THE FOX (MONETTE AND ANGIE)
No one reads the lines in a sidewalk like Monette. She interprets them like an archaeologist studying a wall of rock paintings. This crack represents a camel, and the adjacent crack, a cup of coffee. She generally avoids stepping on living things, while she mercilessly treads on electrical devices and guns, which are far more common than one might believe.
It takes her a few moments to realize that what is lying in front of her at the street corner where she is waiting for Angie does not belong to the concrete but to the earth and the beings moving over it. Once she has understood this, she stretches out her arm, automatically reaching for her older sister’s reassuring grip and brief answers.
“What is it?”
“A dead fox. Don’t touch.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s dirty.”
“Why is it dead?”
“It was hit by a car. Didn’t look before crossing the street.”
Amid the dense swarm of scavenger insects Monette meditates on the recklessness of animals and the cruelty of motorists, while Angie, unable to move away as quickly as she’d like, prods her half-heartedly. Angie is aware that the mere proximity of animal carcasses is noxious; she knows, though cannot name, the diseases and infections they spawn and the spirits that linger around them. Yet she is incapable of taking her eyes off the creature, whose upper body has been smashed. The head, seething with flies and parasites, is unrecognizable, but the slender, nimble gloved paws, seemingly still alive, are flexed as if about to leap — one can almost see it jumping, its magnificent orange tail held aloft like a pennant, its exploded skull guiding it into the shrubs in spite of everything. Angie is overcome by a sense of revolt at the sight of this creature, which could have been deprived of its tail rather than its head, the vain instead of the essential. She feels like crying, like finding a stick to flog the carcass; she wishes it would disappear.
Something stirs in the bushes along the road and the girls shudder. A hard beak emerges, followed by a dark, shiny, robust body. The crows had hidden when the two sisters arrived, some high up in the trees, others a few paces from the prey they were coveting. Having gotten used to the presence of these humans, they approach furtively; their breath is voracious, their appetite as sharp as an arrow. Without thinking, Angie charges at the scavengers, trying unsuccessfully to land a kick but still managing to chase them away. Then she raises her knotty arms skyward, waves them about wildly to scare off those circling from one branch to the next, and lets out raspy shrieks that shatter the calm of the vacant lots. At first Monette is taken aback by her sister’s antics, but then she too bears down on the black birds, yelling, growling, laughing at the top of her small voice.
Once the crows have scattered, Angie completes her intervention by haphazardly pulling up clumps of vegetation and throwing them on the animal’s body in the hope this seasoning will spoil the meal of scavengers, that the thin leaves will conceal the carcass from profiteers or any heartless creatures who feed on the misfortune of the foolhardy, and accompany the deceased to the far shore of the river that separates the living from the immortals. Trying unenthusiastically to imitate her older sister, Monette complains:
“It smells bad.”
While she pulls away the fingers her little sister was attempting to force up her own nostrils, Angie closes her eyes and concentrates. She is familiar with the stench of death. A shadowy, ancient part of her brain has learned it by heart, and at times she recognizes it drifting on the wind as it sweeps over the neighbourhood, around certain shuttered houses and under the nails of certain passersby. But today, on this street corner, the odour that has caught in their throats is not quite the same. She clasps Monette’s hand again to cross the deserted street.
“It doesn’t smell bad. It smells of fox.”
THE SAME WISH (ARIEL AND MARIE)
The cameras are broadcasting real-time shots of the house, their house, with the blue paint that appears to be taking flight in the chilly air, the second-floor shutters, arms spread wide, the yellow bicycle with a flat tire chained to the balustrade, and the swing pushed by the August wind as if a ghost were seated on it. The reporters seem especially fond of this last object, and they take countless close-ups of it, hoping perhaps to raise a deceased ancestor bearing a secret, a message that would explode like a soon forgotten fireworks display.
Marie, mesmerized by the images streaming across the screen, wrestles with the urge to open a window and extend her arm in a gentle wave, the way children passing in front of an electronics store verify that it is indeed they who are pictured on the screen in the shop window, confirming their unimaginable profile, their peculiar gait snatched on the sidewalk. Ariel comes over and delicately ushers his wife away as if to prevent her from being struck down by an enraged beast. He whispers a few words in her ear, and the light coming through the curtains seems to grow more intense. Then he steps toward the windows and in his turn glances at the grey mass of people in front of his home.
“What do they want now? Didn’t they get their fill at Lambert’s place?” he asks, turning to Marc.
“That’s it exactly. They camped out in front of his house for almost a month,” his right-hand man answers. “It whetted their appetite. Better get used to it. This won’t be the last time you’ll see them keeping watch at your house. You had a public life. From now on it’ll be transparent.”
Grumbling, Ariel goes back to pacing up and down so quickly that one can almost see a golden streak in his wake. He sees himself three nights ago face to face with the suddenly distorted features of the party veterans, the ones known as “the cops” precisely because of their role in constructing that unavoidable transparency. For many hours they confronted Ariel with his past, looking for hypothetical skeletons in his hotly indignant breathing, scrutinizing the film of sweat glistening on his brow for a hint of an admission of guilt. After the double life of Daniel Lambert, the former opposition leader, got splashed across the front page of a tabloid amid a slew of public statements by barely pubescent male prostitutes, the party could hardly afford another blunder. The brutality of the cops’ questions was in proportion to the magnitude of their mismanagement.
Humiliated, Ariel gave the veterans the information they sought; the tone of his voice was a blend of gall and satisfaction, because he knew his track record was beyond reproach and also that he would demolish the careers of the three men once he became head of the Labour Party.
Now, the official verdict is about to be pronounced and he is jubilant. The closeness of power is such that the texture of things and the composition of his own cells seem to have changed. Only a few minutes stand between him and what he has been preparing to become since the end of his adolescence: a leader.
Spurred on by this prospect, he goes back to the speech he has been working on with Marc since the day before, ejects a comma, inserts an exclamation mark, and then resumes his rounds, striding like a conqueror. As for Marie, she is still glued to the screen but has changed channels. Disturbing pictures of yet another storm on the coast give way to two or three preachers in quick succession. The last one is the host of a talk show where a facial composite melding the Devil’s features with those of Daniel Lambert says it all. Marie shuts off the TV and moves closer to Ariel, steps through the feverish aura surrounding him, and places her hand on the back of his neck.