Father Beaucage studied him with a severe expression.
“I still think you couldn’t take communion this morning no matter how much you wanted to. I think that last night, perhaps without fully appreciating the consequences of your actions, you instigated a scandal. By which I mean,” he explained, responding to the puzzled look that had come over Charles’s face, “that you incited your companions to commit bad acts. You are old enough and certainly intelligent enough to see that. Because you are intelligent, much more so than a good many others. Do you not wish to confess your sins? I can hear your confession right now, right here. Perhaps you have committed certain impure acts, either by yourself or with others; if so, now is the time to ask for forgiveness, to disburden your heart. No? Nothing to confess? No bad thoughts? No bad touching? God pardons all sinners, as you know, so long as they confess their sins and repent of them.”
The next instant Charles was on his knees before the chaplain, hesitantly reciting the ritual formula for confession. But when the moment came to confess his sins, he stopped, not knowing what to say. His throat felt constricted. If he could, he would have jumped up and run out of the room.
“Repeat after me,” the priest instructed in a low voice. “Heavenly Father, I accuse myself of having drawn others into the sin of impurity by my actions and my words, and to have taken pleasure from it.”
After receiving his penance, Charles stood up, humbled, eyes lowered, and moved quickly towards the door. His confession was incomplete. He should also have confessed to feeling hatred for this man, enough hatred to make him want to claw out his eyes.
“Have a nice day, Charles,” said the chaplain, smiling broadly. “Have fun. And think about what I’ve said.”
Charles turned to leave, but a sudden compulsion made him turn around. “Was it you, then, who made sure I didn’t write any more sketches?” he asked.
It was an insolent question, although he hadn’t intended it that way. Father Beaucage gave a frown of annoyance.
“No, Charles, it wasn’t me. It was the monitors who came to that decision at this morning’s meeting. However, I believe it was a wise decision, because it allows each camper to exercise his talents in a variety of roles.”
And with that he waited for Charles to close the door behind him.
24
A cold, steady rain continued to beat on the ground, driving away all heat and light and more and more leaves from the trees. Still green, they littered the muddy earth as though autumn had crept up and slain them unawares. Greyish-green puddles spread everywhere, some of them surprisingly deep, so that navigating about camp was a tricky matter. According to the radio the bad weather would persist until the next day. Brother Albert stirred a pot of caramel sauce as he listened to the news; he gave a deep sigh, plunged his wooden spoon into the steaming liquid and took a huge mouthful, his eyes a misty blend of pleasure and misgiving.
At about two o’clock, Frederic stuck his nose out through the partly opened door of the office, inhaled the damp air deeply into his lungs and walked heavily down the steps, making his mournful way through the downpour, wagging his rear end and stopping here and there to sniff at a puddle or ponder the tip of a branch. Thanks to the Brothers’ kind treatment and abundant food, the animal had completely lost interest in life in the forest. He stopped in front of the community hall and, hearing a murmur of voices within, decided to investigate. His arrival was welcomed joyfully by the small troupe that had been languishing for an hour under the lethargic direction of Michel-Noël. Charles jumped to his feet and ran to greet him. Frederic, somewhat taken aback, stopped dead in his tracks at centre stage and began snorting menacingly, his way of giving notice that he felt threatened and was not happy about it. But after being stroked a few times he allowed himself to be picked up, and even snuggled into Charles’s shoulder.
Patrick Ricard came up to Charles. “Let me have him a minute.”
“Boys! Boys!” called Michel-Noël, “back to work! We haven’t got anywhere since lunchtime. Charles, put the raccoon down and come and sit.”
“Let me have him,” Patrick said again.
Pretending not to hear him, Charles began scratching the animal gently behind the ears. Two other campers got up and tried to take the raccoon from him. Michel-Noël shoved them aside, grabbed Frederic, and set him down on the floor; the animal scurried back out through the door. Patrick gave Charles a surreptitious jab in the ribs and Charles turned on him to complain.
“You like that, don’t you, rubbing your hands in its fur,” said Ricard, smiling suggestively. “We know you. You like stroking things, don’t you?”
