For Sure (30 page)

Carmen had never met a woman like this! She seemed to personify the human condition all by herself —
The Human Condition
, the title of a book lying around somewhere in their house and which she had intended to read. But there was more. There was kindness in pain, joy in sadness.

“Terry?”

Without another word, the little grandmother had embraced Terry and hugged him a long time in her arms. Seeing them like this, Carmen realized Terry's deep roots in a past of which she knew very little, and felt a bit ashamed not to have made more of an effort to know that past. Then, in the space of an instant, their roles seemed to reverse and it was Terry who was carrying the little woman, who had gone from joy to tears. Then she stepped back, her wrinkled cheeks wet with tears and the tip of her nose reddened, she placed her hands on Terry's shoulders to admire him, and said simply:

“I knew you wouldn't ferget us.”

Suddenly everything Terry had thought of saying vanished from his mind. He did not need to speak. Just being there was enough.

“Auntie, dis is Carmen.”

Auntie took Carmen's hand in both of hers, nodding her head as she looked at her, and added only:

“Well, in a way, it's not a bad bit of a nice day just de same.”

And so, Hans accepts the order of the alphabet; he does not seek to change it. Who is he to question it? After all, is this order of the symbolic inferior to the register of the imaginary? Or inferior to the real? Anyway, what is the real?

Back in the van, Carmen suggested they go to the restaurant. This surprised Terry.

“Are you hungry, den?”

“Not so much. Only seems like I don't feel like goin' back home just yet. I don' know. I feel like us having a talk.”

This worried Terry, but he didn't want to show it.

“A talk . . .”

“Well, a shocking lot of stuff just happened, don't you tink?”

As a matter of fact, Terry did feel that a lot had just happened, but he was surprised that Carmen had felt it, too.

“Have a talk 'bout stuff like . . .”

“Like der's a child back der, already wholly formed, and yet de boy's halfway alone . . .”

Well, that was certainly a surprise. It was the old question of a third child, which they had not succeeded in resolving.

“You want to talk about dat?!”

Terry was all the more astonished since, between the two of them, Carmen was the more reticent to enlarge their little family.

“Dat, and udder tings.”

Terry was still not reassured:

“Well, can you give me like an idea of de udder tings . . .?”

Carmen laughed, realising that her way of presenting their talk left room for ambiguity. She stretched out her arm and caressed Terry's neck.

“
Worry
pas
,” she said, letting a bit of her French slide. “I just feel like us talkin', spendin' a real evening together.”

“O me nerves you got me drove.”

Carmen chuckled.

“I know it. Don't mind me. My nerves are rubbed right raw, too.”

CHAPTER 5

When I have a concept, I contemplate it with respect, I never criticize it, because if you begin to adjust a concept, it unravels, ferments, becomes corrupted, it infects all neighbouring concepts, you lose your head, say goodbye to tranquillity!

Gilles Lapouge
,
Besoin de mirages (A Need for Mirages),
Éditions du Seuil, 1999

Several weeks later, when the ground had thawed out completely, 20 people, armed with picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and work gloves, gathered on the site of the future vegetable garden. First stage: to remove all the stones and weeds, a job requiring mainly elbow grease and dogged determination. At noon, hot dogs and hamburgers appeared, along with everything else that normally accompanies an outdoor meal.

“We'll never get 'er all done, today.”

“Dey'll have to truck in a whole lot of fresh earth.”

“I only hope de soil's not contaminated. Looks awful black . . .”

“Well, 'twas a warehouse before, wasn't it. Lord knows wot kind of horrible tings come down into de ground from der.”

“Dey ought to do some tests. Just to be on de safe side.”

The concept of uneven ground was introduced into the French language as
accident de terrain
(accidented terrain) at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the Swiss naturalist Henri de Saussure, father of the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, son of chemist and naturalist Nicolas Théodore de Saussure, and grandson of geologist and physician Horace Benedict de Saussure, who was himself the son of agronomist Nicolas, author of several books on viniculture. Interesting that Ferdinand's father was himself a kind of shaper of language, a man who crafted language to fit reality.

“Sometimes, we say we're sorry even doh we've done nuttin' wrong.”

Now, Étienne thought, his father was exaggerating.

“Like, say you want to ask somebody a question, you says yer sorry on account of you might be disturbin' dem.”

Thinking his father was joking, Étienne started laughing. Such behaviour struck him as ridiculous.

“An' wot're you laughin' about?”

Étienne figured Terry was still joking.

“Well geez, Dad! We don't know if we're gonna be distrubin' dem or not!”

