The Years of Fire Read online

  Through a gap in the curtains it could see the blue duvet on which it had spent so many days sleeping. If it could only lie on it once more it was certain the pain would go away. The duvet had been pushed to the bottom of the bed, and two pairs of bare legs seemed to be kicking at it, as if trying to make it fall onto the floor. After a time the legs stopped moving, then they tangled themselves together.

  Cold crept into Puffball’s body and blended with the pain, a heavy, terrible coldness that inched towards its heart and began squeezing the breath out of it. It gathered up the last of its strength and gave out a long meow.

  “What was that?” Charles said, jumping up.

  “Just the cat,” Marlene murmured, half asleep. “It wants in. But it has to stay out.”

  “Sounds as though it’s at the window.”

  Charles stood up and opened the curtains.

  “The cat doesn’t look too good, Marlene … it might even be dying.”

  She gave a deep sigh, turned over a few times under the duvet, and then stood up as well. When she saw the animal lying stretched out against the window, its mouth half open, its pupils dilated as though filled with despair, she brought her hand to her mouth and said nothing.

  “I’m going out to see how it is,” said Charles. “We can’t just leave it like that.”

  He dressed and went upstairs; the living room was empty. Marlene came up behind him wearing a robe.

  “Where’d they go?” he asked, nodding at the sofa.

  She shrugged. Charles went outside. Marlene sat on the sofa and hugged her legs.

  “Bloody Agatha,” she muttered. “How many times have I asked her not to go into my father’s bedroom? If he ever found out I’d be good as dead.” But her father would never find out. He spent every weekend with his girlfriend in Châteauguay and didn’t come back until Monday morning, looking grey, and in a difficult mood. She paid for her two days of freedom with five days of tiptoeing around, still receiving her share of complaints and cuffing, not to mention the occasional punch. If only he could find work! That would help things a bit. She would take it for another two months, maybe three, but after that, if he was still at the house all day, she’d decided she would get an apartment with her friend Julie and go back to being a waitress.

  The door opened.

  “Your cat’s dead,” Charles said sadly. “Its hind leg was crushed. It must have died from loss of blood …” When she didn’t reply, he said in surprise, “Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

  “It wasn’t my cat, more my father’s,” she said. “Having it around was a real drag sometimes.… But it had its uses, I guess,” she added with a sigh. “Like when I was lying down, it’d come up and purr in my ear, and sometimes I’d let it sleep with me.”

  “What do you want me to do with it? We can’t just leave it there at the window.”

  “My father’ll take care of it on Monday. Or I could put it in a garbage bag in the morning,” she said, seeing the look on Charles’s face. “Aren’t you coming back to bed?”

  They made love for the third time. Charles was beginning to take real pleasure from the act, as though as the novelty wore off he was able to get closer to his feelings. The presence of the cat above their heads put a damper on the evening, however. He felt vaguely guilty for the cat’s death, but what did he have to feel guilty about?

  He rolled over onto his stomach and closed his eyes, one arm resting on Marlene’s shoulder. He felt wet between the cheeks of his bum and sweat glistened down the small of his back. His sleeping penis was blissfully numb. Everything was so new he felt as though he were inhabiting a new body and that he himself were someone else, someone both totally unknown and totally familiar. It was a pleasant feeling.

  Marlene had brought a litre of milk and a bag of chocolate-chip cookies to her room. They ate the cookies and drank the milk, then lay down again beside each other.

  “I wonder what they’re doing upstairs,” Charles said, curious about the silence that came from the ground floor.

  Marlene burst out laughing. “The same as us, what do you think?” She raised herself on one elbow and looked him over. “You’re a real hunk, you know.”

  “Thanks. You too. You’re beautiful, I mean,” he added, carefully.

  “Me?” she said, with a rueful pout.

  She went on with her examination.

  “You have a nice ass,” she said clinically. She sounded like an entomologist.

  He looked at her in astonishment.

  “But there’s nothing special about it.”

  “Believe me. You have a nice ass.”

