Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather (17 page)

‘Mission accomplished!’

‘I know, I know . . .’

‘What shall we do now?’

‘What would you do in my place?’

‘I’d ask me to clear the fourth floor.’

‘That’s it . . . That’s it . . . Clear the fourth floor.’

With a snap of his fingers Martin rounded up his troops. Just as he was about to go to the rescue of the fourth floor the staff sergeant sidled up to him so no one else could hear.

‘How did you do it? We haven’t even done half a floor.’

‘Downplay it, explain, act positive, organise! And then . . . act!’

‘Oh right, I remember now, it was in the course . . . But tell me, how do you do it, how do you get that
esprit de corps
into your team?’

Martin looked at the cast on his arm – his watch, that is.

‘Staff Sergeant, I’m sorry, but I have a whole floor to clear and I don’t want to get to bed too late. We can talk about it some other time if you like?’

‘Sorry. Do what you need to do. I won’t bother you.’

Martin turned round to count his team to make sure everyone was there. Anne suddenly realised that she would have liked to have been more than just a number; she would so have liked to be number
one, the only one following her man into this new adventure.

‘He’s quite a man, your husband,’ said Julie.

‘I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

‘I feel the same, but whatever it is, I’m embracing it with open arms.’

‘How long have you known Boris?’

‘Three days, since the start of this stupid ice storm. Well, I say stupid, but if it weren’t for the ice storm I wouldn’t have got to know him. That’s what’s crazy.
Basically, I’ve got a natural disaster to thank!’

Anne looked at Julie for a long time before raising her eyes to the sky. Then looked down at the ground covered in ice. Finally she turned to Martin: ramrod straight like a policeman, he was
bravely leading his team of ad hoc rescue workers into their next mission. She fell in, looping her arm round Julie’s elbow, and put her head on her new friend’s shoulder.

‘You’re right, Julie, my love. It’s all thanks to a natural disaster.’

Friday, 9 January 1998

I DIDN’T PUT ANY MORE LOGS ON THE FIRE

I always wake up at night because I have to go for a wee.

When I opened my eyes, at first I didn’t know where I was. I was in the sitting room in my own house, but I had fallen asleep on the sofa at Simon and Michel’s place. I was on a
mattress, my parents’. There was an orange light flickering, coming from the fireplace. There was whispering. I looked up. My dad was drying his casts above the flames, my mum was sitting
next to him. I closed my eyes again, but not my ears. At last they were talking about me.

‘He asked some strange questions when you weren’t here.’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘How did we first meet? He asked me that the day you left.’

‘Do you remember how we met?’

‘I think so.’

‘The way you felt, and why you liked me?’

‘Three days ago I didn’t really remember. But I admit, you refreshed my memory tonight.’

‘I thought about it a lot at the cottage. About how you forget things or don’t see them any more, about how you change. I wanted to find those insignificant little things that made
us want to live together, that made us love each other. I thought that if everything had to come to an end, I had to remember what had brought us together in the first place, rather than make lists
of everything that had started keeping us apart.’

‘Do you realise that if it weren’t for this ice you wouldn’t even be thinking like that right now?’

‘It’s because we’ve temporarily lost our routine, and all our bad habits, the ones that keep you from seeing, that make you passive. After a while you have to try to remember
who you were. I tell you, being cold refreshed my memory.’

The virtues of being deep-frozen!

‘One night he burst into tears and told me he thought it was his fault.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘That it wasn’t his fault at all, of course. That it was a thing between adults.’

‘I’m not even sure any more.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was presented with a
fait accompli
– no one asked him his opinion. It can’t be easy, not for a little fellow who’s only eleven.’

At last they were beginning to get it. But my dad, who’d been deep-frozen for longer, was still way ahead of my mum.

‘It’s as if we jumped on the separation solution right away, because it’s the easiest, it’s what everyone does, and you never stop to wonder if you’ve really tried
everything.’

‘This is too emotional for me. Three days ago I thought you’d be walking out of here with that armchair stuck to your bottom, because you never seemed to get out of it. You come back
with both arms in a cast. All you can think of is joking around. Then you manage to evacuate a hundred old people, and the staff sergeant wanted you to explain the rescue operation to the press,
rather than do it himself. And now you’re telling me things I never thought I’d ever hear you say, let alone think. I need some sleep. I need to think . . .’

I slipped my hand out from under the sheet. It was cold. The situation was improving, but I hadn’t asked the sky to stop yet. The ice had to finish the job at our place, too. It might be
selfish of me, but I though that we needed the help at our place more than anywhere. I was happy for Alex, but I wanted to be happy, too. I decided not to go for a wee. I held it in and thought as
hard as I could about the three of us. I must have fallen asleep really fast.

At ten o’clock the light in the hallway woke me up. It was still cold. I was worried – the power had come back on so quickly. Why did they have to reconnect my
building when there were millions of other people who had no power? Hydro-Québec were determined to give me a hard time.

My dad must have been very tired because he was snoring really loudly. I got up slowly. I waited before I looked at him; I was afraid he’d be alone. I took a deep breath and turned my
head. I wish I’d had my video camera. Mum and Dad were holding each other so close, as if they were one person. They were cold.

I didn’t put any more logs on the fire.

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN LOVE?

‘Nineteen!’

‘And at the other end?’

‘Nineteen!’

‘Julie! Wait for the thermometer to settle.’

