Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  In spite of his anxiety about the factory, Athanase’s trip had given him back some of his old jauntiness. Kathleen noticed the change at once; she also noticed that some of it was forced. Underneath he was as nervous as a cat, and she waited quietly to see what he would do when he learned what the parish thought about him now. She did not have long to wait.

  The first morning after his return, Athanase went into the village to get his mail and papers. He met Yardley as he was stepping out of his carriage and the two went into the store together. Athanase was talking so rapidly he failed to notice the expression of warning on Yardley’s face, so the reception he received hit him squarely in the face.

  Drouin laid his mail on the counter and immediately turned his back. Athanase spoke pleasantly and got no answer. He picked up the mail and glanced about. All the other men in the store had turned their backs too. When he spoke to Frenette the result was the same. He might have been talking to an empty room.

  He leaned over the counter and tapped Drouin’s shoulder. “What’s the matter today, Polycarpe?”

  Drouin muttered something unintelligible as his eyes dropped, and he shifted clear of Athanase’s hand. There was a long moment of silence. Yardley quietly picked up his own papers and stuffed them into his pocket. Athanase kept looking at Drouin, his face drawn and formidable. “Have you lost your tongue?” he said sharply.

  There was still no answer. Athanase knew he should have let it go at that, but his stubbornness kept him there. He turned and tapped Frenette on the shoulder. “What about you, old friend? Are you dumb too?”

  Frenette faced him a moment, his beer-barrel body solid on his short legs, then shifted his eyes and backed away. The old habit of respect was in his face. So was a kind of affection and a great desire to be friendly in his own way. But he stepped back just the same.

  Then something exploded in Athanase’s brain. “God damn you–haven’t I been here long enough for you to know who I am? Frenette–there’s a window broken in my house. I want you up there this afternoon to fix it.”

  Frenette mumbled something incoherent.

  “What’s that you say?”

  “I said I was sorry, Mr. Tallard.”

  “You damn fools!” Athanase lifted his stick and banged it down on the counter. “You poor…”

  Then he felt Yardley’s hand on his elbow, and throwing an angry glance over his shoulder he caught the expression on his friend’s face. Yardley looked both sad and embarrassed at the same time. He stepped quietly between Athanase and Drouin.

  “How about you cutting me a sheet of glass, Polycarpe?” he said quietly. “I guess you know what the measurements are. I told you last week. I’ll be back in the afternoon to get it.”

  Drouin answered eagerly, in grateful relief. “Don’t bother, Captain. Me, I’ll look after it myself. This afternoon, for sure.”

  Yardley kept his hand on Athanase’s elbow and moved with him to the door. They climbed into the carriage and Athanase cracked the whip so loudly it sounded like a rifle-shot. His cheeks were flushed and he began to talk in loud excitement. Almost at once Yardley interrupted him.

  “Don’t try to say anything now. Later on maybe, you and me can talk it over, but right now there’s no sense in it.”

  That afternoon, just after lunch when Athanase was alone in the library, Julienne knocked and entered. She was not wearing her apron but her Sunday clothes: a black dress and a black hat with a feather on it. She stood just inside the door, stocky, sullen and a little bewildered. “I’m giving my notice,” she said.

  Athanase could hardly believe the words. Julienne had been in the house since she was a young girl. The whole meaning of her life was a part of this family. He took off his glasses and forced a smile. “Sit down, Julienne, sit down and tell me what’s the matter.”

  “This isn’t a Christian house. I can’t work here any more.”

  She said these words as if she had memorized them. He put on his glasses and again looked at her. “Don’t be a fool!” he said.

  She continued to stand there, stocky and as stubborn as he was himself. “You got no right calling me that, Mr. Tallard.” Then her stubbornness collapsed and she began to blink. “Oh, Mr. Tallard…” The tears flowed over and came down her plump cheeks, and with a choking sound in her throat she rushed out the door and closed it behind her. Athanase jumped from his chair and followed, but by the time he had reached the front door she was already down the drive on her way to the road. She was trying to run, moving her heavy body with a waddling motion that would have been comical had it not been so pathetic.

