Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather Read online

  ‘It’s a miracle!’

  Tuesday, 6 January 1998

  ‘At noon several pylons in the region of Drummondville collapsed beneath the weight of the ice. Now in Montreal up to seven hundred thousand households are without power. The Red Cross has set up its first emergency shelters. The forecast is for continued bouts of freezing rain. This weather has already broken a number of records.’

  CAN THINGS LIKE THIS REALLY HAPPEN?

  ‘Don’t tell them you did it, otherwise they’ll strangle you!’

  A Hydro-Québec truck had just stopped in front of us. The two men in the cab, their eyes red, their faces drawn, were eating a sandwich while they looked at the long list of places they still had to go to. It started me thinking. Not Alex, though.

  ‘You see that? With their messy hair they look like Gremlins!’

  Maybe they had kids who were sad they couldn’t be with them. Maybe their wives had made dinner but they didn’t have time to go home. I remembered the images I’d seen on the news at noon. They showed these enormous electricity pylons collapsing under the weight of the ice. ‘It is unlikely that the situation will improve, since freezing rain has been forecast for the entire day tomorrow. Nearly seven hundred thousand households are now without power . . .’

  Including my dad. He had called that morning to tell us about his day, but mainly to inform us that the generator was holding up.

  ‘But you should see the way it guzzles gas. I had to go to the gas station twice!’

  He was not the only one going to fill up his jerry can for his generator. The gas station manager had had to step in. People were shoving, squabbling.

  ‘No more than twenty litres per person!’

  Then my dad told us how these two Hells Angels showed up on their bikes, in spite of the icy roads. They weren’t afraid of anything, but everyone was afraid of them, especially the manager.

  ‘Twenty cans of twenty litres? Sure, no problem, I understand your plants have to keep warm to grow!’

  Dad didn’t tell them he was with the police.

  ‘There were two of them. I was all on my own, with nothing more than a jerry can for a weapon . . . An empty one, to boot.’

  After my dad hung up, my mum didn’t really try and talk to me. I think the discussion the night before had tired her out a bit.

  ‘I have so much homework to correct!’

  This was good timing. It meant I could go and meet Alex. He told me about his night without power. I could have taken him to our place, just so that he could have a shower, but I was a coward. I didn’t want him to see my new life. And besides, he didn’t ask for a shower.

  ‘You know that guy upstairs from me, he goes over to the neighbour’s to get laid.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘He was making so much noise up there that he woke me up.’

  ‘If he was making noise upstairs, then he was upstairs, not across the way.’

  ‘I saw him go into her place with a saucepan.’

  ‘A saucepan?’

  ‘He made some little dish for her.’

  ‘In the middle of the night?’

  ‘It’s not the main course that matters, it’s the dessert!’

  ‘The dessert?’

  ‘Well yeah, the dessert, that’s when you get into bed, after you’ve had dinner . . .’

  I don’t like talking about that stuff.

  ‘At least he got to sleep in a warm place!’

  I’d noticed Alex’s uncombed hair, that crumpled look people have when they’ve slept in their clothes. He looked at me. He could tell I was embarrassed and I guessed he was about to make fun of me.

  ‘I was thinking that with your magical powers maybe you could do something. I don’t feel like being cold tonight . . .’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Are you our young neighbour who lives opposite?’

  We both jumped. One of the brothers was standing there, looking at Alex.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘My name’s Simon. Michel and I live across the street from you. We heard the power is out on your side of the street. There was some noise last night in the flat next door and we figured out that that nice young lady let your upstairs neighbour stay at her place. He’s Russian, or so I’ve heard . . .’

  Simon had this grown-up smile on his face, convinced we didn’t know what he meant. They must have had one huge dessert.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alex.’

  ‘Alex my boy, tell your dad we have a spare room to put you up in. Michel works for Météo Canada. This is going to last a while, kids. The situation is getting worse.’

  Alex pointed at me. Was he going to tell him that it was all my fault?

