by Roch Carrier
Father Anthyme didn’t want his cider drunk by these Anglais who had kicked out the people who had come to pray for his son. But he went down to his cellar and dug up some more bottles. “We know how to live,” he said to the soldiers, who smiled because they didn’t understand a word.
Henri, the deserter, in order not to risk being caught and taken back to the army by the Anglais soldiers, remained under cover in his attic, motionless in his bed, while Amélie and Arthur went out to pray for Corriveau’s salvation. Henri breathed carefully, avoiding any movement, any creaking of his old mattress that could reveal, in this too perfect silence, the presence of a man who refused to go to war.
Henri even had to force his children and those of his wife — that is, the ones she had had with Arthur — to forget about him.
The presence in the village of those seven soldiers who had accompanied Corriveau gave him palpitations; the soldiers could very well go back with their hands not empty: there were a number of deserters in the village. Because Amélie wanted to live with two men in the house Henri would be one of the first to be captured. The people in the village didn’t like two men living with the same woman. Henri knew he was superfluous. It wouldn’t take the soldiers long to find him if they looked.
He despised his fear as he despised himself for having lost Amélie. Even if he had his turn in bed with her, even if she called him when Arthur went out, Henri was well aware that she preferred Arthur.
Under his skin, in his flesh, the smarting of his anguish tormented him; he wanted to scratch himself, to claw until the blood came. He would not forgive himself for hiding away in a glacial attic, a man whose wife had been taken away from him and who was afraid that they would come to this black hole where he was scared, where he despised himself, and force him to go back to the war.
The sun had set very early as it always does in winter, when even the light does not resist the cold. But despite the invading night Henri did not sleep.
In all fairness, it was his turn to sleep with Amélie tonight, but because of Corriveau he would lose it. He didn’t dare let himself be seen on the outside. Amélie had had Arthur go along with her to see Corriveau. Suddenly it occurred to Henri that it was just as dangerous for Arthur to go out and be seen by the seven soldiers as it was for him, because Arthur was as much a deserter as he was. In fact, Arthur was even more of a criminal because he had never even worn a uniform. Because he was going to pray with Amélie, Arthur had insisted on spending the night in her bed. Henri had had the wool pulled over his eyes once too often. He despised himself. Perhaps Amélie and Arthur would give themselves up to the soldiers? Henri flattened himself into his bed and pulled the covers over his head. Arthur would spend two consecutive nights with Amélie while Henri, in his attic, was bored to death.
Every night he was tortured by the same thought: his wife no longer belonged to him, his house no longer belonged to him, nor his animals, not even his children, who all called Arthur “papa.” He cursed the war; he gathered up all the curses he knew, inventing some that came from the bottom of his heart, and loosed them against the war. He hated the war with all his heart. But he thought sometimes that he would be less unhappy in the mud of the war. It even seemed to him more desirable to be unhappy with his family, in his own house, than to be happy in the war. Then he would tell himself that it was better to be unhappy in a cold attic than happy in the mud of the war. But he knew above all that man is unhappy wherever he is, that in the village the only man who was not unhappy was Corriveau, on condition that there was no hell and no purgatory. Drowned in the untidy remorse of his thoughts, Henri fell asleep.
Shortly after, he awoke, thinking of the sun. The thought of the sun had awakened him just like a real ray of sunlight caressing your face on a summer morning.
Henri’s sun was only a mirage, a poor thought that would not revive the dead earth beneath the ice and snow, an idea that would not light up the attic where Henri feared the night and the mysterious shadows. He pulled the covers over his head again to give himself the illusion of warmth and security. Henri’s sun would not even light up the sad recesses of his mind.
Henri had dreamed of a big sun, round as an orange; he could still see it in his mind, precise, high, immense, dizzily motionless. He imagined it was suspended by a wire; if the wire were cut the sun would fall and, opening its mouth, it would swallow the whole world. Henri contemplated this sun. There was nothing above it or beside it. It was indeed a solitary sun.
