"No?"
"Course not. At the Five and Ten you're serving people. You get tired of serving people. You get fed up serving them. But at night, people. . . Oh, I don't know how to say it. . . "
She frowned and stopped abruptly. Why was she getting into this kind of explanation with Emmanuel? Was it the warmth inside that made her imagine, across time and space, that she was chatting with Jean? With a Jean who, like Emmanuel, was attentive and willing to listen, trying to understand.
"Oh! I don't know why I'm telling you stuff like that with no rhyme or reason," she said roguishly, slapping his hand lightly with her glove.
She had just thought, I can afford to be nice to Emmanuel. It doesn't matter how I act with him.
She had no need to fear that through him she would feel that tightening around the heart, the dizziness, the misgivings. ... It would be easy to confide to him all the secrets she saved up for Jean. She could be affectionate with him, in small ways. She might even let him kiss her if he was gentle, just so as not to forget Jean's kisses.
Emmanuel drew back to let her go in his mother's room. It was papered in mauve, and the bed cover, drapes and doilies were in the same thick, silky corded cloth.
"If you want to powder your nose, you'll find everything on the dressing table, I think." "Oh," she said indignantly, "I've got my own things. I have my powder."
She went straight to the table with its gathered skirting and its mauve-shaded lamp which cast a pale light below it.
She avoided touching things, but looked fascinated at the phials and pots of makeup. She took out her comb and began arranging her waves, amused at seeing herself from different angles in the three-panelled glass. Her arms, raised shoulder-high, pulled the hem of her dress above her knees, and her slip appeared, trimmed with a narrow strip of fraying lace.
Emmanuel, thinking he might be embarrassing her, murmured:
"I'm going to get Mum to introduce you around."
She felt a touch of panic.
"No, you introduce me. Stay with me."
He took her arm gently, drew her close and, without trying to kiss her, looked long into her face. He knew that he had been a little free with her in the restaurant, and was surprised that she had actually come to his party. Now he was afraid that his parents might not give her a warm welcome. But the thought that she might feel out of place in his home made her more attractive to him, more vulnerable. He liked the blind confidence she placed in him.
"Don't worry," he said, "I won't let you get bored."
"Oh, I won't be bored," she said. "I don't think so anyway. But I don't want you to leave me all alone."
As she spoke she was listening to the voices from the other room, trying to single out that of Jean. The effort brought a flush to her cheeks. Her eyes dimmed, she clung to Emmanuel's arm and she looked coaxingly up at him. What she really wanted was for Emmanuel to appear so taken with her that Jean would be upset. Could she not succeed in that? Could she not, just this evening, be the one most spoiled and coddled?
They went into the living room, Emmanuel holding her hand. Folding chairs rented for the occasion lined the walls of two adjoining rooms whose glass doors stood open. The twenty or so guests who occupied the chairs looked more like spectators than participants in a jolly evening. The rug had been taken up and the heavier furniture pushed back in a corner. In another corner stood the radio. Some of the young people glanced expectantly toward it, others, equally anxious for the dancing to start again, tapped out a rhythm with their toes.
In front of each group Emmanuel murmured, "Mademoiselle Lacasse," then ran quickly through five or six names. And she, her nostrils pinched, would make an effort to smile and say:
"Oh, I don't think I'll be able to remember all the names. ..." and then in a whisper to Emmanuel: "You told me there wouldn't be many people!"
At the kitchen door she was confronted by the young man's parents: Madame Létourneau, small and plump, with a sweet doll-face; and Monsieur Létourneau, with the hint of a paunch, a fine, smooth moustache, a courteous smile, more polite than affable, looking very like a portrait on the wall nearby which must have been of his father. His pose was thoughtful, one elbow on the arm of his chair, the hand beneath his chin occasionally giving a twist to his moustache. His business was the sale of devotional articles, ornaments and communion wine, and in the process of serving prelates and country priests he had caught an unction in his speech and a slow dignity of movement, with broad, benign and measured gestures, as if each time he raised his arm it lifted with it a heavy, embroidered sleeve. In order to tempt the young priests who were drawn to his store, he would put on a shining chasuble or a lace surplice and parade up and down in front of the counter, showing off the beauty of a material in the discreet light that fell among the statuettes and plaster Christs, bathing his shop in the sacral glow of the vestry.
