The Lover, the Lake

by Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau

  Out of the corner of her eye, Zagkigan Ikwe saw her granddaughter leave her tent to join the man. She ground her herbs using a round stone against a granite slab, accompanying the ritual with prayers and a chant from deep within. A guttural sound like wind rushing through the valley through the forest of great pines. Majestic trees that had stood for centuries on this spit of land adopted by her ancestors as the site for their camp during the summer season devoted to amorous adventures, blackberries and flowers … She was seized with dread whenever visions showed her this same peninsula barren and empty. Like madmen, the whites kept on felling these trees, trees that spoke to her through their roots of the earth’s moods, telling her their turn would come to be chopped down, dismembered, transported elsewhere. And that their time would come as well, they the last free inhabitants of these regions, to be herded into shrunken spaces like the people of the south. Long ago, the Nodawayj, fierce enemies, travelled north to kill and steal men’s furs. They worked for the strongest whites and were paid in rifles and firewater. Today, those same warriors lived on “reserves.” Their alliance with the white man had waned, their glory swallowed up by the new culture.

  The old woman suspected, knew, that her people’s territories would shrink to next to nothing, parcelled up by the newcomers greedy for land and the earth’s gold. For centuries, her ancestors had covered vast distances along open trails, walking toward the sun as it rose and set. They’d lived on the banks of the great river to the south until they were pushed farther north by the conquerors and their allies, the Nodawayj. She knew the Mitikgoujig and the Shaguenashit had waged war against each other, each with their own first nation allies. Time passed, another history layered itself over her people’s. In these new lands, the dam built on another part of the lake in Ontario had flooded the fur-bearing animals’ habitat. Ancestor McTavish’s trading post had been abandoned for the one in Gabriel’s village. The old woman’s world was changing, time marched on inexorably, slowly erasing her way of life. An indelible memory was the welcome they had reserved for those pale-faced bearded men when they first arrived in their huge boats. The territory was immense, rich in animals and forests. The red men were free of body, the women too. Out of curiosity, the latter had opened their thighs to these rutting males driven mad at finding women in these wild lands. Several had chosen to live among the “primitives” in order to breathe in the air of freedom that characterized her people. Next the missionaries, after centuries of unremitting effort, managed to introduce their faith into the hearts of the Anishinaabeg … The Black Robes, repudiating all bodily pleasures, holding up their religion as the one true faith, had caused a rift in the First Nations’ spirit. The introduction of the concept of evil was the greatest victory of those despoilers of love. How many of those same men then spat on their vow of chastity like the koukoudji who had impregnated her so violently? For the call to life is stronger than men’s will. She would never renounce her beliefs or knowledge described as “pagan” by those robbers of souls.

  Now the old order had been overthrown. The way things stood, to survive they’d had to turn to the whites. Once both she and Frank were gone, Wabougouni and the child would face the future alone. The old woman hoped that young Gabriel would be the one to shield them from solitude. Because they were unique among their kind. Zagkigan Ikwe knew her intransigence had undermined her granddaughter’s tenuous bond with the clan. Knowing men’s hearts, she was wary of the treatment her daughter’s child would receive upon her own departure for the Great Spirit’s plains. Indigenous Christians were rigid, having rejected or forgotten the open-hearted approach of their nature-based animism-tinged tradition and its respect for all life. Nevertheless, they continued to call on her services as a midwife and healer who mastered the power of herbs.

  The missionaries spoke their language; she had listened to the catechism classes at their camp each summer, the only season during which the whole band came together in one place. The missionaries spoke of their God-become-man who healed others through the laying on of hands. A man-god they sacrificed nailed to a cross … What stayed with them was his death, not his power to heal … What a strange religion whose foundations were built on suffering, not joy. Zagkigan Ikwe knew, without taking herself for a god, that her hands radiated a salutary warmth that could be gentle or powerful as required. Now she was handing all her knowledge down to Wabougouni. If the clan members needed her granddaughter and treated her with the same fearful respect that she, Zagkigan Ikwe, had been granted, the young woman could continue to live among them.

