Kamouraska

by Anne Hébert

  My husband, Antoine Tassy, announcing in his booming voice:

  “Doctor George Nelson. Elisabeth, I’d like you to meet an old school friend of mine. Haven’t seen him in years, and now suddenly I find him here in Sorel . . .”

  I insist that all the servants leave the room at once, even Aurélie. I ask my aunts to do the same. They go out, reluctantly. Beg me, with tears in their voices, to let at least one person stay. Sophie Langlade, whose testimony will be so important for my defense. My mother pulls the covers up around my chin. Now Sophie Langlade steps forward, trembling all over. So violently that she can hardly put one foot in front of the other. She takes her oath on the Bible, then says her piece. So softly the judge has to make her repeat.

  “Madame was never alone in her room with Doctor Nelson. Her mother, Madame d’Aulnières, was always with her.”

  All at once Aurélie’s laugh chills me to the bone. It’s coming from somewhere inside the house. Piercing the walls. Loud enough to be heard outside. That drill-like voice, higher than any human voice should be. She’s speaking now, so painfully slowly. As if the words had to be pulled out one by one. I can hear her in my room.

  “I swear, Madame spent a lot of time alone with the doctor. With the doors closed. As soon as her mother went out.”

  Sophie Langlade has left the room. A moment later, a man’s step, coming down the corridor. Steady, self-assured. With something childlike about it. Lighthearted and confident.

  I can sense, to my horror, that it’s all about to happen. And that nothing on earth can stop it now from happening again, a second time. Once more I close my eyes . . . Antoine Tassy is talking to George Nelson, just outside my room. Now he shuts the door, goes off, strides down the corridor. My husband, deserting me. I’m sure that in his heart of hearts he goes along with everything that’s going to happen. I recognize his voice. Deadened, as if through great wads of cotton. (The cotton they use to stuff the mouths of corpses with.) He must have shut himself up in the dining room.

  “I’ll let him examine her first. Then we’ll get something to drink for my dear old classmate from those days with the priests in Quebec . . .”

  I wish I could forget that dining room. Forget that it ever existed. That room in Sorel where my husband sits entrenched. His clumsy form sprawled motionless against a table leg. Let them rip that room out of my memory. Hack it to bits, slash it, saw it apart. Like a crate tossed overboard into the water. Let them take Antoine and sew him up inside a sheet. Him and his rabbit stew, his brandy, his schoolboy memories, his lord-and-master air, his big, brutish fists. His fits of anger and his crocodile tears.

  Me, Elisabeth d’Aulnières, here in bed, lying sick. The light still hurts my eyes. I feel it burning, like red-hot needles, under the lids shut tight. The way it feels when you lift your face to the sun in the noonday heat. And the curious height of the bed disturbs me too. I’ve sworn to close my eyes and keep them closed. To try somehow to escape from my body. My feelings, my heart . . . An emptiness beyond belief. An emptiness hard to bear and still go on living. But I won’t give in. By now another woman would be dead and buried . . . All right, they’re making me live those days again. Those days when I first met George Nelson. Well and good. But all they’ll find is a disembodied spirit. One of those ghostly souls, roaming about with the bats, and haunting the attics of unknown houses.

  I do exactly what he tells me. Three times he listens to my chest. Three times I cough. I take a deep breath . . . Deep breaths, there’s the rub. They lull me, make me drop my guard. I run the risk of seeing my life come galloping back full tilt. Come looming up, invading my frozen flesh once more. I hold it off, defend myself against it with this emptiness. I do what he tells me, just like an automaton. My every move directed by this doctor, this total stranger. He pokes an infallible finger in my back. Along my ribs. He listens with care, through a delicate napkin, to hear what’s going on inside my body. He hears the beating of an empty heart. His manly head against my breast. His hair, so full. His beard. His whiskers, not too thick . . . No, no! I’m not seeing any of this, not really feeling it at all. None of the substance, the shapes, the colors! None of the pleasure! My life is somewhere else. Secluded, off in some dim, deserted place. A kind of countryside, lying unused, abandoned, where terror casts its shadow-silhouettes.

  Above our heads the silence stretches taut, like an impending storm. At last the doctor straightens up. Stops bending over me. A feeling of great relief spreads through the room. My mother goes over, stands by George Nelson’s side. She seems almost happy. This first encounter has gone off very well. The judges must be really disappointed. No fault to find with how this man and woman have behaved.