  He laughed, flattered in spite of himself. How many guys must she have slept with to have developed such an expert opinion? he wondered.

  They heard steps upstairs followed by a long burst of laughter. It was Agatha. The door at the top of the stairs opened and Steve’s voice called down.

  “You two dead down there, you lovebirds?”

  “No, not us,” Charles thought, “but someone else has died.” He and Marlene got dressed and left the bedroom.

  “Man, I’m starving!” Steve exclaimed. “What about you?”

  He looked at Charles as though to ask: Well, how did it go? Did you have a good time? Are you as deliriously happy as I am?

  “We stuffed ourselves with chocolate-chip cookies,” said Marlene. “I must have put on two pounds.”

  “Her cat just died, right outside her bedroom window,” said Charles, surprised to realize what an impression the incident had left on him.

  “What? Puffball?” cried Agatha. “What happened to him? Oh, I loved him so much, the poor little thing! He used to sleep on my lap sometimes when I was watching TV.”

  Marlene was standing at a mirror, arranging her hair. “What did you expect? When you let cats roam around like that they always end up getting run over.”

  Steve finally convinced the others to go with him to the Villa Frontenac for a smoked-meat sandwich. It was nearly one o’clock in the morning by the time they were back on the street. Agatha yawned and said she had a headache. Since they lived in opposite directions, they decided to part in front of the restaurant; Charles gave Marlene a hug so chaste it made Steve laugh.

  “Don’t forget to come and replace those beers tomorrow,” Marlene reminded them as she left. “I’m counting on you!”

  “Tomorrow, in the dawn’s early light, I’ll bring you a whole case,” said Charles lightly.

  “Your chum talks like a book,” Agatha said to Marlene as they walked away. “Does he screw like a book, too?”

  They both burst out laughing.

  The two boys walked for a while without saying anything. Now that the excitement was over their legs seemed heavy and they were thinking of the warmth of their own beds, feeling pleasantly tired. A few tipsy customers came out of a bar waving their arms. A fat man leaned weakly against his car, digging in his pants pockets for his keys, while a woman with red, baggy cheeks wearing a fake-fur jacket spluttered angrily at him in a low voice. A big, lean, yellow dog ran across the road and Charles thought of Boff, at home waiting patiently for him at the foot of his bed. Steve started talking about his evening with Agatha, making fun of her deodorants and perfumes and her mania about putting on weight, but also speaking fondly of her enthusiasm once she got going. They slowed down when they reached the corner of Dufresne, where they were parting company.

  “So,” Steve said, suddenly serious. “Did you, uh, have a good time tonight?”

  “Yeah, yeah, not bad.… She’s cool, Marlene.”

  He almost added “Thanks!” but thought better of it. It would have made him look ridiculous and was disrespectful of Marlene.

  “We’ll be in touch tomorrow?”

  They smiled and, without really knowing why, shook hands.

  When he got to the house, Charles realized he wasn’t the least bit sleepy. He pushed open the little gate and sat on the porch steps. Across the street and down he could see the staircase leadi
ng up to his old apartment. He hadn’t checked it out for a while. The present tenants were an elderly, retired couple. They’d already leaned a snow shovel beside their door, ready for the winter that would soon be battering the city, a blue plastic shovel like the one his father had used to clean off the steps and the balcony. Maybe it was the same one, who knew? Monsieur Victoire’s taxi wasn’t parked anywhere. He often worked late on weekends, ferrying around the party-goers, strippers, prostitutes, and young couples who had decided to party on until dawn.

