Order of Good Cheer (23 page)

For Samuel, he seduces himself these days with conversation, not with his fellows but with the regular men. This particularly foul and blowing Sunday, after midday meal he decides to forgo the brandy and leaves the nobles' table to circulate amongst the men as they are in the business of dispersing. The question he pleasantly puts to them, each in turn, is, “Please, tell me: why did you make this voyage?”

What he finds oddest as they make their responses is that so many of them seem incapable of telling the truth. That is, of turning their gaze within and questioning themselves truly.
There are few answers in the direction of “I wanted to escape my dull and brutish life for one of adventure” or “I am third in the line of heirs and have no chance of fortune at home — the one hundred fifty livres I gain here is some slim chance.” From more men than he can count comes such an answer as, “To help colonize New France.” Or “To aid in spreading the realm of God, and our King, and our country.” In short, parroting the King's own mandate, perhaps in hope of finding favour with a noble. Or, more likely, in fear of speaking otherwise in case a noble might find fault.

Even when Samuel presses, and pleads, “
Vraiment?”
he more often than not gets a “
C'est vrai
. To aid in spreading the realm of etc.” And as they repeat themselves he receives now a look that admits to the lying. In fact, he sees in this look a fundamental right demanded by the common man: that he be allowed the freedom, in saying the expected thing, to lie to the nobleman. They consider it their right, and an allowable insolence.

Only the carpenter Lucien is willing — blandly willing, but willing — to converse more freely with him on this subject. In all, over the past weeks Lucien has grown less shy. This noon Samuel has him pinned as he remains at the common table, cleaning bark and such from his supply of tobacco, which Lucien has in suspicious abundance these days.

Samuel considers Lucien an odd man in that he doesn't fit his lot in life; that is, though he has rightly taken his family's trade, and does a fair job of it, he is not large of frame or thick in hand and seems more suited to the arts of the better-born, those of music or poetry or painting. Even his skin is clean, and fair, and his beard of a finer sort, such that his cheeks are almost bare. Samuel himself has seen Lucien reading, and Poutrincourt suggested that the subject of his book is sometimes poetry. In any event, to Samuel's query about his reasons for coming here
Lucien speaks chiefly of “having naught but one choice” but also of “wanting to test myself, against fear.” Not looking up from his leaf, Lucien picks through it like a squirrel.

“Of what?” Samuel ventures, noting the whimsy playing on Lucien's face.

“Of the sea, and its weather. But not so much now. Being on land.”

“Of course. And?”

“Drowning. Though, again, not so much now, sitting here. But, death. In general.”

“If God had wanted us not to fear death, He would not have made this fear so natural in us. And what else?”

“The savages, at first. But now, not at all.”

“I concur. And?”

“And men. Who have nothing at all to do.”

“The men?”

“Yes.”

“Surely you don't feel unsafe at their hand?”

“I also include myself in the collective noun.”

Lucien smiles so as to show his seriousness is tainted by irony — wit's slinking cousin — but Samuel can see his point. Who isn't a bit afraid of oneself in the wide basin of unfilled time, with no known tide coming to fill it? It makes men do . . . what? He, for instance, has been driven by his own unfilled time to question random men this day, naively expecting not just truth but some measure of friendship.

But Samuel is not sure friendship is possible even with the likes of Lucien, even if they were both to desire it. Doffing the cloak of one's class is always uncomfortable, a nakedness, even if neither one fully believes in the cloak from the outset. Harder still to engage in such nakedness when in full view of other men. And Lucien's ways are unknown to Samuel in any case. It seems
he has his own adventures, indeed his own colony, in his cranium. Off by himself, or thinking himself unobserved, Lucien frequently whistles, yet they are airs not of jollity but more like sadness, and also very strange, a music not common to the rest of them. Its melody leapfrogs out of time and takes up an oblique new measure, and sometimes suspends itself in no sound at all, where the silence is itself part of the lyric and poses a question or a mystery — and then the whistle begins again as if to give silence its singing answer.

“Lucien. Would you like to leave here if you could?”

