They were awakened by a series of sudden jolts. The car was bouncing along a country road. A crow was cawing above a field of beets, staring down at the ground a bit myopically, as though it were too old to see properly; a stand of trees spared by the plough shook in the wind, teeming with mysterious life; a sign announcing Eggs and Honey For Sale peeked modestly from behind a bush, no sooner seen than vanished; in the distance, exhaust from a tractor inscribed a smokey question mark into the still air; an abandoned farmhouse was quietly turning grey, falling in on itself, dying.
“Where are we?” murmured Henri, his mouth hanging open.
“Almost there,” replied Fernand. “Sleep well, you two? You’ll be full of beans this afternoon!”
Charles and Henri looked thoughtfully out the window, as though it had suddenly dawned on them the degree to which their lives were about to change.
They passed between a spruce-log house, all gables and skylights, and an immense, freshly painted barn with a bright red Purina sign on one wall, then drove along trampled fields strewn with stones and covered with scraggly, twisted brush. The pavement ended abruptly, the road took a long curve, and they came to a hill that looked as though it were infamous in the region. Because of the steepness of its slope, a series of concrete ribs had been laid across it. Fernand whistled when he saw it, then backed the car up to get a run at it, while the two boys gawked in excitement.
“Holy Cow!” Fernand exclaimed. “I wouldn’t want to have to go up that thing in the winter!”
He put the car in first gear and the Oldsmobile attacked the hill with its motor cursing as though it were being asked to tackle something it knew was well beyond its powers. The gears chewed ferociously, suddenly struck by an uncontrollable urge to grind themselves down to filings, and sinister popping noises emerged from the undercarriage. Charles and Henri fell silent and looked fearfully out the back window at the countryside slipping so slowly away beneath them, as though the car had become an airplane, albeit an old, tired, asthmatic one that could barely get off the ground.
“Aha!” cried Fernand when they had reached the top of the hill. “We made it, by the jumpin’ Jehosephat! Phew! I was sure the old heap was going to blow a gasket!”
After a few minutes they came to a rustic arch made of pine poles fastened roughly together. A sign at the top of the arch told them they had arrived at Camp Jeunenjoie.
The camp was run by the Christian Brothers. Each summer the camp took in boys of seven to twelve years of age, in groups of fifty or sixty, for two weeks at a time. Religious communities in general had been falling rapidly out of favour for several years in Quebec, but some had nonetheless managed to maintain the illusion of vitality and importance. Three brothers, with the assistance of monitors recruited from the colleges, worked “for the good of youth,” the idea being to turn them into good Catholics through sports, fresh air, wholesome food, short homilies followed by outdoor “return to self” sessions, and daily morning mass. A chaplain saw to the spiritual and moral well-being of the little colony. Camp Jeunenjoie was comprised of a dozen hastily erected buildings, a chapel, bunkhouses, a dining hall, a communal centre, and so on, situated on the shore of Lake Mailhotte at a spot where a former farm had been more or less reclaimed by the surrounding forest.
The car travelled along a narrow road bordered by sparse woods, then stopped at the centre of a kind of public square amid a scattering of buildings. The two boys got out and looked about them, sniffing the breeze, which smelled of pine needles and fields baking in the sun. Below them they could see the surface of a lake glinting through a filter of trees. The distant water, mingled with the echo of laughter and shouting, created a surprising impression of lightness and transparency. The building directly facing them seemed of a more elaborate construction than the others, and was the only one that had a front porch. From it emerged a fat man wearing a blue shirt and khaki pants, and carrying on his shoulder a curious, small animal with black rings around its eyes.
“Well, well, I’ll be darned!” Fernand exclaimed. “A raccoon. Where did you find it?”
“Its mother stepped in a bear trap a couple of days ago and we had to put her down, poor creature,” said the fat man, coming towards them and looking sideways at the animal. “Her babies were still around her, and we managed to catch this one. It’s fairly tame already! You are Monsieur Fafard? I’m Brother Marcel, the camp director.”
