The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  “Yes, I’m the painting priest! Brother Marie-Victorin was a botanist; I’m a painter.”

  “And I’m an undertaker,” Louis boomed, to lighten the mood, pretending to measure the handsome priest’s arm. Father Lecavalier lost his regal bearing for a moment.

  They spoke for two or three minutes before Lecavalier disappeared into the church, where Father Rossignol, the parish priest, was waiting for him. Father Lecavalier’s arrival had interrupted a discussion, but no one seemed to remember what they’d been talking about.

  The news had not spared the provincial house of the Sisters of the Child Jesus.

  “He’s here! It’s him!”

  Sister Mary of the Eucharist hammered on Old Ma Madeleine’s door with her bony little fists.

  “Did you see him?”

  “No, but everyone’s talking about him. We have to go!”

  “I’m coming.”

  Sister Mary of the Eucharist silently cursed the day the order had moved into the provincial house. The huge building had its charms, and the view of the river from the garden and the upper floors was enough to bring tears to the eyes, but now the church was, from her point of view, an unreasonably long walk away. They reached the church at the same time as Madeleine, Louis, and Solange, all intrigued by the priest who had appeared unannounced. They weren’t the only ones. A few women—a young widow among them—were wandering around outside the church as though they’d lost something. The Lamontagnes, at the sight of Old Ma Madeleine and Sister Mary of the Eucharist arriving with such a spring in their step, wondered what they’d eaten that morning to have so much energy.

  “Where is he?” Old Madeleine asked, panting for air.

  Marc pointed to the church. Caught up in the old ladies’ excitement, they all went inside. In the church, Father Rossignol could no longer contain his joy. On a huge easel, a vast blank canvas awaited the painter alongside a statue of the Blessed Mary.

  The parish priest explained, in an eager, trembling voice, that Father Lecavalier was just back from France, where he’d been studying art. Since his return, he’d been painting frescoes, portraits of clergymen, and in particular the stations of the cross all over Canada. While the priest spoke, Father Lecavalier had lost interest in every one of them and was now staring at his canvas, awaiting divine inspiration.

  He would occasionally interrupt the priest to correct some detail about his travels, or to sing the praises of France and all that was to be found there.

  “You should see everything the Germans stole, those animals!” he said.

  “The Germans paid for all that there,” Papa Louis tried to reassure him.

  “Paid for it? And what might you know about it? They’ll never repay their debts, never! Might I remind you it’s our motherland they attacked. And don’t say ‘that there,’ it’s bad grammar,” the priest retorted. “In France, people still have respect for grammar, even if they’ve lost some of their respect for the Church!”

  “Are you French, Father?” asked Solange.

  “No, why do you ask, miss?” the priest answered, gruffly.

  “I don’t know. You speak like a Frenchman.”

  “It is my way of paying tribute to our beautiful, proud language!” came Lecavalier’s reply.

  He went back to his blank canvas.

  A somewhat embarrassed Father Rossignol explained that Father Lecavalier would probably be needing a few volunteers to sit as models for his stations of the cross.

  “Perhaps your children would like to help, Louis.”

  Louis swallowed. Why his children? Why not ask him? Father Lecavalier took advantage of the silence to rejoin the conversation.

  “I think your son Marc would make a perfect Simon of Cyrene. Show me your arm, young man.”

  The priest squeezed Marc’s arm like you’d squeeze a pineapple to test how ripe it is.

  “Yes, I think I could very well be in need of you, Marc . . . And you, miss. It’s Madeleine, isn’t it?”

  “Errr . . . yes. I . . .”

  Solange exhaled noisily. The priest went on.

  “Would you be prepared to pose as Mary Magdalene for me? I love your eyes. What color is that . . . turquoise?”

  “Teal,” Louis corrected him. “Your vocabulary appears to be lacking, Father.”

  Papa Louis’s quip was met with an uncomfortable silence, except of course from Solange, who broke into virile, hearty laughter.

