Maxime asked Luc if he knew why we didn’t need window shades in this house. Luc knew the answer—everyone, everyone who passed by on the street knew, but Maxime didn’t give him time to respond. He turned toward the house and shouted that the goddamn vines were smothering us. Since I’d forbidden anyone to cut them, there wasn’t a single window they hadn’t overrun.
“Do you know my father only raised his hand to me once in my whole life? Would you like to know what the occasion was?”
Luc looked at me as if he were waiting for my permission. I shrugged, sorry that he was being subjected to this. A few months ago, I had surprised Maxime in the backyard with a scythe in his hand. I had watched him from my bedroom window for a few moments. I saw his sweeping movements and the sprays of weeds and flowers shooting into the air with every swoop of the blade. And I hesitated. A voice within me, which I really did hear, said “Yes, that’s right, Maxime is cutting, razing, making everything like new, and God help me.” But the further he went, the greater my anxiety. What would I do with the yard afterwards? What meaning would I give it? Finally, I charged down the stairs and out the door, and gave him a kick in the ass.
“Say, Luc, while we’re at it, I’d like your opinion on something: which is more terrible, a guy who doesn’t maintain his lawn or a son who hates his father?”
Maxime turned toward me, his fists clenched so tight that his fingernails were digging into his palms. I let him approach because he was my son and there was nothing more important in the world. The truth is, he was ashamed to come home every night. This house shouted, “I’m not like everybody else and to hell with you.” At eighteen, this was not what my son wanted people to hear about him. And I could understand him, having spent part of my childhood doing everything I could so that the house I lived in with my father would arouse no suspicion.
He asked me if I knew what people in the neighbourhood were saying about me, the things he heard when he was still in high school or overheard at the corner store.
“No, I don’t pay much attention to gossip. Maybe I should.”
“They say you’ve got a screw loose, that you’re deliberately cutting yourself off from people. That’s why I’m in such a rush to get out of here. I would have liked to have a father like everybody else’s, but I got a selfish one who’s so full of himself that he doesn’t realize the harm he’s doing to his whole family.”
For the first time, everything had been said. I didn’t have the words to explain to him that one day he might thank me for not giving in to all the blackmail. That kind of lesson, although it wasn’t specifically the intent of the exercise, would have been a big gamble: it could as likely push my son away permanently as help him later when he would try, like me, to find real meaning in his life. I circled him slowly, examining him from head to foot, and gave him a good whack on the back of the head.
“Go to your room,” I ordered. “You can come out when you’ve thought about it.”
He looked at me for a few seconds with that disdainful look they passed down from generation to generation on his mother’s side. Every gust of wind plastered his hair to his forehead.
“You want a normal father? Well, that’s what normal fathers do when their sons act like assholes.”
He didn’t answer. He walked down the wooden steps and headed toward the cars. Luc snickered to himself until my son signalled him to come along. Then he picked up the two suitcases, nodding to me as he passed.
“Take good care of him, Luc.”
They reached the driveway at the end of the short cement walk, and one after the other disappeared from my field of vision.
I crossed a few metres of runaway vegetation, walked through the wooden arch and followed what had once been a gravel path, delicately pushing aside the young balsam poplars, quaking aspens and grey birches that had begun to colonize this part of the garden over the last four years. I loved these trees. I loved their general appearance, but even more, I loved their tragic destiny. They’re the first trees to take hold on bare ground, and as they grow, their shade prevents their own regeneration.
Suddenly it started to rain. I cut to the right and crossed a bed of annuals that used to cost me an average of nearly three hundred dollars a year—and was now no more than a huge mass of twitch grass—and headed toward the big pine, the only original tree to survive the bulldozers when the neighbourhood was built. I lay down under it on the magnificent carpet of needles whose circle grew bigger year by year.
It had been an eternity since it last rained. I would have loved to catch the first whiff of wet earth or the bittersweet fragrance of the rotting flowers awakened by the rain, but the wind was so strong that the smells came to me jumbled in a kind of chaotic bouquet.
I regretted not having brought the bottle of vodka. All the elements were in place to create a perfect moment. The rain at a temperature of twenty-five degrees, the sweet smell of decomposition, and the void in my head, the fabulous void for which I would happily have given my life. If only I’d had the presence of mind to bring the goddamn bottle, I’d have died of joy!
I stood up. Passing close to a young hazelnut tree, I felt dizzy. It was the kind of thing that grabs you when you get a glimpse of the vastness of the universe that contains us, those three hundred billion galaxies. I was so weary I was staggering. It was probably my colossal fatigue, as Michel liked to say—as a put-down—when he spoke of my total disgust with everything.
It was raining buckets and the wind was tossing things around with a kind of colonial disdain. I headed back to the house. Twenty years for nothing, I thought, wiping my face with my hand. Twenty goddamn years.
3
I DIDN’T BOTHER OPENING the window. I just picked up my son’s chair and flung it through the glass. It fell to the cement walk at the end of the patio one floor below in a shower of shattered glass. Magnificent. The night table followed in short order, and it completely disintegrated when it hit the ground—even better. The chair had disappointed me somewhat in this regard.
