The Old American (10 page)

The next item of interest is men working fish traps. “Some kind of basket contraption … what is its purpose if not to catch schooled fish?” Nathan asks, his feelings under control now.

Caucus-Meteor repeats his question in Algonkian. Nathan mouths his English words in the Algonkian language. Caucus-Meteor answers in Algonkian, then translates into English. “The ocean tide hundreds of miles away brings eels to the baskets.” Nathan nods with the satisfaction of received knowledge.

“I would like you to practice saying the name of the place where I am taking you.” Caucus-Meteor pronounces the name of the village—Conissadawaga, makers of shoes, People-in-Exile. “Twist thy tongue, Englishman.”

Nathan tries three times to pronounce the name, and eventually succeeds. “Very good, Nathan Blake,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“Are the people of Conissadawaga like the people of Kahnawake?” Nathan asks.

“The people of Kahnawake are Catholic Mohawks who still maintain some ties with their Protestant and pagan brothers and sisters in the Iroquois confederacy,” he says. “My wife was Iroquois, but I have already told you about my people, who do not even speak the same language as the people of Kahnawake and who in olden times fought the Iroquois.” Caucus-Meteor speaks first in English, then Algonkian.

“How did your people come together?” Nathan asks.

“Why, through sorcery,” Caucus-Meteor says in English only.

Omer addresses Nathan in his peculiar French, “Your master, Caucus-Meteor, gathered these people as one picks fruit fallen from the tree.” He turns to Caucus-Meteor and says in Algonkian. “Can I tell him?”

“You might as well, for he will learn eventually.”

Omer says in French to Nathan, “Your master, Caucus-Meteor, is the son of a great king.”

But Omer's French is too much for Nathan, who blinks in confusion. Caucus-Meteor laughs, says in English, “Omer was bragging on my behalf. He was telling you that I am the son of King Philip.”

“Yes, I know the story,” Nathan says, “but I did not know that the king had a family.”

“My father was killed, his people defeated and scattered; my mother and I were sold into slavery in the islands in the southern sea, but on separate plantations,” Caucus-Meteor says. “I never saw my mother again, nor heard word about her. During one of those brief periods of peace between England and France, my slave master brought me to Europe to train as an interpreter. I saw both London and Paris. In those days, my master dressed me in robes, feathers, and war paint. He'd show me off as a creature part Roman centurion and part New World warrior. I loved the admiration. I still do.”

Caucus-Meteor doesn't say that the son of King Philip was never allowed to learn to read or write, so that despite his demonstrated intelligence and gift for languages he could still be regarded as an ignorant savage.

“Listen, Englishman, while your master teaches you to be a proper slave,” St. Blein says to Nathan in broken English.

“I have no experience in the enterprise of slavery,” says Nathan in the kind of haughty tone that's not fit for a slave, but Caucus-Meteor lets the insolence go.

“I would think it would come naturally, given the disposition of your people,” says St. Blein.

“Nathan Blake, can you smile falsely?” asks Caucus-Meteor.

“How long can a man live within himself if he smiles falsely?” Nathan asks.

“Longer than if he displeases his master with offensive honesty,” says St. Blein.

Nathan frowns, grins, grimaces. He's confused now, thinks Caucus-Meteor.

“In your own way, you are very funny, Nathan Blake,” says Caucus-Meteor. “Make note that a man, like a child, can learn all he has to know by pretending.”

“Yes, master,” says Nathan, but his face says no.

“Perhaps you are thinking of what you can lose in addition to what you have already lost,” Caucus-Meteor says. “You are worried that you will lose the struggle to determine truth from falsehood, which is always the problem even if a man is not a slave. Surprisingly, for a slave, the distinctions are easier to grasp, because pain teaches the difference.”

“You are a slave no more,” Nathan says. “Did your master grant your freedom?”

“My master treasured freedom for himself. I ran away. The first time I was caught after a week of wandering. My master's feelings were hurt that his slave should betray him so. He whipped me almost to death. But he did not defeat me. I survived by devising a secret plan.” Caucus-Meteor translates his English into Algonkian. The exercise gives him pleasure.

