The Berrybender Narratives
Page 65
“Wake up, Pomp!” she demanded. “My father’s getting married, my sister’s taken a savage lover, and then there’s us. Rather a lot for an afternoon, wouldn’t you say?
“There is us, isn’t there?” she asked, her confidence slipping.
“There’s us,” Pomp agreed, calmly. “Do you want to sneak off for a minute, once I get this deer butchered?”
“That’s exactly what I do want—to sneak off for a minute, once you get this wretched deer cut up,”
Tasmin told him. ‘And you might consider hurrying, if you don’t mind. I’m afraid that you’ll soon realize that I’m a very impatient person.”
“I’ll hurry,” Pomp said, kneeling by the carcass.
With an effort Tasmin restrained herself—it was on the tip of her tongue to explain to the young Nimrod that in her opinion kissing should come first and mundane chores a distant second. Any of the trappers could easily have butchered the deer. She started to make that point, but held back—she had glanced up the hill and noticed that Father Geoffrin was watching the two of them closely, a fact which irritated her mightily. Father Geoffrin, a great reader of risque novels, was always the first to spot new currents of emotion, should any happen to swirl through the camp. Tasmin didn’t want the nosy priest knowing about herself and Pomp—not just yet. So, instead of immediately drawing Pomp into the bushes, Tasmin waded into the river and washed her face and neck. Even a Jesuit couldn’t object to that, or conclude that something might be afoot.
All the same, refreshing as the splash was, Tasmin felt a sag of weariness at the thought of the intractability of men. When she met Jim Snow he had known nothing of women except the bare physical facts. Of course, Jim had grown up in a wilderness—how could he have learned? But Pomp had been educated in a castle in Germany, where by his own admission he had observed cooks and chambermaids making merry with their lovers. And yet it was beginning to dawn on Tasmin that Pomp might know even less about women than Jim had. Was she always, then, doomed to have to be the teacher? Would she never find a man who could teach her, someone who would dance her off to bed without her having to forever be leading and expostulating? In the whole camp, the discouraging fact was that the only man who did understand her feelings was a little French priest, whose real interest was in romantical novels and well-stitched French clothes. Must she simply flounder from innocent to innocent until, old and jaded, she accepted one of the cynical old frog princes of the London salons, perhaps for no better reason than that she would at least not have to explain to him the realities of love?
Tasmin didn’t know—she still meant to take Pomp into the woods and kiss him to her heart’s content— but since that was her plan, she thought it might be wisest to give Father Geoffrin a wide berth until the thing had been accomplished.
How irritating that the priest seemed able to read her emotions as easily as he read his Marmontel!
16
“Not for nothing have I read my Laclos . . . ”
“BUT that’s why I understand your emotions better than you understand them yourself,” Father Geoffrin informed Tasmin—who had at once forgotten her resolve to avoid him until her romance had been consummated—if it should be.
The two of them, having attacked the tender venison with their hands, were licking grease off their fingers.
“Not for nothing have I read my Laclos, my Crébillon, the divine Madame de Lafayette, my Restif, and all the others,” he went on. “I am so well schooled in the subtleties of love that a peek into your own feelings requires not the smallest effort.”
“I suppose what you’re saying is that I ain’t subtle, like your powdered French ladies,” Tasmin grumped. “Is that what you’re saying, Geoff?”
She was watching Pomp assist Jim Bridger in doctoring a mare who had something amiss with her foot.
“Would you say that a sledgehammer hitting an anvil is subtle?” Geoff asked, with a wicked smile. “That’s about how subtle you are, my beauty.”
“It’s hardly a flattering metaphor, and I’m not your beauty,” Tasmin told him. “I feel like crying and you’re not helping, even though that is generally thought to be a priest’s duty.”
“Tasmin, you can’t make Pomp Charbonneau into what he’s not,” Father Geoff told her affably. “He’s not a lecherous man. Perhaps you can maul him into what you want him to be—but perhaps not. After all, not all love succeeds—if it did, think of how monotonous life would be.”
