But it was as if she had denied Rose-Anna's work of all those evenings. That was an end to her belief that she had a pretty dress. Now she knew it was a poor girl's dress. She would never wear it again without hearing the crisp sound of the scissors in the expensive cloth or seeing it, half sewn, with white basting thread, a dress of sacrifice, of work done by poor lamplight.
While she was dreaming, a set expression on her face, Emmanuel had crept up behind her and played the childish trick of clapping his hands on her eyes.
"Guess who!" he cried, laughing. Then: "What were you thinking?"
"Oh," she said, "that's not hard to guess," and she pushed his hands away impatiently, but somehow left him holding one of hers, and joined in his laughter.
Dancing had lost its charm. Her shoes, too small and barely broken-in, were hurting her feet. It seemed to her that only her high heels held her up, and that they were boring from beneath into her feet. But they mustn't think she was unhappy or worn out. And so she laughed a little louder than before and made her eyes sparkle — she'd discovered how to do it. They'd think she was having more fun than anyone; nobody was to know she was dying of weariness and distress. And maybe if she pretended hard enough she'd end up having fun. She murmured something.
"What did you say?" asked Emmanuel.
"I said, I'm really having a good time."
"Are you glad you came?"
"Ami? Why, sure!"
"Not too tired?"
She frowned, irritated:
"Who, me? I'm never tired!"
"Do you often go to parties?"
"Pretty often. Just depends."
"I should have met you long ago, Florentine. We've wasted a lot of time."
"I'll be around," she teased.
A shadow of melancholy passed over Emmanuel's face.
"Yes, you'll be around," he murmured, "but I've got to go back pretty soon."
She was aware of a gentle, unfamiliar feeling around her like an aura.
"Why did you join up?" she asked. "It doesn't seem to make your parents very happy." "It doesn't make anybody very happy," he said, something pathetic creeping into his voice, and he looked for approval as he met her glance.
But she lost interest in the subject, swung her shoulders and got into the rhythm, her vivacity reviving.
As it was Lent, supper was served just after midnight. Marie Létourneau, along with Emmanuel and her mother, passed around paper napkins, soft drinks and paper plates containing thin sandwiches, just like a picnic, two or three olives, a celery stalk and a leaf of lettuce. Marie Létourneau looked exhausted. You could guess from her pale, serious face that she took little joy in these festive occasions, but that she wore herself out in the exacting preparations they demanded.
The dancing started up again, and the party went on until dawn. Couples were still on their feet when Madame Létourneau disappeared, to come back a moment later dressed for out-of-doors.
"It's Sunday," she said. "I might as well go to Mass now and sleep later."
The guests from the city, including the student and his mysterious companion, had left hours ago. Only the couples from St. Henri were left, and they all agreed with Emmanuel:
"Let's go to Mass together!"
ELEVEN
They wrapped themselves up and went out into the early morning. The air was mild. They walked two by two under the dripping trees. The tall trunks of the maples, their branches bare and grey and shining with melted snow, already showed their forms clearly in the half-light of the square. Underfoot the soft snow was deep and slushy. The houses were still dark. From cellar to attic the windows were black holes in the cold facades. Over their roofs a scarf of watery blue unfurled in the retreating night sky. The stars were melting.
The party crossed the square together, quiet now, except for one couple who laughed too loudly as they teased each other. Their two silhouettes went astray for a moment among the trees. Then you heard them laugh again, and suddenly the laugh was muffled.
On Notre Dame Street a few lamps gave off their trembling light behind windows shivering under sudden gusts of wind. The air was almost warm, but heavy. You could feel a March downpour in the offing. But to lungs clogged from cigarette smoke the morning was like a blessing.
Emmanuel was breathing deeply, ecstatically. He was astonished at how mild the morning was, and even more at the peace it brought him. Walking beside Florentine, holding her so that she wouldn't slip, he felt a relaxation and serenity that he had never known. They seemed to be starting on a real friendship, more than a friendship, a budding affection, ill-defined, delicious, but uncertain and changeable as the daylight whose colour was just breaking through the veils of night.
