Kamouraska (2 page)

Off in the distance, the sound of a horse's heavy gait, dragging a wagon behind him. It's two in the morning. What can a wagon be doing out now, in this empty, deserted night? There's been so much prowling about in the streets . . . Now it's closer. Rue Saint-Louis, Rue des Jardins, Rue Donacona . . . Quiet . . . Good God! It's turning the corner. Closer and closer, the iron-rimmed wheels, the plodding, lumbering hooves . . .

Any minute now, the horse and carriage will be pulling up under my window. It's me they're after. It's me, I'm sure. One day, a carriage . . . No, a sleigh, it was a sleigh. It's winter. I can hear the runners behind me, scraping along the hardened snow. They're after us, tracking us down, Aunt Adélaïde and me. The
team of horses, galloping hard. Trying to catch me. Oh, those tremendous horses, the sleigh dashing after me. And me, nestled against Aunt Adélaïde, screaming I think. Faster! The American border, and I'll be safe. If only I can convince her. My frightened accomplice. Faster, faster! My love, somewhere behind that imaginary line. The border, in the middle of the forest, and freedom. No use, that trip to Montreal. Talk to a lawyer about the tragedy at Kamouraska? Too late now, it's no longer up to me. Off to find my love. Faster, faster. Just enough time. And my poor aunt, weeping: “I'll do anything you say. We'll both be damned together, darling. Oh, God help us! We're done for! I told you to be careful, didn't I? Oh, Elisabeth! What madness! But it's his fault too, that monster's fault, Antoine Tassy. Oh, what's to become of us! It's a sin, Elisabeth, a terrible, terrible sin . . .” Too late to go on living now. We only get as far as Lavaltrie . . . The police. My arrest. My poor aunt wipes her eyes. Did I want to die? Did I really want to, deep in my bones? Live, live. I want to go on living, no matter what.

Madame Rolland closes the window. She turns toward her husband. Back against the glass, hand still on the bolt, she gauges the narrow space between the rain-soaked street, an old, creaking wagon, and that man — that small, round, ever so fragile man whose every thought is of impending death.

“Haven't you had the gutter fixed yet? How can I get my sleep with all that noise? Even a minute's rest?”

Madame Rolland hears only the sound of a wagon in the night.

“Do you hear that wagon?”

“What wagon?”

“In the street. That wagon, creaking . . . The horse . . .”

Monsieur Rolland listens for a moment, ear cocked, like a bored confessor. The rain, the wind, the torrents of water gushing from the gutter. That's all he hears. No other sound.

“You must be dreaming, Elisabeth, poor dear. It's only the rain . . .”

A sudden splash of silence. The rain must have stopped. By now the wagon must be in front of the door. Madame Rolland looks round the room for some place to hide. In the full-length mirror she sees the little table by the bed. Cluttered, covered with glasses, bottles, medicines. Newspapers and religious books strewn here and there. And propped up on a stack of pillows, the harried face of Jérôme Rolland, ghastly white, watching.

Madame Rolland draws herself up, straightens the pleats in her skirt, smooths back her hair. Over to the mirror, to find her own reflection, her best defense. My soul — my musty, mildewed soul — off somewhere. Held prisoner, far, far away. And yet I'm pretty. Still pretty. Let everything else come falling down around my head, why should I care? One thing is clear. One thing that keeps me going, through all the nagging fears, all the horror of my days. A man . . . One man . . . Lost. To stay pretty forever, for him. Just for him. Day by day love cleanses me. It washes away my every sin, my every fear, my every shame.

Monsieur Rolland sees a triumphant figure approaching in the mirror. His wife looms up like that very image of transfigured death that haunts his visions through the long, tortured nights. He cringes, smaller and smaller. Crouches, buries his head between his shoulders. So smooth, so open to attack, his whole being limp and unprotected. An oyster caught without his shell. Nothing but his eyes alert, his sharp-pointed eyes, with something in them very much like hate.

He asks for a lump of sugar so he can take his drops. Not yet, she tells him, it's not time. He calls for Florida. He pouts. His lower lip trembles, like a child about to cry. He's afraid. Florida, send for Florida, he pleads. Madame Rolland's calm voice assures him that it's half-past two in the morning. Florida must certainly be asleep. Her words, clear and irrefutable, ring through the night. Like a sentence of death. Florida is asleep, the children are asleep, the
whole world is out of reach. Only this woman. Monsieur Rolland is all alone, offered up to his wife's malevolent power, a wife who already once before . . . He begs her to go wake Florida.

