Suddenly Charles sat up in bed, flushed with indignation. He saw again Father Beaucage’s terrible smile, with his white, perfectly aligned teeth, his pink, clean face, his aristocratically straight nose, his cold eyes; he felt again the pressure of those fingers on his neck. Shivers of disgust ran down his back. What a hypocrite! That he could smile and pretend to be friendly after speaking so meanly about him to Ricard. Anger quickly dissipated the pain. He now had only two desires: to get his revenge and to leave. To leave this very night, but first to show everyone what it meant to be a bad influence – to make a dramatic response to the schemes of two-faced chaplains who were foolish enough to believe that no ten-year-old could see through them.
He jumped out of bed, took his flashlight out of his neighbour’s trunk, put on his raincoat, and left the bunkhouse. Rain beat against his face and made him feel better; he took a deep breath of the rain-laden air, swelled with the scent of wet earth, leaves, and pine resin; it clarified his ideas in a flash.
The rest of the campers were in the community hall; he had the rest of the camp to himself. He swiftly crossed the quadrangle, stumbling over the occasional root, and made his way towards the chapel. As he had hoped, the door to the priest’s lodging was unlocked. He crept into the dark room, keeping his ear tuned to the slightest noise, suddenly seized by a panic that froze him in his tracks and made him lose some of his grip on reality; shadows shifted around him, expanding and moving about; a creaking floorboard sounded like a crack of thunder. He turned to the door, on the verge of fleeing, when suddenly something clicked in him; he remembered the gleam that had emanated from the small cupboard when he had been here earlier that day, and the suspicious haste the priest had made to close the cupboard door. Something told him he had found his means of revenge. He went over to the armoire, opened it, and saw a row of bottles. He took one out, removed the cork, raised the neck to his nose and quickly recoiled; it was “the hard stuff,” as his father used to say. His mouth twisted in a satisfied grin. So Father Beaucage liked to drink, did he? But in secret, like the hypocrite he was … Good! after tonight it would be a secret no longer!
His eye fell on the sofa, then drifted about the room as he tried to find the best means of effecting his revenge. There was a door at the back of the room; he pushed it. It opened onto the bedroom: a dresser, a prayer stand, a small desk, a bed. He went over to the bed and on it he emptied a bottle of cognac marked with big Xs. The odour rose up to his nostrils and nearly suffocated him, but he kept his head, filled with a hateful joy that allowed him to find pleasure even in his sorrow. He returned to the armoire and opened a second bottle, which he poured over the sofa. This time he poured the alcohol to form the letters of his name, but ran out at the letter r. The fumes began to make him feel fuzzy-headed, but joy rose up within him, a lively, sharp, crackling joy. His vengeance enchanted him more and more. Raising the empty bottle he brought the mouth to his lips. A thin trickle ran into his gullet, tracing a line of burning fire as sharp as a razor down his throat. He coughed and his eyes filled with water, but after swallowing a few times he felt better. A warm glow spread through his chest. Suddenly he heard Brother Marcel’s voice in the yard, coming through the rain.
“I don’t know! He’s not in his bunkhouse. I hope he hasn’t gone down to the lake!”
“When you find him, bring him to me,” called Brother Albert. “I’ve got something that’ll put him in a better frame of mind. You’ll see.”
Half dead with fear, Charles closed the lodging door silently and made his way to the camp entrance, stopping every ten feet to see if he was being followed. As he passed a huge, rounded rock something bumped against his leg and nearly made him cry out. The animal stopped a few paces from him and began digging in a small pile of leaves: it was Frederic, making his regular rounds despite the rain. Charles bent down and called the animal softly, suddenly taken with a mad desire to pick it up in his arms and, why not?, take it with him. The raccoon looked up at him without moving. Then it stood up on its hind legs and snorted in short bursts, as though fending off a threat.
