The Tin Flute

by Gabrielle Roy

  "Yep," said Azarius, "since Florentine's getting regular pay, it sure makes a difference."

  He looked up suddenly, reddening.

  "It's not right, you know," he said, "for a young girl to give her whole pay to help out the family. I don't like it, Latour. I don't like it one bit, and that's got to change soon. I just hope the building business picks up one of these days."

  "Yeah, I don't see you drivin' taxis all your life."

  "No siree," said the driver vehemently, "I'd drop it in a minute, and that's no lie. It's a dog's life."

  He leaned heavily against the counter, suddenly limp, as if he heard the voice of defeat from within himself, the murmur that comes at certain times in our lives like an echo to our circumstances.

  In his hesitant voice, his faltering gaze, Jean now caught a full glimpse of Florentine. Azarius, like his daughter, felt himself ill-suited to his work and unfitted for daily life; and the least forlorn of the two was perhaps not the father, Jean reflected, but rather the daughter whom he still saw running through the storm in a kind of desperation.

  He reached the door just before Azarius, and went out, his head bent against the storm.

  The tense, pale face of the young waitress still haunted him. Florentine, hating her work behind the counter, detesting even' minute of her subjection to life, and yet giving almost all her pay to her family. A girl devoured at the same time by disgust at her daily lot and by devotion to those nearest her. This was a new Florentine!

  He plunged into the dark of one of the alleys leading to Notre Dame Street. On the walls of the houses, to the right, to the left, wherever they were brightened by the pale rays of the arc lamps, he could make out "To Let" signs.

  The crisis of the yearly move was already upon this unstable folk of the suburb.

  Signs of spring, the young man thought.

  It struck him that the signs belonged on more than the houses. To Let was posted on their very beings. Their arms, to let! Their idleness, to let! To let, their strength. And above all, their minds, which could be led astray at will, turned like weathercocks this way or that, ready for any risk, their forgotten energies unused, their hopes grown numb. Ready, like the houses, for the unknown. Emerging from the thaw, from the mildew! Ready for this call that was coming from abroad, spreading faster than the tolling of the tocsin. Ready for war.

  And what am I ready for? he wondered. It still happened at times that he was not completely sure of his path. Two tendencies of almost equal strength struggled for possession of him, leading in opposite directions. At least he could still weigh his choices and imagine himself on the path of unselfishness which had occasionally tempted him. But he had little doubt about which way his will would eventually turn, or the final outcome that lay before him.

  FOUR

  While Jean Lévesque, wandering through the dark streets, was wishing he were with a friend to whom he could show off and talk about himself, another young man, the only human for whom he felt a real attachment, was making his way toward Ma Philibert's restaurant.

  He reached the half-lit entrance, stumbled on a step buried in the snow and with a prolonged "Brrrrrrrr" entered the little shop like a gust of wind.

  "Well, if it isn't Manuel!" cried Emma Philibert.

  "Hi, Ma Philibert!" cried the young man in return, imitating the voice and gesture of the fat woman and running to join her behind the counter where, in her haste to get off the stool, she had lost one dilapidated shoe and was down retrieving it.

  "Ma Philibert," he declared, "you're just as fat and round and heavy as ever . . . and just as beautiful," he added, chucking her under the chin.

  "You crazy nut!" she cried, still smiling from her surprise, then laughing happily, puffing and giving a push to her hair to adjust her bun.

  Then she noticed the young soldier's uniform and her face grew serious.

  "Emmanuel! So it's true you joined up!" Sitting at one of the restaurant's three tables, three young men were watching, one with impatience, like a dog begging to play, one with ill-humour and the third with insolent boredom.

  "Pitou! Boisvert! And Alphonse, you're here, too!" Emmanuel turned to greet each one in turn.

  Tall, very thin, a little awkward with his hands, his face rubbed by the frost and lit by a friendly, open expression, he stood there uncertain because of the silence that had followed his greetings.

  "Well, you guys, how are things?" he asked.

  "Okay," said Boisvert, "first class, but you're standing in my light." Then he growled, "Why don't you shut the door right? Don't you know it's cold outside? It's twenty below! Where've you been? Is it that warm where you come from?"