Julie, in a red nightie, raised her eyes to the ceiling. She did not think of protesting, not even for a second. She dipped the thermometer into the other end of the aquarium. Across from her
Boris was whistling, light-hearted, and Brutus was sitting on his lap. She had heard her fair share of men whistling after lovemaking, but this sweet melody didn’t sound like the others. At
the height of ecstasy, Boris had moaned:

‘
Ya lyublyu tebya . . .
’

Four times she had heard that cry from the heart, which needed no dictionary. She too had moaned, with the sublime feelings that had run through her:

‘I love you! I love you! I love you!’

The two cats had always considered the sofa their territory – and an ideal springboard to the aquarium – but now they beat a hasty retreat when Brutus delivered a vicious swipe to
the larger of the two. Julie smiled. Ever since he had grown attached to Boris, Brutus had been gaining in self-confidence, and would not tolerate either of his fellows going anywhere near the
aquarium. Julie thought very hard about love. With the thermometer in the water, she recalled what her mother had said, the mother whom she had left when she was so young. Sometimes you need to let
time do its work before you can understand what your parents were trying to teach you.

‘You’ll see, my dear, when you make love to a man you really love, the pleasure is different. It’s unique, because the heart makes it so much more powerful.’

Julie looked at her whistling Boris, who had just taken out his sheets of paper with his calculations on again. Her mother was right: last night she had finally felt what she had been waiting
for for so long. In the past, she had known many imperfect loves. Now the present was perfect, pluperfect, and at last she could imagine a future.

‘Boris, the thermometer still says nineteen!’

He put the sheets detailing the trajectories of each fish down on the coffee table. Well, the earlier trajectories, at thirty-two degrees.

‘
Golubchik?
Did you observe their new behaviour?’

In spite of her intense desire to understand Boris’s experiments and to share the effort that went into them, for all her three days’ experience in topology Julie had to confess she
was still very much a novice.

‘It’s not easy, with the thermometer.’

‘
Milaya
, look. Look carefully . . .’

‘Can I take the thermometer out of the water?’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

Julie watched the fish. Just above the surface of the water, Boris was tracing Number Two’s path with his finger. With his other hand, he was following Number Four. Julie cheated a little.
She just watched her man’s fingers as they performed their ballet.

‘They’re not following the same path any more!’

‘Exactly!’

Boris stared at Julie.

‘It’s obvious! Fish change direction in cold weather!’

Julie was pleased with her answer. It was so pleasant to be able to have these early morning exchanges with her learned Russian lover. But even after lovemaking, a mathematician who is a
candidate for the most magnificent of PhDs cannot help but make you feel that you are a long way from knowing as much as he does.

‘Look,
golubchik
, you’re missing something very obvious.’

Julie was a little disappointed, especially as Boris did not let the matter drop.

‘Take a good look – it’s striking.’

Boris could not grasp that topology, as expressed by the hermetic language of pure mathematics, especially first thing in the morning, was anything but obvious to the rest of the world. But
Julie wanted to share everything with him. She concentrated hard, searching for the obvious thing in the water. Suddenly she found it.

‘They’re following a new path!’

Boris nodded. ‘Yes, indeed . . . I am going to study their new trajectories at nineteen degrees and compare them with the ones at thirty-two. It should only delay my dissertation by a year
or two. We’ll see what comes of it. Despite my misfortune, I am lucky they did not die.’

Boris got up and gave a long sigh of disappointment at the thought that he would have to start his calculations all over again. But Julie the researcher had not finished.

‘It looks as if they’re swimming closer to each other.’

Boris quickly sat back down by the aquarium. Julie still had something to say.

‘That’s it! When it’s cold, they get closer to each other.’

Boris opened his big blue eyes. Across from him, Julie took a deep breath. Her eyes were sparkling.

‘And they’re swimming two by two, in pairs. They’re no longer plotting their course individually, avoiding the others. They’re doing it together. And it’s just
since they got cold that they’ve been like this. Look! Now they’re making double knots.’

Boris had never envisaged such a sophisticated topological conclusion. He leaned over the aquarium for a closer verification of his lovely Julie’s theory. Number Two could not stop rubbing
his right fin against the rear scales of Number Three. As for Number One, it came out from behind the little rockery with what looked like a silly grin on its face – a phenomenon rarely
observed in exotic fish in captivity – followed by Number Four, who gave a little flick of his rear fin, as if to adjust it, blowing bubbles all the while.

‘
Da . . . Da . . . Da.
’

Boris Bogdanov studied the woman beside him: not only did she fill his heart, but she had also just found a conclusion for a basic mathematical proof, easily demonstrable even by the kind of
maths student who repeats his first year, and yet he, Boris, had missed it altogether. When you are in love, you are as one. Filled with wonder, he stared at his lover.

‘Don’t you think, Julie, that this is a little like the fabulous discoveries by Pierre and Marie Curie?’

Julie racked her brains, going way back in time, but couldn’t find it.

‘I saw the film, when I was little. We’ll have to rent it.’

That was what Boris loved about Julie. She was natural, honest and logical. And she had soft skin, firm breasts, the body of a goddess and a torrid sensuality, not to mention the fact that she
was divinely good at kissing. Early in the morning the path between extreme mathematical thought and sudden desire of the most animal kind is much shorter than one might suppose, particularly for a
researcher who has just found what he was looking for.

‘
Golubchik
, come to the bedroom!’

‘Morning, lover boys!’

Alexis had entered the room without knocking. He was holding a tray. On it were two plates with bacon omelettes, two glasses of orange juice, four slices of toast and two piping hot strong
coffees. Simon could scarcely hide his emotion. He turned to Michel who was still sleeping against his shoulder.

‘Wake up, my love. Look at the yummy breakfast Alexis has made for us.’

Just four days earlier these two had hardly dared leave the house in each other’s company, and now they were being served a lovely breakfast by the neighbour from across the street –
a man whom they had known for only three days.