by Roch Carrier
Much later, it was two minutes to three. Our friends were praying relentlessly and their prayers prevented time from advancing. We wouldn’t see our praying friends again until after Easter, after our journey to Rome. Lapin and I waited for Christ’s final sigh: perhaps he had decided not to let himself be killed by men that Friday? We waited for three o’clock to arrive in the vestibule — the curé called it the narthex — where the ropes hung down from the bells they were attached to, high up in the steeple. The black hand on the clock suddenly indicated one minute to three. My legs felt wobbly. Soon it would be three o’clock. As it had happened every year since the beginning of the Church, Christ would die at three o’clock and the bells would fly away to Rome. They would transport Lapin and me, clinging to the ropes which we would wind around our waists. As I tied the rope I could feel the bells shudder. They would take flight at precisely three o’clock. Christ on his cross would open his mouth to utter his last word. I could hear his voice, almost dead: ‘Sitio!’ He would allow his last sigh to escape. Lapin and I closed our eyes. When we opened them again we would be in Rome.
It was three o’clock. Christ had died. Five past three. Ten. A quarter after three. Christ had been dead for several minutes and we were still clinging to the bell ropes. We were still far from Rome.
‘If you ask me,’ Lapin concluded, ‘the bells haven’t gone anywhere.’
I hadn’t given up hope: we hadn’t gone, but perhaps the bells…
‘Let’s go and look,’ I suggested.
We untied the ropes and ran up the dark staircase to the rood loft. Perhaps it wasn’t too late? From ladder to ladder, from landing to landing, we climbed up the steeple. Breathless, my head heavy with vertigo, at the top of the ladders I came to the little trap door through which I could see — huge, heavy — the bells. Their bronze was not trembling with the desire to fly away. They seemed like great motionless stones. The bells weren’t going to Rome. That was the sole truth. Crushing.
My soul was as wounded as my body would have been if it had fallen from the steeple.
‘After this,’ I said, ‘I can never believe in the Catholic religion again.’
The tears in my eyes had not yet dried when I arrived at our house. They’d found the message explaining my departure.
‘Back from Rome already, son? Is it a real pretty town?’ my father asked, holding back his laughter.
How did I find the strength not to burst out sobbing? I didn’t have the strength to accept reality.
‘Lapin and I, we went to Rome,’ I declared, shouting at my incredulous parents.
A few days later they found in the mail a letter decorated with a magnificent stamp from Rome. They recognized my painstaking handwriting immediately. ‘Rome is the most beautiful city in the whole world.’
The Month of the Dead
WHERE ARE THE GHOSTS of yesteryear? Without them we can never know the depth of the night.
Every evening just before sunset, the undertaker used to cross the village slowly, very slowly, in the long black embalmer’s car he used to transport the dead to the church and then to the graveyard.
‘Looking for your next customer, Monsieur Cassidy?’
‘That’s what Albert said last year and he isn’t with us any more,’ the undertaker replied.
Monsieur Cassidy, imperturbable, always looked as though he were leading a funeral procession. We didn’t dare come close to his car for we were certain this man maintained mysterious relationships beyond the grave. He was a man, we thought, who must be as happy in November as we were in June.
November was the month of the dead. On the second day of the month we little boys and girls, one behind the other in order of height, would follow our teacher, a nun transformed by the wind from the mountain into a bird with broad black wings; her veil and her robe would snap in the cold air and it seemed to us that some malevolent force wanted to pluck her from the earth. We followed her into the graveyard. In no other circumstances would we have dared cross through the iron fence that surrounded it. We hardly dared set foot on the ground beneath which the dead were sleeping. With short, cautious steps we followed the great black bird who marked out a path among the epitaphs and tombstones. We walked so lightly our shoes scarcely bent the yellow grass. We feared the accident that had befallen the village drunkard.
