Crossing the Continent

by Michel Tremblay

  Rhéauna is in despair.

  All the next day she feels as if she’s invisible. No one has time to look after her, they’re too involved with getting ready for her birthday party! Bebette is hysterical, loads of people come and go, carrying enormous packages that they set down everywhere but mainly in the kitchen. Bebette exclaims happily like a child or shouts acid criticisms – when Gaétane bursts into sobs, Rhéauna guesses that her pink-and-green cake is not a great success – women of every age run and shout, children cling to their skirts without even glancing in the direction of the birthday girl. Rhéauna, who can’t help thinking about Christmas, more or less expects the arrival of a Christmas tree cut by hand that morning – are there forests around Saint-Boniface? – or to see a man dressed up as a ho-ho-hoing Santa Claus. She is quick to realize, though, that she is just a pretext: Bebette likes to gather her family and friends together, have a party for any reason at all, that’s plain to see. She’s only happy when there is life around her and she leaps at any pretext for organizing a family party. And if there’s no reason she makes one up, as she’s doing today, with rather ridiculous energy that is very close to despair. No one but her needs this party, no one wants it, so why is she working so hard? To pass the time? To shift her attention away from her huge husband? Rhéauna wishes she could beg her to call it off. Knowing that it would be pointless, that Bebette wouldn’t listen to her, she simply dreads what lies in wait for her that night: an excellent meal most likely but one she’d happily do without; surprises prepared too quickly to be of any real interest; a pointless hustle and bustle around a sad little girl who had not been expecting so much.

  Around one o’clock that afternoon, Bebette pushes in front of Rhéauna a tall, pale young girl who seems to have trouble staying upright, she’s so thin, and who stubbornly keeps looking at the threadbare motifs in the living-room carpet.

  “Nana, this is your third cousin Ozéa. She’ll look after you till tonight … She’s awfully nice, you’ll see …”

  Most of all she’s so boring, maybe because of her pathological shyness that keeps her from asserting herself and makes her express everything in the form of a stupid question:

  “Want to do something? Like what? Have you got lots of dolls back home in Maria? Have you got one that opens and closes its eyes? Can you talk English? Is it true you aren’t a real orphan and you’re going to be with your mother and help her work in the house of some rich people in Morial?”

  Accustomed to the energetic suggestions of her sisters, to their healthy aggression, to their curiosity about everything in nature – animals, plants, insects, even the most repulsive – Rhéauna is taken aback in the presence of this city girl who’s dressed like a doll in the middle of the week, who’s too clean, too quiet and has just one thing in her mind: to stay clean.

  “No, I can’t play marbles, my mother won’t let me play in the dirt, she says it’s all right for little girls in the country …”

  Rhéauna feels more like slapping her than playing with her. She’d been told that city children are sassy, unruly, that they know more, too, because they often go to school longer but instead she finds herself with this mildly retarded scaredy-cat little girl – she was born in Saint-Boniface, a big city, she’s thirteen years old and she’s never heard of the Comtesse de Ségur, the ignoramus! – who’s only interested in her own little self.

  The day turns out to be long, then. And challenging.

  Rhéauna wanders from room to room with the anaemic Ozéa while everyone is bustling about in the house. She tries to read – a novel taken from her suitcase which she has read several times and never tires of – but her third cousin looks at her as if she’d come from another planet.

  “Don’t you like to read, Ozéa?”

  “I like it when I’m all by myself.”

  She gets the message, puts the book down.

  “Okay, so we have to find something to play … What do you play in the city in the afternoon?”

  Another uncomprehending look.

  “Let’s walk. That’s something I like, walking …”

  “Okay, sure, let’s walk.”

  “Grandma Bebette doesn’t want us to leave the house … This isn’t my neighbourhood. We might get lost.”

  “We won’t go far … Go ask her, tell her we won’t go far, we’ll stay on this street … Tell her I’ve got a good sense of direction …”

  “She’ll say no.”

