Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather (2 page)

‘At least an alarm clock is more practical than a bathrobe . . .’

‘You mustn’t forget that it’s not the present that counts, but the thought . . .’

I could tell my mum wasn’t really talking to me, but to my dad. I went back to the box with the video camera. I sat on the floor with my back to them. I could sense that they didn’t
agree but, with such a beautiful toy in my hands, that didn’t seem like my problem. I took out the instructions. My parents were whispering. I pretended to read, and I overheard everything,
intentionally. I didn’t know my mum knew how to swear.

‘Shit, Martin. A thousand bucks for that camera! Don’t you start playing that game.’

‘He’s been wanting one for a long time, and have you seen his report card?’

‘He always has good report cards!’

‘Aren’t you the one who said we ought to encourage him?’

‘If you buy him a camera when he’s only eleven, how are you going to encourage him when he’s sixteen? With a car?’

My mum got up and left the room. Hearing them argue because my present was too expensive made me sorry I didn’t believe in Santa Claus any more. Especially since I had already heard way
too many arguments this year. They almost always began with the same sentence:
Don’t you ever feel like you’re wasting your life, sitting there glued to the television?

I turned to my dad. He was trying hard to smile. Then he stood up, slowly. No, very slowly.

‘Urghh! My head!’

He went over to the bathroom. He tried to open the door but it was locked.
Knock-knock
!

‘It’s engaged!’

My mum shouted so loud that he put his hands over his ears. He came back and slumped into his armchair, almost embracing it with his body. Robot-like, he reached for the remote. Click. And on it
went, the blahblah of the television.

It was nine fifty-nine on the news channel.

Christmas goes by so fast.

Sunday, 4 January 1998

THEY’RE ONLY KIDS!

Only three bulbs twinkled on a tiny string of Christmas lights on the tiny Christmas tree that stood on the coffee table next to two empty glasses and a bottle of wine that had
breathed its last. On the sofa two cats nestled together, sleeping on a yellow shirt rolled up in a ball, its bottom buttons still done up. On the floor was a twisted pair of men’s trousers,
clearly removed in a great hurry. A short red dress lay carefully folded on the back of the sofa.

Along the hall, the bedroom door was ajar. In the dishevelled bed two shapes could be seen, both sound asleep. According to the clock radio it was two in the afternoon.

‘Psst! Psst! Come on, here you go!’

In the kitchen, near a little flap at the bottom of the door to the balcony, a black kitten hesitated.

‘Here, kitty kitty!’

The little creature took a step forward, crouched down and put its head through the flap. A hand outside, reaching up from the ground floor, encouraged the kitten, rolling a little red ball from
left to right in the snow.

‘Who’s this ball for, hmm?’

The kitten seemed to think it just might be for him. For a moment he stayed poised. Yes, it must be his! He pounced. A hand grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. So it wasn’t for him
after all.

Meow!

On the sofa, deaf to the cry of distress from their kidnapped fellow creature, neither cat budged. The three little lights on the tree went on blinking. In the bedroom, one of the bodies had
turned away from the other. A man’s muscular arm emerged from the sheets to hang down the side of the bed, accidentally brushing the woman’s back. She murmured something, then silence
returned.

Ding-dong!

The man twitched, and sat up with a start. He looked around and in a panic he turned to the front door.

‘Julie! Wake up!’

‘Let me sleep . . .’

‘There’s someone at the door!’

‘You’re dreaming . . . Go back to sleep.’

Ding-dong!

The man ran frantically for his trousers, pulling them on even more hurriedly than he had removed them the night before. He bent over the sofa and quickly tugged at his yellow shirt. Two cats
flew into the air for an instant before landing neatly on their paws. Buttoning his shirt, the man went to shake Julie.

‘Does anyone know I’m here?’

Julie raised her head calmly.

‘No one but me, the cats and you.’

The man looked hard at her for a second then turned, worried, to the two cats, who were purring innocently. Quite often a man is even more idiotic after lovemaking than he was before. Julie
pushed back the sheet and got up. Her body was absolutely perfect. She headed into the bathroom, barely glancing at the man who was tucking his shirt into his trousers.

