Six Degrees of Freedom by Nicolas Dickner

Author:Nicolas Dickner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2017-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

LISA NOW LIVES SURROUNDED BY tools in a rundown one-bedroom flat.

Every time she visited her father over the past months, she hoped he’d forgotten the whole business, but no. He forgets to take his medications, to eat, to change his underwear, he forgets the names of his neighbours, of the place he is in, he forgets which day of the week it is, which season, but never once, whenever Lisa came to visit, did he neglect to load up the Honda with a mitre-box saw, a set of sockets, clamps, a crate full of screws, a gas welder. From now on, nothing else matters to him but this final mission: to pass on the family hardware to his only daughter.

Twelve times, fifteen times, Lisa has returned from Valleyfield with the Honda crammed to bursting and riding low on shock absorbers weighed down by hundreds of tools, instruments and blades. Her father’s tools gradually invaded all the free space in her little room, a corner of the living room and the shed on the balcony, until her housemates presented her with an ultimatum: this isn’t working anymore, the tools have to go.

And so Lisa’s new place is a stone’s throw from the Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense church, on the top floor of a crumbling three-storey building. She doesn’t really have more living space than before, but there’s no one complaining about stubbing a big toe against a plane.

It’s been barely twenty-four hours since she moved in; she hasn’t had time yet even to hang up the roll of toilet paper. She climbs the stairs, teetering a little, with her last carton. She has just spent the day at the Domaine Bordeur because of a medical appointment, and her father seized the opportunity to unload a last volley of tools on her. The workshop is empty now, except for the workbench and a cast iron surface planer that weighs half a ton.

For once, her father appeared quite calm, almost serene. He had just closed an important chapter and could finally let go.

Lisa opens the door to her apartment and flicks the light on with her shoulder. There are tools everywhere—in the corridor, in the bedroom, piled up to the ceiling in the living room—and the air is permeated with the smell of resin and machine oil. Lisa keeps telling herself the situation is temporary, but the truth is, no solution has come to mind. She has a storage locker in the basement, but it’s too damp to store anything there.

She walks along the corridor to the kitchen, strides over the tools, bumps her feet against the unscrewed heating grate. Her computer sits on the counter, between the microwave and a pyramid of canned food. She pours herself a large glass of milk and launches Skype. After a minute, Éric appears on the screen wearing a quasi-invisible headset straight out of a science fiction movie. He was waiting for Lisa’s call while drinking his second cup of coffee.

“Does the doctor have a diagnosis?”

She shakes her head and drains her glass in one go.

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