Crossing the Continent

by Michel Tremblay

  Bathed and dressed, Rhéauna folds her nightgown, closes her suitcase for the last time. When she opens it again her journey will be over, she’ll have settled in with her mother. She bids a silent farewell to Ti-Lou’s beautiful suite, thinking it will be a long time before she sees such a gorgeous apartment again. Another wonderful memory. But one that she’ll keep for herself.

  The ride in the phaeton, even though shortened because it took Ti-Lou forever to get ready, is wonderful. The weather is glorious, Ottawa is a very pretty city with all its flowers; peaceful; inhabited it seems by stylish people who stroll the streets without hurrying as if they have nothing else to do and seem to be part of a never-ending procession. Even this early in the morning. Some of them, all men, greet Ti-Lou as she goes by; others, all women, turn away with contempt when they spot her perched in her carriage, barely protected by a small transparent parasol that only veils the light from the sun without hiding her beautiful she-wolf face. She smiles at the men, laughs behind the backs of the women.

  “I always see women from behind. I prefer that.”

  From outside, the station looks like the Château Laurier in miniature: the same turrets, the same ogival windows, even the entrance, which suggests a pretentious grand hotel. Ti-Lou is welcomed like royalty on a state visit; gentlemen who aren’t obliged to rush to open the door of her phaeton, pull down the small metal step, extend a gloved hand to help her descend, open the main door of the station. She hands out smiles while giving the impression that she’s giving candy to children.

  A tall boy, redheaded and freckle-faced, rushes toward them as soon as he spots them on the platform. Rhéauna thinks to herself that it’s probably another Anglo and she won’t understand a word he says; he surprises her with his excellent French, broken of course, seasoned with a pronounced accent, but clear and perfectly comprehensible.

  Their farewells are exchanged in a breath of gardenia that brings tears to the little girl’s eyes. The hugging and kissing stretch out, there are more and more resounding kisses, promises to see one another again are exaggerated and made without illusion because they both know that the chances of that are slight and it saddens them.

  Michael – that’s the redhead’s name – picks up Rhéauna’s suitcase.

  “You looks tired. You has big circles under the eye. You sleep bad? Me find quiet place where to sleep good.”

  He chooses an empty bench, tells her she can lie down if she wants, that the trip to Montreal will take just a few hours.

  “You goes to meet mamma not see since long time … You must happy now, yes?”

  She nods, presses her nose against the window after thanking him as politely as she can. Ti-Lou is still on the platform, a sad smile on her lips, a big white handkerchief in her hand and she waves it as soon as she sees Rhéauna. Ti-Lou approaches when Rhéauna lowers the window.

  “I don’t like separations, departures, all those things, which means that I’m going to say my goodbyes right now. If you don’t mind I’m leaving before the train goes … It’s too sad. Bye now, sweetie … Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see … Say hello to Maria for me … And tell her I said to take good care of you, otherwise she’ll have me to answer to!”

  She blows one last kiss, a white lace skirt rustles as she turns onto the concrete platform, a huge straw hat moves away. Ti-Lou is now out of her life. Rhéauna shuts her eyes, breathes in the last whiff of exotic flowers.

  She takes off her coat, folds it, lays it on the suitcase as a headrest. Her neck is bent slightly but she falls asleep at once, exhausted by the agitated night that kept her awake off and on, though she’s used to sleeping for eight solid hours.

  Interlude iv

  Dream on the Train to Montreal

  They have taken refuge in the tall grass around the pond behind the house. It’s the third brush fire this summer, the worst they’ve ever witnessed. The smell of smoke has intensified in the past few minutes, the fire is now very close. Grandpa said that it was time to take shelter. They are crouched in the water, even Alice who is disgusted by the mud and afraid of bloodsuckers, even though she doesn’t know what they are. Bulrushes block their view but they can hear the crackling of the fire, which according to Grandpa advances at the speed of a galloping horse when there’s a wind like there is tonight. And a powerful wind has been blowing in their direction since sunset.

  Grandpa Méo tries to make them laugh to turn their attention away from the danger that surrounds them:

  “The corn’s going to pop tonight! We won’t hear it grow, we’ll hear it burst!”

  No one laughs, his wife pats his arm.

  “Silly fool! Making jokes at a time like this!”

  He replies in the same tone.

