Street of Riches

by Gabrielle Roy

  Did I try my hand at it instantly? Did I at once obey this outlandish command? A gentle wind of spring was blowing my hair, the thousand frog voices filled the night, and I wanted to write as one feels the need to love, to be loved. It was still vague, beneficent, a bit sad, too. All round me were the books of my childhood, which here I had read and reread, in a dancing beam of dusty light, pouring down like a ray of sun from the gable window. And the happiness the books had given me I wished to repay. I had been the child who reads hidden from everyone, and now I wanted myself to be this beloved book, these living pages held in the hands of some nameless being, woman, child, companion, whom I would keep for myself a few hours. Is there any possession equal to this one? Is there a friendlier silence, a more perfect understanding ?

  Yet, this other myself, who in the future urged me to attain her, that other myself—oh, the bliss of ignorance!—was clothed as I was that evening in a navy-blue serge blouse, with a broad sailor collar; she had the same slightly thoughtful young face, leaning in the hollow of one hand; she had grown no older.

  My mother one evening came to find me in this low-ceil-inged chamber, where I so constantly remained, fascinated by the thousand sounds of the night which I was learning to distinguish one from another, fascinated—beyond daring aught else—by the breadth, the mystery of the task I had assigned myself, or else had accepted to undertake. The song of the pools was growing weaker; now, separate one from the other; the little voices sought each other, seemed to reply to one another, or—perchance—to draw apart

  Maman asked me, "Why do you forever shut yourself up here? It doesn't go with your years. You should be* playing tennis or having fun with your friends. You've gotten quite pale. And yet these are the best days of your life. Why not put them to better use?"

  Thereupon I solemnly announced to Maman what was transpiring; that I was to write. . . . For this, was it not necessary to come to the attic, listen for.a long, long while to the intermingling voices... and so many things you must untangle ?

  Maman seemed upset. It was, nevertheless, her fault if I preferred fiction to daily life. She had taught me the power of images, the wonder of a thing revealed by just the right word, and all the love that one simple and beautiful sentence may contain.

  "Writing," she told me sadly, "is hard. It must be the most exacting business in the world ... if it is to be true, you understand ! Is it not like cutting yourself in two, as it were—one half trying to live, the other watching, weighing ?..."

  And she went on: "First the gift is needed; if you have not that, it's heartbreak; but if you have it, it's perhaps equally terrible. ... For we say the gift; but perhaps it would be better to say the command. And here is a very strange gift," Maman continued, "not wholly human. I think other people never forgive it. This gift is a little like a stroke of ill luck which withdraws others, which cuts us off from almost everyone "

  How could Maman speak with such exact knowledge? As she talked I felt the truth of what she said, and felt as though I had already suffered it

  Maman's eyes were distant, and she was so concerned to guard me well, to defend me, that they filled with sadness. "To write," she said to me, "is this not, finally, to be far from others ... to be all alone, poor child?"

  After a brief rain, the frogs renewed their song of such fetching wearisomeness. I think one must yearn far in advance for the long road to be traveled, for the ultimate visage which will give us life. Curiosity to know ourselves—perhaps that is what best draws us forward....

  "At times words also succeed in being true," said I to Maman. "And without words, would there be a single truth of which you could say: Thus it is; it's true!"

  Then Maman made a gesture so desolate, so powerless. She said as she went away, "The future is a terrible thing. It is always something of a defeat."

  She left me to the night, to the lonely attic, to the vast sorrow of the land of blackness.

  But I still hoped that I could have everything: both a warm and true life, like a shelter—at times, too, unbearable with harsh truth—and also time to capture its reverberation in the 132 Street of Riches

  depths of the soul; time to walk, and time to halt that I might understand; time to withhold myself a little along the road, and then to catch up with the others, to rejoin them and to cry joyously, "Here I am, and here is what I've found for you along the way! . . .Have you waited for me? ... Aren't you waiting for me?... Oh, do wait for me! ..."

