A few moments later, back in her bed, she thought sadly and with terrible embarrassment, There, I must be in the hospital. She had always had a horror of them. She imagined glaring lights and a horrid setting filled with strangers fussing around her. She had never been able to resign herself to that, not even when the doctor advised it for Philippe's hard birth. They'd caught her this time.
But slowly she knew from the smells and sounds that she was in her own house. She sighed, contented. She risked a glance, tried to come back to the present and make sense of what was happening around her. Two women were busy in the room. "Strangers, after all," she muttered.
That had always been the worst part. Being seen and helped by others. Needing help so desperately. She tried to pull up a fold of the sheet or the quilt.
A stranger? Not really. She recognized the face that was bent over her. It was the same face she had glimpsed during Daniel's birth, and Gisele's as well.
Strong hands were helping her, to her humiliation. For moments at a time she escaped into the past, to scattered memories. She was drifting like a rudderless boat through past years, seeing the landscape as it retreated swiftly. sometimes a great curve in the river, sometimes a single point on the bank, clear, precise, standing out. She fled on this rudderless boat, reviewing at a vertiginous speed the current of her life which she had ascended so laboriously; things she had barely noticed on the initial voyage assumed a fresh importance now. Everything was moving too fast, and the scene was too disordered for her to find her way in it. The more her visions mingled and were superimposed, the less she understood. She was there, excited, radiant, sweet, engaged to Azarius. As she saw this young girl dressed in bright muslin on a certain summer's day by the banks of the limpid Richelieu, she could have smiled vaguely at her, as at a stranger pleasant to meet but unimportant — an accidental acquaintance. But there she was again, grown old, accepting Eugène's sacrifice,struggling to keep a scrap of money which he took from her, money she needed for food and clothing. . . . Then she stood by the Richelieu again, her summer dress still rustling in the breeze, her hair tousled, the smell of the flowers and the hay caressing her senses.
And here she was walking, walking, through the streets of St. Henri, searching for a house where she could give birth. Then there was a wedding dress to finish in a rush. For Florentine, who was going to marry Emmanuel? No, it was before, while they were on relief. She was sewing to help with the housekeeping money. You mustn't get sick for long, you'd lose your customers. Miss Elise wanted her dress at once. . . . Oh, God, she had to finish the dress . . . she must get up. . . . The sudden effort unleashed a sharp wave of pain. Now she was leaning over a hospital bed. Who was dying? Who was suffering so? Daniel? Could she do nothing to ease his pain? Or her own? Their suffering seemed to have joined forces, melted together in her own flesh. Then a weak cry reached her ears. She leaned back into the pillows. And almost at once, through layers of darkness, came a voice:
"Did you see that, Madame Lavallee? Not a whimper! Not a one! You don't see many that brave, I can tell you."
Not a whimper, thought Rose-Anna. Who had said that? Then she remembered: it was the midwife who had helped her own mother. And she felt closer to her mother than she ever had. A pride and courage swelled in her heart as if new strength had been transmitted to her from old Madame Laplante.
Her mind wavered between sleep and a thousand small preoccupations. She stretched out a hand to point to a drawer in the dresser where the baby's things were to be found. She had always had them ready — little dresses that weren't silky or ornate but clean and warm.
Anxious, suddenly devoured by fear, she asked to see the baby. There was always this fear of having a malformed child.
"It's a fine boy," said the midwife. "He's delicate, but very lively. I'd say six pounds," she said, trying his weight in her strong arms.
Rose-Anna had a desperate, dizzying desire to hold the baby. At last, washed and swaddled in an eiderdown, he was brought to her. His tiny fists emerged from the blanket. On his satin cheeks trembled the shadows of his blonde lashes, fine as down. She had always found the fragility of a newborn baby very touching. She finally allowed herself to take some rest, one arm supporting the sleeping child. She felt emptied of all suffering and distress. After every child she felt this way, languid but courageous, as if she had once more been able to draw on the mysterious, unfailing fountainhead of her youth. It seemed to her that this was not her twelfth child but the first, the only one. Yet this concentrated tenderness did not exclude the others. She heard them come in a little later, led by Yvonne who had taken them for a walk after school. Excited by fresh air and freedom, they demanded their supper. Rose-Anna surprised herself by giving directions to the midwife who, according to the St. Henri custom, filled the office of maid as well as nurse.
"There's a cold roast and some bread," she murmured. "You can give some to the children. And you can see that their things are ready for school in the morning. There's always some little tears to mend. ,,
She was trying to think of all the other things she ought to be remembering. Already her thoughts were back in the daily tangle of small chores. She struggled bravely against sleep, and asked repeatedly:
"Isn't my husband back?"
