Charles the Bold

by Yves Beauchemin

  “Charles!” called a voice that was all too familiar. “C’mere, I wanna talk to you.”

  The boy stopped dead in his tracks and saw his father sidling up to him, a broad smile on his face and his hand held out.

  “Hi, there, sonny. My God, you’re all grown up! I hardly recognized you! How’s it goin’?”

  “Not bad,” Charles replied woodenly.

  Thibodeau kept on smiling, his small, inquisitive eyes behind their puffy, red lids looking the boy up and down, his head nodding slightly as though he had finally arrived at a conclusion that had long been eluding him. He seemed smaller and more sickly looking than Charles remembered, his face dark and dried out, his cheekbones protruding, his lips thin and pale, his hair dull and streaked with grey. He looked as though he’d suffered years of gruelling, inhuman work, or had endured an endless series of trials that had drained his body of much of its vitality. But a sort of dark energy surged within him, tormenting his meagre body; Charles could see it showing itself in several unpredictable ways, tremendous shudders followed by long, sinuous movements that seemed intended to induce nothing but surprise, trouble, and consternation.

  “Well, I gotta say,” he went on, “you’re not a bad-looking kid! You’ll be turning girls’ heads pretty soon, if you ain’t already. You interested in girls yet?”

  Charles shook his head.

  “At your age I was all over ’em. Hey, you don’t look all that glad to see me,” the carpenter added spitefully.

  Charles looked down, not knowing what to say. He wanted to be in the restaurant, sitting at the counter with his sundae, even though with the horrible contractions now going on in his stomach he knew he wouldn’t be able to swallow a mouthful of it. But at the moment the restaurant was two blocks away, and might was well have been at the other end of the universe.

  “Hey!” shouted Thibodeau, in a strange sort of whistling whine. “Look at me when I’m talkin’ to you! That’s better. When someone’s talkin’ to you, kid, you look at ’em. It’s only polite. What’s eatin’ you, anyways? Cat got your tongue?”

  “I don’t feel well,” Charles lied.

  The carpenter lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and said: “Who am I?”

  Taken aback, Charles shrugged his shoulders.

  “Who am I to you?”

  “My father,” Charles whispered after a moment.

  “Eggs-actly! Couldn’t’a put it better myself! I’m your old man. I’ve always been your old man, and I’ll always be your old man. You follow me?”

  Charles nodded.

  “An’ stop openin’ and closin’ your yap like that, makes you look like a fish or somethin’. Gets on my nerves.”

  Humiliated and furious, Charles clenched his teeth with all his strength and took several deep breaths. To his great relief the spasms slowly decreased in intensity.

  Maybe by now Rosalie would be worried by his absence and come out onto the street to look for him, and call him to come back right away. Maybe Fernand would be out buying a newspaper and would see him with this detestable man, and would come up to them with his solid, decisive step, stop in front of Wilfrid and give him such a shove with his arm that he would go spinning right down to the bottom of the metro. But nothing like that happened. No one came to his rescue. He was still there, paralyzed before this man who filled him with such terror.

  “And the best proof that I’m your old man, like I said,” Thibodeau went on, “is that I never stopped payin’ your support, even if there were plenty of times when I had to scrape the barrel to get it. I was always good for it. Because you’re my kid, y’unnerstand what I’m sayin’, and a father’s gotta see to it that his kid’s bein’ taken care of, at least to the best of his ability. Come on. We’re gonna go somewhere quiet so’s we can talk better.”

  “B-but … I’m working at the restaurant,” Charles stammered.

  “You can work some other time. Come on.”

  And he took Charles by the arm.

  “Where are we going?” Charles asked, his voice shaking.

  Thibodeau replied by pointing his chin down the street to some undefined destination ahead of them. They crossed one corner, then another, heading east. The carpenter had let go of the boy’s arm and was walking in silence, casting his gaze all around him, obviously looking for something. Finally he turned up a side street and began walking more quickly, looking down from time to time at his son, who was having more and more difficulty hiding his misgivings. Charles was certain he was being kidnapped. He would never see the Fafards again, or any of his friends, not even Boff. His stomach contracted violently. What would happen to him? Suddenly the scene with the paring knife flashed through his mind. He raised his head and looked up at his father, waiting for a chance to run away, but Thibodeau never took his suspicious eyes off him, and in any case the boy’s stifling fear had almost robbed him of the power to walk, let alone run.

  They came to a huge church, a stone edifice in the Neogothic style, flanked on its left by a parking lot with a row of tall trees along one side. The church’s entranceway was dark and empty, which seemed to please the carpenter. He turned into it and sat down on one of the stone steps, motioning Charles to do the same.

  “This is as good place as any to have our little talk. Because we got a lot to talk about, you and me.”

