The Lover, the Lake

by Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau

  Only through gestures, a glance, the riveting encounter in her bed night after night. Why had the spirits of storms and the lake propelled the Métis to her shore? Why must he be this way, so different yet so alike? They were both of mixed blood, grudgingly accepted by their communities, their mothers gone too young … She would have loved to know how he had mourned and who had stepped in to replace his mother, as Zagkigan Ikwe had for her. They had had to learn so few of each other’s words to know each other. But to what end? Their encounter ended here, tomorrow he would be gone. She would resume married life with Frank and Gabriel would return to his world. Egoudeh! So it would be!

  He slept peacefully. She suffered through the dark of night, in the heart of the shadow world’s breathing. An owl hooted in the distance on a slope of the sleeping hills, an echo took up its cry and flung it toward the vast lake, which sent waves out to lap against the shore. Wind swept through the tent’s openings, shook the canvas, making it flap loudly, then continued on its way, whooshing through tree branches, rustling leaves and wrapping itself in the forest, whistling like a bird of the night. An animal, perhaps a skunk or a porcupine, brushed against their shelter. The young woman sighed.

  Yet all was so serene!

  She could feel how free the man, this Métis was, his words bursting with his self. His inner freedom came from the sounds filling his mouth that he uttered so fervently, excerpts taken from his notebook like secret, impenetrable signs. Despite the warmth of his presence, he remained an enigma enveloped in unfathomable mystery. Sometimes in bed, naked, he looked at the pages and spoke under his breath. She intuited that, if only she could decipher the transcriptions there, a light would be shone on him; she would be able to take those words he’d laid out on the paper, slide them from between her teeth into her mouth, roll them round on her tongue, swallow them whole with her saliva. They would nourish her with his very essence, sustain her with their gentle sounds, move her with their tenderness; they would rise up again from her breast so she could return them to him in wild fiery kisses. Sometimes he pulled from his bag a little bottle of black water and a small stick on which he placed a tip. China ink. Then he drew freehand, without hesitation. She wanted to know.

  He had spoken to her, using words she’d taught him, of a war in far-off countries across the sea, from where his people hailed, the white-skinned people; he had told her he must fight, travel there, traverse that huge expanse of salt water. That his government demanded it of him … kitzi Ogima.

  —Nin’ kamigazou! (I will fight!), he said.

  She didn’t know the reason for the war, just that he was to take part in it because he was now of an age to do so. That he might die. He couldn’t say for sure. Yet, he also had her blood, the blood of the Red people, so why defend the Whites? She lit the candle and leafed through her lover’s notebooks. They included not just signs in his language but pictures of unknown women including a young woman with fair hair. She turned the pages and saw herself, her laughing nakedness or sleeping beneath her curtain of hair or busy with her morning ablutions; there she was again, sad-faced the day before when he’d said, “Waboun, nin k’ni majan’ …” (Tomorrow morning I leave …). Then images of the camp, the sacred rock, geese, ducks in flight, bears, islands, the lake and even her grandmother cooking seated on the ground, women from the camp, children, grandmothers eyeing him warily, Ikwe Ka Niba, Woman Who Sleeps, named for her habit of taking a nap wherever she happened to be, in this case by her sheet laid out on the grass to dry. Then Wabougouni again, making bannock, her aunt lacing a snowshoe’s rawhide sinew, young Pieshish emerging from the tipi, the same child whose breath he’d restored using his own mouth, then Pieshish again lost in play. Or the little girl, faceless though, whose mother dressed her as a boy. Strange. What did the picture mean to the Métis man? She turned back to the drawings of animals: they were so alive, the man had captured them with his gaze, immobilizing them and transposing them into his notebook. How extraordinary!

