by Anne Hébert
They call her Marie Eventurel, speaking under their breath, not yet daring to name her aloud for fear of startling her. Both are waiting for her to come out of quarantine. A long time ago the notice “Scarlet Fever” was posted on the apartment on rue Bourlamaque, a long time ago she came to them reclusive and delirious and now she emerges from her room, bringing nothing, as they have instructed her. Her true life is beginning at this very moment and everything that has happened before today must disappear along with the mattress, the sheets and blankets, the nightgown and the doll, taken away by the city’s sanitation department which will carry out the disinfection.
Her black hair, newly shorn, strews the floor of the bedroom, her nightgown forms a circle on the ground about her feet. For the first time since her birth she is naked from head to foot. She is ashamed and dares not move. Now she is being called to come out of the quarantine room. She does not yet have her own name, she is between two names, the old one having been consigned with the objects to be destroyed, the new one not yet ready to be assumed. They summon her, but not by name, and she must take a step, then two, stride over her nightgown on the floor. She is eleven years old. During her illness she became terribly thin. Her pelvic bones jut out under her white skin. They call her. Tell her to come. Her shaven skull is like ivory.
She must walk along the corridor. Each step is torture and she suffers from her nakedness as if she has been flayed alive, summoned to appear before strangers nude, defenceless, stripped to the bone, it seems to her. She walks toward the bathroom which smells of javel water. The nurse immerses her and washes her, scouring her generously with sulphured soap. Disinfected now from head to foot, she still carries the smell of chlorine on her skin and on the fresh linen and the new dress in which she has just been clad.
And now M. and Mme Eventurel advance, the two of them together, to kiss her and bid her welcome. They discover a child of silence and ice, petrified.
THE NIGHT WAS VILE IN the hotel on rue Sainte Anne, thronged with nightmares and apparitions. Now the day is coming; its sound, its odour rap at the door and the closed window. The din of a vacuum cleaner and of keys clattering in the hallway, the hum of cars, blurred voices from the street. Her legs, her arms are heavy under the sheets, as if poorly drawn, formless. Dry-mouthed. A new day is breaking. She turns to face the wall. Enjoys the deep darkness. Refuses to get up.
She will spend three days in bed in her hotel room, while chambermaids grow impatient and tirelessly knock at the door.
“Can I make up the room?”
Until now, there was no real danger in bringing the women of the city to life as defenceless creatures mingled with her own flesh, to make them sing with us. Even though there was just one spectator facing her, it had taken place on stage. Raphaël was going along with the game like the archangel he is, with his dazzling smile and his great invisible folded wings.
Now that she has nothing more to invent, she is alone in the dark closed room. The imaginary women of the city escape her and dissolve into crumbs.
She clings to the night as to a dwelling place. The blackness of the night surrounds her, moves over her face, her body, sticky and opaque, it enters her veins, turns to shadows the vermilion root of her heart. Flora Fontanges is haunted, becomes herself the dead of the night, open and welcoming.
Above all, do not let the daylight in. Come to terms with the night, once and for all. Now that she is alone in the city. Flush out all the ghosts. Become brand-new and fresh again on the land that gave her birth, as on the first day, without memory.
The story to come has no visible thread, is apparently unravelled, gleaming and quick, like mercury which breaks apart, re-forms and flees.
THE IDEA OF ADOPTING AN orphan girl occurred to them on the night of the fire, when the Hospice Saint-Louis was burning and it was impossible to get out all the little girls who were imprisoned by the flames. Those who could be saved were wrapped at once in blankets, coats, men’s jackets, whatever could be found, and dispersed to hospitals, convents, hotels, families.
Dr. Simard brought home three little girls. The Eventurels, who were visiting the doctor that evening, were able to choose among the three at leisure.
The oldest had no more tears. She stared straight ahead, her eyes as dull as a statue’s. Her lips were as white as her cheeks. Draped in a rug that she refused to shed, shuddering violently as if someone were shaking her from head to foot, she displayed the utmost dignity. Head erect, hands crossed on her breast, wordless, motionless, neither eating nor drinking nor replying when spoken to, she was there because that was where she had been placed, and she must be there because there was no longer any other place in the world for her to live and die. If weariness sometimes caused her head to droop she would straighten it at once, and that abrupt move gave her a certain haughtiness that pleased the Eventurels.
Madame Eventurel talked about innate distinction and Dr. Simard alluded to the formidable pride of some of the poor, to whom one cannot offer charity.
No one consulted her. She was transplanted from the Hospice Saint-Louis to the Eventurels’ small apartment on rue Bourlamaque. The authorities concerned agreed to the transfer and the adoption. She was struck down by scarlet fever almost immediately. Delirium allowed her to cry out her pain and her dread. As the fever dropped, silence took hold of her again and did not leave for days and days. The time it took for her hair to grow back, the time it took to learn the Eventurels’ language and manners.
Without ever uttering a word, she crossed out in her head all the ones that occurred to her, on this or that occasion when M. and Mme Eventurel used other words that she didn’t know but retained as soon as she’d heard them, as if she were learning a foreign language.
One does not say: “I ain’t, supper, her and me, sweat, I should of went.” Rather one says: “I’m not, dinner, she and I, perspire, I should have gone.” One does not dream of an American Beauty satin dress which would be vulgar, instead one selects a kilt from Holt Renfrew made of genuine Scottish tartan. Indeed, whatever is Scottish or English is entirely acceptable. As for the Irish, that’s another kettle of fish. One does not eat with one’s knife. One does not swing one’s shoulders when walking. One does not crack one’s knuckles. One removes one’s nightgown before taking a bath. One does not prefer potatoes, molasses, and porridge to any unfamiliar dish that appears on the table.
One Sunday at the dining-room table, in the middle of the meal, all at once she broke the silence. She asked in a clear voice:
“May I please have a little charlotte russe?”
It sounded as fine to her as her first lines on stage. She who had never seen either theatre or cinema suddenly found herself able to play the part the Eventurels intended for her. She was now becoming their daughter, with full rights, after waiting in silence for perfect mastery of their speech so she could talk to them as an equal, a child from the same world or so she thought, and nothing would show her up or incriminate her.
The first day at school, when she was asked her name, she replied in an exceedingly clear, loud voice:
“My name is Marie Eventurel.”
It started with a name that was given to her and that she took, and little by little she began to resemble Marie Eventurel, as people wished her to.
At prize-giving her new name, Marie Eventurel, was heard often, called out from the stage because she won almost all the prizes, even the first prize for piano and music. Singing, in particular, filled her with delight. It seemed to her that if she worked hard, one day she would be free to do anything with her voice, vocal flourishes and trills allowing her to express her whole life and the whole world, unfurled in its terrible magnificence through her throat.
When it was time to recite a poem in class or to explain a text, she came to adore the sounds and the words that formed in her mouth, on her tongue and teeth. She sometimes felt she had a vocation to speak and to sing, and there was
nothing on earth more beautiful than human speech, full and resonant. She sang hymns one moment and love songs the next, like a saint in heaven or a romantic lover. She closed her eyes and her face was radiant. For a few moments, she possessed the earth.
At the Eventurels’ house, what was done at the orphanage must be undone, she must conduct herself as if she had never before known how to live and was just beginning to breathe. They sometimes said, quite frankly, that she was on the other side of the earth. The wrong side of the world, that must be it; the reverse of everything she has been required to learn up till now.
Madame Eventurel said:
“Don’t shut your eyes when someone speaks to you.”
Useless to plead that at the orphanage they had to keep their gaze lowered as much as possible, above all never look one’s superiors in the eye. At the Eventurels’, the same law does not prevail, never again will the same law prevail, anywhere in the world. Draw a line through it once and for all. Look instead at the lovely things around her, books, dolls, games, roller skates and ice skates, and such pretty white paper with pink flowers and blue birds on her bedroom walls.
When her hair had grown long enough, curling over her forehead and ears, she was taken for the first time to Madame Eventurel’s mother, in the house on the Esplanade. She stood for a long moment, very straight, facing the old lady who seemed to look through the little girl and see something troubling on the wall behind the child.
At table, even as she was sampling dishes she found distasteful, she felt very strongly that she no longer existed at all, neither as Pierrette Paul nor as Marie Eventurel, but was becoming a sort of transparent shadow sitting opposite an old woman who looked like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland.
Everyone who lived in the city filed through the grownups’ conversation in the proper order. Some of the individuals who were conjured up had to undergo a severe examination by the old lady on the Esplanade, before the pitiless verdict.
“Not distinguished!” she declared in a peremptory tone. The little girl thought she was hearing the Queen of Hearts pronounce the death sentence:
“Off with their heads!”
She must have heard that sentence directed at her on the day in question, as they were leaving the house on the Esplanade. Just as Madame Eventurel was sticking a long pin into her hat and adjusting the veil over her face, the old lady came up to her daughter, pretending to whisper, but the acid voice seeped out on all sides and in all directions:
“You’ll never make a lady of her.”
She knew the Queen of Hearts was condemning her to have her head cut off.
THEY PROMISED THEMSELVES THAT THEY would do their duty, despite all opposition, and take their adopted daughter to her debut and her marriage. They had set their minds to it quite firmly.
“We’ll make a real little lady of her,” declares Monsieur Eventurel, who enjoys repeating the English words used by his mother-in-law.
Twenty times a day, Marie Eventurel wonders if she walks properly like a lady, if she bows properly like a lady, if she smiles properly like a lady, if she eats properly like a lady. It’s exhausting, like being a painter’s model asked to hold a pose for long hours.
In another life she had got used to watching how she moved and spoke, watching even her most secret thoughts, in the hope of becoming like those saints, ecstatic and radiant despite the seven blades that pierce them. That was at the Hospice Saint-Louis, and Mother Marie-desNeiges was reading the lives of the saints from the rostrum in the refectory at meal time. She felt the same tension in her whole being, the same dizzying yearning to leave her self behind and burst into the light, the same thrusting towards the divine absolute, the same weariness immediately after the searing flash, when harsh reality extended all around the child born at the Miséricorde.
