The Lover, the Lake
Page 1
The Lover, the lake
Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau
TRANSLATED BY
Susan Ouriou
English translation copyright © Susan Ouriou, 2021.
Original text copyright © Éditions Mémoire d’encrier, 2013.
First English edition. Originally published in French in 2013 as L’amant du lac, published by Éditions Mémoire d’encrier.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical — including photocopying, recording, taping, or through the use of information storage and retrieval systems — without prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.
Freehand Books acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Media Fund, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the National Translation Program for Book Publishing, an initiative of the Action Plan for Official Languages — 2018–2023: Investing in Our Future, for our translation activities.
Freehand Books
515 – 815 1st Street SW Calgary, Alberta T2P 1N3
www.freehand-books.com
Book orders: UTP Distribution
5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario M3H 5T8
Telephone: 1-800-565-9523 Fax: 1-800-221-9985
utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca utpdistribution.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The lover, the lake / Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau; translated by Susan Ouriou. Other titles: Amant du lac. English
Names: Pésémapéo Bordeleau, Virginia, 1951– author. | Ouriou, Susan, translator.
Description: Translation of: L’amant du lac.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200372505 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200372572 | ISBN 9781988298849 (softcover) | ISBN 9781988298856 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781988298863 (PDF) Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PS8631.E797 A8213 2021 | DDC C843/.6—dc23
Book design by Natalie Olsen
Illustrations by Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau
Author photo by Michel Delorme
Printed on FSC® recycled paper and bound in Canada by Marquis
The author would like to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Conférence régionale des élus de l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue, which together made this book possible.
For Rodney
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Anishinaabemowin to English Lexicon
About the Author
We drink because there is no God.
Problems cease to exist as we drink.
| MARGUERITE DURAS |
It is better to have lived one single day as a tiger
than a hundred years as a sheep.
| TIBETAN PROVERB |
preface
It is not easy to put into words love’s tale where Indigenous peoples are concerned. Our way of thinking is distinctive. Our language does not have the feminine/masculine grammatical divide found in both French and English. As Tomson Highway once said in an interview, we have to spell out whether we’re referring to a man or a woman in Cree. It’s difficult to communicate cultures’ different perceptions in this respect; difficult to slip into another person’s skin and truly understand that person.
This novel is about the love between an Algonquin woman and a Métis man but also about the many guises love has taken in the First People’s history. A history in which violence and anger prevail. Above all, a history of pleasure in the body in a world as yet untouched by Indian residential schools and the multiple instances of abuse carried out on children by church representatives. This is why I chose this specific time period, before the rift that occurred in the consciousness of Indigenous peoples. An era during which it was still possible to live freely in the untouched, grandiose natural world of Abitibi.
The aim here is to break free of the bonds of wounds the priests’ abuse has left on our bodies and souls, wounds linked to loss — of land, of intimate spaces, of identity both as an individual and community member, of sexual identity, of delight in the body, of innocence and the uncomplicated nature of lovemaking. My hope is that this novel will serve to unearth the seed of joy buried deep in our culture, still profoundly alive, an escapee from the blazing inferno of annihilation announced by the Indian Act as enforced by the Oblates of Immaculate Mary. The Lover, the Lake shows us that we are not just suffering and victims: we can also be pleasure, exultation in body and heart. Love in the plural.
Several of the novel’s characters actually existed and experienced the episodes recounted here. The Métis could have been my father — in love, naïve, talented, reckless and adventurous. The old Algonquin woman was inspired by my mother, as generous as she was bitter. Pierre-Arthur could be my great-uncle, and the one-armed man, a cousin by marriage.
Then there is the Abitibi region, like its lake, beautiful and enchanting. Lake Abitibi is the story’s main character, holding power of life and death over those who venture out onto its waters, and is an accomplice to old Zagkigan Ikwe’s strength and the Métis’ rashness. And to the meeting of flesh, souls and hearts as they ignite.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:
The terms Algonquin, Sioux and Métis are used in the English translation as in the French original since they are the terms that were in use at the time of the novel’s setting.
1
—Kitzi nibou!
—Kawin! Kitzi kiztaw!
The Algonquin women argued over the odds of survival of the sole occupant of the canoe tossing far out on the lake, an immense body of water that comes to life with the slightest gust of wind. Their agitation spread like a flat stone skipping across the crested waves when the boat plunged, disappearing behind a surge as high as a grown moose. The women let out shrill cries of excitement at the sight.
The boat rolled over a swell strong enough to capsize it. Silt-laden waves struck the fragile hull, again and again, rocking it from side to side, relentless. They shook the craft so violently it felt to the man like a herd of wild bulls that would continue stampeding beneath his black-and-blue body till his life was brought to an end. Words came as he struggled, born of the anguish in his gut.