  There is something final about this statement. Rhéauna realizes that no negotiation is possible: if Bebette has decreed that they won’t step outside the house because Ozéa is too dumb to avoid getting lost in Saint-Boniface, they won’t leave the house and that’s that.

  A red crepe-paper streamer with “Happy Birthday” printed on it in gold shows up in the dining room around the middle of the afternoon. Some great-uncle or first cousin or second cousin or third cousin hangs it up, bellowing too loud for it to be sincere, a song that’s reminiscent of “Partons, lamer est belle” but barely sounds like it, it’s botched so badly. He even sends some winks her way that he hopes will suggest they’re in league with each other but that she refuses to answer. After all, she isn’t going to show enthusiasm she doesn’t feel for a streamer in English!

  Gradually she does regret her stubbornness at refusing to be the centre of attention amid the frenzy created by Bebette’s friends. Something new, like guilt, is making her feel sick. She decides then to ride it out. She tells herself that all those preparations, the excitement, is happening because of her, for her, to celebrate her birthday, that it all springs from a very laudable intention on the part of these generous people who insist on underlining the passage in their lives of a little girl who’ll be all alone on the night of her birthday in the company of the mother she barely knows, and that they’re doing everything possible to make her forget it.

  She spends long minutes sitting in the parlour next to Ozéa, who does nothing to break the silence. She no longer dares to read so she won’t hurt her cousin’s feelings. She’s bored to tears, convinced that the day will never end. She looks out the window. Rosaire is sitting in his chair. He is snoring, an empty plate beside him.

  At one point Ozéa gets up without warning her and tries out some rather clumsy dance steps. Probably she wants to show her country cousin that she takes ballet lessons which cost a fortune and will make her into a genuine young lady, but she only makes herself more ridiculous because she has no talent for dancing. Rhéauna hides her giggles with her hand. She doesn’t know a thing about dancing but she does know that what she sees now is grotesque. She tells herself that at least something is happening! Ozéa, soon exhausted, stops her demonstration as quickly as she started and sits back down in her chair, giving Rhéauna a triumphant smile, as if to say, Just you try it, you’ll never learn that in Saskatchewan out in the back of beyond! Rhéauna would like to tell her about her adventure in the cornfield to terrify her a little.

  Then nothing interesting happens and the afternoon is torpid once again. Rhéauna finally falls asleep – the flight into sleep – and wakes up with a stiff neck because her head had been at an uncomfortable angle.

  A small miracle happens: it’s nearly six o’clock, the afternoon finally passes. Ozéa presses her ear against the gramophone from which emerges the voice of a woman being flayed alive. It seems as if everyone has forgotten that she exists. But the real test will soon take place.

  It begins with Bebette who sweeps into the parlour, a vast apron around her waist, her hair a mess, face red from excitement. “It’s nearly ready! No one from Rosaire’s side answered the invitation but it doesn’t matter, we don’t need them! Besides, they don’t even know you, Nana. They’re nobodies. Dull. Especially at parties! Us, though, we know how to have fun. Not like them. Funeral faces with pointed hats on their heads, that’s not our way. There’s just little Gabrielle I’d have liked you to meet. Her and her mother. They’ve got their heads screwed on right. She’s just four years ol
d, the little monkey, and she can already write her name. Believe me, that child will go far … But you don’t even know which one she is …”

  She is talking too much and too quickly because she’s nervous, that’s plain to see. Rhéauna wants to tell her to calm down, take a deep breath, everything’s going to be fine even though she’s not so sure herself.

  “Did you have fun with your cousin Ozéa? She’s nice, isn’t she, like I told you!”

  Ozéa, terrified, hunches her shoulders. She’s afraid that Rhéauna will denounce her, tell her grandmother how boring she turned out to be. She’s so pale that Rhéauna is afraid she’ll faint in the middle of one of Bebette’s sentences. Who goes on with her monologue.

