Archibald Samuel - Arvida

“Jim’s sleeping,” says Doris.

*

Jim often fell asleep just so, and listened in snatches to adults talking close by. He rolled over in his bed, and an hour was gone. He missed whole swathes of conversation. At one point he realized that his father was lying in bed in front of him, and only Doris and Jacques Plante the trapper were up and about. Like diligent angels, they watched over their sleep, and put the cabin in order while talking quietly.

They picked up full ashtrays and set them on the counter with a little water in them before emptying them into the trash. Jacques Plante doused the last cigarettes in a bottle of beer. In one of the two big dented kettles that Jim went to fill every morning and night at the lake, they put water to boil on the large burner of the Vernois stove, whose high flames licked the metal almost to the bottom of the handle. Jacques Plante emptied the boiling water into the dish tub in the sink, and the shadows filled with long wreathes of vapour smelling of lemon soap. Doris washed and Jacques dried. Jim watched them intermittently, and always asked himself how Doris could keep her old hands in such hot water. Sometimes she herself misjudged her resistance and left one hand immersed for a bit too long, snatching it out with a quick yank, shaking it, and saying, “Goddam, that burns.” When they had finished the plates and utensils, they put the other kettle to heat to make water for the glasses, which they left to soak until morning. They emptied the ashtrays and lined up all the empty bottles at the end of the counter. Afterwards, Jacques Plante cleaned the old plastic tablecloth with Windex and a rag. Half asleep, Jim sometimes heard Jacques Plante asking Doris if they’d forgotten something, but by the time Doris did the rounds and came to murmur words in Jim’s ear about times to come and things that would get better, he was beyond hearing anything.

Jim slept. They had gone when he woke up in the middle of the night to lay a log on top of the embers in the stove, and he was sleeping when his father woke at sunrise, pulled on his jacket, and left the cabin in silence to see the day dawn rich in mist and dew.

He travelled for weeks at a time, but it was always, whatever the city, the same airport, the same empty space, with its distant hubbub and jet-lagged travellers. He’d been killing time for twenty minutes, sipping a gin and tonic in the company of a red-faced fifty-year-old who was on the same flight. The man had told him his name, but he’d forgotten it. It wasn’t like him to forget names. That was his job, handshakes and slaps on the back, significant winks. He could — he ought to — remember the name of any random mortal stumbled upon in an airport or a trade fair. When he happened to remember the first names of their wives and children, that was even better. He’d had a professor of public administration once who liked to say that memory was a muscle you could train. The professor knew by heart almost every country in the world and their capitals. That had impressed him. Now he’d memorized the names of several hundred clients, their birthdays, their addresses, and always two or three personal details. He remembered who was the record collector and who the fly fisherman, knew who was happily married or getting divorced, who had a pregnant daughter or a son in detox. He also remembered what everyone drank. People always feel close to someone who can order their liquor for them.

The trick was to never write anything down. He’d read somewhere that at the end of the nineteenth century, some people refused to have their pictures taken, fearing that the apparatus would steal their souls. It was probably a superstition, but this for him was a proven fact: you would never remember anything as long as you didn’t get out of the habit of noting everything, everywhere, every chance you got.

Behind the airport’s windowed walls, rain was pouring down. It was like being in a car wash. The planes, far off on the runway, were blurred, and perched on the asphalt, seemed hunched over like big wet crows. He took another sip. He could not for the life of him remember the damned name. He really must have been out of sorts. What’s more, the guy was ready to eat out of his hand, to lend him his summer house for a month, and, if pressured a bit, to pay him ten cents a litre for the water that flowed from his tap. But that too was his line of work. To sell. He was very good at it, but that’s not why he was here.

Michel arrived at about 4:30. That gave him about three quarters of an hour before catching his return flight. He took leave from his anonymous friend, left the bar, and sat at a table with Michel, a few metres away. He lit a cigarette. He’d stopped smoking ten years earlier, and had started again two weeks ago.

Michel had bad breath and wore a cheap suit that seemed to have spent the last week in a garbage bag. He disliked him intensely for that. He’d spent the entire flight going over everything that irritated him about Michel. His hygiene was suspect. Michel had lived in Montreal and spent his time trying to recall it, citing street names, restaurants, and bars to which everyone (he in any case) was totally indifferent. Michel carried around in his wallet dozens of photos of his three ugly daughters, and trotted them out on the slightest pretext. Michel was also a consummate ass-licker, who had concocted his own personal technique for flattering your ego in a way that was both understated and obscene. It was hard to go on in that vein, because in the end he was a good guy and everyone liked him fine. But he had to set all that aside. In the beginning he’d embarked on these meetings full of empathy and compassion, and it had almost done him in.

They talked about this and that for a few minutes, and three times he forestalled Michel’s launching into his diorama of ugly daughters. A waiter brought another gin and tonic and a cup of hot water. Another reason to loathe Michel: he’d stopped drinking a long time ago. Tippling in an airport bar seemed even grimmer when he had to do it in the company of an abstemious imbecile who wandered the world with his pockets full of herbal teabags.

He short-circuited the conversation to the point where a deadening silence set in. He stared at Michel for a long time, pulling on his cigarette and blowing smoke over his head until he was sweating, squirming in his chair, and feeling strangled by the knot in his tie. Soon Michel could no longer endure his gaze, and he fixed his eyes on the water snaking its way down the windows, cleared his throat, and asked:

“Are you here for what I think?”

Without saying a word, without moving his head, with only his eyes, he confirmed, “Yes.”

Michel gave a small, tight blow to the table with his fist.

“Does she know how much I brought in for her in the last year?”

“Almost 700,000 dollars. She had me and two accountants to remind her of that, but you know her: she’s pretty well certain that without her no one would be able to see their nose in front of their face.”

“Meanwhile, you’re doing her dirty work.”

“I’m chief executioner now. It’s all I’ve been doing for months. Not one contract, not one sale.”

Michel exploded:

“You want me to cry for you, maybe? I’m fifty-two years old, for God’s sake. Fifty-two years old, a sick wife, and three daughters at university. What am I supposed to do, can you tell me that? What does that fucking cow think we’re all going to do? That fucking fucking fucking cow…”

“Enough.”

“Do you know everything I did for her, and her father before her?”

“You worked, Michel.”

“We gave them our lives.”

“And they gave you yours.”