WE WERE AWOKEN BY A POUNDING ON THE FRONT door. It was the loudest knock in the world. I’m surprised that the whole building didn’t come down. It was as if they were banging with hammers. Nicolas and I woke up so violently, it was as if we had never been awake before. As if we had just been delivered from the womb and were shocked by our arms and legs. We didn’t know how to stand or laugh or count to ten. Only the police ever knock on a door like that. Everyone knows that.
Nicolas leapt up, like one of those worms from a peanut brittle can. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, the way it does when you are falling off a chair. But Nicolas was achieving incredible feats in small increments of time. He had his clothes and boots on and he had stuffed his money in his pockets.
He tried to jump out our bedroom window, but when he saw cops waiting for him right outside it, he leapt back in. I even saw some police officer’s arm reach into the window and try to catch Nicolas’s foot.
There were police officers everywhere. They had surrounded the building. It was five o’clock in the morning. That’s when they always had raids. Right when thieves were in the farthest realms of their dreams.
Nicolas tore through the house screaming. He went out the kitchen window and up the fire escape and into the upstairs neighbour’s window. I guess he figured that he could shimmy up the fire escape and over the rooftops and escape the law the way he escaped from girls he had had sex with. His boots going up and down the stairs were making the sounds of children playing a manic clapping game. He was running in and out of doors like a ball in a pinball machine, waking people up. They came out into the hallways as if they could help him. They were going to be bone-tired. All day it would feel as if there were a little hole somewhere in themselves that sand was slowly draining out of.
The police caught Nicolas on the third floor.
I was looking up the stairwell. I ran back into the apartment and down the hallway to the bedroom, searching for anything incriminating. I saw the gold pack of cigarettes on the night table. I snatched them up, but as I turned, a police officer walked right in the door.
“Hand those over, Nouschka, sweetie.”
A cat peeked out from behind the curtain like an emcee wondering if now was the right time to begin the show.
Loulou had quickly put on his best clothes so that he could show the police that we were clean-living people. He came out of the apartment with a framed photo of Nicolas and me when we were babies.
“Weren’t they cute?” Loulou asked one of the police officers pleadingly. “They’re good kids. They have good natures. They’re just always in with bad crowds. They were on the radio with their father. Do you remember?”
“Sure. Sure. I know who you all are.”
A news van was pulling up on the scene.
“He was such a sweet, talented little guy,” Loulou persisted.
At that moment, two officers escorted Nicolas out of the building. He was sort of making a fuss, but his heart wasn’t in it. Every now and then he would jerk his arms. He wasn’t actually trying to get away. He kept throwing his head back as if he was desperate to get his bangs out of his eyes. Maybe he knew that this was his last time to look tough. The law always makes an ass out of you. We knew that from Étienne’s fiasco.
Nicolas’s goose had already been cooked the night before.
The old man who had a heart attack had been taken immediately to the hospital. In the ambulance on the way, he began to slip away. As he was being bounced by the potholes, the old man uttered his last magical words. The paramedics leaned forward to hear what he was saying.
“It is okay. Le petit Nicolas was at the bank and he told me that everything was going to be okay. He got my envelope back for me. My wife is just going to go crazy knowing that I met him … He was so nice to me. Il était tellement mignon quand il était petit!”
We didn’t know any of this at the moment. We had no idea how the police knew that Nicolas had robbed the Caisse populaire. We didn’t know why I wasn’t in handcuffs too.
A reporter ran up and put a microphone in Nicolas’s mouth.
“You love it. You love it,” Nicolas said. “Look, they thought they were somebodies. They thought they were better than us. Now they have nothing. Oh, isn’t it lovely. Take him down a notch. It’s entertainment. I’m not a character in a television show. Tar and feather me. You stole my childhood. On top of it you losers voted Non! Throw me in jail. You animals, you owe me. You all owe me. Where is my pay for having to spend my whole life being a clown? Be sure to send a postcard of the hanging to Grandpipi in Abitibi!”
Whatever else was said about him, you had to admit that Nicolas had a lovely turn of phrase. He was quoted in all the newspapers. In Montréal later that day, a twelve-year-old boy in the smallest-sized combat boots the army could issue and a jean jacket with gold stars ironed all over the sleeves put a flyer up on a telephone pole and slapped it with a huge paintbrush of glue. The poster was a mug shot photocopied from the front page of Le Journal de Montréal. Underneath was written: LIBéRER NICOLAS TREMBLAY.
The next morning I was standing completely clueless in front of one of the posters outside Loulou’s house. I had been standing there for ten minutes. I thought that there was something that I should be doing, but I didn’t know what. I was missing a compass and it made me feel dizzy. There was no use in trying to call Raphaël. He was not to be found. I suddenly wanted to call Lily. Supposedly, mothers were like North Stars that guided you when you were profoundly lost. How on earth could I explain this situation? I walked over to the phone booth. I looked up her number in the telephone book that was hung from a metal ring. I first turned to the names that began with S, but then I remembered that she would be under Noëlle Renaud. It was amazing: her number was there, right where it should be. What was even more incredible to me was that her name had been circled with two different colours of ink. How many times had Nicolas sat right here, thinking of calling her?