Thirty Acres, page 25
“And where are you from?”
“Me? I’m from Berthier, from Berthier-en-Haut. My maiden name was Boissonneault, Alice Boissonneault.”
“Maybe you’re related to the Boissonneaults of Maskinongé, the ones who live in the Trompe-Souris concession.”
“I couldn’t tell you. Probably.”
“Have you been in the States long?”
“It’ll be four years the twenty-seventh of April. When I was first married Frank wanted to stop in Berthier. But business wasn’t as good as he hoped. Besides, he got lonesome. It wasn’t the same for him; he was raised down here. So we moved to White Falls.”
A wan smile like a piece of borrowed finery lit up the little woman’s face.
“Well, well, Alice!” said her husband, as he came up to join them. “I guess you’re pleased to run into someone from Canada. That’s fine. You see I went to the Brothers’ school in Berthier myself. And that’s where I learned French and met my wife. You don’t have to tell me Canadian girls are the best there is.”
The group began to break up as people went off home for the Sunday midday dinner.
“Good-bye, Mr. Moisan. You’ll have to come and see us. Are you stopping long in the States?”
“Why, no. I just came down to see my boy here and get acquainted with his family. I won’t be here more than a few days.”
“Sure you will, Pa,” Ephrem protested. “There’s no hurry.”
And Euchariste went back to his son’s house feeling much happier.
The days went by. He was expecting news from Canada, but it was a long time in coming: three weeks later, at about the time he had planned to leave for home, a letter finally arrived.
“Here you are, Pa,” said Ephrem one morning. “Here’s a letter from home. What have they got to say for themselves?”
But Euchariste was in no hurry to open it. He wanted to be alone when he read it, without anyone there to make him blush in case there was a reference to recent happenings, to the notary or his own ruin, matters on which he hadn’t breathed a word to Ephrem. His son didn’t press him to open it.
As far as actual news went, there was very little; but there was something about the notary, just a few words:
“… as for the notary, they don’t know where he went. And his wife’s gone back to live with her folks in Grand-Mère.
“Old Touchette died of his cancer at last. The Onias Barrettes have moved away from here. They’ve gone to live with their cousins in town; he’s got a job as a gardener at some Englishman’s place. I haven’t been paid for the eggs yet. So I can’t send you your pension money right now …”
That was awkward. He would have to wait a little longer and stay on at White Falls. Why hadn’t Etienne bought him a return ticket instead of putting him off by saying he might like it so much he would want to stay in the States longer? As if at his age a man could be happy anywhere else but at home with his barn and stable and his stock.
His … That’s right, he had forgotten he had deeded away his property. That was something else he hadn’t told Ephrem.
At any rate, all he could do was to wait a little longer and sit there doing nothing like the retired farmer he was.
And supposing Etienne didn’t send him his money? How would he get back?
“Of course, we’d be glad to have you back home again. But if you could stay on a while longer at Ephrem’s it would save a little money for the new binder.
“And Phydime Raymond was elected school commissioner to succeed old Touchette.
“Love to all the folks in the States.”
Phydime a school commissioner! The man who had robbed him of a fortune and set fire to his barn! How Phydime must be chuckling!
Euchariste stood brooding, tasting his bitterness as he sucked at the ends of his moustache. His fingers groped instinctively in the envelope, trying to find something he might have overlooked: a postal order, perhaps, or maybe something in the letter itself, a few lines or phrases that seemed to be missing.
That was it. It didn’t say anywhere that the farm and the family missed him. Or that things weren’t running the way they should while he was away. He would almost have welcomed the news of some minor catastrophe.
He had only been away a month and yet so many days seemed to have gone by; so much must have happened in that time. For as he was out of touch with farm life now, he forgot how slow and measured its rhythm is, how unchanging its daily round.
When he left, one of the cows was just on the point of calving. And then there was the sow that had hurt herself on her yoke and didn’t seem to be getting better. Part of the barn needed fixing, up near the rafters. Of course, Etienne wouldn’t do anything about it until his father came back and had a look at the damage.
Ephrem’s children were sprawled out on the rug in the living-room, surrounded by a litter of picture papers and coloured supplements. Their mother had gone out, leaving them in their grandfather’s care.
But wasn’t he rather their prisoner? Not that they paid any attention to him; they hardly ever noticed his existence. But today he had to sit there idle, when he would so much have liked to get away for a little and go out of doors and along Jefferson Street until he got to the place on the outskirts of the town where the street ran along beside a little wood that hid the houses and the factories.
Ever since he had discovered this little bit of make-believe country, he had got into the way of going along there, rain or shine, to renew his contact with nature. And nowadays he made it the goal of his daily stroll, stopping when he got there to look at the bare branches of the trees that the sun, which was getting stronger and stronger day by day, would bring to life again. Pretending to go out for a walk and only mildly interested, he would go up to a small maple tree whose lower branches he could just reach. He always waited to make sure there was nobody about.
