The Boy Who Belonged to the Sea Read online

  * * *

  In the dead of night, I heard sobbing in Mama’s room. When I entered the murky aquarium, I found her fully conscious, floating alone in the darkness. She was weeping over her misfortune, and since it was mine as well, we mingled our tears. My mother’s bed was a flimsy raft riding a heaving sea of sorrow. More than once I thought we would capsize, but we drifted on and on until we landed on the luminous shores of dawn. Mama has fallen asleep again but remains warm to the touch. I don’t know anymore how to thank the iguana. I would need to coin new words of praise, compliments no one has ever heard before.

  * * *

  It still happens that Mama suddenly nods off, but it’s an ordinary kind of sleep from which she is easily roused. This time, she is really back, but all those months of inertia have sapped her strength. Regaining it will be a long process. She’ll have to fight to take possession of her body again, and I’ll struggle along with her. I’ll be her scout on the road to recovery. I’ll beat a beautiful, wide trail for her with the snowshoes of my optimism. The Local Centre for Community Services will fly in a physiotherapist twice a week, and I’m going to study his techniques, for I plan on becoming Mama’s discipline and exercise guru. I’ll be her gentle trainer, her great big walking smile.

  * * *

  Mama is working hard. She is doing her best, but it’s difficult. Right now, she can barely lift a spoon. I make an aerobic show of confidence and applaud even her tiniest effort. I massage her poor, sore muscles while I babble on about anything that pops into my head to outwit her grief and dispel her gloom. I fill the gap in her memory by reciting all that has happened these past months. Naturally, we talk about Papa, although we dare not plumb the shaft his death has bored in our lives. Mama confided to me she often dreams about a golden mask bending over her. I would like to help her understand but think it wiser to wait until her body is stronger and her heart has mended. At that time, I mean to tell her everything. Besides, having to explain Luc’s presence is quite enough for now.

  Mama wanted to know who that shaggy-haired boy was who kept walking past her bedroom but never came in. I made the introductions while Luc stood rooted to the doorstep, looking like a squid in a pot of chowder. Too shy to string three words together, he bolted, and we haven’t seen him since. To justify this odd behaviour, I told Mama all the good things about my friend. She was touched when she heard he didn’t have a mother anymore. And once I revealed Luc had been a great support to me during the time I was an orphan, she was overcome with gratitude. She would like to thank him, but he has vanished. Gone into hiding at the Cove, I guess.

  * * *

  Mama is trying to win Luc over. She greets him whenever he walks by and emphasizes each one of her overtures with a smile, but he proves to be difficult to tame. The problem is that my mother is a supernatural being in his eyes, a kind of angel who dazzles him, and he’d rather worship from afar. He doesn’t dare go near her. He is afraid to disturb Mama or be an eyesore to her. But he still brings mystical pebbles and jars with coloured sand which he asks me to set down at her bedside. These presents must be invested with magical healing powers, for they have a soothing effect on Mama. They seem to lessen her sorrow, and she is able to talk more calmly then about Papa. So Luc is helping in his own way to lighten her mourning…

  19

  The days are getting shorter, the nights chillier. The sky is turning dark and leaden over the heads of us flabbergasted kids. We resign ourselves, for autumn is upon us with its treacherous weather and angry moods, its sheets of rain and monochrome hours. It’s time for old movies and chips in the afternoon, and marathon games of Monopoly while raindrops patter away on the roof. We go back to school tomorrow. A gloomy event. Luc and I will be going to a new place because secondary school’s welcoming tentacles are reaching out to us. We’ll be attending the high school in Villeneuve. We have no choice, apparently. This is how it is and that’s that.

  * * *

  Every morning and afternoon we take Pollux’s yellow bus. He’s an ex-hippie who always has good rock playing while we’re on the road. Villeneuve High is kind of a huge fallout shelter where two thousand students shut themselves up at set times to gather knowledge, migrating in herds at the sound of a bell. I may be able to get used to it, I think, but Luc is panicking. Wild-eyed, he studies his timetable and systematically heads for the wrong classroom. In the corridors, he moves against the stream of traffic and constantly bumps into people. How he misses his radiator at the back of the one-room schoolhouse! And that good old window looking out over the sea! His eyes used to be glued to it. Here, the windows are few, narrow, and show only other dreary scenes. Having been suckled by the open air and cradled by the surf, Luc instinctively hates this concrete, these neon lights, this crowding. He is utterly miserable. Whenever he can, he rushes off to shut himself up in his locker, a kind of vertical coffin where he mutters away in merman jargon. It’s quite a challenge to get him to come out. Already, he has started to cross off the days on his schedule. The school year will be long.

  * * *

  This going-back-to-school business is a bad deal. The worst inconvenience is the lack of time. The attention devoted to Mama has diminished greatly as a result. As for opportunities to slip away to the Cove, they’ve dwindled down to a precious few. We’re only able to go and salute the iguana on Saturdays. My faith is suffering because of it. Now that the sacred odour surrounding the miracle has faded, reason is doing its best to get the upper hand. I occasionally wonder if magic did in fact occur or whether I simply imagined it all. But as soon as I see the old lizard, my doubt vanishes. The iguana has that way of hypnotizing you. I always want to touch him to remember what it’s like. I’ll stroke his geological crest, his grungy-dragon tail, his dark claws, anxious to experience those pins and needles in my fingertips again, that electrical tingling that’s like a mild current from a battery.

  * * *

  The saurian forgives us our slackness and keeps supplying me with fresh dreams. He lets me glimpse luminous lagoons under Polynesian night skies, and round, wild bird’s eyes fixed on me as though I were a worm that had lost its way. Suddenly I spot an island, a cliff lashed by the waves. I dive deep below the surface of the water, boldly glide over steep slopes, peer down at thrilling undersea vistas. These are novel, inexplicable dreams, invaded more and more by the sea. Am I on the verge of turning into a merman, too? Is the iguana sending echoes of homesick longing for his native islands into my soul, or is it my friend, rather, who is influencing me? It may be the overflow of Luc’s night visions spilling into mine. Because his dreaming has reached oceanic proportions since we went back to school. His swims are frenzied, his wanderings fantastic. On the back of powerful manta rays, Fngl soars over peaks of briny mountains and he clashes in single combat with protoplasmic entities. He pursues the Shimmering City into the depths of abyssal canyons, and every once in a while, at the end of a dream, as he scans the watery distance, he catches sight of the violet halo cast by the town’s lights. Then the drifting city seems close by. The fish swirl in its wake, the waves still resonate with the conchs’ fading hum, and Fngl knows he is almost there, he’ll set eyes on the tendrilled town soon. Luc, too, now only lives for this. His search for beautiful Ftan has become urgent, more vital than ever since we went back to school. I even think he needs it for his mental health. Dreaming has always been a natural release for Luc, a way to skirt around the horrors of reality, but nothing he has lived through until now can compare with the daily torments of Villeneuve High. He sees it as the exact opposite of Ftan, the nightmarish counterpart of the glorious underwater realm. Slipping back every night into his merman skin is becoming like a drug, a pain reliever he requires in increasingly massive doses, just to keep going.

  * * *

  Any excuse will do to flee the hated school. Instead of going to classes, Luc escapes and, like a fool, I follow him into town. Luckily, Grandfather has asked me to sort the post-office mail for him. Now I’ll be able to in
tercept my non-attendance reports and dodge reprimands. Luc has no worries on that score because the Pig tosses letters from school straight into the garbage can, along with all his bills, without even opening them.

  We treat ourselves to terrific extracurricular escapades. We start off at the amusement arcade, but Luc will instinctively head for the sea, and before long we’re at the harbour, mingling with sailors out on a spree who are swarming the neighbourhood. As we amble along, we love to overhear their shouts in Greek or Italian, their inflections from Portugal or Japan. At the corner of Maltais Street is The Beluga, a shop where they sell diving gear. Luc winces as he studies the outrageous prices of the diving suits. So that he’ll feel better, we go and haunt the docks. We sniff the heady smells of iodine and fresh iron, of engine oil, of fish, of sidereal horizons. We roam the quays, explore the hangars. But most of all we marvel at the ships. Standing on guano-soiled bollards, we gauge the tonnage of anchored freighters, sing out their exotic names. Then we saunter over to the Vieux Quai to watch a returning shrimp boat or a weary crabber. Or we’ll lean over the shoulder of a fisherman to peer into the lustrous, bronze depths and catch the viridescent ballet of rocklets and smelts. Out of the goodness of our hearts we toss back into the water the stupid anglerfish that keep swallowing the bait meant for nobler finny creatures.

