Aphelia Read online

  APHELIA

  Aphelia

  A NOVEL

  Mikella Nicol

  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

  BY LESLEY TRITES

  ESPLANADE BOOKS IS THE FICTION IMPRINT AT VÉHICULE PRESS

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canada Book Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC).

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Roadmap for Canada’s Official Languages 2013-2018: Education, Immigration, Communities, for our translation activities.

  Esplanade Books editor: Dimitri Nasrallah

  Cover design: David Drummond

  Photo of author: Annie Lafleur et Le Cheval d’août

  Typeset in Minion and Filosofia by Simon Garamond

  Printed by Marquis Printing Inc.

  Originally published by Le Cheval d’août 2017

  English translation © Lesley Trites 2019

  Dépôt légal, Library and Archives Canada and Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, second quarter 2019.

  CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION – See page 106

  Published by Véhicule Press, Montréal, Québec, Canada vehiculepress.com

  Distribution in Canada by LitDistCo www.litdistco.ca

  Distribution in the U.S. by Independent Publishers Group www.ipgbook.com

  Printed in Canada.

  For a celestial body, aphelion (or the plural, aphelia)

  represents the point of its orbit that is furthest

  from the sun.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  One

  The night I met Mia, I was drinking with Louis at the bar. We were joking with the bartender, who was serving me discounted beer along with the occasional penetrating stare. I was waiting to see if he would try to kiss me, and whether this time I’d let it happen. Louis was fanning himself with a menu. He wiped away the pearl of sweat forming on his upper lip and signalled to the bartender that we’d take two more beers. The night was unfolding as usual. The guys and I talked loudly and clinked our glasses together in a toast, happy to have left another week behind. I reached up to free my face from my hair, which was soaked to the roots. The alcohol quickly went to my head.

  The onslaught of hot summer days had made me feverish. We were bogged down in an unnaturally infernal May. The humidity in the air would blur your vision and veil the horizon in haze. I didn’t remember the springs of my childhood being so harsh. They were already talking about humidex records on the news, and I woke up each morning to sheets slick with sweat. It was a summer that would become legendary, syncopated by the buzz of fans and the familiar moan of fire truck sirens.

  Louis and I were in the habit of frequenting this bar on Fridays. We called it our bar, like we said our park, a way of legitimizing our loitering, of appropriating some territory to forget all that we didn’t dare conquer. We would sit at the bar, on the same stools, under the glow of the hanging lamps. The swivelling seats allowed us to see who was coming and going. Old regulars mixed with young people in search of cheap booze in this tavern tucked in an alleyway. When we went outside to stretch our legs, the bartender took the opportunity for a break and joined us. We would pass through a dark corridor with several rooms reserved for employees. Through a half-open door, we could catch a glimpse of the owner reprimanding an employee, or a couple kissing, before we emerged into the alley. The bartender would wink at me, no doubt hoping that Louis wouldn’t follow us. He never talked about his girlfriend, and he shot me these perfect smiles that caught the light of the street lamps. The guys would light their cigarettes while leaning against the wall.

  I took a long swig of my beer while spinning around on my stool and found myself facing Mia, who appeared out of the darkness. I had never seen her before. She looked straight into my eyes and smiled before passing, dispensing her perfume behind her as though handing flowers out to beggars. The scent would rival that of the overly ripe buds that had bloomed so vigorously on fluorescent lawns that week, of the white lilacs and rose clover covering the grass in front of low-rent apartment buildings. She sat down at her table without bothering to cross her legs. The bottle I had wedged between my thighs cooled my crotch and dampened my skirt. Louis and the bartender’s voices were unsuccessfully trying to reach me; meanwhile, I managed to contain myself, as though I hadn’t just weathered a storm.

  A fresh beer slid down the bar behind my back. I became vaguely conscious of an exchange of money between the two guys, and then peals of laughter broke me out of my stupor. When I turned around, the bartender was pouring more liquor into the almost-full glass of a girl who was already too drunk. Everyone was clapping.

  I watched Mia on the sly and tried to find something to say to her. Maybe I could compliment her pretty shirt. After a few beers, it didn’t seem impossible. I examined the three people she was with. I didn’t recognize them. New people would sometimes show up at the bar—it did happen—but they never came back. The guy and the brunette looked like a couple. The other girl was leaning nonchalantly back in her chair, her legs stretched out in front of her. She wasn’t talking much and yawned occasionally. Mia was sitting up straight and smiled when our eyes met. The lighting was creating an auburn halo around her hair. She drank often, taking small sips and refilling her glass. I smiled back at her. Her movements were causing butterflies in my stomach. Louis understood what was happening to me, at least in part, and he didn’t like it.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I told him. He sighed and shook his head.

  “This time, you’ve seriously outdone yourself,” he replied, but I ignored him.

  I stopped at Mia’s table, putting my hand on the back of her chair and leaning toward her to murmur something— my name. My fluid gestures and the ease with which I made witty remarks disgusted and fascinated me at once. She’d known I would come over. Our bodies both tensed when I sat down near her. Conversations were floating all around us, but I was incapable of focusing on any of them. They didn’t interest me. Everyone else was only distracting me from Mia. I wanted to talk to her until the night disappeared.

