The Tin Flute

by Gabrielle Roy

  Azarius was surprised at the sound of his own voice. He had spoken aloud without knowing. For a time he listened to the whine of the wind, listened carefully, wondering if he had not been half asleep.

  Then this jobless man that he was tried to renew some contact with the other, the first man, the one who was still suffering at his own decline but didn't want to show it. At that time he had turned into a big talker, a speechifier, hanging around the tobacco stores and the little restaurants of that part of town, and he had developed his innate talent for rhetoric. That, too, was when he began to boast about the convents, churches and presbyteries he had built, and the others, if you could believe him, that he yet would build. In fact he had never built anything but little bungalows for newlyweds, but the more he talked about churches and convents the more he actually believed he had built hundreds of them.

  In those days he had always thought he was on the verge of some great undertaking. Thus he had not hesitated to squander the two hundred dollars Rose-Anna had inherited from her father on a set of tools for building small and fancy pieces of furniture. He had remained certain he was doing big business until the day when he found himself staring at a workshop full of articles that would never sell, and a heavy debt to the lumberyard.

  Far from being discouraged at this, he was pushed by failure to even greater risks. He had thought he was handy at every trade and just about to make his fortune one way or the other. He had scraped together a hundred dollars and sunk the lot into an ironwork and repair shop, along with a man whose name he barely knew. The little shop on St. James Street bore both their names on its sign: Lacasse and Tremblay. Then the partner had cleared out, leaving Lacasse in bad shape with their creditors; and a new sign was painted in black letters on the shop front.

  But Azarius had still not lost his optimism. He still refused the odd jobs offered by friends through Rose-Anna's mediation, saying that he wasn't born to do chores for peanuts. That made his reputation in the neighbourhood: a heartless husband who sent his wife out to scrub floors rather than taking an honest job. Yet this wasn't true: every time he saw Rose-Anna go out as a cleaning woman he had been revolted. But he had said nothing. He'd show them all that he could earn a living for his family, and a good living at that. Just give him a little time. And first chance he had, he'd gone into a skid, as Rose-Anna called it.

  He had squeezed the last cent of credit out of his brothers-in-law to try his luck in organizing a kind of sweepstake. This time he almost had trouble with the police. He had tried it again, lost again, and tried again.

  He stood up, oppressed by the leaden weight of his thoughts. He wasn't stupider than other men, surely! Why couldn't he succeed? He'd been unlucky, that was it, but some day luck would be on his side, and his great undertaking, one of his great undertakings, would be his revenge for all the contempt, all the shame he felt loaded upon him.

  He looked at the wretched lodgings around him with eyes that blinked as if he were just awaking. Rose-Anna doesn't believe in me either, he thought. She never believed in me. Nobody does. He was afraid to wake up and see himself as she had seen him for the last twenty years, perhaps as he really was.

  Suddenly he wished he could run away. He wished it with such acuteness that he thought of a thousand projects, all of them absurd. He saw himself packing his bundle and making off before his wife returned. He'd jump a freight train and go get a job in the mines. Or he'd just start off along St. James Street till he was out of town and there he'd take the highway until fortune smiled on him at last — a man born to high adventure. He'd walk through rain and snow, under the stars and under the sun, all his possessions tied in a kerchief on the end of a stick, and somewhere, at a fork in the road, sometime, he'd discover what he had been searching for since his childhood. He wanted to run, with such intensity his throat grew tight and dry. He wished he had no wife, no family, no roof over his head. He wished he were a tramp, a real old-timer, sleeping in a straw stack in the open air, his eyes wet with dew. He wished for the dawn that would find him a free man with no ties, no cares, no love.

  Then he glanced at the sink. The rusty metal basin had filled up with the drops from the leaky tap and was running over in a thin, continuous stream. Azarius pulled his sleeves up to his elbows and slowly plunged his hands into the wash. The clock struck.

