his promise, just not quite in the way that they’d expected.
Connoisseurs know that Russians don’t like to play rough, but that they are very talented and born scorers. Boris Bogdanov had told the recruiters a few little lies about his past as a player for the Dynamo school club in Moscow; not big lies, just two dozen goals or so a year – half of them when his team was short-handed!
The first day of camp, during the rookie match, everyone quickly realised that he wasn’t a real Russian player as far as his talent was concerned, but he was a real Russian player when it came to playing rough. During the first match, playing short-handed, Boris soon caught the attention of a big beefy player from Alberta who was out for his place in the sun. For this muscle-mountain, hard play was his meat and potatoes, the key to everything, the only corporal expression he was capable of. So this colossus did what all great predators do. He was a blue, so he looked at the backs of the reds for the weakest prey. The swiftest gazelle always gets away from the lion. For the slower ones, it’s every gazelle for himself. And for the slowest of the slow, it’s amen.
Boris Bogdanov never thought of playing the puck when it went into the corner. He was just trying to get away from the enormous Albertan chasing after him. He heard him grunt. Boris wasn’t as quick on his blades as he’d claimed. He didn’t manage to get very far before there was a terrible ker-runch!
Boris Bogdanov, who was not all that hefty a guy, dislocated his shoulder when he hit the boards. All in all he had played only forty-five seconds in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, thirty-two of which were spent running away. In Val-d’Or, people like hard men, real men – but above all, they don’t like being taken for fools.
‘Don’t count on us to pay for your ticket home!’
The equipment attendant did let him keep the hockey bag with the club’s colours.
‘A little souvenir for your kids.’
Just because you’ve told lies doesn’t mean you’re an idiot. The fact that Boris Bogdanov is an intellectual is proof of this. But it is a very intellectual stance to think that everyone else is an idiot.
If Boris did have a fault, that was it. He always went around with a little smirk on his face that meant he knew things others knew nothing about. He was a brilliant scholar and he knew it. Russians don’t just make timid hockey players. They also make great mathematicians.
Boris Bogdanov was passionate about topology – about one of its disciplines anyway. Knot theory is a complex mathematical science that provides explanations for very simple things in life. When you pull on the yarn of a tangled-up ball of wool, sometimes it comes untangled right away, sometimes the knot gets even tighter. Life’s just like that: little actions can have big repercussions. And the same action doesn’t always have the same effect.
Boris Bogdanov’s exotic fish facilitated his research for a new theory. A fish in an aquarium always swims around the same course: that’s the yarn. The fish unwinds its yarn according to the presence of other fish – friend or enemy – in the aquarium. Whenever a new inhabitant arrives, it must modify its usual path. For Boris, the trajectories of the fish were like so many threads, tangling and untangling.
‘We don’t choose our path, others choose it for us.’
His doctoral dissertation was there before him, in water maintained at a constant temperature of thirty-two degrees Celsius. This was vital. His academic survival depended on that water remaining at the same temperature. If it were to drop, some of the fish might change direction and thereby destroy the entire premise of his dissertation.
His research came to the attention of the President of the Mathematical Society of Canada, based in Calgary, Alberta, a very cold place.
‘Come and see us when you’ve finished with your fish; for us it’ll be a change from thermal mathematics!’
Through the window, Boris Bogdanov watched as his two young neighbours sat down on the steps outside the door to the building adjacent to Julie’s. One of them was holding a video camera. Their eyes were glued to the tiny monitor. Boris turned away from the window, put his book down on his untidy desk and with one finger dreamily stroked the wall of the aquarium. He could tell by touch alone that the water was at the right temperature.
Because fish change direction in cold weather.
THAT’S WHEN I UNDERSTOOD
‘This is great! How do you rewind?’
‘Let me do it, you’re gonna break my video camera!’
‘Let me do it . . . You’re gonna break my video camera . . .’
‘I’m not in the mood to mess around.’
‘Not in the mood to mess around . . .Whatever! Take your video camera.’
Alex is like his dad, he always gets annoyed for no good reason. I don’t hold it against him. It can’t be easy to live with a single parent. When he was little, Alex used to say his mum was coming back. Now he never talks about it. It’s a subject you avoid around friends who don’t have a mum. It’s not always easy, because among themselves kids talk about their parents a lot. The hardest time is Mother’s Day. Then I avoid Alex. I wouldn’t know what to say to him. He’s easy to avoid then because he doesn’t go outside. And no one knows whether he’s heard from his mother because no one asks him.
‘Why didn’t you zoom? You can’t see how the point got big – like that!’
I looked at the gap between his thumb and forefinger. Five centimetres! Only Alex would try and make you believe such a thing. At times like this, there’s no point picking a quarrel with him. No matter how hard you try to show him he’s wrong, he’ll find an explanation for why he’s right. It makes things really hard at school, especially with the teachers. The other reason for not picking a fight with Alex is that he is a full head taller than me, even if I’m only one year younger. He knows he can smash my face in, no sweat – I agree with him there. It’s so obvious who’s strong and who’s weak, you can’t do anything but stay friends. Alex gets in a fight at least once a week, on principle.
‘Keeps you fit and it’s good for your reputation!’
I have to confess I like Alex’s reputation. Since everyone at school knows I’m his best friend, no one bugs me. With him arguments are always reduced to basics.
‘First you hit, then you think!’
But while everyone at school has seen him hit, we have yet to see him think. In the school corridors everyone says he’s crazy. And that he’s proud of it. I know him, though, and he’s not crazy, he’s not proud – that’s just his armour. Kids are cruel to each other. He just has to be even crueller. Death to anyone who teases him because he doesn’t have a mum. Sometimes he gets good grades. Well, he would – when he can, he copies from me.
It was his idea that I should hide behind a car and film him while he was taking the kitten back to his neighbour. It was our third attempt. He was never satisfied with the result.
‘Why didn’t you zoom in on her tits?’
Two days earlier he had told me the angle was wrong. Four days earlier the neighbour came out fully clothed. The hard part was figuring out when she’d be in her bathrobe. She doesn’t lead a normal
