Crossing the Continent

by Michel Tremblay

  When great-aunt Bebette told her that she should take a bath before supper, Rhéauna saw herself standing in a basin, scrubbing herself with a big square cake of soap, the same kind that everyone in Maria uses because Monsieur Connells doesn’t sell any others even if certain village ladies often complain because of its poor quality. Instead, she found a massive, all-white bathtub, an enormous rectangular monster with lion’s paws that resembled a coffin already filled with steaming, scented water. She told Bebette that she preferred to wash herself one parish at a time, the way she did at home, and her great-aunt burst into laughter that Rhéauna is convinced made the house shake.

  “Saperlipopette, Nana, this isn’t the country, we’re in the city, we’ve got running water! And don’t tell me you’re afraid of my bathtub, too! It’s one of the finest in Winnipeg! The biggest one in Saint-Boniface!”

  “I didn’t say that it wasn’t beautiful, ma tante …”

  “No, but it scares you, doesn’t it?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that …”

  “Nana, you aren’t the first person who didn’t want to! I’m used to it! When I had it put in for your uncle Rosaire a few years ago, nobody but him even wanted to get close to it. I practically had to carry my children in my arms one by one to convince them to try it! Even the ones over forty! Their excuse was they didn’t live here to get undressed but I made them all try. The whole gang! The oldest and the youngest! It took pretty well a whole month. And they all loved it! Some are even going to put one in at their place, that’s how much they liked it! It’s wonderful, you’ll see, it’s like swimming in a lake. Heated!”

  Rhéauna had to let herself be talked into it because she knew that she wouldn’t win with this great-aunt who might very well behave with her as she’d done with her children and force her to try the darn tub, no matter what. (She imagined the beautiful lady in the wine-red dress she’d seen a while ago, who was so dignified, taking off all her clothes in front of her mother – or her mother-in-law, if she’s the wife of one of Bebette’s boys – just to make her happy, slip into the bathtub while covering the lower part of her body …) Great-aunt Bebette is really very strange.

  Finally she edged her way to the steaming creature. It was mainly the odour that made her decide to dip a finger in the water. Bebette told her it was called rosemary. That rosemary, apparently, wasn’t used just for cooking. She also explained to her that it was an exotic oil from far away. That it would soften her skin. Take a bath in water full of oil? A kind of salad dressing? But apparently this was no ordinary oil:

  “On the label they say it has therapeutic powers! And I know something about that – Rosaire claims that means medical, but Rosaire sees medication all over – but I say when you use a five-dollar word like that it must be important! I bathe in it every day, saperlipopette, and besides always being clean and soft, I smell as good as a flower garden! Although I can’t say I’m any healthier.”

  Rhéauna has finally bent over the bathtub, already more tempting now with its unknown fragrance, put one finger into it, then her hand. It is softer than ordinary water and it makes her realize how tired she is. She feels a weight between her shoulder blades. She hunches her back.

  Bebette seems to be reading her mind:

  “Ten hours on the train, my pet, wears you out. Take your clothes off, get in the tub, soak yourself for a good half-hour, then tell me what you think.”

  She has been soaking in that divine aroma for a good half-hour now and she’d like to stay in it forever, it’s so relaxing after the shuddering of the train and her anxiety in the face of the unknown. Her head feels as rested as her body. The soap she used to scrub her entire body also smells of rosemary and she wonders if that aroma will follow her long after she gets out of the tub. Monsieur Connells’s soap doesn’t have much smell at all and if you know that you’re clean when you step out of the basin at her grandmother’s, you also know that you still smell the same.

  When the water cools down, she just has to turn on the tap on the left – there are two! – Bebette told her that the hot water tank was full, whatever that means. And if the bath is too hot, the tap on the right dispenses cold water. She switches blissfully from lukewarm water to water that’s nearly boiling, her body takes on a beautiful red colour, she feels weak, gradually glides toward sleep. Maybe she actually goes to sleep without realizing it.

  Then all at once, just as Jacques is making his appearance with his big grey eyes and his sad smile, her Prince Charming who doesn’t like women – she should have kissed him longer instead of being satisfied with a quick little peck, she didn’t even have time to taste his mouth, to enjoy the coolness of his lips – the bathroom door opens and there stands Bebette holding a big white bath towel in front of her.

  “Saperlipopette, Nana, I’ve been telling you to get out of the tub for ten minutes! Were you asleep? That thing is to take a bath in, not to drown! I told you half an hour, not the rest of the night! You’ll be so limp when you get out you won’t be able to eat all the good things I’ve cooked. It’s suppertime and your great-uncle Rosaire doesn’t wait. Now get out, dry yourself with this towel, get into your clean clothes and come to the table with us!”

  As she gets dressed, she dreams of finding a bathtub like that in her mother’s house in Montreal. At least she’d have that consolation.

