Kamouraska Page 8

  He waves his arms. Points to the bed, covered with clothes and linens and toilet things, all strewn about. And the big pine cupboard, both doors open wide, shelves empty.

  “Your chemises, dearest? You’re looking for your chemises? Well, find them if you can! Look for them. Keep looking. And your fancy pantalets? You’d like to find them too? To show off a little? To tempt the devil, and your poor husband too?”

  I go about picking things up. Sorting them, putting them back in the cupboard. It’s easy to see that most of my bridal linen has disappeared.

  “No more. Gone. Disappeared. My wife’s chemises and pantalets. Now you’ll have to go naked under your gowns of cashmere and silk! A fine joke, don’t you think? I’m really a clown!”

  Antoine Tassy is choking with laughter. He downs a healthy swallow of brandy. Hangs his head, sheepishly like a naughty child, caught and punished. Again, his strange voice, barely audible, brittle.

  “Don’t look at me like that. Go away, please. Go away. I’m a swine, I know . . .”

  A swine! His words, my husband’s very words. Yes, that’s what he is. A swine. That’s just what he is. And he admits it. It’s all his fault, not mine. He’s to blame. I’m innocent. Innocent . . . Disgraced, humiliated. Six months pregnant. And he insults me. Makes fun of me. I look so foolish with my belly sticking out. It’s Sunday, high mass, and I’m walking along. Heavy, hanging on my husband’s arm, my cape pulled round me, all askew . . . Oh, no! My blue muslin dress. The one that disappeared. Look, there it is. On that filthy Aglaé Dionne! His latest conquest. See? She’s smirking at me. Clasping her hands, making faces behind them as I go by. Laughing at me. Oh, to have her stripped bare, here and now! To have her whipped on the spot, that slut!

  He’s snoring now and stinking of alcohol. I have to undress him. Take off his boots.

  Today he begged me to forgive him. Took me tenderly in his arms. Kissing, caressing my belly and the little one inside. He’s crying, taking great pleasure filling my navel with his tears. He calls it his holy font. And he tells me that I’m so pretty, so kind. And that one fine day he’s going to kill me.

  My mother-in-law keeps repeating:

  “Just ignore him. Turn your back. Let it all go in one ear and out the other . . .”

  My first son is born. Endless ordeal, a day and a half. They had to use forceps. And Antoine, nowhere to be seen. They found him four days later, dead drunk. All huddled up, feverish, shivering with the cold. Lying on the wet sand. In the rushes. By the river.

  He swears on his son’s life never to drink again. We toast the baptism with champagne just off the boat from France. Antoine goes drinking all through the house. Down in the kitchen, up in the attic. Looking for a green and yellow pumpkin, to mix up a special punch of his own.

  “A party for my wife and son! Like none you’ve ever seen before! Ring the bells! Bang the glasses! Ding, dong! Ding, dong! You see? I’ve gone mad! . . .”

  My mother-in-law goes scurrying here and there, filling the cups. Tells everyone that her grandson is quite a bawler, and that her son is twice as bad!

  All’s right with the world. The dead below. The living above. Little baptismal scenes. The manor, lit up, shines in the night. Like a ship out of water. Perched on a promontory. Up for repairs. All lights ablaze. And inside, swarming with life. All the townsfolk, drinking and eating their fill. In the kitchen, bursting with eels and every kind of bird. Flowing with their wine and whiskey brew.

  “It’s a boy! Monsieur has a son!”

  The scene is such a happy one, so full of promise. Why not hold on to it, cling to it?

  On the walls in the couple’s room, a piece of mirror is still in place above the chest of drawers. The soot falls away in a velvety powder. Uncovers a clear, round, silver space . . . Look through the little porthole. See the pretty scene reflected in the stagnant water. Family portrait. Father and mother, all aflutter, bending over a newborn baby, red as can be. Mother-in-law brings over a homespun shawl, one she knitted herself.

  Mother says it’s too rough for her baby. Mother-in-law, offended, raps on the floor with her cane. Three good raps, loud and clear. Announcing the drama we’re destined to play. Leaves in a huff.

  “Theatre, that’s all it is!”

  Now we’re on our own. For better or worse. Antoine Tassy and I, Elisabeth d’Aulnières, his wife.

