In the End They Told Them All to Get Lost Read online

  Laurence Leduc-Primeau

  IN THE END THEY TOLD

  THEM ALL TO GET LOST

  Translated from the French by

  Natalia Hero

  QC fiction

  Revision: Peter McCambridge

  Proofreading: David Warriner, Elizabeth West

  Book design: Folio infographie

  Cover & logo: Maison 1608 by Solisco

  Fiction editor: Peter McCambridge

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

  Copyright © 2016 by Ta Mère

  Originally published under the title À la fin ils ont dit à tout le monde d’aller se rhabiller

  Translation copyright © Natalia Hero

  ISBN 978-1-77186-174-8 pbk; 978-1-77186-175-5 epub;

  978-1-77186-176-2 pdf; 978-1-77186-177-9 mobi/pocket

  Legal Deposit, 2nd quarter 2019

  Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

  Library and Archives Canada

  Published by QC Fiction

  6977, rue Lacroix

  Montréal, Québec H4E 2V4

  Telephone: 514 808-8504

  [email protected]

  www.QCfiction.com

  QC Fiction is an imprint of Baraka Books.

  Printed and bound in Québec

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  We acknowledge the financial support for translation and promotion of the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles (SODEC), the Government of Québec tax credit for book publishing administered by SODEC, the Government of Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

  I’VE BEEN STARING at you for a week, Betty. Betty the stain. Dirty and alone. I didn’t think I’d give you a name when I first got here. A brown stain, on a yellowed wall, in a dirty room. Doesn’t deserve a proper noun. But you’ve started moving. You almost move more than I do. You need a sharp eye to notice; I watch you all day long. You must be alive. I’ve decided to call you Betty. Traced you with a felt marker, outlined in black, cast in a mold. Now you’ll stop moving. You’ll stay close to me.

  I see you, you know. Don’t act all innocent. None of that “innocent until proven guilty” business, that’s over now. Done. Understand?

  The bed is lumpy. The mattress eroded by its springs. When I stretch out, I can touch all four walls at once. Filthy. There’s nothing else I can say about this room. Even if I take a closer look.

  Okay, nothing to say, that’s not true. There’s always something left to say. The ceiling is warped over the foot of the bed. That’s something. Warped by humidity. Warped by pus. Warped by mold. It’ll collapse tonight. That’s what ceilings do.

  A fly as big as a butterfly. It bumps into everything. Makes a noise like a radiator on its last legs. Hits the wall, the ceiling, the other wall, brushes against my left ear, gains altitude, lands on the old worn mirror—then changes its mind. Buzzes this way and that, never still, turns around, back and forth. Then disappears from my field of vision.

  Silence. It seems to have stopped, finally.

  The noise comes back, the bug flies a hair’s breadth away from my nose, charges at full speed toward the light and starts turning around it in concentric circles. Doesn’t go anywhere near the window, not even for a second.

  You poor little idiot, you can’t get out of here.

  My room looks like a birdhouse, perched on a balcony. Perfect for birds that’ve lost their wings.

  I get everything mixed up. The sounds become muddled, they’re all the same. Emilio on the phone. How do I know it’s really him? I don’t even know how many of them are out there. I land in this country, I almost collapse in his arms. It’s ridiculous, he doesn’t know where to stand. Chloé? He stiffens. Um, luggage? I have the address in my hand. That’s all I have, a crumpled-up piece of paper with 34 B written on it.

  Still timid, he points to the back of the courtyard, lets me pass. Marble on the ground, something that was pretty once. He waits for me to go up, keeps his distance. My feet are tired, the steps are tired. I climb, one foot in front of the other, for what feels like an eternity. Here, he says in English, to the left.

  The key he hands me weighs four tons. An old-timey key like in the movies, made for opening treasure chests. I go in. He looks at the state of my clothes and lends me a T-shirt. In it, I’m fifteen.

  My bags couldn’t bear to follow me any longer. They’ve fled. Sucked up by conveyor belts toward unknown baggage holds. I should have known this was in store for me. I lay out what I have left on the bed. Nothing.

  My things scattered, probably for sale in a market in Beijing. They don’t belong with all the other stuff on sale, but who cares? A Chinese lady walks by, picks up my favourite skirt. She doesn’t notice the hem that’s coming undone. She won’t be lazy like me, she’ll get it fixed. But she’ll get sick of the skirt. Way too fast. For her, it’ll be a skirt like any other. She’ll never know how much it meant to me.

  How did you get here, Betty? Have you noticed there’s no view from the window?

  My God it’s humid. How can you stand it? And that noise. It never stops. Enough to drive you insane. The vacuum, the dinners, the babies, the radio, the TV, someone yelling on the phone, the people who use their windows as ashtrays. The cars, the trucks, the buses, the taxis, the horns. This constant vibration that gets inside my skull, penetrates my bones, and never leaves. No wonder they say this town is the therapy capital of the world.

