Kamouraska (25 page)

The man is shivering from head to toe. His teeth are chattering. His bed shakes back and forth as if the floor were trembling beneath him.

Me, Elisabeth d'Aulnières, shut away in Louis Clermont's inn. Pushed up the stairs. Forced through the doorway of the traveler's room. Crossing his threshold against my will. Left standing there in
the darkness, all by myself. Racked by the terrible shudders that shake his body. Sensing in the very fibers of my nerves, drawn taut, the utter anguish of his sleepless night. Imagining his agonizing day, relived in the shadows. The visions, sharp and clear, dancing before his bulging eyes, as he lies there on his bed. Feeling those visions, batlike, fluttering past my face.

I can hear his breathing, a rattling deep in his chest. The darkness, thick between us. The thought of that haggard race, so close. His weary body, shivering under piles of covers. And the sleigh blanket, stained with blood, smelling of blood. My heart, bent on its own damnation, praying that the darkness never ends. That the light will never shine on that man, lying there in the depths of darkness. My dying heart, praying that never again will he come before me, loom up before me, run to me, hold out his arms to me, take me in his arms. This man who just murdered another. In the cove at Kamouraska. His solitude, beyond belief . . . Calling the darkness down on his face. Like the pall pulled over the heads of the dead.

The pity I feel inside me wells up in fruitless struggle. Desperately looks for some way to escape. A gesture, a word. Anything to force it free, out of my stifling cover of stone. The statue I've turned to. Saint Veronica standing spellbound in the doorway, upstairs at Louis Clermont's inn. Asking in vain for a piece of soft cloth to wipe the face of the man I love. Walked up here in my solitude. Transfixed in my own dark dread. Unable to make the slightest sign, the slightest gesture. As if the very sources of my strength, thrown out of joint, could suddenly put forth nothing but still, unmoving silence. I can't take even one step closer to you now . . .

Burlington, Burlington. My love is calling to me from across the border, from across the world . . .

Victoire Dufour unfolds an apron that keeps getting bigger and bluer. As if she had stretched it out and dyed it all blue again. Ties
it round her waist, fatter and fatter. Fills up the bedroom with her fat, blue body. Becomes a giant. Pretends she got up early just to go swear out her story to the justice of the peace. But really concerns herself with me, Elisabeth d'Aulnières. Tries to hold me here at Louis Clermont's inn as long as she can . . .

The traveler bursts out his room. I can see him from behind as he goes into the hall. The look of determination in his neck, nervous but still erect. And yet, a weakness that wasn't there before. Anxious, turning from side to side, again and again, more often than it should. A glimpse of his profile, dark and fleeting.

On the other side of the wall, the sound of Victoire Dufour waking her husband.

“Hurry up, Clermont. The horses are fighting in the stable!”

“Quiet woman. He told me to wake him at five, and it's already daylight.”

The traveler says he didn't sleep all night. Goes straight to the stove. Opens the oven and takes out the kettle. Tells Louis Clermont to come with him into the shed.

“He poured hot water from the kettle while I stood and rubbed. We got rid of the biggest one. But there was so much blood, all dried up and mixed with snow and straw . . . Then the one we call Blanchet woke up from his bench. Blanchet, from down the river. The one who slept by the stove that night and seemed to be so afraid of the stranger. And he showed up in the shed.”

“Damn! How did you ever pick up all that! They sure must have been a bunch of pigs, whoever messed up your skins that way!”

“The stranger told me to hitch up his horse right away. Meantime, he went inside to get his skins and his bag and his whip. Then he got into the sleigh, even before I took it out of the shed. And he spread the skins around, with the hair inside. I led his horse out of the shed and handed him the reins. He didn't even have breakfast. Just drank a glass of gin and left . . .”

Victoire Dufour, face pink as a cake of soap. Features blurring, blending together. Eyes growing paler and paler, immense, spreading like puddles. Gazing at me . . .

