That Dammed Beaver, page 17
“It’s no good,” he repeated.
The landlord, who knew his Chief, having had occasion to bring him to his senses in the past, was careful not to insist. He made haste to end the celebration and had the horses brought up. When the animals were at the door, François asked:
“And what about the cows?”
For François Laterrière, shaken though he was by the little jolts of marriage, still held fast to his resolve.
“Yes, Uncle, the cows. I cannot become a habitant like my father, like my grandfather, like all the Laterrières before them, and preserve the heritage of my ancestors, if I don’t have at least one cow to put in my canyon.”
“What did he say?” asked the Chief.
The landlord explained his nephew’s demand.
“Pooh!” said the Chief.
“What did he say?” asked François.
“He didn’t make himself very clear,” replied the landlord, “but I think he has a rather low opinion of cows.”
The lad from Trompe-Souris, touched to the quick, flashed an indignant glance at his father-in-law, who continued:
“Cows! Pooh! Buffalo in canyon.”
“What did he say??”
“Instead of a cow he’s offering you a herd of buffalo.”
The young man refused. Who had ever seen a buffalo on a habitant’s land? It was a cow he needed. The Chief raised his arms to heaven: a cow would never be able to climb up to the canyon.
“He’s right,” urged the landlord.
But François took no notice. Disdainful and proud, he remained deaf to anything that might deter him from his mission. Blood will tell. Like all French Canadians he was a descendant of Madeleine de Verchères. He was a hero. All that mattered to him was his cow. They suggested a doe: a fig for their doe! A goat: fie! and for shame! Eglantine was growing anxious, the Chief impatient. Suddenly, the landlord cried:
“A heifer!”
There was some sense in the idea; our hero considered it; he hesitated. Pressing his advantage, the landlord slapped him on the back. A heifer, after all, was only different from a cow for a few months. And what were a few months to a determined young man who had worn out fifteen pairs of cow-hide boots, crossed four provinces and found his way at last to his uncle, Siméon Désilets?
“Come on, François, come on!”
François gave in at last.
“I give in,” he said, “but I’m not giving up. I’ll accept the heifer but I won’t forget the cow. I’ll give satisfaction to the Farwest, but I’ll remain faithful to the tradition of my ancestors.”
“Bravo!” cried the landlord. “God has inspired you. You speak like a true curé!”
They all applauded and everyone was happy. All they had to do now was find the heifer. The gods smiled on them: she was found at once. François took her in his arms and leapt onto his horse. The party moved off. Siméon Désilets stood alone at the door of his tavern.
“Whew!” he said.
Then he went inside and poured himself two drinks, one because he was feeling happy, and the other because he was happy to see himself happy.
“You’re laughing,” exclaimed Timire in amazement.
“And you would be too,” replied the landlord.
II
Once they were out of Calgary, François cried:
“Hallo!”
He was echoing that distant hallo that the rising mounts call to the plain.
“Hallo, plain,” they say, “give up your illusion: the earth is not flat.”
The lad from Trompe-Souris was astonished. The mountains drew nearer. His astonishment did not lessen, but his apprehension grew.
“The canyon isn’t up there, I hope,” he inquired.
They showed him, between two dazzling peaks, the pass they would have to cross to reach it. He felt no pleasure at all at the sight. Like La Vérendrye, he would gladly have turned back. Nevertheless, he continued. It was a long climb. When he finally reached the canyon he vowed never to come down. One year later he started down again. You can be sure of nothing when you’ve a heifer in your care.
By spring the heifer had already become a cow. She took no notice and continued to graze. However, she was gaining less now and grew more slowly. Summer came. She stopped growing altogether and was amazed.
“Why should I bother to eat any more?” she asked Eglantine.
“Eat, my girl, eat,” replied Eglantine. “You’ll not regret it.”
Enigmatic words, which the cow was to ruminate for a whole month. At the end of the month, she wanted to know more, Eglantine proceeded to instruct her. From then on, her ears aquiver, her neck strained, she lived in expectation. She forgot to eat her due. Then amid the juicy hay, hunger gnawed her, and she began to wail. It was pitiful to hear.
“What’s wrong with her?” François asked.
“She claims,” replied Eglantine, “that your hay tastes bad.”
This insinuation was not well received. The hay was from good millet and identical in every way to the ancestral hay. How could it possibly taste bad? The cow was an impudent hussy and was lying shamelessly. To satisfy himself, François went and examined her closely. When he came back he announced:
“Wife, there’s nothing the matter with my hay. It could feed more than one cow; it could feed a whole herd.”
“In that case,” inquired Eglantine, “why does she wail, poor thing?”
“There’s another reason. We must go down to Calgary and bring back a bull calf.”
At that same moment the Chief emerged from the bushes. He had been gone since fall and had spent the winter hunting. His pelts had been rich; he was carrying a roll of bills as fat as a girl’s thigh. The roll redoubled his valour; his children were on their way to Calgary; without pausing for breath, he set off behind them.
“Well!” thundered Siméon Désilets, “this is a big surprise!”
The Chief put his roll on the counter.
“Count,” he ordered.
