Just Fine (8 page)

XVI

T
HE TERRE-ROUGE CAFÉ
was one of a number of businesses that had sprung up since the creation of the Petitcodiac park. In good weather the café opened its terrace, next to an ancient little cemetery. Terry and Carmen often sat there.

“Back when they were building the city, they found coffins made of three-inch boards in there. That's how they knew it was an Acadian cemetery instead of an Indian one.”

“On account of the three inches?”

“Uh-huh.”

Across the way was one of the city's most pleasant neighbourhoods. A group of Acadian women had established a very pretty housing cooperative, the Coopérative du Coude, where those with a taste for gardening had access to small parcels of good land to grow flowers and vegetables.

*

Under the sign of Virgo is the sixth astrological house, the house of harvests, of accumulations and reserves. It's also the house of discernment, resourcefulness, and efficiency. The house of the primacy of mind over matter, it is where the struggle between consciousness and materiality occurs, where animality cedes a little to questioning. It's the house of habits, including emotional habits; the house of order, of perfectionism, and of fine tuning. Here too, we find clothing and structure, techniques and abilities. The sixth house is also the house of thankless or imposed labour: the house of service and hard work, dependants and pets, pensioners and handicapped people. It's the house of the stress caused by time and of the tendency to want to do too much. For those in this house, life can get dull if they don't introduce some magic.

*

Though he was extremely happy with his new condition, Hans was in no hurry to turn things upside down. He wanted to be sure he was not labouring under an illusion. For a while, he was content to see the world with new eyes, and that was enough. He was happy to see that the novelty didn't wear off; the illusion, if it was an illusion, was not fading. The more time passed, the more what might have been an illusion strengthened, was confirmed, and became rooted in reality. Reality itself took on a new form. It became the only possible reality, the only one that truly allowed him to advance, to take a step. The step.

And so, Hans began to rid himself of his possessions. All his possessions. He did this with care, striving to get a fair price for each object, but without digging in when demand resisted supply. Bit by bit, he put the money he made into a bank account, accumulating it until the day came when everything was sold, until the day when he was left with only the essentials. On that day, he returned to the diamond merchant and bought twelve stones, choosing them one by one, in spite of their marked resemblance. He opted for a size that could be resold easily. That same evening, he made a little cloth pouch that would contain them and that, from that day forward, he would wear against his chest.

*

That day, Terry and Carmen dallied longer than usual in the Terre-Rouge neighbourhood. They walked along Cran Street and de la Brosse, up to the small square where workers were erecting a monument to the first colonists of the Coude. Carmen read the historical plaque.

“Are these your folks, then, the Thibaudots?”

“Looks like it.”

Carmen was impressed.

Which embarrassed Terry. “Well, we weren't entirely alone. There were the Babinots and Breaus too, in the beginning. And nearby, up to Memramcook on that side and Salisbury on this side, there were Blanchards, Gaudets, Broussards — starting with the father of Beausoleil — Melansons, Surettes, LeBlancs, Doucets, Saulniers, Landrys, Légers . .”

“You learn all this by heart?”

“Had to, for my job.”

Carmen continued to read the plaque. “Well, all the same, says here you were the first, around
1700
.”

“That was more around Memramcook really.”

Although the monument to the Thibaudots, Breaus, and Babinots, the first colonists of Terre-Rouge, was already on its pedestal, it was still under a cloth. Workers were putting the finishing touches to the landscaping. Terry Thibodeau bent at the foot of the monument and grabbed a handful of earth. “The earth was actually supposed to be redder around here. That's why they called it Terre-Rouge. Some folks say there was another river, the Scoudouc, joined up with the Petitcodiac somewhere around here and that was the river that brought the red earth over all the way from Prince Edward Island.”

*

This book, which wanted to be simple and as organic as a handful of earth, wavers now between a handful of earth and a handful of diamonds. Between the passage of time in which we take root and the passage of time in which we become petrified. Encrusted. In which we descend into layers of matter. To become forever immobilized. Mineralized. From slow, cultivated emotion to violent, fossilized emotion. Wavering between the realms of genealogy and geology. Between carbon paper and carbon, layer upon layer of time. The diamond being, after all, nothing more than carbon compressed over millions of years.

*

Carmen and Terry were strolling through the pretty streets of the Coopérative du Coude. They went up des Saules Street, turned on Toises, and walked up to what was once King Street but had been renamed Rue Royale.

