Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather (19 page)

I went into the house with my video camera, and found my mum and dad in the sitting room. The television was switched off and they were sitting next to each other on the
three-thousand-dollar sofa. My dad’s arm was around my mum’s shoulder. They both turned to look at me at the same time. I don’t even remember who it was who spoke.

‘You see? All’s well that ends well.’

Nine years later

Pipo slowly does as he’s told, with his tired body. He has always been a white dog, but now he has new white hairs. He is really very white, almost transparent. I know he’ll only
roll over once. As loyal as they come, until his dying day, he’ll do his little trick to make me happy. Dogs are like great champions – you mustn’t get attached to them, otherwise
when you see how they’re all done in at the end of their career, it will make you sad.

‘Snap your fingers! Make him crawl!’

‘No, he’s too old now.’

‘I want you to make him crawl, I said!’

When you’re twenty you have your whole life ahead of you. But always trailing along behind you there is your little sister.

‘I want you to make him crawl, I said!’

If my sister, at the age of nine, is a right little horror, it’s because she is the baby of the family. But that isn’t the only reason. My parents named her Aqua. At the register
office, the registrar warned them that a name that’s too original can be hard on a child, and can be a burden in the long run.

‘But that was the moment her life began! We can hardly call her “In-the-Shower”, can we?’

Rumour has it that a lot of children were conceived during the ice storm. They even wrote about it in the newspaper. But when your name is Aqua, it does make life tough. I may have already
mentioned that children are cruel to one another.

‘Aqua . . . ducked? Aqua . . . lung?’

Pipo had his usual ritual wee on the little tree that had bent double under the ice. It’s grown up to be a handsome maple tree, not yet the tallest in the street, but a fine upstanding
one, its top aiming proudly for the sky.

‘I told you, I want you to make him crawl!’

‘He’s too old. Simon and Michel don’t want us to tire him out.’

‘They don’t need to know. It’ll be our secret!’

Michel and Simon never again bought Chivas Royal Salute 21 Year Old. They even decided never to drink it again. Those moments they had thought were special had concealed
nothing more than a desire not to exist.

When Simon went to speak to the president of the Quebec psychologists’ association, it was with his head on a platter, for he reasoned that if he cut it off right from the start it
wouldn’t hurt as much. But even when you think you’re done for, there are truths in life just waiting to catch up with you.

‘Simon, it’s hardly important. Look at me. I have a big belly and not a hair on my head! Where do you think I met Sonia? She’s twenty-three years younger than I am! Have you
taken a good look at me? Do you see what a heart-throb I am?’

At Météo Canada, the revelation that Michel was gay did not cause any storms; if anything, there was a thaw. Now everyone knew. A revelation is not just an inner light, it’s
a glow which illuminates the true face you show the world, and it ends up changing what the world sees.

‘Why don’t you want to make him crawl?’

Was I like this when I was little? Did people have to say the same thing twenty-five times until I finally got it?

I pulled gently on Pipo’s lead so we could finish our walk around the block. He followed, taking tiny little steps. My mobile rang. They were calling me from home.

‘Staff Sergeant Dad here! The twins have just arrived!’

‘Pipo, time to go home.’

‘I want you to make him crawl.’

‘Shut up and get a move on!’

On that fateful 9 January 1998, when my mother and father told me that they were not going to split up after all, I was not able to savour my joy for long.

‘Alexandria! Alexandra!’

Julien and the twins had been without power for three days. They lived in Montérégie, a region that had been hit hard by the ice storm. So there was a price to be paid for
happiness regained. It was as if the sky were sending me the bill.

The sirens in the port of Alexandria

Still sing the same melody . . . wow wow . . .

The twins ran all over the place and jumped on anything that might be remotely bouncy. They barged into my bedroom without knocking and wanted me to play with them no matter what. This vision of
hell lasted three whole weeks until, finally, they went home.

But the virtue of time is that it enables plants to grow, even the ones you thought you were allergic to. If they become beautiful and bloom with lovely petals, you don’t look at them the
same way. Nowadays Alexandria and Alexandra have transformed their melody into a siren song.

‘Go on, sweetie-pie, tell us, which one of us has nicer boobs?’

Now I feel totally at ease with the subject, and I can claim a certain amount of experience. We often talk about it with Alex. We have spent every summer for the last eight years in Mexico, in
his little white house with the lovely name,
La Pequeña Felicidad
, The Little Happiness.

That day when I got my video camera back, after we said goodbye on the stairway, Alex went to join his dad, who was waiting for him with the telephone on his lap. Alexis
unfolded a ragged little piece of paper with Dorores’s phone number on it. He hesitated for a long time, for fear she might have forgotten him. But even a thousand years later you remember a
voice you have loved. All she had to do was pick up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Dorores! It’s me, Alexis!’

‘
¿Me perdóna tu, mi amor?
’

Thanks to Simon’s ice therapy, Alexis had forgiven himself and no longer held any grudges towards anyone, least of all Dorores. He went from one construction site to the next, and sang of
love and hope on the pavements of Old Montreal, and eventually he was able to buy two single tickets to Cancún. Alexis and Alex took off for Mexico in early June 1998, four weeks before the
end of the year. The educational director didn’t object to Alex missing the last month of school: he’d turned into a star pupil. But it had really got her down, even though she’d
been in such good spirits ever since she got engaged to her fellow coccyx injury victim. She’d even had to tell the principal.