“Dat's true enough. Only it's just in case.”

Étienne stopped laughing, realizing to his surprise that Terry was actually serious.

“An', well it's a way of gettin' der attention, see. Like, you might be sayin': ‘Excuse me, ma'am, I'm wonderin' if you might 'ave a BandAid, on account me finger's bleedin' an' I don't much like it . . .”

“Étienne could not imagine a time when he would have to ask a stranger for a BandAid.

“Or else: ‘Beggin' yer pardon, sir, you oughtn't to be trowin' yer Tim Hortons cup on de ground.'”

“We're allowed to say dat?”

“An' why not, I'd like to know. De feller ought to know better. An' if ee don't like wot yer gonna tell 'im, at least, dis way, you've already said yer sorry.”

. . .

“Instead of sayin': ‘Hey you! Pick up dat cup you just trew on de ground.'”

. . .

“Mind ya, I'm not sayin' you ought to be goin' round tellin' folks wot to do. 'Specially not folks you don't know. Only, if you have to do it, best to say yer sorry yerself first, and say sir or ma'am, instead of ‘hey you der?' Dat way dey'll know you care a wee bit, just de same. Dat's just wot we call bein' polite.”

. . .

To die, then, or to lose (oneself). Detail?

“Read de paper dis morning?”

“No, 'aven't had the time, have I?”

“Der's an article wot explains dat children don't get irony until dey're ten years old.”

“An' that surprises you, den?”

“Well, it does an' it don't. Doesn't surprise me when I tink about it. Only I wouldn't 'ave tot about it if I hadn't read it.”

. . .

“Dey say up until der five years old, most kids won't get wot yer tryin' to say at all. Around de time der eight years old, dey'll understand wot it is yer sayin', only dey won't tink it's funny.”

. . .

“You have to wait 'till der ten or eleven before dey can tink it's funny, de way an adult does.”

. . .

“Anyway, it's good to know.”

. . .

“Ten. Dat's about five years fer me to go wid Étienne, an' seven or eight wid Marianne.”

“An' you took de trouble to figure all dat out?!”

Copied from
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary®
by Merriam-Webster: “Scrabble® trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the United States by Hasbro, Inc., in Canada by Hasbro Canada, Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J. W. Spear & Sons, Ltd., a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc.

So, Zed had soil tests done.

“All de tests show der's no wot dey call serious contamination. Der's traces of dis an' dat, but nuttin' serious. Jus' stuff you're gonna find in de ground of any city.”

Terry, the realist, wanted to prepare Zed for a more lively than usual monthly meeting.

“Some folks'll panic, jus' de same. Soon as you say dat word contamination . . .”

“Don't I know it. You guys, on account of de kids, does it freak you out?”

“Well, fer sure, it gives us sometin' to tink about. But, if de tests say it's safe . . .”

. . .

“Best ting would be if de folks dat did de testin' came 'round demselves and explain wot it was dey found. Dat way, folks could be askin' questions to de right people, an' you'd get a break.”

“Now, dat's a wonderful bright idea! Aren't you the clever boy!

Firmin Didot's firm eventually merged with the company run by Sébastien Bottin (1764–1853), editor of directories and almanacs, which resulted in the publication of
l'Annuaire du commerce Didot-Bottin
(
Didot-Bottin Commercial Directory
)
in 1882.

The relationship between Josse and Bernard — the young man with the gentle smile she'd met the night of the celebration in honour of Hektor Haché-Haché — was coming along:

“You still playin' baseball tonight?! I tot we were goin' to see a movie!”

“I know it. We should be done 'round ten o'clock. I figured you an' I could do sometin' afterwards.”

“Sometin'? Like?”

“Like go down by Robichaud, make a fire by de water, look at de stars.”

Josse chuckled:

“Are ya jokin', or wot?”

“Not really, no.”

“An' sleep over der, you mean?”

“If you want to . . .”

. . .

. . .

“Alright, den.”

“Fer real? Geez, dat was easier dan I tot 'twould be. I was sure you was goin' to say no.”

“Dat's part of me strategy; to say yes from time to time.”

Ferdinand de Saussure's famous
Course in General Linguistics
ranks among the 10 top choices in the social sciences in
La
Bibliothèque idéale
, right alongside other monumental works such as
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith,
Capital
by Karl Marx,
The Interpretation of Dreams
by Sigmund Freud, and
Suicide
by Emile Durkheim.

All day long, Carmen had had irony on her mind.