The massive Church of St. Zotique appeared in a white vapour like a cloud of incense rising from its steps. Shadows crept toward the doors. Behind two or three old ladies come to hear the early Mass, Florentine and i Emmanuel were inside.
They were enveloped in the pleasant warmth of the place. Florentine, after a rapid genuflection, sat down wearily, barely able to struggle against sleep. Yet even in this torpor her thoughts made her suffer cruelly. Unlike Emmanuel, who from the first hint of dawn had realized the enchantments of the night just past and felt cheerful and miraculously transformed, she had become aware of an acute disappointment. The day, beginning dull and grey, reflected her feelings.
Emmanuel. . . What was he doing, kneeling here beside her, as if he were her fiance? Fiance. . . The word afflicted her with an inexpressible desire to see Jean again. He was the one who should be here, not this stranger, this * Emmanuel, who didn't even arouse her curiosity. Every small attention he paid her now became a vexation. She had no more use for his attentiveness. A little more and she'd detest him altogether. She'd repulse his kindness as a destructive thing that could only increase her distance from Jean.
Why isn't Jean here, close by me? she kept thinking. An image came to her tired brain which made it wide awake. She was remembering the day when Jean had first invited her out. She recalled how he had said she would have to get to know him little by little, and she saw him leave the counter, squaring his shoulders.
Then she realized that this sight was imprinted on her mind, like certain poses that impress us in childhood and follow us all our days, unchangeable and fixed forever.
She began to feel panic. The first thing was to dismiss the vision, choose something else her mind had held fast. Impossible. She continued to see him from the back, a passerby growing more distant, indifferent to what he had seen in passing.
That was when she recognized love: this torture on seeing someone, the greater torture when he was out of sight, in short, a torture without end. Breathing harder, she murmured to herself, with the secret desire of inflicting on Jean this arid thirst rather than curing herself of it: I could make him love me too if I had half a chance. By that she clearly meant: I'd make him suffer as he's making me suffer now.
At her side Emmanuel was praying. His lips were moving and his fine features expressed a cheerful peace. Florentine slid forward onto the prie-dieu beside him, and she too began to pray. But her prayer was almost an order, a challenge: I have to see him again. Let me see him again, dear Holy Virgin, I want so much to see him.
Then she grew more calm and began to use a hundred feminine wiles to get the Virgin on her side. I'll make a novena, she said, if I see him this very day. The fear of committing herself without succeeding froze her heart. She added: I'll do the first nine Fridays of the month as well. But only if I see him today. Otherwise it doesn't count.
She was begging with all her heart, yet her eyes remained hard and her mouth stayed motionless.
At the elevation she caught Emmanuel's eye as she bent her head. For the briefest of seconds she felt another longing: she thought of praying to have this consuming love extirpated from her heart. But as her bowed head touched the next pew she saw Jean again, his back, as he went away. Then she became one with her torment. She clutched it as a drownin
g man grasps a fragment of a wreck.
She would do other, more difficult things to obtain the Virgin's intercession. She'd go to Mass every morning, she'd even — oh, that would be hard! — give up the movies for six months, maybe more. What wouldn't she do? She'd go to the Oratory on the mountain and climb the steps on her knees like some poor devil seeking a cure, though her cure would be to stay intoxicated with a bad dream, and infect another with it, give it to him like an illness. She stared at the lighted candles with eyes that in this flame seemed hard and resolute, not for a moment thinking that her desire for Jean's kisses might be an obstacle between her and the pale statues that peered out from the shadows of the apse. This very day I'll start a novena if I see him, dear holy Virgin. And that was her prayer until the end of the Mass.
As they came out of the church Emmanuel noticed her great fatigue and her faltering steps.
"Honey, you're done right in. Do you want to take a taxi?"
A cab was just slowing down near the group of the faithful coming out of the portico.
