The gas fire hisses, and he dozes. He remembers the watery sunlight in the park. It reminded him of Sunday mornings in the parlor of his grandparents’ farmhouse. Floating motes of dust trapped in slanting rays of sun. The smell of mustiness… and the heavy, sickening smell of flowers.
Grandpapa…
A bright winter day with sun streaming in the parlor window, and Grandpapa, thin and insubstantial in the box. All the children had to walk in a line past the coffin. The smell of flowers was thick, sweet. Claude LaPointe’s shirt was borrowed, and too small; the tight collar gagged him. The children had been told to take turns looking down into dead Grandpapa’s face. The little ones had to stand tiptoe to see over the edge of the coffin, but they did not dare to touch it for balance. You were supposed to kiss Grandpapa goodbye.
Claude didn’t want to. He couldn’t. He was afraid. But the grownups were in no mood for argument. There were already tensions and angers about who should get what from the farm, and everyone seemed to think that one uncle was grabbing more than his share. And who would take care of Grandmama?
Grandmama didn’t cry. She sat in the kitchen on a wooden chair and rocked back and forth. She wrapped her long thin arms around herself and rocked and rocked.
Claude told his mother in confidence that he was afraid he would be sick if he kissed dead Grandpapa.
“Go on now! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you love your Grandpapa?”
Love him? More than anybody. Claude used to daydream about Grandpapa taking him away from the streets to the farm. Grandpapa never knew about the daydreams; Claude was only one of the press of cousins who used to line up to mutter “Joyous Christmas, Grandpapa.”
“Stop it! Stop it right now!” Mother’s whisper was tense and angry. “Go kiss your grandfather.”
The smooth dusty face was almost white on the side touched by a beam of winter sun. And his cheeks had never been so rosy when he was alive. He smelled like Mother’s make-up. He used to smell like tobacco and leather and sweat. Claude closed his eyes tight and leaned over. He made a peck. He missed, but he pretended he had kissed Grandpapa. To avoid hearing the grownups’ tight, muttered arguments about furniture and photographs and Grandmama, he went into the summer kitchen with the other kids, who by turns were making shuddering faces and scrubbing their lips hard with the backs of their hands. Claude scrubbed his lips too, so everyone would think he had really kissed Grandpapa, but as he did it he knew he was being a traitor to the living Grandpapa, whom he had never kissed because they were both physically reticent types.
The fat cousin who used to fart under the covers whispered a joke about the make-up, and the girl cousins giggled. His face blank, Claude turned from the window and hit his cousin in the mouth with his fist. Although the cousin was two years older and bigger, he had no chance; Claude was bashing him with all the force of his rage, and fear, and shame, and loss.
Some grownups pulled Claude off the bleeding and howling cousin, and he was shaken around and sent upstairs to be dealt with later, after the priest left.
He sat on the edge of the bed in the grandparents’ room. He had never been there before, and it seemed foreign and unfriendly, but he was glad to be alone so he could cry without the others seeing. No tears came. He waited. He opened his mouth and panted out sharp little breaths, hoping to start the crying he needed so badly. No tears would come. A hot ball of something sour in his stomach, but no tears. Others who loved Grandpapa less than Claude could cry. They could afford to let Grandpapa be dead, because they had other people. But Claude…
When they came up to punish him, Claude was lost in a daydream about Grandpapa coming to Trois Rivières and taking him away to live on the farm.
That was how he handled it.
It is after midnight. LaPointe has been in bed for over an hour, slipping in and out of light sleep, when he hears the lock turn in the front door. It closes softly, and Marie-Louise tries to tiptoe into the bedroom, but she bumps into something. She suppresses a giggle. There is movement and the rustle of clothes being taken off. She slips in beside him, and cold air comes in with her. He does not move, does not open his eyes. Soon her breathing becomes regular and shallow. She sleepily presses against his back for warmth, her knees cold against the backs of his legs.
He can smell the licorice of ouzo on her breath, and the smell of man’s sweat on her.
…he can’t breathe…
…he wakes with a start. His face is wet.
He can’t understand it. Why are his eyes wet?
He falls back to sleep, and next morning he does not remember the dream.
10
Guttmann has arranged the overdue reports in stacks on the little table serving as a desk, leaving just enough room for his typewriter. He has finally made some order and sense out of the mess LaPointe dumped on him; there is a stack for this week’s reports, one for last week’s, one for the week before, and so on. But largest of all is the pile he mentally calls the Whatever-the-Hell-This –Is bunch.
The hissing roar of sandblasting across the street vibrates the cheap ripply glass of the window, causing Guttmann to look up. His eyes meet LaPointe’s, which are fixed on him with a frown. Guttmann smiles and nods automatically and returns to his work. But a couple of minutes later he can still feel the Lieutenant’s eyes on him, so he looks up again.
“Sir?”
“Is that all you know of that song?”
“What song, sir?”
“The song you keep humming over and over! You keep humming the same little bit!”
“I didn’t realize I was humming.”
“Well, I realize it. And it’s sending me up the goddamned wall!”
“Sorry, sir.”
LaPointe’s grunt suggests that “Sorry” isn’t enough. Ever since he came in this morning, he has been emitting dark vibrations and making little murmurs and growls of short temper each time he loses his place in the routine work on his desk. He stands up abruptly, pushing back his swivel chair with the backs of his knees. There is an indented line of white in the plaster from years of the chair banging against it. His thumbs hooked in the back of his belt, he looks out over the Hôtel de Ville, its façade latticed with scaffolding. This morning the noise of the stone-cleaning grates directly upon his nerve ends, like cold air on a bad tooth. And those monotonous zinc clouds!
Guttmann’s typewriter clacks on in the rapid, one-word bursts of the experienced bad typist. His memory touches the two nights and a day he has just spent with the girl who lives in his apartment building. He passed Saturday evening in her flat, helping her doctor a head cold. She wore a thick terrycloth robe that did nothing good for her appearance, and she had bouts of sneezing that left her limp and miserable, her face pale and her eyes brimming with tears. But her sense of humor held up, and she found this to be a ridiculous way for them to pass their first date. She got a little high on the hot toddies he made for her, and so did he, because he insisted on keeping her company by drinking one for each of hers. When he looked over her books and records, he discovered that their tastes were absolutely opposite, but their levels of appreciation about the same.
Around midnight, she kicked him out, telling him that she wanted to get a good night’s sleep to fight off the cold. He suggested some light exercise might do her a world of good. She laughed and told him she didn’t want him to catch her cold. He said he was willing to pay that price, but she said no.
Next morning, he telephoned her from bed. Her cold had broken and she felt well enough to go out. They passed the day visiting galleries and making jokes about the modern junk-art on display. He spent more than he could afford on dinner, and later, in his apartment, they talked about all sorts of things. They seldom agreed on details, but they found similar things funny and the same things important. After they had made love, they lay on their right sides, she coiled in against him, her bottom in his lap. She slept, breathing softly, while he lay awake for a time, sensing the subtle thrill of waves of gentleness emitting from him and enveloping her. A remarkable girl. Not only fun to talk with and great in bed, but really… remarkable…