by Roch Carrier
The ball began to fly from one boy to the other, joyously, amid bursts of laughter. I decided then to laugh louder than all the big boys. But I still didn’t know what it was that Pierrette was going to lose, and what was so firmly fastened on.
For days my glance followed Pierrette; I invented all sorts of tricks to uncover her secret. I spied on her from behind an open book, I brought a little mirror that I used so I could see behind me, I hid under the stairs Pierrette would walk down. But Pierrette still looked as she always did, timid, plump, blushing and the biggest girl in our class. The big boys could have explained to me but I didn’t dare display my ignorance, I was so afraid of their mockery.
One morning, to celebrate a religious holiday, our whole class was taken to the church. All in a row, by order of height, we went to take Communion. But scarcely had we returned to school when the nun curtly ordered Pierrette to stand up. Blushing, Pierrette obeyed.
‘Instead of displaying such languorous, sensual postures in front of the men in our parish,’ the indignant nun roared, ‘you’d be better off praying to God, Pierrette, to chase the evil thoughts from your possessed body. When a person has such provocative bumps on her body it’s because the Devil’s within you.’
Pierrette’s face became even redder, then it suddenly turned white; she swayed and crumpled to the floor.
‘You see,’ said the nun, ‘the Devil is leaving her body.’
When I approached Pierrette, who had fallen to the yellow floor when she fainted, I didn’t see the Devil but I noticed what I’d never noticed before: Pierrette’s chest was puffed out just like a real woman’s. But why couldn’t the big boys go on playing ball when they saw her?
I hesitated for a long time before confiding in my friend Lapin.
‘Pierrette fainted today because the Devil put bumps on her body. Two big bumps, right here!’
‘Come on!’ said Lapin, ‘it wasn’t the Devil that did that.’
My friend Lapin was doubly superior to me: he was older and his father worked in the office of Duplessis’ government in Quebec. I understood what his profession was when, after school, behind the big rock we used as a secret hiding place, my friend Lapin opened a paper bag as I watched him.
‘This comes from my father’s office.’
He took out a dozen magazines that had nothing but photographs of girls on every page, girls with no clothes on; and all of them were possessed by the Devil because they had bumps! Bigger bumps than Pierrette. The magazines burned my hands like fire, but I was hungry to learn! I wanted to know! On every page I turned I could feel the sea of ignorance retreating. At every picture my body ceased to be that of a child and I became a man.
‘These magazines come from the United States,’ said Lapin.
‘I’d like that, to live in the United States,’ I said, slowly turning the pages.
I discovered that the United States was a truly amazing country because they knew how to print such beautiful magazines, while in Quebec the newspapers only knew how to take pictures of Cardinal Villeneuve or Maurice Duplessis in his old hat.
‘In the United States,’ Lapin explained, ‘the streets are full of girls like that!’
‘There can’t be many Catholics in that country,’ I said.
‘In the Protestant religion there’s no such thing as sin.’
As I couldn’t leave for the United States immediately to become a Protestant, I went back to school the next day as usual. That morning, I played ball with the others. When Pierrette came into the schoolyard I put the ball on the ground and watched her go past with the same expression in my eyes as the big boys.
When the Taxes Split the Roof
NEW BROTHERS and sisters kept arriving endlessly; we had to enlarge our house. With vulgar words that burned our children’s souls, the workmen scraped the cedar shingles off our house, knocked down the walls and blocked up the windows; beside new wood, hundred-year-old planks awoke from their sleep. It smelled good, like the forest, as though sap had travelled between the grooves joining the old wood to the new.
