Street of Riches

by Gabrielle Roy

  And then, as I have said, Wilhelm was clever. Maman had forbidden him to speak to me on the street, but she had forgotten letters. Wilhelm had made great progress in English. He sent me very beautiful epistles which began with: "My own beloved child . . ." or else "Sweet little maid. . . ." Not to be outdone, I replied: "My own dearest heart. . . ." One day my mother found in my room a scrawl on which I had been practicing my handwriting and in which I expressed to Wilhelm a passion that neither time nor cruel obstacles could bend. . . . Had my mother glanced into the volume of Tennyson lying open upon my table, she would have recognized the whole passage in question, but she was far too angry to listen to reason. I was enjoined from writing to Wilhelm, from reading his letters, if, by a miracle, one of them succeeded in penetrating the defenses thrown up by Maman; I was even enjoined from thinking of him. I was allowed only to pray for him, if I insisted upon it.

  Until then I had thought that love should be open and clear, 122 Street of Riches

  cherished by all and making peace between beings. Yet what was happening? Maman was turned into something like a spy, busy with poking about in my waste-basket; and I then thought that she was certainly the last person in the world to understand me! So that was what love accomplished! And where was that fine frankness between Maman and me! Does there always arise a bad period between a mother and her daughter? Is it love that brings it on? ... And what, what is love? One's neighbor? Or some person rich, beguiling?

  During this interval Wilhelm, unable to do anything else for me, sent me many gifts, and, at the time, I knew nothing of them, for the moment they arrived, Maman would return them to him: music scores, tulip bulbs from Amsterdam, a small collar of Bruges lace, more liqueur-filled chocolates.

  The only means left to us by which to communicate was the telephone. Maman had not thought of that. Obviously she could not think of everything; love is so crafty! Then, too, during her loving days the telephone did not exist, and this, I imagine, was why Maman forgot to ban it for me. Wilhelm often called our number. If it was not I who answered, he hung up gently. And many a time did Maman then protest: "What's going on? ... I shall write the company a letter; I'm constantly being bothered for nothing. At the other end I can barely hear a sort of sighing sound." Naturally she could not foresee how far the tenacity of a Wilhelm would extend.

  But when it was I who answered, Wilhelm was scarcely better off. There could be between us no real conversation without its exposing us to the discovery of our secret and consequent prohibition of the telephone. Moreover, we neither of us had any taste for ruses; Gervais employed them when he had on the wire the darling of his heart, to whom he spoke as though she were another schoolboy. But Wilhelm and I—without blaming Gervais, for love is love, and when it encounters obstacles, is even more worthy!—we strove to be noble in all things. Thus Wilhelm merely murmured to me, from afar, "Dear heart..." after which he remained silent. And I listened to his silence for a minute or two, blushing to the roots of my hair.

  One day, though, he discovered an admirable way to make me understand his heart. As I was saying "Alio!" his voice begged me to hold the wire; then I made out something like the sound of a violin being tuned, then the opening bars of "Thais." Wilhelm played me the whole composition over the

  phone. Kathleen must have been accompanying him. I heard piano chords somewhere in the distance, and—I know not why

  - this put me out a trifle, perhaps at thinking that Kathleen was in on so lovely a secret. It was the first time, however, that Wilhelm put me out at all.

  Our phone was attached to the wall at the end of a dark little hallway. At first no one was surprised at seeing me spend hours there, motionless and in the most complete silence. Only little by little did the people at home begin to notice that at the telephone I uttered no word. And from then on, when I went to listen to 'Thais," the hall door would open slightly; someone hid there to spy on me, motioning the others to advance one by one and watch me. Gervais was the worst, and it was very mean on his part, for I had respected his secret. He manufactured reasons for making use of the hall; as he went by he tried to hear what I could be listening to. At first, however, I held the receiver firmly glued to my ear. Then I must already have begun to find "Thais" very long to hear through. One evening I allowed Gervais to listen for a moment to Wil-helm's music; perhaps I hoped that he would have enough enthusiasm to make me myself admire the composition. But Gervais choked with mirth; later on I saw him playing the fool in front of the others, at the far end of the living room, bowing an imaginary violin. Even Maman laughed a little, although she tried to remain angry. With a long, sad countenance which—I knew not how—he superimposed upon his own features, Gervais was giving a fairly good imitation of Wilhelm in caricature. I was a little tempted to laugh. For it is a fact that there is something quite comic in seeing a sad person play the violin.

  When you consider it, it is astonishing that all of them together should not have thought much sooner of parting me from Wilhelm by the means they so successfully employed from that night forward.

  All day long, when I went by, someone was whistling the melody of "Thais."

  My brother grossly exaggerated the Dutchman's slightly solemn gait, his habit of keeping his eyes lifted aloft. They discovered in him the mien of a Protestant minister, dry—said they—and in the process of preparing a sermon. Maman added that the "Netherlander" had a face as thin as a knife blade. This was the way they now referred to him: the "Netherlander" or the "Hollander." My sister Odette—I should say Sister Edouard

  - who had been informed and was taking a hand in the matter,

  even though she had renounced the world, my pious Odette herself told me to forget the "foreigner" ... that a foreigner is a foreigner

  One evening as I listened to "Thais," I thought I must look silly, standing thus stock still, the receiver in my hand. I hung up before the end of the performance.

