Kamouraska (24 page)

“The stranger hid the sleigh bells under the seat before he left for Kamouraska . . .”

“A little black hood, an overcoat of that cloth they make upriver, a dark blue rough-weave jacket with double pockets at the hips. Thick knitted stockings, or they could have been leggings, with little black buttons up one side, and leather soles if I'm not mistaken . . .” “Seemed like a nice-looking young man to me. Average size, well built. Black whiskers and a ruddy, dark complexion. I'd say he was twenty-five or six . . .” “I could tell by the stranger's clothes, and the way he talked and acted, that he wasn't just some ordinary man . . .” “Did you see how white his teeth were? . . .” “He snapped back that he was in a hurry . . .”

“He seemed uneasy and nervous, even more on the way back from Kamouraska than on the way there . . .” “That man's not one
of us. If you ask me he's got an English accent. Or even some foreign country maybe. And that sleigh of his with the covered front, and the poles attached in the middle of the dashboard. You couldn't miss it . . .”

I try to draw out this torpor that surrounds me. Out to its absolute limits. The witnesses chattering by my bed. Their endless, almost solemn pacing fills the room. But I'm still unhurt, unharmed. All these people, pressing about me, puffing in my face, looking me over with gluttonous glances. Secretly plotting relentless ways to force me out of bed. Tear me forever from my house on Rue du Parloir. Far from my poor, dear husband who's about to . . . Planning to take me bodily to Kamouraska. I know I can't escape. They'll banish me to Kamouraska, dead or alive. The most I can hope for is to put them off. Hold out a little longer. An inert mass. Blind, deaf, and dumb. They'll have to grab me by the wrists and drag me along . . . And this stranger you all describe with such insistence, such precision. No, I won't give him refuge. I won't give him papers to prove he has a name. Not now. There's no one but me that can bring him back to life. Save him from time and oblivion. Condemn him again, and myself along with him. That's one thing I'll never do, as long as I live. Tell them, “Look, that man is my lover. His name is George Nelson. He's murdered my husband. And we're guilty, the two of us. So hang us why don't you, and let's get it over with . . .” No, no. I won't say a word.

Me, Elisabeth d'Aulnières. Not here as a witness, but to watch and play a part. Here in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, at Louis Clermont's inn. Not like just another traveler, taken in and given a bed and room. Not like any ordinary guest. Bags sitting on the braided rug beside the bed. Toilet things on the sink, next to the flowered basin and pitcher. But set down, still and silent, right in the middle of the house. To see and hear what happens. Nowhere in particular, and everywhere at once. The hall, the bedrooms . . .

First I have to get to know the place. Before a certain stranger comes knocking at the door. I won't disturb a soul. It seems that no one can see me. Or at least no one bothers to look. Not the innkeeper, not his wife, not the one they call Blanchet. Resigned to my being here. Not willing, just resigned. Something that can't be helped. Forced on them here in Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, at Louis Clermont's inn. By some unbending will. Dropped like a bundle. Thrust into the bosom of this house barred shut. In the middle of winter. Just off the road between Sainte-Anne and Kamouraska. On the night of January 31st.

The cracks in the window, plugged up with wadding, or with newspaper moistened and rolled in a ball. The two-decked stove,
a solid mass of black, standing for all to see in the room that they use as a hall and a kitchen. Blanchet, the drunken beggar, asleep on a wooden bench by the stove, wrapped in an old potato-colored blanket . . . Like any other winter night at this godforsaken inn.

Outside, the huge expanse of snow, far as the eye can see. That kind of thick, white mist, rising from the fields, the road, the river. Wherever the wind can blow up gusts of snow. Great blasts that hide the roads and trails. And the thought of the cove at Kamouraska, boring through my head. The echo of the thought, throbbing its way through my head. Hard against my bones.

The darkening hall, the dying fire. The glimmer of coals through the slits in the little stove door, shut up for the night. The beggar and his noisy breathing, lying on his back with his mouth open wide . . .

