“Don’t tell me you’ve come all this way to waste my time with this junk,” he said to Charles, trying to repair the damage.
Charles’s face turned deep red and he stood up to leave the room.
“Okay, okay, don’t get your dander up! Sit down, we can talk about this.”
The two men smiled at each other and the negotiations began.
Charles said he wanted three thousand for them, and the manager offered five hundred. Half an hour later, Charles left the building with a thousand dollars in his pocket, proud of his negotiating skills. He decided to split the money fifty-fifty with Blonblon, who refused to take his half, saying it was his contribution to the first edition of The Dark Night.
When Lucie heard the story, she was so amazed by her adoptive son’s ingenuity that she went to a cupboard, removed a manila folder from it (the contents of which were known to no one but herself), and took it to the Credit Union; she came home with a cheque for five hundred dollars, which she gave to Charles with a broad smile.
“You can pay me back whenever you can,” she said. “I can say I helped out a writer once in my life.”
He was still about fourteen hundred dollars short, but Pigeon-Lecuchaux was accommodating. The next day Charles signed a contract with Otis Editions, one clause of which stipulated that the Author would pay the Publisher the sum of twenty-five dollars per week until the entire Debt was cleared, in default of which by the Author the ownership of the Work would revert to the Publisher.
“Dura lex sed lex” commented Pigeon-Lecuchaux, who liked to thumb through the red pages of his dictionary. “The law can be tough but fair.”
In his eagerness to become a published author, Charles accepted all Pigeon-Lecuchaux’s conditions without querying any of them. He could feel the laurels of fame already encircling his brow; as he walked back to his apartment, he caught himself wondering why no one stopped him to offer their congratulations.
The Quiet Rip-Off(as the publisher retitled it) came out at the beginning of June, printed on thick, yellowish newsprint that smelled slightly of mould, and bound in a two-colour cover of astonishing ugliness. Charles winced when he saw it, but dared not express his disappointment.
The launch took place on the 15th of June in a bar called Les Bobettes Folichonnes, on boulevard Saint-Laurent. The bar was painted in vibrant colours, the walls decorated with an impressive array of women’s slips and men’s boxer shorts; its clientele consisted mainly of out-of-work revolutionaries, laid-off clerks, part-time students, and intellectuals in search of a cause. All of Charles’s friends and acquaintances were there, as well as many of their friends and acquaintances, and for a while, at least, there appeared to be almost a crowd — a first for Les Bobettes, which for the past two years had been squirming under the menacing eye of its banker.
Charles sat at a table, prey to the usual first-time author’s jitters. He signed seventy-seven copies of his book, figured he must have sold an additional thirty, talked to everyone but noticed no one, and remembered nothing of the evening except that he had been happy, convinced that he had finally entered the world of the celebrity. Everyone drank a great deal of cheap wine out of plastic cups, and for twenty minutes dined on bowls of free chips and pretzels, which after that they had to pay for. Fernand was wearing a black suit with blue pin-stripes along with a blood-red tie, an outfit that put off Les Bobettes’s owner because it reminded him of his banker. However, the hardware-store owner rapidly rose in the barman’s estimation when he picked up everyone’s beer tab. Even Bernard Délicieux was kind enough to make a brief appearance, despite the fact that he was working under a pressing deadline.
When he saw Charles’s book, his disappointment showed. “Everything that goddamned Pigeon-Lecuchaux does is slipshod, isn’t it? Why the hell does he bother?” He thumbed through a copy, put off by the cheap paper, the narrow margins, the thin ink job, the small typeface. Then, setting it down before Charles, he smiled.
“Would you do me the honour, my dear author, of an inscription?”
