The Devil's Making (45 page)

‘Wiladzap consulted his mother about me. The nearest thing you can imagine to her would be the sort of “dowager duchess” type you find in English novels, although she was not very old, perhaps the same age as Mamma is now. She had an eight year old daughter, Lukswaas, who was even then very pretty and thoughtful. At any rate, the old lady – which is what I thought of her as – interviewed me as best she could, established by a discreet examination that I was a virgin, and said Wiladzap could take me as his first wife. I was, of course, not consulted on this, although Wiladzap was so enamoured of me that he swore there would never be a second wife, I would be the only one. They were all very kind. Becoming Wiladzap's wife entailed no particular ceremony beyond dressing me as one of them, Wiladzap giving me fine clothes and ornaments, and my going to live with him in his area of the clan house. To tell the truth, the nearest comparison I can come to is that Wiladzap's area was like a stall in a very large stable. Or perhaps the great hall of a medieval castle was like that?

‘Although the worst of my misery had gone, I had seen my father murdered. I had lost my mother and sisters. My heart ached. I felt violated by Wiladzap. He was not harsh with me, but I could not enjoy his demands on me. I found them disgusting in fact, much as I loved him – but it was a love full of ambivalence and conflict. I learned Tsimshian, and weaving, and all sorts of lore. Then after about six months I became pregnant. This changed things. I was filled with strange sensations. Morning sickness, of course. But then, of all things, intense desire. I became passionate for Wiladzap, and could not have enough of him. We would retreat to bed early, or lie out under the stars – it was summer – and make love and talk. I began to teach him English, which he regarded as a gift, learning it very quickly and talking it quite beautifully. This stage lasted about three months. I had become quite big. And I now had a sort of power over Wiladzap. Yet I could see that once I had the baby I would be one of the Tsalak for ever. I didn't want to be. I had to do something, then or never, to get away.

‘Since I knew by then many of the things they believed in, I thought of the one way in which I could appeal to Wiladzap. Children have a more complicated status with them than with us. For him, for example, his greatest material responsibility would be to his nephews – the children of his sisters, Guyda (she's still at Tsalaks, apparently), and the younger sister, Lukswaas. But there is often great love and affection between fathers and sons or daughters. So I told Wiladzap, and his mother, that if he did not take me back to my people at once I would poison the child in my womb and it would be either aborted too early to live, be stillborn, or horribly deformed. They understood this at once. They think, perhaps rightly, that the pregnant woman can kill her unborn child by evil thoughts, or by stilling what they call the breath of life in her body.

‘Wiladzap pleaded with me – insofar as he can plead – to stay. But I was determined. His pride and largesse were touched. You see, I was not a slave. It would be unthinkable for a man of Wiladzap's renown to keep a wife against her will. If I needed to go back to my own people, well then Wiladzap would take me back. For a while only, to have the baby with my mother. That became the official reason.

‘It was autumn, and the weather was steady, though cold. Wiladzap and some of his men – and their women, to keep me company – brought me by canoe all the way back to Comox. They ran the gauntlet of the Kwagiutl who might have attacked them at any time. The Comox settlement had been abandoned. They brought me further South, to the first British settlement, North of Nanaimo. They left me there. My mother was sent for, from Victoria, and I came here.

‘I had said to Wiladzap that one day I would come back. But as we approached the white settlements he became very gloomy and said he had lost me for ever. If I did come back, I said, I could come in one of the Bay's trading ships, when my baby was old enough to travel. But he must not try to come and get me. He said he would not. I cried when I said goodbye to him. I almost asked him to take me back! I wish I had! None of the present troubles would have happened. But then I was naïve. I was not old enough to understand what would happen to me.

‘My mother was of course happy I was still alive. She called it a miracle. But pregnant! She was her usual helpful self at the birth, as kind as could be. But it was all hushed up. And she found the Joneses to take little William. Wiladzap: William. Sometimes I call him my little Eagle. He's such a fine little boy. But he thinks I'm his “Auntie”! It's so painful. And this has suited everybody. I believe my mother has ‘forgotten' even who William is. And my sisters practice the same deception. The little hypocrites. Can you understand all this?'

