Order of Good Cheer

by Bill Gaston

  Samuel marked this heresy, but another as well, his own: there might be something to learn from these people about God’s proximity. It seems that priests, and priests especially, made much ado about God’s distance. But Membertou’s little dance even survived logic: were not each of God’s creations an extension of God, an arm? And was not God’s arm God Himself? (Samuel would in all earnestness love to call this earth God’s face, and the sea God’s humours, and tell no one.)

  IN THE MAPMAKER’S rooms — though the old man has let go Samuel’s arm and regards him with no ill will, having accepted that for today he will yet remain a heathen — Samuel has already decided not to go to service. The second bell is rung, but instead he goes to the cupboard. He turns and indicates that Membertou should sit again, if he wishes.

  Recently and expertly hung by Lucien, the cupboard door swings smoothly on its black hinges. Both were salvaged from the ruin at St-Croix. Its inner shelves, though, are fresh wood, and smell sweetly of health. Samuel lifts out two goblets and the jug.

  Perhaps out of regret that he could not fulfill good Membertou’s wish to join him in a family under God, he offers instead the one part of the sacrament he can — wine. He stands to make a show of delivering it into his own cup by pouring it from a foot above. Then he lifts the cup in the direction of France, takes a small sip, and then, standing in formal posture, offers it to the sagamore. He knows that savages from all parts see brotherhood in such acts, just as they hold that privacy is the trait of an enemy. He knows, too, that Membertou would be well aware not only that wine is used in the sacrament, but also that in this compound each regular man receives one and one-half pints of medicinal wine daily, and also that they value it for more than its religious and medicinal properties.

  The sagamore Membertou accepts Champlain’s goblet with the posture and vanity of a king, literally rising in bearing to the occasion. He looks into the vessel, gazes into its depths, tilts the vessel and sees that the wine moves not at all — and there is nothing like haste in his movements. Samuel is enthralled to watch. The savage’s study of the wine is only respectful, perhaps even fearful, for though he doesn’t himself know intoxication, he has seen many a dull Frenchman grow bright, and then wise, and then loudly overwise, and in the end possessed by imbecility, and then, thankfully, sleep.

  Enthralled, he watches Membertou take a first taste, for the tongue alone, and his eyes glance down as if seeing it. Then he has a deeper taste, for the head. Samuel watches him look inside himself, for change. Indeed, his eyes move, flitting as they would in a new forest, though this exploration is inner. At some length he looks up at Samuel with a gentle smile, in his eye the deepest sobriety of understanding. But then, hard on its heels, a merry flash of light.

  They share the rest of the goblet together, and then have each one of their own, and they speak as best they can with what words they have in common. Membertou reiterates more passionately that the season of moose meat is almost upon them. Samuel congratulates the sagamore on the size of his family, and for his part Membertou sympathizes with Champlain’s lack of one, despite the mapmaker’s assurance that he has siblings and cousins aplenty. But it is clear that Membertou’s meaning of family is that which you create — wives, children, and, he adds, brothers. Friends, he seems to mean. Membertou marvels, disturbed, at news that priests never make families. And then, after Samuel describes for him some of the dealings he can expect with priests should he ever become Christian, Membertou manages a good joke. When Samuel nods toward the blustery dark water of the bay and tells him that Fr. Vermoulu would guide him completely under the water out there, the old sagamore at first looks within, indeed as Besouat had. But instead of falling fearful, Membertou slyly casts his eyes to Samuel’s and says in a quiet hiss, “Will he guide me back up?” and then tosses back his head to laugh at the ceiling.

  Finished with his wine, and seeing that no more is forthcoming, laughing at unknown things, the old sagamore takes his leave of Samuel now, aping a brief French bow from the neck only, and takes his new head with him to his forest, and his people.

  Samuel pours the remains of his goblet back in the jug. He hears the boots of the men as they issue from their common prayer; he leans back in his chair and considers. If a savage is eager to become Christian, eagerness alone should suffice. If the desire is rooted in a wish for the glass windows, biscuit, molasses, guns, and lace cuffs that God evidently bestows upon His flock, how is this any worse at heart than those of them who pray for a more finely appointed and easeful life in heaven?

