by Anne Hébert
Some days, after a particularly solemn funeral, a very sad Monsieur Eventurel, realizing suddenly that you can’t take your money to heaven, would decide to ignore business matters for the rest of the day and let the thread of time unfurl according to the inspiration of the moment.
Sometimes he would search for a perfect rose, going from florist to florist along the city streets. This quest for the absolute could take him the whole morning. Around noon, tired and drunk with perfume, fingers pricked by thorns, he would resign himself to selecting the heaviest, most fragrant rose that he could find, one he could offer with his best wishes to some old lady from an excellent background who lived in seclusion now, in the General Hospital. Once the rose had been offered and received with the appropriate emotion and gratitude, Monsieur Eventurel would turn the moment to his advantage and garner the old lady’s confidences. That was how he learned that the notary was at this very moment at the bedside of poor Alice D. who wasn’t long for this world. But what most stirred the heart of Monsieur Eventurel was being informed in the old lady’s whispering voice of the fate that lay in store for poor Alice D.’s eldest son, who had been cut off by his mother. The old lady’s voice almost vanished and she’d swear she’d heard it all through the door of the room next to hers.
“As for you, Charles my son, you’ve already cost me plenty, I’m disinheriting you.”
After he left the General Hospital, Monsieur Eventurel would take the streetcar to the Petit Champlain, where he would find Gladys, his parents’ former maid, who raised hens and rabbits in her kitchen and never left her wheelchair. Gladys was a veritable mine of gossip and intrigue, fed on it, every morning, by her taxi-driver husband who worked nights.
Stirred by Gladys’s chatter, half-English, half-French, often trivial and crude, Monsieur Eventurel would decide to round off the afternoon at Georgiana’s on rue Saint-Paul, in what Madame Eventurel would call a bad house.
Without dropping one centimetre of his great height, hat in hand, his expression at once contrite and nervous, buttoned into his steel grey, white-striped jacket, Monsieur Eventurel would make his entrance. He was greeted at Georgiana’s threshold by exclamations of delight. He was called “My Lord” and “Your Majesty,” which pleased him enormously.
Madame Eventurel never suspected a thing, convinced that what went on between Monsieur Eventurel and the girls of rue Saint-Paul could only take place at night, in shuttered houses where red lights drew the attention of bad boys.
Madame Eventurel’s husband came home every evening around six, weighed down by the burdens of the day like any punctual, diligent worker.
Evenings at the Eventurels’ were most lively. The couple greedily exchanged news. Madame Eventurel was rich with all the telephone calls she had made in the course of the day.
When the Eventurels were once again recumbent statues beneath the pink eiderdown, they experienced an extreme satisfaction, an infinite security, so evident and firmly sewn were the numerous threads that attached them to the city. They seemed unaware that there were other places on the planet Earth on which to set one’s feet by day and close one’s eyes by night.
On long winter evenings, in the stale air of the small blue-papered Victorian salon, the remarks exchanged by M. and Mme Eventurel would sometimes drift and hum like drowsy flies. In the next room, huddled over her books and scribblers, their adopted daughter seemed to want to know nothing about the city’s stories. She cared about only one secret, the secret of her birth, and that would never be revealed to her or to the Eventurels, despite their research.
All that they know, all they will ever know, is that the child born at the Miséricorde was later taken in by nuns already burdened with all the sins of the world, dedicated to the expiation and the salvation of all, placed on the cross every day with Our Lord. And innocent and tender little children were borne by them, bodily, like surplus crosses.
The Eventurel couple never lost sight of the line that demarcates good society from ordinary people and from those who were, quite bluntly, common. Clearly stratified in this way, the city remained reassuring and clear in the hearts of the Eventurels, as if the order of the world were rooted there.
M. and Mme Eventurel fell asleep, perfectly calm and serene as in the waters that gave them birth.
ONE DAY, THOUGH, THE ORDER of the world was almost overthrown, and Monsieur Eventurel came close to being swept away by the upheaval, driven to the brink of ruin and tossed in with people who had next to nothing.
“Money’s not producing any more,” he would repeat, astonished.
A series of bad investments over the years had pitted Monsieur Eventurel against the depression that was ravaging the country, and the image of his fall from grace rose before Monsieur Eventurel all day long and even at night, while he slept.
They had to leave rue Bourlamaque and move to rue Plessis, to a smaller apartment.
Madame Eventurel takes bitter pleasure in calling to mind the stages in her decline from rue des Remparts, which she had to abandon, sick at heart, two years after her marriage, because of her husband’s financial negligence. And now what she fears most of all is to be driven from the upper town one day by a fiery angel yielding a sword, and never be able to return, to her ruin and despair.
From now on, in evening conversations between the Eventurels, the phrases “come down in the world” and “cleaned out” occur often, flung violently into the man’s face by his wife. And the little girl doing her homework in the dining room next door thinks these unfamiliar words are horrible insults or curses.
In his present humiliated state, Monsieur Eventurel would give his soul to be called “My Lord” or “Your Majesty” again. But Monsieur Eventurel can’t afford now to go to Georgiana, on rue Saint-Paul.
If Marie Eventurel is growing in wisdom, fierce wisdom that makes her silent, studious and obstinate, her movements are graceless and hobbled. Gone now for reasons of economy are the too-costly lessons in singing and diction, gone are the moments of freedom when she would escape from herself to become in turn Angélique, Ophelia, Catarina, Beline, Rosette, Armande, or Henriette. With no room of her own now, sleeping in the dining room, with no place to escape to in the tiny apartment on rue Plessis, Marie Eventurel lives her adolescence as if she were disappearing into the night. Her cramped movements are those of a prisoner under constant surveillance. Only much later, when she has become Flora Fontanges, across the sea, will her body be restored to her in all its lightness.
AND HERE SHE IS NOW, old. Back at home in the city that gave her birth. The circle is complete. Her final role is before her, to be learned and allowed to infuse like the bitter tea-leaves at the bottom of a cup, for telling fortunes. She leafs through the slim volume of Happy Days. She knows what is in store. She is Winnie, deep inside herself. She is afraid. She collects her thoughts before climbing onto her sand pile and burying herself, grain by grain.
Her face in the bathroom mirror over the basin advances towards her, as if through a window; it is an image detached from herself, to be seen and recognized by her. Well aware that time is short. Such great weariness on her features. She turns her head. Picks up Happy Days. Becomes exercised at the futility of everything, long after she has closed the book.
The sounds and smells of the city drift in through the wide-open window.
HE SAYS: “I’VE COME TO see how you are. We’re just back from the Ile d’Orléans and we’re leaving again right away. Céleste is downstairs.”
He stands in the doorway holding a small bouquet of wildflowers.
She is wearing a terrycloth robe. Her eyes are puffy. Her short hair stands up in tufts on her head.
She asks in a thin voice that seems not to belong to her:
“And Maud?”
“She was already gone when we got there. She can’t be far away. We’ll find her. We’ll cover Charlevoix County village by village. Céleste and I thought
some flowers . . .”
She says:
“Look, don’t just stand there, come in!”
She tidies the room. Pulls the covers over the unmade bed. Stands facing Raphaël after she has taken the flowers from him. She seems lost, as if roused from sleep. So deep a night, she thinks. She pulls the bathrobe across her chest.
“Raphaël dear, if you only knew . . .”
She would like to tell him that the city is liberated, that she is only waiting for him so she can visit the city from top to bottom, no longer protecting herself, now denying nothing.
He seems embarrassed, says again that Céleste is waiting for him. Now he is walking over to the window. He looks out onto the street.
Flora Fontanges looks out too. Shields her eyes with her hand to protect herself from the excess of light. She sees Céleste who is pacing across from the hotel, her long legs like stilts.