“Don't be absurd. The poor girl has to begin again at six. She needs her sleep. Now there's nothing to worry about. I'll get you the sugar myself. It's not time for your medicine yet.”

Monsieur Rolland looks at the clock on the mantel. Four more hours to wait before Florida appears in the doorway, gaunt and efficient, a smug little smile on her homely face.

“Did Monsieur have a good night's sleep? Here, let me freshen you up a little. And let's not forget to do our little business if we have to.”

With Florida it's all right to be yourself. Sick and disgusting, frightened and resigned, complaining and demanding. But with Elisabeth . . .

“Would you like something to drink? Isn't there anything I can get you?”

Don't take a single swallow while she's here. No, nothing while she's here. She wants to kill me. Don't let her give me my drops! Watching them fall on the sugar, seeing the color slowly change while she squeezes them out one by one. No, no, that's more than I could bear. I'd rather die right now.

What an admirable woman your wife is, Monsieur Rolland. Eight children, and still everything so neat and tidy. And now, the whole time you've been ill, the poor thing hardly ever leaves the house. Always by your side. What devotion, what attention! A saint, Monsieur Rolland, that's what she is, a saint. And so pretty too, pretty as a picture. Age, tragedy, crime . . . Nothing seems to touch her. Like water on a duck's back. Yes, an admirable woman.

“Please, go get Florida.”

Madame Rolland knows better than to tell a sick man no. Try to interest him in something else, like a child.

“Would you like me to read to you?”

She pokes among the books piled high on the bed table. He points to one.

“That one,
Poems from the Liturgy.
Where the bookmark is.”

Jérôme watches his wife's expression. She opens the book, finds the page. “Day of Wrath, that day . . .” A passage underlined in pencil. “Whatsoever is hidden shall be manifest, and naught shall remain unavenged.”

Pretend you don't see through the game he's playing, little man propped up on his pile of feather pillows. “Whatsoever is hidden shall be manifest.” Speak for yourself. What's hidden inside of you. Inside of you. Deep in your heart, uncovered, turned inside out like an old, worn-out glove. So, you never believed I was innocent after all. You really never did. Afraid of me, weren't you? Always frightened to death. And now, to let me know it now, after eighteen years . . . To call down everlasting vengeance on my head, and hide behind the words of the Holy Book . . . He's watching out of the corner of his eye. He wants to see if his little barbs hit their mark . . . I'm your wife! Your devoted wife! For eighteen years . . . I'm innocent! Innocent! . . . Suspicious? You? Always so good, so kind? . . . No, my head is reeling. But I won't give myself away. Mustn't let you know. You have no hold on me, no hold at all. Give nothing of yourself, take nothing in return. Strangers, that's what husbands and wives should be. Strangers to one another. Now and forevermore. Amen.

“Why are you smiling?”

“No reason. Maybe my nerves. I must be tired. Monsieur Rolland, your wife is tired. It's three in the morning. Really now, you don't expect the poor thing to stay up till dawn just because you can't sleep?

“I asked you to go get Florida. Then you can sleep to your heart's content.”

Sugar. You need sugar, Monsieur Rolland. It's time to take your drops. Mustn't forget to take them right on time. Not a minute later. It's a serious matter, that flurry of pain that rattles your chest. Better stop it before it starts. Or else you're done for, Monsieur Rolland. Disaster is ready, waiting. Just one breath late, the slightest bit late, and your heart will gasp its last. Go thrashing about like a fish out of water. No blood will get to your heart. No blood at all. Thrashing about for air. For life. You're choking, choking, Monsieur Rolland. Sugar, sugar, sugar! Your drops!

“I'll get the sugar.”

That calm, unruffled voice. Monsieur Rolland tugs at his collar, rips it open. Beads of sweat are streaming down his face. Madame Rolland is bending over him now, her tight-drawn bodice full of her buxom breasts. She wipes his face. Unwavering, her voice assures him:

“It's nothing. Don't be afraid. I'll run and get the sugar.”

What good to call for Florida now? Just one word more and that cage around your heart will use up all the little air it has. That clump of underbrush inside your chest, that mass of branches, giddy little tree where the air has to struggle now to get around. Don't try to pump more air from that dried-up bush. Or to call for Florida. Nothing to do but beg, plead with your eyes. The drops, the drops, the drops . . .

Elisabeth already has gone running out of the room.

The doctor's orders must be followed to the letter: five drops on a lump of sugar, every four hours. Exactly fourteen minutes from now, and it will be time.

Madame Rolland tucks up her skirt and petticoats. Hurries down the stairs. She has to act quickly to keep another tragedy from descending on her house.