He sniggered and returned to his place amid the complicitous laughter of the others in the troupe.
Charles stared after him in alarm. Over the past few hours an inexplicable change had come over Ricard. From being a friend, he had suddenly turned into an adversary, an enemy with a cold, malicious eye who pounced on any opportunity to harass or mock him. Charles didn’t like playing games, and so responded more or less calmly, but inside he felt his anger building up. At lunch, Ricard, who had been sitting beside Charles since his first day in camp, had taken a seat five or six places away, across the table, and several times during lunch Charles had caught him whispering something into his new neighbour’s ear and pointing his finger in Charles’s direction, his small, pointed teeth bared in a malicious smile. Even the pimples on his thin face seemed to wiggle in a way meant to annoy him.
And worst of all, his cold mockery now seemed to have become contagious. Charles had begun to notice that some of his friends were beginning to shun him; he’d caught one of them, a member of his team who had been friendly until now, making faces at him behind his back. And when he passed a group of campers after lunch, their conversation suddenly became hushed and whispered. What was going on? What did they want from him? He went to find Henri to ask him, but Henri knew nothing about it, even made fun of his concerns, saying that all those novels he’d been reading were making him “funny in the head.”
With Frederic gone, the team returned to work, yawning. Their sketch, chosen by Michel-Noël, was about all the different ways there were for a person to be of service to others. They were cross-eyed with boredom. Charles’s job was to beat on a jam jar with a stick to indicate the beginning and end of each scene.
“We’ll never win anything with a stupid sketch like this,” sighed one of the campers after the rehearsal as they made their way to the dining hall for supper.
The Meal of Desserts would be served to the two winning teams the next evening in the kitchen, and already it was causing lips to smack and tongues to wag.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Patrick Ricard, as though he had some special information on the subject. “I think we have a pretty good chance, especially with a good soundman like Charlie, here.” He gave a small, spiteful laugh as he turned towards Charles.
“Okay, that’s enough! What have I done to you?” Charles cried, his voice choking. “You’ve been picking on me all day … You want a fight? Is that what you want? Well, just keep it up and you’ll have your fight, I’m warning you!”
All Pimple-Face did was stick out his tongue and run off to join another camper; then he whispered something into the other’s ear and they both laughed.
Normally, Charles ate enough food to choke a horse, but that night he barely touched his plate. It was the inexplicable malevolence that seemed to be floating around him; he was exasperated by it, and overcome with a terrible sadness. He deliberately took his time going to dinner to avoid having to talk to anyone, and he did not want a confrontation with Ricard and his gang; all during the meal Pimple-Face kept staring at him, as though trying to provoke him into something, then he would get up and whisper into someone’s ear. Charles never learned what was being said, but whatever it was must have been funny. Just before dessert, the priest received a telephone call and had to leave the dining hall, and as he passed behind Charles he laid a friendly
hand on the back of Charles’s neck; the boy turned his head to look up, surprised and a bit wary.
“How’s it going, Charles?” he said with that crisp, radiant smile of his that always made Charles uneasy.
Charles shrugged his shoulders and looked away.
As soon as he had taken his last mouthful he decided to get up and do some reading in the bunkhouse until it was time for the sketches. Then he changed his mind: he thought it would be a better idea to find Henri, his only true friend and someone everyone else respected. But as he was leaving the dining hall, a loud “Ahem!” from the back of the room made him stop.
A smiling Brother Albert was standing in the kitchen doorway, his apron stretched over a belly on which he could have easily balanced a salt and pepper shaker. With a flick of his spatula he signalled Charles to come over to him.
“Ahem! Let’s see, now … young Thibodeau … I just wanted to say that that sketch of yours last night … er … very naughty, of course, no getting around that … put a few people off their feed, apparently … but anyway, I just … It was pretty well done, quite imaginative, I have to admit, and you did make us laugh, you little scoundrel! Anyway, I thought I’d ask you and your teammates to come into the kitchen tonight after snack … I made up some special desserts. Would you like that?”
