She hastened on to escape this animated scene from which she felt excluded.
She had often come here in the past to help her father do the Saturday-evening shopping. She had still been small, but loved to carry the big shopping bag. Her father would stop to chat with some robust country woman whose broad shoulders wore the same rough men's sweater she had on today, so Florentine imagined. From her they had bought tiny cucumber pickles, of which Azarius was so fond. Occasionally they would go in the fishmonger's shop and inspect the fish. Her father taught her the names of the carp and the burbot and, when she grew restive, let her touch a great eel swimming in a tank. Oh, what a long time ago that was, those Saturday evenings at the market! And how useless to think about them now! Yet it was true that she had been a happy, pampered child. There were rich children who had not had what she possessed while she was small. As they left the house Rose-Anna would say, "Take good care of the little one, now" — they'd called her "the little one" until she was twelve; and off they'd go, she with her hand confidently in that of Azarius. And her father's conversation during the whole walk! And their complicity when he squeezed her hand a little harder and said, "Your mother said not to get any cream, but what do you say we buy some, just to see how she enjoys it with her porridge!"
Could she have stayed happy if she had gone on in the same old way? Never! She'd made her choice, knowing that she could no more refuse it than stop breathing. And even now, if she had it to do over again. . .
Her thoughts had come full circle. Florentine's expression was so tense and unhappy that she would not have known herself in a mirror. All this mulling over things was no help. What's the good! What's the good! She'd have liked to shout the words aloud and kill the sentimentality that had softened her.
Walking more quickly now, her lips tight and her eyes staring, unseeing, searching for a practical plan, she was rebellious against all humility, seeking only a ray of hope to alleviate her terror. What else mattered? She had to be delivered from her fear.
Continuing toward the canal, she heard a great rattling of chains and the repeated blasts of a boat's whistle. Below the ochre hall of the marketplace with its serrated tower, beyond St. Ambroise Street, the swing bridge pivoted and left two gaps in the road. Between two long lines of waiting cars, Florentine saw the smokestack of a freighter sailing by.
She stopped to watch, not out of fascination, for this sight had always seemed inconsequential to her, but because she now perceived everything with a painful acuteness, and found it paralyzing. All the ships she had ever seen pass by here had seemed quite ordinary, but this one, gliding between the barriers, took on a strange uniqueness, as if such a thing had never happened before. It was a tramp steamer with a grey hull, its sides narrow and battered, still smeared with sludge, and a tall mast marked by the spindrift of the estuary. It had completed a journey between two horizons so distant that they were lost in mists, and now, incongruous in this narrow path that led it through the city, had only one desire: past all obstacles, all barriers, to reach the open St. Lawrence again and the swell of the Great Lakes. The ship slid quietly, lazily along, its crew on deck, some ready to toss a mooring line which they held coiled like a lasso, others hanging out washing between the deckhouse and the bow. It seemed to speak to that poverty-stricken neighbourhood of a life apart from, indifferent to, the ups and downs of a landlubber's existence, with a poignant reminder of the far horizons dormant in the depths of every man's being.
Soon it was sailing between the walls of the factories that border the canal, and the hum of its propellor faded. But other smokestacks were puffing this way from the port, and their sooty plumes formed clouds that followed the shining, watery pathway. There was a tanker, lying low in the water like a pontoon; and behind it, a barge that looked on the point of sinking under its load of cut lumber, its straining propellors roiling the quiet surface. And there were other masts, other tattered flags moving up between the roofs and painted signs. The operator's cabin and, almost always deserted, a tiny, flat-roofed restaurant stood on the canal bank, blackened by the freighters' soot, melancholy and forsaken, like all buildings stuck in thankless surroundings to serve whatever passes, on a road, a bridge or a canal: the offspring of utility and chance.
Then Florentine realized that she was alone in the world with her fear. She had a glimpse of solitude, not just her own but the solitude that tracks every living being, follow- ine on his heels, ready to pounce upon him like a cloud, a shadow. For her this - had a strong taste of poverty
about it: she imagined, knowing no better, that in comfort or luxury it could not materialize.
Her thoughts led nowhere. She shut her eyes and searched within herself for her imperious desire for Jean — the only part of herself that seemed familiar, after the wanderings of her mind — but all she saw was a shadow play of barges moving morosely in the water, a strange, secret screen. unheard-of and incomprehensible. What she also discovered in her own depths was a horrible feeling of resentment, a rancour so strong that she felt her whole being poisoned by it.
No. Jean could never know the fear that was in her as she walked alone through this spring evening made for laughter, for gently holding hands. That was the injustice that she could not swallow. She thought of his man's life, fulfilling freedom, devoid of all regrets, and this
thought was a thousand times more unbearable than the awareness of her error. It wouldn't be long until he had forgotten her very features. He would love other women. He might occasionally try, without success, to recall the slightest thing about her. This was what she could not abide. Because she had lost him. she would at least have had him suffer as she suffered. Or seen him dead. This notion pleased her, and she lingered over it. Yes, if he were dead she might feel he owed her nothing. But as long as he lived and breathed she would know the humiliation of not having been able to hold him.
