Читать книгу Barkskins - Энни Пру, Annie Proulx - Страница 13

Monsieur Bouchard and Père Perreault entered the clearing riding double on Monsieur Bouchard’s old plow horse. René, hauling a basket of fish, straightened up and stared. The visitors passed the storehouse without stopping, heading for Monsieur Trépagny’s marriage house. But that elevated gentleman, who had been working at his old forge, saw them through the open door and rushed out. “Where do you go, Monsieur Bouchard? Père Perreault, what do you here?”

The deputy wheeled around, dismounted and glared at Monsieur Trépagny. Père Perreault got down as well and held the reins.

Monsieur Bouchard said, “It is distressing that I find you here and not at your grand house with your lawful wife, Madame Trépagny. I have had a letter from the lady, who complains that you continue to live with the Indian woman, Mari, and are rarely seen at that wedding mansion in which she is lawfully ensconced and where you should be.”

Père Perreault spoke in a serious tone: “She wishes to return to her uncle’s house in France and demands the return of the rich dowry given you as you have broken your marriage pledge. You have behaved badly and the lady is within her rights. The uncle is a powerful man. He has taken up the matter and it will be a serious thing for you—and your position as seigneur. I ask you to accompany us to that house where she now awaits alleviation of her painful and insulting situation.”

Monsieur Trépagny followed them silently into the gloom of the west trail.

The day passed slowly. René told Chama and Mari what he had seen and heard. He thought a little smile flickered across Mari’s face. When she went inside Chama said, “This nephew should have proceeded in his search for Duquet. He should have stayed with that rich wife. Whenever there is an Indian woman involved there is trouble. His French wife is not the kind to shut her eyes.”

Night came and still they did not return. Chama said, “Claude will be begging her, he will grant anything she wishes rather than lose the money and the important position. I know him.”

Very early the next morning, as René and Chama were readying for another day of clearing trees, the three men, all in good humor, returned.

“Tell him at once,” said Père Perreault. “At once.” And they all looked at René.

“What? What is it?” he said. He had still not had a chance to talk to Monsieur Trépagny about his land, and he was afraid now that the seigneur had found a way to evade the responsibility.

“You will marry Mari,” said Monsieur Trépagny. “Immediately. Père Perreault is on hand to officiate.”

“No!” cried René. He whispered, not wishing to be overheard by Mari. “She is old. I do not want to marry her.” He had dreamed of a wife from one of the consignment ships with women from France, the King’s girls—les filles du Roi. A charming and shy young woman with blue eyes. “Also, you and Mari—”

“It was only a country marriage.” Père Perreault let the words slide out in his gentle way. “Just a country custom.”

“But no,” said René.

“You do not yet see reason,” said Monsieur Trépagny pleasantly. “She will help you make a house of your own on the land I grant you, and I will be very generous. I will grant you a double portion of land. You will have good workers to aid you—those Indian boys Elphège and Theotiste and that servant girl Renardette. Mari is a clever cook. She will warm you on winter nights. She is adept in curing illness. She has value. What more could you want?”

Mari herself was standing in the doorway, listening without expression. Père Perreault signed to her to come near. René thought furiously in several directions. But to himself he added another reason to Monsieur Trépagny’s list: with Mari at his side he could learn to read and write or, even better, depend on her to do whatever reading and writing was needed. The blue-eyed fille du roi of his dreams vanished. Again he felt himself caught in the sweeping current of events he was powerless to escape. What could he do against the commands of more important men? He nodded once, yes, he would marry Mari, an old Indian woman. So it was done.

In every life there are events that reshape one’s sense of existence. Afterward, all is different and the past is dimmed. For René the great blow had been the loss of Achille, his brother, whom he loved and most dreadfully missed. He came to New France to escape the loss, not realizing he would carry sorrow enclosed within him. The second event was the forced marriage to Mari.

