Kamouraska (7 page)

One day, my mother, just to keep peace . . . No, too soon! I haven't had time yet to remember a single room on Rue Georges. Oh, my first house, gone for good! A kind of white fog, like milk, spreads over the town. Only one house is left lit up. Standing out. The least little speck of dust, as clear to the eye as a moth fluttering around a lamp. The air itself is like the light, bright and resounding. You could hear a mouse breathing. Whatever happens here will be decisive. Exact. Sharp as the clink of crystal. Pure and uncompromising. Like a judge's verdict.

Rue Augusta. You can see the space between the bricks, as if you were right on top of them. The mortar sticks out a little, here and there, dotting the red ochre with bits of gray. A foul cloud of soot hangs over the garden. A withered vine clings to the little courtyard wall, like hair on an old woman's head. You can see every detail in the shutters. The knots in the wood. The green paint fading in patches. To the left of the front door, the right shutter, pulled off its hinges, slamming against the wall at the slightest hint of a breeze.

I'd swear that it's even brighter now than before. A young widow is climbing the well-worn steps. There's something both childish and stilted in the way she walks. For just a moment she turns a crestfallen face in my direction. My own young mother! Holding a little girl awkwardly by the hand. A little girl, bareheaded, hair cropped short.

Tired, I suppose, of changing nursemaids every other day, Madame d'Aulnières resigns herself to going back where she came
from. The family cloister. Celibate seraglio all in red brick, in the shadow of the tall, trembling poplar. Mother surrenders. Turns herself over, lock, stock, and barrel, to the comforting guidance of her elder sisters.

I must be seven or eight. And my education begins.

“Elisabeth, sit up straight!”

“Elisabeth, don't speak while you're eating!”

“Elisabeth make that curtsy again, this very moment!”

“Elisabeth, how many persons are there in God?”

“Repeat after me,
the cat, the bird
. . . Don't forget, you make the
th
in English with your tongue on your teeth.”

Adélaïde, Luce-Gertrude, Angélique. All beaming with delight. Stop reading their favorite novels. Fill up the emptiness of their existence. Intensely, by a kind of osmosis, they share the lot of the weeping widow and live through a whole rebellious childhood.

Elisabeth's hair grows back in dizzying abundance. The three little sisters vie for the joy of combing her tawny fleece. Their own sparse locks light up and shine with vicarious pride. My first period. Their chaste excitement.

“Are you sure, Aunt Angélique, that it's going to happen like that every month?”

“Yes, darling. It's something we all go through. It's the way of the world.”

Aunt Angélique is ill at ease, embarrassed. But still delighted. “The way of the world.” A deep, mysterious communion with all of womankind seems to hold a fabled, romantic fate in store for her. Is each and every wasted ovule of her sterile life about to be made fertile? Gallantly? By tender husbands? Tender lovers? Is mad passion and all its magic, somehow, old as she is, about to make her pregnant at last, with a hundred happy, blue-eyed babes?

Above the house, the sun has gone out. Suddenly, like a lamp. All at once it's very dark. My dear little aunts are getting excited, running about in every direction. Up and down the balcony stairs. Rushing to pick up three pots of geraniums. Disappearing inside the house. Each one clutching her pot of flowers, red or pink, tight to her bosom. The front door slams shut. Behind the closed door, an extraordinary echo. The sound of the door slamming lingers for a time, as if in a great empty space. An immense space, with no furniture, no drapes. Huge. Like a rail-road station. A vault, high and bare. A moment later, a sharp voice pipes up, caught in an endless echo.

“I assure you, it's going to freeze tonight. It would be a shame to leave the geraniums out on the balcony . . . Ge-ra-ni-ums . . . bal-co-ny . . . co-ny . . . y-y . . .”

The words well up in waves. Roll and subside. The voice was coming from the drawing room. Aunt Luce-Gertrude? Yes, that's who it is, I'm sure. It's night now, altogether dark. My house, shut tight, fills all of Rue Augusta with its somber silhouette. It seems to be rising up from the middle of the street. Massive, unavoidable, provoking. Like a barricade.

