Arvida

by Samuel Archibald

  “What did they do with him?”

  “They led him far into the forest, so far that he’ll never find his way back, and he’ll stay there.”

  “Do you think it will work?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “What will they do if he comes back?”

  “Nothing. They’ll put him back in his cage and try again.”

  “You’re lying, papa.”

  He smiled and stopped the truck in front of the cadet camp’s sentry box. The guard, a zealous redhead with a bad case of acne, inspected them as if they were potential terrorists. Their father looked at Lucie on the passenger seat and looked at the adolescent in the back seat and then his gaze came to rest somewhere between the two.

  “It’s hard to understand, but Billy’s no longer afraid of men, and an animal that’s lost its fear of men is a dangerous animal. If Billy comes back Monsieur Roberge will have to kill him.”

  The mess was located in a log building with the kitchens at the back separated from the cafeteria by a stainless steel counter and a line of hot plates. The girls served from behind and the cadets passed in front in single file before going to sit at one of the twenty tables arranged in two rows. There were a hundred and thirty cadets and twenty or so instructors to feed morning, noon and night, and they were five in the kitchen plus the caretaker who sometimes lent a hand. There were the adolescent, Lucie, the manager Madame Rosie, and her two daughters. The younger, Cynthia, was eighteen and she was normal, but the older, Monique, was thirty-eight and she was retarded. Between the two Madame Rosie had had four sons who’d all left home, something Cynthia dreamed of doing one day, while Monique never strayed far without fear and trembling.

  Monique couldn’t do all the work like the others but she was good at repetitive tasks and her mother even let her cut vegetables with a knife as long as she kept up her pace because when she did so she was not likely to hurt herself. Madame Rosie knit little wool shawls and cardigans that she left hanging on a nail beside the cold room, and insisted that anyone who went with her into the refrigerator or the freezer put one on.

  “Go into the cold like that in the middle of summer and you come out with a runny nose!”

  But sometimes she herself cheated, just draping a bit of wool over her shoulders before making a quick visit.

  The five together had to wash and peel and prepare and cook and roast and simmer and serve all sorts of dishes. It was hard work, very hard, and they amused themselves as best they could. As the cadets paraded in front of them with their trays the girls greeted them with the same poses and the same come-hither glances they reserved for their cowboys, but the cadets didn’t have Monsieur Robertson’s poise and they blushed and stammered and sometimes spilled their soup or dessert and Madame Rosie laughed until tears came to her eyes and she called the girls “my little devils.”

  They never flirted seriously with the cadets. The cadets were a subnormal and weak and insignificant species. It wasn’t healthy at their age to need so badly to obey and be obeyed, to be served and to be servile. They cherished the memory of their cousin Jim who’d been a ne’er-do-well and who’d killed himself the year before. They thought that a good-looking boy their age ought like Jim to be a good-for-nothing and a bit of a scoundrel and not a little play soldier. For them to be interested in one of them he’d have to have less acne and be better looking than the others, but above all he’d have to be his own person whom they could imagine alone on a horse or a motorcycle and not a pallid figure surrounded by a big platoon of imbeciles. The girl cadets were no better. They got crushes on stupid boys and tried to look tough and their khaki pants gave them big behinds and to the girls they were just beefy ugly ducklings.

  That day the adolescent wasn’t laughing and wasn’t in a mood for play. She was thinking of Billy who’d never frightened her and whom she’d have liked to meet on the road and she was sad for him and she was praying to the good Saint Anne for him not to return, but above all she was afraid, afraid of the fear she’d have to stroke that night like a big cat rolled into a ball on her stomach and the fear in her belly like nausea itself.

  The warden had put Billy into his cage and with his helper had hoisted the cage onto the back of the truck. Monsieur Roberge had whispered a few words into the bear’s ear. And then they’d hit the road.

  The three of them had passed through Canton-Tremblay and had driven along the Saguenay and crossed Chicoutimi-Nord and Saint-Fulgence de l’Anse-aux-Foins and had advanced into the mountains until they saw Stone Consolidated’s huge mounds of wood. They’d turned left onto the Controlled Zone road and had stopped at the registration office to show the bear. Only one of the gamekeepers came out, because he hadn’t seen the bear the first two times. Slowly they proceeded along the gravel road across the Monts-Valin hills and passed the lakes le Savard, le Barbu, la Rotule, le Jalobert, le Louis, le Charles, le Victor, le Breton, le Betsiamites, le Marie, le Gilles, and they turned left just before the Tagï River and went on to the Portneuf River camp where they stopped to pee and to show the bear to the woodcutters. After, they drove for another hour and a half until they were in the middle of nowhere in another sector far from the woodsmen and the hunters. Spread out before them were wide valleys covered in new growth and moss and grey, emaciated skeletons of trees that had escaped the clear cutting but had not survived it. They tranquillized Billy again and they pulled out the cage and lowered it from the truck. Billy growled weakly and you could tell he was angry but that he had no more strength left in him. He lay down next to the road after having taken a few uncertain steps. The warden removed his collar and chain and passed his hand through the fur on his head and down between his shoulder blades and he and his helper left with hours of road in front of them as the sun began its descent over the broken line separating the horizon from the highest mountains.