The landlord felt it.
“It’s velvet to the touch.”
“You keep,” said the Chief, “if you find way to get me drunk.”
Thus challenged, the landlord felt every confidence in his ability to get him drunk. He brought out his very best mixture; white lightning, beer and rubbing alcohol. One week later, the Chief was hollow-eyed, but he still sat upright in his chair. “Wait a moment, my good Chief,” said the landlord, “you won’t be sitting like that for long!” And he placed in front of him the decisive glass, filled with straight rubbing alcohol.
“Just taste that now and tell me what you think.”
But the Chief didn’t seem the least bit curious. He didn’t even touch the glass. Perhaps he needed a little encouragement. Siméon Désiletes, acting out of the goodness of his heart, went to give him a friendly pat on the back… He remained rooted to the spot, his hand upraised, extremely surprised. The Chief had spun round, lithe as a cat, and plunged a knife into his belly. No allowance had been made in the itinerary for any such stabbing. Having come down to Calgary for the sole purpose of acquiring a bull calf, François and Eglantine had intended to go straight back once the calf was acquired. They were obliged to attend the landlord’s funeral, then the Chief’s trial, and finally his hanging. These family duties kept them in Calgary for more than three months.
Meanwhile, above the canyon, the sun never blinked from morning to night. In time it grew very hot; the springs stopped running, the water in the trough dried up, and in a cloud of dust drought descended on the land. The little cow soon found herself in difficulties. Whenever she took a step, thousands of grasshoppers would fly up, and with their shrill call warn the grass to flee still further. Imprisoned in a moving desert, she could find nothing at all to eat. Her skin was loose, her bones unsteady. She had grown so thin she looked as if she were wearing her big sister’s coat. Ridiculous and pitiful, she wandered about, saying to herself:
“If only I could get a drink.”
It was her sole concern. A hundred times a day she returned to the trough, and always came away disappointed. Above the grasshoppers, the hawks hovered; higher still, the vultures. Neither bird was a good omen. At last, her courage failing, the unfortunate cow said to herself:
“My hour is come.”
And, so saying, she let herself fall onto the burning ground. After a time, however, discovering that she was not quite dead, she opened her eyes and strained her ears…And what should she hear, but the sound of running water!
“My hour is not yet come,” she cried.
And with this she struggled to her feet, poor creature, and rushed off once more in the direction of the trough. But the effort this time was tremendous; her strength gave out; she staggered; a thousand suns were spinning in the sky. To regain her balance, she stopped, but her skeleton kept right on going. She was blinded by the dust, deafened by the grasshoppers, the hawks, and the sun. A vulture landed on her head. The skeleton was still going; it was already well ahead of her; she didn’t know what to think. She shook the hat and the vulture flew off; she had lost sight of the skeleton now, concluded that she must be dreaming, and continued on her hallucinating walk. She arrived at last at the water trough; on the dried up mud lay the skeleton of a cow. She was not dreaming; it was her own.
“I am dead,” she murmured to herself.
Death as a rule has a most devastating effect on life. In this case, the opposite was true; the result was exhilarating; the cow felt better dead than alive; freed of needs she could no longer satisfy, harassing needs, more terrible by far than hawks or vultures, she once more took pleasure in herself. The impression was a strange one: she almost felt alive again.
At the same moment, the sun blinked and rain transformed the landscape. As soon as they were wet the grasshoppers fell silent; reassured, the grass came back, soft and defenceless. The carrion birds, lords of the drought, had disappeared; green silences replaced their harsh cries. Although she was indifferent to the renewal, the little cow nevertheless felt inside her a joy that grew with each new day. Her courage had returned, her skin fit once more. True, she still had no skeleton, but it hardly noticed; her appearance was most respectable. She wandered freely through the canyon. Every now and then she would pause to take a mouthful of grass; not that she was hungry – it was pure caprice. Sometimes she would go over to the water trough and there, occasionally, she might take a drink; not that she was thirsty – it was just a lapse; she simply wanted to see the reflection of the spectre her joy had brought to life.
When they returned to the canyon, François and Eglantine were delighted to find her, to all appearances, in the best of health. They ran to her, embraced her fondly, then introduced the male calf they had brought back with them from Calgary.
“He’s a nice little animal.”
There was no glow of passion in her eyes.
“Nice, he is,” Eglantine replied, “but that’s not all. Just wait: a year from now, burning with passion, a little bull he’ll be.”
The cow remained cold.
“What’s the matter with you, little sister?”
“I’m dead,” she replied.
Eglantine burst into tears.
“What wrong?” asked François, who understood nothing of the language of cows.
“She says…Oh, God! it’s dreadful.”
“Well, what?”
“She says she’s dead.”
Surprised, François walked around the animal, then looked up, skeptical. Eglantine, offended, brushed away her tears.
“How could you have the heart,” she cried, “to doubt the word of a poor dead cow?”
To which he replied that he, for his part, had heard no such word.
“Is it my fault if you’re deaf?”
“If I’m deaf, Eglantine, then maybe you’ve too much imagination.”
