La Guerre:Yes Sir

by Roch Carrier

  Madame Joseph didn’t dare go on. She couldn’t attempt a detour off the road. She’d sink in the snow.

  How would she managé to get by this horde? Would she shout, “Let me past?” They would leap on her; they would roll her in the snow and amuse themselves by looking at her thighs and seeing her pants. The thighs and pants of Madame Joseph were spots of great interest for the boys of the village. Other women could go along the road with no trouble, without being bothered, but as soon as Madame Joseph went out the boys invented a new way to get a look at her thighs.

  “We hatch them and they turn out to be vicious little morons who will always prefer the bordellos to the Church,” she thought, a little sadly. “There isn’t one of those kids who isn’t the spitting image of his father. We don’t beat them enough.”

  With an instinctive movement she tightened her thighs and advanced cautiously.

  Suddenly furious, she raised her arms and brought her fists down on the little boy closest to her. She grabbed hold of a stick, struck out at random, fiercely, shouting threats. “Little morons! vicious little monsters! damn brats! pigs! I’ll show you how to play hockey!”

  Madame Joseph grabbed a second stick, waved it around in front of her head, and struck out to the left, to the right, everywhere at once, in front, behind. Her sticks hit noses, ears, eyes, heads. The boys were soon dispersed. From a distance they shouted their insults: “Fat ass! Big tits! You’ve got the face of a cow walking backwards! You look like a holy Virgin turned upside down!”

  “Vicious little monsters! Damned brats! You’re all set to visit the bordellos in town!”

  They replied, “If we go to the bordellos we go to see your daughters!”

  She stopped speaking their language. She could not insult them. They knew all the insults. “We don’t beat them enough,” she complained.

  She got down on her knees and picked up the object they had been fighting over with their sticks — her husband’s chopped-off hand. The fingers were closed and hard as a rock. There were black marks where their sticks had struck it. Madame Joseph put it in the pocket of her fur coat and went back to her house, announcing to the boys, who were choking with laughter, that the devil would punish them in hell.

  Joseph was sitting in his chair, pale, with a tortured face.

  “I’ve found your hand, Joseph.”

  He looked at her indifferently.

  “It’s a good thing I went that way; the kids were playing hockey with your hand.”

  Joseph said nothing.

  “If I hadn’t got there in time the brats would have broken it. You should thank me.”

  Bored by his wife’s insistence he finally answered. “What do you want to do with my hand? Make soup?”

  “You’re a lazy good-for-nothing.”

  Joseph looked at his wife sadly. “Apparently Corriveau’s arrived at the station.”

  Waving his battered arm, all covered with bloody rags, he exclaimed, “Now let them come and take me off to fight their Christly war! I’ll cut off their dinks, if they’ve got any. I’ll cut them off like I cut off my hand. I’m not going to fight their goddamn war.”

  Madame Joseph whistled between her teeth at the dog, who woke up and obeyed her call. She threw the hand out the door into the snow. The dog ran after it, growling with pleasure.

  “You think it makes me happy to sleep with a man who’s only got one hand…”

  “I always thought you’d have liked to see me go off to the war and you wouldn’t have minded too much if I’d come back like Corriveau. At a certain age all women want to be widows.”

  Madame Joseph stood in front of her husband, her hands on her hips, and spoke to him as though she were spitting in his face. “A man who doesn’t have the courage to go and fight a war to protect his country is no man. You’d let the Germans walk all over you. You’re not a man. I wonder what I’m sleeping with.”

  Joseph murmured gently between his teeth. “Corriveau? Is Corriveau a man?”

  The road between the village and the station had disappeared in the snow like a stream in a white, blinding flood. No one lived here. No house. The forest was weighted down by the snow, which spread out as far as the eye could see, sparkling in all its dunes, its rises, its very shadows; because of the snow it seemed no longer alive, but a mute white plaster.

  On the other side of the endless forest the snow continued to the horizon.

