Vaudeville! by Gaetan Soucy

Author:Gaetan Soucy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2012-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

3

THREE WEEKS HAD PASSED, Xavier had wandered, but too vast was the city, too numerous the demolition sites. Not so much from daring as from a kind of numbness that crept over him more and more often by the end of the afternoon, forcing him to move in a mechanical way, he’d pressed on as far as the Order’s headquarters, but sent packing: naturally, no one was allowed inside without the badge of a certified journeyman. As for the demolition calendar — closed to the public, of course. So Xavier had to leave it to chance, and it was like hoping that if you threw fifty-two cards in the air, they’d form a castle as they fell.

There was also the fact that Xavier was travelling around New York with all the logic and consistency of a fly. Had his footsteps left a white trail behind them, his journeys would have looked, as the crow flies, something like a plate of noodles. Each day brought the same harsh experience of the city. Scenes spotted here and there pained him, spoiling his mood — a family’s misery, cries coming from basements, sudden brawls featuring boot-kicks in an alley, and finally a squad of mounted policemen accompanied by even more disquieting plainclothesmen, who with blinding violence would expel a community of demolished who’d taken refuge in disused sheds (a woman running with one hand supporting a balloon-sized belly). And most of all, his health went flying. Temperature spikes would hit him in the middle of the street, dizzy spells, every so often his legs hurt so much you’d have said a subterranean demon was pounding his heels with a hammer at every step. And to crown everything, the less money he had, the more he was devoured by hunger. It had happened once that, at noon-hour alone, he’d devoured three leaves of cabbage, a slice of brown bread, a quarter of a turnip, and two carrots. Twenty minutes later this voracity led to his regurgitating his meal. Wiping his lips, he’d found spots of blood on his napkin. “I didn’t know there was blood in turnips,” he told his frog.

Until the morning when he checked the state of his savings only to discover that his worldly goods amounted to one dollar and forty-two cents. Fortunately the rent was paid. But he needed a dollar for food to carry on, while cutting down on everything, for one more week or less. Forty-two cents’ leeway then, to handle unforeseen expenses. But after those seven days? . . .

Wild with anxiety, the tail of shirt outside his trousers, he set off on his weekly eight hours of roaming. Today, at least, he had a trail — well, a vague piece of information that had cost him six cents. A crew might have been spotted in the fish-plant neighbourhood. It was a good distance away, a three-hour walk, and he nearly wept when all he found there was a space that had been perfectly cleared, excavated, unplumbed, scraped clean, so forth.

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