“Ha!” cried the old man derisively.
“There’s two,” Blonblon pointed out. “That’s why it’s more expensive.”
“I don’t have that kind of money on me, boys. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
“Oh well, then, see you later,” said Charles, turning away and motioning his friend to follow.
“Hold on, not so fast,” cried Saint-Amour, alarmed.
The discussion continued. It went on for a long time without an agreement. A passing delivery truck interrupted them twice, obliging the old hairdresser to alter his demeanour to make their conversation look more innocent. Charles and Blonblon remained obstinate; the old man’s face glistened with covetous sweat at the sight of two such graceful, young, male bodies, a sight that made him shiver to the ends of his fingers and plunged his mind into uncontrollable turmoil; he was almost quaking at the knees. Knowing they would win in the end, the two children refused to lower their price, watching with a cruel wisdom as the old man fell apart before their eyes.
Finally, Saint-Amour uttered a cry like a sob and gave in: “I have to go to the bank,” he gasped. “Wait for me here.”
“Oh, we can’t do it today,” Charles replied. “We’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Previous commitment, you know,” added Blonblon in a tone that suggested their business was flourishing.
The old hairdresser’s jaw dropped with disappointment; he felt as though someone had yanked him from the table just as he was about to plunge his fork into a big, juicy steak that had been sizzling under his nose.
“You’re toying with me,” he said sadly.
“No, we’re not,” Charles assured him. “I’ll call you at ten o’clock tomorrow morning to tell you where to meet us. You can bring the money then.”
“It’ll have to be in my apartment,” insisted Saint-Amour. “It’s the best place.”
“We’re not keen on going into people’s houses. Too risky.”
“Don’t worry, we won’t cheat you,” Blonblon said, leading him on. He swallowed, blushed delicately, then said: “We’ll do whatever you want.”
The old man smiled and his face lit up. Looking around nervously, he stepped forward and furtively stroked Blonblon’s buttocks, then ran his hand lightly down Charles’s back. Charles could not keep from recoiling ever so slightly.
“Still not broken in, eh?” said Saint-Amour, surprised. “You have done this before, haven’t you?”
“I don’t like to do it where people can see,” said Charles almost under his breath.
“Okay, we’ll call you tomorrow, Monsieur Saint-Amour!” Blonblon called as he pulled his friend away.
They were about to turn the corner when the old man called after them.
“Hey!” he shouted. “You’re not going to trick me, are you?” And he shook his finger at them, all his misgivings having returned.
At six o’clock, unable to settle his thoughts sufficiently to prepare himself a meal, Saint-Amour decided to go out to a restaurant. Not Chez Robert, though, not in the state he was in, which he wouldn’t be able to hide from Rosalie’s perceptive gaze. He decided on a Greek restaurant a few blocks east of his apartment.
It was a dismal meal. They sat him next to a glass-fronted rotisserie, across from a man in his forties whose features were not just unrefined, but practically unformed, and who ate his food with gluttonous speed, his fingers glistening with grease. He pushed food onto his fork with his thumb, uttering little grunts of satisfaction. When his meal was finished he wiped his chin with his paper napkin, crumpled it up into a ball, and tossed it on his plate.
Saint-Amour looked away in disgust.
He was just cutting into a sort of moussaka when the rotisserie over his head shuddered violently and ten lit up, greasy chickens inside began rotating with funereal slowness. He stared at one of them; it was already beginning to drip. “That’s me,” he thought to himself. “That chicken is me.”
His night was even worse. Hot and sticky, a night of sick insomnia, shapeless and eternal, each heavy second weighing on him like an anvil. A sudden shout, the growl of a passing bus, or the roar of a car sent horrible tremors coursing through his body. He tossed and turned in bed, his eyelids stinging, his member stiff and painful, his temples swollen, all his thoughts revolving around the next day’s meeting, his distrust more active than ever, even though he knew he would go.