  With stiff and clumsy movements he began to scrub a little black skirt, full of holes and so worn that the cloth came apart in his fingers.

  THIRTEEN

  The hum of the sewing machine nibbled at the silence. It stopped at times and then you could hear the kettle whistling. Rose-Anna, her lips pinched, was concentrating on her sewing. She would press on the pedal and the voice of her labour would be heard again, muffled, tireless and somehow plaintive.

  Mother and daughter both sat within the circle of the lamplight. Every time Rose-Anna looked up she saw Florentine sitting nearby on the leather sofa, her legs tucked under her. The girl was holding a yellow magazine, reading a few lines at a time with seeming boredom, then staring in front of her, frowning, noisily chewing her gum. She was nervous and irritable, but Rose-Anna didn't even notice, she was so happy to have the girl beside her.

  The children were asleep. Rose-Anna had put them in the big bed for the moment, until she finished making her quilt, and early, so that she would have quiet and room to work. The room looked neat and cosy, with its cretonne-covered couches lined up along the walls. Rose-Anna, as tranquil as this room which she had arranged in her own image, was hurrying at her work. Azarius would be home soon. . . Azarius, who, thanks to her efforts, was working again, and even seemed happy to do so. What more could she ask? The house was once more living with a heart as contented as Rose-Anna's own.

  For the last two weeks she had been getting up first in the morning, very early, so as to make Azarius' breakfast. He often reminded her that he could make coffee in a jiffy, and told her to stay in bed, but there was a trace of hesitation and hope in his voice that she knew very well. She knew it was a comfort to him to hear her old slippers dragging on the kitchen linoleum while he shaved in the first grey light of dawn. She knew he liked coming into the room when it was warmed, where the fire was crackling and the steam fogged the windows. She was sure that even his bread tasted better when she gave it to him buttered, and the coffee when she poured it for him, holding back the broad sleeve of her kimono. Their eyes would meet then, briefly, eloquently. Rose-Anna wanted no other reward. What was more, for a man going off to work — and his hours were long — no sign of respect was exaggerated. She would go to the door with him and open it for him, then, shivering and making room for him to pass, give him a kiss that was not overtly tender or exuberant, but had a kind of dignity that called for courage. Then she would shut the door behind him and go back to sit in Azarius' chair in the kitchen, allowing herself a few minutes rest, her hands crossed on the tablecloth.

  Despite her hurry, she did the same thing from time to time this evening. Her hands would suddenly lie still in front of her and her thoughts, distracted from her work, flew elsewhere. The light, falling straight from the ceiling, showed the marks left on her face by work begun in the early mornings and ended late at night; but her mouth was relaxed, almost at rest. And now Rose-Anna, to tame the sudden hope she felt, a brand-new hope, which experience had taught her to treat as the most fragile of possessions, began to count its causes. First of all, Fug^ne had paid them a brief visit. On a twenty-four-hour pass, he had barely done more than drop in. But she had been struck by his healthy looks and, in general, felt reassured about him. Daniel was still very pale and weak, but she thought he was recovering some of his old desire to play. And for Rose-Anna a child that played games, however strange and serious they seemed, was a healthy child. Thus she never noticed that Daniel was very serious for his age. She saw him writing or pretending to read the whole day long, but if she paid any attention to the fact she was merely amused. Last of all (and wasn't this her greatest joy?), Florentine stayed home
almost every night, and, though they were absorbed by different things and hadn't much to say, it was consoling to feel her daughter's presence, even if she was silent and sullen. She's got something on her mind, Rose-Anna thought. She'll get over it, and I'll have my happy Florentine again. But then she thought, What is bothering her so much? Could she be in love? She tried to remember the words Florentine murmured sometimes when she was daydreaming, and the occasions on which she had gone out evenings. But she had no memory for such things, and found it easy to reassure herself.