  She listened to her granddaughter’s amorous moans, stored them in her breast as close to her heart as possible, savouring them like a generous spring’s strawberries. She continued her chant.

  Egoudeh, egoudeh, n’skoumiss …

  Just so, just so, my granddaughter … Love, be loved in beauty, vibrate in each fibre of your being and in the youth of your two bodies, be thankful, my dearest! Be loved by this man who is loved by the lake. Through this Appittippi, as pure and upright as the pines on our lands, you will know pleasure that rises from the depths of the flesh, that twines inside your belly like an aquatic plant round a paddle, that tears and unfurls to continue its journey beyond the currents into which the swiftest fish dive. Be the woman love will usher to the river of forgetting … the woman who will uproot from our family line the sombre memory of the man whose colour you carry in your hair, reminding me daily of the death of my desire and my beauty. Transfer to the child you carry a taste, a desire for life, smiles, laughter, pleasure! Because your child will be a girl.

  Egoudeh, n’skoumiss, egoudeh!

  7

  Wabougouni waved a welcome to the geese sweeping the sky with hushed wings. Their passing traced arrowheads leading north. They plunged deeper into the blue of the sky, flew over the lake honking loudly, and vanished into the light above the plump, dense clouds. For now, Wabougouni was happy, had no wish to see further, into tomorrow, or to hear across the lake cries announcing the trappers’ return. Her husband’s return.

  She let her velvet gaze linger on her lover splitting logs for the fire, his shoulders tracing wide arcs. He was bare chested. Muscles rippled beneath his thin layer of skin. The children, curious, gathered round, chattering among themselves in Algonquin. He listened quietly, internalizing the rhythm of the language, its undulations and headlong spurts full of Ks and Zs, devoid of Rs, its sharp edges too, its caws of an angry crow. The little ones squabbled.

  Then, despite herself, Wabougouni’s thoughts turned to her tomorrows without him, when her bed would be a desert filled with his absence, his silence, emptied of his hands, his mouth, his sex, the entirety of his body. Her joy disintegrated, crumbled to nothing. In its place, fear, loss, grief. He had already stayed several days, seemed in no hurry to leave, spent their nights in a frenzy of senses and words. He spoke, jotted notes in his little book, asked her to explain the expressions she used, uttered sentences that she repeated, either to correct him or to learn. Sometimes his eyes on her grew tender and his impassioned voice flowed like water trickling in a spring, wind galloping through the leaves, a kingfisher’s wing striking the surface of the lake. She could sense the meaning of words without understanding them; they unnerved her, tingling along her flesh calling out for the silk of his caress. Did she know he whispered words to envelop her in desire?

  Where the pine forest begins, she saw Zagkigan Ikwe bending over; she must be gathering twigs to light her fire. She walked toward her, then crouched, her back against a tree. The old woman pretended not to hear her. Wabougouni wept, tears coursing down her cheeks that she wiped away with the sleeve of her dress, sniffling and swallowing.

  —Kitzi majaw! Ni’ kiniboun! (He’s going to leave! I’ll die!)

  —Ti nabem?! (And your husband?!), her grandmother asked.

  —Ni kin’saw! (I’ll kill him!)

  The old woman’s shoulders quaked. Silent laughter shook her whole body. The rasp of her voice sounded.


  —You can’t kill your little one’s father.

  Anger rose and gripped Wabougouni by the throat as she barked,

  —But, in the lake’s waters, they say you caused the death of the man who got you with child!

  She had often seen her grandmother in a rage, seething with anger, spraying those around her with harsh words. But she had never before seen the utter fury disfiguring her now. Fear gripped the young woman. At the very same moment, the wind gusted, treetops swayed and rustled, rain splattered on leaves. The waves too began to swell, pounding the rocks along the shore, battering the bank ever harder. The lake roared, whipping up crests as large as boats. Zagkigan Ikwe straightened, tottered, but remained standing thanks to the stick she leaned on. She raised that same stick above Wabougouni’s head. Her crutch hit the pine’s trunk.

