Crossing the Continent

by Michel Tremblay

  And her aunt Bebette appears.

  She’s a very capable woman, fat, with creamy skin, feared by her grandfather’s family as much for her all-consuming good humour as for her authoritarian, manipulative and nearly despotic side. A born dictator, she controls her children with an iron hand and enveloping arms. She is an attentive mother with terrible fits of temper, sentimental but sometimes with a heart of stone. She is generosity personified combined with malevolence. Rhéauna has always heard that Bebette is two individuals at once: the nice and the not nice. Even more than her sister Régina-Coeli’s moods, Bebette’s are feared and she takes advantage of that always to do as she likes, making everyone take her advice, intervening where she has no business, overly curious, intrusive – but so charming when she wants, so understanding and magnanimous, that she is forgiven for everything. She is the centre of attention wherever she goes, the life of parties and the most distraught at funerals. She reigns and leads the people around her with a satisfaction that she doesn’t hide and does everything in her power, which is great, to keep it that way.

  Rhéauna, however, knows only the positive side of Bebette’s personality. She has often heard about her famous outbursts, her severity, her aggressive side, but for her that’s a kind of legend because never has Bebette, who has been fond of her since she came out west, shown her the dark side of her personality. She is always charming with her and then some. When they get together over Christmas, she gives her all kinds of presents and kisses, which smear her face with a thick coat of dark red, nearly blue, lipstick. Her gruff, good-natured lady’s voice makes her laugh and encourages her to eat her fill whereas her grandmother tries to persuade her to watch her diet to stay healthy and not get fat.

  “Saperlipopette, Rhéauna, you’re a big girl! I nearly didn’t recognize my sweet girl!”

  Her saperlipopette is also famous in the family. Never in her life has Bebette sworn, she doesn’t need to: she just has to open her mouth, deliver her booming saperlipopette and everything comes to a halt – people stop what they’re doing and the world stops turning. She shouts it with such self-assurance, such an intense modulation in her voice, that no curse from Quebec – neither tabarnac, nor câlice, nor sacrament, nor even a crisse decâlice de tabarnac de sacrament – could equal it. It is a thunderclap that hits you in the middle of the forehead, leaving you paralyzed and helpless. And shaking with fear.

  But the one she’s just pronounced in front of Rhéauna is a caress, a whopper, maybe, but a caress all the same. You sense in it affection for a beloved great-niece and maybe a grain of pity for this child who must cross an entire continent to join her mother and begin a new life. It’s a saperlipopette all right, and it rings out loud and clear under the vault of the waiting room, but it is also a rather rough expression of love from the bottom of her heart. Some of those present – though they’d never admit it – are even a little jealous of this little girl who’s come from the depths of Saskatchewan to be imposed on them as if she were a queen and already is enjoying the leniency of the dreadful Bebette.

  “How do you like this reception, little girl? Eh? I’ll have you know there’s nineteen of us! Nineteen people that came here to meet you! I’m not sure even Queen Victoria would have brought out such a crowd if she’d taken the time to visit us out in the Canadian West when she was alive!”

  Rhéauna, who can’t think of anything to say, merely smiles without looking at anyone in particular.

  Her aunt bends over her. A mixture of spicy sweat, bar soap and cheap perfume. After the loud smacks on both cheeks, Rhéauna knows that she looks like a clown because Bebette’s lipstick always leaves smears that are nearly indelible and need several washes to disappear, but she dares not wipe it in front of the older woman for fear of irritating her.

  “You must be ready to drop, you’re so tired. Climb in with me. My buggy’s the biggest, my daughters’ are smaller … And now, Rhéauna dear, welcome to Saint-Boniface!”

  “Aren’t we in Winnipeg?”

  “Yes, but we’re from Saint-Boniface and we’ve decided that the station belongs to us, too … We call it the Saint-Boniface Station even if it upsets the people in Winnipeg … Saperlipopette, let me wipe off that lipstick … Look at you – people will think I’ve slashed your face!”

  She wets her thumb with the tip of her tongue and starts to wipe Rhéauna’s cheeks. The little girl feels as if her face is being torn away. Or that her cheeks are being rubbed off.

