Street of Riches

by Gabrielle Roy

  Then a kind of despair overcame Adrien.

  "We're going to keep everlastingly coming back to this pile of straw," he complained. "It's inevitable."

  And he told of a farmer who, last winter—or was it two years earlier ?—had lost his way on such a night while merely crossing from his home to his farm buildings. "Shut up," Philippe ordered him.

  But the idiot kept citing tragic instances, one after the other.

  "Let's stay here "

  "Where can we be? ..." "How many miles away? .. "

  Our thoughts were reduced to mere questions.

  And suddenly I cried out in anguish, "Rita! Rita! Rita!" because, for perhaps half a minute, I had not heard her voice mingled with the others'. Whereupon from far away a voice answered me, "I'm here . . ." and at the same moirfent my cousin's hand touched my own. Out of our joy we embraced with all the awkwardness of blind people.

  A little later, over a wave of snow, I believed I saw a slight glimmer; then at once it disappeared and I mistrusted my eyes. None the less I told the others, "Over there—far away—I think I saw a light! ..."

  The four of us, studious together, long stared into this whirlpool of snow.

  And again, like the riding lights of a ship one glimpses when a high wave lifts it out of the abyss, I espied the pale glow. Adrien also had perceived it, having through some amazing circumstance fastened his gaze at the same moment as I upon the same infinitely small point in this horizonless infinity.

  He cried out, "Yes, yes, yes! It's true! There is a light over there!"

  Leading our horses by their bridles, we walked toward this light, which we never again, saw all together, but singly and by turns. After five minutes, the light seemed to me a bit more certain, easier to spot. Almost at the same time I crashed into a tree.

  "Trees! . . . Hereabouts!" exclaimed Philippe, quickly shifting from astonishment to reflection and then reassurance.

  There immediately loomed up a towering house shape, still very indefinite and far away.

  "The building looks square," said Rita joyfully.

  "All the houses around here are square," growled Adrien. Then he stopped growling and quickened his pace, whistling under his breath.

  A few more steps and we had circumnavigated the dark side of the square house. Our horses tried to get away from us. 140 Street of Riches

  ■I

  A lighted window showed its square through the night. And at last we saw the lamp in its place on a shelf, then—not far off -the face of the old dock reflecting the light; the rocking chair, too, and probably the cat asleep on her cushion—everything as it should be!

  Holding a lamp at the level of his eyes, my uncle appeared on the doorsill. His face betrayed his content at seeing us back home and surprise at finding us so little upset.

  "Come in, come in, you gang of young fools! I was quite sure in my mind you'd turn back. . . At last you've come to your senses, you silly little idiots! . . ."

  By Day and by Night

  M!

  y father, so sad and withdrawn during the day, toward night began somewhat to revive. You Lmight have thought that the sun as it set, the daylight as it faded, freed him of a dreadful verity which he ceaselessly carried before his eyes. Was it that he constantly kept seeing the day when, on his return from a trip to his settlements, he stopped in at his office in Winnipeg to pick up the mail and found this letter addressed to him: "For which reason we ask you kindly to offer your resignation . . . realize the value of your services, the devotion of your life to the settlers, of whom several have spoken in your behalf. . . . But other circumstances . . . The new law regarding the retirement age . . ." ? From its first reading, I think my father must have known this letter by heart, and perhaps he never succeeded in driving the words from his mind. He went through a few ridiculous days during which, urged on by my mother and by friends, he tried to appeal his case to the government, but he had not enough confidence in himself to undertake the visits, the pleas to which he would have had to agree. And maybe he was especially repelled by the idea—monstrous to him—of having to display his merits, his life. For with this letter, not only had he no longer confidence in what he was, in what he could do, but he even lost the feeling of ever having been useful. By this letter he was in a sense stripped of all his achievements, and he kept on living only to bear the daily weight of this defeat upon his shoulders. Happily the night was still gentle to him. When it came, so simple and sweet-smelling along our street, my father greeted it like a familiar guest. Was this a merely physical well-being ? Or had this hour still sufficient empire over his soul to revive within it hope of happiness? Whatever the case, this phenomenon was so familiar to each of us that, if we wished to obtain my father's permission for something we wanted, we waited—as Maman advised—"until it is dark."

