Charles looked up at her, his mouth open, his face turning red, torn between fear and the desire to burst out laughing.
“Do you understand me?” she repeated more forcefully.
“Yes, Madame,” he finally said, gracefully lowering his eyes as he had seen someone do the previous week in a French film on television.
He made his mind up on the spot to try to stay on the good side of Madame Prud’homme. But it soon became clear that this would not be easy. He realized that the best way to manage it was to turn himself into an automaton, to blindly follow her instructions, which were legion, to the letter. These included: no unnecessary gestures, no looking from side to side, no shuffling of feet on the floor; coughing was to be kept to a minimum, and any pupil so unwise as to use the drinking fountain before class had better hope he or she had a strong sphincter muscle, since Madame Prud’homme had little sympathy for anyone who couldn’t control their bladder.
Like his classmates, Charles had to get used to the torrent of rebukes that made up the better part of his teacher’s educational curriculum. He was clipped on the head a few times, had his ear pinched (once almost hard enough to draw blood), and repeatedly had to endure such discouraging remarks as, “Deep down, he isn’t that much better than any of the others.”
One Saturday in December, however, the situation changed once and for all. It was during an abominable snowstorm that transformed the streets of Montreal into white corridors along which one staggered and slid, breath cut short by sudden gusts of snow. That morning around nine o’clock, Lucie was making crème anglaise and noticed that she was out of sugar, so she asked Charles to go to the grocery store to buy some.
Charles sighed and got into his coat and boots, pushed open the door and found himself in a tempest; snow instantly blew down his neck and a second later was transformed into icy water. He quickly zipped his parka up to the top and made his descent into the maelstrom.
The grocery store was a good ten-minute walk from the house, but there was a convenience store that was closer, on rue Fullum. Charles decided it was worth the few extra cents for the sugar in order to spend as little time as possible outside, and turned down rue Coupal, heading west. He could barely force his feet through the thick snow that was piling up faster and faster. A good part of it was being blown up into the air by sudden gusts of wind, creating a kind of wild carnival that had been paralyzing the city all night. From time to time his heels would meet a thin sheet of ice, exposed by the wind like treacherous, white skin, and he’d nearly go down. Half suffocated, he would utter a curse, stretch his arms out from his sides to keep his balance, and move forward inch by inch.
Halfway to the store, he stopped in his tracks in amazement. A small boy was standing in front of him, blocking the sidewalk, his head stuck in a huge blue toque with a white pompom, his eyes squinting and his mouth gaping open. Enveloped in swirls of whistling, whirling snow, he was squinting intently at something in the street.
Charles turned and looked in the same direction and uttered a cry of alarm. There was a human form lying on the street, half covered by snow.
“Hey!” he shouted at the boy, “what are you doing? Come and give me a hand! We’ve got to get whoever it is off the street! A car could come by any minute!”
“I just saw him,” the child explained, heading out into the street. His feet slid out from under him and he fell on his back.
A half-empty grocery bag hid the face of the prone figure, but they could tell it was a woman. The two boys each took a leg and began to drag her towards the sidewalk. It was hard work, since their feet could get no purchase on the slippery pavement. Finally, after much herculean effort, they succeeded in dragging her off the street.
“Is she dead?” Charles wondered aloud.
They were both gripped by fear, and the smaller boy backed away, holding his hands over his mouth and nearly falling over again. Charles leaned over the woman and removed the grocery bag – and saw that it was Madame Prud’homme! Her eyes were closed, her cheeks had turned blue, and her small mouth was wide open, making her enormous teeth look like a row of prisoners trying to escape from their cramped quarters.
Charles ran to the nearest door and began pounding on it with his fists. A few minutes later the teacher was lying on a bed, her coat removed, being subjected to a series of slaps, rubs, loud shouts in the ear, and other improvised treatments while they waited for the ambulance to make its way through the snow-clogged streets. After fifteen minutes she opened her eyes, gave a long groan and managed to utter a few words. An hour later she was taken to Notre-Dame Hospital, where she stayed for a week, her mind in a fog. No long-term cerebral damage, the doctors assured her.
