The Dead of Winter

by Lisa Appignanesi

  I squeeze her hand and nod my assent.

  Downstairs, I pat the dogs and pour fresh water into their bowls. With numb fingers I extract cups and saucers from a cupboard, find instant coffee, cut thick slabs from an untouched loaf. I feel anaethetized, unable to think. I have an odd sense that I am in a tunnel where the light is too bright for sight and at either end there is a welcoming darkness I cannot quite reach. I do not notice that I have cut my finger on the sharp knife until I see the blood brightening the white bread. I stare at the patch of red and then chuck the slice in the bin.

  Mme Tremblay and I sit opposite each other at the kitchen table. She is dressed. Her hair is pinned into its customary bun. But she makes no pretence of eating and speech has abandonned her.

  In a flat voice, I tell her that if she is to have the strength to carry out the vengeance she spoke of, she must eat.

  She probes me with eyes that have suddenly taken on a sharper cast. ‘So you agree with me now?’

  I shrug. ‘It’s certainly possible,’ I say, though I don’t believe my own words. But somewhere in the preceeding silence I have decided that the notion of retribution may be good for Mme Tremblay. It will give her a purpose, a narrative by which to order her days. I almost envy her.

  ‘I spent half the night trying to remember that man’s name.’ She scowls. ‘Madeleine didn’t say it very clearly, just threw it off, like an aside.’ She lowers her voice to a mumble. ‘I think she may have picked him up. A hitchhiker. I won’t tell them that.’

  The wood of my chair cuts into my legs. I get up testily and boil more water. The coffee tastes of soiled laundry. It reminds me of the rumpled sheets on Madeleine’s bed.

  ‘And they were in such a hurry. It was already late by the time they arrived. I had half given Madeleine up. I was dozing by the fire. Asleep when they came. Vague with it. Yes, such a hurry.’

  She broods and I don’t want to follow her thoughts. I know she is censoring them for me. She doesn’t want me to see Madeleine rushing upstairs with her hitchhiker in tow.

  ‘You should never have abandonned Madeleine, Pierre.’ Her voice reaches me from behind. ‘You loved her. You were the only one for her.’

  Boiling water splatters out from the mug with its small heap of instant coffee, sprays my shirt with scalding liquid. Mme Tremblay has never said this to me before. I veer round to face her. ‘I didn’t abandon her. She…’

  Mme Tremblay cuts me off. ‘Yes. They were in such a hurry. To get to midnight mass. In town. It was Madeleine’s idea. She was laughing. She just wanted to change first, out of her jeans. She asked me whether I wanted to come with them. That man didn’t speak much. Maybe he couldn’t. Italian or Spanish, he was. Yes, that’s it. I didn’t really get a good look at him. But he was dark. If only I could remember the name. Sandro or…’

  I interrupt her. ‘Was there a second name?’

  ‘A second name?’ She looks up at me with a blank expression. ‘No. I don’t think she said. I…’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘I’m too old. I forget things. Stupid little things.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’ll come back.’

  At a loss, I switch the small table-top radio on. A few bars of music are followed by a weather forecast and the news. I don’t listen to the blunt tones of the announcer, until I hear: ‘The actress, Madeleine Blais, was found dead yesterday in Ste-Anne…’

  Mme Tremblay gasps. I turn the radio off with so violent a gesture that it hurtles across the table.

  We sit in silence again and suddenly I can’t sit anymore. The house has become a trap, filled with the voices of Madeleine and her hitchhiker which I have no right to hear. I push my chair back with a scrape.

  ‘Look. Why don’t I take the dogs for a quick run. You’ll be alright for a few minutes?’

  Mme Tremblay nods, then calls after me when I am already at the door, my boots on my feet. ‘Gagnon said not to let them go near the barn. Remember.’

  Outside, a pristine blanket covers the ground. Yesterday has been wiped out, its traces eradicated.

  I plunge towards the woods, the dogs at my side. My boots are heavy with the snow, but there is not so much of it as to make running impossible. I run. I run until I can run no further and suddenly I am lashing out. From nowhere there is a stick in my hand and I am flailing it, battering the trunks of trees and the bunched thickets, hitting out again and again with savage abandon as if beating could provide answers, as if rage and the whack on wood and ground and the solid, impassive resistance of nature could tell me why. Why Madeleine? Why now? Why?

