With the moose’s liver, heart and tenderloin in his bag, he shot one last glance at his handiwork. Pleased with the result, he bent over to do up his moccasin’s lace, then slipped on his snowshoes and struck out down the trail. He knew the wolf pack would polish off the scraps abandoned there before his return the next day. Perspiration trickled down his back. Catching sight of the village’s faint lights, he slowed his pace at the edge of the silent forest. A pale moon shone behind Pierre-Arthur’s house and its light struck Gabriel to the core — an invitation to gentle pleasures, to serenity. What if he went back to the trapping life rather than wait for the federal government’s response to his request to enlist in the army? Back to where he felt alive, free. He took a deep breath of air and climbed the steps to the verandah.
His uncle sat in his rocking chair in the kitchen. He got to his feet to welcome his nephew, “So, did ya get yourself a moose?”
Gabriel smiled and shrugged off his bloodstained coat and fur hat. He found the heat inside his uncle’s house uncomfortable. He took off his plaid shirt, then slipped his suspenders back up over his damp long johns. Only then did he open his bag to show the meat to Pierre-Arthur.
“You should be prouda’ yourself, m’boy! A real good hunter! Gimme that so I can make us a supper to remember. Have a cup of coffee meantime. By the way, there’s mail for ya!”
Being illiterate, Pierre-Arthur had no way of knowing the letter came from Canada’s Department of Defence. The Métis opened the envelope, his back turned so his uncle wouldn’t see his expression as he read. In the light of the kerosene lamp, the paper shook between his hands. It was an affirmative answer to his application for active service in the Canadian army.
The missive invited him to report to the Joliette training centre. The young man felt his heart swell with both pride and sorrow. Happy that he’d been accepted and sad at the need to take leave of his godfather. The latter whistled as he cut potatoes and plunged them into the pot of boiling water on the woodstove. He knew his nephew had hoped to leave for Europe to fight, but the ministry’s silence on the matter had convinced him the young man would abandon the idea.
21
Night still. Gabriel trudged through cold oozing mud behind Private Laflamme, the scout training him for his task. A light drizzle penetrated the Métis’ jacket, he shivered despite his woollen underwear. Between the squelching of boots and the mortar fire sounding everywhere, he could hear nothing that might indicate the enemy’s presence.
He grew increasingly nervous as they approached the German lines. Their mission was to find a way through to locate the snipers responsible for their company’s losses. Hunger gnawed at their bellies since the broken terrain kept supply vehicles bogged down in mud far down the line. Repeated trampling by the troops had stripped the soil of humus, and its smell combined with that of the explosives’ powder. At dawn, the two men advanced, hiding behind trees. They took turns signalling each other before making another few-metre dash when, suddenly, Gabriel thought he heard a shot ringing out from behind a nearby mound. He raised his arm to stop his companion in his tracks and pointed at the ground. Crouching, he approached the scout, using Sioux sign language.
“Ahead of you, off to the left, there’s someone lying low …” he whispered. “Will you go or me?”
“You saw him first, I’ll leave him to you, but I’ll cover ya.”
Laflamme’s whisper was barely audible. The Métis crawled through the mud, silently calling on Lake Abitibi’s guardian spirit. After half an hour of silence, a series of explosions masked the squelching of mud he set off despite his best efforts. He groped his way round the hillock only to find an enemy sniper stationed so close he could have touched his boots. Without hesitation, he sprang to his feet and drove his bayonette under the soldier’s helmet. His actions drew the attention of another German whose mud-spattered clothes had allowed him to blend in with the terrain. The man took aim. Oblivious to any danger, all Gabriel saw was Laflamme raise his weapon and fire.
A huge emptiness rooted Gabriel to the spot by the body of the man he had just killed; he breathed in, mouth open, but could feel his lungs shrinking from the emotion strangling him. After a few minutes, he turned the lifeless body over and saw, in dawn’s light, the face of an adolescent. His partner ran over and sprawled onto his back beside him as he said, “No one left hereabouts, but the other guy’s still alive. How ‘bout we bring him back as our prisoner, maybe he could flag danger spots?”