  “Do you think I’m in the mood for jokes? It’s for the girls! I’m doing it for the girls, silly yourself!”

  Then all at once, flames higher than the others shoot up in the night. Grandma cries:

  “The house! The house! The house is on fire!”

  Rhéauna stands up under her two sisters’ protests and looks at their house, which really is in flames.

  The sight is terrifying but it’s also overwhelmingly beautiful. The big white building has become an enormous wood stove and burns with sounds of crackling and a happy roar. As if it were happy to be burning! That is making its farewells while laughing like a loon! The so-beautiful veranda forms a ring of fire, a wild and devastating circle around the main fireplace, the smoke swirls, sending up sheaves of sparks that are coming toward her, that will burn her hair, devour her body, to kill the whole family! Fire fairies and murderous sprites pounce on her to devour her! Her sisters cry, her grandmother pulls her by her dress to make her lie down in the mud, her grandfather shouts orders that she doesn’t understand. A spark touches down on her arm, then another, followed by hundreds, by thousands of biting insects. It hurts, it pinches, it stings … Oh, her dress is on fire!

  All of a sudden, her grandmother is standing beside her and screaming as she points to the house:

  “Somebody’s missing! Somebody’s missing!”

  Rhéauna doesn’t understand what she means, they are all there – her two sisters, her grandmother, her grandfather and she herself, the whole family, no one is missing … She cries into her dress which is ablaze.

  “Nobody’s missing, Grandma! We’re all here! Look, we’re all here, nobody’s missing …”

  “Yes, yes, there is someone missing! I have to find her! I can’t let her burn like that, I have to save her!”

  Grandma Joséphine marches into the mud, she tries to get out of the pond, her clothes are plastered against her body, she has trouble advancing in the mud, she staggers, everyone protests.

  “I can’t leave her there. I can’t leave her there …”

  Rhéauna wants to follow her but her grandfather holds her back.

  “Is it Mama that’s missing, Grandma? But Mama isn’t here! Mama’s in Montreal!”

  Grandma has come out of the pond and is heading with outstretched arms toward the house, which is spitting thousands of fairies and sprites.

  “It’s not your mother! It’s not your mother, but there’s a person missing!”

  She climbs up the burning staircase, crosses the veranda, she disappears into the flames, she will burn trying to save someone who doesn’t exist!

  “Grandma! Grandma! There’s nobody! There’s nobody, Grandma, there’s no use looking, nobody’s there!”

  The house collapses with a grim crackling sound.

  It’s over, they have both died, Grandma Joséphine and the person who doesn’t exist.

  She opens her mouth, she cries out, she weeps. She is frozen in a horrified grimace and she howls silently in the sputtering night.

  Grandpa puts a hand on her shoulder.

  “That’s why you’re going to Montreal, Nana. So the Desrosiers line will carry on.

  She wakes with a start. Cold sweat dampens her back, she’s afraid she has wet her pants
. No, she checks, all is well. She looks up. The train has stopped moving. They’re in the station. Surely she hadn’t been dreaming about a fire all that time!

  Then the thought that her mother is waiting for her nearby strikes her and she leaps to her feet.

  Last Stop

  She didn’t see Montreal emerge on the horizon, then come nearer, or the Victoria Bridge that stretched across the very impressive Saint Lawrence River, Windsor Station – another fake castle put up to the greater glory of the Canadian Pacific Railway – most of all she didn’t check that there really was a mountain in the middle of the city, because she was sleeping. She’s mad at herself for missing it all.

  Michael – she hasn’t said a word to him since they left Ottawa – brings her a glass of water. He seems worried.

  “Are you okay? Youse all red! I thought you to be cold so I spread out your coat on top. Maybe he’s too warm …”

  Glancing out at the platform in the hope of seeing her mother, she gulps the water, which cools her throat. She sees only the passengers who’ve just got off the train and are moving away from it as fast as they can, as if no one is there to meet them …

  “Your mother will be back of the barriers over there … Nobody is allowed to get so close to the train …”

  Reassured, she picks up her belongings, puts her coat back on despite the rather unhealthy heat in the car. Michael grabs her suitcase, gets down from the train, sets it all on the platform, then turns back to Rhéauna and holds out his hand.

  “This is bad time for fall just when you are to meet together ...”