I'm waiting for a stranger who'll come knocking at the door. Rattling its timbers with pounding fists. Asking for a place to spend the night. To hear his voice. To be here at the inn, just waiting for that voice. Unlike any other. Maybe to find it more harsh now, more hoarse . . . To be turned inside out by the sound of that voice. To be shaken and sapped and ripped apart by the sound of that voice, as if . . . To wait for that wonderful voice my whole life through, in vain . . . His dark and handsome face. This man of mine. His body bundled up in winter clothes. Stripping them off and standing bare. And me, stripped just as bare, as he comes to my side. Making his way to reach me, through layers and layers of disaster . . . Time, time! Great sooty clouds. The past, leaped over in one prodigious bound. Murder and madness reduced to size. Cleansed of their demons. Their right weight restored. No longer bigger than life, no longer seen through a glass with many sides. (Deformed by panic and anguish.) Our weapons, shining clean and undefiled. For attack, for defense. Spotless and polished now, after the battle. Love and freedom, bought at their terrible
price. Their blood-price paid in coins of gold, heavy and gleaming, piled on the chair by the bed. Along with our clothes, neatly folded. A fine, big bed for the two of us, all night long. Where we're sure to have cool, crisp sheets to ourselves. In a room to ourselves. And a house all our own . . . Once more, there you are, between my thighs. Deep, deep inside me. I scream and call your name, my love! . . .

Dragged back all at once toward the mouth of the river. That beggar's fault, lying on the bench, snorting out his drunken stupor. One recollection, sharp and clear, that haunts his feeble brain and keeps returning to torment his sleep.

“I was on my way here, over by the cove at Kamouraska, and I saw this stranger, plain as day. He didn't seem to know which way to turn. Well, he asks me where the shore is. Can't tell anymore if he's out on the ice or still on land. Him and his horse and sleigh. And the snow blowing all around us. So I start climbing into the sleigh. But he stops me. Won't let me get in. I'm surprised, because he's all alone and there's plenty of room. Just makes me walk in front of his horse and take him to the highway. Then I point out the road to Rivière-Ouelle, like he asked me, and he gives me a dollar. I didn't get a good look at his face on account of the dark . . .”

That vision of the cove, to the north and east of Kamouraska, up toward Rivière-Ouelle, slips its way out of the beggar Blanchet's heavy sleep and takes its place in Louis Clermont's inn . . . The pity I feel for that helpless traveler. The knowledge of what it must be like to lose your way in the dead of night, in the snow and cold. When you've just killed a man. Lord, who would dare to beg your mercy? The terror, the agony of it all . . .

Victoire Dufour says something that makes her laugh. A big laugh deep in her throat. Her head thrown back. That thick, white neck. While Louis Clermont, dried up skin and bones, bolts the door. Says that it's time to go to bed.

Victoire goes waddling off, rolling her enormous hips. Her wizened little husband follows behind. Carrying the lamp. Moaning to himself that he's really got himself the fattest wife . . .

Once again I stand my watch at the sleeping inn. Studying the knots in the kitchen floor with care, as if they had some great importance.

What bothers me most isn't being deprived of the solemn, somber atmosphere of court. It's finding myself in all those places that the witnesses describe. With no counsel to guide me. No help of any kind. Not only forced to hear them tell their stories, but even to watch the scenes unfold as they relate them. Reduced to my most wretched state. As close to utter nothingness as I can be and not be dead. Growing translucent. My body, stripped of all reality. Of all its shape and depth and thickness. My every act, my every gesture, doomed from the start. Held back at the source. Even now, if I try to lift my hand, I can't go on. If I begin to shout, no sound will leave my throat. If I have to endure the next scene — and I must — it will be at the utmost limits of my attention.

Victoire Dufour, wife of Louis Clermont. Says she doesn't know how to sign her name, and makes a cross.

Her pale blue eyes, still blurred with sleep. A long, smooth wisp of yellow hair across her face. Like the lash of a whip. She sits up in bed, fast as her bulk will let her.

“I said to my husband, ‘Clermont, someone's knocking at the door.' So he sat up in bed beside me. And both of us listened. We let them knock one more time. Then Clermont got up and lit a candle. Pulled on his pants. When the one who was out there came in, I could see him through the door to my room. It's just off the hall. I could tell by his coat and his hood that it must be the stranger who passed by on the road that day. I don't much remember what happened after that, until next morning . . .”

Louis Clermont, innkeeper in the town of Sainte-Anne, is proudly signing his name, in giant letters, to the statement he's made under oath. The little man, brittle and nervous, tries hard to keep still. Does his best to look calm. Has about as much success as a live eel, stuck to a pole! Sharp, sudden tremors shake his body, stiff and erect, with no clear relation to the things he's saying. The candle lights his dark, dull, almost leaden face. From time to time a twitch runs through his sunken cheek.