Gabriel’s only response was to vomit up bile as Laflamme looked on, dumbfounded. “Gab, hey there, it’s like you never killed a Boche before!”
“Not up close anyway, and he’s just a kid! A youngster, can’t you see? Thanks, pal, I think you just saved my life.”
“Not that it’s any of my business, but are ya new to the front? Is that it?”
The gulf between the glorious mirage he’d had of the battlefield and the nightmarish reality had shaken the Métis’ courage. He had been fatalistic about the path he’d chosen, knowing how close death hovered at any given moment and that only chance spared him. Faced with the young soldier’s corpse, the dread that had been gnawing at him lessened and a strange serenity took its place. He felt his survival instincts kick in and his perceptions sharpen to those of a predator on the prowl. Should fear return, there’d be no retreat, only a confident advance since he had no choice. Accept that he was a killer. From that moment on, he knew with certainty that the enemy would be his prey.
22
The scout platoon split up to fan out along a branch of the IJssel River looking for bridges that could bear the tanks’ weight. Gabriel and his companions finally found a steel beam structure that seemed to fit the bill. The officer chose two foot soldiers to head for the other shore and flush out the enemy. The Métis had just suggested that Private Bujold crouch down when an explosion pulverized the bridge ahead of them. Shots rang out from either side; he could hear bullets whistling past his head; Bujold, who’d been hit, crumpled to the ground face down. Gabriel dragged him over and together rolled them under the parapet before tumbling off. Projectiles set the water to frothing all round them; the Germans, lying in wait under the bridge, were determined to exterminate the men splashing in the river as it slowly turned red. Gabriel attempted the impossible to save his partner. He wrapped one arm round the man’s chest and dove into the murky waters.
He swam downstream as quickly as his boots and gear would allow hoping their comrades above would gain the upper hand. He could hear Lake Abitibi’s roar in its autumn fury. As he ran out of air, he suddenly began to hallucinate: before him, Zagkigan Ikwe’s ghost pointed to the right of the river. He headed without hesitation in that direction, spent. Clutching at reeds, he surfaced and took a breath out of sight of the snipers. Despite the weeds obstructing the way, he kept paddling with his legs and one free arm till he found a foothold on the sludge at the bottom.
He dragged Bujold onto the grass. Eyes glassy and mouth gaping, his brother in combat had stopped breathing, his chest pierced by two bullets. Gabriel could barely stifle the cry that rose from his gut and the impulse to jump to his feet and dare his enemy to shoot, out of some mad certainty that he was invulnerable. Then, remembering the old Algonquin woman’s apparition, he muttered, “I’m headed straight for the asylum! What madness is this we men have of killing each other! Will this goddamned war ever be over once and for all!”
By then, the Métis had been at the front for two years, two long years during which every day’s survival was a day’s reprieve. Stretched out next to Bujold’s still-warm body, Gabriel shivered with cold, rage and sorrow. He closed the soldier’s eyelids to hide his sky-blue gaze now petrified, ambushed by death. His chest wounds were proof he wouldn’t have survived; perhaps he’d already been gone when Gabriel pulled him underwater? Yet he wondered whether he himself wasn’t responsible for his mate’s passing, whether he hadn’t been vigilant enough on the bridge before the explosion and the leap into the river.
He spiralled out of time, remembered Lake Abitibi, Wabougouni’s passion. He masturbated, spilled his semen onto the ground if only to feel his body vibrant, his soul alive. Why had the old woman appeared to him underwater? Was she dead? Was Wabougouni all alone now? Alone of her kind, pure and free.
The Métis gave a start when a voice pulled him from sleep. Still in shock, he managed even then to feel almost joyous relief at the sight of the team of scouts who, harbouring little hope, had nevertheless set out to find him after decimating the enemy commando unit tasked with destroying the bridge. The corporal gave his shoulder a friendly pat.