After business hours he was involved in traditionalist movements and occupied positions of honour in several religious and nationalist societies. His veneration for the past caused him to reject anything that was flawed by modernism or foreign elements. Yet he tolerated parties in his house, receiving young people whose language, customs and frivolity he deplored, partly out of curiosity and partly out of an urbanity he liked to think he possessed.
For some time now Emmanuel's relationship with his father had been polite but devoid of friendship. As for Madame Létourneau, her timid soul, weak and loving, had tried for so long to reconcile these two that she had become like a mirror that gave an exaggerated reflection of her son's vivacity and her husband's dignity. She wavered between childish effusiveness and a sudden and unexplained rigidity which seemed to express her respectful devotion to Monsieur Létourneau.
Emmanuel introduced Florentine to his sister Marie, a gentle, serious girl; to his brother in college uniform, looking very like Emmanuel; and to a great-aunt with pious, fearful hands whose ceaseless fumbling with the folds of her dress seemed to have to do with an unseen rosary.
Florentine had never felt so out of place, so lost and desolate. She knew now that Jean was not at the party, and from her first glance, which stamped them all as boring, she doubted that he would come. Madame Létourneau, on an impulse of kindness, tried to make her feel at home. She chatted endlessly in a nervous, cooing voice.
"Do you know, Emmanuel's been talking of nothing but you since yesterday? These nice curls now, tell me," she went on, "are they natural?"
"Yes," said Florentine. Monsieur Létourneau took his turn at questioning her with the appearance of paternal interest. She was irritated by the fact that he made her admit things she had never wanted to admit. It was as if he were proving to her, very gently and with a courteous smile, that she had no business in his house.
She was not slow in catching certain nuances in his voice or in grasping their meaning, and she was hurt and furious. If I was in love with Emmanuel, she thought, it's not this old boy that would change my mind. And the certainty that if she wanted she could lead Emmanuel to face anything for her sake pleased and consoled her.
Emmanuel was chatting with some friends in the bay of a window decorated by a tall fern. Florentine, to boost her confidence, took out her compact and dabbed at her nose with the powder puff. She caught Létourneau Senior's mocking glance, and continued at her task deliberately, her head high.
Suddenly she noticed Emmanuel. He was alone now, staring vacantly into nothingness. She thought he seemed as lonely as she was, as if this were not his own home, as if he wondered what he was doing here, as if he were waiting for someone, had been waiting for a very long time. Then his gaze fell on her, and his face brightened. Jean, she thought, never looked at me like that. Just now Emmanuel looked at me as if he'd known me forever. Every time I see Jean he looks as if he's trying to remember who I am. . . . She was amazed at her own discovery.
Conversation was desultory along the wall. Guests from the city were carrying most of the burden; those from St. Henri were mainly tongue-tie
d. A medical student who had been at college with Emmanuel astonished everyone by his precise and elaborate way of speaking. Near him was another student, thoughtful and intelligent-looking, whom the girls found much more intriguing. They nudged each other, clutching their evening bags, and whispered:
"Who's that one?"
"He's a painter," somebody replied.
"No, he's a writer."
None of them sounded very sure of her information. But these whispers and murmurs grew animated in the corner where the girls were concentrated, while the young men chatted among themselves, some of them making a getaway into the hall or even the stairway where they told jokes and laughed loudly as if some restraint had been removed.
Florentine kept an eye on the living-room doorway. She was still hoping for the bell, for Jean to appear . . . with his dark hair tousled and powdered with snow, as she saw him in her memory. Oh, how she hoped for that, and for the half-smile he might have for her when he saw her, his lips barely parted.