  He told Charles that he had been back in Montreal for two weeks and was looking for work in construction. Despite the huge wages to be made up north, he said, he’d grown tired of the life up there and was glad to be back in the city. Fernand’s proposal of adoption had given him a lot to think about, and he was still thinking about it. As a matter of fact, he was feeling less and less inclined to go along with it. On the contrary, he was thinking of taking Charles back. (At these words, Charles bit the inside of his cheek so hard his mouth filled with the taste of blood.) Why? Because he had begun to see things differently. Working up at James Bay all those months had given him a chance to look inside himself in a way he’d never been able to do before. His mind had been so confused after the night of their little disagreement! Because that’s all it was, when you came right down to it, a little quarrel between them, despite whatever was said about it at the time. He’d run into Sylvie a couple of days ago and had talked it over with her, and she’d ended up agreeing that the whole thing had been greatly exaggerated, probably because everyone was so on edge. Even Charles had to admit that the whole story was nothing but imagination gone wild. For proof? He’d got out of the house without a scratch, hadn’t he? A judge – if the matter ever came before a judge – would have to come to the same conclusion.

  Charles listened to him, thunderstruck. What world was his father living in? What was he up to? The boy’s fear had gradually diminished. He realized that Wilfrid was not going to take him by force that night. He had other plans, although it was impossible to guess what they were. Maybe Wilfrid himself didn’t know what they were.

  “Okay, let’s go,” said the carpenter, standing up. “It’s getting late and you have to go home. They’ll be worried about you. I got a lot off my chest tonight. Next time it’ll be your turn. Good night, my boy.”

  And once again he held out his hand, a faint, sly smile playing on his lips.

  “There won’t be a next time,” Charles muttered to himself as he moved off down the sidewalk, teeth clenched, tears of rage running down his face. “There’ll never be a next time. Never, never, never!”

  When he arrived at the Fafards’ the whole household was in an uproar. Alarmed by his failure to return, Rosalie had telephoned the house to speak to him. Lucie had become even more alarmed, and had called Blonblon, then the parents of some of his other friends. When no one knew where he was, she had asked her son and husband to go out and look for him. Forty-five minutes later they’d come back empty-handed. Céline was crying her heart out in the living room. Boff was running from room to room, his head down, emitting short, distressed barks, as though he understood the seriousness of the
situation. The click-click of his claws on the hardwood floors had been getting on everyone’s nerves.

  When Lucie saw the expression on Charles’s face, she ran up and took him in her arms. Fernand listened to his story in silence, his face dark with anger, as Charles recited what had happened in a feverish high-pitched voice. Céline and Henri sat at the end of the room their father had indicated, listening, holding their breath, and exchanging worried looks.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, my boy,” Fernand said when Charles was finished. “I’ll take care of this.”

  He put on his jacket, left the house, and headed straight to Parfait Michaud’s house. Passersby on rue Ontario turned to look at him in astonishment, a massive man with a furious expression cutting a swath like a sword through the happy, animated, Saturday-night crowd.

  The notary was sitting with his wife in their living room, his shirt collar open and a mug of beer in his hand. Despite the overbearing heat he had turned off the fan, which had been giving them at least the illusion of fresh air, because its roaring had drowned out the notes of the cello in the Beethoven quartet they were listening to. When the doorbell rang, he made a face but got up, lifted the turntable arm from the record, and went to open the door.

  “Ah, Fernand, how are you?” he said, making an effort to be cordial. “Come in and have a beer.”

  Fernand made a horizontal motion with his hand, rejecting the notary’s offer.

  “I’m here on business.”

  “Business? On Saturday night?” said the notary in surprise. “In this heat? Have a heart, my friend. Couldn’t it wait until Monday?”

  “It’s about Charles. His father just accosted him. There’s trouble brewing again.”

  “What’s that you say?” cried Amélie, appearing in the hallway, a Chinese fan in her hand (which made Fernand’s eyes widen). “My poor little Charles, is he still having trouble with that impossible man?”

  “Yes, Madame! He wants the boy back, nothing else will satisfy the bastard. Pardon me. But he’s going to find out who he’s dealing with, you can take that to the bank!”

  And he turned to the notary.

  “I’ll need your help, though. Not a minute to lose!”

  The two men went into Michaud’s office. The notary carefully closed the door and put his finger to his lips.

  “Not too loud, if you don’t mind,” he said. “My wife has been very excitable lately. I can’t let her become too worked up. Tell me what happened. Just a minute, though,” he said, holding up his hand. He left the room and came back with two mugs of beer.

  “Please allow me to insist, my dear Fernand. It’s too hot!”

  Fernand gave in. His quick-march to the notary’s office had made him thirsty; he took the mug and drained it in two gulps, then launched into his story. The notary listened attentively, moving sheets of paper about on his desk as though these slight changes in position would influence the course of events.

  “Hmm,” he said with a worried look when his visitor had finished, “it seems the situation has become more complicated. We only had one witness to the affair with the knife, and that was this Sylvie. Now it seems that Thibodeau has neutralized her, either by intimidating her or else by buying her off, hard to say which.”

  “What about me? And my wife? And you, even? What are we? Chopped liver?”

  The notary nodded with a dismissive expression.

  “Our testimonies depend entirely on that of Charles, my friend. We saw nothing with our own eyes. I’m not saying Charles will have no credibility with a judge, but …”

  “With a judge?” Fernand said, taken aback.

