Читать книгу Larry Volt - Pierre Tourangeau - Страница 8

Cam Ramh, 66-67

We have done so much for so long for so little, that now we can do anything for nothing forever.

Inscription on a Zippo lighter,

Unknown G.I.

There are days when life really is a burden. As if I were walking around with an anvil between my shoulder blades. And yet there’s no good reason. No better than usual, I mean. When it happens, I’m at a loss for what to do, where to go. So, when it hits me, I do nothing, I don’t budge, until it passes.

La Marquise can’t accept that I put off her advances, that I don’t respond when she gives me a syrupy smile or makes eyes at me. All she wants is to co-opt me, to make me join the pack she controls. La Marquise doesn’t understand that I won’t follow the piper. Although I have explained to her: the only instrument that’s ever roused me is my own, but it didn’t convince her to fucking leave me alone. As her natural charms weren’t enough to bring me into the fold, she started to bad-mouth me. It’s Oscar who told me. So, as a matter of form and just to bug her, I gathered all my rage and went to demand an explanation from her. She was sitting in one of the armchairs in the lounge, between Julie Horn and Jennifer Ness. I parked myself right in front of her.

“Apparently I have a serious effect on you, La Marquise, to the point you can’t stop talking about me. I’d like to know what you’re saying.”

Lady Snotnose immediately gags, while her two ladies-in-waiting exchange worried glances. Since the answer is slow in coming, I settle into a chair.

“Well?”

Well, I found out – what she was saying. It shot out all at once, like a cannonball, or a terrible stomach cramp, no, like diarrhea. I’m arrogant, I’m conceited, and I’m pretentious, she claims. There it is. With her two cohorts approving.

I find this funny and rather brief. No matter how much I tell them I do not take myself for the Pope, or Napoleon, or even Pythagoras, they won’t be convinced. Actually, they’re the ones who take me for someone else, who see in me someone I’m not. As for me, I’m true to myself in all things.

“If you absolutely want to see someone ’who takes himself for someone else,’ consider for a moment that blowhard, Nihil, the barbarian philosopher. Just one look and you can tell he thinks he’s superior. Dear old Nihil believes he’s the omphalos of the world, the umbilicus of philosophy. Pretty strange for a devotee of cosmology who’s forever declaring and preaching that the Earth is not the centre of the universe, that mankind is not the centre of the Earth.”

Jennifer Ness looks at me, her face tilted to one side, like a dog intrigued by a bone that’s not shaped like a bone. It’s my smile that bothers her. How can I smile after being insulted like that? There are things even the smartest dogs will never understand; dogs will always remain dogs. I see them bristling, the three of them. I’m nasty. A little revenge is in order, if only for the sake of propriety, to prove to them that I am indeed me and no one else.

They would have liked for me to be contrite, to be upset on discovering what a poor opinion they have of me. I tell them to go to hell, to go screw themselves, that it would do them good to get stuffed a bit, that it would broaden their minds. I pour it on insatiably. They’re becoming more up-tight with every passing minute, I tell them. And certain people might do well to take themselves for someone else, they could choose any model at all, it was sure to be better than the original.

“You’re nothing but little stoup tadpoles, sweethearts, frogs if you prefer, merino lambs just begging to be shorn, foul little bugs, disgusting but harmless. You fill me with only one desire: to scratch. Next time you want to incite me to confess and repent you ought to go about it differently. It occurs to me you might be more persuasive in the raw, but I doubt it.”

Jennifer Ness is crying. She imagines this’ll soften me. I’d rather convince myself that it irritates me.

“Crying will get you nowhere! You’re wasting energy and water. Think of all the deserts running over the world! You can dry your crocodile tears, they won’t work. Nematodes of your sort are deprived of lachrymal glands and the only feeling they’re apt to experience amounts to semi-comatose contentment when, like any true parasite, they find a big fat juicy intestine to gorge on.”

La Marquise and Julie Horn can’t it take any longer. They protest loudly, order me to be quiet. Not very impressive. I get up. I pity them. I leave.

Still, I didn’t feel like moving any more after that, because life was pressing down on me. At first I was quite glad to have told them where to get off, the three bitches. It does you good to know you can defend yourself. But once I was outside, going down the hill toward the ordinary world, I soon felt heavier and looked for a bench to sit down. Not that I had any regrets, but it hurt me to realize once again how truly warped the human race is.

It was five o’clock and already dark, due to the autumn’s advancing a little more every day. After an hour on the bench, I’d regained enough strength to lift the nothingness I was wrapped in, and I took the metro home. I got off at the Pie-IX station, as usual, but didn’t wait for the bus. I preferred to walk by way of the Botanical Gardens, even though it was a longer route. You kill time as best you can, otherwise time kills you.

As I arrived in front of my house, I crossed paths with the neighbour’s lover, who was going the other way. The neighbour is a small divorcée, in her prime, thirtyish and good-looking, who tops up her alimony by working as an exclusive mistress. Our two houses are only a few paces apart, and my bedroom window looks out almost directly on hers. Often, summer nights, especially during heat spells, when windows are kept open, I hear her diligently working away. She’s got rhythm, and him, he’s got quite a bit of stamina for a guy fast approaching fifty. On the other hand, he doesn’t have much of a vocabulary; all he could say was “yes, yes” over and over.

He’s a CEO, according to my taurine father, who’s made his acquaintance, having met him a few times at Chamber of Commerce luncheons and other droll events for businessmen on the lookout for contacts and adventures. He’s American. Heads the local United Motors plant – that’s where the multinational builds its engines for the fighters and bombers that pound the hell out of the Vietnamese and Cambodians. He’s quite discreet, the CEO. Always shows up in a taxi, even though he has a chauffeur, as I’ve been told by Taurus. As a rule, he leaves around twelve, never stays overnight. His wife would probably worry too much if he were to sleep away from home so often, since he comes about twice a week to have Mrs. Mistress earn her keep.

