The Tin Flute

by Gabrielle Roy

  His mother, or rather the woman who had insisted he call her that, had not been hard on him, but after the death of her child she had become so distant, so in- accessible, that Jean remembered feeling even more lonely than in the orphanage.

  There had been no indulgence, even for his slightest peccadillos. He remembered hearing words exchanged in the night when they thought he was asleep, precise, cruel words like, "Well, it's no wonder. What do you expect? He's a foundling. ..." "That's not true, he had parents, you remember that poor couple that died in the accident." "That's as may be. Nobody's really sure. ..."

  Then Jean saw himself in college, taciturn and rebellious by turns, but with an intelligence and a curiosity that astonished his professors. His adoptive parents, while they showed no affection for him, were not stingy with material things. In those days he was well dressed and always had pocket money, which he jingled with satisfaction as he thought of the long humiliation in the orphanage. Occasionally, more out of pride than generosity, he would share his wealth with poorer boys. Already he knew that money buys prestige and respect.

  In a few years, thanks to a healthy and copious diet, he had grown amazingly, acquiring solid muscles, strong shoulders and a glance that was piercing and determined. Nothing about him recalled the puny orphan he had been. A mysterious heredity was expressing itself triumphantly in him. From two strangers who had died shortly after his birth he had inherited this awakening power, and he would have liked to wrest their secrets from his dead, for he had few bonds with the living.

  His character had undergone a transformation as total as that of his body. There were abrupt transitions from apparent submission to rebellion. He affected an attitude of disdain and sarcasm. He enjoyed expounding to all comers his personal opinions tinged "with caustic humour. He loved provoking arguments for the pleasure of contradicting others. His curiosity was insatiable, and he began to devour all the books he could lay his hands on. On his walks he would stop and talk to working men, believing that, like him, they must be tortured with the desire to know and understand. One day he would feel a great love for them, and wanted nothing but to devote his life to social reform. The next day he would be filled with contempt for the masses, feel himself above them and predestined for higher things.

  As time went on he became still more solitary. The character of his mind, hard and precise, his sudden spells of silence, his unexplained reversals of position, all combined to disconcert his friends. Out of a spirit of contradiction he began to frequent only the most unfortunate. In the college his reputation was made: he was stuck-up. To give him a lesson in humility his teachers, at the end of the year, held back all the first prizes that should have been his.

  Jean flushed as he remembered this affront. Then one night he had left his adoptive parents' house after a final stormy disagreement. He saw himself packing his things and plunging out into the dark. Running away had reestablished his moral balance. From that time on he was a young man like so many others, concerned only with carving out a position for himself at a time when there were ten applicants for every job. The satisfaction of owing his success only to himself filled him with pride. A small room rented anywhere, a job as puddler, another job, a new room, and the rest of his life had come quickly and easily. He was now in a relatively calm period in which, like a Robinson Crusoe, he saw everything around him as a means which he could bend to his own purpose. Ahead of him he saw years of struggle and poverty, after which he would have only to stretch out his hand to take the fruits of his labour. Jean stood up. He looked around the room astonished because he had forgotten the starting point of his train of thought. The silence made him nervous. The humble arrangement of domestic things, reminiscent of a certain kind of life, upset him. He would have liked to run away. In the kitchen he glimpsed Florentine, on tiptoe in front of the mirror above the sink, curling her hair around her fingers. He was irritated at being alone with her and at feeling an unexpected renewal of curiosity which threatened to flood his common sense. Impatiently he called her. She came at once, holding a plate of candy as a shield. He grabbed it from her almost roughly. She seemed to want to tame him, and this he could not bear.

  "How is it your parents aren't here?" he asked. "Are they away for the day?"

  Her eyes were artless, clear.

  "I don't know, really. But I think they could be back any time now."

  "Did you invite me because you knew you'd be alone today?"

  She took fright at the expression in his eyes.

  "No! Of course not! They only decided to leave this morning."

  "Where did they go?"

  "To the sugaring-off, I think. That's right, Dad was talking about it this morning. So that's what they must have decided."