A thin, grey, dusty light slid into the room through the crack under the blind. He welcomed it joyfully and leapt from his bed. Minutes later he was walking down the street, his legs stiff with fatigue, his lungs heaving in the pure morning air. The two boys would still be sleeping. He imagined them stretched out on their beds in poses of abandonment, with nothing on but their shorts and that almost imperceptible smile children have when engulfed in peaceful sleep. He ached for them desperately. And yet at the same time he detested them. He hated himself as well, and the life of a sewer rat that his shameful passion had forced on him for the past thirty years.
By nine-twenty he was sitting beside his telephone, waiting for Charles to call. He stared at the instrument, glued to his chair, not daring to make the slightest movement for fear it might prevent the ringing that would sound to him like the call of a sweet, multicoloured bird. He’d left the back door partly open to let in a bit of fresh air, and a ray of sunshine streaked through the gaping fanlight straight into his left eye. When he closed it, a bright red curtain appeared, streaked with black and grey stripes. To pass the time he imagined himself standing inside his eyeball, before the huge, red curtain, staring at its many folds, trying to decipher the message hidden in the stripes. Suddenly they began to swim and intermingle, and Charles’s face appeared, also red, his eyes closed, his mouth half open in a grimace. He shook his head, opened his eyes fearfully, and at that moment the telephone rang.
It wasn’t Charles’s voice, but Blonblon’s. The meeting was to take place in an old shed. The boy described the place; it was at the end of an alley not far from Saint-Amour’s apartment, beside a large, vacant lot filled with derelict cars.
“We’ll expect you in half an hour. Do you have the money?”
“I have it, yes.”
“There’s a password.”
“A password?”
“You have to say it loud, after knocking three times. If you don’t, we won’t open the door.”
“All right.”
“The word is wiener. You have to say wiener. Not hard to remember, eh?”
And he hung up.
Minutes later, Saint-Amour was standing in the alley looking towards the shed. He was puffing, and his calves were running with sweat. The building, made of sheet metal with a flat roof, was quite large; it stood slightly to one side of the vacant lot, and appeared to have been abandoned. The area around it also seemed deserted, which he found reassuring. If something went wrong, it would be easy to sneak away undetected. He walked up and stopped before the battered metal door. A few blocks away he heard a jackhammer piercing the air with its incessant chattering. After a careful inspection of the alley, he knocked three times on the door. He thought he heard a slight stirring within. “What’s that?” he wondered in alarm. He pressed his ear to the sheet metal. Small crackling sounds were running through the building’s metal skin, which was sensitive to the slightest breath of wind. The ferocious attacks of the jackhammer muffled everything in a thick paste. He shrugged, telling himself his nerves were playing tricks on him, knocked again three times, and, putting his hands to his mouth like a megaphone, called out loudly:
“Wiener!”
The door opened partway and a hand appeared in the crack.
“The money.” It was Charles’s voice.
Saint-Amour raised his eyebrows and backed away a step.
“The money comes later,” he said.
“No. The money first or you don’t get in.”
The hand remained in place, imperious, fingers spread. A blob of grease glistened on the pink, fresh palm. Th
e old man hesitated, suspecting a trap, but he was afraid of losing his prize now that he was so close.
“The money always comes after,” he said stubbornly.
“Not with us. Don’t worry. I won’t close the door on you. You can come in as soon as you pay. Put your foot in the opening if you don’t believe me,” the boy added.
Still he hesitated, more suspicious than ever in the light of these bizarre, complicated precautions. But the first time with a new child often got off to a bad start, with mistrust and nervousness on both sides. Once the ice was broken, things fell into place.
“I’ll pay you when I get inside,” he said by way of compromise.
The hand was withdrawn and a brief consultation could be heard coming from within.
“All right. But get your money out now.”
He took four ten-dollar bills from his wallet and rolled them into a tube (the fifth would only be added when everything had gone to his complete satisfaction). Then, after once again looking up and down the alley, he slid through the half-opened door and closed it behind him. For a few seconds everything was dark, and it felt like the shed was spinning about him.
“The money,” Charles demanded, a bit breathlessly.
Saint-Amour groped about in the dark, touched a shoulder, and handed over the bills.
