Crossing the Continent

by Michel Tremblay

  So now that it is possible, she is alone in the midst of the sunbeams, without her sisters, without fish, without waterweeds, without air …

  She lacks air! She must go back to the surface! She lacks air! No, it’s all right, she can breathe. Something that isn’t air. Water from deep in the ocean. Or the lake. Or the pond.

  But what will become of her, all alone in the empty water? It’s liable to be long, isn’t it? She’s not going to stay like that, hands sketching a little waltz ahead of her in the undulating sunbeams, with nothing to do and no one to talk to, is she?

  The world is at one and the same time empty and filled with liquid. And she can’t even manage to drown … Because she can breathe the water. In spite of herself.

  Then, in the distance, a silhouette takes shape.

  She liked very much the story of the little mermaid in love with a human, who grows two beautiful legs that let her move around on terra firma, to the great displeasure of her father, king of the Tritons. Maybe she’s the one that’s arriving. The Little Mermaid in Andersen’s story comes to meet her opposite, the little human girl without gills but able to breathe under water. She looks at her feet. No, and no fish tail either. She hasn’t turned into a mermaid.

  But the silhouette that’s approaching is not that of a delicate red-haired girl with a robe of seashells and a fish tail covered with shiny emerald-green scales. It’s that of a woman. Staggeringly beautiful. With an irresistible smile. And who gestures to her as if they knew one another, as if they were reunited after a long separation. A friend, a close friend, who might replace her sisters, with whom she could chatter away as much as she wanted, confide her child’s secrets in the middle of the empty water. No, no one can replace Béa and Alice, and no one is to know about the sorrow and bad luck she’s suffering now. Especially not a stranger, no matter how beautiful, how friendly, how much of a mermaid she may be!

  The little mermaid who is now an adult opens her mouth, speaks. But what she says is incomprehensible.

  The new mermaid tries to turn around, to move away, but her feet are caught in the mud. She flaps her arms, she can’t breathe, can’t breathe underwater without gills … The fish-woman approaches her, touches her shoulder, shakes her.

  Rhéauna wakes with a start. Devon is bending over her. He tells her something, pointing to the window. She understands that they must have arrived in Ottawa while she was asleep. He’s probably telling her that she has to get off the train. She’s soaking wet, cold sweat is running down her forehead as far as her neck. She’s afraid she has a fever. No, her forehead is cool. It’s just a remnant of fear. Of dying. It will pass. It passes. It’s over.

  She thanks Devon in her version of English.

  4

  Ti-Lou

  Never in her life has she seen a woman so beautiful. Or so elegant.

  Leafing through the Eaton’s catalogue, she often admired the drawings of fashionable ladies in flattering poses, with their unbelievably elaborate and varicoloured hats, holding a parasol, their waist squeezed by corsets too small for them (those are Grandma Joséphine’s words), perfect women who – again according to Grandma Joséphine – didn’t really exist. Rhéauna admired them with a smile, ran her index finger over the drawings, dreamed of one day wearing birds on her head or gloves as long as that, though suspecting it was most unlikely. Grandma Joséphine had also explained to her that those women were only used to sell products, dresses, hats, shoes, accessories, undergarments, that you couldn’t look like that and walk down the street:

  “Can you just see yourself, sweetheart, trying to walk on our wooden sidewalk in the middle of winter dressed like that? With boots as thin as those? Or to cross the road in April? Through the horse buns? Even on the church steps after Sunday Mass, you’d be a laughing stock! Or at the height of summer when the earth is dry because it hasn’t rained for weeks! No, no, no, those women are just catalogue people!”

  She has one in front of her, though, dressed even better than in the ads, not so slender, it’s true, more plump, but beautiful like it isn’t possible to be so beautiful, with a radiant smile that’s barely concealed by a little black veil dotted with tiny mauve silk butterflies, her eyes shining, her waist – nearly as slim as Rhéauna’s – in a lilac cotton dress that drags just a little along the platform. And perfume that brings tears to your eyes. It smells of flowers from exotic lands that are new to Rhéauna, that grow in tropical forests where it’s hot and rainy all year long. Flowers from novels that don’t exist in real life either.

