The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  Despite everything, Sister Saint Arsenius never quite managed to impose the reign of calm the principal dreamed of for her class. Mother Mary of the Great Power would often burst in unannounced, more often than not coming across an ill-disciplined rabble, little girls chatting away and sometimes even wandering around the room. She ordered Sister Saint Arsenius to use more effective methods. By way of reinforcement, the Mother Superior would ask Sister Mary of the Eucharist to patrol the convent’s hallways, listening out for uproar and intervening as necessary. The nun took to her task diligently. She would slip in when least expected like a cornet-wearing ghost, and mastered the art of appearing from nowhere as if by magic. She owed her authority to her sinister face, with eyes that, once directed at an unruly girl, had the power to scar her for life.

  When Solange and Madeleine reached Grade 4, they were delivered into the hands of Sister Saint Alphonse. Of a more robust psychological disposition than Sister Saint Arsenius, Sister Saint Alphonse ruled with an iron fist. No more whispering between the rows, no more slips of paper passed along on the sly, no more heads propped up nonchalantly on hands.

  “You are not made of rags, young ladies! And you, Madeleine Lamontagne, are you in need of one of your father’s caskets? Sit up straight, for Heaven’s sake! Lift up your head and think of the secrets of Fatima!”

  Sister Saint Alphonse always went for the jugular. When a girl did something she didn’t approve of, she didn’t think twice about shooting a poisoned arrow in her direction. How many times, listening to Solange cough her way through the first colds of the season, had she passed a snide remark about the Bérubé family’s poor health?

  It was in that Grade 4 class, specifically during the memorable events of fall 1960, that Solange Bérubé and Madeleine Lamontagne became firm friends. The bond between the two girls might have frittered away like almost every friendship, sworn for eternity, that develops in a convent class. Truth be told, if ever an explanation were required to describe the ties that had bound the girls since November 1960, it could be summed up in two parts: the end of the world, and the Chinese. Two things that made Solange and Madeleine friends for life, inseparable atoms, a binary number that nothing would ever split.

  Despite Sister Saint Alphonse’s withering nastiness, the class began to stir between Thanksgiving and the All Saints’ Day holiday. The nun’s classroom was slowly transformed into something more approaching a clandestine tea house. The girls’ attention began to flag after afternoon recess, and she even found—horrors!—a picture of His Holiness Pope Pius XII lying on the floor, a Hitler mustache drawn on by one of the shameless little girls. There had been no witnesses to the strange moment when Madeleine Lamontagne, the picture’s owner, drew a short black line under the pontiff’s nose, then smiled. Without knowing why. She had had the impression at that very instant that her hand had been guided by an angel, an outside force telling her, “Give the old guy a mustache!” Then, as though frightened by what she had done, she had flung the picture under a shelf in a corner of the classroom to make it disappear. Holding it up in her right hand for everyone to see, Sister Saint Alphonse was spitting more than speaking.

  “And to think that we have only just bidden farewell to our Holy Father the Pope and someone has been bold enough to besmirch his memory in this way! Who was it? I demand that the guilty party reveal herself immediately!”

  Silence reigned in the classroom. The nun walked up and down the rows of desks, thrusting the picture of the mustachioed pope under each girl’s nose. They could feel her ready to explode into a thousand black and white pieces. Impassive, she opened her desk drawer and pulled out her cane. Solange swallowed. Simone Dumont, a girl who had learned too late to keep her mouth shut, got it into her head that it would be a good idea to reason with the nun. As her classmates looked on aghast, she raised her hand. The nun took a deep breath.

  “Yes, Miss Dumont!”

  “Sister, maybe no one touched the picture. Perhaps you’re getting all worked up over nothing!”

  “Whatever do you mean, you little dolt?”

  “Perhaps the pope already had a mustache like that. I . . .”

  “You mean Our Ho-ly Fa-ther the Pope!” the nun thundered, hammering home each syllable with a whack of her cane on the desk.

  “I’m sorry, Sister. I mean perhaps Our Holy Father Pope Pius XII used to have a mustache like that and the picture dates from back then? Maybe that’s why . . .”