She turns towards Raphaël, gold from the sun, far removed from anything but the movements of Céleste down below on the sidewalk.
She can’t help appealing to him, to no purpose, and well aware of it:
“I have to tell you something, Raphaël dear.”
He is there but not there, and it’s pointless for her to act as if she wants to join him in his perfect complicity with Céleste. He is pulled out of Flora Fontanges’s room by a tall girl who strides along the pavement like a heron escaped from its swamps.
She wants to hold him back, fears more than anything a relapse into solitude. She looks drawn. She pulls her robe across her chest. She laughs too loud. Turns away from Raphaël. Laughs more softly. Seeks the right tone. Adjusts her robe and her laugh. Assumes a suitable expression. Changes expression without his seeing it. He looks at her back, still shaking with laughter.
“I’m trying to catch my breath,” she manages to say. And already the voice is different, more sonorous and rounded now, almost youthful.
She comes towards him, strange and mysterious. As if illuminated. She takes the little bouquet from the bed. Flora Fontanges brings her face down, over the flowers, breathes the fresh smell of summer on her burning face. Her lips are dry. Her voice has inflections both tender and mocking.
“Buttercups, daisies, vetch, yarrow, white clover, pink clover.”
Her cascading laughter. She approaches Raphaël. She seems to have a priceless secret for him.
“Good my lord, /How does your honor for this many a day?”
Raphaël’s smile is frozen.
“So please you, something touching the lord Hamlet.”
She lets the flowers fall to the ground.
“I would give you some violets but they withered all.”
Her voice cracks again.
“Go, Raphaël dear, quickly now, you mustn’t keep Céleste waiting.”
She asks to be told as soon as Maud is found.
All at once she sounds as if she is losing her voice.
THE CHAMBERMAIDS ARE PESTERING HER. Knock on the door every ten minutes. Ask over and over if they can make up the room. Might as well leave these crumpled sheets, this hastily tidied room. Tackle the city alone. Since Raphaël has gone away with Céleste and she is as lonely as on Judgement Day.
As for rue Plessis, all of that takes place in her head. The dazzle of the day sweeps into the wide-open window on rue Sainte Anne, but another street, dark and narrow, persists in her memory, its blackness and narrowness suddenly brightened by a doorknob of cut glass.
One day, unique in the world, a long slender hand gloved in black kid grasped that doorknob glittering like a precious stone, pure marvel for a little girl.
The door was opened at once for the lady from the Esplanade, who began to climb the steps, very slowly, lifting her cashmere skirt lest she pick up any bad smells on the staircase.
The old lady observed the clutter in their lodgings and recommended they would be well-advised to sell off some of their useless furniture. After she took the little girl from the sitting room and was sure that she wasn’t listening at the door, she described the assistance she proposed to offer her daughter and her fallen son-in-law. Responsibility for Madame Eventurel’s clothing, for her hats and linens, would be assumed by her mother for the duration of Monsieur Eventurel’s difficulties. For the rest, they need only carry on as if nothing has changed and hold their heads high as if they were not living on rue Plessis. The old lady intends to play the game herself at the proper time, and organize a grand ball in her house on the Esplanade in honour of this little girl who has no name, obtaining for her at one stroke the pretext needed to establish her in the city. The old lady from the Esplanade would be glad to lend the Eventurel name to Pierrette Paul for one season, for the time needed to find a husband. And the end of the Eventurels’ good deed that was begun one night during a fire would be marked by the sound of the wedding march.
She is eighteen years old. She has been told that the pearls around her neck have come down to her grandmother. She pretends to believe it, and the others around her keep up the pretence. But no one is fooled. This is a small provincial town where everyone knows everything and has since the beginning of time.
The house on the Esplanade is all lit up, from cellar to attic, even the small dormer windows on the third floor which look like the glowing tips of minuscule cigarettes in the night.
