“Guilty! And being guilty I don’t mind so much as being transparent!” He laughs. “What chance does the criminal have against you, tell me that.”

LaPointe shrugs. “Oh, they manage to muddle along all right.”

Moishe nods. “Muddle along. System M: the big Muddle. The major organization principle of all governments. She seemed like a nice girl.”

LaPointe frowns. “What?”

“That girl I met in your apartment yesterday. She seemed nice.”

LaPointe looks at his friend. “Why do you say that? You know perfectly well she didn’t seem nice. She seemed like a street girl, which is all she is.”

“Yes, but…” Moishe shrugs and turns his attention to the street. After a silence, he says, “Yes, you’re right. She did seem like a street girl. But all girls of her age seem nice to me. I know better, but… My sister was just her age when we went into the camp. She was very lovely, my sister. Very shy. She never… she didn’t survive the camp.” He stares out the window for a while. Then he says quietly, “I’m not even sure I did. Entirely. You know what I mean?”

LaPointe cannot know what he means; he doesn’t answer.

“I guess that’s why I imagine that all girls of her age are nice… are vulnerable. That’s funny. Girls of her age! If she had lived, my sister would be in her early fifties now. I can’t picture that. I get older, but she remains twenty in my mind. You know what I mean?”

LaPointe knows exactly what he means; he doesn’t answer.

Moishe closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Ach, I don’t think I’m up to stumbling around in these parts of my memory. Better to let these things rest. They have been well grieved.”

“Well grieved? That’s a funny thing to say.”

“Why funny, Claude? You think grief is shameful?”

LaPointe shrugs. “I don’t think about it at all.”

“That’s odd. Of course grief is good! The greatest proof that God is not just playing cruel games with us is that He gave us the ability to grieve, and to forget. When one is wounded—I don’t mean physically—forgetfulness cauterizes and heals it over, but there would be rancor and hate and bitterness trapped under the scar. Grief is how you drain the wound, so it doesn’t poison you. You understand what I mean?”

LaPointe lifts his palms. “No, Moishe. I don’t. I’m sorry… but I’m not Father Martin. This kind of talk…”

“But Claude, this isn’t philosophy! Okay, maybe I say things too fancy, too preciously, but what I’m talking about isn’t abstract. It’s everyday life. It’s… obvious!”

“Not to me. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say grief is good. It has nothing to do with me.” LaPointe realizes that his tone is unfriendly, that he is closing the door to the chat Moishe seems to need. But this talk about grief makes him uncomfortable.

Behind his round glasses, Moishe’s eyes read LaPointe’s face. “I see. Well… at least allow me to pay for the tea. That way, I won’t regret having bored you. Regret! There’s a little trio often confused: Grief, Remorse, Regret! Grief is the gift of the gods; Remorse is the whip of the gods; and Regret…? Regret is nothing. It’s what you say in a letter when you can’t fill an order in time.”

LaPointe looks out the window. He hopes Father Martin will get well soon.

They shake hands on the sidewalk in front of the Russian café, and LaPointe decides to take one last walk down the Main before turning in. He has to put his street to bed.

Even before switching on the green-and-red lamp, he senses in the temperature of the room, in the smell of the still air, the emptiness.

Of course, he knew she would be gone when he came back tonight. He knew it as he lay in bed beside her, smelling the ouzo she had drunk. He knew it as he tried to get back to sleep after that dream… what was it? Something about water?

He makes coffee and brings the cup to his armchair. The streetlamps down in the park spill damp yellow light onto the gravel paths. Sometimes it seems the snow will never come.

The silence in the room is dense, irritating. LaPointe tells himself that it’s just as well Marie-Louise is gone. She was becoming a nuisance, with that silly, brief laugh of hers. He sniffs derision at himself and reaches for one of his Zolas, not caring which one. He opens the volume at random and begins to read. He has read them through and through, and it no longer matters where he begins or ends. Before long, he is looking through the page, his eyes no longer moving.

Images, some faded, some crisp, project themselves onto his memory in a sequence of their own. A thread of the past comes unraveled, and he tugs it with gentle attention, pulling out people and moments woven so deep into the fabric of the past that they seemed forgotten. The mood of his daydream is not sadness or regret; it is curiosity. Once he has recalled and dealt with a moment or a face, it does not return to his memory. He examines the fragment, then lets it fall from him. He seldom remembers the same thing twice. There isn’t time.

Some of the images come from his real life: Trois Rivières, playing in the street as a kid, his grandfather, St. Joseph’s Home, Lucille, the yellow alley cat with the crooked tail, one paw lifted tentatively from the ground.

Other memories, no less vivid, come from his elaborate fantasy of living in the house in Laval with Lucille and the girls. These images are richest in detail: his workshop in the garage with nails up to hold the tools, and black-painted outlines to show which tool goes where. The girls’ First Holy Communions, all in white with gifts of silver rosaries and photographs posed for reluctantly and stiffly. He sees the youngest girl—the tomboy, the imp—with her scuffed knee just visible under the thin white communion stocking…

He sniffs and rises. His rinsed-out cup is placed on the drainboard, where it always goes. He cleans the pressure maker and puts it where he always puts it. Then he goes into the bathroom to shave, as he always does, before going to bed. As he swishes down the black whiskers, he notices several long hairs in the bowl. She must have washed her hair before leaving. And she didn’t rinse it out carefully. Sloppy twit.

He is sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling off his shoes, when something occurs to him. He pads into the living room and opens the drawer in which he keeps his house money, uncounted and wadded up. There is a bunch of twenties there, some tens. He does not know how much there was in the first place. Perhaps she took some. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that she left some.

He lies on his back in the middle of the bed, looking up at the ceiling glowing from the streetlamp outside the window.

He never realized before how big this bed is.

Guttmann is tapping away on the portable typewriter when LaPointe enters with a grunt of greeting as he hangs his overcoat on the wooden rack.

“I’m beginning to see daylight at the end of the tunnel, sir.”

“What are you talking about?”

“These reports.”

“Ah. Good boy. You’ve got a future in the department. That’s the important thing—the paper work.” LaPointe picks up a yellow telephone memo from his desk. “What’s this?”

“You got a call. I took the message.”

“Hm-m.” The call was from Carrot. She questioned her clients who went bar crawling with Tony Green; there seemed to be only one place he frequented regularly, the Happy Hour Whisky à Go-Go on Rachel Street. LaPointe knows the place, just one block off the Main. He decides to drop in on his way home that evening. The leads are thinning out; this is the last live one.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“You got a call from upstairs. The Commissioner wants to see you.”

“That’s wonderful.” He sits at his desk and glances over the Morning Report: several car thefts, two muggings, somebody shot in a bar in east Montreal, another mugging, a runaway teen-ager… all routine. Nothing interesting, nothing from the Main.