  Shivering as he felt a sudden chill, Charles pulled up the zipper on his windbreaker and sighed. For the past few minutes he’d felt a dull emptiness opening up in his chest. On the outside he felt completely satisfied. A bit of a rocky start, but the evening had gone well. And they would no doubt continue to go well in the foreseeable future. From now on he’d be able to look any guy or any girl at Pierre-Dupuy straight in the eye, because he had passed the big test. Marlene would waste no time letting all and sundry know that he had left his virginity at the foot of her bed. Agatha would vouch for her. And that might make a few other girls sit up and take notice, you never knew.…

  Then why this big hole? Why this little voice inside him saying over and over again, “Is that all there is to making love? Is that what everyone has been talking about so endlessly for so many thousands of years?” He thought of Blonblon and the way his eyes grew wide with wonder when he talked about Caroline. Blonblon was in love with Caroline, whereas he barely knew plump little Marlene, and deep down he wasn’t much interested in getting to know her better. It was sad but true. Maybe he was missing something. But maybe not. In the books he’d read (he’d just finished Anna Karenina) making love was something you took terribly seriously, not at all the way he’d taken it that evening. But did books represent real life, or did they just try to console us for it?

  In the silence of the autumn night, with the city huddling into itself in the damp and the cold, he felt sad and tired. If it hadn’t been so late he wouldn’t have minded two or three bowls of thick, creamy soup, or sinking into a good hot bath.

  He stood up and entered the house. Hanging his windbreaker up in the hall, he noticed a light on in the living room. Someone was waiting up for him. He was pretty sure it was Fernand.

  He opened the door and looked in. Fernand was sitting in an armchair with a newspaper folded in his hand, wearing his bathrobe, his two hairy legs plunked one beside the other like a pair of marble columns. Light from a lampshade printed a curious pattern on his bald head, like a thin slice of a phosphorescent tomato.

  “Do you know what time it is?” he said, standing up and striding in Charles’s direction.

  “Of course I do. I have a watch.”

  Fernand turned scarlet, took a deep breath through his nostrils and let it out slowly. He looked angrily at Charles, who stiffened, ready for anything. A moment passed. Boff appeared in the hallway and sat down, observing the scene.

  “I can see by your eyes that you’ve been drinking.”

  Fernand spread his legs wide, crossed his arms, and seemed to Charles to become even larger and more formidable than ever.

  “You listen to me, young man,” he went on, his voice heavy and filled with rage. “I didn’t adopt you as my son so that you could grow up to be like your father.”

  When he saw the look in the boy’s eyes he realized he had gone too far.

  “All right. I shouldn’t have said anything so stupid. Forget what I said. It just slipped out. Forget I said it. You’ll never be like your father, no matter where you happen to be living, believe me. But you must understand, Charles, that coming home after one o’clock in the morning without telling us where you’re going, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense! Lucie and I’ve been worried sick, for Chrissakes!”

  “Why? If I can’t look after myself when I’m fifteen years old, I’ll never be able to. So you’re wasting your time worrying about me.”

  He turned on his heels and, followed by Boff, shut himself in his room and locked the door. The unexpected quarrel had added to his sadness. He felt more alone and helpless than ever. When he lay down on the bed he felt like taking Simon the Bear in his arms, but Simon had long since been retired to the storage bin in the basement. Besides, Charles was much too old now to give in to such a childish longing. He was ashamed of himself for even thinking about it.

  6

  In early December, business at the hardware store was so bad that Fernand held a huge pre-Christmas sale, a strategy that violated every principle of good retail management, since everyone knew that such displays of goodwill were supposed to be reserved for cash-strapped customers after the holidays were over. The sale was only moderately successful, and Fernand’s hair turned a little greyer. Charles was only one of his many headaches. Henri, for example, had been developing the irritating habit of leaving his things lying around everywhere in the house, was using his ghetto-blaster as a public-address system, grunted like a whole herd of pigs whenever he was asked to do the tiniest thing, and stayed up so late at night that the only time he got any sleep was in class the next day.