  “Okay, that’ll do for now. We’ll finish up back at the house … There’s a nice hot bath waiting for you …”

  The clan moves like one person, or a gaggle of geese: Bebette in the centre, taller than anyone else, bustling, prattling, regal, the others surrounding her like a queen bee whom they serve without debate. She gives orders, delivers a few slaps, shoots off a couple of well-placed saperlipopettes, not her loudest, though, and drags her great-niece behind her by the hand.

  When the train pulled in, Rhéauna was the object of everyone’s attention, probably because Bebette had given orders, but the little girl feels as if for a few minutes now she no longer exists because everyone is paying attention to her aunt, the natural focus of the group, and she knows that won’t change. Bebette must not often, or for very long, agree to be on the fringe of her family’s attention and she probably doesn’t need to give orders for things to resume their normal course.

  A dense group among a thinner crowd made up of aimless onlookers and hurried travellers cutting across the waiting room, a tight knot of cries, of laughter and smells, not all of them pleasant, Bebette’s tribe cuts a path toward the exit of the Winnipeg Station.

  Bebette turns to Rhéauna after pushing away one of her granddaughters who was trying to get a little too much attention and wanted to grab her other hand.

  “I didn’t introduce you to everybody yet … We’ll do that at the house, but there’s so many people I know you won’t be able to remember all the names … I brought all my daughters and their children – my boys are at work – all my daughters-in-law are here, too, with my boys’ children and, I’m telling you, that makes a whole lot of people for me to manage … I’ve even got a couple of great-grandsons in the batch … See, I didn’t want you to arrive all by yourself, or to feel lost. I wanted lots of happiness when you got off the train, I wanted you to feel that everybody’d been waiting for you …”

  “Anyway, it’s a change from Régina.”

  “I’m not surprised. Poor Régina – is she as boring as ever?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Yes, you can, dear. My sister Régina-Coeli is the most boring person who’s ever been created! She was put on earth to make us die of boredom and she’s way too good at it in my opinion. A punishment! My sister Régina-Coeli is a punishment! And not even from God, but the devil!”

  Everyone laughs. Too loudly. Some protest. As a matter of form.

  “Oh, come on!”

  “Don’t say that, Grandma …”

  “She isn’t that bad …”

  “After all, Mama, she’s your sister …”

  “I like my aunt Régina.”

  Bebette puts an end to it with one sentence.

  “I didn’t say I don’t like her. What I said was she’s crazy, with her delusions of grandeur!”

  Why bother arguing. Aunt Bebette probably doesn’t even know that her sister plays the piano to survive her unbearable loneliness.

  “Does she still play that crazy music of hers? Does she still think she’s a great artist? Does she still put on those free concerts for her neighbours, the darn fool? She’s crazy, all right! She thinks we don’t know anything but it all comes out in the end!”

  Rhéauna doesn’t have time to answer. They’ve just gone through a metal door and emerged onto a large street, livelier than Regina, to the head of a line of splendid, spic-and-span buggies that look roomy and comfortable. They look as if they’ve come from the general store in Winnipeg for their first race a
cross the city to celebrate her arrival.

  Bebette is already lifting her long skirt.

  “Mine’s the first one up front. Pretty, isn’t it? I just had it fixed up. I’d like to tell you it was in your honour but really, it needed it. Come on, the others will follow us.”

  They are alone in a huge contraption smelling of new leather, axle grease and horse manure. He’s off like a shot when Bebette delivers a whistle that must act like a saperlipopette or a crack of the whip and Rhéauna, thrilled, is glued to the back of her seat.

  If Regina’s streets surprised her, Winnipeg’s take her breath away. An open war seems to have been declared by three means of transport: automobiles, which are numerous and roaring, streetcars and horse-drawn carriages. The resulting pandemonium is indescribable. People everywhere, dust, noise, strange odours, very different from the horse manure she’s used to smelling on Maria’s one street, acrid stenches that catch at her throat and give her an urge to cough. When they’re not simply congested, the avenues around the station are blocked, with everyone yelling because no one can move; the horses take fright, they neigh and kick, children are running all over, whining, and the police don’t know at whom to whistle. Rhéauna tries to see everything at once and doesn’t stop moving on her seat. Her great-aunt places a firm hand on her knee.

