And this indeed was leaden fare that I valiantly strove to swallow.
Our eyes met. I saw that the mouthful my father had taken was not going down any more easily.
And how keenly then, through my own poor child's sorrow, did I gain a notion of my father's so much weightier sadness, the heaviness of life itself: that indigestible nutriment which this evening, as though it were forever, my father proffered me!
That night I was very sick with a serious attack of indigestion. My mother, having no inkling of what had taken place between the aged man and his Petite Misfcre, showered my father with reproaches. 'To have her eat pie at ten o'clock at night! Have you lost your mind?"
With a sad smile and without pleading any excuse, he bowed his head; and, later, when he came to bring me a dose of medicine, his face was suffused with such grief that, often, I think it immortal.
MyTinkHat
I
had had jaundice, and Maman, to hasten my recovery, bought me a pink hat. Most likely she tried to make me agree to one of a different color -1 was still bright yellow from my illness—but it was pink I wanted. And, laughing a bit, Maman finally yielded.
My best dress to go with this candy-pink hat was of a rough mottled tweed, black and white, with a vivid red collar. None the less, it was thus accoutered that I was to go on my first trip all by myself. Maman was sending me to the country to recapture my normal coloring and my health, and she could not herself leave the family. But on the train die found an aged Gray Nun to whom she entrusted me.
"Are you going as far as Notre Dame de Lourdes?" she asked the Gray Nun.
The Gray Nun said she was going even farther, that she was visiting the entire countryside to beg for the poor in her community's care.
"In that case," asked Maman> "would you be willing to take care of my little girl as far as Lourdes? Her aunt will come to meet her there."
The Gray Nun took good care of me. Searching through her pockets she found some candies, which must long have reposed there; they were blaaketed in that kind of fine woolen fuzz that dwells in the depths of pockets. At one village, where we made a five-minute stop, she dashed off to buy me an icecream cone. I only hope that she did not spend alms collected for the poor to pay for it!
When I arrived at my aunt's house, it was suppertime. I at once sat down to eat, with my hat still on. My aunt had not yet received the bed she had borrowed for me in the village. I was given a choice between a small space in the big bed with my three cousins or a mattress all to myself on the floor. I took the mattress. First I removed my dress; then, at the last moment, before stretching out on the mattress, I removed my pink hat, which I placed on the floor close beside me, most likely with the notion of having it at hand the moment I woke up. My aunt, perhaps fearful that in getting up during the night some
one might step on my hat, picked it up to place it on the bureau; but instead she perched it in the moonlight on a statue of Saint Anne which happened to stand there, and I began to moan quietly to myself.
It was not solely because my aunt had taken the hat away. Suddenly I had felt sad about being so far from home, at my aunt's, whom I did not know very well, and sleeping on a mattress on the floor into the bargain. Then she put my hat back beside me and said, "Silly girl."
The next day I went down to breakfast with my pink hat on my head, and the rest of me only half dressed. I asked my aunt to button my dress down the back . . . and I was quite happy for an hour or two. In my aunt's garden there was a tiny swing suspended between two spindly little trees. When I was up in the air, I could see far away, under the brim of my pink hat. I could even see, beyond a slight rise in the ground, near a slope on the road, a pretty house in the distance. On the porch were seated two old people who, like two cats, seemed to have nothing to do except warm themselves in the sun. I began to wish that I were in the house belonging to the two old people. In the end I convinced myself that I had known them a long while, that they were expecting me at their house. Often I told myself such tales, and I believed them.
When I was high enough in the sky, I was happy, but each time the swing sank back, I found myself in a minute garden, shut in on all sides. My three cousins were below me, at the foot of the small trees, sitting on kitchen chairs. They were little girls piously and strictly brought up; one was darning clothes with tiny, tiny stitches; another was knitting away at a huge black stocking; the third was reading a big book in a shrill, tedious voice. She had got as far as Saint Ignatius. The whining little voice followed me when I bounded back into the air. Up there I rediscovered the highway, the blue hills, and also the house of the two old people so snug on their doorstep. I thrust myself forward harder and harder to rise higher and higher. All this swinging finally made me sick at my stomach. Once off the swing, I looked everywhere for a way out of this puny garden. My aunt had fastened the gate with a stiff, heavy rope; my mother had probably warned her of my inclination to wander. I could not succeed in undoing the knot, nor could I wriggle under the fence.