  Everyone’s crazy here. That’s why I came.

  You know, Betty, as the plane took off I followed a car with my finger till it disappeared. In some places, there was still snow. I told myself it might be the last time.

  I’m so afraid they’ll come up and ask me something.

  They’re laughing. The sound of dishes and sliding chairs. They go from the kitchen to the living room. Six? Ten? Twelve people? The doorbell never stops chiming, voices stream in.

  No, that’s not it. People come in, the voices talk and the bell rings. Everything in its place. Plates joining their siblings on the table. Glasses clinking. Cheers! Cheers, to health and happiness. Voices that cut each other off and climb on top of each other. They crescendo into bursts, but nothing breaks. One is particularly high-pitched. She laughs like a hyena. What do I know, I’ve never met a hyena. Another voice answers the high one. Emilio? His is the only name I know.

  Sometimes I forget that I’ve never believed in fairy tales, and I tell myself stories about princesses that I draw on the walls with my toes. It keeps me busy for a while. It’s easy, you don’t even need to be that tall. Just stretching my legs out, I’ve got both feet against the wall and I see gardens full of blonde dolls appear, hanging from the elbows of barbarians.

  If I pulled out my pencils to draw them, I’d be stuck having to look at them. And admit to myself that they exist.

  The dog is barking. Again. What time could it be? What day? It’s hot and humid and yet I’m cold.

  The paper airplanes I throw out the window land one by one on the ground three storeys below. The little column of air gives them the false impression that there’s an outside.
My planes pile up, stubbornly refusing to fly. They get cold feet before they’ve even taken off. They can see there’s no way out.

  In this room, there’s nowhere to be except in bed. Or standing up facing the window. I alternate. Their voices rotate, ’round and ’round, like clockwork.

  Finally, they’re gone. A small stream of water is leaking downstairs. I should get up to turn it off. Yes. I should.

  I hope they left the plug in the sink. And that soon it’ll overflow and turn the place into a pool. I’ll go play with the little rubber duckie in the empty apartment.

  Little duckie under the flooded table, little duckie basking in the sun with the Tupperware, little duckie slowly climbing the wet stairs, step by step. Little duckie playing with the curling iron—while it’s plugged in.

  Little duckie electrocuted, watching its own brain being fried, its beak opening as if to scream.

  Lulled by the sound of the washing machine, I drift in the ocean of my room. I slip far away from here. A deep blue sky. Look at that, Greece. I’m in Greece. Embraced by the salty wind. I’m running on the hot pebbles, burning my feet.

  I have only one picture of Greece, a picture from a postcard: white blocks stacked up on the side of a cliff. When I think of Greece, I picture giant sugar cube houses. Ready to jump. And I dream of going there.

  Spin cycle now, and my world vibrates more and more powerfully. The washer makes the bed springs squeak. I’m all shaken up. In my mirage, the houses dive into the sea, destroyed by an earthquake. The cubes fizz as they dissolve. I wish they were bright red, in the teal sea. I’d float over the whirlpool. If I sink, all the better.

  Everything stops all of a sudden, I’m startled. Steps, too heavy for a girl. Climbing the stairs two at a time, stopping in front of my door.

  The seconds last an eternity. I pull the covers over my head. In Greece, the landscape might be devastated but white clothes stay hung on long clotheslines. The shore invaded by flags with no countries. And I walk around with messy hair. Alone. I hear no one. They don’t know I’m there.

  Emilio pokes his curly-haired head through the door. Says something to me. Eh? He repeats it. Still don’t catch it. A walk. Want to come, Chloé?

  He must think I’m depressed. What do they think of me? The weirdo upstairs. When’s she finally gonna come out? A little later, he comes back with a tub of ice cream.

  Emilio has a gentle face. I hate myself for being incapable of anything.

  You’ve got to eat, sometimes. But also sleep. Especially sleep. I forget faces, little by little. But the corner of the wall that I stared at for too long and the folds of the pillowcase have been imprinted, engraved, and they keep coming back to haunt me even though I’ve wandered far away.

  It’s the pictures that are the hardest to shake. They linger, flaccid, sticking to my skin. I rip them off but their pieces come together again, rebuild themselves. The slightest little nothing brings them all back.

  Smells are just as insidious. You have to go where life doesn’t smell like the thing you’re trying to forget.

  People in the street steer clear of me. They’re scared of my face. If only I could laugh.

  I’m walking, Betty. So I can say that I’m breathing their air. Don’t take it the wrong way. Even when I’m outside, I’m still with you. I walk around the block like a tourist, enthralled with the cracks in the sidewalk. It’s windy. Plastic bags fly into my ankles and hook onto my legs. Afraid, I run back inside.

  When I stick my head out my window, I can see the neighbours through theirs. The woman stops to fix her hair. The same loose strand, always. We’re both watching each other, pretending we can’t see one another.

  This is the moment I wait for. My favourite distraction.

