The Tin Flute

by Gabrielle Roy

  "Relief?" sighed Rose-Anna. "No, anything else but that, Eugène."

  "Yeah," he repeated, "anything but relief."

  He wandered restlessly about the room, spotted a chair strewn with children's clothes and sat down on it, crushing a little dress hung over its back. Stockings were drying on a cord strung parallel to the stovepipe. He looked around him with the feeling of animosity that overwhelmed him as soon as he came home. Then his mouth relaxed in a soft, embarrassed smile. He ran his fingers through his brown hair, thinking, staring at the corner of the linoleum. But then he stood up, delivered, liberated. His voice was low, almost timid:

  "Listen, Mother, I've got something to tell you. It wasn't about Father I wanted to talk. He can do whatever he wants. But I. . . "

  Caught up in her idea, Rose-Anna began automatically picking up and tidying things, which helped her to think.

  "If your father could give you a job, Eugène. . . "

  "Hell of a time to think about that," he said mysteriously. "Ma, you might as well know right now. . . "

  His hesitant gaze, like that of Azarius, stood up for a moment to his mother's silent questioning, then wandered off to nowhere.

  In the glow of the night light Rose-Anna finally saw how pale he was. Then she knew it was serious, whatever he had come to tell her. Seized with anguish, stammering, she went over to him. She smelled alcohol on his breath.

  "What is it, Eugène?"

  There was silence, suspense. Eugène looked away, then grew angry and admitted, "All right, I just joined up."

  "You joined up!"

  Rose-Anna's knees grew weak. For a second she was giddy. The pictures of parents and saints whirled in the feeble light, and the knick-knacks on the buffet, and the indistinct faces of the children, and the raw light of a street lamp seen through the cotton curtains, and the driving snow. In the midst of this vortex she clearly saw Eugène, but as a small boy leaving to go to school.

  "Is it true?" she murmured.

  Her voice was trembling, incredulous. She couldn't shape the words that tumbled in her head. But her dizziness left her. She suddenly felt firm and ready for the fight. It was not the first time she had had to defend Eugène. His little offences as a boy — his petty thievery, his lies — she remembered them and the things she had done to cover up for him. But all that seemed like nothing compared to what she was ready to accomplish now to save him.

  "Eugène," she said, "you've been drinking, you don't know what you're talking about. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, scaring me like that?"

  "It's no scare, Ma. I tell you I just joined up."

  She leaned toward him, her eyes shining with determination.

  "In that case, you're going to get out of it. It's not too late. You're too young, you're not eighteen yet. You can tell them you didn't know what you were doing, that your family needs you. I'll go myself, if you like. I'll go, I'll explain. . . "

  He stopped the hot flood of her protests.

  "I signed." And he added, louder, "And I'm glad."

  "Glad!"

  "Yes, glad! I'm glad!"

  Rose-Anna could only repeat the word, turning it in her mind, trying to understand.

  "You're glad! What kind of crazy nonsense is that? And you're telling that to me!"

  She went on folding the pieces of clothing, smoothing them out with quick, absent-minded gestures, keeping her hands busy as she always did when emotions grew too strong. She looked up at him.

  "Is it because I didn't give you enough money for cigarettes, or just pocket money?" she asked, almost humbly. "You know, I'd have given you more if it didn't come from Florentine. She brings almost every pay home, it wouldn't be fair. . . "

  "Let her keep her money," he interrupted roughly. "I'll be making as much as she does now."

  "Anyway, I gave you as much as I could, it seems to me."

  Eugène exploded.

  "It's not that! Listen, Ma, a guy gets fed up, you know, bumming ten cents here and a quarter there. You get fed up always hanging around looking for work. The army's the right place for a guy like me. No trade, not much school, it's the best place."

  "Oh, Lord!" Rose-Anna sighed.

  And yet she had always known the day would come when Eugène would be so disgusted with doing nothing that he would give in to some dreadful impulse. But join the army! No, she'd never thought of that.

  "I didn't really think you took it so much to heart," she said. "You're still so young. You'd have found something too, if you waited. Look at your father, he sat around for years.

