The van was a little balky, the way only a thirty-two-year-old vehicle can be, but I hung in there until the engine kicked to life. Headed toward the church, now my church, bearing a ring of golden keys. “What treasures will these unlock?” I asked Moon, shaking the keys in front of her. She swiped at them, once, twice, with her right paw. I was adrenalized—she and I both—but kept to the speed limit, or a hair above. An impatient motorcyclist rode my bumper for a while, which I couldn’t figure out. It was a two-lane highway. What did he expect me to do? Speed up? Pull over to the shoulder? When I did neither he passed me on a solid line, while tapping his finger against the side of his head. He had the biggest, blackest, loudest Harley ever made. On the back of his leather jacket were letters stencilled in white:
IF YOU CAN
READ THIS
THE BITCH
FELL OFF
As I neared the church the sun moved behind a mountain and everything went grey, as if a giant bird had just spread its wings. At this latitude, at this time of year, the sun sets before five. No wonder they drink as much as I do. Did.
In the failing light, at the front door of the rectory, I misinserted three of the keys while clutching Moon to my chest. Before trying the fourth I noticed the door had a metal clapper, a splendid winged-cat gargoyle that I was surprised wasn’t stolen. It made me think of Scrooge’s pareidolia, his perception of Marley’s face in the door knocker … The cat began to scramble so I tried the fourth key, which fit. The door resisted at first, then opened with a luscious crunch. I set Moon down and she scampered down the hall, toward the kitchen.
I should have been dancing on air—pride of ownership, symbolic passage and all that—but all I could think of was the death that occurred upstairs. And that the place wasn’t really mine. I was about to move on, to the church, when I remembered something more pressing. Leaving wet boot tracks, I made my way down the wood-floor hallway to the kitchen. Only five of the six cats answered the dinner bell. Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Pluto and Comet. Moon seemed to have disappeared.
On my way to the church I couldn’t resist taking a long-cut through the ruined graveyard, which looked like something out of Poe in the crepuscular mists and eerie polar half-light. From a pine or spruce came the threnody of a sparrow, a white-throated sparrow known as the Canada bird, according to Céleste, because of the song the males sing: Oh-sweet-Canada-Canada-Canada. A trio of crows began to drown it out, cawing as they hopped from stone to stone, chortling at my wingless body. I followed them to a tall white pine, under whose skirt of branches I glimpsed three tiny headstones. One had a smashed, forgotten wreath. The others were defaced with felt-tip capitals: FLQ! on one; BETTER DEAD THAN GAY on the other. Must ask Céleste what FLQ stood for. And what solvent best dissolves Magic Marker.
Beyond the tree was the section reserved for animals, which the real estate agent had found so preposterous. I paused to examine the modest stones. The epitaphs—poignant, sad—often contrasted humans with beasts. There was this tribute, for instance, the oldest one I could find, to an Irish setter named Bailey, died December 31, 1906:
Approach, vain man! and bid thy pride be mute;
Start not—this monument records a brute.
In sculptured shrine may sleep some human hog—
This stone is faithful to a faithful dog.
And this one to a husky named Grey, died April 5, 1942:
Here rests the relics of a friend below,
Blessed with more sense than half the folks I know;
Fond of his ease and to no parties prone,
He damned no sect, but calmly kept to his own;
Performed his functions well in every way,
Blush, Christians, if you can, and copy Grey.
As I was mulling these words over I heard a series of sounds, seconds apart, from two different directions. First the noise of a revving engine from the church lane. Then a louder sound, a growl from directly behind me. I turned round. All the hairs on my body prickled up, and my face felt like it was on fire. A large cat, like a sabre-toothed tiger, was crouching in front of me, with a head and body tinged with gold, and a tail at least three feet long. I yelled out, not from fright, not to scare it away, but because I felt its claws, or conceivably teeth, sinking into my right leg. I closed my eyes in pain before kicking out furiously with both feet, thrashing the air with both arms. The sequel was dead silence. I opened my eyes and the cat was gone. I looked down: no tattered clothes, no teeth or claw marks …
Another ignis fatuus, another sign of an unsound mind, nothing more. As I shook my head in disgust, another sound, this time very faint, came from the same direction. A little white cat—Moon—was scratching at the snow and mud between two crooked, crumbling stones, where other cats were buried and where, soon enough, she would be buried too. Her effect on me was strangely tranquilizing, exactly what I needed after being scared half to death. When she saw me she headed my way with finical steps, but after a few feet gave up and cried after me in her narrow voice. I walked toward her, she walked toward me, we met halfway. I picked her up and she rode back to the rectory on my shoulder.
Someone had parked a red sports car out front, as close to the front door as possible without driving it into the living room. Its driver, whose foot rested on the back bumper as he fiddled with some hand-held device, looked vaguely familiar. An actor?
I set Moon down and opened the front door for her. Then walked toward the visitor. « Je peux vous aider, Monsieur? »
He didn’t answer me right away, or even look up from his device, so I had some time to look him over. Around my height, a hair over six feet, but built like a tractor. One of those thin beards that trace the line of the jaw and a moustache just as thin, each of them brindled, the colour of used kitty litter. Fluorescent orange hat, heavy rubber waders, and a game vest with a rubber packet in the back where the bleeding birds would lie. Everything top of the line and brand new, as if he’d just snipped the plastic price loops.
He slipped his BlackBerry or iPhone into a breast pocket, squinted at me, held out his hand. « François Darche. »
Right, of course. He was a hockey player, an “enforcer” with the Minnesota Wild, recently retired or fired or suspended. I was prepared to be maimed by the handshake, but it proved to be rather spongy. As we traded wary smiles, I wondered what a hockeyeur could possibly want with me.
What he wanted, he quickly explained, was an “easement” through church lands to the luxury home he was building six miles away. A shortcut, in other words.
« But it’s a cemetery, » I informed him. « And wetlands. »
« The cemetery part I already took care of. As for your swamp, we just fill it in, put in a gravel road. Like a causeway or whatever it’s called. »
« A causeway? It’s a biome, for God’s sake. »
« What’s that mean? »
I wasn’t sure. « It’s a … an ecosystem. » I was trying to remember what Céleste had told me. « It’s got a heronry and swannery and … lots of other … ry’s.” Froggery, duckery? « Do you know how many creatures you’d displace—kill—doing that? »
Not for the first time, Darche shot a quick glance at his Ferrari, as if worried some delinquent brave or bear would drive off with it. A powerful-looking bow sat on the passenger seat, the razor points of its arrows glinting in the dying sun.
« What’s a few turtles and toads? I’m offering you twenty grand, Reverend. »
The area was thick with these types, according to Céleste. Bankers and lawyers and hockey players who carted their friends and business partners through the Laurentians in decked-out Land Rovers and ATVs, shooting and hooking all moving feather, fur and fin.
« It’s probably a giant mosquito hatchery, » said Darche. « And the rot—it must stink to high heaven around here. Think about it. Twenty big bills. »
I shook my head.
« Twenty-five. »
I paused, as if considering it. « How much you make last season? » Yo
u could ask athletes questions like that these days, since it’s part of their stats.
He smiled. « Two point four. »
« Mill? »
« Right. »
« That’s my price. Take it or leave it. »
He left. After some angry revving and a window-rattling blast of Metallica, Darche put his car in gear and the back end lifted from the power surge. He sped down the church lane, in reverse, and veered onto the highway without slowing down. Then forward, squealing like a cat in rut, unspooling clouds of rubbersmoke. I was hoping that would be the last I’d see of Monsieur Darche; it would not be.
The phone in the kitchen began to ring. Repeatedly, in a way you don’t hear anymore in the age of answering devices. I picked it up on what could have been the fiftieth ring.
“Nile.” A muscle-bound voice had me by the lapels.
“How’d you get this number?” The answer was obvious. I should think more before asking Volpe questions like that.
