Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....Gone HomeThey have been cheated, the Hull Historical Society - or whoever it was that put up the memorial in Brebeuf Park. The robed figure stands with head held high, a rosary about its neck. Lifting dexter a cross, offering it to the spring air this ides-of-May day.
The woman stood below the memorial; the only one to whom Brebeuf now spoke his silent offerings. Holding sinister a paddle, its bottom resting on a portion of canoe, the front part of a canoe, all that was represented there. Cheated because, instead of turning a rich oxidized perspective, the figure has rusted, the materials of which it was fashioned base, like the greed of those who cheat.
Her neat head resting on her slight frame cocked toward the inscription. She read, fascinated by the history of the figure, familiar with its one-sidedness; hadn't she taught its orthodoxy after all, to her own impressionable students year after year?
Tortured by the Hurons, the story went, martyred by the Iroquois. An old story. Avenging their brothers, the other Amerindians, did they but know it, on the Conquistadors, Pissaro and Cortex, who joined Aztecs to the One True God.
Brebeuf, a seventeenth-Century Gothic tale of blind dedication to a concept of a being that never in fact existed. Their own beliefs, at one with nature, were false; only his was the way to God. Did they rip the living flesh from his body, and did his screams for mercy resound through the forest, through the centuries, through her head? The cries of seagulls.
The woman walked on.
Passing elderly people sitting on parch benches, leathery faces turned to the sun, wind whipping grey hair. Her own was fastened, a tight prisoner of dark brown threads, resting on the nape of her neck.
Seagulls cresting updrafts over the Ottawa River, their cries raucous, were ignored. A police cruiser drove slowly over the park's grass, looking incongruous there, two men inside leisurely looking to either side of the park. What for? Illegal drinking?
From the residences across the street, jangling noise whirled in the air, caught in the branches of the trees, assaulted her ears. Not music as she understood it. Growing louder as she approached a stand of Jack pine until finally as she walked abreast of the building, could see in the distance the contours of its stuccoed pseudo-Spanish architecture, its black roof, the din blasting her eardrums and she quickened her pace down the pathway so the noise gradually diminished and the street with its houses hidden then behind the encroaching wood.
A group of teen-age boys straddling bicycles blocked the path and she said "Hi", walking around them. Smiles crossed their faces. They looked healthy, sound in mind and body; their mothers would be proud of such specimens, she thought, and mused on the "bonjour" that echoed past her. Her students, about their age, had always liked her, no problems there. But the past had always oppressed her with its bleak history. The present teased her with its elusive and never-to-be fulfilled promise. And the future, what was that? Hope that some things might change. Blood doesn't, nor a tainted perception; his, not hers.
Ahead of her, a group of people, an assortment of ages, a family picnic in a clearing. Children ornamenting the grass, sitting beside parents, and a young couple, their skins glistening with dark tans in immodest suits throwing a Frisbee to each other, two huge animals like ponderous horses frolicking between them. Saint Bernards, that's what they were; lifesavers.
She couldn't wear a brief suit like that. The unsightly scar from a childhood appendectomy. Sloppy work done on her. She'd been 'one of them'. It hadn't mattered.
The macadam path ended and grass stretched before her, a faint pathway worn in the grass, and it was obvious that here the historic path continued. She meant to follow it this special day. There rose the sound of rushing water as she walked alongside the rapids; the width of the Ottawa stretching blue and cresting white, wide across the river to the city of Ottawa with its high-rise buildings disappointing and modernizing the landscape. She would avoid looking straight across, look only at the mesmerizing water, hear only the waters calling other centuries' sounds. And those of the blackbirds sitting in the sumachs, jawing their harsh tongue, compatible with the landscape.
