IV

The Ideal Writer

It was Saturday.

No question of starting out for St. Louis until the following week: Jack had to go to the bank, then take the Volks to the garage for an oil change and tune-up.

La Grande Sauterelle was still at his place. She hadn’t said whether she would go with him or not. She didn’t talk very much. She read. The girl read with a voracity he’d never seen before. In two days she had read everything he had written (she hadn’t made any comment), then she read a novel by John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire, in one day (she liked the character Susie the bear very much). When she went out she always took a book, which she put, along with the cat, into a small knapsack.

The girl had “borrowed” John Irving’s book from the municipal library. When it came to getting books, she made a distinction between bookstores and libraries. From bookstores, she stole books quite unscrupulously, because in her opinion most booksellers were far more interested in money than in books; from libraries, however, she borrowed them: that is, she would slip them under her clothes or into her knapsack, then return them by mail after she had read them, including a brief note that read more or less as follows:

Dear Librarian, I’m sending you this book which I happened to find in the bathroom at a service station in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière. I have no idea how it got there, but if I can give you some advice, I think you should take better care of your books. Signed: A Friend Who Wishes You Well, Pitsémine.

“Pitsémine” was La Grande Sauterelle’s name in the Montagnais language. As for the writer, his pseudonym was Jack Waterman. One day he had asked his brother to suggest a pen name, and Théo had said he could think of nothing better than Waterman.

While La Grande Sauterelle devoured every book she could get her hands on, Jack Waterman was an anxious, parsimonious reader. He had his favourite authors, all of whose books he had read, but those authors were few in number: Hemingway, Réjean Ducharme, Gabrielle Roy, Salinger, Boris Vian, Brautigan and a few others. And he had his favourite books, which he reread frequently, and which were like old friends. In general, he felt no need to read during the periods when he was writing a novel; at those times, which were lasting longer and longer, other people’s books made him impatient and sometimes even jealous.

For the time being, he had no novel in the works. He was experiencing those moments of anguish that await writers after they’ve finished a book and, already aware of its flaws and still unable to imagine the next book, they begin to doubt their talent. But as he wasn’t writing, he could read, and since he was constantly thinking about his brother, he looked for books that had something to do with the journey to St. Louis.