Impurity Larry Tremblay (novels for students .txt) 📖

reek of urine. Antoine bombards him with questions. He wants to know if he’s using drugs, whom he hangs out with, why he’s doing this homeless number when he lacks for nothing. Is it to punish his parents? Has he thought about the anguish his father has been living for two days? Does he even have a heart? Antoine takes him home, runs a bath for him. Undressing him, he notices a number of small sores on his arms and legs. He questions him again. No answer. Jonathan seems to be absent from himself. Antoine puts him in the tub. The surface of the water is weighed down with grime. Antoine gets undressed, joins his son in the bath. Soaps him, rinses him, holds in his arms his little seagull whom he’s nearly lost, whom he no longer recognizes. Finally, Jonathan looks at him. Softly he sings the first verse of Nirvana’s “Rape Me.”

As soon as he has finished his second coffee, Vincent goes to the student residence. Philippe has insisted that he return Laure’s letters as soon as possible. When his friend opens the door, Vincent notices that Philippe seems nervous.

“I didn’t sleep a wink. I shouldn’t have given you those letters. I didn’t have the right.”

“Here, I’m giving them back.”

At once Philippe stows the small metal box.

“Did you read them?”

“Of course. If you want my honest opinion, I thought they were rather …”

“Yes, tell me what you think …”

“… drab.”

“Explain.”

“I don’t know Laure, but it’s clear that she has suffered a form of brainwashing from you. All she does is repeat over and over, more and more naively, your own dubious ideas about life, love, eternity. You’re harming her.”

“Laure is perfectly able to think by herself and I’ve never imposed a thing on her. Between us there’s always been a free exchange of reflections. And in any case, we don’t have to prove that purity of the heart exists.”

“And I’m going to prove to you that it doesn’t.”

Leaving his son’s apartment, Antoine doesn’t go directly home. The evening is warm, but a light breeze keeps it from being stifling. He parks on avenue Bernard and orders a beer at his usual café. He chooses the same brand that he drank at his son’s place. He feels bad. If only he could go back to that spoiled conversation, apologize, question Jonathan, listen to him. Something rattled him just now: he felt betrayed.

Back at his house he fixes himself a sandwich and watches the news on TV. The John F. Kennedy Junior story is nearing an end. He zaps for a good hour, unable to quit savouring the very last drop of news about the “national tragedy.” Two days earlier, President Clinton had given his okay for burial at sea. The ashes of the three victims were scattered off Martha’s Vineyard, a few kilometres from the accident site, to the sound of a brass quintet playing the naval hymn “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” The official funeral took place the next day in New York. The ceremony wasn’t broadcast on either TV or radio. Senator Edward Kennedy delivered the eulogy to his nephew. Caroline Kennedy, sister of John-John, quoted a well-known passage from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Antoine realizes that during these days of scrutinizing the Kennedy family’s agony, he has forgotten the sorrow in which the death of his wife has plunged him. As if his own grief has lost its topicality. He knows that stating the matter in such terms comes close to pettiness. Grief cannot be reduced to a news item on television, quickly buried by another, more current one. It is a state that puts us in relationship with the deceased. Antoine turns off the TV and, to redeem himself in his own eyes, thinks back to the funeral of his wife. He does not speak during the ceremony organized in tribute to her. Louis-Martin Vallières, Alice’s publisher, monopolizes the microphone to recall the main stages in the career of the prolific writer she had been. He praises her rigour, her intuition, her ability to understand the period in which she lived.

“She had a rare talent for creating characters who resembled her contemporaries without ever falling into self-indulgence. She had a gift for captivating her readers from the very first line.”

Then he reads some passages from her work and finishes with a saying of Confucius: “If we don’t know life, how can we know death?” According to the publisher, Alice Livingston had at length put into practice the thinking of the Chinese philosopher. Antoine is the first to be surprised. Never had his wife mentioned Confucius in his presence, nor does he remember seeing any of his books in the house. Does the publisher want to wrap his favourite author in an aura of wisdom? Going to get a beer in the kitchen, Antoine howls the words of Prospero that Caroline Kennedy had spoken: “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” That’s what he would have read if he had found the strength to speak. Alice deserved to have Shakespeare recited at her funeral as much as John-John.

Going back to the living room he notices the red light on the telephone, indicating a message. He starts the voice mail:

“Are you there? Are you listening to me? Maybe you’re too big a coward to answer. What is it about my new life that bothers you? The fact that Frédéric is twenty-five years older than me? He loves me with a love that makes me grow. The very opposite of yours. Is that what’s bothering you?”

Laure leaves her place to go to school. Vincent follows her. It was easy for him to find her whereabouts thanks to information gleaned from her letters. He’d thought she was blond; her hair is black. He’d pictured her as tiny, introverted; she’s tall and slim, walks with her head in