  ‘So why does he have electricity?’

  ‘Because he’s lucky and lives on the same side as we do. We’re on the same grid as the old people’s home next door. We live in a priority zone.’

  Alex turned to me, stunned.

  ‘You really thought of everything . . .’

  ‘Tell your dad that you’re both welcome.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll tell him . . . But he’s kind of antisocial.’

  ‘Tell him he can feel right at home.’

  ‘He’s not that sort of person . . .’

  ‘In a situation like this it’s perfectly normal to lend a hand. When the heavens won’t help, we have to help each other. Right?’

  I took this as a reproach. But if he were in my shoes, he might understand that there are times when you have to act to get what you want. I clenched my jaw. Then he opened the door to his place.

  ‘We’ll be waiting for you. Come whenever you like. I insist! You’re more than welcome.’

  Slam! The door closed. Alex turned and looked at me for a really, really long time. I knew he was beginning to change his mind.

  ‘Can things like this really happen?’

  WHAT A BEAUTIFUL THING, A MAN WHO SAYS HE’LL BE BACK

  Julie was in bed, her hair dishevelled, and she was finding it hard to open her eyes. It was already three o’clock in the afternoon. Her head was aching. How had she got into such a state? Then it all came back to her: the Russian, the bath, the face flannels, the additions and subtractions and multiplications, the fish . . .

  ‘We have to drink a toast!’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Do you have something to drink?’

  ‘An old bottle of tequila . . .’

  ‘Davai!’

  Since she was still in her nightie, Julie thought he must want to get her drunk to take advantage of her, and he lost all the gold stars he’d acquired so far. She slipped quickly into her red bathrobe. And as for Boris, the tequila slipped down his throat, more than once. After a while, it was doing the same with Julie. Boris sat on the floor, his back against the bath. She had been hesitant to join him there, so she was sitting on the toilet. The alcohol had loosened their tongues.

  ‘Mathematics is poetry. Every line, every formula rhymes with the one that follows, and makes a long, beautiful poem. A mathematical formula is a work of art. A text you write only once, and you mustn’t make any mistakes, so that it becomes unique!’

  ‘That’s lovely, the way you talk about it . . .’

  Boris Bogdanov turned and looked at Julie for the first time. His gaze lingered. She smiled. A researcher always feels that he must convince the entire world, that he must wage a terrible battle in utter solitude for a cause that he alone understands. Boris was not used to being in good company. He raised his empty glass.

  ‘Davai!’

  ‘Last one . . . It might make you lose control of your calculations.’

  Boris gave a fleeting smile. Russians, whether they are researchers or hockey players, think of each drink as nothing more than a port of call on the way to the next glass. The main thing is to forget everything, to let yourself go and, above all, never to stop.

  ‘And what do you do in life?’

  ‘I work
in a sort of, um, amusement park.’

  ‘For children?’

  ‘No, for adults, really.’

  ‘Do you enjoy it?’

  ‘It depends on the evening . . .’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You come home late, it’s crowded, you catch cold easily, people come for a good time but they’re not always nice.’

  ‘So why do you go on working at this amusement park?’

  ‘I intend to stop, soon – I don’t know yet.’

  ‘What would you like to do after that?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

  Boris unscrewed the metal cap on the tequila bottle. Julie was annoyed with her reply. It really didn’t look too clever to go telling a researcher that you didn’t think about things. To fill the silence, she held out her little glass stamped Absolut Vodka in blue, a gift from a spirits rep who’d had no money on him to pay for the last dance. She wanted four of them, and he’d said okay. She had danced for him, but he only gave her two. The glass reminded Boris of his country.

  ‘Since we have vodka glasses, I’ll show you how we drink in Russia.’