‘You’re married, is that it?’

The man pretended he hadn’t heard, devoting all his attention to zipping up his flies. Julie reappeared, wearing a short, red, faux-silk bathrobe.

‘Luc, honey – that is your name, right, Luc? You’ve got a gift, I must say. Last night you were single, then one fuck with me and by morning you’re married.’

Resigned, Julie pulled her bathrobe over her breasts. With a quick knot she cinched the belt around her waist, to keep the flimsy robe closed.

Ding-dong!

‘Does your wife have a firearms permit?’

The moron seemed to have to think about that. Out in the hallway, Julie slid on a pair of high heels. Suddenly taller, she seemed even more slender, even more beautiful, even more perfect. From
the way she walked it was clear she was used to perching on high heels. Her bottom swayed beneath the silky material. The man, terrified, hid behind the first thing he saw, a hat stand. His gaze
followed Julie as she went to the front door. He might have made love to this gorgeous woman last night, but he wasn’t looking at her bottom now. Julie planted herself firmly in front of the
door, then opened it, unafraid. She knew she had done nothing wrong.

Meow!

There was the kitten, in the arms of a boy about twelve years old. Towering on her heels, Julie seemed disproportionately tall. The child’s head came no higher than her breasts. Julie
leaned down towards the cat in her young neighbour’s arms. Her flimsy bathrobe gaped open slightly.

‘Brutus! What are you doing out again?’

The boy’s eyes zoomed in on Julie’s half-naked breasts.

‘He got out again!’

‘That’s the third time this week . . .’

Julie, who was well acquainted with the ways of men who look at women, immediately understood what her providential cat-rescuer was playing at. She leaned forward again and reached out for the
kitten. Her bathrobe opened even further. The child didn’t move. One of Julie’s breasts was now almost completely bared.

‘It’ll catch cold . . .’

The boy, mesmerised by her hardening nipple, didn’t budge.

‘Alex, I’m talking about the cat. That’s your name, right? Alex?’

‘Yes, Julie.’

She leaned lower still to take Brutus. Alex, transfixed by the pair of breasts floating before him, practically touching his face, didn’t seem to be able to let go of the kitten.

‘Alex? It’s not just the cat who’ll catch cold . . .’

Meow!

Alex relented and handed Brutus to her, and the kitten immediately curled against his mistress’s indubitably warmer chest.

‘Thanks, Alex.’

‘If he runs away again, I’ll bring him back.’

Julie, amused, stared for a moment at the young boy: she liked his boldness.

‘I’m sure you will!’

The door closed with a slam. Alex, proud as any prepubescent boy would be, turned to face the street. He raised his thumb with satisfaction – mission accomplished, victory! But still
curious, he turned back to the glass in Julie’s door, for a glimpse of her bottom disappearing down the corridor. Suddenly he recoiled and rushed down the steps. He had seen the man.

‘Who was that?’

‘A young neighbour just brought Brutus back . . . Although I’m pretty sure he came for the view!’

‘What?’

‘He couldn’t stop looking at my tits, is what I mean.’

‘Well, there’s definitely something to look at!’

The moron had reverted to type. Depending on what he expects from a woman, a guy can change all the time. Last night he’d played
Pretty Woman
, this morning it was
It Happened
One Night
and just now,
Failure to Launch.

‘And did he pay, just now, to have a look?’

The look Julie gave him wasn’t dark. It was pitch black. Blacker than black.

‘And did you pay for last night? It cost you three dances, a bottle of wine from the corner shop and two hours of lying.’

To take a stripper home and get into her bed was the Holy Grail of the entire straight male population, the ultimate goal of a game where you bluff your way in, just like in poker. But the
important thing at the end of the game is to slip in a harmless word, something to defuse the atmosphere as you leave the table, after you’ve cleaned up.

‘Christ they start young these days!’

‘Fuck off! They’re only kids!’

