Madame Victoria Page 8

  “I have to speak French?!” Victoria exclaims.

  Clicking her tongue in a show of resignation, the waitress says in an English tinged with Italian, “You’ll never find a job if you don’t speak both languages. What did you do before?”

  “Well, I took care of children.”

  The woman’s face is transformed, like the facade of a building where all the shutters have just swung open simultaneously. Looking decisive, the lamb pulls a sheet of notepaper from her back pocket and scribbles something down.

  “It’s my sister’s number. She’s looking for someone. Call her.”

  Victoria stuffs the paper into her handbag. A half-hour later she has her first appointment for a job interview. She had not been mistaken. This faithless, lacklustre metropolis is just the right place for her. She returns to her hotel with a cheerful spring in her step.

  The woman who greets her the day of the interview could hardly have denied her kinship with the waitress at the pizzeria. Younger, plumper, she has the same helmet of densely curled hair. But unlike her brown-eyed sister, she is odd-eyed. It’s disconcerting.

  Madame Eon ushers Victoria into her house, which is fitted out in a peculiar way. On one side are a bedroom and a kitchen redolent with the usual smells of a North American home: beer, red meat, and disappointment. The other side is marked off by low gates and painted in colours so bright they hurt Victoria’s eyes. The walls are covered with clumsy attempts at representing animals, houses, and other nondescript objects, all fashioned by unskilled minds. The odour given off by this part of the residence is unmistakable: the place is regularly invaded by children, young children. Even if she pinched her nostrils shut, Victoria could detect the smell of milk and loaded diapers.

  Madame Eon confirms her visitor’s diagnosis.

  “I run a family child-care centre. My clientele is Anglophone or allophone. My assistant quit on me this week. With twelve kids, including infants, I need at least two educators to satisfy the government’s ratio requirements. Even though this is not a subsidized service I have to meet the standards, you understand?”

  Ignoring the obscure jargon used by the woman, Victoria scans the place. Miniature chairs. Bins full of toys gnawed by burgeoning teeth. Dog-eared books. Potties, one blue, one pink, with their crowns of bacteria. Cribs. She shakes her head.

  “It’s not the kind of work I had in mind.”

  Madame Eon gives her an imploring look.

  “I can’t,” Victoria insists.

  But inside her too roomy pocket, her fingers start to twitch. In five days she’ll have nothing left to pay for her modest room. Her recent extravagance has not made her stupid; she has little chance of finding another job before then. “This could tide me over,” she tells herself as she kicks away a ball that has rolled up to her big toe. She looks directly into Madame Eon’s blue eye—or is it green?—and shakes her hand. Right then she feels something sting her neck and flattens the palm of her free hand against her carotid artery. She pulls her hand away and examines it. Nothing. An invisible insect.

  Her first shift turns into a succession of days that flow one into the next so seamlessly that what was supposed to be temporary soon becomes an immutable cycle from which, inexplicably, she can’t escape. If she had the leisure to mull it over she might conclude it was predestined or the work of some manipulative, vengeful gods, a kind of enslavement to her fate. But she doesn’t have the time to indulge in such musings.

  Madame Eon’s day-care centre is at once organized and untamed. The day is divided along lines that, theoretically, are very clear but are blurred by crying jags, allergy attacks, and snot. Thus, despite the schedule for naps, the young residents rarely sleep at the same time. Meals never really end; the instant a snack is over, the table is reloaded with food as soft and white as the clay out of which these munching creatures have been moulded. No sooner has Victoria finished serving than diapers get filled up, and the older children’s urgent needs multiply at a furious rate amid a commotion of wailing and accidents in pants already soiled from previous mishaps.

  The paint intended for motor and creative development ends up on the clothes and in the mouths of the youngest. An educational toy with rounded edges reveals, a split second too late, a blunt corner that inflicts bruises as deep blue as the sea, which Victoria quickly conceals with plasters. As the end of the day approaches and Victoria worries about handing over to the always-in-a-hurry parents a bunch of kids covered in gouache and bandages, the kids miraculously transform into clean, undamaged little beings.

