From that point on, Sanguinet began to take Raisin with him on his rounds. The word was that Sanguinet had decided that Raisin’s big fists could be good for something, and that he’d made him his collector. In fact, Sanguinet never asked Raisin to beat up anyone, never mind to kill somebody. And he never even asked him why he’d come knocking at his door that night with a rifle in his hands.
The next year, during the summer, without thinking, Martial, who’d tried hard to forget the whole story and given up for good on getting his five hundred dollars back, let his feet guide him to the front of the Blackburn house. Sanguinet and Raisin were there on the stoop, beers in hand, watching the sun go down behind the backstop. Raisin waved to him.
“Hey, Martial.”
Martial froze and broke out in a sweat. He waved back.
“How ya doing, boys?”
Sanguinet offered:
“Come have a beer with us, Martial.”
Martial still hesitated, then, not knowing what else to do, he sat down beside them.
The night was soft and calm, and you could hear the stomachs of Raisin and Martial as they gurgled in the evening air. At first, all three sucked on their beers in silence, then the conversation found its rhythm. They talked about the weather, the sports scores, and the enticing neckline of a barmaid at the brasserie. Subjects that seemed to have been invented, that night, just for them, just so people like them might have something to talk about.
House Bound
Hardly anyone believes me, but when I bought the house in 1993 it had settled so far down that I had to take eighteen inches off the height of each wall before shoring up the foundations. I revved up my chainsaw right in the middle of the living room and carved away like a madman, just watching so as not to slice through any load-bearing beams. It was no big deal because in the beginning it was all mine to fix up. A lot of people said “That couldn’t be,” and I don’t blame them because there are lots of stories that are hard to fathom when it comes to that house.
When I saw it for the first time it was on behalf of a client. Armand Sénécal. He was going to buy it, and he asked me to inspect it first. I came along Rue Forster, turned up the driveway with its five hundred-year-old trees on each side, and parked in the turnaround at the end, right in front of an imposing residence that seemed really small under the trees. I let out a whistle, sitting alone in the car. I loved that house at first sight, and then a bit more with each defect I found there that would put Armand off. The roof was a disaster, and I would have bet anything that what was just under it was rotten too. The second and third floor walls showed clear signs of water infiltration. The basement was a humid cave, and you could tell just by the smell that the French drain was clogged. The tennis court in the back was nice, but it had been left untended for at least ten years. And then there was the icing on the cake. All across the property there were things the agent tried to pass off as sculptures, but that looked like junk picked up in a scrapyard: steel rods wrapped in barbed wire in the middle of a flower bed; big sheets of iron and copper soldered to look like African masks and fastened to stakes here and there on the front lawn; beside the tennis court there was an old yellow bus planted upright in the ground, with five big tractor wheels around it. A yellow bus sticking straight up in the air, I swear on my daughter’s head.
Apparently the house belonged to the Villeneuve family, town notables who’d owned a number of businesses in the region, beginning with a rock quarry lower down on the hill, towards the Saguenay. Armand said there was an old path starting behind the house, which brought you there on foot. The house was the family’s summer home from about the 1910s to the 1960s. The last residents were Viateur Villeneuve, his wife Claire, and their four children. Old man Villeneuve was a pretty well-known local artist. He’d taught at the trade school, where they did woodwork and cabinetmaking. The children were gone, the old man was dead, and now Madame Villeneuve wanted to sell the house, which was too big for her.
I asked Armand:
“How much does she want for it, Madame Villeneuve?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“Well, if you pay two hundred and fifty thousand for that, you can be sure of two things. First, you’re going to regret it, and second, I’m going to go all over town telling everyone ‘Armand Sénécal has a heart of gold.’”
Saying that about anyone around here is not exactly a compliment. Armand swore under his breath, then said:
“How much would you give, at the most?”
“A hundred and eighty five, maybe a hundred and ninety thousand. That’s if I had two hundred thousand more to sink into the renovations, and ten years of my life to spare.”
He thanked me, and we each went our way. Two days later, Madame Villeneuve, in person, called me at my office. She sang me a chorus of insults. She even tacked on some “crisses” and “tabarnacs” that coming from her had the ring of responses committed to memory for Mass. When she’d finished her bit of theatre, I put in, “Madame Villeneuve, I’m going to tell you something. Your house, I want it. I’m going to give you a hundred thousand dollars for it, with a disclaimer clause in the act of sale. That way you’ll be sure that I’ll never go after you for a hidden defect. Talk to some people with their heads on straight, if you know any. They’ll tell you that you’ll never get more than that.”
She hung up in my face. The next week I passed in front of the house, I turned around in the driveway, and I stopped the car. I found the house beautiful, with its roof broken up by attic windows, the grey asphalt shingles peeling away on top, the two dormers projecting from the front façade, the large cedar shutters, and the hoary whitewashed walls. I couldn’t help myself.
I saw Madame Villeneuve peering out the window, through the curtains. I took off immediately. As if I felt guilty. I breathed a long sigh and for once decided to listen to the voice that always talks into my ear, telling me what to do, and that now was saying, “Forget it.”
A year later, I was living elsewhere. I’d just finished moving with my wife and little girl into a house that I wasn’t crazy about, but that would do us for a while. The telephone rang. It was the good woman Villeneuve.
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes, Madame. What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to know if your offer still holds.”
The truth was, that it didn’t. I’d just transferred everything into the new house, and moved my office. But business was good, and I knew that it wouldn’t take long for me to refill my coffers. I also knew that if Madame Villeneuve were calling me now, it was because she’d spent a good year trying to sell her house.
I said:
“Yes, Madame, it still holds. Except that I can’t give you the money for at least three months. I’ll need time to sell my house here.”
“I understand. That seems reasonable.”
“But there’s one more thing: I’m not going to move my wife and daughter into your shithouse without doing a minimum of renovation.”
She coughed.
“What are you saying?”
“I’d like you out within two weeks.”
“You want to pay me in six months and turf me out today. Is that it?”
“Right.”
“Can I think about it?”
“Take your time, Madame.”
That time I was the one who hung up. It was her son who called me two weeks later. He’d had the papers drawn up, and he was anxious for me to sign. He was in the Saguenay for just one week, enough time to move his mother into a retirement home and liquidate her possessions. At the notary’s, he offered to leave me the furniture or the objects already in place. I replied that they could keep their old rubbish, and that they were lucky I wasn’t charging them to remove the old man’s rusty totems from my property. I then asked him, just to make conversation, if his mother had had him close the deal because she was sick, and he replied: