French Minister of the Marine.
***
“OVER THERE,” VARIN POINTED with grim satisfaction. “Le Comte de Matignon de La Rochelle is the ship that will take you back to Bayonne, where you belong.”
Esther walked along beside him silently, her eyes downcast. They were accompanied by the two guards the King had ordered to watch over the girl on the voyage. Monsieur Hocquart did not think an armed escort was necessary but the last letter he received from His Majesty had insisted on it, assuring him that he would be recompensed for the expense. The girl was utterly passive, so there was nothing for the soldiers to do but carry her possessions: two bags of clothing and a few farewell gifts. Hocquart himself had given her a beautifully illustrated copy of The Thousand and One Nights and Madame Duplessis an edition of the letters of Marie de l’Incarnation. Madame Lévesque had given her a pair of candlesticks and several candles, that she might have light to read these books by. Marie-Thérèse, ever practical, had simply filled a handwoven Indian basket with food for the journey.
Naturally the Intendant was too busy to see her off, and the precise time of the girl’s departure had been kept secret from the others so as to avoid unnecessary commotion. Varin was grateful for this; far too much attention had been paid to the sneaky little Jew already. He was relieved she wouldn’t have the opportunity to make one last scene today.
She finally looked up to see where he was pointing. Her face became more animated. “A fine vessel indeed,” she said. “Who is the captain?”
“The Sieur Lafargue.”
“Is his name really Lafargue?”
“Yes.”
Esther started to laugh, though her face was streaked with tears. She picked up her skirt in both hands and ran quickly up the gangplank, unaware, as usual, how much leg she revealed. The guards stumbled after her, burdened by her things. On the dock, a few men snickered and pointed, making rude comments; Varin told them to shut up and then called Esther’s name, insisting that she come back.
“You are my prisoner!” he shouted, feeling foolish.
But the girl didn’t glance back at him, or at the land that had been her home for the last year.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE TALE-TELLER IS A fantasy improvised on a suggestive but poorly documented historical incident. Most of what we know about Esther Brandeau comes from the report filed by JeanVictor Varin de La Marre, which follows in my translation. The original, as well as Intendant Gilles Hocquart’s observations about the girl’s year in Canada, are available in microfiche from the National Archives of Canada, series C11A–B, 71 and 72. Letters received in reply from France may be found in 68 and 71; excerpts from some of these are quoted in my novel as well.
In The Tale-Teller, the fact that Esther Brandeau was Jewish is revealed only in the spring of 1739, when communication with France resumed, rather than upon her arrival. I wasn’t interested in writing a whole book of religious controversy. What intrigued me was Esther’s character — what made her brave and foolhardy enough to run away and what made people in New France hold on to her until a direct order from the King forced them to send her home. That in reality she blurted out her true identity as soon as she was challenged influenced my interpretation of her as a fantastic storyteller rather than an intrepid adventurer. Someone so fearful of authority could never have passed as a boy for five long years, including a stint in jail.
Information about Varin, Hocquart, Governor General Beauharnois, and Mother Claude de la Croix comes from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. The translations from the works of Marie de l’Incarnation are Joyce Marshall’s from Word from New France: The Selected Letters of Marie de l’Incarnation (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967). The Wendat phrases spoken by Madame Duplessis are borrowed from the beautiful “Huron Carol” written by Saint Jean de Brébeuf. The story of the scholar who fell into the water has been freely adapted from that recounted in Jewish Folktales, as told by Pinhas Sadeh and translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin (NY: Doubleday, 1989). And the Ladino proverbs known as “refranes” that introduce each chapter were found in The Sephardic Tradition: Ladino and Spanish-Jewish Literature, edited by Moshe Lazar and translated by David Herman (NY: W.W. Norton, 1972).
I am not alone in suspecting that there were some hidden Jews among Quebec’s early settlers, as there were in all the other North and South American colonies. Rabbi Arthur A. Chiel, in an article for the Manitoba Historical Society published online at http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/jewishhistory.shtml, suggests that Marc Lescarbot, whose Histoire de la Nouvelle-France was published in 1609, was of Jewish descent, because Lescarbot demonstrated an unusual knowledge of Hebrew and attempted to prove that the First Nations were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. More wide-ranging and scientific in its ambitions, the anusim project at http://www.familytreedna.com/public/canadiananusim/default.aspx is currently seeking DNA proof that there were crypto-Jews among early immigrants. Corroboration may also be found in an interesting article by Jean-Marie Gélinas about his family’s roots, posted online at http://www.gelinas.org. Both sources cite the registers of the “Saint-Office” (the French equivalent of the Inquisition) as evidence that the name “Lévesque” was considered Jewish at the time my story takes place.
