That Dammed Beaver, page 18
He followed her to the Tourist Rooms adjoining the tavern. She pulled off his boots and put him to bed. A maid appeared, enticed.
“Is this one for me, Ma’am?”
“No,” replied Beauty Rose, “he’s not for you, nor me, nor anyone. He hasn’t a cent and he’s sick; his own mother wouldn’t want him now.”
When the servant had left, Beauty Rose thought to herself: Perhaps he really hasn’t got a cent. She checked: she was right. But what should she find in his pocket but the rosary of Siméon Désilets, her late husband.
“It’s my nephew, François,” she said to herself. “I thought he looked familiar!”
She left the room. To the maid, she said:
“It’s my nephew, François. Something terrible has happened to him.”
“Poor you,” said the maid.
“Something terrible. And he’s changed, changed! I recognized him by his uncle’s rosary.”
“Poor you! What a dreadful thing to be so changed!”
Cutting short these ancillary condolences, Beauty Rose went back downstairs. The bundle was still on the counter.
“Timire,” she called.
Timire arrived.
“Unwrap this bundle, Timire. I haven’t the heart to do it myself.”
He unwrapped it. She clutched her hands to her breasts.
“Lord Jesus! Just as I thought: it’s a girl, a lovely little girl! Timire, don’t just stand there with your mouth open! Come on! Do something.”
Do what? Timire had no idea.
“Why, baptize her, of course! Can’t you see she’s cold? You never know; she might have caught her death, the poor little creature.”
Timire, beer in hand, said:
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Poor fool! You say: ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”
Timire was about to touch the baby’s forehead with his glass, but Beauty Rose stopped him.
“Fool! Precious fool! It’s not beer you use to baptize a child! Do you have no principles, then?”
She handed him a bottle of white lightning.
“It’s white lightning!”
Once the ceremony was over and the way to paradise opened to the poor little creature, the widow of Siméon Désilets regained her composure.
“Now,” she declared, “we must see to it she doesn’t die.”
Timire called the maids. They came down to the tavern.
“This,” the widow told them, “is the child I’ve been promising you. She’s my niece. Her name is Chaouac.”
Their joy was amazing to behold. The child was handed over; her weight seemed to reassure them. When they had taken her away, Beauty Rose asked Timire how he felt.
“I’m very glad,” he replied.
The next day, although he had fully recovered his senses, François Laterrière did not recognize the grimacing little frog he had found lying in the blood of a monster and a woman; they showed him a clean, well-fed baby, asleep on the breast of one of the maids. This breast, alas, reminded him of another.
“Aunt,” he said, “Eglantine is dead.”
“I’d guessed as much,” replied Beauty Rose.
He told her the tragic story. She said:
“François, your daughter is my daughter. Stay here, we’ll bring her up together.”
At such generosity the young father lost his composure and fell down upon his knees. Seeing this, his aunt lost hers, and burst out laughing.
“Get up off your knees, you silly boy! You owe me nothing. It’s a favour you’re doing me letting me take your daughter.”
He got up.
“There are three reasons why you owe me nothing. Just listen to them and you’ll stop your genuflexions, you’ll see!”
And Beauty Rose explained that she had not always been a person of staid disposition, having first been driven by wanderlust for many years. Born in Dublin, she had acquired her Irish education in haste and had left in search of adventure by the time she was thirteen years old. Her travels had brought her, by a thoroughly capricious route – via Australia, China and Russia – to Canada, where she had at first sojourned in the ports of the east. After which she had moved to the Yukon, and from there to the Farwest.
“Nephew,” she went on, “I paid my own way. For a long time I had the means. As I grew older, however, I found it more difficult to make a living from my looks, and I was soon in desperate straits. From then on travel became difficult. I have very unpleasant memories of the Yukon: men there are quite unreasonable. When I arrived in Calgary I was exhausted. Siméon Désilets came along. He needed a wife, I deserved a rest, we were married. He was a strong man, your uncle! He kept me where he wanted me and there I stayed! And I became staid, oh so staid! We lived together five years, then his friend, the Chief, did him in. He’s gone now; but he left me his memory, Timire, his tavern, and his morals. That’s the first reason why you owe me nothing, even if I am helping you out.”
But the inheritance was not all pure gold. There was also, in the widow’s estimation, an element of wastage, understandable if one considered that Siméon Désilets had not come to Calgary via Australia, China and Russia. He had held on to certain of the prejudices of Saint-Ursule de Maskinongé, which Beauty Rose had been obliged to dispense with after his death. On the subject of the sexes, for example. Not for anything in the world would the landlord have encouraged contact between them. He had every occasion to do so, however; beer awakens a client’s generosity; after two or three bottles he very often feels the need to bestow his favours on some poor disadvantaged girl; in this case, why not help him to find her? Besides, collaboration of this nature is always profitable.
“Your poor uncle always refused.”
François Laterrière had not travelled via Australia, China and Russia either.
“By God,” he exclaimed, “my uncle was right.”
“After his death I gave in.”
“You betrayed him!”
“Precisely,” said the widow, “and that, you see, is my second reason. I’ve been unfaithful to the principles of your uncle. I’m sorry, even though I didn’t approve of them. You’re his nephew. I’ll help you and so make amends.”
François, indignant:
“Make amends some other way. Don’t count on me anymore. I’ll have nothing to do with your acts of fornication.”
Beauty Rose, taken aback:
“Fornication?”
“Yes, fornication.”
“I don’t understand, Nephew. You’re forgetting that I have morals.”
“Morals? You must be joking!”
“Morals that I got from you uncle. If I hadn’t had them, I’ll admit, I’d have gone in for a brothel; but I had them, and so I made do with Tourist Rooms.”
François had spoken too harshly.
“Tourist Rooms, that’s different,” he conceded.
“Just a modest little enterprise: ten rooms, four maids. So help me, I don’t see where you get your fornication, Nephew! I employ the maids to look after the rooms; in between chores they have time to spare; I don’t ask them how they spend it; that’s their business. I collect the money for the rooms. What could possibly be wrong with that, Nephew?”
“Why, nothing at all, Aunt Beauty Rose.”
“Besides, I’m never in the place. I stay in the tavern. There, after the second or third bottle, a client will sometimes ask me for a girl: I offer him a room, I promise him nothing; I tell him if he’s lucky the maids will like his pretty face. If he still takes the room it’s at his own expense, and not theirs, because he never has a pretty face. I personally select the clients; the pretty faces always go elsewhere to be admired.”
“And the third reason?” asked François, who was beginning to weary of his aunt’s dialectics.
Beauty Rose hesitated.
“To be perfectly honest,” she replied, “when the client goes upstairs I’m not as confident as I let on to you. True, I’ve personally selected him; he never has a pretty face. But then, I’m not that well acquainted with my maids either; they just might have poor taste. And so, to calm my fears, I’ve insisted that they all have milk.”
François, aghast:
“Milk!”
“Yes, milk.”
“Hmm,” said he.
“Of course,” Beauty Rose went on, “a maid can’t have milk without having previously experienced a certain misfortune, and I tell myself that the milk will prevent it from happening again. That’s my third reason: we’ll have more than enough to feed your daughter. You lend her to us, we’ll care for her, and you can keep your genuflexions for another: your daughter will pay us back.”
The young father, horrified:
“How?”
“By sucking,” came the reply.
Having milk is not everything; what matters is being able to keep it. To achieve this end, it’s best that it be drunk, since breasts are so made that they will fill up only as long as they are emptied. For a while, before the arrival of François Laterrière and his daughter, Chaouac, this generous paradox caused Timire great concern, for it was he who had been put in charge of the milkmaids’ welfare. Day in, day out, morning, noon and night, he had to provide them with hungry children. He chose these children with the greatest of care; they were nevertheless always taken off the streets, where children have a tendency to be more talkative than elsewhere. And so it happened that certain parents came to hear what repast was being served in the Tourist Rooms, and they were most upset, for parents, it is well known, are always more or less corrupt; these felt obliged to forbid their children the healthiest, the noblest, if not the most humane of all foods. As for Timire, they talked quite simply of hanging him. Timire would hear nothing of it, but he was anxious all the same. He had no difficulty approving the adoption of Chaouac.
