Against the Wind Read Online Free Page A

and a dullard in December.” He called me “my lad” and tried to understand the reasons for my academic decline. I told him I didn’t know why things had changed. I had no idea that my imaginary inventions and my visions could have any connection to my sudden lack of interest in my school subjects.
    He talked to me about the ability to concentrate on studies and about many other things that I later forgot but that impressed me at the time. At the end of our “chat,” he said he was going to “inform your parents of this state of affairs” when they came to pick me up for the Christmas holiday.
    My parents were dismayed by the news and my Christmas holidays were sad. Mama and Papa didn’t scold me or deny me gifts or treats. The whole situation was “beyond us,” they said one evening at the table with Grandmama and me. Grandmama declared that I had been through too much recently, with the catastrophe – which she couldn’t mention without crying – and “that episode in the cemetery” with my father, which “was too much for a sensitive little boy, I always said I was against the idea.” Her solution was to keep me at home for the rest of the year. “He’ll rest and regain his strength with us,” she said. In any case, she had been “so lonesome” for me that she couldn’t imagine a better solution.
    Papa let her speak. He said finally that he and Mama had thought of something that would “cure” me. I should mention that the day before, I had confided inMama about my “hallucinations.” Papa said he was not a psychiatrist, but as a doctor, he knew enough about this kind of visions to be concerned about my “psychological state.” He said that schizophrenia could be cured. That I would go back to school after the holidays. That he would get me an appointment with one of his colleagues, a child psychiatrist for young people in Quebec City. And that Mama would go with me for the first visit.
    Grandmama was crying harder and harder and kept repeating “my God, my God,” with her lace handkerchief in her hand and her face wet with tears.
    Mama was cold and had wrapped herself in a shawl. She was drinking her tea in little sips, her eyes moving questioningly back and forth between Papa and me. Each time her eyes met mine, I felt I could hear her begging my forgiveness for betraying my confidences. Or perhaps she was reliving the catastrophe.
    In any case, I didn’t resent her for it. Nor Grandmama for crying so much over something I found far from sad. Nor even Papa for making plans behind my back. I thought they were being dramatic over nothing, and told them that my invented history and my visions were as important to me as my studies, which made Papa angry, and that made me see their reasons.
    I asked Papa what schizophrenia was and what psychiatrists did. He answered that schizophrenia was a “serious illness of the mind that begins with delirium and ends in madness.” And that psychiatrists were doctors for “sick minds.” His words worried me, and it must have been obvious, because he decreed that since things had been decided, we would change the subject, think about other things, eat our dessert, light a fire in the fireplace and put on some nice music. And why not play cards? Which we did.
    The rest of the holiday continued on this festive note, lighthearted and even happy.

VII
    My mother would say:
Sometimes we talk to you and
we wonder if you’re there.
    Serge Doubrovsky,
Le livre brisé
    As we had agreed, Mama came to Quebec City for two weeks in January to go with me to the “mind doctor.” She stayed with her sister, my Aunt Isabelle, whom I barely knew but I loved her right away because she looked so much like Mama that they could have been twins. Before the appointments – there were four of them – I would go to her house for lunch.We would talk