  The words stuck in her throat. She could see that he didn't believe her. But she still tried to mislead him, getting tangled in her own lie.

  "When Mamma saw it was so nice this morning, you know. . . "

  Again she had to drop her eyes, then suddenly began to appear angry at his disbelief.

  "I suppose you think you know everything!" she cried. He had grasped her wrists, and now wrapped his arms around her as if to break her. His desire exasperated him. He had come here certain that her family would be around, and much against his will — imagining a family scene that would bore him stiff, at the same time determined to put up with it, just out of pride at keeping his word. And that wasn't all, either. Why had he come if it weren't for the fact that the girl, weeping as she had last night, had disarmed him for a moment and wrung a drop of compassion from him? And here she was, more tenacious and cunning than ever! That's where weakness got you! She was simpering at him, trying to conquer him, instinctively making use of all the devices she had used to catch his attention in the restaurant.

  Disturbed by his own violence and his regret at having given in to her yesterday, he devised an escape:

  "Come on, get your hat. We're going to a movie."

  But still he held her tight. He knew now that Florentine's house reminded him of the thing he most dreaded: poverty, that implacable smell of poor clothing, the poverty you could recognize with your eyes shut. He realized that Florentine personified this kind of wretched life against which his whole being was in revolt. And in the same moment he understood the feeling that drew him toward her: she was his own poverty, his solitude, his sad childhood, his lonely youth. She was all that he had hated, all that he had left behind him, but also everything that remained intimately linked to him, the most profound part of his nature and the powerful spur of his destiny.

  It was his own wretchedness and sadness that he held in his arms, his life as it might have been if he had not ripped it off like a cumbersome rag. His head fell to her shoulder and he remembered the great torment of affection that had been his when he was very small. Without thinking, as if he had known her in that past time, he murmured: "Just a tiny little waist. I could put my hands around it."

  At the same time he remembered that occasionally during his life he had tried to do a good turn, that as a child he had willingly shared a treat with a small friend. He still felt such surges of generosity, and gave in to them if they didn't cramp his style. That was it. He could be kind if his kindness caused him no problems. How many friendships had that cost!

  Florentine was cowering as his dark eyes stared down at her with a kind of madness. Her own imprudence had become so obvious to her that its consequences closed in around her.

  She tried to escape, and his fingers ripped one of the thin straps of her apron. This torn bit of clothing, half hanging now, made him pause. With a great effort of will he whispered in her ear:

  "Go get your coat, get your hat. ... "

  But he didn't release her. Out of the corner of his eye, over her shoulder, he stared at the old leather couch.

  She fell back, her knees bent, one foot kicking feebly. Before she closed her eyes she caught the glance of the Madonna and that of all the other saints bent upon her. She tried to r
ise up toward these sad countenances which came to her from all parts of the room, begging her, supplicating, mute and terrible. Jean still seemed ready to let her go. But then she slid down into the hollow of the couch where she slept each night beside her small sister Yvonne.

  Outside, above the neighbourhood imbued with its Sunday calm, the church bells rang out vespers.

  SEVENTEEN

  For a long time that Sunday evening Jean Lévesque wandered the streets aimlessly, filled with self-hatred. Not because of Florentine's suffering face, which floated before his eyes, but because he felt very clearly that he had irrevocably compromised his freedom. With an irritated gesture he tried to unlace two invisible arms from around his neck. Would he now have the feeling, wherever he went, that another life was linked to his? That this intrusion made his former solitude a thousand times more precious than he had thought? And, more precisely, what would Florentine's attitude be now? What would she expect of him? But what troubled him most was his inability to regain that self-possession which excluded all sense of responsibility. What on earth had he been thinking about? Until now he had been able to limit his curiosity to prudent moves, semi-advances that called for no diminishing of the self. He felt a vague disgust, and admitted awareness of the motive that had lain behind his fear of a liaison with a young and inexperienced girl. Not those old ideas! he thought, with more disdain for his own hesitations than for his conduct toward Florentine.

