FIRST ENGLISH EDITION
Published originally under the title Document 1 © Les éditions de L’instant même, 2012
English translation copyright © 2018 by J.C. Sutcliffe
The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013-2018: Education, Immigration, Communities, for our translation activites.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Blais, François, 1973– [Document 1. English] Document 1 / François Blais ;
[translated by] J.C. Sutcliffe. —First English edition.
(Literature in translation series) Translation of: Document 1.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77166-378-6 (softcover)
ISBN 978-1-77166-379-3 (HTML)
ISBN 978-1-77166-380-9 (PDF)
ISBN 978-1-77166-381-6 (Kindle)
I. Sutcliffe, J. C., [date]–, translator II. Title. III. Title: Document one. IV. Series: Literature in translation series
PS8603.L3282D6213 2018 C843’.6 C2018-900812-1
C2018-900813-X
Sheer experience had already taught her that, in some circumstances, there was one thing better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever.
—Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles
All laughing comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at, there is no laughable thing under the sun.
—Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Part One
By Tess
Ò
Prologue
(The Theory of Adjectives)
I really hate to brag, but I think Jude and I are unhappy. The desire to just get away from everything has got to be the most common symptom of unhappiness. I know it’s totally stupid, but unhappy people genuinely believe they can leave their problems behind, they can fix everything with a change of scenery, or by starting over from scratch, or by going off to find themselves, all that crap. (“An’ live off the fatta the lan’. An’ have rabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we’re gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that, George.”)
Okay, so in our case we’re not exactly talking about starting over, since all we want to do is go and spend a month in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, but that should be enough for us because we’re only a little bit unhappy. We’re only ever a little bit anything. When I told Jude—“Man, I think we’re really unhappy!”—he laughed in my face and called me a goth.
“So you reckon we’re happy then?”
“God, no! Where the hell did you get that idea?”
And that’s how he came to tell me his theory, in considerable detail: according to him, adjectives were created for the sole purpose of describing a tiny handful of people, extreme cases. We use them because they’re handy or because we’re lazy, but if we ever bothered to stop and think about it, we’d soon realize that the vast majority of people don’t really warrant them. We go around saying, “So-and-so is superintelligent,” or, more often, “So-and-so is an imbecile,” but in reality we hardly ever meet superintelligent people. Or imbeciles, come to that. There are some complete idiots, of course—just as there’s the odd genius, a Leonardo da Vinci, at the other end of the spectrum—but these maestros of stupidity are about as rare as babies born with teeth or people born blind. The vast majority of people you come across on a daily basis have never had an original thought in their lives, but they’re nonetheless perfectly capable of doing a sudoku in the newspaper. By the same token, people are hardly ever really ugly or really beautiful. They’re just nondescript, and the only way to find them interesting is with alcohol or rose-tinted glasses, or some combination of the two. (That’s what Jude says. As for me, even when I’m pissed out of my tiny mind, I never get overly excited about anyone.) Jude admits these things aren’t always equally distributed. There’s always more people at the negative end of the spectrum: more idiots than geniuses, more ugly ducklings than hotties, and, of course, more unhappy people than happy ones. But according to him, it’s not unhappiness that’s our problem. We’ve got quite a ways to go if we want to claim to be unhappy. I find this reassuring.
Ò...1...Ò
A Little History
(Introducing My Topic)
Around the end of the third century, while Emperor Maximian was staying at Octodurum (today Martigny in Switzerland) and finding it somewhat dull, he decided to entertain himself by persecuting some local Christians. His own guards proving insufficient to the task, he called in a Theban legion for reinforcement. The commanding officers of this legion, upon learning the nature of their mission, refused to carry out the emperor’s orders and came to a standstill in the narrow passes of Agaunum. Maximian then commanded the decimation of the legion by gladiator sword. When the remaining soldiers still refused to comply, the emperor carried out a second decimation. After the legion sent a delegation to Maximian indicating their resolve not to break the oaths they’d made to God, regardless of how many decimations were commanded, the emperor ordered the legion’s massacre.
