"She understands."
He was getting just a shade impatient. His eyes sought Jenny's smile at the other end of the ward. She was something wonderful and gentle that had come into his life, and they'd always understand each other, language or no language.
To get him back Rose-Anna put on her happy voice, and reminded him of their excursion to the country:
"You had a real feast, eh, that day we went to the sugar shack? Did you like your snow candy?"
"Yes."
He was thinking about the best day in his life, but it always got mixed up in his imagination with Jenny's name. There was "grandmother's country" as he called St. Denis, with all the blue he'd seen through the windshield and which was perhaps the Richelieu, a word he loved, fine-sounding and distant, and he thought, I should have brought back some sugar from there for Jenny, for his thoughts were blurred and he didn't remember that he hadn't even known Jenny when they went on their ride to the country.
"You call her by her first name!" Rose-Anna said suddenly.
"Yes, Jenny," he said, breathing with difficulty. "She's Jenny."
He was searching among his letters again. After a moment his mother asked cautiously:
"Do you like her?"
"Yes, she's Jenny."
"But you don't like her better than us, do you?"
A shadow of hesitation crossed his tired face.
"No."
She was expecting him to complain about something and ask to be taken home. But he was only interested in sorting out his letters. And it was Rose-Anna who, after a long silence, broached the subject:
"Aren't you in a hurry to get well and come home, and ... go back to school like before?"
She caught his gloomy look and hastened to add:
"I might just find enough money to buy you a little cap, if you want one, to go with your nice new overcoat. That was what you wanted most, wasn't it?"
"No."
But she thought she had touched his weak point, for she remembered how he had wanted to be a little man, from his first days in school. She pulled her chair closer to his bed.
"Then you tell me what you'd like most!"
A tiredness shadowed his face. Precocious, he may have vaguely understood his family's poverty and his own need to be reasonable; or perhaps he was too tired to think about it. He looked around, taking time to smile at the baby who reached toward him through the bars of his crib. Daniel shrugged.
"Nothing, I guess."
When Rose-Anna spoke again her voice took on the melancholy tone that comes instinctively when one speaks through bars or in a convent parlour.
"Those are nice toys. Who gave them to you?"
"It was Jenny!" he said triumphantly.
"No, no, it wasn't Jenny. There's rich ladies who bring toys for sick little boys, or other children that have too many toys themselves."
"That's not true! It was Jenny!"
Rose-Anna was surprised at his anger. Daniel's eyes were shining. His lips trembled. She was perplexed and saddened. Then, remembering that the doctor had said impatience and irritability were symptoms of Daniel's illness, she tried to mollify him. "Gisele and Lucille miss you something terrible," she said.
He nodded, but his lips were still tight. Yet a moment later he asked about Yvonne. His mother made too long a story out of her answer, and got everything mixed up. His gaze wandered. Here too he was loved, he thought, and had lots of chums who didn't try to drag him into tiring games. The more active ones played a kind of hockey, tossing the puck from bed to bed. Jenny had invented the game, and Daniel loved it, following it with a true spectator's eye. And though he never raised a finger in his bed, Jenny said he was the goalie, and gave him points on the blackboard.
Here he was in a world made for children. There were no grown-ups with their conversations to trouble his sleep. No one whispered at night, and he never woke suddenly to hear people talking about money, about rent, about expenses, words vast and cruel that came to his ears in the darkness. He could lie here at ease, and no one would fold or move his bed each morning. For the first time he had a few things of his very own. And, above all, he'd never had such windows at home, nor such sunlight on the walls. It was enough to make him forget his new coat, which Jenny had taken from him on his arrival in the hospital and locked up along with his new St. Denis shoes and other small effects. He'd never have given up that coat to anyone but Jenny.
He breathed heavily, and with an effort. He had just finished a group of letters and shouted happily:
"Look what I wrote. ..."
Rose-Anna had already seen it on the covers: Jenny's name.