“It could have been anywhere between eleven and twelve. I let them knock a couple of times. And each time I asked whoever it was to tell me their name. But they wouldn't answer, just kept knocking louder. Finally they said ‘a friend,' so I lifted the bolt . . .”

Dark mass in the doorway. Beard and eyebrows covered with frost. Breath, quick and throaty. Sweat dripping from head to toe, soaked up by the thick woollen clothes. Little by little turning to ice. The smell of a manly body and dank, wet wool. A hoarse voice, panting between clenched teeth.

“A place for the night for me and my horse . . . And hot water . . . Lots of hot water . . .”

Is it the candle's glimmer? I seem to see dark blotches caked on the coat, powdered with snow.

Keep telling myself I'm dead, beyond all harm. Not hurt, not dying, but really dead. And no one can see me. Not even the stranger who just came in, huffing and puffing like an animal long
on the run from his pursuers. Invisible, I tell you. No feeling in me either. Hidden away at this inn. Transparent as a drop of water. Practically nonexistent. Nameless and faceless. Destroyed. Rejected. Yet there's something inside me that won't be held back. And it leaps from my body, though I've ceased to exist. Not the power to suffer, not the power to love. But only . . . Not even the five senses of a living being. Only one sense still left free to function. The other four tied down, in shackles. (Except for sight, of course . . .) Such a fine, upstanding woman, she is. (See how she cares for her husband, Monsieur Rolland . . .) Like an arrow, my sense of smell flies straight for its prey. Finds it and knows it at once. Greets it with open arms. Delights in the murderer's smell. The sweat, the panic. The musty stench of blood. Your scent, my love, that smell of the beast . . . Inside of me, a dog, crouching. Whining softly. Baying its long and deathly cry.

Again the traveler says that he wants some hot water. Slowly, his every movement dripping with sleep, Louis Clermont fires up the stove. (There are still a few embers left glowing in back.) He fills the coffeepot with water, puts it on the fire. The stranger snaps at him. Says that he doesn't want the water to drink, but to wash off his sleigh and his bisonskin blankets, and that he'll need a lot more than that. Louis Clermont fills the kettle, puts it on the fire.

“You didn't get all that filthy on our roads around here, did you? Not with this nice white snow!”

“The last place I stopped, I had to leave my sleigh in their slaughterhouse. That's why all the blood . . .”

“They sure weren't awfully clean at that inn, to mess up your sleigh like that and get your skins so dirty. At least they could have washed them off . . .”

“I was in a hurry . . .”

The traveler's voice, choked up in a muted whisper, but sharpedged all the same. Telling Louis Clermont to put the horse in the stable, and to give him some lukewarm water and a gallon of oats.

“So I did what the stranger told me, and took a bowl and a feed bag out from under one of the seats. There was a horse collar stuck away down there, under the seat, with a lot of little bells. And there were drops of blood, like tears, hanging from the sleigh, all frozen hard. I scratched at them with my nails. And believe me, I was good and scared. But not like later on, after the stranger left and I stopped to think it over . . . Anyway, he came to the shed with me to wash off the sleigh. I could see with my lamp that there was plenty of blood inside the sleigh too, on the floor. And on the seats. Practically all over . . . Well, he took some hot water and threw it against the sides and the front. And both of us began to rub. Me, with one of my wife's old petticoats. Him, with a gray cloth sack that looked like something to keep a pistol in. It was cold, and the water kept freezing up on us. So he said I'd better wait till morning to wash the sleigh. And be sure not to forget to wake him up at five o'clock. Then he bundled up the skins and took them inside the house, along with his bag. As soon as he got inside, he took off his gray coat and rolled up his sleeves. And he started to wash out the skins in a tub that I gave him. With hot water that I heated up in the kettle, and that he kept mixing with cold. He asked me to warm him up a glass of wine, and he drank it about halfway down. Then he went to his room to go to sleep. But first he looked the bed over and made me give him some more covers. A little while later, maybe fifteen minutes, he asked me for one of the skins from the sleigh to put on the bed. Said he was so cold he just couldn't get warm . . .”