  “Stop squirming, Nana, you look like you’ve got worms …”

  Rhéauna tries to be still, to observe everything without turning her head too much. In vain.

  “I’ve never seen a thing like that, ma tante! Not even yesterday in Regina.”

  Bebette smiles, puffs herself up as if she owns the city of Winnipeg.

  “The big city’s really something, isn’t it?”

  Her great-aunt Régina had said the same thing the day before, she’d used the same words, at nearly the same time of day, about a much smaller city and in a much smaller crowd. She wonders if she would be just as impressed by the streets of Regina now that she’s in Winnipeg. If she went back to Regina right now, would she think the streets were peaceful compared to these, when they’d seemed so spectacular twenty-four hours earlier? Do we end up getting used to all that? To changes? To the unknown?

  Her great-aunt leans over to her and talks to her very softly, as if to reassure her.

  “You’ll have to get used to it, they say it’s even worse in Morial. Apparently, they’ve put lights at the corners of the streets there to help the traffic. I don’t know how it works but apparently, they’ve already done it in the United States, in Salt Lake City I think … I read that in the paper. A green light to go and a red light to stop. I don’t understand how, but if it works … You can’t stop progress, can you?”

  The buggy swerves violently and Rhéauna almost ends up on her knees on the floor, which is covered with a royal-blue carpet.

  “You have to sit properly, Nana, or you could get knocked out … Saperlipopette, you have buggies in Maria, don’t you? You know how they work!”

  The store windows are full of exotic things: strange household devices; electrical appliances that look nearly menacing, their use mysterious; big reproductions of pictures showing beautiful landscapes in blazing colours or people frozen in odd, stiff poses; fabulously rich clothes. She even sees a whole display of wedding gowns! It all rushes past her eyes and she only has time to note its existence but can’t fully understand what she is seeing. Will she be able to hold it all in her memory and think about it later?

  Her great-aunt takes off her enormous hat covered with birds and foaming tulle that made her look like a monarch, untouchable, and all of a sudden she seems more human. Less impressive at any rate. And smaller. She sticks a long pin into the fabric of the hat, then sets it down between them. Then she tidies the hair that has escaped from her hairdo – grey curls in a loose knot on the top of her head. That way, in profile and despite her portliness, she resembles closely her sister Régina-Coeli.

  “It’ll be quieter in Saint-Boniface! And saperlipopette, at least people will speak French.”

  It’s a country road in the middle of the city, like the one in Regina the day before. The frame houses resemble that of her grandparents, with verandas wrapped around three sides and everything, but instead of overlooking a cornfield, they face other houses, painted similar colours and equally worn down by bad weather. They could be a row of houses sitting in front of a gigantic mirror. And multiplied to infinity because Rhéauna saw several other streets like this one when the buggy turned off what seemed to be the main artery in Saint-Boniface, an avenue nearly as busy as the streets around the station, but whose name she hasn’t been able to read yet.

  After travelling through downtown Winnipeg, the buggy went across a metal bridge, the Provencher Bridge, then crossed a square where stood a very beautiful cathedral, and great-aunt Bebette said in a tone that contained a certain amount of relief:

  “We’re home now, saperlipopette.”

  On the veranda of the last house on the right, painted sky blue with white shutters, a pachyderm is waiting for them, slumped in a dilapidated rocking chair, his head back, apparently asleep. Rhéauna had found the word pachyderm in a book about animals. It seems to mean the same thing as elephant. This is the first time she can use it for a human being. She knows people who are big, of course, Madame Houle and Monsieur Cantin, for instance, and even Bebette are all fairly corpulent, but this one is even bigger and she finds it hard to believe that he’s going to extricate himself from the chair in a little while, stand on his feet, say something, go inside the house with them. She imagines him rather as an unmoving guard, like a huge hound attached to a chain so he can’t run away, or as a gigantic garden gnome. A presence that is reassuring despite his immobility. As she climbs the few steps that lead to the front door, she realizes that he is a very old gentleman with pure white hair and incredibly short legs. Maybe because his torso is so huge, his limbs seem truncated – two little arms, two little legs – and Rhéauna wonders if he waddles when he walks, like a gnome in a fairy tale. A giant gnome. Who rolls along instead of walking.

