A Very Bold Leap (11 page)

Three days went by. Fernand and Lucie watched Charles with concern. Normally friendly and industrious, he had become quiet and preoccupied. He would stop in the middle of doing something and stare off into space, fingering his lips, and when asked a question would seem to be hearing it from a great distance; twice he had almost lost customers who had come up to him with a polite request. It was the goddamn publishers, muttered Fernand; they take more pleasure in torturing writers than in publishing their books, as they ought to do, unless they were just stupid and lazy. After all, what were the risks? The government gave them grants, didn’t it? But instead of using the money to publish books, they no doubt bought themselves Mercedes-Benzes and drank champagne with bimbos smothered in jewels. He had half a mind to go to them and give them a piece of his mind, but what good would that do? He knew nothing about that kind of business, and they’d simply laugh in his face.

On the morning of the fourth day, Charles showed up at the hardware store looking so distraught and out of sorts that, after consulting with his wife, Fernand decided to take him aside and ask him how things were going, and whether or not he could be of any help.

“Give him a couple of days off,” Lucie suggested. “A little rest might do him some good. Maybe he’s gotten into the habit of writing all night. Artists usually keep late hours. But they need their sleep like everyone else, don’t they?”

A few minutes before ten, just when Fernand had gathered enough courage to approach him, Charles received a telephone call and spent several minutes on the line. When he hung up, he was a changed man. For the rest of the morning he was the most charming and efficient hardware-store clerk in the
city, and when he left the store at noon he was whistling “When Men Live for Love.” Fernand and Lucie stood at the door watching him sashay down the street, still perplexed but much relieved.

Several minutes later he left the Berri-de Montigny subway station and walked quickly up Saint-Denis to the Commensal, a restaurant where Bernard Délicieux was waiting for him with a small man sporting a black beard and thinning hair, in his late thirties, with a pair of tinted glasses pushed high onto the top of his head.

“Charles,” said the journalist, standing up, “allow me to introduce Édouard Pigeon-Lecuchaux, editor, journalist, public relations expert, reporter, and a great many other things besides, as he will tell you himself. But first,” he said, assuming a comically formal tone, “let us make our choices from this groaning board of succulent vegetarian meals prepared for the delectation of our palates and the benefit of our health. On me, of course.”

He led the way to the serving counters, where huge, gleaming metal trays were heaped with a colourful array of hot and cold meals, their steam filling the room with strange and mouthwatering aromas.

“Have you been here before?” asked Pigeon-Lecuchaux, stepping politely aside so that Charles could take a plate for himself.

“Yes, once or twice,” Charles replied, looking, despite himself, at the man’s tinted glasses perched so bizarrely on his head. “A long time ago.”

“Well!” declared Délicieux. “I’ve been coming here every day for a month now. I’ve decided to pay more attention to my health. No more meat for me! With what they feed cattle and pigs and chickens these days, we’re better off staying away from meat altogether, believe me. Try a slice of this millet tourtière, Charles, and tell me what you think of it. And here’s a seaweed salad — you won’t find any worms in that! — and some grilled tofu… yum-yum! What an embarrassment of riches — dig in and live to be a hundred!”

“So,” said Pigeon-Lecuchaux, taking his place at the table with a plate piled high with food, “Bernand tells me you have laid a golden egg?”

And he attacked his meal with remarkable voraciousness.

“Laid a golden egg!” exclaimed Bernand Délicieux, beaming. “Honestly, the expressions you come up with!”

“I tried to write a novel,” Charles replied modestly.

“And I understand the publishers have been hard on it.”

“Well, let’s say they haven’t been stopping me in the street asking me to sign a contract.”

Édouard Pigeon-Lecuchaux gave a small, silent laugh and blinked two or three times, then, after vigorously chewing on a piece of curried eggplant, murmured in a silky voice, “With your permission, I would like to form my own opinion of your manuscript. I have the utmost respect for Bernard’s judgment. If I think the novel has merit, I might be able to do one or two things for you.”

“He can do it all, Charles!” enthused Délicieux, brandishing his fork.

Which, in a way, was perfectly true.

