"You wouldn't like some hors d'oeuvres?" he asked her.
At that moment, and to his profound embarrassment, he saw that Florentine was digging in her purse and bringing out, piece by piece, her whole artillery of beauti-fication. Beside the cutlery and crystal gleamed her lipstick, her compact and even a comb. . .
"Not here," he said, humiliated, looking sideways to see if people at the next table were watching. "There."
He pointed to a heavy curtain with gently illuminated letters above it.
"Oh! I see!"
With a defiant smile, as if she found his embarrassment out of place, she dumped her things in the purse again and went to the rear of the restaurant. He was furious when he saw her coming back, her lips smeared red, and preceded by a perfume so harsh that people on both sides of her path looked up and smiled.
Why did I bring her here? he thought, gripping the table's edge. Of course, I told myself often enough: to see her as she is and have no more illusions about her. He watched her approaching in her tight dress. Or was it to see her eat her fill for once? Or was it to dazzle her . . . and then take her, and leave her worse off than she was before?
He stood up as she reached the table. In her cocktail glass swam a cherry which she examined and at last put to one side on her plate. She tilted back her head and swallowed the whole drink at a gulp, and then began to choke.
Her cheeks grew red. She began to talk. She talked volubly, her elbows on the table, her eyes lively and happy at times, at others distant and vague. The courses came and went, the potage Julienne, the hors d'oeuvres, the filet of sole, the steak, the salad, the French pastries. And she didn't stop talking, except once in a while to peck about in her plate like a bird. She tasted everything and said, "It's good." But she was too excited to be aware of the taste of food. What really intoxicated her was in a great mirror behind Jean: her own reflection, which she frequently leaned forward to observe. There she was, her eyes shining, her complexion smooth and clear, her features slightly blurred; and because she liked herself like this, each time she leaned forward she seemed to want to communicate to him her moment of triumph. How could she fail to love someone in whose company she felt so beautiful?
Toward the end of the meal she began to call him by his first name. She didn't notice that he barely listened, that he cast covert glances of boredom in her direction. She was really talking to herself, bending her body toward those eyes of flame encouraging her, egging her on, intoxicating her from the depths of the mirror.
Later in the evening, when they left the bus and continued on foot, she grew calm, almost silent. It had suddenly turned warmer, as often happens near the end of February. The air was soft. Snow was falling, powdering their clothing and hair and hanging, fine and silky, on their trembling lashes. Immense flakes floated slowly down and as they passed beneath the street lights Florentine saw that their shapes were infinitely varied. Some were great stars, others reminded her of the monstrance on the altar. She no longer dared to speak, and felt occasional pangs of doubt: had she really made a good impression? Jean seemed so far away.
They turned onto the Notre Dame viaduct in front of the St. Henri station, and Jean stopped. She saw him looking up toward the mountain, whose lights you could mistake for clusters of early stars.
"Did you ever see that mountain?" he said slowly.
She smiled in embarrassment, but ironically, for she sometimes had no notion what he was getting at, this strange young man; then her thoughts flew to the restaurant where she had known a moment of happiness. And like him she leaned on the parapet to dream. She too stared at the mountain, her eyes shining in the snow, blinking in the snowflakes; but what she saw there was the great mirror in the restaurant and her own face with soft lips, and hair as fluffy and light as if it had been reflected in still, dark water.
Jean turned to contemplate her. She now left him almost indifferent, almost calm. He scarcely even thought of kissing her. And that was as it should be. Now that he no longer felt a brutal, irresistible attraction to Florentine, he could talk to her about his ambitions. He could clearly show her the great distance that lay between them.
He took her thin wrist in his hand and began to laugh.
"You know, beautiful," he said, "it won't be long before I have my foot on the first rung of the ladder . . . and then, good-bye to St. Henri!"
