He did not know that Henri had telephoned twice to ask what food Marc liked and whether the old bedroom needed a larger desk.
Living with Henri meant living according to rules that seemed to have been written sometime before the invention of electricity.
Breakfast was at seven.
Supper was at seven.
Shoes were not worn on the sitting room carpet.
Dirty dishes were washed immediately.
The front door was locked after ten.
The workshop was not to be used without permission.
And nothing on Henri’s workbench was to be touched.
Marc ignored several of these rules during the first week.
He ate standing in the kitchen.
He left cups beside his bed.
He played music late at night.
He borrowed a small screwdriver from the workshop to tighten a loose knob on his keyboard stand.
Henri discovered the missing screwdriver the following morning.
“Did you take something from my bench?”
Marc was making coffee.
“What?”
“A screwdriver.”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“I needed it.”
“Then you should have asked.”
Marc looked at him.
“It’s a screwdriver, Grandpa.”
“It’s my screwdriver.”
“I brought it back.”
“That isn’t the point.”
Marc set down his cup.
“Everything’s a big deal with you.”
Henri looked at the spoon Marc had left on the counter.
“Apparently not everything.”
Marc followed his gaze.
He laughed without humour.
“Right. The spoon. Sorry.”
Henri said nothing.
Marc took the spoon to the sink with exaggerated care.
“There. Crisis avoided.”
Henri returned to the workshop.
Marc watched him go.
He had been there eight days.
Already, they had argued about dishes, noise, electricity, tools, food, and whether a nineteen-year-old needed permission to stay out late.
They had not yet discussed university.
Marc knew that conversation was coming.
He dreaded it.
Henri was not ignorant of music.
He had played violin badly as a young man, attended concerts with his wife, and kept several jazz records in the sitting room.
Élise had loved piano.
When she was a teenager, he had bought her a secondhand upright instrument and carried it up two flights of stairs with the help of three neighbours.
He remembered the smell of the varnish.
He remembered how she practiced scales with fierce dedication and then abandoned them to play melodies by ear.
Marc had inherited her musical instincts.
Henri knew that.
What troubled him was not the music.
It was the absence of a plan.
For weeks, Marc spoke about releases, collaborations, streaming platforms, and opportunities.
He rarely mentioned income.
Whenever Henri asked what a project would pay, Marc became defensive.
“Not everything pays immediately.”
“I understand that.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Then explain it.”
Marc would begin explaining exposure, audience growth, and long-term opportunities.
Henri listened.
Then he asked how Marc intended to pay his bills while waiting.
Marc hated that question.
He hated it partly because he could not answer.
One evening, after supper, Henri found Marc working on a track at the kitchen table.
A laptop sat between two small speakers.
The music consisted of a repeating sequence of synthetic tones, a deep bass pulse, and fragments of a voice manipulated almost beyond recognition.
Henri stopped in the doorway.
“What is that?”
Marc glanced up.
“A track.”
“I gathered that.”
Marc sighed.
“Then what?”
“Where are the instruments?”
Marc stared at him.
“You’re hearing them.”
Henri leaned closer.
“That sounds like machinery.”
“It’s electronic music.”
“I know what electronic music is.”
“Then why ask?”
Henri listened for another moment.
“Does the melody begin later?”
Marc took off his headphones.
“There doesn’t have to be a melody.”
Henri considered this.
“Then what holds it together?”
Marc stared at him.
He had spent nearly six hours working on the arrangement.
He had adjusted the rhythm, layered textures, and refined the low frequencies.
His grandfather had listened for twenty seconds and asked where the melody was.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Henri looked at him.
“Perhaps not.”
Marc returned to the laptop.
Then Henri said, “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to explain it.”
Marc slammed the screen shut.
“Can you just leave me alone?”
Henri looked at him for a moment.
Then he went upstairs.
Marc remained at the table, angry enough to shake.
A few minutes later, he reopened the laptop.
He listened to the track.
The bass was too loud.
He reduced it.
Then he sat staring at the screen.
The most valuable object in Henri’s shop was not the clock in the window or the gold chronograph he had been commissioned to restore for a collector.
It was a gold pocket watch kept inside a narrow display cabinet beside his workbench.
The watch was old, heavy, and unusually elegant.
Its case had a fine engraved border and a small monogram on the back.
A delicate hairline crack crossed the enamel dial.
The hands were fixed at eight fifteen.
The watch did not run.
It had not run for nineteen years.
Henri dusted the glass cabinet every Friday.
He checked the lock.
He never offered the watch for sale.
Customers occasionally asked about it.