  "Yeah, and I didn't want to do the same."

  "Not so loud!" Rose-Anna begged. "Don't wake the children."

  Little Daniel moaned gently in his sleep. She went over to the narrow bed and tucked him in.

  Eugène found the gesture unbearably moving. He followed his mother, and took her apron strings and tied them, as he had done when he was small. And he thought, It's the first time in my life I'll be able to give her something.

  His voice was caressing:

  "Listen, Ma," he said in her ear, "it's going to be a help, you know. All the time I'm in the army you're going to get twenty bucks a month."

  His emotion came through in his words, a sort of innocent, proud, astonished joy. Like his father, he had a marvellous capacity for enthusiasm, and for believing that he was being guided by worthy sentiments. Like his father, he was not clear as to where his own interests ended and generosity began. At this moment he was almost certain that he had acted out of pure altruism. He was so pleased with himself that tears came to his eyes.

  "Twenty bucks a month, Ma, that's not so bad, eh?"

  Rose-Anna turned slowly toward him, as if she didn't want to recognize too quickly what she knew. The street light outside shone in where they were standing. Her face was ashen, with deep shadows for eyes. Strands of hair fell down unkempt on her cheeks, and her lips moved soundlessly. She seemed old and ready to collapse.

  "Yes, I see," she said, her voice coming from far away. "I see why you joined up, poor child!"

  She raised her hands toward him without touching him and went on in a voice that was plaintive, almost resigned, a soft voice, without resentment, lifeless, barely audible:

  "You shouldn't have done it, Eugène. We'd have got along."

  She stated this with a surge of courage, even a gentle welcoming of well-known ills, tried and familiar as day and night, and less to be feared than others hidden in the mists of the future.

  She was holding back a sob, tugging at her apron. Suddenly all her resentment about money, her misery for lack of it, her fright, and her great need for money poured out in a pitiful protest. "Twenty beautiful dollars a month!" she was murmuring through her sobs. "Just think, isn't that lovely! Twenty dollars a month!"

  Tears as pale as her face ran down her thin cheeks. Her hands, white and tightly clasped, seemed to reject the offered money.

  Eugène shook his head, as he always had when he didn't get his way, and went to the kitchen. She heard him take out the little camp bed that was folded behind a door during the day and set up each night between the table and the sink.

  Wiping her eyes, she made her way to the back of the double room and lay down fully dressed on her bed. She had still to wait for Florentine and Azarius, and then bar the doors and be sure that everyone was asleep before she herself undressed and tried to get some rest. In the shadows, at the foot of the bed, the bleeding face of a Christ with his crown of thorns darkened a patch of the wall. Beside it, completing it, a mater dolorosa offered her transpierced heart to the ghostly light that flickered through the window.

  Rose-Anna searched for the words of prayer that she recited every night, alone, but her mind was absent. Instead of the statuette of her childhood, which often came mysteriously before her eyes when she meditated, she saw paper money, rolls of bills peeling off one after the other, flying, twisting, disappearing in the night, carried away by the wind.

  SIX

  The s
alesgirls were starting their escape from the Five and Ten into the darkening street. Some went out in groups through the front entrance, doing up their coats, adjusting their hats. At the curb they stopped for a second, stunned, their faces whipped by the wind, then, with little nervous screams, holding each others' arms, they dashed off toward St. Henri Square. Others, heads bowed against the wind, crossed the street and took quick refuge at the streetcar stop and waited there, stamping the hardened snow. As one group disappeared into the cross streets or froze at the car stops, anew lot would pour out the revolving doors and rush toward the square. The streetcars, already crammed, came down St. James and Notre Dame and somehow managed to take aboard the crowd that was flooding the street.

