Tom and Charlie are on their fifth cigarette. The morning’s conversation lingers awhile on whether Ted knew it was his time, if he had seen death coming or if she had taken him by surprise.
Death is an old friend. They talk about her casually. She has been on their heels for so long that they can feel her presence lurking, waiting, discreet during the day but sometimes intrusive at night. Their morning conversation is one way of keeping her at bay. Once they have said her name, she arrives, joins in their conversation, won’t relent, wanting the spotlight, and they snub her, make fun of her, at times insult her and then send her off, and she, like a good dog, goes back to gnawing her bone in her corner. She’s in no rush.
Charlie is the authority when it comes to death. He got to know her up close while he waited for her in his trapping camp. And Tom never stops asking him, ‘Did you see her? Did you see her?’
‘No, I didn’t see her. It wasn’t my time.’
‘So tell me, why didn’t you take your pinch of salt then? It would have been so simple.’
‘I’m telling you, it wasn’t my time. Plus, it was summer, it was warm, and there was a sweet smell in the air, I heard the birds chirping – it wasn’t my time.’
‘Methinks, dear Charlie, that it will never be your time. That you’ll never decide.’
Soon they would stop having these private conversations in Charlie’s cabin. Great change was coming to the little community by the lake.
THE COMMUNITY BY THE LAKE
Great change was coming to the little community by the lake. The idea of a woman, not to mention an old, very fragile woman, in a place so rugged was quite simply inconceivable. And yet the idea of that inconceivable female presence was taking shape. No one had said it, but they all knew they wouldn’t let the woman go back to where she came from. In this community, there was a strong enough spirit of revolt and bravado to tackle the impossible. But how?
Bruno had quickly sorted things out with his mother. He called her from a service station to tell her that his aunt had escaped when he went to pay for gas in Huntsville – he had looked for her everywhere, but to no avail. He had waited for the police, answered their questions, signed a statement and returned, reassured by the polite indolence. They would only take so far the search to find an old woman nobody wanted.
So now she found herself expelled from the world, completely dependent on them, and they would have to solve some problems the situation posed, the first being to house her in a modicum of comfort. Ted’s cabin offered this minimal comfort, but they were reluctant. It was as if Ted still lived there.
Marie-Desneige, who was still named Gertrude, had grown accustomed to her room, left it rarely and didn’t seem to worry what would become of her. Her current preoccupation was choosing a new name for herself. She was torn between those of the residents of 999 Queen Street she had known, and there had been many. She also felt like inventing one. It was an amusing pastime, absorbing, an honour and a responsibility that left her no time for anything else. She wrote each name on a piece of paper so as not to forget it, and annotated it so as not to forget the person who went by that name. It seemed to her that the world was laid out before her when she spread all the pages on the bed.
She had been there for four days and nothing had been decided, neither in the great hall where Bruno and Steve smoked their brains out nor on the shores of the lake. And yet the old woman would have to live somewhere other than the Lebanese man’s hotel. Fall was on the way and with fall the hunters, the transients and other askers of questions.
On the morning of the fifth day, they decided to bring her to the old men’s camp to see how things would go on either side. The trip was made on a quad. Once again, she showed no surprise. Not even when she had to get up on this strange machine and wrap her arms around Bruno. Steve followed on foot accompanied by his dog.
Tom and Charlie, alerted by the noise, were waiting for them outside.
There was a crowd in front of Charlie’s cabin. Four men, one woman, four dogs and a cloud of mosquitoes that had come to greet them all.
Tom, as was his habit, was showing off. He greeted the lady and added a wink that, he thought, would make any woman in good working order blush. He tried to blush himself when he realized that he would have to apologize to the lady, but at his age the blood doesn’t really rush anywhere, and he contented himself with staying pale and thinking that this woman was too pretty, a finely cut gem, too pretty and too graceful, and she didn’t belong among them.
