Régina has no trouble finding the gentleman who is supposed to look after Rhéauna on the train. He’s from Montreal, a student who earns money for his studies by crossing Canada from coast to coast as a baggage handler, shoeshine boy or occasional childminder. He has a funny accent, he rolls his r’s and Rhéauna wonders if everyone in Montreal talks like that. She is reassured to realize that she’s not the one with an accent, he is.
Now it’s time for farewells. She would like to jump into her great-aunt’s arms, perhaps tell her that she suspects the older woman has some great sorrow that’s impossible to share; she’d like to tell her, too, that the secret is safe with her, that she’ll never talk about it, to anyone. Of course Régina’s chilliness makes it impossible. Rhéauna must be satisfied with a dry kiss on her cheek. The train is about to take off, the Montreal fellow has picked her up to put her in the coach, as if she weren’t big enough to do it by herself. She’ll have to say something. Nothing comes to her. Her great-aunt tries to make something that could pass for a smile. It’s a pitiful sight.
“Say hello to your great-aunt Bebette. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her …”
Then, just as the door is about to close on the little woman she’ll probably never see again, a sentence emerges from Rhéauna’s mouth that she hasn’t felt coming. She looks Régina in the eyes and tells her, with a sad smile:
“I know you’re unhappy, ma tante Régina from Regina.”
Interlude ii
Dream on the Train to Winnipeg
Heaven is full of archangels.
She knows that they’re archangels because of their immensewings; if they were ordinary angels their wings would be smaller, their faces less radiant, their songs more fluty. They have low-pitched voices, archangel’s voices, and they chant in unison a kind of litany made up of a single note, an o stretched out to infinity, that actually reminds her of the howling of the train when it has left the station or when they want to warn a village of the danger represented by its imminent passage. Clear the track, get your children out of the way.
Archangels are stunningly beautiful, as all angels are supposed to be beautiful, especially archangels, but their song is frightening because it gives the impression that a train is approaching and that it will come too close to not be dangerous.
Heaven is so full of them they have troublegetting around. Some, who refuse to make way for the others, jostle and, if they weren’t busy producing their long, drawn-out o, they would probably be shrieking insults at each other. She realizes that they are city archangels.
She is all alone in the midst of the traffic of archangels, so beautiful but so disturbing, and she doesn’t know what direction to take. She could ask of course, but do they know how to do anything besides pronouncing the endless o, the incessant drone that gets on her nerves because she knows that it’s fastened down up there in Heaven,eternal as the stars, and she must learn to live with it. Do they themselves know where they’re going?
They suddenly seem to become aware of her presence and they turn in her direction, all together, like a herd of cattle when a train actually does pass. Maybe they will talk to her, help her, tell her where to go and how to get there. Instead they stop their insistent chanting and a great silence takes over Heaven. As unsettling as the din that came before. She raises her hand in the same way she saw hergreat-aunt do to hail a taxi and she’s about to ask them where she is and what she’s doing there, when one of the archangels, the tallest, the finest looking, the most imposing, starts to beat its wings, quickly copied by others – hundreds, thousands of others. The beating of wings replaces the litany heard a while ago, a beautiful sound of birds taking flight rises into the sky. She even expects to hear the cooing of pigeons or the cries of nighthawks. But they remain silent while the beating of their wings speeds up, amplified, until they form a kind of whirlwind that shakes her, takes hold of her and lifts her off the earth. Instead of falling into a hole like Alice in Wonderland, she rises up toward the sky like a rocket on the feast day of Saint John. The whirl of wings lulls her, makes her soar, turns her in every direction, faster and faster. Shesees them, the archangels, who are waving at her in a farewell that she does not understand because she hasn’t even had time to be introduced.
When she slips through them – a tiny hole in a sea of archangels – she feels as if she’s an arrow that is piercing a target, or a bullet penetrating an animal’s skin. She turns toward them. They are now lower than she is. She’s afraid that she has killed them. No, the beating of wings has stopped, the o stretching to infinity has started again and they’ve begun jostling one another again, paying no attention toher.
Now she is all alone in the middle of the sky. It’s cold – the sun is a pale winter sun – the whirlwind is nauseating her and she has lost her suitcase. She will start falling again at any moment. Will the archangels down below form a carpet to receive her or will she crash to the ground? The ground? No, the seat in the train. She is on a train. A moving train. And it’s shaking her up.
Then, on the horizon, a flight of wild geese makes itsappearance. A mother wild goose, cackling and joyous, followed by seven goslings exhausted by their mother’s speed because she doesn’t want to miss the arrival of the train.
The young man who is supposed to look after her until Winnipeg – his name is Jacques and she quickly realized that he is supposed to make her journey as pleasant as possible – is sitting on the seat facing hers. He is holding a tray with all kinds of good things to eat. They look delicious. Her mouth waters.
“How much does it cost for all that? I may not be able to pay for everything.”
He smiles, sets the tray on her lap.
