“‘What-ho, my dear. This is a dashed rummy place for you to be living, what?’ I thought this sort of thing would impress her, you see. The accent. She was so young, so lovely. I thought it would charm her …
“She threw me over! For a younger man! I’m past retirement age—who’s going to look at me now?
“You’re only saying that to make me feel better, Mr. Nightingale. Nobody wants me now, not at my age. I’m on the scrap heap …
“It’s all a bit of a hot stove. Best not touched. I’ll be fine. It doesn’t do us any good, does it, to wring our hands over the far-off things. What can’t be cured must be endured. Look at that stained glass …
“Sublimate, I must sublimate. I must keep active. I am one of those organisms that never want to go to bed and never want to get up …
“Music, we must have music! Hang on …
“Ah yes. Yes, listen … Da duh-duh-duh da … Inexplicable longings surge within me whenever I hear this. I base my life on its form, in fact, and I advise you to do the same. Allegro, Andante, Waltz, Allegro. I’m now in the Waltz, and shall end my days allegro con vivace …
“I’m a bit of a dinosaur, I know. But the music is still good. It has not been surpassed by rock and roll or hip-hop …
“People everywhere seem to want to live in the past, and when you stop and think about it, who can blame them?
“I’m willing to pay for my blunders, but in a single lump sum, not on the instalment plan …
“I cut all ties with my family, you see. With blunt scissors. And now, now I cultivate the inner garden …
“Listen to this bit … Yes, I know, I’m too old to whistle, I haven’t the breath for it. But you know, I don’t feel old. Inside, I mean. I feel like I’ve got the youngest part of my life still ahead …
“A little excess weight will help you live longer, according to the studies …
“I asked the doctor how much time I had to live. ‘Let me put it this way,’ he said. ‘Don’t buy any green bananas.’ A little joke of mine …
“Most people go on living long after they ought to be dead, don’t you think? We lounge around and then die. That’s all the Earth is, really—a big extinction lounge, an extinction club, membership awarded posthumously …
“There are too many of us, anyway. A tiger is worth ten thousand humans. Read Blake.”
A long silence followed, broken only by the papery rustlings of mice, the scampering of cats, Llewellyn’s sighs.
“Not faulting the company, Mr. Nightingale, but I’d best be alone now. Retire into the kingdom of my mind. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?” He winked. “On St. Stephen’s Day?”
I invited him to the rectory for Christmas dinner, even to sleep there, but he declined. He had a place on Lac St-Nicolas, he said. So I closed the door and left him there, to retire into the kingdom of his mind.
Neither Céleste nor I saw any lights on in the church that night, and we did not see Mr. Llewellyn the following day. Or the day, week or month after that. I never saw him again, in fact. But Céleste did.
XX
It’s New Year’s Eve & I’m looking out the window with my telescope at the ice-cream hills of the Laurentians, the oldest mountain range in the world. People from out west or Europe might not think they’re very high, but as I say, they’re older.
I wish there was such a thing as a time telescope, so I could see how they looked when the first Europeans arrived, when they were the home of Algonquin Indians. When the forest was 30 to 50 metres high, with some areas nearly 80 metres. In other words, between 12 & 15 storeys high & in some places as high as 25 storeys! The first settlers — the French, Irish, Scottish & American homesteaders — basically saw this forest as something to get rid of. They cut down the trees like weeds. Today it’s 4 storeys high.
The Laurentians got their name from Saint Lawrence. This is because when Jacques Cartier arrived in the Gulf in 1534, it was on this saint’s day, August 10th. But he only named one small bay after Saint Lawrence. The river was called the Saint Lawrence when Cartier’s maps were translated into Spanish. Why did the translator change the name? Because the saint was born in Spain.
Lawrence was responsible for the church property in Rome & was promoted to Keeper of the Treasures in 258 after Emperor Valerian cut the heads off the rest of the officials. But Saint Lawrence didn’t exactly keep the treasures — he shared them. When he was asked to come forward with the church’s valuables, he produced the blind, the crippled & the sick. “These are the treasures of the church,” he said. Probably in Latin. For this he was roasted to death on a gridiron. As he was being grilled, he asked to be turned over, saying he was underdone on the other side. This is why he is the saint of laughter.
A few kilometres from where I live, south of the Bogs & Ravenwood Pond, is the Rivière du Diable. It runs for about 70 kilometres through a valley formed by the Laurentide Ice Sheet. This glacier was about 2,000 metres high, a gigantic wall of ice that would dwarf a city like Montreal or even New York, towering over their skyscrapers. A thousand years ago, if Nile & I had stood on Mont Binoche, which is the high ground around here, we would have looked WAY up to the icy mountains to the north, higher than the Swiss Alps.
The first humans to pass through the Laurentians probably saw the last of this glacier. The Weskarinis? The Montagnais? If they did, they left us no record of what it was like. We haven’t found anything yet, at least.
I will now tell a story about St. Lawrence whales. In 1861, P.T. Barnum led an expedition to capture white whales from Quebec for his circus aquarium in Manhattan. In his autobiography he wrote: “On this whole enterprise, I confess I was very proud that I had originated it and brought it to such a successful conclusion. It was a very great sensation, and it added thousands of dollars to my treasury. The whales, however, soon died.” So Barnum sent out his agents to capture two more whales. They soon died too.
In the Saguenay River, which flows into the St. Lawrence, there were once more than 5,000 beluga whales (“beluga” means “white” in Russian). When fishermen began complaining that these whales were eating their fish, the Canadian government put a bounty on their heads. Hunts were organized where sportsmen could shoot whales from boats. Like the way Americans used to shoot buffalo from trains. The population was reduced to about 500.
Today, when a St. Lawrence beluga whale dies naturally, its body is so contaminated that it’s considered hazardous waste.
I asked Nile if he was happy staying here with me and he said he was “on cloud ten.” Which made me smile and made me feel great. Especially after what happened. I’m not using it as an excuse, but I should never read novels, just science books. And never drink champagne.
Nile doesn’t know it but I’ve been listening on my headphones to the CD he gave me for Christmas. My grandmother would’ve hated it because she hated rock music but I like it. A lot. There are 3 songs I play over & over & over: “Foxy Lady,” “Purple Haze” & “All Along the Watchtower.” I’m also reading Nile’s book of poems because I kind of like Lewis Carroll, I have to admit, even though I’m 15. This poem was circled in pencil, probably because “The Mad Gardener” is SO much like Nile:
He thought he saw an Elephant,
That practised on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife …
He thought he saw a Buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece:
He looked again, and found it was
His Sister’s Husband’s Niece …
He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week …
He thought he saw a Banker’s Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus …
He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four
That stood beside his bed:
He looke
d again, and found it was
A Bear without a Head …
He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A Penny-Postage Stamp …
Poor Mr. Llewellyn, I can’t stop thinking about him. I hope he’s all right.
I’ve lost my voice again. But this time I have a feeling it’s never coming back …
More later. Guess who just popped in. Nile from Neptune. He’s heading my way, balancing a bottle & two wineglasses on a chessboard, like a waiter …
XXI
It was New Year’s Eve, a time for merrymaking and madcappery, so I proposed a game of chess. Naturally, I intended to go easy on her. Start with a Sicilian, but make it elastic. Porous, if necessary. She’s still in rough shape, still feeling bad about her drunken antics—wouldn’t want to break her spirit, poor thing. Especially when she’s lost her voice again, and is convinced she’s never going to get it back.
She was lying in bed wearing one of my T-shirts, writing or drawing in her NOT TO BE READ UNTIL I’M DEAD sketchbook. She would invariably close it whenever I came too near, which is what she did now. To the title on the cover she had added, in smaller capitals, AND NEVER BY NILE NIGHTINGALE.