  But the absence of children never lasts more than a few minutes. Through some inscrutable process, the quiet moments disintegrate as soon as they arise, and new children come to replace the old ones. The fact is that Madame Eon, who dreams of astronomical profits, has decided to keep the doors of her establishment open on weekends and evenings to accommodate parents with atypical schedules or who put a premium on social events. As a result, the day-care centre is crowded with tots at all hours of the day and night, and Victoria, unable to extricate herself from the seething syrup of early childhood, spends weeks of continual wakefulness wiping gummy fingers and keeping kids from falling into sinks full of soaking dishes that never quite get cleaned.

  She couldn’t say which is more exhausting: the perpetual recommencement of maternity of her previous life or the never-ending return of different children in Madame Eon’s place. In any case, this, too, is beyond the realm of the things she has the luxury of pondering. Just as she’s given up trying to understand how human beings this stupid can grow up so fast, she has also stopped examining herself, questioning herself, and analyzing her ailments and her tiredness. Of course, she feels her muscles stretching until they’re just limp cords, her arms afflicted with tics and spasms. She feels her knees popping each time she lifts an overweight baby—they’re all overweight, fed as they are on goose fat and starch. But whereas she had reflected on her situation back home and concluded she must leave, here, the whirlwind of chores and emergencies keeps her from withdrawing from her environment even for a second, and she slowly sinks into this routine, where the yearnings that she brought to Montreal dissolve one by one.

  She gets the feeling every now and then that time has remained suspended since the first day she entered this house and that whole generations have passed through her hands, where they were rocked and wiped before racing toward adulthood; that, in their turn, those adults, the corners of their mouths still studded with cereal crumbs, send her their offspring not yet able to speak their given names; that from one generation to the next these people are increasingly shapeless, and that in a few years nothing will be left of them but vague outlines.

  At other moments, however, it seems to her she arrived just yesterday and that time in fact has stretched so that each second has opened up and let in thousands of minuscule instants inhabited by microscopic pains. Because despite all their awkwardness and idiocy, children, especially those in Madame Eon’s house, are capable of the coldest acts of cruelty. Tiny knives concealed under a good layer of fat and filth.

  Take, for instance, her broken nails, which she initially put down to accidents; Victoria soon realizes it was the children, with their plastic cutlery and wooden hammers, that have been crushing her fingertips. At play, they butt her with their heads, apparently unintentionally, leaving her with bruises and a bitten tongue. It takes her a little while to notice the kids’ sideways glances after these misdemeanours, their looks of satisfaction, even amusement on seeing the blood trickle down their keeper’s chin.

  On her legs and stomach she discovers burns as long as whips. She has no recollection of what might have caused these wounds. True, there’s always hot milk sitting on the counter, and boiling water to cook eggs in, and a generic sauce simmering on the stove. But are the children really capable of handling these things without hurting themselves? She doesn’t believe it, but when she catches so
me of them avidly eyeing her blisters she’s not so sure anymore. Unable to make up her mind, all she can do is mop the table with a fetid rag to erase the splatters of strawberry jam. It’s the kids she would like to wipe away with her dishcloth.

  One day, as she’s going down to the basement to store some damaged toys, the door slams shut behind her and sends her tumbling to the bottom of the stairs, where she ends up with a badly sprained ankle. This time there’s no room left for doubt. Peals of high-pitched laughter ring out on the other side of the door. Victoria hobbles back up the stairs as quickly as she can to unmask the culprits. But there is no one behind the door. From the dormitory comes the sound of reedy snoring. The noise of a remote-controlled model airplane buzzes out under a door. Madame Eon convinces her that a little ice and a rudimentary bandage will suffice to fix her ankle; Victoria obediently returns to the yoke of her duties.