  The Storm

  Wi

  '-inters in Manitoba, at my uncle's dear, beautiful farm, when we were sixteen ... did we sleep on holiday eves, when the sun as it set had taken on a worrisome color? Often we would wake up and listen—with distrustful ear—lest the wind growl too hard over the roof, and then we would sleep briefly, pulling the good woolen blankets up to our chins.

  Now, this holiday morning, we had seen when we got up that the snow fallen the day before lay quiet; it clung to the soil, asleep as it lay, like a big motionless cat making a muff of its paws. Rays of sunshine everywhere caught the weary animal's blinking eyes. And we thought—my cousin Rita, her two brothers, Philippe and Adrien, and I, who was spending my vacation with them—that nothing could prevent us from going to the gathering of all the neighborhood youth that was to take place at the home of my cousin's friends the Gu6rins, whom I did not know, but who surely would be lovely people! ... How ready was I to like these people I had never met, with whom we were to join forces after dashing over a dozen miles of appalling road!

  We had decided to leave toward four in the afternoon, allowing ourselves two hours for the trip, since we were supposed to be there for supper. As for our return, were we worried? It would certainly take place during the small hours of the following night, amidst glacial cold. No matter! What mattered was to get going, and we clasped hands, my cousins and I, and danced through the house, singing our heads off. My poor aunt, then quite ill, had begged us to restrain a little our happiness -at least not to make quite so much noise over it.

  Toward two, the sky grew almost completely dark. From my uncle Nicolas's house, built in the heart of a little woods, we could now only make out the nearest poplar trees, standing very close to the porch: small trees reaching bleak branches toward a day which, little by little, like a fog, swallowed the trees' gestures, then the trees themselves. Soon we might have thought ourselves no longer dwelling in a house surrounded by woods, but situated wherever you might fancy it, in some un-

  known land; a mountain house, perhaps, so cut off had it become ! And the snow began to stretch itself along the ground, then to fly, to surge up, to fill all the air. My cousin Philippe, however, laughingly said that he so perfectly knew the road to the Gufrins' that it would take more than this powdering gale to prevent him from driving us there.

  The next question was what vehicle we should use. At my uncle's there were several means of winter travel: first, the old Ford, its canvas curtains adorned with small squares of mica; but it was little used, since in those days snowplows did not exist to open the roads; then there were the long sleds with several seats; the cutter, a much smaller sleigh, very low on its runners, that skimmed along like a cloud, but could not hold us all comfortably; and finally there was the "cabin."

  This it was we determined to take, since the cold was increasing.

  Oh, the good "cabin" of those bygone days!

  It was a sort of little house, somewhat higher than it was wide, with a door at the back, a slot in front through which passed the reins, and above this a glass panel. Inside were two benches, either facing each other or built transversely across the "cabin's" breadth. Occasionally a small stove was installed within, its pipe passing through an opening in the ceiling to carry away the smoke. And surely nothing could be prettier in those days than to see advancing across the frozen countryside these tiny, smoking houses, which you knew to be filled with muffled people coming from afar to land on one's very own doorstep! My uncle's, though, had had no stove ever since a bum
p on the road had one day dumped everything, including the live coals, upon the floor, and the fire had driven the passengers outside to risk death from the cold.

  How comfortable it was, though, our "cabin," built of sturdy balsam planks, lined inside with a heavy brown wrapping paper, and complete with its two upholstered seats! It nad, indeed, its inconveniences, of which the principal one—from our point of view—was not enough speed; for, driven too fast, its top-heaviness could cause it to overturn; besides, it churned us up so thoroughly that we would emerge covered with bruises. But the fun of being in there, all huddled together!

  Toward half past three, thinking to get ahead of the real blow, we laughingly stowed ourselves away under our warm buffalo robes, heated bricks at our feet.

  My uncle was out of sorts. Forgetful of the time when he

  himself had made a beeline for every dance within twenty miles, he grumbled that we would do better to stick close to the fire on a day like this; that, in any case, if go we must, at least we should take a sleigh rather than this "cabin" from which we could make out neither the turns in the road nor any landmark along our way.