And as Charles bent over the book, tongue between his teeth, racking his brains for an original, witty phrase, Délicieux leaned towards him and added, “You know, Charles, nothing begins without a good start…”
At six o’clock Pigeon Lecuchaux called for silence, and after several appeals — for alcohol always loosens the vocal cords — the room became quiet enough for him to deliver a short, sonorous speech in which he praised “this young, spirited Canadian literature — or should I say Québécois literature — that has brought such a breath of fresh air to our old French culture,” then turned the spotlight on Charles in particular, “our newest romantic hero,” from whom, they could be assured, they had not heard the last. He stopped, extended his hand to the young author, and invited him to say a few words. Charles, as red as a ripe tomato, thanked everyone for coming and could then think of absolutely nothing else to say. He stammered the one or two inane phrases that came to his lips, said he hoped they would all enjoy reading the novel, and sat down.
Half an hour later, the tables had been cleared and the ashtrays wiped clean. It was over. Dull, ordinary life reasserted itself. Fernand and Lucie invited the young author and a dozen others to a nearby Italian restaurant; Charles found himself sitting between Céline and Henri, across from Blonblon and Isabel; Steve was beside Monsieur Victoire (who was sporting a tie for the first time in ten years) and Rosalie, who had come in from the Laurentians with Roberto and had put on a considerable amount of weight. Pigeon-Lecuchaux held forth from the head of the table. On his left, Roberto, looking pink and healthy, kept casting annoyed glances at him; on his right sat a young, strangely beautiful woman who had come with the publisher but whom no one else knew and who hadn’t uttered a single word all night. The publisher ate and drank like a soldier on leave, talked a great deal about his past triumphs, made a few not very funny jokes, then took his leave of the assembled guests along with his silent friend, saying he had “a mountain of paperwork to do before the morning.”
That night, Charles went to bed feeling sad, somehow. He couldn’t say why. “Hey, you!” he chided himself before going to sleep. “You’re a writer now. Cheer up!” But he remained unconvinced.
Two weeks went by. Charles went to work at the hardware store, hung around with Céline, went out with his friends. Newspapers came and went, television programs marched by. No one seemed aware of the existence of The Quiet Rip-Off, or of its author. As far as the general public was concerned, it might as well have been published on the moon.
One afternoon, after having tried several times to reach Pigeon-Lecuchaux by telephone, Charles decided to go down to the publisher’s office. Montreal was in the midst of a heat wave, the first of the summer. Cats and dogs lay panting under balconies, under cars, and in any available shadowy corner, surprised and stunned by the heat. He found the publisher engaged in an animated conversation on the telephone, wearing a flamboyant short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, and smoking a cigar. As the cigar was waved about it emitted a pleasant odour of rum and spices, as its owner completed the arrangements for his vacation in Cuba.
Charles sat down in a chair and waited patiently for Pigeon-Lecuchaux to finish, then launched into a calm but resolute recital of the concerns he was feeling for the future of his novel.
“Calm yourself, my friend,” cried Pigeon-Lecuchaux, annoyed by such a display of impatience. “Let time work its magic! Paris wasn’t built in a day, you know. With very rare exceptions, first novels take a long time to find their public. Stay calm and have some confidence in me, I beg of you. You’ll soon see what will happen, and I guarantee you’ll be delighted!”
Charles did see what happened: nothing. The articles promised by Robinard did appear — in fact, a whole string of them — but long after the book’s publication date. And in the areas where the articles appeared, the book was not available. Where the book was available, no articles appeared. Otis Editions’s distribution system seemed designed to i
ncrease poverty rather than to combat it. The brilliant, ingenious strategy devised by Pigeon-Lecuchaux had dazzled Charles’s eyes, but it had had very little effect on his sales.
Like many writers, Charles, emboldened by his own anonymity, took to checking out the bookstores to see how many of them were carrying his book. He found two copies on a small table in Parchemin Books; one copy in the Champigny Bookstore; and four at the Book Mart on boulevard de Maisonneuve, where his regularity as a customer had earned him the owner’s friendship. Everywhere else, no one had ever heard of his novel.