“You okay, Gabriel? Looks like your partner didn’t make it … Come on, we’ll carry him back to camp.”
23
The young man strolled through the streets of Paris. Canadian soldiers had to wait for a ship to be available to ferry them home. In the meantime, they were free to visit the cities spared by the bombing. They still wore their army uniforms. People approached, greeted them as their own, called them their “cousins” from America, thanked them for being part of the country’s liberation, treated them to a drink or a meal; emancipated young women offered them a good time. Prostitutes offered their services free of charge.
The men celebrated their return to life, to air free of the stench of gunpowder, dust, decomposing bodies, death. It was like having a stitch in one’s side that never stopped thrumming, a finger tickling one’s back, this incredulous, hesitant joy. Gabriel was accompanied by his friend Camil Laflamme who had rescued him in extremis during his first scouting mission. The Métis drank himself unconscious. His friend managed to wrestle him back to their lodging.
One evening, they went out for beer to a bar beneath blinking lights in the Champs Élysées neighborhood. The waiter brought them a second round before they’d even finished the first.
“Gentlemen, these are for you. Courtesy of the gentleman at the bar.”
Camil cast a sidelong glance at his friend, “That’s a first, someone buying me a drink! It takes a Frenchman! Does he think we’re girls or what?”
Out of courtesy, Gabriel went to thank the man who immediately invited himself over to their table. A typical response whenever their accent from across the water was heard. The stranger wanted to listen to them speak, hear the charmant words in their Quebec accent. He wore an expensive suit, rings glittered on his fingers. He was obviously wealthy.
“Are there any Indians where you live?”
When he heard that Gabriel was Abenaki through his mother, his focus sharpened, a wolf, watchful. The Métis felt uneasy, not sure what instinct had put him on guard. Alcohol helped dispel his discomfort and he became increasingly verbose in the face of the man, Marcel’s, curiosity. He spoke of his time spent with the Algonquin of Lake Abitibi, the rigours of life in the forest, the simplicity of the wild new territories; he spoke a bit in Algonquin. He saw himself as a poet, his words chiselled into the stonework of the City of Light. He could hear the roar of the lake’s waters the day he had almost drowned, the rasp of old Zagkigan Ikwe’s voice, the veil across Wabougouni’s. Yes, his blood was that of the Americas and their first inhabitants.
Marcel invited them to a restaurant carpeted in velvet. The wine — full-bodied, powerful, ruby red — caressed his palate. Gabriel was in the state of euphoria he’d been striving to attain ever since the hostilities ended. Camil saw there would be another night of excess for his friend. He stood up after the last digestif.
“I’m off to bed. You coming, Gab?”
The man protested, it was early yet, they could head out to a nightclub, he would show them parts of Paris by night … The Métis decided to stay, and Laflamme left. He figured his partner was a big enough boy to find his own way back and look after himself. As soon as Camil left, Marcel invited Gabriel over to his place for a drink.
24
The next morning, the Métis opened his eyes to luxurious surroundings. He had no idea where he was, and only vaguely remembered the previous night. When his body finally registered its pain, he was shattered. First, his head about to burst, pounding to the beat of his blood; then the burning in his rectum, on fire as though a poker had been used on him. A dildo lay on the floor. He held his breath, listened for the slightest sound, called on his sixth sense that he’d abandoned on the battlefield.
He reached back and felt a fresh wound. He was bleeding, could smell fetid sperm mixed with a gel of some kind. He saw the dirty sheets and realized the man had come back for more many times over the course of the night, as desire dictated. Anger rocketed through him. Intolerable rage, so pure in its power that it might very well stagnate inside him forever. This was the dark face of love — betrayal, trampled trust—stronger than hatred, deeper than the hunger to kill to survive.
He crept from room to room, naked, his knife held close with the stealthy step he used for tracking Nazis. No one. He was alone. He crouched and did his business on the soft carpet covering the living room floor to rid himself of the man, and spread his shit all over, everywhere it would stay encrusted and leave its stench. He peed. Then he went to scrub himself clean, keeping an eye on his weapon. He pulled on his clothes.
