Brought down to earth for a moment, Rose-Anna took time to wrap him carefully in his covers. She had felt him shivering as he cuddled close to her.
Then, at the end of a tree-lined avenue, her village appeared.
"St. Denis!" shouted Azarius.
And Rose-Anna strained forward, her eyes dimmed by tears. Memory aiding, she anticipated the corner, and farther on, the little hill at the end of the village. Finally the landscape made its last concession and gave her the house where she was born. You could see the gabled roof behind the maples, then the railed verandah with what was left of its climbing cucumbers, shrivelled by the winter. Rose-Anna, thrown toward Azarius by the movement of the truck, murmured with a shudder of physical pain and more than a trace of emotion:
"Well now! Here we are! You know, it's hardly changed!"
Her joy had lasted this long, and was to last a little more, for the door burst open and her brothers and sister-in-law appeared, and she could hear the warm exclamations like a distant rumbling:
"Would you look at that! See who's here! Well, land's sakes! We've got visitors from Montreal!"
But just as she was getting out of the truck, shaky and dizzy from the sudden gust of fresh air, trying to smooth out her old winter coat, a heavy attempt at humour by her brother Ernest marked the first attack on her joy.
"Well, I'll be darned, Rose-Anna! If it ain't you!" said the farmer, taking her in with a hasty glance. "And would you look at her! You must be tryin' to bring up fifteen of them, just like our mother, eh?" Rose-Anna was shaken by this strange greeting. She had laced her corsets as tightly as she could and hoped her pregnancy wouldn't be noticed, not out of false shame but because she had always been in this state when she visited her family and this time would really have liked to have a quiet day, a day of rediscovered youth — perhaps a day of illusions. But she tried to smile and pass it off as a joke.
"Why, it runs in the family, Ernest. What do you expect?"
Yet she had realized how fragile and easily threatened was her joy.
A harder blow came from her sister-in-law, Reseda. Helping her to take off the children's coats, Madame Laplante Junior cried:
"Say, your kids are pale as ghosts, Rose-Anna! I hope you give them enough to eat, at least!"
This time Rose-Anna was angry. Reseda was just being spiteful because her own children were so badly dressed; they looked like ragamuffins with their coarse, home-knitted stockings and shabby pants hanging down over their knees.
Rose-Anna called over Gisele to comb up the big wave in her hair and hoist her hem above her knee as fashion would have it. But as she was hastily tiffying-up her children, she glanced over at Daniel and Reseda's eldest, chubby, pink-faced Gilbert. The farm boy had grabbed his city cousin and was trying to roll on the floor with him like a healthy puppy. Rose-Anna gave a scream. Her sickly child was struggling hopelessly. What he clearly wanted was to be left alone.
Rose-Anna controlled herself.
"He's older than mine, of course."
"He is not," the young woman protested. "They were born the same year, you know right well."
"No, no. There's six months' difference." And there was a long discussion over birthdays.
"Albert, now, he's more the age of yours," Rose-Anna insisted.
"Not a bit of it," said Reseda decisively. "You know they were both summer babies."
As she talked she paced up and down the room, trying to pacify the baby at her breast who was clamouring for his meal and trying with his strong little hands to unhook her blouse and get at her round, firm breasts. Reseda went on:
"No, no, you can't change my mind. I know they were born the same month."
The women stared at each other, almost hostile. There was insolent pride in the eyes of the farm wife. Rose-Anna gave way first. Her anger abated. She glanced around at her children, fearful and confused, wondering if she had ever really seen them as they were, with their thin, small faces and skinny limbs.
Reseda's second-last was crawling toward her, his legs short and fat, bowed and dimpled. Suddenly, above the baby, she saw a row of bony little legs — those of her own children, sitting docile along the wall; and she saw nothing of them but their legs, dangling, long and almost emaciated.