  Two white china plates laden with steaming corn sit proudly in the middle of the dining-room table. It’s the first of the season – it was late this year and everyone who lives in western Canada is unhappy. For them it represents summer’s end, harvest time, back to school – Rhéauna is happy she can finally eat some, but she’s a little surprised to see that there’s nothing else on the beautiful hand-embroidered tablecloth. Two dozen ears of corn, three places set, two pounds of butter and that’s all. And why two pounds of butter anyway? Unless they’re expecting company … Or corn is Bebette’s equivalent to Régina-Coeli’s eggs goldenrod. And is only one dish served per meal in her grandfather’s family? But when they come to visit at Christmas or Easter, the many members of Rosaire and Bebette Roy’s family always bring lots of good things prepared with care and enthusiasm by the women in the clan.

  But it’s pretty to look at, this tableau in yellow and white. In any case it gives you an appetite, she can hear her stomach growl.

  Then great-uncle Rosaire makes his entrance on the arm of his wife who supports him under the armpits. He takes tiny steps, bent over, legs apart. Sweat stands out on his forehead and his shirt is wet in front and under the arms. He must only move for a meal or a bath, at least that’s what crosses Rhéauna’s mind. She doesn’t know how to behave around him. Say hello as if everything’s normal? Or ignore him and make small talk with Bebette while he stuffs himself because that’s probably what he will do? There’s a reason he’s so big … He leans against the end of the table before he manages to sit down on a big wooden chair, the only one that can support him and which creaks under his weight. All at once Rhéauna remembers that she has often asked her grandparents why aunt Bebette’s husband never came to Maria. She had the answer before her eyes and it’s not a pretty sight.

  How much could he weigh? She thought about the word pachyderm a while ago, now what comes to her mind is a whale. He’s as white as a whale and he seems equally uncomfortable out of water … And his weight must be close to that of a little cachalot …

  The silence is becoming heavy. Bebette ends it by speaking to her husband.

  “Say hello to Rhéauna, Rosaire. She’s my brother Méo’s granddaughter. Maria’s daughter. You remember Maria Desrosiers, the one who left at the beginning of the century to live it up in the east, in the United States, in Providence, Rhode Island? Well this is her daughter! She’s on her way to Montreal where her mother’s just moved for some reason or other …”

  A very small voice emerges from the mass of flabby flesh, surprisingly sweet and with a natural affability breaking through. A good little boy who speaks politely.

>   “I know who she is, Bebette, you’ve been talking about her visit for a week now … I saw you arrive a while ago with the rest of the gang, but I was going to sleep … Hello, Nana, how are you?”

  He looks at her for the first time. His tiny eyes are an amazing blue that is somewhat reminiscent of the gown on the statue of the Blessed Virgin, but with red veins as if he suffers from a permanent head cold. Piggy eyes. She can’t stop herself from sketching a faint smile. An elephant, a whale, a pig – the entire animal kingdom will be represented if this keeps up! What will she think about when he starts to eat his corn? A cow? Will he start ruminating like Valentine, her grandfather’s cow?

  “Welcome, Rhéauna … But your name isn’t Desrosiers, is it?”

  “No, Uncle Rosaire, it’s Rathier …”

  “That’s right, your mother married a Frenchman from France … Wasn’t long till she was on her own again. That’ll teach her … Anyway, welcome, Rhéauna Rathier. You’re a real pretty little girl … And tempting like all the girls in your family …”

  Rhéauna sees Bebette stiffen a little and suspects that Rosaire’s compliments are usually reserved for her and that she doesn’t take it kindly when they’re meant for someone else.

  Bebette wipes her hands on her apron, forces a smile that’s supposed to be gracious but looks more like a cruel, sardonic grin.

  “Okay, time to eat. It’s good to gab but the corn’s getting cold, saperlipopette!”

  This time the saperlipopette is very serious; Rhéauna pulls out her chair.

  “There’s a dozen for your uncle Rosaire. See, he likes his corn and he eats a lot during the two weeks when we can get it fresh … What we don’t eat tonight I’ll roast on the wood stove tomorrow morning, Rosaire likes that as much as toast … Do you eat corn out there? You can eat all you want but be careful, there’s something else afterward … I cooked chicken, potatoes, new peas. And a raspberry pie ’cause they’re nearly over …”

  Rhéauna wonders if there will be a whole chicken for her uncle and another for her and her aunt. She immediately regrets such a rude thought, hangs her head. It’s very different from last night’s supper.

  Since she was a small child she’s been taught to spread a thin coat of butter on four rows of her corn at a time so that nothing drops onto her hands or her plate. And to chew for a good long time because corn is hard to digest. And that indigestion from corn can be fatal. Great-uncle Rosaire doesn’t seem concerned about these trivial matters. He places the blazing hot corn on the pound of butter, turns it around so the whole ear is thickly coated, salts it and throws himself on it, grunting. The little girl has never seen such a thing. He devours a cob of corn in less than a minute, it’s all over his cheeks, butter is dripping onto the table, he hiccups, he labours, he belches, his breathing is hoarse and jerky, there is sweat standing out on his forehead. As soon as one ear is finished he drops the empty cob onto his plate and takes another. All under a kindly look from Bebette who picks at hers because she claims that she doesn’t like corn very much. She seems, though, to feel a need to apologize for him: she wipes her lips with her napkin and looks at Rhéauna, smiling.

