Charles the Bold

by Yves Beauchemin

  “Prison, is it?” Fernand managed to get out in a strained voice. “Well, we’ll be in there together, then, my friend, because I’ll report you to the police.”

  With those words the two men parted. “Well, now you’ve done it, you big idiot,” Fernand told himself as he returned to his own house. “You should have given it more thought before barging over there and sticking your big foot in it like that. Now you’ll never see the little guy again at your place. Instead of helping him, you made it worse for him – maybe even put him in serious danger. Maybe I should lodge a complaint after all.”

  He talked it over with Lucie for a long time. Her advice was to wait a few days to see what would come of the incident.

  As Fernand predicted, Charles didn’t show up at the Fafards’ the next day; Boff waited patiently for him, emitting little plaintive barks until late into the evening. But the next day the child appeared as though nothing had happened, saying to Lucie, who was surprised and relieved, that his father had calmed down and everything was back to normal.

  In fact, once the carpenter had had time to work through his anger and think about it, he’d realized that the Fafards’ attachment to his son presented certain benefits to himself, relieving him of a good part of his responsibilities, even allowing him to save money on food bills, and that the situation was also satisfactory from Sylvie’s point of view; she had never shown much interest in the boy, considering herself to be completely separate from him. The deception Charles had subjected him to, plus the humiliating scene on the staircase, had distanced Wilfrid from his son even further, if such a thing were possible. The threats Fafard had made frightened him, however, and he didn’t dare punish his son for his behaviour. But he began to regard the boy with a deep, insidious hatred, the extent of which was unknown even to himself. It continued to deepen and fester, and would have serious consequences for Charles later in the boy’s life.

  Spring arrived without further incident. The snow eventually melted, leaving little clumps of dirt that the street-cleaners smashed into powder and scattered to the four winds. The air warmed up, became almost sweet, filled with unfamiliar odours that caused some people to dream and others to wince. The lawns and waste spaces exhaled a stench that smelled like vomit, making Charles hold his nose as he walked past. The sweet effusions from the Macdonald’s Tobacco Company floated in the air from morning to night along every street in the neighbourhood. Henri began smoking in secret and tried to get Charles to join him. After taking a few puffs and nearly choking to death, Charles stomped on the cigarette in disgust and vowed he would never try it again, no doubt in rebellion against his father and Sylvie, both of whom smoked like chimneys.

  Winter clothing was packed away in closets and stored in cardboard boxes sprinkled with mothballs. Everyone, emboldened by the fine weather and impatient to take advantage of it, dressed as though it were already full summer. For the first time, Charles began to notice girls’ legs, since short skirts were the fashion of the time. Some legs attracted him with a mysterious, almost irresistible force; they moved, intrigued, and delighted him, and he joked about it with Henri, who confessed to having the same urges as Charles and who told him three extremely dirty stories, at least dirty to them, that made them both laugh.

  One day, towards the end of the afternoon, finding himself with nothing to do, Boff wandered over to the Thibodeaus’ yard and ended up face to face with Charles’s father, who had just finished repairing Monsieur Victoire’s clothesline. Seeing the dog, the carpenter threw his hammer at it, hitting it hard on the haunch; the dog, howling, escaped through a hole in the fence, ran down the alley, and, crossing rue Dufresne, came within a hair of being run over by a delivery truck. Charles, who’d been watching, was horrified, and ran to shake Boff roughly by the collar, scolding him for his carelessness; then he saw the wound on the dog’s leg.

  “Who did this to you?” he cried in alarm.

  Then his father appeared at the apartment door, and Charles guessed the truth. Crouching down beside Boff, he whispered:

  “Let this be a lesson to you, you big dummy. This is not your home any more. Don’t ever forget it.”

  Towards the end of May, Wilfrid, off work because of a fractured wrist, announced to his son that he was cutting off the boy’s weekly allowance, seeing as how Charles was making enough to get by on running errands for the corner restaurant.

  “I think it’s better to think of your future,” he explained in strangely accented tones (he’d been drinking). “You never know, you might want to go on to further your education … we’ll need the money more, then.”