"Can you write anything else?" she asked, her throat tightening.
"Sure," he said kindly. "I'm going to write your name." A little later she saw in the folds of the sheet five letters which made "Mamma." She wanted to help him finish the word, but he grew angry.
"Let me do it myself! The Brother doesn't want you to touch it!"
His eyes stared wide, full of fear. His mouth trembled.
The nurse was at his bedside in a moment.
"He's getting tired," she said in English. "Maybe you can stay longer tomorrow."
Rose-Anna blinked. She understood vaguely that she was being dismissed. With the docility of the humble, on discovering she was just a visitor she stood up unsteadily. It was now, after a few minutes' rest, that she felt the strain throughout her body. She took a few heavy steps, no longer on tiptoe but letting her weight fall flat-footed on the slippery floor. It's a long way from home, it's not the same here, she thought, her mind skidding into nonsense; she felt trapped and yet stubborn.
Then she caught Jenny's glance, and looked down as if her secrets had been revealed.
Another hesitant step or two, hating to leave, and she stopped, trying desperately to remember a few words of English. She wanted to know what treatment Daniel was getting. She would have liked to describe his character so that the young nurse could care for him as well as possible, seeing that she herself had to abandon him. But the more she thought, the more she realized that she was incapable of such an explanation. She settled for a brief smile in Jenny's direction, and turned around for a final look at Daniel. His head was buried in the pillow.
On the foot of the bed was a card on which she read: Name. Daniel Lacasse. Age: six years. Then came the name of his illness, which she couldn't decipher.
"Leukemia." Was that what the doctor had said? "A wasting disease. . . " She had not been too frightened, because he had neglected to add that from this disease there was no return.
Yet in the doorway of the ward a presentiment seized her, penetrating to the fibres of her soul. She wheeled around with the violent desire to take the child in her arms and bring him home. An old mistrust of doctors and hospitals acquired in childhood from her mother's sayings came to her mind.
Jenny was tucking in the covers. Daniel, quiet again, was smiling. Rose-Anna made a timid gesture — a child's "Bye-bye. . . " — and the baby, gripping the bars of his crib, found it irresistibly funny. He laughed loud and clear, and a dribble ran down his chin.
Rose-Anna was in the dark corridor. Her step was hesitant because of the feeble light and her fear that she wouldn't find the exit. One thought filled her mind with reproach: Daniel had all he needed here. He had never been so happy. She didn't understand it and tried to find the reason. A sentiment with the taste of poison stuck in her throat. So they've taken him from me too, she thought, and it's easy to take him, he's so small! Her body stiffened as she walked. Daniel's new peace of mind, marvellous as it was, pursued her down the stairs like an unforgettable shame.
At the front entrance a blinding ray of sunlight struck her face, and she stretched out her hands that searched their way into the sun. Never had she felt her poverty so intensely.
She opened her purse to find a tram ticket; she was too tired to walk. She was dumbfounded to see a ten-dollar bill tucked in behind the torn lining. Then she remembered: this was a
ll she had been able to save, to "hide away," as she put it, out of the twenty dollars sent by the government after Eugène had joined up. The money had seemed so tainted by sacrifice that she had not wished to use more than half of it, not for food or clothing or even a treat for Daniel. Stubbornly she had kept it for their move, for what she called "rent money," so precious that she had concealed it from herself.
NINETEEN
Rose-Anna got off the streetcar at Notre Dame. In front of The Two Records she saw a freshly printed news bulletin. A small group of men and women crowded around it. From where she was, over the heads and shoulders crouching as if in astonishment, Rose-Anna could see the coarse lettering on the yellow paper of the notice:
Germans invade Norway.
Oslo bombed.