  But Philippe tightened the reins and the "cabin" lurched off. Now were we hurled against one another, laughing, disentangling ourselves, banging our noses against each other. Though we were traveling across flat country, this vehicle staggered so thoroughly over every slightest bump, every lump of snow, that it created for us the illusion—charming on our level plains—of being dragged up and down the steepest of mountain roads.

  While we were still on the lane leading to the farm, my cousin Philippe could vaguely make out the edge of the woodland, but once upon the public highway, there was no longer anything to guide us, for the trees were far from the road and we could see nothing of them. Moreover, the little glass panel had entirely frosted over. And, indeed, what could we have seen, even had we been in the open ?

  A very weak glow, vaguely the color of cafS au hit, for a short while longer filtered through the glass panel; then this minimal sign of daylight faded away. It was barely four o'clock and we were smothered in darkness.

  We now lighted a lantern, which we tried to hang from its hook in the ceiling. But our gyrations constantly threatening to tumble it upon our heads, in the end we, turn and turn about, held it in our hands. Having very shortly observed that its glow—according to the angle at which it was held—distorted, transformed our faces, we made merry by swinging the lantern, by moving it from one place to another, to laugh the more heartily at the unexpected results we thus obtained.

  Meanwhile, it was getting colder; we all put on our mittens and drew tighter around our necks our heavy woolen scarves.

  Philippe, glued to the panel, gave up trying to see anything outside. He gave the horses free rein, saying that they themselves would certainly make their own way to the crucial intersection; there, at the crossroads, we should find the telephone line; and we would only have to follow it, from pole to pole, until we reached the Gu6rins' Child's play!

  And the four of us began to tell each other something of what we were going to do later on, when we should be on our

  own and wholly free. Philippe announced that he would have a very large restaurant with a jazz band—a farfetched idea which, of course, he never followed up. For his part, Adrien, already a trifle peevish and bitter—but also less handsome than Philippe—seemed more to wish for the happiness of others than to elaborate one to his own measure; and he let it be understood that if he had this, or else that, he'd know how to turn it to his advantage. Rita, the shrewd dreamer, said she would never marry ... because boys were too stupid. And I, nestling against my cousin Rita, of whom I was so fond, indeed wholly beguiled by my three young cousins—the warmth of our friendship as vivid to me as that of their bodies -1 proposed to them: "Why don't we choose, rather, to die together before we get old, ugly, and crabbed, Nothing could be simpler! All we have to do is set out on foot through this gale. . . ."

  My cousin shivered a little and she protested that we surely had time to live a bit longer before becoming ugly and ill-tempered . . . that at least we'd first go to the party, wouldn't we?

  At this juncture the "cabin" jolted heavily, as though we were attempting a sudden slope, and then came to a halt.

  We had stopped laughing. Was it because of my proposal, because it suddenly occurred to us that my aunt was very ill? Each of us looked anxiously at the other, as though seeking a denial of the ideas that flashed through our minds. But we all betrayed the same tense faces and bated breaths.

  Philippe opened the door, and the wind pounced on us inside the "cabin" like a demon unleashed.

  Outside, Philippe cried, "Come and see . . . what you make of it! ..."

  One by one we got out, leaning against the wind, suffocated and almost blinded by its violence. Like fiery needles the snow pricked our eyes. Yet had we, despite everything, been able to hold them open, what could we have seen? Nothing belongs more fully to the wind than snow—so docile, so malleable! And here was the wind holding suspended in the air all that swollen snowy dust. Oh, the fine play of black and white commingled !

  The exhilaration storms always roused in me was too strong to allow the feeling of danger to outweigh it. As I stooft near the "cabin," I listened to the wind, first of all intent to grasp what it was saying, to define its great, crashing cymbals, then its poor, plaintive wail, so long drawn out. With no other in-

  strument than itself, how could the wind produce such a variety of sounds, an orchestra complete, at times, with outbursts of laughter and of pain ? Much later, when it was granted me to hear the Walkyries' cries, I told myself that here truly is the music of the wind heard in other days, when its myriad snow steeds dashed in full career over Manitoba.

