The Years of Fire Read online

  Lucie burst out laughing.

  “Goodness gracious,” she said. “It’s safe to say you guessed right, Monsieur Michaud. You’ve made him happy as a lark!”

  “Parfait, Lucie, call me Parfait! I’ve begged you a thousand times!”

  “Parfait! You’re perfect, all right!” said Fernand with a mouthful of canapé. And he clapped Michaud so forcefully on the back that the notary’s glasses jumped.

  Blonblon was still running his hands over the bronze dog. “My dad would love to see this,” he said quietly. “He’s very interested in Japan.”

  The Michauds had placed a long table against one wall, and on it was a buffet such as Charles had never seen. Going over for his third helping of veal galantine, he noticed the tip of Boff’s tail sticking out from under the white tablecloth. He bent over, thinking that the dog had found some food somewhere and was hiding under the table to eat it. But he was wrong. Boff was asleep, his muzzle between his paws, worn out by the sound of their conversations – two bottles of wine had been drunk, and many bottles of beer. Charles pulled the dog towards him, held his head between his hands, and stared into his eyes.

  “Did you hear that, Boff? Loyalty is important. It’s one of the most important things in the world. Don’t forget that!”

  Céline, curled up in a soft chair with a plate of sandwiches on her knee, watched Charles with a strange gravity and without moving a muscle.

  At about nine-thirty, Lucie said she was tired and began talking about going home. The little group began to break up, to the great relief of Amélie, who was feeling a headache coming on, and was aware that her husband had had a lot to drink. Instead of going home, however, Charles went with Blonblon to Frontenac Towers, to show Hachiko to Blonblon’s father.

  Half an hour later, Charles was walking slowly along rue Ontario, the box weighing heavily in his arms. A dozen paces from the corner of rue Dufresne he suddenly stopped dead, overwhelmed by a sense of danger.

  Ahead of him, under the yellowish glare of the street lights that hung their resigned heads above the deserted street, everything had suddenly taken on a curiously sinister aspect. Yet it was the same street as usual, with its oil stains, its cracked and wrinkled asphalt like a snake’s sloughed skin, its dirty sidewalks, its barred shop windows filled with glaring light that showed how badly in need of a good dusting some of them were. He continued on his way towards rue Dufresne, trying to figure out what had happened, when he recalled the glimpse of a figure half seen out of the corner of his eye when he’d yawned, a shadow slipping behind the corner of a house. He stopped, intending to retrace his steps, but he was too late: Wilfrid Thibodeau stepped out in front of him, looking at him with feverish intensity as he rubbed nervously at the three-day beard on his chin.

  “Hey there, kid. How’s it goin’? Son of a gun, you’re even bigger than the last time I saw you! You’ll be taller’n me pretty soon, eh?”

  Charles stared at him with his mouth half open, parched as a desert, in such anxiety that everything around him seemed suddenly to have started shaking. For a full second he thought of running, but it would have meant dropping Hachiko, and he didn’t even have the strength to do that.

  “So, what’s new? You gonna speak to me or what?”

  “Hello, Papa,” he finally managed to get out.

  “Papa?” The carpenter laughed. “You’re still calling me that? I thought you had a different papa these days.”

  Charles went on staring at his father. Despite his fear, he couldn’t help noticing that a profound change had come over the man. Stooped shoulders, wizened body; he seemed to be going through a rough patch, at least in terms of his physical health. Even his clothing gave him away: the frayed collar of his shirt, his jeans worn so thin Charles could see the skin of one knee through the cloth. And his breath, warm and heavy, smelled of alcohol and rotten teeth.

  “It’s your birthday today, ain’t it? What are you, fourteen?”

  “Yes … Papa.”

  “Well. Happy birthday!”

  He offered Charles his hand, then brought it up to rub his chin, as though uncertain of what to say next. His eye fell on the box Charles was carrying.

  “What you got in there?” he asked brusquely.

  “A present.”

  “You gonna show it to me?”

  Charles lifted it out of its wrapping paper.