FISH CHANGE DIRECTION IN COLD WEATHER

Four exotic fish, lit by a white neon light, were swimming in circles around an enormous aquarium set up right in the middle of the room. A plank set on two trestles was
sagging beneath the weight of books on pure mathematics. Scattered over the books were sheets of paper covered in scribbled equations and obscure calculations. Other papers were strewn across the
floor, some of them crumpled. In a corner was a sports bag bearing the logo of the Val-d’Or ice hockey team. Three hockey sticks had been set on top of it – sticks for a left-hander,
with a very curved blade – an attacker’s blade by the looks of it.

Across the street a door opened. Julie appeared on the ground floor landing, still wearing her very short bathrobe. She tossed an empty wine bottle disdainfully into the blue recycling box and
it smashed. A man rushed out next to her, looking left and then right. He gave a slight wave that Julie did not return. She went in and slammed the door behind her. End of love story.

Boris Bogdanov had looked up from his reading – a book by Andreï Markov, not the hockey player but the great Russian mathematician. From his window he had seen everything. An
enigmatic smile spread over Boris Bogdanov’s face, as if he knew something his neighbour didn’t.

Was Boris Bogdanov in love with his neighbour?

Nyet!
Boris Bogdanov had never been in love, because in his entire life the only things that had ever interested him were himself and his fish. He had arrived from Russia in 1990 at the
age of eighteen, dreaming of changing his life on the ice of Quebec’s arenas. He was offered a chance to do just that, a spot at the beginning of the season at the training camp for the
Foreurs de Val-d’Or in the Major Junior Hockey League. The recruiters thought this young Russian must be a rare pearl. And he’d fulfilled his promise, just not quite in the way that
they’d expected.

Connoisseurs know that Russians don’t like to play rough, but that they are very talented and born scorers. Boris Bogdanov had told the recruiters a few little lies about his past as a
player for the Dynamo school club in Moscow; not big lies, just two dozen goals or so a year – half of them when his team was short-handed!

The first day of camp, during the rookie match, everyone quickly realised that he wasn’t a real Russian player as far as his talent was concerned, but he was a real Russian player when it
came to playing rough. During the first match, playing short-handed, Boris soon caught the attention of a big beefy player from Alberta who was out for his place in the sun. For this
muscle-mountain, hard play was his meat and potatoes, the key to everything, the only corporal expression he was capable of. So this colossus did what all great predators do. He was a blue, so he
looked at the backs of the reds for the weakest prey. The swiftest gazelle always gets away from the lion. For the slower ones, it’s every gazelle for himself. And for the slowest of the
slow, it’s amen.

Boris Bogdanov never thought of playing the puck when it went into the corner. He was just trying to get away from the enormous Albertan chasing after him. He heard him grunt. Boris wasn’t
as quick on his blades as he’d claimed. He didn’t manage to get very far before there was a terrible
ker-runch!

Boris Bogdanov, who was not all that hefty a guy, dislocated his shoulder when he hit the boards. All in all he had played only forty-five seconds in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League,
thirty-two of which were spent running away. In Val-d’Or, people like hard men, real men – but above all, they don’t like being taken for fools.

‘Don’t count on us to pay for your ticket home!’

The equipment attendant did let him keep the hockey bag with the club’s colours.

‘A little souvenir for your kids.’

Just because you’ve told lies doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. The fact that Boris Bogdanov is an intellectual is proof of this. But it is a very intellectual stance to think that
everyone else is an idiot.

If Boris did have a fault, that was it. He always went around with a little smirk on his face that meant he knew things others knew nothing about. He was a brilliant scholar and he knew it.
Russians don’t just make timid hockey players. They also make great mathematicians.

Boris Bogdanov was passionate about topology – about one of its disciplines anyway. Knot theory is a complex mathematical science that provides explanations for very simple things in life.
When you pull on the yarn of a tangled-up ball of wool, sometimes it comes untangled right away, sometimes the knot gets even tighter. Life’s just like that: little actions can have big
repercussions. And the same action doesn’t always have the same effect.

Boris Bogdanov’s exotic fish facilitated his research for a new theory. A fish in an aquarium always swims around the same course: that’s the yarn. The fish unwinds its yarn
according to the presence of other fish – friend or enemy – in the aquarium. Whenever a new inhabitant arrives, it must modify its usual path. For Boris, the trajectories of the fish
were like so many threads, tangling and untangling.