  Again Samuel will pass on Membertou’s request to the Sieur, who might possess some more talent to sway Vermoulu. Though Poutrincourt seems wary of instructing a priest. Of the other nobles, Leduc wants the savages christened, while de Court dearly does not. Fougeray de Vitre does not seem to care. The lawyer Lescarbot, smiling sagely, instructs all within hearing that the Bible contains one million words, which is one million more than the savages can read.

  IT WAS TWO DAYS previous that Samuel arranged tonight’s visit with Sieur Poutrincourt, and he made so formal an arrangement in order to ensure this time with the Sieur alone. Samuel’s plan, one he has rehearsed, is to discuss the healing nature of comedy. And then, out of that, to discuss what might be a way to survive the winter that is almost upon them.

  Ironic, then, this supposed discussion of comedy! There sits the Sieur, aslump in his chair, staring through his three candles’ flames, past their surround of bobbing shadow, through the blackness of the very walls and out into a blind night. He continues to raise his cup of wine with nothing akin to pleasure. Indeed, his dullness of humour speaks of one too many such cups having met their maker. Poutrincourt’s boy, over in the dark corner standing ready with the pitcher, looks quite flushed himself with so much striding up and pouring. The room itself feels dull and askew.

  Samuel blames this night’s wind, which even now thuds its flabby paw against the walls and the window. He hates the south wind; the south wind brings with it summer airs, which gives the body false hope. It is warmth out of season, time out of joint. It is a girl’s breath, to stir the nuts, and then it is a monster’s, to unmast the ship. On board he hates it most, for it lulls, and therefore endangers.

  But now in what feels tantalizingly close to wit, Samuel offers, “The problem with exploration is the stopping.”

  When his friend — Samuel is reasonably certain they are friends — moves not a muscle, only then does he remember that Poutrincourt’s reason for being here wasn’t exploration at all, but settlement. This gentleman had come to stop. That first week, striding the nearby meadows and then even helping with the lifting of the first outer wall, Poutrincourt had more than once wondered aloud at what next voyage he might bring his wife and young children along. He has not been speaking this way of late. Poutrincourt has of need cast from his mind the black rumours of the King’s new whimsy of the fur monopoly abolished, and Port-Royal dying before it is fully born — and perhaps he has not fully succeeded.

  Samuel clears his throat and tries again.

  “That is, one problem with settlement seems to be the settling. Itself.”

  At this Poutrincourt raises his brows in polite agreement but there is nothing like the smile or chuckle Samuel hoped for. Indeed, his sitting room looks nothing like a place of smiles, or of settlement, for that matter. In the gloom, at Poutrincourt’s side rises the staircase to his bedchambers, and the staircase lacks a railing or spindles yet. It looks dangerous, or like the painting of a maliciously vacant dream.

  Samuel is again aware of the chasm between knowledge and wisdom: one can gain much knowledge and yet at the same time remain dumb to its use. Take the farmer who expertly raises the cow and yet remains all thumbs at the butcher’s block when said cow’s flesh needs preparing. Or take himself: his amateur study of musical performance and the levels of comedy leave him painfully aware that his knowledge of comic art sees him no better equipped for comedy itself. That is, he doesn’t kno
w how to lend humour to a situation. He has seen how utterly he lacks wit, save the vengeful kind that flowers in the brain slowly, blossoming some minutes too late. Which isn’t wit at all but a kind of rumination, a bitter chewing on comedy’s dead petals.

  He simply is not funny. The elements of comedy are much like those of music, and he lacks what is probably something like rhythm. Poutrincourt has cleared his throat, which sends his boy to Samuel’s side, and now Samuel sees that his own cup is empty. With pinched fingers he shows the lad that he is not much thirsty tonight.

  Even the brutish Dédé has a rhythm — the coughing barks necessary for low comedy, the shouts about farts and fucking, a comedy for souls which need improvement — still it is wit and it demands a certain rhythm. Sometimes it is quick-paced indeed, an onslaught well lubricated, and sometimes its practitioners employ a knowing delay before the crescendo, which is often of a physical kind, a slap or shove or mimed explosion.