I want to run. To keep from going inside the house. Not risk the certain chance of seeing my bygone days spring back to life, shake off their ashes in powdery little flakes. Each burnt-out log rekindled. Each rose-red ember blazing, bursting into flame. No, no! I won't! I'll never cross the threshold of my house again. There must be some mistake. You're confusing me with someone else. I have a perfect alibi. My pass is in order. Let me go. I'm Madame Rolland. My husband is Jérôme Rolland, notary in the city of Quebec. None of this is any of my affair. All these mysterious happenings of dubious taste, long dead, here in this brick house on the corner of Rue Augusta and Rue Philippe, in the town of Sorel. You've got the wrong person, I tell you. Let me go. I'm supposed to be somewhere else. My duty calls me. I've got to get back to Quebec, to Rue du Parloir. This very moment my husband is dying. My place is by his side. I have no business on Rue Augusta, here in Sorel. I'm Madame Rolland. I swear I am! Madame Jérôme Rolland!

I don't dare turn aside. I keep staring straight ahead. And yet, to my right and left there's something happening, something I can't see. Coming closer, from both sides at once. Now it's grazing my body. Pressing against me. Right beside me. Someone rumpling my skirt. Touching my knee. I'm being lifted off the ground. Under my arms, two powerful arms seizing me. Will I have to put up with this outrage again? Must I cross that threshold, in front of me there, with two policemen by my side? And the witnesses! All of them, packed into the vast drawing room, safely behind closed shutters. I can hear them whispering. No, I won't be brought to trial before the likes of them! Servants, innkeepers, boatmen, peasants! Good-for-nothing witnesses, every one! None of them can stand up against me. And as for Aurélie Caron . . .

There! My fear has called her back, conjured her up. Aurélie has hold of my arm. I steal a glance her way. See her profile with that jutting jaw of hers. Her bosom heaving with each labored breath.
She seems consumed with indignation. Somehow I manage to turn my head and look the other way, painfully, like a sick man lying prostrate on his pillow. Now it's Justine Latour, gazing at me, bewildered. Half smiling, half in tears.

“Good God a'mighty, but Madame has really got us in a stew!”

Aurélie's wild laughter. Exploding in my face. My two bodyguards hold me tight. Hurry me up the steps, four at a time. Someone I can't see, inside, opens the front door. Now I'm standing in the hall. The door to the drawing room is closed. Behind it the witnesses stop talking. I can hear their muffled breathing, hear them clearing their throats, snorting, crumpling bits of paper or cloth between their fingers. The muted sound of restless foot-steps fills the room.

The silence that follows is so sudden, so complete, it almost takes my breath away. There's no one in the drawing room now. The door opens, slowly, onto the empty space. There's no one standing beside me either, no one making me move along. Aurélie Caron and Justine Latour have disappeared. I'm alone in the hall. That strong, stale smell of houses shut up tight spreads over me. Goes up my nose, stings my eyes. Sticks to my skin.

You can see where the plaster has peeled off the walls in great flakes. The chips have been swept into little piles against the base-board. There's a fine dust falling, effortless as snow. Am I going to die in this utter void? Here, under glass, smothered in this dry endless dust?

In this minute space, this gray and thinning air, suddenly a little girl appears, dressed for Communion. All in white, from head to toe. Her long veil reaches to the ground. A crown of white roses on her head. I'm powerless to move. In her heavy hand, in my own arm turned to stone, expires a feeble, half-attempted sign of the cross. My childhood self smiles soberly and looks me in the eye. Makes me listen to that solemn little voice I thought was gone for good.

“I renounce Satan and all his works and all his pomps, and I take Jesus Christ unto myself forever.”

And so, the vows of baptism are solemnly renewed. Now the rest can proceed apace. The door is open. The clear, brisk air fills my lungs. I find I can move again, while here in the hall the child before me is taking off her Communion clothes. My three little aunts go bustling about her. Removing her veil, her crown. She drops her white dress gaily to the floor in a snowy ring around her feet. Hops over it quick as a wink.

But let's not linger. Her childhood is past. Now the rearing of a rich young miss can all unfold in order. Quickly the tulle of her First Communion dress gives way to silk and sheer batiste, to muslin, velvet, satin and furs, to fine cashmere. The fashion books, the bundles of cloth, still fragrant with the smell of distant oceans crossed, deep in the hold, wash up ashore here in this shabby hall. This scene of the reenactment.

“The child is growing up before our very eyes!”