“When I got up it was daylight. I saw blood on the floor, all over. And I said to my hired girl, ‘There's no two ways about it, child. That man's killed someone!' She said so too. ‘There's no two ways about it. That's the only thing it could be. Just go and look outside under the porch, where they threw all the blood.' I went and looked. There was blood on the snow. I was frightened to death and I started to shake all over. He was up before I was. He even came and looked in at my room while I was getting dressed. As if he was after something. I thought it was a pretty dirty thing to do. But he just kept looking at me, real nervous. And the whole time he was in the house he tried to avoid me, and always looked the other way. I didn't much like looking at him either. But I saw enough of him to know him anywhere. When I saw all that mess and all that blood, I said to my husband, ‘Clermont, it's pretty plain. That man's killed someone . . .'”

“Quiet, woman. Don't talk so much. He could be an English officer and have us arrested. Times are bad. Maybe there was some fighting up the river.”

“I told him a couple of times that that man must have killed someone. Then I went into the stranger's room to get the basin he washed his hands in. The water was full of blood. And that morning, before he left, I saw him rubbing and scratching his stockings, with his hands. His eyes were real suspicious, real dark. I was good and frightened. We're poor people and our inn isn't very big, so we notice anyone that stands out and looks different. Well, when I was in his room to make the bed, I found blood all over the quilt, and drops of blood on the floor, around the bed. And near the stove, and over where he puts his bag . . . He never seemed to look us in the eye the whole time he was in the house.
And I saw those skins of his, trimmed around the edges, all red with blood . . .”

Victoire Dufour leans over my bed. Her face growing pinker and pinker. Shining, dripping with sweat. Now, through her clear, transparent cheeks and nose, you can see a great fire burning over the bones, melting away her face. Drop by drop. And all the while, as it turns to liquid, Victoire Dufour tries to catch my eye and draw it to the great big basin of snow that fills her arms. Tells me, in a whisper almost too soft to hear, to take a good look, with her, this one last time, at the blood spreading and freezing over the white, white snow.

The wind has died down. That furious something in yesterday's wind has died down completely. Those gusts of snow, all over the cove at Kamouraska yesterday, have stopped their blowing.

A traveler wrapped in blood-soaked blankets speeds in a black sleigh up along the river. Far, far from Kamouraska. Riding away from Kamouraska. Finished with Kamouraska. Now that he has wrung from Kamouraska all the importance and urgency it had to give him. Little by little he feels a boundless calm. A curious peace. All at once, rid of the burden that weighed so long on his breast. The frightful drive that held him in its grasp through his whole long journey — perhaps his whole life — lets go of him without a word of warning. Drops him, like an empty suit of clothes. Leaves him utterly weak and lost. So terribly tired. The powerful urge to lie down in the snow and quietly die. Now that his job is done.

He looks at the reins hanging loose across his horse's back, and spotted with blood. (He'll have to get rid of all that blood, really, once and for all.) So many things seem meaningless all of a sudden. Stripped of that terrible importance they used to have, and
probably still ought to have even now. Disarmed, defused. reduced to their simplest terms. Stripped of all their authority, all their prestige. No weight, no substance left, almost unreal. Even that furious passion. So trivial now, so far away, freed from the spell it was under. A dagger stuck in the heart, pulled loose all at once. Leaving behind it only a nice, neat wound. A sadness, that is impossible to measure. All yearning calmed. All thought of worldly wealth so utterly foolish now. To sleep, to sleep . . . And yet, deep in the heart, that gentle tremor, that muted ecstasy, down where the blood goes flowing through the veins. The victor's exultation, buried away beneath his weariness . . . Back over the road, without a care. To the red-blond lady, aflame on Rue Augusta, in Sorel. His joyous news that she's finally a widow, finally free. Hypocritcal tears . . .

Why, who would dream of marrying this woman now, after the tragedy at Kamouraska? Dear little Jérôme Rolland, you're raising your hand. Asking to speak. For a long time now that formidable child, too beautiful to bear, has made you tremble in the shadows. It's now or never. Just offer her a spotless name, above reproach . . . But let me warn you, George Nelson won't stand for such humiliation . . .

Your head is spinning, love, in the pale light of dawn. Your horse can hardly make his way through the soft, new snow. Since yesterday (long before the cove at Kamouraska), you haven't had a thing to eat. I'm on your trail. You can hear my sleigh bells jingling behind you. I'm Madame Rolland. And I'm haunting you, just as you haunt me. We're out of our minds, the two of us. Cut off from each other already . . .