  I howl. I hit and beat until snow topples from the boughs and the stick in my hand is reduced to nothing. My mind is a black void. My legs crumble. I sprawl against bark. Around me, there is the slow drip, drip of snow melting from topmost branches. It makes a little pattern of indentations on the ground as it falls. I look up and the cold moisture hits my face. It is only then I notice that my face is already wet with too many tears.

  The whimpering of the dogs rouses me. I don’t know how long I have been sitting here but my trousers are stiff with cold, my toes icy. I brush the snow from my clothes and move slowly back towards the farm.

  In the distance, tires squelch. As I reach the house, a car skids to a stop. Dr Bertrand emerges from it slowly, balancing his weight. He waves a gloved hand at me.

  ‘You haven’t left her for too long?’ he says by way of greeting.

  ‘Hope not.’

  He gives me a critical look, then shrugs. ‘Bad business.’

  ‘Very bad.’

  A sweet acrid smell pervades the kitchen. Mme Tremblay is chopping onions. She looks back at us and wipes her hands and streaming eyes hurriedly on her apron. Onions are a good cover.

  ‘I thought Pierre should have some lunch,’ she announces. The glance she casts in my direction is consoling and tinged with guilt.

  ‘Is there enough for three?’ Bertrand pokes his nose towards the counter.

  She nods. ‘Do you have some news?’

  ‘Just the barest details. That’s what I came about. Thought you’d want to know.’ He gestures her towards a chair, pulls up a larger one from the corner to fit his ample frame.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Don’t be in such a hurry, Claire.’ He chastises her. It is the first time I have heard anyone but my father call her by her first name.

  I pour him a drink and he looks at me gratefully.

  ‘Well, the good news is that Madeleine died instantly. No pain I imagine. Her spinal cord was severed, the first three cervical vertebrae fractured. The coat helped undoubtedly. Made her heavier.’

  Mme Tremblay is staring at him as if he were her own executioner.

  ‘Is that what you’ve come to tell me?’ she murmurs at last.

  ‘Heh. I can’t tell you more than I know.’ He has taken hold of her hand and is rubbing it, as if to restore its warmth. ‘The only other thing is that she probably died between two and four in the morning. Maybe a bit sooner. I’ve allowed for the cold. The lab reports will tell us more. If the police decide to do them.’

  ‘What do you mean if they decide to do them?’ She springs up, fired by some new energy source, and she is suddenly by the telephone, screaming into it, demanding to speak to the Chief of Police.

  When she comes back, she tells us with steely calm, ‘Gagnon’s not in. He’s ringing me back.’

  I clear my throat. ‘If you don’t mind, since you’re going to be here, I’ll just pop back to my place and get some fresh clothes.’

  ‘You run along, Pierre. I thought you might need to. I’ve arranged for one of my nurses to turn up at three. And she can stay. If Claire doesn’t take the broom to her, that is.’

  We both wait for Mme Tremblay’s response. But she has her back to us. She is chopping onions again with a clatter which speaks more of frenzy than precision. Her good-bye to me is barely audible above the noise, which must also mask the sound of the bell. When I open the door, I am surprised to f
ind Constable Miron and his partner standing there.

  ‘Gagnon’s sent us to do a search of the house,’ Miron stammers.

  I lead the two men into the kitchen and steal away. The desire to be gone makes me furtive.

  From the crest of the hill, my house looks as serene as an old hand-painted picture postcard. Snow covers the huddled pines in a graceful swoop. The cat, like some vigilant sentinel, is poised gracefully on the eaves. Smoke curls thinly round the weathervane and disappears into a sky which has turned crisply blue.

  Madeleine will never taste this sight again, I think and suddenly I would like the house to show some sign of the devastation which has occurred: a scar of graffiti, a gaping wound in its side. But the only change I can see as I slip down the incline is a car parked in the drive.

  My heart sinks. As I open the door, the rumble of a vacuum cleaner emerges from the far room. I consider sneaking upstairs, but no sooner have I put my foot on the first creaking step than the noise stops.