The carpenter looks startled by this, perhaps wondering for a moment if it is indeed possible. His eyes glance this way and that, as if to review a calculation of that which is good in New France against that which is not.

And of that which is newly and secretly good. Lucien's reply, “Sir, if someone could leave with me,” is humble yet a boast as well, and it is more answer than Samuel wants. The carpenter's open-faced honesty is not so much impudent as it is reckless in its trust, which Samuel knows is his own fault, for offering such friendship. In any case, it makes the rumours true. And Lucien takes another bold step toward a common intimacy by asking Samuel now if he, too, would not return home if given the chance.

“No, but I would like to be at sea,” says Samuel. “Or up a new river.” He thinks a moment, and then voices a favourite notion. “It is with their canoes, not our ships, that we will get to see China.”

Samuel notes Lucien shaking his head at the wonder of this. But then sees that the carpenter is merely disagreeing.

“No?”

“Not ‘we,' that's certain. Perhaps you. Never me.”

“Well, likely not me either. I meant France, of course.”

“Of course.” Lucien appears to remember something and then begins to laugh quietly to himself.

“What?”

“It might be me after all, since I'm the only one who's learned to paddle.” Lucien is beaming at him, staring him openly in the eye. “I got well wet the first time, but since then I've got rather good. I didn't come last in a race.”

Samuel forces his own smile down. “You must take more care.”

“I'll ask for another lesson, yes.” The carpenter smiles with irony again.

“I believe you know I am not discussing canoes. You must take more care.”

Lucien studies Samuel's face the briefest moment before dipping his head in a simple bow. “Thank you, sir. I will.”

Samuel takes this as cue to turn and walk away. Indeed he felt it was an act of friendship as much as his station to make such a demand of Lucien. The man was near foolhardy. Though Samuel would have much rather stood longer and spoken of paddling and its art. Indeed he would love to paddle a canoe and then own one. In Hochelaga he'd been in a canoe, sitting in its centre while a brave at either end paddled him about like a little king.

LUCIEN RETURNS TO
their hidden meadow every day, just in case. Eight and nine and ten days pass and he tries to resign himself to the truth that she had spelled out weeks, not days, on her fingers.

But now, on this the twenty-first day, Ndene steps out of the trees. She is neither laughing nor smiling, and Lucien is at first wary of this until he sees that she has been waiting for him too and that her face is severe with missing him.

Their clothes are more and thicker but they come off as quickly, and though there are no bugs there is the broader bite of the cold. In the corner of the meadow where wind has forced a bed of oak leaves into a nook, they lay her cape, and they draw his coat over them both.

Soon they are made perfectly warm in their lovemaking. When they finish, and rest, and begin to cool, they have only to begin again and it is like pulling a weightless quilt over them.

Even when they have paused in their lovemaking they don't try to talk. It is Ndene who seems assured that there is no need to. Her manner of resting, of staring off over his shoulder, suggests that whatever thoughts or words they could arrive at are of no matter at all. How could one better this? And so Lucien relaxes into this posture as well. He doesn't try to think, or to speak, or to meet her eye. To do so, seeking some kind of reassurance, would be to doubt their growing bond and by questioning hurt it. Her manner tells him that, at least for now, lovemaking is all
they need do. And how can he not agree? As her loveliest body, her perfect shape, takes his in, it is only obvious that both of them have been made for this, for this most of all; that in their perfect wrestling they do none other than unwrap God's gift and witness its sacred brilliance, and in doing so carry out God's will. That God had them snorting and yelling like beasts could be seen either as comedy or tragedy, should one care to ponder this, and Lucien does not.

IN TIME HE SLEEPS
, but when Ndene shakes his arm he sees the light is unchanged, so he hasn't dozed long. They rise to dress. Partway into pulling on clothes, Ndene stays him with a hand, insisting that she help him. She rolls on his second legging, helps him pull on breeches. Lucien smiles with warmth when he sees her secretly fondling and turning the clothes, checking the build of each garment, picking at a hem, perhaps with the goal of someday making such clothing herself. Finally, she stops, turns, and demands that he pluck all the broken leaves from her hair.