  The doctor is talking with my mother. I catch a few words. “Anemic . . . pregnancies too close together . . . weakness in the lungs . . .” People speaking out in the corridor. Whispering, laughing. Heaving great sighs. Pouring them out, the way they do when a terrible danger is over. Then all at once the doctor leaves the room.

  I think I’m stretching now, under the covers. A long, delightful stretch, from head to toe. I want to get up . . . Now I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, my feet dangling out of my long chemise, kicking the air. As if to test some imaginary stream and see how cold the water is . . . I’m innocent!

  The reprieve doesn’t last. The signal! I’m sure there’s been a signal. Out I come, slowly, a little at a time. Out of the safety of my dazed confusion. No high, shrill whistle. No nun with her clapper, calling for order. No fire, no smoke. And yet, there’s been a signal! It’s in the air, filling the very air I breathe. The alarm! No help for it now. The alarm has been given. And it’s all beginning again. No place to run to. I have to go on, pick up the thread. Play out the second scene with the doctor. I can’t escape it, can’t say I’m too tired. The witnesses, already here. All of them, coming in one by one, so stiff and solemn. Striking the pose . . .

  My mother puts me to bed. Pulls up the covers and tucks me in. My aunts sit down on the couch. Whimper a little. Sophie Langlade keeps trembling. Justine Latour stands wide-eyed, gaping. Somebody says that it’s all so foolish, that reenactments like this have never really done much good. Aurélie picks up her blue basin, her Irish linen napkin and her big cake of perfumed soap. She squints, as if in the blinding sun. Seems to be getting more and more excited.

  “We’re all here now. Except for Madame’s first husband, that is. And he’s so full of brandy he can’t get up out of his chair. Too bad. What will be, will be . . .”

  I tell Aurélie to leave. Her and the pair of slippered acolytes by her side. Suddenly they disappear in a jumble of little white aprons, all crumpled and askew. The three of them. Aurélie Caron, Sophie Langlade, Justine Latour. My aunts don’t wait to be told. They leave by themselves, abashed and despairing.

  And so I’m alone with my mother again, as she takes her stance at the head of my bed. An arm stretched out along the black wooden frame. The sheer, transparent oversleeve, falling in pleats, flaring about her shoulder like a wing. Stately and solemn, like an angel sculpted on a holy font, she waits for her daughter Elisabeth’s second encounter with Doctor Nelson.

  An incredible calm scans to pervade the house. Yet every witness has taken his place, here in this mansion in Sorel. And each one seems to be going about his business, doing his daily chores. But better not be taken in. I’m sure they’ve all been assigned their roles. Spies and informers, all of them. Except for my dear little aunts, of course, sick to death just thinking of all those lies they’re going to swear to.

  The first one, Justine Latour. Hanging the wash to dry, behind the house. Wet towels in hand, she shakes them out, flaps them sharply in the breeze to signal the doctor’s arrival. Three times, loud and clear. To let His Honor, John Crebessa, know that it’s all beginning.

  My husband, Antoine Tassy, comes next. He sees Justine Latour and her signal. Comes back from the farthest ends of the earth, from the farthest reaches of death itself. Plays his p
art. Tries to cup his hands and shout.

  “Someone be sure to tell me when the doctor comes. I want to get something to drink for my dear old . . .”

  Doctor Nelson doesn’t stop in the drawing room. He climbs the stairs. Goes straight to my door. A sharp little rap. He comes in . . . Now he’s standing in my room, a small black satchel in his hand. This time I can see him very clearly. I steal a glance when no one is looking. Especially at his neck, when he turns to say something to my mother. That slender neck, with its air of determination, brisk and bold . . . His eyes. Yes, I think it’s on the second visit that I look at his eyes. Black. An awesome light, burning. Aimed at me . . . I turn my head. Let it toss on the pillow. From side to side. Again and again. Like a whining, wailing little child. As if I would deny the fire that already consumes me.

  Now he’s noticing some bruises on my arm. Mutters in outraged tones.

  “Good Heavens, you’re hurt. But who . . . !”