Henri noticed that, beneath this sun, something was arranging itself on the ground. It looked like a house, but as he observed more carefully he saw that it was not a house but a big box, and as he thought better he realized that it was Corriveau’s coffin, which he had seen going by in the street covered with the Anglais’ flag. Henri saw the sun, then, very high, and on the earth he could see nothing but Corriveau’s coffin.
To tell the truth, this coffin beneath the sun was bigger than Corriveau’s, because the people from the village were entering it, one by one, one after the other, just as they entered church, bent over, submissive, and the last villagers brought their animals with them — cows, horses, and the others following. It was a silent cortege. The coffin was much more vast than the village church for, as well as the villagers and their animals, squirrels, snakes, dogs and foxes were entering the coffin; even the river suddenly climbed up like a snake to enter the coffin. Birds came down from the sky to go into it, and people from neighbouring villages. The cortege was interrupted; people were arriving with their baggage and their children and their animals. Henri was among these strangers, and he went into the coffin too. Houses were moving like awkward turtles; covered with ice and snow they slid along heavily and disappeared into Corriveau’s coffin. Now people were arriving in crowds, whole villages at a time, huge numbers of people patiently waiting their turn. They came in trains, hundreds of trains, then giant steamboats drew up and spilled their crowds into Corriveau’s coffin. From the four corners of the earth people came running up, rushing into Corriveau’s coffin which was swelling up like a stomach. The sea too, even the sea had become gentle as a river and was emptying itself into Corriveau’s coffin: he saw fish with eight hands, with three heads, crabs with terrifying teeth, insects too, creatures in shells that seemed like pebbles, then nothing more. The entire ocean had been drunk up and in the whole world nothing remained but Corriveau’s coffin.
“Now it’s all over,” thought Henri.
The earth was deserted. Now the coffin seemed very small, hardly as big as the one Henri had seen going by on the shoulders of the Anglais soldiers. The earth was silent, motionless. Henri was relieved not to be thinking of anything.
Then groups of men, mechanically disciplined, began spilling out from the torn horizon. They were soldiers, armed, marching in step. Countless armies were marching towards one another; their march was fierce, implacable. Henri understood that they would converge at Corriveau’s coffin. They did not raise their weapons but, soldierlike, entered Corriveau’s coffin. Henri waited a long time. Nothing more happened. On the whole earth, only Corriveau’s coffin under the Anglais flag still existed.
He cried to himself, “I’m going crazy!” He moaned again, “I’m losing my mind!”
He sat up in his bed. Night was over and day had begun in his attic. Henri noticed Corriveau’s coffin. It was in his attic. Henri saw it, at the back of the attic. A hand was pushing Henri’s back, pushing him towards Corriveau’s coffin which now was just big enough to contain one man: Corriveau or himself.
“Help!”
He leapt from his bed, pushed aside the trunks, lifted the trapdoor, let himself down and ran downstairs. The children were asleep; the walls were cracking as though the devil was nibbling at them.
Henri slipped into Arthur’s boots, put on his wool jacket and his fur cap. Despite the danger of being caught by the soldiers and taken back to the war, Henri decided to join the others at Corriveau’s house. The door was open: he hesitated
on the step.
The night was so black, the village so flooded by the night, it seemed so deep that Henri felt dizzy.
He stuck the shotgun in his hand.