Céleste reopened the book when I asked if she played chess, and under a nice sketch of a horse head, wrote in blue pencil: You any good?
I set down my cut-glass goblets and Welsh grape juice and considered the question. Why be modest? “Well, let me put it this way—it takes a pretty heavy-duty computer program to beat me.” As a child in Baden-Baden I played a game of fast chess called Blitz with my father, in a park with chessmen bigger than me, and won more often than not. “How about you?”
She made a comme ci comme ça roll with her hand.
“You play much?”
Now and then. With Grand-maman.
“Ever beat her?”
Near the end, when she wasn’t … She probably let me win.
“Maybe I can show you a few things. A few tricks.”
Céleste reached for a vial of Voxangel, a voice-loss medicine whose label warned of such side effects as reduced alertness and impaired thinking. She took a swig from the bottle’s neck. No doubt.
Her king’s pawn opening followed by a move of the king itself might have sent a player less humane than I into wild, uncharitable laughter. Talk about unorthodox. An opening favoured by kindergartners. “Well, okay, I’m not sure … you know, whether that’s the best strategy …”
Let’s play it through.
“Fine with me.”
After a dozen moves with running commentary, as I was showing her how to bend a Sicilian defence into a variation of my own device, I was checkmated. Obviously a trap I’d fallen into while pedagogically preoccupied, something her grandmother had shown her.
You don’t have to take a dive. I don’t mind losing.
I stared at the board. Then set it up again, turning it around so that Céleste was black. I moved my king’s pawn two squares. “Your move.”
This time I lasted longer, my fingers drumming on the bed frame, my kneecaps pumping like pistons, taking forever between moves. No clocks, thank God.
Suddenly, in a reckless move, Céleste left her queen unprotected. “Careful of your queen,” I warned, not wanting to win this way.
I watched her take another slug of medicine and then scribble Your move.
All right, if that’s the way you want it. “En garde.” I moved my knight to fork her king and queen. “And check.”
She moved her king out of the way. I hastily captured her queen with my knight, hitting it, sending it flying across the board. She took my knight with her bishop, putting me in check. I moved my king diagonally forward, and she took my rook with her bishop. How did I not see that? Oh well, keep up the attack. I moved my queen menacingly forward …
She ignored this thrust, rashly I thought, and instead nudged an irrelevant pawn. In desperation? I countered with a pawn move of my own, preparing the way to slaughter. She moved another pawn forward, putting my king in exposed check from her other bishop. Three moves later I resigned.
We played six more games. Céleste made her moves quickly, unerringly, advancing without mercy to the inescapable conclusion—a bit like Garry Kasparov playing a chimpanzee. Not once did she queen a pawn; she always chose a horse, her favourite piece. Once she asked if she could leave the pawn there as a pawn, since she already had two horses. Between moves, she did not study the board; she doodled in her sketchbook.
I caught glimpses of things like this:
And this:
In a clear attempt to distract me, she ate pieces of black licorice, with her head thrown back in the way of a sword-swallower. She also whistled “Auld Lang Syne,” her lips stained with grape juice, and asked irrelevant questions.
What beautiful bird has a horrid name?
“I don’t know.”
Peacock.
“I’m trying to concentrate.”
In which movie does a couple fall in love while playing chess?
“I give up.
Hitchcock’s The Lodger.
“Your move.”
Did you know that Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button?
I shook my head.
It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
“I’m trying to concentrate.”
In which movie does a man play chess with the devil?
“Céleste …”
Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
“I knew that.”
How’s that book you’re reading?
“Which book?”
The one with no covers. Broken Wind.
“It stinks.”
She moved her black-square bishop one square, in a fianchetto, then wrote Mate in 2. Happy New Year.
I refilled, dazedly, two glasses with juice. Then set up the board for another game. As I was carefully pondering a complex opening, a Nimzo-Indian variation, Céleste dozed off.