A strange anxiety came over her, and she stood pensive, her hands still folded on the parapet. A shunting locomotive wrapped them in a cloud of steam. For a moment Florentine felt lost in an infinite mist. Then she was calm again. What did she have to worry about? Things were going as they should. When they came out of the restaurant and Jean took her arm, she had been worried, it was true. She had wondered, Where's he going to take me now? She had bristled at the thought of defending herself against him. But when she realized he was bringing her straight home, she regained her assurance. A thought had blossomed in her mind: He doesn't hate me. He wants to be my boyfriend.
At that moment, standing straight beside him, enigmatic, smiling to herself, she savoured the words "my boyfriend." And with the boldness she had gathered from the thought of being loved, respected, by this unusual young man, she held her own incipient feelings in check. It's not that I've got the big love for him, she reflected, no, I can't say I love him truly. He's a show-off with his long words and all his crazy ideas, but he's not like the other guys in St. Henri either.
Slowly they resumed their walk, each lost in his own thoughts.
Jean: I won't see her again. Maybe once or twice more, so there are no hard feelings, but this has to end soon.
And she: I must arrange to invite him to our house. It seemed important to her to maintain the kind of respect he was showing her tonight. That was the right way to go, especially as their adventure had had a very imprudent beginning. Invite him home. . . But how? It's so small and ugly and full of children. . .
And Jean again: Oh! The poor kid in her little dress! Why don't I drop her right now :
On Beaudoin Street she stopped before the naked, poverty-stricken facade of a frame house. At the right a low, damp opening led to a small interior yard where windows, faintly lit, cast their glow on accumulations of junk. There were twenty or so such houses on the street, pierced here and there by covered passages leading to hidden courtyards. At the street's end an embankment rose to the level of the railway.
"Do you live at the end?"
"No, here."
Florentine pointed to the house which rose directly from the back of the sidewalk. It stood in range of the street lamp which shone accusingly on the faded, depressing grey of its paint. She too was standing in the lamp's raw light. Her cheeks looked hollow, her lips too red, too bold.
"Get away from there" he said.
He pushed her into the shadows. And the shadows were kind to her. They wiped out all trace of makeup, and made of her a frail, almost childish thing; they dressed her in mystery and gave her distance and value. He held his breath, staring at her for a moment, then swiftly put his arms around her, around her shadow, this smiling mystery. He drew to him Florentine's pale smile, her weakness, her credulity, her deep eyes in the darkness. His lips touched her cheeks. They sought for the form and warmth of her mouth. And the wind sported around them, and the snow slid down between their touching faces, melted there and ran between their lips in tiny streams.
Florentine melted into his arms. He had the impression of holding nothing more than a bundle of clothing, something soft, inert and damp. He held her closer and could feel how bony her shoulders were under the thin coat. His hand ran down her slender arm, and he gently pushed away this little creature veiled in shadow, polka-dotted with snow and smelling of frost and winter's cold.
She was standing in front of him, her eyes still closed. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against each of the closed eyelids. Then he pulled back and walked rapidly away. He almost felt like whistling.
And Florentine, her head in a whirl, was dream
ing: He kissed me on the eyes! She remembered other kisses but she had never felt the caress of lips on her closed eyes.
Feeling her way like a blind thing, she found the doorway. In the little room, lit by a trembling ray from the street lamp, she began to undress, taking care to make no noise that might wake the household, noting the thumping of her heart, dreading any interruption of the memory: He kissed me on the eyes!
From the depths of the double room, however, where she could just see the outline of the bed, came a voice that was weary.
"Florentine? Is that you? It's late."
"It's not so late," she murmured.
Sitting on the edge of the sofa-bed, she took off her stockings, only half aware of what she was doing. She was floating on a great wave, rising with it in a joy that almost choked her heart.
"Your father isn't back yet. I don't know what he's up to," the plaintive voice went on. "I'm really scared he's quit his job. I know he didn't get his pay yesterday. And Eugène's joined up, Florentine. Oh, God, what's going to happen to us?"