Then came the day when the workmen took off the roof. We were asleep in our beds at the usual hour, as we were every night. Our beds were in their proper places but our ceiling was the starry sky. Although our mother had taken from the chest woollen blankets, which, in wintertime, protected us from the threats of strong winds, we shivered as though we were about to sprout wings. Never had we seen the sky so vast. At times I had to clutch my blankets so I wouldn’t topple into the enormous well. We had learned in school that there are more stars in the sky than there are flowers on earth. Each golden dot in the depths of the sky was billions of millions times bigger than I. Beneath the sky I was a grain of dust that the slightest wind could have swept away; my hands clung to the blankets. Everything was good again. I listened to the good Lord breathing in His heaven. Why had He not given the children wings so they could soar from one star to another? Once again my bed seemed unstable, drifting on the blue water of the night; and again I clutched the sheets. Around me my brothers laughed dryly, like those who have little fear in their throats. I fell asleep. For me, the sky was a tranquil roof.
In the morning I woke up, bigger now because of the immensity of the sky. Never would I forget that when you live on earth you also live beneath the sky. Even now, man seems not to have been made of the earth under his feet but to have sprung from the sky above his head. It would be impossible for me to see myself in any other way than as a grain of dust lost on the crust of the sky.
We were dislodged from the sky by the workmen with their planks and nails, their saws and hammers. Downstairs in the kitchen, my father and mother were sitting at the big table. We jostled one another as we shouted, telling of our great adventure. Neither my father nor mother looked up. Their faces were marked with despair. Had they been crying? They didn’t speak or move, they were bent down. On the table a letter lay unfolded.
‘Defraud the government…’ my father moaned.
‘Defraud the government…’ my mother repeated.
‘Defraud,’ said my father again. ‘I never learned how to do that.’
My father was accused by the government of not paying all the taxes that he owed it. The government was demanding the unpaid balance, under the pain of a fine. My father wanted to pay that very morning. For him, a man wasn’t a man if he couldn’t pay cash.
He thought, too, that a man isn’t a man if he doesn’t put a roof over his children’s heads. Before we were born he went far away, behind the mountains, in search of money that would make him able to build a house like the one in the dream to which he often abandoned himself as he sat at the window, smoking. On Sundays he would select a volume, always the same one, from a series of books filled with pictures of far-off countries. He never read, but from page to page travelled to those countries where snowstorms didn’t exist. One day, he stopped before a Greek temple: ‘Wife’, he said, ‘that looks like the house I’m going to build you some day.’ Later we would often see him open the book and, surrounded by the smoke from his pipe, spend long hours dreaming of the Greek temple.
When he had accumulated the necessary money, my father went to see the contractor, carrying the book under his arm. They spent the day arguing before the book, opened to the page with the Greek temple.
‘Defraud the government,’ said my mother, ‘as though we weren’t honest.’
‘Defraud — I don’t even know what it means …’
We were on the stairs, bewildered by our parents’ despondency, and we were silent. Suddenly my father rushed outside, furious. Never had anyone in the village seen him in a hurry. But that morning he ran, and people still remember it.
The contractor had just arrived to begin his day’s work. My father stood, arms spread open, in front of the rusty, dented truck, which stopped with a squealing of its old brakes.
‘I’m stopping the work!’ my father shouted. ‘I’m stopping everything!’
The contractor burst out l
aughing. My father was famous for the funny stories he brought back from the other side of the mountains (and which he never told in the house); for the contractor, this joke about interrupting the work when he hadn’t yet put the roof on the house was really very comical.
‘You’ll have the only house without a roof in the whole county! Makes sense, though: you won’t have to shovel off the snow in the winter!’
The contractor’s face was red from laughing.
‘I’m stopping the work!’
My father was shouting so hard there were tears in his eyes. The women had come out on the galleries, lingering there as they pretended to be busy. The contractor, seeing my father cry, didn’t dare believe it was a joke. He silenced the motor of his truck. My father got in and sat beside him.
Through the windshield, where the sun was reflected in the dust and mud, you could see only the two men’s shadows. The children dared not come any closer and the women gradually went back inside the houses.