  But Maman was a creature of the day. I have never seen anyone so impatient to get up in the morning to go out in summer at the sun's first rays in order to care for her flowers, which were as full of health as Maman herself. She took it 142 Street of Riches

  very ill that we should sleep late, and if her kindliness forbade her to make noise for fear of waking us, soon her vitality overcame her caution—or perchance it was her unconscious desire to make us get up which led to her clattering the saucepans. Even in winter she arose very early to light the fires, now that my father was so ailing, and to set the porridge to boil; then, in bitter cold, and through darkness, Maman trotted off to the earliest Mass. When we got up, the house was already warm, a going concern, its sleepiness well shaken off. Yes, Maman's activities were full to overflowing as long as they were accompanied and sustained by daylight; but the moment dusk fell, she abruptly lost all her momentum; she would yawn; never did she show her age except in the evening, under the harsh electric light She put me in mind of those flowers, so living by day which at night so sadly hang their heads. And toward ten o'clock, if we expected no company, if there were nothing extraordinary to revive Maman in her overpowering drowsiness, she would say to us, "Well, I'm going to bed; I'm dropping on my feet." And she would beg us, "Do try not to stay up until some impossible hour."

  It was one of her ideas that to be in good health you must retire early, rise early; that sitting up by electric light ruined one's eyes.

  At this hour, however, Papa was just coming back to life. Yes, he greatly helped himself with coffee which he made very strong, and indeed very good, as compared to Maman's dishwater. Thus it happened that evening, while he was watching his coffee on the stove and its aroma was spreading everywhere, that Papa glanced at Maman. "Already!"

  He was always as astonished at seeing Maman go to bed come ten o'clock as she was to see him sleep almost all day.

  Maman arose to leave us. And although she had lived with father for thirty-six years and must have known that her recommendations and reproaches were unavailing with him, on that evening as on every other Maman said to my father, "Really, Edouard, I don't understand you, drinking coffee at ten o'clock! What's more, it isn't even coffee, but essence of coffee! It's no wonder that afterward you are fidgety, that you should be ill and unable to sleep! You turn night into day!" >

  My father made no answer to this ancient reproach. In the daytime he might have made a fairly biting rejoinder. But at this hour he grew indulgent, even though he more and more

  obstinately followed his own sweet will: the ease night brought him was too precious to him for him to be able to give it up. Most likely he was ready, were it necessary, to pay for it with what remained to him of health, of life. At times, watching my father, I would already say to myself, "It's not so much to life that he clings, that many others cling, maybe, as it is to

  certain rare and brief moments in life "

  "Well, then, go!" said he to Maman. "Seeing you can sleep with the hens. I don't know how you do it. ... Go sleep, poor Maman!"

  For, now that he was very old, she much younger than he, like all of us he called her "Maman."

  Thi
s evening, however, my mother seemed more resolved than ever to prevent my father's having his way. A terrible weariness spread over her face, as though she could truly no longer endure seeing him so little careful of his health, hastening—you might say—his end. She must have done herself a real violence not to register a final reproach, a last prayer; she began to move away, her arms hanging by her sides. Still young, I realized how desperate a business it is to be in the right concerning those one loves.

  With her hand Maman made me a brief sign which meant, "Don't you be too late. You, at least, could follow my example. . . ." And was she, by this poor little gesture, asking me to remain her ally ?

