Thirty Acres, page 24
In addition to all this, he was beginning to feel rather dizzy; he had hardly slept and had had practically nothing to eat ever since he left. His eyelids felt heavy and even his mind was weighted down by a drowsiness that seemed to stretch a thick curtain of fog between him and his surroundings. The walls of the room and even the people in it seemed to float in the air and to shimmer like a landscape seen through smoke, and every now and then he felt as if he himself were floating and had lost contact with his chair. The talk between Ephrem and his wife came drifting into his consciousness like scraps of cotton-wool.
“By God, Pa!”
He woke up with a start.
“I guess you’re falling asleep.”
“Why, no, not at all.”
He heaved himself up to shift the burden of his fatigue.
“What time do you go to work, Ephrem?”
“In fifteen minutes, Pa.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you.”
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” Ephrem muttered, lapsing into English.
Moisan began to feel strangely anxious for his son to go; he thought he might feel better if he were left alone. Just now he was aware of being intolerably tongue-tied, tense and weary. Like in a nightmare there seemed to be an invisible barrier between himself and his son.
Though Euchariste was far from being a chatterbox, there was the tale of all the everyday happenings back home waiting on the tip of his tongue for a question from Ephrem to bring it pouring out into the broad daylight of sympathy and understanding; but Ephrem asked no questions.
“Well, what do you do with yourself all the time? What’s happened to you since you left home?”
“Well, all sorts of things.”
Just then Ephrem’s wife came in and she and her husband started speaking English.
“Jack, it’s time for you to go to work.”
“O.K. I’ll beat it.”
He stood up to go.
“See you tonight, Pa. We’ll have lots of time to talk.”
“Fine. Well, good-bye!”
Euchariste was left alone or practically alone all day. Of course, there was Mrs. Moisan; but as soon as Ephrem left she seemed to forget the few words of French she may once have known. And Euchariste fell asleep in the armchair, lulled by the even purring of the vacuum-cleaner as it went from room to room.
At lunch-time he ate with his head bent over his plate and only looked up from time to time to see if his grandchildren were watching him. But they went on talking to each other in English, apparently unaware of the presence of this farmer they didn’t know but who was supposed to be a grandfather of theirs. Not the Washington Street one, who was a kindly old Irish man with gold teeth and gold-rimmed, spectacles, expansive gestures, and a cigar that stayed clamped in his mouth except when he took it out to make some sweeping statement. He was a real grandfather who glowered at his grandchildren with mock ferocity and was always slipping them ten-cent pieces. This person sitting at table with them was very different from that typical product of the United States, the Irish-American; he was their other grandfather, who had come from away up North, from backward countrified Quebec, wearing a shabby suit and muddy boots. His eyes were submissive-looking and there were drops of soup on the drooping ends of his moustache. This grandfather smelt of the stable and not of the barber-shop.
For the first time in his life Euchariste found himself in a place where he felt completely useless and in surroundings that he understood much less than the common objects of a farm, though these can be complicated enough; he was with people now who were infinitely less in sympathy with him than his own farm animals were. Here he was, being dragged along in a current he could not fight against and that threatened to sweep him off his feet.
After lunch he thought he might as well go out for a bit. Oh, not far – just in front of the house, where he could watch the unending stream of automobiles go by and the occasional pedestrians.
The front garden, which was about the size of a pocket-handkerchief was crowded in between the house and the sidewalk. In summer there would doubtless be a few petunias in bloom, getting their nourishment supposedly from the soot in the air. He stood near the sickly-looking flower-bed and leaned against a tree, for these were relatively familiar objects to him. But he didn’t dare sit down on the ice-cold doorstep or even smoke his pipe, as he no longer felt he knew what could be done and what couldn’t.
Then a shower of rain sent him back to the house. When he tried to get in he found he couldn’t; the door was locked. What kind of a country was this where even in broad daylight you had to lock up your house like a strong-box? He was almost ready to believe they had locked him out on purpose. He took refuge under the overhanging porch to wait for the rain to stop; it had now turned to melting sleet. Finally he slumped down on the doorstep and fell asleep.
Ephrem found him there when he came home from work.
THREE
Back home, on the rare occasions when Euchariste Moisan had thought of the States, he had imagined towns and farms that were far away, perhaps, but very like the ones he was familiar with. And he thought of the whole country as being gradually invaded by Quebec. So many of the families he knew had emigrated there that this living and prolific stream must have spread out into an extension of the Laurentian home-land: a new, American Quebec. No doubt about it. Every year, when the celebrations on St. John the Baptist’s Day opened the flood-gates of national eloquence, pulpits, platforms, and the press resounded with the usual paeans on the fertility and vitality of the French-Canadian race. A million and a half “French” in the Eastern States alone, just in New England!
And now he was in his son’s home, in a town where he had been told one-third of the population was of French descent, and yet everything was strange to him.
“Well, Pa,” Ephrem explained, “here in White Falls the French-Canadians are all sort of scattered around. There’s places like Lowell and Worcester where they’re all together in a gang in their own little Canada. But it ain’t like that here.”
