The Tin Flute

by Gabrielle Roy

  Over her housedress she pulled on her old winter coat, its original black turning green. From the buffet in the dining room she took her hat and a shabby purse that Florentine had passed on to her. Florentine was just waking up, and her mother brought her shoes and stockings and told her to hurry, it was after half-past eight.

  Florentine, emerging from her sleep, looked around, frowning, then, remembering her joy, was sitting on the edge of her bed with a single sprightly jump.

  "That's right, don't you be late now," said Rose-Anna.

  She bustled across the kitchen as if she had to catch a train, and went out, pushing back the little ones who clung to her skirt shouting, "Bring us a chocolate rabbit, Ma. Bring me a flute, Ma!"

  They were all of school age, except little Gisele, but Rose-Anna had kept them home for a few weeks, Lucille because she had no rubbers, and Albert because he had a bad cold. As for Daniel, for two months now he had been in a slow decline without showing any serious symptoms. Philippe, who was turning fifteen, stubbornly refused to go back to school at all. Rose-Anna had caught him smoking his father's cigarette butts and reading detective stories. He looked unhealthy, with rotting teeth, and eczema on his face.

  From the sidewalk Rose-Anna turned back to see them all piled into the doorway, even little Daniel who was half dressed because his pants and shirt had not dried overnight. Only Yvonne was missing. Up at dawn, she would wash at the cold-water tap in the kitchen, dress quickly, snatch a crust and stow it in her schoolbag beside her books, then silent as a shadow she would be off to an early Mass before going to the convent school. She took communion every morning. In any kind of weather she was the first to leave the house. When they had tried to keep her in because of extreme cold, she had flown into rages that were extraordinary in such a nervous, self-effacing and gentle child.

  Then, one day when they had tried to keep her in by force, she had begun to weep, explaining through her sobs that she would leave Our Lord in suffering if she missed a Mass. Rose-Anna had understood the artless story, in Yvonne's classroom there was a sacred heart, and each girl who went to Mass was entitled, as she came into her class, to remove one of the thorns from this suffering heart. Yvonne had said, with the tears running down her pallid cheeks, "Oh, Mother, there are so many bad people putting thorns in Jesus' heart every day. Please let me go to Mass!"

  Her mother had not tried to dissuade her after that. But the same evening Rose-Anna had taken some old material and made her a good, warm coat, with layers of quilting. Then when the child left in the cold dawn she would say to herself, "At least she has something warm on her bones."

  The children in the doorway were astonished to see her go out, for she never left the house. Daniel had shouted in his thin voice, "A flute, Ma, don't forget!" And Gis£le had begun to cry, until Azarius took her in his arms and told her to wave good-bye.

  All Rose-Anna's resentment had melted, her ill-humour had disappeared like magic. She went on her way, determined to buy perhaps not the flute that Daniel had asked for, but at least four little chocolate rabbits to keep for Easter. Walking was hard in the soft snow. Occasionally she stopped to get her breath, leaning against a wall or a fence.

  Since the early days of March the sun had shone stronger over the neighbourhood and the old snow had begun to melt. She made her way slowly, tired and heavy. Already old memories were attacking and eating away her courage. She saw the futility of her hopes. The clear sky and soft air meant nothing to her. Springtime! What had it ever meant to her? In her married life it had meant two things: being pregnant, and going out pregnant to look for a place to live. Every spring, a move.

  In the first years it had meant looking for something better. She and Azarius would get tired of their cramped space and by winter's end would start wishing for something newer, fresher, brighter and bigger, for the family was growing. Azarius especially would be full of wild ideas. He would talk about a house with a garden for his cabbages and carrots. And she, a country girl, would be delighted at the notion of seeing vegetables growing beneath her windows. But it was always smokestacks or shantytowns that she saw when she looked out.

  Later, when Florentine and Eugène had started school, they no longer moved because they wanted to but because they were behind in their rent and had to find something cheaper. Year after year this search went on, as rents went up and decent housing grew harder and harder to find.