From then on, Madame Prud’homme treated Charles as her saviour. Her venomous, reptilian nature didn’t exactly evaporate, but some of the edge was taken off it, and a kind of understanding existed between them. It was a cold, almost calculated understanding, and it gave neither of them much pleasure, but at least it saved Charles from bearing the brunt of the daily harassments the rest of the class continued to endure.
Towards the end of June the school administration held a small party for Mademoiselle Laramée, who was retiring after thirty-two years of loyal, energetic service. There were cakes and sparkling wine in the staff room. After three bottles of Faisca, the illustrious corps of teachers began to resemble a hen party. Mademoiselle Laramée brought her colleagues to tears with a story of one of her uncles who came home late one night without knowing that that afternoon his wife had sent the furniture out to be reupholstered; he went into the dark living room with a glass of scotch in his hand with the idea of sitting quietly for a moment before going up to bed, sat down where one of the vanished chairs had been, and ended up spending the night sleeping against a radiator. In the morning he had fourteen stitches and a slight loss of memory.
When she left the school a while later, she was slightly tipsy. She wondered if perhaps she shouldn’t delay her retirement for a while; after all, the pain in her knees and hip hadn’t bothered her for the past hour. She was making her way along the sidewalk a little shakily, trying to remember what it was she had meant to pick up for supper on her way home, when she saw Charles walking ahead of her with two of his friends. She waved and called to him in a curiously crooning voice.
“Yes, Mademoiselle?” Charles said, walking back to meet her.
“My poor child,” she said, her eyes moistening, “in two days we won’t be seeing each other any more. I’m leaving school for ever after this week.”
“I know, Mademoiselle. I was going to come to see you to say goodbye after class.”
She remained silent for a few seconds, sideswiped by such a show of kindness.
“Ah, Charles, Charles,” she finally said, her voice trembling. “Of all the pupils I’ve had in my thirty-two years, you’re the one I’ve liked the best.”
She stroked the back of his neck. Charles smiled, slightly embarrassed by the bizarre change in the behaviour of his former teacher, as well as by the looks he imagined he was getting from his two friends; he could feel their eyes boring into his back. Then suddenly, defying all schoolboy protocol, he took her hand.
“My beautiful boy,” she blubbered, “my beautiful, lovely boy.” Two tears rolled down her cheeks.
But then her practical sense and indomitable energy reasserted themselves. Tossing her head and shaking her shoulders she began fumbling for something in her purse.
“Listen, Charles,” she said, taking out a pen, “tell me honestly. Would you like to see me again from time to time – not too often, of course, two or three times a year, if you want? We can exchange news, you can tell me what you’ve been up to – that is, only what you want to tell me about. Would you like that? Tell me the truth, now.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle,” Charles replied, surprised but sincere.
“Good. Then I’ll write my address and phone number on this scrap of paper. Don’t lose it. Whenever you feel like it,
and only when you feel like it, you know, come and see me. Call first, though, because I might not always be home.”
She handed him the paper, touched him on the cheek, and limped off, her eyes fixed proudly straight ahead.
Charles finished Grade Six first in his class in French, but with more middling results in most of his other subjects. This was partly because so much of his energy and attention was going into his extracurricular activities (to use the jargon of the time), and partly because his raging thirst for reading often made him give short shrift to his studies. Despite all their efforts, Lucie and Fernand were unable to convince him to limit his work in the appliance repair shop to weekends. He was becoming amazingly adept at fixing things. However, they did manage to get Rosalie and Roberto to agree not to let him work as a delivery boy during the week.
30
The night gathered slowly. A warm, moist wind tore at the clouds in the turbulent sky, and between them the moon appeared fitfully against a backdrop of mauve turning to black. A vagrant gull glided above the city, riding the wind, its feet still greasy from a day spent at the dump. Its impassive eye scanned the rooftops and streets as they darkened imperceptibly with the movement of the sky. In most houses people were sleeping. In some, however, they were still up, talking or eating or making love or watching television, with weary rings around their eyes. Bitter voices were raised in certain quarters. Piles of bills were being added up and then added up again. Plans were being made and unmade and then remade in different guises. Through it all blew the warm, humid wind, swept aloft as though on a strangely drunken spree, a spring-like binge despite the fact that fall was approaching, continuing its attack on the fleeing clouds.
