My brother and sisters went through the terrible rituals of bereavement, eyes downcast, speaking in monosyllables, stunned with the sudden fact of death in the midst of our days and evenings. While all this time within me was the flowering knowledge that told me I was to blame for Bernard's death.
Let me now put into words what I have not been able to do during the long, aching passage of the years.
I killed Rudolphe Toubert.
Held the knife that entered his body. And stabbed him again and again.
The scene is as vivid in my mind at this moment as it was a lifetime ago.
* * *
I stood with the knife in my hand and Rudolphe Toubert saw it.
But what did he really see?
A knife suspended in the air. A miracle, magic, and, of course, utterly impossible.
Forgetting that I was in the fade, I had picked up the knife from the counter and turned to face him. Found him facing me, and immediately realized my mistake. My uncle Adelard had warned me that once I was in the fade, any object that I touched or picked up or moved would give the game away, would appear to be moving by itself.
I pondered my next move. I knew that it was necessary for me to inflict injury on him as revenge for what he did to my father and the workers, to my aunt Rosanna, to Bernard and hundreds of Frenchtown boys, myself included. Did I want to kill him? Can I truly answer that after all these years? Maybe there was murder in my heart, but is the wish father to the act?
At any rate, he saw the knife.
I looked at it, too, floating in the air, above the counter, held in my right hand but the hand unseen.
Rudolphe Toubert stared. More than stared. His eyes almost popped out of his head. At the same time, he began to rise from the chair, his two hands flat on the desk, pushing himself up, his eyes riveted to the knife.
Then he looked away, shook his head vigorously, eyes on the door, leaning against the desk. He raised one hand and rubbed his eyes and I knew it was imperative that I move quickly, to hide the knife so that when he looked back it would be gone and he would consign what he had seen a moment before to a fancy of light or his own mind playing tricks on him.
But I was not quick enough.
He peeked at me, his hands covering his face but one eye visible between two spread fingers, and the eye pinned itself on that knife.
“Jesus,” he said, his mouth still gaping. He came around to the front of the desk, as if hypnotized by the knife.
I laughed.
Not exactly a laugh but a giggle, a giggle of delight and triumph, enjoying not only the sight of Rudolphe Toubert sweating with fear but knowing also that my laugh, my chuckle, would hurl him into further horrors.
His eyes left the knife and lifted to the source of that chuckle and he began to babble incoherently, his body twitching, his mouth working to bring forth sounds—a scream for help, perhaps, or for sanity—and then his babbling ceased. He could not speak. He stood mute and paralyzed.
That was when he did the unexpected, catching me off guard and unaware. As if propelled by a catapult, he shot across the floor, legs springing him forward, hands extended, eyes wild and frenzied. Caught by surprise, I stood rooted to the spot, hands extended, the knife still pointing toward him as he came. He reached out as if to bat the knife away but ran into it and into me at the same time, knocking me backward. I held on to the knife and saw it enter his chest, spilling blood immediately on the striped shirt. He looked down, staring in disbelief, placed his hand on his chest and watched his hand being covered with blood. Like my father an hour before.
Raising his head, he let out a scream. “No …” The word echoing stridently in the garage.
He began to fall. As he fell he reached out, and his hands brushed my legs, clutching for support, and I pulled away. As I did so, I stabbed at him with the knife, sinking the blade into his back as he fell to his knees. Stabbed him again and again. For my father, for the strikers, for Bernard, for Ro-sanna. For me.
He sank to the floor in a puddle of blood.
The story of Rudolphe Toubert's murder filled the pages of the
Monument Times
for three days. Pictures of the office where his body was found, an inset showing his face, his bow tie, his thin moustache.
On the second day, there was a blurred photo of Herve Boisseneau, evidently taken by a box camera, as he stood on the steps of the three-decker on Seventh Street.
