by Roch Carrier
That day, my father stopped before one of the unpainted houses. A man was sitting on the steps in front of the door. There were no children around. They must have been in the fields, picking raspberries. I decided to wait in the car.
‘Bonjour, Philémon!’ said my father.
‘Salut, Georges, haven’t seen you around for a while.’
‘Is it you that’s missing me, Philémon — or your wife?’
A form appeared in the screenless doorway and Philémon’s wife called out, before going back into the shadows:
‘You’re a pair of skunks, you two!’
‘Your wife expecting again?’ my father asked with a mocking smile.
‘This’ll make fourteen, Georges,’ said Philémon, his satisfaction stretching into a grin. ‘How about you? Not up to making fourteen, eh?’
The shrill sound of a crying child came from the house.
‘Philémon,’ my father asked, ‘is that howl telling us your fourteenth’s arrived?’
‘If it is, Georges, I better get to work on the fifteenth right away!’
His wife, her form blending with the shadows, reappeared in the doorway.
‘I’d just as soon the children didn’t hear when the two of you get together.’
I was in the car, listening; the words were familiar words, but they were speaking a language I didn’t know. I understood nothing of what they said. I was careful to laugh at their jokes when they did, for it was important that I seem to understand.
‘What you got up your sleeve for me today, Philémon?’
‘Today, Georges, I’m cleaning my gun. Something wrong with your eyes?’
In fact the man was holding a rifle across his knees, rubbing the barrel with a rag.
‘I like a gun that’s as clean as my eyeballs,’ said the man. ‘Don’t look. It’s as bright as an electric light.’
As he spoke the man had taken the rifle from his knees and was pointing it in my father’s direction.
‘Watch out, Philémon,’ said my father, ‘you’re gonna scare me. That’s no rosary you got in your hands, it’s a gun.’
My father took a few steps back, towards the car.
‘Come on now, Georges, don’t be scared. You know very well…’
‘Philémon, that thing scares me.’
Laughing, the man pointed the rifle at my father; with his left eye shut, he aimed.
‘If you was a deer now, Georges, you’d be out of luck today. Ha ha!’
‘Philémon!’ my father ordered curtly, ‘put that down. Maybe it’s loaded!’
‘Come on, Georges, I ain’t crazy; if my gun was loaded I wouldn’t be playing with it.’
The man aimed at my father, but the rifle moved. The man’s shoulders shook because he was laughing so hard at the sight of my terrified father. My father did his utmost to get away.
‘I can’t run, Philémon. My legs won’t move.’
My father fell to his knees. The rifle was levelled at him.
‘If you was a deer, Georges, I could pick your forehead or the nose or even the heart. Or maybe … Ha ha!’
His words were shaken by the laughter gurgling from his mouth. The rifle pursued my father. He had folded his hands as he did when he prayed, and in the car I had my hands folded, too.
‘Philémon,’ my father said, weeping, ‘I pray the good Lord not to let you shoot.’
The man still stalked my father through the sight.
‘Georges, I’d’a never thought you’d be scared of a gun, like a little girl.’
The man was laughing harder and harder; he was stamping his feet in their big boots with pleasure, while I was trying to slip down on the seat so I couldn’t see anything. I was as paralysed as my father.
‘Philémon, I don’t want my boy to see me die.’
My father had let himself drop to the ground, his face in his arms. The man had stopped laughing — rather, he was shouting with pleasure, or coughing or spitting. He was so delighted he couldn’t hold the rifle; he put it back on his knees so he could wipe the tears and saliva with the back of his big brown hands. Slowly, he was calming down. My father didn’t move. I looked at him lying on the ground, I could see his white calves between his trousers and his socks, I could see the worn-down heels of his shoes. The man was no longer laughing. He came towards my father. His big belly sagged and he was dragging his boots. He tapped my father’s head with the barrel of the rifle.
‘No,’ my father shouted, ‘no, NO.’
