The Tin Flute

by Gabrielle Roy

  Emmanuel arrived on the hump of St. Henri. His walk had made him thirsty. He hurried toward The Two Records.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Several men were standing in the middle of the restaurant, motionless and silent. Others, leaning on the counter, forgot to smoke their pipes. The radio was bringing news of the war. Very often these days regular programs were interrupted by bulletins with the latest happenings. There had just been a break in a program of light music and the announcer's voice came on. After a short newscast the music began again. The listeners relaxed and several began to talk, when a hollow voice rose in a kind of lament:

  "Poor France!"

  Emmanuel lit a cigarette feverishly. He wanted to forget these concerns, at least during his leave. He frowned, puffed too quickly at his cigarette, seemingly in the grip of some violent emotion.

  The man who had just spoken was beside him, his elbows on the counter, his face in his fists. He straightened up slowly as if his shoulders bore more than their own weight. Emmanuel, seeing his face, recognized Azarius Lacasse, who had done some repairs around his parents' house. Emmanuel held out his hand with the easy cordiality that won people's confidence.

  "Monsieur Lacasse, I'm Emmanuel Létourneau," he said. "I'm a friend of Florentine's." Azarius looked up, surprised to hear his daughter's name. His only reply was, "Things look bad, eh? Poor France. Poor France."

  He seemed deeply moved. This strange man, who had looked on at the downfall of his family without admitting his own defeat, this lazy man, this unstable dreamer, as people said, seemed close to despair because in a distant country that he knew only by hearsay the fate of armies was being decided in a bloody battle.

  When he said "France" the word took on a familiar tone, but it was an incantation too, a combination of an everyday reality with some rare and prodigious marvel.

  "A beautiful country, France."

  "How would you know?" scoffed the young usher from the Cartier movie house. "Have you been there?"

  He never missed a chance to pick a fight with Azarius who had reproached him once for not being in the army.

  "How do I know?" said Azarius in a strong, rich voice, without a trace of anger. "How do you know the sun is good? Because according to the asterologists it's billions of miles away and you still feel its warmth every day, and see its light, eh? And the stars, those little pinholes to hell and gone out there! Thousands and thousands of miles away, you can still see their light on a good dark night!"

  He was in his stride now, his voice swelling with an unpolished, natural lyric strain:

  "France," he said, "is like the sun and the stars. It may be far away, maybe we never saw it. We're French from France but we left France, we don't really know what France is. No more than we know what the sun and the stars may be. Except it gives off light day and night. Day and night," he repeated.

  He looked down at his idle hands with the astonishment he always felt at seeing them so white and soft and useless, then he raised them in a dramatic gesture. "If France she i disappear" he said, "it'd be as bad, you might say, for the world as if the sun fell down."

  There was silence. All these men, even the most unfeeling, loved France. Across the centuries they had kept a mysterious and tender attachment for the land of their origin, a vague but constant nostalgia that was seldom expressed but was as close to them as their tenacious faith and their language with its naive beauty. But it surprised them to hear the simple truth expressed by one of themselves; it embarrassed them even, as if someone had obliged them to bare themselves to each other.

  Emmanuel had followed Azarius' speech with astonishment at first, then with a surge of sympathy. Finally he felt a certain reservation, knowing that this patriotic outburst didn't satisfy his own thirst for justice. He stood thoughtfully aside, as a few of the older men came over to Azarius and one of them clapped him on the back and cried:

  "Well said, Lacasse!"

  Behind the counter Sam Latour was scratching the back of his neck, more deeply moved than he would have liked to admit, and without knowing it filled with the same vibrant pride he felt each year during the St. Jean Baptiste Day speeches.

  "Yeah, and all that don't help much," he said, trying to bring the conversation back to more comfortable ground. "It's just too bad they didn't get ready for war instead of stickin' the iA heads in the sand. What did I tell you, Lacasse? I said their Imaginot Line wasn't up to much! Imaginot, Imaginot! Sounds like imagination, and that's about what it amounted to."