In her heart she felt a muted lament, a low cry, a prayer asking that Jean should love her still, despite the leaden hate she felt for him. If she were to be freed of hat freed of fear, he had to love her. And she searched her memory for small proofs of tenderness : 5 that he
had said. She clung to these words as a beggar clings to a
penny, turning them over and over, hoping perhaps to see it grow or turn to gold through the simple magic of a wish. But the alms had been too meagre, the gold a speck of dust.
And so this was what made the world go 'round: this was why the man, the woman, two enemies, called a truce to their ancient war; why the night air could turn so soft, and the illusion of a path reserved for these two people seemed to open up before them. And this was why your heart gave you no rest! She forgot the moments of frenzy, the suspended moments of her happiness, and saw nothing but the trap that had been set for her weakness; and this trap appeared to her coarse and brutal, and she felt, stronger than fear itself, an unspeakable contempt for her fate as a woman, and a self-hatred that left her amazed.
She had arrived at the house where Jean lived. With its oozing eaves troughs that dribbled like scupper holes, its flaking paint and the pervasive sound of marine propellors, the place seemed to her like a wretched tub of a freighter laid up in drydock. Florentine walked to and fro before it, hesitating. She had been there twice already but had not mustered the courage to go inside. Then she had sent Philippe with a letter. Her brother had sworn he lost it, and next day demanded a quarter to buy his silence. On the weekend he had returned to the charge, this time doubling his blackmail fee.
Florentine repressed a great desire to run, run anywhere, and keep a trace of her pride intact. But where could she go? To whom could she turn if Jean was still the one she missed? Her mother seemed more and more depressed, ever since their trip to St. Denis. Her father? What support or help had he ever been to them? And Eugène. . . . Ever since she had discovered he had not returned the money to her mother, she would have liked to catch up with him and slap his face and scratch him until he bled. During his last leave she had met hi
m on St. Catherine Street, uncertain on his feet and offering his arm to a loud-voiced young lady. That same evening her mother had served the family bread and a little cold meat, saying that she hadn't had time for shopping. Oh, the taste of poverty that went down with that meal! Florentine's mouth was still bitter with that savour, the food of suffering and resentment that would never disappear. Then, out of anger at Eugène, she had lost all patience with her mother, all desire to help her. And this loss of what was best in herself caused her to resent still more her brother's treachery.
Florentine was distressed enough by signs of loosening ties within the family. But behind these signs she recognized the smell of former lodgings, all the poor houses in which they had been together and yet separated already from one another. She saw, as if she were there again, that whole series of interiors where the same pictures of saints and the same family photos hung before walls that slowly closed in upon her. She thought it must have been from the very depths of her life, from her first childhood, that she had been awaiting Jean.
She took out her compact, patted her cheeks with the puff and, in the mirror in her purse, inspected herself with a mixture of incomprehension, wounded pride and profound self-pity. And she regretted not having bought a straw hat, a ridiculous little thing, all flowery, which she must have noticed despite her distress somewnere on her way, maybe today, perhaps long ago, but she remembered it now, barely bigger than a pair of folded wings, with lots of red, and ribbons crossing at the back. She wondered whether, if she had been better dressed or prettier on this day or that when Jean had seen her, he still would have disdained her. . . .
She went up the two steps and rang the bell. Immediately she saw herself as she must look, and was ashamed to be waiting there, her purse on her arm, stiff as a board, jilted and poor.
The door opened a crack. She heard herself asking for information in a barely audible voice. It seemed to her that if she turned around she would see Jean disappearing around the street corner. She could almost hear him whistling. . . . She thought, All my life I'll see him going away.
As through a fog she caught the words:
". . . left without giving any address." And it seemed to her she had already heard these words, at night, at dawn, whenever she awoke and felt herself faced with the obvious.
Later she found herself walking downcast toward the foundry on St. James Street. Bracelets jangled on her thin wrists and on the brim of her straw hat a small bunch of red glass cherries rattled. These sounds echoed in her head and prevented her from following any thought to its conclusion. She arrived in front of the foundry and remembered how, not two months ago, Jean had greeted her here with contemptuous coolness. She blushed with shame and anger. Why on earth had she come here to be reminded of that humiliation? How could she go to places that belonged to Jean? Suddenly she regretted these things she had done more than her vanished dream.
She turned away. And in the face of her inability to find Jean and win him back — an inability which she now began to think of as her own refusal of him — her fears began to dissipate, and continued to do so the farther she left his neighbourhood behind. Oh, if only she could be wrong, her whole life would be a sweet revenge on this absurd panic, on the terrors that had dogged her steps this evening! She must have made a mistake! Now she remembered that her mother had once. . . And again her fears receded. The alarm bell gradually faded away, and Florentine managed to think of her error as a stupid accident, a piece of carelessness which brooding would only turn into an indelible sin.
At Notre Dame Street, which she entered just above the Carrier movie house, she was relieved to see the street signs and the bright shop windows filled with pretty dresses. For the first time in her life the sounds of a crowded street seemed to her friendly and pleasant.