Worn out and dying. After so great a passion, so strong a passion lived and suffered. The illusion of happiness, rising up before us. Like a fogbank over the frozen road. To live together, the two of us. Lovingly, tenderly, with no ado. Like two blue shadows on
the snow . . . “Elisabeth! Your body, opening, closing about me. Pulls me down, engulfs me forever. That brackish taste of seaweed and brine . . .” Ah! That blood all over the reins and inside the sleigh! . . .

The morning of February first, at about eleven, the traveler stopped at the inn at Saint-Roch-des-Aulnaies. He asked for lunch. But he hardly sat at the table for more than a minute. What he really wanted was to have the landlord clean the reins and carefully scratch the crusts of blood off the leather.

Anxiously, madly, I scour the frozen roads and the hours forever past. Stopping a traveler from time to time, asking at inns. In the wild hope of finding . . . From village to village I hear his description. His black horse, hind hooves white to the shanks. The man's black whiskers. His ruddy, dark complexion. The blood on the blankets. The blood . . .

But something is missing. A gap in the agenda of this man I'm trying to find. A gap I help create myself. Careful to avoid one certain hour, the most important one of all. These roundabout roads, just to keep away from Kamouraska. The cove at Kamouraska. About nine o'clock. The night of January 31st, 1839 . . .

Up at the manor, they're already beginning to wonder why the young squire has been gone so long.

Slowly the backwoods tidings make their way to Kamouraska. North from Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière. Trotting along with a dapple-gray old mare. Elie Michaud, a farmer from Kamouraska, told Blanchet he could ride back with him, in his sleigh. Blanchet, the beggar who spent the night at Louis Clermont's inn.

Now, in the barren stretches of his mind, Blanchet turns over the curious things he saw back there. A black rig, covered with blood. A stranger who didn't seem like any ordinary traveler . . .

The numbing winter cold. Blanchet's mind, asleep somewhere under a soft, mossy rock. More mossy and soft all the time . . . Snowflakes, one by one, dancing ever so lightly before his half-closed eyes. Elie Michaud sits dozing too. The mare knows the road. Slowly she wends her way to the stable . . . It's not so much the cold. It's that dreaminess in the flakes as they graze our faces. And we don't even try to brush them off. As if we were trapped in a glass globe, swirling with soft and gentle snow. Behind us, Louis Clermont's inn, and that curious traveler who . . . Ahead of us, the cove at Kamouraska, and that other traveler who, only yesterday . . . But none of that bothers us yet. We're all wrapped up in our furs. Thinking how nice it would be to pull those thick, warm
covers over our heads . . . Bloodstains at the inn. A stranger in the cove, who doesn't know which way to turn . . . Should we say something to Elie Michaud about it? . . . Now it doesn't even help to close our eyes. The red spots follow us in our sleep. Well, why go running after nightmares? Let's open our eyes good and wide. Let's take a long look at the comforting snow. In front, in back, all around us. The blinding, honest snow. And let's keep watching those dappled haunches of Elie Michaud's old mare, trotting along at her easy, familiar pace . . .

Wide-eyed, Blanchet gazes at the real world spread out around him. There, on his left, the cove at Kamouraska. With blood on the snow, all over the frozen path along the edge. Here and there on the highway too, not far from Monsieur Tassy's little house, up by Paincourt . . . He crosses himself. Wakes his companion, snoring softly, head slumped on his chest. Elie Michaud opens one eye, sees what Blanchet has seen, and shuts it again as fast as he can. Takes refuge with Blanchet, safe in the depths of sleep, where sometimes men are glad to mix together their dreams and the outrageous sights of life.

The next day, Saturday, the second of February, Elie Michaud is pulled from his nice warm house first thing in the morning. Drawn outside, for no apparent reason. The thought of those bloodstains, on the path by the edge of the cove, grows harder and harder for his mind to bear. Unnerves and torments him. Pushes him out of the house. (Toward the village, abuzz with rumors.) Wrenches him out of his solitude. Makes him yearn to be with his fellow creatures. Carefully, slowly unburden his soul . . . Elie Michaud walks into James Wood's tavern.

The tavern is full, despite the early hour. Everyone talking about Monsieur Tassy, who went riding off, Thursday night, in a sleigh with some young stranger. And no one has seen him since. The servants at the manor have been looking for him high
and low. In the village, out in the country . . .