  How could they have got away, these men who were bent under a coffin and sinking into the snow up to their belts? They were six soldiers carrying the burden, three on each side, and in front of them a sergeant shouted to make them go on. Each step required an effort. First they had to lift a leg out of the snow, which gripped the foot with a strong suction, then raise the foot as high as possible without losing balance, stretch the leg then, and push the foot energetically, press it into the snow until it was hard, still without losing balance, and without moving the coffin too much, because all the weight carried by one man would be transferred to the shoulders of another; they had to hurry. It was already later than they had expected. The sergeant was in a bad mood. He nagged his men, who were sweating in this plain of snow, under the coffin they were carrying on their shoulders from the station to the village. It was not the first coffin they had carried, but they had never gone as far as they had that day, and at each step the village on the mountain seemed farther away, as though they had changed directions in the snow.

  The soldiers were sweating. Their clothes were soaked. The sweat rolled down their backs in cold globules. Sweat poured onto their faces too, and froze after sitting motionless on their chins; they could feel the skin growing stiff. Their swollen lips had slowly become paralyzed. They didn’t dare to say a word, to swear or laugh or complain, they were so close to the breaking point. Their wet hair was steaming. The cold stung their hands like spiny bushes.

  The soldiers didn’t even suspect that there was a road hidden under the snow. They simply walked on like animals. They went on towards the mountains where they saw chimneys above the snow, their smoke like a comforting balm to the men. In the silence, where nothing vibrated but the effort of their breathing, they remembered, bent down under their fatigue, their own houses which they hadn’t seen for months.

  With no order from the sergeant, with a spontaneous gesture, they lowered the coffin from their shoulders and put it down.

  “I’m dead hungry,” said one.

  They took up their burden again and continued on in the snow.

  Busy surveying the unloading of merchandise, the station master had not seen the soldier Bérubé get off the train, accompanied by his wife, Molly, whom he was bringing home from Newfoundland. What a surprise this arrival would be. He had not warned his family, either that he was coming home or that he had recently been married. His letters didn’t say a thing.

  Basically, Berube had only one topic to write about: that he could tell nothing about his life as a soldier, or about the war, and that he didn’t know what would happen to him tomorrow. He kept himself ready for everything, he wrote. His mother couldn’t read a line without bursting into sobs: how painful this war was, when a son couldn’t tell his mother about his life.

  Bérubé was responsible for looking after the toilets in G wing of B building at the airforce base in Gander, Newfoundland. Bérubé had learned to speak English. He spoke it as well as all the other toilet-cleaners, whether they were Poles, Italians, Hungarians or Greeks.

  Waiting for the plane that would take him to Montreal, where he would catch a train, Bérubé decided to stay at the Aviator Hotel. Before he had even ordered a drink at the bar a soft hand stroked him, and an insinuating English voice said, “Come with me, darling.”

  “Darling?”

  “Come...”

  “Where are you going, by the way?”

  “To my bedroom.”

  “OK, let’s go!”

  Bérubé followed the girl. As he watched her walking ahead of him, her hips swaying in her
narrow skirt, and as he speculated about the well-formed behind, Berube’s legs felt numb; the rug in the corridor became rough and lumpy for him. He had the feeling that each of the girl’s steps and each movement of her body tightened invisible ties around him. He hurried, because she was walking quickly. When he put a hand on her behind and she did not take it away his disagreeable paralysis dissolved and he was suddenly sure of himself and even a little cold.

  “Tu es un bien beau bébé chérie.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Be a good girl.”

  The girl turned towards him and, laughing, stuck out her tongue and pushed away his hand. She opened the door of her room. “Shut the door behind you!” she ordered. Then, making her voice more caressing, she said, “Give me five dollars. Take off your clothes.”