  “He’s only like that when he’s eating corn. You’ll see, he’ll calm down in a while …”

  Rhéauna is appalled at the mere thought that he is going to eat something else after his dozen ears of corn but she doesn’t dare say a word and bends over her plate.

  Looking up, she suddenly catches a strange look on her great-uncle’s face. Right in the middle of a grunt, while he is chewing at an incredible speed, he gives her a kind of pleading look, as if he is asking her for help … She realizes then that he can’t stop, that it’s a kind of sickness, that he could die of it, like a horse that’s left behind in a field of oats. Here’s another animal to add to the list … Not a cow, though. Rosaire doesn’t ruminate, he devours!

  She looks at Bebette. Does she know? Has she, a ten-year-old little girl, come here to guess something that’s as plain as the nose on your face, that her great-aunt, an intelligent woman, doesn’t see? Or prefers not to? And why? Bebette had said earlier that he would calm down when the chicken arrived but is that true? Does he eat everything like that? And most of all, does he always have that pleading expression when he swallows his food as if he were eating for the last time? Would he like to be stopped by force? Does Bebette let her husband eat because she feels sorry for him? But excuses him to keep up appearances?

  “Saperlipopette, Nana, you aren’t eating! Aren’t you hungry?”

  No, she isn’t hungry. She puts her ear of corn on her plate.

  “You don’t like corn?”

  “Maybe I’m too tired to eat …”

  “Oh, come on, a child your age has to eat! You’re still growing! Pretty soon you’ll be a big girl!”

  She tries to pick up her corn, nibbles a couple of mouthfuls. Will she be able to eat it again someday and not think about uncle Rosaire? About his pleading expression? But why doesn’t he say so? Why doesn’t he get up from the table, throw his plate on the floor, saying that he doesn’t want any more, that he’s sick and tired of being fat, of eating like a pig? Who knows, maybe he likes it. Eating too much. And being a pitiful sight.

  But Rhéauna has misunderstood her great-uncle Rosaire. In part, anyway.

  Rosaire Roy had built a fairly respectable fortune as foreman during construction of the western branch – the last and most difficult one – of the railway that henceforth would cross Canada almost from coast to coast, east to west. He was present at the opening of the final section that runs through the Rockies into British Columbia when he was about to retire and saw it as the crowning achievement of a long and fruitful career. He witnessed the creation of the famous pâté chinois, the British shepherd’s pie with added corn, a commodity that was local, abundant, filling and invented by Asian cooks to nourish the men working on the railway. He ate more pork-and-beans than any human could tolerate. For years he slept in disgusting barracks that smelled of grime, sweat, pork-and-beans farts, in a tent or under the stars but never in a hotel because he would have felt as if he were looking down on his men. He grew ecstatic over the beauty of Lake Louise during the full moon and he fed the elk that wander freely on the streets of the glorious village of Banff. Most of his life he followed the railroad when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being built, far from his hometown, Saint-Boniface, now and then for several months at a time, often suffering from loneliness but always thrilled by this unprecedented and unique project that would link the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific – a revolutionary metal road on which he was an enthusiastic worker. Essential, too. Which didn’t keep him from making seven children with Élisabeth Roy, née Desrosiers, the one love of his life.

  There exist some old yellowed photos showing him bare-chested with his arms crossed, in front of the first locomotive to have crossed the border between Manitoba and Saskatchewan, others scarcely more recent that show him on board the train which inaugurated the section that winds its way through the Rockies. A last one, the one of which he’s the most proud, shows him in front of the incredible panorama of Vancouver’s English Bay in the summer. He is already big but the virile strength that now emanates from him commands respect. One can sense that he’s a foreman who doesn’t just show up on easy days.

  His trips home to Winnipeg were always a source of joy for his family because, as a father, he was considerate, amusing and generous. There’d been whores, of course, who followed the workers across Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and toward the end, British Columbia in covered wagons, lavishing on them some human warmth – it’s necessary for the body to exult, especially when you’re young and vigorous – but that was a simple call of nature, a bodily function that served only to relax and that he didn’t condemn despite the Catholic religion which was uncompromising on the matter of an absolute prohibition against knowing other women than one’s own. His affection he reserved for his Bebette, and for his retirement – to be taken as
late as possible, when he was close to seventy, a unique situation at the Canadian Pacific Railway – the children grown up, married, parents themselves, he planned with her an end of the line made up of sweet things and little treats. He had money in the bank, his house had been paid off for ages, they were going to travel, but this time inside the train. They would visit his wife’s family who were scattered from one end of the continent to the other – uncles in Vancouver, nephews and nieces in Calgary, Ti-Lou in Ottawa, the loathsome Régina-Coeli in Regina and maybe even Maria in the United States. And in particular, Joséphine and Méo outside Saskatoon, whom they both adored. His own family was quite sedentary and he’d never had to travel very far to run into them. But never mind, they would put on giant celebrations and invite everyone they knew on his side. Bebette could be in charge of it all with her ringing saperlipopette, run to her liking, parade beneath her unbelievable hats with nothing to worry about except seeing to it that the great celebration at the end of their lives turned out to be a success. It was one exciting plan that alas never materialized.