Charles stared at him, speechless with delight.
“Well, I’ll take that for a yes!” Brother Albert said, laughing. “Tell your buddies, but keep it to yourselves, eh? Don’t want to make the others jealous, you never know.”
“Thank you very much, Brother Albert,” burbled Charles, stepping up to shake the monk’s hand.
The monk laughed heartily and pinched the end of Charles’s nose, then returned to his kitchen. Charles pulled up the hood of his raincoat, pushed open the screen door, and went out into the rain. Above the pitter-patter of raindrops on his hood he heard all kinds of other wet sounds: the heavy drumroll of rain on the shingled roofs, the lighter ratatat on the foliage, and the crystalline tinkling coming from the water puddles, which were still getting larger and deeper. From the centre of the empty square came the soft, wet sound of rain hitting a sugar maple, darkening its trunk and running down its bark in long rivulets to disappear among its roots. Charles was making his way slowly towards the bunkhouse, soothed and somehow consoled by this music, when a stone struck the side of his raincoat; he stopped and turned around to see where it had come from. A second stone hit him in the back, and then suddenly he was being pelted left and right by a volley of missiles, accompanied by muffled laughter. Frightened and furious, he ran over to a large bin made of rough-hewn lumber in which the garbage pails were protected from bears and raccoons. Behind it were Patrick Ricard and two of his friends, all three standing innocently enough but smiling idiotically at him. He heard steps splashing in the mud behind him and two more boys ran up, one of them his neighbour in the bunkhouse, to whom he had lent his flashlight the previous night.
“Why are you picking on me all the time?” Charles shouted, beside himself with fury. He planted himself squarely in front of Ricard, whom he was certain was the ringleader of this little ambush. Ricard looked at his companions as though to build up his own fading courage, then gave a nasty laugh.
“Take it easy, Stroker. We were just having some fun.”
Charles went white.
And, gathering up his own courage, he delivered a thundering punch to Pimple-Face’s nose.
“I’m just having fun, too!” he yelled, jumping back to avoid a retaliatory punch that never came. There followed a short exchange of punches and kicks. At one point Charles was down, rolling in the mud, when a third stone hit him just above the eye, but he managed to struggle to his feet without much damage being done. The bloody state of Ricard’s nose seemed to have intimidated his assailants, and they judged it better to express their aggressiveness by yelling insults at him from a distance.
“Stroker!”
“Jerk-off!”
“Go eat some wieners, why don’t you?”
“Jerk yourself off, you pig!”
Charles walked off in a daze, forcing himself to move slowly in order to show his disdain and contempt for his enemies.
Ricard staggered over to lean against the garbage bin, his shoulders shaking with sobs, holding his nose in both hands and snorting strangely. A bright red streak ran down the front of his yellow raincoat, diluted slightly by the rain. It was from him that Charles received the comment that brought him up short.
“Father Beaucage is right!” Ricard managed to shout in a quavering voice. “You are a bad influence! You have brought evil into this camp! You’re rotten to the core!”
Charles turned around and stared at him, thunderstruck.
Suddenly he understood the source of all the sneaky rancour that had been dogging him all day. The priest who hated him had seen to it that everyone else hated him, too. That was it! He was a bad influence, someone to be avoided. He was dirty, smeared with invisible filth he could never wash off, because it was his self that was dirty. That’s what Monsieur Saint-Amour had seen in him, and why he had done those disgusting things to him.
He turned and ran to the bunkhouse, flung open the door at full speed, and threw himself, raincoat and all, on his bed and cried. Lying with his face on his pillow he tried to rid himself of this new pain that was pulsing through his body, a pain more terrible than any he had yet experienced and which he was now condemned to carry around for the rest of his life. How could he get rid of himself? How could he go on living if his very soul was abhorrent to him? Father Beaucage must be right. No matter how hard he tried to be good, he was wicked, the son of a wicked father and made in his father’s image, and nothing could ever deliver him from his own wickedness. Evil flowed through him like the very blood in his veins.