  The space of a second. No more than a second. And the life I’ve driven away comes galloping back. Makes up for lost time, in that single moment. My defenses crumble like a house of cards. I throw my arms around his neck. This stranger with his smell of fresh tobacco. I don’t seem to care that this is just what the judge is waiting to see. The one thing he wants me to do before he can direct his questions. Nothing can stop me. Nothing and no one. Not even my pride. I have to go racing headlong to my doom. It can’t be helped. The scandal has to break . . . I’m bursting into tears now, can’t hold back the flood. Between two gasps I manage to tell him how miserable I am. Misunderstand his angry look. Think he must be objecting to my behavior. Frightened, I pull my arms away.

  My mother complains that this scene is really out of order. She’s whispering to the doctor. Careful not to look him in the face.

  “My daughter is a very nervous child. You must forgive her. And . . . Oh, yes, about her arm.,.. She bumped into a table, or a chair, or something. We’re so awfully cluttered here, you know . . .”

  The doctor gives her a withering glance. Leaves the room without a word. A moment later Aurélie comes back. Still loaded down with her basin, her napkin, her round cake of soap. She seems beside herself.

  “The doctor didn’t even wash his hands!”

  She drops the soap, watches it roll along the floor. Doesn’t think to pick it up. Stands there, transfixed. Filled with a kind of envy. An envy mixed with fear, some vague preoccupation. I see the look come over her face, catch the first glimmers of that curious fascination that’s going to be her downfall.

  “Say what you want, love really can take your breath away, Madame! And that affair of yours . . . You and Doctor Nelson! . . . Well, I never will get over it, believe you me! . . .”

  The woman who’s been nursing my second son has suddenly gone dry. She weeps and whimpers. Swears it’s all the doctor’s fault. Says that he’s put a curse on her.

  “He’s got the blackest eyes. And he stares at you so. Why, the minute he first came near me to look the baby over, when I had him in my arms . . . Well, I felt like a shock . . .”

  Aurélie, in no time, has spread the word all over Sorel that this Doctor Nelson is some kind of American devil who goes about casting spells on women’s breasts. The way some witches poison the water.

  Aunt Adélaïde claims that on Sundays this Doctor Nelson shows up at mass. Even though everyone knows he used to be a Protestant.

  Aunt Luce-Gertrude mutters under her breath that the strangest part of it all is the way this Doctor Nelson lives. Out in the country, in a little backwoods cottage. Lives like a settler. And the whole two years he’s been in Sorel, young as he is, he absolutely refuses to meet the proper people, mix in the right society . . .

  My husband, on the other hand, speaks of George Nelson in a kind of strangely distant, almost childish voice. A voice I’ve never heard him use before.

  “In school . . . To have had a real friend . . . He’s the one I would have chosen . . .”

  A blue eye, clouded over with the mist of childhood memories. I turn my head, say that I’m sick. Call for the doctor. He hasn’t come to see me since . . . My husband insists that I’m not sick at all.

  My mother goes back to having her headaches and shuts herself up in her widowhood again. As if my fate has been sealed now for good. My aunts take on that cringing, anguished look that pets have when they sense a crisis brewing in the house.

  I could still escape. Not force the rest to happen.

  Make contact again with Rue du Parloir. Just open my eyes. Cup my hands and shout: “I’m Madame Rolland!”

  Too late! It’s too late. The past, remembered, cuts open its veins. My mad youth wraps itself over my bones. I step in its tracks. The way you fit your feet in your very own footprints, walking along the wet, sandy shore. Again, crossing through murder and death. Touching the bottom, the depths of despair. Well, what’s the difference? As long as I find my love once more. And find him well. Bursting with life. Pressing his head against my breast. Worried about how much I must be suffering. Outraged, raising his voice: “Good Heavens, you’re hurt. But who . . . ?” I’m fingering the watch chain now that hangs across George Nelson’s waist. I’m breathing deep the odor of his vest. Much more than pity, I want to find anger in his heart.

  “Theatre, that’s all it is!” proclaims my mother-in-law, with clear disdain.

  As if I were waiting just for that cue, I make my entrance. I use the word “I,” and yet I’m someone else. Off with the venerable garb of Madame Rolland! Trampled underfoot. Off with her sacrosanct whalebone stays! Thrown to the winds. Off to the museum with her plaster mask! I laugh and I cry now, unashamed. I’m wearing a pair of pink openwork stockings, a great wide belt just under my breasts. I’m letting myself go. I’m living my life in fever and folly, as if they were my native land. I’m in love with a man who’s not my husband. This man I keep calling for. Daytime. Nighttime. Doctor Nelson, Doctor Nelson . . . His absence, more than I can bear. I’m going to die. He hasn’t come back since the day I put my arms around his neck. Doctor Nelson, I’m so awfully unhappy. Doctor Nelson, Doctor Nelson . . .

