“We are to offer a feast, Isaac,” Gabriel says glumly, “so don’t stop collecting the firewood. We’ll need much of it, probably more than we’d burn on the coldest winter week.”
Gabriel glances at me, but I smile at how Isaac’s face lights up. “A feast!” he says. “Yes, this is just what we should do for the dear people.” He claps the nubs of his hands together. “What shall we prepare?”
“Everything,” Gabriel mutters.
I cut in. “It’s time to play to their, how shall I put it, their weaknesses,” I say. “Their willingness to squander all they have just to impress the others is something we can exploit.” I choose my words carefully. “Yes, their spirit of generosity parallels Christ’s. We’ve all witnessed that. But we must question for what reason, to what end, they hope their generosity might benefit themselves.”
I glance at Gabriel, whose sour demeanour softens as what I say begins to sink in.
Isaac simply appears confused. “Look,” he says, still excited. “I’ve found a wonderful ingredient for the feast.” He bends to pick up his wide hat, filled to the brim with mushrooms that he must have been picking all day. “I’ve not had these since we left beloved France,” he says. “Won’t they make a wonderful addition?”
Of course,” I say, distracted. “You’ve done very well, Brother Isaac.” I turn back to Gabriel. “We haven’t left our homes, our families, the simple comforts of our former lives that now seem kingly in order to enjoy the scorn and torture and yes, the misguided generosity, of these sauvages. We’ve travelled so far at great peril to our physical and spiritual selves to bring these lambs into the fold.” I stop then, searching for more. But I think it might be enough. We will hold a feast, and the people will come, and we will begin once more to guide them toward their salvation.
—
RUMOUR HAS IT that the juggler Gosling will attend, and this is fine. I’ve got a few of my own tricks planned, if need be, to counter her tonight if she decides to show off. As I look around our residence, I too late realize it might not be big enough. Already, long before the sun has set, dozens of Huron have arrived in full regalia, their faces painted in red and blue and yellow ochre, the men’s hair fierce and shining with oil, the women’s long and plaited, all of them wearing their finest deer skins decorated with beadwork. There’s no denying, Lord, that they’re a beautiful people, the most beautiful people I’ve ever laid eyes on. The men alone would put our greatest athletes to shame, and the women are as supple and ample and alluring as any of the European royalty. If only they understood and repudiated the darkness of their ways. But this is my mission, isn’t it, to turn them toward the light?
As promised, we have opened our stores completely, and I’ve given direction that nothing is to be saved. Isaac has taken it upon himself to bake loaves of bread in our small stone oven and already has a group of fascinated wretches standing around him, watching intently. Children and dogs run around without care, rolling in the dirt with one another. If there is one thing I will never grow accustomed to, it’s the sauvages’ inability to chastise their children. In all my years here I’ve never seen an adult even raise a hand in anger toward a child. Indeed, this should be one of the first behaviours we must try to modify. This will not happen, dear Lord, until converts are won, yes? Tell me, give me a sign, that one day this will be the case.
Rather than turn glum at my own party, I walk over to the women who help us prepare the feast. There’s no chance that Gabriel and Isaac and I could have done this on our own. The house is nearly too unbearably hot with the fires they’ve started, and the smoke is atrocious, but at least it keeps the mosquitoes away. And even I must admit that the smells emanating from the kettles are quite glorious. As I look into one that Delilah stirs, I can’t begin to guess what might be in the dark roux of it. I’ve become used to their way of apparently not caring what meats they mix in their pots, and have eaten soups that contain bear and beaver, fish and fowl. Beyond that corn paste, ottet, which tastes like glue and is their staple on long trips, I’ve been strongly impressed by their kettle feasts. One thing I can promise You, dear Lord, is that by the end of the night, every kettle will be scraped bare, leaving little for even the dogs that will inevitably lick the pots clean.
I’d like to ask Delilah about the feeling of shame she’d admitted to a few days ago, but she’s bent to her work and doesn’t look up.
