For Sure (27 page)

From Terry's tone it was clear there would be no four-and-a-half.

“Four . . .”

Marianne raced toward her room. Terry waited until she was almost at the door to announce the next number.

“Five!”

Watching her, Terry thought he might have a future Olympian on his hands.

“Yer a proper devil, girl, but at least you run fast. May save yer life some day. Here now, put dis on.”

Marianne let loose a short burst of laughter; then, giggling, she pulled the underpants over her head.

To err. A statistical analysis of the first letter of names of some 550 authors of “The Ideal Library of the Social Sciences” shows once again that the fiwst few letters of the alphABET ACCOUNT FOR THE LAgest number of autors, in particulqr the
b . .
. (writing time interrupted by reason of drowsiness).

“Dad, how come we don't pray?”

Terry was in the doorway, on his way to work.

“Pray like you do wid Granny Thibodeau, you mean?”

“Uncle Étienne asked me if I pray.”

“Did 'e now?”

“Do I got a godfawder?”

“A godfawder? Well, no, you don't have a godfawder.”

Terry tried to be as gentle as possible in stating this fact, which suddenly struck him as hard.

“So den, dat means I have a godmudder?”

“No, you don't have a godmudder neither.”

. . .

. . .

“Do you have one?”

Terry could not deny it:

“Yeah. Me godfawder's old Arthur. You know, ee's de one from time to time fixes up old cars wid yer granddad.”

Étienne knew who he was. An old, thin man who smoked a pipe.

“An' his wife Émerentienne, well she was me godmudder, only she's dead now. She was already dead when you were born.”

. . .

“At Christmas time an' on me birthdays, dey always gave me a present. Most times 'twas a hockey stick. One time, dey gave me a little electric train. Boy oh boy, did I play wid dat train!”

Unlike the obsessional neurotic, an individual experiencing identity amnesia does not attempt to hide his ploy, nor to erase his traces. He has simply abandoned the place assigned to him by his identity. The choice of the word
experiencing
is therefore not arbitrary, since the individual is not actually suffering.

Antoinette lay down the Acadian word
zire
, meaning “disgust” or “sharooshed.” It did not even occur to The Cripple to contest it.

Ten times 2, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.

Antoinette entered the number 24 in the little box, for a total of 149 in two turns.

Eventually, by virtue of dispensations, the Catholic Church ended up allowing unions between first cousins, as well as sororat and levirate marriages. Sororat marriage compelled a young woman to marry her older sister's widower. The levirate obliged a man to marry his brother's widow if there was no male descendant. In many countries, the Church left it to the State to legislate consanguinity in marriage. In general, laws proscribed marriage between direct relations and between brothers and sisters. The same prohibition existed against someone marrying the children of his or her wife or husband. This applies in the case of adopted children, as well as children of the same father or mother, which explains the discomfort, not to say scandal, sparked by the relationship between the filmmaker Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow, with whom Allen had been in a common-law marriage for many years.

“Sõ
12
I ended up recitin' de Our Fawder for 'im. I was right proud I remembered it.”

Carmen approved:

“It's more down to earth dan de udders.”

“Down to earth . . . I like dat.”

Carmen did not worry too much over every little phase the children went through:

“Most likely, ee's just curious. I doubt very much he really wants to pray.”

“Dey say dat children go troo mystic periods.”

“Mystic?”

Terry wasn't sure of the exact definition of the word, so he preferred not to risk explaining it to Carmen.

“Is dat sometin' Myriam said, den?”

“Naw, it's in a book downstairs.”

“Awh.”

“I'm tinkin' ee'd like to 'ave a godfawder, doh
12
. 'Course, first we'd 'ave to baptise 'im. I suppose.”

“An' you an' I'd 'ave to get married.”

“Go on? Is dat obligatory?”

. . .

. . .

“Well, my mudder wouldn't mind, dat's for sure.”

“Mine as well, even doh she won't say nuttin' about it.”

In fact, the identity amnesiac would prefer to be left entirely alone. His own name is a source of anxiety to him; he would like to rid himself of all filial constraints and obligations. He dreams of a place without conditions and, since such a place does not exist, he falls back on forgetting, which allows him to escape, to absent himself, to extricate himself completely from the field of play.

“Me? It's de idea of both me knees gettin' crushed betwixt two parked cars. Say de brakes was to fail or some such ting. Just tinkin' about it, I starts to hurt.”

The presence of a hidden defect in a novel is particularly difficult to overcome. It's the sort of ambiguity to which an author does not aspire. Because the discovery of an error in a book undermines the reading experience. The reader is indisposed, he or she balks at the thought of pursuing a less than perfect work to its end.

Blissful white. Whitewash, zinc white, silver white. White lead. White O. White meat, whiting powder. Whiter than white. So white is black and black is white? White face. Mrs. White with a lead pipe. A lot of folks named LeBlanc. Whiteout. A little white lie.

Occasionally during the evening, the idea that his son might be undergoing a mystic phase occurred to Terry.

“If I'd bin on de ball, I'd shown 'im how to make de sign of de cross. I never tawt of it. 'Twould be sometin' easy to learn.”

“Well, it's not too late now, is it? Wot's to stop you showin' 'im?”

“Dat's true enough! Jeez, it's nice to live wid somebody dat's always tinkin' . . .”

The virtues that Comte-Sponville examined are consistent with the general flux of the four cardinal virtues of Christianity: courage, justice, prudence, and temperance; not to be confused with Christianity's three theological virtues, which are faith, hope, and charity.

