The Witchin’ Canoe

Chapter 4: Bernard’s Warning

Chapter 4: Bernard’s Warning

It’s getting late in the evening and Honoré can’t avoid going downstairs for much longer. Soon, Uncle Gédéon will summon him. The very idea of giving a piano recital for those hounds down there causes him heart palpitations and cold hands.

If only he could escape this house tonight. But what will happen if he does venture out in the dark streets? He’ll walk for a while, and then begin to feel nervous and threatened. He’ll see angry faces flash at him from under the brim of hats. He’ll hear whispers and mocking laughter. And after a few minutes, he’ll end up hurrying home like a fearful child.

What happened to the curious boy he used to be? The boy who would go sliding down the Côte-à-Baron without a care in the world?

Turning away from the window, Honoré looks at his father. “I shouldn’t have read that Nodier tale. That Smarra of his. It haunted me all night.” He lowers his voice and sits in his usual chair, the one facing his father’s. “I hid the copy in Mother’s music box. If Bernard finds it, he’ll be upset with me. He says I shouldn’t be reading these types of books, and I know he’s right. Why am I so tempted by these tales of demons and ravens?” He stands again, paces, and then goes to the window to stare out at the side courtyard. A silvery blue moon hangs in the sky. “It’s because I need to live. To feel. To be thrilled and enticed. I can’t be locked up in this stuffy house for another year reading Leconte Delisle and Louis Fréchette, or worse, LaFontaine!” He presses his palm against the window. “And now Uncle intends on beginning my apprenticeship this fall. I don’t want to be a stoic banker.” He curls his fingers into fists. “I want to be a poet. Or compose my own opera!”

No, he’s getting excited again. If he isn’t careful, Gédéon will call Doctor Beaufort and they’ll force him to take that horrible everlasting pill, or worse, plunge him into an ice cold bath, and then he’ll be in bed for days with an induced fever and stomach cramps.

Honoré kneels by his father’s rolling chair, gazing up at his vacant expression. Then his attention strays to the wall behind the bed. Encased in a massive gold frame, a large portrait of his mother looms over the room. Her black hair is pinned under a sophisticated hat decorated with blue feathers. Her gray eyes, so much like his own, follow him whenever he’s in the room. “I met someone today,” he whispers to his parents, as he’s done ever since he was a child. He doesn’t need to write in a journal. His father is the white page on which he spills his thoughts and dreams, and his mother is the guardian of them. “He came here to ask for a job. I think I made a…friend.” He recalls McGauran’s searching dark eyes. His fiery red hair. His hoarse voice and musical accent. And when he thinks of the shape of McGauran’s muscular chest straining the fabric of his worn jacket, he feels aroused in a way he’s never felt before. The sensation is overwhelmingly pleasant, yet scares him a little.

There was an accord between him and McGauran. A resonance. Most men recoil from Honoré, and those who don’t, watch him salaciously, as though he were a mere object they wish to fondle. It was different with McGauran. Yes, McGauran scrutinized him this afternoon, but in his eyes, there was desire and perhaps even…admiration.

Drool has gathered at the corner of his father’s mouth and Honoré patiently wipes it with his handkerchief. “Can I send for him? He wants me to. I know he does. Sunday. In the afternoon, of course. He must attend church, don’t you think? He’s an Irishman. Do you think he would come? Do you think he fancies me a little?” He glances at the door again. Downstairs, male voices boom and he can smell the cigar smoke gathering in the house. Soon, he’ll be forced to make an appearance and subject himself to their interrogation or indifference.

He rises and checks the doorway. “They think love is a convenient pairing of two estates and bank notes are the world’s poetry.” He looks over at his father. “Don’t you agree?”

Of course, his father stares at the wall, his thick hair shining almost white in the candle light. Above the bed, Honoré’s mother gazes at him with eyes full of secrets he’ll never learn.

Lost in his thoughts, he paces again. The bedroom is small but furnished with everything a man of his father’s status should need. In the right corner, there’s a massive walnut chest filled with finely tailored suits and shirts, and near the window, a Louis XVI secretary is covered with papers, ink, and an empty journal, waiting to be used. The bed, a Parisian baldaquin, is draped with the most lavish purple bed clothes and embroidered silk cushions he could find in the city. All of it has been chosen by him. Every week, the maids dust and clean the room.

Yet, George Latendresse doesn’t need any of those expensive objects. His feet have never even touched the Persian rug. His father, a businessman who was once revered, has been mute and confined to this chair for the last seventeen years. Honoré has never known his embrace. Or if he has, he can’t recall it.

Feeling the grief more poignantly tonight, he goes to the window again. Somewhere to the west, down the hill, is where McGauran O’Dowd lives. Is he lonely, too? Is he thinking of him? No, that would be too much to ask.