“Well, if yer findin' it so hard bein' nice to yer kids, best not to tink of havin' anudder one.”

Terry couldn't believe they were going to get into a row over this irony thing. And then, unintentionally, he poured fuel on the fire:

“I'm not findin' it hard, sometimes I makes an effort is all.”

“An' how's dat any different?”

Terry tried to put it differently.

“Well, wedder you like it or not, wid kids you gotta have a bit o' patience, right?”

Carmen could not deny it.

“Well den, sometimes, instead of losin' patience, you start turnin' tings around in yer mind. And let's just say der's times dat'll put some weird ideas in yer head.”

Carmen still saw no reason to disagree.

“Alright den, so wot I learned from dat paper is just dat it's not much use tellin' de kids every crazy idea dat pops up in yer head right den, on account of chances are dey won't be understandin' it, or if dey does understand, dey won't be findin' it funny. Could be, even, dey tink it's mean. Or, tird possibility, dey feel bad on account of it. Now, do you tink I wants to look mean to my kids or to go an' make dem feel bad?”

This troubled Carmen. Had she so badly misunderstood what Terry had said earlier? Had she wasted her day trying to work something out that wasn't there to begin with?

“Wot's surprisin' to me is dat you'd even have ideas dat could make dem feel bad!”

But Terry was convinced he was no worse than anyone else:

“Well, happens to all parents from time to time, don't you tink?”

“An' wot in heaven's name does dat mean?!”

The night promised to be a long and arduous one.

L'Officiel du jeu Scrabble®
lists 237 French words beginning with the letter
a
and including at least one
x
. Two of these words each contain two
x
's. They are
affixaux
(“affixal”) and
axiaux
(“axial”) — relatively simple words when compared to the two that begin with
a
and contain two
y
's:
amblyrhynque
(“marine iguana”) and
antéhypophyse
(“aterior pituitary gland”).

Whereas words beginning with
a
and containing at least one
y
are far more numerous in English than in French, the opposite is true in the case of words beginning with
a
and containing an
x.
This is largely because, in French,
x
is a plural ending and many adjectives end in
–eux
or
-aux
. There are only 71 English words beginning with
a
and containing at least one
x
as listed in
The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary
®.

“Like de worst I can imagine?”

“Go!”

“Matter of fact, I already tot about dat. An' de worst ting I could tink of is a rat runnin' around betwixt me legs while I's drivin'.”

“Yuck!”

“I don't know wot kind of noise a rat makes, but one ting I can tell you, if dat rat made a sound right den, well boy, I'd ‘a dropped dead right der.”

(For a long time after that, The Cripple would wonder if Antoinette had heard his play on words
image-inate
.)

Right off the bat, Simone the biologist set the record straight: the soil was absolutely normal for an urban environment; it was not contaminated, merely impoverished by virtue of not having been able to regenerate naturally. She recommended the addition of a thick layer of fresh earth, manure, and compost. Regardless, the garden would never live up to minimal biological standards because of the railway.

“An' wot has de train got to do wid it, I'd like to know?”

“De smoke, me tinks.”

“Wouldn't be no different if 'twere a road. You can't be growin' organic by a road or a street on account of de exhaust.”

“An' den der's de vibrations. Train passes, boy, de eart' shakes.”

“Naw, naw, now yer gettin' it mixed up wid a wine cellar. De vibrations're no good fer a wine cellar, but dat's got nuttin' to do wid organic farmin'.”

“Anyway, when did we say we was wantin' an organic garden?”

“Well, we never said so, but sure we'd all have liked it.”

“I would.”

“I as well.”

“Anyone want sometin' else over here, den?”

“A Sleeman Cream.”

“Corona.”

“Glass o' wine.”

“Awh, what de hell… anudder Ceasar.”

“An Alpine.”

“Ginger ale.”

HEBDROMEDARY:
n. — 2005/2013; from
hebdomadal
and
dromedary
♦
Weekend drunk.
“The hebdromedary achieves an equilibrium on Wednesday.”
(Daigle)

“In de end, dem dat wants to eat organic'll just 'ave to haul demselves down to de store and buy it. Weren't nuttin' we could do about it.”

The Cripple had been too indolent to attend the meeting. Now, listening to Antoinette's report, he regretted his laziness a little.

“An' are der a lot of folks gonna lend a hand, den?”

“We're close to twenty. Pretty much de same folks dat did de clearing. Any more an' wouldn't be wort it. We's even tinkin' of goin' bigger. I'm de one dat's in charge of makin' sure dem dat does de work gets der share before anyone else.”