  "I guess," said Emmanuel, disconcerted.

  Pitou had perched himself on the counter, his legs dangling, his guitar on his knees. Still shy, he watched Emmanuel and smiled aimlessly. To one side, where it was darker, sat Alphonse, a lazy smirk on his face. It's not easy, thought Emmanuel Létourneau, to pick up old acquaintances, even if you've not been away so long. And he wondered whether to sit down or simply buy some cigarettes and a chocolate bar and be on his way.

  From his earliest childhood he had played with these boys despite his mother's prohibition. She would have liked to see him in better company. Then he had been lucky enough to go to St. Henri college while they, at thirteen or fourteen, were already looking for work. Before finishing school, to get away from his father's influence, he had impulsively taken a job as spinner in the cotton works on St. Ambroise. Shortly after, he became shop foreman, and this luck in those hard years had given him real prestige in the eyes of his old gang, still unemployed. Nothing in their lives held them together except the memory of the neighbourhood public school, where everybody went, whatever his class origin. There were sons of middle-class families along with ragged urchins from the canal side, and the pale, sickly children of families on relief. They sat side by side on their benches in the Christian brothers' school, and the glimpse he had of poverty at that early age never left his mind. And he never quite lost sight of the poorer kids he had liked at school: young Boisvert, intelligent and sly, but so starved that he spent more time stealing nuts and apples from other children's pockets than he did on his books; little Alphonse, already silent and bitter; and Pitou, Pitou who tore his pants and didn't dare go home for fear of a beating! Pitou, who missed three weeks of school because his mother had no thread for mending. Pitou, who turned up at last in his older brother's pants after the brother died of tuberculosis.

  They had seemed to him to be the true expression of his generation — confused, wise-cracking, indolent. And on the day he left his job to join the army, the troublesome, confused recollections of his youth went with him, playing no small part, as he realized, in his decision.

  It was only a few months ago that he used to stop by here at Emma's place, on his way from work, to buy a coke or a package of tobacco for the fellows sitting around in the low-ceilinged room. But as he came in just now he had felt a sullen, ill-concealed embarrassment among them. Then he understood: it was his uniform that provoked this veiled hostility. He had not been back in the suburb long before he sensed this unease, this mute disapproval. Yet as he walked around alone he had purposely sought out points of contact with his former life.

  Ma Philibert, still nonplussed by his sudden appearance, made no secret of her delight. Beaming, she made him turn around while she inspected him from head to foot. "Now, then! You sit down, Manuel," she said, fussing over him. "It's not been the same around here since you left. Sit down, sit down. You look well, you know, but you've lost weight. Do they feed you right in that army of yours?"

  "Oh, yes," said Emmanuel, smiling, "we get lots to eat."

  The smile gave his face its natural expression of gentleness. He had dark eyes, rather high cheekbones and a forehead narrowed at the temples. As he spoke he tilted his head slightly to one side, as if his neck had trouble holding it straight. His slim hands nervously dug into his greatcoat pockets. He drew out a l
ighter and a pack of cigarettes which he passed around before taking one. He lit up and settled comfortably in his chair. In the middle of the narrow room the cast-iron stove was red-hot, and Ma Philibert's face was framed as usual between the jars of peppermints and pink candies lined up on the counter. The small bell above the door rattled with every puff of wind. Boisvert, faithful to his obsession, took out his jack-knife and started paring his nails. Emmanuel thought, I'm the one who's changed. He stretched his legs toward the stove's heat, sighing contentedly.

  "You always were a soft touch," said Pitou.

  He was smoking sparingly, watching with comic despair as his cigarette grew shorter.

  "Yeah," he went on, "you've always got a cigarette to lend a guy. Not like Boisvert, he goes and smokes all by himself so he won't have to give us a puff. At least you're one of the guys."

  He had moved to his regular place on top of the soft drink ice-box. Sitting on the red metal square, he held his guitar between his legs, reached for Emmanuel's forage cap and slapped it rakishly on his own head.