“You should think more,” said Volpe, “before asking me questions like that.”
In the background I could hear “Teen Angel” by Mark Dinning. “Earth Angel,” “My Special Angel,” “Johnny Angel,” “The Angels Listened In”—a most spiritual times, the ’50s. “What’s new?”
“Another lawsuit. Some author and publisher in France. I had to hire an interpreter to shovel through the shitpile they unloaded on me.”
I’d almost forgotten about that.
“You trying to set a Guinness record for litigation? What the hell is this all about, Nile?”
“I improved his book.”
“You improved his book. The suit says you, quote, ‘distorted an original work of art, mistranslated it wilfully and wantonly, with malice aforethought.’ Did you?”
A work of art? “I made the odd change, yes.”
“What kind of changes?”
“Little things. I tightened up the plot, spiced up some tedious dialogue, killed off an obnoxious character and added a chapter of sex.”
“The artist and publisher claim you rewrote it from cover to cover. They’re asking for $100,000 in damages. Compensatory, punitive and exemplary.”
The “artist” had broken the transition problem wide open, beginning each paragraph with And then. The “publisher” had the book printed with the pagination backwards. “The author spoke his book into a dictaphone and the publisher operates out of a phone booth.”
“Irrelevant, immaterial, non-germane.”
Why do lawyers speak in synonyms? “Yes, but is it extraneous, inapposite or inconsequent?”
“It’s a question of intellectual property, Nile. Not to mention artistic integrity. You can’t mess with that.”
“Artistic integrity? The book’s a mystery, for Christ’s sake, the kind left behind in airports and hotel rooms. Or hurled out of windows.”
“It says here he received a writer’s bursary for it from the French Ministry of Culture.”
“Governments should give these writers money on condition they write no more.”
“How’s the book selling in France?”
“Like whatever the opposite of hotcakes is.”
Another long sigh into the receiver.
“I forgot to mention something,” I said. “Which may or may not be relevant. Or … pertinent. The publisher didn’t pay me for my services.”
“They didn’t pay you.”
“No. In lieu of payment, I accepted a percentage of the sales.”
“You translated a book for nothing? Where did that idea come from? I know where, because your father told me. ‘From long practice in …’”
“‘… doing the wrong thing.’”
“Exactamente. So how am I supposed to clean up this mess, Nile? What do you expect me to do?”
I expect you to do what you always do: obfuscate and delay, wear people down with lawyer fees. “I don’t know. Hire O.J.’s jury consultant? The first one?”
After buzzing Céleste, and getting the right response, I went for a quick look at the church. I’d seen pictures of the interior and caught glimpses of it through the windows but never actually stepped inside. Céleste had warned me that it was empty, that everything of value had been carted out by thieves. Everything not of value as well.
I tried the back door first, because it was closest, but the first five keys I tried didn’t fit. I would’ve tried the sixth, but I was distracted by a faint whistling, human whistling, coming from the front entrance. Darche?
As I walked round to investigate, the sound stopped, replaced by three hefty knocks. And then a fine tenor voice: “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me …”
I peeked round the corner, distinguishing nothing but a strange-looking foot. I took a bold step forward.
“… a partridge in a pear tree. On the second day …”
“Can I help you?” I interrupted, because the song went to twelve.
“Oh, hello there,” said an elderly man with a long silver beard. And Druidical aspect. “Happy Christmas.”
“To you as well.”
A bare light bulb between us caused him to squint, ramifying the lines on his face. “I’ve come regarding the vacancy.” His beard sparkled like a moonlit brook.
“The vacancy?”
He pointed to the rain-wrinkled poster on the church door. “In your firm, the position advertised. ‘Elderly volunteers wanted to work in merchandising …’”
“‘Neither age nor mental health a factor.’”
“Very crafty, that.”
“What is?”
“Hiring former asylumites.” He had a Welsh accent, or something close to that.