  Again my husband is wearing a band of white, wrapped round his forehead. Raising his arm above my head, waving his fist. To curse me. I’m holding my son in my arms. I close my eyes. Now my mother-in-law comes back. Tells us we’re just a couple of puppets . . . Oh! The piece of mirror is breaking, smashing to bits . . .

  One last sliver clings to the wall. Tiny triangle, all jagged around the edges. But so clear. Limpid. No, I refuse to move. I’ll stand like this as long as I have to, clutching my son to my breast. I’ll keep my eyes shut tight, no matter what. They’ll have to pry them open to make me look. That mirror, too flawless. Its flash is sure to pierce my heart. Better to face his anger. Awful, like a wounded beast’s. Antoine and his revenge. Anything, rather than see that clear, blue, childlike look of his again. That look of sad bewilderment.

  “You? Elisabeth? My wife? How could you . . .”

  His tortured voice, too soft and gentle. God, what have I done? What’s the crime . . .

  My skirts are covered with mud. My bodice, ripped apart. We’re running, the two of us. So fast. Can’t catch our breath. Over the wet bank. Falling in the rushes. The little puddles of greenish water splashing under our weight. The slimy seaweed, red and yellow. The sea fern, outlined on our skin . . . Antoine Tassy, my husband . . . Good heavens, if ever the servants or the folks in town . . . We’re two wild children. Let’s hold each other’s hands. Kiss each other on the lips. So hard we almost smother. Let’s take off all our clothes again. Run quick and hide in the little house at Paincourt that my husband uses for his own affairs . . .

  He’s throwing a kitchen knife at me. Straight for my head. I barely have time to move. The knife is stuck in the woodwork, right on a level with my throat.

  He’s mad. Look at him, sitting in his chair, so quiet and motionless. Or on his feet. Stiff as a heavy stump. At the window, against the light. As if the burden of immobility builds up inside him, bit by bit. Bears down on him with all its ponderous weight. And all its silence. Like an earthen jar filled up with iron pellets, one by one, right to the brim . . . Everyone away! Locks and seals on all that excess weight. On his petrified gaze. No other thought in mind but following the secret workings of that awesome something, forgotten, left behind almost unthinkingly to gather dust. Though everyone knows what kind of beast it is, there in the sack. What mischievous little mouse, what devilish sprite triumphant. Antoine seems so far away. But he’s listening to that deadly voice within him. The underside of his noisy, brawling joy. The bitter, all-commanding voice of his despair.

  I throw myself at his feet. I beg him to come to his senses. If only I could rid him of that one idea, that obsession. He looks at me but doesn’t see me. Speaks in a voice calm and controlled.

  “I’m going to kill myself. Kill myself. I have to kill myself. You know I have to. There’s no other way. I’m going to kill myself, Elisabeth. Kill myself.”

  His mother says he’s been like this five years now. Says to make him drink black coffee. Talk to him about other things. Keep an eye on him all the time . . .

  At night he raves, delirious. He goes to confession. Calls the priest a dead tree. Beats his breast.

  “I’m living in filth, Father. Stuck in the mire. I say the foulest things, Father. Debauched, depraved . . . Doing my tricks, cutting my capers. My somersaults. Squealing like the swine I am . . . A clown, Father. That’s it, I’m a clown. Full of brandy and beer. A clown who laces his wine with whiskey. Plenty of it . . . Ugh! I’m falling, Father. Into a black hole. Going blind . . . You’re a big dead tree, Father. With lots of dead branches.” — “The better to hang you with, my child
.” — “Look, Father, I’m putting my damn fool head through the noose. Right now. Amen!”

  Antoine, down on his knees, drags himself along the floor. Tries to get up. Wants to confess again, in front of the piece of mirror stuck in the wall above the chest of drawers.

  “I want to see my damn fool face!”

  He stares in the mirror, wide-eyed. Opens his mouth, sticks out a coated tongue. Shoots a bullet at the glass. Misses. Hole in the wall. While the one last sliver still intact, stuck on a nail, quivers. Dizzily . . .

  I’m pregnant again. I like being pregnant. It makes me so awfully important in the house. Surprised, Antoine goes slinking about, almost unnoticed. My mother-in-law attacks her knitting with a vengeance . . .