  Athanase stood on the steps. “Julienne!” he shouted.

  She did not stop or turn around. He saw her reach the road and take the turn toward the village, pulling her black hat squarely down over her forehead on the way. She had a married sister living in one of the newer houses beyond the church, and now her sister’s place would have to be her home.

  For several minutes Athanase stood staring after her. When he turned around he saw Kathleen behind him in the doorway. “What did you expect?” she said, and with a slow and indolent movement went back into the house.

  An hour later there was another knock on the library door, and this time it was Blanchard. He stood with his feet apart, and even while standing motionless he gave an impression of plodding forward. Both hands clutched his cap, and as he looked at the floor he kept turning the cap between his thumbs and forefingers, slowly around and around. Athanase waited for him to speak. He leaned back in his chair with his finger-tips pressed together under his chin in an inverted V and looked at his man.

  Finally Blanchard’s Adam’s apple moved up and down as he cleared his throat. “I’ll be staying till the crops are in, Mr. Tallard.” He made a short movement with his head. “The other men–I’ll keep them around too.”

  Athanase said sharply, “And after that?”

  Blanchard continued to revolve his cap. “I been thinking…with my own field, maybe with that piece of land…” Then he blurted out, “Next year I won’t be working for you any more, Mr. Tallard.”

  “Good!” Athanase snapped at him. “That’s fine. Now I suppose you want your money?”

  With a swift movement he swung around in his chair and wrenched open a drawer in his desk. He pulled it out so violently that some of the papers fell on the floor. Immediately Blanchard lurched forward and bent to pick them up. Athanase bent at the same time and the two men looked at each other, blood rushing to their lowered faces, each checking the movement of his hand. “Never mind, Joseph!” Athanase said coldly.

  Blanchard straightened and took a step back, stood with his feet apart, his eyes lowered, revolving his cap. Athanase reached for a black account book and thumbed it through. Then he pressed down a page and studied it, frowning. He picked up a pencil and noted down a set of figures, closed the book and said to Blanchard with a bitter, almost academic irony, “I owe you for nearly half of twenty years’ work. Taking into account the compound interest, and subtracting what you paid for the field this spring, it makes seven thousand, six hundred and forty-two dollars. Is that right?”

  Blanchard shook his head. “And thirty-nine dollars, Mr. Tallard.”

  “You’ve been the thriftiest man I’ve ever seen in our parish. Now you’re almost rich. I suppose you have plans for this money?”

  Blanchard nodded.

  “Very well. I’ll write you a cheque. It’s been in a separate account in my bank for you all along.” He took his cheque book from the drawer, tore out a cheque, and with quick, flourishing strokes above and below the lines, filled in the names and figures. After doing this he bent the cheque crisply lengthwise through the middle and handed it to Blanchard, who took it with both hands, looked at it cautiously, then slipped it in his right pants’ pocket and held it there with his hand.

  “Don’t worry,” Athanase snapped. “If you lose it, I’ll give you another. Put it in the bank at Sainte-Justine. If you can’t take my word for i
t, ask the priest.”

  And then he was ashamed of himself, and a wave of sadness broke over him with intolerable force as he saw that Blanchard was weeping. The man stood in front of him sobbing from his chest, and a film of moisture spread down his browned cheeks to his jaw. Athanase got to his feet. “Pull yourself together, man!”

  But when he grasped Blanchard’s hand and felt the answering pressure he knew his words had been stupid. He stepped back and in a partial daze saw the library door close behind Blanchard’s back. He dropped into his armchair and sat quite still for nearly five minutes, then he reached blindly to the nearest bookshelf. His hands turned the pages of the book he had found and finally held a place almost automatically. He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes, then rubbed the glasses on his handkerchief and set them on his nose again.