“Shut up! I’ll make this succeed,” Tasmin said. “I’ll make Pomp want what I want. Why shouldn’t he?”
Father Geoffrin shrugged.
“He’s a very calm fellow, Pomp,” he observed. “Perhaps he prefers his calm—he won’t have much of it if you succeed in entangling him in your lusts.”
Though Tasmin had sought the priest out—where else was she going to get an informed opinion about matters of the heart but from this smart celibate? But now she found that she hated everything he was telling her. Why would Pomp Charbonneau, the man she meant to have, possibly prefer calm to passion? He hadn’t really even known passion yet.
“If he’s as innocent as he looks, you might consider giving him a little time to reflect,” Geoff advised.
Tasmin put her face in her hands—in a moment warm tears were dripping through her fingers, tears mainly of self-reproach. She was beginning to fear that she must, after all, be a bad woman to want this young man when she already had an excellent husband. It must be sinful to want two at once—and yet that was the fact: she did want two at once. Whatever he might have observed the German chambermaids doing, Pomp Charbonneau was as innocent as he looked; yet now she was determined to besmirch that innocence, and as soon as possible. She did want to entangle him in her lusts. She was bad—she knew it—and yet she couldn’t change. She meant to have her way—the greedy, sensual way of the Berrybenders. Were her appetites, after all, as selfish and unrestrained as her father’s? What had he done, for the last forty years, except seduce every comely woman who caught his eye, in the process betraying his marriage vows as casually as if he were eating a peach? She was younger, but was she any better? She knew she wasn’t. Even in England she had scorned ladylike behavior—now, far out on the American prairies, it could only be a nuisance. There were social customs—and then there was one’s real nature. What was her real nature?
“Cry, you’ll feel better,” said Father Geoffrin, putting an arm around her shoulders rather tentatively. ‘Although personally it’s the one criticism I have of women—they will cry—and then men feel so bad.”
“Well, you needn’t feel bad,” Tasmin told him, flinging off the arm. “I wasn’t crying about you.”
“But you might, mightn’t you? After all, I’m a needful person too,” the priest told her. “I cry about myself every time I remember how far I am from Paris.”
“That’s not important,” Tasmin said bluntly—she needed to take out her irritation on somebody. Why not Geoff, her understanding friend?
“There you sit, day after day” she went on, “reading about love in your ill-bred books, and yet you never do love with anyone at all. At least I try to grapple with the thing itself, although I always seem to fail.”
“You don’t always fail—no self-pity now,” Geoff reprimanded. “Sometimes you appear to be very happy, as you were this morning when you emerged from your first little rendezvous with Pomp.”
“How did you know that I was happy?” she asked, for it was true: she had been very happy that morning.
“By your blushing—you reddened like a rose,”
Geoff told her. “It’s mainly happy women who blush to the roots of their hair.”
“You spy!—sometimes I hate you—no one else saw me blushing,” Tasmin retorted.
“Not so—your sister Mary noticed even before I did.”
“The sinister brat, what did she say?”
“She said, ‘The fat’s in the fire, Tasmin has had her way with Pomp,’” the priest quoted.
“/ don’t think you’re bad,” Geoff assured her. “You’re merely very impetuous, and rather forward at times.”
“I confess I did kiss Pomp—just kissing, no more,” Tasmin admitted. ‘And you were right—I was happy, and I did blush. But it was only kissing.”
“Fine—though kissing has been known to lead to even more intimate behavior,” Father Geoff reminded her. ‘And then you went back in the woods with him after he butchered our deer. That was for more kissing, I assume.”
Tasmin put her face in her hands again, too upset to voice her disappointment.
“It was like kissing a brother,” she confided, when she felt able to speak.
“Now I understand your tears,” Father Geoffrin said, putting his arm around her again; this time she let it be, and even rested her throbbing head against his shoulder.
“The kisses of a brother are not always what one wants,” he said.