Charlie went about his duties as host so as not to have to say anything. He found everyone a comfortable log, lit the fire to chase away the mosquitoes and disappeared into his cabin to heat the water while mentally counting the receptacles he had for tea. The old lady, with her lather of hair and hands like lace, was as delicate as a fledgling. It seemed all it would take would be to blow on her for the fledgling to tumble from her seat. The thought bothered him. Rather than blowing on her, he wanted to take the baby bird in the hollow of his hand and bring her back to the nest, a thought that bothered him even more.
Steve and Bruno led the conversation, exchanging thoughts on the nice weather and trout fishing, while waiting for the opportunity to slide toward what was on their minds.
The tea was finished, the sun was reaching its zenith, and they still hadn’t taken a first step toward what seemed to be an impossible objective: convincing themselves that the aunt could stay in Ted’s cabin.
That’s when Charlie first spoke.
‘What should we call you?’ he asked.
And the aunt answered immediately, as if her response had been prepared, even though she was still wondering which name to choose among all the ones she had left on her bed.
‘Marie-Desneige.’
‘Marie-Desneige. That’s a nice name.’
Without realizing it, Charlie had just accepted Marie-Desneige’s presence among them. As a result, his mind starting moving very fast, faster than he was used to, too fast, the ideas bumping into one another, so that he couldn’t follow them all, and he heard himself say, even before the idea had taken shape in his mind:
‘We’ll build you something, not too far, something comfortable, here, next to my cabin. We can’t let you live as if you’ve spent your whole life in the woods.’
It was unexpected, disconcerting, but entirely feasible. The idea quickly made its home in each of them, so relieved were they not to have to disturb Ted in his spirit life. And the idea was exciting. They hadn’t built a cabin since Tom’s. There had been a few sheds that had collapsed and had to be rebuilt, but a cabin to live in, that was something different entirely. A cabin to live in, well, it was where you lived, and where you died. It was where you saw the sun waiting for you on summer mornings and set in winter. It was where you heard noises in the night. A cabin to live in was your companion in all of your thoughts. With a cabin to live in, you were never alone.
Something comfortable, Charlie had said, and he was right. The lady, Marie-Desneige, needed a cabin with all the modern conveniences. Running water, they quickly agreed, she needed running water. No small order. They discussed it at length. And then they decided that she would also need an indoor shower and toilet. More technical problems that they seized on enthusiastically. Building Marie-Desneige’s cabin absorbed them to the point that they forgot about its future occupant, sitting on her stump, looking, distraught, from one to the other.
‘A cat. I would like a cat in my house.’
A feeling of discomfort and relief among the men. She had just called them up short on their bad manners by reminding them she was there, but had indicated her consent to it all so long as a cat was thrown in.
They built her a cabin next to Charlie’s. All the mod cons: running water, indoor shower and toilet, which required major work. The water was brought up from the lake by a pipe wrapped in insulation and pumped indoors by a gas generator. They would use propane to heat the water for the shower, to provide light and heat and to
power the fridge and stove – luxury items in the deep woods but deemed necessary for a lady who was used to neither firewood nor maintaining a home. She appeared to be capable of nothing. Sixty-six years of institutionalization had left her with no skills or bearings. A baby bird who had fallen from the nest, Charlie thought once again.
The work took three weeks. The cabin took shape fairly quickly because they had opted for a traditional structure with beams and insulating boards. A log cabin would have taken too much time. The cabin had a main room and in the back, on the north side, a tiny room that they called the bathroom. They were so impressed, Tom and Charlie in particular, who had long forgotten these conveniences, that they wound up dispensing with the term cabin, referring instead to Marie-Desneige’s little house.
The work started early in the morning with Steve and Marie-Desneige’s arrival on a quad. Marie-Desneige loved her room, but could no longer stand being alone at the hotel, and although she was of no use whatsoever at the construction site, she spent her days there. Bruno arrived later. He had traded in his van for a pickup truck, loaded with everything needed for the work. Money wasn’t a problem, and had never been – the plantation provided more than was necessary.
Marie-Desneige’s mood started to show cracks as the days went by. At first it was just tiny flickers in her eyes, and then dark areas, and then she disappeared, her eyes went empty.
Sometimes they would hear her singing. She would go sit in the grass near the lake and stay there a long time, absorbed, they thought, in contemplating the water. A voice would rise softly, very different from the one they were used to her using. A pure, crystalline voice, light and distant. Only a few flutey notes would reach them over the hammering. They would slow their pace, and the melody would spread its wings. It was a song of ancient times, the son of a king who loved a shepherdess, the farewells of a man going to the gallows, a sad story that Marie-Desneige sang in a tender voice. She sang it in a loop, once, twice, three times, the voice growing hoarse at the saddest part of the story, six times, eight times, the voice trailing off to nothing more than a murmur, nine times, ten times, the hammers falling silent, all eyes turning toward the lake. Marie-Desneige, her knees hugged against her, was rocking back and forth and mumbling a song, its pain reaching them in muted notes of despair.
The incantatory songs at the edge of the lake made them worry that insanity was slowing resurfacing.
The work continued, and Marie-Desneige’s quarters were ready in early September. A small house just slightly larger than Charlie’s cabin, with screens on the windows, black lathing paper on the outside walls and a sheet-metal roof that overhung the doorway. They imagined that this part jutting out could become a screened-in porch where Marie-Desneige would rock on summer evenings singing her sad melodies. The insanity might be just that, too much sadness. She simply needed some space.
The day finally arrived when Marie-Desneige moved into her house. A grey day, overcast, and a little rain holding back. The furniture was moved in hastily and haphazardly, furniture Bruno had procured from different places so as not to arouse curiosity, bought ready made; there was no question of fashioning a table with an axe for Marie-Desneige. No time and out of the question – Marie-Desneige needed things nice and new. A table, three chairs, a box spring, a mattress, a gas stove and a small refrigerator, all of which were stored in the great hall of the hotel and then loaded into the pickup, transferred to the quad trailer and hauled into the little house.
The photographer appeared at the end of the trail just as they were fussing around the refrigerator.
They had forgotten about her.
Charlie noticed her first, surrounded by dogs and waving something over her head.
The photos of Chummy, he thought. How could I forget she was coming back with them?
It was indeed the pictures of Charlie’s dog that she was waving about. A pretty flimsy calling card under the circumstances.
In a single movement, the four men gathered in front of the door to stop her from going in and, above all, to hide Marie-Desneige in case she felt like going out. But it was like trying to hold back the rain. Sooner or later in the next few minutes, the photographer’s questions would come, and nothing they could answer would turn things around.
There was a lot of brain activity in the compact, hostile mass that greeted the photographer. Steve was fuming at the dogs for not announcing her arrival. The woman truly has a gift, he thought. Bruno was thinking that she wasn’t bad at all, this woman, hefty but in the right proportions, and, well, almost pretty. The thought shone in his eyes, which did not escape Tom, who was amusing himself with the idea of romance. Charlie dropped the idea of driving the intruder away with a few shotgun shots, but, lips sealed, he thought, I won’t say a word, she’ll get nothing out of me.
All of this would prove to be pointless.
When Marie-Desneige heard the photographer’s voice greet the men, it awoke something in her, a memory, a hope, something pleasant, absolutely irresistible, because she swept out of the house, made a beeline through the men and found herself all smiles before the photographer.
‘Ange-Aimée,’ she whispered.
They were witnessing the ebbing of her old life, someone she thought she recognized, a person who had been dear to her, probably a friend who had been through the bad and the unimaginable at her side.
‘Ange-Aimée,’ she whispered again, but sadly. The voice was barely audible, the disappointment palpable.
They grieved for her, they wanted to console her. The men were caught off guard faced with a woman’s distress, but the photographer knew what to do. She leaned toward Marie-Desneige, took her hands and brought them to her lips.