When the villagers found themselves in front of Anthyme Corriveau’s house, their feet in the snow which was as sharp as splinters of glass, when they understood that they had been expelled from Anthyme Corriveau’s house, that they had been thrown out into this icy sea where they were trembling in their soaking clothes, when they thought again that it was outsiders, Anglais, who had chased them out of Corriveau’s house, a house that had come down through five generations of Corriveaus, all living in the village and in the same house on the same bit of land for more than a hundred years; when they reminded themselves that Corriveau, a little French-Canadian boy, a son of the village, had been killed in a war that the Anglais from England, the United States and Canada had declared on the Germans (Corriveau had been killed in the mud of the old country while the Anglais were sitting on cushions in their offices; the Anglais left their shelters sometimes, but only to go and bring a young French Canadian, dead in the war, back to his family); when the villagers realized that they had been sent out like dogs that had peed on the rug by the Anglais who weren’t from their village or their county or their province, or even their country, Anglais who weren’t even Canadians but only maudits Anglais then the villagers knew the depth of their humiliation.
Gesticulating, swearing, bickering, arguing, pushing and shoving, spitting, drunk, they swore inflammatory oaths agains the Anglais who had settled themselves into Corriveau’s house.
Joseph waved his stump, wrapped up in its bandages, and shouted louder than the others. “The maudits Anglais have taken everything away from us, but they haven’t got our Corriveau. They won’t get Corriveau’s last night!”
Sweat was streaming over the body of little Mireille, over her face, and wetting the sheets.
She didn’t move.
She couldn’t stir; her limbs refused. The night weighed on her like the stories of the loaded wagon that had capsized on her the summer before. Only her eylids were moving. She opened her eyes, then closed them. Though her eyes were shut she could still see.
Mireille wished that she could see nothing.
She raised her foot and looked at it as though it wasn’t hers, as though there was only her foot in the bedroom.
In the light Mireille could see her toes at the end of her foot. She curled them, uncurled them, and watched them move. Then she stopped. She saw her foot as it really was: it was wax. She could no longer shake her wax toes, she could no longer pivot her foot around her ankle. She didn’t dare touch her wax foot, even with her fingertips.
She wanted to yell, but she had lost her voice. She couldn’t call for help.
Mireille especially did not think of her fear. She was busy instead watching the smile of Corriveau who was lying in her little brother’s place.
Mireille had seen Corriveau sometimes when he was still in the village, and today she had seen his cortege go by.
Corriveau was smiling.
Mireille knew that Corriveau would get up. She waited, stiff, paralysed, mute. She waited dutifully. Then Mireille heard the sound of the straw in the mattress. She saw Corriveau get up, look in the pockets of his trousers and take out a match. He lit it with his thumbnail. He looked around him. Then he walked towards Mireille’s feet, lighting his way with the match.
Corriveau brought the match near Mireille’s foot. She saw little flames start up at the end of her wax foot.
Satisfied, Corriveau went back to lie down in the coffin, which was in the place of her brother’s bed.
Corriveau lay down, stretched out with satisfaction, and fell asleep smiling.
Mireille was suffocating. But she could do nothing with her toes, those ten little burning candles that were watching over Corriveau.
Anthyme Corriveau and his wife had fed the Anglais as though they were boys from the village. They watched them. The Anglais ate little. They spoke little. They drank little. If one of the Anglais spoke, the others were quiet and listened. If a question were asked one at a time would answer. They didn’t laugh: instead, they compressed their lips in a miserly smile. Anthyme and his wife could not understand what the Anglais were saying, but they didn’t like to hear the sounds of their language because of their eyes. “Their eyes aren’t frank,” thought Anthyme. They had the impression that the Anglais were making fun of them when they spoke.
“We’re all French Canadians here,” thought Father Corriveau; “my little boy who is dead is a French Canadian, everyone is a French Canadian. The whole province is French Canadian, there are French all across Canada, even in the United States. So why did they send these Anglais to bring back my son?”
Anthyme Corriveau could not overcome a certain sadness; it was not because he had lost his child, but another sorrow that he couldn’t explain.
Listening to her rattling saucepans in the sink the old man knew that his wife was not pleased with the way things had worked out.