Euchariste had been there for five days now and each day he wandered about near the house, venturing further and further afield as the surroundings became familiar to him. And, without seeming to, he listened to the passers-by, hoping to hear them talk French. But they never did!
Finally, on Saturday evening, Ephrem announced to his father with an air of triumph: “Tomorrow’s Sunday. We’ll go to the French-Canadian church for Mass.”
Euchariste was delighted. Not only at the idea of being among his own people again, but chiefly because this proposal allayed a half-formed suspicion that was beginning to worry him.
He had looked in vain on the walls of his son’s house for a single one of those religious pictures that are so plentiful in Quebec homes. One day, when he was alone, he made a special tour of inspection, trying to find at least the certificate of the children’s first communion. But there was nothing. And he got to the point of wondering whether his son had committed the dreadful crime of changing his religion. Why, he’d married an “English” girl, hadn’t he, and the “English” were all Protestants and pagans, weren’t they?
And now on Sunday even Elsie set off for an early Mass with her prayer-book under her arm and accompanied by the two children.
Euchariste and Ephrem decided to go to High Mass, which was at ten. As usual, the latter suggested they should drive. Indeed, ever since Euchariste’s arrival and in spite of the fact it was winter, there wasn’t a day they didn’t dash off along the highways and byways as soon as they had hurried through supper, and Euchariste was whisked off into a mad dance, in which factory-chimneys waltzed about with lime-kilns, while garbage-dumps and hillocks slipped by to the backfiring of the engine, as the car climbed grades in low gear.
Moisan had had enough of it, so this time he insisted they should go on foot.
As it was Sunday, all the shops on Main Street were closed, but the show-windows were full of cheap finery: sleazy garments of artificial silk, panama hats at two-ninety-five, imitation gold jewellery. Each tenth shop was a drugstore, displaying trusses, patent lighters, “home-made” candy, kodaks and the latest best-seller.
With its two rows of assorted buildings of different heights, built for the most part of brick, but interspersed here and there with wooden shacks, and dominated by the twenty-eight stories of the New Hampshire Utilities Corporation Building, which rose like a tower above it, the main street had the temporary look of a midway at a fair, with the booths scattered about near the church to celebrate the feast day of a patron saint.
There were a certain number of French names. Some kept their original spelling without any false shame: Gélinas, Barbeau, Francoeur, Legendre; some were slightly disguised: a Martel changed to Martell, a Barabé to Barabey, a Lainé to Leney and there was even a Lapierre who had become La Pier! But there were still others Ephrem pointed out casually: a White who was really a Leblanc; a Delaney who had been Chapdelaine; a Cross, Lacroix; a Gault, Legault.
Sunday had not only emptied the stores but also the streets, covered with their late winter slush. There were a few loiterers only in the cigar-stores and the garages. At every second corner stood a filling-station which tried to attract customers by disguising itself as a Swiss chalet or a California mission.
They finally got to a little street that led to an open space in front of the church. A few married couples with their daughters dressed in their Sunday best stood chatting in small groups in the damp March wind as they waited for Mass to begin.
Euchariste felt his heart-beat quicken: they were speaking French. Ephrem introduced his father to them right away and they shook him warmly by the hand one after another, exclaiming half in English, half in French: “Well! Well! Glad to know you!”
“That’s fine! That’s fine!” Moisan answered, overcome by a sudden wave of emotion.
All his bitterness had vanished in a moment. At last here were strangers speaking French, speaking the rugged familiar language of old Quebec. Everything else simply ceased to matter: time and space, his journey and these foreign-looking houses. A few ordinary everyday expressions had the magic power to make him feel at home again, as though he were back in some village of the St. Lawrence valley like the one he came from. And almost immediately he was surrounded by a little knot of men of his own age.
“So you’ve come right straight from Canada?”
“Sure. I’ve just been here a few days.”
“Well, what do you know about that! Where are you from anyway?”
“Me? I’m from Saint-Jacques-l’Ermite.”
“What? From Saint-Jacques? Can you beat that! My wife’s from there too. She’s a Lafleur, Ange-Aimée Lafleur.”
“She any relation of ‘Jésus’ Lafleur?”
“Why, sure, of course. She’s his cousin. Her father was Abondius Lafleur. Come here a minute, Ange-Aimée. I want to introduce you.”
But the church-bell began to ring for Mass and the various groups broke up and started to file through the narrow doorway in an unbroken stream, like the sand in an hourglass. Before going in, some of the men carefully crushed out their partly smoked cigars against the stone wall and slipped them in their pockets.
Euchariste was dazzled by the magnificence of the church. The reds and violets of a stained-glass window shone from the back. The filleted ceiling was studded with little angels, who clustered about the gilded plaster frame surrounding a huge Transfiguration.
The imitation-mahogany pews were quite well filled; the congregation was largely made up of women and young girls, the former calm and self-possessed, while the latter were all dressed up and kept turning round every now and then to eye the young men.