Human sounds long passed behind her and she walked over a path bare of grass. Old, very old, and comprised more of granite outcroppings than dirt. The wind not as noticeable here, the scrubby underbrush nudging closer to the path, closing in at certain places and here and there, tent caterpillars spreading their corruption on newly-leafed branches. The worms, black, squiggling, appalling in their home, a knitted tent, fragile-appearing yet strong enough to withstand wind, rain and the onslaught of insect-eating birds; an obscenity on the spring growth of the bushes, the trees.
She deviated from the path, stumbling on gravel, walking to a granite outcropping. Stood looking out over the river to think on the tenacity of trees growing on granite islands in the river. Swallows, their bodies iridescent blue in the sun, graced their winged embroideries on the air, swooping over the turgid water, hunting insects.
Their cries meshed with the swishing water-sound and she thought how primordial it seemed, it sounded. And here she was, in this ancient place, transported in time to another space, following in the footsteps of Brule, de Vigneault, de Champlain; and they, intruders, in the steps of their guides, Indians who had long used the pathway. Feeling the same sun on her back, the same stones under her feet and breathing air surely the same, just a trifle tinged with the stain of 'civilization'.
Here they portaged, the explorers, missionaries, traders, voyageurs. The trade route, portage most familiar to them, homespunned and booted, setting canoes in the river, past the rapids, paddling north and south, shipping profits back to France. The influence corrupting the land as surely as the caterpillars did the trees. What would they say, any one of them, if they were here with her now?
No, not them,
them! The moccasined ones, the bronze-skinned people of the plains, the forests and mountains whose home all of this had been, who lived with nature. Who also obligingly let it all happen, the desecration.
How different the immediate surroundings, for example? Well, ash elm, and poplar, thin and spindly in place of the virgin growth they met here. Giant conifers long logged out. And looking across the river at the cement monoliths, the architecture of the future encompassing that of the centuries following their footsteps; the Gothic traceries of the parliament buildings - what would they think? My God, she could hear their astonished, choking, inarticulate sounds, too stricken to be intelligent about it, the words strangling in their throats, their breathing heavy, laboured with distress for the land.
They were pushing her, demanding explanations, making her responsible for the nightmare vision before them!
The dogs, it was the dogs. The two huge brown and white dogs, nuzzling her, breathing like a brace of locomotives, slavering over her clothing, her hands pushing them away. Well, but they're persistent, insisting on being noticed. They're the here-and-now, not a group of ghosts crowding her imagination. They want to be fondled, shown that they matter. They would like to share her warmth. At the very least to be petted, feel her reluctant hands stroking the mat of their soft hair. So she obliges, murmuring "hello fellas" at them, and they eagerly complete with each other for her frail attention.
And as she walks on, back onto the pathway which twists and turns and finally dips to an inlet in the river where water twists over rocks forming a walkway, one turns back; the other follows her, joyfully adopting the small thin woman with the dark hair who stumbles but continues, determined to see this thing through, the historic walk, the promise of the day this mid-May afternoon.
Behind her, before her, beside her; he's there, the dog, snuffling, gamboling. Her newfound companion, his aliveness and eagerness for attention dominating the present, banishing the past. And she hopes he'll soon tire, become bored and leave her to resume her past connections. That's the way it always goes, doesn't it? Doesn't it?
Silas, she could have had him. Sad stereotype of a failure to adjust to another era, another way of life; the drunken Indian.
"Aw, c'mon Annie, have a heart. S'not my fault!" His tall frame leaning carefully, swaying, over hers seated implacably in her mother's house, visiting.
Anne", she said stiffly. "It's Anne".
Sneering at her, was he sneering at her? All right, it had been Annie when she was a kid, all the years they grew up together. Herself not knowing much then, though certain there must be a better way to live.
They talked. they'd get out, make something good of themselves, both of them. together. Childhood promises as ephemeral as children's dreams.
Back, only so she could tell Mattie Longcanoe how it was with her. She'd only shrugged. Didn't care. Nothing like 'no daughter of mine's gonna marry one of
them'. It simply didn't penetrate the fog of drink, the stupor of indifference.
