The Boy Who Belonged to the Sea Page 10
* * *
We’ve completed our telephone survey. We’ve exhausted the list of Bouchards and, from start to finish, they swear they’ve never heard of Luc. As for the Chantals, not one of them wanted to acknowledge she was his mother. Anyway, there is no proof that she returned to her native haunts. She may just as well be in Tokyo, for all we know. Or be living somewhere under a different name. Luc thinks we mustn’t rule out the possibility that one of the Chantals may have lied, but how should we go about clearing that up? Make them all take a lie detector test? Luc would like to question them in person. He feels he would be able to see into their hearts. If it were up to him, he’d be on the next bus to Rimouski.
* * *
He has disappeared. We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him since yesterday and everybody is uptight. I went to check the spot where he hides his loot and found the tire empty. The list of the Bouchards is missing, too. He has obviously gone to Rimouski. The son of a gun just couldn’t resist.
* * *
He called from a phone booth a minute ago and apologized for worrying us. I heaped reproaches on that nutty caveman, but he said he had no choice, we would never have let him go off on his own. He is not wasting his time in any case: he’s scouring Rimouski, knocking on doors and interviewing candidates. He has already eliminated nine Chantals. There are three left for him to see. He promised to come back tomorrow.
* * *
We went to pick him up at the bus terminal. I suspect he hasn’t eaten in three days. He is coming home empty-handed, convinced at last that none of the Chantals is the right one. My mother had a serious talk with him about things one simply doesn’t do. I think he understood. He won’t let himself get quite so carried away again.
He seems subdued and acts the sensible guy, but that’s only a façade. His heart and soul are still in a turmoil. He smells the wind, hunting for a new lead. He is still quite sure that his mother is alive and must have left some traces along the way. There must be someone out there who knows, he insists. Besides the Pig, of course, who doesn’t count, because we’d probably need to torture him to make him talk, and giving that a shot doesn’t appeal to us in the least. How about the neighbours? Since Luc is incapable of getting them to confide in him, I offered to take care of that.
* * *
The Trépaniers, on the west side, filled me with pudding but became tight-lipped when I brought up the subject of Luc’s mother and stated they didn’t know anything about her. I was even less successful on the east side, at Monsieur Cormier’s place: at the mere mention of the name Bezeau, the fellow became irate and threw me out. I tried my luck at the Desrosiers’ as well, then at the Keenes’, but at both places I came up against a wall of silence. They all claim they don’t know. They pretend they haven’t a clue. It reeks of dishonesty and confirms Luc’s suspicions, but meanwhile the ghost of the lovely Chantal remains as elusive as ever. Luc feels intensely blue. He’s still positive she is walking the earth somewhere and he’d give anything to know where that might be. We still have the iguana, though, with its serene smile and coralline dreams which my sluggish brain fails to penetrate. Luc has lain a portrait of his mother on the altar and is waiting for an idea, a dream. Who is she? Where can she be? And where, I wonder, is Luc himself when, standing in front of the mirror, he studies his features until his eyeballs are about to pop out while he mumbles away in the language of Ftan? It’s as though he was expecting some kind of revelation from these sessions of self-hypnosis. Is he hoping his reflection might come to life and tell him where his mother is hiding? ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall…’
22
The promise of an early winter made me fear a possible relapse. I was afraid the chill might remind Mama of other — painfully recent — cold seasons. But I’m reassured, for she doesn’t appear to be disturbed by the mercury’s drop. She actually seems invigorated by it: the wheelchair isn’t used anymore except for our Grand Prix races and other ballistic experiences. Now that she’s steady on her legs, Mama paces up and down the hard, sandy beach every day, and her strides are getting longer, her cheeks ruddier in the strong, bleak wind gusting in from Labrador. She stubbornly insists on going out bareheaded, without gloves or a scarf. She has hot flashes, and Grandmother follows her around in the house with a shawl, turning up thermostats, closing windows that Mama leaves wide open wherever she goes. By the look of it, her icy stay at Kilometre 54 has rendered her immune in a way.
