Poor saintly ladies of Rue Augusta. You really don't understand
a thing. By day I'm more than willing to weep on your shoulders. To vote for the villain's death. To play the decoy, nothing more, with mournful voice and haggard eye. Set out to bring the hideous husband tumbling down.
“See what you've done . . . Your lovely little wife . . . You ought to be ashamed! . . .”
But by night, again Antoine's accomplice. Though it disgusts me to the core. Drives me mad with fright.
The bed I slept in as a child. So narrow. Made up for the final sacraments, or so it seems. White feather coverlet . . . The door is never locked. Despite my aunts and all their warnings. A man comes fumbling his way into the room. One night in three. Whenever he's not too drunk. The saintly ladies have piled up chairs out in the corridor, against my door. Just so Antoine can go bumping into them. Sometimes, with that drunken sailor's gait of his, flat on his face . . . Then a volley of foul and angry language. And I can't help laughing, frightened as I am. Sure that my dear little aunts are wide awake, crossing themselves and trembling all over. They learn so much at night. Drunkenness, blasphemy, violence, love, disdain . . .
Sometimes, at night, the child will moan and groan. In pain or pleasure. No matter, the crime is all the same. The man is guilty. He stole away the smiling, sunny little one we love. The days and months are going by. Antoine is spending his money on every whore in Sorel. He's drinking and gambling. We're all the talk of the town.
Elisabeth has been bewitched. She's under his spell. The devil must be cast out . . .
That time. That one time. A certain time of my life, moved back to, moved into like an empty shell. Enclosing me again. With the sharp little click of an oyster snapping shut. I'm forcing myself to live within this narrow space. I'm settling into the house on Rue
Augusta. I'm breathing its rarefied air, an air I've already breathed before. I'm taking the steps I've already taken. There is no Madame Rolland. Not anymore. I'm Elisabeth d'Aulnières, the wife of Antoine Tassy. I'm pining away. Dying, dying. I'm waiting for someone to come and save me. I'm nineteen years old . . .
In honeyed tones my mother treats her son-in-law with feigned solicitude.
“You'll be more comfortable on the corner of the table, with those long legs of yours . . .”
Antoine gives a foolish smirk. He's just caught sight of the rabbit stew steaming on the table.
“I'll bet there's plenty of white wine in there!”
My gentle voice bounces against the intimate tête-à -tête Antoine is having with his rabbit stew.
“At least it's a change from the eels and buckwheat cakes we have in Kamouraska.”
I seem to hear him chewing his every mouthful. He doesn't bother to wipe the gravy dripping down his chin.
I'm sure my mother is trying to sound pathetic now.
“I've gone to Angélique Hus and ordered Elisabeth three dresses. Some shoes too, and some chemises. Really, Monsieur, the child doesn't have a thing to wear. And the babies need new clothes, new underthings . . . And you know, Monsieur, Elisabeth is beginning to cough. She really should see a doctor . . .”
Antoine asks for another helping. Gulps it down. Then struggles to pull his legs out from under the table. With a roar.
“Elisabeth, go pack your bags. And get the children ready. I won't stay here another minute and be insulted!”
Aunt Angélique clears her throat, tries to give a little substance to her voice.
“You'll go back to Kamouraska by yourself, Monsieur. Elisabeth and the children are staying here, where we can take care of them.”
“But I'm the squire of Kamouraska! I'm entitled to some respect . . . I'll go back down the river, back home where my word is law. And everyone will bow low . . . And then I'll kill myself, you hear? I'm going to kill myself, Elisabeth. In Kamouraska, on the beach . . .”
Antoine pours himself a drink. Sits there sobbing, crying his eyes out. My mother tries to catch her breath. Buries her face in a lace-trimmed handkerchief, heavy with the smell of camphor.
Antoine pretends he's leaving for Kamouraska. His leather valise, tawny brown, hastily buckled. With a white shirttail sticking out. The initials A. T. shining bright. He goes out, slams the door . . . But look, first thing in the morning, here he is, back again. Valise and all. Just as my aunts are leaving for their five o'clock mass. Antoine stands gazing at this frieze of tiny ladies all cloaked in black and ruffled in white. He picks one out at random. Throws his arms around her. Lifts her off the ground. Kisses her on the checks. For a fraction of a second two little feet kick at the air.