"Whose fault then, Silas?"
"It's a sickness, my dependence. Don't you do any reading up there? You're supposed to be so educated, living in the city, teaching. Even
I read. Sociologists say we can't help it." His face saturnine, beautiful, earnestly trying to persuade her. Was he really that naive? "A crutch", she delivered her judgement pitilessly.
"Just a little help, that's all I need." Not from her. too late. Once, maybe, but not now. It was never meant to be, Annie and Silas. And currently it was Anne and Rene. Anne and Rene Hebert. Not as though it was only yesterday. Years had intervened.
Had they no concept of time? Expect her to come back now, after all that time" All that time. Why didn't all that time make any difference to her? Time heals all wounds, doesn't it? Wasn't time all that was needed to consolidate her future with him, with her white man? Ah, perhaps she was that ingenuous once.
That was history, too. And so was the failure. Why? Different worlds unable to meet. Was she so fundamentally different from say, his sister? How could she apportion fault? Partly hers, partly his. Did it make any difference? Promises meant nothing, even when they both agreed to try a little harder. And if it was all over now, why did she feel ... how
did she feel? Could she define it? Well, at the very least, empty. Devoid of future thoughts. No expectations, that was it.
Finally, there, there; the steps, the granite steps she'd read about, where canoes were launched downstream from the rapids. The rapids much more fierce centuries ago, before the Chaudiere dam had been built. Much more fearsome, more spectacular. Cruel and beautiful. Those same words described the severing of one's past from the present; aroused the same helpless ambivalence, both repelled and attracted.
And how to define what she felt about this decision, still toying reluctantly in her mind? Was it greed or wonder for what lay ahead, the challenge of competing with nature on her own grounds?
Life's only challenge now was to endure. And what use in enduring what has no value?
She scrambled awkwardly over a series of rocks. Her intent to sit on a projection, a huge, moss-carpeted boulder overlooking, high over the river. The river turning and tumbling, fascinating, utterly; the patterns diverging, converging. An odour of creosote tarred the air and from where it came she couldn't imagine, yet it belonged there somehow and didn't bother her, its heaviness.
She relented, looked across the river to the other side and watched bicyclists turning wheel on the parkway, minuscule cars sliding metallically over the highway, the sun blinking off windows eyeing those tall buildings.
A sound. She turned away, watched now both dogs approach her, happily crowding the boulder, slobbering with joy over their renewed acquaintance. Eyes sad, bodies jovially clumsy. Sad eyes, reddened by selective inbreeding and it was true, wasn't it, that such dogs suffered eye problems as they matured? Wasn't it? As though it matters, Annie.
It was dangerous, wasn't it? Here on this precarious perch with the dogs crowding her? They footsure, but her uncomfortable beside their warm and panting bodies, their saliva spilling over her silk blouse, long pink tongues reaching to caress her hair. She pushing, scrambling to rise to her feet, they pushing and finally, her shoes sliding uncontrollably, knees scraping on the granite, the ancient mineral.
The water is cold and she is quickly inundated, the shock travelling electrically, in spasms, through her body. She is wearing her favourite pink blouse, a pair of brown pants and one shoe, brown suede, has fallen off. It's just as well she thinks, and wonders erratically about all the effluent that comes down the Ottawa from the towns and cities dotting its banks. Untreated sewage. So much for civilizing influences. A scandalous situation. Oh, she shrinks from the thought. As if it matters, she consoles herself. There are other things to think about in this brief space.
The dress rehearsals, practised in dreams. See, no panic! And this, the final presentation.
Hands reached up to grasp her ankles. Then her hands, which fluttered upward desperately, without volition, like frightened birds. The reaching hands were gentle yet firm, reassuring and helping her to adjust to her new home.
The rushing in her ears became a sweet song.
c. 1981 Rita Rosenfeld
Published in
Mamashee, Winter-Spring 1981