  But the incidents don’t end there. Growing less timid and more brazen, the children start to attack her more openly. They hit her with sticks when she least expects it, pinch her under cover of darkness, bite her the way one crunches a juicy apple. And the more they hound her, the less able Victoria is to punish the nasty beasts, to respond to a cruelty that appears to be both unconscious and calculated. The ambiguity of childhood paralyzes her. Madame Eon, constantly busy counting her money and putting up a good show for the parents, is completely oblivious, and Victoria would rather die than admit her inability to defend herself against such petty little monsters.

  Even the ones she thought were the gentlest manage to hurt her. A sly caress creeps around to her back and leaves a claw-like slash. An eager hug ends up choking her and she must struggle to break free of the stranglehold. At times, when she is exhausted, Victoria takes the liberty of sitting down and closing her eyes. She awakes to find her thumbnail has been completely torn off, that a patch of her hair is missing, that there’s a bluish half-moon shining above her eye. The wounds heal, but the erosion of her body worsens. The rebellion that had driven her to leave the world where she was once captive withers away. The more she works, the weaker she grows; the weaker she grows, the more the work becomes an obligation, an inescapable fact, an upper-case verb.

  She will never know what put an end to this cycle. One morning, she opens her eyes. She is stretched out in the middle of the corridor. There is silence all around; her whole body cries out in pain. She shivers as she raises her head. The house seems empty, something inconceivable. She calls out; her call drops back down like a dead pigeon. Sitting up, she realizes she is lying in a pool of blood. The sticky fluid appears concentrated, condensed, as though it had refrained from spreading for fear of being sucked up by a young vampire. She lifts her shirt. She wears the same shirt every day. She was probably wearing this shirt the day she declined and then accepted the job Madame Eon was offering her. Her stomach is riddled with deep holes where something seems to be smouldering. On the walls there are paler splashes of blood, possibly someone else’s, or her own, diluted by fatigue. By the rush of a battle. By a dash toward freedom.

  Summoning up all her strength, she gets to her feet. In front of her, the door is banging in the wind, letting in gusts of winter, keen and glaring. Who could have neglected to close it? Who are the runaways or the intruders she allowed in, or out? Victoria looks around. Everything, every sound, is motionless, petrified. She feverishly steps toward the exit, certain that she is dreaming, until her feet land on the porch and thousands of shards of ice pierce the mesh of her slippers. The shock of the cold seizes her; she straightens up and totters toward the street.

  The snow is blinding. Victoria has not really seen the winter since arriving in Montreal, only its traces: damp mittens, brown puddles in the front hall, fractures produced by the collision of ice and bones. She lurches forward as though, deep inside her, a lever had snapped. Yet she manages to reach the street and, impelled by some burning certainty, she heads east. Walking slowly, she traverses the city blocks, trailing behind her a delicate red thread. The quiet neighbourhoods give way to busy thoroughfares. Ambulances speed past, telling her she is going in the right direction. A number of times her vision blurs and spasms crumple her stomach.

  She can’t remember her last meal. Come to think of it, she’s not sure she has really eaten during all those years (or was it days? months? decades?) working for Madame Eon. But she isn’t hungry; she is sleepy. In the distance a promising “H” shines in the icy sun.

  When she arrives at the gate, her heart lifts. As she enters the hospital grounds, she feels calm. Her aches and failures are less painful, her blood pumps more slowly. The old trees protect her; the building’s grey stones whisper soothing words. She needs to reach a door, one of the dozens of doors that beckon her, and go into this place where she can lie down at last. Entrust her broken body to others and be helped by other people without making the slightest effort in return.