Believing in his drunken state that he was going into the auberge, the drunkard had walked into the graveyard one November night, cursing and blaspheming. God wanted to punish him. He guided the man towards an old grave whose cover had rotted. The drunkard’s foot sank into it, the dead man grabbed his ankle and took the drunkard’s toes between his pointed teeth. The drunkard was so afraid that night, he stopped drinking!
Everyone knew this story, which our parents had told us, and that was why we walked so lightly in the graveyard.
We returned every evening in November, to pray for the dead. The church was just beside the graveyard; we would run back home, often with our eyes shut. Once night had fallen, the village belonged to the dead. We couldn’t doubt it and you’d have thought the same if you’d heard the story of Madame Zanna: she was trembling and pale as she told it to my father.
One night Madame Zanna heard a noise above her head, in the ceiling. She awakened her husband and they turned on the lights. Nothing. But the noise didn’t stop. It sounded like a dog gnawing on a bone. They didn’t have a dog. ‘It’s the month of the dead,’ the husband thought suddenly. They leaped out of bed and, suffocating with fear, they prayed for the souls of the dead. Gradually the noise diminished, then stopped completely. They were so afraid they couldn’t get back to sleep. Trembling with cold and fear, they waited for the day. Light chases ghosts away. When it was noon Madame Zanna and her husband, armed with rosaries and holy water and accompanied by neighbours, finally had the courage to go up to the attic where the demonic noise had come from, up above their bed. They found a bone. A bone that looked like a human bone. Our parents had seen that bone. We went to church and prayed on November nights because we wanted to keep the souls of the dead from getting out of their coffins to go and beg for prayers.
We also knew the story of Père Grégoire. He was, as they said, a village boy who’d become a missionary. He used to write letters from Africa in which he told how he chased away the devil so God could enter the hearts of the little pagans. Then the letters stopped coming. Several months later his parents learned that he had disappeared in the bush, probably to be martyred and then devoured by some pagan tribe. A few years later, only the old people remembered Père Grégoire. One night in the month of the dead the curé was awakened by loud organ music. He jumped out of bed, wrapped his coat around him and ran to the church, where he was surprised to see all the windows lighted as though by bright sunlight. He opened the door: the church was full, full of kneeling Africans. At the altar, the priest officiating over this unbelievable mass turned around to say: ‘Peace be with you.’ The curé recognized Père Grégoire. The curé was so surprised that he fainted. Next morning he was found stretched out on a bench, dazed, like a man who is intoxicated and smells of alcohol.
Around mid-November the wind became aggressive; it clutched at the roofs of our houses, it pounded against the walls; at night, the walls cracked, the beams and floors creaked. To us, these sounds were caused by the souls of the dead. We were sure of it because on the walls of our bedrooms, on November nights, we could see their fingers, long fingers, as long as the branches of trees.
‘November ghosts, where are you now?’
In Montreal, on rue Sainte-Catherine, they don’t answer me. They no longer come to frighten children.
Do the ghosts no longer believe in the living?
Son of a Smaller Hero
WAR HELD SWAY over the earth: ‘the greatest conflict in the history of mankind,’ it said in L’Action catholique. Never had so many men done battle; never had men borne such powerful weapons; and never had men died in such great multitudes. And never had those who were
not at the front been so well informed about what was happening in the war. You had only to put your ear against the big radio to hear the voice of the war as you might have heard people quarrelling on the other side of a wall.
The war sowed havoc in our village too. If you wanted to get butter at the general store — or meat or sugar — the law required you to supply a prescribed number of coupons. Onésime, behind the counter, his patience tried by this requirement, grumbled as he crammed coupons into his pocket.
‘Oh! life won’t be so complicated when this war’s over!’
Boys from the village had been called up, as they said, and sent far away, to Europe, to the countries at war. On Sunday at mass we’d hear their mothers sniffle when the curé asked the good Lord to ‘protect from the fires of Hell their souls, whose lives are in far greater danger than their bodies.’ When we came out of church my friend Lapin and I, listening to the local gossip, would sometimes hear: Pray for them, sure, but not too hard, or they’ll come back too soon and start drinking like pigs again and singing shameful songs that make your ears blush!’