  —Never speak those words again, girl! NEVER! You cry because a man loved you! Because he gave you pleasure!

  She muttered through clenched teeth, her eyes emitting sparks.

  —You should laugh instead! Be happy that the great lake gave you a man made for joy. Know that youth is fleeting and that mine died beneath the man you speak of, because he stood on the other side of life, death’s side, with death-inspired actions to engender life! That fiery-haired stranger, that demon you’re descended from! He stole me from the man I was promised to, a man I’d loved from childhood! I could have killed your mother, drunk bitter tea to bring about the death of that seed in me. Let the red waters of my moon flow. But that’s one thing I wouldn’t do because I stood with Life, with the power of Earth, of the Mother! If I had committed that act against your mother, I would have excused his ruthless act that turned my life upside down! I am not now nor ever will be a grave!

  The weave of the old woman’s hatred and love reached epic proportions. Her whole body twitched and trembled as she muttered words locked deep inside since the day she’d left joy behind. Wabougouni feared a stroke or a ball of inner rage that would choke her grandmother, sending her off to the Great Spirit’s plains and leaving her granddaughter behind.

  —Koukoum! Koukoum! Egoudeh! Pountoun …

  (Grandmother! Grandmother! So be it! Stop …)

  She crawled toward her grandmother, wrapped her arms round the older woman’s legs. They remained motionless, the grandmother on her feet, the granddaughter on her knees. Then the old woman bent toward the young woman and sank to the ground next to her on the pine needles. She drew her close and Wabougouni laid her head on her bony thigh the way she used to when she was a child in moments of distress. Zagkigan Ikwe buried her fingers in the red mane of hair blazing in the sun that she couldn’t help loving because it belonged to her, to this child, so beautiful and alive. She lent her ear to her granddaughter’s sorrow.

  8

  As the two women reconciled, Gabriel, oblivious to the eddies swirling round him, kept on working, felling hollow trees to make himself useful in the camp. He wore trousers stained with motor oil, held up by suspenders. The handsaw cut a neat groove through the wood. Speaking to the children, he made funny gestures and drew in the air and on the ground.

  Every night, he slept with Wabougouni and was exposed to increasingly hostile glares from the women of the community, including the chief’s wife, haughty and distant toward the Mitikgouji she visibly scorned. The young man’s seeming indifference hurt her pride, however. She had no way of knowing that the Métis regarded her as set apart; his Abenaki grandmother had always described tribal chiefs as endowed with great nobility, worthy of respect. He had assumed the same held true for the chief of this band since, otherwise, he would not have held that position.

  He returned to his thoughts because, despite the euphoria he felt in his lover’s presence, he was considering leaving. He knew their nocturnal moans of pleasure were trying the patience of these women. Yet he was fascinated by their customs so different from his own. To feed her baby, Lilush, a friend of Wabougouni’s, would simply drop the top of her dress, exposing her breasts to the young man’s gaze. A gesture so natural he immediately discarded the values women of his milieu held around modesty. The Algonquin word for breasts and mother was the same — djoudjou — with an additional n to signify belonging—n’djoudjou, my mother. How then could he eroticize the sight of Lilush nursing? He could see himself adopting a new way of viewing the natural role of breasts, that of feeding a child. He was surprised at how freely Wabougouni gave herself to him, acting on her own desire, despite being tied to another man. She shared the ardent passion that had burned in him ever since he laid eyes on her. Here, Gabriel lived in the present. He sensed he was in the grip of an emotion as powerful as the one he’d felt on his mother’s death. A tearing of his very fabric. Wabougouni was not his first lover, but she left a mark on the innermost part of his being. He tried to close off his feelings within a circle of reason.

  A woman passing by brought his mind back to his work. She shot him a scathing glance. He had noticed that only women wearing a cross round their neck showed him any hostility, even though they seemed afraid of Zagkigan Ikwe. He didn’t know the full story or about the old woman’s hatred of the Black Robes.