  Walking quickly, he reached St. James Street. The light of a street lamp came like a slap, but as soon as he hud crossed the pavement he was again wrapped in the dark of Beaudoin Street, which grows more shadowed and wretched as it goes down toward the Lachine Canal. Soon he was on St. Emilie, with its shops, ornate balconies and pinnacled roofs at every street corner. When he passed a blinking arc lamp Jean would see wet facades with long rust-coloured zigzags where the water had found its easiest descent. The snow was melting in a soft south wind. You could almost hear it dissolving and escaping in rivulets of blackened water in the silence of the deserted street. From every roof and every softened twig, far and wide, it ran in a sound like rain, continuous and melancholy.

  The need to justify himself, with all its bitterness and confusion, directed his thoughts along a single track: had he really wanted to hurt Florentine? Even today he'd wanted to spare her. And was it not the frustration of that wish that enraged him now? It might even be that he had wanted to keep a memory of her that he would not despise, mingled with some sentiment of pity and anguish that he had felt at another time in his life. What other time? He wasn't sure. An illusion, perhaps.

  But between Florentine and him there was no longer any cloudy, snowy night that would remind him: I let her go because she was throwing herself away, the ignorant scatterbrain! What they held in common now, and would forever, was the creaking of an ancient sofa, the squeaking of springs, the glow of a cracked centre light. Florentine's image might fade in his memory, as his youth itself might fade: never would he forget the horrid poverty that had been the setting of their moment of love. That was the unforgivable thing staining his cherished superiority, an embarrassment to his ambitions, a vision that could sour every future success. Jean's pace was rapid, his hair was blowing in the wind, his cap tucked under his arm. He could not hide from himself the fact that he was shattered by the experience, for there had been only one woman in his life before Florentine, a woman older than he who had led him on, but who had no face in his memory. But Florentine! He could still see her anxious move, devoid of pride, to keep him from taking his hat and coat to leave, so fearful had she been of finding herself alone with her thoughts after his departure.

  Poor little fool, he thought, less in compassion for her than in regret that he, of all people, had become the bearer of her pain and disillusion. He no longer doubted that it had been her extreme ignorance which led her to compromise herself so rashly. Knowing this, he understood at last her pose of boldness. And how timid and clumsy she actually was! What childish hesitation she had displayed! No ... he didn't want to think about it. That meant giving in to pity or, what was worse, to this feeling of his own diminished freedom.

  The St. Henri Church clock showed after midnight when he reached Notre Dame Street. He crossed Guay Square, half asleep with its phantom trees casting anxious shadows on the stone, shadows blurred by a thin fog and drizzle of the kind that herald spring.

  Jean's thoughts had already passed the mark where the vision of an offence brakes the mind, holding it in suspense, as if life from then on must take a new turn. He saw himself no more able to think of the consequences of his conduct than the wind of the plains can pause to consider the destruction it has left behind. He fled from the sight of Florentine's total disarray when he left her, saying in her small voice, 'Til see you tomorrow, won't I, Jean?"

  That voice reached him now over an ever-widening distance. At the time he had consciously hesitated to reply. Now her voice echoed distantly inside him, but like a call that had no meaning and could not distract him from his dominant idea: to find a way out that would protect him against any weakness so far as she was concerned — a return within himself.

  "Knock it down, everything that's past, knock it down!" he shouted, the violence of his thoughts making him express them aloud. "Knock it all down!" And he knew that he was attacking not just a memory that was painful to his own conceit, but a whole section of his life which, tonight, had ended. It's time, he thought, time to break loose from all that. And his determination was all the more violent because the hindrance in his path took on the shape of a young working girl who had come to follow in his steps, timidly, tenaciously and with not a trace of pride. It flashed across his mind that perhaps she really loved him, that only passion could have led her so far astray. But this thought, far from calming him, poisoned his reflections. Indeed that would have been the last indignity, if her blind stubbornness had dared to pass for love.

