The Years of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

started to run, seized by sudden alarm. A wheeled stretcher came through the restaurant door, pushed by two ambulance attendants. He had time to make out Roberto’s face on the stretcher, tomato-red, cheeks deeply creased, his head wobbling from side to side as though attached to his body by the thinnest of threads; his large, hairy arms also seemed to have been chopped off, so white were his bloodless hands even against the sheet.
    “Rosalie!” Charles shouted when he saw her coming out onto the sidewalk. The bright, flowery print of her yellow dress was a painful contrast to the dismal scene. “What’s happened?”
    She climbed into the ambulance behind the stretcher and turned towards him with a defeated look. She seemed not to recognize him. Then the rear door closed and the vehicle pulled quickly away from the curb.
    Charles hurried into the restaurant. Liette was crying and dabbing her eyes with her frilly apron, and Monsieur Victoire had his arm around her. The new waitress, Marie-Josée, was stroking Liette’s hair while puffing on a cigarette, with a grave expression that made her round, open face seem curiously old.
    “GIVE THE MAN SOME AIR! GIVE THE MAN SOME AIR !” yelped
    Edward the Parrot, perched on a shelf that was splattered with its droppings. “WHERE’S THE BLOODY AMBULANCE? NOT HERE YET! SON OF A BITCH!”
    A customer Charles vaguely recognized was serving coffee all around with a tragic, important air. The kitchen door was partly open, and looking in Charles saw the multicoloured makings of a pizza trampled into a mess on the floor. Bits of pepperoni were stuck to the linoleum in front of the counter.
    “Charles, my boy, come over here,” called Monsieur Victoire, the taxi driver, still comforting the waitress as she wiped her nose with her apron.
    And in his deep, solemn voice, seemingly able to soften even the most terrifying words, Monsieur Victoire told Charles of the tragic event.
    Roberto had been complaining all morning of a pain in his stomach, saying it felt like a drill bit was boring into him. But he absolutely refused to be taken to the hospital, despite Rosalie’s insistence. About eleven o’clock he said he was feeling a little better.
    “You see, Lili?” he told her, holding up a bottle of Fermentol. “Nothing but a little indigestion. You women, you’re always thinking the worst.”
    Meanwhile he’d got a bit behind in his work and lunch hour was coming on, so he began banging things around in the kitchen like a bull who’d just spotted the cow of his dreams.
    Rosalie was still worried, though. She checked in on him two or three times, sticking her head into the kitchen and saying, “How do you feel now?”
    “Fine, fine. Like I tole you.”
    But his voice was strained and a bit breathless, and it was clear he was not fine at all. Noon came. The restaurant filled with a happy roar, punctuated by the clinking of knives and forks on plates and the shrill calls of waitresses giving their orders. Customers ate and talked, exchanged greetings, flipped nervously through newspapers, excited by the smell of good food, looking enviously at the plates of those who’d already been served. Trays of food were trotted out of the kitchen in a steady stream. At the cash, Rosalie was her usual welcoming, motherly self.
    Liette had just been coming along the counter with a tray piled high with plates of beef and veg when they heard a dull thud from the kitchen and felt the floor shudder. Setting her tray on the counter, she ran back through the door and let out a scream:
    “Madame Guindon! Madame Guindon!”
    A deathly silence settled over the restaurant. Everyone stopped talking or moving.
    Rosalie had been handing change to a customer. She ran into the kitchen and a second later they heard another scream, this one even more hair-raising than the first.
    “Mercy upon us, for the love of God! He’s had a stroke! Roberto! Roberto!”
    The poor man was lying on his stomach on the