Monsieur Trépagny made a formal assignment of land to René, granting him the old domus and workshop and the gardens but not the cow, as well as the clearing to the west that René coveted and the land with clear water springing from under a yellow birch. René was, in one stroke, a man of property. Père Perreault and Monsieur Bouchard left soon after the brief ceremony with Monsieur Trépagny’s signature on René’s land assignment.

Monsieur Trépagny spoke with casual sarcasm to Mari. “Madame Sel. Cook dinner as you always do and Chama will bring it to my lady wife and myself. After this evening her maid will prepare our food until we find a cook and servant. We will purchase a Pawnee or blackamoor slave or two from Kébec.” He walked westward into the forest.

Six woodcock had been hanging for days and had reached the hallucinogenic point of decay that Monsieur Trépagny savored. Mari roasted the birds, put them in a large basket, added a cold leg of venison, four portions of steamed sturgeon. René thought it was a supper the seigneur hardly deserved. Chama, who had become attentive to the Spanish maid, carried all of this in the oxcart, the cow tied behind. For their own supper Mari thumped on the table a platter of hot eels graced with the sour-grass sauce. She had baked in the morning and served a loaf of bread with the last of the butter—alas for the loss of the cow.

Mari, walking from fire to table in her deerskin tunic, looked as she had always looked, but she gave René the fattest eel and touched his hand lightly. After the boys went out to the wikuom she made up a pallet in front of the fireplace and then pulled off her baggy dress. She stood nude in the firelight—the first naked female he had ever seen—not an old Indian castoff foisted on him, but a strong and well-built woman. She lay on the pallet and waited.

René pulled off his clothes, conscious of his greasy reek. He lay down beside Mari, who rolled toward him. The fabulous shock of warm silky skin against him was powerful in the extreme. Not since he and Achille had intertwined and whispered and tried what they could think to try had he experienced the stunning excitement of another human body naked against his. Mari’s elasticity, her hard muscles, her smell of bread, river eels and bitter plants made him wild. She was not Achille, but he thought of his brother as he proceeded.

In the morning Mari said, “Good you,” got up, pulled on her deerskin dress with its faded designs and made the fire.

With a shock of insight he understood that Mari’s impassive expression was a calm acceptance and knowledge of life’s roils and clawing, an attitude that in a way matched his own belief that he flew in the winds of change like a sere leaf. She had answers to the most untoward questions, for the Mi’kmaq had examined the world with boundless imagination for many generations. Over the months and years he learned from her. His relationship with Mari became a marriage of intelligences as well as bodies.

They stood opposed on the nature of the forest. To Mari it was a living entity, as vital as the waterways, filled with the gifts of medicine, food, shelter, tool material, which everyone discovered and remembered. One lived with it in harmony and gratitude. She believed the interminable chopping of every tree for the foolish purpose of “clearing the land” was bad. But that, thought René, was woman’s talk. The forest was there, enormous and limitless. The task of men was to subdue its exuberance, to tame the land it grew on—useless land until cleared and planted with wheat and potatoes. It seemed both of them were subject to outside forces, powerless to object in matters of marriage or chopping.

Farther west the manor house resounded with discontent. Monsieur Trépagny tired of his commanding wife, who endlessly harped on how much she wanted to return to Paris, and he began to curse the world he had made. His mind shifted from consolidating the domus to vengeance. If only Duquet had been a gentleman he certainly would have tracked him down and challenged him to a duel. Although too much time had passed, he said he would begin his pursuit of Duquet on the next full moon. Elphège, he said, must come with him as his squire. This decision, perhaps, was bolstered by Bouchard’s call for a new road-building corvée at that time, an onerous duty that not even one with a particule could evade.

At night Mari wept. She said it was right that Monsieur Trépagny pursue Duquet if he wished, but Elphège had no reason to do so.

Before he left, Monsieur Trépagny buried a small metal box beneath the front doorstep, muttering a curse or two. From the hall window upstairs the Spanish maid watched him. Trépagny and Elphège left under the hard dot of the moon and nothing was heard of them nor Duquet nor the bearded brothers until the next spring.