  Maryla Orkanova appears through the arch of the doorway. She has a starched white apron on over some blue swirling dress more appropriate to dancing than cleaning and she stands there, her pinned-up hair slightly dishevelled, her grey eyes wide in a thin face whose expression I cannot read.

  ‘Pierre,’ she breathes, her voice husky. ‘I…’

  ‘I’d forgotten you were coming today.’

  ‘I’m not suprised. I… I’m sorry.’ She is fumbling for words and suddenly she races past me and reappears a moment later, a paper in hand. She waves it at me. ‘I bumped into Françoise. She told me. Then I read about it. I’m so sorry.’

  I grab the newspaper from her and unfold it clumsily. The local rag has rarely worked so quickly. A special edition, no doubt. On the front page there is a large photograph of Madeleine in the high-necked gown she wore as Hedda Gabler, in her hand, one of the general’s pistols. Above the photograph, the headline blares, ‘SUICIDE D’UNE STAR’.

  The eager glossy-haired reporter has had no trouble in reaching a verdict on Madeleine’s death.

  My eyes skim the story. There are the barest of details - the site, the manner of death, a bio which manages to hint at salacious details amongst a list of films and plays, all culminating in a resounding quote from our beloved mayor: ‘A tragic death has befallen one of the greatest of our own. We can only join with the relatives, the friends, the many fans of Madeleine Blais, to mourn her passing.’

  I crumple the paper into a ball and pass it back to Maryla.

  She is staring at me, her eyes frightened. ‘You knew, yes?’

  I nod. Is there anyone by now who does not know? I consider ringing Mme Tremblay’s and telling Dr Bertrand that he must keep the paper out of her sight. But I know the protective measure would be pointless. This is a small town and gossip travels with the speed of light and with more excited insistence.

  ‘Can I make you some coffee?’ Maryla’s eyes are still glued to my face.

  ‘Yes. No. I’ll do it.’ I make for the kitchen, hoping that she’ll leave me on my own, but she is right behind me.’

  ‘It’s so sad. She had everything, had so much to live for. So why? Why?’ She is wringing her long-fingered hands, pausing at the wedding band, twisting it. ‘Life is too precious to be wasted like that. An act of will. Why did she do it?’

  ‘We can’t interrogate the dead,’ I mutter. It is a stupid thing to say. All I want to do is interrogate Madeleine, force her to answer my questions so that I can bully or cajole her into hope, prevent that act which is too definitive for the living to bear.

  I don’t know why my thoughts won’t accede to the possibility of murder, despite Mme Tremblay’s conviction. Nor do I know why I refrain from mentioning this to Maryla. My mind won’t tolerate a terror which is somehow worse than despair.

  ‘She was spoiled. Too rich and famous and spoiled.’ Maryla’s face is suddenly all angry passion. She turns her back to me and starts scrubbing at the cups stacked by the sink, one by one, fiercely, as if she wanted to remove their colour. ‘It is a sin. A violation.’

  ‘Maryla. Really. That’s enough.’ My voice is steely.

  ‘Yes.’ Her outburst isn’t over. ‘By damning herself she has damned God. Cursed all of creation. Denied it. Disfigured it for the rest of us. Selfish. A selfish woman!’

  She is facing me and suddenly my hands are on her arms and I am shaking her, shaking her so hard that she winces and the cup flies from her hands, shatters onto the tile floor.

  I step back, aghast at my abrupt surge of violence. I bend to pick up fragments, stammer out an apology.

  Tears flood Maryla’s eyes. ‘There is enough death,’ she murmurs.

  Death is no stranger to Maryla. A short while before I returned to Ste-Anne, her husband died. They had only been in Canada for a matter of months. What accident of circumstance had led them from Poland to settle here remains a mystery to me. Maryla doesn’t like to talk of it. More deaths I suspect. Jerzy worked at the plywood factory at the other end of town, Legrand et Fils. It has been there forever. And one day he simply didn’t come home from work. When they phoned Maryla, she didn’t understand what they were saying to her. Her French was still rudimentary then. She rushed over to the factory to find Jerzy dead. A stroke, the doctor told her.

  She was left with a three year old son and a cousin of her husband’s in Toronto who had arranged for their immigration and then promptly abandonned them to their own devices.