Isaac approaches, carrying a birchbark pail filled with the mushrooms he picked. “Here, Delilah,” he says, offering it to her. “For your kettle.”
Delilah turns to him, a smile lighting her face. His simplicity never fails to win these people over. She takes the pail and glances inside. “Either you joke with me,” she says, “or you’re ignorant of these.”
Isaac looks as confused as I must. “Did I do something wrong?” he asks.
“These fungi will kill a person within a short while of eating them,” she says. “Where did you find them?”
“Growing in our woodlot,” he says.
“I wonder if that is simply chance,” Delilah says, handing the bucket back to him. “You will show me where tomorrow. But for now, get rid of these. Don’t be lazy and burn them in the longhouse fire, either,” she adds. “The fumes will make you vomit for days. Build a fire outside of the gates and away from us. Burn them there, but be careful not to inhale the smoke.”
Isaac stares down at the mushrooms, and then up to Delilah, a strange look on his face, as if he understands something I don’t. “I won’t be long,” he tells her. “I’ll be careful but quick. I don’t want to miss the feast.”
Delilah turns her attention back to her kettle, obviously not wanting to speak anymore. I’ll leave her alone for now and try to lead her back to the fold later tonight with generous action rather than words. Maybe this could be a pathway into their hearts.
Hearing a commotion by the door, I look and see the three reprehensible boys who’ve so thoroughly terrorized me this summer walk in, looking fearsome in their dress and manner and paint. A few older women call out to them as if in a swoon, and the younger girls, including my near apostle, Snow Falls, do the same, but genuinely. Something must be done. The overt sexuality of these people is beyond embarrassing. It’s grotesque. I have the urge to tell them to leave but am reluctant to cause a scene. Besides, this feast is for one and all and I can’t be selective about which souls enter through the door.
The feast begins as they always do, with long speeches and a raining down of compliments and thanks upon the hosts’ heads. I sit with Gabriel and Isaac near the centre fire, listening intently. Gabriel’s getting better with the Huron language, and Isaac mastered it long ago. Tonight, I feel little need to translate. The speechmakers, the most important men who aren’t on the trading expedition, compare us to osprey and our hospitality to the great inland sea. Wonderful orators, they recall even the tiniest facts about us Jesuits and our history with them. By the time they’ve finished, my years amongst the Huron have been celebrated and explained down to the most mundane detail. As always, I’m amazed, even more so by the complete lack of anger or alienation toward us tonight. Maybe I have finally found a pathway to them.
When I stand to speak in return, I see that Gosling has once again slipped in without my noticing. She sits near the three troublemakers, and it makes me wonder if she isn’t the agent behind their devilry. Her presence takes the wind out of my magnanimity, and I find myself searching for words. It’s obvious that my attempts to strike fear into them aren’t working. Maybe it’s time to take another tack. I jump in, not sure where I’ll go.
“I thank you for coming to us tonight,” I begin. “I have opened up our cache of food in the hope you will understand I wish to share with you. I’m not here to take.” I pause to try and find a stronger direction.
“We came here not to take from you but to give to you. It’s your choice whether or not to accept what we freely give. I will not go on long tonight because we are all hungry. My stores are n
ow gone, but that they are used to nourish you makes me happy.”
I sit down, then, ashamed at my inability to take this opportunity to preach and to convert. But then, hearing their appreciation, their grunting what sounds like “Ho, ho,” I raise my head. The people stare at me as one, and only then do I realize that, maybe, this is working.
Neither Isaac nor Gabriel nor I am used to eating more than just enough to keep us from starving, but tonight we are like our sauvages, and having waited until everyone else has been fed, we gorge ourselves, partaking until our stomachs feel as if they’ll burst. All around us are in a joyful mood, and there’s none of the antagonism I’ve carried like a heavy burden for so long with just brief respite. On an evening such as this with all of us like one great family, with even Gosling smiling and laughing with the rest, I can truly see, Lord, a future for these ones that isn’t damnation.
