Kamouraska (10 page)

Two bullets in his head. His brains, coming out his ears. They've bandaged his hideous wound. Laid him to rest in the church, beneath his lordship's family pew. On stormy nights I can hear him moaning . . . The wind plays such havoc with us here . . . Then stealthily he gets to his feet. Walks through passages deep in
the earth. Dark pathways flowing with underground streams. Comes to the ruins of the manor. Sits in his armchair, fragile as charcoal. The velvet, withered. Next to the fireplace, still intact. Gaping black hole. Complains how cold the earth is. How many masses he has to listen to, day after day. The squealing chants sweep over him in gusty blasts. Down in his hole, under the floor-boards of the church. Great puffs of incense . . . There he sits now, dreaming of giving orders. Calls all his servants. Asks them to bring him food and drink. Says he has all the time in the world to live. Tells them he's waiting for his wife to join him. Groans again. Says that his nasty temper is dead, along with his blood. Begs them to send him his wife, right away. Thinks he's just barked a decisive command. All the time, whispering behind his hand, gloved in black. Announces that everything is ready now for the reenactment of the crime.

“This way. If Madame will be good enough to follow me . . .”

That high-pitched voice. It's Aurélie Caron. Just as she was, that December, 1839. All dressed in new clothes, from head to toe. Ready for the long, hard journey to Kamouraska. Ready to perform her awful mission. Her hair curled over her forehead like so many little commas. Her teeth stained with tobacco. She bundles up in her coat of homespun wool. Collar, cape, kerchief, and scarf.

I walk up the path to the manor, hard on the heels of this girl with the swinging hips. Can't keep from following her. I have no choice.

Aurélie leaves me at the foot of the stairs.

“This is as far as I can go. You know that. I never worked in the manor house at Kamouraska. Not me. I only came up here once. And then, never inside. Something about a certain errand . . .”

Look, there's Rose Morin and little Robert. Marie Voisine, Alma Ouelette, Charles Deguire, Desjardins, Dionne . . . All of them, standing in a double row. With their lamps held over their heads. As if to greet me. Escort me to the staircase. Then let me go up all
alone, into the darkness . . . The steps are gutted by the fire. Every other one, eaten away. The sixth . . . Yes, it still creaks. There's life here after all. And that man, waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Good God, please, let him be alive!

Why does he have his head all bandaged? Haven't we only been married a couple of months? No one has tried to murder my husband for me yet! Not yet, I'm sure! . . . I'm standing at the threshold. I don't want to go in. Our bedroom door is gone . . . I can't stop looking at that head all wrapped in white. Inside the room, such utter chaos, nothing in its place.

“Well, come in! What are you waiting for? Close the door.”

I don't know that voice. I can scarcely hear it. A kind of dull crackle, breaking with every word. Now he's standing up. Almost on top of me. Suddenly he has his booming voice again, the one he used to have. His pale eye, bulging from its socket, tries to catch my glance. I hide my face in my hands.

“Damn you, woman! Damn you! See what you've done!”

Good God! He's going to take off the bandage! Show me the wound! . . . He pulls my hands away from my face. Seizes my wrists, holds both of them tight in one big hand. Makes me look at him, right in the face . . . Again I feel the oily smoothness of his heavy hand, the strength of the bones. Wide-eyed, I recognize his features. A little child's plump and puffy cheeks. No bandage now to hide his fine, blond hair. If only I could thank him somehow. Thank him for that unscathed image of himself. Hug him and kiss him for it. Most of all, make him forget the attack, the murder. In the cove at Kamouraska . . . My young husband. Six months married. God be praised! Nothing has happened. Not yet . . . He looks at me and laughs.

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.