“We were among our own people, all from the village,” she was thinking. “We all knew each other, because we all live the same life; we raise our children together. My son is the son of the whole village. All the people who were here are a little bit his parents and I could even say that the young people were his brothers or sisters. Even when trouble comes to the village we like to be together; we all share the trouble, and then it’s not so hard to bear. When we’re all together we’re stronger, and the trouble doesn’t bother us as much. Why did the Anglais break up our get-together? My son would have been happy to see us all around him. But the Anglais have broken up our evening. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”
Mother Corriveau didn’t want to serve the Anglais at the table any more. She offered them three or four tourtières and went into the living room. Anthyme put a bottle of cider on the table and found his wife kneeling in front of their son’s coffin.
In the kitchen the Anglais were speaking in low voices, saying words that Mother Corriveau and her husband could no longer take the trouble to understand. Hands joined on the coffin, Anthyme Corriveau and his wife forgot about the Anglais whose voices came to them discreet, distant. The old couple were alone. It was the first time they had been alone with their son. They were close to each other as they had been on their wedding day. Mother Corriveau was wiping away tears as she had on that day. Anthyme’s eyes would not permit tears but, as on his wedding day, he had a violent desire to cry, to swear, to hit himself, to break something. Had they lived their lives to come to this dismay, this sorrow?
The paths of everyone’s lives, they were thinking, lead to the coffin. They could only accept that this law was a fair one. She wept. He raged. Mother Corriveau did not want life to be like this. Anthyme could not remake it, but he was convinced that if it was necessary for coffins to go by, and for life to stop at a coffin, it was not fair for people to have such an obvious love of life.
The old people wept.
What was the use of having been a child with blue eyes, of having learned about life, its names, its colours, its laws, painfully as though it were against nature? What was the use of having been a child so unlucky in life? What was the use of the prayers of that pious child, who had been as pale as the pictures of the Saints? What was the use of the blasphemies of the child become a man?
Everything was as useless as tears.
What was the use then of the sleepless nights that Mother Corriveau had spent consoling the child who cried from the pain of living? What was the use of the old people’s grief?
Anthyme could not stay on his knees. He wanted to destroy something. He went to the stove, took some logs, and threw them on the fire. Mother Corriveau wiped her tears with her apron.
“God isn’t reasonable.”
She wanted to say that he was exaggerating, that he was not being fair. Anthyme came back to her. “It’s not worth the trouble to have children if God does that,�
� he said, indicating his son.
His wife thought of the others: Albéric, Ferdinand, Toussaint, Gaston, Alonzo, and Anatole who were in countries where they were fighting the war against the Germans. There was even Ernest and Nazaire in countries where they were fighting the Japanese. They were shooting bullets at this moment, without knowing that their brother had been killed. Mother Corriveau realized that it was night; no, right now her children were not fighting: they were asleep, because it was night. The thought reassured her. When would they learn that their brother was dead? Would they know before the war was over? Letters arrived at their destinations so seldom.
Suddenly, Mother Corriveau got up. An image had come to her, terrifying, an image to make her die of grief. She had seen in her mind the coffins of all her boys piled up one on top of another.
“Anthyme! Anthyme!” she begged.
He started. “What is it?”
She ran to him in tears, pressed herself against him. Anthyme’s arms closed around her.
“We have to say a lot of prayers.”
“I’m going to the barn. I want to swear.’”
Joseph-with-the-hand-cut-off was the first to dash towards the house. The others followed. He smashed into the door. The house shook as if a bull had fallen on the roof. The windows trembled. The door sprang open as if someone had pulled it. Joseph brandished his stump in its bloody rags. “We want our Corriveau! We want our Corriveau! You’re not taking our Corriveau!”
Anthyme went to Joseph calmly. “Cut off your hands, cut off your feet too if you want, cut off your neck if that’s what you want, but don’t tear out my doors!”
Mother Corriveau stayed beside her husband, an iron pot in her hand, ready to strike. “I’ve just taken it off the fire, and it’s red hot. I’ll fry your face, you with the hand cut off.”
