Charles the Bold Read online

  “It’s never good to have a hole in your life,” Sylvie told her. “That’s where the sorrow gets in. Look at this poor little thing, look at the way he looks at you. He’s asking you to love him!”

  A few days later, however, when she saw that the hairdresser was in a better frame of mind, the interest and friendship she had shown towards the woman seemed to vanish. She hardly acknowledged Mademoiselle Galipeau when the woman greeted her in the street, as though her thoughts were elsewhere now; the page had turned, Sylvie had moved on.

  She was a secretive, self-absorbed woman, a good worker but unsociable, generous at times but rarely to the same person twice, as though her generosity, so easily exhausted, required the stimulant of novelty to set it going again. She seemed to find contentment only in front of the television, glass of beer in hand – and perhaps also in the arms of the grumpy carpenter who, in bed, became her charming, gentle knight.

  Charles benefited from a few days of grace in her eyes, but after that he was just another kid, like all the others, which to her meant deadly boring, a necessary adjunct to the man who made love to her every night and saved her a considerable amount of money by letting her live in his apartment.

  The relationship that established itself between the boy and the woman was a curious one. Neither was particularly fond of the other, but neither seemed to resent the other’s presence, either. As though by common accord, although nothing was ever said, they managed to limit their social contacts to the bare essentials, and to carefully avoid any open skirmishes: they each instinctively understood that mutual indifference and polite neutrality were their only hopes for rendering their lives together tolerable, if not pleasant. Wilfrid was often surprised by Charles’s attitude towards his partner:

  “He has the makings of a diplomat, that little guy,” he said to Sylvie one day. “Do you notice how he never gets under your feet? Whenever you ask him to do something he always does it right away and never makes a fuss. But he makes sure you ask him as little as possible. He’s no fool, that’s for sure.”

  “I’d do the same if I were in his shoes,” Sylvie replied, unperturbed, exhaling a long plume of smoke.

  And so two years passed. At the beginning of the winter of 1972, Wilfrid became unemployed. But he did not let himself become idle. He went to see Monsieur Victoire and got permission to make himself a little workshop in the basement of the apartment building. The next week he passed a circular around the neighbourhood, announcing his availability for doing home repairs and odd jobs. But he rarely had any clients, and so he soon took to spending most of his afternoons in the Amis du Sport, a bar a little south of the neighbourhood, on Iberville. Sitting at a table with a few of the bar’s regulars, he would erect pyramids of empty draft glasses under the owner’s unamused eye, and make his way home in the early evenings with a slur in his speech and his clothes stinking of cigarette smoke.

  During this time, when he wasn’t at daycare, Charles played at his friends’ houses or in the street with his rowdy pack of dogs, or else ran errands for Rosalie, who paid him with cookies or french fries and pretty much gave him the run of the kitchen, where he would collect leftovers and other goodies for his long-tongued friends.

  An unfortunate incident almost put an end to the poor beasts’ gastronomical privileges. Charles had just opened the back door of the kitchen to fill his plastic bag with juicy bits of past-due and slightly smelly meat when an ash-blond mongrel spaniel with one small and one large ear dashed between his legs, shot across the room like a meteor, and, nearly knocking down a waitress who was carrying in a trayful of dirty dishes, burst into the dining room; running his intrepid eye over the guests, he picked out Monsieur Bissonnette – a travelling salesman who was always dressed to the nines – and made off with a pork chop from his plate, spattering his trousers with gravy and mashed potatoes as he went.

  When the mess was cleaned up as much as possible, Roberto went up to Charles and pointed his monumental index finger at the boy’s nose:

  “It’s a good thing for you I have a gentle nature, my lad, and for now we’ll leave it at that. But if this happens once more, those dogs of yours will be living on snow and crushed gravel. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Roberto,” Charles replied with a contrite expression that would have moved an anvil to pity.