  “The doctor is out, Madame. The little boy doesn’t know when he’ll be in.”

  “He’s doing it on purpose! I’m sure he’s doing it on purpose! Go back, Aurélie. Go get him. Tell him I’m sick. Make him come with you. He has to, do you hear? He has to . . .”

  Aurélie leaves, goes off against her will. I choke back my tears. I gasp. I toss and turn. I threaten to fling myself out the window . . . Finally, exhausted, sinking down into a heavy sleep, I dream that someone is calling me. Urgently, pathetically. A strange force seems to lift me from my bed. Wakes me with a start. Sends me running to the window. My eyes open wide. My heart pounding fast . . . I listen to the sound of a horse’s hooves, trotting off in the distance. Turn around and face the utter chaos of my room. The crumpled bedclothes . . . That feeling, like falling through the vastness of space. My head swimming . . . I struggle back to my bed.

  “We’d better send for another doctor. The child is really sick.” “The first thing to do is keep that husband of hers away from her . . .” “Yes, he’s the one. It’s all his fault . . .” “Send him back to Kamouraska . . .” “Or at least make sure he doesn’t go near her.” “Have the servants guard her door and keep him out . . .” “Stay up all night if we have to . . .” “As long as there’s breath in my body, he won’t get by that door . . .” “He’ll have to kill me first . . .” “Maybe get some legal advice from Maître Lafontaine . . .” “A separation, that’s the only way . . .”

  My husband goes about, telling anyone he can find to listen that my aunts are three old hags, and that they ought to be done away with.

  Every night he passes by my windows. With his black horse, his black sleigh. I’m sure that’s who it is. For hours I lie waiting, in the silence of the night, listening for the horse’s hoofbeats, the scraping of the sleigh along the snow. Long before they can be heard by any ot
her mortal ear. I pick up the scent as soon as he leaves the little wooden cottage. Way at the other end of Sorel. (The sleigh bells are already laid away, carefully, under the seat.) I don’t dare get up now and run to the window. I just lie curled up in my bed. I wait for him to go by. And I listen, filled with despair. Listen, as long as I can, to the sounds of the horse and sleigh, vanishing into the night.

  I can’t go on this way. One day I’ll go find him. And I’ll say to him, with a haughty air: “Well, doctor, is this how you let your patients waste away and die? Don’t you even try to save them? . . . Doctor Nelson, I’ve gone mad. Doctor Nelson . . .”

  “Elisabeth! Why don’t you answer me? That’s the second time I’ve asked you the same question.”

  You shouldn’t be so insistent, Aunt Adélaïde. My mind is taken up, you know. Day and night. Watching the growth of a giant living plant, spreading within me. Ripping me to shreds, devouring me. Yes, I’m possessed.

  I have my one idea. Like those lunatics they put away. The ones whose minds seem gone, completely. Locked up, in chains. Still clinging, in their little world, to the wild, demented specter of their one idea . . . I never leave my bed now. Just lie there, tossing and turning, or sometimes too tired to move. Laying down rules for myself to follow if I want to be happy. Not to try to see Doctor Nelson for a time. To begin by making perfectly sure I’m not pregnant. Keep myself utterly pure. Fight off my husband if he ever tries to come near me. Wash myself clean of Antoine forever. Cleanse my body of every last trace of his tenderness, his violence. Even the very memory of . . . Be born again, into a new life. Untouched and untouchable. For everyone except the one, the only man in this world, coming to get me . . . Passionate, pure, innocent! I’m innocent! Waiting for my love to come and take me, to keep me by his side forever. My one and only joy, this man. The law itself . . .

  I’m sleeping in Aunt Luce-Gertrude’s room now. Pretending to be like a little child. So utterly well-behaved. Patiently waiting to have my period . . . I hate Antoine when he’s had too much to drink. I hate him when he’s sober. I laugh, I cry, for no reason at all. I feel so strange, as light as a bubble . . .