The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches

by Gaetan Soucy

  Rosario DUBÉ

  Lawyer, Notary, Justice of the Peace

  12 Main Street, Saint-Aldor

  I met up with horse in the middle of the road and I could see in his eyes that he wanted to know if my steps had taken me where I wanted to go, and I had to admit that they hadn’t. I grabbed hold of his chops and sadly led him away. We were walking along at loose ends, and a sorry sight we were, because what kind of impression would I make if I came back to my brother without a coffin after such a failure? I sat down on a front stoop very close to a dog turd, recognizable by its noble form, and I was sitting there on its account, since some flies had gathered there. For the frog which is our only toy, or just about, we have to stock up now and then in order to feed her the way I’ve already described, and when it comes to catching flies there’s nobody like yours truly, I can even capture one in each hand simultaneously, my brother has never come close. But at this moment I had neither the morale nor the jar where we stored our dead insects for that purpose, so I simply squashed the insects inside my fist and let them fall to the ground dead, thinking, in any case, why bother?

  Meanwhile the bells had stopped ringing, I don’t know if I forgot to mention that, because of my hiding place I have to write too fast to reread what I’ve written, but I’d killed no more than nine flies when the bells started ringing again but this time there was just one, haunting and deep, like the heartbeat of a child who is going to die, if that ever happens, I mean if children die.

  And then they started pouring out of houses from every direction. If you wanted to see neighbours, this was the place! They were springing up at every turn from god knows where, I counted a hand of them, and then two hands, and then another two hands, there were at least forty-twelve of them, all more alike than the others, I thought to myself, they talk like hell but they cant scare me, then the whole group headed for the church where I had been. Horse and I were quite an odd couple or I don’t know a thing, judging by their looks, which I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  I got to my feet because that was the least I could do. A group formed near the general store, resembling the sheep in pictures that like nothing so much as the hole of the neighbour in front of them, for the reassuring smell, and move like one animal with fifty-thirteen hooves, which is called a myr-iapod. No doubt it’s the custom of the country that everyone tries to resemble that day’s defunct, because my neighbours all had faces as long as noodles. Have I mentioned that it was the beginning of autumn? The first dead leaves, still green, were strewn all around and I told myself that they too fit the occasion. When the red season is just beginning the disadvantage is that the flies are fewer in number, but on the other hand their flight is slower and they’re easier to catch, so in a short time I’d been able to destroy two hands of them minus one finger. Be that as it may, I didn’t try to join the troop. It was quite enough that they were my neighbours, I didn’t have to become one of theirs even if they had permitted it, which I doubt, as you shall see. There were as many sluts and blessed virgins as the others, as far as I could judge, but not so many bambinos, clearly fewer in fact, I don’t know where they could have been hidden or why, the smallest must have come up to my inflations, it was wearing an old man’s hat and had a sad look on its face that made me wonder if it actually was a bambino, in any event, where wings were concerned he must have had only stumps. And the coffin came out from the general store.

  A coffin — what am I saying! It was a veritable castle made of six planks. Never in my bitch of a life had I seen anything so beautiful, even horse did something he hadn’t done for a moon’s age, he neighed. Horse neighed! When you lavish such attention on a box, I thought, there can’t be much left inside, if you want my opinion. Such concern for the container, I thought, gives the contents a hollow ring, if I’m any judge. Such an extravagant box, I thought, doesn’t bode well for the emptiness inside it, believe me. A wooden fortress, I thought, to shelter nothing, and what else, and blast I can’t find the words I need to say what I want to say. It happens even to me. But you ought to see what it would be like if brother were writing all this!

  The slut from a while ago who was boasting that the dead man was her husband came out next, with a smug look, a handkerchief at her nose and her hand in the hand of her cherub, which appeared to be very surprised at everything around it. I felt the sympathy one orphan always feels for another, and if I’d been close enough I would have pinched it on the sly until it bled.

  The crowd was transformed into a long undulating animal, a kind of snake with feet and, for the snout, a coffin I kept expecting to see a forked tongue dart out from, though according to what I’ve read it’s rare for grave boxes to open from the inside on their own. The tail end, where I wasn’t, since I was keeping my distance as you may well imagine, hadn’t even started to move by the time the reptile’s gleaming head penetrated the interior of the church and one of its bells began striking even in my temples, do-o-o-ong … do-o-o-ong … I stood there shifting from foot to foot, gritting my teeth with impatience, but inside my head I was telling them, faster, faster. There’s one thing you have to understand though, which is that everything about a funeral has to be slow, it wouldn’t be fitting to race through it, even if doing so would ultimately be in accordance with reason and the ethics of Spinoza, because it would look as if you wanted to get rid of that which no longer exists, which is characterized by taking umbrage at trifles. The more one is nothing, the more one needs moral support. Whence the need to be thoughtful towards the defunct, because it’s when one is dead that one needs help, whereas the living can help themselves, you can just let them croak if you want my opinion, which is exactly what happens as far as I can tell. I learned from a dictionary recently that you’re supposed to put flowers on the stones above the pits where you’ve lowered your defunct, to prove to them beyond doubt that you didn’t put them there for your amusement, that you’re still thinking about them, that all things considered you’d rather they were here, and I so love the flowers no one’s ever given me, like in the most wonderful stories I know, that I’d go into a pit myself if it would make my brother think of bringing me flowers while telling himself that all things considered he’d prefer to have me around, but as you can imagine. And those were my thoughts, and of course I was associating them with the still fresh memory of papa, when I saw the last of the buriers go inside the church and I stood there in the middle of the square holding horse’s chops between two fingers.