There are moments that burst with such a flash of light that truth comes rushing on full tilt. Reveals its deepest, innermost sense, its sharpest anguish. Quick! Quick! Ward off the danger. Must stop at nothing to keep the order of the world from being shaken again. Fail for a second and anything might happen. Madness will rise again, reborn from its ashes. And once again I'll be its victim, bound hand and foot, like so much kindling for the eternal flames.

Madame Rolland runs down the steps as fast as her legs and her skirts will let her. The sugar! The sugar! Must find the sugar! The carpet-rods on the steps flash by, bright yellow copper. Fill her heart with a kind of extravagant joy. Like finding, one by one, the reassuring signs that her house is still in order.

No sugar in the pantry. Where on earth did Florida put it?
Madame Rolland looks everywhere. No use. Rummages behind the empty sugar bowl, the saltcellars, the mustard pot. Still nothing. But the sugar has to be there, it's supposed to be there, somewhere. An endless supply, replenished there in the darkness by hands whose duty is to keep providing sugar. That's how it works. It always has. Since the day she became the wife of Jérôme Rolland. And it's that way, too, with all the other things: the salt, the flour, the oil, the eggs . . . All provided without fail, one after the other, according to the time of year, like the phases of the moon. Perfect order. But who on earth could have moved the sugar? Or even worse, let it run out? Go wake Florida. Five drops on a lump of sugar, every four hours. I'm partly to blame. I must be. How could I let the sugar disappear like that? . . . My God, the children! Why didn't I think of that before? It must have been the children . . . Maybe Anne-Marie. Or little Eugène. He's always filling his pockets with sugar . . . Of course, the children! Suddenly Madame Rolland has the urge to wake them up, then and there, to call them all down from that sleepy top-floor room of theirs that looks so much like a dormitory. She would like to gather her children around her, hug them close to her skirts. Ask them to help her, to save her. Stand with them there, defiant, in a single, solid, indestructible mass. Even go off, perhaps, and find the eldest two, at Oxford. High silk hats, blond whiskers and all. Handsome young strangers now, seeds that another husband planted one day, brutishly, in her womb.

Yes, go wake the children. Let them be a bulwark. Let them run through the house. Station them at the windows, post them behind the door. Let them go clambering up the stairs, all of them, all at once, kicking and singing, shouting and knocking one another about. All those fine little dears with their plump, beribboned nannies. All those sweet little dears to be nursed, and weaned, and stuffed full of food again. Pissing and slobbering in
cashmere and lace. Gorged and bathed, swathed and starched, shown off all shining and well behaved. Rosaries, dominoes, jump ropes, scarlet fever, First Communion, whooping cough, earaches, roast beef, plum cakes, sweet corn, fancy puddings, rabbit-fur coats, fur-lined mittens. Lacrosse and toboggans. Convent school, then classes with the priests. “No more to the woods we go, Tra-la-la-la-la-la.” Clementi sonatinas. Sweet, sweet childhood, growing up and stretching tall on tiptoes. Eight little imps, eight boys and girls to take the stand in behalf of Elisabeth d'Aulnières. Seven sacraments, plus one. Seven capital sins, plus one. Seven holy terrors, plus one. All suddenly waking up, shouting their war cry. Seven little lambs, plus one. And that one in a sailor's blouse, singing so sweetly with downcast eyes: “Someday in Heav'n, the Virgin fair I'll see.” Just let them loose and hear what a fuss they'll raise! The call of the blood in their spontaneous cries. Just watch the angel choir sprout horns if anyone points a finger at their mother. Have we ever run out of sugar before, children? Or jam? Come, come, children. Have we? Answer me, all of you. All of you. Even the one and only child of my love, dark and slender. My little Nicolas. And the eldest two, my two young lords who went to have their minds improved in haughty England. And you, Eugène and Sophie. And you, Anne-Marie, so prim and proper, forever fussing the way you do with the frills on your elegant pantalets, peeping from under your crinoline skirt. And you, Jean-Baptiste, stammering a little and dreaming that you'll preach retreat in the Basilica, with a mouth full of pebbles. And you, baby Eléonore, with your little embroidered bib, still in the nursery. All of you. Who could contradict your testimony? You can speak your piece and go right back to bed. Monsieur Rolland, your father, never loves you quite so much as when you're lying fast asleep, way up there, under the eaves. With hand-picked nannies watching over you. Safe from your parents. Sheltered against parental crimes
by the coarse caresses of peasant women in their fluted bonnets.