The headline over his picture said:
MURDER SUSPECT SOUGHT
In smaller print below:
Weapon Missing
The murder took the spotlight away from the settlement of the strike, although the
Times
ran a story at the bottom of page one reporting that “management and employees have reached an agreement on disputes that had occasioned a near five-month walkout that halted operations at the shop.”
Armand threw the paper down on the kitchen table, snorting: “They can't come right out and say the shop lost and the workers won.”
My father explained: “It's not as simple as that, Armand. We've got a long way to go. Some experts are coming from Washington to arrange for an election. The workers have to vote for a union if they want one. Maybe, they'll vote against it….”
Fire in Armand's eyes as he answered: “Never in a million years, Dad. Uncle Victor says—”
“I know, Armand, I know,” my father said, and Armand saw that he had been joking. My father had not joked for a long time. “Listen, Armand, Pve been thinking it over. If you want to quit school and work in the shop, okay. Go ahead. The times are different now. Maybe we need young guys like you to see that things will change.”
Armand whooped with delight, leaping from his chair, clasping his hands above his head, like Joe Louis being crowned champion of the world. I saw a shadow cross my father's face and vowed that I would graduate from high school and bring home a diploma to hang on the wall in the parlor.
The church.
Once again, I knelt in a pew in a shadowed area, watching the penitents come and go. Once again, I felt a need to confess, to unburden myself, to whisper to the priest the sin I had committed. Murdered, broken the fifth commandment. My earlier sins seemed paltry now—touching my aunt's breast reduced to a venial sin by comparison. If I had found it difficult to confess small sins, how could I utter words to describe an act of murder? I shuddered, anticipating the reaction of the priest. I had been taught in school that the seal of the confessional could not be violated, that the priest must listen in silence and remain silent. Kneeling there, as candle flame leapt against the dim walls, I knew that my act went beyond whispering words in the ear of a priest. I had offended God. Who had made the world and made me.
Forgive me, dear Jesus.
And waited for a sign.
The penitents came and went, the candles flickered, the sun slanted through the window that depicted the end of the world.
No sign—should I have expected one?
After a while, I left the church.
A headline in the
Times:
LEADS DWINDLING IN
MURDER CASE;
SEARCH FRUITLESS
The search for Herve Boisseneau and the knife allegedly used in the three-week-old murder of Rudolphe Toubert has reached a virtual dead end, police announced today …
I put down the newspaper after reading the story, feeling neither relief nor dread.
I told myself: If Herve Boisseneau is ever found, I will give myself up.
I thought of Sidney Carton in
A Tale of Two Cities
we were studying at Silas B. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.”
But I did not feel noble like Sidney Carton.
Did not feel anything at all.
I cut the newspaper story out of the
Times
with my mother's scissors and placed it carefully folded with the poems and stories I kept on the closet shelf along with my uncle's blue bandanna.
* * *
A house in which no one sleeps is a haunted house. You wake up in the middle of the night and hear muffled voices and soft footsteps and even if you strain your ears and hear nothing, you know that the house is not still, people are in the rooms, standing watch.
The men always kept the all-night vigil at wakes, letting the women sleep. The women carried most of the burden of the wake, providing food and drink and comforts hour after hour, tending to the children and keeping the household going. Certain things never stop even with death. Washing and ironing and preparing the meals, soothing an unhappy child, making beds. When the night hours came, the women went home, except for my aunt Olivine, who remained behind to help my mother until they both collapsed in bed in exhaustion. My aunt Rosanna was not present at the wake. It had been impossible to notify her of Bernard's death. No one knew her address. She had not sent any postcards or letters since her departure a few months before.
“She was going to open a beauty shop in Montreal,” I told my father when he reported that no one knew how to get in touch with her.
My father's lips twisted in contempt. “Rosanna run a business? What a pipe dream. She's probably waiting on tables somewhere.”
In my bed, as I listened to the vague comings and goings of the all-night vigil, the voices gave me no rest.
You killed him.
A heart attack. Bernard died of a heart attack.