  It was agreed that Marc and Madeleine would drop by the church over the coming days. On the way home, the Lamontagnes and Solange remained pensive, each for reasons of their own. Father Lecavalier had stirred entirely different feelings in each of them, ranging from utter contempt to romantic curiosity. No prizes for guessing which end of the spectrum Solange belonged to. She took her leave of the Lamontagne family without a word and returned home. She slammed the door on her way out, livid and brandishing the key to her Triumph, which she revved loudly all the way to Cacouna.

  “I don’t like it when she goes out without a helmet,” Madeleine sighed.

  The nuns, meanwhile, had lingered behind at the church, not to serve as models for the women of Jerusalem, but because the arrival of the new priest, a painter into the bargain, had left them intrigued. Sure, they’d been told that the fundraising campaign would result in a new way of the cross, but they’d paid little attention to what they considered to be nothing but a waste of money. Father Rossignol, though, hoped that by giving the church an original way of the cross—something as yet unseen in the diocese—he might stem the flood of departing parishioners. (Nothing alarming, mind you, but some were in need of a little persuasion.)

  Then Sister Mary of the Eucharist did something that surprised Old Ma Madeleine.

  “Have you had a chance to visit our provincial house, Father?” she asked.

  “No, I arrived from Quebec City this very afternoon. I have seen nothing of the town as yet. Looking at it from below, I figured it wouldn’t take long to see everything there is to see. This provincial house, it’s the long yellow-brick building not too far from here?”

  “I think it’s actually more cream in color, but yes, that’s the one. Listen, Father. The nuns would be delighted to have you over for supper tomorrow night, provided our dear parish priest doesn’t mind us stealing you away for the evening, of course. Will you take us up on our invitation?”

  Old Ma Madeleine found the nun more than a little bold. Lecavalier smiled. What did this frightful nun want from him? Supper with the nuns when he had so much work to do? The very idea of sitting down for supper surrounded by dozens of silent nuns ogling him out of the corner of their eye was about as appealing to him as the prospect of jumping on a hornets’ nest, but curiosity got the better of him. He wondered how a nun ugly enough to turn cow’s milk had ever plucked up the courage to invite him over. Not wanting to upset the locals, Lecavalier agreed. The two old women walked back alone to the provincial house.

  “He really is handsome, Sister Mary of the Eucharist. Do you think it’s him?”

  “I’m really not sure, Madeleine. I still need a closer look at him. I couldn’t make out a thing in that half-light. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, you know.”

  “Mother Superior will be furious when she finds out you invited him without speaking to her first! How are you planning to get around her?”

  “Mother Superior will be delighted. Take my word for it.”

  “Give her some warning, at least! And how about a cake for our handsome young man?”

  “Yes! With pineapple slices and maraschino cherries.”

  “You do realize that’s a capital sin . . .”

  The nun’s laughter turned a peony red.

  Over at the Lamontagne household, it was gin that was the order of the day, not tropical fruit. Each on their own, this time around. Papa Louis had changed out of his Sunday best and strolled down to his favorite bar, the Ophir. Irene was lying low in her kitchen, sipping on a sad tonic. And even Marc drank on his
own, knocking back glass after glass of water. This was something that had escaped the attention of his mother and father, who only years earlier had been perfectly normal parents. As normal as a couple of undertakers could be. But Marc had grown up in their blind spot, preoccupied as they were by little Luc, who had needed so much care, only to be snatched away in such an unfortunate mishap, and by Madeleine, who carried on with her confessions and novenas as though the end of the world was always nigh. Handsome young Marc had preferred silence to his dad’s patter, and in fact all he took after his father was a passion for bodybuilding: he envisaged a future for himself as a strongman traveling across America, even though he was well aware that strongmen had fallen out of fashion. A wrestler, perhaps. Or a hero of one of those sports that involved flattening someone on their back. In the meantime, he practiced on his sister.

  He would wait until the house was empty, then slip like a cat into Madeleine’s room, where Madeleine would often be sitting at her desk, busily reading a cookbook or combing her hair in front of the mirror. She always sensed him coming and would fend off the attacks, as Solange had shown her how. But Marc was stronger. However much she might threaten to tell Solange—who terrified him—or, worse, tell fat Lise Thibodeau that he was head over heels in love with her, there was nothing doing.

