Читать книгу The Town Below - Roger Lemelin - Страница 10

When the elder Boucher had finished emptying his pockets of the grain he had brought back from the elevators, he came into the house and washed himself thoroughly, taking pains not to leave any of the dust behind his ears. Denis kept hanging around him. What was the use of asking his father for money? He would only start making a speech about how they had worked their fingers to the bone to put him through school. The youth clenched his fists, and when he spoke it was in a sharp tone of voice, for it humiliated him to be intimidated like this.

“I’d like to go to the entertainment tonight.”

“That’s your business.”

“I need fifteen cents. I’ll give it back to you.”

“No loans. We give you twenty-five cents for Sunday, that’s enough! Look at your brother; he knows how to get it. Stay at home with him and amuse him.”

Gaston protested, but still he had a vision of Denis reading him the illustrated stories in the newspaper. Flora Boucher did not like Denis to go to these affairs, for she sat in the reserved seats next to the churchwardens and people looked at her when her son created a disturbance. She now put in a word, her hands upon her hips.

“Joseph,” she began, “do you know what he did this afternoon?”

Taking the offensive, Denis came back at her: “It’s all on account of Noré,” he said. And he went on to mimic his mother, whom he had overheard reminding the gendarme of their past: “Ah! Those were the days! Do you remember when we went cherry picking?”

Flora turned pale, but disconcerted as she was, she did not fail to note the arrival of the Abbé Charton, who appeared as a kind of Providence. “Monsieur l’Abbé!”

“Dear Madame Boucher! And how are you?”

“Thanks to the good Lord, my family and I are all well. Did you find the canvas for my son’s brace?”

Joseph Boucher went out to give the hens some grain, and Denis had a sudden idea. To go to the cupboard and take three empty milk jars and stuff them in his shirt was the work of a moment. Then whistling nonchalantly, he made for the door. The Abbé Charton, a charming smile on his lips, greeted him cordially, for Denis possessed a fine bass voice and was a possible recruit for the choir at high mass. When the young man saw that he was no longer being noticed, he ran out and hastened to Bédarovitch’s place.

The junk dealer was occupied with unharnessing his decrepit horse, which he called his “old nag.” The poor beast was so skinny that one had the impression that the shafts served him as a pair of crutches. The cart, perched upon its limping wheels, was of a pale yellow hue, as if someone had endeavoured unsuccessfully to give it a coating of gilt. It was overflowing with bits of copper wire, old rags, bottles, and old bedsprings. It was, in short, a catchall for objects worth nothing to anyone save to the Jews of the ghetto. The only thing was, could one definitely assert that Bédarovitch was a Jew? There were all sorts of arguments pro and con. For example, his sunburned skin afforded no clue, for his was not the olive-brown complexion of the Oriental. Moreover, Jean-Baptiste did not have a long beard to twist in his right hand in the manner of his pseudo-ancestors. Semitic or not, he had one characteristic mannerism: while he was talking to you he would clack his false teeth with every sentence. This was not a whim on his part, as he tried to make it appear, but was due to the fact that his plate was not one made to order; the explanation was simple enough: he had found it in the dust-bin of Monsieur Folbèche, the parish priest. People did not know what he was talking about when he remarked mysteriously: “You may take my word for it, what you hear is not out of the Curé’s mouth.” And he would clack his plate once more.

Bédarovitch was said to be of French-Canadian descent. It was whispered among the parishioners that his grandfather, a certain Bédard, was a real Frenchman whose reasoning had run somewhat like this: “All the Jews succeed in business here. I will make myself a Jew.” He had accordingly set up shop in Quebec, being at pains to add to his name the profitable termination; and proudly decorated with this “vitch” that so many Jews sought to hide, he had prospered. Jean-Baptiste, who clung to traditions like a career patriot, had kept up his grandsire’s deception, and his shop had become a true museum of rags, old bottles, and broken-down beds. Old clothes, copper wire, watches that no longer ran — he took all that the quarter had to offer; his cart was the gulf into which all cast their odds and ends in return for a few pennies. Having exhausted their unemployment compensation, the women would frequently sell him an old corset or an out-of-date hat to get the price for the movies or a bingo party. And who could say whether, with those Mulots, he was not to a certain extent a receiver of stolen goods?