  Since his birthday fell in October, Charles couldn’t start school until the following year, and he was greatly offended by this injustice, since it condemned him to playing with little kids among whom he felt his prodigious maturity was entirely wasted. He dreamed about his admittance into the mysteries of school life; the snatches of conversation he overheard in the street between those privileged few who were born before October 1966, their silent disdain if by chance they deigned to look his way, instilled in him the sense that school was a different kind of life, one almost as exhilarating as that of adults, but also a bit disturbing, since it apparently required one to give oneself over to extremely complicated activities and to submit to formidable competition.

  That winter a change came over his behaviour. A sort of seriousness appeared in him at times. He remained an active and happy child, still easygoing, but he would isolate himself from his playmates on occasion, sit in a corner not speaking, his mind elsewhere, or else he would leave the room altogether and go into his bedroom, where he would spend hours slumped in front of the television, his eyes unfocused, his chest heaving deep sighs, a thousand miles from whatever was going on on the screen, and groaning to be left alone whenever Wilfrid or Sylvie urged him to go outside to get some fresh air. One night the waitress found him lying fully clothed on his bed, his head buried in his arms. Thinking he was asleep, she touched his shoulder to wake him for dinner; his body stiffened, he began breathing loudly and he refused to move. His father finally had to come and drag him forcibly to the table, where he picked at his food and sulked during the entire meal. Such moods became more and more commonplace, and one day Sylvie complained about them to her boss.

  “But, my poor girl,” said Rosalie, “it’s his mother’s death coming back to haunt him.”

  “Oh, come on! He was only four when she died!”

  “So? When you’re four you have all your heart even if you don’t have all your reason. I was three and a half when I lost my grandfather, who lived with us after the Spanish ’flu took his wife. Well, my mother said I had nightmares for three months. And why do you think? Because I loved him, he was my Grampa, he took me everywhere with him, spoiled me rotten, always buying me sweets and ice cream – his death hit me harder than anything else I’ve ever been through, including my father’s and mother’s, and I always got along well with both of them. Sure I was only three and a half when he died, but I can still see him in my mind’s eye, my Grampa Odilon; I see myself sitting on his lap, him telling me stories while he smokes his pipe, or teasing me, or me sitting on the counter in the dairy bar while he orders me an ice-cream cone. I can even hear his voice … So Charles, you know …”

  But Sylvie was unconvinced. “It’s been two years since Alice died,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t care who …”

  “No, you listen to me: he’s suffering from a delayed reaction.”

  She leaned closer after taking a look around the restaurant to make sure no one else could hear her:

  “If you want my opinion,” she said, keeping her voice low, “it was the October Crisis that did it. It disrupted that boy’s grieving. Trucks full of soldiers interrupting the funeral … Think about it! And Monsieur Fafard being arrested in front of his eyes! Not to mention the atmosphere that poisoned everything at the time. Don’t you remember? Everyone was on pins and needles, myself included, it would take nothing to put us in a sweat, suspicions hitting us left and right all the time. I remember shutting the restaurant one night at nine o’clock because my knees were shaking so hard I couldn’t stand up at the cash. No need to look farther than that, my dear: that child is finally going through his period of mourni
ng.”

  “Well, all I can say is, I hope he gets over it soon,” the waitress replied, looking away.

  And she went off to attend to a customer.

  That afternoon, Wilfrid and his drinking buddies built such a huge pyramid of glasses on their table in front of the television that a silence fell over the room; everyone stopped what they were doing to watch. Then, in his excitement (and no doubt also in his cups), Pierrot jumped out of his chair to call the owner over to admire the masterpiece. Unfortunately, his knee caught the edge of the table and the whole thing came down in a cascade of broken glass loud enough to scare a deaf elephant. That brought the owner, who was furious, and who handed them a bill for $37.85, payable on the spot.