Emmanuel turned on the radio. A furious jazz melody with noisy saxophones filled the room. The girls hurriedly pushed their hair into place, and taking out their compacts reassured themselves that they were fit to dance. Then Emmanuel was standing in front of Florentine. He took her hands and drew her to him.
"This is our dance. Do you know how to swing?"
He was laughing. Normally he was slightly awkward and reticent, but as soon as he was caught by an emotion, his mettle showed. His head no longer slanted toward his right shoulder, and his smile came to life like an offering to his joy. When Madame Létourneau saw him like this — exuberant, his head high — she was as disappointed as he that an eye defect had kept him out of the Air Force.
Florentine followed him perfectly from the very first steps. She who was so rebellious and strong-willed showed an astonishing docility when she danced, her slim, supple figure submitting to the rhythm and her partner's move- merits, abandoned, passionate, childlike, almost primitive.
"What kind of nigger dance is that?" Monsieur Letour-neau wanted to know. "Where on earth did Emmanuel learn that?"
"They dance very well together. Doesn't look like the first time," murmured his wife. Then, leaning toward her husband, she pleaded gently, "But, my dear, we don't give enough parties. We've lost touch with the young people."
Emmanuel held her close, then let her go to arm's length. For a time they moved forward, shaking their legs from the knee like light weights that had their own life. Holding Florentine's hand above her head, he twirled her until her skirt flew high and her necklace and bracelets rattled. Then he held her waist again and they jumped in a jerking rhythm, face to face, breath to breath, mirrored in each other's eyes. Florentine's hair, floating free, flew from shoulder to shoulder and blinded her when she whirled.
"Where did Emmanuel meet that girl? Did you say she was a Lacasse? Was that it?" asked Monsieur Létourneau.
"Why, don't you remember," his wife murmured, "that poor woman who used to come here by the day sometimes, it was years ago."
"So that's her daughter, is it?"
"Of course . . . but you'd never know it. Her Florentine is quite a classy little thing."
"Does Emmanuel know?"
"He must. That wouldn't bother him anyway."
"Stupid!" muttered Monsieur Létourneau, twisting his moustache. "The boy will never keep up his station in life."
"I could dance all night with you, do you know that, Florentine?" said Emmanuel. "I could dance with you all my life!"
"Me too," she said. "I just love dancing!"
"I'll never dance this with anybody else but you. And would you believe it, I'll not let you get away." She threw her head back and gave herself up to him with a smile. If there was one thing she liked better than dancing, it was to be the centre of attraction in a crowd. The others around them were quiet now; everyone was looking at them. She thought she heard some say, Who is that girl, anyway?
With a shiver she imagined the reply:
Oh, some little waitress from the Five and Ten.
Very well, she'd show them that she knew how to make Emmanuel like her, and not just him, if she felt like it. She'd show them who Florentine was! This feeling of defiance, along with the speed of their dancing, lifted up her heart and put colour in her cheeks. You'd have said her eyes were lit by two tiny lamps whose flickering light set a point of fire in each pupil. Her thin coral necklace like a light chain flew around her small neck; and her arms, another chain holding Emmanuel, and her rustling silk dress and her high heels tapping the bare floor — this was Florentine! And she was dancing out her own life, she was defying her life, burning her life, and other lives were bound to burn if hers did.
Emmanuel's devotion and his obvious infatuation were the proof of this, and his tense smile, his face grown pale — yes, these were proof that she, Florentine, had a rare and genuine power over men. That wiped out so many humiliations that had left their mark on her heart. Good. It was like a promise that Jean himself could not help being in love with her.
Now it was Jean she was dreaming of, half out of breath, her lips parted showing her small, straight teeth, panting, her silk dress clinging to her delicate form; and she loved feeling Emmanuel's heart beating fast under his heavy wool tunic. Gently, caressingly, she went so far as to let her cheek touch his, and then, through her thin dress, she felt such a thumping that she wasn't sure if it was her heart or his beating at such a rate.
The music stopped. Emmanuel noticed that the brooch on her dress was undone.