It was a splendid morning—it must have been twenty-five degrees. I was in an impressive state of relaxation, given the circumstances.
All that remained were the dresser and the bed, but something told me I was going to extend this little housecleaning session to the other rooms of the house. A great calm …
I considered the dresser with an amused smile. It was too big and heavy to suffer the same fate as its peers. It just wouldn’t fit through. I could have knocked out the window frame, and even a chunk of wall while I was at it, but I wasn’t sure I could lift it in one piece. While reflecting on what strategy to adopt, I tore down the posters that decorated the walls, crumpled them up, and sent them gracefully flying.
There weren’t a lot of possibilities. I started by pitching the six drawers of the behemoth, one by one, each more energetically than the one before, so that the last one travelled more than five metres before landing at the foot of a bitter hickory that I had planted somewhat resentfully, I must admit, having wanted to put a speckled alder there but not wishing to defy the plant hardiness zones.
I went downstairs, walked around the worktable top and the two sawhorses I had thrown from the top of the stairs a little earlier, and headed toward the patio door. The garden shed was an exact replica of the house. I had built it with my own hands and I think I can say in all modesty that it was in better shape than the original. I opened the door and picked up the axe.
What was in store for me at the end of all this? What would I find at the bottom of this solitude? How far was I prepared to go? I would perhaps end up huddled like an arthritic old dog in the middle of an empty house. When they came to get me, when they arrived on the patio with their bureaucratic compassion—puzzled by the furniture littering the yard, the creeping plants, the mosses and mushrooms that had taken over the area—and when they smashed through the door, maybe I wouldn’t even raise my muzzle.
Knowing that the dresser was made of whit
e pine gave me a psychological advantage. I took a wide stance, raised the axe above my head, and swung with all my strength. The blade went all the way into the top, but that was it, the rest of the structure didn’t budge. Those damn Swedes knew what they were doing.
With the second blow, however, the sides began to show signs of fatigue. I hit it again. And again. Finally the dowels gave way, the screws tore through the wood, and the piece of furniture succumbed. A lovely smell of sawdust pervaded the room. I finished dismembering the thing with my hands and sent the pieces flying out the window one after another. All that remained was the bed.
“Hello! Doing some housecleaning, Édouard?”
I looked outside. My wife was standing in front of the debris, holding my two suitcases. She was wearing a long skirt and a sleeveless white knitted top. She was radiant. Because of the suitcases, a simple passer-by might have thought she was returning home. But they would have had to be really simple.
“Moving some furniture?”
Shortly after our separation, she had commented that it was only a matter of time, that sooner or later my son would understand what kind of father I was. Today she was wearing a triumphant smile.
I didn’t want those suitcases anymore.
“Throw them on the pile,” I said.
In any case, I didn’t see what use I would have for them. It had been a long time since I’d done any travelling—since I had missed a flight to Italy, in fact.
“You’re in fine form, I see. Can I talk to you for a minute anyway?”
It wasn’t a good time. I had been running on anger and anxiety for several hours now and I was afraid that if I stopped, the fatigue, the huge fatigue I had repeatedly chased away like an insistent fly, would finally catch up with me. Passing the front hall mirror, I glimpsed an unwashed, unshaven man in his forties who hadn’t slept in thirty hours.
I stopped in front of the patio door and we looked at each other for a few moments. We were like two specimens from different species observing one another curiously from inside their jars on a pet shop shelf. She opened the door and I got out of her way.
Every time she set foot in the house, she managed to make it hers again. She’d make the same gestures she had made all those years—as if she were walking in her own footsteps—and the house would become her property again. A few quick steps around the table, a pause before going into the kitchen, the sweep of her skirt as she turned, and it all belonged to her again. And every time, I came close to falling under her power again, and after she left, I had to roll up my sleeves and take back my territory metre by metre. It was very annoying.
Since our separation, she hadn’t been herself. Over the years, she had cultivated a remarkable strength of character, a cold-bloodedness a reptile would envy, but now she was at the mercy of emotional swings as a result of my presence. In other words, she sometimes lost control.
Right from the start, she made it clear that she was in frighteningly fine form. She showed it with a toss of her head, like those girls in commercials for hair conditioners, but less naturally, as if that were possible. I was supposed to deduce from this that she had a new lover. Then she took a deep breath, closing her eyes. Here, I was supposed to get an idea of how well he satisfied her. Instead, I took advantage of the opportunity to peek at her breasts thrusting against her sweater. An old habit, nothing very serious. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
“His name is Philippe … ”
She exhaled very slowly, and I thought of all the micro-organisms she was spreading in my space, all the germs, all the particles that had dwelt inside her body and that she was expelling like so much garbage in my home. And to think that at one time those germs and those particles could go from her anatomy to mine and vice-versa without my having the slightest problem.