  Antoine is calling to me from a shed in the courtyard. He’s sitting on a white wooden box. Behind him, tied to one of the beams, a thick rope, ending in a noose, swings back and forth. He struggles to his feet, mumbling.

  “Are you coming, Elisabeth? I’ll make the noose bigger and you can come too. Swinging from a rope. Husband and wife, hanging together, two heads in one noose. Isn’t that nice? And the baby will split your belly, all by himself. No midwife to help him. He’ll fall on the straw like a rock. And his very first screams will ring in our ears. Just before we get to hell, the two of us. Come on along. The rope is big enough for two, Elisabeth. You see? The bonds of marriage. A thick rope, nice and solid. A noose to strangle in together. You promised, for better or worse. Come on, come on . . .”

  He’s screaming with laughter, trying to slip the noose around my neck. I push him away and make believe I’m laughing too. A moment later he loses his balance and falls on the straw. With a great, dull thud.

  All ropes and straps and halters out of sight. Strictest orders to the help. To keep this man from hanging himself. And destroying me along with him . . . Go on living. Another child. Ten months after the first one. A second boy. More of a bawler than the first . . . The wind. The sound of the waves dashing against the rocks. The great autumn tides. The manor, jutting out above the rising waters, lost in a fog as thick as milk. The wooden shutters creak and come unhinged. The storm ranges for two whole days. No sleep. Watching the branches breaking. The cataracts gushing. A man staggering through the darkness. Helping him out of his sopping clothes.

  I think it’s fear alone that keeps me here. I’m spellbound. Held fast to a madman’s bed. His crazy wife, still bewitched by love. Once in a while. In great, sudden flashes. Fewer and fewer . . . Go on living. My new baby screams and screeches all night long. My milk is almost all dried up. My mother-in-law says I should get some sleep and find him a wet nurse instead. Yes, I’ll look for one. An ugly one, not too young. Neat and clean, with plenty of milk.

  My mother-in-law has no objections.

  “My son is such a terrible spendthrift. It’s up to you, my dear, to see that my grandchildren never want for a thing.”

  Madame Tassy leans on her cane. Screws up her little hook nose and goes digging in her numerous pockets. Rummages through her woollen skirts, here and there, inside and out. Finally produces a handful of coins and thrusts them into my hand. Scratching my palm with her little nails. As if she were clawing the earth to bury a treasure. Keeps telling me that she’s the mistress of Kamouraska.

  Antoine could puke at his mother’s feet, all over the rug, and she’d never call him down. Never say a word. Instead, she delights in making our meals an act of strictest penance. Boiled potatoes, pickled eels, buckwheat cakes . . . Day after day.

  My aunts come running to the baptism of my second child. Look at me, aghast. Decide to take me back to Sorel for a while, me and the children. I give myself over, body and soul, to these three little creatures, appearing all at once from the ends of the earth to save me. Antoine swears that he won’t allow it. Then suddenly changes his mind and decides that we’ll all go back to Sorel together.

  My last mass in the church at Kamouraska. My aunts, gazing with pity at the hapless wife.

  “How thin she is!”

  “And so pale . . .”

  The people of Kamouraska whisper as I go by.

  “Wonderful woman . . . Wonderful wife . . . Such a pleasant disposition . . . Such Christian resignation . . .”

  My head bowed low over my missal. I take a certain curious pleasure in my role as martyred wife and outraged princess. Over and over I repeat to myself the tender praises of the parishioners gathered in the little stone church. Mechanically I begin to spit out the words of the Our Father . . . A savage frenzy seems to seize me. Wakes me up, all at once, like someone walking in his sleep. Makes me sink my teeth into four words of the prayer, wrenching them out of the text, explaining them, devouring them. As if to make them my very own, forever. Giving them one supreme and ultimate meaning. “Deliver us from evil.” While the evil I must be delivered from, at any cost, takes shape beside me in the family pew. Takes on the flushed face and the trembling hands of the man who is my husband.