  He filled two glasses then held his arm out to Julie. She thought he wanted to chink glasses, but he came closer, on his knees, and wrapped his arm through hers. Then he lifted the glass to his lips. She did the same. Tangled together in this simplest of knots they raised the Mexican liquor to their lips, trying very hard to pretend it was vodka. Boris paused and stared at Julie, whose pink cheeks already betrayed that she’d been drinking . . . and perhaps something more than that.

  ‘Na zdorovye!’

  ‘Na ndorovye!’

  ‘No! Na zdorovye!’

  ‘Na zdorovye!’

  In a single gulp Boris swallowed his glassful of tequila. He breathed out, long and slow. His breath, suddenly Mexican, encouraged Julie. She threw her head back and emptied her glass in one go, then tossed it over her shoulder. Smash! It shattered against the wall.

  ‘Why’d you do that?’

  ‘Well, it’s tradition.’

  ‘It’s only in American films that Russians smash their glasses. Given the number of litres we drink, in such a poor country we can’t afford to break so many glasses!’

  Julie didn’t want a diplomatic incident, especially since, with the exception of From Russia with Love, she didn’t know a thing about Russian cinema. Boris patted the floor and Julie finally came to sit next to him.

  ‘We’ll take turns.’

  He filled the glass, handed it to her, and she drank. He filled the glass again, didn’t hand it to her, and knocked it back. The process was repeated three times without a word until Julie brought up the fish again.

  ‘Why are you making all those calculations with your fish?’

  ‘I want to prove, in a mathematical fashion, with a topological theory – hence the knots – that we do not choose our path, but that others choose it for us.’

  ‘Do you really need all those calculations to prove that?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Take me, for example. Other people always decide my life for me . . .’

  A long silence settled over them. Boris turned to Julie, who suddenly seemed very sad. Alcohol can be conjugated in every tense, including the imperfect, and melancholy is a necessary stage on the way to alcoholic nirvana. Boris began to sing in Russian. Even though she did not understand a word, Julie burst into tears. It sounded so sad. It was going to be a long night.

  ‘It’s three o’clock in the afternoon already!’

  Julie emerged from her bedroom with a terrible headache and a persistent bitter taste in her mouth. On the sofa in the sitting room the two cats slept, undisturbed. A knot, a little one, formed in her stomach.

  ‘Don’t tell me he’s left, too?’

  She opened the door to the bathroom, lifted up her nightie, sat on the toilet and closed her eyes. She tried to remember where she had last seen her Russian mathematician. She opened her eyes again and there on the floor beside her she saw a pair of legs. Still leaning against the bath, one finger in the water to check the temperature, Boris Bogdanov was sound asleep. Brutus lay on his lap, purring. In the corner, the tequila bottle had gasped its last.

  Julie, while doing what she had come to do, looked around her, relieved. This was a good way to start the day. She’d met her fair share of men and plenty of them had come to her place. And in the morning, waking up next to them, she would see them for who they really were. But this one lying here before her was not like the others. He hadn’t even tried to follow her into her bedroom. Yet she wouldn’t have refused him.

  Julie stood up, climbed over what remained of her Russian evacuee, and looked at the fish for a long time. When Boris began to snore, she leaned forward. Her eyes were glittering with desire. Slowly she began to remove her nightie . . .

  ‘Aaaaaaahhhhh!’

  Boris had been ready for anything, but not this! Neither had Brutus.

  When he raised his heavy head and turned towards the bath, he almost passed out. Julie smiled at him. He immediately leaned over to see where his fish were. Perfectly peacefully, in water at thirty-two degrees, they were mapping out their paths.

  ‘This morning I noticed that it’s as if they haven’t realised that the bath is bigger than the aquarium. They don’t use all the space. So I sat down just here where they don’t go.’

  Sceptical, Boris observed his fish. He leaned forward and followed Number Two as it swerved less than ten centimetres from Julie’s naked breasts. Number Three did the same, and Number Four, too. When Number One swam towards her left breast, Boris leaned right down to the water. The orange fish with the green stripes also continued on its way without the slightest regard for the enormous sphere in its field of vision. Boris did the same. Either way, Julie had not even bothered to cover her breasts, convinced as she was that this man was unique – the only man she had ever met who could actually dress her with his eyes.

