Go Figure by Réjean Ducharme

Author:Réjean Ducharme [Ducharme, Réjean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 978-1-7201-111-1
Publisher: Talonbooks
Published: 2016-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

Our turnover was way down. Our embankments and our well-trodden ditches no longer yielded anything. It’s rubbish or perish. We annexed the hotel territory, with its lovers’ grove, its parking lot and its trash. I don’t know where this will lead us. It’s becoming a mania—not to say, drawing deeply on my elementary knowledge, a form of kleptomania, which is a wellknown displacement of lovers’ frustrations. I have some; fine, it’s normal in my case. But I’m afraid of reinforcing the tendencies toward dissociation already observed in Fannie. In that vein, she has constructed under her porch a fortress made of scraps of boards and sanded shingles that protect Julie’s treasure-trove, consisting of refuse picked up along the way: a rusty pocket knife, a butterfly, a round stone, three links from a chain, a starling’s wing, a tube of lipstick, a queen of spades, a toad completely squashed by a car. Despite everything that it will change—and one changes nothing with impunity in such a structured organization—I catch myself hoping that she will be accepted into kindergarten. At the moment when my reflections reach this conclusion, Mary comes over, with heavy steps that aren’t like her.

“They won’t take her …”

She is crushed, showing it to me as if it were my business.

“I was thinking … I talked it over with Hubert … You’ve been a teacher—couldn’t you take charge of her, usefully? … Show her a little how to read, to count? … You’d have her sing, you’d tell her stories? … You’d give her something to think about other than her blasted fanny pack? …”

I leave her question marks suspended in midair, where she allows the pleasure of her friendship to resonate. I feel painted into a corner and caught unawares … She changes her tune; she makes it a good deal.

“Let’s say three hours per day. I’d pay you … Or we’d make some arrangement. I could make your meals, do your laundry … We’d set up a little classroom in the basement, with a blackboard, a desk, a terrestrial globe, one of those mounted up high like I’ve seen at the flea market … Gorgeous! …”

“Listen, I’ll think it over, but not before you’ve had a hearing with your authorities …”

“What does that mean—are you throwing trash in my backyard?”

“Take it any way you like …”

I feel some remorse for having been too curt. I had no choice. I’m all balled up in their complicated relationships quite enough as it is. No, I should have said yes on the spot, with no conditions, as if to a party. And that’s exactly what she was proposing to me. It was clear in her face and in her heart that she was opening up to me completely, along with her house. To spit venom on that is pure folly. On the other hand, she rubs me the wrong way by seeking to adopt me, to employ me as if I belonged to nothing, were good-for-nothing. I’m not so needy, so dispossessed; I have you.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.