For Sure (7 page)

Terry wrote down the third title, adding:

“I suppose I'd better be orderin' more dan one den. Ever since we set up shop four years ago now, every year we're sellin' ten copies or so of
L'homme rapaillé
.”

“Is that a lot?”

Terry laughed.

“'Tis plenty for us, anyway. And we're talkin' poems, mind you . . .”

. . .

“Would you be wanting me to ring you when dey come in den?”

“That would be fine, yes.”

The client gave him her particulars, and Terry took the money for the two other books.

“You've a fine selection of paperbacks.”

“We try.”

Terry looked frankly at the woman, and smiled.

“Don't know why dat is, but I like paperbacks. I'm always hopin' a book comes out in paperback afore I get around to readin' it. Dere's plenty of good books, so I'm never in so much of a hurry I can't wait.”

Surprised by Terry's pleasant manner, the customer decided he was something of a real bookseller.

“Naw, I figure I'll never be lackin' in books to read.”

As he spoke, Terry raised his arms to encompass the bookstore. The woman liked him, and returned his friendly smile.

It is in her novel
Just Fine
that the Acadian novelist France Daigle first explores the symbolism of the number 12, which, when multiplied by itself, is said to evoke plenitude.

“Wuchak de groundhog wasn't a bad sort. Only ting, she never knew when to stop. Say she came across a barrow full o' lettuce, well she just started in anibblin', 'till she'd ate up de whole ting. Den off she goes home in Roches-de-la-Butte, only she's so full she can hardly walk, see. An' all de while, she's burpin' an' fartin' on account of 'er tummy's churnin' so hard from havin' to digest all dat greenery.”

Burps and farts were among Marianne's most favourite things.

“Well, lo and behold, one time, Wuchak goes an' finds a wagon full o' cabbage! An' if you tinks lettuce will get ya fartin', ha! Cabbage is like five times worse!”

This set Marianne off into ever greater peals of laughter. She'd heard enough storytelling to appreciate a rising dramatic action.

“Trouble was, Wuchak din't know Mrs. Bigbelly, who was in de habit of eatin' a cabbage every mornin' fer her breakfast. She'd cut it up, see, into wee bits and put 'em in one of dem big salad bowls, wid lots o' milk and some sugar, and den she eats it all up like it was corn flakes.”

Marianne giggled. Meanwhile, Terry tried to think where to go from there.

“Well, does ya think Mrs. Bigbelly was goin' to sit back an' do nuttin' while her cabbages was all bein' eaten up? No sirree. Mrs. Bigbelly was no fool. You wouldn' tink so lookin' at 'er, but Mrs. Bigbelly knew a ting or two. So, when she see'd Wuchak the groundhog up on 'er hindlegs and chompin' on a big juicy cabbage, wot d'ya tink she done?”

Marianne did not want to guess. Terry pressed on with the first thing that came to mind:

“She went an' fetched her fiddle and bow, and she set herself right up close to Wuchak . . . On account of Wuchak didn't mind folks watchin' 'er eat. But when she heard Mrs. Bigbelly's fiddle, well she took off like a rocket.”

Marianne could not guess why.

“On account of Mrs. Bigbelly may 'ave owned a fiddle, but she weren't no fiddler. You might say she played terrible awful, you wouldn't be far off. And dere's nuttin' worse dan a fiddle badly played. So Wuchak takes off, an' right quick too. An' dat's how Mrs. Bigbelly didn't just save 'er cabbages, she saved Wuchak from a right mean swamp . . .”

Terry pinched his nose and concluded in a nasal tone:

“Pee-youuuu, if ya catches me drift.”

Which made Marianne laugh, even though she didn't really understand what her dad meant.

Terry bent over his daughter:

“G'night, me pretty woodchuck . . .”

And he squeezed her tight in his arms, as though to bury the scatological edge to his story. Well it was the best he'd been able to do that night.