  It didn’t take long for Rosalie to hear about this new arrangement. She was outraged. Like everyone else in the neighbourhood, she knew all about the episode with Boff, and she thought Wilfrid Thibodeau’s decision was just another example of his cruelty. She talked it over with Roberto.

  “The poor kid! He’d be better off with no father at all than with one like him! I’m going to give him some deliveries at Frontenac Towers from time to time. He’s a bit young yet, but he’s smart. I don’t think Gilles will mind that much: he’s often got too much as it is.”

  Charles was delighted when Rosalie told him that his territory would henceforth include the Towers. The three huge apartment blocks, built a few years earlier on rue Bercy, were home to a large number of people who were crazy about Roberto’s pizzas and club sandwiches and hot chicken sandwiches, not to mention his incomparable poutine. They liked to consume vast quantities of them in the comfort of their own apartments, and they were famous for being generous tippers.

  His first delivery took place that Friday night at seven, and it left him with mixed feelings. He started out by losing fifteen minutes (and no doubt a big part of his tip) by going up the wrong tower; then, when he at last found the right address, he was hit by a fire alarm the moment he stepped off the elevator on the seventeenth floor. The horrible sound of bells going off and the toneless, metallic voice coming from the loudspeakers telling everyone to proceed in a careful, calm manner, threw him into such a panic that he ran up and down the corridor like a rat spattered with nitric acid. The air seemed hard to breathe, and he was sure he could smell smoke. He thought of firemen’s ladders, of people in flames throwing themselves out of windows, their faces twisted in terror. He ended up crashing heavily into a door, crying. The door opened and he nearly tumbled into the apartment. A young blond boy considered him in silence. From Charles’s position on the floor, the boy looked like a giant, but when he stood up he saw that he was about his own size; he even seemed vaguely familiar.

  “What are you doing?” asked the boy.

  A man’s voice came from within. “Shut the door, Michel! We have to keep the door closed! Didn’t you hear the instructions?”

  At that second the alarm went off.

  “I’m lost,” Charles said piteously.

  “Who’s the pizza for?” asked the boy.

  “Apartment 1759.”

  “Another false alarm, I guess,” grumbled the man’s voice, and there was the sound of someone dialing a rotary telephone. “Shut the door, Michel,” the voice said again, this time with much less urgency.

  “It was a false alarm, Papa!” called the boy. “Just like before!” Then he turned to Charles. “Do you want me to show you where it is? It’s not far.”

  Charles put his hand on the pizza box, which was almost cold by then, and nodded.

  “Ah, good!” said the man’s voice into the telephone. “Another false alarm? It’s getting on our nerves, Madame! I’ve even got cramps in my legs. Yes, yes, I understand. Good luck!”

  Michel closed the door and moved rapidly down the corridor with Charles. As he walked, he told Charles that his last name was Blondin, that he had until recently been going to the new Champlain School on rue Logan, but since moving into the Towers he was going to start at Saint-Anselme, where he’d be in Grade Three, in Madame Robidoux’s class.

  “Oh yeah? I’m in Mademoisell
e Laramée’s.”

  “I know,” replied Michel, smiling. “I saw you in the playground during recess. Here we are, this is it.”

  With his heart pounding, Charles rang the bell. The door was opened by a huge woman with grey hair and a mauve dress, whose silver glasses seemed to shoot out lightning bolts. She crossed her arms and, looking furious, stood there saying nothing.

  “It wasn’t his fault, Madame,” said Michel, giving her a slight bow. “He was caught by the false alarm. He was quite frightened by it, as you can appreciate.”

  Charles thought it prudent to accompany Michel’s story with a smile that expressed his regret at having arrived with a pizza that by then would have to be re-heated.

  “Well, I guess it’s all right this time,” grumbled the woman, taking the box. She handed Charles an envelope. “But aren’t you a bit young to be delivering pizzas? Is this the first time you’ve been up here?”