Then a final wound came from her mother. After the hectic dinner in two sittings, during which she had helped her sister-in-law as best she could, Rose-Anna found a moment alone with old Madame Laplante. She had been waiting for this time, when Reseda would be busy with her breast-feeding and the men would be talking of important things around the stove, to have a quiet chat with her mother. But the old woman's first words were filled with fatalism:
"My poor Rose-Anna! I thought as much. I was sure you'd had a bad time. Of course I knew it. Why should it be better for you than for anybody else? And now you see, my girl, you can't just make things happen as you like in your life. There was a time you thought you'd have your say about it, but now. . . "
All this in a sharp, high voice devoid of bitterness or any other emotion. Old Madame Laplante, sunk in her squeaking rocking chair, seemed to have been transmuted into the negation of all hope. It was not that charity had had no place in her life. On the contrary, she liked to think that she was on her way to her Creator laden with indulgences, her hands filled with good deeds. It was almost as if she saw herself achieving paradise like a careful traveller who had taken lifelong precautions to ensure herself a comfortable stay in that last resort. She had, as she said, "put up with her purgatory here on earth."
She was one of those people who listen attentively to tales of woe. Any other kind she met with a sceptical smile. Nothing surprised her like a happy face. She didn't believe in happiness, and never had.
At the other end of the kitchen the men were talking, their voices growing louder. Rose-Anna had pulled her chair close to the old woman. Awkward and ill at ease, she clasped and unclasped her hands on her knees. She felt almost ashamed to have come to her mother, not as a married woman with her responsibilities and her own burdens, and the strength they presuppose, but like a child in search of help and wisdom. What she got was bits and pieces of advice in a sermonizing tone as cold as the old woman's white, angular face: advice that reached her ears but touched her heart with nothing but a feeling of total solitude.
What had she expected, anyway? She no longer knew, for as she chatted with her mother, their voices subdued, she found herself forgetting the image she had created of her over time and distance, rediscovering her as she really was, as she had always been; and wondered how she had been able to practise this self-deception. From this old creature she could expect not the slightest sign of tenderness.
Madame Laplante had raised fifteen children. She had got up in the middle of the night to attend to them; she had taught them their prayers and heard them their catechism; she had clothed them by spinning, weaving and sewing with her strong hands, and she had fed them well. But never had she looked down at one of them with a transparent flame of joy in those hard, iron-grey eyes; never had she taken them on her knees, except when they were in swaddling clothes. She had never kissed them, except for a peck after a long absence or perhaps on New Year's Day, and then with a chill of seriousness accompanied by the empty formulas of her good wishes.
She had held fifteen round heads against her breast, fifteen little bodies had clung to her skirts; she had had a good, affectionate and attentive husband; but all her life she had talked about the crosses she had to bear, her trials and burdens, her Christian resignation and the pain she must endure.
On his deathbed her husband had murmured, his voice thickened by the approach of his last sleep:
"Well, you'll have one cross less to bear now, poor wife!"
"And how's your Azarius making out these days?"
Rose-Anna started, and came back to present anxieties. Then she leaned close to her mother again. She realized that the old woman, in her dry, distant way, was asking about Rose-Anna's family. She had always said,
"Your Azarius," or "Your Florentine, your children, your life. . . ." She had felt even less warmth for Azarius, a city boy, than for her other sons-in-law who all came from the country. At Rose-Anna's wedding she had declared: "You may think you're running away from poverty, that you're going to play the fine lady in town, but you mark my words: poverty finds us out. You'll have your miseries too. But it's your choice. Let's hope you won't be sorry fork."
The only good wishes she'd ever had from her, Rose-Anna thought.
"Oh! Azarius! " she said. "Well, he's working these days. He's feeling better about things. And Eugène joined up, I told you that. He looks pretty good in his uniform. It makes him look grown-up. Yes, we're getting along. Florentine gets paid regular."
The old woman blinked. For each remark she said:
"Well, well! That's fine. That's fine if things are as good as you say."
But her dry, yellowed fingers rubbed at the arm of her chair, worn at that spot by this gesture which seemed to express her constant scepticism.