One sigh the last over my defeat
So little time granted me
Time to speak to encounter roads
Leading to myself and to that other somewhere
The one I’ll never know …
I am but breath running out
Words to cling to and usher the wind’s roar into his life, into hope. Contemplate death to survive, to baffle
it, dislodge its teeth embedded in the wooden frame of his skiff weighed down with furs. One hand numb from cold and exertion grasped the tiller while the other baled water mechanically. Hands skilled at manoeuvring a paddle or tools and at work that ensured day-to-day survival — hunting, trapping, fishing — or, when the time came, at tenderness and lovemaking. Long, fine hands with veins rippling beneath delicate, transparent skin burnished by a life spent outdoors.
He loved this lake. Lake Abitibi. Was born on its shores. Yet the lake was about to do him in, drag him down the fatal path his recklessness had led him to against his better judgment. This lake that he had travelled, its round bays abounding in beaver lodges and holts made by otters, their smiling features and soft, silky lustre. On winter evenings in his lonely cabin buried under snow, he would fondle himself with their fur reminiscent of a woman’s velvety flesh. This lake dotted with its numerous islands, so many landmarks scattered over hundreds of kilometres well-suited as ports of call for the nomad.
He looked up to see clouds turning into huge horsemen mounted on misshapen steeds, their hooves striking the colossal waves that rippled like the monumental hindquarters of copulating giantesses. The horizon was reduced to a wall of water.
“The end is near …”
He was spent from his dash to the lake’s Quebec shore. Behind him lay Ontario and the mounted police officer charged with arresting poachers on Algonquin territory. The officer had begun tracking him the day before, tacking between islands till nightfall. At dusk, the trapper had shaken him off, vanishing into the mist dancing over the black water the minute the sun sank to the west. He advanced, careful not to bang the paddle against the side of his canoe. Silence kept danger at bay. The nervous spasming of his spine lessened as he paddled. The man continued his journey in the dark by the pale light of a quarter moon. At dawn, clouds amassed behind him, accompanied by a damp wind full of rain’s promise. The screen formed by the islands protected him up to the moment he had to yield to the need to set out across the lake’s naked expanse.
Suddenly, the motor sputtered, a terrifying sound. Had water infiltrated the gas tank? He dropped the baling bucket to deal with the danger, fiddled with levers and pistons, pushed the motor to its limit. To hell with it! The boat shot over the raging waves. It was then that he caught sight of shore and the women surrounded by children.
A sudden lull. The hull, part canvas, part wood, stopped heaving. He had crossed the patch open to the fierce winds, whose speed was now slowed by a peninsula jutting far out into the lake. On that spit of land, trees bowed and creaked. Was it the malicious spirit of the lake taking its revenge on the trees because it had lost its prey? The man cut the motor. Only a few tiny waves lapped against the bottom of the canoe.
The music of words returned.
Grace a moment’s grace
Granted my soul I am eternally grateful
Here the unexpected shore toward which my life
Hauls itself hurls itself a resurrection
He shivered, teeth chattering. Seeking warmth, he hugged himself, then bent over and began to rock back and forth. He prayed. The scent of sap, sweet and fresh, and of silt wafted over to him. He closed his eyes, making out the fragrance of poplars and fir trees buckling under the wind’s assault. He listened to the other murmurs of the forest beyond the creaking branches, heard the deep breath of quivering undergrowth and the trampling of moss by hare chased by lynx, wolves, foxes, the rasp of victims’ and predators’ dry throats, the smothered cry of prey, male partridge wings drumming before mating, the she-bear’s moan, teats swollen with milk for her litter.
He breathed in the scent of the male moose waiting for females to calve, detected the lapping of marsh water beneath its hooves past the fertile hills standing like sentinels along the valleys below. A duck added down from beneath her wing to her nest, paddling between two rocks as she waited for the drake. He sensed all of life beating, drunk on abundance, opulence, generosity. Gradually, his terror receded, eclipsed by the sight of nature alive. Death had wound its reptilian coils round his breath, had left him teetering on the brink of nothingness, of annihilation, suspended in eternity for an instant, but it had been nothing but a misunderstanding. He was young. The glacial grip round his solar plexus loosened, calm taking its place.
Spring was here.
There will be tomorrows
My journey to the crossroads now
To those who continue to stand
To relish a while longer the full extent
Of their power and joy
A flock of geese flew overhead as his canoe grazed against pebbles. He grabbed his paddle and pushed his craft back into safe waters, rose to avoid other pitfalls. He beached on a sandy strand and waved at the Algonquin women closely following his arrival.
—KWE!
The man lifted a few bundles, checking to make sure no water had seeped inside. His furs were worth a year’s salary. Wet, they would rot. But all was well.
2
In high spirits, the women teased Wabougouni as she swooned over the stranger’s exploit.
