Kamouraska (15 page)

Which one first challenges the other to a game of chess? And anyway, the games have already been acted out. The winner and loser chosen in advance. Who can presume to change the course of fate? Recess after recess. Year after year. The same stubborn silence. The same complicity. Through endless games of chess.

“Checkmate!”

Flushed with victory, this youngster with the rough and cracking voice . . . Doctor Nelson, is that you? One day that voice of yours will change, grow deep, and win me over, body and soul . . .

With a sweep of his hand, Antoine clears the pieces off the board. They fall to the floor. Nasty loser. Nasty child. No one can match him when it comes to fiendish tricks. Like blowing up little green frogs, from the pond, with smoke from his pipe, and making them burst. And that great, shattering laugh of his.

“Nelson, you're cheating! . . .”

I keep my jealous watch. Beyond all time. No thought here of any conventional reality. I have that power. I'm Madame Rolland and I know it all. From the very beginning, I play my part in the lives of these two ill-starred young men. Presiding over their friendship with great delight. A friendship destined never to exist between George Nelson and Antoine Tassy.

I lie in wait, listening in vain for a horse's hoofbeat, the sound of a sleigh. Can it be that he won't come back, won't come prowling anymore beneath my windows? One moment he calls me “Madame Elisabeth.” And the next, he rejects me. Runs away. I never should have told him about those nights, leaning out the window, when I . . . The look he gave me! That piercing glance. Like a cornered beast.

Now he shuts himself up in his house. Locks and bars the doors, like a criminal. And I venture as close to his solitude as I can. Provoking him, bedeviling him. The way he provokes and bedevils me.

“That man's a foreigner. It's better not to trust him, anymore than he trusts us.”

“Quiet, Aurélie . . . Go away. I'm much too busy . . .”

I'm concentrating. Closing my eyes. As if I were trying to conjure up the spirits. And yet, it's life I'm after. Life . . . Over there, at the other end of Sorel. A man, all alone, leaning on a kitchen table. A book lying open in front of him, not a page moving . . . Standing over him, reading over his shoulder. Trying to work my way down into the innermost recesses of his daydreams . . .

They won't let you out of their sight, Master Nelson. They follow wherever you go. Protestants are all a pack of . . . And your weatherbeaten old sealskin cap.

The man who makes foolish little mistakes in his French gives himself away. The man who speaks of “the Bible” instead of “the Holy Gospels” gives himself away. The man who says “Madame Elisabeth” instead of “Madame Tassy” is sure to compromise himself and her as well.

How wonderfully selfless. To choose medicine as a calling. Compassion, spread open like a wound. You should find that very comforting. Fighting evil and illness and witches the way you do, all with the very same zeal. Why is it, then, when you do so much good, that nobody here really likes you? They're afraid of you, Doctor Nelson. As if, under all that obvious selflessness of yours — too obvious, perhaps — some fearsome identity lies hidden . . . That original flaw, deeper than your Protestant religion, deeper than your English language . . . Look. Look hard. It's not a sin, Doctor Nelson. Only some terrible grief.

Turned out of your father's house. His house with its white columns, its colonial façade. Like thieves. You, your brother, your sister. Three innocent little children. And your father sends you off, like thieves. And your mother, pressing her face against the window, crying. In Montpelier. In Vermont.

This American independence is really too much for good loyalists to bear. Isn't it better to pack the children off to Canada? Send them away before this new spirit pollutes and infects them? Let them even become Catholics. Even learn French if they have to. Anything, just so long as they keep their allegiance to the British crown . . .

“You don't know my brother and sister, do you, Madame Elisabeth? You really should. You'll see how very much alike we are, ever since we all turned Catholic . . .”

One day, my love, you'll call me just “Elisabeth.” No more formalities at all between us. You'll tell me how your sister Cathy went with the Ursulines when she was fifteen. You'll talk about her Roman nose, her cheeks, all covered with freckles. And you'll tell me about your brother Henry, the Jesuit, and those impressive retreats he preaches . . .

You're groping for my body in the darkness. Your words are strange. Time ceases to exist. No one but me to hear them. We're naked, lying together for all eternity. And you murmur something against my shoulder.