* * *
The potholes frosted over, then the first snowfalls buried us. This was all Grandfather was waiting for; his snow blower stood at the ready, primed right up to its mouth. But Luc offered to clear everything with a shovel, including the driveway. He explained it was his job at the Pig’s and had become a habit, a kind of winter sport he enjoyed. Since it seemed to matter so much to him, Grandfather agreed. He’ll keep his snow blower for special occasions, for real blizzards.
* * *
Luc wasn’t joking. When I came downstairs this morning for breakfast, that scruffy yeti was already outside, happily slaving away. Since the driveway is thirty metres long and was covered with a thick white blanket, I felt obliged to go and give him a hand. I teamed my shovel with his, and together we swiftly wrapped it up. But lo and behold! tonight it’s snowing again, and I’m beginning to regret being so helpful this morning. Have I created a dangerous precedent, I wonder?
* * *
The pirouetting flakes are making Mama edgy. With Ski-doo fever, that Nordic malaria, spreading through her as it does every year, she is raring to go, but it’s quite out of the question we would ever let her climb on one of those blasted contraptions again. To take her mind off it, I suggested we get out our skates instead, and we went to cut the ice at the school after supper. Dodging Lilliputian astronauts and puck pushers, we whirled around under the floodlights like Olympic clowns and waltzed to tinny music while Luc stood chomping at the bit behind the sideline. He doesn’t know how to skate and deeply distrusts this shady activity. He followed us up and down the rink, eyeing my mother anxiously, afraid, I’m sure, that she might take a tumble on that slippery surface and break into a thousand pieces like a fragile figurine.
* * *
Despite the pall cast by my father’s absence, all augurs well for the holidays. Luc is lending a hand with the decorating and even the cooking, offering to act as Grandmother’s kitchen boy while she makes her tourtières. As nimble as a chimpanzee, he scaled the verandah to festoon the house with brilliantly coloured lights. He also helped put up the Christmas tree, on the boughs of which he hung sparkling balls, along with a few mackerel bones for an even prettier effect.
* * *
Clearing the driveway has become an early-morning ritual, a kind of muscular reflex. It’s quite a pleasant routine, really, and gives us a chance to compete in some wonderful, virile contests. High on endorphins, we’ll forge ahead from both ends of the driveway and quickly dispatch the snowdrifts as we aim for the hockey stick that serves as a flag at the centre, while Grandfather holds his stopwatch and cheers us on. At other times, when we’re in an artistic mood, we take the trouble to carve big, beautiful, pristine blocks out of the wintry expanse, which we leave in the middle of the road as our signature.
* * *
Our Christmas Eve party was loads of fun. Grandfather got a wind gauge and Grandmother a new sewing machine. Mama plugged her new iPod into the speakers and played Christmas carols while I feverishly unpacked my computer. For Luc, I’d bought real, top-quality flippers and, following my suggestion, my grandfolks gave him a diving mask. Grandmother also presented him with an amazing pair of corduroy pants. To each of us he gave a gift he’d cobbled together in his workshop at the Cove. For me, he’d made a chain from crab claws — a symbol of the pact that unites us and a token of our friendship. For Grandfather, he had chiselled a most impressive ashtray out of a whale vertebra, and he gave Grandmother a lovely little mirror framed with plaited rushes. My mother’s present had been his biggest wor
ry for the past few weeks. Since he couldn’t think of anything that would be beautiful enough for her, he’d procrastinated until the very last minute and then hastily crafted a pair of delicate ear pendants set with tiny seashells. Mama likes them a lot. Her gift to him was an art supply kit, made up of canvases, oils, charcoal sticks and inks, but she had another present for him as well: she’d bought him skates. Although completely baffled at first, he hurried over to the rink this morning to christen them, learning under my supervision. He covered more distance on his backside than on the blades, and there were times when he turned into an uncontrollable missile only the sideline could stop, but I know he won’t give up, bruises or no bruises; he has made up his mind he’ll master this new means of transport and he will, no matter what, for it’s a question of honouring my mother’s gift.