  “Have you got a pretty dress, something to wear tonight? Go and change now, and hurry, people will soon start coming. I told them to be here early because it’s a children’s party. We usually do them in the afternoon, but this is a weekday and people are at work …”

  All at once Rhéauna realizes that Ozéa has taken an afternoon off school to be with her. She shouldn’t have bothered.

  “Hurry up! Come on now, saperlipopette, go and change. And you, Ozéa, go and help your mother set the table! Is that your dress for tonight? Haven’t you got something dressy, something, you know, something like a party outfit?”

  She disappears before Ozéa can say anything.

  Rhéauna feels a little sorry for her over having to deal with that woman all the time. She goes to her room to change.

  As soon as the first guests arrive, hysteria takes over the house. There are a good dozen people, Rhéauna doesn’t know if they’re one family or several because they’re of various ages – two old adults not much younger than Bebette and Rosaire, it seems to her; others in their thirties who could be as old as her parents; then teenagers, children, a baby. They talk non-stop, they laugh at anything, each one wishes her “Happy Birthday” several times. They move around so much that the house seems already full when the party has barely begun. Others arrive hot on their heels, even noisier if that’s possible, then still others. An endless parade of rustling long dresses and hats covered with tulle and birds of every colour take over the house, staccato remarks addressed to no one in particular are delivered with no hope of a response, inarticulate shouts and laughter come from who knows where – all that amid dizzying comings and goings that intensify minute to minute. They have impossible names – Althéode, Olivine, Euphrémise, Télesphore, Frida, Euclide – which they cry out with slaps on the back or between hugs and kisses. The women race in every direction to set the table, the children howl because they’re hungry, a call-and-response song – already! – bursts out in the living room but doesn’t have an echo, which is odd: the refrain, rhythmical and full of double entendres of course, is shouted at the top of his lungs by a fat, red-faced man, then nothing, no responses, the girl in the duck pond behind the house in the middle of the woods, digga-doo, digga-dun-day gets no response and the somebody’s uncle who sang it, in the middle of the living room, waving his arms, looks like a damn fool. He’s told as much by a tiny woman, curt and idiotic, probably his wife or his sister maybe, who doesn’t weigh her words as she points her finger at him. He swallows, hunches his back and goes back to the ranks of the men who’ll be bored on the doorstep all evening because really, a party for the eleventh birthday of a little girl they don’t know is not by a long shot their idea of fun. They’ll take refuge in strong drink, as usual – “frisky” alcohol – according to Bebette – before they start to fondle any grand-nieces who are old enough. And to set off the evening’s first drama. They gather around Rosaire, the older men will talk about the Canadian Pacific Railway, about the good old days on the work site with no women to pester them; the younger ones will once again envy them that life of freedom surrounded by untamed nature. Bebette is everywhere and nowhere at once: everywhere she’s not expected – she surprises some little girls who are laughing about one of their cousins who’s been wearing eyeglasses for a while now and she yells at them so many insults and saperlipopettes that they all burst out sobbing – and nowhere when she is needed: “Where’s Aunt Bebette? We can’t find the candles for the cake! Aunt Bebette! Aunt Bebette!” Barely half an hour since the last guests’ arrival the lady of the house calls out: “Comeand get it while it’s hot! Eat up before it freezes!” They all race into the dining room where a huge U-shaped table is set up. There are also two tables for the children in the kitchen but soon it’s obvious that they don’t provide enough space. Then in no time, the mountains of food brought by everyone and hastily prepared that same day by the women, who didn’t scrimp on sugar or fat, is being devoured pretty well all over the house. It’s like Christmas: tourtières, apple pie, roast turkey, pigs’-feet stew; and Easter: an enormous ham, already sliced and spread over two vast white china plates surrounded by potatoes prepared four ways (mashed, boiled, baked, roasted); a fresh ham that Lolotte’s husband had smoked a few months earlier and was keeping for a special occasion; maple syrup pie; the little fried pastries called nuns’ farts. Not to mention