“Mr. Tremblay, would it be too much to ask of you to kindly keep the untimely movements of your earlobe in check so that your fellow students might concentrate on the problem at hand? Is that understood, Mr. Tremblay?”
The Suspicians are constantly Mister-Tremblaying me up and down; they want to make it perfectly clear to me that as far as they’re concerned I’m not Volt. They prefer to act as if Volt doesn’t exist, they’d rather not make his acquaintance. But there are times I forget I’m also Larry Tremblay. When that happens, they find themselves in a bit of a bind, the Suspicians, because they very nearly lose patience and would gladly let fly a Mr. Volt in my direction just to get a response. But they hold it in and that constipates them.
I make them writhe, the whole lot of them: parents, teachers, students, pedestrians, the blacks and whites of this world. Even the butcher grinds his teeth when I ask him if he has any venomous tongue today.
If it comes from me, the slightest trifle sends them into a rage. Including my humour, which they don’t appreciate - imagine. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe I have glands that other people don’t have, glands that produce hormones or some stuff that makes them rabid, that attacks their sympathetic system.
It’s not the beginning of classes that’ll keep me from making the rounds of the downtown dives. My nights are all the same, every one much like the one before and the one before that. A handy way to erase and forget, no effort, no remorse. I walk la Catherine, Saint Catherine Street. From bar to grill to pool hall to topless club between Drummond and McGill College. Last night it was between Drummond and Peel. Other nights it was somewhere else.
At every stop, I drink beer, to keep the engine running. And I watch, like the filthy little voyeur that I am. The nude girls, the drunks, the decor, the vegetation, the local customs, I can never get my fill. I write it all down in my logbook. The lighting, the location of the toilets, the smells, the flow of the crowd, the price of the drinks, the colour of the walls, the shapes of the asses, all of it.
Oscar Naval often keeps me company, but he doesn’t notice anything, doesn’t have much to say, isn’t offended by my bouts of writing. He thinks I’ve caved in to my primitive poetic instincts, as usual and as expected, or that I write because making conversation with him is a waste. Which is true, because most of the time he’s in a haze.
Well, at least you know where you can find him. Unlike others, whose position is always impossible to pin down and who are forever disappearing without a trace. Experts at giving you the slip, like Taurus and Virgo, my dear sweet little parents, who’ve gone down to Florida to take a rest from me, for just a few months, or like Anna Purna sometimes, when she does her little seductress routine. As if that were necessary.
Already two o’clock. I’ve chewed all my sandwiches, except the crusts, which I threw on the floor just to be a nuisance. I adore ham sandwiches and being a nuisance. The college dining hall is almost empty now. The only sound comes from the broom the small white nun uses to sweep the old oak floor. You pray to your god as best you can.
Outside, the big elm trees that fall has stripped bare shiver slightly in the wind, despite the sun, which looks downhearted at this time of year.
Ever so quietly, all the little lambs of the flock have gone back to their classrooms. Not me, though. I’ll wait five minutes, hang out with the vending machines to make sure I come late. When you refuse to fit in, rule number one is: avoid punctuality. And in the misfit division no one in the entire known universe can beat me. I’ll be late for Nihil’s class. Not very. Just five minutes, the time it takes for him to slip into his philosophical stupor. That way, he’ll be truly annoyed when I tiptoe in and, at the worst moment, trip over Rag Bag’s enormous butt that spills over the sides of her chair into the aisle, hampering the free flow of ideas, goods, and people.
Rag will squeal and squawk. It’s not my fault! I’ll offer in my defence. We’ve had enough of your rolypolies. How about not spreading your lipids all over the place! She’ll want to smack me, pound my face. I’ll appeal to Nihil and run for shelter behind him. The others, starting with Allie Buy, will jump at the chance to make a racket. Pandemonium will break out and Nihil will have completely lost his train of thought.
Furious, but not letting it show, he’ll call on Miss Bag to stay calm and, once she’s sat her hundred and twenty kilos down again and heads have cooled, he’ll show me to my desk, pointing out that I have been consistently late since the outset of the term and warning me that, next time, he will not allow me to come in.
I’ll tell him how sorry I am, repent not once but a hundred times, don the mask of contrition, along with the appropriate pout. That will mollify him a little and he’ll concentrate by gazing at the ceiling before launching once again into the Thomist considerations from which my inopportune arrival had drawn him. I must admit: I enjoy having fun with the teaching staff of Saint Suspicius. I don’t leave them too many ways out. As soon as I appear, subito presto the staff starts swinging willy-nilly in self-defence.
From their little sanctuary on the mountain, they see the world from on high and don’t understand very much about life, the Suspicians. They believe the world still belongs to them, as it did back when they were the lords of Montreal.
On this particular day, Nihil asks us to hold forth on the theme of violence as an agent of change. He’s all aquiver because for the past three months the bombs haven’t stopped going off around town. When Nihil is agitated, he speaks even less than usual. Nihil’s agitation can be gauged by his silences.
Just yesterday night, an explosion blew up the ground floor of a curling club in Westmount. Three dead. The first victims of the latest round of attacks. Three Anglos, innocent, in all likelihood. Standing behind his chair, our philosophy teacher sways silently, waiting for someone to go ahead and articulate a few thoughts on the terrorist act that has filled the front pages of all the dailies.
Allie Buy raises his hand. He’s indignant. And the more indignant he gets, the more he gets carried away. Hoodlums, murderers, scandalous in a democratic society! He can’t see how a bomb can further the interests of French Canadians. It would appear that no cause warrants the killing of innocent people. Why doesn’t he go tell that to the Vietnamese!
“Why don’t you go tell that to the Vietnamese!” Julie Horn ventures, blushing to the very roots of her hair.
“That’s no reason!” protests La Marquise, self-proclaimed representative of the silent majority, as she adjusts her décolleté to let everyone know she has one. “We are not in Vietnam. We live in a civilized country!”
Allie Buy eagerly nods his head in agreement. He’s not alone: a large portion of the class supports La Marquise, who takes great pleasure in the knowledge that her opinions are shared, as always, by a small following of shorn sheep and milk-white lambs.
“Besides, they’re not communists, the Anglos,” Allie adds, anxious to say the right thing in order to maintain his informal position as La Marquise’s right-hand man in the hierarchy of the flock. “I have lots of English friends who would like nothing better than to understand the legitimate aspirations of the French-speaking Québécois…”
As if that were the issue, as if it were up to the Anglos to decide what is legitimate or not for their former subjects!
Every one of them throws in his fuzzy two cents’ worth, with Nihil looking on absently while studying the cracks in the ceiling. Oscar Naval attempts to put things back into perspective but gives up after three sentences. Oscar hates making things hard for himself.
As for me, I don’t say a word. I’m not going to waste my time trying to explain to a pack of morons that no one is innocent, that we all have some petty horror on our conscience, that violence is everywhere and the important thing is not choosing your victims or weapons but being on the right side of the fence. Any means of getting your ideas across is all right, as I think history has amply demonstrated. Come on, Nihil! Why not dole out a little wisdom to your congregation! Teach them epistemology