  "In the first place, it's not Imaginot, just Maginot," said Azarius. "That was the name of the engineer that drew it up, a fellow called Maginot."

  "It's still an imagination." "Could be. But that's not here nor there," said Azarius. "A fort is just a fort. It's not the country. A country, now, that's somethin' else. It don't mean the country's finished just because a fort blows up."

  He was getting the oratorical urge again, and the agreeable feeling of swaying his audience. He turned, not as if he were addressing a group of idlers but replying to the murmur of an immense crowd.

  "It's not the end of France," he said.

  "I told you their Imaginot Line wasn't worth a dang," Latour began again. "I told you, it's like me here behind the counter. You've only got to come around the end. . . "

  And he went through his familiar demonstration. But Azarius interrupted him almost violently:

  "It's not the end of France. Every time France went down she came up brighter and better than ever. It's not the first time we've seen her hour of danger. We've seen that in history. But in that hour of danger there's always been somebody to lead her to victory. In the old days she had Joan of Arc. Then she had Napoleon. And don't forget Marshal Foch in the last war. Who's it going to be this time? We don't know, but he'll be there. In her hour of danger France has always had her liberator."

  He stopped to wet his lips and look around for approval. But the men were reacting against the emotion he had aroused in them, and in a mood for joking.

  "By golly, you've got your history down pat, Lacasse," boomed Latour. "You been goin' to night school?"

  The men laughed.

  "What do you know! Where's he find time to study?"

  "He sure learned his lessons!"

  "Oh, I read a little. I learn a bit," said Azarius curtly.

  His disappointed, nostalgic gaze fell on Emmanuel.

  "You're lucky," he said. "You've got the youth and the uniform and the weapons to go and fight." "Hey, you're talkin' like the old man of the tribe," said Latour. "You're not a dang day older than I am."

  'Tm no spring chicken anymore," said Azarius. There was a sudden break in his voice.

  But almost at once he drew himself up and faced Emmanuel, as if to measure himself against him. His blue eyes were flaming.

  "I salute you!" he said loudly, and went out.

  Emmanuel left the restaurant shortly after him.

  He had been moved by Azarius' words, and intrigued by the man's complex personality. Apparently he had never been able to provide properly for his family, yet he radiated strength and conviction. Emmanuel suspected that curiosity had played a role in his emotion. As thinking of Florentine's father was a way of being near her, he tried to define the impression Azarius had made on him.

  He felt that he had come away with a fine and generous idea, but he also perceived that it could be dangerous and he hesitated to make it his own. Of course, he too loved France. Like all young French-Canadians educated in colleges that had remained true to French culture (without always doing it justice), he had absorbed certain conservative ideas: the survival of the race, fidelity to ancestral traditions, the cult of the national anniversary. All these were fossilized rituals that had nothing, it seemed to him, that might appeal to or nourish the imagination of youth or even exalt their courage. His father, for example, fervent nationalist that he was, had done all he could to dissuade Emmanuel from taking arms and flying to the defence of that France which he pretended meant so
much to him.

  Yet Emmanuel too had been an adherent of this national cult, which at that time seemed to be undergoing some rejuvenation. Perhaps he, like Azarius, had wanted to go beyond mere fidelity to the past. Even when he was young he had perceived the glory and beauty of the living France of today. He loved France, he loved humanity, he was distressed by the suffering of the conquered peoples, but he knew that suffering had existed before the war, and that there are means other than war to relieve it.

  Despite his tender nature he was more open to justice than to pity, and wasn't sure whether the slow martyrdom of China or the frightful poverty of India didn't revolt him more than the invasion of France. It was at this point, tangled in these difficult considerations, that he lost sight of the impulse he had obeyed when he volunteered to fight. But it irritated him to reduce all these questions to how they affected him, and he rebelled. He knew the time would come when he would have to channel his thoughts into something that would be his own truth, his undeniable truth. But not tonight. He wanted first to enjoy a few days of relaxation, and his thoughts of Florentine consoled him.