Euchariste felt care-free, relaxed and completely at his ease. It was just as if he had taken off a stiff new suit and got back into his everyday clothes, to which he was so accustomed he hardly knew he had them on. He felt he could move his arms and then turn around and twist his shoulders about with perfect freedom now he no longer bore the mark which set him apart as a pariah, a stranger.
“Say, Ephrem,” he said, leaning over towards his son. “Are all these here French-Canadians?”
“Sure, Pa.”
And, indeed, Moisan felt as if he were back again in the old church at Saint-Jacques, though, as befitted the States, this one was on a larger, newer, more prosperous scale. The celebrant went through the same universal ritual, but did it a little less sedately. Dominating everything was the heavenly and Catholic perfume of the incense.
When the priest appeared in the pulpit, Euchariste felt himself a humble and filial member of the congregation, his soul a part of the collective religious soul of his race; he even felt filial towards this very young man to whom a surplice lent a special dignity.
The curate took his wad of gum out of his mouth and stuck it carefully under the ledge of the pulpit before reading the announcements for the week. Every now and then Moisan found it hard to understand what he was saying. In addition to his American accent, the preacher had a curious way of swallowing his syllables! Euchariste felt more at home when proper names were mentioned, as these, even when slightly mispronounced, still had a melodious French ring to them, which was a pleasure to listen to. It made his whole body tingle. He felt as if he were immersed in a warm sea of friendship. In his new-found joy he was almost ready to get up and open his arms wide to all these people who seemed to welcome him.
So, when the priest took up the collection after the sermon, he felt generous and took all the small change out of his purse: a ten-cent piece and six or seven coppers, which he deposited in the plate.
The curate stopped dead. He looked down at the offering and then up at Euchariste. It was only then Moisan noticed that, aside from a few large silver coins, the plate contained nothing but bills. He turned to look at his son and saw he was blushing. So he sat there without moving and felt his happiness die inside him just as his bitterness had died a little while before; Ephrem quickly slipped a dollar into the plate.
Ephrem didn’t say anything, but right up to the reading of the last Gospel Euchariste felt his son’s annoyance burning into his side. His own embarrassment didn’t abate until he came out onto the square in front of the church. There they met Euchariste’s new-found friends again and, before going home, visited several of these hospitable Canadians. The women, who had remained more attached to Quebec than their husbands, spoke quite warmly of their country of origin, to which distance lent enchantment, and of friends and relatives whom they liked all the more because they hadn’t seen them for a long time. They ended up at the home of Mr. Dagenais who, after a great many winks and high-signs, produced a bottle of whiskey blanc from behind the piano. The knowledge that they were breaking the law made them feel like fellow-conspirators and they drank down the rot-gut together in a religious silence.
There were people there of every age, but all belonged to about the same economic level: there were old men of Moisan’s generation who spoke with a kind of nostalgia of the country they had left so many years before; Americanized French-Canadians in their forties who could still remember and who had acquired nothing in the States but a taste for a higher standard of living, a slight foreign accent and a corrupt way of speaking their own language. And there were even a few children who were shown off to Moisan as exceptional prodigies when, as was not often the case, they could be persuaded to speak the few words of French they happened to know.
“So you’d kind of like to go back home, would you?” Euchariste asked old Lessard, who seemed touched by the mention of Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pérade.
“Sure! I guess so. I guess I would.”
“Well, why don’t you come back with me? There’s certainly plenty of room there. And they tell me the land round La Pérade is pretty hard to beat.”
“It’s the best there is! But I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t think of going back for good. I used to think I would when I lost my thirty-five thousand dollars.”
Euchariste stared at him. He felt there was a bond between himself and this man who had also climbed the Calvary of ruin.
“I tried it, but living in Canada’s too dear. It’s not like round here.”
A pale-faced little woman with drawn features came up to them quietly.
“All the same, Mr. Lessard, to my way of thinking it’s better to be with your own folks than with foreigners.”
“Oh! It ain’t the same for you, Mrs. Léger. You don’t speak English. You was married back home; you’ve never got used to it down here.”
“Maybe so, Mr. Lessard, but to my way of thinking it’s better to be with your own folks than with foreigners.”
She was obviously homesick and would never get over it.
Still, she seemed to be an exception. They spoke of Quebec rather in the way you speak of a distant relative you are glad to get news of, but whom you wouldn’t trouble to go and visit – a relative too insignificant to inspire any feelings of pride. Of all the Franco-Americans there, two or three at most pretended to any degree of warmth in their regard, or boasted of having gone back home a couple of times. But it didn’t go beyond that. Their enthusiasm didn’t seem very spontaneous and was more a mark of politeness towards the visiting Quebecker; it was just a thin thread of sentiment in the web of their self-satisfied daily existence.
Moisan began to feel that he wanted a little more than that. So he managed to drift over towards the woman they called Mrs. Léger.
“It seems you get lonesome for Canada sometimes, Mrs. Léger.”
She gave him the answer he was hoping for: “Oh, yes, Mr. Moisan! You see, I can’t seem to get used to it here.”
Her words were as refreshing to Moisan as cool spring-water to a thirsty man.