‘Of course.' It was, in fact, predictable. Reputation was more important for ‘eligibles' than life itself.

‘It has put me in the most horrible position. I've returned to the life of a blushing maiden. For nine years! But it's a lie. I've not known how, in all conscience, I could even marry – the Indian marriage being a nothing in Christian terms. Not a
respectable
man, anyway. I have – as you know – the appetites of a married woman. At the same time I have the attributes of an old maid in the making. I like that too, in a way. I'm more interested in books and music and grafting apple trees than in most things. I can't play the game my sisters can.'

‘Did you ever think of going back?'

‘Incessantly. But it would have broken Mamma's heart. She too was living in agony. She too has the appetites of a woman – as I
now
know – and had lost her man. She couldn't have Daddy back. Why should I have Wiladzap? Who was a painted savage anyway …

‘At the same time there is much about the life of the Indians – even the Tsimshian – that repulses me. It's not merely that they do not always wear clothes, that they do not play Handel, or eat seedcake at “tea”. Nor are they much dirtier than we are. They have no baths but they wash more often … But up at Tsalak it rains constantly and the clouds become stuck gloomily for weeks on end against the mountains. And it's like living in a combined butcher's and fish market. They are always bringing in animals they have killed, and chopping them up, and skinning otters, and gutting and cleaning fish. One is always washing off blood or fish scales. And it all stinks. It's not the work. They work, especially the women, all day long, but some of it's pleasant. I picked berries and crushed them into cakes, I cooked meat in skunk-cabbage leaves, I wove blankets. But it's a constant harvest of living things. I prefer to work on my apple trees. This orchard was my idea, by the way, and I love grafting and pruning. Civilization seems to depend on agriculture, which the Indians just don't have. Indeed they consider it ridiculous to cultivate plants. That's why Indians are so unreliable as farm workers. Another thing is that they live in terror! Now the whites are more established up the coast I've heard there's much less head hunting and raiding. Many of the Tsimshian – the so-called Kitkats, even, from near Tsalak – have even moved up to the missionary settlements. But I'm sure there are still the permanent revenge feuds that go on between tribes. They remember atrocities from decades back, and brood on them, then take action when they can. I shouldn't want to go back there with my son – although, my God, I'd love to
own
the little dear – only to be butchered in some raid by the Haida.

‘Then, on the other hand, if raids are less common, if the Tsimshian are becoming less wild, I sometimes worry that they'll become corrupted, like the Songhees, and degenerate. Although at other times I think they may not. They have more energy, and they are terrific traders. If we, the whites, will let them be! Lukswaas tells me the trading routes are being taken over by the HBC, and have been prohibited to Tsimshian. She says Wiladzap is afraid of becoming mangy and diseased like a bear in a cage. That's why he's worked up about this old fashioned quest of earning the Legex name. How could I go back to all that? Yet you know, when I saw them at Cormorant Point last week I cried with emotion and gratitude to be among them. Even talking about them now with you makes me want to be with them…' Aemilia stopped talking, her face flushed and excited but her eyes abstracted.

‘Did Wiladzap come to Victoria to fetch you?'

Aemilia laughed, rather wildly. ‘I don't
know
for sure. He didn't tell them. It was a trading expedition, that's all, to find new markets. Lukswaas says he wants me back. He has had slave girls, of course, and sired children on them whom he could acknowledge and raise to his level if he felt like it. But he has not done this. He ‘dreams', as Lukswaas put it, of me. She says that when they arrived at Cormorant Point he told the women who go from farm to farm seeking housework, to keep an eye out for me. They always remember a face, by the way. Lukswaas recognized me at once, even though I was dressed as a man and she had not seen me since she was nine. She thinks he meant to search for me once they got really settled in at the camp. I would have known last night! – if he had got free. I told Lukswaas to tell Wiladzap he could send a messenger for me if he wanted. I waited up all night! I was ready to take the buggy to wherever they were, and to take William too. But it's my fault, all this mess!'

‘How?'