“And I swore I'd be a saint, Elisabeth! I swore, do you hear? And never, never in my life did I yearn for anything else so much . . .”

Once again, a studious young man bent over his books, in a wooden house. And the words going round and round in his head, mocking him: “Mustn't get caught! No matter what, but mustn't get caught!” . . . You jump to your feet, put away your books. Put on your coat, your cap, your mittens. Every movement so precise, and yet so quick. Like a doctor hurrying off to see his patients . . . He knows that, this time too, he'll hitch up his horses and go prowling the streets of Sorel, even at the risk of being . . . Back and forth, maybe a good ten times, in front of Madame Tassy's windows . . . In the hope and fear — both at once, so utterly intertwined — of seeing the wicked husband, thrown out of his wife's house, suddenly appear on the corner of the street. Take careful aim at him. Shoot him down like a partridge. The born loser, Antoine Tassy. “Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” I'll take his rook. I'll take his queen. I'll take his wife. It has to be. How can I bear the thought of . . . A woman, so lovely, so pathetic. Being tortured, humiliated . . . Lying next to Antoine, beaten by Antoine, caressed by Antoine, opened and shut by Antoine, raped by Antoine, ravished by Antoine . . . I'll bring back justice the way it used to be. The law of
the victor and the vanquished . . . In a flash, a sudden glimpse of being in tune, at one with yourself. Something tried over and over again, since the mind can remember. Finding yourself, deep in the marrow of your bones, completely yourself. Admitting at last the sickness within you. The frenzied yearning to posses the world.

Possess this woman. Possess the earth.

I call to George Nelson. Yes, I'm the one who calls out to him through the darkness. The voice of passion seeks us out, lords it over us, lays us low. One thing that must be done. Only one. Let ourselves both be damned forever. Each with the other. Each by the other. And me, the malicious and sinister stranger . . .

Is this what sleeping will be like from now on? A couple of hours, at best, racked by horrible dreams?

A wooden cabin, standing in the middle of a flat, deserted landscape. Off on the horizon, the edge of the forest. The cabin is filled with people. All of them worried about some little pet of theirs that's roaming loose. Such frightful things will happen to it unless they find a way to bring it back right now. Everyone turns and looks at me. Everyone, without exception. They beg me to “call” the animal home. And I'm struck with terror. I know what they mean by “call.” I know the awesome power I possess, and it makes me shudder . . . From every side they press me, urge me on. Every second could mean the death of the little creature still on the loose out there . . .

A cry escapes my lips. (This power of mine won't let me hold it back.) A cry so harsh, so terrible, that it tears at my chest and leaves me stunned, transfixed. Echoes on and on all through the countryside. I can't make it stop, can't keep it from surging and swelling, out of control . . . Suddenly all the beasts are on the move. The wildest beasts of the forest and plain. Swooping down, attacking the cabin. Every last one of them, stirred by my call. And
men and women too. The cruelest, the most vicious. Charmed, drawn out of their hidden lairs of would-be virtue. And Doctor Nelson is with them. His white teeth, sharpened to a point, like fangs. And I'm wearing a black chignon that sits on top of my head and comes unpinned. With great thick locks falling down around my face . . . A witch. I'm a witch. And I'm calling out, summoning up all the evil from men and beasts. Wherever it can be found . . .

In which of my dreams did I call them both back? Not only my love, but the other one too. My husband. As if I couldn't call one without the other. All the beasts of the forest. All of them, summoned . . . This cry, deep in my chest. This call . . .

Now there are two of them at night, riding past my windows. One sleigh, then the other. Antoine chasing George, in a tinkle of sleigh bells and women's laughter. Brandishing his whip up at my window. Bellowing out his drunken joy.

“I want to get something to drink for my dear old classmate.”

The neighbors, roused from their slumbers, don't know what to make of this mad, outrageous romp through the night. And by two young men of such excellent breeding.

I fall asleep long after the clash and clatter disappear. Leaving my frenzied mind filled with the hazy vision of men on horseback. Chases, confrontations. Horses pawing and trampling each other, and rearing up for long moments at a time.