François Laterrière also approved it, but with less promptitude. First, he had to listen to a debate in his conscience between his daughter, the said Chaouac, on the one hand, and his priest, Monsieur de Saint-Justin, on the other. The priest spoke first; he affirmed truths to which François listened, but which he barely heard, since the acoustics of a “tourist room” in the Farwest are hardly conducive to such things as those of a farmhouse in Trompe-Souris. Then it was Chaouac’s turn; her speech was short and to the point; she was thirsty. With her first cry François heard her and felt the torment of her thirst.
“Oh, Monsieur le curé, forgive me,” he cried, handing the child to Beauty Rose. “I have no other choice!”
“Not so fast, there, Nephew!” replied Beauty Rose. “I may have my morals, but I’m not a curé yet!”
One of the “tourist rooms” was made available to the young father and it was suggested that he might like to help Timire in the tavern during the day. He accepted the room but refused the job, happy to be able to sleep next to Chaouac, but not the least bit inclined to get himself breathed all over by drinkers of beer. Not that he despised these drinkers; they were his brothers, exiles like himself, and for the most part of the same origin. Indeed, the tavern is the only place in America where a French Canadian can speak his language freely. But François Laterrière was not one to indulge in conversation. He was a serious lad, who had no time for idle talk and knew that, as far are essentials were concerned, everything had already been said long ago by persons in authority, and in particular by Monsieur de Saint-Justin. And so he preferred the open air.
He went to work on a ranch. No speeches there, just grass and wind, and sometimes a cloud or two, or else an empty sky and the backdrop of monotony against which simple, uncomplicated souls, inclined to melancholy, seem to thrive. François found peace there, if not happiness. They hadn’t given him a lasso; he had no idea that he’d become a cowboy. The ranch seemed to him like one vast Trompe-Souris, a free and unfenced version of the lowlands of Maskinongé county. He wished for nothing more. At night he came back to sleep at the Tourist Rooms; in the morning he returned to his cows. He took care, however, never to go near the tavern, which he believed to be a haunt of the Devil. On the ranch he felt no cause for anxiety. Yet it was there that a sinister encounter awaited him. One day he found himself face to face, not with Satan, but with a white bull, an animal utterly lacking in subtlety, who was nevertheless to have a most disastrous influence on his soul.
Both parties began by examining one another coldly. The landscape was green, almost blue. Then a strange heat was felt, as a cloud moved aside, unmasking the sun, which was yellow, almost red. And in that same moment both turned coward. Each took a step forward in the hope that the other would step back, then keep on going, leaving fury triumphant and carrying off in his retreat the cowardice of both. But the other party also stepped forward. So there was no alternative but to fight it out. François was the madder of the two. His fury triumphed. With his neck wrung, the white bull turned coward and died. “Bulls and I,” said François to himself, “just don’t seem to get along!”
He had to admit that he, for his part, detested them, for the very good reason that one of their kind had forced him to leave the canyon, where he had found his mission, where Eglantine lived, and where his ancestors and his children would together have brought about his certain happiness. But he refused to allow for the existence of any such sentiments on the side of the bulls. Yet the bulls had every right to feel this way, since they considered their brother in the canyon to have been guiltless, laying the blame for Eglantine’s death on the dead cow and responsibility for the bovine fury on François, who, they claimed, could have prevented it by removing the offending organ. In short, as is always the case, both sides had excellent reasons for carrying on the war. And the war continued. Ten more times, pitting his strength against an ever renewed enemy, François Laterrière emerged victorious, thus demonstrating the superiority of the lad from Maskinongé over the bull of the Farwest. This was not quite what the boss had had in mind.