  Thereafter, Wilhelm scarcely crossed my path again.

  A year later, perhaps, we learned that he was returning to Holland.

  My mother once more became the just and charitable pre-Wilhelm person I had loved so dearly. My father no longer harbored anything against Holland. Maman admitted that Mrs. O'Neill had told her concerning Wilhelm that he was the best man in the world, reliable, a worker, very gentle. . . . And Maman hoped that Wilhelm, in his own country, among his own people, would be loved ... as, she said, he deserved to be.

  The Jewels

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  must have been, perhaps, about fifteen when, quite overnight, I went mad over jewelry. During ahe time I was in the grasp of this passion, I never had enough such adornments to satisfy me; I don't think that at the time quality counted for much in my eyes; I was too avid for anything that sparkled, and I had not enough money to fix my yearnings on what was handsomest. Woolworth of Winnipeg was good enough for me. And it was in that store that one day I fell prey to this mania, while I was trying on a necklace having the weight and emitting the clangor of an iron chain.

  I had bracelets that imitated onyx, others pretending to be gold or diamonds; the latter were studded with hundreds of tiny brilliants; I also had snakes coiled around my wrists, spider brooches, horses affixed to pins, tiny dogs, cats with closed eyes, other domestic and doubtless other repulsive animals -certainly monkeys—and, finally, poor butterflies of imitation mother-of-pearl with brittle glass wings. At times I affixed almost all these pieces at once upon my chest, and I could not decide which of them pleased me; the jewel my collection lacked always seemed to me the most desirable. Then I would be seized with a sort of exasperation; was it really impossible, would it never be possible, at last to possess everything I needed ? I was unhappy in those days.

  Once from my brother Robert, who was staying with us briefly on his way through town, and who was very fond of me, I received a dollar, and rushed off to my palace of temptation. Never before had I had a whole dollar to spend all at once for adornment. The vastness of the sum, leaving th
e field open to my desires, made me very unsettled in my mind. At first I was tempted by a set of turtle pins; then I was drawn to some bracelets as heavy as handcuffs; then I inclined toward some false pearls. In cases of doubt, it had been my custom to settle the question by taking the most ornate; thus did I think myself proof against mistakes! But this time, if I remember well, my indecision dragged me to another shop, there to make the painful round of all available possibilities. I got little futher than the cosmetics department, near the entrance door, already dazzled 126 Street of Riches

  by the sheen of the lovely perfume bottles, of the pink or milky jars, of the slender vials in transparent pottery; but I was even more seized with admiration of the clerk at this counter, a woman of maturity, slightly faded, who displayed on her own countenance the melancholy virtues of all these products.

  She must have been twice my age, perhaps even a great deal older; she had bluish eyelids, heavy black hair in which was planted a Spanish comb, remodeled eyebrows, an insensitive face, and—what was more—imprinted on that face something knowing, invulnerable, as though life could no longer harm her: something, in any case, that strongly tempted me, for I longed to resemble this woman as I have scarcely ever since wished to resemble anyone. For her it was child's play: by looking at me as though she already saw my old age looming, she made me afraid of it, and was at no pains to take my dollar in exchange for a pot of cream the size of a thimble.

  Thereupon, by constantly imploring her, I persuaded Maman to buy me high-heeled shoes; I had much trouble in learning how to stand on these stilts, even more how to walk thus raised aloft. Yet I would have borne even worse tortures ... for love of myself. Alone in my room, I would put on the shoes; I would hang from my neck a long string of many-colored glass beads, which I wrapped seven or eight times around my throat; at times it would be some other necklace, fashioned of amulets, of bits of darkened wood, of crescent and full moons; onto my arms I slipped the snake, the imitation onyx, the imitation tortoise shell, the false rubies; from my ears I hung lizards. To my waist and in my hair I affixed brilliants. Among the belongings of my eldest sister I had found face powder and lipstick. One day I fashioned myself a bloody mouth and feverish cheeks. All this accomplished, I sat down on the floor, cross-legged, in front of a Buddha, where I burned incense to myself. You placed scented strips of paper in the Buddha's body; then you lowered the head which served as lid. The smoke and the smell emerged from the replete and—as he now seems to me -sarcastic small fellow's nostrils. Whence came to me the inclination to associate him of the paunch with my uneasiness, my mad quest? He looked at me; I looked at him. I needed a witness, and it seemed to me out of the question to show myself to living persons in my transformed state. Had my father surprised me thus bedecked, he would certainly have lost his temper with a vengeance. Maman, wiser and more patient,

  must have hoped to see me soon cured of the disease. She would affectionately reproach me: "You were far nicer before, simple and natural, your own self ! . . ." Yet perhaps she was not unaware that to be oneself is precisely the hardest of all. She gave me my head. Then, too, how should I have known who I was ? This girl, unrecognizable even to my own eyes, whom I saw in my mirror, of whom I asked advice, from whom I expected a thousand surprises—this enigmatic girl, daily more outrageous—was she not momentarily the most venturesome, the truest of my various selves ?