  20

  Autumn reveals its colours while Mama is regaining hers. We’ve rented a wheelchair and I push her around, watched enviously by Luc, but she doesn’t really want to go anywhere. Most of the time she’ll ask me to station her at the window and she’ll read poems by Supervielle, by Nelligan. Or just sit there gazing out, as though looking at a distant, fantastic landscape, no longer within her reach.

  * * *

  She felt stronger this morning and, after breakfast, she asked to see my father’s grave. First I dashed up the hill to make sure no trace of our digging remained, then I wheeled Mama over. We lingered for a long while in the bare cemetery, conversing only in our minds amid the whirling leaves. My father’s eye winked in the low-hanging sun that gilded our brows. His presence could be felt in sovereign autumn’s every manifestation, yet Mama didn’t notice a thing. Papa’s death appears to be taking up permanent residence within her. The problem is no longer the physical aspect of her recovery but its mental dimension: it is her soul that is slow to heal. How can we throw off this shroud wrapped around her heart?

  * * *

  Luc is smartening up. He has set himself the task of taking Mama’s mind off her worries. That buffoon of the beaches has decided to make her laugh, so each time he walks into her room he is decked out in some disguise. He’ll put a lampshade on his head, or a salad bowl. He’ll fashion elephant ears for himself with his socks and try to mimic all the crazy characters he sees on TV. He’d like to be Luc the clown, the Master Gagman, but he’s actually quite pitiful and deserves his nickname ‘the Mongolian’ more than ever. But the big surprise is that Mama smiles at his antics. Sometimes she’ll even laugh out loud, which is music to our ears. She is simply being kind to him, of course, since he’s just a poor motherless boy. Mama knows he’s trying to quench his thirst for a mother’s love through her and she goes along with it. She’s agreeing to stand in for the female lead in Luc’s play who disappeared during the first act.

  * * *

  She calls him her little clown, and I always find him hanging around her room, prostrating himself, bending over backwards a hundred and eighty degrees. He says he wants to anticipate her every need, but that’s just a pretext to stay close to her and worship her to his heart’s content. He sketches fish, asterias, seaweed, mermaids for her. Mama is dazzled by his talent, and I must confess that jealousy knots my guts, since I can’t draw worth beans. Their relationship is taking on a closeness that upsets me, but I’m unable to hold it against them. Hasn’t Luc earned the right to share my mother a bit, seeing that he contributed so much to her rebirth? Besides, he really does draw well. He can’t be blamed for that, can he? And anyway, their chats remain perfectly innocent.

  * * *

  He has sketched a portrait of Chantal for Mama and peppered her with questions. This mad notion, this fabricated nostalgia just won’t let go of him. It seems to be buried, yet it’s always there, just below the surface of his soul, waiting for an opportunity to emerge. Mama had to disappoint him. She never knew his mother because she wasn’t even living in the village at the time of Chantal’s death; she was away at university. Chantal’s lovely face is therefore unfamiliar to her, but she asked Luc if he had any other relatives on his mother’s side. Uncles, cousins, grandparents? Luc doesn’t know. His father has never mentioned anyone and, obviously, Luc never asked. But when Mama offered to question the Pig on his behalf, he quickly refused. She insisted, because she thinks it’s important that we find out, and Luc promised to attend to it that very evening. A narrow escape for the poor guy. The mere thought that Mama’s purity might be sullied by coming into contact — even by phone — with the Pig’s visceral coarseness makes him sick.