‘We’ll have to cancel the party in the cafeteria that we’d planned for after the final round of
Blooming Geniuses.
Without Alex, the school has no hope of
winning.’

The world needs its outsiders, its dark horses who end up making it first across the finish line, otherwise hope would never be anything more than one never-ending race.

‘I told you, I want you to make him crawl!’

I ran up the stairs to my apartment four at a time, with my sister at my heels and Pipo in my arms, a little dog who was only too happy not to have to subject his four skinny little paws to any
further exertion.

‘I’ll tell Mummy that you were mean to me!’

‘You do that. But you won’t be able to play on the computer with Olga.’

Olga is Aqua’s best friend. It’s no coincidence; the sky certainly ordained it. They were born on the same day, almost at the same time, at the Sainte-Justine Hospital. Olga never
makes fun of my sister’s name. Only once, when they were fighting over a Russian doll, did she try.

‘Aqua . . . rium!’

Although my sister forgave Olga fairly quickly, Boris was hurt.

‘Olga! You must not make fun of Daddy’s PhD!’

Boris has changed a great deal since obtaining his PhD in mathematics from McGill University. Now a leading world expert on topology, he contributes regularly to
Nature
, the famous
scientific journal, with the findings from his research. And the day he received the Fields medal, the highest award there is for a mathematician, he felt that at last he had found his place among
his childhood heroes, those glorious figureheads of the communist regime whose path he had wanted to follow to join the dynasty of great scientists of the former Soviet empire.

‘
Da . . . Da . . . Da . . .
’

He has a big office at the university, access to which is rigorously monitored by his very personal assistant, Julie. Only Brutus is allowed to go in and sit on the lap of the great scholar.
Julie, her blouses always buttoned up to her chin, is very wary of his female colleagues: they may have all their prestigious academic qualifications, but she doesn’t like them hanging round
her beloved Boris’s department.

‘Mademoiselle, this is a prestigious university. I am of the opinion that your outfit is an insult to its history, and a hindrance to those who seek to perpetuate the tradition of quiet
contemplation for the good of Humanity! In other words, the next time you wear such a low-cut neckline, you can read all about your future in the employment section of
La
Presse
.’

We’d been sitting round the table when Julie told us that story. She had nothing to hide from her friends. She was still just as natural as ever, as if, by coming back to
our neighbourhood, she felt just the way she had ten years earlier. These days she’s a fine Westmount lady, living in a huge house with a lawn imported from London and maintained by a
gardener who speaks only English. But she hasn’t forgotten a thing, and every year she reminds me of the fact.

‘You’re a lucky boy that there’s a statute of limitations for having filmed my boobs!’

Michel was the only one who didn’t hear what she said. He preferred playing with the children. He and Simon had got married, but they’d never been able to adopt.
Dura lex, sed
lex
.

Aqua and Olga were older, but now they had to share their toys with Natasha and Igor, the youngest, whose cheekbones were as prominent as his father’s.

‘Mummy says that Daddy scored a lot of short-handed goals!’

The children returned to the table screaming with joy when my mum emerged from the kitchen with an immense home-baked
galette des Rois
, still the best in the world.
What had once been just a family tradition was now a pretext for all of us to gather every year at the beginning of January to commemorate the ice storm that had brought us all together. We always
told the same stories, but that didn’t matter. We never got tired of hearing them.

‘And then I said to Boris, they’re swimming two by two, in pairs. They’re not swimming all on their own and avoiding each other any more. They’re together now that
they’re cold – look, now they’re making double knots!’

My dad got the bean. My mum, naturally, was his queen. She put on her crown, taking care that it didn’t slip. Everyone applauded, amidst peals of laughter. My parents looked at me closely
for a moment. All it took was one look and we knew we were all remembering the same scene in the kitchen when they had told me the worst news ever. Mum and Dad hugged each other, smiled at me, then
they kissed.

All afternoon I savoured the company of these people who seemed to love each other so very much. We met only once a year now, but we knew we were bound forever by that incredible ice storm
– so incredible it could even have been downright supernatural.

That night in my room, after I’d shooed Aqua away from my computer, I waited for her to stop screaming outside my door so that I could finish writing this story.

The older you get, the better you understand the inner paths of your childhood, which can sometimes take you on strange journeys. You are able to analyse them, to figure out the causes, motives,
destinations. And above all your memories help you to distinguish how much is true in everything that seems so unreal. But there is one thing I will never try to get to the bottom of: how could I
have imagined I was the one who caused the ice storm? I just didn’t want my parents to split up, that’s all.

I haven’t told you my name. Now that we’re on the last page, it really doesn’t matter. I just wanted to remember that January in 1998, and everything that it inspired in me, so
that my story can belong to all the children who would like to make themselves heard.

May all of life be this beautiful.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . .

. . . To everyone who, while I was writing, took the time to read the manuscript and share their constructive thoughts.

. . . To Titus, and all the team at the Café République in Outrement, for keeping that same table for me, along with the same chair, the same cup and the same smile.

. . . To my loved ones, because without them, all these words would have no meaning and no significance.

About the Author

Pierre Szalowski has been, at one time or another, a press photographer, a print journalist, the editor of a monthly boxing magazine, a graphic designer, an artistic and
creative director in PR, a political communications counsellor, an educational software designer and an interactive content producer and then the vice-president of the videogame company Ubisoft
– but throughout it all he has wanted his life to be a permanent adventure.