Morel by Maxime Raymond Bock

Author:Maxime Raymond Bock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Qc Fiction

IT’S BROKEN. Morel doesn’t need an X-ray to tell, the pain is recognizable; icy and burning in the hollow of his palm under his ring finger, maybe under his pinkie, too. Whatever’s happened, both fingers jut out at an incongruous angle, and he bellows his rage in a succession of vehement curses, cradling his hand against his chest with his uninjured arm. His hand. His working tool, its joints swollen and cracked, covered over in grime and scabs, scored with a multitude of variously-sized gashes he unknowingly massages every night as he talks, or watches hockey on television, and which he sometimes tests by feeling for its most tender areas, as fascinated now as he was as a child to realize your fingers can fold by pressing the centre of your palm with the thumb of your other hand. But for the last few years, such manipulation pressures have been painful, so he soaks his hands in a bowl of ice water when he gets back from work, instead. How long will this bullshit force him into unemployment, and will he still be able, once his hand’s healed, to hit with the hammer, to drive resistant screws into solid wood even when the muscles of his forearm burn more and more with every rotation, to scale scaffolding with the same strength, the same endurance, the same confidence? André’s lying on the living room floor, where he collapsed after his father struck him on the jaw with all his might. Morel pulls himself together, he understands the scope of the idiocy he’s just committed. André’s unconscious, arms stretched out stiffly before him, head angled crookedly, the nerves of his neck protruding. “Câlice d’hostie de saint tabarnak,” hisses Morel as he realizes he’s broken his hand knocking out his own son to the cha-cha-cha cheering the living room, Ginette on the radio. Goddamn he hates this tune.

Whether this is a tipping point or just another trial among others over the course of these difficult years—years that have exhausted and anesthetized him—he cannot yet say, but he knows that something’s fractured, figuratively and literally. André’s worrying stiffness is interrupted with a twitch, André puts his hands on his belly, turns his head slightly, emits a whine followed by a long exhalation. Why did he come at his father like that, threatening, the fury of his youth, legitimate but directed towards the wrong target? And why couldn’t Morel do better than to break his son’s face with a powerful hook? Couldn’t he have tried to calm him, to understand him? Was he as cowardly as his father Henri? More pugnacious?

“Centre-Sud’s falling apart, the neighbourhood’s disappearing, câlice!” shouted André when he’d come home, jeans torn, his hands and face smeared with soot, his hair filthy, and his sparse goatee dripping in sweat. “It’s burning down! It’s Hell on Earth—we’ve got to do something!”

And he’d gone to drink two huge glasses of water, grimacing fiercely as a hyena, eyes bulging from their sockets like someone who hasn’t slept for days.

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