“Just read my novels carefully. Between the lines there is space and time. That’s where everything happens. That’s where the world is bursting out, emerging from the present.”
Antoine hadn’t wanted to antagonize her on this day when she would be receiving a prize. He had held back a laugh. Did his wife really believe what she was saying? Was she intoxicated to that point? But when he entered the reception hall on the arm of his celebrated wife, he could not prevent a quiver of pride from misting up the mirror of his thinking.
In the end he agreed to meet the journalist the next day. She would come to his house. As he hung up he blamed himself for agreeing. He has nothing to say about the novel that had monopolized his wife’s final months. He would pocket her royalties, at least he’ll be able to say that.
Chapter 2
Antoine heard about the monk Thích Quảng Đức for the first time in 1971, when he started college. On the first day a student arrives late for class; he’d lost his way in the corridors. It’s Félix Maltais. He asks Antoine if he can borrow his notes. Why him and not someone else? Does he really look like a serious student meticulously taking down every word that falls from the professor’s sacrosanct mouth? That’s not the image Antoine has of himself, with his outrageously long hair. That day he has on a military overcoat from an army surplus store. He has even dared to keep it on during class, though it’s not cold. The last days of summer outside the windows are casting a vibrant and joyous light not in the least conducive to taking notes about Ferdinand de Saussure, linguistics, and the intriguing distinctions between signified and signifier.
The next day, Antoine finds himself face-to-face with Félix just as he’s coming out of the Tabagie 500. This is a mythic place in Chicoutimi. They sell magazines, tabloids, slander sheets like Allô Police and Photo Police. At the very back, there’s a counter with a row of red stools fastened to columns. Most of the customers prolong their coffee by chain-smoking, turning the greasy pages of a magazine, or ordering a club sandwich, finishing their feast with a slice of apple pie weighed down by a gigantic scoop of ice cream. What attracts Antoine in particular stands at the front door: a revolving rack of books. He likes to make it turn around, feigning a sudden interest in one title or another. Nonchalantly, he takes a book, runs his hand over it, opens it, flips through it briefly, and buries it in his army coat with no one the wiser. After that he moves to the magazine section. He’ll leaf through a few psychology and sociology periodicals which he manages to spot among the Paris Match and fashion and sports mags. Then he moves to the counter where cigarettes and chocolate bars are sold. The small bit of change in his pockets often forces him to buy cigarettes singly. At times, he leaves Tabagie 500 with two or three Caramilk, Aero, or Caravan chocolate bars, his favourites, hidden in his pockets.
That Friday, he arbitrarily stole Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. When he runs into Félix on the sidewalk of rue Racine, he opens his coat. At first Félix doesn’t see what he’s getting at and pretends not to recognize Antoine, whose linguistics notes he’d borrowed just the day before. Antoine extricates his loot, wedged behind his belt. With a theatrical gesture, he holds out the book. Félix appears horrified. He doesn’t want to touch the paperback, as if it were contaminated. At once Antoine feels an attraction for this boy who is staring at him with his very dark round eyes. He puts de Beauvoir’s book back under his shirt, buttons his coat, and invites his new friend to a restaurant, Le Top, that has just opened on the roof of a furniture store, a surprising new arrival in Chicoutimi. He really wants to know this exotic type who flaunts moral values to the point of indignation at petty shoplifting.
Antoine plies him with questions on his view of the world and his beliefs. Before long, Félix is telling him about the monk Thích Quảng Đức.
“His heart was found intact in the calcified remains of his body.”
“How can you believe such a thing?”
“To me it’s organic, physiological proof which is spiritual as well, that matter dialogues with the spirit. Just now when we’re talking peacefully in this café, do you know what’s going on? Billions of events. Antoine, it’s enough to think of one’s body as an antenna, a radar if you prefer, to enter into contact with the whole universe. And the universe for me is not the cosmos. The universe is everything that has to do with humankind.”
“That’s nonsense. The universe, the cosmos, are the same thing.”
“No they aren’t. But that doesn’t really matter. What matters is what connects humans. It hardly matters what they think, what they do. People are connected. No one can escape the universal connection. What happens if you and I, at the very moment when the waitress tucks away a lock of hair and the client sitting on our left gets up to pay, if we open our eyes, our ears, our hearts, and send our consciousness out to listen to the universe like an enormous radar?”
“Lots of things, I imagine.”
“Exactly. But above all, we’re astonished. See, you put sugar in your coffee and at that very moment American soldiers are slaughtering Vietnamese children in their villages. I put milk in mine and in Washington, young people like us are demonstrating against Nixon. They’re beaten with clubs, they’re dragged through the mud by armed policemen. Young people like us are thrown in jail.”
“What should we do? Organize a demonstration against the war in Vietnam here in Chicoutimi, or stop drinking coffee?”
“I’m trying to make you understand what I mean by ‘universe.’ Do you know that right now there’s a cholera epidemic in Bangladesh?”
“No …”
“Well there is, a terrible epidemic. And when we’ve finished our coffees there’ll be a thousand or maybe even ten thousand more victims. Whole villages where the corpses are dumped into stinking pits. Men with gas masks over their mouths suffocate in the acrid smoke from the pyres they’ve lit to burn the victims’ furniture and clothes. That must be how it happens. Like the plague, d’you see? Radar, Antoine. No one can escape. And the heart of Thích Quảng Đức, in my opinion, is just that: the absolute act condensed into one muscle. Something that no one can explain, can comprehend. Because explaining and comprehending mean nothing when you’re dealing with a … a … I can’t come up with a word for it. The same as for music. Must we explain, must we understand music? No. Music is what most resembles the heart of Thích Quảng Đức. Something that acts in the whole universe but we aren’t able to explain or comprehend it. Do you understand?”
“Are you a Buddhist?”
“Not at all. I believe in Christ.”
“So why are you talking non-stop about this Thích Quảng Thing and his fireproof heart? I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“Do you think I know myself? Lots of things escape me. I may be the one person who knows the least about myself.”
“When did it happen?”
“What?”
“That business of the suicide by fire.”
“On