  Jean Lévesque huddled in a doorway stamping his heels on the cold stone. The flood of shadows passed by in front of him. It was a tired but hurried flood, rolling silently toward its evening rest. It came from far away, from every corner of the neighbourhood, ending up on St. Henri Square, where it divided up again. Masons, white with mortar, carpenters with their tool boxes, housewives hurry- ing to get home before their husbands, workers in their caps, lunch boxes under their arms, girls from the textile or cigarette factories, mill hands, puddlers, guards, foremen, clerks, shop-keepers. The six-o'clock flood caught in its stream not only the workers from the neighbourhood but those coming home from Ville Saint Pierre, Lachine, Saint Joseph, Saint Cunégonde and even Hochelaga, as well as those who lived at the other end of town and started here their interminable tram ride.

  At regular intervals a raucous bell jangled from up Notre Dame Street and a streetcar passed by. Through their steamed-up windows Jean could see the raised arms of straphangers, opened newspapers, bowed and weary backs, a mass of exhausted humanity; and sometimes among the mass he would see a face look out, melancholy and dejected. Perhaps this was the face of that whole crowd! Its expression stayed with Jean long after.

  But he was becoming impatient, and began to stare at the exit of the Five and Ten. Did I miss her? he wondered, and was angry at himself. Just as he was growing worried, the heavy door was pushed outward by a small, bare hand and Florentine appeared. Alone, as he had hoped.

  He adjusted his scarf, a gesture he would have laughed at in anyone else, and quickly caught up with her.

  "Well! Florentine!"

  He wanted this encounter to seem quite accidental, but he didn't fool her for a second.

  "Oh! It's you!" she said with a little contemptuous laugh. "You're hangin' around these parts quite a bit these days."

  Jean smiled, not admitting a thing.

  "I wanted to tell you . . .about last night, Florentine. . . "

  "Don't put yourself out making excuses," she interrupted.

  And she hugged her purse tight to her body. Her nose trembled, and her fine nostrils, blue with cold, moved with her rapid breathing.

  "What do you take me for? Did you think I took you serious and went to meet you? Not me, that's for sure"

  "Is that right?"

  He took her arm gently, smiling warmly.

  "So you'd have made me wait in the cold!" he teased her. "I didn't think it of you. Two friends like us, just made to get along. . . "

  He pressed his arm slightly against hers. She must have sensed a force too strong for her, because she suddenly tried to pull free.

  "Anyway, I don't want to see you again," she said.

  "You wouldn't leave a guy all by himself to get bored, would you?" he protested. "Come and have dinner with me in town tonight. Will you?"

  Behind the tiny veil her eyes crackled with indignation, but in their depths a small, defiant flame lit up in response to the young man's bold look.

  "Well, that beats all!" she said.

  Her small, white, pointed teeth bit at her lower lip. Such cheek! And yet his invitation bothered her in quite another way, at first in the back of her mind, but it was on the move and already her vanity was awakened. What was more, it was very cold, and she was trembling so hard she barely had the strength to think.

  "I'm not dressed for town," she said, in a tone of childish anger.

  And as soon as she had uttered these revealing words she looked up, pouting, half persuaded.

  He was steering her toward a streetcar stop.

  "That's all right, Florentine, you're fine the way you are. What difference do a little paint and powder make?"

  The streetcar was stopping. She turned to him suddenly with a look full of anxiety. "I'd rather not go there today" she said, very directly.

  People were climbing on board. She was caught in a press of bodies and in a moment was sitting in the tram.

  She thought, Maybe I didn't wait long enough yesterday. Maybe he came to meet me. Standing in front of her, strap-hanging, Jean was examining her. She met his look and saw herself in it as in a glass, and her hands went up to straighten her little hat. Her thoughts were racing. She had imagined herself going out with him like this some day, but dressed fit to kill. With distress, real distress, she thought of her pretty new dress, tight at the waist, which made her small breasts very round and emphasized her hips just enough. She felt a pang in her heart as she thought of her little jewel box, from which she could have chosen a pin for her hair, and bracelets, four or five, to jangle on her wrist, and maybe a brooch for her blouse. Wasn't it the very end, she thought, going in to town wearing her poor work dress and not a piece of jewellery on her?

