Impurity Larry Tremblay (novels for students .txt) 📖

existence … but Antoine can’t renew himself, that’s what he must tell them, the professor is dead … Look at him, he’s simply going on and on about the world’s great thinkers, while Alice has written a novel about the unsuspected baseness of the human soul. You don’t get the connection? He’ll explain it to you one more time. The soul is made up of three elements: the lustful, which is found in the gut; the rational, which is found in the head; and the third, which is found in the breast and is called … is called … the heart! A pure heart.

A student rises and taps Antoine on the shoulder.

“Sir, are you all right?”

Antoine looks at the girl’s face with astonishment. He is suddenly aware that the class is watching him, waiting for him to say something. He mumbles a few words and runs off.

The next day, he is unable to go back to work. The following day as well. The very idea of finding himself in front of a class gives him stomach cramps. The following days, the smallest task requires a huge effort: answering a letter, paying a bill, buying bread, eating, dressing himself.

His life is slipping through his fingers.

Anasty wind is ripping the leaves from the maple trees. Antoine is gazing fixedly at the cold October rain as it lashes the living room windows. His antidepressants are slowing the pace of his thoughts. Since he’s been on sick leave, he has been spending a lot of time in front of the TV set. He watches documentaries. He bemoans the fate of the polar bears; of geese being force-fed for their livers; of sharks being killed just for their fins. This sudden vulnerability seems to come from a miniature of himself, from a tiny little Antoine buried in a distant past. One night when he can’t sleep, he empties out his son’s closet, where his old jeans are gathering dust along with his faded T-shirts, a kung fu outfit, and two Halloween costumes that Jonathan had worn as a small child. He gathers up records, books, posters of actors and singers, the remains of his son’s still-recent adolescence, and dumps them all into garbage bags. He repeats the exercise with Alice’s clothes. He empties the medicine chest of all the beauty products that fill its shelves. He thinks he’s emptying out his head and his heart. But nothing works. He has the feeling that she is observing his slightest gesture, capturing his most intimate thoughts. He sleeps less and less, nightmares pulling him from his bed. He often has the same dream: he’s playing with little Jonathan, explaining to him that a cat says “meow,” that a cow says “moo.” Suddenly his hand detaches itself from his arm and scrabbles like a spider over his son’s body. Antoine then wakes up, drags himself to the living room, and for the tenth time listens to the last message Jonathan left on his voice mail. Then he dials his number, and at the last moment, hangs up.

By the middle of November, he has lost ten kilos. He’s let his beard grow. Its Nordic fairness is no more than a memory. After having been shut up at home for two months, he again goes out to buy the newspapers. Everything dealing with the Y2K bug draws his attention. The question all the news media are asking is how, on January 1, 2000, computers will interpret “01.01.00”? Because the “00” could mean both “2000” and “1900.” They’re anticipating a chaotic, disastrous situation when the new millennium kicks in: the obliteration of computer networks, plane crashes due to the malfunction of air traffic control, a financial system in a state of collapse, the accidental launching of nuclear missiles. On the night of December 31, Antoine gets up to make sure that the world is still out there. He sees that there is still electricity. He hears no suspicious noises such as the explosion of an airplane in flight. The telephone works. He turns on the radio and the TV and hears only year’s-end broadcasts with humorous flashbacks. He zaps, watches for a moment the New Year’s Eve broadcast from Times Square. Thousands of people are screaming with joy and drinking champagne, their smiles as broad as an ocean liner, surrounded by enormous publicity screens. Through his living-room windows, he contemplates the little piece of the world that is his: a snow-covered street, house fronts lit up with Christmas decorations. He’s disappointed. He would have preferred that the Y2K bug destroy all this masquerade. He would have preferred that the world be as badly off as himself. He would have preferred, above all, to disappear.

He goes into the “aquarium” and opens the iMac’s packing box. Unlike his wife, the computer was not even scratched at the time of the accident. Apple protected well its cheerful box, its plastic cover, and its hard foam balls. He plugs it in. The sound, as it starts up, reminds him of a gong’s vibration. The operating system’s icon smiles at him with its stylized twin faces, proclaiming that Apple, too, is poised on the shores of the third millennium. Antoine sheds hot tears.

* * *

On the afternoon of January 1, he is astounded when his son rings the doorbell in the company of Frédéric Létourneau. Antoine lets them in, still in his pyjamas, eyes bleary from his sleepless night. Jonathan has not seen his father for months, he doesn’t even know that he’s on sick leave. He apologizes, he should have called to announce their visit. They’re on their way to one of Frédéric’s sisters’, who lives in the neighbourhood, where a big family party will celebrate the year 2000. He thought he would take the opportunity to introduce him to Frédéric, especially because his friend has a proposal for him.

Frédéric holds out his hand to Antoine. He has no choice but to ask them in.

“Well, Happy New Year.”

They take off