  It was almost night when Billy came out of his stupor. He grazed on the plants and currants and blueberries around him and then set out. He felt very far away but he sniffed the ground just in case. He’d find a trail sooner or later. He had nothing against these woods. There was lots to eat and space to move around in and plenty of animals and things to entertain him along the way.

  He walked for days and days.

  There was in his bear’s soul an ancestral knowledge of the cardinal points and nutritional needs and the seasonal cycle and a certain violence but in his bear’s head he didn’t know solitude and above all he didn’t know that it was normal for a bear not to have a house.

  “What’s the matter?”

  They were outside. The adolescent was at the edge of the trout pond. Their father had widened the stream that flowed past the house, and built little stone walls around it. Some of the passing trout lingered there and you could see them sleeping in shadow during the day. At night the little girl sat by the water and let her feet dangle. Their mother gave her a hot dog and with her thumbnail she broke off little lumps and threw them into the pool. For a few moments the small pieces made bright spots on the black water and slowly sank towards the bottom before being snapped up by the trout. You could guess where the trout were, seeing the bits of sausage disappear or suddenly veer off inexplicably.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  The screen door slammed and the dog barked where he lay beside the garage.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, I said.”

  They turned towards the house. Their father was walking in their direction and all at once he stopped and there was a loud report. He turned his head towards the row of trees that cut the property in two at the right of the house and stared into space for a moment as if wanting to see past what was there.

  “Do you want to see Billy one last time, my babies?”

  Lucie didn’t answer and ran past her father
into the house. The adolescent said:

  “I’ll go with you.”

  The old man was facing away from them on his knees beside the bear, which lay on its side. They got out of the car and approached slowly. Their father cleared his throat. The old man didn’t turn around but raised a hand in the air and signalled for them to come.

  “Come here, my lovely girl.”

  The adolescent moved forward and placed her hand in the old man’s hand, both rough and moist. He led her as for a waltz to the other side of the bear, facing him, and invited her to kneel as well and guided her small hand into the thick fur under which the bear’s body was still warm and haunted by the echo of a heartbeat.

  “Pat him.”

  The old man turned around and stood and walked up to their father who said:

  “So there was still one more kill in you.”

  “There’s always one more.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “That you had to kill him.”

  “Don’t be. I made it happen. The day I took Billy. If I’d left him there the good Lord would have killed him and when I saved him I took his life into my hands and I knew I’d find myself here. I knew I was the one who’d have to kill him and that’s how things had to happen because by saving his life I’d agreed to be God for him. Don’t be more sorry for me than for God who counts each of our hairs and kills us all one day or another. You can’t be sorry for me any more than you can be sorry for God, any more than you can blame us or pardon us. That’s been turning around in my head. For about ten years. I’d talked to my wife about it. She was a God-fearing woman, my wife, and I asked her why in a religion where they talk so much about forgiveness there’s no ritual for forgiving God. She said, ‘What do you mean?’ and I explained ‘It’s God’s fault if his son suffered. He’s responsible for children having no father and parents ruined by their children and battered women and women being raped and he’s responsible for all the wars and the dead soldiers and the maimed. Nothing happens on earth that he doesn’t cause or that he doesn’t allow to happen so why do we never try to forgive him?’ She told me I’d committed a terrible blasphemy and she made me promise never to repeat it anywhere and I promised but the next week I asked the same question to the priest at confession. He told me the same thing as my wife: ‘There’s no point in my giving you any Hail Marys but I’m going to pray for you and you’d do well to ask all the people you know to do the same.’ I still said what I thought. I think people don’t talk about it because in a religion where you have to forgive everybody you can’t mention God’s name when you talk about forgiveness. You can praise him and sing for him but you can’t ever say anything about his most important attribute which is to be unforgivable. Everyone has his reasons except him because he’s the one who decides what’s what and he’s the only one who can make things happen differently. It’s the same thing for Billy and me on a smaller scale and it’s the same thing for you and your girls. You’re the whole world for them and you knew when they were born everything that might happen to them and that you’d have no excuses to give them and you’d have to be responsible for everything. Our brothers and our sisters who are idiots and understand nothing they can always say they didn’t know and they didn’t do it on purpose and it’s not their fault and people will forgive them because they’re just the same. But we’re the clever ones and people know it and you can never say it’s not our fault because those with the knowledge are never forgiven.”

  Their father shook his head.

  “I don’t know anything about anything. Especially not what you’re talking about.”

  The old man kissed the little girl on the top of her head and walked towards the little halo of light over the back door.

  Their father said “Come my beauty, we’re going,” and she ran to the car without looking at him and like Monsieur Roberge without looking at the bear.