  She was leaning with her elbows on the machine, gazing into the dark corners of the room. Then, ashamed at shirking so many chores that awaited her, she pressed her foot down abruptly on the pedal. The sewing machine hummed again, accompanied by the whistle of steam from the kitchen. A gentle wind whispered at the window. It was no longer the raucous gust of winter, but a spring wind that shook the last puffs of snow from the trees and made the wet branches rub together.

  "Your father should be home soon. It's almost eight."

  She would often make some unimportant remark like

  this in the midst of the silence, with a trace of intimate

  satisfaction. Her words would fall with no continuation, and she would go back to her thoughts again; sometimes she would sigh, and the bib of her apron would quiver.

  For there was, alas, a dark spot in her ease of mind, and she couldn't think of it without foreboding: they still had not found a proper place to live, and the date of their move was coming closer. Azarius kept telling her there was no rush, they should wait until they had a little cash to pay down for the first month's rent. That way, he said, they'd get a nicer place. Maybe, he was right. She'd have liked nothing better than to believe him. Yet the memory of many disappointments warned her that in anything requiring common sense she had to rely on herself.

  In fact, the greatest suffering in her married life was occasioned by her feeling that in important decisions she could rely on no one else in the family except Florentine, and she herself was not born to lead, for her character was gentle, and despite her efforts she had remained too much of a dreamer.

  She had to try to be the family helmsman. When she thought of her efforts, undertaken timidly enough, she felt more embarrassment than pride, and it seemed that when she had proved Azarius in the wrong she had widened the gap between them.

  What was more, she noticed an increasing tendency in her children to imitate their father's penchant for living in the clouds. What dream world, closed to her, did they escape to? It wasn't that she lacked imagination. Little Yvonne had been the first, in her excitable way, to detach herself from the family. Even when she was there under the lamp, poring over her school books with her pale, stubborn face, Rose-Anna knew that she was far away and inaccessible, and this child's escape for some reason was more irritating to her than any other's. Luckily there was Florentine, so practical, so different from the rest.

  As she sewed, Rose-Anna cast a glance at the girl, taking care not to prolong it. She was not often demonstrative, either with her children or with Azarius. Her tenderness was almost always concealed behind a look that was discreet or words that were so common as to be unnoticeable. She would have disliked expressing herself in any other way. Yet this evening her heart was filled with an awakening of affection and a sudden clairvoyance. Florentine was indeed the only one of her children who lived in Rose-Anna's world and who was not a stranger to daily cares. A flood of emotion warmed her, and at the same time she felt a kind of surrender to Florentine's judgement. Once again the idea crossed her mind: Florentine, who was so capable, so sure of herself, would be their salvation. She'll do this. . . . She'll decide that. . . . It'll be up to her because she helps us out so much. . . . Rose-Anna moved her lips as if she were talking. All her interior monologues were helped along by unconscious movements of her face. Then she prepared a new start at conversation, aware of the abyss between her thoughts and her usual turn of phrase.

  "Your father got his pay tonight," she said. "If only he comes straight home and don't go spending it first."

  She was sorry she had said it, sounding suspicious.

  "I shouldn't say that," she murmured. "Your father doesn't spend on himself, you've got to give him that. But robberies, accidents. . . "

  On reflection, that seemed silly. So she changed the subject:

  "Are you sure his supper's in the warming oven, Florentine? He'll be here with an appetite like a bear. ..."

  That was as if she had just said, her equanimity restored, He's coming home, he's done his day's work, he's got his? self-respect back and a line of sweat on his face, and I've: always liked those things, but he's going to have ten times his normal appetite because of the fresh air and being tired I and swallowing his pride, and I won't fail him now any more than he's failing me. I'll accept what he brings, whether it's his simple weariness or some unexpected joy.

  "Azarius!" she said aloud, carried along by her reverie.

  "Who are you Calkin 1 to?" asked Florentine, without looking up.