We hosts are urged to stand once more after we’ve eaten and rested and eaten again. The guests call on us to speak, to tell them something interesting or to teach them something from where we come from. One of the three awful boys shouts out to Isaac to tell him what it was like to be tortured by the Iroquois. I fear this will send him into another fit, but it does quite the opposite. For the first time since meeting him in New France, I see him straighten his back and become solid again.
He lifts his arms in the air. “See these?” he asks, nodding at his stumps. “This happened to me when I went on my journey to meet the Neutrals not long after I came here to you.” The crowd hushes, ready for the story. “I was new to your country, and I believed in the salvation of Christ.”
I am about to stop him from doing irreparable harm to our mission, but he continues before I’m able.
“And I still do,” he says, “even though your enemy captured me and the party that accompanied me. They killed most of us with arrows and clubs near a waterfall where we couldn’t hear them approach.” His audience listens, intent. “They killed everyone but me and a young girl you’d sent with us whose family had married into the Neutral.”
Isaac stops here and I expect him to cry but instead he smiles. “I feared more for the girl’s safety than my own,” he says. “I swear. But as we were bundled off to the enemy camp, I watched one of their warriors barter with the others to allow him to adopt her, for, as it turns out, he’d lost his own daughter to one of you.” They nod at this, transfixed.
“When we entered their camp, men were lined up on either side, and as I walked between them they rained down blows with fists and clubs until I thought it was time for me to die. But this was just the beginning of it.”
Isaac takes a breath, the room silent but for the crackling fire. “Two of them each took one of my hands, and while the others held me down, they brought my fingers to their mouths and chewed until they spit them out. This took over an hour.” His stumps shake now. “But they were not yet done.”
Isaac lowers his stumps and struggles to lift his robe from his body. “Your words will suffice,” I whisper to him. I can hear those nearby tsk-tsk me.
“All that night they took sharpened sticks of fire and poked and prodded and penetrated me until I passed out. And then they revived me with cold water and began again. When it seemed I would bleed to death from the wounds on my hands, they cauterized them with red-hot axe heads.”
I want Isaac to stop now, but still he continues. I peer over to Gabriel, who stands stoically.
“After two days of torture they let me rest for a whole day, feeding me by hand and pouring cold water into my mouth and binding my wounds with salves as tenderly as if I were their child. I expected the worst was still to come, but this is when they told me I would live if I desired, if I made them a promise.”
The crowd leans toward him.
“They made me promise that if I were to leave this country forever and return to my home, if I were to carry the message back that my kind were not welcome here, then I could go free.”
With this, the air seems to deflate from Isaac, and he sits back down. The audience remains silent. Confused, I look at Gabriel, wondering if we, too, should sit down. Judging from his reaction, he has no idea either.
“It is either very brave or very foolish,” an old lady then says, “to break your promise to a Haudenosaunee.”
“Which are you?” someone else asks. People laugh at this, and after the intensity of his confession, I’m shocked. I look down at Isaac. Again I’m surprised by the smile on his face. Like that, the tension is broken.
“It is time for you, tall charcoal, to entertain us,” someone then shouts, pointing at me. Others join in the harangue, laughing and calling on me to do something.
Gabriel leans to me and whispers, “Why not give them a little of their own trickery?”
I lean closer to him. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve been thinking about this since that witch caused such a stir,” Gabriel says. “A donné back in New France used to win favours among the Montagnais with a simple trick that always amazed them.”
“Tell me more.”
“We will need a quill and some parchment.” He then whispers instructions in my ear.
“Brilliant,” I say in French. “Retrieve them.” I turn to the guests and clap my hands. “The one you call Gosling is not the only trickster in the room.” Everyone goes silent. I was hoping to make them laugh. “The Great Voice has given us Black Gowns special gifts as well.” I look out over the guests covering the floor, watching me. I need to build this up and truly impress them.