  The sight of her so radiant beside the train, you might think she was getting ready to travel around the world. Or is coming back from it.

  As soon as she spots Rhéauna, the beautiful woman heads for her confidently, then leans over to speak to her.

  “You’re Rhéauna, aren’t you? Maria’s girl? I knew you right away because you look just like her … I haven’t seen Maria for years but I’d recognize those eyes anywhere! They aren’t eyes that you’ve got, they’re two pieces of coal! And me, I’m Ti-Lou.”

  Too impressed to speak, or even to hold out her hand the way you’re supposed to when you meet a stranger, Rhéauna blushes to the roots of her hair and looks down.

  This time, the lady practically bends double to talk to her.

  “You aren’t afraid of me, are you? I’m your mother’s cousin, daughter of her aunt Gertrude who’s the sister of her mother, your grandmother Joséphine … But maybe that’s a bit complicated for a tired little girl like you? You’ll spend the night at my place. A short night because it’s now practically midnight!”

  She thanks Devon in English, holds out some money. Now it’s his turn to blush. He stammers, trembles a little as he pockets the bill. Ti-Lou merely smiles as if she were used to provoking this kind of reaction in men.

  A gentleman arrives with a kind of metal wheelbarrow that makes a deafening noise, loads Rhéauna’s suitcase into it and sets off without a word. Before the little girl’s look of panic, Ti-Lou lays a hand on her shoulder.

  “He’s a porter … he’s going to carry your suitcase for you; don’t worry, he won’t run away with it! Say good night to the gentleman who looked after you on the train, thank him, too, then we’ll go …”

  Rhéauna thanks Devon. In English. He looks thrilled, says something that’s incomprehensible because he talks so fast, and waddles away.

  The little girl doesn’t have time to gaze at all the wonders of Ottawa’s magnificent railroad station. Ti-Lou and Rhéauna cross it in less than thirty seconds, following close on the heels of the porter whose wheelbarrow is creaking louder than ever.

  They go out into the sticky night. Not much traffic now. And no battle between streetcars and automobiles. A small square, empty. Lit by electricity. Rhéauna hesitates between surprise and disappointment.

  “You’ve come a long way. You must be tired to death!”

  Rhéauna can barely get out something that resembles a little protest. Ti-Lou stops short in the middle of the entrance to the station.

  “Now listen. You’re going to have to talk to me! Are you always mute like that? Are you?”

  Rhéauna has just one thing in her head, to ask Madame Ti-Lou for the name of her perfume or at least the names of the flowers that it’s made from. There might be some names that she knows, that she thinks are beautiful, like gardenia, or jasmine. But she’s too overawed.

  Ti-Lou sighs, takes her hand, pulls her along. At the bottom of the steps she holds up her right arm with deliberate carelessness. And the most beautiful carriage in the world stops in front of them: small, all black, very high, square, incredibly elegant. The horses drawing it, black as well, have been so well curried, they gleam in the night. Even Bebette’s carriage, though it’s exceptional, would look like a poor person’s next to this one!

  Rhéauna can finally exclaim:

  “That carriage is so beautiful, ma tante Ti-Lou!”

  Ti-Lou looks at her as if she’s just said something extremely s
tupid.

  “It’s just a carriage you know! A phaeton.”

  She gives her a little shove to make her get into the phaeton.

  “And in just a little while I’ll be getting around in an automobile!”

  It smells of new leather, fresh paint, it’s comfortable, the night is mild; Rhéauna forgets how tired she is. Drowned in Ti-Lou’s perfume she rests her head on the back of her seat and envies this distant relation who has the means to buy … a what is it, a fa-something, how do you say it, in fact, and how on earth do you write it? She knows that in the future it will be one of her favourite words. Not so much because of how it sounds – nearly funny – but how it smells. New leather and gardenia. They cross a small city, sleeping and silent. Rhéauna can’t believe that it is the capital of her country, one of the biggest in the world, one of the most beautiful, most influential. According to her grandfather anyway. Few lights, deserted streets, the sound of horses’ hooves echoing off stately dwellings that seem abandoned. A big Sainte-Maria-de-Saskatchewan after midnight. She nearly expects to see Monsieur Connells’s general store loom up at some street corner or to hear the voice of old man Lacasse, the village drunk who only sings at night so he’ll be sure that he disturbs everybody.