During the afternoon the little old man came past my aunt's house. In his hand he held a sort of string bag; he must have 22 Street o! Riches
been on his way to get provisions. He had a large beard. From behind the gate I politely greeted him, and he, laughing a bit, returned my wave with a wink. And he said, "You have a pretty little hat."
I was still there when he went by again, an hour later, his bag stuffed with packages. My aunt and my cousins were in the house doing chores or cutting out work for themselves; everyone in this tiresome family always had her task before her, and when that task was finished, the poor wretch went looking about for another. I called out softly to the bearded old man, putting a finger on my lips to urge his own silence. When he was very close, I asked him: "Monsieur, would you be kind enough to untie this big knot?"
Laughing a little, but soundlessly as I had requested him, he undid the knot. Then he went on, shuffling slowly, his hands at his back, thus dangling his bag behind him. The dirt road ahead seemed fine and long, mounting by short gray slopes. I began following the old man. He turned toward me. He took his pipe out of his mouth. He asked, "Wherever are you going?"
I ran the short distance between us and put my hand in his. I said to him, "With you."
We arrived together at his pretty house, wholly surrounded by flowers. When she saw me, the little old woman, sitting on one of the front steps, asked the old man, "Where did you pick her up?"
The old man smiled into his beard; he motioned with his head and shoulders to indicate some place behind us, but did not let go my hand. And the kindly old woman asked me, "Are you hungry?"
I nodded. Then the good soul pulled open a trap door and disappeared into the cellar to fetch some strawberry jam; she cut some slices of the whitest bread I ever saw; she gave me the best milk I ever tasted. What a lovely afternoon! I don't believe the old people asked me a single question. Certainly nothing so silly as, "Where did you come from ? . .. What are you up to, hereabouts? . . ." We were very well pleased with each other, all three of us together on the porch, looking at each other and laughing soundlessly, just with our eyes and the corners of our lips.
Later on the villagers said that I had spent almost the whole day at the old people's house, that during all that time my aunt had almost lost her mind worrying; that first she had gone asking about me all over the village: "Have you seen a little pink
hat going by?*' Then they had even searched the wells. A very strange thing: to me it didn't seem long... not at all long.
Darkness was beginning to fall when suddenly I saw my aunt on the road, moving along at a brisk pace. In her hand she held a little stick, and she looked like someone who wanted to use it. The poor old people probably appeared more worried than I did. My aunt was scanning the whole countryside with her eyes; she did not yet know where I was; the bushes on that side of the road must have kept me from her sight; I might even have had time to hide more effectively. But when she raised her head, my aun
t must have seen through the lilacs the crown of my pink hat. Her face immediately relaxed. Her eyes were no longer in the least angry. Her pace grew auspiciously slower. The stick fell from her hands.
And as for me, I ran out to meet my aunt and thrust my hand into hers.
To Trevent a Marriage
Ml
other and I were rolling along in a train toward Saskatchewan, on our way there to present a marriage. I remember my father had come home one evening from one of his trips among the Dukhobors; he was deathly pale, upset, and nervous. He had said to Maman, "You have got to go out there, Eveline, and try to make her listen to reason. I've tried. But you know me; I must have been too violent. I didn't succeed in talking to her as I should have. You must go, Eveline, and prevent this marriage at all costs."
Then Maman had objected, "How about our youngest, Edouard?"
Since I had been born, Maman had not left me alone for a single day. And my father had replied, "Take her along. I have your pass. As for her, she is not yet old enough to have to pay a fare ... or at most, half-fare!"
