by Anne Hébert
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 . . .”
The man is shivering from head to toe. His teeth are chattering. His bed shakes back and forth as if the floor were trembling beneath him.
Me, Elisabeth d’Aulnières, shut away in Louis Clermont’s inn. Pushed up the stairs. Forced through the doorway of the traveler’s room. Crossing his threshold against my will. Left standing there in the darkness, all by myself. Racked by the terrible shudders that shake his body. Sensing in the very fibers of my nerves, drawn taut, the utter anguish of his sleepless night. Imagining his agonizing day, relived in the shadows. The visions, sharp and clear, dancing before his bulging eyes, as he lies there on his bed. Feeling those visions, batlike, fluttering past my face.
I can hear his breathing, a rattling deep in his chest. The darkness, thick between us. The thought of that haggard race, so close. His weary body, shivering under piles of covers. And the sleigh blanket, stained with blood, smelling of blood. My heart, bent on its own damnation, praying that the darkness never ends. That the light will never shine on that man, lying there in the depths of darkness. My dying heart, praying that never again will he come before me, loom up before me, run to me, hold out his arms to me, take me in his arms. This man who just murdered another. In the cove at Kamouraska. His solitude, beyond belief . . . Calling the darkness down on his face. Like the pall pulled over the heads of the dead.
The pity I feel inside me wells up in fruitless struggle. Desperately looks for some way to escape. A gesture, a word. Anything to force it free, out of my stifling cover of stone. The statue I’ve turned to. Saint Veronica standing spellbound in the doorway, upstairs at Louis Clermont’s inn. Asking in vain for a piece of soft cloth to wipe the face of the man I love. Walked up here in my solitude. Transfixed in my own dark dread. Unable to make the slightest sign, the slightest gesture. As if the very sources of my strength, thrown out of joint, could suddenly put forth nothing but still, unmoving silence. I can’t take even one step closer to you now . . .
Burlington, Burlington. My love is calling to me from across the border, from across the world . . .
Victoire Dufour unfolds an apron that keeps getting bigger and bluer. As if she had stretched it out and dyed it all blue again. Ties it round her waist, fatter and fatter. Fills up the bedroom with her fat, blue body. Becomes a giant. Pretends she got up early just to go swear out her story to the justice of the peace. But really concerns herself with me, Elisabeth d’Aulnières. Tries to hold me here at Louis Clermont’s inn as long as she can . . .
The traveler bursts out his room. I can see him from behind as he goes into the hall. The look of determination in his neck, nervous but still erect. And yet, a weakness that wasn’t there before. Anxious, turning from side to side, again and again, more often than it should. A glimpse of his profile, dark and fleeting.
On the other side of the wall, the sound of Victoire Dufour waking her husband.
“Hurry up, Clermont. The horses are fighting in the stable!”
“Quiet woman. He told me to wake him at five, and it’s already daylight.”
The traveler says he didn’t sleep all night. Goes straight to the stove. Opens the oven and takes out the kettle. Tells Louis Clermont to come with him into the shed.
“He poured hot water from the kettle while I stood and rubbed. We got rid of the biggest one. But there was so much blood, all dried up and mixed with snow and straw . . . Then the one we call Blanchet woke up from his bench. Blanchet, from down the river. The one who slept by the stove that night and seemed to be so afraid of the stranger. And he showed up in the shed.”
“Damn! How did you ever pick up all that! They sure must have been a bunch of pigs, whoever messed up your skins that way!”
“The stranger told me to hitch up his horse right away. Meantime, he went inside to get his skins and his bag and his whip. Then he got into the sleigh, even before I took it out of the shed. And he spread the skins around, with the hair inside. I led his horse out of the shed and handed him the reins. He didn’t even have breakfast. Just drank a glass of gin and left . . .”
Victoire Dufour, face pink as a cake of soap. Features blurring, blending together. Eyes growing paler and paler, immense, spreading like puddles. Gazing at me . . .