Brother Marcel held out his hand – it looked chubby and warm and was covered with grey hairs, like an extension of his face, which was also chubby, almost babyish, the face of a fifty-year-old to whom life had been extremely kind, a lover of pastries and café-au-lait. The raccoon shied away from them, trying to hide behind the monk’s ample neck.
Fernand introduced the two boys and the monk spoke to them in a friendly enough manner. Charles and Henri were barely listening, fascinated by the animal as though it had cast a Medusa-like spell on them. Their chins were raised and they hardly breathed.
“He’s beautiful!” murmured Charles ecstatically, and slowly, cautiously, he raised his hand towards it.
The animal, curled on the monk’s shoulder, began emitting a series of curious whistling noises through its nostrils. Its eyes became fierce and its lips curled to reveal a row of small, needle-sharp teeth.
“Whoa, whoa, not so fast, my friend!” said the monk, laughing. “He’s not used to you yet! Give him a day or two and you’ll be able to take him wherever you like, as long as you’re patient and gentle with him. Raccoons are nervous animals at the best of times, and this one is still traumatized by the loss of its mother.”
“Poor creature,” said Charles with heartfelt compassion.
“What’s its name?” Fernand asked after a quick glance at his watch.
“We call him Frederic. After Chopin.”
“After who?”
“Chopin. The composer. You know, the Polonaise and so on.”
“Oh yes, the Polonaise. I see,” said Fernand, completely at a loss. He walked back to the car and took out two suitcases and a canvas bag. He hugged the boys, told them he would be back to pick them up in two weeks and that they were to behave themselves and be careful.
The monk, his face half-hidden by the raccoon’s tail as the animal twisted round to face a suspicious noise, laughed confidently. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll be having any problems with these two,” he said. “They seem like good little boys to me.”
Once Fernand had left, Brother Marcel put Frederic in his office, which for the time being was doing double-duty as a kennel, and then showed the boys to the “senior bunkhouse” to assign them their beds.
Charles could hardly lift his suitcase. The monk picked it up.
“What the devil do you have in here, my friend? A piece of Saint-Joseph’s Oratory?”
“I brought some books.”
“He’s always reading,” declared Henri a bit sarcastically.
“But that’s good! Reading is very good!” said the fat man, with the air of someone who is praising an activity he does not himself indulge in.
The bunkhouse was a large room with exposed beams, walls, and floor of rough-sawn lumber, and two lines of single beds covered with grey blankets. It seemed even larger to the two boys because of its crudeness, which turned it into a kind of adventurer’s hideout. They were disappointed to learn that their beds would not be next to each other.
“It’s better this way,” declared the monk, cryptically; he had had long experience of bunkhouse mayhem.
After showing them where to stow their personal gear, the monk expressed the opinion that a short swim was better than no swim at all, and sent them off to the washroom to change into their bathing suits. A few minutes later they were walking along a gravelled path through the woods that brought them to Lake Mailhotte. Dozens of children were running about and playing in a small bay bordered by a narrow beach, on which other campers were lying in the warm sun. A monitor, standing in water up to his waist, was giving
swimming lessons to a young boy; another was standing on the beach, scolding a tall, thin boy who was listening with his head down, holding a tree branch.
Charles’s eye swept the breadth of the glinting lake, edged in the distance by a dark bank of forest, then peered into the fresh shadows of the forest itself. The trees rustled deliciously in the slight breeze. His gaze finally came to rest on the overexcited bathers around him, and raising his head to Brother Marcel, he gave him a knowing smile, the smile of a small, street-wise kid who had just been set down in paradise. Lucie’s sudden illness, which had darkened his summer, had in fact ushered him through the door to a new world, one that until then he had only been vaguely aware of; his soul was suddenly and wonderfully stirred.
“Go, go, what are you waiting for?” Brother Marcel urged with a laugh. “You’ll have to hurry if you want time to get a good soaking.”