  However much he would love to discuss comedy now with Poutrincourt, the latter is clearly, and literally, not in the mood. Nor, Samuel is coming to understand, did his friend have much conversation beyond his own practical dreams — the size his manor was to be, the ideal au pair for his children, what sort of trap would best catch these too-wily river herring. Samuel would’ve loved to discuss not only the reason he has come visiting this night — that being the subject of middle comedy, of men who seek to learn about and laugh at their own behaviour — but also the rare nature of high comedy, and what discovery he had just made of it, right here in Port-Royal. He would’ve loved to have been granted the interested audience to describe his understanding of high comedy: that it begets more tears than laughter, for it is the heart being struck with strong loving blows; it is passionate, not with yearning but with sagacious awe; it has to do more with death than birth, or more clearly with both at the same time; it has to do with man’s folly and wisdom combined; it often sounds like the voice of God. He would have loved to explain and discuss all this with Poutrincourt, but even more, he would have been afterwards keen to have the man’s opinion on the discovery he had just made — it is the savages here who, of any society he has yet seen, are prone not to low or even middle comedy, but to high.

  It was the sagamore Membertou who instilled this thought in him. It was more than Membertou’s nobility, of which all of them could agree he was possessed. And it was more than the elaborate theatre with which the savages embraced their dead and dying. No: it was more with their reception of daily events. The way Membertou, for instance, greeted a change in the weather — his face might widen in a kind of thanks, and awe, as if God Himself (though they have no god as high) had presented Membertou alone with a gift. Membertou’s adoring face at hearing, for the hundredth time, the capture of a moose in leanest times, would similarly remind Samuel of someone sitting in audience to high comedy. It was the perfect opposite of frivolous, which middle comedy could sometimes be.

  So, perhaps naively, Samuel has come to regard Membertou’s life as a kind of simple but sacred opera. What else could be said of one for whom clouds meant more than the possible onset of rain? Though what would Poutrincourt make of this? Dare he tell him? For this whimsy has also changed his mind as to the savages’ mode of government — which both Cartier and La Roche insisted they lacked entirely. This was an easy mistake to make, the sagamore’s word being law in times of war and dispute and marriage only, while the rest of the time his people did what they pleased, save, perhaps, murder. But Samuel has now remarked that, of each of the seven or eight sagamores he has encountered in the several years he has voyaged to this world, most of them shared, at least to some extent, this nobility, this attenuation to high comedy, and it was this attitude and general bearing that the rest of the tribe could respect, and learn from, and to some extent emulate. Even when a sagamore lied to you as transparently and bald-faced as a clumsy child, you could just as easily tell that something in the man’s very bones would not allow him to lie similarly to his own people. In fact it seems to Samuel that, compared to what he has seen of his own Royal Court at home, here in the land of savages a more natural hierarchy reigns — though this is something he will never dare record in his journals, published or not.

  But what Samuel has wanted to do, and why he visits this night and seeks to gain Poutrincourt’s advice, is to introduce to their settlement a series of banquets, with entertainment. Poutrincourt has some wit, and appreciation of wit, though apparently both had lessened as this season died and leaves fell upon the ground.

  Poutrincourt listlessly raps his empty glass on the chair arm, and it takes a while for either Samuel or Poutrincourt’s boy to understand that the man is calling for more wine. The boy jerks as if dragging a stuck leg and is for one moment unsteady on his feet, and Samuel hopes to God that this isn’t a sign of one so young falling ill.

  But Samuel begins:

  “It seems, sir, that once shelter is well built, and fuel secured, and the belly filled, and God properly thanked, one needs some mode of pleasure beyond survival.”

  “It seems.” As if to illustrate, Poutrincourt downs half of his freshened wineglass. Seeing this, his boy simply stands beside him with jug at the ready. He is pale yet glossed with sweat and truly does not look well.

  “I have means in mind by which to introduce some middling comedy into our midst. That is, a way to rouse the men to a more cheerful humour. Without relying solely on —” Samuel lifts and waggles his own wineglass. On the chance he has just insulted his host, he adds, “Which has proven itself well, but which, in the morning, does tend to balance last night’s pleasures.” Samuel has heard enough vomiting to last him all winter.