Édouard Pigeon-Lecuchaux had been living in Montreal for a year. He had let out that he was originally from Paris, the son of a well-known surgeon, now deceased. In fact, he had been born in Bergerac, in Dordogne, where his father had been the concierge of a tobacco museum. Charles thought he had seen his name somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. Délicieux filled him in: three weeks after his arrival in Montreal, feeling an urgent need to put money in his purse, the adventurous master of all trades had struck gold. In ten days he had written a biography of Ginette Reno that had become a small scandal and the subject of a lawsuit for defamation of character. The speed with which he had written the book, and the quiet effrontery of its contents, had blown Délicieux away, and he had made Pigeon-Lecuchaux into a kind of cult figure.

“He is Otis Editions, Charles.”

“Otis, like the elevator company,” explained the publisher with a thin smile, “except that we only go up! I already have half a dozen titles that are selling quite nicely, and we’re putting together a small book about the Gay Village that will sell like hotcakes, believe me. It is clear to me that homosexuals are on the rise.”

Charles listened to him with interest and surprise. With a little more knowledge about the career of his new acquaintance, he might have cut short his lunch and gone to watch the sparrows in La Fontaine Park, or to count the cracks in the sidewalk on Sainte-Catherine. But very few people in Montreal knew who Édouard Pigeon-Lecuchaux really was.

A shameless adventurer, an inexhaustible talker, a man of infinite schemes, Pigeon-Lecuchaux had dabbled in everything, stirred up everything, stuck his nose everywhere, and done anything. His innumerable talents had been employed in the sale of rosewood pianos (“the singing wood”) and of whirlpool baths, and in publicity. He had been involved in the organization of cultural events both philanthropic and commercial; the setting up of a practice in “reconstructive psychology;” the production of high-class pornography; a dealership in holistic medicines; illegal immigration; writing, journalism, and, most recently, his venture in publishing.

The previous year, in Paris, he had published, with the connivance of a dubious translator and under the pseudonym Sacha Savaroff, three erotic mystery novels —
Tête-à-Tête on a Train Track; Everyone Looks Like Someone;
and A
Hippopotamus in My Bed
— the work of an obscure writer in Moscow. Sacha Savaroff had remained as obscure in Paris as his victim had been in Russia.

Then, after having produced several books that had been adroitly mixed, mashed, and reassembled from other books, he had published
The Seven Pillars of Inner Peace
, a philosophical work under the name Abouyafi Afnam Aknach, purportedly an eighteenth-century dervish. The famous intellectual Jacques Languirand himself had provided the preface, although without knowing it. The book sold very well, since mystical contortionism had been all the rage for some time.

But legal entanglements had inspired the author to preserve his own inner peace by turning himself into a puff of air and rematerializing in Quebec, where he came to earth with ferocious energy and daunting enthusiasm, convinced as he was that he had landed in the country of his dreams, which so far had proven to be the case.

Édouard Pigeon-Lecuchaux took a mouthful of triple-chocolate cake, accompanied it with a long sip of coffee, waited several seconds for an inopportune bubble of gas to dissipate, and then, turning towards Charles, handed him a card.

“Bring your manuscript to my offices tomorrow. You will hear from me pronto, I assure you. And what I like, the world likes. You have my word on that.”

The next afternoon, shortly before one o’clock, Charles discovered that “my offices” consisted of a tiny room somewhere in the bowels of an immense four-storey dilapidated edifice on rue Ontario, near Saint-André, a former warehouse that had, over the intervening years, been put to ever more diverse and ludicrous use. Otis Editions was reached by threading through an incredible maze of creaking corridors and dusty stairwells filled with a variety of rumblings, scurryings, and unidentifiable noises; the walls and ceilings were covered by a lavish display of tile work, and the electrical fixtures were encrusted with paint. Charles wandered about for a good twenty minutes looking for someone who could point him in the right direction, and then suddenly recognized Pigeon-Lecuchaux’s voice speaking into a telephone. He knocked on a door. Someone bade him enter. The publisher welcomed him with a friendly “Ha!” then stood up, shook his hand, and shoved a chair towards him that looked as though it had supported thousands of backsides and was beginning to smell like it.