“Where’s your friend? We need some light in here so we can see each other.”
“I’m right here,” replied Blonblon. “Come closer, I’ll turn a light on.”
The old hairdresser took two steps, his hands held out in front of him. Someone pushed him violently from behind. He let out a cry and fell into a sort of pit.
“Now!” Charles shouted.
He heard something heavy being slid across the floor and tried to struggle to his feet. He’d lost his glasses in the fall, and with his knees feeling half dislocated, swearing and trying to climb out of the pit, he suddenly found himself buried under an avalanche of soft, slimy objects that smelled faintly spicy. Flashlights played over him amid shouts, laughter, and taunts.
“Wieners for the old pig! Wieners for the old pig!” sang a group of small boys, who danced around the pit before his spinning, stupefied gaze. The fiercest among them was Henri, who shone the light directly into his eyes, blinding him, and then hit him two or three times on the head with the flashlight.
The next instant, the old man was alone. For a few seconds the sound of retreating footsteps pounded outside, punctuated from time to time by the distant shudder of the jackhammer. Saint-Amour remained motionless in the pit that had been carefully prepared for him, petrified with rage and terror, standing like a giant, wrinkled wiener himself, half buried in a pile of fresh frankfurters whose slightly sickening odour now filled the shed and which a man appearing from nowhere would shortly come to collect, wash off, and place back on his counter for resale.
He stayed in bed for three days, unable to eat a thing. The smell of wieners clung to his skin and made him want to throw up. Once or twice he stretched out his hand to a bottle of Seven-Up on his bedside table and took a minuscule sip, eyes bulging, mouth askew, then issued a defeated sigh. The slightest sound made him sit up in bed in terror. The telephone rang once or twice. Each time he thought he would die. Summoning all his strength he managed to get up and take it off the hook. At night, through the partition separating his bedroom from the next apartment, he heard two youths erupting in great bursts of laughter. They were laughing at him, he was sure of it; if by some means he were to venture outside his building, the entire neighbourhood, the whole city, would turn and point their fingers at him, and keep them pointed until the police arrived.
Days passed. Then one night a truck pulled up in front of his door; he filled it with everything he had collected over the years, clambered inside the cab like a frog, and was never seen again.
28
That afternoon Roberto stood on the sidewalk in front of his restaurant staring up at his sign, rubbing his nose, and making faces for a good five minutes.
CHEZ ROBERT
CUISINE CANADIAN. CANADIAN FOOD
SPÉCIAUX DU JOUR. DAILY SPECIALS
METS POUR EMPORTER. TAKE-OUT MEALS
LICENCE COMPLÈTE. FULLY LICENSED
It was a good sign, metal, lit by two powerful spotlights. It had been through a good many seasons, been covered by God knew how many tons of pigeon and sparrow droppings, and had always given Roberto and Rosalie enough visibility to guarantee them a respectable living. But over the past two or three years he’d noticed that the sign’s colours were beginning to lose their sharpness, with little pinpricks of rust showing through in a few places, and someone with a suspicious mind might possibly deduce from it that the bank account of the restaurant’s owners was not as healthy as it might have been.
Roberto was looking at it with such rapt attention that an old rubbie in a Panama hat stopped beside him and began examining the sign himself. Then a young woman in lime-green shorts, apparently unconcerned about showing off her cellulite, also stopped to look. Then a delivery man in a red hardhat stopped on his way back to his truck with an armload of empty boxes and stood with his own nose pointed up into the air.
“Is there a problem?” the rubbie asked politely.
“No, sor,” said Roberto, with a big smile. “I never have problems.”
Whistling, he went back into the restaurant.
“Lili,” he called out in his high tenor voice, “we’re going to get a new sign.”
Rosalie was wiping off the cash register with a chamois cloth. She looked up and frowned. “We are?” she said. “What for?”
“Because it’s time, that’s what for!”
The restaurant was completely empty, which allowed the couple to discuss the matter in private.
“That sign’s in perfect shape. It’ll last another three years at least, maybe more.”