The strong arms of the war had come to collect the sons of the village and its hideous face came to haunt my father’s garage. Never will I forget the poster that faced the enlarged photograph of Monsieur Duplessis on the wall opposite: on it was drawn a group of uniformed officers; they stood so stiff they seemed to be dressed in steel; they wore tall caps with a swastika on them. And they wore rows of coloured medals. Their faces looked like death’s heads. All carried revolvers whose barrels, tragic crowns, rested against the shaven head of an emaciated child — who wore a star. (My unshakable conviction that war is a way for adults to persecute children was, no doubt, sown there.) I wished I could help the child flee from the hands of his macabre executioners. But I was only a child myself.
From time to time a truck came to collect scrap iron. My father explained to me:
‘They’ll melt the scrap iron in a factory, just like your mother melts sugar when she’s making jam. The iron turns liquid and clear as water. Then they pour it into moulds to make hulls for boats, and tanks and bombs.’
To help the war effort, people gave the truck any old iron that was lying around in their barns and attics: pieces of pipe, old bed-springs, rusty nails, horseshoes, buckets with holes in them, nicked scythes… Lapin and I went exploring in the rock piles, those long rows of stones heaped up in the fields where the farmers would leave tools and implements they couldn’t use or repair, abandoning them to rust. With all the generosity of our young strength, we wanted to help make tanks and cannons and shells to destroy the people who were torturing the little boy on the poster. If we scraped our hands on the rusty metal, or saw a drop of blood, we were filled with pride like war heroes.
And then one day our house was invaded by toothpaste. A flood! The man who carted goods between the train station and the village unloaded dozens of crates of toothpaste at our house. We piled them in the cupboards and behind the drapes, we hid them behind the sideboard and under the beds. My father had carried off another of his deals! My mother was doubtful but my father was convincing.
‘That toothpaste cost me nothing. And I’ll sell it for twice as much.’
‘Two times nothing,’ my mother retorted, ‘is still nothing.’
She had been a schoolteacher.
It wasn’t easy to sell toothpaste to the farmers.
‘My horse,’ said one of them, ‘he never used that stuff in his life and he’s got two rows of choppers that look better than your plate.’
The women seemed interested. They knew instinctively that beauty requires loving care, but at the very moment they were about to buy, their husbands would interrupt:
‘Woman! don’t waste your money on soapsuds when there’s a war on. After it’s over, then we’ll see.’
My father had promised me that in a few days the house would be free of the clutter of cases of toothpaste because he would have sold them all. But his customers hardly helped him keep his promise.
One evening the truck that collected old metal for the war stopped in front of our house.
‘If your tubes of toothpaste didn’t cost you anything,’ said my mother, ‘why don’t you just get rid of them?’
(In those days toothpaste tubes were made of soft lead.) My father started. He thought for a moment then, smiling, almost triumphant, he said:
‘When you’re holding onto a fortune you don’t throw it away, you help it grow.’
The next day he decided I was to accompany him on one of his trips. It would be a fine day, he told me, because I’d learn something from it. He’d prepared his sales pitch in his head. I listened to him talk to the customers.
‘Bonjour, lovely lady. I hope everything’s all right with you, aside from the World War. It’s sad when you think of it: here we are, all quiet and peaceful, and over there on the other side, in Europe, folks are killing each other off … A sad thing it is. Doesn’t matter if the enemy falls, but our side … our own children … Mustn’t let them get killed, eh lady? Gotta help them defend themselves. Can’t send guns in the royal mail, but, you know, if everybody sent a little metal, just an empty tube of toothpaste say … Lovely lady, there’d be enough lead for cannons, bombs, tanks … Now if I’m wrong there, you tell me …’
I listened to my father in the evening too, after supper, out on the gallery that went around the house. The men from the village came there to smoke and chat and rock in their chairs with him. He’d describe the tanks he’d seen pictures of in L’Action catholique, he’d describe them as though he’d been born in one. (I listened, my mother sighed.)