Since we didn’t want the iguana to be left out of the general rejoicing, we put on our snowshoes and headed out to the Cove to throw a small Christmas Eve party just for him. After placing a red hat on his flat head and draping his crest with tinsel, we sang a few Christmas tunes, then I laid a panoramic photo of the Galápagos Islands in front of him, which I’d swiped from a National Geographic. Throughout the celebration, the lizard only gave us his ever-present Mesozoic smile, but I could tell he was enjoying himself.
* * *
Winter won’t stop us from paying our respects to the iguana. In spite of the deep snow, we continue to crisscross the Gigots and often visit that icebox where the iguana hibernates. Actually, as soon as we light a fire, the cave becomes quite comfortable — cosy enough, at least, for us to take off our parkas and work on Luc’s fresco. I help him doing the seabed and occasionally furtively scrawl a tiny merman in some corner or other, while right against the vault, just outside the alcove, Luc paints away like a third-rate Michelangelo. He is trying to portray the octopus-headed monster he sometimes meets on the route to Ftan and whom he fights but has never been able to defeat. I don’t know if it’s intentional, but the monster’s eyes conjure up those of the Pig…
23
If a diver fails to follow the dive tables or his ascent rate is too fast, nitrogen bubbles may form in his body. This is called a decompression accident.
We never hear of the Pig anymore. The animal seems to have forgotten Luc exists. We always make long, superstitious detours to avoid the yellow house and won’t even utter the name of its loathsome occupant, for fear that the mere vibration of the word may trigger something.
Living among normal people is doing Luc good. A few kilos have been added to his scrawny frame. He is filling out and now combs his hair like a pop singer, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg, the visible part of a more profound change. He is undergoing a transformation. You only need to open his sketchbook to understand. Mermaids and other sea creatures turn up less often; they mingle with terrestrial landscapes, caricatures of teachers, drawings of ordinary objects and scenes from everyday life. Even his mother’s portrait, which used to be everywhere, now only turns up here and there, while there are plenty of pictures of us. I think this is a sign of a favourable development, of a better adjustment to the world. It’s as though Luc’s ether was condensing, as though the ground under his feet was becoming firmer. By prosaically rubbing shoulders with our little group, he is growing accustomed to reality. He will never give up the realm of dreams — the place where his heart is — but he doesn’t pray to the iguana quite as urgently as before. His fantasies still play to a full house every night, yet he no longer curses daybreak. Ftan continues to be his ideal destination, but he is now subjected to the strong pull of a family, a home, and a new gravitational equilibrium is establishing itself. After steering clear of the shores of human society all his life, Luc has found a port to put into at last! This sailor of inner waterways, this lover of the high seas of the imagination, this denizen of the waves who has always preferred the peaceful depths to the turbulent surface, is suddenly taking the risk to emerge. Horrible reality, which he’d only ever perceived through a prism of pain, is beginning to have an unexpected appeal for him; he is discovering you can put down roots in it without sacrificing your dreams, and this is a major revelation. Luc accepts the challenge. He agrees to come out of hiding. Even at school he is trying to get used to things. He no longer takes refuge in his locker and practises walking calmly in the middle of the corridors. Yet he prefers the hermetic quiet of the library, where he spends as much time as possible studying like mad. Since one has to do something useful in life, my friend has decided to become a great deep-sea scientist, a kind of new and improved Cousteau.
* * *
With winter doddering into senility, spring disputes its authority and has begun asserting itself, sculpting the beach, furrowing it with torturous trickles. The Gigots are melting too, which makes our pilgrimages to the Cove easier. We forget our scarves on the hallway bench. Viruses take advantage of this to launch the offensive. Then thermometres are deployed, the handkerchief war begins, ending eventually with the revenge of the corpuscles. There’s a rich, pervasive smell of fertile humus in the air, and Mama is sensitive to this phenomenon of universal regeneration. Now that the days are lengthening, Mama is restless. She pores over the newspaper, scans the want ads, studies the job opportunities. She misses her independence, would like to become an adult once again. In private, she talks of moving to town soon, but hesitates on account of the repercussions. It’s just that my grandfolks have aged considerably as a result of their recent worries and we are reluctant to turn our backs on them after all they’ve done. There’s also Luc we don’t want to leave behind and whom we’d need to talk into coming along to Villeneuve, which won’t be easy. Mama foresees a heartrending parting and that stops her from wanting to pull up stakes. She says we need to give it a bit more thought, then once again puts off the final decision. That’s fine with me. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no hurry.