I imagined her body coloured like a thermal spectrum, showing the heat given off by each part. The top of her head, her armpits, her mouth, her crotch all glowed red, pulsating, radiating in the room.
“So you’ve finally found the love of your life.”
“Yes, I think this is it. He has all the qualities I’m looking for in a partner.”
I didn’t particularly feel like hearing the list reeled off. I had a feeling it would consist of everything that was the opposite of me. I went into the living room and flopped down on the couch. She really wanted me to try to say what it was about him that had seduced her. I didn’t dare hazard a guess. I didn’t want to spoil her fun. She must have been planning this blow all the way here. Kilometres of going over it in her mind from every angle in order to find the most striking way to put it. I was expecting anything—an insult, a slap, the stab of a knife—and finally concluded that it would likely be all three at once. I closed my eyes, trying to anticipate the punch line.
“He’s allergic to flowers and pollen. In fact, he hates everything that’s green and produces oxygen. So much so that when I described our house to him … ”
“My house.”
“Anyway, I had to find his pump for him in a hurry, he was suffocating.”
“He’s a real force of nature.”
“Well, aside from that, he’s quite robust, if you know what I mean.”
Since our separation, she had kept me up on all her relationships. I knew about all the guys scattered along the path of her new life. She took a malicious pleasure in telling me what these men were ready to do for her, whereas I had pushed her away. As for me, I had loved no one after her. Of course, in the beginning I’d had a few flings, blinded by a kind of naive optimism, but I had very quickly lost interest. I was tired of arranging these meetings that just kept on getting more complicated and more disappointing. Not to mention that it had become risky to invite girls home with me; as soon as they saw how my place looked, they were afraid I would kidnap them or something. Also, it wasn’t unusual to hear a rodent scratching or a bat beating its wings at night, indoors. Other than a veterinarian or a zoo attendant, I couldn’t see who’d want to spread their legs under these conditions. At any rate, three times out of four, I couldn’t even get it up.
Being a good sport—but not going so far as to look at her—I remarked that this Philippe was a very lucky guy. She didn’t react right away. I turned my head to see what she was up to—her silences had a way of making me nervous. She was staring at me, fists on hips, legs apart. Her anatomy was so familiar to me that I could imagine her thighs under her skirt, very hard, with the inner quadriceps, those muscles that start just above the knees, particularly well developed. And on top of all that, a cute little dimple on each round cheek of her bum.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just that this Philippe is very lucky to have run into you.”
She turned her head away quickly, and then back just as fast. All the muscles in her face had contracted. This distorted her appearance, creating little bumps and hollows here and there, exaggerating the lines caused by the repeated knitting of her brow or just age. She spoke half of the next sentence with her eyes closed.
“What are you trying to do, Édouard?”
It was a reasonable question. Did I only want to deprive her of the pleasure of throwing her happiness in my face, or did I really feel this guy was lucky? Or was I trying to avenge Maxime’s leaving by any means I could?
She shook her finger at me and forbade me to speak to her that way, and took a few steps, bristling with irritation.
“You have no right to tell me who I can share my life with or who I can screw. And as for your condescending manner, as if you understand the meaning of life, you can save it for Maxime!”
I leapt off the couch, aiming at her. Crossing the few paces between us, I said that in that case, I was changing my position—that the guy was totally pathetic and would be well advised to put a bullet in his head while he still had full possession of it. That way, she could keep on believing I was against her, since it made life so much easier for her.
“And let me tell yo
u something. You’re really vindictive. It’s not enough that you’ve co-opted our son, but now you have to talk to me about your Philippe, with his delicate bronchi and his hard cock. If all this is just to show me yet again that I’ve been wrong about everything, it seems to me that after all these years you could just drop it.”
“Poor Édouard, I was just making conversation … ”
Yeah, sure, she had spent twenty minutes on the road just to “converse” with me. She had no doubt mistaken my house for a tearoom. I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t in the habit of going anywhere without a good reason. Either it was to protect her position or it was to launch an attack. And today I had a premonition that it was both.
“Contrary to what you think, I wish you no harm, Édouard—only what you deserve. And if I understand correctly, that’s what you’re getting. It appears you have almost no one with you now … ”
“Speaking of which, I really appreciated the fact that Maxime, on your recommendation, decided to leave without talking to me first.”
“He asked me what to do in this kind of situation, so I told him that that was how things were done in this family.”
I closed my eyes for a second. I could hardly believe we were going to go over this old story again. I had talked to her about our separation two years before it happened. It was Véronique who had asked me to wait until Maxime was twelve. I had agreed out of love for her and my son, and we had resumed the course of our lives. What she has blamed me for ever since that fateful day was my not having reminded her every week that we were moving toward the end.
“You acted as if nothing was wrong! You worked, you took care of me, Max, the yard, the house. Every once in a while, you’d put your hand on my ass and I’d get the message that you still wanted me. It was like that for two years, two almost perfect years. And then out of the blue, you announce to me that the time has come.”
A Slight Case of Fatigue Page 2