lots of dough” so he could buy himself some “wheels” and “pick up chicks.” His physical development was a bit ahead of Charles’s, whose own interest in the opposite sex existed somewhere out on the fringes of his consciousness.

  One afternoon after class, however, Lachapelle invited Charles up to Dupuy to “check out the action” leaving school. The two friends stationed themselves in front of the Grover Building, a textile factory across from the high school that, day and night, filled the entire neighbourhood with a low hum. With their school backpacks on the sidewalk, they pretended to be engaged in an animated discussion, but their eyes constantly scanned the flood of students pouring into the street. Lachapelle was excitedly eyeing the “chicks,” and Charles was imitating him. They were, however, being discreet about it, since it was well known that any “babies” from Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur caught hassling their elders on rue Fullum were liable to get a shit-kicking.

  Suddenly, moving through the throng of people and the clouds of cigarette smoke, Charles saw a beautiful, young, black girl of about fourteen or fifteen, dressed in a black leather miniskirt and a blouse the colour of liquid aluminum, with a black spiderweb pattern over her incredible breasts. His astonished eyes didn’t know where to come to rest: on her aristocratic face, illuminated by angelic eyes the whites of which seemed almost phosphorescent? On her legs, which were long and fine and magnificently bronzed in the caressing light? On her feet, with their mauve toenails encased in black, high-heeled sandals? On her supple, mobile waist? On her hips, her forehead, her slightly red-tinted hair? Adopting a vaguely disdainful air, she moved with regal slowness through the crowd like a goddess risen from the sacred depths of the jungle for the sole purpose of being admired for her beauty in the dust of Faubourg-à-la-Mélasse.

  Charles was thunderstruck. He stood with his mouth hanging open as though he had seen a ghost, staring at her with such intensity that Steve elbowed him in the ribs, worried that he would draw unfavourable attention from the high-schoolers. Charles hardly noticed. For the first time in his life he had seen Woman, the Great Temptress, the bulging Cornucopia from which flowed the water that turned the great wheels of life.

  Finally, fearing trouble, Steve grabbed his friend by the arm and dragged him quickly towards rue Ontario. Like a sleepwalker, Charles let himself be led off without a word. Two or three times he looked back, but the black girl had disappeared, no doubt on the arm of one of the high-schoolers. What boy would be good enough for her?

  “Holy shit, that tarbaby sure turned your crank, didn’t she?” exclaimed Steve, after a prolonged silence from his companion.

  Charles stopped. “Watch your mouth, you jerk!” he said, furious. “She’s not a tarbaby! You’re not good enough to lick the sidewalk she walks on!”

  And he began walking again, his head held stiffly and his eyes staring directly ahead of him.

  After a moment Steve hurried contritely after him. “All right, she wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. I’d screw her, for sure. But did you see that blonde walking beside her, the one with the huge tits and the great ass on her?”

  Still engrossed in his vision, Charles wasn’t listening. He was savouring the memory of his Black Goddess as he would hold a candy in his mouth, savouring the juice.

  That night after supper he went into the garage workshop with Blonblon to help with an emergency repair job. He tried to describe his experience of the afternoon as best he could. Blonblon listened with a surprised smile, then suddenly put his finger to his lips: Céline was leaning against the wall outside the shed, near the open doorway, listening to their conversation. Charles turned and saw the edge of her skirt.

  “Céline,” he said sternly.

  She appeared in the doorway, her hands on her hips.

  “What? I’ve got a right to be in my own yard, haven’t I? It’s not my fault if you’re always telling your stupid stories!”

  Her scorn was so obvious that Charles broke out laughing. She ran off, stifling a sob.

  He turned back to Blonblon, his mouth screwed up in perplexity. Blonblon sighed loudly and went back to his work.

  “What’s up with her?” Charles asked after a moment’s silence.

  Blonblon looked up calmly, with that look of wisdom that had always set him apart from other boys his age. He explained that Céline’s anger probably stemmed from her feelings of jealousy. “And when you are jealous of someone, it’s usually because you’re in love with them.”

  “Céline? In love with me?” exclaimed Charles, stunned. “But she’s like my sister!”

  “No accounting for love, my friend,” said Blonblon. “You’re in love with your Black Goddess, and you haven’t even spo
ken a word to her yet.”

  Blonblon’s revelation troubled Charles for several minutes. Then he told Blonblon that for all his philosophy he didn’t know what he was talking about. How could a little eleven-year-old girl fall in love with a boy of thirteen?

  When he saw Céline again that evening, she seemed to have forgotten the scene at the garage. She barely paid attention to him at all. He decided that Blonblon was wrong and that he, Charles, was right. He finished his history homework, breezed through his math (with only middling success), and took his evening shower. In the warm, stinging water he gave himself the kind of treatment he would have liked to have enjoyed with the beautiful black girl.

  The next day he was at his post on rue Fullum, ready to worship the Goddess. He barely caught a glimpse of her before she moved off with a group of other girls. The next time he took Henri with him, having let him in on the fact that he’d fallen head over heels for Black Beauty; Steve had refused to go because he found it too risky. But the Goddess didn’t appear. Several days went by. Sometimes he saw her, sometimes he didn’t. His frustratingly Platonic love made him walk around with eyes like a mooncalf. He stood off by himself in secluded places, hands in pockets, lost in reverie, sighing deeply, counting the hours that separated him from Linda (he had managed to find out her first name). Among his other faults, Steve Lachapelle was also a leaky bucket when it came to confidences, and soon everyone at school was making fun of Charles’s passion. A few well-aimed punches kept most of them at bay.

  Finally, one afternoon, his perseverance as a love-starved puppy drew the attention of two high school students. They crossed the street and asked him what newspaper he worked for. Charles opened his mouth, uttered two or three inarticulate sounds, and took off, but not before receiving a solid kick that left a large bruise on his buttock. The incident put a stop to his long-distance, anonymous idolatry.

  Two weeks later, Charles came face to face with the beautiful Linda as he was coming out of a grocery store.