The two boys, shy and smiling, ran down the beach’s slight slope. A monitor saw them and moved in their direction. The next instant they had hit the water and joined in the fun with their fellow campers with the natural ease of children.
Charles threw himself enthusiastically into the camp’s daily routines. He had lunch in the dining hall, where he gobbled up wieners, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and caramel pudding. Lunch was followed by a “nature discovery” walk that ended in a return-to-self session led by Brother Martin, who in his sharp, nasal voice exhorted the young campers to take advantage of the benefits of prayer. After that there was baseball – Henri scored two runs and became instantly popular – then firewood detail, in which everyone went off into the woods to collect dead branches for the evening bonfire. Then another trip to the lake for swimming, and then dinner, at which time the camp chaplain, Father Beaucage, appeared fresh from the long drive from Joliette.
Father Beaucage was a tall fair-haired man in his thirties. He looked like an athlete, and had confident, quick gestures, a piercing gaze, and a smile always on his lips. But there was also something vaguely false about him, as though his good humour were a duty imposed on him by his position. Brother Albert introduced him to the two newcomers when they arrived at the table.
“Welcome, my friends,” said the priest, vigorously shaking Charles by the hand. “You’re from Montreal? Which parish?”
“Um … I don’t remember the name of it,” babbled Charles, caught off-guard.
“Saint-Eusèbe,” put in Henri confidently.
“Aha … Montreal East … not an easy place to live … Oh well, the next time I ask you,” he said, looking at Charles, “you’ll know what to say, right?”
And he laughed while Charles, red in the face, turned and took his place at the table.
But his embarrassment was soon forgotten during a fracas caused by the appearance of Frederic, attracted by the smell of food. His domestication seemed to be progressing minute by minute. Despite being called back by Brother Marcel, the animal walked under one of the dining room’s long tables and was soon devouring a banquet of bread and crackers. One of the twelve-year-olds finally picked it up; it squirmed in his hands without much conviction, a bread stick jutting from its mouth.
“Bring it here,” ordered Father Beaucage. “You should get rid of it,” he said, handing the animal over to Brother Marcel with a smile. “Raccoons often have rabies.”
This was met by thunderous protest. Standing at the door to the kitchen, enormous Brother Albert, the camp cook, showed his disapproval by slowing shaking his head, which made the deep, greasy folds in his neck tremble with indignation. The priest raised his hands in a gesture of submission and took his seat.
Charles wolfed down his cream-of-turnip soup while discussing with his neighbour to his left, a thin, pimply-faced boy with a curiously pointed nose, the possibility of Frederic having rabies. Every now and then his glance fell on Father Beaucage, who was sitting at the end of the table discreetly following a conversation between two campers seated near him, while with his long, manicured fingers he reached out for the butter that was half-hidden behind a basket of bread. For some unknown reason, Charles did not like the man, and he resolved to have as little to do with him as possible.
The priest, to divert attention from his earlier suggestion regarding the raccoon, began telling humorous anecdotes about camp life. The campers laughed politely. Then one of the monitors, Marc-André, who was spending his third summer at Camp Jeunenjoie, stole the show with a story about something that had happened the preceding year and had caused a great flap.
Early in July, the local butcher had mistakenly delivered eighty pounds of wieners to Brother Albert, who had ordered only twenty pounds, and the butcher had steadfastly refused to take back the surplus. Since there wasn’t enough room in the freezer for so many wieners, the cook, after giving the matter much thought and many deep sighs, had resigned himself to using them up as quickly as he could; that week the campers were subjected to a veritable festival of wieners: hot dogs and buns, grilled wieners, boiled wieners, wieners and beans, wieners and onions, wiener casseroles, wieners floating in soup, wieners prepared in every form and combination known to man. Every time another wiener slid onto another plate there was a chorus of groans and complaints, until finally the campers became so sick of wieners they launched a formal protest. There was even talk of going on a hunger strike.