“It’s not in the bookstores?” said Pigeon-Lecuchaux. “What are you complaining about? That’s a good sign! If it isn’t in the stores, it’s because all the copies have been sold! What would you rather have, a pile of books in the stores gathering dust? And it doesn’t surprise me in the least that these clerks say they’ve never heard of your novel. Most people who work in bookstores are idiots who wouldn’t recognize a book if it fell off the shelf and hit them on the head! I don’t blame them, I suppose: there are so many new books coming out these days it’s enough to drive anyone off their rocker.”
In short, under the circumstances, everything was running smoothly. But there were certain other signs that made Charles suspicious. Each time he met with Pigeon-Lecuchaux, the publisher seemed to have less and less time for him, and he almost never returned a phone call.
In the end, Charles insisted that the publisher send him a few hundred copies of the book so that he could place them in bookstores himself, on consignment. Steve Lachapelle, who had just got his driver’s licence, managed to convince one of his uncles to lend him a van, and offered to drive Charles around town to distribute his books. And so, after marking their itinerary on a map of Montreal, the two set out one afternoon to conquer the city’s readers. At Charles’s request, Steve had washed his running shoes, put on a new pair of jeans, and taken the silver ring out of his right earlobe. Charles did not have to worry about his friend’s language; bookstores, which Steve never entered, intimidated him to such an extent that he was transformed into a mute pack horse.
At five o’clock they stopped at a tavern, dead on their feet but in good spirits. Charles’s easy, friendly way with people had succeeded in placing fifty books in various stores, and four sales staff, obviously swayed by his good manners, had promised to read the novel. If they liked it, they would no doubt become effective promotional agents.
“If you like,” Steve said, when Charles had paid for the beer, “we can make another round in a week or two to see if any of the books have been sold.”
“Hey, that’d be great, my friend. Let’s give it a couple of weeks. We have to give my novel enough time to find its way in the world, eh?”
Fifteen days later, the book had sold five copies. Given the lamentable job his publisher had done, selling even five copies amounted to a miracle, but the first-time novelist was crushed. Céline tried to comfort him but without much success. The combined efforts of Parfait Michaud, his wife, Lucie, and Fernand, who launched a campaign aimed at everyone they knew who could read, allowed him to off-load another fifty or so copies, but Charles continued to wallow in a disconsolate funk.
At the beginning of September he finally rallied, and decided to give it one more try; he took his book to Le Devoir and to La Presse. The books editor of Le Devoir was away from his desk, and Charles had to content himself with leaving the novel, with a note attached, with a secretary. But he was lucky enough to meet Reginald Martel in La Presse’s newsroom. Although a bit taken aback and obviously swamped with work, Martel received Charles cordially, placed the novel on a teetering pile beside his desk, and questioned him briefly on the nature of his work, pretending not to notice the state of stupefaction into which his young, blushing, and tongue-tied interviewee had fallen.
“I’ll take a look at it when I get some time,” he promised, refraining from going any further.
A month later the following notice appeared in La Presse’s Saturday literary supplement: “Otis Editions, a new publishing house based in Montreal, enjoyed a small succès de scandale a few months ago with a biography of Ginette Reno. It has now sent us The Quiet Rip-Off, a mystery novel by first-time Québécois novelist Charles Thibodeau. Although neither a specialist in nor a big fan of detective stories, I will nonetheless allow myself a few observations. The Quiet Rip-Off has a well-rendered plot and some good writing, and though not exactly original, it is still a pleasant enough read. Unfortunately, the hatchet job done by its publisher (cheap paper, laughable cover, innumerable typographical errors, grammatical and syntactical howlers, and so on) weaken the impact of a young writer who might have benefited from a firmer editorial hand, and therefore prevents us from saying with confidence whether there is any real talent lurking beneath the litter. Perhaps his next book will tell us more.”
It was Céline who brought the article to his attention, at six o’clock in the morning, enthusiastically pointing out its positive aspects. Charles, barely awake, read the notice three times without saying a word, becoming paler each time. Then he asked Céline to leave him alone for a while.
“But Charles, what’s wrong with it?” she asked, worried. “Don’t torture yourself for nothing, my poor love … It’s mostly good. Really.”
