Читать книгу Settlement - Ann Birch - Страница 17

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Anna sat at the pine table in her bedchamber rereading the letter she had written to Ottilie von Goethe. Perhaps it was the type of letter that Mrs. Hawkins would label “Written by Lady Snob”, but Anna thought it was clever, exactly the sort of thing her friend would enjoy. After all, Ottilie, in her free-spirited way, was always on the search for a new man in her life.

Dearest Ottilie:

Are you growing weary of your lover, le beau Charles? Do you yearn for a new objet d’amour? Come here, my dear, and I will present you with an Indian chief.

He will be tall and muscular, and you will grow accustomed to the stink of his sweat and the filth of his deerskin leggings. He will be a man of few words, and those he speaks, you will not understand. So you will not have to converse with him, nor will there be tiresome preliminaries to your love-making. He will simply throw you over his broad shoulders and carry you off to his wigwam deep in the pine forest. On a comfortable mat of boughs and branches, he will make you his very own... squaw.

There will be household tasks you must learn, of course, but these will be easy. You must skin a bear or two to make a warm covering for the nuptial mat. You must snare a rabbit, skin and gut it, and boil it over your campfire into a tasty stew. He may need a gallon of cheap whiskey each day, but that you can bargain for from a greasy trader.

When your handsome chief tires of you, or you of him, there will be no lingering heartache. He will strike off your head with his tomahawk. Or you may do likewise. White man’s courts will pay no heed. Indians have their own marital customs and their own solutions for dissension.

When I contemplate my marriage to Mr. Jameson, I may envy you. We have our meals on a table, but I hear only the clink of the stopper on the wine decanter and the rustle of his newspaper. Sometimes I long for a bear to skin. Or a tomahawk to wield.

I have asked the Superintendent of Indian Affairs—a rather good-looking white man—to bring some of his Chippewa charges to meet me. So far he has not complied, but if he does, I shall pick the perfect specimen for you. In the summer I travel into the Canadian wilderness, where I shall find out more, and pass on my wisdom to you.

From your loving friend cum marriage broker,

Anna

She gave the letter to Hawkins to post. Somewhat to her surprise, she had discovered on one of her walks about town that there was a post office. She had heard so much from her European friends about the backwardness of Canada. This office was in fact an imposing three-storey red brick structure in the Georgian style. Hawkins told her that the postmaster had to pay for staff, fuel and candles from his own pocket, and she suspected that he rolled some of the letters he received into spills to light his hearth fires. Who could blame him? Few of the populace could afford to pay the postage on the letters addressed to them, and there were piles of unclaimed correspondence. She had seen how one old man abused the system. He claimed he could not read, had asked the postmaster to read the letter to him, then said, “Don’t know none of the folk mentioned. Won’t pay for nothing that’s not mine.”

She sat down then to do the translations of the German essays she had brought with her. She had just finished the second essay and started on the third when Mrs. Hawkins interrupted.

“Come quick, ma’am, there be people here to see you.”

She thought immediately of another dreary encounter with Mrs. Powell and her daughter Eliza. She was in Toronto to promote Robert’s social reputation, true, and she should probably be pleasant to them, but enough was enough. “Can you invent a plausible excuse, Mrs. Hawkins? I have three hours of study before me as you can see.” She gestured at the books on the table.

“But I think you be interested in these people, ma’am, if I may say so.”

“Not Mrs. Powell then? Nor yet Mrs. Robinson or Mrs. Widmer?”

Mrs. Hawkins laughed. “No indeed, ma’am. Mrs. Powell and them would have nought to do with these ones. Three of them, anyways. Three be savages and one be Mr. Jarvis, the Indian keeper.” Mrs. Hawkins’s cheeks were flushed with excitement. She flapped the skirt of her apron. “Oh, ma’am, to think of real savages in our new-papered drawing room. Do they sit upon chairs, ma’am?”

“Let them decide. I shall be there directly. And please get a meal ready for them. Anything you can come up with in a hurry.”

As soon as the door closed, Anna ran to her bureau, pulled open the top drawer, and found exactly what she was looking for, a bag of blue wampum. She hooked it onto the belt of her skirt.

In the entrance to the drawing room, Mr. Jarvis stood, ready to make the introductions. The Indians were in file behind him.

“May I present Chief Snake, ma’am?” he said, and gestured to a tall man in a red blanket coat and leggings. Fastened to the Indian’s grey braids was a long black plume which dangled behind one ear. The Chief bowed.

“And Jacob Snake, his son.” This was a younger man in a tri-coloured blanket coat with a pretty beaded pouch that hung around his neck. His cheeks were daubed with black paint.

“And Elijah White Deer.” Elijah smiled and pointed at the bag fastened to Anna’s belt. He said something in his native language.

“The Chief and Elijah don’t speak English, and I, alas, speak no Chippewa. Jacob will translate,” Mr. Jarvis said.

“Elijah pays you a compliment, ma’am. He says he likes the wampum bag which you wear on your belt.”

“Please tell him, ‘thank you’. The wife of the New York Governor gave it to me while I was in New York City on my way here. And please say that I too am impressed by the strings of blue wampum on Chief Snake’s neck. And that in a minute or two, my housekeeper will serve breakfast.”

All this was translated; everyone smiled and bowed. Anna noticed that Mr. Jarvis seemed especially pleased with her offer of breakfast. Then they moved into the drawing room where the Indians went directly to the fireplace. Elijah took the bellows and pumped up the fire to rich red flames. There the three men stood, backs to the burning logs, obviously enjoying the warmth.

Anna exchanged a few inanities about the weather with Mr. Jarvis. The Indians made no attempt to talk, yet they seemed perfectly at ease.

Mrs. Hawkins came into the dining room with a tray of cold meat, bread and beer. Everyone moved towards the table. At first the Indians tried to use the knife and fork that had been placed at each setting, but then they took out their own knives from the deerskin slings that they wore across their shoulders. Apart from a tendency to impale the ham on the end of these knives, their manners were good.

“Their restraint is remarkable,” Mr. Jarvis said, speaking quietly into Anna’s ear, “especially when one considers how hungry they must be.” In a normal voice, he added, “We are on our way to the Governor to ask for rations of food and a supply of blankets. My companions have walked over the snow a distance of eighty miles, and not one of them has eaten for two days.”

“You forget, Nehkik, that I have an excellent meal with you this morning.” Jacob Snake took a clean, but much worn, square of cotton from his beaded pouch and wrapped his bread and meat in it. He paused for a moment, looked at Anna, who nodded approval, and continued his folding of the cloth around the food. He passed his tankard of beer to his father, Chief Snake.

Anna turned her attention back to Mr. Jarvis. “I have some questions to ask while I have you here with your party. But I am fearful of giving offence through my ignorance.”

“I am happy,” Jacob said, overhearing her comment. “Not often does white man show an interest in our ways.”

So she asked about the making of the beautiful porcupine-quill baskets she had seen in the local shops, about their sacred scrolls, about the use of birchbark in their canoes, about their attitude to the white settlers, and about whether they were forced to take Christian oaths in a courtroom. While Jacob responded, he turned occasionally to speak to his father in his own language, apparently to check the veracity of his comments to her. The old man seemed pleased to take part in the discussion.

“And I must caution you, ma’am,” Mr. Jarvis said, “not to lump all Indians together under one category, as so many people do. There is as much difference between the customs and language of, let us say, the Chippewa and Mohawk nations, as there is between the French and the English.”

He looked at his pocket watch and rose, laying his hand on Anna’s arm and drawing her aside. “Time for our visit to the Governor. I do not know what our reception will be, and we must not keep the Great One waiting. Governor Colborne always looked on the natives as a problem to be solved, and I fear that our new man will be no better. Worse, in fact. I’ve heard that the common appellation bestowed upon him is Governor Bone Head.” He smiled, and Anna noticed again the attractive dimple in his left cheek. “But of course, you must repeat nothing of what I say, especially to my wife, who worries about my lack of discretion.” He shook hands. “Good day, ma’am. I hope you now have new insights. And perhaps I should tell you that Jacob is in mourning for his wife. That’s why he has blackened his face.”

In parting, Chief Snake said something to her which Jacob translated as, “The blessing of the Great Spirit be on you and your house.” Elijah White Deer held out his hand to her, and in a moment’s impulse, she unhooked her wampum bag from her belt and gave it to him. He held it aloft for a moment, smiled and put it immediately into his deerskin sling.

Last to leave was Jacob. Anna stretched out her right hand and touched his sleeve. “May you find happiness in the New Year.”

“Thank you,” Jacob said. “You and Nehkik are good people. Not often I find good white people. Only sometimes.”

Who was Nehkik? Anna wondered. And then she remembered. It was Mr. Jarvis, of course. Jacob had called him by that name earlier. And this “Nehkik” had actually asked her to keep a secret from his wife. What was she to think of that?

Mrs. Hawkins came forward as soon as the front door closed behind the guests. “Oh, ma’am, it be so exciting. Never have I seen a savage inside a white man’s house before. Only at the door when they swap salmon for butter.”

“Perhaps we ought not to call them savages, Mrs. Hawkins. They were anything but savage in their demeanour and their manners at table.” She thought of her silly letter to Ottilie. Perhaps she could get it back and tear it up. “Has your husband already gone to the post office with my letter?”

“Oh yes, ma’am, it most likely be on the mail sleigh for Kingston by now.”

So the damage was done. She had made a few bad jokes at the expense of people she knew nothing about. She was as bad as Mrs. Powell with her ignorant attitude towards the serving classes. She remembered the woman’s dismissive remarks about her maid’s pregnancy. Well, she would correct herself in her next letter to Ottilie.