  What a pretty sight when the high mass is over. All the townsfolk leaving the church. Row after row, crowding behind his lordship and his lady. Arm in arm, just for the occasion. The young wife, smiling sweetly, still so pale from her confinement. Inside, her hidden heart. The underside of all that sweetness. Violent counterpart. Your delicate face, Elisabeth d’Aulnières. Film of angel skin laid over your loathing. Thin as can be.

  You have just enough time to say good-bye to Kamouraska. Take a good look at the gigantic man coming toward you, covered with snow. Rising up out of some deep hole, dug in a snowbank out on the ice. To bury him forever. The long, flat, broad, bare, powdery stretch of snow. The lovely cove between Saint-Denis and Kamouraska. This man, lost. Standing out against the blurred horizon. His head is wrapped in white. He’s growing, growing before your very eyes. Still coming toward you. Intent on making it perfectly clear that your love didn’t fool him one bit.

  I cry out. I’m sure I cry out. This vision of Antoine, murdered, is about to pounce. Knock me down. But all of a sudden . . . My shoulder, made of stone. And the giant smashes against it. Breaks into bits. Penetrates my very being. Thousands of splinters stuck in my flesh. I’m possessed, down to the roots of my hair, the tips of my nails. Antoine, multiplied beyond all measure. As if he were crushed in a mortar, pounded into a mass of tiny fragments. Each minuscule grain still bearing all the burden of crime and death. His blood, shed. His skull, smashed. His heart, stopped. About nine o’clock at night. January 31, 1839. In the cove at Kamouraska.

  His blood, his head, his heart. It’s all beginning again. Dancing around in my bones. A swarm of Antoines, murdered, milling around in my bones. Black ants with huge eyes. Blue ones. Good God! I’m dying! I’m dying, I tell you . . .

  I sit up on the bed with a start. All those morning glories on the paper, twining around me, holding me prisoner. The four walls grip me and weigh me down, like a fist clenched tight against my throat.

  “Anne-Marie! . . . It’s you, darling! . . .”

  Madame Rolland is sitting there, her head, Medusa-like, poking out of her crumpled robe. Anne-Marie stares at her mother, a look of fright in her wistful eyes.

  “Was that you that screamed, Mamma? . . . Are you sick? . . .”

  “Me? Sick? . . . Don’t be silly! . . . Now be a dear and get me a glass of water.”

  Madame Rolland gulps it down. Passes the moist glass over her brow, her cheeks. Still under the dark and piercing gaze of Anne-Marie.

  Madame Rolland begins to get up. The child runs to the bed, smooths out the covers. Speaks in a commanding tone. Repeats the doctor’s orders in a solemn voice.

  “No, no. You mustn’t get up yet. The doctor said you have to rest . . . All the care you give Papa, all your worry . . . You’re all worn out. You have to sleep a little longer.”

  Madame Rolland savors her daughter’s words. With gluttonous relish. “Care,” “worry” . . . She’ll find her peace someday, hidden inside a compliment, hard as an almond.

  Madame Roll
and, grateful to her daughter, gives her a hug and a kiss. Then, dutiful, and in her dolefullest of voices, asks how Monsieur Rolland is doing.

  “He’s asleep. Florida is staying up with him. You don’t have to worry.”

  What a good little girl your daughter is. And Florida, what a devoted maid. Nothing to worry about. But be sure not to fall asleep again. Stay up and keep watch.

  Keep watch over my husband. Follow him every step of the way, as far as I can. Over this narrow plank that leads to death. Until I can’t take one more step without dying myself. Just at the very moment prescribed by law, leaving him alone to take the last step over . . . Hanging from a thread thinner and thinner. Watching him disappear. Standing here, still living. At the edge of the cliff. And the thread, broken, hanging. Cut . . . Waving a handkerchief good-bye, over the void. A widow again . . . No, you can look all you want. This time my hands are clean. I’m innocent. My husband’s name is Jérôme Rolland, and now I’m going to see him off. Walk with him. To the brink of death.

  This dangerous urge to keep falling asleep will be your undoing, Madame Rolland. See, you’re drunk with dreaming. You’re babbling, Madame Rolland. Turning your heavy, sluggish body toward the wall, as if there were nothing else for you to do. And all this time, in his second-floor room, in your house on Rue du Parloir, Monsieur Rolland . . . Who knows, is he gasping his last? . . .