  * * *

  I guess the Pig didn’t much care for his son’s questions, since Luc turned up this morning with a cut lip. He claimed it was the result of a bad fall, but no one believed his story. Shaking with righteous anger, Mama picked up the telephone to call Children’s Aid, but Luc begged her not to. He told her about his morbid fear of being carted off to a foster home. Mama gave in but demanded to be wheeled over to the Pig’s place so she could at least give him a piece of her mind. Grandfather objected. He decided that he himself would go and beard the fisherman in his den. He put on his cap and strode off in a manly fashion. Luc was in a cold sweat, but relaxed an hour later when Grandfather returned alive and well, although deathly pale, and minus his cap. Refusing to comment on his visit to the Pig, he closeted himself with Grandmother in Mama’s room, and they held one of those detestable confabs reserved for adults. Ten minutes later, they called us in. They will respect Luc’s wishes. They won’t notify Children’s Aid, but forbid my friend to ever set foot in his father’s place again. From now on, he’ll live with us. Luc is all for it. Choking back tears, he blurted out his thanks and swore to be worthy of our trust. So here I am, with a brand-new adoptive brother! The five of us will form a new-style family — a crazy quilt, to be sure, but with the heart of a lion. Just let the Pig dare come for his son and watch what happens!

  21

  Grandmother has taken hold of Luc and enrolled him in a rigorous personal-hygiene instruction programme. It’s conditioned-reflex training that intensifies at the approach of mealtimes and culminates at night in major scrubbings. Luc means business. He is even beginning to smell good. Pavlov would be proud of him. Grandmother rewards Luc by showering him with small, practical gifts such as toothbrushes, nail-clippers, and pajamas, and he responds to this generosity by treating her with boundless respect. He agrees to take on the civilized veneer Grandmother imposes on him and does his best to fulfill her lofty ambitions. He is willing to satisfy her on all counts but one: we’ll have to forget about him getting rid of his old cap and Newfie boots. As ratty as these articles may be, they are his personal insignia, something Grandmother will simply have to put up with. She has given in and tries to ignore these items. Now that she’s abandoning the idea of improving Luc’s extremities, she is concentrating on the middle section and, already, has nothing but praise for him. Actually, to listen to her, he’ll soon be sprouting wings, and a halo will blaze around his head: scratching Luc’s surface and marvelling at what she brings to light, she assigns all kinds of imaginary qualities to him. He is becoming a paragon of virtue in her eyes. Poor Grandmother. Luc — civilized? If she could only see him at the Cove doing a voodoo dance in his Stanfields while yelping like one possessed to invoke the avenging elements each time the Pig puts out to sea!

  * * *

  The mystery surrounding Luc’s family remains unsolved, but Mama is tackling it with the zeal of a first-rate detective. It’s giving her something to do, something
important to accomplish, another reason for living, actually. She sent us off to the presbytery to get Luc’s baptismal certificate. Flipping through the register between two mouthfuls of tart, Father Loiselle produced a copy of the document, and Luc studied it with eager interest, because this was the first time he laid eyes on such absolute proof of his existence. Listed on the page were his parents’ places of birth. As a bonus, so were the dates. Chantal Bouchard was born in Rimouski. She was twenty-eight last month. She would have been.

  Now we have the name of a town, we’ve got a lead. If Luc has any relatives, that’s where we may be able to find them. With Mama, we went over the Bas-Saint-Laurent telephone directory with a fine-toothed comb and made an inventory of two hundred and six Bouchards spelled various ways. Among them were twelve Chantals. The next stage will be to phone all these people.

  * * *

  We’ve turned Mama’s bedroom into a mini-telephone exchange and are calling across the Gulf. We can reasonably expect to unearth some of Luc’s relatives, and this prospect whets his imagination, but not as much as one might think. He goes along with the tracking down of relatives, should there be any, but couldn’t care less really about getting to know these strangers. What interests him in Mama’s project is the possibility of questioning the twelve Chantals. He hopes to find his mother this way — not the mermaid, but the real one, the two-footed mother — and that fires him up. He stubbornly persists in talking about her as though she were a living person, and if I happen to make the big mistake of voicing even the semblance of a doubt, he immediately hops on his high seahorse to defend the theory of her being alive. He maintains she simply staged the drowning to cover up her flight. He thinks she may have decided to go back to live on the south shore, and he is so sure of this that I’ve ended up sharing his belief. It’s not impossible, after all.