  Behind me, old drunk people dropped coins into the slot machines that emitted even more heat. I looked at Louis, who was sitting at the bar staring into space. The bartender had lost interest in him.

  I don’t have any memory of our conversation. Mia’s mouth made sounds, her irises captured the light, and suddenly I was no longer in the bar we had worn down to the last thread, surrounded by the same people we’d been rubbing shoulders with but still didn’t know. I was elsewhere, and it was her who’d taken me there.

  When Mia announced she had to go, my sadness returned with a vengeance. I was already drunk. Before she stood up, I took her hand under the table, out of sight from her friends. That was the kind of thing I did. Looking elsewhere, seeming indifferent, while actually I was unhinged by the mere idea of this girl. I started by grazing her knee with the tip of my index finger, then I seized the hand lingering under the table. Disentangling our fingers, I let her go, hoping she’d remember me. Mia’s friends stood up, nodding to me. She followed the group, and I stayed behind, alone.

  Louis came to find me at the empty table. He held out a fresh beer that I didn’t want, but that I drank.

  The driver was smoking. The numbers on the meter rose steadily, their red reflection projecting onto my knees. Sitting in the front of the taxi, my head against the window, I watched as the sky trans
formed. I was the girl of the dawn, the girl of nothing, at peace as night faded away. I thought about how I was repeating the same mistakes, spending money I didn’t have. The driver tried to engage me in conversation, but I felt nauseated by the smell of smoke trapped inside the car. Nothing happened when I pressed the button, and I asked if we could open the windows.

  A long way behind us, the sun came up. The burgeoning whiteness of the sky was reflected in the black, humid streets. I didn’t remember it raining. After Mia, everything had dissolved into drunkenness. I thought of the compassion in her eyes, her way of walking very straight, almost proudly. Walking toward me. Some cigarette ash fell on the seat between the driver’s legs, and meanwhile we were getting farther and farther away from the bar where a guy once told me I wasn’t beautiful because I was too sad.

  The drive seemed never-ending; I had lost all notion of time. The route we were on was jammed in places. Around the construction zones, the road narrowed to one lane. The driver swore. The reflective tape on the traffic cones shimmered under the headlights like the fragments of a shattered mirror. I wanted to collect all the pieces. We finally freed ourselves from the traffic jam and entered the tunnel, where the taxi picked up speed. The cars thinned out as we approached my destination. I staggered as I got out of the car and made it only a few steps up the sidewalk before I dropped my keys. The door refused to open. On the third try, it finally gave way. I wished the dawn could follow me inside.

  Just before I fell asleep, I received a few messages from the bartender. He said he liked me, that he wanted to make love to me. I read the texts and erased them from my phone. I’d had enough of him. I’d drunk too much, and the next day would be a wash. Women. I didn’t know anything about them. Most of the time, I wasn’t their friend. But that night, the face of a woman was all that was left in my mind.

  *

  The pain knifing my pubic bone woke me up. Opening my eyes, I stared at the ceiling. The burning was arcing across my lower stomach and radiating through the small of my back. I felt a stickiness between my legs. Memories of the night before reached me in fragments, one by one, as if from a distance. Louis and I sitting on the sidewalk, waiting for our respective taxis. A nebulous image of the deserted bar as we left. I became conscious of the dazzling early afternoon light and of Julien’s presence at my side. The blood was flowing, reminding me that each month I had to reinvent myself, become a brand-new person, a stranger to myself. Lying there in a haze of pain, nauseated, I let numbness overtake me. Julien stayed as he was, beached on the other side of the bed, his body broken into a thousand incongruous angles of sleep.

  I slid over to him and ran my hands over his naked back, felt his ribs, his spine. Day after day, I rediscovered the firmness of his flesh, the same as that of all the men I’d loved. The muscles, the absence of texture, of organs, of veins. I was hitting a surface that knew no depth, like a mirror that would only reflect my starkest features. I stroked Julien’s head, his skin warm and clammy like a child’s.

  I had a hangover. Something important had happened to me, and I could choose whether or not to let myself be overwhelmed by it. But I was tired. I thought I might live an entire life waiting for the girl from last night. Julien stirred.

  I got up. The sheets had creased my skin. Blood soiled the spot where I’d been sleeping. A perfectly round stain on the perfect whiteness of the sheet. That day, my body had undertaken the task of assassinating this house, this nest.

  The tiles of the kitchen floor were strangely cool beneath my feet, despite the suffocating heat in the air. I put my hands in front of my eyes to protect them from the sun hitting the white walls. The purity of the décor blinded me. A few months before, when we had decided I would move in with him, Julien had suggested we repaint. But I hadn’t been able to decide on colours.

  The sound of the bathroom fan filled my head. I took three pills.