Then my father got out of the truck, which rattled, shook, turned around and went sheepishly back up the hill. My father came and took his place at the table where my mother waited for him, in front of the letter from the government. They didn’t speak to each other.
A few minutes later the contractor walked into the house: timidly, without saying hello, without looking at my father or mother, he placed a fat envelope on the table, then left as he had come in. My father’s fingers, stained brown by tobacco, tore open the envelope and took out some banknotes in different colours, which he pushed towards my mother. She counted them carefully, almost piously.
‘Now then,’ my father ordered, ‘you’re gonna write to the Tax Government in Ottawa and tell them, around here we know more about paying than defrauding.’
Meanwhile, the workers dismantled the scaffolding, tossing the pieces into the contractor’s old truck.
‘Walls without a roof…’ they grumbled.
‘… it’s like a man without a head.’
September nights aren’t as warm as July. The villagers paraded past our house, trying to see without looking.
My father immediately prepared to drive his black Ford to the other side of the mountains. Along came the bank manager: he’d been told of our misfortune. He hastened to offer his help. My father answered him curtly:
‘A man that takes other people’s money is a thief. I’m going to put the roof on my house with money I earn from my own work, by the sweat of my brow. Thanks very much.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you. Even the good Lord borrowed. He borrowed a mother…’
‘Not from your bank.’
My father got into his car.
Through the windows of our rooms without ceilings, without a roof, we gazed at the Ford as it raised a cloud of dust on the gravel road which appeared, then disappeared, depending on the hills and trees. My father had said:
‘I’ll be back with the roof.’
‘What if it rains?’ my mother asked. ‘The children …’
‘A little rain never hurt anything that’s growing!’
That night, lying under the roof of the vast night, I didn’t dream that I was flying like a bird. A great anxiety threw my child’s heart into turmoil. Was it the anxiety of all who question the night, yet know nothing of it, understand nothing?
The Hockey Sweater
THE WINTERS of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places - the school, the church and the skating-rink — but our real life was on the skating-rink. Real battles were won on the skating-rink. Real strength appeared on the skating-rink. The real leaders showed themselves on the skating-rink. School was a sort of punishment. Parents always want to punish children and school is their most natural way of punishing us. However, school was also a quiet place where we could prepare for the next hockey game, lay out our next strategies. As for church, we found there the tranquillity of God: there we forgot school and dreamed about the next hockey game. Through our daydreams it might happen that we would recite a prayer: we would ask God to help us play as well as Maurice Richard.
We all wore the same uniform as he, the red white and blue uniform of the Montreal Canadiens, the best hockey team in the world; we all combed our hair in the same style as Maurice Richard, and to keep it in place we used a sort of glue — a great deal of glue. We laced our skates like Maurice Richard, we taped our sticks like Maurice Richard. We cut all his pictures out of the papers. Truly, we knew everything about him.
On the ice, when the referee blew his whistle the two teams would rush at the puck; we were five Maurice Richards taking it away from five other Maurice Richards; we were ten players, all of us wearing with the same blazing enthusiasm the uniform of the Montreal Canadiens. On our backs, we all wore the famous number 9.
One day, my Montreal Canadiens sweater had become too small; then it got torn and had holes in it. My mother said: ‘If you wear that old sweater people are going to think we’re poor!’ Then she did what she did whenever we needed new clothes. She started to leaf through the catalogue the Eaton company sent us in the mail every year. My mother was proud. She didn’t want to buy our clothes at the general store; the only things that were good enough for us were the latest styles from Eaton’s catalogue. My mother didn’t like the order forms included with the catalogue; they were written in English and she didn’t understand a word of it. To order my hockey sweater, she did as she usually did; she took out her writing paper and wrote in her gentle schoolteacher’s hand: ‘Cher Monsieur Eaton, Would you be kind enough to send me a Canadiens’ sweater for my son who is ten years old and a little too tall for his age and Docteur Robitaille thinks he’s a little too thin? I’m sending you three dollars and please send me what’s left if there’s anything left. I hope your wrapping will be better than last time.’