"Your pin," he said, "it's going to fall off."
Clumsily he tried to replace it where her neckline widened.
Florentine stiffened, took a step back and fastened the brooch herself. She was trembling a little.
When she looked up again she saw Emmanuel's eyes on fire.
"My darling," he murmured, very softly, and caught his breath.
Now they were playing a waltz. He took her in his arms almost roughly.
The music, much slower, was less to Florentine's taste. Emmanuel was holding her too tightly. His moist hand was crushing her fingers. Clumsy couples bumped into them at every second step. The room seemed too small now that all the young people were dancing. Their many-coloured mass was swaying without advancing or retreating, as if they were searching for a way out. The seven-branched candelabrum still gave off its feeble light through coloured bulbs, but the serried group of dancers cast confused shadows on the walls and seemed to darken everything.
The movement was no longer so fast as to prevent | Florentine from thinking. How boring it was, this slow music! She laughed at something Emmanuel was saying to her, but didn't hear the words. She wasn't listening to him. All that she could hear was an evil foreboding. Jean ... he hadn't come. And it was on purpose, so as not to see her. He'd decided that he didn't want to see her anymore. And what good did it do to be loved if the one she wanted never came back?
Her arms and legs hurt. It would have been all right if she had been able to go on and on in a frenetic whirl, turning and turning, never stopping, keeping ahead of her fatigue. But now weariness was seeping into her limbs and forming a heavy weight dragging after her like a life enchained, a life afraid of not attaining happiness.
Emmanuel was holding her too tipht. He was warm, and his coarse wool unitorm scratched her bare arm. She looked up at him and detested him. He had called her "darling." What did that mean to her? He was not the one who had a right to say such words to her.
Later she returned to reality. It was stifling hot in this big room with its radiator. The flowers on the piano were wilting. She looked around her, dazed, and caught a phrase from Monsieur Létourneau: 'The French-Canadian race . . . the family. . . "
Around Emmanuel a group was discussing the war. She heard scraps of a bitter argument. ''Poland attacked . . . the democracies. . . " Tired, she allowed her eyes to close. Then she opened them and caught the cold, smiling gaze of Mr. Létourneau fixed upon her. This man s
eemed to see in her the waitress exposed to public coarseness, born to that state and destined to stay in it all her life. The moment he looked at her she felt herself relegated to the greasy steam of the sink, and she felt her hands plunging into tepid, soapy dishwater, with the smoke of pork sausages rising all around her.
A tart question came from a girl sitting beside her:
"Have you been going out with Emmanuel for long?"
Yet the voice had a touch of distress in it.
Florentine heard her with a start. She would have liked to be rude to this stranger with her anxieties. Hurting someone would have been a relief. But all she did was accentuate her pout.
"He's not my steady, in any case."
"Who is your steady then?" persisted the girl whose eyes were drowned in chagrin. "You love him," she said hastily, in an attempt to narrow the distance between them.
She was small and dainty and despairing, and followed Emmanuel with a heart-broken look.
"My steady!" Florentine repeated the words, and felt a rush of anger.
My steady, she thought. I haven't even got one. Here I am nineteen and I haven't even got a boyfriend to take me to a show on Saturday or come to parties with me. I'm nineteen, and I'm all alone. . . .
"Where did you buy your dress?"
It was the voice of the girl beside her again.
The question was probably not ill-meant but Florentine thought she heard a shade of condescension in it. As she hesitated to reply she suddenly saw her mother busy cutting the cloth one winter night, the material laid out on the table in the large room, the lovely black silk, supple and rustling, and Rose-Anna puffing, excited at making the first slash with the scissors — and the wind ou tside whistling in the cracks of the small, frosted panes! Oh, how the silk had seemed beautiful to her that night, and she remembered the first try-on, before the sleeves were added, ducking down before the sideboard mirror then climbing on a chair, so as to see the whole dress even if it were half at a time.
"I don't remember where I bought it," she said, barely audibly.
The Tin Flute Page 12