“Unlike my more frivolous-minded confrères,” he seemed to find it necessary to explain, “I do not put my money into
décors et spectacles
, as the great Gaston Gallimard used to say, but into my books. Here everything goes into the book, nothing but the book. My vanity and my comfort are well down the list of priorities. Any publisher worthy of the name should be a slave to his books and to his authors, for they are his only reason for being. That’s how I see it, anyway. And very soon, my dear friend, I hope to become your slave. Ah, here it is, the famous manuscript! I cannot wait to read it. I’ll begin immediately.”

“There are probably a few places where it still needs work,” Charles said modestly.

“No matter. What’s important is that it show talent. Everything else is just mechanics and plumbing. That’s where we come in, we editors; we are the bridge between the writer and the multitudes. But the bridge’s foundation must be solid, and the roadway smooth and free of obstacles, so that the traffic of ideas between the one and the other can proceed unimpeded.”

He opened the manuscript and straight away began reading. Three minutes passed. From the floor above their heads came the sound of “Yellow Submarine” playing on a consumptive radio. Charles watched in astonishment as a space in the greyish plank floor beneath his feet narrowed and widened
as if through some mysterious pulsation, then realized that his own nervousness was making him hallucinate.

Pigeon-Lecuchaux raised his head.

“It starts well,” he said. “If the quality keeps up, I can get you favourable reviews, guaranteed.”

“Guaranteed?” asked Charles, amazed.

The publisher glanced at his watch, then stood up and offered his hand to Charles with a paternal smile.

“Guaranteed. I have an infallible method in place. You will hear from me soon, my friend. All my thoughts are with you.”

C
éline and Blonblon listened to Charles in bewilderment as the carafe on the counter refilled with coffee. Charles had asked them over to tell them about his second encounter with the owner of Otis Editions. The meeting had taken place earlier that day in the restaurant Le Caveau, on rue Victoria. A huge meal, superbly complemented by fine wine, had accompanied a series of strange proposals — strange, at least, to a neophyte writer like Charles.

Édouard Pigeon-Lecuchaux had loved
The Dark Night
. He bombarded Charles with praise that included such phrases as “major talent” and “a star of the first magnitude,” called him “a young Atlas holding up the world of Quebec literature,” and said his novel was “a quintessentially North American outpouring in which the interweaving of cruelty and love produces an extremely durable emotional fabric.” In short, a great career awaited the future author if…

And here the publisher had paused.

“If what?” Charles had asked, excited but also a bit skeptical.

“If adequate care is taken,” continued Pigeon-Lecuchaux, “to ensure that this career has its beginning under the most favourable conditions.”

“And what conditions would those be?”

“We can talk about that later,” the publisher had replied with a dismissive gesture. “Someone will be joining us for dessert to discuss that. First I want to describe to you what I consider to be the publisher’s role in all of this.”

According to Pigeon-Lecuchaux, most publishers treated their authors as so many galley slaves, repaying their Herculean efforts with a miserable pittance — the so-called “author’s royalties,” which rarely exceeded five per cent of sales (in other words, nothing) — and keeping the lion’s share for themselves.

Pigeon-Lecuchaux saw things differently.

He did not regard the writer as a common employee, but rather as an associate, almost a partner, who supplied the firm with the raw material — the book — and who therefore deserved adequate compensation. Wasn’t that simple justice? In fact, Pigeon-Lecuchaux saw
himself as
the common element, a simple gearbox, as it were, glistening with sweat and streaked with oil, whose only task was to direct the energy from the creative machine, the writer, from which it drew its motive power. But in order to get this motive power rolling, a more fundamental condition came into play. If the author was to participate on an equal footing in the profits generated by his work, he first had to contribute to the generation of funds needed for its publication. The publisher, in this case Pigeon-Lecuchaux, simply drew a reasonable salary for his own role in the process.

“Contribute to the generation of funds?” Charles had repeated, becoming more and more nervous. “Contribute how much?”

