Archibald Samuel - Arvida

He makes other people feel guilty in the name of family ties, friendship, love, professionalism;

He holds others responsible, and not himself;

He does not clearly communicate his demands, his needs, his feelings and opinions;

He often gives vague answers;

He alters his opinions, his behaviour, his feelings, to suit different people and situations;

He draws on logic to disguise his own demands;

He makes others believe they must be perfect, must never change their minds, must know about everything, and must respond instantly to his demands and queries;

He calls into question the qualities, competence, character of others: he criticizes without appearing to, puts people down and judges them;

He sends messages via other individuals;

He sows discord and creates suspicion, divides to conquer;

He knows how to portray himself as a victim in order to attract sympathy;

He ignores requests even if he claims to be dealing with them;

He enlists the moral principles of others to satisfy his own needs;

He uses veiled threats, or overt blackmail;

He abruptly changes the subject in the midst of a conversation;

He avoids or walks out on conversations and meetings;

He claims others are ignorant, and proclaims his own superiority;

He lies;

He makes false statements in order to worm out the truth;

He’s egocentric;

He can be jealous;

He cannot tolerate criticism and denies evidence;

He doesn’t take into consideration the rights, needs, and desires of others;

He often waits until the last minute to give orders to others or to have them act;

His reasoning seems logical or coherent, while his attitudes do not;

He flatters you to please you, offers gifts, will without notice do anything for you;

He generates a feeling of unease or of not being free;

He is very effective in attaining his own goals, but at the expense of others;

He has people do things they would probably not have done of their own free will;

He is constantly the topic of conversations, even when he’s not present.

She’d underlined almost everything. I couldn’t talk to her about it right away, because that evening we were entertaining her friend Monique and her retard husband.

The same night, I waited for her in bed with her book in hand, and I asked:

“Danièle, will you be so kind as to tell me who you know that’s such an asshole?”

She gave me her pinched little snobby look, as if I were the most pathetic case on earth.

“Gilles, it’s obvious. That’s all about you.”

Danièle had magical powers: she could make me furious even when she said exactly what I thought she was going to say. I remember punching the wall, hard, and asking her at the top of my voice if they were going to bring out a second volume to talk about women who were fucking liars and fucking parasites.

We heard Julie crying. Danièle called me a bloody madman and then did what she usually did. She took the little one and went off to Quebec City for the weekend. To her sister’s. That was something else I could never figure out about her, her being able to persuade herself that she was protecting her daughter by loading her into a car to drive for two hours when she was halfway drunk.

I stayed on alone with the yapping dog and old quarrels suspended in air along with the Villeneuve family’s ancient dramas. That’s the weekend something happened in the house, the only thing I could never explain to my daughter.

*

We talked on the phone two or three times in the course of the weekend, Danièle and me. I don’t even remember what I said. It was just a ritual, a penance I had to perform every time, so Danièle could get up on her high horse. I promised to be careful. I said that maybe we’d go for counselling somewhere. Above all, I didn’t raise my voice once during the calls. The girls came back Monday while I was at work. When I showed up, Danièle and Julie were outside. Danièle stayed on the lawn, while Julie came up to hug me, and asked:

“Papa, have you seen Mélodie?”

“Mélodie? I tied her up outside this morning. Maybe I brought her in, too. She’s not in the house?”

“No.”

We searched around a bit, calling her name. While Julie wasn’t looking, I mimed to her mother over her shoulder my taking a swig from a bottle, and I shrugged my shoulders. In fact, I hadn’t seen the dog since Sunday. The little one was concerned. At supper we reassured her, telling her that the dog had perhaps run away. That papa had maybe forgotten to close the patio door at one point, it had been hot over the weekend. After three days, my wife began to wonder whether the dog had been hit by a car.

I printed up flyers at the office, with a photo of the dog and our telephone number on it. We went to put it up all over the neighbourhood, once Julie got home from school. There were no calls. We began to tell the little one that Mélodie must be dead. She was ten years old, after all. Maybe she’d got sick. Maybe she’d decided to go and hide in the woods to die.

On Saturday I was at my workbench in the basement, when Julie came to find me. She said:

“Papa, I’d like to show you something while mama’s not here.”

“Right away?”

“Yes. I think I found Mélodie.”

I took off my goggles and put them down on the sawhorse. “I’m with you, my lovely,” I said, and we went outside. We walked out behind the swimming pool, to the edge of the woods. Julie rooted around in the branches a little, before saying, “It’s here.” A chill went down my back when I saw that she’d found the path leading to the old Villeneuve rock quarry. We walked up to the barrier I’d built almost two years earlier. The little one leaned out over it. “Be careful,” I said. “Don’t worry,” she replied. “Don’t worry, just look.”

Down below there was something in the hole. The body of a little disjointed animal afloat in the black water, black as well, but another, duller, black. I took a deep breath, and then I asked:

“Julie, I promise you that we’ll go see if it’s Mélodie. Over on the other side, though, because the path gets dangerous here. But first I want you to tell me why you came here.”

“No, I don’t want to.”

“Julie. Tell me.”

“Because it’s the lake where Thibeau and Vallaire Villeneuve died.”

I shut my eyes and clenched my fists and I felt Julie clinging to me.

“Papa, listen to me. It’s not mama who told me, I swear. It’s that big Christine at school. Don’t be mad, papa. Don’t be mad.”

We went back to the house to pick up gloves and a shovel and a big burlap bag. We took my car and went round by the old town. The quarry’s blocked-off entry gave onto a little road bordering the Saguenay, gloomy as it always was on a cloudy day. I pried the padlock off the gate with a crowbar, and we went in. We threw rocks into the water until Mélodie washed up on shore. I told Julie to look away.

We buried her behind the swimming pool shed that night. The little one was sad for about a week. After that she calmed down, and the whole house grew calm as well.

As if it had accepted a sacrifice.

Things went on that way for a while. My wife decorated and decorated. The house quickly turned into a labyrinth of little pedestal tables and shelves and tiny end tables with little knick-knacks and little lamps on top and little feet underneath. Dozens of goddam little feet to stub your little toe on in the dark at four in the morning. My daughter made note of every creaking door and every wailing pipe, in her book of mysteries. She took dozens of Polaroids. Photos of nothing. She took them against the light or in complete darkness until she had one strange enough to paste into her notebook. She dyed her hair black and put on black lipstick and she seemed on her way to buying all the black clothes her size in the whole world. I remember saying to myself, “Christ, if she could only get interested in boys a little.” I remember regretting that a lot when the tomcats started circling her, later on.