He had gone out that morning ravaged by chagrin and a feeling she thought she understood: a horror at the life they led and at his own inability to change it. Where could he have gone after he left the hospital? What tortures was he suffering? And what might they drive him to do? Azarius, poor fellow! She had always held him responsible for their poverty, but now it seemed to her he had done his part. A man, she thought, can't put up with as much as a woman. I should have had more patience. He had his sorrows too.
And Rose-Anna, who for so long had taken no thought to please her husband by what she wore, asked for the lace bed jacket Azarius had given her just after they were married. She also asked for a white coverlet which she kept pressed and starched and folded against the worst contingencies of illness and death. For a moment as she saw the two women holding its corners, she caught a whiff of danger, a cold threat coming from the stiff folds which refused to open. Her mother had thought it was bad luck to use the best linen except in need. That need skulked behind words one didn't say aloud: accidents, departure from this life.
Then Rose-Anna had to smile at her silly fears, and gave in to the urge she had always had as a young mother: to appear all in white for Azarius. Her anguish left her, and she dropped off quietly to sleep.
THIRTY-TWO
When she awoke, night had fallen. They had pulled back the curtains to air the room. The red signal lamps of the railway shone through the window. The warning bell rang shrill and insistent, and Rose-Anna thought she heard a despairing cry dragging her from her sleep. Someone needed her . . . someone was calling. . . . She half raised herself in bed and called her husband's name. Azarius! Where could he be? Why was he calling her? Was this another bad dream? No, she was sure that while she slept Azarius' thoughts had gone out to her, and she was warned of some new trouble on its way to her. Her sudden movement had reminded her of her maltreated body. She called his name again, with all her strength, as if her voice had far to go to find him.
This time she heard steps in the next room. Those were a man's steps, for sure. A shy smile came to her lips and she felt an unexpected sweetness, that of rediscovering, after suffering, her old life with its duties, affection and, yes, even its torments and regrets.
The steps were drawing near. It was Azarius, and yet there was something unfamiliar in the sound. She heard the floor vibrate under heavy hobnailed boots. She knew what it was; he'd bought new work boots. Again she had to think of the past. A May morning. Her yesterday's wash, moist with the dawn, was flapping on the line in the sunlight outside, and birds were chattering. Azarius was leaving for his day's work. She had lain down in bed again after making his breakfast and was listening to his firm step ringing on the sidewalk. He went off singing, Az
arius did, on that May morning. She felt confident, confident about the baby that was about to be born — her first. She feared nothing. No misfortune could come near her. She listened for the last trace of sound from her husband's footsteps. With tender gravity she said aloud, speaking to her timid love, to her present, to her future: ''He's going off to earn our living!"
God, how happy she had been in those days, and how little goodwill it took to recognize the fact! Suddenly she wished she could detach some joy from her youth, just one, any one, and offer its memory to Azarius.
The door opened a crack, then completely, and she saw her husband's shape against a background of yellow light. Rose-Anna raised herself up in bed, a nervous smile on her drawn face, and held the sleeping baby toward him. Memories could be tarnished by the troubles that clung to them, but the baby — that was their future, that was their real youth rediscovered, the great challenge to their courage.
"Turn on the light, you have to see him," she said. "He's just like Daniel when he was born, remember, pink and blonde, really blonde. ..."
"Daniel!" he said.
She heard his choking voice. Then he buried his head on the bedside and began to weep with great, surging sobs.
"Daniel is past suffering," said Rose-Anna simply.
She reproached herself, however, for this way of recalling the dead child. Azarius, for his part, had not made her voyage to the depths of pain to understand that death and birth, in that place, have almost the same tragic meaning. She knew that she would miss Daniel a little more, and more intensely, as her daily life took over again and reminded her of him. She knew that her regrets were there, numbed within her brain; but just now Daniel seemed lucky to have escaped his human fate and the share of misfortune she had bequeathed to him. It was as if a balance were re-established.
She took Azarius' hand.
"We can't see each other, Azarius," she said. "Turn on the light."
At first he did not answer. Clumsily, he was wiping his j eyes.
"In a minute, Mother. I want to talk to you first."
Silence weighed on them. Then, in an uncertain voice, still gasping and tearful but determined, he said:
"Get ready for one heck of a surprise, Rose-Anna."
Usually this preamble would have thrown her in a panic. Today she merely pressed his hand a little harder.
"What on earth have you been up to now, Azarius?"
There was another silence, inexplicable. At any other time she would have felt it as a brutal warning.
"You're not saying anything, Azarius. So youVe been up to some nonsense!"
He sniffed loudly, wiping away a final tear with his hand. Then he got to his feet.