“Some folks say a river with big tides like the Petitcodiac divides folks. That, most times, those who live on one side or the other of a river have a lot in common, but actually it's the other way around when tides are big. Folks get separated instead of brought together.” Terry had become talkative, almost long-winded. Carmen wondered if he hadn't begun to enjoy having an audience. “'Cause there was trouble right from the start, among the French themselves. They fought over the best land. Even before the Expulsion, even before the Triteses, the Lutzes, the Joneses, the Steeveses, the Somerses, and the Wortmans arrived on Captain Hall's sloop in
1766
.”

XVII

T
HE MORE TIME PASSED
,
the more urgent it became to solve my problem. One possible solution kept coming back to mind. I picked up the telephone.

“Camil Gaudain?”

“In person.”

“It's France Daigle . . .”

“Well, hello there! How are you?”

“Not too bad. I'd like to talk to you about something, have you got five minutes?”

“Sure.”

“Good, well, I won't beat around the bush. And don't be shy about saying no if —”

“Don't you worry, no one ever accused me of being the shy type.”

“Good, well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind coming along with me to France so I can go on that
Bouillon de culture
show?”

Short silence on the other end of the line. My proposal seemed to have caught him by surprise.

“My gosh, I'm flattered, but . . . can't your friend go?”

“Well, she did want to go, but she can't get time off just then.”

“Lord! And what kind of so-and-so does she work for!”

It was the only hesitation. Camil Gaudain agreed to accompany me and, to judge from the rest of the conversation, we were going to get along just fine.

*

That morning, Élizabeth was truly happy lounging in the arms of Hans. She felt as though she would never have to hurry again, that nothing would ever be as charming and sweet as this moment of doing nothing but being. Even Hans's questions bothered her little. Their exchanges had become a kind of game, pleasant and enlightening in a way and without consequence.

“. . . but you're a doctor.”

“One has to do something. To keep busy. Stay interested.”

“Just that?”

“That's already quite a lot.”

“What about passion? Desire? Will?”

“You mean hope, the ideal, the grandeur?”

“Yes, all of those.”

“. . .”

“No?”

“I don't know. The more I go on, the more doubts I have. And, at the same time, the more I doubt, the more I go on.”

*

As usual with Terry and Carmen, the day's topic resurfaced at night.

“And what about you? Is there no one famous in your family?”

Carmen pretended to think about it before replying. “My father was named businessman of the year seven times in Kent County.”

“Really? What does he do?”

Carmen had a pretty good idea of the effect her answer would have. “Diamond Billiards mean anything to you?”

In disbelief, Terry sat right up in bed. Arthur Després was a local millionaire whom everyone respected, mainly because he didn't appear to have stepped on anyone on his way up the ladder of success. “He's your father? And how is it you never thought to tell me?”

“Don't know. I guess it never came up.”

*

Hans was intrigued by Élizabeth's attitude. He couldn't quite grasp her point of view, what the source of her freedom, her detachment, was exactly.

“But you'll go back to it?”

“Of course.”

“When?”

“I don't know.”

“They're not expecting you?”

“Yes and no.”

“But don't they depend on you?”

“They're waiting. They know. And someone's replacing me in the meantime. There are lots of doctors now, you know. We can relieve each other.”

But Hans, being European, wasn't used to the wide open spaces of the North American mind. He was lost in this sort of vagueness. “You say they know. But what is it they know?”

“They're Acadians. They know nothing is black and white.”

“Arcadians?”

“A-cadians. Without the
r.
They're the folks who live there. Of French descent. It goes back to the time of the discovery of America. A long story.”

“And these A-cadians, they're in no hurry?”

“Let's say they have an instinct for detachment. It's a kind of sixth sense.”

*

One subject led to another. Fame, Carmen's father, billiards, and the lousy music they play in pool halls exhausted themselves, but the subject of music remained in the air.

“Did you see Bob Dylan when he came to Moncton?”

The question amused Terry. “Well, sure! What do you think!”

“Did he sing ‘Tangled up in Blue'?”

“No.”

“Well, he couldn't sing ‘em all, now could he!”

“I suppose not.”

“And you, where were you?”

“Toronto.”

“You never told me that. And what were you doing there?”

“Good question.”

*

I spoke to Camil Gaudain a few times on the phone before our departure, mainly about buying plane tickets and other such details. I also wanted to know, without saying so, if he felt physically able to make the trip, if there was any danger of him falling suddenly ill.