Charles was asleep in his bedroom, his body jerking fitfully from time to time. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, his hands grasped at objects that were always just out of reach, and fragmentary phrases escaped from his lips. Simon had secretly crept back under his covers, but could offer little comfort from the nightmare in which Charles was once again locked. Every now and then Boff, awakened by an errant knee, would open one eye, cast a quizzical look at his master and heave a deep sigh before going back to sleep.
Twice Lucie had got up to listen at Charles’s door, had almost gone into his room, and then had returned to her bed, where she and Fernand continued their whispered conversation.
Charles had been having nightmares for the past several weeks, ever since a scorching Saturday night towards the end of the summer. It had started with a small triumph at Chez Robert. At five o’clock, just after he’d arrived to begin his deliveries, he was enjoying listening to a parrot that Monsieur Victoire had bought that afternoon from a man of shady credentials in a fleamarket in Prévost, where he had gone in his cab with a customer.
“Of course it’s a stolen parrot,” the taxi-driver was saying, looking admiringly at the bird perched on his shoulder. “The son of a bitch didn’t even know its name! But like I said to myself, it wouldn’t be any less stolen if I didn’t buy it, would it? What’s done is done, so we might as well make the best of it. Besides, at the price he was asking, it was more like a gift. What d’you think, Charles? I did the right thing buying it, eh?”
“I don’t know,” Charles replied, his entire attention riveted on the bird. Its feathers were magnificent, all green and red. It jerked its head continuously and rolled its lidless eyes.
“ARMAND!” it suddenly cried in a furious, raucous voice. “I’M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS GOOD AN’ PROPER!”
For the fifth time the restaurant filled with roars of laughter.
“I don’t know where it came from,” Rosalie remarked, “but I don’t think it was Westmount!”
A small, wrinkled man with a grey beard put his hands on his hips and said with fierce conviction: “No, it comes from someplace where people say what they think! An’ if you ask me, that’s a darned good place to come from!”
“THE VANQUISHED SHALL BE BEATEN!” the parrot continued, trying to lower its voice.
“What a dumb bird!” Charles scoffed. “Of course the vanquished are beaten. That’s what vanquished means!”
“Listen, kid,” said the man with the grey beard sententiously, “some things seem stupid when you first hear ’em, and then when you think about ’em they ain’t so stupid after all. You just gotta think about ’em.”
Charles gave the man a bored look and decided to ignore him. It was the first time anyone had seen him in the restaurant.
“ARMAND!” the parrot repeated, “I’M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS GOOD AN’ PROPER!”
And grabbing a tuft of Monsieur Victoire’s hair in its beak (which made the taxi-driver grimace), it swung from his right shoulder to his left.
“I hope you don’t intend to come in here every day with that thing,” Rosalie said half-jokingly. “You’ll give the place a bad name.”
Since there were no deliveries to be made, Charles thought he would go home and bring Céline and Henri back to look at the foul-mouthed bird. He was at the front of the restaurant when a violent curse issued from the kitchen. A dozen faces turned towards the kitchen door, and Rosalie, dropping an order of Spanish omelette and fries in front of a customer, ran off to see what had happened.
“The fan just quit on us!” Roberto bellowed in his resonant, tenor voice, pointing to the range hood. “I knew she was gonna break down … she nearly give out four times already today … And now she’s gone for good! Aye-yi-yi, where’m I gonna get a repair guy on a Saturday night! You know how hot it’s gonna be in here an hour from now?”
“But there’s an emergency number,” Rosalie said. “I’ll call it right away.”
“Don’t waste your time, Lili. Giovanni never comes on Saturdays. He goes down to Venise-en-Québec …”
“Can I help?” Charles asked modestly, coming into the kitchen. “I know a bit about electric motors.”
“Thank you, Charlie, thank you,” answered Roberto, patting him on the head, “but there’s nothin’ you can do here.”