  “Statue of a dog! Jeez, you still got dogs on the brain, eh?” Then, without a transition, he continued, “I been waiting here half the night. I wanted to see you, since it’s your birthday. I’m not as heartless as everyone seems to think I am,” he sniggered. “I knocked on the door at nine, but no one answered. So then I says to myself I’ll get a pizza at the corner restaurant – Roberto’s sold out, eh? – and who do I see go by the front window but Fernand and his wife and two kids, a real procession, like the Three Wise Men, eh, bearing their gifts. Were they all for you? I saw them go up to their house and I thought you’d be comin’ along pretty soon. But you took your goddamn sweet time about it …”

  “What did you want to say to me?” Charles asked, trying to keep the meanness from his voice. And almost succeeding.

  “Hey, you little shit, don’t talk to me in that tone of voice. I’m not your father any more, but … well, I am, in a way, you know, like it or not. That’s how nature works … at least that’s how I see it …”

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and Charles watched all the air seep out of him. Now would be a good time to run, he thought, but he stayed where he was, anchored in place by a vague feeling of pity.

  “Anyway, all I wanted was to say happy birthday, kid,” the carpenter went on, as though suddenly remembering his son’s question. “No harm in that, is there?”

  He started laughing through his teeth, all the time eyeing the boy in an agitated way. Charles couldn’t decipher the look, but he didn’t like it. It was the look of a drunk, or of someone on drugs. As he knew from experience, anything could come of it, at any moment.

  “Course, you’re a man now, ain’t you, a good looker, too. You gettin’ it on with the girls yet? Okay, I went too far. Sorry, none of my beeswax. No, stay here,” he snapped when Charles seemed to be on the point of turning away. He put a heavy hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I … I got somethin’ for you. Nothing much …” With his other hand he reached into one of his pockets and, with much effort, took out a cracked leather wallet that had come partly unstitched. “Here,” he said, flipping the wallet open and handing Charles a worn five-dollar bill. “Take it. I’d give you more but that’s all I got left. Don’t spend it all in one place, as me old mom used to say. So, goodbye and good luck.”

  He gave Charles a wink that twisted his face into a grimace and took off down the street, looking down at his feet, dragging his heels and swinging his arms heavily.

  “Thanks, Papa,” Charles said after a moment’s hesitation.

  Thibodeau continued walking away without turning around. Maybe he hadn’t heard. With the five-dollar bill crumpled in the palm of his hand, Charles watched him go. Suddenly his shoulders shook and he began to cry, but whether from rage or relief or pity he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was from the unbearable feeling of helplessness that comes over us in cases of irreparable loss.

  4

  Fernand’s Oldsmobile gave up the ghost on February the 10th, 1981, after eight years of faithful service. Buying a new car was out of the question, and so as soon as he arrived at the hardware store he began looking through the want ads for used cars. This occasioned a great deal of huffing and puffing.

  That same day two events opposite in nature took place in Charles’s life. Robert-Aimé Doyon relieved him of his duties as editor of the Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur newspaper because of a disrespectful remark that had appeared in it concerning the statue of the Sacred Heart; and the Lalancette Pharmacy hired him as a delivery boy at a salary of two dollars an hour.

  His job at the drugstore came about as the result of a series of c
urious circumstances involving french fries.

  Fire Station Number 19, at the corner of Fullum and Coupal, counted among its brave crew members a certain Romeo Pimparé, whom heaven had blessed with exceptional skill in the culinary arts. Give him an old turnip and a couple of wilted carrots, a bit of oil or butter, and some seasonings, and he would create a soup au gratin the aroma of which would draw half the station into the kitchen. But it was from french fries that he derived his greatest successes. His captain told anyone who would listen that he would gladly walk through three walls of flame for half a plateful of Pimparé’s french fries. Crispy on the outside, mushy on the inside, fried to a golden hue but never greasy, salted to perfection, they melted in the mouth and made anyone who tasted them swear that Romeo’s fries were the only food they would ever eat. Every Wednesday evening for eight years Romeo had been preparing his fries for his fellow firefighters, who devoured them with hamburgers or pineapple ham, or sometimes with chicken stuffed with apples and cubes of bread.