  ‘Da . . . Da . . . Da . . .’

  Boris raised his head and turned to the little mermaid. Julie could not help but shiver. In his gaze there was something she had never had the good fortune to enjoy: respect.

  ‘A magnificent observation.’

  Julie thought of hugging Boris to thank him for his compliment, but she was naked. Besides, Boris was already on his feet, looking at his watch. He pointed to the fish.

  ‘They memorised the space and volume of the aquarium, but I don’t know how long it will last . . . Can I trust you with them, just for the time it will take me to go and get it?’

  She just looked at him. He stared back for a moment, seemed to hesitate briefly, then, won over by her frank gaze, he capitulated.

  ‘I’ll be back!’

  Boris went out without saying goodbye. That was something Julie was used to. All the same, an indefinable smile lit up her face. A tear slipped gently from her eye, then another. She did not try to wipe them away.

  What a beautiful thing, a man who says he’ll be back.

  THEY’LL BE FINE HERE!

  ‘They could’ve warned us. I swear they’re all fags at the weather office!’

  ‘My dear Alexis, you don’t know how right you are . . .’

  Michel, petrified, looked down at his plate. He loved Simon for his gift of witty repartee, but in this case he had surpassed himself. Alexis felt encouraged.

  ‘Besides, I wonder if they’re not all Jews to boot!’

  Michel closed his eyes to pray. He turned worriedly to Simon. Alex sensed there was something weird going on. Only Simon didn’t seem the least bit fazed.

  ‘What makes you think that, Alexis?’

  ‘If it’s not one, it’s the other.’

  Simon watched as his guest took his time helping himself to a nice slice of roast. He noticed that he was shovelling the shallots to one side. Simon didn’t like shallots either.

  ‘You work at home, I suppose, since you seem to be there all the time?’

  ‘At the moment
there’s not much on, what with this ice.’

  ‘The ice started yesterday, Dad.’

  The symphony of forks lasted a good while. Alexis could sense everyone staring at him.

  ‘Is that any of your business, Alex?’

  He didn’t say it in a nasty way, but to be given a home truth in public – that was just not on. Alexis appealed to Michel and Simon as witnesses.

  ‘It’s true though, isn’t it! Since when do kids get to stick their noses into grown-ups’ business? He still hasn’t got it into his head that over the Christmas holidays there’s not much call for renovation!’

  Alexis had no sense of time passing: he hadn’t noticed that Alex had grown up. Now he wolfed down another slice of roast, chewing energetically, oblivious to basic etiquette that dictated that you shouldn’t speak with your mouth full.

  ‘And what sort of work do you do?’

  ‘I’m a psychoanalyst . . .’

  ‘Ouch! Better watch what I say, huh?’

  ‘It’s pretty rare for people to come and see me just to watch what they say . . .’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I work at Météo Canada.’

  The piece of roast went no further. When you talk with your mouth full, that’s the risk you take. Alex, Simon and Michel all looked over at Alexis who, with great difficulty, managed to swallow his lump of partially chewed meat.

  ‘It wasn’t you I was referring to, just now . . .’

  ‘If you’d known, you wouldn’t have said it, naturally . . .’

  Alexis looked down into his lap. If he could have hidden under his slice of roast he would have. Simon smiled mysteriously. A psychoanalyst is like a professor or a policeman, he can never leave his profession to one side.

  ‘And you, Alex my boy, how are things at school?’

  ‘Well, these days it’s pretty quiet—’

  ‘Cause of the ice!’

  Pleased with his joke, Alexis chewed the next bite of roast with a wide smile. A little moment of contentment wafted over the room. Oddly enough, Alexis felt good in this unfamiliar place, with these people he had only just met and whom he had thought he would despise. He had to find something nice to say.