Читать книгу Barkskins - Энни Пру, Annie Proulx - Страница 17

He prospered during the seasons following a bad year when the settlements were sick with longing for overdue supply ships from France, sick with fear of the Iroquois, who had only ten years earlier surprised and slaughtered the inhabitants of Lachine and might do so again. In spite of ongoing fighting, huge loads of beaver pelts came down the river and kept coming, until the hatters and furriers of France could use no more, until the warehouses were packed full of rodent fur. Again Duquet saw the great weakness of the trade—surplus or scarcity. Beaver might disappear from overtrapping or disease or for no discernible reason. Or the Indians took too many. He watched and considered. He now regarded tales of immense profits in the fur trade as fables. He wanted great and permanent wealth, wealth for a hundred years. He wanted a fortune to pass on to his sons. He wanted his name on buildings. He was surprised to discover in himself a wish for children, a wish to establish a family name. The name Duquet would change from a curse to an honor. But there were difficulties—especially the ugliness of a toothless, collapsed jaw. It might be impossible to find a handsome wife. Unless he had money.

His agile mind ceaselessly worked over the question: what resource existed in this new world that was limitless, that had value, that could build a fortune? He rejected living creatures such as beaver, fish, seals, game or birds, all subject to sudden disappearance and fickle markets. He repeatedly came back to the same conclusion. There was one everlasting commodity that Europe lacked: the forest. Duquet knew, as everyone knew, that the English colonists to the south did well cutting pines for English navy masts. Could the French not do the same? He remembered Forgeron’s talk. The forest was unimaginably vast and it replaced itself. It could supply timber and wood for ships, houses, warmth. The profits could come forever. Yes, there were many problems of transport and markets, but it was an unexploited business that could expand and dominate. In France there were men who dealt in forest goods, but few in New France and perhaps not in the colonies to the south. So, he thought, he would get as much money as he could with the furs in the next few years, prepare himself in every way and then change to timber when he was ready. He would not yet give up the lucrative fur trade, a stinking, complicated business for trapper Indians, but with high profits for white traders with market connections.

He briefly sketched his plan to the Trépagny brothers and told them he would be glad if they continued with him as partners when he made his future move to timber and wood. He was surprised that they were not enthusiastic. Their eyes reflected the evening fire like orange beetles. Perhaps, Toussaint said, and Fernand said they would see. They looked away into the trees.

“Well, let it stay as it is.” Duquet passed on to another subject and said there was one great obstacle he had to overcome. He could neither read nor write, and it was necessary to gain those skills if he were not to be cheated in dealings with sly merchants. He did not know even a single letter such as that fool Sel had doted on.

“The world cheats men who cannot read. I know this as I have often seen it,” Toussaint said. “If you wish to do this, you need one of the Black Robes. The Jesuits all can write countless pages, all can read both silently and aloud until their eyes cross. Let us get one of these fellows and carry him with us. He can convert Indians while we bargain and in quiet moments he will teach you those arts you wish to acquire.” And so they kidnapped Père Naufragé, one of several missionaries on the way to the Hurons.

For several days they watched the little group and their Huron guides before acting.

“See,” whispered Toussaint from behind their tree, “there are four of them. Choose the one you like. We’ll get him when he steps aside to answer the call of nature.”

Duquet studied each of the fathers. One seemed quicker and more sprightly than the others. He was first to rise, made the fire with the high technology of a burning glass if the sun shone, packed and unpacked their goods with alacrity, and spent the least time in prayers.

When the missionary stepped into the shadows and hiked up his robe to relieve himself they sprang like savages. Toussaint clapped a leather gag over the priest’s mouth, Fernand bound his hands behind him and Duquet frog-marched him into the forest and away to their camp.

“You are French!” exclaimed the priest later when Duquet pulled off the gag. “I thought you were Indians. Why have you taken me from my brothers? We are traveling to the Hurons.”

Duquet explained that the Hurons could wait. Père Naufragé would stay with them until Duquet learned to read and write. The Jesuit would be treated well and was advised not to try to escape.

“For if the Iroquois get you, you will become a martyr.”

Père Naufragé said he was eager to become a martyr, more eager than to teach illiterates the rudiments of the alphabet. “My friends expect me. I warn you, you will pay dearly for this outrage.”

Duquet described the ample opportunities the Jesuit would have to convert savages as they traveled about the country gathering furs.

“What you ask is not even possible. My books of instruction are with my traveling companions.” The Jesuit smiled triumphantly.

“That is no problem,” said Fernand, opening his possibles bag and rummaging to the bottom. With a vengeful smile he pulled out a stained, worn book and thrust it at Père Naufragé.

“Icitte! Here is your instruction book—Les Quatrains de Pibrac. It was a gift from my mother and I have never been parted from it. ‘First honor God, then Father and Mother—Dieu tout premier, puis Père et Mère honore,’” he quoted. “Everything in the world can be found in the pages of Pibrac.”

“God knows you will do more good with us than with a thousand Hurons.” Père Naufragé, habituated to obedience, nodded acceptance but insisted on daily devotions, a weekly mass and time set aside for disputation on a theological subject which he would select.

The priest had a face like a short sword—thin and sharp. His olive skin stretched over jutting cheekbones and his crenellated hair was as black as that of any Spaniard. Ah, thought Duquet, the fellow looks like a Moor. But it was when he smiled—which he did not do until the third day after his capture—that his face changed entirely. His mouth was very wide and his face seemed to separate into two unrelated parts. And his pointed teeth—mon Dieu, thought Duquet, muttering under his breath “how many is there”—dazzled with an unnatural whiteness.

As for the lessons, Duquet learned quickly. He scrawled his letters and numbers—arithmetic quickly became part of the curriculum—on hundreds of pieces of birch bark. His hands, heavily muscled by years of paddling, labored with the small muscle coordination necessary to form elegant letters, and his handwriting was coarse. No matter; it was legible. The priest became embedded in the little group and closed his eyes to the whiskey trades and his pupil’s disturbing aura of ambitious greed. He was fascinated by Duquet’s grasp of information, for he seemed to remember everything, scraps of German, Greek, Latin and English, all that the priest uttered, even prayers. At the end of the first year Pibrac retired to Fernand’s bag again as he was suffering wear, but Duquet had memorized the contents and had quatrains to cover every situation in life—should he care to quote doggerel. But he preferred to despise Pibrac.

In early spring, two years later, Père Naufragé, dressed now like a woodsman as his cassock had shredded in the brush, left them unwillingly.

“But it is time for you to go,” said Duquet with a patient smile. “As Pibrac says, ‘The steps of man are directed by God.’ We will take you now to the Hurons as I must travel to France on business.”

“Another year of study and I believe you could have acquired a considerable handiness with Latin, the most important language for men of business such as you intend to become.”

But Duquet only twitched his mouth; his thoughts ran in a different direction.

Six days of travel skirting burning fields and woods brought them to the edge of the forest around the Huron mission. Fernand, coughing, said, “Every time I have been in the Huron country the place is afire.”

Duquet stood aside while the Trépagnys embraced the priest and wished him good fortune. They watched him make his way toward the clearing. Then he disappeared into the smoke.