Against the Wind Read Online Free

that lunatic who did you-know-what to your stepmother, Françoise. You did the right thing, killing him. It had to be done.”
    That night before I went to sleep, I made my vision come back and I walked through my family tree, stopping at the special branch that linked my two families, the branch with two Jacques, the father of my second cousins, Grandpapa Napoléon Jacques, Papa’s father,
and the father of Marie Jacques, my mother. And between waking and dreaming, I said to myself that I was truly related to Papa, Léopold Jacques. This thought comforted me.
    The next day, my father took the train back to Abitibi. When I said goodbye on the station platform, he was embarrassed to hug me. He shook my hand firmly and said, “Try and put a little meat on your ribs.”

VI
    When I arrived at school at the beginning of September, I adapted very quickly to the new pace of life, the style and the rituals that were unlike anything I had ever known. In my first report card, I was first or second in almost every subject. I was very proud, and Mama and Papa were too. I read it on their faces on visiting day.
    In all my free time, or “wasted time” according to our math teacher, I continued to cultivate my two secret gardens, my second – invented – history and my visions. I would add whole parts of chapters to my history in my head. As a beginner in Latin, I took pride in titling my chapters in that language.
    As for the visions, they became more and more frequent and varied. It was no longer just completely unknown foreign cities that appeared to me in every detail. The long hours in the chapel for the many religious services, masses, vespers, stations of the cross and confessions had given rise to mystical characters, with whom I would have conversations.
    Sometimes I would sit at the right hand of Christ, as for example at the Last Supper, and listen with delight to his confidences and secrets about his miraculous powers. Christ was my favourite magician, surpassing even Houdini, who was to me the greatest of all magicians. I saw myself with him, turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fishes, raising the dead – I didn’t hesitate to bring back a few of them to chat with.
    These parallel activities became so important to me over the weeks that I began pursuing them in class and study time. It was only during physical education that they left me. My marks plummeted. By December, I had fallen to the bottom of my class.
    Just before the Christmas holidays, the principal summoned me to his office. The prospect of that meeting terrified me. Father Gagnon seemed so scholarly and so stern, even rigid. He had a terrible reputation among the students. They called him “General Hannibal.”
    I went there with a heavy heart during study period, as arranged with the monitor of the division. I knew the way to his office. It was on the other side of the chapel, in the wing where the priests lived. You had to go down long dark corridors with creaky old wooden floors, climb long staircases with groaning steps, and, once past the refectory, take smaller corridors and a tiny spiral staircase.
    Before reaching the chapel, which at that hour was also dark and only had some ancient little priests praying in it, leaning on the armrests with their heads in their hands as if they were crying, you had to go through the shrine of “our holy Canadian martyrs,” Brébeuf, Lalemant and Jogues. I genuflected and crossed myself as we had been taught, with great fervour and conviction. And I asked the three of them, who had been so brave under torture by the Iroquois, to take me under their protective wing and support me in this ordeal that I feared would involve prying questions.
    It was nothing like that. I found a calm and affable principal who wanted “to help you remedy this academic downturn.” He didn’t understand how the same student could be “excellent in September