“Elisabeth, sit up nice and straight. Don't stoop. And don't lean against the back of the chair, for goodness' sake!”

“We'll have to find another seamstress. This one can't even stitch a straight line.”

“Don't forget your Easter duty. Just keep your eyes on your embroidery. Your good looks and good manners will do the rest.”

Adélaïde, Luce-Gertrude, Angélique go whirling about the child, dancing attendance on her. Keeping an eye on her weight, her figure.

Aurélie is fifteen years old. She's forever walking back and forth in front of the house. Dawdling along the sidewalk in her little print dress. Gesticulating at me. She and that band of good-for-nothings with her, hustling her about. She taunts me, this child, and makes me green with envy. At fifteen she knows as much about life as the dead themselves.

Aunt Luce-Gertrude shuts the door.

“That child is ruined already. What a disgrace at her age!”

“I wish I could go out like that. Go fishing for catfish, the way I did when I was small! With boys!”

Aunt Luce-Gertrude doesn't try to reply. Aunt Luce-Gertrude can only gasp. Aunt Adélaïde too. It's clear, the child has become a woman.

Here she comes, dressed for her very first ball, all rustling and shimmering, shoulders uncovered and flowers in her hair. Lucky for us, in this wilderness, that we have the governor's ball!

The three little sisters let themselves plunge into a mad, yet agonizing, dream. As if they themselves were about to take part in some carnal, wild, erotic mutation.

My mother comes quietly into the hall. Looks at me in blank amazement. Feels a surge of melancholy. Finally makes up her mind to speak.

“We'll have to find a husband for the child.”

I have just enough time to run along the towpath after Aurélie. We may as well meet right now, the two of us, in the tart freshness of our fifteen years.

We stand eyeing each other. At a distance. Wary as a couple of cats.

Her tight skirt clings to her legs. Her bare feet are caked with mud. Two long woolly braids flap against her back, like two black straps, haloed about with little bristles reddened in the sun. Her face, her neck, her bare arms all have the ashen pallor of mushrooms, freshly picked.

“My, but you look pale, Aurélie.”

“Oh, Madame knows . . . I always had this prison look. A taste of what was coming . . .”

And that's that. From the very first, we get right to the heart of the matter. She mentions prison. She calls me “Madame.” Now she'll begin growing older before my eyes. Heavier. Under the weight of her every passing day. Take me to task, perhaps? . . . I'd give my soul if only I could keep all that from happening again! My very life, just to recapture, as it used to be, that time when both of us were innocent!

“But I never was innocent. And neither was Madame . . .”

It's as if we're rehearsing a play. Groping for words and gestures already used before, already worked out at leisure, but reluctant now to appear in a certain light.

Her voice grows more piercing as she speaks. More like a grown-up, more unpleasant.

“And me, in prison, those two years and a half. All on account of you. ‘Held at the court's discretion.' Isn't that how they say it? While Madame gets out on bail . . .”

“Are you forgetting the two long months I spent in prison. Aurélie?”

Her voice, shrill, as she jumps aside. Crouching. About to pounce.

“I don't forget a thing. Not a thing.”

I have to act fast. Protect myself from Aurélie's rage. Have to save us both. See that we make our peace once and for all. Rid ourselves of one whole part of our lives. Go back to when we both were growing up. Long, long before . . . I seem to be tugging, trying to pull a certain phrase out into the light. Just one, heavy, from far away. Such an important one, like a weight, sunk in the earth. A rusty anchor. Buried underground, at the end of a long rope. A kind of root, embedded deep . . . Down deep . . .

“Charges withdrawn! Charges withdrawn! . . . You must have heard, they've dropped the charges, Aurélie!”

Over and over Aurélie repeats: “Charges withdrawn!” Hardly seems to believe it. Not too sure. Like someone learning a new, language. “Charges withdrawn!” Then suddenly the meaning of the words shines clear. Makes her burst out laughing.

“‘Charges withdrawn!' And the judges scratch their heads . . . And the witnesses all go home . . . And the reporters have to shut their traps! . . . Oh, yes, Madame is saved, and so am I! We're free! Free! Both of us, free!”

She laughs until she's out of breath. Lets herself collapse in a heap on the ground. Her shoulders, heaving, as if she were crying. I kneel down beside her on the towpath grass, worn thin.