Omer Laurent is interested now; he breaks in, speaking in Algonkian, “This plan, if I had a piece of it, would it help my canoe transport?”

“Some victories are better savored in private, so I will not reveal my plan. Whether an understanding of my cached heart would help your business I cannot say.” He switches now to English, “Slave, you'll need a plan of your own to survive the rigors of your captivity, so pay attention.”

Nathan laughs a little. “My father's favorite expression was ‘pay attention.'”

Caucus-Meteor is thinking that even after he'd escaped and carried out his plan, it still took many years to remove the slave inside the core of himself so that he could be a true, free American. But if he can say one thing about his life, it is that eventually he did succeed. Today he stands like an old maple tree that rings hollow, his core of hatred rotted out, empty, a living drum that makes music from the blows of life, in danger of toppling from the weight of his accumulated knowledge.

Caucus-Meteor catches St. Blein's eye.

“You've been unusually quiet, my commander,” Caucus-Meteor says.

“I worry more when I am not at war. Perhaps it is time that I spoke my mind. Omer,” he says, “you pay a bribe to the intendant's man in Montreal?”

“Why do you ask, do you work for him?”

“No, I work for Canada. I despise the intendant,” St. Blein says.

Omer doesn't like this kind of frank talk. It could get him in trouble, and he attempts to change the subject. “There used to be a sand bar there”—he points with his paddle—“gone today. The river never lets you rest, because your knowledge of it is never entirely true.”

“And so it is with a leader of a nation, for a people are like a river. My ensign,” Caucus-Meteor addresses St. Blein in the familiar
tu,
“you didn't talk so wildly when we were fighting Englishmen and burning their barns.”

“I was too busy making war to express my political beliefs.”

“You seemed to enjoy the business of war.” Caucus-Meteor is teasing, but the young French officer remains serious.

“I like to make war, because there's no room for conscience or consideration. Everything is as simple as life and death. Now, however, I am not at war”—he stops in midsentence to laugh without mirth, then adds—“except with my beloved enemy—moi.”

“You are thinking about your destiny, then; this is common and admirable among young men,” says Caucus-Meteor. His mind suddenly and unaccountably a conjuring apparatus, Caucus-Meteor notes that Omer Laurent is no longer listening. He can tell we are testing one another, that the true subject matter is palace intrigue; Omer Laurent is interested in our talk only in so far as it affects his enterprise. And anyway since we are talking rapidly in formal French, he has lost the meaning. Caucus-Meteor's mind turns away from conjuring to the world of time and event-present; St. Blein is about to speak.

“I do think of myself as one destined,” says St. Blein, “but I think first of my country, and I am not talking about Old France.”

“You are wasting your nobility, Ensign,” Caucus-Meteor says. “Nothing can be done for New France as long as Old France rules Quebec.”

“Perhaps you are right,” says St. Blein. “The logical conclusion, well, I dread to speak it.”

“But you must.”

“Yes, I must. Something more than talk must be the instrument to halt the demise of Canada. One has to act.” St. Blein launches into a long speech, criticizing corruption in the government offices. But the speech ends in frustration and a grimace.

“What you need,” says Caucus-Meteor, “is what is known in the English language as a motto. I think what you are trying to say is: Canada for Canadians.”

“Yes, that's it—Canada for Canadians!” St. Blein speaks the phrase as if he had invented it.

Omer Laurent doesn't like the tone of the conversation. Grand ideas, grand emotions, especially coming from privileged young

Frenchmen, usually mean some unforeseen difficulty for his own kind.

St. Blein enjoys the feeling of one who senses that his long felt ideas have come to the surface and now can be expressed. “The people of North America—French, native, English, Dutch, Scots, even the freed African—have more in common with one another than they do with those of Europe,” he says. “We quarrel amongst ourselves because of interference from Europe.”

Caucus-Meteor smiles. St. Blein conveniently set aside his knowledge that the tribes were at war with each other long before the arrival of the trading ships from across the sea. He imagines love and peace, if only the governments of France and England were driven off the continent.

“Good thinking,” says Caucus-Meteor in a tone of gentle mockery.

Omer's canoe party arrives in Quebec City in midafternoon. Nathan gazes at the stone fortifications surrounding the city. He appears impressed.