Eight-year-olds don
V
have heart attacks.
It's rare. But it happens. Dr. Goldstein said
so.
Dr. Goldstein can be wrong. Dr. Goldstein is not God.
Bernard was always delicate.
Not delicate enough to die.
Please, leave me alone.
Why should you be left alone when you are to blame?
The argument went on during the small, still hours of the night, the voice inside me with its accusations, and I recoiled in horror because the voice was me: I was the voice.
During the day, I went through the motions of mourning, knelt before the coffin, murmuring prayers, avoiding after a while looking at Bernard as he lay stiff and unmoving. By the evening of the second day, I made myself look at him. His flesh had begun to alter, no longer pale now but darkening. His features also seemed to grow thicker, lips, nostrils. He was changing before our eyes but nobody said anything, nobody made comment. Perhaps they did not notice. Perhaps Bernard was changing only for me. I fled the room, the cloying flowers, the suffocating closeness.
My uncle Adelard found me in the shed.
He sat himself down on an old kitchen chair that my father had thrown out because the legs were wobbly. He looked at me with such sadness—the old sadness I knew so well—that my anger deserted me, and left me empty.
I had schemed in the first few hours to approach my uncle and confess what had happened. He would have the answers for me. But now I hesitated.
“When Uncle Vincent died …” I began.
“Yes … I know how you feel, Paul. He was my brother, the way Bernard is yours …”
“In the cemetery that day,” I said, gathering my nerve, “you said that Vincent died because of you …” I almost added: because of the fade. But did not.
“I blamed myself for a long time, Paul,” he said. “Still do, maybe. But learned to live with it …”
“Why did you blame yourself?”
“Because I did nothing to help him. He was in a lot of pain but kept it to himself. He told only me. Pledged me to secrecy. In the night, he'd wake up and I'd hold him. Don't tell Papa, he'd say. And I didn't. I should have told our papa. I used the fade to help him….”
“How did the fade help?”
“I used the fade to slip into Lakier's. Found medicine there. I had heard that a medicine called paregoric had dope in it. To ease pain. Found the paregoric and brought it to him. He slept.
“The thing is, Paul, I did not think he was sick enough to die. I thought he was only sick and in pain and wanted me to help him. Wanted me to help him keep his condition a secret from everyone else. If that is what made him happy, then I was glad to do it. I used the fade to bring him toys. Went out at night and broke into the stores, brought him things. Did all I could. Loved him, kept his secrets, used the fade to help his pain. But he died anyway. In fact, he might have lived if I had not interfered. Or if I had told my parents what he was going through.” Tears gathered in his eyes. “But I did not expect him to die.”
I touched his arm in sympathy and knew that I could not confide in him after all. The circumstances of Vincent's death were different from Bernard's. My uncle Adelard had not killed anyone. Vincent's death was not an act of revenge.
I left him and knelt before the coffin, not praying, looking at the poor frail thing that had been my brother.
I'm sorry, Bernard, Pm sorry.
But knew that words were not enough.
Bernard was buried on a wind-howling morning, the cold biting at our cheeks as we stood under a faded green canopy that was no protection at all. We huddled together, shivering and shuddering, looking at the gray metal coffin held by straps above the hole beneath it. I averted my eyes and saw Mr. LeFarge at a distance, standing near the fence, leaning stolidly on his shovel, as if this were a summer afternoon.
The words of Father Belander were tossed on the air and blown away by the wind, French and Latin phrases dissipating on the air. Booming thunderclaps accompanied the wind, out of season, as if heaven itself protested Bernard's death and burial. Armand and I clung together, arms around each other, sniffing, tears frozen on our cheeks.
Snow began to fall, whirling madly as the procession made its way home in borrowed cars and a black limousine supplied by Tessier's Funeral Home. The car I rode in belonged to Mr. Lakier and it had a plush interior, everything maroon, and a smell peculiar to my senses: the smell of newness.