  Philippe, a little older than we, became anxious. "Where can we be? . . . Anyway, let's stick together; if we even lose sight of each other for a second ... well..."

  Then he said to his brother, "Come help me clear a little snow. We must have left the road. I think we are in a furrow. If we find one under the snow, at least we'll know that much...."

  Two paces away from him I could barely hear the sound of his voice.

  Whereupon the wind started to weep in so sorrowful, so absurd a fashion that of a sudden I thought of the beautiful Archangel cast into darkness—for thus had he been called aforetime. And I firmly believed that the wind was Lucifer, to whom, for a winter's night or two, belonged Manitoba!

  My two cousins, shaking with the cold, were trying to fathom the configuration of the soil; they said that they thought they could distinguish massive ridges beneath the snow, which might indicate a plowed field. But what did that tell us? Were there not plowed fields on any farm?

  "Everybody," said Adrien in a tone of pessimism, "plows in the fall... r

  His voice trailed off as he drew away a few steps. Suddenly I was grasped by the arms; I was pulled toward a human shape as vague as my own; lips pressed on mine, damp with snow. From the young mustache I knew it was Philippe whose heart beat next to me. For a long while in the wind which labored furiously to tear us apart did he thus hold me to himself. But when the others drew near, he let me go. When he spoke, his voice seemed to have aged, become in a few moments as serious as that of a man. "Let's keep on going; perhaps the horses on their own will take us back to the road."

  Again piled into the "cabin," now cold as a tomb, moving where the horses saw fit, for almost an hour we journeyed, but now in silence. And then, once more, the strange jolting, the two or three heavy bumps, the full stop!

  We were very cold. It made our shoulders shudder. We emerged anew from the "cabin" in brief single file, each holding 138 Street of Riches

  hard to the coattails of another. And we strove to recognize, in the lee of the gale, some aspect of reality. I kept my eyes open despite the snow; it was like a flame, piercing your eyeballs. Meanwhile, everything that was not exposed to its burning -one's feet, one's back, ones' hands—froze. Whereupon I ma
de out something of a vague and melancholy shape, resembling a fearful, lost home, never inhabited, never with light at its windows, a dreadful ghost of a dwelling.

  We walked toward this terrible black house and, after a dozen steps, we touched it with our outstretched hands. What could it be? ... Under our fingers it was moist, lacking solidity and resistance. . . . Then a great burst of laughter set us free: the thing we had approached and surrounded with such fear was no more than a great pile of straw.

  But such straw ricks were likewise everywhere, on all farms. What could be learned from the shape of this one ?

  "It might belong to the Labossifcres ... the Frenettes ... the Frenchman . . . the Scotchman ... to anyone . . ." Philippe counted them off. "Let's get going again. What's important is not to let ourselves be frozen."

  Before re-entering the "cabin," I journeyed as far as our horses' heads, guiding myself along their streaming flanks. Oh, their poor eyes! The vapors emitted by their nostrils and the natural liquid around their eyeballs had frozen fast their eyelids; weighted with ice, they could no longer open. Breathing upon their heads, warming our hands with our breaths and then applying them to this ice, we little by little set free their living eyes, which betrayed only the mildest surprise and fluttered a little as they focused upon us. . . . Then forward once more! Our horses walked for a long while, as though more sure of themselves, leaning their Tieads one against the other, probably to lend each other courage. We were drowsy, and Philippe was constantly shaking us. "You mustn't fall asleep," said he;

  "fight the cold " And here was the hardest part of that night!

  Later when, once more come to a halt, we had again seen that strange and sinister black structure standing in the snow, we did not fear it. But was this the same stack of straw we had already driven by or another?

  "It must be the same one," said Philippe. "When they cannot see, horses go in a circle."