  This particular Wednesday, at about seven-thirty in the evening, Pimparé was keeping a sharp eye on his deep-fryer, in which the peanut oil (de rigueur for fries) was just beginning to come to a boil. Suddenly the alarm bell began to ring wildly throughout the station, summoning the firemen to the trucks. A major fire had broken out in the rear of the Woolworth’s store on rue Ontario and was threatening to spread to the neighbouring buildings, and it was essential that Station Number 19 arrive on the scene before Station Number 5, which for some time had been in fierce competition with Number 19 – ever since a certain report in the Montreal Journal had appeared after a fire in the basement of the Church of the Immaculate Conception on bingo night.

  Within thirty seconds, Romeo Pimparé was booted, helmeted, wearing his asbestos gloves, and hanging off the side of the truck as it took a hard left in the glacial air of the winter night. Two minutes, twenty seconds later they arrived at the scene of the fire. Pimparé was busy attaching a hose to a fire hydrant when Captain Flibotte ran up to him through the suffocating smoke and yelled to him furiously.

  “Never mind that! Hurry! We have to go back to the station! A fire’s broken out in the kitchen, you bloody idiot!”

  In his hurry to leave, the fireman had forgotten to turn off the gas burner under the deep-fryer, and flames were shooting joyously up through the window, as though in revenge for all the jets of water the firemen had inflicted on them over the years.

  Is there anything more comical or tragic than a fire in a fire station? The news spread throughout the neighbourhood as though whispered from ear to ear by the Holy Spirit Himself, and there was a jeering crowd waiting for them in front of the building when they returned.

  Monsieur Victoire had seen the clouds of smoke as he was on his way home and run across the street to tell the Fafards. Charles and Henri were home alone that night, and they decided to go with Monsieur Victoire to take in the show.

  By the time they arrived on the scene the firemen almost had the fire under control, but it had caused a great deal of damage, not so much to the building as to the pride and reputation of the men in charge of it. Charles and Henri elbowed their way through the crowd until they were at the barrier the firemen had put up to keep the curious at bay, but even so a spark flew over and caught Charles on his left eyelid. He cried out sharply and rubbed his eye, but quickly forgot about the pain as he watched the embarrassed firemen, red with anger and chagrin. He laughed at the cruel jokes being shouted out around him, and even shouted out a few of his own, at which those around him laughed as well.

  By eight o’clock there was nothing much left to see, and since their toes were nearly numb the boys decided to go home. They’d lost sight of Monsieur Victoire long ago; shortly after their arrival he’d gone off to chat up a pretty South American woman muffled up in a white, hooded coat.

  They took a detour down rue Ontario. From time to time Charles raised his hand to his eye, since it had started hurting again. He wondered if he shouldn’t go to the hospital. Henri took a look at it and said it looked serious, and he told Charles he should do something about it. They were just coming up to a pharmacy; the windows were lit up and it seemed to be still open. They went in and were welcomed by a smiling woman in her fifties with black hair tied up in a ponytail. The woman looked them over carefully. The store was otherwise deserted, except for a balding man with grey hair and a pair of glasses balanced at the end of his nose, who was scribbling something behind a counter.

  Charles went up to him and, in his politest voice, asked for something to put on the burn on his eyelid. The man looked up and stared at him. For several seconds his deeply lined face remained entirely expressionless; it seemed to be reflecting an inner emptiness, which, admittedly, might have been a reflection of the lack of customers in the store.

  “How did you do that?” he asked at length.

  “I was watching the fire at the fire station a few blocks from here, and a spark flew at me.”

  The pharmacist continued looking at him blankly; he looked over at Henri, then back at Charles, then gave a long sigh. Was it because he was tired? Charles wondered. Or bored? Or had Charles, with his incautious curiosity, just provided him with yet another example of human stupidity?

  Finally the man recommended an ointment. Charles took out his wallet, asked a few questions about how to apply it, paid the bill, and turned to leave.

  “One minute,” said the pharmacist. “What’s your name?”

  Charles, though surprised by the question, told him.

  “Do you live far from here?”

  “Just at the corner of Dufresne and Ontario.”

  “Hmm. Not far, then.… Are you working somewhere in your spare time?”