She stared, dazed, pulling at the strap of her purse. At first she didn't know the source of her paralysis. Then, trained to misfortune, her mind flew to Eugène. In away that was inexplicable but hard as rock, she was sure that her son's fate depended on this piece of news. She reread the large letters, syllable by syllable, barely forming the words with her lips. At the word "Norway" she stopped to reflect. And this distant land, located somewhere over there, seemed linked once and for all with their lives, incomprehensible as that might be. She left aside the fact that Eugène had assured her in his last letter that he would be in training camp for at least six months. She simply saw the fat black letters spelling out immediate danger. And this woman, who never read anything but her Book of Hours, did an extraordinary thing. She crossed the street,
230 tumbling in her purse for change, and in all haste offered three cents to the newspaper vendor, quickly opening the damp pages he had given her. Leaning against the entrance to a store, she read a few lines, pushed this way and that by housewives shopping at the fruit store, holding her purse under her arm. After a moment she folded the paper and stared in front of her with eyes heavy with anger. She hated the Germans. She, who had never hated anyone in her life, felt a sudden, implacable hatred for this people she had never known.
She started toward Beaudoin Street and home. All at once she knew them well, all those women in far-off countries, whether they were Polish, Norwegian, Czechs or Slovaks. They were women like herself, women ot the people, as needy as she was. For centuries they had seen their husbands and sons march away. One age passed away, another came, and nothing changed: the women of all the ages waved good-bye or wept in their kerchiefs, and the men marched off. It seemed to her that on this bright late-afternoon she was walking not alone but in the ranks of thousands of women whose sighs breathed in her ears. the wear' sighs of the poor, the ordinary women, from the depths of the centuries to her own time. She was one oi them, one of the women with nothing to defend but their men and their sons, who had never sung when it was time for them to leave. One ol the women who had watched the parades with dry eyes, secretly cursing war.
Yet she hated the Germans more than war itself; and this troubled her. She tried to dismiss the feeling like an evil thought. It frightened her, for she saw that it gave her a reason for accepting the sacrifice of her son. She tried to pull back, to remain outside of hate as well as pity. W in Canada, after all. she said to herself, it's too bad about what goes on over there, but it's not our fault. Fiercely she tried to disown the forlorn procession that had joined her, but though she walked more quickly she was unable to lose this crowd emerging mysteriously out of the past, from all directions, from far but also nearby, for new faces not unlike her own kept appearing. The women from elsewhere had misfortunes to bear that were greater than hers. They were weeping for their devastated homes. They came toward Rose-Anna, and when they saw her made the motions of a prayer. In every age women have known each other by their mourning. Their supplication was silent; they raised their arms as if to ask her for help. Rose-Anna hurried on. She saw the despair of her sisters, saw it clearly and without flinching, looked at it squarely and understood all its horror; then she put her own child's life in the balance, and he won. Eugène seemed as powerless and forgotten as Daniel; she saw that they both had need of her. Her defensive instinct awoke, she regained all her energy, knew her goal and ceased to think of anything but that.
She had planned to stop at the Five and Ten to tell Florentine how Daniel was getting on, and to buy a few provisions for supper at a grocery on Notre Dame. All that was forgotten now. She went straight home, her hands clenched, her eyes resolute, as though some pressing danger awaited her, a danger to be cornered, forestalled if she could.
But when she saw their house she felt a relief that made her smile.
She went directly to the kitchen, taking off her coat. For all her anxieties she didn't forget that she had supper to prepare. Her eyes, still accustomed to the glare outside, at first saw only the familiar shapes of the furniture. She went to the dining room and hung her outdoor things in the closet. Then, tying an apron over her Sunday dress, which she had no time to change, she came back to the kitchen. She was pushing her sleeves up and approaching the stove when she saw Eugène sitting at the table with a broad smile on his face.
She stretched trembling hands out toward him. Then, moved beyond words, she stepped back to examine him from head to foot. She was not particularly surprised to see him. She knew that if she had come home in haste, thinking constantly about Eugène, it was because some telepathy had warned her that he was there and needed her.