‘Georges,’ said the man, ‘of all the people that’s come this way, nobody’s ever made me laugh as much as you. You know very well this gun ain’t loaded. Look!’
He pointed the weapon towards the sky. The sky thundered as it had never done during the severe storms that froze us with fear some nights. The rifle jumped to the ground.
‘I killed him!’ the man shouted. ‘I killed Georges! I killed him!’
He was weeping. Slowly, my father got up, shaking the grass off his suit.
‘I killed Georges!’ the man cried.
In the doorway, the shadow of his wife said nothing. The man kept shouting:
‘I killed him! I killed him!’
My father bent over, picked up the rifle and held it out to the man.
‘Philémon, don’t be so scared.’
And to me he said:
‘Come here, son, this is gonna be a lot finer day than I thought.’
I’m the same age now as my father was at the time of the great fright. If I find myself thinking about death I can’t help seeing it as I perceived it that day: idiotic. It doesn’t know that it can kill.
The Machine for Detecting Everything That’s American
AT THE FOOT of the mountain two or three streams wound their way through the alders. The water was very clear. In it we could see minnows, select the ones we wanted, watch them bite the hook. It was impossible to come home empty-handed.
In the spring as soon as the snow had gone, the Americans were back, as we used to say, with cars bigger than the curé’s to which were attached marvellous motorboats. The Americans had come to fish. With their big boats they didn’t venture into our three little streams; no, they went farther, into the mountains, to fish in a lake that belonged to them. Because the Americans came from so far away to fish in their lake, the trout in it were longer than in any lake in the United States. Of that we were absolutely sure.
There was no end to the magnificent boats, the cars with licences bearing names like magic words and the rich gentlemen who smoked big cigars; they drove through our village as though it wasn’t even there. The Americans were in a hurry, as the men in the village said, ‘to go fishing for trout with a shovel.’
I had an inspiration that I confided to my friend Lapin: we didn’t have to be satisfied with our grey minnows. We should be more ambitious. We should go fishing in the Americans’ lake.
‘We aren’t allowed,’ he said. ‘That lake belongs to the Americans. But the trout are as long as that,’ my friend the shrewd fisherman sighed.
We went to get our fish nets. Lapin filled his pockets with worms and we stood by the side of the road, waiting for a car that was going towards the Americans’ lake. An hour later, Onésime’s old truck had taken us to the entrance of the Americans’ lake. On the fence was written: DÉFENCE DE PÊCHÉ; NO FISHING. We climbed over, then followed the road to the lake, a road broad enough for the big cars, a road that was better built than our country roads. The lake was as beautiful as the ones on calendars. It was deserted. There was no American fishing from his big motorboat. From our ambush behind a tree, Lapin and I looked all around. Certain we were alone, we walked to the dock where there were a few canoes.
‘You know how to paddle?’ Lapin asked. ‘No? Me neither.’
‘Our fathers weren’t Indians, that’s for sure.’
In a canoe on the Americans’ lake we baited our hooks and started to fish. Soon I said to Lapin:
‘If we don’t stop we’ll have to get
out of the canoe to make room for the trout.’
‘Let’s scram,’ said Lapin, ‘before we get caught.’
Back on shore, we threaded our trout through the gills onto slender alder boughs. Then we ran to the road where we began to walk as though we hadn’t just come from the Americans’ lake. We’d gone scarcely one arpent when Onésime came back in his old truck. We ran into the trees with our trout, but he’d seen us and stopped. We had no choice but to get in the truck.
‘Nice trout you got there.’
‘We found them in a little hidden stream,’ said Lapin.
Onésime knit his thick grey brows, the brows of a man who’s seen the world. We looked down, blushing.
‘You kids done all right, it’s no sin to steal trout from the Americans…. It’s just smuggling. You know what that is, smuggling? Don’t get caught, children, like some people let themselves. The Code’s the Code.’