  Charles shook his head and assumed the attentive, focused look that had so often gained him generous tips in his career as a delivery boy.

  “It’s just that I’m looking for someone to do deliveries on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Does that kind of work appeal to you? You look like a good worker.”

  The man gave a very faint smile, which still was like a firework going off in the face of a totem pole.

  “Yes, of course, I’m very interested, sir,” Charles replied, under the envious gaze of Henri. “When would you like me to begin?”

  “Tomorrow, if that suits you. Get yourself here around five-thirty. I’ll pay you two dollars an hour.”

  And so Charles became an employee of Henri Lalancette, pharmacist, a 1953 graduate from the University of Montreal, married, father of three (now grown and moved away), a taciturn man not normally given to fantastical notions, but dependable, a hard worker, and, all in all, an agreeable person to work for when accepted exactly as he was.

  Beneath his hibernating-bear exterior, Lalancette had three hidden passions. The first was his daughter, Claire, whom by dint of patience and kindness he had succeeded in rescuing from drug addiction when she was sixteen. She was now married and worked in a downtown travel agency; every Thursday evening he had dinner with her in a restaurant.

  His second passion was diseases of the prostate gland, an interest he had had for many years. He and a former medical student, who now worked in the laboratory of a pharmaceutical company, had been conducting “experiments” on the beneficial effects of the dregs of port wine on such diseases, beneficial effects that he himself had experienced.

  And thirdly, he was an inveterate collector of paintings, some of them of dubious quality, hinting perhaps too strongly of the bargain bin. His most precious acquisition was entitled “View from the Montréal-Matin Building, Nightfall, Winter’s Day,” painted in 1953 by John Little, which he had bought from a retired journalist. It reigned on the living-room wall above the settee, along with a few other works of lesser interest, and no one but he and he alone was allowed to so much as dust its frame.

  The pharmacist congratulated himself on having hired Charles. He found the boy friendly, resourceful, and conscientious; after two weeks he raised Charles’s
salary to two dollars and twenty-five cents, to show how satisfied he was with his work. For his part, Charles quickly learned that, despite Monsieur Lalancette’s dour expression, he was an interesting man with a sensitive heart, a man who could easily be taken advantage of (as his associate in prostate research knew very well). Claire came into the pharmacy one evening and talked for a while with Charles. She, too, found him charming, and said so to her father. Two days later, after closing time, Charles was favoured with a thirty-three-minute lecture on the dregs of port wine; the pharmacist expressed his regret that Charles was still an adolescent and therefore probably had a properly functioning prostate, otherwise he would be able to join his small group of guinea pigs. The following week he invited Charles to his home, to admire his collection of paintings.

  Madame Lalancette, a small, portly, somewhat snobbish woman, was cool towards Charles at first, but was soon won over by his smile and good manners. She offered him a glass of milk and a piece of raspberry pie, cutting a large slice for herself as well, which she ate while telling him about the week-long vacation she and her husband had taken in Cuba at the beginning of the winter.

  Within a month Charles was nicely settled into his new job. True, the atmosphere in the pharmacy was infinitely less entertaining than Chez Robert’s restaurant had been. But the work would nonetheless draw him into a terrible experience.

  Céline was busting out all over. Two impish bulges had appeared under her blouse that very morning, and far from being shy about them she paraded about the house as though to show them off. She kept her eyes lowered demurely, but there was a smile of satisfaction on her lips. Could they have appeared overnight? Hard to believe. And yet one day it had been difficult to see her as anything but a young girl, and all of a sudden she’d been mysteriously transformed into a young woman, easily overtaking both Charles and Henri on the road to maturity.

  The stir she created that morning almost made Charles forget it was the last day of school and they were leaving Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur School – and its tyrannical principal – forever. At the breakfast table the boys teased Céline mercilessly (Charles asked her why she had two little puppies playing under her blouse). Their jokes, however, made not a dent in her good humour. She ate her cereal without saying a word, looking up occasionally to give them an indifferent glare, as though to say: “Puppies, are they? Well, they’re pretty good-looking puppies! And what do they look like now?”