  She kept turning pages. One hatched image with harsh, tangled, truncated lines revealed a stormy nature: he had taken Zagkigan Ikwe’s anger and caught it on paper. Barely visible strokes too to represent old Makie with her deep dark eyes, gentle and sad or, for her friend Lilush, the happy mother, nursing her baby then kissing the child’s forehead, a brushed surround, as though he hadn’t dared press down on the small stick, his hand unwilling to bring too much pressure to bear on the tenderness there. Reality captured by the skill of his sketches. She unfurled the brown paper used by the clerk at the general store to wrap the Algonquin women’s purchases with when they accompanied their husbands there before the latter departed for their hunting grounds in the fall. More faces of women from the camp came to life on the page thanks to the black water’s magic.

  The man carried enchantment in his hands. She recalled his familiar gesture, wielding his knife to shave chips of wood from the pencil he used to trace these lines on paper. Right then, as the signs entered her, she loved him with a singular intensity. A benediction, a nurturing grace that lit her from within. She blew out the flame. Took Gabriel’s hand, kissed it. Then drew nearer, lay down beside him, touched her lips to his. She caressed his sleeping body with the palms of her hands, felt the hard muscles, the ridge of jutting ribs, the satin of his belly. The Métis shifted, responding to the woman’s caresses, enfolded her in his arms. She lowered her lips to the soft, tender hollow by his shoulder blade, placed her tongue there, probing till he was wholly with her in the present and the fullness of love.

  He pushed her away gently and asked for light. She groped, took hold of the candle at the foot of their bed, struck a match, held it to the wick, which caught fire. Her silhouette was projected onto the tent’s canvas, her gestures dancing along the surface quivering in the wind. She turned back to her lover, who reached out and drew her slowly to him even as he sat up. He lifted her buttocks to wedge her in against him, legs wrapped round his pelvis, facing each other. He put his arms around her and she responded in kind. Leaned his head against her shoulder and began to rock. An owl hooted deep in the woods, no doubt pursuing some small creature of the night.

  Just then, she felt a tenderness so profound emanating from him that she gave herself permission to cry, something she had never dared do before in front of a man. He sang under his breath a tune unknown to her, a cradlesong from his culture.

  Il y a longtemps que je t’aime

  Jamais je ne t’oublierai …

  Gabriel caressed her hair, his fingers combing through the lustre of her locks in the faint light, stroking their shadow-tinged shimmer.

  —How do you speak of love in your language, Wabougouni? he murmured. How do you say I’ll miss you.

  The solemn tone of his voice shook her in the sacred part of her being, and she understood he was admitting to feelings she’d hoped for without daring to believe. She let an explosion of emotion wash over her, filling her with such genuine happiness that she raised her head, eyes glistening, and gave herself to Gabriel. He kissed her tears, wiped them away with his thumbs. She laid a hand on her heart then on his and said,

  —T’zaghidden … (I love you …)

  He repeated her words,

  —T’zaghidden … I’ll give you both tenderness and love, my incredible beauty of the woods, and never forget you …

  With eyes locked, tears trickled from hers and welled up in his from an inner spring, transforming his strength into a foundering.

  He stayed anchored in her, barely moving. Pleasure sprouted slowly in Wabougouni’s belly, heat radiating out through her body. The Métis breathed into her neck, the warmth of his breath on her flesh enfolding her in a feverish languor. Their mouths joined in a gentle, simple kiss, each tasting the silk of the other’s lips, the coolness of Gabriel’s, the fire of Wabougouni’s.

  Then passion took hold again, and he toppled her onto her back. She tossed under each thrust releasing her, opening her again and again, transporting her to luminous continents an
d shores where the sun’s brilliance couldn’t eclipse his strength, his surge of virility subjugating her, running through her, turning her into a warm river swollen by one long moan. She clung to him, nibbling on his erect nipples when a violent orgasm propelled her backward, her head off the mat crashing into the ground strewn with sweet-smelling fir boughs. He leaned over, laid his mouth on her ear, accelerated the motion of his hips. His prolonged bellow pierced Wabougouni more keenly than any desperate animal’s cry. All the while, the lake lay strangely silent on this night of farewells framed by blind fate.

  10

  Ready for the return to his village, the Métis scribbled in his notebook. Moved despite himself, he felt compelled to sling onto the page the last words brought into being by his auburn-haired woman of the wild.