‘You can call me Ange-Aimée if you like.’
Marie-Desneige’s smile returned tentatively.
The photographer had just won Marie-Desneige’s friendship and, along with it, her admission to the hideaway. They didn’t realize it at the time. It was only afterward, when Marie-Desneige led the photographer into the house and they heard laughing and chattering, that they understood that their little community would never be the same.
The two women finally came out, and the photographer announced that Marie-Desneige would need sheets, towels and curtains.
Curtains!
And just like that, it was done. There were two women at the hideaway. One there to live and the other, the visitor, free to come and go. And they were left powerless before these two women and a burgeoning friendship.
They did what they were told and brought linens, dishes and other household necessities from the hotel, but not curtains because the ones at the hotel fell apart in their hands. Tomorrow, I’ll go buy curtains, the photographer decided, and the day ended on this solemn promise.
And just like that, Marie-Desneige was settled in her house for the night. She had unpacked her suitcase, hung up her clothes, put on her nightdress and was waiting in her bed, her hands flat on her thighs and her back straight, waiting for her body to slowly come back together again. All day she had felt as though it wanted to get away from her. First there was that feeling of cold in her lungs which had moved to her stomach, and then the cold had disappeared, she no longer felt it. She felt nothing further where the cold had passed, and it was terrifying, because she knew that she was slowly starting to disintegrate. This feeling of her body dissolving was familiar to her – she had had to battle it her whole life. The medication had helped, but she had run out, her supply was exhausted, and it took tremendous concentration to restore her bodily integrity.
A song rose up in the night. The wind had dropped, and the forest was dark and silent. The only thing that could be heard was the whispering trees. Marie-Desneige’s song rose up, and the night carried her prayer up to the endless skies.
Charlie was on watch. He waited until he could no longer see any lights in her little house before going to bed. He smoked and drank tea, wondering whether Marie-Desneige understood how to operate the propane lamp.
The song reached him just as he was about to go outside, convinced she needed help turning off the lamp.
It was an old sea shanty, slow and weighed down with thwarted love, that spread its lament over a melody smelling of spring tides, salty sea spray and pitching on rough waters. A melody that after having come around a number of times becomes more bitter, more laboured, scraping the bottom of merciless seas. Charlie wanted to hear it no more, but the song went back to the beginning, the sailor boarded the ship again, his heart heavier, and poured out his misfortunes into a bottomless sea. Charlie couldn’t take it anymore. He wanted it to stop, he wanted her done with all this misfortune that was not her own, but she revelled in it, immersed herself in it. She was the sailor who had sailed the world’s seas seeking oblivion. The song took on a more intimate pain, the voice forgot itself, got lost, dropped to no more than a whisper in the night, and Charlie knew that Marie-Desneige over there, so near, in the little house, in her bed, was rocking back and forth holding her body close as if she were rocking a doll.
Marie-Desneige was indeed rocking her body while quietly singing it the final verses of her sea shanty. She hoped it would come back to her. A number of times she had managed to bring her body back together this way. This time there was resistance, something stopping it, an opposing force that warded off her lament, and she thought it was the house, too new, too lonely. She had never slept with no one nearby, with no one in the same room.
When Charlie heard a sound at his door, he knew who was on the other side.
She had put on a coat over her nightgown. In the moonlight, her hair was a dazzling sight, and in the dark of the night her eyes conveyed her immense distress.
‘Can I sleep here?’
With a sweep of his hand, he gestured to the bed of pelts that awaited her.
They each have their own corner, Marie-Desneige in her nest of furs and Charlie on his mattress at the other end of the room. But since the cabin is small and the night silent, they can hear each other move, they can hear each other breathe. Charlie can barely stand the intimacy. He isn’t used to sharing the night with anyone but Chummy. And then the silence that grows heavier when sleep doesn’t come. Charlie figures he has to ask a question to lift the weight, but what should he ask?
And the Birds Rained Down Page 7