“Don’t matter, Lili, the government’s making us change it anyway: we can’t have an English sign up any more, as you well know. I read about it inna paper. They passed a law last month. Now everythin’s gotta be in French.”
“Yeah, but not for five years. I read the papers, too, you know.”
“It’s all rusted out, come and look.”
“I’ve looked. What are you talking about, rusted out? There’s nothing wrong with that sign.”
“Whaddaya mean nothin’ wrong widdit? People’re gonna take us for a coupla cheapsteaks on accounta that sign. The paint’s stripped in at least a dozen places!”
“And what about your wallet, you want it stripped, too? Do you know how much a new sign would cost?”
“No, I don’t, and neither do you. But we gotta change it to French, what else can we do? Minister Laurin explained it all the other night on Tv, whatsa matter, you don’t remember? We get what, maybe three English customers a month comin’ into this place?”
“You think I’m an idiot or something. I know what you’re up to.”
“Oh you do, eh? What am I up to?”
“You want to change the name of the restaurant. You want Roberto up there, instead of Robert.”
Roberto turned red in the face. He took three long strides to the cash and leaned his hands flat on the counter.
“That’s not true! The restaurant’s registered Chez Robert and it’s gonna stay Chez Robert! You got rocks in your head!”
The discussion continued, becoming more and more lively. Rosalie let it be known that she thought her partner had come under the perfidious influence of the Separatists. Roberto replied that she was an old stick-in-the-mud; if she kept on dragging her heels like that, he predicted, she’d find herself eating everyone else’s dust. Rosalie returned that if he didn’t give so much money to his daughter things might be different and they might be able to think about a new sign; but since he completely lost his head every time he laid eyes on her, they couldn’t, and that was that. Roberto swore that he hadn’t given her a penny for at least six months and he had no intention of giving her any more in th
e near future, now that his no-good son-in-law had finally found a job. Then he dropped a bombshell so big it took Rosalie completely by surprise.
“Listen, Lili, since a new sign has to be all in French, we can make the letters really big. That’ll be more publicity for us, right?”
Defeated, Rosalie took refuge in a series of acidic grumblings, then decided to straighten things out under the counter, thus putting an end to their tête-à-tête.
Satisfied, Roberto poured himself a cup of coffee, and since there were still no customers in the restaurant, he sat down at a table with a piece of paper and a pencil and began redesigning the sign. After ten minutes of scribbling, he heaved a deep sigh, got up, paced up and down between the tables, and then went to the telephone. Several minutes later, Charles showed up carrying a dictionary and with such a serious expression on his face that Rosalie forgot her bad mood and nearly laughed out loud. Man and boy went straight to work, but Roberto soon had to go back to the kitchen. The official wording of the new sign wasn’t finalized until the middle of the afternoon, at which time Charles tactfully pointed out to the cook that “cuisine familial” had an “e” at the end of it, and that, after diligent research that required several telephone calls, he had ascertained that “fully licensed” might be a source of profound mystery to certain tourists, and should be replaced with “wine, beer, and spirits.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” said the cook, handing him a five-dollar bill. “No, no, no! Go on, take it. See, it pays to get an education, atta boy!”
A period of peace and quiet now began in Charles’s life. It was as though he had paid his dues and been granted his rightful share of happiness. His wounds healed slowly, and although they didn’t disappear altogether, they no longer made him suffer. Lucie and Fernand, who had for a long time considered Charles their own son in spirit, now wanted to make him their son in fact. To do that, however, required either the consent of his natural father or the removal of Wilfrid’s parental rights. The carpenter was still sending his meagre pittance from up north. Fernand asked Lucie, who had “been taught to write by the nuns,” if she would compose a “diplomatic” letter to convince Wilfrid of the numerous benefits that a stable life would bring to Charles. They worked on the letter together for three nights, their discussions sometimes rising to tumultuous heights, before handing the text over to the notary, who said it was an excellent letter but needed a touch-up here and there, and then reworded it from top to bottom. Finally the letter, along with its burden of hopes and fears, was sent off to James Bay.
Charles the Bold Page 37