  A new concern was suddenly added. Did she at least have her lipstick? Frantically, hands trembling, she opened her imitation-leather purse and rummaged in it. Her fingers slid over the comb, the compact, a few pennies. She grew frantic, pulling things from the bottom and pushing them to one side. Her mouth tightened and her eyes shifted uncertainly as she stared across the car. Finally her fingers found the little metal tube. She gripped it with joy and was relieved, so relieved. She was close to taking it out and redoing her lips then and there, but Jean was watching.

  Yet she felt comforted. She had her lipstick. Any minute now, when Jean looked away, she would take out the tube, which she was holding ready in one hand deep in the bottom of her purse. She could wait, there was no hurry. She started to smile, but crossed her legs instead. Then, where the hem of her skirt was pulled up over her knee, she saw a run in her stocking, and again she pouted. That was just swell, going to town in your worst dress and a run in your stocking into the bargain. At home in a drawer of her dresser she had a lovely chiffon pair. The finest you could get. She'd been crazy to buy them, they'd cost two dollars, but they were the nicest silk and the colour matched her pale skin.

  Jean weaved slightly back and forth above her with the movement of the tram, a mocking smile on his face.

  "If you pulled your skirt down a little or uncrossed your legs the run wouldn't show at all," he said softly, leaning down to her ear.

  Choking with indignation, she sought in vain for a comeback. Her thoughts grew confused. The damp heat of the tram, the heavy breath from all these mouths, the noise, everything made her groggy. With Jean nothing ever happened the way you planned it. What a pain!

  But then she stopped worrying and stayed quiet, her head loose, wobbling with the jerky motion of the tram, occasionally allowing the lids to droop over eyes burning with fatigue. The whole trip was a torture of warmth and torpor.

  When they got out of the streetcar and ran to catch a bus, the cold seized her. But soon they were rolling along with a quiet rumble. Everything was waves of cold, heat, subdued voices, waves of wind, of doubt, of hope, up to the moment when they entered a discreetly lit restaurant, where white tablecloths and glittering crystal danced before her eyes. Then everything turned to a dream, and bravely she entered the dream to play her part in it. Yet in order to live at the height of her dream, every move cost her a painful effort.

  "Oh," she cried, emerging from her torpor the moment she crossed the threshold, "I never been here before. It's classy, eh?"

  She felt immensely flattered, and had already forgott
en her poor woollen dress and the ladder in her stocking, which was running. She looked up at Jean, ecstatic.

  A waiter in tuxedo with a stiff shirt-front bowed and led them to a small table. There were flowers. She thought they must be paper, until she was astonished by their feel and smell. The waiter pulled out a chair and Florentine sat down, awkwardly taking off her coat, raising her elbows too high. Then she was handed a menu and Jean, across from her, was saying in a polished, courteous voice she'd never heard:

  "What would you like, Florentine? An aperitif?"

  She'd never heard the word. She wondered if Jean was showing off. She nodded, avoiding his eye.

  "And after that?"

  With fingers bleached by years of dishwater she turned the pages of the menu. All those funny words, which she deciphered syllable by syllable, pronouncing them laboriously to herself, left her worried and hesitant. Her heart beat quickly. But she took her time, searching up and down the page, and when she found a word that looked familiar, she pounced:

  "Hey! There's roast lamb, I like that."

  "No, no Florentine, you're going to start with soup. Just leave it to me."

  Trying to keep on top of things, she murmured:

  "It's all right, I'm going to take that, up there on the left, the consomme."

  Now she was fiddling with the menu, pretending to think it over. Jean could see only the top of her face, and, peeking around the edge of the menu, her fingernails, from which the polish was cracking and coming off in flakes. On one finger there was hardly any polish left, and this bare white nail, beside its scarlet neighbour, fascinated him. He couldn't look away from it. Long, long afterwards, when he would think of Florentine, he would see that pale fingernail, stripped of its polish, naked, marked with tiny ribs and white spots — a symbol of anemia.

  For her, the enchantment was beginning. For him, pity had already killed desire. I could never hurt her, he thought. No, I could never make up my mind to that.