“Well, well, Sister Adélaïde . . . Have a good day now! Have a good mass! And pray for me, won't you? You know, I'm out of my mind, Sister Adélaïde! . . .”
Scarcely does she touch the ground when Angélique, peeved at being taken for her older sister, protests with a vengeance:
“Angélique . . . I'm Angélique . . . My name is Angélique Lanouette . . .”
Antoine sits down on his valise. Begs pardon in his humblest, most correct of tones.
“Excuse me, Sister Angélique. My mistake. But one little nun looks just like another!”
“Good morning, Madame. You slept well, I hope?”
Quick as a wink, Aurélie has put the pitcher of hot water down on the washstand, next to the flowered blue basin. Pulled the curtains open with a sharp tug. Light comes streaming in, intense, like a tide of rolling waves, breaking against my bed. I hide my face in the covers. The light is unbearable, brighter than the sun. Aurélie is mumbling as she sets my clothes out for the day.
“Can't go on living in the dark. What will be, will be. Your really big scenes are coming up, Madame. You've got to live them over out in the daylight.”
The first thing I do, back in Sorel. Hire Aurélie Caron. Despite my mother's and my aunts' entreaties. To play Milady and her maid. Until . . .
“They say you have yourself a merry time, Aurélie! Down by the river, out on the islands. Is it true? Tell me, what do you do? Tell me everything! . . .”
All petticoats and ribbons and fancy shoes, the typical soubrette . . . Aurélie stands at the mirror, looks at herself, enthralled. Turns toward me. So awfully pale. That sudden yellow spark, flashing from between her eyelids. With muttered words and knowing
winks. A volley of chatter. Breathless, disjointed, brazen, uncouth . . . Then voices from my solitude. My own. One confidence deserves another, tit for tat. And here I am, whispering in her ear.
“Really, you know, I'm married to a beast.”
“Good God a'mighty! You mean you didn't know they're all of them like that? Sooner or later, just give them time . . .”
Aurélie squats down, fixes a fire. It's morning. I'm nineteen now. I'm combing out my long curls, rolled up around strips of white cloth for the night. Life seems so natural, so calm. And yet . . . This silence. This disagreeable feeling that I've lived it all before. Most of all, the strange appearance of the fire. A kind of curious glare, cold and still. The look of fire, but a fire with no warmth, no brilliance . . . The linen bedsheets with their openwork borders. The fine weave of the cloth, so sharp and clear, as if magnified under a glass. The table by the bed, with its marble top. I'm sure I could trace out each one of the little black veins, follow them as they split and splinter their way along, smaller and smaller.
It's not so much the clear precision of things themselves that staggers me now. It's just that I'm forced, with every part of my being, to pay such close attention. Nothing, nothing must escape me. The real life, hidden beneath the past . . . There, tiny pinpricks all over the bedstead. Insect bites in the worm-eaten wood. Everything in the room has been gnawed away. Still standing by some kind of miracle. Already crumbled. Put back together just for this one blinding moment. Everything so precise, so clear . . .
This stillness mustn't last. Or else it will spread its rot to every fragment of life around me. Weigh them all down in one great, final, ponderous silence.
I turn toward the impudent person standing there in front of me, stock-still, watching. A strange smile frozen against her teeth, stained with tobacco.
“Speak to me, Aurélie. Say something. Anything at all. Only speak . . .”
Aurélie raises her voice, forces it a little as if she were playing a part. Pretends to be talking to someone behind the wall.
“Oh, Madame! Good God a'mighty! Look at that mark on your arm, all black and blue!”
“Don't shout like that, Aurélie. Please, not so loud. Someone might hear you! . . .”
“Oh, the things Monsieur does to you, Madame! I'll go tell the cook. I'll go tell the governess. I'll go tell Madame d'Aulnières and her three little sisters. I'll go tell the judges if I have to.”
“Stop it, Aurélie! Stop shouting like that! I'm so ashamed! If you only knew . . .”
“No need to be ashamed for a thing like that! Better to get ourselves pinched a little than never to have a man at all, don't you know! And as far as being ashamed . . . Well, you'd better get used to it now. It's just beginning. The worst is yet to come.”