  Walking aimlessly, he found himself several times in the rue du Couvent, a few steps from the Lacasse house, but he didn't dare to knock again for fear of being a bother to Rose-Anna.

  At eleven o'clock a fresh hope occurred to him and he went to lie in ambush outside the Cartier theatre. He scrutinized some thirty movie-goers as they came out. Suddenly a young girl seemed, from behind, to be the image of Florentine, and he went up to her holding out both hands. She turned around and saw a man so disappointed that she broke into peals of laughter.

  He gave up his search, reproaching himself for mistaking the girl for Florentine. Now that he thought about it, she didn't resemble her at all, she wasn't the least bit pretty, and he'd have liked to admit his mistake to Florentine and laugh about it with her. But how was Florentine, really? Did he know her at all? Was she naturally happy? Was she sad? Hot-tempered or gentle? Pretty hot-tempered, he thought, remembering her anger with Jean and himself in the restaurant. But all those coarse men around her! And that awful job! How tiring it must be! He tried to recall her features, shutting his eyes to see her as she had been at the Five and Ten that day. His other meetings with her had added nothing to that vision.

  Since that first day his picture of her had been precise and clear: the straight nose, the ardent eyes, the fine skin of her cheeks, almost transparent, and even the little vein in her neck that swelled at the slightest emotion. He remembered a remark of Jean's: "She's too thin." No, he thought, she's delicate, very delicate. He loved this word, which for him was the very definition of Florentine. It would be the first one he would use in trying to describe her to a friend. He repeated it to himself as he walked. It broke his heart to think of the wretched quarters of the Lacasse family, and of Rose-Anna sitting opposite him, so gentle and resigned. She must have been slim and pretty too once upon a time, he thought.

  As for Florentine, "That's no place for her," he said aloud. He thought of the noisy, common bazaar that was Notre Dame Street, and the house covered with soot, shunted up beside the railway. "It's no place for her," he repeated, as if by protesting against her fate he might succeed in altering it.

  From every store, wide open on his way, a strong, metallic voice escaped into the street. A word was lost between shops, but from one to the other the same voice continued, disconnectedly. A hundred radios, behind and in front of him, stuttered out their fragments of news, trying to remind him of the world's agony. He heard them but refused to listen, shutting out this invasion of shadows, of terror, accepting only isolated words which, devoid of sense, still horrified him.

  He was too impulsive to dwell long on today's disappointment. I'll see her tomorrow. Tomorrow! he thought. And the word filled him with a tantalizing anxiety. He would have liked the night to be over, and then he thought it was perhaps better that he hadn't seen Florentine at once on his arrival. This way, all his joy was still to come, his store of joy was intact, untouched.

  Tomorrow, he said to himself, calling on his patience. But he knew that his patience wouldn't last. Going home, at any rate, was out of the question. His mother would want to know, "And how did you spend your evening, dear?" and grate on his disappointment. He might then confess how he had gone out for nothing, and she would scold him gently, saying (and how sure he was of her words!), "But for goodness sakes, Manuel! You could have the pick of the most distinguished girls in St. Henri!"

  "Distinguished" was a word she often used. He smiled. Was Florentine distinguished? Of course not. She was a poor gir! from a poor suburb, with crude expressions at times, and gestures that were wrong. She was better than distinguished: she was life itself, with her knowledge of poverty and her revolt against it, with her long, floating , hair and her little stubborn nose and her odd expressions — hard truths at times.

  No, the more he thought about it, the less he believed his mother would approve his choice. A pity, but it didn't change his mind. Yet he wasn't ready to confront the opposition of his family. He couldn't stand anything tonight that would thwart his mood.

  What then? Look up an old friend? He couldn't think of one that he really wanted or needed to see. They all seemed to live on a different planet now. He was too upset and angry with these young people who, with a war on, continued their lives as if nothing had happened, preoccupied by their petty personal quarrels.