  Rhéauna smiles despite her fatigue.

  Bebette walks past her, lays a hand on the man’s forearm without waking him.

  “This is my husband. He’s big.”

  The buggies that were following them have stopped behind Bebette’s and the other eighteen people who greeted Rhéauna when she got off the train have already swept into the garden in front of the house, up the steps, through the front door. They’re of all ages, there are even some children, but in her opinion most are rather old to be stirring up this whirlwind of excitement around her on their own initiative: she doesn’t really understand why they’re fussing around her so much, she doesn’t know them, all she knows is that they are part of Bebette’s family. They seem to know her, though, they call her by name, they ruffle her hair, welcome her again to Saint-Boniface, and wish her good luck on the rest of her journey. They talk loudly, they laugh, a skipping rope appears out of nowhere and some little girls – the only ones who are ignoring her – sing a counting song she’s never heard that says something about a cow that’s lost in a cornfield and counts the cobs … She senses that this evening will be very different from yesterday’s and that no doubt she won’t have the peace and quiet she needs if she’s to rest from her long trip. Will they keep following her till she leaves tomorrow morning? They must have their own houses, surely they don’t all live with Bebette! Anyway, the house wouldn’t be big enough, which reassures her a little.

  Her suitcase has just appeared beside her but she doesn’t see who brought it. A very elegant lady in a dress of wine-red satin with greenish glimmers takes her hand, squeezes it a little too hard.

  “Poor little girl … I knew your mother very well. We played together when we were little. We were the same age. She wasn’t easy …”

  Why is she talking about her mother in the past like that? She still exists, even if she’s at the other end of the country!

  Bebette claps her
hands, all heads turn toward her.

  “Thanks for coming out like this, everybody, it was nice of you! I’m sure our little Rhéauna is glad to have you all here … But now I think you can go home, she must be tired, and you’ve got supper to make … If you want some lemonade or coffee, there’s gallons.”

  No introductions. She won’t know their names though Bebette has promised to introduce them one by one.

  Conversations stop dead, this is probably the signal they’ve been waiting for to leave. Rhéauna understands that she’s guessed right: no one in this noisy group has chosen to come and meet her at the station, they probably didn’t want to, it was all laid out by Bebette. They had no choice but to accept the orders of this energetic woman to whom it seemed very hard to say no about anything, so strong was her personality, she was the undisputed leader of the family whom they feel obliged to obey without argument.

  The house is cleared out in no time, no coffee is requested, no one comes back to welcome her or to wish her good luck for the rest of her journey. You could say that she ceases to exist for the second time.

  Now Rhéauna is all alone with her great-aunt Bebette. And the mammoth with the too-short limbs goes on sleeping despite the racket all around him.

  At first, she refused to climb into the steaming bathtub that takes up the whole back wall of the bathroom just under the open window through which any curious passerby could no doubt see her playing in the water. Back home she washes herself while standing in a basin on the back veranda in summer and, in winter, in front of the wood stove where her grandmother places three kettles full of warm water; it takes five minutes and there is no question of lingering, unlike her two sisters, who always take their bath together to save water, and love to shout and spray one another with dirty water in imitation of battles at sea. All they know about battles at sea they’ve gleaned from picture books – Saskatchewan has very few large expanses of water and boats are rather rare – and they picture themselves as Caribbean pirates, especially as Captain Hook, the most-hated character in children’s literature because he wants to destroy Peter Pan and kidnap lovely Wendy, or as Long John Silver, the most ferocious pirate of all time. Grandma Joséphine had read Treasure Island to them the year before and they still haven’t got over the vastness and the cruelty of the sea; the twenty-foot-high waves that can swallow a boat in seconds; the food full of worms that sailors sometimes have to make do with; boats that pitch and roll; flags that sport the skull and crossbones; cannons that produce as much smoke as noise. All that is what they try to illustrate in the half-full basin of water, but they have to stand up during their improvised wars because they can’t even kneel in their too-narrow ocean.