“Our very fingers were turning into wieners!” attested Marc-André, holding up his hands.
One of the campers piped up with a risqué reference to wieners that drew a spurt of laughter from the audience (although Father Beaucage contented himself with a wry frown), then someone reminded them that just that day they had been served wieners at lunchtime. There followed a great banging of knives and spoons, and Brother Albert was called from the kitchen. The monk emerged, raised his arms in the air, and swore that after a few more days wieners would never again appear on the camp menu.
“Swear! Swear by Saint Wiener!” shouted Marc-André.
“I SWEAR!” replied Brother Albert, to thunderous applause.
22
After supper, each camper was given free time to spend on his own, and the first day Charles and Henri returned to their bunkhouse to unpack their personal effects into the small trunks that were provided at the foot of their beds. Beside his pile of clothes, Charles carefully placed the eight novels he had brought with him, although after his first day in camp he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have time to read even a quarter of them. The previous night, before going to sleep, he had had to give up in the middle of a pulse-racing episode in The Mystery of the Yellow Room, by Gaston Leroux. Now, sitting on the side of his bunk, he returned to find Rouletabille still, nearly twenty-four hours later, trapped in the same desperate situation.
“Are you coming?” asked Henri, on his way to the door.
“I’ll be there in a minute.”
Henri shrugged and left the bunkhouse.
It was dark when Charles finally had to quit reading. Looking up, he saw a light switch near the door but did not dare turn the light on for fear of the mockery and sarcasm that would come from the other campers. He got up and, walking cautiously in the dark, made his way towards a large patch of light across from the community building, where campers were piling up firewood for the campfire; he heard their voices coming from that direction.
As he passed the dining hall a dark shadow loomed suddenly in front of him.
“Well, well, it’s my little altar boy!” said Father Beaucage in his deep voice. “Where are you coming from? Why aren’t you with the others?”
“I was in the bunkhouse.”
“The bunkhouse?” the priest repeated, placing his emphasis on the last syllable.
“I was putting my things away.”
“So, you’re a loner … Come, we should get a move on. Brother Martin must be about ready to start the campfire.”
And placing his hand on the boy’s shoulder he led him quickly towards the fire area, asking him various questions along the way in his brusque but jovial
manner. Charles replied only in monosyllables, still feeling vaguely sullen and shy.
A small crowd had assembled around the impressive pile of branches, logs, and cordwood, waiting impatiently for Brother Marcel to signal to Brother Martin – nicknamed Little Foot because he was not much bigger than a dwarf – to put a match to the crumpled newspaper that he had cleverly placed beforehand beneath the pile.
With the sun no longer out, the forest had suddenly become a black, impenetrable, and menacing mass. Its humid cave-breath made the campers suddenly aware of the thinness of their cotton sweaters. With thoughts of summer’s end in their minds, each of them looked forward to the comforting warmth of the fire.
There was a short whistle. Little Foot, half-crouched with a lighter in one hand, began running around in his lopsided way trying to light the newspaper; a low crackling sound was heard, then the pile gave a great shudder as little curlicues of smoke from the still unseen flames licked along the bottom branches and then flew up, trying to reach the summit of the pile; a kind of whoosh came from the centre of the mass and then there was fire everywhere, big, pulsing, orange-coloured flames throwing their flickering light on the campers’ faces, making them look oddly Oriental. A mounting heat spread from the pyre; tiny explosions mixed with the crackling, and the nearest campers had to back up a bit. Everyone stopped talking and fell into a thoughtful contemplation of the fire; the ancient fascination was upon them. Charles had never seen anything so magnificent, except perhaps once, on Saint-John-the-Baptist Day, in a park a long way from his house.
He turned to a camper – the boy with the big lips who’d sat across from him at dinner – and they exchanged a smile. Suddenly Henri appeared at his side. Happy to see him, Charles gave him a friendly poke in the ribs.
“Pretty nice, eh?” his friend said quietly.
Charles the Bold Page 29