After a while the pain began to subside, and he began to doze off. Suddenly he heard the door open and footsteps approach his bed.
“Aha! Here you are,” said Henri. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
Charles shook his head, still lying face-down on the bed.
“So, what is it? Come on, the sketches are starting.”
Charles shook his head again.
“What happened to you?” Henri said, sitting down on the side of the bed. “Someone beat you up? Was it that little shit, Ricard? You want me to settle his hash for him?”
“I want to go home,” Charles murmured thickly, almost inaudibly.
“We are going home, in three days,” replied Henri, smiling at his friend’s sudden childishness.
“I want to go home now. Call your father, ask him to come and get me.”
“Are you crazy? Papa has too many other things to do. Mama just came out of the hospital, and you know as well as I do that Papa has to do everything around the house. She’s still sick, Charles. Very sick.”
Charles started crying again into his pillow. His friend watched him uneasily.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said, laying a hand on Charles’s shoulder. “The first sketch has already started. It’s that Ricard who’s turning everyone against you, isn’t it? I saw him doing it during dinner. Don’t worry, I’ll put that little asshole in his place.”
Charles wanted to tell Henri that he’d already done that, but he was sobbing too much to talk. To his unhappiness was now added the shame of crying like a baby in front of Henri.
His friend sat there for a moment, then stood up, shrugged and left, promising himself he would find Pimple-Face and clean his clock for him.
Twenty minutes later the bunkhouse door opened again, and this time it was Brother Marcel who came in, looking anxious.
“What’s happened, Charles? Are you not well? Rumour has it there was an incident earlier. That you were in a fight. Is that true?”
Charles was kneeling by his trunk, feeling a bit calmer, but the appearance of the camp director brought everything to the surface again. He threw himself on the bed and buried his face in his pillow, ashame
d of his puffy eyes and burning cheeks, and of his reputation for being a cry-baby that seemed to be circulating about the camp. Brother Marcel observed him for a while, still wearing his raincoat.
“Who did you fight with, Charles?”
“With Ricard … and … his gang,” Charles said, his words punctuated by sobs.
“And why did you fight them?”
Charles’s only reply was to dig his face deeper into the pillow. A shudder seized his lower jaw and it opened and closed uncontrollably – his fish-mouth was back. Had he not suffered enough humiliation without that? The idea of Brother Marcel seeing his horrible facial tic filled him with terror.
“Come, come, my lad,” said the monk, rubbing Charles’s shoulder sympathetically. “Calm yourself, I implore you. You can talk to me, no need to be afraid. I’m here to solve problems, not make them.”
But no matter how much he cajoled, trying to console the child with his somewhat awkward pleasantries and caressing him with his rough, bachelor’s hands, Charles refused to talk. Finally the monk, convinced of the seriousness of the affair but aware that his insistence would get him nowhere, decided that a good night’s sleep would do more for the child than all the comforting in the world; Charles would no doubt be more disposed to empty his heart in the morning. In the meantime, he would conduct his own investigations.
“You look tired, my poor boy … Why not get into your pyjamas and try to sleep? You’ll see things in a different light tomorrow morning, I’m certain of it. Good night and pleasant dreams.”
“Poor kid,” he said to himself as he returned to the community centre. “What can we possibly do to help him now?”
25
Along time passed. Every so often the sound of distant shouts and laughter reached the bunkhouse before being drowned out by the rain. Charles had turned on his back and was lying with his fists clenched, staring into the darkness with a fierce intentness, as though expecting a glowing angel to drop down and, with the faint touch from her wingtip, relieve him of the pain that wracked his mind. But no angel appeared and the pitiless pain continued to eat away at him. If only he could press himself against old Boff! How much better that would make him feel! (Was it pure chance? At just that moment, Boff, asleep on his blanket by the kitchen door, suddenly opened his eyes and gave a long howl that wakened Lucie, who was lying on the sofa in the living room; she stared at the silent figures moving about on the television screen for a few moments, then sighed and went back to sleep.)
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