  Before, when she went off to find a home, she had a clear idea of how it should look. She wanted a verandah, a yard for the children and a living room. Azarius would encourage her: "Get nothing but the best, Rose-Anna, nothing but the best."

  For a long time now her efforts had been limited to finding a place to live, anything at all. Walls, a ceiling and a floor. All she asked was shelter.

  A bitter thought crossed her mind: the bigger the family, the smaller and darker grew their lodgings.

  The depression had affected Azarius early on, as he was a carpenter. Too proud to take just any work, he had tried to find it only within his own trade. Then he had become discouraged, and, like so many others, had finally accepted government relief.

  The worst days of their life! thought Rose-Anna. The rent allowance was practically nothing. Landlords laughed when you offeree them ten dollars a month for four rooms.

  Then Azarius would agree to pay the difference, just a few dollars. Always the optimist, incurable, he'd say, "Oh, I'll make a buck here and there, we'll find a way." But he wouldn't find work, or the money would go to fill another vacuum. He would never manage to keep the agreement, and next spring another furious landlord would put them into the street.

  The sun was already a bright, running brook. From the gables of the houses hung sharp-pointed icicles, like gleaming crystal. From time to time one would break off with a snap, and crash at Rose-Anna's feet in shining shards. She progressed very slowly, afraid of falling, always seeking a hand-hold somewhere. Then she would be in soft snow again, which meant harder work but less fear of a slip and fall.

  How she had loved spring in the first days! She'd had two beautiful springtimes in her life. One, when she met Azarius, such a happy fellow in those times, about whom her mother, Madame Laplante, had prophesied, "He'll never amount to much, that boy, he's too sure everything goin' to turn out rosy." Then there was the spring Florentine was born, her first. She remembered how sweet those two springs had been. Sometimes she even thought she could smell the fresh leaves of those first years. She saw herself going out, in the little free time she'd had, pushing Florentine in her small carriage in the sunlight. Neighbours bent over the ribbons and lace and said, "My, you do take a lot of trouble. When you're at the tenth you won't bother."

  Rose-Anna made an effort to hurry. People were sweeping or shovelling snow in front of their houses. Some who knew her shouted gaily, "Good-day, Madame Lacasse! You out house-hunting?"

  Others looked up at the fair sky and jerked their heads: "That's it this time. Spring's here!"

  "Yes," said Rose-Anna, "but you never know."

  "We'll have a cold snap yet, but it's great while it lasts."

  "Oh, yes," she'd agree, forcing a smile, "and you can save a little on the heat."

  She went on, picking up her old train of thought. It wasn't that houses were scarce. Everywhere she looked Rose-Anna saw "To Let" signs. It seemed that once a year the neighbourhood gave in to a folly of escape stimulated by the passage of trains and the blowing of locomotive whistles, but, unable to afford a real voyage, settled for a move next door. Two houses out of five had their much-used signs up: "To Let, To Let, To Let!"

  Rose-Anna met several workers' wives who were, like her, walking slowly as they scrutinized the houses. In a few weeks there would be hundreds of them on the march. She must hurry, she thought, to avoid the great April rush. But she couldn't make up her mind to knock. She would go up to the steps, glance inside and trot back to the sidewalk. Either she was discouraged by her glimpse of the inside, or the house was so clean and w
ell-kept that she thought, no use asking how much, it's too dear for us.

  On St. Ferdinand Street, however, she forced herself to go inside a certain brick house. She came out in a daze, barely walking straight. The smell of diapers drying over the stove and the sight of the windowless toilet opening onto the kitchen had been so disgusting she was afraid she'd be sick. And for that they want seventeen dollars a month! The only light inside came from the front windows, for the others looked out on a yard as narrow as a well. Seventeen dollars a month, she thought. It can't be done. We can't manage. Yet she began again with her patient calculations. Rose-Anna knew by heart the exact amount of their small income, the largest part being Florentine's salary. And she also knew what their expenses came to, those that were strictly necessary. She could tell to a penny "how much I need this month. . . " and she would surely have added: ". . . to make the grade."