  She finally undoes her new coat that she put on before getting off the train, despite the heat, to make a good impression. She feels relaxed, she wants to know more about Ti-Lou. You can’t be as beautiful as she is and not have an interesting life!

  “You’re lucky you can go around in this! Is your husband rich?”

  Ti-Lou breaks out in a lovely rippling laugh that rises up in the night to get lost somewhere in the stars.

  “I’m not even married, Rhéauna … Do you think you absolutely need a rich husband to be able to pay for a phaeton?”

  “Umm … yes.”

  “Well, you’re wrong! I’ll have you know, I don’t have the slightest need for a husband to pay for everything I buy myself!”

  “So who pays for it?”

  “I just told you. I do. Me, myself and I!”

  Rhéauna runs her hand over the leather seat, enjoys its suppleness, its softness.

  “You must work hard! Do you work here, in the city? What do you do?”

  Ti-Lou’s laugh rings out again, longer this time, with a final snort that’s not nearly as pretty as the cascade of trills before.

  “How old are you, Rhéauna?”

  “I’ll be eleven next week …”

  “You should be old enough to understand this … Have you ever heard the word guidoune?”

  Yes, Rhéauna has heard it. Many times. Especially about Madame Cantin who lives in a house that stands on its own just outside Maria, of whom it’s said that she only earns her living after sunset. And on her back. But her grandparents have always refused to explain what that means. And she can’t imagine how a person can earn their living after nightfall. Lying down in bed.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that word. There’s one of them in Maria. But I don’t know what exactly it is that she does …”

  This time, Ti-Lou doesn’t laugh. She lays her hand on Rhéauna’s, squeezes it very gently.

  “A guidoune, Rhéauna, is an independent woman.”

  Rhéauna can’t imagine just what that means but she nods so that her cousin won’t think she’s too stupid.

  “And an independent woman isn’t somebody people approve of … You still don’t understand, do you?”

  Why hide it? Rhéauna shakes her head.

  Ti-Lou heaves a sigh, looks at the little river on their left, which seems to cut the city in two.

  “Well, it’s not up to me to explain. Especially not tonight. One day you’ll understand and you’ll be able to boast that you’ve met a real one, one of the best, one of the most professional, one of the most conscientious – the great Ti-Lou, the she-wolf of Ottawa.”

  The she-wolf of Ottawa? Rhéauna is wide-eyed. A she-wolf! She’s just compared herself to a wild animal!

  Ti-Lou runs her hand through Rhéauna’s hair.

  “It’s just a way of speaking, Rhéauna. That’s something else you’ll understand someday.”

  She bends down, kisses her on the cheek.

  “Meanwhile, I don’t know what I’d give to have those eyes of yours …”

  The phaeton turns left, goes up a road made of big rounded bricks of a kind that Rhéauna has never seen … and stops in front of a palace that’s right across from the station!

  Rhéauna raises her arm, points.

  “We just had to cross the street!”

  Ti-Lou hides her confusion, shaking her little veil.

  “That’s right!”

  “Why didn’t you come and get me on foot?”

  Ti-Lou starts as if Rhéauna had slapped her.

  “You’ll learn, little girl, that the she-wolf of Ottawa never goes out on foot! Not even to cross the street! I wanted to show you a little of Ottawa before you go to bed.”

  Rhéauna turns toward the building in front of which the phaeton has just come to a halt. The structure is so immense that even the illustrations in her fairy-tale books pale in comparison. It’s a gigantic edifice of stone and brick with towers, dormers, countless windows all lit up. It’s the only building in this part of town or maybe in the entire city that displays a little life at this late hour. A great stone ship plunked down on a hill. Unmoving in the night. A gentleman in a costume, standing at the main door, approaches their carriage, opens the door, extends his hand to help her out. Welcomes her. In English of course.

  Ti-Lou slips him a banknote as she’d done earlier with Devon, leans across to Rhéauna.

  “Welcome to the Château Laurier, Rhéauna.”

  So it is a castle! She’s going to spend the night in a real castle!