The Lacasse house was only five minutes' walk away, but Florentine was so spiteful that she didn't mind making Emmanuel spend the extra money. She could imagine her mother's astonishment at seeing her come home in a taxi. She nodded in agreement, exaggerating her shivering and helping her teeth to chatter.
The sun was rising, round and sulphurous. Soft snow had begun to fall, threatening to turn to rain. Emmanuel turned up Florentine's fur collar and, protecting her as best he could, steered her to the taxi. She smiled to herself as she snuggled like a cat into the warm seat.
"You really were cold!" said Emmanuel, covering her legs with a flap of his coat.
Now she was shivering with pleasure at seeing herself cared for and spoiled with nothing demanded in return. Warmth blew her way from the heater. The radio, through the crackle of static, was playing an insignificant love song. The church atmosphere was already swept away from Florentine's memory. Why panic? If she was patient she'd get what she wanted. And while she waited, why not let Emmanuel be kind to her? Slowly, giving no hint of her train of thought, she asked him:
"Your friend, Levesque, the guy at the store with you the other day, you'd invited him, hadn't you? Why didn't he come last night?"
As if she were unconcerned, she looked out as the houses paraded by and allowed Emmanuel to take her hand.
"Don't you worry about Levesque," he said, frowning and at the same time moving a little closer.
She dropped her purse, bent down to retrieve it and went on with affected playfulness:
"Oh, I was just wondering why he didn't come. It seemed funny to me. I thought you were great friends. Where's he from, anyway?"
"We were friends," said Emmanuel simply. "We still see each other sometimes. He's a guy ... he hasn't had it easy in life. You'd think he was taking it out on anybody that reminded him of the bad days. But let's talk about us, Florentine. We haven't got * % * of time."
Again she pushed him off on the pretext that she was too warm, laughing as if she'd made a joke.
"He's a funny one," she went on, still in her mocking tone. "Where does he live, anvvu : "He's got a little room at the corner of St. Ambroise and St. Augustin. He likes living alone. He spends most of his time studying and hasn't much use for girls. The funny thing is, they seem to like him. ,,
He emphasized the last words and tried to catch Florentine's expression.
She looked at him, wide-eyed, sounding his mood, then laid a hand over her heart and said with a forced laugh:
"Not me, that's for sure." Her voice was shrill and sharp. "I think he's. . . " She searched for a word that would wound Jean, a word that Emmanuel might even repeat to him. "I'll tell you. He's just not my type. Not my type at all."
Her vehemence made him smile.
"That's good. Good for me, I mean. I owe Jean a lot, and he's a friend in spite of everything, but if you were my sister I wouldn't like to see you go out with him."
"Why?"
His answer was simple and direct.
"Because you'd be running after your own unhappiness."
"Oh!" she said, amused and half incredulous.
"There's another reason," he said, taking her hand again.
"What?"
"Luckily you're not my sister. And I think a lot of you."
"As much as that?"
"A lot," he repeated.
The taxi halted outside the girl's house. He got out and paid the driver, then joined her. She had started shivering again, genuinely this time, staring with a lost look down the ugly, deserted street which echoed the suffering this day held for her. The two of them were the only living things, patches of murmuring light, in this gloomy corridor.
"D'you want to give me a kiss, Florentine?" She started, seeming to emerge from a troubled daydream, and looked at him with distaste, not knowing what to say. He was the only one who hadn't tried to get her into dark corners at the party. And she'd been expecting him to want to kiss her. But right here . . . with the memory of Jean. . . She made a little face and turned her head just in time for his lips to brush her cheek. He was dizzied by the faint caress, and immediately wanted more.
"Not like that, Florentine, better than that."
He caught her by the waist so abruptly that she lost her balance. Red-faced and trembling he struggled with her and found her lips.
A door slammed in the distance. Quicklv he let her go, but held her by the wrists.
"I won't see you before I go, Florentine. I'm leaving tonight. But from now on you're my girlfriend, eh?"
She said neither yes nor no, thinking, I've time to decide about it. I don't have to make up my mind now.