Monsieur Eaton was quick to answer my mother’s letter. Two weeks later we received the sweater. That day I had one of the greatest disappointments of my life! I would even say that on that day I experienced a very great sorrow. Instead of the red, white and blue Montreal Canadiens sweater, Monsieur Eaton had sent us a blue and white sweater with a maple leaf on the front — the sweater of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I’d always worn the red, white and blue Montreal Canadiens sweater; all my friends wore the red, white and blue sweater; never had anyone in my village ever worn the Toronto sweater, never had we even seen a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. Besides, the Toronto team was regularly trounced by the triumphant Canadiens. With tears in my eyes, I found the strength to say:
‘I’ll never wear that uniform.’
‘My boy, first you’re going to try it on! If you make up your mind about things before you try, my boy, you won’t go very far in this life.’
My mother had pulled the blue and white Toronto Maple Leafs sweater over my shoulders and already my arms were inside the sleeves. She pulled the sweater down and carefully smoothed all the creases in the abominable maple leaf on which, right in the middle of my chest, were written the words ‘Toronto Maple Leafs’. I wept.
‘I’ll never wear it.’
‘Why not? This sweater fits you … like a glove.’
‘Maurice Richard would never put it on his back.’
‘You aren’t Maurice Richard. Anyway, it isn’t what’s on your back that counts, it’s what you’ve got inside your head.’
‘You’ll never put it in my head to wear a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater.’
My mother sighed in despair and explained to me:
‘If you don’t keep this sweater which fits you perfectly I’ll have to write to Monsieur Eaton and explain that you don’t want to wear the Toronto sweater. Monsieur Eaton’s an Anglais; he’ll be insulted because he likes the Maple Leafs. And if he’s insulted do you think he’ll be in a hurry to answer us? Spring will be here and you won’t have played a single game, just because you didn’t want to wear that perfectly nice blue sweater.’
So I was obliged to wear the Maple Leafs sweater. When I arrived on the rin
k, all the Maurice Richards in red, white and blue came up, one by one, to take a look. When the referee blew his whistle I went to take my usual position. The captain came and warned me I’d be better to stay on the forward line. A few minutes later the second line was called; I jumped onto the ice. The Maple Leafs sweater weighed on my shoulders like a mountain. The captain came and told me to wait; he’d need me later, on defense. By the third period I still hadn’t played; one of the defensemen was hit in the nose with a stick and it was bleeding. I jumped on the ice: my moment had come! The referee blew his whistle; he gave me a penalty. He claimed I’d jumped on the ice when there were already five players. That was too much! It was unfair! It was persecution! It was because of my blue sweater! I struck my stick against the ice so hard it broke. Relieved, I bent down to pick up the debris. As I straightened up I saw the young vicar, on skates, before me.
‘My child,’ he said, ‘just because you’re wearing a new Toronto Maple Leafs sweater unlike the others, it doesn’t mean you’re going to make the laws around here. A proper young man doesn’t lose his temper. Now take off your skates and go to the church and ask God to forgive you.’
Wearing my Maple Leafs sweater I went to the church, where I prayed to God; I asked him to send, as quickly as possible, moths that would eat up my Toronto Maple Leafs sweater.
Foxes Need Fresh Water
THEY USED TO tell us that rich ladies in the big cities wouldn’t buy fur coats unless they were made from our foxes. These rich ladies thought our foxes had a ‘sheen’ the rest of the foxes in the world were deprived of. So our foxes were reserved from birth for the coats of some rich lady or other. The breeders would often make fun of them as they threw carrion to the animals: ‘There you go, a shovelful of guts for the fat lady’. A fox is a fox, after all, and why would the good Lord make our foxes finer than anyone else’s?
As the men waited for winter to end they would talk about these things, smoking their pipes. Monsieur Josaphat said:
