Elle Page 6

  It turns its ungainly backside to me, shoves its black nose into a crevice and snuffles wetly, with anticipation. By the look of things, she is female, an old mother bear, a fact which increases my sense of kinship and identification. She begins to dig, using her nose and forepaws to push boulders aside, pausing now and then to lower her nose and sniff. She quivers with a wan excitement that only exaggerates her decrepitude. She is a sad bear, a dying bear, who, like me, is out of place and soon to be extinguished from this land of sudden sunlight and clarity.

  It is like a dream: The white bear scrabbles at the feet of the scarecrow woman in court dress. I am not afraid. The bear resembles me in so many particulars (skin, bones, loss of hope). In the distance, I hear a dog barking, though there can be no dog. I manage to rise to my feet and shuffle toward her, looking bear-like in my bags of bird feathers. I brush against an arquebus, still aimed at the contorted pines, though rusty and useless, the priming powder blown away by the wind. I stumble to the grave mound and subside upon a rock, from which I can smell the bear (pungent yet full of warmth) and observe the rheumy gentleness deep in her eyes. Her eyes remind me of Bastienne, that interrogative look: Why me, Lord Cudragny? What did I do that I should deserve to grow old and find myself starving at winter’s doorstep, digging in a French tennis player’s grave? I probably wear the same look.

  Bear, I say — it is a pleasure to speak to someone, even a bear, though my voice is weak, and I imagine my words freezing before they reach her ears. Bear, I say, you had better leave off digging. I don’t want you to eat Richard. Let his poor body lie in peace. You can eat me. I don’t mind. Don’t hurt your mouth on the bones.

  The bear snorts. Whether from surprise or disgust, I can’t tell. She turns her back on me, resumes digging. She mews like a cat. I think, this is the trouble when two worlds collide: It is difficult to discern the identity of the other. I have the advantage of the bear for having seen other bears. But the bear has never seen a French woman dressed up in pillows before. In a situation like this, the smell of Richard’s flesh is tantalizingly familiar.

  Bear, I say, raising one finger for emphasis, as priests do when they sermonize. Pay attention, bear. I grab a tuft of fur, give it jerk. It comes away in my hand. Oh, bear —, I say. But the bear, apparently taking my point, whirls round to face me.

  Her mewing modulates into a rumble. Black lips curling back, she snarls, then opens her cavernous mouth and roars. I have time to notice her worn-out teeth, bleeding gums and truly rancid breath before she lurches onto her hind legs, her torn foot pawing the air above her head in imitation of my raised finger. Her great roar vibrates over the island, sets my head ringing. The sound is black and terrible. It goes on and on. Then suddenly she falls upon me, those enormous jaws ready to tear me asunder.

  I have an instant to say a prayer. I think of confessing, but, really, where to begin? Something general and easy. God, forgive me. I was a bad girl. But I’m not dead. Being eaten by a bear seems oddly painless. I can still hear a dog barking. The bear is embracing me, not eating me. She’s very heavy. Perhaps she plans to crush me to death. Then I realize she is dead. Her eyes are closed as if in sleep. Her breathing has stopped. She seems very calm, enviably so.

  It takes me some time to wriggle out from under her, and I lose several of my feather bags in the process. I place a hand upon her breast, but it is still. Yet warm. What fur she has left conserves her body heat. I crawl (legs fail me again) to the hut and rummage around till I find the sword. Then I hurry back to the bear, thinking what a wonderful warm coat she will make. It is a difficult feat, but I manage to roll her on her side and slice into her at the breast, where I had placed my hand. The sword is dull and inadequate for the purpose. It takes me an hour to saw from her chin to her crotch. I reach in (as I have seen hunters do), drag out the bags and ropes of her guts and leave them steaming on the snow. I find her liver, like a slab of jellied blood. At first it makes me gag, but then I savour it.

  Oh, bear, I think. Now I will eat you, and we will know together the difference between being and nothingness. And you shall be another mother to me.

  I find her heart, not as large as I had expected, covered with fat. All muscle and hard to tear with my teeth. All at once, I am tired, sated with a few bites, languorous in the setting sun. Cold, too, because I have lost my feather bags. On an impulse born of the moment and the sight of those steaming guts, I gather sword, heart and liver, lift the flap of her belly wound and slip inside. I am suddenly warm, warmer than I have been in months, maybe warmer than I have been since my first (and otherwise useless) mother gave birth to me. I suck the liver and pull the bear’s belly close around me.

  Oh, bear, I think. Oh, my saviour bear. Then I forget myself and thank the Lord Cudragny for his bounty and fall asleep and dream I am a bear, young and strong, hunting seals along some distant arctic coastline.

  When I awake, I am still warm, soaked in blood and juices. But some movement has disturbed me, roused me. I notice the edge of the bear’s belly being lifted from outside, a shaft of grey light beyond, something sniffing (chuff-chuff) at the hole. I grasp the sword in my fist and slide out into the snow.

  Stars and moonlight and moonlight reflected off the ice — bright as a dull day. Someone’s feet loom before my face. Feet clad in fur, standing on two tennis racquets. Strange, I think. Then there is a dog’s face, big as a bear. I’m still dreaming, I think. But the dog licks my face. He seems pleased to see me, seems, indeed, to recognize me. I reach up and catch hold of his studded collar to drag him off. It is the ghost of Léon.

  What of My Uncle, the General?

  But what of my uncle, the General, Sieur de Roberval, JeanFrançois de La Rocque, a nobleman of Picardy styled by the King Viceroy and Lieutenant General in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay and Baccalaos, etc., last seen sailing west into the heart of the now-white continent after deserting me on this solitary island of birds (not demons)? Labrador is Portuguese and means a small landowner. Lavrador. So called by an explorer named Fagundes, who also discovered a nearby island group he somewhat wistfully designated the Archipelago of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. Baccalaos is from the Basque word for codfish, which are abundant in the waters off Newfound-land. We call them morue. In France the rude term for a woman’s genitals is salt cod. I tell you this, though I am not certain it is pertinent.

  Does he think of me as he sails up the Great River of Canada? Does he pray for my soul? Does his palsied hand quiver? Does he feel the slightest twinge of guilt or regret? (I had on occasion made him laugh, though he was a sour man and his laughter was like a grimace.) Does he inquire of my travails? Does he dream of me? Does he question his motives — for anything? He has a dark, greedy, conspiratorial, disputatious, hair-splitting Protestant soul. Everyone is his enemy. He is always right — like all Protestants, he has transferred God’s will from the Church to his own heart.

  Does he notice the tremendous forests that roll into the infinite distance on either hand? Does he wonder at the thundering rivers? The islands draped with grapes? The herds of deer in the meadows? Does he notice the savages, who, though no one has settled here for good, are already wary? Does he see the suspicion lurking in their eyes and behind the words of their windy, incomprehensible speeches? Is he anxious about the winter, which has twice defeated M. Cartier and filled the Christian graveyards by his landing sites? Does he balk when he sees how in just a few months the houses, barns and workshops M. Cartier built have fallen to pieces? How the garden fences have tumbled down and the gardens gone to weeds? How the savages have taken every piece of iron they could carry, right down to the nails? Does my uncle wince when he sees the graves? Does he imagine all those deaths by scurvy? The loose teeth, the swollen joints, the old wounds reopening, the depression, the mania? Does he fear his own death?

  What do you do with a headstrong girl? Does he feel righteous and blessed for having abandoned a little salt cod on the Is
le of Demons? Has he learned any of the words from M. Carter’s lexicons? The heavens, quenhia. Ice, honnesca. Night, anhema. Look at me, quatgathoma. The wind, cahona. Silence, aista. Does he even think that he needs to converse with the savages? Or does he believe his little outpost of Europe can survive and prosper on its own? Oh, the righteous shall carry all before them, and the whip and the scourge shall domesticate the unbelievers. Does he not see that he has indeed invented a New World, but that it is uninhabitable? That the future he foresees is but a lonely colloquy of the self with the self? That without God there is no Other? Look at me, I say. But I digress.

  They disembark at the spot where savages killed thirty-five of M. Cartier’s men the winter before, where starvation and scurvy carried off a like number. They see the walls and roofs collapsing, the fences broken. It is too late to plant. Though many of the General’s colonists are illiterate whores, thieves, pickpockets and drunkards, they can still count the stores. The savages, who were once friendly and helpful, have grown silent and elusive. A whole village melts into the forest. The General longs to smash their idols but so far has found none. When the cold begins, when the leaves fall from the trees, does the General begin to doubt? He has planned a model community based on rational lines and Protestant morality, with strict segregation of the sexes (in other words, a town run like a monastery), the nobles in the big house atop the hill and the lower orders in ramshackle dormitories above the storehouses at the water’s edge. He orders the ships careened on the rocky beach and breamed to burn off seagrass and barnacles. One catches fire and is nearly lost.

  When the stealing and hoarding break out, he follows M. Calvin’s policy and enlists spies — the cabin boy Pip and others — and cows the colonists with the whip. But thieving breaks out again. He dreams of becoming the new Cortez, a Pizarro, of finding the sea route to the Orient. He interrogates M. Cartier’s old pilot, de Saintonge, now half blind from sighting the sun along his cross-staff on too many ocean voyages. He has way-ward and meaningless conversations with the savages. Yes, of course, China is three days march to the west. You will find a big lake. It’s just on the other side. Or did he say to the north? Does the General notice how alien the land is? How words begin to fail? He sends men out to hunt, but the Canadian deer aren’t very good at standing around waiting to be shot with an arquebus. The savages watch with ill-concealed glee. China is fives days march to the south. You’ll find a big tree. Turn right.

  The new forge burns down. Deer knock over the fences. Jehan de Nantes steals a loaf of bread and is whipped and set in stocks. Petite Pitou is whipped for selling herself. They eat hard-tack and boiled oats. The colonists suffer from swollen gums and loose teeth. They trade nails to the savages for fish and venison. They strip nails from the buildings when the General isn’t looking. The savages wear skin capes made of beaver. The coarse outer hairs wear off after a while, leaving the smooth, velvety underfur. Enterprising colonists trade knives for capes. The savages think they are cheating the colonists and walk off naked in the snow, scarcely noticing the cold. Someone loses an ear, a finger, to the frost. Outside the front door is a pile of frozen shit. The General can’t sleep at night for the coughing, the snoring, the clandestine fornicating and the inarticulate prayers of the dying. Snow mounts to the roof before Christmas. The ships are frozen into the river. Where the river is not frozen, it boils and steams in the cold.

  There are months of this. They begin to watch each other die. They remember how the General abandoned a girl on an island. They think they are being punished. They think about food. They test their teeth in the dark, spit blood. They fuck Petite Pitou because they have nothing else to do. Stray thought: In the lexicon, the savage word for penis is aynoascon. They might as well be dying on the moon. China is one day’s march upriver. When the weather improves, the General sets out in a boat but nearly goes down in the rapids, returns soaked to the skin in a blizzard. Does he begin to doubt? Remembering M. Cartier’s stories of gold and diamonds along the river shore, he sets his starving colonists to prospecting. When they find a likely spot, they shoot gunpowder charges to loosen the ore. What they collect looks like ordinary rocks to the General, but he locks them carefully away. Does he doubt?

  A young woman (young, but you couldn’t tell it by looking at her), sick with consumption, also pregnant, steals a loaf of bread. The General orders her shot. An arquebus at close range leaves a hole the size of a cannon ball. The colonists quiet down. He gets a good night’s sleep. There is no place to bury the body. The frozen corpses of the dead are stored in the carpentry shop. He thinks of Cortez, the road to the Spice Islands, the empires of Cathay and Cipango and the country of the Great Khan. He thinks of M. Cartier atop Mount Royal, shading his eyes (like Balboa on the heights of Panama) to catch a glimpse of the silvery river winding out of the north-west. All these cattle, he reasons, thinking of his colonists, are Catholic anyway. Canada is worth every Catholic soul it costs. And he hasn’t even started on the savages yet. China? Yes, we have heard of it. We can draw you a map. We will take you in the spring when the ice is out.

  If they are so smart, why can’t they speak French? What happened to the ones who thought Cartier was a god? The General is ready to attempt Protestant cures upon the credulous natives. What was that miraculous tea they made for Cartier’s people that first winter? Some sort of pine tree. The General has his apothecary set up retorts, mortars, vats and colanders and sends him to scour the forest for the appropriate plant. But like Bastienne, the apothecary is at a loss in the New World. His cures make people sick, his balms make them writhe in pain. The General has him stretched between two pulleys and whipped front and back till he bleeds. The General bites his beard, stares at the table, tests his teeth. A scratch he got on the hunt won’t heal. Does he doubt? Does he remember me? (The dreams have already begun, and he sees my face superimposed on every woman’s face.)

  Léon, Léon

  Do not ask how I know what I know. I have dreams. That’s all.

  Léon licks slobber all over my face, which is more affection than he showed anyone when he was alive. Perhaps he is only licking the bear’s blood. You never know with dogs. They expect so little in life that any attention — a kick or a beating — is a sign of love. In that topsy-turvy world of emotion, my having drowned Léon at the entrance to the Great River of Canada was a testament of the highest affection.

  I must truly be in the fabled Land of the Dead. I am certainly not anywhere I ever expected to be at this stage of life — in Canada, pregnant, lying on the ice next to a white bear inside whose body I have taken refuge, naked except for the blood, slime and offal coating my body and the oddly attractive scattering of feathers glued to my skin, with a large dead dog tonguing my face and a strange man wearing tennis racquets on his feet standing over me.

  To be fair, he looks as surprised as I feel. We’re both seeing ghosts. He is short, squat and clothed in furs — slippers, gaiters, leggings, gauntlets, shirt, looks like wolf, a brush of tail hangs down behind — fat face slick with grease, a mask of spiralling tattoos, head shaved all around except for a top-knot tied high on his bare skull and threaded with a white bone. In one hand he carries a spear with a barbed bone tip, what looks like a child’s bow, delicately curved, and a hide quiver. In the other he grasps a shallow drum or rattle. Have I mentioned the tennis racquets?

  My teeth are chattering. I feel like crawling back inside my bear. I lean on Léon to stay upright. The man steps back hastily and shakes his drum at me. It sounds like bones inside. A man with tennis racquets on his feet is always at a disadvantage. I try to speak. I try to recall the savage word for friend. In my confusion, I think I tell him to come to bed. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t seem to understand. They speak a different language here. Or maybe M. Cartier made up those lexicons out of his imagination. Or maybe the savages purposely misled him. Okay, okay, let’s give him aguyase, I have bird shit on my face. Tell him it means friend. And I think how ripe the world of translati
on is for lying, betrayal, misrepresentation and fraud. It is always thus when one encounters another — child, father, friend, enemy, savage, astral being. A world of confusion, just like love.

  Léon, I say, turning to the dog, who is trying to lick a feather off his nose. Léon, Léon, I chide. Where’s the ball? Did you lose the ball? He looks suddenly guilty, peers warily about for something ball-like. I regret my raillery. I chuck him under the chin, scratch his ear. He really looks much healthier, leaner and younger than on shipboard. The icy land doesn’t tilt under his feet and give him the runs. His huge muscles bunch and flow with every movement under his glossy coat. I am happy to see you, I say. I’m sorry about the b-a-I-I. It was thoughtless of me. I got into so much trouble with the General. As you can see, things are not going well. The bear was going to eat Richard, and Bastienne lies yonder in the hut. I built that hut with my own hands.

  I am talking to a dog. Recently, I tried to talk to a bear. I have had worse conversations. I notice I am weeping. Tears trail down my bloody cheeks. A crimson bubble pops out of my nose. Again, a new look. The man reaches across the snow with a paw-like gauntlet, rubs my cheek, then examines the gauntlet. I can see he is thinking, always a surprise in a man. Then he surprises me even more by saying, in French, You are white? Not Paris French, mind you. Not the elegant Latinate periods of the Dominicans or the elaborate discourse of the Asianists. Something hybridized and contorted by his inability to mouth all the consonants. It sounds like, Chew air fweet.