“Oh, but it’s not me who—”
“You declare them as employees, as tax write-offs, you get the government subsidies for hiring them. But you don’t have to pay them because they think they’re volunteers.”
“Oh, I see. But it’s not me who—”
“Au fond, they don’t even have to exist. A bit like Gogol’s Dead Souls, if you follow me.”
I stood there, not following him, but nodding as if I were. I must read more.
The man winked at me. “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed, my mouth as tight as a choirboy’s arse.”
Did I mishear that last bit? I examined the man under the light of the naked bulb. He had the avuncular look of the man on the Quaker Oats cereal box, except that he was wearing dentures that didn’t fit him, a reddish tweed coat that looked like a dusty carpet, and galoshes over shoes fastened with duct tape.
“What type of merchandising are we looking at exactly?” he asked, coughing. A deep-lunged hack, so deep I thought it might disgorge blood or bile or part of his esophagus.
“We are not looking at any type of merchandising. I did not put up that sign.” To prove it I tore it down, or what was left of it. “But I am looking for help. A cleaner or restorer, so if you know anyone around here who—”
“Destiny is a door that hangs on the hinges of chance.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m an antiquarian by trade, Mister …”
“Nightingale.”
“I once ran a shop in Wales, Mr. Nightingale. As my grandfather did before me. I was born there, in fact, delivered in a carton marked ‘This Side Up.’”
I smiled politely. “Right … But, you see, what I’m really looking for is someone to … well, restore the interior, seal and retile the roof.”
“My specialty was toys, antique toys. Lead soldiers, rocking horses, miniature musical instruments, that sort of thing. Wind-up monkeys who comb their hair in a mirror, who bang cymbals and dance jigs. I bought them, repaired them, sold them. Is there an organ in the church? I could tune it for you.”
“Uh, no I think the organ was … removed. Are you from …” I almost said “the Institute” but changed my mind. “Ste-Madeleine?”
“For the time being, until I can get back to my atelier by the lake. Lac St-Nicolas. You can’t miss it—it?
??s the little cottage with the red-and-white stripes. Like a candy cane.”
We stared at each other without blinking, like frogs. I wasn’t sure what to say next. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who drives a big black pickup with a broken headlight, would you?”
“I know everyone around here, and everything they own.”
I decided not to pursue this. “Listen, is there anyone around here who does church renovation? I’ve asked around, but it seems that no one—”
“You might as well try turning water into wine. They’ll accept you up to the fence, the villagers, but they’ll never let you open the gate.”
What the locals resented, I soon learned, was that I was trying to restore a symbol that was abhorrent to them; rationally or not, they viewed the church and its grounds as a dark sinkhole of death, a haunt of fiends and swamp devils.
“I shall work like a carthorse, Mr. Nightingale. Scour the place from top to bottom, renovate from stem to stern. I am in tip-top shape, a born athlete. Don’t let this pear shape fool you. I bloom at this time of year like a poinsettia. Leave things to me. I’m a lucksmith, you’ll see. Greypower is what’s required here. I shall wash the pews with Murphy’s Oil Soap and the floors with Heinz vinegar.” He extended his hand. “Myles Llewellyn at your service.”
I extended mine, which he squeezed several times in quick succession. Like a bulb horn or turkey baster.
“I can start tomorrow if you like. Or this very moment. Work does not deter me. It does not faze me. I am not one to hit the snooze button. Shall we get started, then? Hop to it?”
The old man was about as able to hop as he was to fly. I smiled and he smiled back, crinkling the corners of his eyes. The stamp UNEMPLOYABLE seemed to burn on his brow. How could I tell him, gently, that his services were not required, not now, not ever? How could I tell him this a week before Christmas?
“Mr. Llewellyn …” Adopting a mien of authority not unlike my father’s, I paused to clear my throat. In a maelstrom of indecision I closed my eyes, and on the back of my lids my father’s face leered at me. Just do it! he hissed. Tell him, for the love of Christ! “Mr. Llewellyn, you are … just the man I need. You’re hired.”