  “Is this where you live?”

  Ti-Lou smiles, stands very upright, raises her head defiantly.

  “Since last year. Since it opened. I was there for the inauguration. In the presence of Monsieur Sir Wilfrid Laurier in person!”

  “It isn’t an old castle?”

  “It’s brand new! It still smells of paint and carpet cement!”

  “But it looks like something from a fairy tale …”

  “That’s the idea, child. The Château Laurier was built to make people dream. For those in power – the corridors are full of them going back and forth at every hour of the day and night, plotting, arguing, deciding; see, this is where most cabinet ministers have their headquarters – so that those in power think they’ve arrived for good, that it will never end, that they’ve moved into a castle, a real castle and nobody will ever throw them out! And me, well I’m the damsel in distress that has to be saved, Sleeping Beauty who has to be wakened, the Little Match Girl who has to be protected – or the she-wolf who has to be tamed. The jackpot, you might say. They’re so naive!”

  In the hotel’s lobby – almost bigger than the Ottawa train station – everybody greets them. Rhéauna wonders what they’re all doing here in the middle of the night. They’re fashionable, busy, some as stiff as chair rungs behind their marble counters that in fact resemble the ticket wickets in all the train stations she’s visited over the past three days. With nothing to sell, though. She imagines that they’re too polite to be sincere and all, without exception, greet Ti-Lou with low bows and by her first name preceded by Madame: “Good evening again, Madame Ti-Lou,” “You weren’t gone very long, Madame Ti-Lou,” “Your cousin is very cute, Madame Ti-Lou.”

  Rhéauna thinks that her second cousin must be a really important woman if everybody greets her like that. Ti-Lou pulls off her gloves with studied nonchalance, stops at an enormous mirror after lifting her veil, seems to like what she sees.

  “Before you ask, Rhéauna, no, I don’t own the Château Laurier. I just rent a suite on the top floor.”

  Rhéauna looks up.

  “A sweet? What’s a sweet?”

  Ti-Lou shrugs.

  “A suite, a suite, I meant a suite, Rhéauna
, if you absolutely insist on speaking French.”

  “So what is it?”

  Ti-Lou explains, pushing her toward the elevator. Rhéauna, who didn’t know that elevators existed, is flabbergasted when Ti-Lou explains that the metal cage replaces stairs, that it climbs up by itself and will take them in a matter of seconds to the top floor of the Château Laurier, where her sweet is lodged. The royal sweet.

  So this is a hotel. In some of the novels she’s read there are descriptions of hotels far away, in Europe; she has also seen reproductions in old magazines but never would she have imagined that one could be so imposing. A genuine castle where you can rent rooms! And sweets!

  An old gentleman in gloves opens the door for them and, bowing slightly, ushers them into the square compartment decorated in the same style as the train that Rhéauna has just left: shining metal and carved wood. Ti-Lou gives the man a big smile.

  “You’re still here, Monsieur Lapointe? You haven’t gone to bed? It’s past midnight, there’s no elevator attendant at night …”

  The old gentleman flushes, coughs into his fist.

  “You told me you wouldn’t be gone very long, Madame Ti-Lou … I waited for you to make your last trip of the day … I wish you a good night, Madame Ti-Lou.”

  Ti-Lou places her hand on his shoulder. He blushes even more. Rhéauna has the impression that he’s liable to pass out between floors. Just because Ti-Lou touched him? The man is sick …

  The corridor they turn onto when they leave the elevator is wide, silent, dimly lit. Ti-Lou takes a very ornate key from her purse. They stop at a door; it smells good already.

  The suite in question – it’s number 809 – is a cave with thick carpets, richly coloured silk, spotless lace placed here and there with skilful negligence, heavy brocade curtains and pictures that depict ladies scantily clad or frankly naked dancing before beaming men, themselves dressed from head to toe, or serving them drinks.

  And everything smells so good – the same scent that follows Ti-Lou everywhere of course, that Rhéauna has decided is gardenia, but all sorts of other things, too, heavier, that go to your head, that tickle your nose in the strangest way – that the little girl stops on the doorstep, wondering if she will be able to put up with it all night without suffocating.