*

“My dear, as far as I can tell, my internal mix is stable. No matter how many ways I look at it, I can't see how a one-week trip to Paris could do anybody any sort of harm unless we run into terrorists.”

Neither Camil nor I saw any need to see each other before leaving. We'd have plenty of time to get to know one another during the trip. And so, we ended our last phone conversation in good spirits with his words, “It's often best not to know too much in advance.”

XVIII

A
T FIRST, ÉLIZABETH looked without understanding at the small pile of diamonds Hans had removed from his pouch. She saw the diamonds there, pell-mell, shining, and free, and no thought came to her. There was nothing to conclude. She thought of touching them, picking them up, and letting them fall like sand, and then she did. And she liked the idea, the idea of a small pile of diamonds one carries around, casually, without showing them. For the diamonds could have been arranged, set in order one next to the other, fixed for all time on a necklace, a brooch, a ring. But that way, one would always see the same facets. Inlaid in the general surface of the world, in all the beauty and wealth made to be exhibited and admired, they would be deprived of the freedom to show themselves from all angles.

*

Under the sign of Pisces, the twelfth house of the astrological chart is the house of all things hidden. This is the house of the mystery within oneself, of secrets, but also of regrets and unacknowledged, unconscious, or forgotten remorse. It's the house of all that we conceal, which includes weaknesses, limitations, sorrows, and handicaps without excluding strengths. It's the house of the private or reclusive life, of confinement, imprisonment, and illness. It's the house of endings and, in that capacity, it includes hospitals, prisons, and asylums. It's the house of self-destructive action and dependency, of undiagnosed diseases and accidents. It's the house of fatality, exile, and solitude; the house of criminality, obstacles, and life's material difficulties. In short, it's the house of the human condition with all it entails in the way of philosophical death, the struggle for inner healing, and contemplation. In this house, we abandon some of our rigidity, including the rigidity of the body, for a future that has become desirable. It is in the twelfth house that we attempt to judge ourselves objectively, that we listen once more to the collective unconscious, and that we undertake the pilgrimage of dissolution.

*

And then Élizabeth felt like laughing. By their very presence, the little stones banished seriousness from every situation. Better still, the presence of these little diamonds capsized everything into the pleasure of the unknowable. Something marvellous made Elizabeth not want to know. She enjoyed floating in the absence of genesis. In any case, she knew that everything was both good and bad. There was nothing to be suspicious about and she suspected nothing. She found herself face to face with pure wealth.

Troubled by her silence, Hans sought to reassure her. “They're mine. I —” But he stopped talking when Elizabeth lay her finger gently on his lips to silence him. They remained cross-legged, face to face on the unmade bed, with the little pile of diamonds lying on the rumpled sheets between them. And in the silence, in their eyes, in their internal and external laughter, desire surged once more within them.

*

Camil Gaudain expressed only one concrete wish regarding the trip to Paris. “What would you say to a visit to the Place de l'Étoile?”

“You mean going up the Arc de Triomphe?”

“Yes. I'd really like that, to look down the length of the grand avenues, the twelve points. I've always wondered if the Place de l'Étoile was fashioned in the style of the old cities, like Rome for example. In those days they really knew ritual. You had to learn how to found a city. They even taught it. Not like today. Back then they didn't do it in any which way.”

*

There was no longer any possibility of concealing daylight in the room in which Hans and Élizabeth lay entangled in the silence of love. This room somewhere in Greece had once again become simultaneously anyplace and the centre of the world. The three axes extended in the six directions, as they should, and all the numbers were in alignment, as they had been since the beginning of time. They had squared the circle. And since nothing could be opened further, they had to begin again.

“Aren't you afraid of losing them or being robbed?”

Hans didn't know what to say. He had been afraid someone might suspect him of stealing them. But the possibility that someone could steal them from him had never occurred to him. No more than the possibility of losing them.

*

That night, as she watched Terry take out a condom, Carmen said, “Never mind that thing, we don't need it.”

Terry didn't understand. The results of his tests hadn't come back yet, nor had hers for that matter. Carmen insisted. “I know you don't have
AIDS
, and I don't either.” Terry didn't know what to do. Until Carmen shouted from the bathroom, “Okay, put it on then, if you like, but make a little hole in it so I can get pregnant.”