Saturday afternoon I visited the suspected vandal.
“Who are you?”
“Rock Tuff.”
“Never heard of you. What do you want?”
I outlined the evidence against him. “And,” I concluded, “the graffiti is probably in your handwriting.”
“It isn’t written, it’s printed,” he said triumphantly. Then he realized his mistake.
“May I come in?”
“Entrez.”
He was around fifty-five, probably nearing retirement, but he had aged ten years in three minutes.
“Let me get you a drink.” He was gone for several minutes, not poisoning the drink, I hoped. He returned with his wife and three generous glasses of wine, no doubt French.
“I did it,” he confessed, “but please understand my position. My job requires me to be bilingual, but I have no linguistic ability. I try. I immerse myself in French, but it’s frustrating. My boss is a Francophone and he holds the meetings in French. I have to pretend to understand, but often I don’t know if we’re discussing the department budget or planning the office Christmas party. I’m two years from retirement and I need the pension, so when I see letters and editorials against bilingualism, I sympathize, but it also adds to my frustration. I know the graffiti was stupid and it will probably get me fired when my boss finds out.”
“If he finds out.”
“If?”
“Right now only we three know who wrote — printed — the graffiti, oh, and my …female friend, and if there’s no more vandalism, no one else needs to know.”
The Lee-Strattons both looked as if they were close to tears.
“And I’ll try to shift Mr. Goodman’s letters to other topics — municipal taxes, injection sites, the public transit system. Bonne chance, monsieur.”
“Thank you.”
That night Amanda and I had a celebratory dinner. She still wanted to try La Cuiller d’Argent, but out of respect for the Goodmans and the Lee-Strattons, we returned to Hamburger Heaven.
“You know,” I said “I think God’s severest punishment ever on the human race was the imposition of multilingualism at the Tower of Babel,” and I returned to the special, lima bean poutine.