“It was so sweet this morning,” Tasmin told him. “But this afternoon it just didn’t work ... he wouldn’t even allow me to hug him as I wished to.”
“My, my . . . it’s so complicated,” Father Geoffrin said. “Do you suppose you’d ever want to kiss me? You needn’t worry that I’d feel brotherly about you.”
Tasmin fairly jumped away—she could not have moved more quickly if she had discovered that she was standing on a snake.
“But Geoff, you’re a priest—you can’t kiss anybody, much less me,” she told him.
“I’m not much of a priest—you yourself frequently remind me of that sad fact,” Geoff said. “Besides, there’s a whole school of literature based on the unchaste and disorderly behavior of priests and nuns.”
“I’m not literature, I’m a woman,” Tasmin said, indignantly. “You of all people—trying to catch me when I’m discouraged.”
’� catch is a catch,” Father Geoffrin said.
Tasmin looked him in the face. His was a thin face, intelligence popping off it like sparks. In his eyes she saw unmistakable desire, the one thing she had not been able to arouse in her sweet, handsome Pomp. A shiver ran through her—she was about to tell Geoff quite firmly that he had better mind his manners when Monty came waddling in their direction. The confusion inside Tasmin was so great that she merely jumped up and hurried toward the river, passing her son without even giving him a pat, a lapse that startled Monty so that he opened his mouth to protest but then forgot to wail.
Father Geoffrin sighed; he thought there might yet be at least a glimmer of opportunity, though opportunity was not likely to present itself anytime soon. As a second best he helped himself to another bloody slice of the excellent, tender venison.
17
In her confusion she first blamed Jim . . .
WHEN dusk fell, Tasmin hurried down to the river and walked along it until she found some concealing bushes; then she sat down and sobbed until she was empty of tears. In her confusion she first blamed Jim— why would he just go riding off and leave his wife the opportunity to develop so many unfaithful feelings? There were several competent scouts in the company— why couldn’t two of them have conducted this scout, if it was so important? Wasn’t the real reason Jim left that he simply got tired of dealing with her? Of course, their matings were still lively and satisfying—it was her talk, the incessant flow of opinions that poured out of her, which seemed to tire Jim. Indeed, her talk seemed to tire everyone, except perhaps the smart little French priest, whose sudden declaration of interest had just shocked her so. If only Jimmy wouldn’t indulge in such lengthy absences she would have much less opportunity to daydream of love with Pomp.
But once she was cried out, which left her calm if tired, content merely to listen to the river rush over its rocks, Tasmin knew that blaming Jim Snow wasn’t really fair. She had had just as many daydreams of romance with Pomp Charbonneau while Jimmy was still in camp. Nor could Pomp be blamed, particularly—he had told her months before that he wasn’t lustful, a confession she had felt free to ignore, confident that she could make any man lust a little if she applied herself to the task. Young virgins often became old lechers, in her opinion. Pomp Charbonneau simply didn’t know what he was missing—once she was able to show him, surely he wouldn’t want to miss it anymore.
Sitting concealed behind her bush, Tasmin felt exhausted—a whole day of the surge and ebb of feeling had worn her out—and for what? Here they were, hundreds of miles from Santa Fe, with summer ending, the temperament of the Indians uncertain, the way hazardous, Jimmy gone, herself with a young child to care for, a task that would have usurped all her energies had she not been able to count on the loyalty of Little Onion, a young woman who had nothing in particular to be happy about, that Tasmin could see, but who was unfailing in her devotion to the various little boys while still managing to accomplish a myriad of chores.
Tasmin knew she should have been grateful enough just to be alive and healthy, with a healthy baby. She should be capable of concentrating on just the task of survival, and not go around kissing one minute and sobbing the next, allowing herself to be prey to the sort of hothouse emotions that might better have flourished among the bored nobility of London or Paris, Venice or Vienna, rather than in a remote and rugged valley by a mountain river. Why bother loving, kissing, seducing, desiring, failing, or succeeding in the rare sublimities and frequent disappointments attendant on the attempt to love any man, much less the two intractable specimens she had fixed her feelings on? Why didn’t she just stop it, pack up her kit, yell at the trappers until they sprang into action, get the whole company on the road—any road?