  "You're wet behind the ears," said Boisvert. "All you know is how to bum cigarettes. When did I ever see you pass them arounc

  Pitou shrugged, made a face, then, dropping to his feet, leaned over the shining lid to admire his reflection he tried on Emmanuel's wedge-cap in different styles.

  u jhtening up, he asked suddenly:

  How long you been in the army now, Manuel? Four months? How do you like it? Does a guy have a good life in the army. Manu

  "Not bad:'

  There was a pause. Alphonse had shifted his position.

  and as always when a trace of life animated this gangling

  body, everyone turned to look. He sar stretched out, his

  igainst the apron of the stove, his hands clasped behind

  his neck.

  "Tell me, Manuel, why did you join up?" he asked in his drawling voice. "You had a good job. You were doing decent work. You didn't need the army to keep you alive."

  "No." said Emmanuel, laughing, "not a bit of Is that right, you left your job to join up!" cried Ma Philibert. 4 T didn't believe it. Now why ever did you do that, Manuel? 91

  'There's 2 war on. you know. Mama." Emmanuel said.

  "I know that, but the war's a long way off. ally

  our business

  "Come on." said Pitou. "we're not goin' to let everybody get knocked around like the Pole

  • The Poles, the Poles, they're not our folks, are they?"

  "There's not two kinds of folks on earth." Emmanuei said absent-mindedly, as if he had been following his own train of thought.

  You're not goin' to tell me," said fat Emn: Polocks and them Ukrainians are just like us. Why. they beat their wives and they eat garl;, .—-» She was tapping the counter with the tips of her plump fingers. The black cat, taking this for an invitation to be caressed, offered his pink nose. Emma scratched him behind the ears for a moment, her large bust heaving.

  "Do you want me to tell you what I think?" she went on angrily. "It's those smooth talkers there, running around the streets getting young fellows to join, they're the ones you listened to. Don't try to tell me they didn't get you drunk to make you sign."

  Emmanuel smiled, but the smile had no fixed place on his thin face. It wandered past his lips, touched his eyes, then disappeared in their depths to give way to an expression partly meditative, partly bitter, partly tender. Right here before him he felt he had the sad indifference of the human heart to the universality of unhappiness. An indifference that was not selfish or egotistical, that was perhaps nothing more than the instinct for self-preservation: ears stopped, eyes shut for survival in the poverty of her daily life.

  "But Mama," he said, "if the neighbour's house was burning down you'd be the first one to go and help."

  "Well, sure I'd go. . . "

  "Come on, there's enough houses burning down and filth and misery right here around us every day," Boisvert broke in, "you don't have to go far to find that."

  "I know," said Emmanuel. "And it wasn't to save Poland that I joined up, believe me."

  "What for, then?" Boisvert demanded, disconcerted.

  He was short, with long, dull-blonde hair that flopped down straight on both sides, and bright, shifty eyes. He went on paring his nails as he spoke, then stopped and pointed his knife blade at the others. But he frowned and went back to a gnawing attack on the flesh at the base of his thumbnail, chewing furiously, his eyes wide open and suffering behind his ravaged hand, then spat invisible bits of skin on the floor. Through the blue haze from their cigarettes Emmanuel stared at him. A shade of contempt showed in his eyes, then understanding. His face hung slightly forward, pale, almost too handsome, his thin cheeks hollowed. His dark eyes, deep-set, shone gently after his irritation passed.

  "Did you ever think," he said, "that a guy can help himself sometimes by helping other people?"

  "Like fun!" Boisvert replied. "A guy has his work cut out these days looking after himself."

  He nibbled off a refractory bit of skin, snapped shut his jack-knife and stepped into the middle of the room, a disdainful curl on his lips.

  "I'll tell you something," he said, "for twenty, thirty years society doesn't do a thing for us. It tells us, look after yourself, it's up to you. Then one fine day it remembers we're there. All of a sudden it needs us. Come and defend me, it's shouting. Come and defend me!"

  He stopped in front of Emmanuel, solid on his short legs, a lock of blond hair hanging over his forehead.