Then he would pull a branch towards him and cradle one of the twigs – always the same one – in his thick hands. He would carefully examine the tip of the twig. For some days now he had noticed that the delicate bark was swelling mysteriously and becoming mottled. It didn’t amount to much yet; just a slight bulge that you had to touch to be sure it was there, just a trace of red on the dark brown of the tip. But you could feel a suggestion of moisture from the sap that April was thawing out and that would start to run in May.
Every year back home at about this time he would go off across the fields that still slept under their winter covering. He used to say it was because he wanted to have a look at the fences. But what he was really after was some spot exposed to the sun, where the thin layer of snow had already melted and the grey tangle of last year’s grass lay uncovered. Then he would look until he found a blade of new grass, a tiny slender blade, heralding approaching spring. And every year, with unconscious superstition, he built his hopes of a good harvest on the auspices of this blade of new grass.
The branch meant all that …
The children started quarrelling all of a sudden and brought him back to reality. Outside a warm sun was shining that seemed to beckon man to his yearly mating with the fertile earth. But here he was a prisoner with the fetters of idleness clamped to his arms and legs. The calluses on his hands were beginning to soften because he had no work to do.
Elsie came in with her arms full of parcels and Ephrem got back soon after.
“Well, Pa,” he said when supper was over. “What’s the news from Canada?”
“Nothing special, son.”
“Is it still pretty cold up there?”
“They don’t say, but I guess it is.”
There was a moment’s silence. Euchariste slowly lit his pipe.
“Ain’t they getting lonesome for you at Etienne’s?”
Euchariste took a deep draw on his pipe and looked around in vain for a place to spit before lying with perfect composure.
“Well, they’d like me to come home because there’s a lot to do on the farm in the spring. They miss me all right. But the snow ain’t melted yet.”
“Oh!”
“So, seeing as I don’t often take a holiday, I’d like to stay on a few days longer with you folks.”
“You can stay, Pa. You’re no trouble.”
So saying, he went out to the kitchen where Elsie was washing the dishes.
FOUR
Euchariste had never expected Ephrem’s wife to be very demonstrative. He would have been the first person to be surprised and even embarrassed by anything of the sort.
For he was accustomed to the gentleness of the farmers’ wives and daughters in Quebec, where the long winters and the traditional struggle for existence have somewhat tempered the liveliness of their French blood. When French-Canadian women smile it is always with their eyes rather than with their lips.
But never once did Elsie throw him a kindly glance or give the slightest sign of filial affection. At first he put it down to her race and hoped she would thaw out gradually. He was content to wait and, with every suspicion of a smile that he noticed, he thought that the time would soon come when they would get used to his ways and accept him as one of the family.
He made little tentative advances, little secret moves to get into her good graces; and then one day he offered to come and sit in the kitchen to keep her company while she was doing the cooking. But she told him very emphatically that he would have to go outside if he wanted to smoke, and that was as far as he got.
Even his grandchildren seemed in no hurry to accept him or to show any signs of affection. So there was nobody left but Ephrem, and it was towards his son that he tried to direct all the tender feelings born of his loneliness. But he was always conscious of his daughter-in-law’s hostile influence coming between them.
It almost turned into a sort of undeclared war, a guerilla of petty annoyances. It was enough for him to say: “If you like, Ephrem, we could go over and see the Légers this evening,” for Elsie, who understood French well enough when it suited her, to remind her husband that they had to go and see one or other of their Irish friends.
He had never experienced such a long and trying period of loneliness, for he had always lived a collective sort of existence among people whose thoughts and decisions and actions were in harmony. These thoughts, these decisions and these actions were effects resulting from unvarying causes; the ups and downs of the land and weather conditions. Farmers don’t have to say much to understand one another, for harvests, storms, deaths, or elections produce the same reactions in all of them. When Euchariste stood by himself in a field, turning the hay, he didn’t need to look up; if he did look, he knew he would see a whole succession of fields just like his own with men just like himself pitching clover and timothy into the wind.
And it wasn’t that neighbours visited one another much back home. When you’ve reached a certain age you don’t go out to see people a great deal. However, a piece of news will travel from one end of the concession to the other in a few hours, passed on from neighbour to neighbour across the boundary fences. For farmers understand one another almost without saying a word, while people in the towns talk a great deal without really understanding each other.
It’s true that during the three months he had been in the States he had plenty of invitations: to the Légers, the Benoîts and even to the Tyos who, in spite of their change of name, were still good honest Taillons from the lower St. Lawrence. But one day, when he turned up at an awkward moment, he discovered that you should telephone first. He tried to but …
“I seem to have a terrible lot of trouble trying to hear through that there contraption!”
“It ain’t so tough!” Ephrem answered with a smile.
But no matter what he did or how frantically he glued his ear to the receiver and imitated the others by yelling “Hullo! Hullo!” he couldn’t hear anything distinctly.
At first, to make himself useful, he tried to keep track of the calls for Ephrem and Elsie. But the results were hopeless. He couldn’t have made a worse mess of things if he had done it on purpose. He got to the point of envying his grandchildren, even three-year-old Patrick, who knew how to get his other grandfather on the telephone. It made him feel ashamed of himself.