Liette came in with three orders for the kitchen, and Roberto went back to work. Charles left without a word, and five minutes later came back with a small tool box and his flashlight. Roberto told him to keep away from the hood.
“Roberto,” said Monsieur Victoire, who was standing in the doorway, “give the boy a chance, why don’t you! What’ve you got to lose? He’s pretty handy with things. The other day he fixed a telephone for me in ten minutes flat. I was gonna throw the darn thing out the window, and now it works like new!”
“And he fixed my hairdryer,” added Liette, putting in her two-cents’ worth. “The plastic casing was all melted and the cord was hanging half off. Now you can hardly tell there was anything wrong with it!”
“But this is an industrial fan,” Roberto objected, holding his hand out towards the hood. “It ain’t child’s play! And anyways, he might burn himself in the grease in the deep-fryer.”
“Roberto,” said the taxi-driver, picking up the large cutting board the chef used to roll out his pizza dough, “have a bit of faith in the little fella, will you? He just might solve your problem.”
And he set the cutting board on top of the deep-fryer, tested it for solidity, and motioned Charles to climb on.
“Ten minutes! That’s all!” declared the chef, holding one index finger up and using the other to wipe sweat from his eye.
He opened a small wall cupboard to reveal an electrical panel, and unscrewed a fuse. Meanwhile, Charles took a stool, climbed up onto the stove and kneeled on the cutting board.
“Ugh, it’s filthy in there!” he couldn’t help remarking when he saw the thick layer of grease that covered every surface.
“What’d you expect?” Roberto said hotly. “You’re the one who wanted to stick your nose in it, so quit gripin’.”
Charles heaved a sigh. The heat and the smell of fried food was suffocating. He almost wished he hadn’t offered to help. He turned on his flashlight and with a grimace of distaste began exploring th
e inner workings of the range hood with his fingertips.
“Well?” asked Roberto, impatiently.
“Give him time!” admonished Monsieur Victoire in his best circus-master’s voice. “When you can’t wait to make love, you still have to get your pants off, don’t you?”
Feeling sheepish, Charles was just about to admit defeat when he suddenly thought he’d found the source of the problem. It was simple! The screw attaching the power cable to the electric motor seemed to have worked itself loose, probably from the motor’s vibration, and the connection was broken. Three turns of his screwdriver and the fan would no doubt work like a charm.
He nodded to the taxi-driver, his eyes blurred with sweat, his mouth feeling pasty, and his ears burning, and asked for his toolbox. Two minutes later the range hood was humming and Roberto was ecstatic. He hugged Charles as though the boy had just saved the restaurant from certain ruin. A small group of admirers gathered around.
“Rosalie!” called Roberto. “Make this guy a sundae like you never made a sundae in your life! Use the pink bowl from up on the high shelf, the one for a four-scoop banana split!”
Charles was radiant. He had just sat down at the counter, ready to attack a sundae made with vanilla ice-cream smothered in chocolate and caramel sauce, dotted with four maraschino cherries, four wafers, and sprinkled with sliced almonds and grated cocoa beans, when he had to leave to make a delivery.
“Hurry back, kiddo,” said Rosalie with a warm smile. “I’ll keep your sundae cold in the refrigerator.”
He ran full-speed to Frontenac Towers, even at the risk of visiting indescribable havoc on the club sandwich that was inside the cardboard box. Ten minutes later he was on his way back, breathless and with a good tip in his pocket and a craving for ice-cream such as he had never known before.
He started to cross the small square outside the Frontenac metro station. That evening it was busy. A half-dozen street kids were skateboarding around it, shouting and making a racket with their endless collisions; a little farther on, two Jehovah’s Witnesses, surrounded by a handful of skeptical listeners, were making heroic efforts to convert an old pensioner in a panama hat and a pale blue Fortel suit who hadn’t had a conversation that wasn’t about money, gin, or women for thirty years. Charles had just passed them when a dark figure fell into step a little to his left. In his hurry to get back, Charles paid no attention to the figure, except to feel a vague presentiment of menace.
Charles the Bold Page 40