  "Now you, you were lucky. If you want to play hero, that's your business. Everybody's got his own business. But what about us, what did we get from society? Look at me, look at Alphonse. What did it ever do for us? Nothing. And if that's not enough, look at Pitou. How old is he? Eighteen. Well, he never got paid for a day's work in his life. An' it's almost five years since he left school with a good kick in the you know where and he's still lookin' for work. Is that fair, eh? Five years running right and left and all he's learned is playin' the guitar! Our Pitou smokes like a man, he chews like a man and he spits like a man, but he hasn't earned one red cent in all his dang life. Do you think that's pretty, now? I think that's damn awful, that's what I think."

  Pitou, a flighty, impressionable creature, waggled his round head with its fuzzy hair and plucked the odd plaintive string on his guitar. Boisvert's honeyed sympathy, theatrical as it was, touched the very core of his torment. Another time he would have stuck out his tongue at him, but now, held up as victim, he felt obliged to support Boisvert.

  "It's true, you know," he said. "I haven't been able to get a day's work since I quit school. I'm too old to deliver papers, and they won't take me on in the factories. Nobody wants any part of me, nowhere."

  "What did I tell you?" said Boisvert. "It comes back to what I always said. Society gave us nothing. Nothing."

  "Aren't you ashamed," cried Ma Philibert, "saying that in front of me, after all the time you've sat here evenings warming your feet at my fire, with my wood?"

  "That's not what I'm talkin' about," said Boisvert. "Society. . . " he was about to go on.

  "In my time," she scolded, "we didn't talk about being given nothin'. We talked about giving."

  "That was your time." Boisvert was getting angry. "Nowadays it's not the same. As I was saying, society's given us nothing. . . "

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute," Alphonse murmured lazily. "That's not quite true. Society gave us something. It gave us something, for sure. You know what it gave us?"

  He was sitting almost in the dark, and spoke with his eyes half closed, barely moving his lips, so that his voice seemed to come from someone hidden behind him.

  "All right, I'll tell you. It gave us temptations."

  "You're crazy, you're all crazy," cried Ma Philibert.

  "No, not so crazy," Emmanuel said gently. "What were you going to say, Alphonse?"

  There was a pause. They could hear Alphonse laughing derisively. Then he went on, his thick voi
ce rising through the dark, like a part of it: "Did you ever go walking along St. Catherine Street, an' you didn't have a penny in your pocket, an' you look at all the stuff in the windows? Yes, eh? Well, so have I. An' I saw some great things, my friends, just like a lot of other people have. I had time to look, lots of time. The great things I've seen, just bummin' along St. Catherine, vou couldn't make a list of it. Packards, Buicks, cars for speed, cars for fun, and all those big wax dolls with fancy dresses on, and some with not a stitch. There's nothin' you can't see on that street. Furniture, bedrooms, more dolls in frills an' silk, and sports stores, golf clubs, tennis racquets, skis, fishin' poles. If anybody has time to have fun with all those things, it must be us, eh?

  "But all the fun we get is looking. And the way people stuff themselves! Did you ever have an empty gut and walk by a restaurant up there where there's chicken roasting in the window? But that's not all, my friends. They put all that under our noses, all the very best. But don't ever believe that's all they do!

  "They tell us to buy, as well. You'd think they're afraid we won't be tempted enough. So they dun it into our ears that we gotta buy all their junk. Turn on your radio a minute and what do you hear? Sometimes a gent from the loan company, he wants to lend you five hundred bucks. Boy! That's enough to buy an old Buick! Or you see a billboard that says how well they're goin' to dry-clean these rags you've got on. And then they tell you you're crazy, you're stupid not to get in fashion and have a frigidaire at home. Just open up the paper nowadays. Buy cigarettes, buy good Dutch gin, buy little pills for your headache, buy a fur coat. Nobody should go without, they drum it into you night and day. This is progress, even-body's got the right to have fun. Then you go out in the street. And they're tempting you with big lights every time you look up. Good cigarettes, good chocolate, lots of

  SI them, all in those little lights dancing over your head, here, there, everywhere."

  He stood up and came out under the hanging light bulb, a tall, thin boy, his eyelids red with sties, his big ears standing out from his head.