“Oh, not much. A few thousand, more or less. But the success of the book, and I am certain that it will be successful, is in direct proportion to the amount of effort that goes into producing it. Your investment will be returned to you twenty-, fiftyfold! Oh yes! With proper early management, you’ll have an assured income for the rest of your life,
from a single book
. Can you imagine it? A life of freedom and ease! Something like that doesn’t just fall into your lap, you know!”

Charles had given a disillusioned shrug. “That may be so,” he said, “but I don’t have that kind of money.”

“That remains to be seen. People spend their whole lives dreaming of having a million dollars, but they can usually lay their hands on seven thousand without too much trouble.”

“Seven thousand!” Charles had exclaimed, then added, suspiciously, “So why not put the money into it yourself, if you’re so certain of my success?”

“As I have just explained, my dear friend, such an arrangement not only violates my principles, it also goes against my concept of the author-publisher relationship.”

“But how am I supposed to come up with seven thousand dollars?”

“Well, consider your options. So far, no one has wanted to publish your novel. Am I right? Now you may, eventually, convince one of my fellow publishers to take it on. But then again, you may not. This business is riddled with
such idiots! But hold on, let’s see if I can’t make it easier for you. What did I say, seven thousand dollars? If I roll up my sleeves, keep one hand on the calculator and the other on the printer’s throat, I might be able to bring your book out for … let’s say, five thousand. But don’t ask me to lower that by another cent!”

Charles had given the proposition his serious consideration, rolling a piece of bread about in his fingers. Peigeon-Lecuchaux refilled his glass of Bordeaux.

“You could get a loan,” he’d suggested gently.

“A loan! No one would risk ten dollars on me.”

“They would if you had a guarantor. All you need to do is find yourself a guarantor.”

“But that would be you!”

Pigeon-Lecuchaux had burst out laughing, as though he had just heard the best joke of his life. When the discussion resumed, it had been intense, hard, and lengthy, punctuated by long pauses after which the publisher had cajoled his companion, tried to encourage him, gone over the many merits of his proposition. The conference had continued until the bottle of Bordeaux was quite empty.

Charles had been compiling a list of possible candidates for his guarantor when the sound of feet scraping the floor had made him look up. Standing a few steps from the table was a tall, thin man with greying hair, wearing a ragged suit, a loosened tie below the open collar of his shirt. He regarded them wearily, as though hesitating before taking up an unpleasant new duty.

Pigeon-Lecuchaux also looked up. “Ah, Gaston!” he said. “Here you are at last. Come closer, let me introduce you to my newest discovery.”

The man had smiled weakly and approached, dragging his feet. He extended a limp, soft hand to Charles, then let himself drop into the chair Pigeon-Lecuchaux had pushed towards him. He sat with his feet stretched out under the table, eyeing the wine bottle. A moment later he was bringing a glass of wine to his mouth. He held the wine there, pursed his lips, looked up at the ceiling, then gave a brief, approving nod of his head, as though to indicate that he considered the Bordeaux good enough to go down his throat.

“My dear Thibodeau,” said Pigeon-Lecuchaux, signalling the waiter to bring another bottle, “you may count yourself lucky that I am so well connected. Gaston Robinard, here, is the best journalist in Montreal.”

“… and the most exhausted,” added Robinard in a feeble voice, giving a long, noisy yawn.

A large woman in a red hat sitting across from them threw the journalist an outraged look, and underscored her indignation by angrily jabbing her fork into a small onion.

“Yes, yes, yes,” returned the editor, playfully. “He never tires of telling us how tired he is. But he has the energy of a nuclear generator. How many pieces have you written so far today, Gaston?”

“Seventeen. And I still have at least eight more to send in before midnight, otherwise Robidoux will kick my ass.”

“You see? Twenty-five pieces in one day! Most journalists, even syndicated journalists, would be hard-pressed to produce that much in a week!”

“So where do you work?” Charles had asked, intrigued but finding it hard to conceal a somewhat dubious smile at the sight of this huge, soft body slouched on a chair like a blow-up doll that had sprung a leak.

“Everywhere. Everywhere that pays, anyway.”