But Florentine was still riding the crest of her great wave. . . . When it lifted her high she had to hold her breath. How could she ever again be bothered by these petty everyday cares? Would she ever again feel the old anxiety on hearing these dreadful midnight confidences, in the silence heavy with breathing? The wave that bore her was like a long, slow swell. There were hollows into which she sank with all her thoughts, all her willpower, where she was no more than a wing, a feather, a fringe, borne off ever faster, ever faster. ... He kissed me on the cheeks. On the eyes!
"What's going to happen to us, Florentine?"
On the cheeks, on the eyes, and his lips were so soft. . . .
"If your father's gone and lost his job again, we'll have to live on what you can give us, poor Florentine. We can always go back on relief. ..."
There was a silence, long and distressing, broken by the gusts of wind and snow rattling at the windows. Rose-Anna raised her voice again. This time she was talking to herself in the heavy solitude of the great bed. She had given up hope of reaching Florentine. Perhaps she was too tired, too weary, to talk. Or half asleep already. She bore her no grudge, but she had to talk. She couldn't lie there in the dark like that, alone with what was weighing on her heart.
"The landlord's given notice, we have to move in May," she said.
And her heart was so full of anxiety, so weighted down with troubles, that she would have spoken aloud to herself in this way even if she had been alone. "What are we going to do if your father doesn't get another job and there we are having to move again? The rents are going up and up, and now. . . "
She hesitated on the verge of one last confidence. And in the dark, the deep dark that seemed so empty and filled with gloom, eyeless, earless, pitiless, she came out with it: "When there were only ten of us it was hard enough to get along, but now there's going to be eleven. ..."
Florentine was jolted back to reality. The wave of ecstasy vanished and left her a castaway.
Her throat dry, she said roughly:
"Not another one!"
For some time now she'd been keeping an eye on her mother. She imagined her growing heavier day by day; but Rose-Anna, her figure misshapen from so many childbirths, always seemed to bear a burden beneath her loose and swelling clothes. Florentine had been suspicious at first, but she had thought, it can't be. Our mother's over forty.
"It'll be in May, the end of May," said Rose-Anna.
She seemed embarrassed to admit it. But she recovered quickly and said, "You won't mind, will you, Florentine, if you have another little sister?"
"Good God, Mother, don't you think there's enough of us now?"
The fatal phrase had slipped out. Florentine was already sorry for it, wished she could take it back, but in the warm silence of the room, with the wind beating the windows, the memory of it hung. The dark seemed to repeat it, to echo it again and again.
Rose-Anna turned on her sweaty pillow. "Easy, child, easy!" she begged. Then after a long silence she whispered into the shadow. "There's no help for it, Florentine. We don't do what we like in this life, we do what we can."
It's not true, thought Florentine. I'm going to do what I like. And I won't have troubles like our mother.
The rolling wave was there again, lifting her high and singing in her ears with the sound of a thousand clear streams, music of her dreams that promised a happy life. Naked under her nightgown, she crept into bed beside her younger sister, Yvonne. The child kept her eyes tightly closed, but her lips were trembling. At thirteen she was trying to go her own way in her search for the key to the mysteries of human life.
Florentine tried to warm her frozen feet on those of her sister, and, half asleep already, called softly to her mother:
"Never mind, Ma, don't worry, we'll make out all right. We've been through worse."
Beside her Yvonne, stiff and wide awake, was breathing jerkily. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, and with her hands clasped before her, she tried to push a suffocating weight from her thin chest.
SEVEN
She watched him smoking his cigarette with short puffs as he sat quietly by the kitchen stove, yesterday's newspaper spread out on his knees, and she was bitter.
From the heavy knitted jacket half closed over his strong chest his neck rose white and smooth as that of a young man. His complexion was fresh and almost free of wrinkles. She begrudged his staying young and handsome, with his unfailing good health, while she bore such obvious marks of fatigue and wear. He was just two years younger than she, a difference that had not counted when they married. Now he looked at least ten years younger. Rose-Anna, at the end of her tether, said nothing more as she went about poking the fire. Her lips trembled as she bent over the light of the open stove-lid.