Excerpt from the novel
Just Fine
by the Acadian France Daigle, as translated by Robert Majzels, © House of Anansi Press, 1999: “Product of the three planes of space and the four cardinal points, the number 12 symbolizes both the internal complexity of the world and the celestial vault, divided into 12 sections, the 12 signs of the zodiac. We find its symbolic power in all the great civilizations, but also among lesser known peoples, the Dogons and Bambaras of Mali, for example, for whom the 3 and 4 correspond to the male and female elements, which together add up to the static number 7, and multiply to produce the dynamic number 12, representing the perpetual becoming of the individual being and the universe. Twelve is the action number, at the same time as it represents accomplishments and the completed cycle. We find it often in the Jewish and Christian holy texts, where it symbolizes perfection. Multiplied by itself, the number 12 is said to lead to plenitude and paradise, no less.

“Price of gas gone right up again. Dese days seems like drivin's costin' me more 'n eatin'.”

. . .

“Well, one ting, they've got that new boy workin' the pumps. I calls 'im me Gas Rookie.”

. . .

“Dat boy's prettier dan Bill de electrician.”

. . .

“Anyways, don't figure I've got much of a chance wid 'im.”

. . .

“Too old I am, more's de pity.”

. . .

“Dey's foolin' wid our nerves over at the gas station, don't ya tink?”

The Montessuy Lyon Colour Chart is a cloth pouch that unfolds into 480 coloured binder samples. Seven panels are composed of two columns of 16 colours each; the eighth panel explains the chart along the length of a final column of 16 colours. The Chart distinguishes the colour cream (no. 1603) from the colour crème (no. 1604), the colour pink
(no. 1606) from the colour rose (no. 1607) and the colour sky (no. 1614) from the colour azur (no. 1615). The many typos in the names and numbering of the colours are what lends the Chart a certain artisenal cachet.

It's not always easy to know when one is justified in creating new old words. The French expression
quoi c'que
meaning
what is it that
for example, is a contraction of
quoi c'est que
, which is pronounced and written in simpler form in Acadia as
quoisse que
(and might be rendered in English as
wot's dat den
). However, this last version appears neither in Pascal Poirier's
Glossaire acadien
(
Acadian Glossary
), nor in Yves Cormier's
Dictionnaire du français acadien
(
Dictionary of Acadian French
). The Poirier volume does however include the words for
where
:
ousque
and
yousque
instead of
où est-ce que
and
y où est-ce que
. One might be similarly justified in including
ayousque
, which is equally common in Acadian speech and clearly derived from
à y où est-ce que
. In that case, why not
quoisque
and, for proper Sunday speech,
quesque
? The
quoisse
would continue to exist as a way to contract the
que
. Clearly, the same rule ought to apply to
qui
.

“Makes no nevermind wot you say, it's only a whole lot more rules. And who is it's goin' to make sure 't all makes sense?”

“Does we even have de right to screw around wid French like dat?”

Twelve cubed (i.e., 12³, or 12 × 12 × 12) seems to evoke an ample and durable plenitude, more than 12 multiplied merely once by itself (12², or 12 × 12). The idea of 1,728 fragments, rather than 144, promises a definite breadth and strength.

Music played an important role in the Babar's success. Carmen and Josse had asked several talented disc jockeys and other musical connaisseurs to tape several hundred hours of music for those evenings when they had no live music. New compilations were constantly being added. Most of the DJs offered their services without charge.

“It's good practice for me. You can buy me a beer sometime.”

“Eh! More 'n one. I'll be openin' up de opposite of a tab for you at the bar.”

The vowel
u
takes the prize when it comes to inspiring no colour: 5 of the 102 participants in the survey claimed they imagined the
u
without any colour. These respondents were nevertheless fewer than the 16 who saw it as red, 14 as yellow, 14 as green, 12 as purple, 12 as blue, 10 as orange, 9 as brown, 2 each as black, white, grey, and turquoise, 1 as pink, and 1 as uranium.