  Throughout the class, the nun could be heard sweating with rage. Had it not been for Simone Dumont’s naïveté and the clergy’s thin skin concerning Pope Pius XII and his facial hair, Solange and Madeleine would probably never have known the apocalypse, or the Chinese, and might never have become the best friends in the world. The nun ordered Simone Dumont to her feet, to stand in front of the class, hold out her hand, and take twenty well-administered lashes of the cane.

  “Stop snivelling! This is what happens when you spout such nonsense, Simone Dumont! Did Our Lord cry on the cross? No! You’ll just have to put up with the pain, you little tramp!”

  The little girl couldn’t contain her sobbing, which earned her a slap. That didn’t help. She went on crying. Tired of the spectacle, Sister Saint Alphonse seized the garbage can, emptied its contents over the bawling girl, and pulled it over her head. The only sound in the room was a distant, hollow sobbing, its lower notes slightly amplified by the wooden garbage can.

  “That will teach you to think before you speak.”

  Simone remained like that for a half hour before being sent back to her desk. But Sister Saint Alphonse wasn’t done yet. Overweight, blind as a bat, and unflatteringly nicknamed Sister Fatty, the nun was not one for backing down. She was seen that very afternoon in the infirmary, having a few strong words with Sister Mary of the Eucharist.

  The next morning, Sister Fatty, wearing an especially severe face, gave her students a dictation exercise entitled “The Ascension of the Virgin Mary.”

  Solange was looking over her copy when suddenly Sister Mary of the Eucharist appeared out of thin air. A chill ran through the panicked girls. One of them cried out. Simone Dumont soiled her uniform.

  “Girls, we’ve just been told that our Holy Father Pope John XXIII will be addressing the world’s faithful. Let us pray for good news. I will be here to keep you informed.”

  Sister Mary of the Eucharist let her news sink in and came back at the end of the afternoon. She wore a gloomy expression, gave a little cough or two to clear her throat, then delivered the following news in a weak, flat voice:

  “Girls. I have dreadful news for you. The Holy See informs us that the end of the world is nigh! We already know the date: the morning of Thursday, November 10. Flaming blocks of ice will rain down to punish humanity. Only the pure of heart and the God-fearing will be saved. Our Holy Father the Pope has asked us to pray continuously so that as many souls as possible might be spared. It is time, girls, to see that all is in order in your hearts! Get out your rosary beads! Open your missals! Repent!”

  She went through the same spiel in the other convent classrooms, so that by three o’clock that afternoon, every last schoolgirl was gripped in the clutches of terror and fear of the Last Judgment. For the younger ones, the weeks leading up to the fateful day were marked by feverish prayer, novenas in rapid succession, and trembling confessions. Solange and Madeleine were swept up in the panic along with the others. Strangely enough, Solange was reassured by the thought that the end of the world was near. Until then, she’d always had difficulty distinguishing between God and the Lamontagne family. But now there was a more powerful being than even the undertaker who lived next door. And she realized that Madeleine was mortal like all the rest of the girls, kneeling beside her desk and begging for clemency from the Lord, just like her. So it was in part thanks to this whole morbid production that Solange plucked up the courage to approach Madeleine Lamontagne, after four years of holding back, managing not to faint, pee her pants, or vomit over a nun’s
wimple in the process. Defying every single ban imposed by her mother, Solange ran to catch up with Madeleine Lamontagne on the way home. Madeleine didn’t say much. She was terrorized by the thought of the end of the world, she confided in Solange, and devoting all her free time to prayer and acts of contrition.

  “I put a picture of Good Saint Anne in the shed. I’ll go hide there when the end of the world comes. Surely God will make sure nothing happens to Good Saint Anne!”

  Solange was beaten that night on her mother’s orders. Someone had ratted on her. Probably her brother, who’d been walking behind her.

  “Who did you walk home from school with today, Solange?”

  “No one.”

  “Look me in the eyes, you little . . .”

  “I was by myself!”

  Solange must have had LIAR tattooed across her forehead. Twenty lashes of the belt, which seemed like a bargain if you asked her. The next day, it was Madeleine who caught up with Solange.