“Is it the massive walls that move you so?” asks Caucus-Meteor.

“More the order in the design and the cunning behind the labor,” Nathan says.

Caucus-Meteor suddenly feels very inferior to his slave. It's not what these Englishmen say, he thinks, it's how they say it, with self-assurance.

Omer counts thirteen oceangoing vessels in the harbor and many smaller French skiffs and canoes. “The sun tells me we're an hour later than I'd hoped,” he says, looking critically at Caucus-Meteor.

“Don't feel too embittered against your king for not paddling hard—he is an old man,” Caucus-Meteor teases. He puts a hand on the shoulder of his kinsman.

Omer forces a laugh. He brings the canoe to a dock, and tells Caucus-Meteor that he and Hungry Heart will join the tribe when ice clogs the river.

“And you will bring me part of your profits for tribute to be paid to the intendant, correct?” Caucus-Meteor smiles without showing teeth. Omer winces, but nods in compliance to his king's request. Caucus-Meteor knows that Omer's resentful because he's paying double taxes, tribute to the intendant's man to operate his business in Montreal and tribute to Caucus-Meteor to fulfill his obligation as citizen of the village of Conissadawaga. Maybe if I provoke him enough, he'll drown me one day, thinks the old king, watching Omer depart. Omer will loiter around the docks until someone is ready to pay him for transport, maybe a red-capped voyageur heading north to Tadousic, where the furs come down the Saguenay from the Hudson Bay region, or some traders going south to Montreal or west on the Ottawa.

Caucus-Meteor turns his attention to Nathan, who appears to be studying the city. He likes things, thinks Caucus-Meteor, he likes buildings, he likes man-made structures; people leave him disturbed.

Quebec is divided into two sections. Here in the lower section is a marketplace with shops selling leather goods, candles, clothing; alongside the mercantile establishments are churches, convents, taverns, and inns. Strolling streets paved with stones laid like brick are priests, nuns, merchants in colorful garb, seamen, and Americans.

“These houses are considerably more elaborate in style than even the houses of your own cultured town, Boston,” says Caucus-Meteor.

“Too fussy,” Nathan says. “Though I admire the stone work of the streets and houses, I prefer timber-framed dwellings with clapboard siding painted white, plain, square corners.”

“My own preferences run to sticks,” says Caucus-Meteor. “I don't like to see wood mutilated with saws and irons.”

Nathan responds with a polite nod. The idea that boards are inferior to branches is not only alien to him, it's seditious. Caucus-Meteor is pleased that he's dumbfounded his slave.

“We soon will enter one of those buildings you admire, for we are going to the intendant's palace to see the intendant's man.”

Nathan nods wisely, the way people do when they don't understand. Caucus-Meteor doubts whether he knows what an “intendant” is.

Caucus-Meteor bribes the intendant, whose “man” keeps priests, soldiers, fur traders, ambitious Americans, and earnest public officials from taking over Conissadawaga. Without public succor from the intendant, the village of castoffs would disappear, for unlike the Hurons in nearby Wendake or the Mohawks of Kahnawake, or the various Algonkian peoples from Odanak, its inhabitants don't have the power of numbers, the blessing of the Roman church, or the influence of arms needed for survival in Canada.

Caucus-Meteor senses that St. Blein has strange matters on his mind. He wonders what they are. After Omer leaves them, Caucus-Meteor says in his most aristocratic French, “Ensign, I believe your family lives near the intendant's palace. I am going in that direction, so perhaps we can walk together.”

St. Blein gestures wildly as he answers, “Better yet, let's ride by carriage—I'll pay.”

“Excellent,” says Caucus-Meteor, though he's a little suspicious. When a Canadian offers to pay an American, it means the Canadian wants a service.

St. Blein hails a horse-drawn carriage. The driver has a salt-and-pepper beard and smokes a long-stemmed ceramic pipe. The men look where they step, which is the common-sense rule in streets dominated by horse traffic.

Off they go in the carriage, the ancient American interpreter, the rebellious French officer, the stalwart English captive. For a few minutes, no one speaks; they listen to the pleasant sounds of horse hoofs on stone-paved streets.