  I am a man of fluid motion

  A tributary seeking a new bed in which

  To sleep each night

  I flow to the great river beyond far to the north

  On the other side of the continental divide …

  Love like driftwood

  claws at my back

  I must continue my aquatic life for even though you drink of me

  Have drunk of me

  I will slip away again and again …

  The words felt arid to him, but his hand carried on across the dog-eared pages curling in on themselves from all his handling.

  You have been my moth my butterfly of fire

  Shining in the heart of my twilights

  Entrancing through mystery and freedom

  You the beauty daughter of the forest

  Your red mane and skin the colour of earth

  A forever source of dazzlement for me

  Deep in your soft belly, hungry for joy …

  He slipped the notebook into his shirt pocket and the pencil in its usual spot behind his ear. He turned back to take his leave of the Algonquin women. Wabougouni was nowhere to be found. He waded into the water, dropped his boots into the canoe, tugged it out and, at the last minute, hoisted himself inside. He paddled to the tip of the peninsula and, as he rounded the spit of land, saw the young woman standing on a rock in her red-flowered dress. Just as when they’d first met a few scant days earlier, she shone against the green of the leaves and slopes. His heart pounding, he hesitated, considered pulling ashore to make love one last time … but to what end?

  Desire bored into him as he gripped the sides of the canoe even tighter. The two gazed at each other, motionless, for what felt like an eternity. He could see her face, glimpse tears, yet she smiled. The wind began to gust further, the waves to surge. He heard a cry from the forest behind her, a moan, the sound of one tree brushing against another.

  He drank in the sight of her, felt invisible water flowing through a tectonic fault inside from which sprang a pain so unexpected his breath stopped for the space of a few seconds. He must leave now. Urgently. He raised one arm high and waved. He started the motor, pushed it to full throttle and tore across the lake toward the Attigameg River whose tributary passed through the village. He had the grim sense of fleeing, losing something he would never find again — the sensation of being fully alive.

  11

  The old woman touched Wabougouni’s shoulder and stood, her gaze, like her granddaughter’s, following the canoe and its progress through the swell, farther and farther, tinier and tinier. She could feel a fissure growing in the young woman, travelling down her spine and back up to that place between her legs, continuing its course along her belly and breasts. She laid one palm flat on her granddaughter’s heart, the other against her back. With unusual-for-her gentleness, she sang a brooding song from Wabougouni’s childhood. Intense heat emanated from her hands, releasing the hard lump obstructing her beloved Flower’s chest. They shed tears, the old woman for her granddaughter’s suffering, the young woman for her first love.

  —Oh! Koukoum, koukoum … tcegon ma? (Oh, grandmother, grandmother, why this?)

  They crouched and, with sad tenderness, the old woman rocked the young woman in her bony arms.

  —I don’t know, Flower, my love … I don’t know. Maybe to open your heart as the healer you’re called on to become. Because I’m old, you see, and one day I’ll be gone, perhaps soon. You already know much about herbs and the touch needed for healing, but you are young, you must keep practicing to perfect your knowledge. I can feel the years crushing my bones, breaking my back when I bend to gather the medicines; I never know if I’ll be able to haul in the next net heavy with big, quivering fish or if the lake will call me in turn into its depths … So granddaughter, I have no answer. But at least you know what it is to feel to your core the love of a man. He doesn’t realize it yet, but he carries you inside, hidden in the secret voice men can’t hear. He’ll have to experience an ordeal that will break him and then he’ll know.

  Zagkigan Ikwe spoke as never before. Ever since her fury at Wabougouni’s reproach, ever since those long bottled-up words had finally been spoken, something inside had softened. The young woman’s work as a healer had begun. Without meaning to, she had taken aim at her grandmother’s suffering camouflaged as rage. Her blame had slit through the purulent bag imprisoning the memories of that long-ago day when the old woman lost her joie de vivre. Wabougouni had dared to confront her, proving her maturity by breaking the chains of hatred that bound Zagkigan Ikwe. A healer of souls! She would be stronger than her grandmother, more engaged in the Mother’s energy; of this the old woman was convinced since, when transferred from one generation to the next, the power to heal grew stronger. She hoped nothing would ever sever the continued transfer of those ancestral traits.