  Tonight he felt a desire to probe the mysterious troub- ling depths of his anxiety, since he had been unable to forget it. He had the feeling that he would derive more benefit from talking to the first person he met than from some long discussion with people from his own world. He believed that he and the workers he had seen tonight were pursuing their paths with the same burdensome enigma on their minds. Within himself too many things were still unexplained. He had always felt this desire to penetrate the soul of the masses, but never with such intensity. It was as if by coming nearer to the working class, staying in its midst, he was continuing his search for Florentine, a search that would lead him to a better understanding of her and break down the obstacles that lay between them. Yes, he wanted to hear a voice tonight that spoke Florentine's language.

  Suddenly he thought of his old school chums on St. Ambroise Street, the ones who gathered at Ma Philibert's place. He saw their faces marked by disappointment and hardship. How could he have forgotten them, the first friends? He had known them and their shivering poverty since he was a child, and had seen them as a living reproach raised up between himself and a certain kind of comfortable life with which he might otherwise have been quite satisfied. Now, as he thought of the divergent paths he and they had followed, he was curious, in a melancholy way, to know what had become of them. He thought: It's easy to predict a future for Jean. When you're not hampered by scruples, you succeed. But what about Alphonse and Pitou and Boisvert?

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The restaurant door was wide open. The walls, darkened by smoke, were visible with their cobwebbed corners. The place seemed empty and gloomy. It was not until Emmanuel went inside that he saw Alphonse sitting motionless in his usual spot by the unlit stove. His feet were up on a second chair, and his hands were clasped behind his neck. He seemed to have been staring glumly for hours at some invisible point.

  "Alphonse! How are things?" he asked, laying his hand lightly on the other's shoulder.

  Behind the drape that concealed the back room he could hear Ma Philibert puttering around. At about eleven o'clock she began making supper for her husband who came home from the factory at midnight. A cabbage boiling in the kitchen filled the restaurant with its pungent smell.

  Emmanuel turned a chair so that he could sit astride it facing Alphonse.

  "Keeping warm, eh?" he joked, nodding at the cold stove.

  Alphonse opened his eyes a little wider, then half closed them again as if the light were intolerable.

  "A stove's always company, lit or not lit," he said.

&nb
sp; He reached out a hand for a cigarette, waited patiently without budging while Emmanuel gave him a light, then shifted his weight on the chair.

  "The winter's over, you know,"said Emmanuel, laughing.

  "You don't say!" said Alphonse, and fell silent again.

  "Where are the other guys?" asked Emmanuel.

  "No idea."

  Then he began to laugh, a hurt, ironic laugh.

  "You mean you haven't seen Boisvert?"

  "No, I just got home."

  "Well, you missed something."

  His tone, loaded with implications, usually got him an attentive hearing. But as Emmanuel didn't encourage him, he lapsed into a semblance of hostile silence, which lasted too long for his taste. He cast with fresh bait.

  "There's a guy who's doing all right out of this war."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah, with bells on. He's got a job, and new shoes, a new hat, a watch with a six-month guarantee, and Eveline into the bargain. If you hear bells ringin' tomorrow or next day, that's his wedding. Monsieur Boisvert will be coming down the big aisle with Mademoiselle Rochon of the Five and Ten store hung around his neck for the rest of his life. She's one helluva protection against conscription. The guy's protected from head to foot. He's even taken out accident insurance. In case somebody walks on his corns while he's crossin' the street. Some kind of a child prodigy, that kid. And that's how he'll be his whole life, if he lives to be eighty. Don't you remember? A little snotnose, bummin' cigarettes right an' left, and when he had some, 'What's yours is mine and what's mine's my own.' He shoulda been a capitalist. 'They're mine,' he'd say. 'If you want cigarettes, buy some. Do like I do. I earn mine.' A guy can go far, you know, with ideas like that."