Onésime told us what had happened. Our village was a few miles from the American border where there was a customs station, just a shack. The customs officer only worked during the day. He saw more rabbits than travellers. One man had taken advantage of the night to smuggle across several dozen packages of American cigarettes, with the idea of selling them again in the village. In the morning the customs officer showed up at the smuggler’s house and confiscated the cigarettes and even the keys to his car.
‘I think,’ Onésime concluded, ‘he’s going to have to get around on his bicycle for a while. Unless he goes to jail … Smuggling’s a serious thing … But I wouldn’t think they’d hang the man …’
‘How did the customs officer know the man had crossed the border with the cigarettes?’
‘The customs officer’s got a machine that can detect anything that’s American.’
Lapin and I said nothing. But we were thinking the same thing. Bringing American cigarettes into the village is a crime, punishable by law; bringing trout you’d fished in the Americans’ lake must be the same thing — a crime punishable by law.
Onésime stopped in front of the church.
‘Out you get, youngsters, here’s where I turn off. Watch out for the Code!’
Lapin stuck the trout under his sweater and we jumped to the sidewalk, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths. With our trout hidden under his sweater, Lapin’s chest stuck out as much as Pierrette’s. He couldn’t walk around with that bump in his sweater for very long. In front of the flowers on Monsieur Rancourt’s lawn, my friend Lapin said:
‘Let’s throw our trout in the flowers.’
‘No! Somebody’ll find them. The customs officer with his machine. And he’ll know we put them there.’
What were we to do? Lapin sat on the edge of the sidewalk, arms crossed to hide the bump. I did the same. All we could do was think.
‘These are our trout. We caught them with our hands and our own worms.’
‘Yes, but we caught them in the Americans’ lake.’
‘Yes, but that lake’s in our country, in our forest.’
‘Yes, but the lake belongs to the Americans. If we bring something into the village that belongs to the Americans, it’s smuggling.’
‘And with his machine,’ Lapin concluded, ‘the customs officer can tell whenever anybody’s smuggling.’
We were trapped. We ran to the church with our trout. Hidden behind the organ, we waited. We prayed and waited. Would God come to the rescue of two children who, that day, were so fervent? Through the big windows we could see the light grow pale. It was already night in the church, though there was still light on the earth. Would we have to spend the night in hiding? At night the church would be a deep cave, the vigil lights like will-o’-the-wisps. The sacristan began his tour of inspection before locking the church. We would be prisoners till morning.
‘The customs officer’s machine’ll know we’re here, but he’ll wait till after dark to come and get us.’
We didn’t want to spend the night in the church. With all the saints and the demons and the damned, the angels and the souls in purgatory, could anyone know what would happen there at night? At night a church could be like Heaven — but it might be like Hell too. Lapin and I had tears in our eyes.
‘Our only hope’s to confess, admit all our sins …’
‘And resolve firmly never to sin again,’ Lapin added.
On tiptoe, silent as angels to escape the sacristan, we emerged from behind the organ, then left the church and ran to the customs officer.
‘We brought you some smuggled trout,’ I said weakly — beaten, guilty.
The customs officer examined them with a knowing eye.
‘You didn’t clean them …’
‘We didn’t know it was in the Code,’ my friend Lapin apologized.
‘Doesn’t matter. Thanks a lot, kids. Matter of fact I was just thinking of some nice trout. Wife! Cook them up in butter. Lots of butter. And garlic too!’
The Day I Became an Apostate
I WISH I’D BEEN a bird instead of a child. There are so many countries I could have gone to simply by flapping my wings in the vast blue sky.
I’d have liked so much to go to the moon and visit the nice man whose eyes and mouth you could see on bright nights when the moon is full. But unfortunately we learned in school that I could never go to the moon. The nun explained to us:
‘Children, try to imagine if you can, a train that left France in 1608, when Champlain set sail for Quebec; imagine, children, that this train was going eighty miles an hour and never stopping … er … imagine this train going along a railway that men have built between the earth and the moon; well, children, today this train still wouldn’t have reached the moon, whereas Champlain, the founder of Quebec, has been dead for three hundred years. Children, if the good Lord put the moon so far from the earth it’s because in His wisdom He didn’t want men to go anywhere except on earth.’