The flame sprang up with a shower of sparks. Azarius looked up. He sniffed the odour of dry wood shavings — a small supply lay on the oven door — and that of toasting bread, which he loved above all. He sighed with well-being, thinking of the cold mornings when he kept an eye on the passersby from his taxi station. It was more than Rose-Anna could bear.
"Why did you have to go an' quit your job! Was this a time to get hard to please? You don't see Florentine quitting her job, eh?" This was the start of their day. A touch of sunlight rose behind the kitchen window. Thus had begun many of their days in the past. Rose-Anna, listening to her own voice, wondered if her words had not been their own echo from the past. But Eugène's camp bed, standing against the partition, reminded her that her eldest son was gone, that she was growing old and that Azarius never changed.
"What's more, you're right in my way," she said. "How do you expect me to get the meals? Pull back your chair, can't you?"
He gave a little smile, half embarrassed, half surprised. He could no more get used to reproaches than he could to the awareness of being in the wrong.
"Just give me a little time," he said. "I've got prospects. Let a man think a bit about his business, will you?"
"Yes, you think about your business, sittin' by the fire. Go right ahead."
"Come on, Mother, might as well sit here as anywhere, as long as I'm sittin' jugglin' things around."
"Juggling!"
She had caught up his word derisively, and the shuffling of her slippers on the floor stopped abruptly.
"Juggling, is it? Can't you do anything else? You've spent your life juggling. And after all your juggling things in your head, where did it get you? D'you think juggling's going to help the poor souls that need it?"
She felt a sudden dull pain. It cut off her speech, and she laid a hand on her swollen body.
"Go and lie down again, Mother. I'll do your chores today," he said gently.
His boastfulness was gone. Not his painful certainty of being misunderstood, not his latent self-confidence, not even his fund of easy optimism. But there was an end to showing off. What was left was an overwhelming desire to be forgiven. It would have been hard to recognize the speechmak
er of The Two Records restaurant in this con- trite man hunched beside the fire. This was how he was at
home, without resilience, as if he were in a nest of thorns
trying to pluck them away one by one as they multiplied
j around him. Even his voice was not the one he used outside
' to state his opinion or give his generous and daring views.
I Now it had a conciliatory tone, almost humble, in which
[ x from time to time you could hear a note of defeat.
"If you really want to know the truth," he said, sighing, "Til tell you, wife. I was fired. But it's just as well. I wanted to quit. How can I look after my business when I'm tied up in that outfit morning and night!"
She looked away. She'd had time to cool off, but didn't want to show it too soon. Straightening out the kitchen tablecloth, she remembered something old Madame Lacasse had said: "With Azarius, my girl, you'll never hear one word louder than another. And that's worth forgiving a few faults for, child."
It was true, thought Rose-Anna. Azarius had never said an angry word to her.
"All right! That's it, make yourself useful," she said mildly. She sat down to eat in her turn at the corner near the oven. This was how she managed to give bigger servings to the children and keep only a crust of bread for herself without anyone noticing. She began to rock gently, which she often did even in a straight chair as an aid to reflection.
She quickly came up with a plan. Always full of ideas, once she had thought of a project she pursued it tirelessly. She took a last gulp of tea and set her cup down decisively.
"Listen," she said, "how would it be, now you're here to see to the kids, if I got out and started looking for a place to live?"
She wasn't asking for advice. The moment her idea was expressed it seemed to her reasonable and excellent.
"You know," she went on, "however bad things are, we've still got to live somewhere." Drops of saliva ran from the corners of her lips. She sucked them back in and got to her feet: a little woman, rounded out everywhere, her forehead still handsome and her brown eyes courageous, with delicate, mobile furrows between her eyebrows.
The Tin Flute Page 8