It was handy still to be too small to have to pay on the railroad. During those years I traveled a lot, but I was so young I remember little about it, save for this particular trip.
We had been in the train for quite some time. Maman was seated facing me, her hands on her skirt, unaware of the passing countryside. She must have been going over in her mind what she would say to my big sister Georgianna. I had never seen much of Georgianna, who, the very year I was born, had gone to teach school in Saskatchewan. There was a photograph of her at home. Her hair was done up in two heavy black braids, tied with a ribbon above her ears, and in this picture she had excessively eloquent eyes. Even in a photograph, Georgianna looked as though she were ready to jump up and say, "Here I am! ,.." and then burst into laughter at everyone's surprise.
Propped against her plush seat, from time to time Maman assumed a look of wrath; she moved her lips as though framing a speech filled with reproaches. Then she must have recalled what my father had said: "Gentleness ... be patient . . ." for she shifted to an imploring expression, truly most sorrowful. I was sad to see Maman talking to herself, inside herself, like that.
But most of the time I had my face glued to the window. It's odd: it seemed to me, it still seems to me, that the whole of this long trip must have taken place at night. Yet it is quite certain that at least a good part of it was by daylight. Moreover, I remember the burned-bread color of the land; at night I could not have seen it, nor that such, indeed, was the color of the grasses and of the soil itself. The country had been flat for a long, long while, then marked with an occasional low mound, then wholly flat again. There were small wooden houses around grain elevators painted dark red. I have always thought that the word "Estevan," which I can link to no exact recollection, must date from this trip; that perhaps I spelled it out on the front of some railroad station on the plains. I also read the big letters painted in black on the grain elevators: "Manitoba Wheat Pool," and then it became "Saskatchewan Wheat Pool."
"Are we in Saskatchewan ? M I asked Maman, and was about to feel pleased, because passing from one province to another seemed to me so great an adventure that it would certainly and completely transform Maman and me, perhaps make us happy.
Yet Maman, who certainly also loved adventure, only gave me a distracted nod, as though it was as sad in Saskatchewan as in Manitoba.
We got off the train, and this time it must really have been night, for of this big village I remember only the name, deciphered in the glow of an adventitious light, perhaps the locomotive's blazing eye. It was Shonovan.
There was a long wait for another train, which was to carry us over the last lap of our journey to Georgianna. We were sitting side by side in the almost dark waiting room. Maman had wrapped me in her coat and told me to sleep. But I couldn't. Cut ofF now from the occupation of reading the names on stations or the letters on the grain elevators, I felt seized by a sort of fear of this Saskatchewan—wholly dark and unknown -where we were stranded, so alone, upon a wooden bench. Often, thinking that I was asleep or in order to calm me, Maman brushed my cheek with her hand . . . and I felt her golden wedding ring scratch lightly over it.
But I was thinking hard. And abruptly I asked her: "So in real life it's wrong to get married?"
Then Maman told me that sometimes it was right, even very right.
"But why must Georgianna be prevented from marrying at all costs?"
"Because she is still too young" said Maman. "You have to be old to get married?" "Not too old, though," Maman replied.
And then she told me, "Don't worry your head about it. We may still succeed. Say a prayer that we do."
It was thoughtful of her to include me in the purpose of our trip. But I must have gone to sleep. And certainly Maman must have carried me in her arms to the second train and, later, to the house where Georgianna had her lodgings, for when I woke up I was lying in a bed, and in the next room I heard Maman and Georgianna talking heatedly.
I believe all this certainly transpired at night; I am almost sure it did . . . although the same dim glow hovers over this whole journey—I mean not darkness so much as an absence of real light—the same indefinite color penetrated by the noise of the rails, then by bursts of talk.
Maman must have forgotten what my father had so urgently recommended to her. I heard her say, "Don't talk so loud; you'll wake up your little sister," but she herself was raising her voice. "Georgianna, listen to me, listen to my experience. Your father says this boy is no good." "That's not true," said Georgianna.
Then louder still Maman asked, "Why do you insist on creating your own unhappiness ?"