  On the 16th of March, a sudden thaw melted nearly all the snow that was still on the ground, and rain fell steadily for ten hours. This was followed the next day by a sudden cold snap that coated the entire city in ice; walking home that night, Fernand twisted an ankle and had to see a doctor about it. When he finally arrived home, with an empty stomach and in a mood that would have made an artillery battalion run for cover, Charles announced that he was going to spend the weekend with some friends, and that Lucie had already said it was all right with her. There followed the stormiest discussion the house had known since its construction at the turn of the century. It ended with an understanding having been tentatively reached: from then on the number and duration of Charles’s little excursions outside the house would be determined by his marks at school (which so far were highly satisfactory, it had to be admitted); the slightest drop in his scholastic achievement would occasion a corresponding increase in the amount of time he spent at home studying. This agreement was written down on paper and signed by both parties. Lucie drew up the text, every word of which was given the most minute possible examination, and it was duly signed by all concerned. Then Fernand, feeling he had arrived at the end of his negotiating rope, wolfed down an enormous plate of boiled ham and potatoes and spent the rest of the night watching television with his ankle wrapped in a plastic bag filled with ice water.

  Weeks passed. Charles saw Marlene a few times. She had become a kind of bed-buddy, a role she played episodically with two or three other boys from school. It was a highly informal arrangement that suited everyone. He also briefly enjoyed Agatha’s favours. She was fairly liberal with them – one had only to ask – but he soon gave them up out of loyalty to Steve, who was not at all into sharing, and also because he didn’t like the way Agatha put on airs, or the way she was always comparing her sexual partners, attacking the reputations of those who had gone before with a mocking cruelty that gave Charles the willies. He marvelled at the turbulent sensations his new life entailed, but sometimes they frightened him.

  He continued going to the Orleans Billiards Hall, to the consternation of Fernand and Lucie, who were afraid that the vices that had ruined his father’s life would also ruin the son’s. René De Bané showed up most nights, and almost always had a bizarre story to tell.

  On the 6th of May, around nine o’clock, he arrived in an extraordinarily dismal mood, took a seat at the bar, and drank three beers without uttering a single word.

  “What’s up with you?” Nadine asked him.

  The owner, who was busy arranging bottles in the refrigerator, looked over briefly and shrugged.

  “Nothing,” said De Bané.

  “Yes there is. I can tell by the look on your face.”

  “I said there was nothing and I meant there was nothing! Go mind your own business!”

  But the barmaid had nothing else to do, and s
he kept at him until he finally gave in and agreed to recount the source of his immeasurable pain. Nadine signalled to the regulars in the room; everyone crowded around, Charles and Steve in the front row, and, with the air of a Roman martyr about to have hot needles shoved under his fingernails, De Bané launched into a story of the unmitigated evil recently endured by one of his favourite uncles.

  The uncle’s name was Charlemagne Alarie. He had a bad leg and a big mouth and was a former police officer who, they say, had one day run up against none other than Machine Gun Molly herself. The previous night he’d asked De Bané to go with him to look at a boarding house he owned on rue Beaubien, saying the place needed some repairs. The two men had just stepped out of Alarie’s car when a kind of wolf-dog with teeth like a Swiss Army knife leapt over a fence and started chasing them down the street, howling at their heels like a hound from hell. De Bané ran across the street and nearly got himself run over by a taxi, but the dog, realizing it couldn’t chase them both at the same time, stuck with the one with the bum leg, who was hopping stiffly along like a madman trying to keep ahead of it. The animal was gaining on him. Then De Bané, keeping pace with them on the other side of the street, hoping he could somehow help his uncle (though he had no idea how), witnessed the most amazing thing he’d ever seen in his life. He saw, with his own eyes, how absolute terror transformed a cripple into an Olympic runner! Charlemagne Alarie, knowing that there were no more than a few centimetres between his ass and the dog’s teeth, dug deep and came up with a reserve of strength that must have been hiding in there for years: he literally flew down that sidewalk! In a matter of seconds he was so far ahead of the dog that it stopped dead in its tracks, totally confused, and sat on its haunches in disbelief. The old man jumped – yes, jumped! – over a fence and ran up a set of spiral stairs, taking them four at a time. When he reached the balcony he banged on the door to ask for help. But it was too late! His heart, weakened by the valiant effort it had just made on the old man’s behalf, gave out.