“Say, Ephrem, I guess I’m starting to get hard of hearing; that’s why I’ve so much trouble.”
That was the excuse he invented to save his self-respect.
He sat around all week now waiting for Sunday, just as formerly he had waited for Sunday to be over to get back to his usual round. All his life Mass had been a matter of weekly routine and now it had become a pleasure to look forward to, almost a reason for his existence.
Though the officiating clergy took no special notice of him, he tried to curry favour with them by putting a lot of money in the collection plate. At first these offerings and his tobacco had been his only extravagances. Now he had cut down on his smoking.
When Mass was over he hung round in front of the church, drifting from one group to another and ready to accept the least hint of an invitation. A little group of the same few people showed some sympathetic understanding; they made him welcome and were kind enough to ask him in for a drink. He was grateful and wanted to do honour to their hospitality, so now he sometimes took a drop too much, though that sort of thing had hardly ever happened to him before.
When Ephrem was with him and it was raining, a card game was generally fixed up for the afternoon. But if the weather was fine they inevitably went for a drive in the car, so that every Sunday morning Euchariste looked anxiously out of his window hoping for signs of rain. It was no longer from a feeling of concern for the crops and the thirsty fields, but because he wanted to escape these long rides that shook him all to pieces; sometimes, however, he would be left at home on some vague pretext or other.
There was no news from Saint-Jacques. Each day’s silence made him feel more helpless; he no longer stood upright on the solid familiar earth of his fields; he was being sucked down into unknown quicksands into which he felt himself sinking relentlessly. At times he even had that unbearable sensation of timelessness that comes to travellers lost in the forest. It seemed as if he would never, never get away from the place.
A bud began swelling on the branch of the maple tree and burst finally to thrust out the green cluster of its newborn leaves into the soft spring air. From a distance everything still looked bare, but from close at hand each branch was taut and ready for the springtime explosion of its vital sap into leaves and petals.
In the new green of the underbrush, down in the little wood, a few flowers had already sprung up to brave the cold nights: stalks of spring beauty with their clusters of pink blossoms peeping out between their twin leaves, wild columbine too and liverleaf, reflecting the pale blue of the sky.
Further out, in the fields themselves, the flowers that Moisan knew well from having struggled against them were coming along fast: the tiny bridal bouquet of the shepherd’s purse, the white sprays of penny cress and the green stalks of sweet hay. These comely agricultural pests were only a decorative and fragrant advance-guard for all the others.
Each year, as a rule, Euchariste was completely dumbfounded by the vigorous growth and flowering of the weeds. He couldn’t understand it. The fact that Divine Providence made life easy for these pests, while useful crops needed so much work and care and worry and sweat, was the only thing that might have made him question it. And every time he came on an isolated tuft of field sorrel or plantain he would root it up with unconscious violence, though he let the daisies grow all over his fields. The paper told him all he had to do was to sow with clover and mow it early. But what was the use? There were too many of them.
And now today – a today that was so different from the yesterdays he had known – he found himself stooping to look with suppressed emotion at a single tuft of shepherd’s purse, though he would never have stopped before the most lavish display in a florist’s window. The fact was that this weed now reminded him of what he missed most keenly: that feeling of exhaustion after a day’s ploughing or seeding, the anxiety at the sight of a storm cloud that comes to darken the spotless blue of the sky on the very last day of the haying, the many worries caused by the mysterious ailments of the stock. How he longed for all that now.
Because he had lived his whole life in contact with the land, he had adopted its rhythm. Towards the end of autumn a feeling of peace would pervade his whole being, a sort of torpor like the somnolence of hibernating animals, or the mysterious yearly lethargy of the seed buried in the soil which is merely a prelude to germination. And then, as with the animals and all growing things, when the sun returned from the South it would fill him with new blood that came bubbling up eager to cope with any weariness. This natural rhythm with which city folk have lost all contact had been an actual part of him for sixty years. And now that it was spring again he felt this deeply rooted instinct flowering within him.
There was a tiny yard attached to Ephrem’s house.
“Do you know what, Ephrem, while I’m here I’d like to plant a garden for the kids.”
“Well, Pa, suit yourself.”
“You see, I’ll fix the ground for them and sow some carrots and some parsley and some tomatoes. All they’ll have to do will be to weed it a little once in a while.”
The children received this suggestion with an outburst of enthusiasm and for the first time Euchariste felt he was really their grandfather.
With a coal-shovel instead of a spade, a rake and a broken kitchen-knife, he cleared the yard of its litter of old crates and tin cans. The space had to be carefully measured and marked out to leave the entrance to the garage free; but, by squeezing them close together, he managed to lay out three beds with sufficient exposure to the sun.
When the time came to plant the garden, it was the children who did the seeding under his direction. One of them dropped the seeds into the row of holes prepared beforehand and raked in the earth; the other came along and sprinkled the bed from a brand-new watering-can.
Ephrem came out of the kitchen and joined them.