Now no more looking. No more being looked at. I push Aurélie aside. Storm out of my old room in the house on Rue Augusta. Go running down the stairs. Lifting my skirts high up off the floor . . . Now in the hall again. The outside door is shut, locked tight. The kitchen door too. Quick, the backstairs. There's a door in the attic. Must be a ladder down to the courtyard . . . Up on the second floor. Can't find the attic stairs. All the doors are shut. All but one. The one I forgot to close when I went dashing out. The room I slept in as a child. Pretty, all pink and white . . . I plunge inside, almost as if I were pushed in from behind. The bed has been changed, made up with care. (Though I've only been gone for a moment.) And the covers turned down. My mother is standing beside it. Telling me I'm sick and I have to go to bed. I shy away, look toward the door. Aurélie is there, blocking my escape . . . I obey my mother. Take off my clothes. Put on a chemise, trimmed with lace, set out for the occasion. And all the while my mother keeps assuring me that the doctor will be here any minute . . . Aurélie and her rollicking laugh. Rippling . . . She comes in now with a basin of hot water. A big round cake of perfumed soap. And a napkin made of Irish linen. My mother speaks to her.
“Put it down there, Aurélie. It's for the doctor.”
Sophie Langlade is here too. And Justine Latour. They're bringing me my slippers and my robe. Then a voice I can't quite recognize.
“Now let's reconstruct the facts the best we can, day by day.”
Aurélie Caron, Sophie Langlade, and Justine Latour are standing against the wall. My husband appears in the doorway. I'm sure that's who it is. My mother is still standing by my bed. My aunts are sitting on the couch, pressed close to one another.
It seems to me my bed is higher than it ought to be. Raised up on some kind of platform, or so it seems. With great shafts of light falling from the ceiling, above my head. It's as if I'm lying on an operating table. My mother, clutching my wrist, holding me down . . . Please, not an operation. Not a real one. This sickness inside me, plucked out like a violet. This hidden tumor . . . The silence is unbearable. I close my eyes.
My husband, Antoine Tassy, announcing in his booming voice:
“Doctor George Nelson. Elisabeth, I'd like you to meet an old school friend of mine. Haven't seen him in years, and now suddenly I find him here in Sorel . . .”
I insist that all the servants leave the room at once, even Aurélie. I ask my aunts to do the same. They go out, reluctantly. Beg me, with tears in their voices, to let at least one person stay. Sophie Langlade, whose testimony will be so important for my defense. My mother pulls the covers up around my chin. Now Sophie Langlade steps forward, trembling all over. So violently that she can hardly put one foot in front of the other. She takes her oath on the Bible, then says her piece. So softly the judge has to make her repeat.
“Madame was never alone in her room with Doctor Nelson. Her mother, Madame d'Aulnières, was always with her.”
All at once Aurélie's laugh chills me to the bone. It's coming
from somewhere inside the house. Piercing the walls. Loud enough to be heard outside. That drill-like voice, higher than any human voice should be. She's speaking now, so painfully slowly. As if the words had to be pulled out one by one. I can hear her in my room.
“I swear, Madame spent a lot of time alone with the doctor. With the doors closed. As soon as her mother went out.”
Sophie Langlade has left the room. A moment later, a man's step, coming down the corridor. Steady, self-assured. With something childlike about it. Lighthearted and confident.
I can sense, to my horror, that it's all about to happen. And that nothing on earth can stop it now from happening again, a second time. Once more I close my eyes . . . Antoine Tassy is talking to George Nelson, just outside my room. Now he shuts the door, goes off, strides down the corridor. My husband, deserting me. I'm sure that in his heart of hearts he goes along with everything that's going to happen. I recognize his voice. Deadened, as if through great wads of cotton. (The cotton they use to stuff the mouths of corpses with.) He must have shut himself up in the dining room.
“I'll let him examine her first. Then we'll get something to drink for my dear old classmate from those days with the priests in Quebec . . .”
I wish I could forget that dining room. Forget that it ever existed. That room in Sorel where my husband sits entrenched. His clumsy form sprawled motionless against a table leg. Let them rip that room out of my memory. Hack it to bits, slash it, saw it apart. Like a crate tossed overboard into the water. Let them take Antoine and sew him up inside a sheet. Him and his rabbit stew, his brandy, his schoolboy memories, his lord-and-master air, his big, brutish fists. His fits of anger and his crocodile tears.