“Are you Pomme?”

“Pomme, dat's me!”

The young man took my extended hand quite naturally. We had crossed paths from time to time.

“So, no exhibition on right now?”

“Dis 'ere's a micro-exhibition. You gotta get right up close to de wall to see it.”

At first I thought he was joking; I tried briefly to decipher his statement. Then Pomme said he had to leave for 10 minutes or so.

“No problem, I'm in no hurry.”

While I waited for him, I walked back and forth a bit in the room.

. . .

I thought I heard music, and then, nothing.

. . .

Then again, yes, music.

. . .

Something shiny on the floor in the corner caught my eye. I moved closer.

!

Up close, I saw nothing. The shining was gone. Only a bit of orange wire lay abandoned on the floor. But looking more closely, I realized the wire ran into the wall a few centimetres above the floor.

!!

The orange wire emerged a little higher up on the wall, drew an arabesque and then vanished back into the wall. I heard footsteps. Maybe Pomme returning?

. . .

The arabesque was a familiar form. Could it be read? I turned my head one way, then the other. Was it necessary to get down lower to really see it?

!?

In the far corner of the room lay a mass of dusty electronic equipment, one machine piled on top of the other, and all connected by miles of tangled black cable, except for one orange coloured wire. Pomme reappeared.

“Is dis wot you call an installation, den?”

“It's part of a project I's workin' on wid Zablonski.”

“Zablonski's into electronics now?”

Pomme smiled, as though my question reminded him of something he wasn't about to tell. He simply said:

“Zablonski's broken troo all de media supports.”

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I imagined someone larger than life, completely out of my reach. For a moment I doubted my ability to interview this artist.

In general, incidents have less unpleasant consequences than accidents, except in the case of diplomatic incidents and border incidents.

Tired of waiting for some new manifestation of anxiety in his son to correct what he perceived to be his blasé attitude as a father, Terry decided to intervene.

“Étienne, you know de udder night, when you went to bed a wee bit late, an' I told you a story an' den sang a song an' after all dat, you still wasn't sleepin' . . .”

Fiddling with an old Transformer, Étienne nodded that he remembered that evening, and waited.

“I got de feelin' you was like a wee bit troubled. Is der sometin' bodderin' you?”

The child was listening even as he continued to undo and reshape the object in his hand. Terry waited a moment.

“Maybe you doesn't recall exactly. It's only dat if der is sometin' bodderin' you, you know you can be tellin' me an' yer mudder. Whenever sometin's troublin' you, sometimes just talkin' about it makes it not so awful bad. Turns out de ting, whatever it is, isn't so desperate a problem after all.”

(
Clic clic clac clic cloc
. . .)

“Anwyay, you don't have to remember. I just wanted you to know dat you can be tellin' us if ever der's sometin' on yer mind.”

Étienne looked up at his dad for a moment — would he say something? — but then he turned back to his Transformer without speaking.

“OK?”

“OK, Dad.” (
Cloc
)

In the end, it seems fastidious to apologize for every Acadian or Chiac turn of phrase in relation to standard French. Obviously, any language will have its own many colours and idiosyncrasies.

“Me, it's swallowin' a piece of glass. Gets so's I can't eat some place where dey just broke a glass or dish or some such. It's always brudderin' me when I eats out anywhere.”

“You just said ‘brudderin' instead of ‘bothering'. Maybe your fear is linked to your brother?”

“Me brudder Chip? Ha ha! I doubts it . . .”

(Pomme was wearing a chestnut-coloured linen shirt, adorned at regular intervals with a sparkling orange thread.)

“Hallo, Carmen? Is Terry der?”

Usually Terry's mother took the time to chat a bit with her daughter-in-law before asking to speak to her son.

“No, ee's at de bookstore . . .”

“Only sometin's just happened . . .”

Carmen could believe it. Terry's mother was not the sort to get upset over trifles.

“I don't know 'ow to say it. Der's been a murder . . .”

Carmen's heart leapt.

“A murder?!”

“Is dat not 'ow you say it?”

“You mean someone killed somebody?”

“Dat's not de half of it . . .”

Carmen couldn't imagine what more could follow.

“Do you want me to go and fetch Terry?”

“I don't know 'ow ee'll take it . . .”

Carmen's pulse began to race.

And yet, Hans does not manifest all the symptoms associated with identity amnesia. He has not stopped talking to people, nor does he go out of his way to avoid being spoken to. He takes decisions, makes choices and, in spite of his detachment, he is considerate of others. True, he has no fixed address and his trajectory is unpredictable. However, wherever he happens to be, he is not evasive, he answers questions, neither retreating nor remaining within himself, and he seems approachable.

Terry hung up the phone.

“Holy shite!”

“Wot's goin' on, fer de love . . . ?!”

After her mother-in-law's call, Carmen had rushed down to the bookstore to tell Terry to phone his parents. She wanted to be physically by his side when he heard the news.

“Dis fellow, one of me chums when I's little — Shawn, Shawn Hébert . . . — last night, ee went an' killed 'is dad.”

Carmen could hardly believe that Terry was somehow linked, even remotely, to a murder.

“Lord! Wot 'appened?”

“Me mom doesn't know nuttin' 'cept fer de rumours goin' round.”

“Like?”

Terry did not reply. He seemed to be going in circles behind the cash.

“Been a long while since I last seen 'im, Shawn. Still . . .”

Carmen did not want to hurry him, but . . . a murder! She tried to ask her questions gently, but balancing gentleness and urgency wasn't easy.

“Ow did ee do it, den?”