And Georgianna kept repeating and repeating the same thing: "I love him; I'm going to get married. I love him "
Afterward, almost always throughout my life, I have been unable to hear a human being say, "I love ..." without feeling my heart contract with fear, and wanting with both arms to clasp that so sadly vulnerable being and protect it.
I did not know Georgianna well enough to take her side against Maman. Yet it seemed to me someone ought to have supported her, because of the degree of pride in her voice when she reiterated, "I love him, you hear, I love him! No one will make me change my mind."
"Poor Georgianna." Maman then exclaimed, "you talk of love as though it would last. . . . But when it goes ... if there is nothing to take its place... it's horrible!"
They must have been walking as they talked, perhaps moving toward each other, or—quite the opposite—drawing apart. On the walls of the room where I lay I could see their shadows move. A lamp projected their gestures before my eyes, and finally I could distinguish Maman's, which were despairing,
from Georgianna's. From time to time Maman would raise her arms toward Heaven, like a person wholly disheartened.
I recall almost nothing, any longer, of the other day we must have spent at Georgianna's, almost nothing of that sojourn until the moment when we were again on a train and evidently had failed in our undertaking.
I saw in reverse—and looking completely different—all the same dark red little Saskatchewan villages, the wheat fields, the elevators with their big, black lettering.
But we did have an adventure.
Along the route we were taking, the Dukhobors had burned a bridge in protest against some governmental legislation. All that remained were the rails, barely supported by a few half-burned ties. The train could not risk a crossing. All the passengers were ordered off, with their baggage, and the plan was to carry us to the other side of the river, not more than five or six at a time, in a handcar. The adults were far from strong-hearted; several cried out that we were going to die and became hysterical. But I was not afraid, and sat with my legs dangling over the water, held tight by my mother, who had her arm securely around my waist. A railroad man supplied the motive power for the small vehicle, which made good time. I thought it was fun. Never before had I crossed a river of which I could ve
ry clearly see the water through a bridge almost entirely burned away.
The travelers were furious with the Dukhobors. They should be thrown into jail, said one, and another asked why we received into our country people who would not conform to its laws. I was on the point of saying that my father was very fond of his Dukhobors, that he had settled them in Saskatchewan, and that he didn't think them wicked. Maman cut me short and told me to keep quiet; she said it was no time to proclaim to everyone that my father was friendly with his Dukhobors.
When we reached the other side of the river, the conductor himself came to tell us that help was on the way, not to be upset, the company would take good care of us and would get us to Regina; from there we could continue on a regular train.
On that side of the river there was a little knoll, and everyone sat down on it in the grass. It must have been afternoon. This was the only moment of the trip when I remember having seen the rays of the sun; they shone upon the knoll and on the 28 Street of Riches
faces, which eventually lost their angry looks. I was the only child among the travelers, and I was given so many oranges and so much candy that Maman begged the good people not to give me any more. Up on the hillock it was just like a big picnic; the grass was strewn with orange peels, nutshells, greasy papers, and people everywhere were singing—everyone was singing except Maman and I. Then I thought I would busy myself picking wild flowers to make myself a small bouquet, but Maman called me back again: that day she seemed not to want me to wander even a few steps away.
The rescue train arrived; it consisted merely of two boxcars, red like the grain elevators, and with no openings besides their heavy, sliding doors. The people were displeased; they complained, "Yes, the company is certainly taking good care of us; it's sending us off in boxcars!" Then all at once night fell; I think it comes quicker in Saskatchewan than anywhere else. A railroad employee was waving a lantern; it served the travelers as a guide through the darkness and helped them clamber into the cars, which naturally were not provided with steps. I was picked up in his arms and put inside like a bundle of goods. The country around us was pitch black; there were no farms in those parts; it was the real plain, without dwellings or lights. But along the railway there was movement; lanterns slid quickly up and down the right of way. English voices crisscrossed : "All right? ... All right Ready? ... All clear "
Street of Riches Page 4
