Arvida

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. My father sighed deeply, as if to say “You’re complicated, you young people.” He went to get us each a beer from the old Coke cooler, to wash down the scotch. While he was shutting the door, his face lit up. He began to tap on his temple with his fingers, which resonated on his skull like on wood, a favourite ploy of his when he wanted you to know there was something going on inside.

  “You forget one thing, coco.”

  “What?”

  “Your grandmother.”

  “Éliane?”

  “No. My mother.”

  “What?

  “Her name was Madeleine.”

  For an instant, I thought about the Sophie cakes that Mado made with sugar and cream that never set, the banana bread, the little squares of white cake on which she poured boiling hot butterscotch and a dribble of cream. I thought of the hares my grandfather skinned himself in the garage, and that my grandmother cooked like an Indian. I thought of a million things, but above all of Mado herself, her smell, her voice, her smile and her tiny eyes behind thick lenses. With those memories came the memories of dozens of stories I could tell, one way or another, or any old way if necessary.

  Stories of Arvida and elsewhere.

  Horrible stories and funny stories and stories both horrible and funny.

  Stories of road trips, little thieves, and people weak in the head.

  Stories of monsters and haunted houses.

  Stories of bad men, as men often are, and mysterious and terrifying women, as women always are.

  True stories I’d tell without asking permission or changing any names, while giving dates and the names of streets.

  Terrible stories that I’d never tell except by removing them to the opposite end of the world, or disguising them in strange language.

  They all jostled together, taking their time, until I succumbed to the overwhelming fatigue of a day in the open air. There was no hurry. I hugged my father, I pissed outside, and I went to bed early for once, happy to know so many stories.

  Beginning with that one.

  About the Author

  Photo by: Frederick Duchesne

  Samuel Archibald was born in Arvida, Quebec, in 1978. He earned a doctorate at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where he currently teaches creative writing and popular culture. From 2007 to 2009, Archibald was a post-doctoral fellow at the Université de Poitiers, France.

  Arvida won two literary prizes and has been universally acclaimed as one of the major works of fiction published in French Canada in recent years. In addition to Arvida, Archibald is the author of a novella, and of non-fiction books about reading in the digital age and the decline of the middle class.

  About the Translator

  Donald Winkler is a Montreal-based literary translator and documentary filmmaker. He has translated French language fiction, non-fiction, and poetry for many years, and is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for French-to-English translation, most recently, in 2013, for Pierre Nepveu’s collection of verse, The Major Verbs.