  It was ’round about that time that Marc’s strange symptoms first appeared. Although in fine fettle, for weeks he’d been exhausted in the evenings. His father put it down to a growth spurt and the revelation of an entirely new set of sensations. The bouts of fatigue were always accompanied by a great thirst, which he’d try to quench by knocking back pint after pint of water. Polydipsia? No. Instead, Irene blamed the salty snacks the children so enjoyed.

  “Sleep if you’re tired.”

  And so Marc slept, to the great delight of his sister, who would then be left alone for a while. She’d never breathed a word to anyone about Marc’s visits to her bedroom, perhaps because at first she’d confused them with their childhood games. Madeleine and Marc had grown up without ever being aware of their differences in age and sex. They were also somewhat cut off from the other children in the parish, due to both the fear and the admiration people had for the strongman. In short, few children, as Solange could tell you, were allowed or inclined to get close to the Lamontagne clan, which meant that Madeleine and Marc, as they napped together when they were eleven and twelve, felt not as though they were upsetting the divine order of things but rather that they were simply satisfying their need for sleep. Madeleine and Marc were close, to the great displeasure of Solange Bérubé, who saw nothing but a pale imitation of his father in the boy. He didn’t even have his eyes; Marc had inherited Irene’s big brown eyes, deep as shadows. Madeleine was the only one to feel something approaching empathy for the boy when he was overcome by bouts of fatigue and unquenchable thirst. She would carry up pitchers of water to his bedroom, keep watch over him while he dozed, and read while waiting for him to wake up. Marc would take advantage of those drowsy moments to let his hands wander.

  “Stop it!”

  “Why?”

  “We’re not married!”

  “Do you want to get married?”

  “Idiot!”

  And so, Madeleine looked after her little brother, put his strange behavior down to his unknown illness, and continued to pray for him. It was sometime in September or October that Irene began to take an interest in the classified ads in the newspaper, this one in particular:

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  The day after Father Lecavalier came to Rivière-du-Loup, the Sisters of the Child Jesus made an upside-down pineapple cake as per Old Ma Madeleine’s wishes. Mother Superior, who had always harbored dreams of being immortalized in paint, congratulated Sister Mary of the Eucharist for taking the initiative and inviting the priest-cum-painter to the school. Now she prayed to God that the man would be inspired by her wise features. She had even put on a little powder. The guest arrived with Germanic punctuality at six o’clock on the dot. The only man amid dozens of nuns in the provincial house’s huge dining room, he was for two hours the subject of thousands of unspeakable thoughts. Barely audible murmurs were exchanged between the nuns.

  “His neck is a little long . . .”

  “. . . but what beautiful big brown eyes he has.”

  “He still has his puppy fat . . .”

  “. . . and the lips of a cherub.”

  “But our vows are everlasting . . .”

  “Pfff, pass the salt, would you?”

  And so Father Lecavalier’s supper with the nuns unfolded in an altogether Edenic atmosphere. Ensconced between Mother Mary of the Great Power and Sister Mary of the Eucharist, just across from Sister Saint Alphonse and Old Ma Madeleine, the priest’s gaze swung back and forth between The Entombment of Mary on the wall and Old Ma Madeleine’s silent face. The old woman, he had noticed, was not dressed as a nun, not like the others.

  “May I ask why you are dressed like that, Sister?” he inquired, his voice laden with respect.

  A few giggles broke out.

  “So as not to be buck naked!” Sister Saint Alphonse quipped, mischievous as ever, from her seat not far from the group. The entire convent was swept up in divine laughter, virgin and crystal clear. Father Lecavalier smiled inanely.

  “Old Ma Madeleine is Louis Lamontagne’s grandmother. You met him yesterday. She came here to get away from the television. In return, she helps with the laundry,” Mother Superior explained to the young priest, visibly amused by his question.

  “From the television?”

  “Yes. She can’t bear the hiss it makes.”

  Old Ma Madeleine clapped her hands over her ears and pulled a face by way of illustration for Lecavalier.

  “Why, you have tinnitus, that’s all.”