  “You’re not allowed to talk to me. My dad beat me because I spoke to you yesterday.”

  “Come meet me in the shed behind our place. Knock five times.”

  Solange went home, wrestled with her conscience for all of twelve seconds, then as though propelled by an outside force, opened the window of the bedroom she shared with one of her sisters, caught hold of the drainpipe with her left hand, and slid down to the lawn. As nimble as a cat, she slipped through the willow hedge that separated the Bérubé property from the Lamontagnes’. Instantly, she felt as though she’d crossed a border with no possibility of return. A breathless Solange gently knocked five times on Madeleine’s shed door. Three centuries went by, then the door opened a crack.

  “That was quick!”

  “I came down the drainpipe. I could have killed myself.”

  “We’re all gonna die anyway. Come on in.”

  The door closed behind Solange, who found herself in the darkness of a little shed Louis Lamontagne had first built to house his tools and lawnmower, but that was now Madeleine’s hideaway. As her eyes grew used to the half-light, Solange sniffed the air. There was definitely a cat and another animal, probably a rabbit, in the shed. Her suspicions were confirmed soon enough. Madeleine lit a candle, its light illuminating a wooden hutch where an enormous rabbit was nibbling at some freshly picked clover. In her lap, the little grey cat was all grown up; it was the same cat Madeleine had been holding on the balcony the day when one look from her teal-colored eyes had been enough to floor poor Solange. Holy pictures were pinned over the hutch: Saint Anne, the Miraculous Virgin of the Smile (who cured little ten-year-old Thérèse), Saint Veronica holding her veil, and Saint Joan of Arc had all been carefully pinned in a row, looking down tenderly over the big orange rabbit who went on munching his clover. Pinned to the frame of the hutch was a piece of wax paper with the animal’s name—Lazarus—written on it.

  “His name’s Lazarus,” Madeleine whispered as she grabbed him by the ears.

  Solange winced in pain.

  “You have to pick them up by the ears or else you hurt them. I’ll set him down on your lap.”

  Solange had never touched a living rabbit before. She stroked Lazarus, who right then seemed to her to be the gentlest, most charming thing to ever have walked this earth.

  “We’ll pray that when the end of the world comes the blocks of ice won’t fall on Lazarus or the convent,” Madeleine declared.

  “Yeah. Well, all the girls will ask God to spare the convent, the nuns too. It should work. But what about Lazarus?”

  “That’s why I put the pictures above his hutch: so that God doesn’t destroy the shed.”

  “What about your house?”

  “Well, my great-grandma is dead already, and I told the others to pray.”

  “So did I.”

  Out of Madeleine’s pockets slipped two sets of cheap pink rosary beads, the kind you get for your first communion.

  “My brother Marc took them from the little girl who was laid out for viewing at our place last summer. He nabbed them when Dad asked him to close the casket. Mom said the little girl was a saint. Her rosary beads are bound to work better than mine. Here, you can have them.”

  Horrified yet intrigued, Solange gently picked up the rosary beads that had been stolen from the dead girl. She lifted them up to eye height. The first drops of a chilly late-afternoon shower were beginning to strike the shed’s sheet-metal roof. The small, pink rosary beads glistened in the half-light. Solange stroked Lazarus the way you would finger the petals of the first spring lily, the first peony. The orange rabbit slowly closed and opened its eyes contentedly. Like Clare sisters, Solange and Madeleine chanted their incantations, one answering the other, a heavenly duo beneath an autumn shower. Lazarus fell asleep on Solange’s lap.

  “Do you want to be my friend?” Solange murmured after an Our Father.

  “Yes, but I’ll be your one and only friend,” Madeleine replied after a Hail Mary.

  For Solange, that went without saying.

  They had made a few rounds of the rosary beads when they heard a shout outside in the yard.

  “Madeleine!”

  It was the Caron woman calling for her daughter. Lazarus woke up, wriggled, bounded down off Solange’s lap, and started running every which way. Madeleine barely had time to warn her new friend.