The worthy citizens of Sorel, awakened by night, are bored by day. Thanks to us they'll get their taste of life and death, in a dizzying whirl that frightens them off yet lures them on. Blessed are we through whom the scandal cometh . . .

Never before have there been so many parties, one after another. And everyone vying with everyone else to invite that poor dear Madame Tassy, whose husband is sowing his wild oats here in Sorel. Right under her very nose. With a creature named
Horse Marine. Why not invite that young American doctor too? The one who speaks such excellent French. We'll make him come out of his shell. Leave his books and his patients behind for a while. He has some kind of special power, no doubt about it. You see Madame Tassy? See how she trembles? Well, watch her come to life the minute he's near her.

“He's such a quiet fellow, and not the least bit friendly. Why, until just recently he'd never accept an invitation. Not from anyone.”

“Have you noticed how that dark face of his lights up as soon as he sees Madame Tassy? And would you believe he's only twenty-five? . . .”

Which one of them insists that my husband should be invited too? That he is the squire of Kamouraska, after all, and that it wouldn't be right to ostracize him from society . . .

One evening, when he's had his fill of Horse Marine, Antoine will appear in the Kellys' drawing room. Or the Marchands'. Bursting in, bumping into the guests. His hat cocked behind his ears. And on his pink face, lost in disbelief, I'll watch the realization of the truth slowly, laboriously dawning in his dull-witted brain. He'll kill us, I imagine. That is, unless . . .

George greets me with a little bow. I look down at his hair, so thick and black. He talks without raising his head, in a low, gentle voice. Almost pleading. As if what he was saying had some hidden meaning, some mournful importance.

“Are you going to the ball at Saint-Ours next Sunday? If you'd do me the honor of coming in my sleigh, I'd be the happiest man alive . . .”

“And I'd be the happiest woman. . .”

You never hear her coming in. Then suddenly there she is. As if she could walk through walls. Weightless and transparent . . . Look at her there, spreading my brand-new party-dress out on the bed. Stroking the beautiful velvet, cherry-red, with a kind of gluttonous envy mixed with awe.

“Good God a'mighty, what a pretty dress! I'd give my soul to have one just like that!”

Aurélie sighs. Rekindles the fire. Arranges the room. Her every movement seems so strange, so disturbing. And that high-pitched voice of hers, driving me to the very limits of my resistance.

“Aurélie, please, be quiet!”

“But I'm talking so people can hear me, Madame. . .”

My mother's dressing room. No air at all in here. Impossible to breathe. That musty smell. It's making me sick . . . The green cloth on the dressing table, ragged and frayed. The real world is somewhere else. On Rue du Parloir, by my husband's bed. And yet I let myself sit on the stool. So nice and meek. In front of the mirror, all covered with spots.

Aurélie shakes out the ivory comb and brush, yellowed with age. Blows off the dust.

“I'll just give the mirror a wipe . . .”

I draw back with a start.

“No, no! For goodness' sake, don't touch the mirror!”

A kind of sudden break in Aurélie's voice. Blown glass drawn thin, shattering with the last bit of breath. Now she speaks in a whisper, almost too soft to hear.

“Just a touch of the cloth. There. That's all. Madame has to look herself right in the eye . . . See that pretty face. Those lovely shoulders. I'm going to fix Madame's hair for the ball. Madame should be able to see for herself . . .”

The mirror, come to life like a bubbling spring. My youth, smooth and clear. All those curls piled high seem a little absurd . . . Queenly bearing. Viper's soul. Lovesick heart . . . A single thought fixed firmly in my head. A flower in my hair. My left eye quivering madly. My eyelids drooping. The lashes brushing against my cheek.

A man comes rushing in. Stands next to the woman decked out so ornately. His breath, coarse against the woman's bare shoulder.

I don't have time to be amazed. How on earth did Antoine get in here? I thought the house was so well protected. And what about my aunts? And the servants?

A man and a woman, side by side. Husband and wife. Hating each other. Tormenting each other. By gentle candlelight. Two candles aglow, on either side of the mirror.

“You're not going to that ball.”

“I said I would go, and I'm going.”

“A married woman, a mother . . . It's absolutely indecent!”