Rose-Anna went on defending her husband with the same harsh voice she had used in former times when her mother had unkind things to say about him.
"He gets by," she said. "When one thing doesn't work out, he tries another. He doesn't stay idle long. He's just taken up truck driving to fill in. He's counting on the war to start him up in his trade again. There'll be building to do."
She was surprised to hear herself using the expressions Azarius used, and when she mentioned his trade she spoke with almost as much passion as he did. But at other times her voice sounded distant and artificial. She heard it, and wondered if it was indeed herself talking this way. Through the window that looked across the fields she saw the children taking off for the sugar bush with Uncle Octave. Daniel was scuffling through the snow, far behind the frisky group. Rose-Anna's voice grew still and her eyes were anxious until she saw Yvonne turn back to help her little brother. Then Azarius' voice came to her, as if through a dream:
"Look here, if you think you're goin' to have a big run of sap, you can let me have some syrup. I can sell it for you, and I won't make but pennies on the deal. On my route there, it's easy as pie."
He was showing off, putting on airs, slouched on a kitchen chair with his feet up before the fire. Rose-Anna had pressed his only decent suit the night before, and he was playing the city slicker in front of his brothers-in-law in braces and shirtsleeves, their ties loosened.
Rose-Anna saw that they were taking his proposition seriously, and she was concerned. As soon as they had a little bit of luck, Azarius was too encouraged and ready to launch into some undertaking about which he knew nothing at all. A part of her dreaded the least good fortune that came their way. She would have liked to caution Azarius, and her brothers too. And she was bothered by Philippe's attitude, rolling cigarettes under his grandmother's disapproving eyes, hanging around the men and using coarse language every time he opened his mouth. But instead of checking him, Rose-Anna turned, embarrassed, to her mother, and went on in a monotonous tone with the recital of her family's life:
"Yvonne's first in her class. The sisters are very pleased with her. Philippe is just about to look for a job. It seems they'll take on boys like him in the munitions factories. So altogether we won't be too badly off."
From time to time she straightened in her chair to see better out the window. The children were just entering the maple woods, a small blotch of colours that broke up and disappeared in Indian file between the trees. She regretted so much not having gone with them that her eyes filled with tears. She hadn't dared after her mother, lecturing her like a child, had said, "You're not going running around the woods in your condition! ,,
Run around the woods, indeed! thought Rose-Anna. This was not how she had imagined their expedition. But perhaps she had for a time been unable to see herself as others saw her, and had dreamed of something impossible, misled by her desire. She was now so frightened of finding her dream ridiculous that she put away the thought of it, telling herself, I knew I wouldn't be able to go to the maple bush, of course I knew. . . "
Yet when old Madame Laplante sent someone to the cellar for a big cut of salt pork, fresh eggs, cream and preserves, Rose-Anna was touched by her mother's generosity. Knowing how the poor old woman couldn't stand to be thanked, she was at a loss for words. And this made her really sad. She watched her mother get up with difficulty to add a loaf of home-made bread to the box of food, rummaging around in the box, rearranging its contents and grumbling to herself. She gives us so much every time we come, thought Rose-Anna. I'll bet she doesn't believe a word I tell her. Poor old thing, she wants to help us, in her own way. And it makes her mad that she can't do more. She'd never let us go hungry if she knew we were badly off. All her life, whenever we needed her, she's given us . food and things to wear — and good advice. It's true. Rose-Anna frowned. Was this all a mother was supposed to give her children?
But then she turned this thought against herself. Could I do more for Florentine once she's married and needs somebody to talk to, the way I do now?
And she suddenly fancied that she understood her mother's austerity. Did it not come from the terrible awareness of not being able to defend her whole brood? Because she was no longer sure that she could help Florentine, either now or in the future, because she was possessed by the fear that Florentine would never ask for such help, and because she had just realized that it was very hard to come to the rescue of one's children in their secret woes, Rose-Anna shook her head and lapsed into silence. Effortlessly, as if she had always had the habit, she began to stroke the arm of her chair with her aged mother's futile gesture.