  WE’LL BE ACCUSED OF going inside then, horse and I, but did anyone stop to think what it was that attracted us into the holy place? It was the music. I asked myself, how could anyone dare to do that to mortal remains that are no longer there to defend themselves? I loathe music. Because music, you see, is an out-and-out debasement, a greedy octopus that feeds on us. Make music well up within a hundred-metre radius and my heart is gone, it’s left my belly where it lives and burst out to the ground while I look on, bereft, even if my eyes are closed, it bounces back like an elastic and pierces a bullet hole in my chest, it’s a wound that lives and is resurrected with every note and I could die a most delightful death from it, so atrocious and cruel and trying it is, just like life. To say nothing of the fact that it leaves the most horrible memories in our souls, horrible if they’re good precisely because they are only memories, horrible too if the memories are horrible because it means that won’t let go of us until we’re on the threshold of our graves, where we don’t know what lies ahead, it may be worse than what we call this side, I don’t know if you follow my logic.

  Be that as it may, I know whereof I speak, we had music at the house back when papa commanded everything just the day before. There were two kinds, among others. First of all there was the music that papa made himself, with his fingers and his mouth and my legs, which I’ll get to in a few lines, it’s worth the detour. Then there was the other kind that was produced by the fairies, but there’s something I have to talk about first, which will surprise you, but believe me if
you will. Papa possessed a magical generator, that’s what it’s called, which didn’t leave his bedroom except when he carried it on his back and under his arm in the direction of the mountains past the pine grove, to fill it up, if I understood correctly, and which brother and I wouldn’t touch because of the whacks. That will give you an idea of the powers father had been granted. One day he explained to us, with a jubilation that made him a very funny sight, that great forces exist in the universe, above all in the sky, for proof just look at lightning, thunder, wind, and all the rest. Now — and this is what could set dresses on fire if you don’t dare believe me — you can call up those forces, which are also spirits, you can make them appear around you in eddies of flame, and if you know how to make the right movements you can capture them and put them in a box and, supposing you have the necessary ropes, you can attach that box to another box that will free the fairies imprisoned inside the black discs, which dispense the music to us, for everything in the universe communicates with everything else through the power of magic, and that’s what I was getting at. Papa would wall himself up in his bedroom. We weren’t allowed even to show that we were of this world by breathing, father demanded absolute silence so he could fill it with melodies, watch out for whacks. I would huddle on the other side of the door and say not a word, breathing like my friend the praying mantis. Just try to understand, in the evening mosquitoes fly to the candle that will burn them to cinders, I’ve often observed it, and that’s me exactly in my relationship to music. Brother would snuggle up against my side, and it made him giggle, that’s all he knows how to do, laugh or blubber or wriggle around on top of me. And the music would gush out with a resonance that reminded me of when my brother and I used to pinch our nostrils for the fun of it and talk through our noses. Sometimes papa’s voice would rise above the melody, straddle it for a few moments, torment it just enough, and what can I tell you, it was so horribly beautiful.

  But as I was saying, there was also the other kind of music that papa produced with his fingers, his mouth, and my legs. You see, there was a musical instrument in the house in the midst of the dictionaries from the library, and I don’t know why it wouldn’t be there still in spite of everything that has shattered us over the past two days. It was an extremely complicated instrument, with three layers and a separate keyboard for each layer and pipes of different dimensions and a pump you had to activate so you could blow into the pipes, hence my legs. Brother’s were stronger, I have to state things as they are, but brother would giggle as he did it and though that brought him whacks as you can well imagine he couldn’t help it, as he said, so I was the one assigned by father to work the pump that blew air into the pipes, and the effort it required and the impression it made on my soul left me crying my eyes out, my head would be down and I’d push with my foot, I’d push and the tears would run down my face and, like spiders hanging from their threads, they would slide down the length of my long hair. After an hour of this regimen I was a gasping wreck, that’s the name for it. All this to say nothing of the fifes, the flipple flute, and the tambourine, but those I’ll discuss at the proper time, along with the billy goat and the kitten kaboodle.

  And so what flabbergasted horse and me was that the music coming from the church was as close as bubbles to the music that emerged from papa’s instrument with the pipes, and since, contrary to all reason, I am drawn to music that leaves me in charred shreds, we went in, horse and I, because it was inside.