She knew she didn’t lack character—it must be that her character was just bad, selfish, even brutal. She couldn’t stop wanting the pleasure of being loved by a man—even the sneaky little priest had looked at her in such away as to make her shiver. The first soft kisses she had exchanged with Pomp that morning had made her blush to the roots of her hair. She was reckless and she couldn’t help it—she was going to make trouble for men. Those who didn’t welcome trouble would do better to stay out of her way.
Just as Tasmin was reaching this uncomfortable conclusion, she happened to notice a small, squat figure watching her through the bushes. Kate Berrybender, unobserved, had found her out.
’Are you crying because you miss Mr. James Snow?” Kate asked, with her customary bluntness.
“I would be glad to see Jimmy—I mostly am always glad to see Jimmy,” Tasmin admitted, wondering why, of all times, she now had to be interrogated by a four-year-old.
“So is that why you’re crying, then?” Kate asked, in a tone that was surprisingly sympathetic.
“It’s not always easy to say why one cries, my dear,” Tasmin said. “I cry because I’d burst if I don’t.”
“I think it’s because you miss Mr. James Snow,” Kate concluded. “I often feel like crying myself when Mr. James Snow is absent. When he’s here I don’t feel that the Indians are as likely to scalp me.”
’An accurate surmise, I’d say.”
“Pomp Charbonneau is rather worried—I believe he’s looking for you,” Kate informed her.
“You found me easily enough,” Tasmin pointed out. “Surely a skilled scout such as Pomp could locate me if he really wanted to.”
“I don’t know whether to call him ‘mister’ or ‘monsieur,’” Kate confessed. ‘At times he seems rather French.”
Tasmin chuckled.
“Personally, I don’t find him French enough,” she confessed. “Nor do I find him American enough. It may be that he’s stuck in between, which is why he vexes me so.”
“That priest is a wily fellow,” Kate remarked.
“Wily indeed—but at least he’s French enough,” Tasmin told her.
’All the same, I do feel better when Mr. James Snow is with us,” Kate said.
“I suppose I do too,” Tasmin allowed. �
�If you see Monsieur Pomp, tell him that I can be found sitting squarely behind this bush.”
“I don’t like it that you cry, Tassie,” Kate admitted, in a quavering voice. “Perhaps you could hug me. I’m sure I’d feel somewhat better after my hug.”
Tasmin hugged her warmly—despite the child’s bossy airs, she was a baby sister.
“I think I’ll just call Pomp ‘mister,’” Kate said, as she was leaving. “Perhaps it will help him be more American.”
It was full dark when Pomp came—Tasmin had been sitting, rather numbly, wondering if he would come. He moved so quietly that when he put his hand on her shoulder Tasmin jumped, thinking it might be Geoff.
“Kate said you were crying—I expect it’s my fault,” he said.
“Not at all,” Tasmin assured him. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s men who assume blame when no blame has been assigned them.
“I have my moods, Pomp,” she added. “Many of them are just my moods—most of them have nothing to do with you.”
“But you were vexed with me this afternoon,” he reminded her, easing down to sit beside her.
“It would be more accurate to say I was frustrated,” she said. “I didn’t see why I shouldn’t kiss you, and yet when I tried I felt embarrassed. Nothing is more sobering than trying to kiss a man who doesn’t really want you to.”
“It’s just that this is new,” Pomp said. “I was afraid someone might spot us.”
Tasmin didn’t believe him, but she found his hand and twined her fingers in it.
“Pleasure has its risks,” she told him. “I don’t shy from them, but you big strong men certainly seem to.”
“I was only trying to explain.”
“No use, no use,” she said sharply. “Explaining won’t get us where I want us to be.”