“Father! If I could just say something?”
“I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother. And I have lots more ...”
“Forgive me for insisting, Father, but you know quite well that I was moved here by force after being essentially thrown out of the house in the village, where my children and I were very comfortable. The house that was owned by my father-in-law, and which therefore belonged to my husband’s family.”
“That’s precisely the problem, my dear woman! You make yourselves unwelcome everywhere, you and your badly brought up tribe. You realize that we — the town — have ways of getting rid of you, do you hear me? To banish you if you don’t change your attitude and refuse to behave in a civilized manner!”
Stunned, Lucie stares at this bald, well-fed man whose eyes are as round as his glasses. He’s used a strong word — banish, banish — he’s threatening to send her to the devil, she who has, who should have some rights to this land in this country. All of a sudden, she realizes that the era of tolerance has ended, that the vague pity and affection that have always surrounded and protected her — probably because of her widely respected father-in-law — have evaporated. For a long time, the old doctor’s mantle lay over his descendants, over Chonchon especially, the youngest, who was forgiven for his bohemian ways, for having married such an unlikely girl. But now that has gone, and she’ll have to play hardball.
“Doctor Tourangeau,” she says, to verify her disgrace, “always told me that I could rely on my neighbours’ benevolence, when ... He knew that Chonchon wouldn’t be able to support me and ...”
“You should realize that that’s over with; it’s in the past. The good doctor has been gone for several years, and it’s useless to depend on his influence. He is remembered as a perfectly honest man, and people deplore the fact that his descendants are so unlike him. One look at you, at your home, at your badly dressed children, and it’s obvious that you are nothing like him, nothing at all!”
Shaken by these words, Lucie bursts into tears. “But Father, that man loved me. If it wasn’t for him, I would have left my husband and all the children he kept giving me. He told me that I was indispensable to them. He accepted my habits, my way of seeing things. He said that love was the most important thing, and he knew that, in spite of my shortcomings, Father, none of my children would ever go without and, most of all, they would always have the love that makes life possible.”
“Love is good, of course. I preach it every Sunday! But do you think it’s enough?”
Lucie is sobbing now. Broken, she collapses at his feet. She wraps her arms around his knees, her mumbled words half drowned in grief. He remains still, waiting for the crisis to pass, but still she holds on, and, little by little, becomes increasingly insistent. He becomes frantic as it dawns on him that he has fallen into a trap of foul affection, that this crying woman is capable of anything. He wants to get up, run away, but she is stronger than he is, and his resistance suddenly gives way to her infectious madness. He pales, his head spinning, and loses all sense of reality. For a second, he retains an instinct to fight, resist the terrible pleasure being offered to him, push off the hands that are so expert at gentle, efficient, motherly care. Then he yields, consents, lets himself be overwhelmed by the tender, smothering wave, suddenly finds himself in a large, moon-like bed, where life, with long arms and immense breasts, envelops his desire. Now it’s clear, and he, the priest, lies naked beneath her as she thrashes like a hundred demons, watching him, and he wants to lick her smile full of large, slightly yellow teeth. Her large brown eyes have no depth, yet are filled with foolish dreams, and they bewitch him bit by bit, with little shocks of boundless joy drawn from some unknown source, as if this miserable existence could secrete something other than misfortune and death. How smooth, like silk, this stomach against his own, this sharing of heat. And now he communes with the joy that seizes him, or the pleasure, since this is a base affair of flesh, of animal, almost vegetal rhythms, a vast rush of blood and juice, an utter distension — ecstasy!
4
Walking along with his pockets full of time, Étienne often thinks about God. He watches himself advance as if he were two people. He sees himself, advancing alone because the fact that he’s a Tourangeau, the son of crazy Lucie, sets him apart and makes him someone who can be greeted but not befriended. He pictures himself moving along the roads, penetrating the heavens, which close behind him with a rustling of leaves and a swishing of clouds. And he thinks about God. His mother often talks about God, although she’s not devout. She’s pious by nature and treats her creator with more love than respect. Étienne is the same. He has turned God into someone to talk to during his long walks. With the feeling of his legs beating out the pace, his body vibrating with each step, his penis floating in his jeans, the belt pulled tight around his stomach, his limbs stretching freely, a rhythm of prayer overtakes him.
At first, he murmurs silently, without thinking: God, God, my God. Then more words come: great God, great, high, and holy, my high and holy God in heaven, heaven, and now, because of this presence, he sees the heavens better. The sky is like a beast’s quivering snout, radiant with blue and white air cells that are also distances, rays in which the being without form exists, greater than all else because it contains everything, the means by which I, Étienne, exist. And Étienne feels proud, and, happy, he evades his pathetic outlook, his lot as a boy with no trade, no place in world. Now he’s not a child: he’s a man filled with the joy of living, and the joy transforms him. He is reborn; rather, he is born all new into his skin, minute by minute, into the clothes that share his nakedness like a second skin. He feels handsome, young, and pure. God streaks through him like a comet’s tail.
Houses then become benevolent accidents, heaven’s acolytes lining his path. He moves forward amidst bounty and blessings. Behind a window that reflects daylight like a ghost, sometimes he catches a glimpse of an old woman’s ivory head as she watches him pass, unafraid of being seen. There are such old women whose only job seems to be watching, like witnesses, everything that passes by, young and old, good and bad, the unusual, the unexpected. A tease, Étienne waves and sometimes throws them a kiss or an obscene gesture, depending how he feels. They never turn a hair, but their icy judgments will add to the weight of evidence continually being amassed against the family of vagabonds in the court of public opinion, the vagabonds sprung from the good doctor’s work like a punishment for some nameless crime. Étienne feels nearly happy, almost proud to belong to the race of wolves, to receive his life’s vocation straight from heaven, where a great, holy, gentle God loves him wholeheartedly, unconditionally, loves even his hunger and his occasional shame, his deep yearning for freedom. Ah! the air, the air before his eyes fills him with a serene hope, tinted blue.
When he gets to the viaduct that straddles the rapids, where the lake pours into the river, Étienne stops to ponder what to do with his day. He could go to one of the islands, hopping across the stones, and fish using the rudimentary tackle he’s got hidden in the bush. If he’s lucky he could catch a bass or pike. But he doesn’t have a fishing licence, and it would be hard to sell the fish. Potential buyers have been aware of pollution’s effects for a quite a while now, and they are wary: “A nice pike, ma’am?” “No, sir! Your fish is pretty fishy!” In ecology, wordplay often replaces logic.
He has another idea: he could go over to Laval West and make some money on the golf course. Then he could catch a train to Montreal. To do that, he’ll have to use the train bridge. That makes him a little nervous, has ever since the accident a few years back when Ti-Nest Laroche got killed that way. The urchin hadn’t counted on the express train coming through and he was out in the middle when the train started onto the bridge. The jolting of the metal structure he was clinging to made him lose his grip, and he smashed his head on the rocks that protruded from the current’s web. The current was strong just there, and his body was fished out well downstream.
Étienne makes sure no train is