  She was bored in this silent room. And she was tormented less by her boredom than by her hatred for this poor house, which was like a prison wall dooming all their attempts to escape. For three weeks now, ever since the day when Jean had come to the store with Emmanuel, he had not been there. He had disappeared with the last rough storm of the winter, like a squall which leaves nothing behind it but the trace of violence. Oh, the misery, the exasperation of waiting for him day after day, without being able to whisper a word about it, like a secret illness. You try, though, to discover things by roundabout means, and you learn that the one without whom life is impossible has the gall to go on breathing, sleeping, talking, walking, as if nothing were wrong with the world. Then rage grows in the midst of love, through and through love, like thorns through a flowering bush, until the flowers which could have flourished die one by one in this rough tangle.

  The bitter feeling, like an abrasion, of growing spiteful while losing everything she had desired was so strong that Florentine wanted to cry out. But who would hear her complaint? Everybody in the house was far away in his own dream.

  Boredom submerged her and she seemed to sink deeper into it with every tick of the clock resounding in the silence. And just as the fire smouldering in the room responded to every gust of wind outside, her heart's fever answered the least whisper from the street, rising at a voice or a man's footstep on the hard snow before the door.

  Oh, how bored she was this Saturday night! To calm her nerves she would have liked to smoke, but because of her mother she didn't dare.

  She had a small pack of cigarettes under a cushion, how- ever, and after much hesitation took it out, put a cigarette in her mouth and, on the point of striking a match, said:

  "You don't mind, do you, Mother? ,,

  Rose-Anna was shocked. Florentine, her legs crossed, lit her cigarette and sent a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. Slim and bold, she looked like a boy. But Rose-Anna thought, I mustn't be after her about everything. She merely said:

  "Do you really like that stuff?" and coughed a little. "Well, it's your business, Florentine."

  And she set about her sewing again. Had they ever had time in all their years together to stop working and get to know each other? The wheel of the machine was whirring. It was invulnerable to Florentine's boredom, as it was to Rose-Anna's dreaming; it turned as the years had turned, as the earth turned, unaware in its blind course of what takes place between its poles.

  The house was caught in this tireless motion of the wheel. Work filled the house, killing speech and understanding. The whirring wheel turned and the hours turned with it, and with the hours the confidences missed, the voices that had failed to speak, the thoughts left unexpressed. . . .

  Sometimes a surprise, a word or a complaint came to break the spell of silence. Tonight it was Azarius' homecoming.

  About eight o'clock the kitchen door slammed shut more noisily than usual. He came in whistling, tosse
d his cap on a nail in the wall, plunked his lunch box down on the table, and you couldn't tell if he brought good or bad news until he came into the living room, beaming with joy at being home and with something else that shone in his eyes.

  "A good wind brings good surprises, Rose-Anna!"

  As she looked up at him she didn't know whether to smile or take alarm. She heard the tremble in his voice, tried to finish a seam, bit the thread off and asked:

  "What is it, Azarius?"

  He stood leaning against the door frame, his teeth flashing. His hair fell, as it used to do, in damp, flat locks where the cap had marked his forehead. He looked young and happy, as if in counting his treasures he had found one he'd never seen before — buried under all the monotonous days.

  Rose-Anna looked at him in silence for a few seconds. She could hear her own heart. There were times when Azarius, with a rush, took her back to her youth.

  "Well, my big silly boy, what's this news of yours? If you've got news, out with it."

  She was still half leaning over her sewing machine, keeping an eye on her husband, but less severe than usual, with the shadow of a smile she always had when she used the tender, mocking expression "silly boy" that was a souvenir of their courtship.

  Azarius laughed aloud.

  "You're curious, eh, old girl?"

  Because he didn't often have great joys to offer, he liked to gild his surprises and make them appear as big events, surrounded by the suspense he enjoyed creating. And he liked to see Rose-Anna smiling. And above all, how he loved to be able to give her something beyond all expectations! To this man peace and security of living, which were all that Rose-Anna wanted of him, didn't seem adequate to make those around him happy. Happiness had to be something bigger and better!

  He planted himself in front of her.