SIXTEEN
In the house on Beaudoin Street there was not a sound to be heard but the rattle of the kettle lid in the kitchen and from time to time the tapping of Florentine's high heels on the linoleum.
A vague melancholy and heavy silence hung in the dining room.
For Jean's visit the girl had scrubbed and waxed and dusted, whisking out of sight all the bits of clothing and the ill-used toys that testified to the cramped life of the family in these rooms. She had arranged the chairs around the table according to her own fancy, exposing certain light-coloured areas on the wallpaper which revealed its fatigue and age. She hid away the knick-knacks that had littered the buffet; in their place she laid an embroidered, heavily starched runner, and on it, right under the holy picture, a clay vase with a few forlorn paper flowers. The picture showed the Christ-child half draped in scarlet cloth, grasping with his chubby arms a Madonna dressed in dark-blue robes. It was at this picture that Jean was staring just now in a state of morose embarrassment.
Florentine was fussing about in her housewife role. She had thought it an excellent idea to show herself in this light. She hadn't dared for a minute to doubt that he would come, though she had gone to the window from time to time, peeking out and crumpling the curtain in her hand, then slowly letting it fall.
Now that she had him there, she harnessed all her energy to defy the young man's will rather than to please him; and she played her role with caution. Brightly coloured jewellery rattled at her neck and on her wrists, the nervous voices of her willpower. Over her black silk dress a little oilcloth apron slid and rustled with every movement.
One minute she would be there with Jean, asking if he wasn't bored. Lively and attentive, she would bring him a cushion, a magazine or some snapshots of herself in an album. Leaning on his shoulder she would give him the needed explanations. Then, a second later she'd be in the kitchen, singing as she busied herself at the stove.
Jean was exasperated by these attentions. She was treating him with the consideration and confidence due a fiance, as if there had been a tacit agreement between them. She left him alone to make some fudge, and went on chatting from the kitchen in a friendly way, slightly detached but polite. Her attitude bespoke a wakeful, prudent reserve. She avoided touching his hand, and when he asked her to sit down she chose a chair that was not next to hi
s. And she put on a serious, preoccupied air, playing with her bracelets, not looking when she felt his eyes upon her.
Florentine's ruses forced a smile from Jean. You're smart, he thought. If I didn't know better I'd think you hadn't a single trick up your sleeve. But her comings and goings were driving him crazy. She slipped through his fingers with great skill. As soon as he made a gesture in her direction, she drew back and invented a new errand in the kitchen.
The footsteps of a solitary passerby outside echoed in the house and slowly faded away. Jean looked around, uneasy. Through the kitchen door he could see Florentine buttering the inside of a saucepan. Her apron whispered against her dress, the metal rattled on the counter. Then he could hear the sugar sizzling in the pan. All these sounds seemed to come from very far away. They irritated him, arousing his defensive instincts against all domestic order. Again he found himself staring at the Madonna and Child on the wall above the buffet. He understood why this picture attracted and bothered him. It called up his whole past, his unhappy childhood and turbulent adolescence. A flood of memories returned and things he had thought safely asleep came back to his consciousness.
First it was the Church-Art image of the orphanage that came to life; and with it an impression of drowsiness, in which black silhouettes passed his dormitory bed. There were the cold dawns in the chapel and, mysteriously, his shrill choirboy's voice which he seemed to hear out of the depths of memory.
This image led to a host of others. He saw the orphans' grey twill pinafores, coarse and grey as their days deprived of tenderness. He saw himself ripping his to strips. His need for individuality showing already.
Then the scarlet and blue picture on the wall changed size. It became a tiny souvenir that the nuns slipped in his missal the day when a lady had come to get him at the orphanage. She was a silent, embittered woman who had made a vow to adopt a child if her own, an only girl, recovered her health. Thus he had been a part of this barter with the saints, but the girl had died in any case shortly after.
The Tin Flute Page 18