“You’ll go far, my boy,” he said. “Ten bulls in one week is a mighty fine start! Carry on the good work anywhere you like, but keep off my ranch!”
So, François took himself elsewhere and, at the expense of another boss, proceeded to repeat his demonstration. Before long a nasty reputation had overtaken him. Thrown out a second time, he was unable to get himself hired on a third ranch. After which, on the advice of Beauty Rose, he went to see old Jesse Crochu at the Calgary Stampede. Crochu took him on immediately, but on one condition: he was to change his name. Frank Laterreur he became.
Not long afterwards, who should arrive in Calgary but Monsieur de Saint-Justin, on an apostolic mission. He was companied by an academician – a ferret-faced pinhead – none other than the famous historian, Ramulot. They had come from Edmonton where, on behalf of the Committee for the Survival of the French Agony in America, they had been inspecting the few remaining houses where the French Canadian lingo could still be heard. In Calgary there was no one to visit. And so, to the Calgary Stampede they went. There, the said Frank Laterreur greatly impressed them, both by his courage and by the extreme simplicity of his technique. Indeed, without picadors, without banderilleros, alone in the ring, and unarmed, without the aid of a red cape, or a lance, or a spear, with only his bare hands, he slew the black bull. This beat anything Europe and its toreadors could do.
“Oh my! Oh my!” exclaimed Monsieur de Saint-Justin.
“Hooray! Hooray!” cried Ramulot, his mouth watering.
After which, still hungry for more, they decided to go and congratulate the champion on behalf of their Homeland and to present him, honoris causa, with the emblem of the fleur-de-lis. In the wings they bumped into Jesse Crochu, who asked them, “Who are you?” They gave their names and listed their titles. The Academy? Old Jesse had never heard of any such thing, but, putting two and two together, guessed what it must be. I reckon that’s what those fellas down East call their rodeo, thought he.
“Anyhow,” he said, “don’t go getting ideas about taking Frank away from me. Bulls, now – that’s okay. If you need some, I can let you have all you want. But not Frank. He’s mine, and he stays right here with me.”
Ramulot thanked him: the Academy was not in need of bulls. As for the said Frank, they had no desire to hire him. They simply wished to congratulate him and pin a fleur-de-lis on his chest. Jesse Crochu, reassured, saw no reason to stand in their way. Let them congratulate, then, and decorate; let them fleurdelisate to their heart’s content!
François saw them approaching. Like most priests when they travel, Monsieur de Saint-Justin was not wearing a cassock. François caught sight of his collar. Bah! it’s a clergyman! he thought.
As for Ramulot, he was wearing a tie, a blue one, distinctly on the gaudy side.
“You, my pinhead,” said François under his breath, “you can pay for the heresy of your friend.”
And drawing in his neck like a bull, he advanced towards him.
“Mr. Laterreur!” cried the Academician, “I have the greatest admiration for you. Please stop and allow me to decorate you with the fleur-de-lis!”
Now, in the Farwest, this symbol is used for branding cattle.
François: “Just you wait! I’ll show you who’s the calf around here!”
But Ramulot had no wish to wait. He turned on his heels and fled. All went well until a terrible boot with a deadly aim caught him from behind, raising his lower quarters high off the ground and causing his upper quarters to plunge accordingly, so that he sailed through the air, a ferret-faced Icarus, in the direction of the nearest manure pile. There he landed, pin-head first, and sank so deep that François abandoned the fight in disgust. And turning to Monsieur de Saint-Justin:
“Mr. Clergyman,” he said, “take back your shit-faced friend.”
So ended the encounter of François Laterrière and his parish priest in Calgary. They met again in Saint-Justin twenty-five years later, but this time, the priest having assumed his cassock and François his real name, they recognized each other.
“So!” cried François, “the clergyman was you!”
“So!” cried the priest, “the toreador was you!”
And they burst out laughing at the memory of Ramulot. He alone had kept his identity. And a fat lot of good it had done him.
