They want to celebrate it. There’s going to be a party tonight to inaugurate the Catalpa, a party with dancing and low lights, and drinking and smoking-up and other covert goings-on. They’ll be nuzzling in the corners, they’ll be overflowing with lecherous embraces behind the armchairs and in the nooks and crannies to the tune of Procularum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale,” their hearts will swell - and not just their hearts - from dancing so close, and they’ll play at romance as if they’ve been at it all their lives. The whole flock will be there for certain. It’s not to be missed. Oscar, Anna Purna and me, we’re already licking our chops over it.
Meanwhile, I’ve got my English class. So I’m going. Reluctantly, because I dislike English and that goes double for my English teacher.
The Suspicians say it’s useful, even indispensable, to have at least two languages. As far as I’m concerned, two brains would be of more use than two languages, but, oh well… Note, they don’t teach us Armenian or Chinese. They teach us just English. The English teacher, Mrs. English teacher, says that in Quebec you can’t do without English, that it’s much more useful than Armenian and Chinese put together, because Quebec is in Canada, Canada is in the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth is in the world, and the world is in the United States. The English teacher claims you have to speak at least two languages fluently to be a citizen of the world. However, the English teacher speaks only English. She says she doesn’t need to speak two languages fluently because she’s a citizen of the United States, not a citizen of the world.
She gets on my nerves. The English teacher wants to angluttize us. The angluttizer asks me to tell her in English what I did over the weekend. Naturally, the angluttizer addresses me only in English. I pretend not to understand. She persists. She repeats the question more slowly, clearly articulating every syllable of the sentence. I still refuse to understand. The angluttizer stops smiling:
“Come on, come on! Don’t tell me you don’t understand…”
I act as if I think she doesn’t get it when I tell her I don’t understand, by making signs at her that I don’t understand a thing. The other students are rolling in the aisles. A number of them don’t like English, and those who do don’t like the angluttizer. She’s getting more and more vexed.
From my desk, I can see Anna Puma’s slender blond body at an angle. She turns toward me, smiling with her whole face. Anna Purna is laughing, like everyone else. I love to see her laugh. When she laughs, Anna is as beautiful as a Walt Disney movie. Anna Puma’s hair is like an avalanche. I watch her watching me and I whip up the most dazzling of smiles. Her eyes beam like Cadillac hubcaps in the sunlight.
There’s no end to the angluttizer’s vexation:
“Please, please! Tell us what you did during the weekend. Come on, hurry!”
“Damned shitty monstrance!1 Why don’t you learn French? It would be a lot easier!”
My point of view on the subject doesn’t interest her. She’s absolutely determined to stick her nose into my private life. The angluttizer is a voyeur. The angluttizer drives me up the wall.
“I did nothing. Nada! Nothing at all, actually…”
“Make complete sentences, please.”
She’s digging her heels in, the cow! The angluttizer is an intrusion, an insinuation.
“I did nothing during the weekend. I slept during two days.”
She’s still not satisfied.
“I’m sure that you dreamt. Tell us what you dreamt.” Frankly, she’s gone too far.
“Frankly, you’ve gone too far. While you’re at it, would you like to know if I sleep in the raw? Would you like to know what colour my sheets are? Go to hell! Shit…”
That’s where the English class ended for me, this time. Outraged, as red as the red stripes on the American flag, she threw me out with a broad sweep of the hand, vowing in the language of Elizabeth II that I hadn’t heard the last of it.
True, as far as hearing the last, I had not yet heard it. Pelvisius took care of that part with a wonderfully edifying speech on the virtues of patience and moderation. It took place in his office and must have lasted an hour. An hour lecturing me, his eyes glued to my stomach, an hour of appeals for calm and of common-sense therapy.
“Beware of your intensity,” he says to me in concluding his epistle to the collegian, “and be more tolerant of the faults and flaws of others. Above all, do not feel obliged to confront those with whom you disagree. Remember that most temptations are the result of an unrepressed gaze. Reflect on that a little. And lower your eyes. Rein in your hot blood, Mister Tremblay. Better to beat a retreat than to do battle at the drop of a hat, for it is often through flight that the greatest victories are won: Fuge si non vis perire.2”
I immediately put his recommendations into practice and backed away with a flurry of bows and mea culpas. He congratulated me for my positive attitude and I thanked him for his sage advice. How could he know that that’s all I do, run away, that flight is my way of life, that I’ll do anything to end up all by myself as much as possible?
Every day, every hour, and every minute, I try hard to wear blinders in order to avoid the world around me, to see no one but me, I strive to move along the same grooves, leading only toward me. I want to see just me, I can stand just me in my universe. Other people, they distract me. When I look at them, they turn me away from me. That’s the reason I’ll always be outside of any herd: I’ll always be my own shepherd, my own livestock, my own pasture. The others can go chew the cud somewhere else. I won’t let anyone hang a bell on me.
I don’t want to bear the misery of the world on my shoulders, I’m not a martyr or a saviour. I have no wish to be crucified. I’m tormented enough already.
When I happen to bite, it’s in self-defence. Nothing to do with solidarity. When I go on the attack, it’s because you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. There are aggressive windmills everywhere. I attack only those who’d like to skin me alive. I fight only to survive as long as possible, to keep my head above water, to keep breathing.
Julie Horn scolds me for my unnecessarily hostile attitude. She says I irritate the teachers so much they then take out their rancour on everybody, and everybody has had it up to here with my antics. She says that I’m paranoid, I should arrange to see a psychiatrist. She doesn’t understand, any more than Pelvisius, that I spend all my time running away. If I could, I’d scram from myself.
My words frighten Julie Horn. She’s on thin ice when she approaches me, when I talk to her. She’s afraid for her mind’s virginity, for the integrity of her thoughts. Julie Horn doesn’t realize that she bares herself to me - which suits me just fine - that she unknowingly betrays her secrets to me.
“You make a fool of yourself, Julie Horn. You’re as easy to read as a Coca-Cola sign. It’s obvious you’re frightened. It’s obvious right away from your nervousness, from the beads of sweat on your scalp, from that strange habit you have of innocently looking away as soon as I come into your peripheral field of vision.”
She’s not even listening to me any more, won’t let me get another word in. She says that I’m raving, that I spout rubbish like a machine. She says certain people would be better off if they permanently shut up, certain people ought to turn it over in their mind before coming out with a lot of nonsense. I answer that certain people would be better off turning it over in mommy’s womb before coming out.
Julie Horn is peeved. She won’t let anyone say things like that to her. I’m wasting my breath, she’s no longer listening. She’s