  The men would be back soon. Not knowing what their reaction would be to his prolonged stay among the women, he would rather not be around for their return. Hospitality and assistance in times of hardship were an age-old tradition in this country of great solitude and long, cold winters. Nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, he would leave.

  I’ll set off tomorrow, he thought to himself.

  He took a break and made his way to the timothy-infested cemetery whose headstones bore Scottish names. Anguished cries from the shore tore him from his musings. The women were screaming,

  —Pieshish! Pieshish!

  Above the clamour, the chief’s wife’s voice called out to him.

  —APPITTIPPI! APPITTIPPI! PISHAN! PIIISHAAANNN! (COME! COOMME!)

  In long strides, Gabriel raced to the lake. Offshore, a boy clung to an overturned boat, waving in desperation. The Métis grabbed the first canoe he came upon and paddled hard toward the child, reaching him in no time. But the boy shook his head and pointed beneath him, bawling.

  —Pieshish! Pieshish! N’tobim Pieshish! (Go after Pieshish!)

  —Pieshish nibi’ka? (Pieshish in the water?), the Métis asked.

  The little boy nodded frantically. The man understood the child’s friend had gone under. There was no current in the bay, the child couldn’t be far; he collected his thoughts then emptied his mind. He yanked off his boots, his glasses, took a deep breath and dove underwater. He searched beneath the boats to begin with, then swam in ever-widening circles. He held his breath, hoping to find Pieshish before he had to resurface for air. He opened his eyes wide, scanned the bottom, pushed aside black weeds blocking his view. The water, its clay particles disturbed by his movements, grew murky; he’d lost hope of finding the little one when, suddenly, his hand grazed the child’s body. He clasped an arm round the boy’s narrow chest, swam to the surface, cleaving the water with his free arm and legs, then held Pieshish to his torso as he swam on his back, swift as a toiling beaver. Spotting a flat rock outcropping, he hoisted the child up and, without taking time to climb on himself, his feet buried in mud, bent over and breathed into the boy’s mouth.

  The croaking of frogs punctured the humans’ leaden silence. Gabriel continued furiously. His soul screamed at the little one to come to. His mind flashed back to a tragedy ten years earlier when the lake had carried off a childhood friend across from the village. They’d been playing in a broken rowboat when the current hijacked it then sent the craft to the bottom with the boy inside. For a good while after his friend’s death, Gabriel’s heart had remained mired in sorrow.

  Huddled together on the shore, the Algonquin women held their breath. At last, Pieshish groaned and, coughing, spat up fluid. He moaned, then shed tears of fear and relief that were greeted with the women’s nervous laughter and the sobbing of his mother, the chief’s wife.
She advanced toward the Mitikgouji, her son clinging to his neck. She gathered the boy into her arms and gazed at the Métis, eyes brimming with tears.

  —Kitzi miigwech … (Thank you so much …), she said.

  Overcome, Gabriel’s entire being began to tremble. The earlier grim feeling of helplessness at the sight of the boy’s motionless body had metamorphized into a flood of bliss and gratitude for life.

  Thank you! he thought. Thank you!

  He didn’t know to whom his thanks were addressed, but the words sprang of their own accord from deep within. He held the boy’s mother’s gaze, humble and proud, then climbed into a second boat to fetch the first young boy and recover the other boats bobbing in the bay.

  Seeing the look they’d exchanged, Wabougouni felt a violent surge of jealousy. Zagkigan Ikwe murmured,

  —Kin zagkigan nabeh! Appittippi zagkigan … tapishkoon nin tzignagouzin. (You are the man of the lake! Lake Appittippi … you are like me.)

  9

  Turmoil rumbled inside Wabougouni. The Metis’ imminent departure both shook and shattered her, leaving her in a state of utter confusion. Competing emotions wreaked havoc: the passion hemmed inside her belly carried undercurrents of anger and love and an urge both to kill and to die. She wouldn’t stop him from leaving, could not, must not. However, she wrestled with the desire to strike out with wounded bear claws and leave an imprint on his skin of her pain and sorrow. She had no words to tell him of her anguish, to nail her name to his soul.