“When the Great Voice beckoned us to speak His words for Him, we had no choice but to obey. And we obey with all our hearts. Doing what is requested of us, though, is no easy task. To become a Black Gown, we must swear off all temptations, temptations of the heart and of the soul and of the flesh.”
“He means he won’t be with a woman,” someone shouts. “Or a man, for that matter.” People laugh.
“But to give up these temptations means that we are given other gifts.” I see from the corner of my eye that Gabriel’s returned. “One of these powers,” I say, “is the ability to share what is in our heads without speaking to one another.”
I can tell from their reaction that I’ve piqued their interest.
“What am I thinking?” a young woman asks.
“I could tell you,” I reply. “But you’d be ashamed of yourself.” People do find this funny, so I grow bolder. “I need someone to come forward who wishes to have their thoughts exposed.”
No one makes a move. This is not the time for them to act coy. “I promise it won’t hurt,” I say. “All I ask is for one person to come forward and tell Gabriel something about themselves, a secret, for example, or any bit of information I couldn’t already know.”
Finally, an old woman stands. She approaches Gabriel, hesitant.
“Tell me something,” I hear him ask her. She glances at me, looking embarrassed, then leans and whispers in his ear.
Gabriel listens intently. His eyes widen. The woman finishes speaking and he hesitates before jotting her words down. “This thin bark I hold will carry her thoughts to Christophe,” he tells our audience, then hands me the parchment.
I read the words quickly before lowering the paper. Looking up to the expectant crowd, I speak. “You’re not able to enjoy intercourse anymore because your sex fell out of your body.” I look at the woman, my face, I’m sure, flushed red from the words. She nods solemnly, and I can hear some of the people gasp. “Is there anything else you wish Gabriel and me to pass between each other?”
She shakes her head but reaches her hand out for the parchment. “There are strange markings on it,” she declares to the crowd after studying it. “They look like the drawing of rapids in a river. That is all. Yes, they must have some kind of magic.”
She goes back and sits down, looking proud for having been so brave.
“Does anyone else,” I ask, “wish to have their thoughts travel sound-lessly between the Black Gowns?�
��
A young man stands and whispers to Gabriel. When the writing is handed to me, I announce that he hopes to travel on next summer’s trading party to New France. He nods solemnly and sits. A woman shares that her first child died at childbirth. An old man admits he no longer wakes hard in the morning, and people laugh. Before I know it, the Huron are jostling to have their thoughts told. In French, I call out to Gabriel and Isaac, “I think we have found a sure way to make them come to confession!” They laugh, and we continue to perform until I realize we shouldn’t squander this new gift.
“The Black Gowns have grown tired,” I announce. “We must rest now.” Our sauvages groan out loud as one, clearly disappointed. “But you are welcome to visit us any time you like in order to have your thoughts carried on the thin bark between us.”
When the people settle back in their places, some yawning now with the sun long set, the rumble of thunder emanates through the house. Several of them turn to one another, surprised. None of us saw any signs of rain this evening.
Lightning flashes brightly enough to make me blink even though the windows of our cabin are shuttered. People gasp. Everyone’s awake now, sitting up. A few of the young men hurry to the door and pull it open. Outside, it’s as still and hot as any of the other dry summer nights we’ve experienced the last week.
“Look at the stars! There’s not a single cloud in the sky,” one of them reports. The mumbling rises.
“Close the door,” someone says, “but stay by it.” The young man obeys. The room goes quiet.
Again, distant thunder rumbles and lightning flashes through the room. When instructed to, the young man flings open the door, and outside remains the same. When he closes the door again, it’s immediately followed by the sound of rain tapping the roof, the rain growing in intensity to a ferocious pounding. People shove closer to one another as a cold draft enters. Over the roar of it, a man shouts, “Open the door!” He’s barely audible over the pounding, but as soon as the young man swings the door open, the storm stops, the world quiet outside except for the sound of crickets singing. People gasp and chatter.
The Orenda Joseph Boyden Page 24