platters of raw vegetables and the inevitable corn on the cob. It is all delicious, of course, and needless to say, abundant. Everyone eats a lot and quickly. At first, it seems like too much food, but there are nearly forty of them passing plates between mouthfuls and, in the end, the women are afraid they’ll run out. But there is enough for everyone, even the greediest. The one who is overlooked in all the commotion was the birthday girl herself, whom they abandoned to her fate after they embraced her because there were more important things to do – as if the reception itself were more important than she is – who spends a good part of the evening alone at the end of the adults’ table, watching them eat, laugh, shout. As soon as they’d cleared their plates the children left the kitchen, racing and shrieking all over the house. Some went upstairs to play hide-and-seek and who knows, maybe doctor as well. After the main dishes, delicious and filling, when an incalculable number of salads appeared as if by magic, the men who’d held back since the beginning of the meal, simply devouring everything in sight, warmed up and began to hum and tap their feet. Call-and-response songs finally got a response, the women turned red and hid behind their hands when the allusions became too risqué – “She says whoops, does Farlantine, she says spuds and your poutine, put your mmm, put your mmm, right next to mine!” Then, after a particularly dirty couplet, Bebette stands up and shouts to everyone: “The singing and the dancing are for Christmas! This party’s for children so hold back! Meanwhile we’ve got something more important to do if you get my meaning …” All eyes are on Rhéauna who realizes right away that the birthday cake ceremony is about to begin. She wishes she could go on being forgotten while observing them, they’re so funny, she’d have liked to hear the rest of the call-and-response song, too, but this is a birthday party and that means birthday cake, you can’t avoid it … She forces a smile that is meant to be innocent, as if she doesn’t know what is going on and sighs, resigned. She’ll have to act surprised, listen to the song, blow out the candles. A breath of complicity descends onto the wreck of the table. Nudges are exchanged, excited hilarity hidden behind hands. Suddenly the children appear as if by magic. Someone must have told them or maybe their instincts inform them that the cake is on its way. The lights go out in the dining room. Two women enter the room, carrying the pink-and-green cake on which eleven candles flicker. The inevitable “Happy Birthday to You” rises up in the dark, sung off-key but sincerely, vibrantly, happily. The last part is stretched out in the traditional way: “Happy biiiirrrrththday, dear Rhééééaaaaunaaaa!” Then come cries, endless applause, everyone tells her to make a wish before she blows out the candles. She complies gracefully, telling herself that it’s nearly over. When the candles are out, the other children want to know what she wished for while the adults tell them she has to keep it secret or it won’t come true. A moment of calm settles in around the table while everyone samples the cake. It’s true that it’s not much to
look at, it’s rather shapeless and the icing has already started to ooze; it turns out, though, to be delicious. And as Gaétane puts it so well, probably to apologize: “It may be ugly but it tastes like cake!” The ingestion of fat and sugar is gradually taking effect, it shows in the tone of the conversation. While they serve the coffee, the women, hands on their hearts, talk about the Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic last year, an event that traumatized them all the more because they’re so far from an ocean – a natural phenomenon they have trouble imagining from deep in their vast prairies where salt water doesn’t exist – and they’ve never seen a big ship. Since they’re talking about serious matters now, Bebette slips in the oft-repeated story of her far-off uncle, pride of the Desrosiers family, who fought alongside Louis Riel and was hanged with his leader in Regina in 1885. She wipes her eyes as if she’d known the martyr well or witnessed his hanging, and her children laugh at her a little. “Honestly, Mama, you never laid eyes on him and you talk as if he was your best friend!” She gives them a little saperlipopette of protest, blows her nose, then glances in Rhéauna’s direction. “That child has a long trip tomorrow … All the way to Ottawa, by way of Toronto. It’s going to take all day.” They look at her and nod. “As far as that’s concerned …” “She needs her sleep.” “Poor child.” “We’d better be going.” “Well, I guess we’ll be on our way …”