‘When I heard a band of Tsimshian had camped on the peninsula I was terrified. I thought at once it must be him. I suppose I had half-wished, half-feared such a thing might happen one day. So I sent McCrory to spy on them.'

‘
That's
why he went…'

‘He would have anyway. He loved Indians because he could buy valuable herbs from them for almost nothing, and because they told him things which by their standards are commonplace but which he could use in his practice. I told him to find out, without asking of course, if Wiladzap was there, and to report to me on what he looked like, what his mood was. Wiladzap is extremely intelligent but he's as temperamental as a child…'

‘Wait. McCrory knew about Wiladzap? You had already told him your story?'

‘Yes.'

‘I must ask you to tell me everything about your relationship with McCrory.'

‘It's an ugly story – much uglier than the Tsimshian, even with their canoe-full of heads. Uglier, in its own way, than my father's death which was at least sudden!' Aemilia was transported by her own vehemence, and stopped short.

‘Go on, please.'

‘I'll try. I can talk to you, Chad. But please, if this must become public, censor it, won't you? Like Bowdler's
Family Shakespeare.
Bowdlerize it, won't you? Because to you I'd rather tell exactly. We've been close – though My God it fizzled out, didn't it – as it had to. We've been with
them.
Anyway I want you to tell me what you think of my tale of McCrory.'

‘I shall.'

‘All right. He turned up in Victoria last year as you know, and he made a great impression on Mamma. She went to see him. Not, ostensibly, about
her
“nerves”. About mine. My melancholia. I had refused to go. I had told her only a charlatan could pretend to cure melancholia, since it was the result of life. Emotional conditions are not diseases.

‘But eventually I went to see McCrory. To keep Mamma happy. I was not sure why she was so urgent that I go. I don't understand human motives, and certainly not hers. Could it be that she was drawn to him, and did not want to be, so threw me in his way instead? I wondered that even at the time. I went. He was a charming man, of course – a bit of a ruffian under the gloss, one sensed, but then that can be charming too. He was extraordinarily sure of himself. When I told him my objections to coming – not that he was a charlatan, but that emotional states were the results of life, not diseases – he said “Aha! You must think I'm a charlatan to attempt to cure such things!” Then he explained that even physical diseases were the results of blockage in the flow of life – or universal fluid, animal magnetism and so on and so forth – through the body. Emotional states could cause these blockages too, he said. In short, he disarmed every criticism, often before it was made, but at the same time accepted completely that I
was
critical, that I
had
doubts.

‘I had never met a doctor like him. You can see that part of his appeal was that his pseudo-scientific jargon described things I had learned from Wiladzap! Of course there is a “breath of life”, and a flow of it through our body. Any Tsimshian “halayeet” works to dissolve the blocks to this flow, although he may see them as places where evil spirits are encamped. So I was impressed by McCrory. I went into treatment. The lying on the couch. The breathing deeply. The magnetic passes. You know it all, I suppose.'

‘How about what one lady described to me as “the electric testicules”?'

Aemilia laughed rather nervously and for a moment I regretted having been so forward. But she went on. ‘I wonder who that was? No, don't tell me. Thank-you, you make it easier for me. Yes, the electric testicules. To which I did not react at all – I mean electrically. I withdrew my hand, sat up, and asked him what in God's name he meant by this. With characteristic aplomb he buttoned his trousers and explained. There was a special concentration of magnetism in that area, and so forth. Then he said it was clear from my reaction that although I was annoyed, I was not an innocent woman. He said he had already deduced that my melancholia and what he called my “hysterical” symptoms – such as aches and pains and dizziness and oppression around the heart – were the result of an early awakened sexual impulse that had not been satisfied … At the time I did not know something I know now: that he had seen my mother privately on every trip she had made into town, and that they were in the way of becoming pretty intimate – I'll explain later. So of course she had told him something of my story. He was able to tell me little things about myself which he presented as the result of clinical deduction, but which of course were not. This was over many appointments. I had fallen under his spell enough to come back regularly. I, who am always so critical! But usually my criticism has frightened people: they feel it as sharp, and they shrink from it. It was wonderful to have a man receive barbed remarks from me with perfect calm.