Then she asked him if he thought she was crazy. No, he didn’t think she was crazy. But he did disapprove of her listening to the blather of animals. She argued back: he refused to
climb down. She called him a savage; he called her a squaw. In short, they quarrelled. When they had finished, the cow motioned them to follow her: she led them to the water trough. The skeleton was there, irrefutable.
“Well?” said Eglantine.
François, shattered, could find no reply.
“Now, do you dare to say this cow is not dead?”
He did not dare.
“But,” he added, “dead or not dead, what’s the difference as long as she’ll calve?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s leave the little bull to sort things out.”
A year passed. The bull calf, now every inch the animal required, began to lift his eyes in the direction of the cow. One day, emboldened, he lifted his legs instead. The cow, already suspicious, had seen him coming; she jumped sideways and the bull fell to the ground.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said.
He picked himself up, his forehead bristling, all ready to try again.
“If you want to know the truth,” the cow went on, “you disgust me.”
Round-eyed, he stared at her.
“Fool, can’t you see I’m dead?”
The poor chap swallowed his saliva. He was sincere in his intentions, but blinded by passion, he had not noticed the sad condition of his companion. In his innocence, he had wanted
to serve her. Since she was dead, he did not insist. He walked away. Not for the world would he have defiled her. And his ardour, with no outlet, turned inward against him now. His head became swollen, his eyes shot with blood; he longed to crush his bones against a rock; the canyon shook with the sound of his bellowing. Until in the end the little cow took pity on him.
“After all,” she said, “I may be dead, but that doesn’t stop me from taking a mouthful of grass here, a drink of water there. Why shouldn’t it be the same with the other little necessities? There, poor boy, don’t look so sad now. You can do what you like with me. Feel quite free: it’s really all the same to me.”
Now it was the bull’s turn to be disgusted.
“Thank you very much,” he replied, “but I don’t need your cold carcass!”
And with that they were estranged, estranged forever, sadly, foolishly, all because of a few thoughtless words, estranged for no good reason! For they could have been reconciled; indeed, they should have been. Love is the coming together of life and death; it is perfectly natural for one party to be cooler than the other.
Meanwhile, François himself had not been idle. Having talked first for the sake of it (which improved his voice) he found at last the world he had been looking for. And so it was
that the virtue of the race, at first inoperative, one day bore fruit. Eglantine, mysteriously touched, smiled as she grew heavier. In spite of her condition, she continued to look after the animals. Her shoulders thrust back, portly as an ambassador, she went from the bull to the cow and from the cow to the bull, mediating as best she could, but unable to make peace between them. This failure, however, did not trouble her unduly, for she had already achieved within herself the reconciliation of opposites. François, for his part, was preparing the nest. He was putting the finishing touches to a house, the perfect replica of the Laterrière farmhouse in Trompe-Souris, in the parish of Saint-Justin de Maskinongé. He had thus reconciled future and past, heir and ancestors, and was on the point of transplanting to the Farwest the traditions of the Quebec people. It was too perfect to last.
One morning, Eglantine, on one of her diplomatic missions, spied the bull, normally quite stand-offish, coming toward her with blood-shot eyes, his head low.
“What’s the matter, little bull?” she asked.
He did not answer, but kept on coming. Then Eglantine, guessing his intentions, uttered loud and piercing screams. Her emotion only proved to the animal that she was indeed alive. Frustrated by a dead cow, he needed nothing more. The morphology of the two parties did not lend itself to their union. The fair Eglantine died. François, who had rushed to the scene, now furious at finding himself a widower, killed the bull, then collapsed himself on the two bodies. When he came to, he heard a wail. It was a baby girl, lying there, kicking, in the blood of her mother and the monster.
François Laterrière left the canyon that same day. It was the dead cow who moved into the house, that perfect replica of the ancestral home. She felt quite happy in it. But there were times when she would climb up to the attic and there, with her head thrust out the window, gaze nostalgically into the distance.
III
Fleeing his canyon, François Laterrière left behind him, like an absurd dream, a house built in the Quebec style and haunted by a dead cow. The chorus of ancestors tried to hold him back, but he refused to stop, thinking it was the cow. For two days and two nights he walked. After which, already much distressed by the death of Eglantine and the failure of his mission, he had completely taken leave of his senses. God guided him. At the end of the third day he reached Calgary, a city large enough to get lost in. But God did not abandon him: he found his way to the tavern of his late uncle, Siméon Désilets.
The last client had left. Beauty Rose and Timire were in the process, she of totting up the day’s cash, he of wiping the tables. Any moment now they would be closed. The door opened; a man walked in and placed on the counter a tiny bundle of soiled linen. Automatically, Beauty Rose slipped him a glass; he emptied it in one gulp. She slipped him another; he emptied it just as fast; then a third, a fourth… He was clearly very thirsty. Beauty Rose, her interest aroused, said to herself:
“Something tells me I know this man.” But she could not put a name to him. Suddenly the tiny bundle moved.
“Lord, it’s moving!”
“So what?”
“What is it you’ve got all wrapped up there and moving like that?” she asked him.
“Dunno,” he replied.
She took pity on him.
“Come along with me,” she said.