  This morning, I received a message from Eagle, from two eagles actually. I know there’s a connection to that man, to Appittippi. While he was in the lake’s waters doing his usual, diving and resurfacing again and again, a black eagle collided with the crown of a spruce tree. Such a strange vision. Then a bald-headed eagle appeared, chasing after the dark bird of prey as it tried to flee … both disappeared into the forest. White men have symbols they’ve borrowed from us. I think that in the war he’s to be part of, his side will emerge victorious. He will return. He will survive because he is blessed. He lives like a fish in the water of this lake we hold sacred.

  Zagkigan Ikwe began a chant from her earliest memories to comfort Wabougouni and bring her back to her clan, her wisdom, her hereditary gifts. Gradually, peace descended on the young woman, she could feel, like large raindrops, the child drumming against her womb. She laid her grandmother’s age-spotted hand on her belly and said,

  —Feel how alive she is!

  12

  Gabriel navigated the Attigameg River, just barely avoiding a pair of muskrats he happened upon midstream, which then vanished beneath his canoe. Mating season had erupted everywhere: male waterbirds pulled out all the stops in their bid to seduce the other sex; a flamboyant mallard skimmed across the surface of the water beating its wings under the seemingly indifferent gaze of a dull-feathered beauty. The banks exploded with life, animated by the squawking, chirping and trilling that accompany nest-building. Bulrushes rustled, swaying with the birds’ industrious to- and fro-ing.

  Gabriel felt empty and sad. He already missed Wabougouni but kept going because she was spoken for, had come too late in his life along his path as a man. The silk of her ochre skin, her scent of warm earth and her taste of fruit tinged with spices, would he ever free his thoughts of her? He shook himself, turned his attention to his destination. His uncle, Pierre-Arthur, would be happy to see him return. Gabriel would share the money from the sale of the furs with the man, his godfather with whom Gabriel lived when he wasn’t travelling. He wondered about rekindling his relationship with Rose-Ange, Dr. Miron’s daughter, the girl he had had a bit of a romance with. He had no idea where their relationship would lead given that, when he’d left for the forest last October, their affair had still been at the platonic stage, barely acknowledged through near-chaste kisses. Among the bourgeoisie, young wo
men saved their virginity for the big wedding night … He sighed.

  He wondered how such a pretty girl could be interested in him. Even in this newly colonized country, a municipal bylaw voted in by elected officials stated that First Peoples were not allowed to live among Whites. The idea of a union between Rose-Ange and a Métis man was utopian, no matter that his father was of her race. Gabriel’s exoticism and charisma had seduced her and, having spent several years in a convent boarding school in Quebec City, she didn’t have the same bias as others from her parents’ village regarding the territory’s first inhabitants. Most people there held them in scorn and mistrusted them. Gabriel’s father’s white origins did soften somewhat their opinion of the young man. His Abenaki mother had earned a teaching diploma from the Ursulines of Quebec, an order of nuns that had educated Indigenous daughters since the colony of New France’s beginnings. For the times, Gabriel was an educated man. A victim of the Spanish influenza, his mother had exacted a promise from his father, that their child would be allowed to finish primary school before being taken into the forest to become a logger or trapper. Discovering he couldn’t bear a widower’s life, his father left Abitibi to return to his own region of Portneuf. Unable to raise his son on his own, he entrusted him to the care of a female cousin and to his brother, Pierre-Arthur.

  Almost from the moment she set foot back in the village, Rose-Ange noticed Gabriel in the general store, looked for him, sought how to approach him. He was intimidated at first, especially when she asked to join him on his boat on the river. He arranged for them to meet one sunny July day. He waited. She never came. Angry and put off at being stood up, he set out in his boat and fished on Lake Abitibi till dusk. The next day, the young woman stood waiting for him outside his uncle’s door. “I’m so sorry about yesterday, but my mother wouldn’t let me leave to meet you.”