  It was a book of Greek lyric poetry, old and dog-eared. His grandfather had bought it, his father had studied it, he had used it himself during one term at the classical college. He had forgotten most of his Greek, but the Jesuits had pounded the paradigms into him and he still remembered many of the words. The book had fallen open at a fragment of Simonides, and he tried to puzzle it out.

  He read, groping at the words, losing their exact meaning but slowly feeling his way through to a forgotten intimacy. He remembered that he had read these lines many times before, that once he had considered them remarkable, for there was a note beside the poem in his own handwriting. He noticed with curiosity that his writing had been much smaller in his student days. Then he suddenly recalled the whole fragment, remembering the rector sitting behind the desk going over the translation, his lean face alive with the pleasure of the poetry. “Being a man, do not say what happiness is, nor seeing a happy man, how much time he will have…for it is swift, like the turn of a dragonfly, the change!” Athanase let the book fall shut over his fingers and closed his eyes, and for several minutes lay back inertly in his chair.

  Then he got up and went to the door. “Kathleen!” he shouted.

  He heard her moving upstairs, then her feet as she came slowly down, and he went back to his chair again. She entered with her familiar languid motion, and he wondered in amazement if the expression he saw on her face was pity. No one had ever pitied him; it was awful if pity should become necessary. More than ever as he watched her, the latent vitality in her body gave him a deep feeling of shame.

  “Sit down, my dear,” he said quietly. “I want to talk to you.”

  She opened the drawer of the table and took out cigarettes, and she did not sit down until she had lighted one. He drummed on the arm of his chair with his fingers. “Well,” he said, “it looks as if we leave here for good. You must feel happy about it.”

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  After a moment, he said, “I wonder if I know how you feel about anything any more?”

  “You never ask me. You just go ahead and do things your own way. What difference does it make how I feel? Or what Paul or anyone else feels any more?”

  “There are some things I must explain to you.” And then he did not know how to continue. He wanted to tell her that he would have been satisfied to continue living in Saint-Marc if he had known that she was also satisfied, but he knew she would not believe him. He wanted to tell her that because he was no longer any use to her as a man, the least he could do was to make money so that she could live the sort of life she had always desired. But he knew that if he said this it would account for so little of the reason why he was turning his life upside down that it would be hypocritical, and that she would merely look at his face as though it were a curtain and not even bother answering.

  “Every man…” He fumbled with the words. “Every man has to act according to some principle. He–he must make his life aim at something. He must live in accordance with the times. That’s going to be the tragedy of so many people we know–they’ll have to pass through a long period of transition from their present way of life to the way science compels us to live. Maybe Marius is a reflection of the tragedy of that transition. He doesn’t understand, of course, but–but I do, Kathleen. I’ve understood it for years. That’s why I…” He stopped with the feeling that his words were like drops of water falling into an empty bucket. There had never been any sense in talking to Kathleen about ideas.

  “So that’s why you had to quarrel with Father Beaubien!” she said. “That’s why you had to drive Blanchard and Julienne out of the house! That’s why you’re making a Protestant out of Paul!”

  Her voice was perfectly level, without obvious anger or hurt; she merely recorded the facts. But if her words meant anything, he thought they meant that she despised him.

  In sudden anger he spurted out at her, “Don’t be deliberately stupid, Kathleen! You may not know it, but ideas are the things that change the whole world. Let me explain…”

  She got up and tossed her cigarette into the hearth, where it lay smouldering among ashes and waste paper. “You don’t have to explain anything. You’ve been explaining things all your life and look where it’s got you! You’re over sixty, Athanase–and you’re just as stubborn and headstrong as you ever were. Let’s not talk about it any more. Let’s get out of here and forget all about it.”