  I was myself hesitating as between day and night. Like Maman, I felt, when I had gone to bed early, a joyous haste to greet the dawn, to run to my open window; I inherited from her that feeling of possession for things which in so many human beings is a product of the morning: the world seemed then to me as though at its beginning. Here was a new slate on which to write my life. I got up with my head full of resolutions : to give my hair a hundred brush strokes, to put a fresh collar on my convent uniform, to go over my homework. . . . Then, again, if I stayed up a little late, if I succeeded in repelling the first assaults of sleep, I would attain a kind of over-excitement very different from the fine calm of morning—but how wonderful! Morning seemed to me the time of logic, night of something perhaps truer than logic. ... In any case, I was far older than my years as far as the evening went, and possessed an understanding beyond my experience. I had noticed that the words and sentences of my compositions flowed quite 144 Street of Riches

  easily in the morning; but thought itself—or rather that nimbus which surrounds it while it is still unshaped and precious—I experienced at night. I was divided between these two sides of my nature, which came to me from my parents, sundered by the day and the night.

  I lingered on for some time that evening with Papa. To induce us to stay with him, he would practice such obvious wiles. First he would offer us some of his black coffee, as well as toast which he made with a long fork over the coals. And if, through these halting advances, we were kept from hurrying elsewhere, then—sometimes—it happened that my father began to talk—and the full effect of the coffee aroused in him a sort of sparkling lucidity, precise, vivid, and very well-chosen words. The few times when he told me of his life were on such occasions, almost in the dark, alongside the stove now barely warm.

  Once he had led me into the small room that contained his old roll-top desk and his wall maps of the colonization regions. As they were very detailed and large scale, a single corner of Saskatchewan covered a wall. That particular evening he unrolled one of them and showed me where he had formerly established some tenscore Mennonites. He spoke of "my people, my settlers," and likewise, "my immigrants," stressing die possessive pronoun so that this word "immigrant," rather than signifying a stranger, took on a curious value of blood relationship. "Here," he would say, "I found them a heavy layer of black earth, true gumbo, the soil that best suits wheat, and it yielded them sixty bushels to the acre." He pulled the string on another map, and with his finger pointed out the location of a Galician hamlet founded by him. I date my passion for maps from the time when my father made me behold upon them the low-lying little houses of the plain, some new dwelling place in emptiness . . . perhaps even the people themselves, inside their homes, gathered around the table. At least once my father grew spirited enough to relive, in front of the map, his long voyages of other days—and perhaps it made him forget, for a few moments, the letter: "Have to replace you with a younger man . . . necessary to apply the most up-to-date methods ..."—that letter which set forth so many reasons in order not to have to give the only real one, and the one which ' would have been the least wounding: "We must hand over your job to a man of the right political party. . . . What we need is not a servant of the country, but a servant of our own "

  In this little study of my father's there was also a full-length portrait of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. It showed the statesman in an attitude that must have been habitual with him while he was speaking in public: the high forehead lifted, as though illumined by a thought that had just come into being, the right hand open to present the evidence, the long hair, white and supple, floating behind as though in a breeze. And Papa said to me of Laurier: "Whatever words may be spoken about him, remember that this man labored to unite Canadians, never to divide them—and that's the best tribute you can pay a man when he's conquered and beaten, when he's dead."

  Oh, had I been better able to sit up at night, I should better have learned to know my father! But I was unaware then that a somewnat more patient attention on my part would have freed him from silence.

  The last time he talked to us, it was, I believe, about Verigin. 'The Dukhobors," explained my father, "thought that Verigin, their leader, was Christ reincarnate, that they could never be wrong if they heeded his words. Poor people! To such an extent bewitched by Verigin they did not see his faults; or rather, seeing him, they believed only in him; to their Little Father Verigin, all was permitted, since he was of divine essence. . . . For one does not impute evil to God! So Verigin could exact from them the harshest penances, abstinence, continence, whereas he himself! ... I saw him occasionally: he was richly clad, well-fed, surrounded by young girls. He traveled only with an escort of young maidens dressed in white, bedecked with flowers. Oh, we were long fooled by him! He played a double game, claiming to make his people subject to the country's laws, to work with Ottawa, whereas more and more he pushed his adepts toward a crazy mysticism. I should have liked to have known him better, grasp the devil's part, maybe, in this strange nature, understand the dark satisfaction he can have felt in obtaining from others more than from himself."