* * *
With the good weather, all sorts of migratory birds are showing up again, including some of the funnier ones: Joël, Marc, and Luigi, Luc’s diver friends. They’ve wintered in Martinique and have returned golden brown on both sides. They’ve landed another contract at the port of Villeneuve and have happily moved back into their old mouse hole. The guys have blown a bundle — they’ve treated themselves to a big Zodiac with a ninety horsepower motor, in which they skim the swells every night after supper. We jump at every invitation to join them; I can’t think of anything more exciting than gulping sea spray like this at the speed of sound. Luc likes to sit in the bow and take it all in, but when we roar past the Pig’s place, he turns his head away. He doesn’t even want to risk catching a glimpse of his poor excuse for a father. Anyway, the beast is nowhere to be seen. Indifferent to the changing seasons, the Pig remains cooped up in his private Sahara, and the rowboat gathers moss on its blocks. Only the occasional absence of the truck attests to the existence of some kind of larval life form.
* * *
The caplins are back and the bottle hunt is on. It promises to be a fruitful season. Luc eagerly haunts the shore, because Joël, who wants to modernize his diving gear, has promised to sell him his breathing regulator and old scuba tanks for peanuts. The beaches are coming to life. Fires leap up again. Grandfather is dusting off his repertoire of tall tales and trotting out new versions of them that are more horrible than ever.
* * *
Suddenly, there’s the explosion of summer, its atomic budding, its pyrotechnics of tantalizing promises — and the highlight of these fireworks is that school’s out. For a time, which we hope will be elastic, school and all such tedious things can go to the devil as far as we’re concerned. We are tight coils of heightened senses. We sleep less so as not to waste anything, for we need to savour every drop of the intoxicating elixir that flows from the sun’s casks and fill up our pores with the pure photons it distills. We gorge on freedom. Like nature that’s buzzing all around us, we’re in a hurry to grow, to live a thrilling existence, a life raised to the
zillionth power.
* * *
To top it all off, who should suddenly appear but Uncle Hugues! Hugues, whom we hadn’t heard from in two years except for a single postcard mailed from Liberia. Hugues, who showed up out of the blue in the middle of supper, setting down his suitcase, plastered with distant destinations, in the doorway. Hugues, the vagabond, the adventurer, whom my grandfolks welcomed with mixed feelings, since he is the least pristine sheep of the family. Mama and I rushed into his arms, though, for he’s her big brother and my very favourite uncle rolled into one.
Hugues and Mama have always belonged to one another. Leaning over the cradle of that baby girl born on his sixth birthday, Hugues decided she was his present, and she has been his most precious possession ever since — his elf, his pocket angel, his treasure. Was she thirsty? He would rush to the store to get her a Pepsi. Did she want a ball? He’d filch one from some child in the neighbourhood. Had she admired ballet shoes on a TV show? He would manage to get her a pair from Quebec City. Did she wish for the moon? He would instantly make up his mind to become an astronaut. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t get hold of for his princess in felt booties, and this unbridled love was mutual, for she idolized her big brother, that all-powerful magician. No girl ever had a more chivalrous brother or a fiercer protector — nobody would have dared lay a finger on Hugues’s little sister. It even became a problem during her teenage years, since he was extremely particular as to her choice of suitors and succeeded in driving them off one by one. Only Papa had found favour in his eyes, perhaps because Papa was so much like himself, and that is actually why I’m so fond of that beanpole Hugues. I worship him not just because he is the most dynamic and irreverent of all my uncles, but because he reminds me of my father. That’s the reason I love him so much, now more than ever. That’s why I threw myself into his earthy smell and hugged him so tightly I almost dislocated my shoulders.