  I wait, my neck strained, for her to turn up. Then she appears and pretends I don’t exist. Looks through me and fixes her hair with one swift motion that’s almost tragic. Soon, she’ll board up her window so she can stop pretending.

  I try to imagine them, their life on the other side of that window. Their apartment must be like mine, but inverted. When they set the table, they don’t know where to put the little spoons either. They end up throwing everything in a pile in the middle.

  I wish I had a fat lady as a neighbour, who spends her days on the phone in her underwear, wearing a pink kerchief on her head. On Sundays, her children and grandchildren would invade the apartment and she’d serve them spaghetti and meatballs, or the local equivalent. Before leaving, they’d all sing the national anthem together.

  The morning kicks off with the sound of the coffee maker and hurried footsteps shuffling toward the bathroom. The water from the faucet, the water from the toilet, and then, finally, the shower. Sometimes the steps cross paths and talk to each other. But generally, there are three waves of distinct footsteps. One sometime between 8 and 10, followed by a second, just after the first steps have left, and then a third, much later.

  I wait till everything’s been quiet for at least fifteen minutes before heading out. I carefully place my feet onto the stairs to make as little noise as possible. Some days, I go out between the second and third waves; some days, after that.

  Adriana hands me a pile of clothes without asking what I think of them. I timidly thank her. Adriana is the other girl. Well, the girl. She has big black eyes that sparkle. She makes people laugh, she’s from Barcelona. If I’d met her at any other time in my life, I’d be cracking up constantly. Every time I see her, her nails are painted a different colour. Sometimes she even alternates between fingers. That’s what I notice, the colour of her nail polish.

  I met her while she was making herself a coffee. She handed me a cup, salmon-pink nails, started giggling when she saw me: I was still wearing Emilio’s T-shirt.

  When the other roommates talk to me, on the rare occasions they talk to me, I never know when to cut them off. They talk too fast. And I look at them with my eyebrows raised and tell myself I have to catch one word, just one. The worst will be behind you. But words have a mind of their own. They resist, they escape. They refuse to build bridges but instead weave threads, more bars for my cage.

  But I’ve taken lessons. I thought I knew something, at least.

  Every now and then, the vacuum knocks against my door. The impact makes the wood shake and the motor roar even louder. I try to tune the noise out. But it’s impossible. It does all it can to get to me. A pillow over my head does nothing.

  What a strange idea to have a cleaning lady. I hate that noise. Vrooooom! When the door opens, the noise bursts in, enough to make my eardrums explode.

  ¡Ay! ¡Oh! ¡Lo siento! And a whole series of words I don’t understand. Me llamo Luz. That part I get. I push the pillow against my head. But her words still reach my ears. At this hour, I should be up and about. That’s what she told herself.

  As a kid, I slept in a single bed with a shabby mattress just like this one. The springs would squeak every time I moved.

  I remember I often counted the chimes of the church bell across the street so I’d know how many hours I’d managed not to sleep. I fought off the slumber that tried to slide its way under my eyelids. But some hours seemed longer than others. I suspected that the priest had fallen asleep and lost the bet he didn’t know he’d made.

  The priest, fallible. Me, I counted the bells, and resisted sleep.

  I learned much later that the bells had been automated since before I was born.

  Three steps between us that I don’t dare take. The dog’ll never let me go downstairs. Should I jump over it? Its barking could wake the dead. I bet it knows how to fly. And once I’m on the same floor as it, I don’t hold out much hope that I’ll make it out alive. No te preocupes, it’s because he likes you. Ah! Hadn’t realized Emilio was in the kitchen. Did I understand what he said?

  The dog never goes out. Except on the balcony,
its open-air litter box. That’s on a good day, the days when someone’s gotten up early enough to open the door for it. But most days, it settles for the foot of the stairs that lead up to my cage. Half-asleep, I’ve just stepped in some.

  It sits there, with its innocent little face, pretending to be nice for once.

  Betty, you’ve moved again. I told you to stop. Why don’t you listen to me? I talk to you, and you don’t listen. I thought that you would, at least. Come on, be nice. Don’t do anything ever again. You want to abandon me, is that it?

  In the span of three hours, Betty, the spider’s moved less than you have. I hope that teaches you a lesson. That now you understand. That you won’t try to cheat me again.

  Have you considered meditation?

  The Chinese emperor who was buried with an army of terracotta soldiers must have died of fright, finding himself so alone before eternity. His underlings worked their asses off to sculpt serene, gallant faces, the exact opposite of reality. Carving and grinding till the clay looked human, till the darkness became less cold.

  No one dared to point out that an army of clay couldn’t save him.

  Knock knock. ¿Señorita? I don’t need cleaning. Luz comes in to shake something out in the room full of nothing. I don’t even have four walls to myself. She talks and talks and talks. I don’t listen. She wonders what I’m up to, always in my room. Pobrecita. Me, the poor little thing. How ironic.