“Don’t think about that. Eat. I threw out the lunch you had with you … It didn’t smell good.”
The train bellows, cows turn their heads in the direction of the passing train, a flight of wild geese crosses the sky.
It’s the third time he has come to sit beside her on the worn leather seat. After the snack, during his second visit, he gave her material for drawing, but as everyone has always told her, she’s no good at drawing, so she contents herself with lining up in her finest handwriting – hard to do with coloured crayons – some of her favourite words in the French language: mélancolie, silhouette, mandibule, onomatopée … Others, too, which she finds gentle to the ear – aérien, foisonnant, litière – or whose sound she finds evocative – carabine, for example, which sounds, in her opinion, like the object that it names. (When she says the word good and loud – carabine! – she hears the sound the rifle makes when her grandfather goes hunting for hares, in the cornfield in front of the house.)
She doesn’t understand them all, of course. She remembers looking up each one in her grandmother’s old dictionary when she came across them in a novel; in fact, it is one of her greatest joys. But if some are engraved in her memory, others slip away from her. A little earlier she was frozen for several minutes over circonlocution – one of the longest words she knows, along with onomatopée, and the most beautiful – but couldn’t remember the meaning. That was the question she prepared for Jacques if he should turn up for a third time.
When he arrives then, with a blanket because it’s a little chilly in the car, she gets up from her seat, shows him the word written in good round letters, all even, the way Mademoiselle Primeau had taught her.
“What does that mean, cir-con-lo-cu-tion, Jacques? I used to know but I can’t remember …”
He seems somewhat surprised by her question.
“You’re young to know a word like that … Where’d you get it?”
“In my head. I mean in the books I’ve read. But I’ve held on to it. I started reading when I was little, you know. I like words. I think they’re beautiful. And I like to remember them. Look, instead of drawing I wrote a whole page.”
“Listen, I don’t know if I remember exactly what it means but I’ll try …”
He talks to her about roundabout means of exp
ressing yourself without saying exactly what you want to say, of a number of words with just one meaning. She knits her brow, slightly lost.
“I don’t really understand. Mademoiselle Primeau always told me that you have to be clear when you talk … Give me an example.”
He thought it over, scratching his head, knitting his brow in turn.
“It’s hard just like that, point-blank …”
“What’s a pointed blank?”
“Look, one question at a time … We’re going to start with circonlocution … For instance, if I’m looking at your page of writing and I tell you that your handwriting isn’t bad, that’s a circumlocution because I took a detour, used several words to say something that I could have said more directly. I could have just said that your handwriting is beautiful … That’s also called a periphrasis, or a euphemism, or …”
He smiles at Rhéauna’s wide-eyed astonishment.
“I’ve come up with some words you don’t know, eh? It’s complicated, for sure. The French language is always complicated …”
“Well, the words you say are really complicated, even more than the ones in books by the Comtesse de Ségur …”
“Looks like you’re going to stay in school even if you’re old enough to work …”
She doesn’t know why he is laughing, she didn’t intend to be funny. But laughter feels good so she decides to join in. Then he sits down beside her to explain the meaning of the term point-blank.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
She wasn’t really listening to him, though. She’s just watching his beautiful lips move without taking in what emerges from them.
Because she thinks he’s very handsome. Very. Despite his advanced age. If he is nearly twice as old as she is – he confessed that he would turn twenty in a few months – he doesn’t come across as arrogant like the boys in Maria who, once they’re old enough to get married, become arrogant, they puff out their chests and make jokes they claim are dirty, slapping their thighs, that she understands only rarely. No, there’s nothing crafty in his eyes. When they light on her, it’s at her that they are looking, as she is now, a little girl, and not what she’ll become in five or six years. She doesn’t feel as if she’s being judged or assessed as future goods. The boys in Maria like to make obscure remarks that always have to do with what the boys and girls they will become can do together. For them it’s terribly funny but the girls tend to think they’re silly with their pimply faces and hypocritical eyes. She suspects that they’re forbidden things that have something to do with the prohibition against playing with the boys in the cornfields, but what things? And why?
The train is chugging across the prairie. Jacques is explaining words she has never heard, but she’s not listening. She is looking at his mouth.
Usually the excitement she feels in the presence of something that interests her or someone she likes comes from a part of her body near her heart; it’s warm, it’s pleasant, often she has experienced a kind of dizziness when her grandmother, kissing her, said that she loves her, or over a huge ice cream cone on a summer afternoon, or when she received for her sixth birthday the doll who closes its eyes that she’d coveted for so long. That warmth, it seems, that floating sensation is what we call love. At least that’s how it has always been explained. With a warning, though, to watch out if it gets to be too strong. But what she feels in front of this tall, handsome, grey-eyed young man – she’s never seen eyes that colour, she didn’t even know it existed – doesn’t seem to be located in her chest. Yes, her heart is pounding, faster even, but the warmth, instead of rising up to her head, is going down toward her lower body, and it curls up a little higher, around her solar plexus. She wonders if she has to go to the bathroom. No, it’s not that. It’s something else. It’s new, mysterious and, strangely, it makes her feel uncomfortable. As if she were guilty when she hasn’t done anything.