  And so, crouching on the floor, in somewhat the same posture as my Buddha, I would almost choke on the vapors he belched at my face. My eyelids half closed, jewels in my hair, rings on my fingers, I watched over my poor dreams; not, surely, without a certain boredom, I would await some fresh inspiration to spring up, requiring satisfaction.

  Once, knowing my father to be out, I went downstairs on my high heels, clinging for support to the banister. Then I boldly launched myself, with an excessively peculiar gait, to display my charms to my nearest and dearest. I had practiced making all my bracelets jingle at once, and I made my entrance, sparkling from head to foot, my features lofty and distant. Everyone burst out laughing. My brother Robert, who was enchanted at any foolishness on my part and who urged me on in this direction to see what I would do, stuck his hand in his pocket and produced another dollar.

  "Here,"- he told me; "your collection must certainly lack some bit of jewelry. Take this; it'll allow you to decorate yourself even better...."

  But Maman sighed sorrowfully. "Why do you encourage so cruel a bent, Robert? ..."

  On my way back up to my room, I heard them talking about me. "Every woman," Maman was sayimg, "has, deep down within her, a poor little pagan soul, and it seems to me that you

  men all too often bow down before that very pagan "

  "Of course," said Robert, laughing.

  "She who toys with you, she who is dreaming up a thousand hard and pitiless games—yes—that's the one you egg on. When you come right down to it, there is no equality between men and women. The lovely virtues—loyalty, frankness, straightforwardness, admirable simplicity—you insist on for yourselves, whereas you esteem women for their wiles, their flightiness. And that's bad, first of all for yourselves, who are the

  first to suffer from it, and for women whom—it would seem -you enjoy keeping in a state of artful childishness. Oh, when, indeed," exclaimed Maman, "will the same qualities be of good repute for all! ..."

  I continued toward my room, thoughtful and forgetting to make my skirt swing, as I had learned after a fashion to do. Once more I saw my smoking Buddha, an ugly, fat little man, basically repugnant. Once again I sat down as before, my legs folded under me, my eyes searching myself out in the mirror ... but my pagan soul had nothing left to offer me. Come! Was that all she expected of me: to steal a bit of powder, to paint my mouth, to cover myself with a nasty collection of jingling trinkets, only to leave me yawning, lazy, and disappointed? And how could I have been this barbarian, this child, this slave ?

  Abruptly I tore from my arms the onyx, the coiled snake, the brilliants, of which a good half had already fallen from their cheap settings. I threw them into the bottom of the scrap basket; there also followed the Buddha, an accomplice perhaps, but perhaps likewise an indulgent censor. I poured into the washbasin the rest of my perfumes. Suddenly—yes! -1 wanted equality on earth, and I rubbed^my cheeks so hard with soap that they burned.

  Naturally I could not yet do better than go from one extreme to the other: I smoothed my hair and smoothed it yet again, in order to do away forever with any natural curliness. And then I cast myself upon my knees; I did penance. But my soul was still distempered: did it not insist, and that at once, that I should leave for Africa to nurse the lepers ?

  The Voice of the Pools

  i;

  -n the pools not far from our house, some evening toward April, began a kind of piercing, vibrant

  -music, softly sad withal, which lasted almost all summer, only to cease whenever the water in these pools had been wholly consumed by the sun or by the earth.

  The tiny singers—hundreds of frogs—were invisible. Emerging from winter, from their numbness, from the mud, did they recapture this thin, strident voice to talk to each other, to greet each other from one swamp to another? Or else did they live once more, did they free themselves from the viscous bottom only to stir our hearts a while with a strange music? At first individual, scattered, in the end these voices harmonized and soon made up a single long and continuous cry. I still hear it, drilling through the spring nights around our home; never have I heard a stronger summons toward childhood, toward its somewhat savage joys.

  I still often went to my attic, even when I became a hardworking student, even when I was a little older and on the edge of what is called youth. What did I go up there for? I was perhaps sixteen on the evening when I climbed there as though in search of myself. What should I be, later on ? . . . What should I do with my life ? . . . Yes, such were the questions I was beginning to ask myself. Probably I thought the time had come to reach decisions regarding my future
, regarding that person all unknown to me who would one day be I.

  And it happened that that evening, as I leaned out of the little attic window toward the cry of the pools close by, there appeared to me—if one may say that they appear—those vast, somber lands which time spreads before us. Yes, such was the land that lay stretched in front of me—vast, wholly mine, yet wholly to be discovered.

  The frogs, that evening, had swollen their voices to the point of making them a cry of distress, a cry of triumph as well ... as though they foretold a parting. I then saw, not what I should later become, but that I must set forth on my way to becoming it. It seemed to me that I was at once in the attic and also far 130 Street of Riches

  away—in the loneliness of the future; and that from yonder, committed at so great a distance, I was showing myself the road, I was calling myself and saying to myself, 'Tes, come, this is the way I must travel M

  And so I had the idea of writing. What and why I knew not at all. I would write. It was like a sudden love which, in a moment, binds a heart; it was really a fact as simple, as naive as love. Having as yet nothing to say ... I wanted to have something to say.