Voices sounded nearby. Charles started running. He ran through the arch of pines that formed the front gate of the camp, and disappeared into the night. He soon had to slow down, out of breath. In order to hear better he had pushed back the hood of his raincoat. Water ran down the back of his neck like long, cold worms. The rain had already soaked his pantlegs and was now getting into his running shoes. The euphoria that had seized him during his vengeance was now drained out of him. He walked slowly, shivering, along the tree-lined road, stepping around potholes full of water, among dark, looming, indecipherable, vaguely menacing shapes, wondering where he would spend the night. He remembered that when they had arrived at camp they’d passed a long line of fields and pastures without seeing a single house or barn. “No problem!” he told himself with forced bravado. “I’ll sleep under a tree. It’ll be fun!”
And so saying he stepped into a puddle so deep that his foot was soaked up to the ankle.
Almost at the same time he heard a car behind him; a yellowish halo appeared at the end of a curve a hundred metres away, illuminating the crooked posts of an old fence that lined the road. Stepping over a patch of tall grass, he threw himself headfirst into the ditch and lay down in a pool of water.
A moment passed, then the car bounced into view and stopped. Through the grass he recognized Brother Marcel’s blue Chevrolet. One of the windows was down.
“Charles! Can you hear me?” It was the shrill voice of Jean-Guy – he always sounded like he’d fallen prey to a violent emotion. “Brother Marcel wants to talk to you! Everything will turn out okay! Don’t be afraid!”
The throaty voice of Brother Marcel also came from inside the car, but Charles could only make out the end of one sentence:
“… in the fields, but we’d need a searchlight, the little worm!”
The car moved slowly off, jolting over potholes like an exhausted bull, then returned twenty minutes later. Charles hadn’t dared move from his hiding place. He gritted his teeth and sighed at the thought of his flashlight, now lying underwater beside him and no doubt dead as a doornail. When the Chevrolet passed he almost jumped up in the ditch and waved his hands, ready to give in to whatever fate had in store for him, but shame and pride kept him pinned to the ground.
When silence and darkness once again descended, Charles climbed back onto the road and began walking, numb with cold, heavy with guilt, unable to understand the folly that had taken hold of him. Questions flooded his brain. How would Lucie and Fernand take this when they heard of it? Would they still let him live with them? Would Brother Marcel call the police? Would they throw him in prison?
The only sound was of rain in the fields, and rain spattering in the puddles that flooded the road. Somewhere in the distance a cow lowed. Charles sat down on a rock, lowered his face into his hands, and began to cry as he thought about the desperate fix he had placed himself in.
Suddenly he heard a movement in the woods behind him. He looked up.
Fernand signed the check with a flourish, carefully tore it from his cheque book, and handed it to Brother Marcel.
“There you are, paid in full. Once again, I hope you will excuse him … I am truly sorry for all the trouble.”
The apparent civility of his remarks contrasted strongly with the look of controlled fury on his face, but it was, for the moment, a fury without an object to dwell on; it had gone off in search of a guilty party but hadn’t found one anywhere, so it came back empty-handed and grumpier than ever, thirsting for a head-on collision, a scathing denunciation, a face to spit into. Finally, exhausted by its own impotence, it had slumped into a dark corner and begun gnashing its teeth.
Fernand heaved a deep sigh. The two men regarded each other and both coughed at the same time.
“Are you sure you won’t have a cup of coffee?” asked Brother Marcel for the fourth time. “After all, to get up in the middle of the night and drive all thi
s way … not to mention the worry … Some coffee would help, don’t you think?”
The monk gave him a smile that came on in stages, showing first his natural goodness, then his desire to be agreeable, then his sadness at finding himself in such a situation, and finally his conviction that coffee was a good idea. It made Fernand feel he was being a pain in the neck, and the resolve with which he had fortified himself – to take nothing from these people, not so much as a toothpick – began to weaken, leaving behind a pinch of dry dust.