  The nuns smiled tenderly. The priest went on.

  “So you’re Mr. Lamontagne’s grandmother?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yes. I already died once. Now I’m waiting for the Good Lord to finish the job,” Old Ma Madeleine replied as serious as could be, just as soon as she’d finished gnawing on a piece of chicken.

  The priest, visibly embarrassed, tried to change the subject.

  “Wherever did you get that painting on the wall?” he asked Mother Mary of the Great Power.

  “The Entombment of Mary? It’s a little souvenir our Louis brought his grandmother back from Germany, I believe. He never did tell us where he got it. We decided to hang it in the dining room. It’s amusing, isn’t it? The painter must have been a real beginner. No sense of perspective and just look at those frightful washed-out colors! And the drawing! A ten-year-old could do better!”

  While the Mother Superior spoke, the priest, no doubt short-sighted, stood up, without asking to leave the table and without finishing his peas, to take a closer look at the painting. His hands behind his back, his neck craned, he peered as though studying a train timetable.

  “From Germany, you say, Mother?”

  “Yes, Germany. Although we really don’t know. Louis says so little about the war. He used to say more. He gets so sad every time we mention it.”

  The rest of the meal was more relaxed, now that the nuns had had their laugh. Lecavalier was questioned about his plans for the stations of the cross. He twice helped himself to seconds of the upside-down pineapple cake, making sure he got a maraschino cherry each time, an act of gluttony that was not lost on the nuns, who, durin
g the three months the priest stayed at the presbytery, sent him two loaves of raisin bread, three pounds of sugar fudge, two pies made from freshly picked blueberries, four jars of wild raspberry jam, and a lemon tart. Siegfried Zucker, their faithful supplier, had managed to get his hands on lemons even though they weren’t in season, and all at an unbeatable price. It was their way of titillating the little cherub’s senses without comprising their commitment to the Almighty.

  Talk then turned to Paris, the fine arts, and—inevitably—the Eiffel Tower. It was to Rome that he most hoped to go one day, Father Lecavalier confided to the nuns. As a painter or a priest, he didn’t care, but the Eternal City beckoned, a logical end to his existence.

  “I know the Lord has bigger plans for me than these villages hiding away at the end of the world,” he concluded.

  Once he had gone, Old Ma Madeleine anxiously rushed over to Sister Mary of the Eucharist, who was making her way to her room in slow, resigned fashion.

  “So is he our handsome young man?”

  “No, Sister. You can sleep easy.”

  “But how can you tell?”

  “He’s as blind as a bat, just like me. He won’t do. We need someone stronger, more . . . how shall I put it? At any rate, I bid thee good night, Madeleine. I’m tired. Time to rest. Pray to the Blessed Virgin. Keep praying to the Blessed Virgin.”

  The doors to the nuns’ cells clanged shut one by one with the dismal metallic sound made by the bars of Alcatraz imprisoning their captives.

  When Father Rossignol got wind of Father Lecavalier’s thoughts of Rome, he offloaded a stream of dreary apostolic work on his guest, notably Wednesday confessions. To his great surprise, Lecavalier was only too pleased to take him up on his offer and, one Wednesday in late June, he sat down in an empty confessional and waited for the sinners of summer. They weren’t long in coming: Father Rossignol had been kind enough to let his parishioners know about the change in personnel. The new confessor got his money’s worth. Before he’d come to the parish, only a dozen old women with nothing better to do found the time to warm the seats of the church’s confessionals, but when people found out that Lecavalier was taking over from old Father Rossignol, the sacrament of pardon quickly fell back in favor. There were new sinners among the men, it is true, but most of all there were women, old and young, who had sinned and began making a beeline for the church of Saint-François-Xavier on Wednesday afternoons. Lecavalier quickly came to regret accepting the invitation. But Rossignol had assured him that no archbishop would ever consider recommending a priest to Rome unless he had experience. If the road to Hell was paved with good intentions, Lecavalier thought to himself, the road to Rome was clearly strewn with depravity and loose morals. The anonymous voices of middle-aged women whispered their failings to him: lies, ill will, slander, jealousy of every shape and size.