"Rose-Anna," he said, "for a long time youVe put up with everything and you haven't said a word, eh? Oh, I know." He brushed away a protest. "I know since we were married youVe always had a hard time. It started with little things and then bigger things. And it built up and built up till at last you couldn't even cry anymore, not even when you hid from me at night. Do you think I couldn't see you eating your heart out!" he cried vehemently. "Do you think I didn't see it all? And the worst thing after that was when you went out cleaning for other people and I was too yellow to take any old job, street cleaner or on the sewers."
In his humiliation, his admission of defeat, he felt a kind of intoxication, as if finally he were about to see the light of pardon. His voice broke. When he spoke again his voice was hollow and trembling:
"But you know, Rose-Anna, it was because I couldn't believe we were that bad off. I just didn't want to see it. Instead I thought about the times when we were young and ready for anything. That's what I always saw. I didn't see our misery. Oh, sometimes I did for a minute, when I was clear-headed, but I couldn't really believe it. I could still hear your laugh when you were young, and I couldn't believe a laughing girl like you never laughed anymore. I shut my ears and I shut my eyes. I was like that for a long time. Oh, Rose-Anna," he groaned, "it took me a good ten years to find out what had become of us."
"Azarius!" she cried, trying to make him stop, unable to bear their sufferings in this light. Had she herself not refused to recognize them? "Azarius, don't say that!"
"If I'm talking about all that today," he said, "it's because your poverty's finished, Rose-Anna. Do you hear me, Rose-Anna. There's going to be a new start. And the first thing you're going to do is look for a house to suit you, just as soon as you get back on your feet again. A good house, a bright house, Rose-Anna, like you always wanted.'Not one like this where I've seen you not get a wink of sleep, thinking and thinking how we're going to get by!"
A touch of pride and self-vindication swelled in his voice:
"I know you always thought I couldn't do it, I couldn't look after us. Well, by golly, it's done. Everything's looked after. You're going to live like you always wanted to. At least I'll have done that much, Rose-Anna. It's a bit late, for sure, but you'll have a few years of peace and quiet."
"Peace and quiet!" she murmured, her voice a cracked echo of his, incredulous, exhausted. "Peace and quiet!" Then she became herself. "Don't go saying crazy things, Azarius. Don't tempt Providence!" she begged.
He took a deep breath and went on, almost joyously now:
"Crazy things! Crazy things! That's what you always say. Just wait a bit, you'll see what's crazy. Quiet and peace like we never had, Rose-Anna. Just listen: from July on you're going to get a nice bit of money, cash, a nice government cheque that'll come right here to the house. And after that, the first of every month. What do you say to that, eh?"
He was talking with the same joy and satisfaction he had shown in other days when he gave her his whole pay. "Here, that's for you," he would say, slipping the roll of bills into her hand as he held it. "It's all for you." He had seemed to make her a gift then of his well-filled days, of his trade, of his strong arms, and of the future as well, the future to which they both looked without apprehension.
"No, no, Azarius," said Rose-Anna, not trusting her ears. "Don't talk to me about peace and quiet, poor man. That's more than we can ask for. Better not aim too high."
"Too high!" he repeated. "Will you listen when I tell you, you're going to get a nice cheque every month! Your peace and quiet's coming, Rose-Anna, coming in the mail! It's going to fall right in your hand! Every month. But wait a minute. That's just for you. You'll get some for the kids as well. Altogether you're going to have about ninety-seven dollars a month. Is that peace and quiet or isn't it?"
She smiled incredulously, still weak, and so far from any foreboding that she began to make gentle fun of him.
"Same old Azarius! With your furniture business you were going to make two thousand dollars a year, remember? And you were going to make three thousand out of the wrought iron. And with the sweepstake business you were all set to buy a house in Notre-Dame-de-Grace!"
Then, more gently:
"Now don't you worry about it. We'll get along like we always did. With our tw r o pairs of arms. Believe me, forget it. It's better like that. We're better off counting on our arms and hands than getting taken in by wild schemes. Schemes are only schemes. Ninety-seven dollars in the mail? Hey! We never had that much money in our lives! Not for a long time, anyway. That's a lot of money, don't you know? Where on earth will it come from? And why to us, poor fellow? Why us?"
"We've got it, I tell you!"
And he repeated with fresh emphasis:
"It's all yours. You're looked after. Ninety-seven dollars a month. And that's not all. The best of all is. . . "
He strode up and down the room, his hands behind his back, then sawed the air with one hand.
"The best of all is. . . "
He came nearer the bed, breathing rapidly:
"The best of all is, you're going to be rid of me."
He was aware of a terrifying silence as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He had tried to say it lightly, turn it into an affectionate joke, but there was no smile in the silence.
His forehead was sweating. He was panting softly. Had he acted to save himself or to save his poor family? Whichever it was, he had a sensation of accomplishment and resurrection.
The Tin Flute Page 33
