Glue

translated by Dawson Ford Campbell from Clémence Dumas-Côté

Chapter 1

I am a sieve. A medium-sized strainer picked up at Renaissance, with a weave that’s tighter in places, a rim that’s lightly rusted. My handle is yellow.

The events of my life, what it’s made up of—the sensations, words, thoughts—are a continuous stream of materials, a miscellaneous mix pouring into the sieve.

Liquids readily pass through—unimportant anecdotes, small defeats, things and people I’m unaffected by, ideas I can’t grasp.

There are clumps that gather at the bottom of the sieve and will never get past—flashes of beauty, hard times, what awes me. There are also percolating globs—big, dense particles which, with a little moisture and gravity, eventually break down and migrate to the other side of the mesh. These significant chunks of my life end up forgotten because they’ve been processed and the questions have run out.

***

It’s not a boutique or a market. The things sold here have no value but do have exorbitant price tags, seemingly set at random. Placed carelessly atop the furniture, each object is covered in a somewhat sticky layer of dust; after handling a few, my palms are tacky and my fingers grey.

It’s a place you enter with your eyes closed. A place you go into as you would a stranger’s home—through a door left ajar. Same feeling of expectant voyeurism. And Mr. Sokoloff is basically never behind the counter. You might come to think he only ever emerges from the back office for a breath of fresh air, when the mood strikes, unbothered by having maybe missed a “customer.”

A commercial Anglo radio station can be heard playing softly in the background, or else there might be a Franco Catholic show blaring on about a Berthierville congregation’s mission to Africa, and the crackling waves and the slivers of light trickling through the dingy windows make me queasy.

I’ve been coming here for years, on a cyclical basis and always with the same intention.

I walk through the door and beeline for the dresser where old, forgotten war medals and unopened disposable cameras from the ’90s have been laid out, side by side. Here—next to a box of postcards written, addressed, sent, and eventually delivered as intended, only to be mysteriously sold decades later and above of all bought by Mr. Sokoloff—is where I find it.

You might come to think Mr. Sokoloff is directly plugged into the world’s memory. Could he be its source?

I take the flesh-toned plastic handset and bring it to my ear. I’m caught in a wave, which I ride. A frequency, a vibration. Replete silence, on the other end. For years, the root of this sensation has been a mystery to me. I hear my own breathing echo from the telephone. And in this silence, in the receiver, I think I sense a presence. Someone’s about to speak. A voice will cut through the void.

I am E.T. going home, I am an iPhone plugged into the wall—I drink from the source, from the significance of being here. I get the unshakable feeling that I’m feasting on it. As if the emptiness were so deep, took so long to fill, that all I can ever manage is to reach the minimum level. Battery sufficiently charged. I savour this moment of suspension, beyond time, where I can be alone with this invisible presence, where I can hang from its neck.

Then, I leave—sated. Mr. Sokoloff never once appeared behind the counter. I step out onto the sidewalk along Saint-Laurent, my special strip, with a better sense of my direction for the months ahead.

***

I started compulsively listening to podcasts at night when I couldn’t sleep, two years ago now, pregnant with Babygirl. Every night, it was the same thing: I’d wake up to pee three or four times, which made it impossible to fall back asleep. Determined not to scroll into the void and expose myself to blue light, which supposedly stops the brain from shifting to rest, I’d instead plug into these stories.

Since I didn’t have time to find the perfect podcast, I’d tap the little triangle of any which one of the bit-of-everything kind—documentary, history, geography. Which is how I happened on Diesel Fuel For the Soul, a series that casts a surprisingly wide net.

Last night, I listen to an episode on the daily life of Québec peasants in the 19th century. It’s not long before I feel like a tiny particle caught in a current of words, given over to endlessly drifting and spinning toward a whirlpool, a final focal point—sleep. In the meantime, I learn that summer kitchens were actually built out of clay, oh is that right? sleep butts in, hear about potato fields as far as the eye can see, kilometres out, a numbing sensation spreads over my scalp, stats on the heaviest snowfalls in recorded history, can’t feel my feet anymore, see people skiing through the city, in black and white, I am a puddle, smiling at the camera, a shovel shovelling, suddenly elsewhere, the cavernous voice of an eel fisherman at the river’s edge, warm vortex before my eyes, hot glue I curl up in.

***

For eight years now I’ve been living in Parc-Extension, one of Montréal’s more remote boroughs, where most people I know never set foot, a stone’s throw from boulevard de l’Acadie. It’s far from the epicentre of my various lives—personal, professional, and sexual. It’s called extension because you have to stretch your arm to point it out on one of those blown-up city maps in the metro. If you want to show someone your street, parc Jarry, the autoroute cutting past, you have to extend your elbow a little further than those alongside you, who live by the very trendy metro Laurier or the oh-so chic metro Beaubien. You stretch and stretch and get sucked up whole into the map by your forefinger. The person who was next to you suddenly stands alone on the platform.

My part of the map is pandemonium. Loud colours of Indian clothes for sale. Stands piled high with over-ripe fruit. Tales of arrivals and departures, glazing the neighbourhood in a sticky warmness.

Once or twice a month, I’ll pop over to Saint-Roch to grab a box of Greek pastries. Little nubs shaped vaguely like half-moons, generously dusted with icing sugar. I walk home with the spiral-ribboned box held flat in one hand so as not to crush its contents, like a tightrope walker on a mission, inching up Wiseman to north of Jarry. And on my way, I get to eat at least one of my kourabiedes.

I savour them down to the name. Kou-rah-byay-dais. Saying it nourishes a part of me beyond the cellular level. When I bite into one, I feel like I’m eating a handful of sand and am overwhelmed with satisfaction. My head swims in the dense warmth of almond and orange blossom. A stark contrast to the nippy May, the decrepit buildings, the sagging balconies.

Last Tuesday, I came home from the bakery to find yellow police tape—the kind that would give anyone the creeps—marking off a perimeter in front of the building across the street.

Some people from the area, outside in their pyjamas, talk to the police. One of my neighbours not-so-discreetly peeks out from behind her curtain, holding it aside with one hand. Only the drizzling rain seems in its rightful place. An onlooker’s dog desperately drags its bum across the sidewalk while its owner watches the scene, smoking a cigarette. And to think, I say to myself, nothing ever happens up here, north of Jean-Talon, let alone something newsworthy.

I pick another kourabiedes out of the box and take a bite—something to chew on while I decide what to do next—place it back among its brothers, then sidle up to one of my neighbours. So… Guess ya heard ’bout tonight, eh? Suicide. Young, too. Simon… or somethin’? Like, young-young…? Ya knew ’m, no?… Lived ’cross the street…? A lil’ party, looks like. Took a turn. Thing is, people see their roof and figure it’d make a perfect patio. Everyone does these days. Tough go fer the kid, though…

I say goodnight and realize there’s powdered sugar stuck to the corner of my lip. I’m ashamed to be that neighbour who noses around in the misfortunes of others, even if I’m not exactly sure of what to make of it all yet. Clearing away the sugar with a hard, grating bite, I back away a few steps, turn, and head home.

There’s a tragedy playing out just feet from my apartment, and yet a higher need emerges. It’s Wednesday morning; Babygirl is with her dad today. I can pretend to be young, blast podcasts, listen non-stop to the radio, to stories of war, murder, and explosions, drink nothing but piping-hot tea all day, then read, lying on the floor among the cuttings floating in their grimy glass pots—or just let my eyes close, even if not to sleep.

***

Whenever I take the bus, over the last few months, I always sit next to someone. I choose a spot based on how close I can get to this other human. Once at their side, I begin the process: my breathing deepens. I try to synchronize mine with my neighbour’s. My eyes are half closed. My skin is an antenna, it picks up even the slightest movements. Pairing with this stranger, I try to channel their experience for one ride, to take part in it, give it a little more room to spread out in. I fade out to better couple with this person.

Often, my seatmate will notice I’m up to something. They shoot me a look, as if to say, What gives? I answer them by inhaling deep and long as I catch their eyes, then exhaling as I close mine.

Also, I always wear my gold-fabric gloves in the metro. And, waiting for the train, I’ll sometimes fall in love with someone across the tracks. I’m head over heels as soon as I see him, her. We look at each other, shamelessly, up and down, burningly checking each other out, and I give them my biggest smile, which sometimes turns into a brief burst of laughter. Our story unfolds in our gaze within minutes. We make love like this, standing, some twenty metres from each other, and it’s good. I accept his or her slightest flaws and deepest vulnerabilities. She or he welcomes me entirely, with open arms. And then their train pulls in. We’re both caught by surprise, tense with mutual desire, and they gesture for me to call, a question mark in their eyes, but I prefer to cut the whole thing short before it turns sour. It’s beautiful, so beautiful like this—intact. I place a gloved finger to my lips and mime a solemn shhhhh. Their train leaves the station. I feel my joy swell a half measure fuller. When my train arrives, I find a seat. This time, I take a container from my bag and pick out a baby carrot, which I chew intensely.

***

At the stop closest to my place, there’s a bus shelter where I leave offerings. Whatever it is, it goes into a Mason jar, which I position conspicuously on the bench inside.

Most of the time, it’s a strip of paper with a prompt like “Describe your eyes to me” written on it. One time, I left a black marker and a note which read, “Tell me who you are.” When I returned a few hours later, the bus shelter’s glass partition conveyed the short biography of a girl about my age, similar to me in her interests and thoughts. Sometimes I’ll leave pictures I’ve taken in a photobooth, even if it’s harder to find one these days and I have to go all the way out to Langelier station to use one. In these pictures I hold up pieces of cardboard I’ve written questions on, asking that the answers be left in the Mason jar. To the question “Where are you going?” I once got a really lovely, poetic response from a guy who, like me, seemed to be wondering which direction to take.

Every week after breakfast on the Saturdays that Babygirl stays with her dad, I plan something new for strangers in my neighbourhood to experience and put it in a glass jar on the corner of Bloomfield and Jarry.

Yesterday, I left a key and my address. I staked out the bus stop for a while until I noticed someone read the note, take the key, turn it around in their hands, and throw both into the nearest garbage can. I went home—empty. I cranked the radio and listened to the news, lay splayed out on the floor.

***

Like my mother, I believe in magic. I was born to a song which lent my life its theme.

My mom and dad met one mid-December night in 1983, at a party thrown at the Montréal apartment of their mutual friend, Jojo. Back then, Jojo was a name a woman could have. Just like a man might have been called Coco. A nickname made up from the fragmentation of a given name. When a Coco could meet a Jojo. These were the days of sharp edges and bold colours.

At this party, my mom starts eyeing my dad while he chats in a group, observing his every move—fascinated. As she downs glasses of white wine, she gets it in her head that if this man kisses her tonight, then he must be the man of her dreams.

The party keeps rolling along, the lights dimming little by little, until someone plays Starmania, the iconic 1979 rock-opera record. Leaning into the ketchup-and-mustard wall behind her (these are the kinds of colours Cocos and Jojos would paint their kitchens in the ’80s), my mom closes her eyes and starts to sing, stone le monde est stone je cherche le soleil au milieu de la nuit, dueting with the female lead, stone the world is stone I look for the sun in the still of the night. Superstitious, she tells herself that if she opens her eyes before he kisses her, then the spell will break and he can’t be the man of her dreams.

She feels a presence approaching. She resists all temptation. The feeling, on her lips, of something hard and warm, then of a hot, bitter liquid trickling into her mouth. Whenever I get to this part, everyone thinks it’s going to be sperm and I always want to say: they’re at a party, surrounded by people, who would think of something so gross. My dad pours sake from a ceramic cup into her mouth. Then, the kiss. And then, three years later, I appear, screaming my little lungs out, head full of black hair. Two and a half years later, they split up. I am the sun in the still of the night.

***

I hate noise, it makes my stomach ache. Pots clanging, Tupperware tumbling, doors slamming, hinges squeaking, the TV blasting in Spanish at my Dominican neighbour, her four kids clambering up the staircase in a herd, or playing on their Nintendo or hide-and-seek in the fire escape, barreling down the steps—each one a resounding thunderclap. Even with all this sound permeating every second of my existence, I try, with my hands, to detect my heartbeats. I’ve been feeling for their vibrations since I was a kid, to no end.

This morning, I fashioned myself a stethoscope, inserting a flexible aluminum hose into the tube of a funnel. I was careful to file down the other end of the hose with a square of sandpaper to make sure the metal edge wouldn’t dig into my temple. Lying on my futon, I press the funnel to my chest and hold the hose against my ear. I test different listening positions. Nothing. The reigning ruckus doesn’t help.

I decide to go out for a walk and get some jujubes by the piece. Parc-Ex is immense as universal disorder. It’s the chaotic coalescence of yellow-orange and sequins, of video stores renting the latest Bollywood blockbusters, a madhouse so well-stuffed, so densely packed that the cashier at my local dépanneur is fluent in seven languages just to accommodate the regulars. Kalimera! She goes, but has gotten it wrong. She keeps taking me for the Greek girl next door, a young Physics PhD studying at McGill, who, like me, often comes here for a scoop of jujubes to pluck herself up with.

At the till, I catch, from the corner of my eye, the Journal de Montréal with, on its front page, a picture of the building opposite mine. The red type printed over the photo reads: suicide dans la petite inde : un party qui finit mal.

I add the paper to my bag of jujubes, pay, and leave. I race down the three or four steps to the sidewalk. Dépanneurs are always dirty. My fingers are greasy and grey. I hurry home. In front of the building, a few last shreds of the yellow tape strung up by the police still trail along the ground. I climb the three flights of stairs to my apartment and flop onto my Ektorp with the paper.

I read the last few paragraphs of the story. One witness claims that the young Simon was completely sober when it happened. Another reports seeing him walk calmly and without stopping to the edge of the roof, then jump. On page 4, there’s a photo of him. I don’t think we ever met.

As I read, I again listen for my heartbeat with my improvised stethoscope, but even after racing up all those stairs, there’s still nothing to hear. There is, though, that reflexive movement of my chest, back and forth.

Did Simon feel the beat of his heart or only the beat animating him, on the night of May 22? Did he feel its renowned drum or only the contractions resounding throughout his body?

Maybe I’m not the only one who feels the pull of suicide-as-portal, drawn in by the urge to jump—because there’s something beautiful about it. And I could decide to do it, too; Simon may have made that very choice—deliberately.

I eat another jujube shaped like a royal-blue fish. It’s plump and firm. Makes me think of proteins. He would’ve jumped on purpose. To eternalize spring in bloom, a night with friends.

***

Whenever I stand on a balcony, I think about it, too. I’d just need to set my mind to it. A single act is all that separates me up here from me down there. This makes me smile, fills me with a sense of power. I rest my hands flat on the railing. Surely I must look calm and collected. With my head held high. I imagine a ballerina’s string hoisting me upward. Only my eyes are downturned.

The same thing happens when I’m on a bridge: I imagine that I jump. I see myself jumping. When I’m with someone, I even see myself pushing them off, ahead of me. Instead, I then point something out in our scenery, based on the season. In the summer, I’ll say: Look at the light! Aren’t we lucky to be alive, to be able to see this? And I’ll pause. I’m so glad to be here with you, Simon. In the winter, I’ll say: Wow, are you seeing this snow, it’s stunning! A pregnant pause. I feel good when I’m with you. Do you ever want to jump and become one with the immense universal disorder?

This translation was produced as part of ALTA’s 2025 Emerging Translator Mentorship Program, supported by Québec Édition.

ABOUT THE CREATORs

Dawson Ford Campbell lives in Vancouver, Canada. He received his M.A. in Translation Studies from Concordia University in 2022. Dawson translates literature from Quebec and France. His work has appeared in World Poetry Review and Hopscotch Translation.

Clémence Dumas-Côté was born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1986 and currently lives in the Eastern Townships. She’s a writer, performance artist and podcaster. Clémence is the author of the novel Glu (winner of the Alfred-DesRochers prize, 2023), and three poetry books, L’alphabet du don, La femme assise (translated into English as The Seated Woman with House of Anansi Press, 2025), and Filles de Gore.