We remained on the earth, then, and the distant moon seemed like a lamp in the window of the sky. (And yet, in the comic strips in L’Action catholique, men pushed a lever, pressed buttons and rose up to the moon.)
I couldn’t go to the moon then, but if I’d been a bird I could certainly have gone to Rome, the Holy City, home of the Pope, the man chosen by God, the only man who never made a mistake, the man to whom God had given the keys to the gates of Heaven. The Pope, the most powerful man in the world, lived in Rome. Once every week he opened his window and made the sign of the cross. Those who saw him perform this act were touched by divine charity and their lives would be filled with goodness and happiness. Rome was bathed in a celestial perfume. But Rome was so far away and I wasn’t a bird but a child, condemned to walk in his narrow little shoes on the earth of our village.
Because she was a saint, our nun’s Superior had obtained the privilege of going to Rome. There she had experienced the supreme happiness of seeing with her own eyes the Pope — in flesh and blood. Our nun had received a postcard from her Superior. The stamp on it was as beautiful as a diamond. It came from Rome. From the Eternal City. It had come almost from Heaven. And it was as precious as a relic, as a piece of the Pope’s own soutane.
‘I want that stamp!’ I exclaimed.
‘Me too!’ the other children exclaimed in chorus.
‘I can’t tear the stamp into thirty-five pieces to please all of you, children; so I’ll give it to the one who shows the greatest piety during the holy time of Lent.’
I went to mass twice every morning, I said the Rosary as often as twelve times a day. God was pleased with me. He gave the nun the idea that I deserved the stamp from Rome.
In mid-April the Duplessis government’s huge snowplough came to clear the village street. The accumulated snow from the winter was turned over and formed into high cordons on either side of the street. Here and there patches of yellow grass emerged. The snow turned grey. The sky darkened. Spring was hesitating. Spring never dared emerge from winter before the victorious Christ emerged from his grave. The earth was becoming sad bec
ause the death of Christ was approaching. The condemnation to death of the Son of God was shameful and the sun refused to shed its light on such a sin. Even the church bells would soon be silent. On Good Friday, in fact, at three o’clock in the afternoon, after Christ’s last sigh on the cross, the bells would immediately fly away to Rome to beseech the Pope to forgive the sins committed in the village and ask for his blessing, which they would send out, all year long from the parish steeple on the mountain. The bells left for Rome on the day of Christ’s death and returned on Easter to announce his Resurrection.
I think it was an angel who made a suggestion that became more and more pressing; though I had no way to go to the moon it would be very easy for me to go to Rome — with the travelling bells.
The week was interminable. I knew that Good Friday was on the horizon and I was waiting for it, but it came no closer. Each day was longer than the one before. The suffering of Christ was endless. I couldn’t pray to him to hasten the arrival of Good Friday… I collected the coins I’d hidden in secret places, I wrote a message to put under my pillow, explaining my absence to my parents. Finally, I announced to my friend Lapin that I’d be disappearing for a few days ‘to a holy city I can’t tell you the name of.’
‘Whereabouts?’
My secret was too big for me.
‘I’m going to Rome.’
Lapin understood immediately.
‘With the bells?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Let’s both of us go to Rome!’
At last it was Good Friday. In church, my friend Lapin and I followed from prayer to prayer, from psalm to psalm, with extraordinary attentiveness, the last hours of Christ who would die at three o’clock in the afternoon. At that very moment the bells would fly away, taking us with them to Rome. The psalms dragged on, prayers were repeated endlessly, with words that grew longer and longer. The hands on the clock above the pulpit seemed to have stopped moving towards three o’clock.