  He reached St. Antoine Street, which was vibrating from the passage of a distant streetcar. The bright lights, after the dark alleyways, made him blink. The show windows cast on the sidewalk a light that seemed intense. He was glad of the glare, which helped him shake off the counsels of the dark. Even more than the memory of this evening, he wanted to rid himself of any notion that he was loved by Florentine.

  It began to rain harder. The last snow was undei attack by these heavy, wide-spaced drops. All that remained underfoot of months of frost and freezing was a light crust that crumbled as he walked. The sidewalk was soon completely washed by this slow, tenacious rain. Its smooth, shining surface reflected the midnight lights and tangles of naked branches.

  Springtime! What would it bring, he wondered. He felt a greed for the unknown, the beginnings that new seasons bring. A woman's footsteps tapping behind made him turn.

  He saw only a solitary shadow behind him, but it reminded him irritatingly of Florentine's hand on his arm, and how she had come trotting toward him one stormy night. And for a brief moment he understood clearly that through the biting wind, from the depths of her misery, from the depths of all her uncertainties, she had come running to him, scatterbrained, daring, but bringing him her whole life, since he no doubt represented something solid and successful to her and her poverty. He watched his shadow stretching before him on the sidewalk. Stupefaction and resentment brought him to a halt. What was he supposed to do with such a gift? What did it matter to him? Never had the cool solitude he had built around himself felt more precious.

  Spring, which sharpens the sensitivity of many people, excluded him from its magic. On the contrary, it filled him with renewed determination never again to give in to his need for friendship.

  Springtime! What a season of thin illusions! Soon there would be leaves in the light of the street lamps, the poor would set out chairs on the sidewalk before their houses. In the evening the squeak of rocking chairs on concrete would be heard. Babies, for the first time in their lives, would breathe outdoor air; older children would trace cha
lk squares on the cement and sing a rhyme as they hopped from one to the other. And in the inside courtyards, by the light of kitchen windows, neighbour families would chat or play at cards. What did these needy folk find to chat about, with their lives so plain and monotonous? Elsewhere men would gather on a vacant lot to throw horseshoes, they too pretending to forget. The clang of metal would ring in the evening air along with shouts from the children, loud puffing from the locomotives and the choppy voice of the boat whistles. And that's what spring would be, down where the smoke came from, at the foot of the mountain!

  He imagined the end of April. That would be the great exodus toward the street. From all the apartments, the damp basements, the garrets under the zinc roofs, the slums of Workman Street, from the big houses of Sir Georges-Etienne Carrier Square, from the sinister alleys down by the canal, from the peaceful squares, from near, from far, from everywhere, the crowd would come, and its multitudinous voice, contained on one side by the mountain, on the other by the ring of factories, would rise toward the distant stars. And the stars would be the only spectators to this inconceivable propensity of man for his sustaining

  joy-Everywhere in the dark, narrow streets, in the obscurity between houses, in the shadows of trees, there would be silhouettes of couples. Two by two they would stroll through the odours of hot molasses, tobacco, rotten fruit, vibrating with the trains, covered with soot, stubborn and pitiable shadows. On some spring nights, when the wind blew softly and a folly of hope lay in the air, they would begin again to go through those motions which ensure the perpetuity of human suffering. And Jean dared to rejoice at this passivity of men which makes it so easy for the daring ones to rise. He looked down at the dark mass of roofs, each of which hid its share of dreams and misery, and it seemed to him that between himself and Florentine a poor man's springtime was breathing its disenchantment. A door opened somewhere down the street. A burst of jazz escaped, soldiers emerged, staggering, accompanied by hatless women who laughed loudly and jostled one another. The young men were trying to get them to come along. They resisted half-heartedly, then gave in. The group disappeared, singing. Jean, striding quickly now, was surprised to find himself smiling. He was thinking about what he was escaping by avoiding Florentine: a hidden love, furtive encounters, long, wandering walks outdoors, and the fear on his part and hers of having to pay dearly for such a paltry sin. He felt a glow of self-satisfaction. His brutal, relentless domination of Florentine had left him, in fact, with a taste for other conquests, more exotic and challenging. But that'll come, that will come, he said to himself, enjoying the rhythm of his own stride.