  Bérubé feverishly tore off his tunic and sat on the bed to undo his shirt. He was trembling; he had the feeling that the bed was charged with electricity. He undid his fly and took off his trousers, which he threw onto a chair. He turned his head towards Molly. What kind of modesty was making her turn her back as she undressed? Bérubé wanted to see a naked girl.

  “Hey! look at me,” he said.

  Bérubé felt it was ridiculous to be sitting on a bed when a girl was getting undressed on the other side, but he didn’t dare stand up: the girl would make fun of what had happened to him. He remained seated and blushed.

  “Come, darling.”

  The girl was before him, naked. She had kept on her brassiere, which was full to bursting. She held out her arms to Bérubé who was incapable of getting up, of leaping towards the naked girl, of seizing her in his arms, of clutching her violently and throwing her on the bed. Bérubé felt completely weak, as if he had had too much to drink. In his head he heard a tick-tock like a drumbeat. “Always, never,” repeated the monstrous clock which had marked the hours of his childhood, the clock of hell which throughout eternity would say “always, never”; the damned are in hell for ever, they never leave. “Always, never.” Under the clock Bérubé saw the viscous caverns of hell where serpents climbed, mingled with the eternal flames. And he saw the damned - naked, strangling in the flames — and the serpents. “Always, never”: the clock of his childhood beat out the measure, the clock of eternal damnation for those who go naked and those who touch naked women; “always, never,” sounded the clock and Bérubé had to beg, “Do you want to marry me?”

  “Yes,” replied the girl, who had never been asked this question.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Molly.”

  “Oh! Molly, I want you to be mine,” said Berube, getting up and going towards her.

  They embraced. Molly let herself fall onto the bed, and the marriage was celebrated.

  Then they got dressed again. Bérubé took her in a taxi to the Padré, to confess and receive the sacrament. The Padré did not hesitate to give his blessing.

  Before they took the plane to Montreal Bérubé and Molly went to buy a wedding dress, which she insisted on putting on right away.

  Molly was shivering in her long bouffant white gown, which the wind was trying to snatch away from her. Neither the horse-drawn carriages nor the snowmobiles had been able to get to the station to pick up the travellers. Bérubé said simply, “Molly, climb up on my shoulders. Get on my back, we’ll take our bags another day.”

  They started to go up towards the village. Bérubé powerfully dug a passage through the snow, which came up to his chest. Because of the white lace tickling his face and because of Molly’s warm thighs which were pressed tightly against his cheeks, Bérubé felt a desire to toss her into the snow and leap onto her, but that would have rumpled her dress and made Molly all snowy; when they arrived at the village people would soon guess what had gone on and they would be amused at Bérubé’s impatience.

  This way, in the snow, Bérubé tried to think of nothing in order not to think of Molly’s thighs, of her breasts, bigger than fine apples, of her buttocks beneath the white dress. But it was impossible to think of nothing; one always has a picture inside one’s head, or a sensation, or the memory of a picture of a sensation, or even a desire. A feeling of warmth, the good warmth of Molly’s thighs, of her belly, of the warmth between her breasts, clouded Berube’s thoughts, threw into his head and before his eyes a fog that dazed him. He did not know if he was still going in the right direction; he could no longer see the village on the mountain, and the snow was as deep as the sea. Bérubé could think of nothing but the warmth of Molly, and this warmth moved over his body like a caressing hand, so that even the snow pressing against his legs, his stomach, his chest, had the warmth of Molly’s body, seated on his shoulders and silent as though she didn’t want to distract him from his sweet obsession.

  Bérubé forced himself to think of a cow, an airplane, the wreck of a big ship, the Satanic, that he had heard stories about, of Hitler’s moustache, of the toilets he had cleaned and washed for months and months. In his head one image was supreme, one image that hid the rest of the universe behind it: Bérubé saw, as though for the first time, Molly standing up near the bed, naked, her breasts spilling out of her brassiere; then he thought of the pleasure he had had. Ah! his pleasure had been so intense he had wept like a child.