“When I got up it was daylight. I saw blood on the floor, all over. And I said to my hired girl, ‘There’s no two ways about it, child. That man’s killed someone!’ She said so too. ‘There’s no two ways about it. That’s the only thing it could be. Just go and look outside under the porch, where they threw all the blood.’ I went and looked. There was blood on the snow. I was frightened to death and I started to shake all over. He was up before I was. He even came and looked in at my room while I was getting dressed. As if he was after something. I thought it was a pretty dirty thing to do. But he just kept looking at me, real nervous. And the whole time he was in the house he tried to avoid me, and always looked the other way. I didn’t much like looking at him either. But I saw enough of him to know him anywhere. When I saw all that mess and all that blood, I said to my husband, ‘Clermont, it’s pretty plain. That man’s killed someone . . .’”
“Quiet, woman. Don’t talk so much. He could be an English officer and have us arrested. Times are bad. Maybe there was some fighting up the river.”
“I told him a couple of times that that man must have killed someone. Then I went into the stranger’s room to get the basin he washed his hands in. The water was full of blood. And that morning, before he left, I saw him rubbing and scratching his stockings, with his hands. His eyes were real suspicious, real dark. I was good and frightened. We’re poor people and our inn isn’t very big, so we notice anyone that stands out and looks different. Well, when I was in his room to make the bed, I found blood all over the quilt, and drops of blood on the floor, around the bed. And near the stove, and over where he puts his bag . . . He never seemed to look us in the eye the whole time he was in the house. And I saw those skins of his, trimmed around the edges, all red with blood . . .”
Victoire Dufour leans over my bed. Her face growing pinker and pinker. Shining, dripping with sweat. Now, through her clear, transparent cheeks and nose, you can see a great fire burning over the bones, melting away her face. Drop by drop. And all the while, as it turns to liquid, Victoire Dufour tries to catch my eye and draw it to the great big basin of snow that fills her arms. Tells me, in a whisper almost too soft to hear, to take a good look, with her, this one last time, at the blood spreading and freezing over the white, white snow.
The wind has died down. That furious something in yesterday’s wind has died down completely. Those gusts of snow, all over the cove at Kamouraska yesterday, have stopped their blowing.
A traveler wrapped in blood-soaked blankets speeds in a black sleigh up along the river. Far, far from Kamouraska. Riding away from Kamouraska. Finished with Kamouraska. Now that he has wrung from Kamouraska all the importance and urgency it had to give him. Little by little he feels a boundless calm. A curious peace. All at once, rid of the burden that weighed so long on his breast. The frightful drive that held him in its grasp through his whole long journey — perhaps his whole life — lets go of him without a word of warning. Drops him, like an empty suit of clothes. Leaves him utterly weak and lost. So terribly tired. The powerful urge to lie down in the snow and quietly die. Now that his job is done.
He looks at the reins hanging loose across his horse’s back, and spotted with blood. (He’ll have to get rid of all that blood, really, once and for all.) So many things seem meaningless all of a sudden. Stripped of that terrible importance they used to have, and probably still ought to have even now. Disarmed, defused. reduced to their simplest terms. Stripped of all their authority, all their prestige. No weight, no substance left, almost unreal. Even that furious passion. So trivial now, so far away, freed from the spell it was under. A dag
ger stuck in the heart, pulled loose all at once. Leaving behind it only a nice, neat wound. A sadness, that is impossible to measure. All yearning calmed. All thought of worldly wealth so utterly foolish now. To sleep, to sleep . . . And yet, deep in the heart, that gentle tremor, that muted ecstasy, down where the blood goes flowing through the veins. The victor’s exultation, buried away beneath his weariness . . . Back over the road, without a care. To the red-blond lady, aflame on Rue Augusta, in Sorel. His joyous news that she’s finally a widow, finally free. Hypocritcal tears . . .
Why, who would dream of marrying this woman now, after the tragedy at Kamouraska? Dear little Jérôme Rolland, you’re raising your hand. Asking to speak. For a long time now that formidable child, too beautiful to bear, has made you tremble in the shadows. It’s now or never. Just offer her a spotless name, above reproach . . . But let me warn you, George Nelson won’t stand for such humiliation . . .
Your head is spinning, love, in the pale light of dawn. Your horse can hardly make his way through the soft, new snow. Since yesterday (long before the cove at Kamouraska), you haven’t had a thing to eat. I’m on your trail. You can hear my sleigh bells jingling behind you. I’m Madame Rolland. And I’m haunting you, just as you haunt me. We’re out of our minds, the two of us. Cut off from each other already . . .