  And let me tell you, woe unto him by whom the offence cometh, that’s the truth. I made my way up the long aisle with horse. The naked coffin was directly ahead of us. The priest was limply waving a censer, you don’t teach an old dog, and his eyes were half closed and he was muttering and he looked to be thinking extremely hard about something painful, we made a conspicuous entrance, horse and 1.1 was holding my cents bag shoulder-high at arm’s length and I showed it to the people sitting on the benches as I walked sadly, repeating, if you please, if you please, give me a coffin, and I was a pitiful sight to behold. I don’t know what’s happened to the hearts in this village, people don’t have any, I’m telling this exactly the way it struck me. The truth compels me to say in the village’s defence, however, that there was one old slut in the third row with her back all hunched over who nonetheless gave me a look without hatred, and I thought I could make out behind her grey veil that she might be aiming a smile at me that, heavens above, resembled something like compassion, just one old slut in that whole church for whom I like to think the creator of all things will reserve an easy death, like the kind experienced by flowers and butterflies, that’s my wish for her, never will I forget that smile that understood. Two men grabbed me from behind and I couldn’t, but. I don’t know if they were the same two men as a while before at the dead man’s general store, there are times when everything in the universe seems interchangeable to me, but since I was an enraged goat I had time to scream at the top of my lungs: “You’re torturing your dead man with that music.” I said that right to their faces, to as many of them as were there, minus the old slut with the smile, which I had time to return during that one brief moment. There were just two of them, I may have forgotten to mention that, I mean the two men who grabbed me from behind like cowards, and they were clearly stronger, we are helpless against nature’s laws.

  Now horse was so overwhelmed by what was happening to us that he was beside himself, he sprang out of the church and he was off like a shot, at a speed I wouldn’t have thought him capable of, in the opposite direction from which we’d travelled together on the road until then, neighing, his belly level with the ground, and heading for the pine grove beyond which lay our house and papa, who still didn’t have his coffin. It can’t be! They left me in the middle of the road beyond the church steps, a threatening forefinger wagged at me and gave me orders but it was too late, I had reached the point of understanding absolutely nothing about anything, I was in the grip of a stoppit.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there in the public square, because when I have a stoppit time contracts or expands or goes in circles, it’s impossible to know, it only starts bolting in a straight line once I’ve begun to move again, but the devil knows what happened to the hours in between. To see my hand upraised, strained, the fingernails digging into the sky, my head motionless on one side, my eyes staring at some sensationally insignificant object, to see my gaping mouth, and my buttocks raised as if a comet were about to explode from them, you might think I was a stone, but what you don’t know is that when I have a stoppit I’m extremely active on the inside. I look through my ruminant eyes as I would look through a window with the eyes we have inside our bonnets, I observe everything in every direction so that nothing escapes me, I climb inside my body as if I were hiding in an attic and spying on the world through the bull’s eye, ah la la, another eye. If I move my little finger, the one you use to scratch your hole, the cosmos is liable to fly into smithereens, that will give you an idea of how I feel when I have a stoppit. Sometimes I can’t do a thing, one leg starts to tremble and oh it’s terrible the anguish it creates, it’s as if the earth is rumbling and I have to control my leg without using my hands if I’m to prevent universal disaster, and it takes much more effort than pumping a pipe organ, that’s what it’s called. Papa was also subject to stoppits, I don’t know if I forgot to mention that. It runs in the family.

  The fact remains that the moment came when they all streamed out of the church behind the coffin, it made you wonder if they were going to follow it into the grave and be buried with it out of some idiotic fascination, like our former dog that wouldn’t let go of me at those times when I was dripping disgusting blood. In fact that was why father finally put mothballs in his daily bread. Later on I’ll explain about all that blood business, which must seem strange, and is, as a matter of fact.

  And so the crowd in the street. Apparently they hadn’t yet got used to having me as a neighbour, judging by their expressions, which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The
whole lot of them started forming a circle around me and it was terrible, that’s all I can say, and I was beginning to panic in my attic, so much that it pulled me out of my stoppit a little. I began to swivel on my left leg by fits and starts, like the beggar on his fool’s bauble, being careful not to change the position of the other parts of my body, I don’t know if I’m making myself understood, and as the circle around me came undone, people shrank back as if they were afraid of getting involved in something about me that was none of their business. How long I stood like that, turning clockwise, I don’t know but, freed even slightly from my stoppit, I regained the notion of time, and it seems to me that I kept swivelling like that as long as the rank of the faithful hadn’t been stitched back together and people hadn’t finished disappearing at the end of the street to go and bury their dead, or so I assume, it makes no difference to me. But they didn’t all follow, for a reason I’d very much like to have explained to me because I don’t know what it is, and a few remained and observed me as if I were the pope’s shit, I mean with intense curiosity, and moved away a few paces and then came to a standstill once more to stare at me, then moved away again, and they kept this up till I couldn’t see anyone anywhere and there I was alone and sadly forsaken on the village square, as if I were the surviving prince in a kingdom devastated by cholera. An impressive silence underscored by the sound of leaves tumbling in the wind, if you want my opinion.

  And finally, because such things happen on this earth, there were two individuals before me, two again, it’s as if they go around in pairs, these sly devils whose outfits I give up trying to describe, aside from the one on my right, who was wearing a soutane and wasn’t the priest I’d seen before but was much younger, waving the censer around the dead man.