  Still, it was with a light step that the carpenter left the bar and made his way home at six o’clock; though short of breath, his mind a little fuzzy, his cheeks pleasantly warm despite the dry wind that was riffling the puddles in the street, he could already imagine the smell of the dinner Sylvie was making for him (she got off at four o’clock that day and had promised him a stuffed chicken). Life wasn’t that bad, he told himself, all things considered; work would start up again in the spring, he still had a small cushion in his bank account, he’d made some good friends down at the Amis du Sport, his health was okay, and on top of it all there was Sylvie.

  He entered the building and began climbing the stairs to his apartment; the walls wobbled a bit, but his legs were still strong. Suddenly he stopped and rubbed his eyes; someone was shouting in the apartment. Then he heard a streak of swearing, made all but unintelligible by anger. He recognized Sylvie’s voice, and then another voice even higher-pitched, which could only be that of his son.

  “All right, all right, all right,” he grumbled. “What the hell’s going on!”

  He hurried up the stairs, tripped on one of the steps, nearly flattened his nose and hurt his hand trying to grab the railing. A dark anger began to replace the good mood he’d come in with.

  He opened the door, and Charles’s strident voice jabbed at his ears like a fistful of needles.

  “Go away! You’re not my mother! I don’t want you here! I hate you!”

  Then a door slammed and all was quiet.

  Wilfrid stumbled down the hallway, bouncing off the walls a few times, and went into the kitchen.

  “So, you decided to come home!” Sylvie shot at him.

  Sitting on a chair, her face red and puffed (for the first time, he thought she looked ugly), her hair in disarray, she was holding a dishtowel to her shin; a thin trickle of blood was running down her nylon stocking.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he said again, menacingly.

  “What’s going on,” she said, raising her head, “is that you haven’t taught your son how to behave! He calls me, I go into his room, and suddenly Bam! no warning, he throws a metal truck at my leg. Christ! It feels like it’s broken, the little bastard!”

  “Liar!” shouted Charles, coming into the room, his face streaked with tears and beside himself with fury. “I threw the truck at you because you tore up the birthday card my mother gave me. It’s the only one I had left!”

  “How was I supposed to know you were keeping it? It was lying on the floor!”

  “You knew!” cried the boy, his voice choked by sobs. “And it wasn’t lying on the floor. It was in my dresser. You’re a liar!”

  Sylvie gave the carpenter a look that clearly stated: “There, you see how he treats me? You choose: it’s either him or me.”

  Wilfrid felt something like a roar of flame building inside him; the tip of the flame was burning his head, trying desperately to get out of his body, which began to tremble. He leapt on Charles, seizing him by the shoulders and throwing him against the wall. Then, grabbing him again, he began hitting him across the back and on his head. He beat him with such violence that Sylvie let out a cry and rushed at him: “Stop it! You’re going to kill him! Have you gone crazy or something?”

  When he didn’t let up, she began pulling savagely at his hair; he suddenly lost his balance and fell onto the floor. Charles lay at his feet, his eyes half shut, not moving.

  The carpenter stood up slowly, let out a belch, rubbed his face with his hand, and then looked around as though trying to figure out where he was.

  “Put him to bed,” he muttered.

  Then he went into the bathroom, where Sylvie could hear him throwing up.

  Charles stayed in bed for two days. He ate nothing, hardly drank a thing, spoke even less. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, just wrapped in a cloak of silence that could have been caused by rage or despair. While undressing him, Sylvie had discovered huge bruises on his back and a red, swollen blotch on his left side. During the night she’d considered moving out of the house in order not to get further involved in anything so sordid and dangerous, but in the morning the rising sun had dispelled her anxiety, as it is said to have done so often for so many.