‘Now you see how deep the foundation of this house is: broad as your two arms spread wide open. Now the sides of a tank are just as thick. Our soldiers are safe inside them … No bullet’s gonna get through that. Even the good Lord, he’d have a hard time getting through. But I hear the army’s short of tanks … Oui Monsieur … The folks on this side, at peace, aren’t sending over enough lead … Now if everybody gave a hand and sent a little lead — well, our soldiers’d be saved; it’s drops that make an ocean. If everybody just sent one empty tube of toothpaste …’
He was silent then, smoking and dreaming. The men with him smoked and dreamed as well.
A few days later there were no more cases of toothpaste in the house.
When the war was over the children from the village who hadn’t been killed returned to the fold. A party was organized to celebrate the victory and their homecoming. One of the veterans invited my father to take part.
‘Why sure, I’m gonna go and celebrate with the rest of you,’ said my father.
‘You,’ said the former soldier, ‘you sacrificed yourself for us from one end of the country to the other…’
‘That’s the truth,’ said my father. ‘You notice what nice white teeth the women got?’
Pierrette’s Bumps
EVER SINCE we’d started school Pierrette was the tallest girl in our class, the one who sat in the last row at the back, the one who was always last when we marched through the village in order of height, accompanied by two nuns as the wind tried to pull away their veils. Pierrette was a quiet girl; she didn’t really attract our attention except when, in a sentence during reading or an example in grammar, the word ‘big’ appeared; then all heads would turn in her direction and the classroom would be filled with noisy chortling; Pierrette would blush and be silent. Aside from that, Pierrette was like the rest of us, just another student; and that was why I wondered, when Pierrette walked by, why the big boys would stop yelling, put down their ball and stop to look at her.
One evening the men from the village were sitting with my father on the wooden gallery. Words rose in the air with the smoke from their pipes, words as dark as the night that was drawing near. They talked about how life was going badly in the world. But they declared they were happy there was a leader like Duplessis to protect Quebec. I listened, a child in their midst, fascinated by all that th
ese men knew.
‘I’m scared about the future,’ said one of them. ‘Duplessis won’t be around forever, like the good Lord. And what’ll happen to us when we haven’t got Duplessis any more?’
Suddenly they were silent. They stopped smoking. Pierrette was walking along the sidewalk. Not talking, not smoking, they examined her. My father too.
‘Watch out, Pierrette,’ one of the men called, ‘you’re gonna lose them.’
The others guffawed and slapped their thighs with their big workers’ hands, bent over and shaken by their laughter. Pierrette walked faster, to escape.
‘Papa,’ I asked, ‘what’s Pierrette going to lose?’
Hearing me, the men were paralysed, as though struck by lightning.
‘This is men’s talk,’ my father stammered, blushing.
The others, coming to his rescue, began to explain why it was that without Duplessis, ‘they’d’ve never got electricity in the stables.’
I left the group of men. Just what was Pierrette going to lose? I was far more obsessed by this question than by the future of Quebec or the politics of Duplessis. It prevented me from sleeping.
In the schoolyard the next day, I approached the territory reserved by the big boys for playing ball. A few minutes later, Pierrette appeared. The big boys broke off their game as though the ball had become a heavy stone. Their eyes followed Pierrette as though she were the Pope. It was time to take action.
‘Watch out, Pierrette,’ I shouted, ‘you’re gonna lose them.’
Pierrette fled, taking refuge in the school. One of the big boys picked up the ball and said to me majestically:
‘Don’t get in a sweat, kid, they won’t fall off, they’re fastened on good and solid. I checked myself.’