“Whoever he is, my fragrant flower is his!”
“If he’s a white man, you’ll have to bathe your flower first!” cracked an old toothless woman. “Their armpits stink, but before giving you what you want, they balk at your crotch’s perfume!”
The man approached at a rolling gait that spoke of the lake’s turbulence. The old woman, Zagkigan Ikwe, licked her lips. Her piercing eyes like those of a crow took in the new arrival’s build, weighed his charisma. Good-looking, he seemed to be of mixed blood with bronzed skin, black hair, almond eyes. One stem of his round glasses was held on by a thin brass wire, a pencil stuck out from behind his right ear. Beneath his sodden clothes, she could make out hard muscle, supple joints. However, the Métis saw only Wabougouni, the old woman’s granddaughter, in her red-flowered dress; their eyes locked, a smouldering in the velvet of her lower belly, a flutter in the shallow rise and fall of her chest. He liked the daring in her gaze.
—Awen kin? the elder asked.
The man hesitated. Did he understand their language?
—Appittippi saghigan.
The women laughed. He thought she’d inquired where he came from when it was his name she’d asked for. He patted the head of a child, who slipped away. He was reeling with fatigue. A break in the clouds illuminated the group, then dark billows rushed to fill in the gap. The tents’ canvas flapped in the wind and their skirts clung to the Algonquin women’s legs, making some look like stone hoodoos, nature’s sculptures, whose graceful, rounded limestone shapes were found in abundance along the shores of Lake Abitibi.
3
—Pishan, Appittippi! the old woman continued, beckoning for him to follow her.
She invited him to share in their meal of beaver stew washed down by a cup of tea. The women flocked round the pot hanging over the wood fire. Meat simmered in a broth seasoned with tough roots. The Métis dropped to the ground, his back against the trunk of a lone birch in the centre of the camp. Wabougouni hurried to offer him a generous serving of beaver on a white porcelain plate, her finest. He was captivated by her beauty with her mass of mahogany hair that spoke of other origins. After a few mouthfuls, his head drooped and the plate fell from his hands.
Zagkigan Ikwe and her granddaughter helped him to his feet and led him to Wabougouni’s shelter. With a scornful glare, one woman spat on the ground as they passed, then stomped off in a fury, followed by several others. The Métis caught a glimpse of a wooden cross hanging round her neck. Wabougouni and her grandmother laughed and exchanged a look. They pushed the man inside the tent and waited outside. At that precise moment, the skies opened, raining down on the women as they scattered to their tents with excited cries, the cold shower penetrating the light fabric of their dresses.
The man shed his wet clothes and threw them down by the bed of pine boughs covered in wool blankets. The tent was fragrant with resin. From his shirt, he pulled out a
sodden notebook, which he opened wide to let dry. The minute he lay down, he began to snore loudly.
“You won’t get much out of that one!” a smiling Zagkigan Ikwe said to her visibly frustrated granddaughter.
The old woman was tough as granite. Nothing seemed to trouble her; hardened as she was, life washed over her without a trace. She was wrinkled and ugly, grey strands of hair wafted above her half-bald scalp that she hid beneath a scarf. Yet at one time she had been beautiful both inside and out. So beautiful that the clan gave her the nickname Waseshkun — Sun’s ray — for the way she lit up her parents’ days with her good humour and kindly character. She was promised to the young future chief of the band.
One day in her sixteenth year, as she was alone in the family camp, a Black Robe arrived via the lake and stopped, claiming he needed a rest, his head haloed with fire in the sunlight. His Algonquin guide wandered off to trap partridge along the trail. With a brutal shove, the priest toppled the young girl. She cried out, clawing at him so hard her fingernails broke, but the man yanked up her skirt and ripped off her underpants. He was tall, built like a bear at the height of its powers. He stunk everywhere: his breath, his lower body, his armpits. It was wrapped in that revolting stench that Waseshkun lost her grace, her joie de vivre and her smile, in the tearing of her body impaled by a monstruous penis that kept ploughing into her; at one point even, the man, swept up in the vortex of a depraved climax, made an attempt to break her neck. When at last he let go, Waseshkun fled to her tent, seeking refuge beneath the fur on her bed. She was chilled to the bone, blood seeping from between her legs. The guide called out to her on his return but received no answer. The missionary’s chubby features had gone slack, a sure sign: his usual tension had been released. The man followed the Black Robe to the canoe.
Blood still leaking from her wound, Waseshkun crawled outside and dragged herself over to the lake. Her eyes were dry, it hurt to breathe. She got to her feet, waded into the water, heading for the depths. Its cold seized her and eased the burning. She slipped on the smooth, viscous rocks and fell. She swallowed a mouthful of water, choked, got to her feet spluttering. Then screamed.