  Wilfrid stayed away from the Amis du Sport for a week. The whole time Charles was in bed he hardly left the apartment, tormented by fear and remorse. He paced from room to room, hands in his pockets, mouth twisted into a scowl, unable to stop sucking his teeth in short, convulsive movements until his mouth became as dry as a piece of cardboard. Every so often he would go down into the basement intending to do some odd job just to get his mind off things, but before long he’d be back upstairs, sneaking a look into his son’s bedroom, where Charles was either asleep or pretending to be. He didn’t dare call a doctor or take the child to the hospital for fear of the questions they’d ask, or afraid that Charles would tell the truth. He sensed that Charles was entirely capable of it.

  On the third day Charles got out of bed early in the morning, dressed and made his way quietly into the kitchen. From his father’s bedroom came a duet of snores that sounded comical in the silence of the apartment; Sylvie’s were small and plaintive, almost musical, whereas his father’s were loud and cavernous, as though they came from somewhere deep beneath the surface of the Earth. Charles poured himself a big bowl of cereal, added milk and tablespoons of brown sugar, and ate it hungrily. Then he put on his coat and went outside. Rue Dufresne was deserted and quiet, bathed in a fragile, shimmering light, a mixture of blues and mauves that seemed to be timidly trying to remove the darkness of the night. It had been snowing for two days but now the weather had turned mild; the street and the sidewalks were cleared, but the trucks had not yet come to take away the huge piles of snow that lined each side of the traffic lane. In front of him, Charles saw a slight, inviting depression in the snow. He turned and fell backwards into it and found himself sitting in a kind of soft chair that wrapped itself tenderly about him; he heaved a deep sigh and felt a sense of sweet sadness slowly spread through him.

  His back barely hurt at all any more, and ever since the previous evening, when through partly opened eyes he’d seen his father’s remorseful face, he also felt released from the fear that had gripped him.

  In fact the fear had been transferred from him to his father. It was the only form of revenge that was open to Charles for the moment, and he would have taken some comfort from it if exhaustion hadn’t erased all feeling from his mind. He didn’t even have the strength to hate, had barely enough to slowly breathe in the fresh outside air and feel the warmth of his clothes and savour the pleasure of being alone. He closed his eyes. Behind him a car passed, the sound of its tires muffled by snow, then down at the corner the door to Chez Robert opened, and for a moment he could hear the chords of a guitar.

  He remembered the first time he’d heard anyone playing that instrument. It had been a long time ago, when he was three. Before Alice became sick. They’d been hurrying down rue Ontario; the sun was baking the city. His mother held him by the hand and he’d noticed that her own hand was burning and moist, sending waves of heat down her arm and into his body and causing beads of sweat to break out on his forehead. He wanted to let go of her to cool off for a minute, but he wasn’t allowed to. That was the
rule: when he was with her in the street, he had to hold her hand because of cars and child snatchers …

  They passed a store whose window was filled with musical instruments, all of them shining in the sun; the door to the store was wide open, and there was a man inside leaning against the counter playing a guitar. The music was so beautiful that Charles had asked his mother if they could go inside so he could listen to it. Alice agreed, though she’d been in a hurry, and they’d stood in front of the guitarist not saying a word. The man smiled at them and nodded, and then they had left, returned to their brisk walk down the sidewalk, Alice’s hand still burning and sending all that heat into Charles’s arm. But almost immediately his mother had decided that they needed something to cool them off. They stopped at a dairy bar; beside a low wall someone had placed a few wooden picnic tables, their fresh paint sparkling under a huge umbrella. They took their places, drank a large glass of water, and shared a chocolate ice-cream cone. He ate his half in large bites because the heat was making the ice-cream run down his hand, and all the time he was eating he could hear the man playing the guitar. It had made him feel very good. He told his mother that, and she had laughed and kissed his cheek.

  It was one of the happiest memories of his life.

  The door to Chez Robert opened again, and more notes from the guitar came out. He was humming them in his head when a sudden violent jolt to his chest knocked the dreams out of his head; the yellow spaniel with the different-sized ears had jumped on him and was frantically licking his face. He gently pushed it off and wiped his cheeks, then fell on the animal and held it in his arms and started to sob: