Black robe, p.9
Black Robe, page 9
When he took up the paddle and began to stroke, his head felt faint and his ears rang with the familiar deafening noise he had come to fear. He stared ahead into the blinding mist of snow; the chill air formed tiny icicles in the hair of his beard and eyebrows. Someone kicked him from behind, almost unbalancing him in the narrow canoe. He turned, slewing to one side, to let the child who had kicked him pass by and scramble up with the other children on the snow-covered pile of baggage. But as this child settled itself, it turned and looked back at him. Through the veil of snowflakes he saw the wizened face and glittering eyes of the sorcerer, Mestigoit.
*
All morning the canoes moved upriver. The storm did not abate. At times the wind seemed to shift and the snow beat upon their backs instead of their faces. On either side, the forest, mantled by snow, seemed to blur and disappear into the white woollen cloud of sky, as though the land itself had melted into the desolation of winter. Laforgue, paddling, felt his arms and shoulders ache as though he had been flayed. His knees and thighs froze in their cramped position, and numbness spread down his left leg, often causing him to half topple at the end of his stroke. Try as he might, he could not keep pace with the Savage ahead of him, and there were times when he was forced to let his paddle trail in the water and, panting, dizzy, bow his head, his ears ringing, his body racked with pain.
Early in the afternoon he saw, mistily, in the distance, the shores of a large island in the centre of the river, and as he did, the snake of canoes turned left, going towards a landing place. The Isle of Dyes, Daniel had called this place, and Laforgue remembered reading in Father Brabant’s account of his journey that this was where the Algonkin found a red root with which they dyed their ceremonial robes. The island was heavily wooded. Laforgue, his clogs tied around his neck, his cassock hiked up, scrambled about in the shallows, helping pull his canoe clear of the water, pushing it up on to the snow-covered shore.
The Savages, on landing, at once tied to their feet the large flat discs made of thongs and wood which the French called raquettes. Laforgue, undoing his bundle of belongings, took out these snowshoes on which, at Québec, he had spent many hours of practice. Having tied them on, he manoeuvred carefully across the snow, but now, in real winter snow, his practice did not stand him in good stead. Reaching a deep drift, he toppled into it. Gleeful children ran around him and one of the Algonkian men helped him right himself, laughing, saying, ‘Stand up, you silly prick. Have you been drinking the Norman drink that makes you fall down?’
‘Thank you,’ Laforgue said, and smiled. One must always smile and give thanks and never lose one’s temper, for the Savages were slow to anger and surprisingly good-humoured about their own trials and sufferings.
‘Lift your feet up like this, Nicanis,’ the man said, and demonstrated. Slowly, Laforgue went up the incline. Beside him, adept on a child’s set of snowshoes, the hunchback moved with a light, hopping step.
At the top of the incline stood Neehatin and Chomina, both armed for a hunt. ‘Today you will come with us when we seek moose,’ the hunchback said. ‘Neehatin has told me to watch you, Blackrobe. No spells against the hunt, do you hear? Pray to your god. Ask him to send us moose.’
‘I will do that,’ Laforgue said. He saw that Neehatin was looking down at him. The Algonkian leader’s face made him think of the stone image of a dead Saxon king he had seen carved on a tomb in Bayeux. Neehatin raised his arm and shouted some orders of which Laforgue heard only ‘Beyond the trees... Chomina with five men... Ougebemat, the ravine...’ and then, ‘Iwanchou, put away your musket and take a javelin. We do not want the noise of your cannon.’
‘Come,’ the hunchback said. ‘Follow me. Lift your feet like this.’
And so, moving among sparse trees, plodding on the wide, flat snowshoes, Laforgue followed the hunters into the white unknown. A chill wind caused powdered snow to blow off the tops of drifts in a fine, sugary mist. Laforgue, keeping as close as he could to the hunchback’s pace, gradually became aware that the others had gone on ahead and were lost to his sight. Through the trees they came out on to a long snow-covered hillside which stretched down for half a mile to end in a wooded ravine. At the top of this slope, he again saw the hunters. They had cut and fashioned long poles, to which they attached javelins tipped by stone points. Balancing these poles, they went cautiously down the sloping hillside. The hunchback turned and put his filthy hand over Laforgue’s mouth, warning him to silence.
The hunters spread out in a wide, wavering line, becoming smaller until their figures were like children’s, far down the white slopes. Suddenly, the hunchback tensed and pointed. From a clump of trees, ungainly, floundering in the deep snow, came a male and two female moose. Their long thin legs plunged into the drifts and they staggered, mired as though the snow were a white glue. The hunters, seeing them, advanced, not running but stalking them as though afraid to come too close. Laforgue saw Chomina turn and give a signal to the others. All stopped.
Chomina was closest to the animals. Raising his unwieldy javelin he hurled it, striking a moose in the neck. The animal reared up in the deep snow. The remaining two, frantic, began a slow muddy gallop back towards the trees. At once, other hunters, some hurling their javelins, some jabbing with them like spears, circled and attacked the injured moose. Laforgue saw the animal fall, saw the snow stained by blood. Five hunters now burst from another part of the forest, trying to block off the escape of the two fleeing animals. The javelins flew. One of the moose tripped and fell, and the hunters, swift, sure, incredibly agile on their flat snowshoes, closed in for the kill. The unharmed moose, a doe, had reached higher ground where the snows were not deep and now, at speed, fled to safety along the tree line. At that, the hunters broke their silence with howls of triumph. Two of the large animals lay dead in the snow. The hunchback turned to Laforgue, his glittering eyes filled with joy. ‘Ho, ho,’ he cried, uttering the guttural Savage cry of pleasure. ‘Your god has answered you, Nicanis. Those moose have died for you. I told you the demon had gone out from under your black robe, you lucky old prick. Now, we will eat. Yes, tonight we will truly eat.’
But Laforgue was looking about for Daniel. At last he saw the boy standing close to the first-killed moose, as the Algonkin began with their knives to hack the animal into sections. From the area where the canoes were beached, women appeared, pulling behind them the long strips of bark with which they enclosed their habitation. The women went down to the scene of carnage and the hunters loaded pieces of the dismembered animal on to these makeshift sleds. Daniel was helping to skin the hind leg of a moose, and as Laforgue watched the boy, his hands and forearms stained with blood, his long hair flowing down his back, his clothing greasy, he seemed, at a distance, indistinguishable from the young men around him. And again Laforgue thought of other Frenchmen he had seen in this wild and empty land: of the fur trader Mercier, half naked, eating at the kettles; of the young coureurs de bois who went into the woods with the Algonkin in search of furs and came back to Québec, wild, corrupted, sleeping with the Savage girls. How was it that, in a few months of living like animals among these barbarians, they could forget the civilization they had left behind and, with no fear of eternal damnation, embrace the ways of ignorance and filth in which these barbarians lived? Is Belial more beautiful than Jesus? Laforgue asked himself. Impossible. Then how can it be that he is more ardently loved, more promptly obeyed and more devotedly adored?
But now he was given little time to reflect on such matters. For all around him, as though in drunken euphoria, the Savages were bustling about, calling out foul slanders on each other, laughing and cavorting like buffoons as they dragged their catch back to the encampment where the fires were already ablaze in the snow. The kettles were slung and the meat was thrown in. Children and dogs romped in the snowdrifts while the hunters, as though to celebrate their victory, began to gamble among each other, tossing stones in a bowl as they waited for the meat to cook. As the Jesuit warmed his freezing feet and tried to dry the hem of his robe at the flames, Neehatin approached him. The sorcerer, who had been trying to caress a girl little older than a child, stopped his depredations and at once came over, as though to eavesdrop.
‘Well, Nicanis,’ Neehatin said, smiling. ‘Mestigoit tells me he has pulled that demon out of your asshole. Is that right?’
‘There was no demon,’ Laforgue said, remembering to smile. But he did not hear what Neehatin said next; his ears began their painful ringing. ‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘I said, can your god bring us food every day? Mestigoit thinks you can cast a spell on game. Can you cast a good spell tomorrow as you did today? I mean, bring us beavers as well as moose?’
‘I can ask,’ Laforgue said. ‘But I do not know if my God will think us worthy of his blessings.’
‘Nicanis is a cunning old prick, isn’t he?’ Mestigoit said, prancing around in his usual irritating fashion. ‘He’s not going to tell us anything, is he?’
‘Just tell us where to get more moose,’ Neehatin said, laughing. ‘If you can do that, we’ll follow you anywhere you want to go. Even past the Great Rapids. That’s a promise, Nicanis. Talk to that god of yours, and if he brings me moose – oh, yes, and some beaver and a few fat birds as well – then I promise you I’ll kiss his fucking toes as you do.’
‘My God can do more than find food,’ Laforgue said, but as he spoke he saw that Neehatin was no longer listening. He had turned away and now called out something to the women around the fires. One of the women took a piece of meat from a kettle, put it on a bark plate and brought it to the Algonkian leader. At once, he tore off a small strip and handed the remainder of the plate to Laforgue. He held up the strip of meat which he had torn off and said, ‘This is for your Hesu. Is that his name?’
‘Jesus is his name,’ Laforgue said.
‘Hee-sus. All right. Heesus, I give you this piece of moose and ask you for more.’ He threw the piece of meat into the fire, where it roasted and then shrivelled in the flames. ‘Now, eat,’ he said, turning to Laforgue. ‘We will all eat our fucking faces full. Right?’
At that a great roar of joy went up from the men, women and children assembled around the kettles, and at once the women began ladling out pieces to all comers who proffered their empty bark plates. As Laforgue sat down beside the flames to consume his portion, dogs, frantic with hunger, barked and pushed at him, one sticking its snout right into the plate, upsetting the meat on to the snow. Hastily, Laforgue retrieved it. After ten days of eating only the foul-tasting sagamité, this half-cooked meat now seemed to him as fine as any beef he had eaten in Normandy. Famished, he wolfed it down and, following the example of the others, got up and went to the kettles for more. All around him were smiling faces and a noise of shouting, laughter, foul banter. Again, he was impressed by the way in which the Savages, although they must be as famished as he, did not jostle each other and seek out more than their share. Indeed, as he approached the kettles, the man in front of him turned and dumped on his plate the piece of meat he had pulled out for himself. Laforgue moved on into a throng of Savages, eating from his plate as he walked. He was searching for Daniel. Now is the time to speak with him; now, when all are occupied and before we lie down for the night. But as he walked, his ears began to ring. The heavy toll of the day’s paddling, the freezing cold and the pain from the old injury to his foot all conspired to make him shiver as though he ran a fever. He remembered that he had not said his nightly office, remembered that in these moments of feasting he had thought of nothing but eating his fill. Why had he marvelled just now that other men could become brutalized in these wilds? Was it any wonder that eating was the Savages’ highest joy when, cast out from the sight of God, they dwelled here, in this harsh and unforgiving land, dependent as wild animals on finding prey? Would it ever be possible to convert such people? It is as though this country is far from the sun of God’s warmth. Even I, who now beseech His aid, can only think of eating my fill, then brutishly huddling among other warm bodies in the smoking stench of tonight’s habitation. My mind is fogged with pain and weariness. I can no longer think.
And then he saw Daniel, sitting among six or seven young hunters, licking his fingers as he finished gnawing on a bone. At once Laforgue went over and squatted down beside him. In the firelight the boy’s features seemed to shine as though, like the Savages, he had greased his skin. He did not speak but resumed gnawing at the ragged fringe of meat which adhered to the bone.
‘Why do you hide from me,’ Laforgue said. It was not a question, but an accusation.
Daniel stopped eating. He stared into the flames of the fire. ‘Because I am ashamed.’
Laforgue felt his heart beat hard in his chest. If only he knew that I too have sinned, he might speak to me.
‘I also am ashamed,’ Laforgue said. ‘I am ashamed for myself. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. I can cast no stone.’
‘What are you talking about?’ The boy kept looking into the fire. ‘You don’t understand.’
Laforgue bowed his head. ‘Daniel, I too have committed a sin of the flesh.’
‘You?’ The boy turned to him for a moment, astonished. Then he laughed. ‘What sin did you commit, Father? Something you did long ago, in France?’
‘No, no. A sin of intent. Here. With that girl.’
Again the boy looked at him, a side glance, suspicious and confused. ‘My uncle does not like the Jesuits; he wanted me to go as an apprentice with the Récollet Fathers. The Jesuits lie for the greater glory of God, my uncle told me. The end justifies the means. One must never trust what they say.’
‘I am telling the truth.’
‘But why? To win me over, isn’t that it?’
‘We have sinned equally in the sight of God,’ Laforgue said. ‘Perhaps my sin is greater because I am a priest. Now we must ask His forgiveness and promise to amend our lives. I want you to kneel with me and say an act of contrition. And promise that we will avoid further temptation.’
‘Amen,’ the boy said sarcastically. ‘Father, don’t you know that life isn’t so simple for the rest of us? We are not Jesuits. God has not chosen us to be His special servants.’
‘God chose you to come with me,’ Laforgue said. ‘And now, Daniel – Daniel, listen to me. I am afraid. I am afraid of this country. I am afraid of this mission. I am afraid of what is happening here. I don’t mean the ordinary dangers: starvation, capture, death. I mean the other, the greater danger. Perhaps it is heresy to say it, but in the last few days, as we go on, I know more and more that the devil rules this land. Belial rules here; he rules the hearts and minds of these poor people. Through them he seeks to wound Our Saviour. Through them, and through our weakness. Through that girl, for instance.’
‘Woman is the devil’s instrument, the fount of pollution,’ the boy said, chanting it mockingly. ‘Please, Father, I’ve heard it all before.’
‘That does not mean it is not true.’
‘It can be true or not true, it doesn’t matter. I said I am ashamed. Do you know why? Because I have failed God, and because it means nothing to me.’
‘How can it mean nothing, since you feel ashamed?’
‘Stop it,’ the boy said, in an angry whisper. ‘Don’t try to trick me with a Jesuit’s arguments. I am not going to give up this life, do you hear?’
‘You are not going to give up that girl, you mean. What life are you talking about? This life – living like an animal?’
‘Animals? The Savages are truer Christians than we will ever be. They have no ambitions. They think we are mean and foolish because we love possessions more than they do. They live for each other, they share everything, they do not become angry with each other, they forgive each other things which we French would never forgive.’
‘I know all that,’ Laforgue said. ‘I know it, and it fills me with shame. Their patience is extraordinary.’
‘It is more than patience. You do not know them as I do. Annuka tells me about the mysteries of this land and these forests. It is there that they find their spiritual strength. They think us blind and stupid. They say we are less intelligent than they are, because we ignore these mysteries.’
‘What mysteries?’ Laforgue said. His ears rang. He had to strain to hear what the boy was saying.
‘The mysteries of this world. They believe that all things have a soul: men, animals, fish, forests, rivers.’
‘That is because Belial rules here,’ Laforgue said. ‘The devil infects their minds, making them resist the truth of our teachings.’
‘What teachings?’ the boy said. ‘Why should they believe in your world after death when they already have an afterworld of their own?’
‘What are you talking about? They do not believe in an afterworld. Father Brabant, who studied them for years, says they have no concept of an afterlife.’
‘He’s wrong.’
‘So you know more than Father Brabant?’
‘Yes, because they would never trust him. To them he is a Blackrobe, and all Blackrobes are sorcerers. They would not tell him of their world of the dead.’
Laforgue stared at the angry young face in the firelight. Around them, the feasting Savages had begun to sing their monotonous chants of celebration. ‘What world?’ Laforgue said.
‘The world of the dead.’
‘And where is this world?’
‘They believe that at night the dead see. They move about, animals and men, in the forests of night. The souls of men hunt the souls of animals, moving through forests made up of the souls of trees which have died.’
‘Is that what she told you?’ Laforgue smiled. ‘But what childish reasoning! Do they believe that these dead souls eat and drink, as we do?’
The boy looked at him with scorn. ‘Is that harder to believe in than a paradise where we all sit on clouds and look at God? Or burn for ever in the flames of hell?’