The children were playing outside-, but to guard against any interruptions she led him into the dining room. In any case, it seemed to her that the kitchen was not the place to receive this handsome young man in uniform, his cheeks rosy with health and exercise, quite unlike the picture of Eugène she had kept in her mind's eye.
"Now, let me get a look at you! ,, she said, going ahead of him into the brightest room in the house, turning around at every other step to inspect him. Her voice, do what she would, betrayed her pride at seeing him like this, standing straighter, his skin fresh and healthy.
As soon as they were sitting on the leather couch her fears returned. Eugène, despite his new well-being, was not light-hearted. At once she took his visit to be a desertion.
"I suppose they wanted to send you over there!" she said bitterly.
She pointed to the crumpled newspaper on the buffet.
Eugène laughed. His laugh was half-hearted, joyless, a little bored. He ran a hand through his thick, wavy hair.
"Not a chance, Ma. You Ye always the darndest one for getting ideas in your head."
Silence. He felt it was his turn to make conversation, and told her a few details about life in camp. He said he liked it fine. Then he stopped, not knowing where to go next.
Rose-Anna had more questions for him. How was the food there? Was he homesick? Who were his friends? Eugène replied absent-mindedly, smiling at times at the childish questions, then looked around the room, impatient. God, it was poor and ugly in this place! He saw the camp bed that his mother used to open out for him, covering it with a thin mattress when he wanted to go to bed. He remembered the hot dishes his mother had kept for him when he came home from bumming around the neighbourhood. He saw her drawn, white face the day she had gone to the police station to excuse and defend him. He had returned the stolen bicycle and she had done whatever had to be done so that no charges were laid. Oh, he could even see the wilted hat she'd had at the time, and her good dress, her Sunday dress, which she'd worn that day, so determined to make a good impression and win their sympathy. All that was a pain in the neck because he'd have preferred to recall some injustice from his mother: it would make it easier to ask for what he wanted.
He felt that every fleeting minute worked against him. The cares, frustrations and sufferings of his mother would soon take over again, entwine him, paralyze him, if he stayed too long in this house. It was true, the house frightened him, with all its reminders of childhood. And the poverty that was written over every corner of the place! He'd wanted long enough to run away. And it seemed so long, in fact,
since he had left! Never to come back! Oh, to get out the door and into life, the life which ' even tonight might offer him the exciting wine of forget-fulness!
He stood up. His temples were throbbing. The face of a girl floated before his eyes. He paced a few steps then marked time as if treading on his memories. Suddenly he turned toward her. His eyes had hardened. It was such an effort to smile that his face looked strained, and he held his hand up before it, speaking with the faintly humble tone he put on when he talked to his mother. "Did you get your twenty bucks, Ma, first of the month?"
She nodded, still sitting in her corner of the sofa.
"I even managed to hide ten of it," she confessed. "Your father's still out of work. He counts on starting again soon. But I'm keeping the ten dollars just in case. At least we'll have that to put down on the first month's rent. I saw a place that wasn't all that bad," she said in a moment of optimism. "I've got your ten dollars to make a deposit if we decide to take it."
She said "your ten dollars" with an inflection of deference and gratitude, she who had for so long refused to count on this money.
"You know," she went on, "the first thing is to have a place to live. After that, well, we'll see! Once you've got a roof over your head there's time to think about the rest."
She was explaining her intentions in great detail as if from now on she had to account to him for the way she spent the money he brought into the household.
"That money," she cried, almost vehemently, "you can be sure I won't lay a hand on it unless there's terrible need."
He looked away. He couldn't bear to hear her talking about rents and poverty. Would the two of them ever talk about anything else? Was that what he'd come home for? To hear more complaints? Outside people were hurrying past, almost racing toward the busy streets of town. Others were on their way to the movies. Girls were going out to meet their boyfriends. There was music, there was youth in the streets, and all of that was waiting for him.
With a nervous hand he pulled from his pocket a new cigarette case engraved with his initials, which he couldn't help giving an admiring glance.
The Tin Flute Page 21