  Even in her most obscure thoughts she used this expression from the world of success and ambition, an instinctive working-class way of defying arithmetic. . . .

  She passed by several houses without seeing their signs, preoccupied by her battle of the sums. She was walking firmly now, striking out some expense or other — only her eyes showed the regret she felt — but running full speed into a total which always exceeded their resources. And at that point Rose-Anna, who still had her imagination, began to soar beyond this prison of worries, torments and intractable calculations. She created a rich uncle she had never known, who died and left her his great fortune; or she saw herself finding a well-packed wallet which she would, of course, return to its owner, but for which she would get a generous reward. This fancy became so insistent that she began feverishly to search the ground. Then she grew ashamed of these childish notions.

  Whatever the dream, Rose-Anna was brought back to earth by her arithmetic.

  She arrived at St. Henri Square and crossed it for once without fear of the streetcars, the warning bell of the rail crossing, or the sharp smoke that bit at her eyes. A passing truck just missed her, and she looked up more surprised than terrified, like an absent-minded accountant disturbed at his books.

  Safe on the sidewalk again, she started her accounts over from the beginning. And now, for the first time since Eugène had joined up, she thought of the twenty dollars a month he had mentioned. But, with a tightening of the lips, she refused to take them into account. Only to realize a moment later that she had already engulfed them mentally, committed them to the last penny. Ashamed of herself, but relieved just the same, she took a deep breath.

  As if it was meant for her, she noticed a poster stuck on a store wall showing in broad strokes the figure of a young soldier, bayonet fixed, his eyes shining, his boyish mouth open in a rallying cry: "Let's go, boys! The country needs us!" were the words in striking black on the blue background above his head.

  Rose-Anna was stunned. The boy looked just like Eugène. His mouth, his eyes! Spelling out the words, she thought they read, Let's go, boys! Our mothers need us! She clasped her hands over her coat. Eugène was crying out in anguish from his high wall, shouting their poverty down to the four winds.

  Her gait was not as sure, not as courageous, as she turned to the most wretched areas, behind St. Henri station.

  She soon arrived at Workman Street, which earns its name. "Work, workman," it says, "wear yourself out, bend your back, live in filth and drudgery."

  Rose-Anna ventured along in front of the slum of grey brick which forms a long wall with identical, equidistant doors and windows.

  A crowd of ragged children were playing on the sidewalk among the litter. Women, thin and sad, stood in evil-smelling doorways, astonished by the sunlight. Others, indoors, set their babies on the windowsill and stared out aimlessly. Everywhere you saw windows plugged with rags or oiled paper. Everywhere you heard shrill voices, children crying, cries of misery coming from the depths of this house or that, doors and shutters closed, dead, walled up against the light as if it were a tomb.

  All the houses — but how can they be called houses when only the number over the door tells one from the next, a pitiful appeal to individuality — all the houses in the row, not just two or three out of five, were for rent, every last one.

  Every spring that hideous street was emptied, and every spring it filled again.

  A persistent wind carried the sweet penetrating odour of tobacco up from the nearby cigarette factories, along with a bitter whiff of hot paint and linseed oil which she could taste as well as smell. It left her tongue thick and her throat dry.

  No, Rose-Anna thought, Florentine would never want to come here. She turned back the way she had come and tried Convent Street. This was a peaceful avenue of middle-class houses. There were lace curtains over stained-glass windows. The cream-coloured blinds were half drawn. On the house fronts you saw brass sign plates; and here and there on the inside sill of a window, robust plants that had more air and space, Rose-Anna reflected, than the children she'd just glimpsed on St. Ferdinand Street. She knew that this oasis of silence was not for the Lacasse family. For that matter, there was nothing for rent here. But she could breathe easier. Workman Street had restored her courage after all. It was some comfort to know that they were not yet reduced to extreme poverty. To her right rose the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas. Because she was tired and needed to rest and think, she went inside and sank exhausted into the last pew of the nave.