Charles’s face darkened, and for the first time since they’d known each other, he yelled at her, using some rather inelegant terms.
She didn’t see him for three days. He left the hardware store precisely at noon and shut himself up in his apartment, communicating with no one. Finally, on the third night, Blonblon and Steve, having been apprised of the situation, knocked on his door.
“Ah, just in time,” Charles greeted them, smiling. Boff leapt up and sniffed Blonblon’s shoes suspiciously, as though he had been somewhere questionable in them. “I was just about to ask you to come over. I called Céline, too. She should be here in a minute.”
“Come over for what?” Steve asked, curious.
Charles replied with an evasive gesture, led them into the kitchen, and gave them both a beer. His friends’; repeated questions evoked nothing further from him but a mysterious smile. “Wait until Céline gets here,” he told them. “Then all will be made clear.”
Céline arrived more alarmed than ever, since she had found Charles’s manner on the telephone very strange. Charles gave her a tender hug. “It’s over, my little vixen,” he whispered to her. “I’m back on earth. Do you want something to drink?”
She shook her head, wanting only to know what he was going to announce to them. But he sat at the table, still smiling, and slowly drank his beer, refusing to reply to their questions. Every so often he looked out the window, as though checking the sky. It was the middle of October, and the days had begun to shorten. A half-hour went by. For lack of anything else to do, the others talked among themselves. All three kept casting perplexed glances in Charles’s direction. Had the strain of the last few months finally pushed him over the edge?
Suddenly, after a prolonged examination of the sky through the window, Charles jumped to his feet. It was almost completely dark outside.
“I would like you all to be witnesses to a great event,” he said. “Follow me,” he added, taking a flashlight from his jacket pocket.
Behind the building in which he lived was a small, asphalt courtyard surrounded by old sheds and garages. Taking advantage of a crack in the pavement that was larger than the others, a Manitoba maple seed had somehow managed to survive and become a tree, and was now growing peacefully among the garbage cans — the only green thing to be found in the area — and a few feet from a dilapidated storage shed. They could hear its leaves, already attacked by the onset of autumn, stirring in the wind.
“Where are you taking us?” Céline asked, following Charles down the wooden stairs.
“You’ll see.”
He led them to an open space in the middle of the now darkened yard. He then stepped towards the centre of it and turned on his flashligh
t.
“Holy baloney, what the heck is that?” Steve exclaimed. “What are you going to do, start a bonfire or something?”
An odd-looking sort of pyre occupied the open area. It was made of books piled every which way, the spaces between them stuffed with rags that gave off the odour of gasoline. Beside it was a green garbage bag filled with more paper.
Céline recognized the books, and began to cry.
“Have you gone nuts, Charlie?” said Blonblon, pulling a copy of The Quiet Rip-Off from the pile.
“Quite the contrary,” said Charles. “I’ve come to my senses. And about time, too!”
He calmly explained to his companions that after giving the matter a great deal of thought, he had come to the conclusion that he hadn’t a single iota of talent as a novelist; that Reginald Martel had seen the truth and could have been a lot crueller than he was; that his pathetic excuse for a publisher had in fact done him a favour by producing such a shoddy product, because it meant that very few readers were now aware of how he had wasted his time writing it — and that was why he now had to rid the planet of this wretched book. Hence the funeral pyre.
“I know it’s just a symbolic gesture,” he added with a bitter smile. “There are a few copies still in the publisher’s warehouse, but in two or three months the last of them will have been either pulped or tossed into the garbage bin. And good riddance to them! Remember this,” he finished, with a rhetorical flourish that made Blonblon smile. “Each time a bad writer stops writing, humanity breathes a little easier.”
He put his arms around Céline.
“Come on, my girl, it’s nothing to cry about. If only you knew how relieved I am! I’ve got to burn this bloody book. I’m not cut out to be a writer, at least not yet. What would you have me be? A failed artist who spends his life applying for grants and boring the world with his worthless stories?”
“But your book is good,” she said, sobbing. “It’s just because you’re disappointed that you’re acting so crazy.”
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