  “It’s the first time I’ve been to your apartment, Madame,” Charles replied, evasive without being aware of it. “But I’ve been working for Chez Robert for two years now.”

  The woman shrugged and pursed her lips in what could with generosity be described as the beginning of a smile, and closed the door.

  “Thanks,” Charles said, leaving his guide.

  “See you tomorrow,” Michel replied, and ran off towards his own apartment.

  Afraid that his lateness would lose him his precious Frontenac Towers, Charles ran back to the restaurant as quickly as he could, where there would no doubt be more deliveries waiting for him. There were, as it turned out, and Rosalie was just about to telephone the customer to try to track down her delivery boy. Charles told her about the false alarm, didn’t try to hide from her how frightened he’d been, and promised to display a little more sang-froid in the future if something like that ever happened again.

  “Well, this time don’t leave anyone waiting. It’s for Monsieur Saint-Amour. As usual, he likes his anchovy pizza piping hot. As soon as you get it, you run like a rabbit, okay?”

  Charles took off at a run for rue Frontenac, where the former hairdresser lived, the one with the over-stuffed apartment and the slightly strange ways.

  The evening was to have more emotional adventures in store for him.

  When he entered the apartment building, he saw a bag of dog food in the ground-floor hallway, lying half-split open with some of its contents spilled out over the unwashed linoleum floor. It seemed to have been just left there. “I’ll take that for Boff,” he thought, happily. “Monsieur Fafard will be happy.” (The hardware-store owner had graciously taken over the feeding of the dog.)

  He turned to the door to Monsieur Saint-Amour’s apartment and knocked. There was no response. He knocked again, louder this time, eager to be taking a closer look at the bag. A very soft tread could be heard coming from within the apartment, like that of a person walking carefully, followed by a sort of snap, then a long, floating groan. Charles felt his face turning red and his hands becoming suddenly moist.

  “Oooooh! Oooooh!” cried a man’s voice, struggling, it seemed to Charles, with unspeakable pain.

  “Monsieur Saint-Amour!” Charles called out. “Can you hear me? It’s me, Charles, the delivery boy from Chez Robert.”

  “Come in, Charles,” said the voice, sounding faint. “The door is open.”

  The child entered the apartment. In the centre of a kitchen so tiny that a fly would have had a hard time flying more than twenty centimetres in a straight line, he saw the former hairdresser stripped to the waist, collapsed on a black leather recliner with his head thrown back, staring up at the ceiling with every sign of being on the very threshold of passing into the next world.

  “What’s wrong with you, Monsieur Saint-Amour?” cried Charles, horrified. He put the pizza box down on a table that also held an electric heater and several other cardboard boxes.

  “Aaaaah! Aaaaah!” repeated the man, without seeming to have heard Charles’s question. “It’s my … stomach … It’s killing me …” he finally gulped. He brought his trembling hand up and rested it on his belly, which was grey and flabby and covered with white hairs and hung out over the top of his belt.

  “Come and rub me, my boy,” he begged in a whisper, emitting another groan.

  Charles hung back, torn between disgust and pity, then stepped hesitantly forward.

  “Where do you want me to rub, Monsieur?”

  “Here, on my … just below the stomach … Yes, there, near the belt … maybe a bit under it, that’s right … aaaah, these damned stomach pains … they’ll be the death of me … yes, there … don’t stop, dear boy … it feels so good … a bit to the left … now a bit to the right, there … yes, yes … and a bit lower down … my intestines are so delicate … ever since I was a lad … such pain … comes on without warning … it’s pure torture … Oh, yes, keep rubbing …”

  A moment went by.

  “I’m getting kind of tired, Monsieur Saint-Amour,” sighed Charles, who had just noticed a strange bulge in the front of his customer’s pants that made him feel increasingly uneasy.

  “You’ll get your … reward in a few minutes … dear boy. Aah! It feels much better … already … Faster, faster … it’s almost gone … There! Oh! Oh! Oh, thank you so much!”

  The man gave a slight jump, then closed his eyes, and sank back into his chair, his body completely relaxed.