“Well,” he said, “on second thought I suppose I could have a quick one. It’s going to be a long drive back …”
“Excellent!” cried Brother Marcel triumphantly. He got up from his rocking chair. “I’ll just run over to the kitchen. Won’t be a minute.”
He was gone eight minutes, but he came back carrying a fresh pot of coffee and a plate of cookies, cakes, and confections that had been part of Brother Albert’s Meal of Desserts.
Fernand took a sip of coffee, raised his eyebrows slightly to indicate his contentment, waved off the plate of biscuits when it was held out to him, then relented and took one.
Brother Marcel had called Fernand at midnight to inform him of Charles’s disappearance. Fernand had arrived at the camp an hour and a half later, alone – he had not wanted his convalescing wife to accompany him – and practically bent double with anguish; he was all for organizing a search party immediately to scour the surrounding woods. The police, who had also been called in, explained to him that such a thing was impossible in the middle of the night. Better to wait until sunrise; in any case, it was much more likely that the boy had stuck to the road, and that by this time he had probably found some dry place to sleep. On the other hand, they were working on the theory that he might have drowned, and there was nothing to stop them from dragging the lake right away. They had brought the necessary equipment with them.
On hearing this Fernand’s eyes widened as though he had swallowed a large rock; Henri burst into tears. Two monitors and three police officers, accompanied by Little Foot, went off to the lakeshore where the police launches were waiting. Fernand wanted to go with them but held back, unable to face the idea of seeing Charles’s dripping body being hauled up from the murky depths of the lake. Instead, he went over to the director, who was pacing back and forth in the clearing, Brother Albert following him and waving his arms, his shirt half pulled from his trousers.
“What happened?” he demanded to know in his terrible voice.
The two men went into the director’s office and began to conduct a formal inquiry. Henri was called, then Patrick Ricard, who confessed tearfully that it had been because of the chaplain’s condemnations that he and the others had started picking on Charles.
“Get Father Beaucage in here!” thundered Fernand, jumping to his feet and turning purple with rage. “Get him in here this instant!”
Unfortunately the priest, forced to leave his sodden quarters, had decided to spend the night at his sister’s house in Joliette – in the circumstances he had not felt that his presence in camp was needed, and besides he had a meeting at the bishopric the following afternoon; but he had promised to keep in touch with the camp by telephone.
Fernand had already learned about Charles’s revenge with the cognac; the chaplain had been furious and not a little embarrassed, and had sworn Brother Marcel to secrecy. But thanks to the large ears of Brother Albert, the whole camp had heard about it within half an hour.
“Just let me get my hands on that whisky priest!” Fernand roared, gripping the arms of his chair. “I can’t wait. I can’t wait to get him in my sights! I’ll break every bone in his body! This is all his fault, his fault entirely! No one else’s! My boy” – for now Charles had become his son – “a bad influence, you’d have to be a nutcase to think such things about him! Such a gentle boy! Such a hard worker! So friendly! You’d better pray no harm has come to that boy, Brother Marcel, because I’ll drag that Nazi priest of yours into court by the hair, if I have to! Where does his sister live in Joliette?”
“I’m afraid I have no idea,” said the director prudently.
Morning came. It had stopped raining. Since dredging the lake had revealed nothing, the searchers organized a sweep of the forest. Fernand decided to drive around the area in his car.
He drove for half an hour, keeping his eyes peeled. His hands were moist, his feet felt like ice, and he was tortured again by the abominable cramps that made it hard for him to breathe. Several times he was sure he saw a child’s silhouette in the distance, but each time it turned out to be a vision born of his own anguish.
Exhaustion overcame him. His eyes blurred, his mind turned to mush. Twice he almost drove off the road into the fields. He decided to pull over and sleep for a few minutes. He stopped the car on a small side road, leaned his forehead against the steering wheel and was soon dead to the world. He was awakened by the cawing of a crow; the bird had landed on the hood of the car with a loud beating of its enormous wings; Fernand took it for a terrible omen. According to his watch it was six-thirty, a sinister hour. He drove quickly towards Camp Jeunenjoie in the grip of a terrible presentiment of disaster; he felt this would be a day he would hate for the rest of his life.