“Charles, I wanted you to get to know Gaston because he’s the pad on which your career is going to be launched. You see before you a man who is not only an experienced journalist, but also a seasoned trench-fighter, a man who has thousands of contacts in the business, is gifted with an agile, perceptive mind that can assess in an instant the value and originality of your work, and who knows how to bring that assessment to others. But first,” he’d said, turning to the journalist, who was still sprawled in his chair and who now held out his empty glass, “I should tell you something about my young recruit here, and the work he has entrusted into my care.”

And with a voice trilling with excitement, he had praised Charles’s novel. The journalist had listened with his jaw sagging and his eyes half shut, his sallow face taking on the expression of a dead fish. From time to time Charles glanced at him in alarm. Then, suddenly, the journalist’s face would become animated at something Pigeon-Lecuchaux had said; a series of tics rippled across it and his eyes blinked and sparkled; before long, however, Robinard would sink back down into his gloomy torpor. This happened two or three times, and when Charles was least expecting it.

“In short,” concluded the publisher after a peroration that had lasted a dozen minutes, “we are dealing with an exceptional talent, a well-crafted work, and a new voice that needs to find its true audience. I would be very grateful if you would take this on, my dear Gaston, under the usual conditions, of course.”

By way of response, the journalist had reached out his hand, grabbed the wine bottle by the neck, and poured himself another slug. This appeared to be too much for the woman in the red hat, who gave a sort of stifled snort of contempt; her companion, a small, fragile-looking gentleman, had looked at her nervously and tried to calm her.

“I’d be happy to,” Robinard had finally said, after taking two long drinks of his wine. “When does it come out?”

“Hmm… Well, let’s see… We have a few details to work out first, nothing too complicated, mind you … then we have to find a printer — and a new title, of course …”

“A new title?” Charles had exclaimed.

“Oh, yes, absolutely, my boy. After giving it some thought, I have concluded that it needs something a little more … eye-catching.” He turned again to the journalist. “Let’s say, in two months.”

“Well, I don’t know what I can do,” Robinard had sighed. “But I’ll give it my best shot.”

And with an effort that seemed to drain all the remaining energy from his body, he reached out and shook Pigeon-Lecuchaux’s hand, and then Charles’s.

“Would you like my manuscript now?” Charles asked him.

Robinard raised his hand as though to protect his face from a flying object. “Thanks, thanks, but I never read the books I write about. Don’t have the time. Besides, I write better about things I know nothing about. Keeps my ideas fresh.”

Flabbergasted, Charles looked from the publisher to the journalist. Pigeon-Lecuchaux smiled, unperturbed.

“Here’s what’s going to happen next, my boy,” Robinard said in an exhausted voice. “You have to give me a hand with this if you don’t want me to die of overwork; that would be a real shame for a guy under fifty. First, you’re going to write me a short précis of the book, giving the names of all the principal characters. But don’t make it more than a couple of pages, otherwise I might get it all mixed up. Then you’re going to make a list of all the nice things
you want me to say about the novel. Edouard here will do the same, as usual. Try to use phrases that have some punch to them, something that’ll make a good headline.”

He’d drained his glass, looked at his watch, and appeared to plunge into deep reflection; a moment later, however, his eyes closed and he was asleep. Pigeon-Lecuchaux had pushed away his plate and was checking the bill that had just been brought to the table.

Charles, still finding the situation incredible, stared alternatively at the publisher and the journalist. The latter’s head had flopped down to his chest, and he was emitting light whistling noises through his nostrils.

“And so this is how I become a published author?” he’d asked finally.

Pigeon-Lecuchaux had smiled broadly and nodded. Then, noticing the increasing distress in his young protegé, he reached over and patted Charles on the shoulder.

“You don’t go into battle armed with fly swatters, my boy,” he said. “What the hell, the means have to be commensurate with the ends. Hey! Robinard! Wake up! Our friend here is having second thoughts. Explain the business to him; he’s fading fast, poor child.”

Robinard had started, opened his eyes, smiled, excused his momentary blackout, and swallowed the dregs of his own coffee and then those of Pigeon-Lecuchaux, which the publisher had barely touched. He explained the promotional strategy he would have to use to spread the name of a young, still-unknown writer.