  Her thoughts wandered and scattered at first, but then her strength returned.

  She thought, I must pray, this is a church. She slid gently to the edge of the bench and knelt, telling her rosary.

  But as she murmured her Ave's she was unable to concentrate. Her lips moved but in fact she was launched on a silent pica which at first was addressed to no statue, no relic, not even to a presence. "It's not fair to my children," she said. "Not to Eugène, he never had a chance, and not to Florentine. When I was her age, did I have to think about keeping my parents alive?'' And she added, "Lord, listen to me!"

  It wasn't often that she prayed directly to God. She preferred to ask the intercession of saints that were familiar through statues and pictures. But of God, God himself, she had no conception. She had had no notion of him for years because of the effort it called for, and anyway no matter how hard she tried she still couldn't see him, or anything more than a pile of clouds like cotton batting and a dove flying over them. But now she had brought to life the immense old man-with-a-beard of her childhood — the one above the holy family who is supposed to be God^ the father. Her need was too urgent to allow for intermediaries.

  She said all kinds of things without trying to put them in order, but with a natural tendency to justify herself and disarm the divine power. " jVe done my duty . Lord. I've had eleven children. I have eight alive and three that died youngTmaybe because I was too tired. And this little one that's on the way, Lord, is he going to be as sickly as the last three?"

  Then she remembered that God knew all about her life, and she was wasting time telling him that. But she said to herself as well: "Maybe he forgets things. There's so much misery goes up to him." This was the first crack in her faith — the candid supposition that God, as absent-minded, tired and harassed as herself, couldn't manage to give more than cursory attention to human needs.

  She came around to material things, but not too hastily, because it seemed to her that a certain adroitness was as necessary in prayer as in any other petition. All of that was instinctive and came about in the depths of her being. She would have been embarrassed to ask any favour for herself, but for her family she was not afraid to say what she wanted; that was how she marked off the dividing line between spiritual and temporal goods.

  She thought fleetingly of Yvonne, and felt a sudden pang. Was not she herself one of those creatures her daughter talked about, who thrust their thorns into the Saviour's flesh?

  But on second thought she rejected the idea. At heart she had an intuition of God that was gentle and not unlike herself. Her whole life separated
her from the sickly piety of Yvonne. She felt relieved. Her prayer was less an attempt to escape from her burdens than a humble way of putting the responsibility on the one who had given them to her.

  With a firm step she reached the holy water basin, crossed herself, then went outside, breathing a first breath of spring air with a kind of naive surprise.

  On the platform before the church she already felt encouraged. If it had to be, now that Azarius wasn't working, she could take the whole day, and other whole days, to find a proper dwelling. Her energy came back, along with her old habit of making the best of the smallest advantage.

  The street was sunlit. She put sunlight into the house she hoped for. Timidly at first, she couldn't have told you how, she began by imagining a little room with windows facing south, where she could set up her sewing machine. Then the sun reached the dining room; it lit up the kitchen doorway and moved inside. It landed on the geraniums in their clay pots. It glistened on the pots and pans. It shone on a white tablecloth. It brightened the face of a little girl sitting in her high chair.

  Rose-Anna shook her head. The corners of her mouth moved in a melancholy smile. What she had just glimpsed was her house as a newlywed, it was Florentine, it was the sunlight she had known when she was twenty.

  EIGHT

  Florentine was serving Emmanuel and Jean Lévesque, flashing her best smile at them both.

  From end to end of the counter all the stools were full, and behind the row of hasty diners others, standing, watched out for a gap in this stockade of rounded backs. Housewives, determined to grab the first empty seat, clutched their parcels and kept an eye out, right and left, or staked out their claim behind a customer who was almost finished. Workers, their caps still on, stood a little farther back from the wafted gravy smells, all of them serious, sad, somewhat resigned, with the grave and worried faces they wore at the factory entrance punching in, or hesitating just inside a beer parlour when the tables were full.