The Provincial Police were leaving the camp just as he arrived. Henri ran towards him; a farmer had just telephoned Brother Marcel saying he’d found a small boy sleeping in one of his outbuildings. The boy was lying naked in a pile of straw, with a flashlight in his hand and his clothes hanging from an old harrow. At first he seemed frightened and wouldn’t answer any questions, but finally he identified himself and said he had run away from Camp Jeunenjoie and refused absolutely to ever set foot in the place again. He had begged the farmer to bring him into the house so he could phone his parents to come and get him.
Brother Albert came out of the cookhouse with a dishcloth over one shoulder, stepped heavily off the porch and made his elephantine way towards Fernand; anxiety and sleeplessness had transformed him into a sort of grey, slightly gelatinous, quivering mass, and the announcement that Charles had been found had not yet calmed him down. He shook Fernand’s hand vigorously, and the smell of lemon-scented dish detergent filled the humid air around him.
“What a mess! Our director has just gone down to the lake to call off the dredging. As for those out searching the woods, well, I suppose the fresh air will do them good. Lord of Lords! All’s well that ends well, but some things are better if they never get started, eh? I haven’t closed my eyes all night!”
Fernand turned to get into his car, but Brother Albert took his arm.
“Don’t be too hard on the boy. I’ve been keeping an eye on him, and he’s not a troublemaker. Far from it! In the thirty years I’ve been with the community I’ve seen a few boys, believe me. Maybe he was just bored and it went to his head, you never know about such things … Boredom or … something like that,” he added, not daring to say what he was really thinking. “You must talk to our director.”
“Boredom!” Fernand replied, turning the key in the ignition. “What are you talking about? I know what happened! Tell me, where’s this farmer live?”
Ten minutes later, after having put his car’s axles in peril several times, he stopped before a small house done up with aluminum siding, whose flashiness bestowed a kind of nobility on the grey-board buildings that surrounded it. He found Charles sitting at a table in the grimy kitchen, surrounded by stacks of old newspapers, in the company of an old man with a crumpled face, shirt-tails hanging out, to whom twelve years of solitary widowerhood had given a slightly wild expression.
“Gimme quite a turn s’mornin’, kid o’ yours did,” said the farmer, scratching the small of his back.
Charles gave an embarrassed smile. Although his hair was mussed and contained pieces of straw and his eyes were wide and bright, he seemed calm enough – as Lucie remarked, between sobs of joy, when Fernand called her on the farmer’s telephone.
“Well, you little scallawag!
You gave us all quite a turn,” said Fernand, without quite being able to hide his happiness at finding the boy safe and sound. “The police have been looking for you! Everyone’s been beating the bushes! They even dragged the lake! Gracious me, we’ve been turning the whole world upside down looking for you!”
“Sorry, Fernand,” Charles replied seriously, turning red. He stood up from the table where he’d been eating a bowl of porridge. “But I had my reasons.”
And leading Fernand out onto the porch, where the farmer graciously left them on their own, he tearfully recounted the entire story of his stormy relationship with Father Beaucage; he didn’t downplay his own part in the fracas, but his simple and pointed narrative brought out the dominating, hypocritical character of the chaplain.
Fernand listened attentively, making Charles repeat the episode of the sketch in minute detail; he listened with clenched fists, nearly bursting with indignation.
“Okay,” he said, standing up when Charles was finished. “Let’s go get your stuff. I might as well bring Henri home, now that I’m here. But before we leave I want to have a word or two with this Father Beaucage.”
He went back into the kitchen to thank the farmer and to offer him five dollars for his trouble; the old man nimbly pocketed the money, then went over to Charles, grinned at him toothlessly, and solemnly shook his hand. The white hairs in his five-day beard shone like silver in a shaft of sunlight.
Charles the Bold Page 33