  “You have to go, Solange! Come back tomorrow. But don’t mention Lazarus to anyone. Dad gave him to me. Mom doesn’t even know I keep him in the shed!”

  Solange waited until the Caron woman was looking for her daughter in front of the house to slip out of the shed and make her way back to the other side of the willow border. She ran through the rain, snuck into the house through the cellar door, and walked up into the kitchen with an armful of potatoes that she began to peel in front of her mother.

  “Decided to make yourself useful, Solange?”

  Mrs. Bérubé didn’t know if she should be surprised or pleased to see her tomboy of a girl doing housework for a change.

  “The end of the world has finally knocked some sense into them,” she thought with a smile, silently thanking the Sisters of the Child Jesus.

  Outside, the Caron woman kept on hollering after her daughter. Still bathing in the afterglow of the time she’d spent with Madeleine and Lazarus, Solange thought that the Lord could happily send all the ice in Greenland crashing down onto her head. Now she had truly lived.

  From that day forward, the heavy, tiresome days at the convent went by like beads on a rosary. Every morning, Sister Mary of the Eucharist would spring up from nowhere to remind a class of terrorized girls, her index finger in the air, that the end was near, before disappearing again just as quickly as she had appeared. As a direct consequence of these terrifying apparitions, the atmosphere was now appreciably calmer in the convent’s classrooms and hallways. Skeptics, for fear of being punished, dared not contradict the nuns’ promises of apocalypse, which meant that the week leading up to Thursday, November 10, 1960, was as long as the road to Calvary for all involved. Almost every evening, Solange managed to escape her mother’s watchful eye to meet up with Madeleine and Lazarus in the shed, where they continued to pray to Good Saint Anne. At the Bérubés’ and the Lamontagnes’, the girls were noticeably better behaved, displaying newfound attention to propriety and decorum. Solange was surprised to find herself enjoying humanity’s last days because they had brought her closer to this being of light that Madeleine Lamontagne represented in her eyes.

  On Thursday, November 10, Solange and Madeleine went separately to the convent. One by one, the Grade 4 girls arrived in the schoolyard, looking crestfallen. They stood and said their morning prayers, which echoed through the whole school louder than usual on that particular day.

  “Sit down, girls.”

  And the morning went by. A sky that had been bothered by a smattering of white clouds at nine o’clock gradually clouded over, inevitably so in the girls’ eyes, as the morning advanced. At 10:40, a mass of dark grey clou
ds covered the sky of the Lower St. Lawrence, daubing everyone and everything with a pale, whitish hue, the light of November in northern climes. Above the huge river, the mountains of Charlevoix disappeared behind a thick apocalyptic fog. In the classroom, its windows overlooking the schoolyard, there reigned a greasy, silent sadness that no one wanted to interrupt, not with a word, not with a movement, not with a single noise. They waited for eleven o’clock to strike like Zacchaeus waited for Jesus: shaking in their boots.

  Twelve minutes before the appointed hour, Solange begged the Lord to spare her a stinky end to the world by ensuring that Simone Dumont did not soil herself again. It was only natural to fear the worst from poor Simone: she hadn’t said a word for two days, nothing but endless prayers driven by fear of the Last Judgment, and had begged her mother in vain to keep her home that morning so that she might live out humanity’s final moments by her side.

  The nun, who had a knack for stagecraft, had prepared for the occasion by giving her students, fifteen minutes ahead of time, a task to complete in silence. They were to copy the following passage into their notebooks as often as time permitted:

  “Lord, I am but ashes and dust. Suppress the stirrings of pride that rise in my soul and teach me to be scornful of myself, you who heed not the arrogant and give grace to the humble.”

  A nervous giggle arose from the third row. Solange had torn off the corner of her notebook and decided, before being sent to hell, to pass it on to Madeleine Lamontagne, who was copying into her own notebook the act of humility that Sister Fatty had written on the blackboard. The nun, her face set in a particularly ghastly expression for the occasion, caught sight of the tiny white butterfly flitting from hand to hand, making its way up and down from Solange’s desk over to Madeleine’s.