From a small restaurant came the noise of jazz. Her feet were tired, and she took refuge in the animation inside. She ordered a coke and a hot dog, sat down alone and lit a cigarette. With the first puff she sank into a familiar apathy, deep, deep into the noisy, overheated, shrill half-night that had been the normal climate of her being for many years now, outside of which she had to admit she was lost. She imagined that now she would even be contented back at the Five and Ten, where at least the noise and agitation never slowed. Oh, the horror of the silence she had felt around her this evening! The horror of deserted streets! If ever she kept the trace of a memory of this wretched night, sure as she now was of escaping from it, that memory would be of having been alone, irrevocably alone, while in other streets couples strolled together to the sound of jukeboxes braying their syncopated joy from every small cafe. She would never forgive Jean for the fact that tonight she had slunk about like a leper, banned from the swift stream of sounds and emotions which she loved so much.
The music stopped, and with it her impression of being safe from loneliness. She slipped a coin into the nickelodeon and, to the accompaniment of a deafening boogie-woogie, took out her comb, her compact and her lipstick, and began to apply her makeup with great care. She would take a puff at her cigarette, lay it down, smear a little more red on her lips, pat more powder on her forehead, one foot tapping to the music beneath the table. A last look in the glass and she was satisfied. She was pale, it was true, but pretty, prettier than ever, with her hair down and her eyes still wide from the alert of fear. She looked down at her slim body as if she had never seen it. She moved her hair under the bracket lamp to make it shine in her tiny mirror, and stretched out her hands to admire her delicate fingers with their carmine nails. In the presence of her own youth, her fine hair, loosely combed, and the whiteness of her arms, she began to love life once more. She decided to buy the little hat; she knew now where she'd seen it. This would be her revenge on Jean. She'd be so elegant that if he ever saw her he'd regret leaving her behind. Then it would be her turn to be hard and pitiless!
The jazz filled her mind, and the cigarette left her in a pleasant daze. She was thinking of all the finery she had denied herself. Seeing herself in this, in that, she made her choices, determined to give her life such an appearance of happiness that happiness itself would come to dwell there.
She thought of her mother, and the pity and tenderness she felt — resulting from her new-found optimism and her respite from fear — seemed to her to be the unmistakable sign of her own goodness: a notion she found so pleasant that she bathed in it luxuriously for a while. Yes, from now on she'd be a real help to her mother. What did it matter if Eugène and Azarius didn't do their share? She'd never leave her mother to their tender care!
The light-hearted jazz, the easy tapping of her toe beneath the table presaged the facility with which her new sacrifices would be borne. From time to time a siren wailed, vibrant and impassioned, and she would shiver, imagining herself back at the edge of the canal, where she had glimpsed the grey, melancholy thread of her existence. She took several quick gulps of coke, puffed at her cigarette and shook her head angrily. She set a superstitious deadline for the end of her old life: if nothing was changed when she arrived home, she could conclude that her worries were unfounded. As delighted as if she had found a real solution to her problems, she left the restaurant and started home.
Soon she saw the dining room light shining through the parted curtains. Its humble glow provoked a goodness in her heart that was no longer calculating or defiant, nor a kind of currency with which to barter and exchange; what she felt was an infinite, poignant affinity for this life that was her family's. No longer did it seem harassed and restricting, but rather made beautiful from start to finish by Rose-Anna's courage. Her mother's courage shone out like a lighthouse beam before her. Home would take her in, home would cure her.
Her hand on the doorknob, she paused for one long, ineffable moment. Then she pushed open the door. And it was as if an arctic wind chilled her frail efforts to make a fresh beginning.
TWENTY-TWO
In the dining room, furniture that she didn't recognize was piled against the partition. Str
angers' faces were there among the ripped-open packing cases, the washtubs of linen and the chairs piled one on the other to the ceiling.
For a second Florentine hoped that she had come into the wrong house by mistake. But no: behind the piles of mattresses and the shaky cupboards there were too many familiar things to be seen — the old clock, the children's hats, the oilcloth on the table. Then she saw her mother sitting on the edge of a chair, tugging absently at her apron. Florentine, trembling, went to her. Rose-Anna smiled distractedly, then went with her into the kitchen, closing the door behind them. In this crowded space they were alone, with nothing to remind them of the chaos outside. Florentine, aware for a new reason of the flight of time, thought, stupefied, That's right, it's May! It's time to move!
"Sit down," said her mother, as if nothing remained to them but the right to sit in their own kitchen . . . and look at each other . . . and talk if the words came. . . .
She herself collapsed onto a chair. Her time was drawing near. She grew out of breath with the slightest effort.
They stared at each other. No explanation was needed. But Rose-Anna felt obliged to say something. Impatiently, almost nastily, she said:
"The new tenants. Couldn't you guess?" Then her voice grew monotonous and plaintive:
"I thought we'd have a few days grace, but these people had paid. The fact is, they're more at home here than we are. What could I do? I had to let them in."
The Tin Flute Page 23