  When I arrived in Ste-Anne, she was still stunned, a lonely soul stranded in a strange land. Her confessor asked me whether I might have work for her, part time, something, anything. She came to the house, her son in tow, and before I had really arrived at a conscious decision Maryla had become my housekeeper. We tried to bring her mother over from Poland after that. But before the papers were in place, there was news of her mother’s death.

  Maryla worked for me until Stefan was of an age for school. Her French, by then, had improved greatly and I found her rather better work as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. But she has refused to give me up altogether. She is both grateful to me and feels I need her; wishes, I know, that I needed her more. The fact that I don’t, she blames on Madeleine.

  Maryla is staring at the remaining pieces of blue and white china on the floor. I put my arm round her shoulders. She is still trembling slightly.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I say. ‘The cup doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It matters. I shouldn’t have said all that.’

  I shrug, unable to come up with the appropriate lie.

  ‘You would rather be alone.’

  I nod without meeting her eyes, gesture at my trousers which are still damp from the snow. ‘I need to change.’

  When I am already out of the room, she calls after me in a hard little voice . ‘Perhaps some man made her desperate.’

  I pretend not to hear her.

  My bed is neatly made. Its heavy blue spread displays not a single crease. The scatter cushions have been plumped into rectitude and symmetrically aligned. Maryla’s attention to detail is scrupulous.

  Like some over-pampered child, I throw the cushions on the floor. I tear my carefully hung robe from the door, fling it round myself and plunge down on the bed. The anger is unnecessary, but Maryla’s comments and speculations echo in my ears. I recognize that similar words are probably already on every pair of lips. The noise robs me of Madeleine, scatters her into a hundred alien fragments which blow back into my face and refuse to coalesce.

  There will be no genuine tears shed over Madeleine Blais in Ste-Anne. She has always been felt as an outsider here. Lightly veiled envy dogged her every bid for freedom, attended her every achievement. It will now be transformed into gloating malice. The town has never judged her kindly and it will not forgive her suicide.

  All my ambivalence about the place suddenly rises up and chokes me.

  I see beams of satisfaction settling on every face. ‘It was inevitable,’ Mme Groulx says with lowered pit
iless eyes. ‘What else was there for her, eh?’ Serge Dufour leers as he jingles the keys in his trouser pocket. ‘After that wild life, there could only be suicide.’ My brother stands at the pulpit and intones, ‘Sin leads to sin…’ He transforms Madeleine’s death into an exemplum: better settle for mediocrity than risk the fate of Madeleine Blais. The tyranny of opinion takes over and obliterates dissent.

  Madeleine’s wild laughter suddenly rings in my ears. It blots out the stampede of voices. She has her teasing face on, all pouting lips and innocent eyes. ‘Maybe if you understand them so well, you’re becoming just a little too much like them. Eh, mon Pierre?’

  I focus on her smiling face, and abruptly I see her stretched like a purring cat on some sofa. In Paris, is it? The upholstery is striped and she is running her hand over the fabric. ‘I’m so glad you still want me, Pierre,’ she murmurs. ‘When no one wants me anymore, I’ll curl up and die.’

  I touch my finger to the smooth warmth of her cheek and murmur that I want her still. Always. That someone wanted her on Christmas Eve, if her bed is proof of anything. But Madeleine has already disappeared, faded into that swinging marionette with its cold deathly pallor.

  I burrow under the covers for warmth and force the image away and try to make sense of a world without Madeleine. For the tenth time I reenact our last meeting, then remind myself that that wasn’t the last time I saw her. Nor spoke to her. Could I have done anything? Crabs scuttle and claw at the murky edge of my consciousness, scrabbling for something which won’t take shape. I chase them away only to stumble again on that cold, cold body wrapped in its icy sheath.

  A knock at the door forces itself to my attention and I see Maryla opening it tentatively. She is carrying a stack of freshly ironed shirts. She walks on tiptoe and places them carefully on my dresser. Then she turns to look at me and steps back.

  ‘I…I thought you were sleeping.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I’m going now.’ She comes towards me and bends to kiss me on the cheek. Her loosened hair brushes my face. It smells of tart green apples and something muskier and suddenly I am pulling her down on top of me.