The brave officers who chose to die with their men rather than attack their fellow Christians were called Maurice, Candidus, and Exuperius. I don’t know if the last two were canonized, since I know of no place called Saint Candidus or Saint Exuperius (after all, if your name is Candidus or Exuperius, you can hardly expect anyone to name too many places after you), but what we do know is that Maurice did make it into the liturgical calendar, and has today given his name to a ton of villages, municipalities, regions, and out-of-the-way spots all over the Western world. But whose idea was it to name our own beautiful region in honour of a third-century Theban general? Nobody’s. The Saint-Maurice River (and, consequently, the Mauricie region around it) took its name, somewhat ridiculously, from one Maurice Poulin de la Fontaine, who cleared the land in the middle of the seventeenth century. (Which means that my telling you the story of Saint Maurice was pretty much pointless, but I’m confident you’ll find some way of dropping it into conversation in the near future.) Monsieur Poulin de la Fontaine was gazing contemplatively at the river one day, after a hard day’s work, when he said to himself, “Hang on, this river hasn’t been named yet. What if I named it after myself? It’s basically my only chance to make sure it isn’t forgotten. And just to ensure it doesn’t come across as a sin of pride, I’ll put a Saint in front of it. There must be a Saint Maurice somewhere. Given that there’s a Saint Mechtilde, a Saint Euphrasia, a Saint Euloge, and a Saint Crispin, it would be pretty crazy if after all that time we couldn’t
dredge up a Maurice or two who’d been chopped into pieces for the glory of Christ.” Or perhaps it didn’t happen quite like that; maybe Monsieur Poulin de la Fontaine didn’t say that to himself at all. In any case, Maurice gave his name to the river, and the river gave it to the region (so that anecdote about Monsieur de Laviolette pulling up to the future site of the town of Trois-Rivières and exclaiming, “By Jove, it’s dead here!” must be apocryphal).
It took another two centuries for the region to be settled properly. In 1889, while across the pond Jack the Ripper was rampaging through Whitechapel murdering prostitutes, construction of the Eiffel Tower was almost completed and Germany had just crowned its last emperor, Mr. John Foreman was constructing a hydraulic power station near Shawinigan to power his pulp mill. Lacking capital, he was forced to team up with three Boston gentlemen: John Edward Aldred, John Joyce, and H. H. Melville (yes, the one of Melville Island fame), the same guys who would in 1897 found the Shawinigan Water & Power Company. Nobody knows exactly which of the three had the idea of calling the village Grand-Mère after the rocky island in the middle of the river, but we do know that we can blame an American if we ended up with the second most ridiculous place name in Quebec (yes, we’re looking at you, people of Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!). But these American gentlemen truly had a knack for outlandish names. Which is something we’ve discovered in our travels to the four corners of America.
Ò...2...Ò
Travels on Mouseback
(The Topic Introduction Is Dragging Somewhat)
One amusing and instructive way of learning about America is exploring the Family Watchdog website (www. familywatchdog.us), a service that allows American citizens to learn whether anyone in their neighbourhood has been convicted of a sex crime. The home page asks for the name of a town. Let’s choose one at random: Anchorage, Alaska. A map pops up with a constellation of little coloured squares corresponding to the houses and workplaces of criminals. These offenders are categorized into four types: “offence against children” (in these cases, the criminal’s house is represented by a red square, and his workplace, where applicable, by a burgundy square); “rape” (“offender home” in yellow, “offender work” in white); “sexual battery” (do you know what that means?) (“offender home” in light blue, “offender work” in dark blue); and “other offense” (“offender home” in light green, “offender work” in dark green). In cities with a high population density, the map disappears entirely under little coloured squares, which looks very pretty. Seven hundred and twenty-five people have been convicted of sex crimes in Anchorage, in addition to 509 “non-mappable offenders,” whatever that might mean. Let’s click on a little red square (home of a child rapist) near International Airport Road. This brings up the photo and ID sheet of one Douglas Dwayne Martin, currently residing at 4521 Cordova Street, Apartment 4, Anchorage, AK 99503, and working for Alaskan Distributor. Mr. Martin (forty-eight years old, five-foot-ten, 160 pounds, white) was convicted on November 9, 2000, of the following charge: “Attempted Sexual Abuse of Minor 1.” If we zoom in a bit, we spot a second little red square right in the same place: another pedophile lives in his building, or in the one right next door. Or maybe they’re roommates?
Another go? Let’s take Dallas. Maybe I’m prejudiced, but I think there might be some good fishing down there… Aaaand I’m not wrong: it’s quite the avalanche of little coloured squares. Especially red ones. It’s bizarre, you’d think everyone in Dallas spent their leisure time doing nothing but kiddy-fiddling. (And don’t forget that the site shows only the ones who got caught…) There’s a big circle all around Harry Moss Park, about fifteen reds and one blue (“sexual battery”). Twenty-two sex offenders within a half-mile radius, Family Watchdog tells us. Maybe not the best place to raise your little family. A random click and here comes the photo of one Richard Allen Haskell (7522 Holly Hill, Apartment 3, Dallas, TX 75321; sixty-seven years old, six-foot-four, 219 lbs), who looks, at first sight, like a completely harmless old guy. Let’s see what he’s accused of: “Possession of child pornography.” No doubt it was all just a misunderstanding; he must have downloaded it by mistake while trying to sign in to his email. Old people are useless with computers.
One last one? (Personally, I could spend hours doing this.) Let’s try somewhere quiet this time. Hmm, let’s see. Aha! Here we go: Cheyenne, Wyoming. Everyone there is chaste and pure, I’d swear to it. Or maybe not. Holy crap! There are perverts in Cheyenne! You’re not safe anywhere. Now, who’s hiding behind this little green square at the corner of Missile Drive and Round Top Road? None other than Ron Ernest Schneider, a big red-faced guy with a moustache, which didn’t hide the smile on his ID photo. Six foot, 310 pounds, a good specimen of a man. You wouldn’t have wanted to be in his victim’s place on December 12, 2003, when he committed a “third-degree sexual abuse.” Going by the date, it might have happened at a work Christmas party. Can you really hold that against him? I mean, who hasn’t committed a third-degree sexual abuse after one drink too many?