While pulling a wool blanket over her, I caught a glimpse of her sketchbook, opened at this half-page image:
Okay, I admit it. Fifteen-year-old Céleste Jonquères is smarter and quicker than forty-four-year-old Nile Nightingale. Smarter and quicker than any computer I’ve played. She could play against God, give him an extra bishop and win. Next time we’ll play cards.
XXII
“WOMEN, BY THEIR NATURE, ARE NOT EXCEPTIONAL CHESS PLAYERS: THEY ARE NOT GREAT FIGHTERS.”
— GARRY KASPAROV
I’ll let you in on a little secret, one that I haven’t told anyone (except Nile). It’s this: I’m more parrot than owl. I’m not really that smart. I just read smart people, and remember. Everything else I know, or almost, came from my grandmother.
I should’ve told Nile last night that she represented Canada at the Nice Olympiad in 1974. And in Prague in ‘76. She lost at both places, but she was a grandmaster.
I’m thinking of becoming a stamp collector. After the chess game Nile showed me an amazing set of chess stamps from Afghanistan. Which I’d already seen because I’m such a snoophound. When I told him how beautiful they were he said I could have them. And that I could have his whole collection if I wanted! I said no. But I was just being polite & I think he was kidding anyway.
He said that his grandfather’s collection (which is now his) contains one valuable stamp from Canada, the 12-pence Black of 1851, and one valuable stamp from Australia, the Inverted Swan of 1855. One is worth $125,000, the other $85,000. But that he doesn’t plan on selling either one.
He also said that by 2040 there will be no more stamps in circulation. Or newspapers or books, for that matter. “I won’t be around to see that,” said he, “but you will.” Wrong.
Speaking of stamps, we watched another “stamp” movie today, from a 10-DVD set by a Polish director named Kieslowski that I was very skeptical about because it’s based on the 10 Commandments. Volume 9 is about two brothe
rs who inherit their father’s stamp collection. It’s great, and it’s not really based on the 9th Commandment, but the funny thing is that it uses the SAME plot device as Charade: a young boy naively trades 3 valuable stamps for a shitload of worthless ones …
Again, Nile rewound the film to freeze-frame the stamps, but this time I wasn’t listening. When I saw the images going backwards I thought it would be nice to have a reverse button in life. I imagined my body shooting back up from the Bogs, the Exit Bag coming off my grandmother’s head, the bear going up not down on that ramp, Bazinet’s bullets travelling back into his rifle, Déry unjumping me, his penis unpenetrating me.
I haven’t mentioned that last part to anyone, not even my grandmother. Why? Because Déry said if I told anyone what happened before I stuck the pencil into his neck, he & his sons would come & kill Grand-maman. And gang-rape me.
“That’s very interesting,” I said to Nile, who knew I hadn’t followed a single word he said.
Nile & I were talking about suicide today. He brought it up, I guess because I brought it up the other night. He said that a kind of suicide happens every day. That there are lots of collisions on the highway where nobody seems to have put on their brakes, as if the victims had somehow decided on death. And that there have been cases of people stopped on railway tracks with lots of time to get off, who simply sat there. Why was he telling me all this? Because it happened to his mother? He’d told me that she died in an accident, so I asked him if this is how she died, stopped on a railway track, waiting for the train to come. No, he said, she died from “internal decapitation,” where the skull is detached from the spinal column. She was rammed by a tailgating truck.
XXIII
After the chess game, as Céleste slept, I leafed through two books I’d stumbled upon in the den, one on child geniuses, the other on how to raise a child genius. The latter, called Bring Up Genius!, was written by Dr. Laszlo Polgar, who claims he can turn any healthy baby into a genius. To prove it, he kept his daughters out of public schools, considering them factories for mediocrity, and instead home-schooled them in his apartment in Hungary. Now adults, all three are brilliant, and two are chess grandmasters, the top two women in the world.