A tall lady wearing black silk and shining jet receives, elegant and haughty. Imposture and ridicule, she thinks deep down. Laughs. Old she-wolf’s teeth in an emaciated face . . . She is giving a ball in honour of her false granddaughter, as if she were real. She tells her: “Good evening, Marie,” naming her for the first time. She kisses her forehead for the first time. She is thumbing her nose at the entire city. She is offering a spectacle of pomp and excess.
A long white glove, just faintly yellow, lifeless, like a dead snake found lying across a road. Is it all that remains of a season of parties and balls? Flora Fontanges drinks her second Martini, sipping it. Around her, muted conversations. Cigarette smoke drifts through the hotel bar in great blue scrolls. Green glints. Aquarium atmosphere.
Once there were two long ball gloves, quite alive, with three small mother-of-pearl buttons where the wrist begins, on the palm side. Compelling fragrance. Soft against the skin. Silver sandals. Flowers in her hair.
Never has the Eventurels’ adopted daughter seemed closer to the heart and to the dearest wishes of her adoptive parents. Slender and straight in her long white gown, she looks altogether like someone who wants to be part of society.
The debutantes, hair waved and curled, family jewels around necks and wrists, showing décolletés for the first time, clutch handfuls of skirts made of faille, taffeta, silk, tulle and muslin, or let them trail on the floor which has been sprinkled with boric acid to make it slipperier.
The boys, buttoned into freshly pressed tuxedos, very straight parts in short hair slicked with brilliantine, make the debutantes dance till dawn.
The luckiest will marry within the year.
She danced for one whole winter, losing herself in the dance as if she were singing or reciting poems. Her body grew lighter and lighter, given over to the arms of her dancing partners, then transfixed once again as soon as the dance was done, resuming then the pose of a well brought-up young lady. She would have liked to become a dancer and to make the entire world ring out under her heels, like a hard, smooth dance floor edged with trees and vast rivers.
At the end of the third month of parties and balls the worst dancer in town asked her to marry him and she said no. It’s easy to say no, like that, to a boy who has trodden on your feet all winter, especially if his expression is sullen and sly, surprised by the no that she uttered, sharp and clear. But what’s most difficult is explaining that in order to live one needs an enormous dance floor, where nothing can limit the momentum and shut in the heart, and that the dreamed-of love is not to be found here.
M. and Mme Eventurel are simply amazed. Such a good catch, a lawyer’s only son, heir to his father’s practice, and such a neat little black mustache, like Charlie Chaplin’s.
Too confined in her skin, which is cracking from top to bottom, Marie Eventurel feels like a little lizard, warmed by the sun, who moults and leaves behind his wilted scales. For the first time, she does not play at being the perfect adopted daughter. Her honesty is unsparing. She declares in a steady voice:
“I don’t want to marry, not with any boy. I want to work on stage, and I’ve decided to leave here and choose a name that will be my very own.”
She was called ungrateful and shameless. The theatre was an invention of the devil, unworthy of a girl of good society. The break occurred at one stroke, between her and her adoptive parents, as if preparations for it had been made in advance, in the shadows, like a piece of cloth worn by air and sun which tears seemingly of its own volition in our astonished hands. They raised no objections to her emancipation, though she was only eighteen. She left town on the Empress of Britain, as a chambermaid. Her experience of poverty became her most precious possession, along with patience, of which she turned out to have a great deal. What awaited her, on the other side of the ocean, was at once more beautiful and fiercer than anything she could imagine. To learn one’s craft, to become oneself full-blown and on all sides exposed to the sun and to find every day the money necessary for the most rudimentary existence.
She is on her third Martini. There is too much smoke here. The air becomes visible, greenish and heavy, it blends with the smoke. A sort of magma wherein people float like dead fish.
Flora Fontanges experiences the deaths of her adoptive parents like a foreboding, as if these deaths were going to occur at any moment, before her eyes, having not yet caught up with her, fixed in her heart in 1956 when she realized she had no tears or sorrow and felt ungrateful and light, all absorbed in playing Miss Julie in the French provinces.