  She left the room, and when he was alone again Athanase wondered how it was that an ignorant woman who had known a man with her body could understand him better than an intelligent man who could speak to his mind. He felt crushed. He had wanted to explain that every man must act in accordance with his own inner compulsion. Now he knew that she had guessed what this compulsion was, that it had often been no more than the product of his physical condition at various times of his life. His nature had always demanded a new idea of itself, and when he had his vigour, women had provided it. Now no woman could satisfy him, nor he a woman. Nothing was left him but principles and ideas. “God,” he thought, “is that all there is to it?” And then it occurred to him that perhaps all wars and revolutions and movements of history started from sources just as trivial and undignified. He saw the people in their churches and nationalisms huddling together under flags and banners in desperate attempts to escape the knowledge of their own predicament. They were all silhouettes moving almost accidentally for seventy years or so over the ridge of the world between darkness and darkness. Among them he saw himself. Then he laughed harshly, mocking himself, Kathleen, everyone he could think of. “When I make money she’ll think I’m right! They all will!” And the thought that he had never known a person who sincerely despised money gave him a faintly bitter feeling of vengeance for his own inadequacy.

  That night Athanase tried to play chess with Yardley, but the game went so badly that he lost his queen in the first five minutes and surrendered. They went out to the porch and sat in silence together. It was a warm night and the last crickets of the season were loud in the fields. A full harvest moon washed the plain, and far out in the river a ship which had left Montreal before sunset cut the moon’s path blackly.

  Suddenly he heard singing. It came from the road where the singer was hidden by trees and darkness. But the voice reached them clearly, for it was a rich baritone with a familiar lyric quality. Athanase lifted his chin, glanced at Yardley’s profile and then away. Rossignolet sauvage…it was only Frenette feeling good after a few drinks of whiskey blanc, on his way home from a game of checkers. He was merely letting his voice pour out in the first song that had entered his head. But the music and the words were more than Frenette, for both were racial memories. No wild nightingales had ever sung along the Saint Lawrence, but there had been many of them in copses by the Orne and the Seine, now and centuries ago. In Quebec they had not been forgotten.

  PART TWO

  1919–1921

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The war had been over for six months, and now the first battalions were coming home.

  Some of them had lived through half a week of the first gas attack, breathing through rags saturated with their own urine while they fought the Germans
before Ypres. Some had existed in the cellars of Lens for weeks, gnawing their way underground through the town like rats, wall by wall; and each new cellar had meant grenades and the L-shaped rip of bayonets. Some had seen the top of Messines Ridge blossom like a fire-shot black flower into the sky, carrying with it the shredded limbs of a whole division of Germans mixed with thousands of tons of dirt. Some had gone up the slope of Vimy and fought all day with the Prussian Guard they had been told would be dead when they got there, and at the next dawn they had seen each other’s helmets encased with sheet-ice from rain that froze as it fell. Some had stood up to their necks in cold water stained with blood and human excrement while they waited for hours to crawl a few yards closer to Passchendaele. Some had been drunk on sacramental wine found when they had dived into a hole in the ground to escape bombardment, and so had discovered that they were in the crypt of a church, that the occupied ground was a village, that the village was the objective of a three months’ offensive. Some had crawled like snakes through the standing grain east of Amiens after the break-through of August 8, 1918. Some had seen friends loosen and fall around the coal piles of Mons on the last morning of the war, then had gone in past them to gut the last snipers of the war with their bayonets. Some had marched at attention across the Rhine bridges into the clean, untouched German towns. Some had won medals. Some had acquired trench feet, scars, clap, gas-burns, syphilis and hallucinations that came in the night. Some had learned a peculiar peace through an ultimate knowledge of themselves. And now, having done the whole duty of a soldier, they were coming back to the middle classes, to the farms and forests and the wooden railroad towns, to the gaunt stone cities like Toronto and the sprawling wind-swept ones like Winnipeg. They were coming home to a land still so near the frontier that in most of it everything was black or white, uncomplicated, where wickedness was barely intelligible unless it were sexual.