  Bérubé, completely swallowed up, could not pull himself out of the snow or even move his foot. It was making him dizzy. He let Molly down, jumped on her, and caught her mouth between his lips, trying to bite it. Roughly, he caressed her breasts.

  “Oh!” complained Molly, who was floudering about. After a fierce struggle she succeeded in freeing an arm, and gave him a slap in the face. “Nothing but animals, these French Canadians. I don’t want my dress to get creased,” she said, to excuse herself.

  He did not reply. He had decided simply to abandon her there, in the snow. He got up. Free of the load on his shoulders he was less troubled by the snow. He went away. Molly did not call him. Anyway, he would not have answered if she had called. Something warm tickled him in the corner of his mouth. He put his finger to it. It was blood.

  “La bon Dieu de Vierge!”

  He picked up a handful of snow and stopped up his wound.

  “Let her freeze there standing in the snow, la Vierge. I won’t let any woman break my jaw; not a whore, not an Anglaise. Not an Anglaise. Let her freeze there, la Vierge’’

  Bérubé turned around to see his wish come true. Almost disappearing in the snow because of her white dress, Molly was waving her arms about to call her husband, but she was quiet. Bérubé after savouring his triumph for a moment, cried: “Go ahead and freeze to death.”

  Lower down, at the foot of the mountain, Molly noticed a group of men carrying a long box on their shoulders. “That French Canadian has got blood on my dress.”

  Bérubé arrived in the village alone; that was when he learned about Corriveau’s death.

  The gossips were saying, “Now that Amélie’s got two men in the house she must be satisfied.”

  Amélie had started to prepare a meal. She was alone in the house. Saucepans sang on the wood fire, perfuming the kitchen. She wanted a man. Arthur had gone out; Henri was in the attic. She smiled. In a long caress she slid her hands over her bosom and slowly onto her belly and thighs. She stood up again, went to the stove, lifted the covers off the pots, the aroma of the roasting meat drifting out.

  She tested it with her fork, checking to see how much longer the meat had to cook, replaced the cover and climbed upstairs. Amélie needed a man.

  Was it Henri’s turn, or Arthur’s? Who had slept with her the last time. Her two men made her keep a strict accounting; that was very difficult.

  Amélie wanted a man, and in a few minutes the meat would be burning on the roaring fire. She took the broom and, according to the code, rapped on the ceiling. Someone moved in the attic. The heavy trunks were pulled aside and the trap door opened.

  “What is it?” asked Henri in a voice choked with sleep.

  “Get down here, I need you.�
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  “What for?”

  “Hurry up, I can’t wait till Arthur gets back.”

  “What for?” Henri repeated, hardly convinced.

  “Get undressed and come here!”

  “It’s not my turn,” he yawned. “I don’t want to cut in when Arthur’s away.”

  Amélie had already undone the buttons on her dress. Henri leapt from the attic. He started to undo his trousers.

  “Hurry up,” Amélie ordered, hurrying towards the bed. “I’ve got some meat on the stove.”

  “Hurry up,” repeated Henri, “that’s easy for you to say; a man isn’t always ready.”

  He finished undressing, getting out of his clothes as though they were a thornbush.

  “What’s the weather like today?” he asked Amélie, who was already stretched out on the bed.

  “Winter, same as yesterday.”

  “I know that. I know perfectly well that it’s winter. I’m dying of cold up there in the attic.”

  “It’s your own fault. If you’d been willing to go to war you wouldn’t have to hide in an attic and be cold. Hurry up; thaw out.”

  “There isn’t even a goddamn window in my attic. And the cracks in the ceiling are blocked up with ice. That’s how I know it’s winter.”

  “Hurry up. You can keep your wool socks on… Don’t complain about nothing. If you weren’t so well off in your attic you’d go to war. Come on.”

  Then Amélie became gentle. “And besides,” she said with-a smile, “you’re not always in the attic… “ Her voice was caressing. “Isn’t that right, Henri?”