  “Step back a bit now,” he said to Charles without looking at him. “I’m feeling much better. You can leave … There’s an envelope on the table beside the heater, take it … Wait,” he added suddenly. “I want to tell you something.”

  His voice had returned to its usual strength and clarity; he sounded almost joyful. He sat up straight in the chair and looked hard at Charles, his eye sparkling maliciously while his mouth fought to keep a serious expression.

  “Don’t go telling anyone about my stomach trouble, if you don’t mind, my dear boy. People will laugh at me and I won’t have the courage to order any more pizzas from Chez Robert … And that would be too bad. You’d lose your tips … When you open that envelope you’ll see that tonight’s is an extra generous one … You promise me this will be our little secret?”

  “I promise, Monsieur Saint-Amour,” Charles replied, turning red.

  “Next time you come I’ll have a surprise for you, something that will give you a great deal of pleasure.”

  Charles headed for the door, impatient to be out of the apartment. Then suddenly he turned around.

  “Monsieur Saint-Amour, do you know who owns that bag of dog food in the hall?”

  “Oh! It belonged to two Jamaicans who lived in the apartment next door. They left it there this morning when they moved out. You can take it if you want. It’ll give your dog strong teeth.”

  Charles hurried down the street carrying the bag, which was heavier than he’d expected it to be. He felt sad and uneasy without really knowing why. The scene in the apartment had disgusted him and made him feel ashamed, but he didn’t think he had done anything wrong. He’d only done what the man had asked him to do.

  When he arrived at the restaurant, he opened the envelope: there were two dollars in it, the largest tip he’d ever received in his life. But it gave him no pleasure. He stuck the money in his pocket and thought no more about it.

  The next night, Monsieur Saint-Amour ordered another pizza, but Charles refused to deliver it.

  “What’s got into you?” Roberto asked, greatly surprised.

  “I don’t feel like going.”

  “Putting on airs, now, are we?” said Sylvie, passing with a carafe of coffee. “Better be careful, they’ll show you the door.”

  Rosalie, however, was curious. She looked at Charles for a second, then, shrugging, turned to a tall, skinny kid with a black moustache who had just come in twirling a ring of keys on his index finger.

  “Gilles,” she said, “take this pizza over to Monsieur Saint-Amour.”

  Charles gave a sigh of re
lief and went to join Boff, who was waiting for him outside the restaurant.

  Charles would have liked to have confided in Henri, since the incident of the stomach pains continued to torment him, but he felt bound by having given his word. He was sorry he had given it, because he felt he had dirtied himself.

  In the end he took the two-dollar bill to the Woolworth’s on rue Ontario, bought a pretty plastic doll in a blue tulle dress, and gave it to Céline. He knew it was exactly the kind of gift that would please a six-year-old girl. Overjoyed and delighted, she threw herself in his arms and kissed him on the cheeks.

  “A doll for me? But it’s not even my birthday!”

  “That doesn’t matter, I felt like giving it to you.”

  He liked Céline very much. She reminded him a bit of Henri, rowdy and boisterous, always thumping or tugging at him; there were certain advantages to being the friend of the best fighter in the third grade at Saint-Anselme Elementary, but it was also sometimes exhausting. Céline, however, was a girl, and that made a world of difference. Sometimes when he was in the Fafards’ living room watching television with Henri, she would slip in between them on the sofa and lean ever so slightly against him. Charles pretended not to notice, but he liked it very much.

  Charles and Michel Blondin, the boy from Frontenac Towers, quickly formed a friendship. Michel was a quiet, even-tempered child, meticulous as a three-legged turtle yet also a dreamer, although that didn’t stop him from being an excellent pupil. He soon gained a leadership role among his friends, for two reasons: his interest in others, and his talent for settling minor disputes. Three weeks after his arrival at Saint-Anselme he was on good terms with one and all, and despite his dubious status as a newcomer no one thought of him for a moment as an outsider.

  One day, when two pupils were shouting insults at each other and seemed on the verge of coming to blows, Michel went over to them, calm and smiling, and the following scene unfolded: