Do You Believe in Goodness?

One of the subplots in A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny involves the forming and continuation of relationships by Chief Inspector Armand Gamache with troubled young Surete agents. Having lost his parents as a boy, Gamache can penetrate deeply into their psyches.

Guy Beauvoir was a misfit exiled to wilderness Quebec by the Surete du Quebec until Chief Inspector Armand Gamache rescued him but not by attacking his anger:

What blinded us, he told Beauvoir, were the horrorific acts. They threatened to overwhelm and obscure the decency. It was so easy to remember the cruelty because those left a wound, a scab that hid the rest. But those appalling acts, those appalling people, were the exception.

Ten years later the presence of Reine-Marie and the villagers of Three Pines reassure him:

Every evening Armand Gamache was reminded that goodness existed.

Gamache’s confidence in goodness resonated with me.

A decade after their meeting Beauvoir shares the goodness that supports Gamache. He is married to Annie, the Gamache’s daughter, and has two children.

Amelia Choquet returns to the series in A World of Curiosities. She was another wounded soul rescued by Gamache to become a member of the Surete.

A few years ago she appeared in The Reckoning as a brilliant, very troubled young woman, on and off the streets of Montreal who Gamache, as Commander of the Surete Academy, grants admission. He saw past her tattoos, piercings and studs and gave her a chance.  

Choquet is now an agent. She is impetuous, on the edge or past of contempt towards colleagues and superiors. She instantly offers opinions. She is much like the young Beauvoir. 

Choquet is sly, as well as clever. Asked by Gamache to subtly approach Sam Arseanault (See my previous post where he appears in my review of the book) she clicks her tongue stud against her teeth in Morse code forming “Subtle, c’est moi”. Only Gamache understands.

Lawyers, especially litigators, can be as cynical as police about the world. We see people daily who are entangled in trouble. My day may start with a call about issues over parenting involving parents who only text as they cannot talk with each other. Disclosure on a criminal file may follow the call. Most criminal files I deal with involve some conflicted domestic situation. The day may continue with an estate dispute over whether a sibling unduly influenced a parent in the making of a will.

It would be easy to think the world is filled with bitter people intent on hurting those they are sure have wronged them.

Yet the rest of my day might see me meeting with a young couple signing documents for the purchase of their first home. That appointment might be followed by parents working out the details of the transfer of some farmland to their children. It might conclude with discussion of the terms of settlement of a commercial dispute in swhich both sides have shown some flexibility after starting with rigid positions.

Beyond work days that involve a mix of the best and worst of human nature I, as with Gamache, have the goodness of family and community in the evening.

Beauvoir and Annie, the Gamache’s daughter, chose life rather than abortion when they learned Annie was pregnant with a child who would have Down’s Syndrome.

Their daughter Idola brightens their lives:

He bent closer to his daughter, smiling. “Daddy’s big and strong and won’t let anything ever happen to you, right, ma belle Idola, Idola, Idola.”

As Idola’s father held her flat, saucer-like eyes, she laughed, With abandon.

She was so like her mother that way. A light and easy heart.

Gamache and Reine Marie love and cherish Idola.

What neither Gamache nor the other police in the Three Pines mysteries have is faith. I find being a Catholic sustains me in tough times and gives me hope for the future.

A spiritual life involves faith. You cannot be a cynic if you have faith.

On a lovely spring day Beauvoir reflects on goodness:

But now, as the sun rose higher and the scent of lilac filled the air Juan-Guy looked around at the peaceful village and began to see that maybe the belief in goodness wasn’t a blind spot. It was a bright spot.

Outside today the sun is shining in a big Saskatchewan sky. The brilliant white snow sparkles. I agree, goodness is a bright spot. 

There is good all around if you are open to goodness.

****

Penny, Louise – (2005) - Still Life; (2006) - Dead Cold (Tied for 3^rd Best fiction of 2006); (2007) - The Cruelest Month; (2009) - The Murder Stone (Tied for 4th Best fiction of 2009); (2010) - The Brutal Telling; (2011) - Bury Your Dead (Best Fiction of 2011); (2011) - A Trick of the Light; (2012) - The Beautiful Mystery (Part I) and The Beautiful Mystery (Part II); (2013) - "P" is for Louise Penny - Movie Producer and Review of the Movie of Still Life; (2013) - How the Light Gets In; (2014) - The Long Way Home; (2014) - The Armand Gamache Series after 10 Mysteries - Part I and Part II; (2015) - The Nature of the Beast (Part I) and The Nature of the Beast (Part II); (2016) - A Great Reckoning - The Academy and Comparisons and The Map; (2016) - Louise Penny and Michael Whitehead Holding Hands; (2017) - Glass Houses - Happiness and Unhappiness and Getting the Law Wrong; (2019) - Kingdom of the Blind and Irreconcilable Dispositions; (2019) - A Better Man; (2020) - All the Devils are Here and Relationship Restaurants in Fiction and Real Life and Reading of the Marais Simultaneously; (2021) - The Madness of Crowds and Responding to Evil and Considering "People"; (2021) - Three Pines - The Amazon Prime Series; (2022) - Season One of Three Pines; (2023) - A World of Curiosities