Jude and me, we weren’t just about the sex tourism, we also liked wandering aimlessly around the world—particularly around America, in fact, for reasons that will be explained later—thanks to Google Earth, Google Maps, and Bing Maps. For example, you can tour the Gaspésie in twenty minutes, soaring above Highway 132, clicking on the little icons along the way that indicate images uploaded by volunteer contributors. (Thank you to JMRioux for the beautiful photo of Querry Falls in Caplan, to Simore for the view of the Bonaventure quay, to Paul Langlois for having informed us that Mont-Joli is the world capital of outdoor murals. After that, we head west totally at random. We travel thousands of kilometres with one quick movement (just a few centimetres to the left on the mouse pad), ending up near Minneapolis. Then we zoom in on the posh end of town (it’s easy to spot tony areas on the map: they’re near green spaces and away from highways), and have a nice little jaunt around Kenwood Parkway, a beautiful wide avenue lined with hundred-year-old trees. The house at number 886 is as big as a school! We swoop in front of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, home of the Twins, we roam the banks of Lake Nokomis, we amble toward downtown, then we head south again. We jump the four hundred kilometres separating Minnesota’s metropolis from Des Moines, Iowa. We’d better see what the buzz is down here. Fly low over Grand View University. Not much going on, it’s all very peaceful, but let’s just note in passing that the Des Moines fire hydrants are yellow. Another crucial piece of information to take up storage space in our brains. There’s not much happening on Euclid Avenue either, even though it seems to be one of the town’s main commercial streets. Lots of vehicles (trucks in particular), but no pedestrians: apparently strolling is not the done thing in Des Moines. All right, let’s tear ourselves away and head west, toward Nebraska. We fly over Omaha without stopping (something tells us that Omaha and Des Moines are much of a muchness) and are heading along Interstate 80 toward Colorado, when a name catches our attention: Cozad. “What’s Cozad?” we ask Wikipedia, which speedily tells us that it’s a town in Dawson County with 4,163 inhabitants (according to the 2000 census), whose main—if not only—feature is its position on the hundredth meridian. A huge sign on the way into town points this out. We double-click randomly on Meridian Street, just to check, for surely the people at Google Street View won’t have taken their photographerly zeal to such an extent as to photograph the streets of Cozad. But look, believe it or not, that’s exactly what they have done. And what does Cozad look like? Meh! Bungalows, commercial buildings, cars, more bungalows, a municipal airport, a few factories, and yet more bungalows. And if you really must know every single detail, the people at 60 Gatewood Drive were about to do some landscaping when the picture was taken. There’s a tractor in the alley and a Werner’s Sprinklers truck parked in front of the house. And that’s the juiciest piece of local gossip we could winkle out. We leave Nebraska and carry on in a southwesterly direction, skipping over Colorado, where no place names catch our eye, and he
ad into Arizona airspace. Right by the New Mexico border there’s a godforsaken little place by the name of Fort Defiance (a little over four thousand inhabitants, ninety-two per cent of whom are Navajo Indians). We try to see what it looks like on the ground, but there’s nothing to see. Here we have one of those rare places snubbed by Google Street View; when you think that they went to Cozad and Saint-Georges-de-Champlain, it’s pretty insulting to the people of Fort Defiance. Now we’ll never know what Water Tank Road looks like. Too bad. Anyway, we’ve had our fill of the back of beyond: let’s go and look around downtown Phoenix. Returning to civilization will do us good. But nooo! Phoenix is super-ugly, like Trois-Rivières West with palm trees.
These American small towns are like episodes of The Young and the Restless: once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But it never dragged; we’d stay up late in front of the screen, roaming the streets of Edmond and spying on downtown Oklahoma City via the webcam on the roof of city hall, going into raptures every time a passerby appeared in the frame. It wasn’t exactly that we despised ordinary cities—Rochester, Cape Breton Regional Municipality, Harrisburg, or any of those charmless, functional agglomerations you only ever hear about on the sports channels (“The Washington Nationals have called up outfielder Manolo Perez from their minor-league team, Harrisburg”)—but we did have a particular predilection for places with stupid names. As soon as we saw one that caught our attention (pro tip: fly low if you want to find them; it’s usually the small places that have moronic names, and if you fly too high over the map, only the names of big places will show up), we’d stop there and spend some time wandering the main streets. Next we’d go and ask Wikipedia everything there was to know about the place. Most of the time, there wasn’t much to say (Chocolate Bayou, Texas, has the nerve to call itself that without any explanation as to why; ditto for Scissors and Ugly), but every once in a while we’d come across a fantastic story.
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