  “And then some,” Poutrincourt agrees, tapping his temple, though rather brusquely and not smiling. “Please, do go on. Reveal your genius.”

  “No, I am no heroic figure. It is a modest suggestion.”

  “I was being facetious.”

  DEATH’S YELLOW IN these uppermost leaves is a hard sign it’s autumn, but Lucien will let this gloom pass him by. Why ponder the growing cold, and future snow, when one can stay in the warm middle of this moment as it comes?

  He is far up a giant old birch looking for branches of size for the spindles of the Sieur’s staircase. If one can find them already grown to a near fit there is less need for lathe and measurement, all asquint in the dark of the shop. But he lies to himself — if he truly wanted made-to-measure he should be down there amongst the saplings. In truth he mostly wanted to climb this wise old tree that happened also to be white. Such a vast white tree should be the premise of a fairy story, though he isn’t aware of any. In winter a huge white tree would be invisible — and wouldn’t that be a good story’s beginning?

  He doesn’t bother unpocketing his drawknife. No branches are straight. Even the youngest have taken their parent’s gnarl. But he pauses for the view. He can see the whole of the bay and the entrance into it, that fissure in the mountains through which their ship brought them, a gap that’s hard to see without feeling a pang inside. He strains to see the settlement, but aside from two lines of smoke issuing from a notch where there are no treetops, there is nothing marking the scar they’ve made in this vastness of forest.

  Though it’s not quite the tallest tree, such is its magic that, while in it, Lucien feels he is in the forest’s very centre. He’s about to descend his grand white tree when he sees them, the scatter of women and children in a meadow he hadn’t noticed before. All of them are hunkered down and digging at something, lunging rhythmically as if kneading the ground’s intestines. Around the perimeter the youngest of them run and play unabated. Curiously, now that he sees them, he can also hear them. There: a shrill laughing scream, and an answering young roar.

  HE THOUGHT HE was quiet, but when he arrives out of the trees and into their meadow the women and children have stopped their digging and already stand up facing him, all with the identical expressionless face. Lucien cannot read if it is fear, or just an abiding
caution, or even a common request that he leave. It is no meadow but a kind of swamp, and the savages are digging up white bulbs, onions perhaps, but barely the size of acorns. They hoard the muddy little globes on squares of birchbark at their sides. He smiles and waves. None moves, so he waves again and this time shrugs, and as he enters farther from the woods, wearing his largest smile, one foot sinks deep in muck and he flounders and yells, “Aghh!” The children erupt as one with laughter and, Lucien can tell, derision. Half of the dozen women turn away and resume digging. At the same time, paying Lucien no attention at all, an old woman passes him by as she comes out of the forest too, cinching closed the hide strips of her nether garments, clearly having just accomplished her toilet.

  A younger one has risen and approaches him from the back of the group. She simply and easily strides up to him and stares. He could be a fish lying on salt at the market and she someone’s daughter with orders to shop. Is she sixteen, or his age — twenty — or even older? Impossible to tell. He has not seen so many of them in a group before. All looked the same at first, partly because of their similar hides, and black hair, and olive skin. Now he marks their odd and differing ornaments, beads and small conical shells, and strings of coloured hemp, and some women are wrinkled around the eyes, and fringes of human winter in their hair. This present girl, eyeing him as if to determine his freshness, decides to ask him a question before she purchases him for dinner, for she begins speaking and doesn’t stop for some time. Her language is full of breeze and softly snapping twigs. His instant wish is to have some language lessons from Monsieur Champlain, for he can hear clearly enough that her words offer not just facts but also shades of meaning and angles of the heart. She wears mud to her elbows but seems not at all shy about that. Lucien can smell this mud, blended not unpleasantly with a smell that is her own, one like rank apples. She’s not so pretty as some he’s seen but Lucien can tell she will laugh at herself. In her round face her eyes are underlarge, though he thinks he can see that when she is an older woman, she will be in some way wise.