  As soon as she sets foot on the concrete platform, she hears someone call out her name. It’s her! She turns around and sees the woman beckoning her, very far away, behind the big metal grilles, in the middle of a crowd of people who are embracing and patting each other’s backs.

  Her heart takes a leap. She’s there! She is in the presence of her mother! She’s going to be able to kiss her! She races through the travellers, followed by Michael who tells her that it’s pointless to run like that, he’ll lose sight of her …

  She stops abruptly a few steps from the grilles and stands there frozen in place in her coat that’s too big for her.

  Her mother, seeming on edge, waves frantically, and this is weird, she’s holding a package in her other arm. It’s pale blue and it looks like clothes, tiny little clothes … Diapers. Her mother is holding pale-blue diapers in her arms!

  All at once, Rhéauna understands why her mother wanted her to come to Montreal from so far away. And everything crumbles.

  Maria gives her a magnificent smile and shouts:

  “Nana! You’re so pretty! You’ve grown so much! And I’m so glad to see you! Here, come and meet your new baby brother! Come and give him a kiss! You’ll love him! His name is Théo, Théo Desrosiers. I’m using my maiden name again! Come give me a kiss, Nana, give both of us a kiss! I’ve missed you so badly!”

  About the Author

  Born in a working-class family in Quebec, novelist and playwright Michel Tremblay was raised in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood. An ardent reader from a young age, Tremblay began to write, in hiding, as a teenager. Because of their charismatic originality, their vibrant character portrayals and the profound vision they embody, Tremblay’s dramatic, literary and autobiographical works have long enjoyed remarkable international popularity; his plays have been adapted and translated into dozens of languages and have achieved huge success throughout Europe, the Americas and the Middle East.

  A seven-time recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, during his career Tremblay has received more than sixty prizes, citations and honours, including nine Chalmers Awards and five Prix du Grand public, presented during Montreal’s annual book fair, Salon du Livre. Tremblay has also received six honorary doctorates.

  The French Government, in 1984, honoured Tremblay’s complete body of work when it made him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de France. Thereafter, in 1991, he was raised to Officer of the Order. In 2008, he was created Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur de France. Tremblay was appointed, in 1991, Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Québec. In 1999, he received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award. In 2011, he was honoured with the Révolution Tranquille medal, given by the Ministry of Culture of Quebec, awarded to artists, creators and artisans who began their careers between 1960 and 1970 and who still have an influence in their field of practice.

  Also by Michel Tremblay:

  Chronicles of the Plateau Mont-Royal

  The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant

  Thérèse and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel

  The Duchess and the Commoner

  News from Édouard

  The First Quarter of the Moon

  A Thing of Beauty

  About the Translator

  Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Sheila Fischman is a graduate of the University of Toronto. A co-founder of the periodical Ellipse: Œuvres en traduction / Writers in Translation, she has also been a columnist for the Globe and Mail and the Montreal Gazette, a broadcaster with cbc Radio and literary editor of the Montreal Star. She now devotes herself full time to literary translation, specializing in contemporary Quebec fiction, and has translated more than 125 Quebec novels by, among others, Michel Tremblay, Jacques Poulin, Anne Hébert, François Gravel, Marie-Claire Blais and Roch Carrier.

  Sheila Fischman has received numerous honours, including the 1998 Governor General’s Award (for her translation of Michel Tremblay’sBambi and Me, Talonbooks); she has been a finalist fourteen times for this award. She has received two Canada Council Translation Prizes, two Félix-Antoine Savard Awards from Columbia University and, in 2008, she received the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Ottawa and Waterloo.

  Copyright © 2007 Michel Tremblay

  Translation copyright © 2011 Sheila Fischman

  Talonbooks

  P.O.Box 2076, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canadav6b3s3

  www.talonbooks.com

  Cover photo ©2011 Francis Stanton

  Cover design by Typesmith

  First printing: 2011

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts; the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program; and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council for our publishing activities.

  No part of this book, covered by the copyright hereon, may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical – without prior permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review. Any request for photocopying of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright (The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaM5E 1E5; tel.: (416) 868-1620; fax: (416) 868-1621.

  La traversée du continentby Michel Tremblay was first published in French in 2007 by Leméac Éditeur and Actes Sud. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, for our publishing activities.

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  ISBN: 978-0-88922-730-9