  I was now living among objects of a previously unknown quality. I was learning to touch them delicately so as not to break them, with my clumsy fingers that knew nothing of luxury, of the softness of the material beneath them. Louis joked that I’d changed social class. Julien was so patient; he wanted to show me everything. I turned on the espresso machine and leaned against the counter, waiting for the water to reach the correct temperature.

  Children were shouting. Someone was mowing the lawn. I was living in a glass cage, and the echoes from outside were foreign to me. Whatever took place on the other side of the glass was reaching me from far away, muffled. That’s what I remember most about that dreadful summer.

  Two

  I arrived in front of the building twenty minutes before my shift. I was working for a telecommunications company whose offices were at the end of an industrial street that was deserted after six o’clock. I used my magnetic key card to open the door to the stairwell, then climbed four floors. The call centre was slowly emptying out. The wildflower-scented air freshener didn’t succeed in masking the musty odour in the air. I took the time to buy myself a coffee from the vending machine in the meeting room and make small talk with the day-shift employees, but I was secretly waiting for everyone to leave.

  The manager beckoned to me through the glass wall of her office and I went in. Her glasses, which were sitting on her keyboard, had left two marks on her nose.

  “Here, these are the promotions that take effect on Monday.”

  She handed me a pile of printed emails and a brochure.

  “I sent them to everyone, but your internal email address seems to have been deactivated. You should check it more often.”

  I nodded.

  “Jacques will look into it. It should be working soon.”

  She gave me an indulgent smile. Jacques was the IT technician who was continually accusing us of breaking equipment or causing system malfunctions.

  “Are you okay? You look pale. Did you stay out late last night?” she asked me with a wink.

  “No.”

  I settled into my cubicle while my colleagues finished collecting their things. They left one by one, giving me nods of apology. Few were willing to work night hours. When the last employee closed the door behind them, I turned out the fluorescent lights and the office became quiet. I pushed the paperwork further away and consulted the daily horoscope I received by email. During the first hour of my work shift, between ten and eleven o’clock, I would take refuge in those websites decorated with pink sparkles, animated solar systems, and Zodiac wheels, where they addressed you like a teenager. I liked to know that my Venus was found in Gemini. That it wasn’t all my fault. I liked to be asked questions (Why are you so restless, Pisces?) that I never had the answer to. I’d been focusing for some time on only putting faith in things that couldn’t disappear. It was more sensible. The planets would always be there.

  I put my feet back up on my chair. It had been almost a year since I’d gotten this job where, awash in the dreamy light of old computer screens, I had to answer the few calls that pierced the shadows. The calls were so rare they made me jump. A name or a number would appear on the display, and an indicator for one of my lines would start flashing. These nights seemed like the crystallization of all the solitude in the world. In my large building with transparent walls, I had to constantly arm and disarm the alarm system to move from one room to the other. When I went to the bathroom, for example, or when I went outside for air, I passed three detectors, each corresponding to a specific zone, and had to enter three different codes. I would reactivate them on my return and sit back down in my comfortable chair, sheltered amid my secure rooms. Some nights, this routine was easy for me. Other nights, I would forget the sequence of numbers and fumble before figuring it out, because I was rotting with boredom and almost never slept.

  The few people who called complained about a billing mistake or said one of our services wasn’t working. They all believed their problem couldn’t wait until the next day. Sometimes they had to make an appointment with a technician from downtown. We would end
the conversation by wishing each other good night. Julien had found me the job. The company was one of his clients, so he had been able to get me an interview. The job didn’t have the same prestige as his, but it was a foot in the door to the field, he’d said. I was never able to admit to him that I wasn’t exactly planning to climb the corporate ladder.

  My day-to-day life was lacking in meaning. I asked myself whether these customers were imagining me as I was, a recluse in my enormous, overly air conditioned room. Wrapped in my shawl, my feet folded up under me.

  The semi-darkness of the call centre allowed me to see outside. I let my gaze wander past the glass wall of the façade, out into the long, empty industrial parking lots and beyond that, stretches of neglected land that looked like fields running down to the river. The tall, dry grass stirred in the breeze. The phone on my desk was dead. I wondered where Mia drew the strength last night to smile at will, to talk while twirling her hands.

  After an hour of immobility, I went down to the street. It wasn’t so bad to miss a call. The customers would just have to wait for me to return, to the tune of the music I’d never heard. They’ll call back. I’d often heard colleagues emphasize that. It was a job where you could quickly become angry, and where the customers (whom we wrongly called users) never understood what we (the agents) explained to them. Behind me, the doors I’d opened closed again.

  Outside, the air still bore traces of the cruel heat. Glancing at my cell phone, I saw Julien hadn’t written to me. I took a few steps, intentionally drawing out my break. I wished I’d given Mia my phone number, but I was almost sure that in my fervour I’d forgotten. In the gloom at the end of the road, the stars appeared more clearly than elsewhere in the city, and I fixed my gaze on the ashen light of the moon. At midnight, when the next day started, I would consult my new horoscope. In the meantime, I kept my head tilted up toward the sky for a long time. Then I went back inside.