  Thereupon Agnbs complained, "Lord, Papa! How late it is! And tomorrow I must help Maman with the house cleaning."

  And yet she liked, more than anyone else, to hear Papa tell about the country, the past, and she loved to see him forget his sorrows. But with such delicate health, sitting up late wore her out, and she insisted on husbanding her strength to help Maman as much as possible. Little by little, through her own

  efforts and almost joyously, she had fashioned for herself at home a very useful little niche, by no means brilliant, even dull. Martha's part, if you will. That evening she must have undergone a long struggle against fatigue and the headaches so constantly hers. "Papa, half past eleven!"

  My father drew his big watch from his pocket. "Not at all, Agn&s; only eleven!"

  "You know very well. Papa, that we set our clock by the church, when the Angelus rang." "Sometimes they are ahead of time, even at the church."

  But it was obvious that his spirits had been quenched by all these remarks about the hour. He looked at Agn&s anxiously 'True enough," said he, "you are pale and your face is drawn. You're failing ... you, too, Agnfes."

  She went to him and kissed his forehead, then moved away, leaning against the furniture out of sheer weariness.

  We remained alone, Papa and I, in the feeble glow of the stove. Even on summer nights he kept it, as he said, "just alive," for often enough was not the fire his sole companion? He offered me some of his coffee.

  "Just for once!" said he. "A little cup; I don't think it will do you any harm."

  And he deceived himself so skillfully, he so ably bent truth to his own purposes, that he announced, with deep seriousness, "I never found that coffee prevented me from sleeping; it merely helps you to remember better, to sort your impressions, and sometimes also to recapture flavors, names, maybe a soul that is not so old "

  I accepted a cup, which he brought me steaming to the table corner where I had rested my elbows. Despite myself, my eyes were closing. With some slight remorse I thought of my unfinished homework, of the approaching examinations. I drank a little coffee.

  "I diluted it a bit for you," said my father, "which is bad, for coffee does not stand baptising. Your mother really should

  try
it; then she could sit up a little later nights "

  "But Maman is out of bed at five in the morning, Papa!" / "Yes," said he. "That's something I've never understood, that at the very crack of dawn your mother should feel such a need of bustling about."

  I had never heard Papa talk in this almost teasing, joking way. In the dark cosiness of the kitchen, with all the doors

  shut, he walked back and forth, his hands behind him, limber, full of plans. When he turned toward me, once, a sudden spurt of flame in the fire showed me the brilliance of his eyes; I saw them overflowing with confidence. But also I saw his bent back, the dreadful lines which life had etched into his face. And it was surely at that moment that I thought, "Why, Papa is a broken man!"

  Abruptly he asked me, "Little one, what do you think of an idea I have? Your mother has no faith in my ideas. But, after all, even at seventy-two, one can still be useful... within limits...."

  He sat down close to me, as though to establish that I had become an adult in his eyes; I felt as though I,had a child beside me, a sad, unruly child.

  "I still have a little—a very little—money," my father confided to me, "a little remainder of what I once earned. Were I to buy a business, a grocery store, don't you think it would bring in something? We should take turns at the counter; I myself would be there the most frequent of all. I think," said he, "I have a talent for dealing with people "

  It was so farfetched: Papa a shopkeeper, he who now fled people's company, he whom we had to nurse all day, who could scarcely stir after his nocturnal vigils! Only toward six in the morning, his exaltation spent, did he sleep, at times as though in an abyss, his terrible defeat written in the folds of his half-open mouth, in his ravaged features.

  He continued telling me about his schemes. "If I have only six months to live, it would be better to stretch our savings as far as we can; but if I have still several years left, would it not be wise to invest the little money remaining to us? Perhaps -for instance—in a mushroom farm? ..."