Next, he slashed the leather armchairs, the mattress, the feather pillows, hacked at the brocade and lace drapes, the silk sheets, the oriental rugs, the dozens of fine suits and shirts in the wardrobe, cut the man’s ties like a scout slitting the throat of enemy soldiers taken unaware. He scored the exotic wood furniture, planted the knife, broke the Chinese porcelain knick-knacks, the stained glass on the doors, threw vintage bottles at the walls, overturned the sideboard and its Limoges dishes. Looking up at the masters’ paintings on the walls, he hesitated, his arm raised, the blade poised to rip into the canvas. His breathing was ragged, his gut pounding, his heart gone berserk. After a long pause, his hand fell to his side. He slid the dagger into his belt, grabbed his jacket and strode out without looking back.
He had touched neither the bookcase nor the books.
25
Wounds oozing, liquid manure leaking drop by drop onto the devastated zone of his soul, Gabriel drank. Back in his country, his army pension in his pocket, he smouldered in the big city, battling intoxication that never let up as he continued to down one glass after another. Quit washing. Barely slept. But wrote and wrote.
I am one of those come back from hell
The hell of trenches, bombs
exploded flesh
Men’s hell, worse than the devil’s
or God’s
Who said honour is found at the end of a
rifle?
Lies, lures, deception!
Horror resides in us, in those who return
A foul mud clinging to our boots
Splatters our nights too long too
dark
Obscures our eyes that no longer see the sun
Yet his inner territory had expanded, his gaze went further for having crossed the ocean, trod on another continent, touched the stones of cathedrals from the Middle Ages. Despite his descent into the abyss of despair and his participation in the primitive, sacralized ritual of war, he stood on the side of the victors. He clung to that thought so as not to fall once and for all into the pit of shame, the feeling he’d been debased, depraved, made a killer for hire. He wanted to take root in the earth, something that seemed out of reach in his drunken stupour; the original solidity he’d felt before the war had disappeared. Vanished into thin air. He felt broken and feared he was losing his mind when, in a half-slumber, a black spider got his solar plexus in his clutches, cutting off his breath. He cried out.
Then a young woman appeared, a chambermaid in the seedy hotel he holed up in for a modest sum. Her hands were red from scrubbing, her face plain, no beauty or appeal. But she was lit from within and her hair, Venetian blond, created an autumnal aura round her head. One morning, as he’d already broken out a bottle of beer, she spoke, “Sir, you shouldn’t hurt yourself that way …”
The Métis smiled at
her, surprised at the daring shown by this girl who looked barely sixteen.
“Huh! You don’t think it’s a good idea to be drinking like this?”
He let it happen. At first, she brought him chicken broth then, as the days passed, solid food. A red-headed angel? he thought to himself. Wabougouni! Why was it that the flame-haired Algonquin came to mind whenever kindness crept up on him? And so, this young girl, in the absence of any reason or expectation, helped him return to the ethereal place of hope. She managed to persuade him to stop drinking and convinced him to return to his homeland, return to the Lake Abitibi flowing in his veins, its booming waters resounding in his ears.
Abitibi, you with your golden womb
Your granite from the dawn of the world
I look to you for hope like a healing
Abitibi, your lake of open infinite space
On this day you call and I hurry to your side
I hurry to your mother’s body
Your hands harsh and cold yet more gentle
Than man’s ambition and folly …
Will she still be standing on the rock
She who lives there whom I’ve stopped hoping for
If only to see her from afar
She the wild firebrand camouflaged beneath a blood-red skirt
26
Winter. War’s uproar, its pointless furor, continued to torment Gabriel’s nights. He had purchased dogs, a sled. Now he strapped on provisions, adjusted bundles protected by a rough canvas covering, tied down the rifle in its sheath and buckled the backpack full of traps. He rallied the animals, checked their halters. Dawn sought out shadows slowly, gradually. The team started up the track leading to the Attigameg River and Lake Abitibi.
The Lover, the Lake Page 7