“Still the same price for three empties, Père Baptiste?” Denis inquired.

“Wait inside at the counter. Ah, greetings, Tit-Blanc! Greetings, Bison Langevin! How goes it?” said Baptiste to the pair that had just arrived. He returned to the shop with a set of bedsprings over his shoulders, forming a sort of collar about his neck. The door was low and one would not have thought there could be so many things behind it. Upon an ancient chest of drawers that had shed its paint and now served as a counter stood an apothecary’s scale in forlorn state. One wondered if it was for sale, too.

It was a roomy enough place in the back. On one side of the partition could be seen a heterogeneous heap of old iron. From the other side came voices to which the odour of tobacco smoke seemed to cling. Pictures hung from the walls. There in effigy were Wilfred Laurier, Ernest Lapointe, Mackenzie King, and at the far end was a photograph of Cardinal Villeneuve, next to the image of the Sacred Heart. The heart of the statue was heated by electricity while its toes were warmed by a well-trimmed lamp. The image was painted red, for Providence is on the side of the Liberals. Big sheet-iron letters which one of the members had patiently cut out of the empty canisters swayed opposite the entrance, announcing: LAPOINTE LIBERAL ASSOCIATION.

Like the big organizations, this suburban club had its president, its vice-president, its sergeant-at-arms, its little banquets and celebrations. And all this was conducted by the master hand of Gus Perrault. It was fine to hear the members address him as “Monsieur le Président.” A city-hall functionary, he was king among the workers, who were more obsessed by the myth of steady employment than they were concerned with political principles. He held a diminutive court at which all lent him an attentive ear and readily fell into the proper fawning attitudes. For Gus Perrault, who loved to make speeches, found every occasion a suitable one for “mounting the rostrum.” By way of getting off to a better start, he would first emit a formidable “Ha.” Like certain poets, he had his own little tricks in summoning inspiration. A prudent man, he spoke in a loud voice, almost shouting, for otherwise he could hear himself thinking, and that disturbed him; and so, he bellowed and chewed over his sentences. The deputies, aware of his prestige among the workers, handled him with gloves, and from time to time they gave jobs to members of his club. The fortunate one who was chosen then had the right to address Monsieur le Président as “Gus,” and later, by way of celebrating the event, they had in some fiddlers and the guest of honour paid the expenses.

This little association lived by the mirage of a cavernous bureaucracy. The workers, glad to see their party take power at last, had come to believe in nothing but the wonderful jobs which the government could provide. Their ambition, as artisans or day labourers, had narrowed to the following in the footprints of their deputy. The only thing they could think about was a permanent job, and they saw but one means of attaining that end: to become some kind of rivet, bolt, or wheel in the party organization. It was commonly said that the quarter was ridden with poverty and hunger, but the truth is that it was suffering from a more dangerous affliction: the poison of machine politics. The inhabitants of Saint-Sauveur were divided into three classes: the separatists, the blues, and the reds. When one of the parties came to power, the vanquished inevitably fell into want and the result was unemployment, feverish looks, a succession of brawls, and the prolonging of enmities. If a blue was elected to city hall or the Legislative Assembly, a red lost the place that was coveted by every Conservative.

This ebb and flow, this clean sweep, this joyful coming in and gloomy going out took place regularly every five years. The separatist or independent workers, always discontented, were forever trying, one after the other, the two political colours. For ten traffic policemen who sped around happily to the rhythmic chug of their motorcycles there were ten ex-policemen who watched them go by with hate-filling glances. The same rancour existed among the street sweepers and the elevator “conductors.”

It was in little clubs such as this that the decadent mysticism of the bureaucratic spirit found a shrine.

Tit-Blanc and his friend were greeted with jovial exclamations.

“Monsieur le Président,” said Bison Langevin, father of the twins, “I’d like a word with you.”

Tit-Blanc clapped Denis on the shoulder. The young man looked him over. “You’re brave, aren’t you, seeing you’ve got your gang here? That doesn’t worry me.” Tit-Blanc spat on the floor at Denis’s feet by way of showing his contempt. If he were only a Mulot six feet tall!

“Here’s your fifteen cents,” said Bédarovitch, “and the next time wash them out.”

Denis was about to leave when from the corner where the young Liberals were engaged in a discussion he heard Lise’s name. They were laying bets, each wagering that he would be the first to kiss her. It was all Denis could do to keep from egging them on as he thought of how annoyed Jean would be. And then, suddenly, he felt like breaking their jaws. He went on back, his hands in his pockets, lightly kicking their chairs as he passed. No one spoke, for they could tell that he was looking for an argument. But he was satisfied and strolled over to lean against the frame of the door.

Seated on long, low benches close up against the wall, the men were enveloped in smokehouse atmosphere from the fumes of their pipes, and through this fog their eyes gleamed like marbles. Over to one side, near the Sacred Heart, sat Gus Perrault, his black horn-rimmed glasses on his nose, his hair carefully smoothed down, a cigar in his hand. He was listening to Bison Langevin, who was whispering his request and his hopes. He would wrinkle his forehead at moments and at other times would contrive to interject a word or two — “I’m looking after that affair of yours” — between a couple of “Monsieur le Président” preambles on the part of his interlocutor. Broko Lallemand, father of ten children and out of work, was shouting the loudest of any of them. If he had no work, it was because they suspected him of being a blue.

“Pipe down, you fellows! We can’t hear what you’re saying,” Paul Ménard, the wood vendor, called out. He was closing a little deal with Tit-Blanc.

The air was laden with chicanery. Méo Nolin, jealous of the lads who had learned their trade at the technical school, was seeking to pick a quarrel with Bison Langevin. He wished to place his sons in the Parliament Buildings and as a red believed that he was in line for it, but he did not propose to have them taken on as do-nothings, loud talkers who pretended to be plumbers, like Bison, for example. But these bursts of anger died down almost at once. The Mulots were plotting against Denis and were having fun with their “bully,” the club’s strong man, who was afraid of him. Voices rose and fell, and Tit-Blanc, who believed that he was whispering, was the loudest of any of them.

Denis studied them all, searched their faces, and wondered why it was he felt such a distance between these men and himself. Yet he had hit upon no theory, had formulated no new order of things! Did he at least have convictions? A vague anxiety gripped him, but this environment prevented it from attaining any depth. Did he know where he was going? It tired him to discuss the subject, and far from being drawn to this or that opinion over which the others argued, he was rather inclined to burst them all like bubbles and show up their ridiculous aspects. Did this feeling of superiority come from the fact that he was an educated young man who had studied stenography? A tinkling of the doorbell interrupted his reflections.

“Our good Abbé Bongrain! Why, if it isn’t Monsieur Pritontin!” exclaimed Bédarovitch. “We don’t see very much of you.”

There was silence. The Mulots smiled sarcastically, for this man who had just entered was the most despicable of the Soyeux. The choleric Adolphe Pomerleau, tormented by political worries and a fanatic on the subject of social systems (he went about selling pamphlets for little-known movements), now gave a sigh and, indicating his uncle, Anselme Pritontin, addressed the other members of the group.

“Don’t be too hard on him, gentlemen. He has his troubles. He had counted on being appointed churchwarden this year. As if anybody had a better right to the place! A regular churchgoer who never misses mass.”

“He’s a good citizen but not rich enough for them,” said Père Didace Jefferson, who never failed to get in his anticlerical digs, ever since Monsieur le Curé had seemingly gone over to the conservatives.

“The family even made a novena,” Adolphe went on. “I am telling you that my aunt wept when she learned he had lost out.”

“I can just see him carrying the canopy,” put in Denis.

Out at the counter a lively discussion was going on. “Five dollars, Monsieur Pritontin. These chandeliers are not worth even that. No! It’s no use; I can’t give you a cent more.”

“Be fair, Monsieur Bédarovitch. Just look, they’re all bronze and each one holds seven candles.”

“They’re far from being pure bronze — from some impoverished church, you know.”

“Take five, Monsieur Pritontin; it’s a good price,” counselled the Abbé Bongrain in his gruff, good-natured voice.

“But that will not cover half of the expense of an altar for my oldest boy. He has a true passion for playing mass. You can tell that the priesthood is in his blood. Now, if the money were to be spent for sinful purposes, such as I could mention —”

“Good evening, my lads,” the priest called out as his tall figure appeared on the other side of the partition. The Mulots took off their caps and greeted him cordially, and Gus Perrault left Bison and came over to join him. Pritontin, meanwhile, was casting a wary eye over the room. Piety fairly dripped from the Soyeux, seeming to melt his human personality and replace it with a cloud of dignity. It was distasteful to him to see the Abbé Bongrain slapping the Mulots on the back. He was thinking what his own attitude would be if he were a priest.

The abbé would smile at one of the group, make some bantering remark to another. It was plain to be seen that this strong individual, imperturbable as a Pharaoh of old, was a friend to all of them. He was not a handsome man. His stiff straight hair resembled a horse’s mane and could only be close cropped. His features were large and looked as if they had been well kneaded by his big, awkward hands. The eyes alone stood out. Exceedingly mild and filled with blue-grey glints, they were like azure breads that had been inadvertently dropped upon this mass of crude flesh. At first sight, he gave the impression of being a sturdy, square-shouldered, good-hearted child who had nothing to do with the sins of grown-ups. In the confessional he had a gesture for conferring absolution that could be compared only to a vigorous stroke with an axe, arrested halfway. He loved the workers and his priestly soul conveyed the illusion of a benignant deity who was laying his hands upon you. Hypocrites were frank with him, for he had a look that made them shudder. It was through him that the Mulots formed a conception of their God.

“Everything all right, Denis my lad? And when is Gaston going to open his confectionery shop?” Tit-Blanc pricked up his ears at this.

“Next week, I think.”

After whispering to Denis that he too had a fondness for picking apples, the priest went over to Broke Lallemand, who voiced his usual complaint of having no job.

“Gus, can’t you do something for him?”

“The deputy has his name on the list,” replied the president, with an evasive gesture.

“The black list,” said Méo Nolin, who knew all the communist catchwords.

“It’s too bad, but that’s politics for you,” observed Père Didace, a hereditary Liberal.

“With such a government the proletarian will never find work,” declared Adolphe Pomerleau, the leatherworker, who was growing a moustache like Hitler’s.

“It’s the trusts that are devouring us!” cried Bison Langevin.

Adolphe Pomerleau arose majestically and surveyed his audience. He was a small, thin man but he worked his jaws energetically. Running his hand carelessly along the brim of his hat, he began: “It’s the capitalists who have pocketed all the money. And where has all that brought us? To economic liberalism!” He stopped here, staring straight in front of him at the horizon of ideas. Then he lowered his head and sat down, resigned to the explosion which he knew his words would produce.

“Merde!” shouted Langevin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He at once darted Gus Perrault an apologetic glance, for he had caught the latter’s frown.

“Keep still!” the Abbé Bongrain sternly commanded. “You elect governments, so put up with them. A social system is something more complicated than you think.” The abbé was at heart a great admirer of Laurier.

Tit-Blanc, who was still drunk, now became aggressive. “You can defend the trusts,” he said to the priest; “you’re part of them.”

This created a chill in the room. The men glanced at one another, knowing that they were about to witness an extermination. The Abbé Bongrain clenched his fists behind his back, but he was quite calm as he bent his gaze on Tit-Blanc.

“Yes,” he said, “a trust that twice has saved your job for you. We are members of a trust, but you came to wake us up in the night last year, when your wife was in childbirth.”

Pritontin, on the other hand, was thrown into a small convulsion by the insult which had been offered to the Church. He came forward, pale and trembling. It was an outrage, a thing like that. Imperceptible hiccups rose from the bottom of his throat, as if his anger had been cut to shreds by the sorrow that he felt.

“Drunkard that you are! If that isn’t a terrible thing, I ask you. And they wonder why religion is on the decline!” He looked to the Abbé Bongrain for support, hoping it would be reported to the Monsieur le Curé that he, Anselme Pritontin, the one whom they had passed over, had defended the Church’s cause.

“Shut your mouth, you pillar of the Church,” said Méo Nolin, who liked to hold forth on justice and equality. “Monsieur l’Abbé can take care of himself. And anyway, you’re a Soyeux; you’re not one of us.”

The priest knew how to deal with such stupidity — a gesture would suffice; he knew how to speak the word of truth to the poor, while remaining charitable toward this fellow Tit-Blanc. But of a sudden all the energy and ardour that was in him died down and he appeared to be smiling at his own weakness, at the weakness of humankind. He was thinking of the rows down there in the mines at Thetford, when he was earning the money to pay for his schooling. He had also shared the pleasures of his fellow workers, but he had found them vain and had sought and attained beauty as he conceived it. Today as yesterday, his life was made up of the “incomprehensible” that had come to take on a soul. At the seminary they had looked upon him as a social climber in a cassock, this big lad from the mines who in fits of anger would let drop a “damn” for the simple reason that he had been used to hearing it down under the earth. Was it his fault if such expressions clung to him like twigs even as he mounted heavenward?

He looked the group over, eager to transmit to them all the goodness of the world as seen through his own eyes; he longed to prove to them that they were really big, however small they might feel themselves to be.

Realizing that it was his turn to speak, Père Didace, the club’s oldest member, arose. He cleared his throat, batted his lashes, and assumed the tone of voice that he used at banquets.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is no time for speechmaking. But there is one thing I can tell you: my father was a Liberal, and I have been one for forty years, that is to say, ever since I reached the age of reason.”

“It was about time, old Didace,” said Gus Perrault ironically, “for you’re all of sixty now.” Gus was jealous.

“I was born a Catholic, and I’m proud of it. And the Liberal party in its politics is proud to stand side by side with the Church and its principles. Laurier —”

“That’s worth a good cigar.” Once more Gus interrupted him, for he could scarcely conceal his annoyance at not being the only one to make pompous speeches.

Anselme Pritontin by this time had recovered from his breathless indignation. “Are you going to prevent me from entering my protest against the sacrilegious expression that was used here?” he demanded to know. “The Church is a trust! When it has given us everything, religious education, piety, faith, hope, charity, traditions —”

“And chandeliers,” added Tit-Blanc.

This was more than Pritontin’s heart could bear. “If you rail against the Church,” he burst out, “that’s because you are married to a whore. Everybody knows what your Barloute is.”

“Sue him; I’m a witness,” urged Chaton, for he went in for lawsuits.

“You damned hypocrite!” And with a bellow Tit-Blanc threw himself upon Pritontin.

“In the belly, Tit-Blanc, in the belly, the belly!” cried Denis, getting worked up.

Pritontin was on the verge of fainting. “Monsieur l’Abbé! Save me!”

The priest leaped forward and separated the pair with a grip of steel: “Look here, Monsieur Pritontin, calm yourself, calm yourself; you’re too good a citizen to be discussing politics.”

Pritontin was ready to weep from anger and impotence. “Ah, no,” he said, “this is not going to be the end of it.” And he made for the door.

Bédarovitch, whose interest it was to keep on good terms with the priest of the parish, hung on to Pritontin’s arm. “I hope you are not offended, Monsieur Anselme. He’s an impudent fellow, Tit-Blanc, and he’s drunk.”

“I trust you will not take what a drunkard says seriously, my dear Monsieur Pritontin,” said Gus Perrault, who wished to maintain friendly relations between the Church and the Lapointe Liberal Association. “The Church and the Association.” “Gus the President.” How well that all sounded! A feeling of grandeur came over him in little waves.

“I am not going to permit my religion to be attacked like that. I have told you so.” With this, Anselme Pritontin had made a hasty exit; for the Abbé Bongrain was preparing to leave and the aspiring churchwarden wished to arrive at the parish house before the priest did. He accordingly trotted off as fast as he could. He was a man who attributed his own sentiments to all the world, and his latest ambition had so distorted his point of view that he had come to believe anything furthering in his own cause belonged to him as of right. He revelled in advance in the grateful look on Monsieur le Curé’s face.

Back at the club, the Abbé Bongrain was bidding them good night. “I’m leaving you, my lads; I have three baptisms.” He gave Tit-Blanc a long look and went out.

There was silence for a moment, and then Méo Nolin’s mocking laugh was heard. “You have nothing to say when he looks at you, have you?”

Tit-Blanc swaggered out to the middle of the room. He tightened his belt. “Do you think it’s going to stop there? It’s time I was doing something about it.”

The others smiled at this. “Are you going to apologize to Pritontin?” Gus wanted to know.

“Me, Tit-Blanc? Apologize? Never! Him and his Church — I’ll blow them both up; I’ll kill him,” he roared, gesticulating wildly.

“What have you done, got yourself a bomb?” asked Méo Nolin sarcastically, taking his cue from Gus.

Tit-Blanc stopped short as if paralyzed and regarded them with a fixed stare; then he suddenly burst out enthusiastically: “That’s it! I have it! I’ll put a bomb under Pritontin’s seat at high mass.”

“You’re drunk, my boy. Why, you’d kill him.”

“A big firecracker, rather.”

“Don’t be a fool, Tit-Blanc. We all know that your mother was reading the History of the French Revolution when you were born.”

In the face of these objections Tit-Blanc did some thinking and assured himself that his indignation was real. He began gritting his teeth as he thought of Barloute. Him a cuckold? A solemn expression came over his drunkard’s face. “I’ll show you what nerve is, you Mulots.”

“Yeh, but a big cracker like that makes a lot of noise,” Méo Nolin reminded him.

“For ten cents I can get an extra big one.”

“He wants a silent revolution,” said Denis.

There were exclamations on all sides. The slumbering audacity of the Mulots appeared to awaken when confronted by the possibilities inherent in this exploit.

“They sell them for a penny, also. They’re not very big but they make a sharp noise, enough to scare you,” explained Chaton, who did not like people of quality to see him taking part in disturbances.

“That’s right,” agreed Tit-Blanc, “but it must go off.”

“How are you going to light it?” asked Bison Langevin.

“You’ll be up in the front of the church.”

“Yes, and there I’ll not be able to strike a match.” He was hoping now he could get out of the affair, for it occurred to him that he had spoken somewhat hastily.

“Have someone pass you a lighted butt,” suggested Denis.

“Now you’re talking!” said Méo Nolin. The idea of frightening Pritontin and creating a small scandal was not displeasing to him. “Bidonnet, our sacristan, will be glad to do it. He doesn’t care much for Father Folbèche, a question of wages, you know. What’s more, the sisters have taken over the laundering of the surplices, and that means the loss of five dollars a week to him.”

Tit-Blanc was beginning to fancy the idea again. Suddenly he raised his head in a manner that seemed to increase his stature. He had made his decision.

“Okay, lads, tomorrow, at ten o’clock mass.”

He went out with a firm stride. It was plain that no one took him seriously. Would he carry out this act of bravado? They doubted it very much, knowing him to be drunk. Denis watched him leave and he became angry. Tit-Blanc had aroused in him once more a thirst that would not be quenched. Yet another deception awaited his eager young heart. He ran home to supper now. That girl Lise must find him handsome, strong, not at all like the others. But untouchable so far as his heart was concerned.

His mother was looking for her milk jars.