I turned on the TV as soon as I came in. The good thing about my parents being away is that I can do whatever I please. The piss-off is that I have to make my own meals and do my own laundry. When it’s only for a few days, that’s fine, but in this case I’m looking at upwards of two and a half months. Ever since Taurus decided to go into semi-retirement, my parents spend several months a year at their Florida condo. When it comes to castles in Spain, you take what you can get. I’m an only child and quite capable, it would appear, of getting by on my own. Because you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, as Taurus says about anything and everything.

I opened the fridge; I found an old slice of pizza delivered the night before and some milk. All I need. I’m eighteen and it’s been a while since I stopped growing. Besides, I’ve grown enough. Any more would be overdoing it and I’d be given an even rougher time, which really isn’t necessary.

They were presenting the news on the TV. Yet it wasn’t at the usual time. I gathered right away from the alarmist tone and appalled look of the announcer that we were being treated to a special report. I turned up the sound. A bomb, yet another, had gone off, this time in the offices of the Business Council. It had demolished everything, but, miraculously, no one had been killed, although three employees, who were not supposed to be there, had been seriously injured.

Despite my best efforts to resist, bombs thrill me, especially when it’s my city they’re exploding in, and especially when it really sends the shit flying. After all, the powers-that-be should just stop screwing people. That’s not their job.

It was the Popular Liberation Front of Quebec¹ that set off this particular bomb. As well as those of the past months, for that matter. To shake up the power structure protecting the privileges of the English minority that runs everything, rather than defending the rights of the French majority that holds nothing, except its tongue.But since they, the Anglos, can never get enough, the powers-that-be even passed a law to make English the official language of Quebec, on an equal footing with French. Nor will the powers-that-be reconsider it, even if no one likes it but the Anglos. So, since all other efforts had been fruitless, some French-speaking terrorists decided to force them to change their minds with bombs. It’s worth a try, because the power is on the side of money, as always, and the money belongs to the Anglos. Sure, there are a few French Québécois who’ve managed to make some, like Taurus, but they’re so afraid of losing it they stick to the Anglos like leeches.

Even so, they, those few, should remember how hard they had to fight to garner a few crumbs of the pie. When I was little, my father was constantly mouthing off at the “damned English”² who would always snatch up the construction contracts thanks to their pull in the government or City Hall. Things were so bad we ate canned tomatoes three times a week in order to get by on the bit of money he was earning from the small company he’d founded after four years working as a foreman for a large West Island construction firm.

We lived farther west, on 1st Avenue near Masson, in a small second-floor flat with mice in the walls. My father worked non-stop and my mother helped him with the accounting. I liked to watch them work, day and night, despite my feeling lonesome. I knew it was for our good, to carve out our place in the sun. That’s what they would tell me, and I had no reason to doubt it. My father persevered until he finally got some small contracts, then bigger contracts, then more and more big ones.

That was when he was still a man, not just a successful businessman, when he was still my father, not just Taurus. Afterwards, things went sour. But he did get it, his place in the sun, that is. Only, it’s in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – that wasn’t how I’d imagined it.

So, you see, me and money... What’s more, I’m of the opinion that money numbs the neurons. And you know what they do in hospitals to stir numb neurons? They zap them with electroshocks. It’s the same thing for bombs – they’re collective electroshocks. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.

I ate my old pizza crust and played a Jinni Hendrix! record over the TV picture. The special report was finished, and they were showing a stupid soap opera, which I watched absentmindedly. There was still a lot of mescaline left in the fridge. I snorted some. I needed to air out my head a little so I could do some painless thinking.

Because the air, the wind, washes me, cleanses me inside and out, cools my attic. As if it were reminding me that I am my own cabin, that only within myself am I safe. No windows, barely a door, it’s so tiny even though it’s filled with everything you can imagine. It’s not open to just anyone: No Strangers Allowed. I’ve hung a huge padlock and no one knows the combination but me. The walls are as hard as reinforced concrete. They can’t be breached, even with five megatons of dynamite. When I go inside, I might as well be invisible. No one pays attention to me, and I pay no attention to anyone. You could knock on the door till your hands broke, I still wouldn’t answer. I play the man who doesn’t hear the knocking at the door.

At school, a lot of people lurk around my cabin, and I don’t like it. La Marquise and the others. Even Rag Bag sometimes slinks along the walls, looking for a crack to poke her nose in. She approaches, unobtrusively, as if she could avoid detection with that randy brontosaurus look of hers, and tries to get a glimpse of something. But she won’t see a thing, and neither will the others.

There are all kinds of folks who would love to put my cabin in order. The Suspicians first and foremost.

After all, that’s what Taurus and Virgo pay them a bundle for. Me, I refuse. Order is for priests, for the collared of every stripe, an invention of the powers-that-be. My cabin is too small and too cluttered to contain order on top of everything else. Anyway, order is not what’s needed to save the world.

Sometimes, when it’s hot, my cabin is skin-tight. When it’s cold, it swaddles me and keeps me warm. When the light is too strong, it covers my eyes. When it’s too dark, it lights up and I can see as plain as day. It’s my shell, my camouflage, my chameleon hide.

I’m often hit, assaulted, attacked. That’s because I love to disturb. Naturally, there’s hostility toward my mind, my way of looking at things, my way of seeing. Everybody dislikes it when you’re not like everybody. But they can’t get at me, because I have my cabin and my cabin is solid.