It is obvious that Ndene is thinner. Perhaps from all the distance walked. Perhaps they didn't find the food they were seeking, if that was the nature of their journey, as apparently it most often is. When birds nest in a certain bay, or fish gather at a stream mouth, there her people will gather too, bringing with them or building on the spot the simple but ingenious machines to harvest the creatures and then prepare them for eating. He has seen her family cook a seal in a hollowed-out stump, the bowl of which was filled with water and the stump below set on fire, causing the water and the beast both to boil.

She has lost any softness or roundness of belly, and she is almost without breasts, and when Lucien shows her this with
his hand, she does the same at his waist. He has lost his small belt of fat too, and hadn't noticed.

Lucien has practised and saved up some sentences for her. Dressed, hair free of leaf, they sit back down, leaning against each other for shared warmth. He tells her, in what he hopes sounds like Mi'qmah, that he has a sister, Babette, a brother, Albert, and that he lives with his mother, father, and paternal grandmother. He lives in the seaside city of St-Malo, famous for its building of ships. He tells her that, to make his living, he fashions things out of wood. Ndene doesn't seem to understand this last part, and it begins to occur to Lucien that this might be because, in her world, all men do identical things. So Lucien tries as best he can to explain that d'Amboisee, the apothecary treats the men with herbs and potions, Bonneville cooks their meals, the soldiers protect them all with their guns, and Lucien builds them all a place to live. Ndene regards him a moment, understanding, and then points to her chest, stabbing it again and again, while with great humour explaining to Lucien that she, Ndene, catches fish, cleans the fish, cooks the fish, digs onions, makes clothing, salves men's wounds, builds houses, finds the bark to build the houses, snares a rabbit, cooks the rabbit, mends the — and Lucien has to put his wrist into her open mouth, whereupon Ndene keeps talking, muffled and comic, knowing, a clown.

SAMUEL HAS SUFFERED
the kind of day that, though bright with sun and cloudless, still appeared dark to him. Of course it is but his inner humour that so tints the heavens. Not helping is his suspicion — no, it is less a suspicion than a truth, even if the men don't know it — that the disease is upon them. He has seen the vague limp, and the dull glower, taking over a half-dozen of the men. So, it's here — but when was its arrival ever in doubt? There's no surprise in it at all.

As he often does at such a time, he gathers his pens and ink about him, unfurls a precious fresh sheet of better parchment, and sets to work.

Yet, hunching over the page for minutes, and minutes more, nothing comes. He has also pulled out various sketches he has yet to commit to ink — the midsection of the River of Saint-Jean, the coastline some leagues below St-Croix, as well as ideas for adorning the finished maps, such as Indian maize, a beaver, a sturgeon — but he does naught but stare at these unmoved. And remains melancholic.

So he turns from his possible art and ponders this mood in hopes of manoeuvring out of it, as sometimes works, casting words as soundings to keep his heart off the reef. The first coil of logic he tosses to himself is simply to announce that reefs are always here, are in everyone's own sea, and are a part of all voyaging. Yet how is it then that some intelligent men always forget
these reefs and always founder, surprised? Why, too, do some of the dullest have such apparent talent for mirth? Having run aground, any glowering genius would be a fool not to want some of that skill. Even the witless Dédé laughs more than most, roaring broadly when a fellow trips and pitches into the mud, or smiling like a lover when he happens to witness the flexing of his own hammy arm in lifting a water bucket over the high lip of the well. Or, give Lescarbot one tankard of good wine and he is at carnival: he sits taller, and life could not be better for this
roi de flan
. Another, the carpenter Lucien, who likewise seems prone to melancholy, returns from his walks unsmiling but eyes full of soft light, content, it seems.

How can it be that, when hit with the first cold drops of rain from a surprise cloudburst, some men curse, and
some laugh
? For some, one cold drop of rain might deliver the final insult, the tipping burden, and send a man to take his own life. For others, a cold drop of rain might cause them to shout for more, as if it has shocked cool their hot captivity and relieved them of a load.