  But halfway there she stops short. On the till-now virgin snow, footprints appear. Very small footprints that descend toward her and stop, abruptly, right there, in front of her own poorly shod feet. Her heart jumps, the cold catches up with her. She looks around in disbelief, looks through the bushes on the edge of the parking lot, then up and, once again, behind her. The tracks of children’s boots are unmistakable, as though cut out by a hole punch. She frantically skirts around the footprints, fixes her eyes on the hospital, and quickens her pace. But she soon comes upon another set of footprints. Once again, the invisible feet seem to have outflanked her and then closed in to more easily climb up her spine. Terrified, Victoria changes direction. She scurries toward the mountain.

  With each stride the warmth of the hospital recedes and the woods grow denser. She thinks she sees apples gleaming on a fruit tree, the surface of a lake through the branches and trunks. She hears what sounds like laughter, the howl of a coyote. Now she no longer sees anything but her legs sinking into the snow, this immaculate snow imprinted with so many secrets, passages, escapes, and pursuits. This snow that refuses to melt when touched by her bare hand—or perhaps her own skin is dissolving in the snowflakes? The mountain has begun to cast its shadow over the city.

  What the missionaries omitted from the accounts of their voyages was the appeal of winter. The serene way of calling you, snagging you in its raw mesh. The subsequent lethargy, the burning and the shivering, the letting go. As Victoria advances, the frost erases her mind, annihilates her strength. When she falls to her knees she understands that her true destination was neither the north nor childhood. It was the cold.

  She struggles, mustering her inner fevers. The bite turns into heat, an irresistible ignition; she could undress, right there in the polar wind, but she lacks the strength. Her wound has almost stopped bleeding. There will be no stain, no mark to signal her presence. Rustling sounds reach her, move toward her, then fade away. Nursery rhymes zigzag among the trees. She would like to stop up her ears, grab onto a memory, perhaps her own childhood, far away and inexplicable, to obliterate all the childhoods that devoured her other ages. But her head grows white, her arms and mind sink once again. Amid the numbness of her body, only her eyes testify to her last wish. A moment of her own.

  Victoria in Love

  First, I light a fire. There’s always sufficient dry wood; I’m the one who goes to fetch it in the evening so it can dry overnight. I like to stack the logs and fit them together just so, with the bark turned skyward. I like to run my thumb over the patterns etched on them and afterwards to sniff my finger. The scent is always the same, at once young and old, sap and fungus.

  Then I put the water on to boil. The two big kettles ring like church bells when I fill them up. One kettleful will serve to make tea for Madame, a thick soup, hardboiled eggs, and to wash the dishes. With the other I’ll do the laundry, using the soap that burns your hands. Every day I soak the sheets, shirts, underpants, handkerchiefs, rags, and bonnets. Saturday, I wash my own clothes, to get them clean for Mass.
My petticoats are riddled with a thousand tiny holes that make pictures no one else can see.

  After the water comes the bread baking. I knead the dough and let it sit through the night; next morning I just have to slip that pretty ball inside the oven’s mouth. But first I press my forefinger down on it, and when I lift my finger I feel the mass of dough wanting to follow, to float up to me like a chubby angel. I pray for the bread to rise well. It’s a childhood habit—I was flogged whenever I botched the bread. That was during the war.

  The sun comes up; Madame rings. I climb the stairs to her bedroom and let the light in, prop up her pillows, serve her tea. She’ll have her bread and eggs later, downstairs. She’s copied this routine from the English. I still don’t understand which things are fit to be copied from the English and which ought not to be shared with them, so I never talk about it. I empty Madame’s chamber pot. Sometimes there’s blood, but less and less. I like the smell of blood. It reminds me of my mother.

  Bertaud, the hired man, arrives early and I serve him his porridge. He can’t speak. He’s big as an ox and his breath smells of melted snow. His voice and thoughts go astray in that large, cavernous body of his and they never get out. Madame says the doctor dropped Bertaud on his head while pulling him out of his mother’s womb, and it’s kept him simple. I’m quite fond of him, myself. He’s strong and kind and regards everyone with the same fearful gentleness. He draws no distinction between masters and slaves, just as he can’t tell the difference between dogs and foxes.