If she got up now, right away, if she went up to him and kissed him on the mouth, what would it mean? And why does she want to do it all of a sudden? What’s got into her? She’d firmly pushed away Fabien Thibodeau, a boy at school, when he wanted to lure her behind a barn to play doctor and now she wants to kiss an adult on the mouth! What can it mean? That she would like to play doctor with him? But he’s way too old!
“Have you got a stomach ache?”
She is startled.
“What?”
“Have you got a stomach ache? You’ve been rubbing your stomach … Are you sick to your stomach? Maybe it’s what you ate, or the motion of the train …”
“No, no, I’m fine. My stomach doesn’t hurt. I don’t feel sick, well, maybe a little … A drink of water would help I think. Or some orange juice.”
He gets up, obviously worried, and nearly runs to the dining car.
She leans her head against the window. Outside, cows chewing hay watch her go by. Placid. Happy. Do cows ask themselves questions? No, cows don’t ask themselves questions. Lucky them. She raises the window, takes a deep breath.
She feels as if she has brushed against a danger. If he hadn’t interrupted the thread of her thoughts to ask about her stomach, would she have done it, would she have got up and kissed him? On the mouth? Would she have had the courage? The nerve? And afterward, what would have happened afterward? The sensation of warmth around her solar plexus has subsided but her heart is still beating too hard. The coolness of the glass does some good. She takes more deep breaths. What is she going to do when he comes back? Drink the orange juice and send him away with a thank-you? But that’s not what she wants! She wants him to stay, to look after her, talk to her, to …
What exactly is it that she wants? After the kiss … What would have happened after the kiss, what comes after the kiss? Caresses. After the caresses? Others, more precise? But how? How precise?
Jacques comes back with a cold glass of orange juice. It’s good. She didn’t realize how thirsty she is and drinks it in two long gulps that tickle her throat in a nice way.
“Thank you. That felt good.”
“I hope you don’t have a fever.”
He leans across, touches her forehead. It feels soft, it feels warm, she wants to cry. Oh, please, leave your hand there, don’t take it away … It will cure me if I have a fever.
“No … Your forehead is cool … You’re just tired from the trip.”
Will he sit down again, take up their conversation that was so interesting, where they’d left it? Likely not, he has work to do. Earlier, he talked about shoes to shine, meals to serve and other people – adults who, like her, need help – whom he must look after. He’s right, she’s not all alone on the train and she has to let him tend to his business if he wants to pay for his courses at the university to become a doctor. A young doctor. The only doctor she has ever known is old and he doesn’t always smell good, so she finds it a little hard to imagine Jacques with a stethoscope around his neck. Say, that’s another beautiful word – stethoscope …
She wishes he would stay. A little longer. The shoes to be shined can wait. And it’s not yet time for the evening meal … Adults are supposed to be able to manage on their own whereas she …
But how can she hold on to him?
“I know you aren’t married, you don’t have a wedding ring, but have you got a fiancée?”
It came out without her realizing. She said it to gain time, to keep him from leaving. She has the impression, though, that she has asked the wrong question because he straightened up all at once as if she had insulted him. She was indiscreet, that’s not polite, and she wishes she hadn’t said it. Her grandmother would insist that she apologize. But she doesn’t have time, he speaks first.
“No, I don’t have a fiancée.”
It seems as if he wants to run away, but why is he so uncomfortable, the question she asked was perfectly ordinary!
“Why do you ask?”
She has to be careful about how she replies. She senses that he would be easily h
urt. She chooses her words carefully:
“At your age some of the boys in Maria are already married with children …”
He tilts his head a little, sits on the edge of the seat. He looks as if he’s going to slide off onto the dirty floor. As if all at once he’s the one who needs help from her.
“In town, Rhéauna, we don’t marry so young.”
“Everybody calls me Nana. Rhéauna is too serious. It’s a name that nobody knows and no one ever remembers …”
“I remembered …”
“You’re different, you go to university …”
“Okay. I’ll call you Nana if you stop saying vous to me. You don’t say vous to your friends, Nana, you say tu.”
His friend! He sees her as his friend! If she could not get off at Winnipeg to meet her great-aunt Bebette but stay on with him all the way to Ottawa, to Montreal, she would. And she would gladly go all the way to Vancouver with him … Why not spend the rest of her life always moving like that – Montreal to Vancouver, Vancouver to Montreal – with someone who thinks of her as a friend, who would always be nice to her, whom she could admire without his realizing it, love secretly, instead of being subjected to the life that awaits her in Montreal, full of the surprises, with people she doesn’t know and dreads to meet? To grow up on a train beside a perpetual medical student? She knows it’s ridiculous to think that but it fills her with a wild hope and, for a while now, that strange sensation in her lower body has come back. She’s going to do it, she is going to get up and kiss him …
Crossing the Continent Page 9