But as soon as he was gone she wiped her mouth. She watched him, noticing that he walked with his head tilted to one side. She wanted to laugh and she wanted to cry.
TWELVE
The end of the winter was signalled by clouds and gusty winds. Early that afternoon masses of low clouds hung over the south slope of the mountain and the wind charged at the lower town.
Around eight that night the powdery snow was loosed on the city. Shutters slammed and from time to time one heard the sound of ripping zinc from the roofs of houses. Dark trees twisted and dry cracking sounds were heard from their knotty trunks. On the windowpanes came rattling fistfuls of shot, and the snow whirled and sifted beneath ill-fitting doors, slid in the cracks of windowsills and searched in a frenzy for any refuge against the fury off the wind.
There was no more earth or sky. The houses were massive shadows with here and there what looked like the pale blinking of a lantern. You'd have said that a vigilant hand fumbling through the tempest lit an occasional street lamp which at once went out, tried a new bulb which gave off a hasty flame, and, untiring, continued this vain struggle against the dark. On Notre Dame Street the flashiest signs cast only a dim glow into the roadway, and from the sidewalk across from the movie theatre came no more than a reddish light like that of a distant fire. Pushed and harried by the wind, Azarius emerged from a patch of dark, passed quickly through the turbulent halo of a street light, and then, with short, quick steps, leaning into the gale, made his way toward The Two Records restaurant. Its white facade blended into the storm. Three yards away you'd never see it. With the sure hand of habit Azarius found the latch.
The place was almost empty. Sam Latour, sitting by the roaring stove, was smoking a cigar and blowing smoke rings whose ascension toward the ceiling he observed with satisfaction. Behind the counter his wife, a charmer with freshly waved dark hair, was leafing through an illustrated magazine, her elbows on the unpainted wood and her chin on one hand. There was only one customer, visible from the rear, immersed in the reading of his newspaper.
"Oho! It's our do-nothing big talker!" shouted Latour good-humouredly. "Did the storm blow you in? Nita was just sayin' she bet we wouldn't even see a cat in here tonight."
"Happens there ain't much doin' tonight, you're right," said Azarius laconically.
<
br /> Leaning on the counter, he unbuttoned his overcoat and ordered a coke. He didn't seem anxious to talk. Contrary to his custom, he remained silent for some time, giving excessive attention to wiping the bottle-neck on his sleeve. His forehead was smooth, his cheeks red and healthy from the cold, but he was looking restlessly around, bewildered and uncomfortable.
"That's right," said Anita Latour, picking up the nickel Azarius had left on the counter. "Sam was just saying there can't be many folks out and about tonight."
This affectionate couple had the habit of giving each other mutual support even for their least compromising statements. What one said passed at once into the conversation of the other, prefaced by a good-natured "Sam was saying. . . " or "As Nita said. . . " Each borrowed phrase was paid for with a smile.
"And that's just what I thought, too," Anita went on, "when I saw this storm. Sam's goin' to be all alone the whole night, says I to myself. So I just up and come along."
Sam was laughing slyly.
"Tell me, Lacasse," he said, "did you ever in your born days seen a good girl like my Nita? You could almost hate her, she's so darn good."
Azarius took a long swig from the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. For a moment he remained undecided, his eyes shifting nervously. He remembered Rose-Anna, not as she was now but as she had been: happy, with tender eyes as soft as velvet, and a cordial voice. But she changed while he remembered, and he saw her hunched by the lamp, patching children's clothes. He saw her straighten up to get closer to the light and take a few stitches, holding the dark material close to her eyes.
He had tried to help her, offered to thread her needle. He had asked her humbly to tell him how he could be useful and she had answered not a word. Then for the first time in his life he had said to her "one word louder than the next."
"Dang it, it's enough to drive a man to drink, do you know that?"
To that also she made no reply. And he had dressed to go out, but so slowly as to give her every chance to hold him back. He could stand reproaches but never silence.
The Tin Flute Page 13