  “Of course, with a judge. Let’s be realistic here, Fernand. You and I both know that this kind of thing has to be settled in court. Where else would we settle it? At the beauty parlour?”

  “With a judge means with a lawyer,” Fernand said quietly, thinking about the expenses the affair was going to entail.

  “I’ll act as your counsel, of course. That’ll save you a bit. But there’s something that bothers me about your story,” he went on, reaching out for his beer, “something we need to discuss.”

  He sipped his beer for a moment, looking off into space, while Fernand squirmed in his seat, looking unhappy and becoming increasingly embarrassed by the demands of his bladder.

  “What bothers me …”

  “… is that the bastard didn’t take Charles with him tonight.”

  “Exactly, Fernand, you’ve hit the nail on the head. It could mean one of two things: either he actually wants to take Charles back, in which case he could easily have done just that, since he still retains parental authority over the boy, or else he intends to –”

  “– sell him to us for as much as he can get, and to hell with everyone else.”

  “I might have put it a bit more delicately,” replied the notary, smiling, and a bit disconcerted by his companion’s ferocity, “but that more or less sums up what I was going to say.”

  The two men talked for a few more minutes before deciding to let Thibodeau make the next move. In order to prepare for any eventuality, the notary undertook to obtain the necessary documents and procedural manuals for adoption, and to find out what steps were needed to make a representation for the withdrawal of Thibodeau’s parental authority. Meanwhile, they would have to keep a close eye on Charles to make sure there was no opportunity for a kidnapping; he would have to be forbidden to leave the Fafards’ house unless accompanied by an adult.

  During their discussion, Amélie’s ear had been glued to the door. Now she hurried to the bathroom, completely shaken by what she had overheard. She quickly swallowed four capsules of valerian in the hope of warding off the night of insomnia she could already see looming on the horizon.

  31

  Eight days went by. Wilfrid Thibodeau showed no signs of life. To be on the safe side, Charles had been forbidden to go back to work at Chez Robert. The precaution wasn’t necessary: terrified at the thought of having to go back to living with his father, Charles was content to hide out at home. He didn’t even show any interest in working with Blonblon. He spent most of his day watching television.

  When it was time to go back to school, Charles and Henri began their first term at Jean-Baptiste-Meilleur Secondary School, on rue Fullum, which was quite close to the Fafard house. It was one of those brick buildings trimmed in granite in the Beaux-Arts style, from the turn of the century; despite its age, it had maintained a solemn, imposing, almost haughty dignity that contrasted sharply with the colourful, energetic students that coursed through its dark-panelled hallways. Before its main entrance, which was flanked by four massive granite columns, was a painted cement statue of Christ, arms held out, a thoughtful frown on His face, as though He were apologizing to the students in advance for the trouble that awaited them in their lives. The pedestal was piously engraved:

  Sacred Heart of Jesus

  Bless our Students

  DONATED BY ALUMNI

  1901–1951

  The establishment was run by a small man with iron-grey hair, a former priest who had been transformed by the Quiet Revolution only as far as a kind of half lay brother; he had a reputation for not tolerating boisterous or lazy students.

  Along with the many unfamiliar faces in the school were several of Charles’s former comrades from Saint-Anselme Elementary. There were a few new routines he had to learn. Rather than having a single homeroom teacher upon whom rested the sole responsibility for the entire school curriculum, here the teaching was shared by a half-dozen specialists. What was more, for the first time in his life (except for his gym teacher at Saint-Anselme), Charles was being taught by men. But what was worrisome was that he seemed to be completely out of step with these new developments in his life as though he was unaware that things had changed, or at least as though the changes were having no effect upon him. His friends no longer recognized him. What could have happened to turn him into a ball of putty that only wanted to curl up in a cor
ner with a sullen expression on his face? He made Henri swear to say nothing of the problems he was having. Blonblon tried to wheedle it out of him, but after being rebuffed several times he advised Charles to take some vitamins.

  Since Thibodeau’s reappearance, Lucie had been accompanying Charles to and from school, until the situation settled down. These daily escorts drew some attention, and then teasing, from the other students. One morning after Lucie had left him in front of the school, a large, dark-haired, big-boned kid from the second form, whose claim to fame was his ability to contort his body into impossible shapes and to stuff his cheeks with balls of paper like a hamster storing food for the winter, pranced up to Charles in a loose-limbed manner, his forearms raised and his wrists limp, and said in a high, squeaky voice:

  “Mama’s little boy-child too scared to go anywhere on his own?”

  Before Charles could react, Henri, who was standing next to him, gave the idiot such a punch in the stomach that the latter decided to sit down by the Sacred Heart statue for a moment to reflect on the nature of his conduct.

  “If you can’t say anything nice,” Henri called by way of a parting shot, “then don’t say anything at all.”

  But word spread quickly that Charles was in grave danger. That made him the focus of attention. His friends from Saint-Anselme let it be known that he lived with an adopted family, that his father drank like a fish and probably worked for the mob, and that he himself could be a holy terror when his dander was up, easily capable of putting anyone in their place without any help from Henri.