The bare walls of the refectory, the great black cross above the rostrum, the endless tables, the wooden benches on which were crowded a hundred little girls in black, hunched over the sour cabbage soup and the grey meat. Pierrette Paul was sure she would never be summoned into the parlour on Sunday, not in this life or the next one either, she would add on nights of despair.
There was only Rosa Gaudrault who consoled her and called her, in secret, my kitten and my treasure.
TOO OLD TO BE ADOPTED, thinks Flora Fontanges, and she remembers it’s been two days since Raphaël has come to ask about her.
She turns to face the wall. Shuts her eyes. Picks up the thread of her story. In the dark, sees again the Eventurels who pretend they have a daughter of their own.
Too old to love and to be loved.
They should have taken a newborn. She is more than eleven years old. Too late. For her and for them. A certain distance that must be crossed, on both sides. That will never be crossed. Accept the inevitable. Beneath the implacable eye of the old lady on the Esplanade.
Lying in their big brass bed, under the pink eiderdown swollen with choice feathers, M. and Mme Eventurel frequently, at night, examine their conscience. They ask themselves if they have done all that is necessary to make their adopted daughter sweet and pliable, worthy of her appointed place in society.
While Marie Eventurel sleeps in the little room with its walls covered in flowers and birds, she utters occasional cries she does not remember on awakening.
“I must have dreamed about the wolf,” she says in the morning, shrugging, when when last night’s bad dreams are recalled.
In reality it is little girls who pass through her dreams, who are set alight like torches. Seven are chosen to play the part of the seven tongues of fire of Pentecost. It is a classroom session organized by Mother Marie-des-Neiges. Their hair blazes like straw. Their nightgowns drift away like burned paper. The smell of their scorched flesh fills all the space. Someone says that the greatest gift of Pentecost is wisdom, which contains all other gifts in one bright flame.
Marie Eventurel screams in her sleep.
During the day she is as wise and well-behaved as if she were filled with the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. There is no doubt about her wisdom or her good behaviour. Whenever she sings in school or in church, whenever she recites a poem in class, an alchemy occurs in her, stirring together tears and cries to produce a true, crystalline voice that is bewitched by its own pleasing tone and by the fact that her soul is escaping into the light of day in a pure breath.
BREAKFAST HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO her. She half-opens the window. Looks out blindly onto the street. Sets the breakfast tray on her knees. Sits up against the open window. She sees nothing of what is going on in the street. Eats her food without tasting it. Is quite unaware of what is in the room. Fully engaged in telling herself the story of M. and Mme Eventurel.
I know a few things about them, she thinks, and feels an urge to laugh.
First of all, it is important to note that the only daughter of the old lady on the Esplanade married her first cousin, to salvage the Eventurel name which was disappearing.
Flora Fontanges is utterly aloof. As if little characters made of wood have come to visit her in her hotel room and are moving before her now like puppets.
Monsieur Eventurel sometimes leaves the house very early in the morning, standing by the kitchen sink to gulp his coffee. Since the maid’s departure, Monsieur Eventurel has stopped eating breakfast. Madame Eventurel takes too long to prepare the meal. Monsieur Eventurel doesn’t have time to wait. No more orange juice, velvety porridge, fragrant toast. Monsieur Eventurel is as anxious to leave the apartment on rue Bourlamaque as if he were going to punch in at a factory. Often, he regrets that he once told Madame Eventurel she has the bearing of a queen. Since then, she has never walked quickly.
Monsieur Eventurel knows the city inside out, in all its twists and turns, ascending and descending from the upper town to the town below and from the lower town to the upper town, listening, questioning anyone, everyone he encounters, from nine in the
morning until five at night.
It often started with a funeral that Monsieur Eventurel would follow, walking bareheaded, summer or winter. The life of the dead man was immediately commented upon and dissected sotto voce, his family tree assembled and disassembled, in order and disorder, along with former classmates encountered in the procession or at the church. It’s amazing how, some days assuming you have the time by following a hearse, you can find yourself providing an almost flawless account of the past events in the life of one of the city’s dead, sometimes blithely going back several generations.
Once the dead man has come to his final resting place, Monsieur Eventurel and a few friends might end up in the bar of the Château or the Clarendon. News items and the politics of the land were subjects of lively discussion. Over a cup of coffee or a glass of gin.
The waiter sometimes joined in, and he was listened to religiously. He would lean across the bar, bring his bright red face as close as possible, drop his voice, and shamelessly expose the city’s secret lives, the ones kept jealously tucked away, but which slip out one night when you’re drunk and feeling low, amid cigarette smoke, the smell of beer.
“In here, nothing gets lost.”
And the waiter touches his forehead in a broad and solemn gesture.
The sources of Monsieur Eventurel’s information proved to be many and surprising. Bankers, lawyers, brokers, exchange officers were heard and consulted on every detail of Monsieur Eventurel’s business. He closely followed prices on the Stock Exchange and invested and transferred his fortune with no rhyme or reason. It sometimes took him all day. From time to time he was distracted by intrigues he discovered here and there, through business conversations, lunches at the University Club or private chats with secretaries and elevator boys, to whom he was always considerate.