  In the car her father cleared his throat several times. He hummed and cleared his throat again. All along the way the adolescent repeated in her head: “Don’t talk don’t talk please don’t talk.” They only saw the trees and the telephone poles and the houses and garages and barns in silhouette and the night was an incandescent black light that shone on things just enough to hide them behind their shadows and its work was complete except for a few naked bulbs aglow over the lintels.

  She knew what he would have said.

  He would have said:

  “The world is a hard place for men and maybe worse for women and it’s hard for a man to bring children into it and maybe even worse if they’re girls. You can show boys all you know and hope they’ll handle things just like you did but girls are delicate things and it’s tempting for a father never to teach them anything and to hope nothing will ever happen to them and to try to protect them from the world instead of showing them how to live in it.”

  All during the ride she repeated “Don’t talk, papa,” because if he’d talked she’d have had to tell him that she’d learned all that a long time ago all on her own and his silence hadn’t protected her from anything.

  When they got back to the house everyone was sleeping and cats were lying here and there in the darkness and the TV’s blue glow was pulsing and in fits and starts turning their grey fur a bit paler. In the half-light the grandfather clock tolled midnight and the little girl was limp with a fatigue that kept her from sleeping and she knew that the next day she’d be dizzy and would have a stomach ache but she was fine with that because she didn’t want to sleep right away. She brushed her teeth and left the bathroom to her father and wished him good night. In her room she let her jeans drop to her ankles and pulled off her socks and her sweater. She undid her brassiere and let it fall to the ground and with her nails scratched the moist undersides of her breasts. Lucie hadn’t moved or talked and her breathing was deep.

  She lay down on her side to look at her sister. She didn’t want to wake her but it felt good to see her on the other side of the room.

  When she was very little she’d often had the same dream. She was in a familiar place like her room and she was playing with a doll or petting a cat and all at once the door behind her slammed and the room got small and in her arms the cat was dead and from under her button eyes the doll was weeping blood. Something enormous was moving in the closet and the doorknob was turning and slowly the door opened, creaking on its hinges. She always woke up before having seen what was stirring in the darkness. If she’d had those dreams later that would have explained it but she’d had them well before so it must have been a sort of premonition because that’s how things happened precisely. She always felt safe when he appeared and in a flash there were no more escape routes. Nothing stirred in the closet because she wasn’t always in her room, sometimes she was in the garage or out in the fields but there was nowhere to run to, nothing in the closet but inside him there was something that rasped and seethed. He looked a lot like her father and as with many men who looked like her father there was neither the same softness nor the same strength in his face and in his eyes.

  She was not sure of having tried one day not to struggle and not to flee and not to be afraid. She remembered one time but perhaps she was imagining it because she’s the little girl now. She’s living in her dream and she’s lying inside it swathed in a little pink nightie hiked over her hips and he’s in front of her on his knees beside the bed and on the other side of the room her sister is looking at her with dead eyes and all the doors are locked and thick boards are nailed across the windows.

  With one finger, then two, he slips into the hollow of her womb a shameful warmth. As always he’s gentle with her and as always he’s careful not to rush her and not to hurt her. As always he leaves no mark on her body and no scar, only on her skin the flush of an inscrutable pleasure and shame in her heart. Shame she tries to throw off as always all alone hidden deep in herself but suddenly someone’s beh
ind her in the bed and her arms are slender and her breasts are warm pressed up against her back. She’s known boys and she’ll know others but it’s her sister who is the first to murmur in her ear “my love” and to repeat “my love” until she’s calmed.

  Her grandmother when she was alive was not afraid to reveal secrets and terrible truths.

  To honour an ancient custom they had placed at the edge of the village a high wooden cross on a stone pedestal to hold the devil at bay. The township was big, however, and many were the villagers who lived on unhallowed land.

  The grandmother didn’t believe that the devil had residence in America. She did see him implanted where he was born in Europe along with Communists and Protestants. She said that the cross was useful all the same to protect them from the little gods who had come to America in boat holds or who were already there at the time of the Indians. The grandmother had talked to her a lot about those spiteful gods that reigned as despots on parcels of land of no more than a few acres. They were bonded to the earth, and their aspect changed according to the seasons. They were robust in spring and alluring in summer and not far from obese just before harvest but when winter moved in to dislodge autumn they began to waste away. They hid themselves, grey shadows on snow, behind bushes and their hair fell out and their eyes sank deep into their orbits and they could no longer close their mouths completely over their pointed teeth. They were the earth and relied on the earth and served the earth. They worshipped the sun and at twilight they dreamed up ghoulish dances to bring down the rain.

  They knew the earth needed light and water but also blood. They were the ones who sometimes sucked blood from the necks of cows and ripped out their viscera in a cruel game and left mutilated bodies lying there so the crimes would be blamed on extraterrestrials or wolves. They were haughty and sadistic and even if their names were forgotten and no one believed in them, they demanded sacrifices from the infidels. They stole from houses what was their due as offerings and whispered their rage and desires into sleepers’ ears at night so that the earth might obtain in good time all it thirsted for.