Gélinas also provides commentary on, and links to, Pierre Lasry’s 2001 novel about Esther Brandeau, Une Juive en Nouvelle France, published in English as Esther: A Jewish Odyssey in 2004. I deferred reading both Lasry’s novel and Esther, by Sharon McKay, until after I completed my own book (having begun it before I was aware of Lasry’s and before McKay’s came out) and was relieved to discover that our interpretations of the girl’s character were entirely different. For a fascinating exploration of the range of such interpretations throughout Canadian history, see Nathalie Ducharme, “Fortune critique d’Esther Brandeau, une aventurière en Nouvelle-France” (2004).
Joaquin’s stories appeared in an earlier form in The University of Windsor Review 39.1 (2006) thanks to Marty Gervais. For financial and moral support when it mattered, I am happy to acknowledge the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, Cormorant Books, Dundurn Press, Black Moss Press, and Sumach Press. Martha Baillie, Rachel Klein, and Carolyn Smart were my first readers, and this book is much better for their advice. Helen Dunmore’s encouragement has meant more than I can express. My agent, Alisha Sevigny of The Rights Factory, believed in Esther from the start, as did my amazing editor, Marc Côté, whose rigorous aesthetic pushed this story to be as good as I could make it, and whose own ancestors arrived in New France in 1637.
My biggest debt is to my husband Toan Klein and our children Jesse and Rachel, for filling my days with love and our trip to France with chocolate — the secret recipe for which was brought to the Pays Basques by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. These days, every town in the area has at least one chocolatier but few have any Jews. When Esther Brandeau lived in Bayonne, there were thirteen active synagogues. Now there are none.
There is, however, a synagogue in Quebec City.
REPORT FROM VARIN DE LA MARRE TO THE AUTHORITIES IN FRANCE, SEPTEMBER 15, 1738
Today, the fifteenth of September, one thousand seven hundred thirty-eight, Esther Brandeau, aged about twenty years, appeared before us, the Commissary of the Marine, charged with policing the maritime population of Quebec; the aforementioned girl embarked at La Rochelle disguised as a boy passenger under the name of Jacques Lafargue, on the ship Saint Michel commanded by Le Sieur de Salaberry, and has declared herself to be Esther Brandeau, daughter of David Brandeau, a Jew by race, a merchant of St. Esprit in the diocese of Daxe, near Bayonne, and herself Jewish in religion. Five years ago her father and her mother sent her away from the said place on a Dutch boat captained by Geoffrey to send her to Amsterdam to her aunt and her brother, but the boat was lost on the sandbanks of Bayonne during the moon of April or May, one thousand seven hundred thirty-three. Luckily, she was brought to shore by one of the seamen, and
she lodged with the widow Catherine Churriau who was living at Biarritz, then fifteen days later she left, dressed as a man, for Bordeaux where, in this capacity and under the name of Pierre Mausiette, she engaged on a ship commanded by Captain Barnard destined for Nantes; she returned on the same boat to Bordeaux where she re-embarked in the same disguise on a Spanish boat with Captain Antonio, sailing to Nantes; having arrived at Nantes, she deserted and went to Rennes, where she found employment as a boy with a tailor named Augustin; she stayed there for ten months, then from Rennes she went to Clisson where she entered the service of the Recollets as a domestic and errand boy, and she stayed three months at the convent, after which she left without warning to go to Saint Malo where she found sanctuary with a baker named Jeunesse living close to the Great Door, where she stayed five months offering certain services to the said Jeunesse, then she went to Vitré to investigate certain things. There, she found employment under the director of the Chapel, a captain of the Queen’s Infantry, where she served for ten or eleven months as a lackey, then she left this place because her health did not permit her to continue serving the director of the Chapel who was always sick; the so-called Esther then returned near to Nantes, to a place named Noisel, where she was arrested for being a thief by the misfortune of being in the wrong place but she was let go after twenty-four hours because they saw that they had been mistaken. She then presented herself at La Rochelle, having taken the name of Jacques Lafargue she boarded as a passenger on the boat Saint Michel, at which point we asked the said Esther Brandeau to tell us the reason she disguised her sex this way for five years, to which she replied that, having been saved from shipwreck, she arrived in Bayonne and was taken to the house of Catherine Churriau as she told us before, and there she ate pork and other meats the use of which is forbidden among the Jews, and she decided therefore from this time on never to return to her father and mother but to partake of the same liberties as Christians. This and all the forgoing comprises the testimony of the so-called Esther Brandeau, witnessed by us at Quebec this day and compiled by the said Varin.
The Tale-Teller Page 17