“Tiddly-tiddly-tat yer pointy pointy hat!”

Marianne giggled. Terry did it again:

“Tiddly-tiddly-tat yer pointy pointy hat!”

Again Marianne giggled, and Terry did it again, this time modifiying the intonations:

“TIDdly-TIDdly-tAT yer pointy pointy hAT!”

He could have gone on like this forever. Marianne was not a difficult child, and easily amused. For this very reason, Terry and Carmen had to be careful not to neglect her, compared to Étienne who never let you forget him.

“Marianne, how'd you like to take a car ride with Dad? Eh, just Marianne 'n Dad in de car?”

“I wanna go too.”

“Nope, you came along yesterday, didn't ya. Marianne's turn today.”

Étienne, too, had to get used to the fact that Marianne occupied a place of her very own, as well.

Second coincidence: in
Le Nouveau Petit Robert
dictionary, the definition of the word
auburn
refers us back to the word
acajou
, French for “mahogany.” In the same volume, directly above the word
acajou
one finds the word
acadien
. And stranger still, the mascot of the Acadian Games was called Acajoux. Something to think about.

For fun, two friends of the Babar who'd read the brief article in
L'Acadie nouvelle
began to interview the customers around them.

“And do you imagine the letter
a
any particular colour?”

“Yellow.”

“And
e
?”

“Naw.”

“How about
i
?”

“Orange like . . .”

“And
o
?”

“Black fer sure.”

“And
u
. . .”

“Purple-ish . . .”

“And
y
. . .”

“White.”

“White?! G'wan wid choo, now dat's unusual.”

Among other designers to have made their mark on the history of letter forms, we can include Fournier, William Caslon, John Baskerville, and Giambattista Bodoni. But this list is far from exhaustive. The history of the alphabet, like that of writing, belongs to civilizations rather than individuals.

“Pascal de lamb was a lamb like all de udders: he was wee an' curly an' innocent.”

“Wot's innocent?”

“Means ee was nice like, not a mean bone in 'is body.”

“Wot's a mean bone den?”

“Dat's just an expression. Folks been saying it so long nobody knows where it comes from. Just means ee had no meanness in 'im.”

This explanation satisfied Étienne, so Terry continued:

“An' ee was called Pascal ‘cause ee's born on Easter.”

“Wot's Easter, Dad?”

With this, Étienne's third question, Terry decided the story would be a short one.

“Easter's de weekend when Jesus was resurrected. You know, we all goes down to Grande-Digue an' eats Easter eggs an' Easter bunnies.”

“How come den it's not a story 'bout Pascal de rabbit?”

Étienne had used the expression
How come
in English, which made Terry wince. Carmen often blamed him for the children's use of Chiac.

“On account of dis was a lamb and 'is name was Pascal.”

“OK, Dad, go on den.”

Terry prayed for inspiration.

“Pascal the lamb was down on 'is four knees an' bleatin' like lambs do, when ee hears a voice tellin' 'im to get up. Well, ee gets up, 'cause don't ferget, ee's innocent . . .”

. . .

“An' de voice says not to get all anxious if de earth starts atremblin' an' shakin', on account of it's just Jesus pushin' on dat rock in front of his tomb, so's ee can resurrect.”

. . .

“So Pascal de lamb doesn't worry one bit, ee just leans down an' takes anudder moutful o' grass.”

Terry paused a moment to pray again for inspiration.

“Well right den, de eart' starts atremblin'. . . an' shakin. . . an' tremblin' some more . . . an' Pascal de lamb, well ee jus' keeps on chompin' on dat grass, not scared one bit.”

. . .

“An' does you know why?”

Was Étienne already asleep? Terry did not dare hope.

“Well, it's on account of ee was innocent. An' God protects de innocent, so dey say.”

Terry decided to believe Étienne had truly fallen asleep, especially since the story had reached a good place to end. He got up slowly, turned off Babar on the dresser and moved toward the door.