Oh, this is torture! To have so much to give and yet have no one to offer it to. Honoré presses his forehead to the cool glass. “I’ll go mad,” he whispers. “And be interned at Saint-Jean de Dieu, with all the other deviants and prodigals.”

The Longue-Pointe Madhouse.

He walks to his chair and falls back into it, resting his head against the plush seat. That’s what happens to men like him. They end up under the care of the good sisters of La Providence.

For a while, he stares at his father, imagining himself in those aged features. Is he doomed to the same fate? When Honoré looks up, he glimpses his own pale face in the mirror above the desk and starts, sitting up straight. His nerves begin to dance under his skin. Sometimes he can’t seem to recognize his face in the mirror. Why?

Alienation from one’s self, Doctor Beaufort calls it. Polymorphic tendencies.

“Ah, there you are.” In his usual brisk manner, Bernard enters the candle lit room and turns that dreadful artificial globe on. He blows the candles out, one by one. “Your uncle requests your company.”

Hoping to hide his mental confusion from Bernard, Honoré watches the smoke twirl up from the extinguished candles and cracks a brittle smile. “The artificial lights keep flickering. It gives me a headache.”

“Yes, I know. The wiring needs some looking into.” Bernard is fluffing George’s pillow behind his head and then pulls the velvet drapes closed. He sighs. “Please stand up, so I can make you presentable.”

Honoré sulks, crossing his arms over his chest. “I am presentable.”

“Now, now.” Bernard stands by his chair with a resolute expression. “A few verses and a song won’t end your life.”

“I haven’t written anything new for so long. I can’t write, Bernard. It’s all gone.”

“Then recite an old poem. The one about the parakeet, or what about that short one you wrote about broken cemetery gates?” Bernard pulls him up. “Your uncle won’t know the difference.”

“And that’s precisely the reason I hate reciting for him and his colleagues. I could read them a passage from La Contesse de Ségur or worse, a page from that awfully boring book Les Anciens Canadiens, and tell them it’s George Sand.”

“Well, you’re a poet and a musician. They’re merchants.” Bernard begins to smooth out the wrinkles and creases in Honoré’s coat. “Poets end up ruined, interned, gravely depressed, or die of venereal diseases.”

Honoré grins. “I’d like a proper venereal disease.”

“Don’t say such things!” Bernard slaps his cheek very gently. “Soon you’ll be married and inheriting—”

“No, I won’t. And you know it.”

Bernard fixes his gaze on him. “Honoré,” he says with a sad expression. “You must…try.”

He can’t hold Bernard’s knowing stare, so he moves away and stands by the window again.

“Men such as yourself have succeeded before. There is nothing stopping you from marrying and fathering children, but your own stubbornness.”

He turns around and makes an effort to contain himself. “I’d rather die than be some countess’ pet husband.”

Bernard shakes his head. “Tsk. Tsk.” He looks down at George in his chair. “Think of your father. Of the life he would like to see his only son lead.” Tenderly, he fiddles with Honoré’s necktie.

Instead, Honoré thinks of the conversation he had yesterday with Maggie, the new housemaid. “We’re hexed. It’s true, isn’t it? That’s why Mother died and Father withers away…and now Uncle is afraid that I’m going mad. That the curse is on me now. That whatever he did, has come down to me and—”

“You’ve been spending time in the kitchen again, haven’t you?” Bernard chuckles dryly, but there’s tension in his face. He pats Honoré’s shoulder and swiftly walks away. “Is it the new girl? That little Irish rose? Did she come with new stories of the Devil and a flying canoe on New Year’s Eve?”

“She says the reason the housemaids don’t stay but a few months, is because they’re terrified of the Devil returning. Of that black dog, too.”

Now he’s said it. He watches for Bernard’s reaction.

Bernard pauses a little. “You shouldn’t be befriending the help. It isn’t proper. I should have that girl sent home. Bad enough you spend your days with Fredeline in the kitchen.”

“Don’t you dare. Maggie has no home. She’d be forced into a nunnery.” He crosses his arms over his chest again. “I have no friends! Whose company am I to keep?”

“There is the spring ball next week.”

“No.”

“Be reasonable.”

“I want you to send a telegram tomorrow.” Boldly, Honoré walks past Bernard in the door. “To McGauran O’Dowd.”

“My dear child, please, you are risking your reputation.”

“My reputation?” He scoffs. “Everyone already believes that I’m fit to be interned.”

Bernard sighs and then smiles a little. “Go downstairs and show them just how mad you are, my little pest. Why don’t you play them that terrifying Grieg piece you’ve been practicing all week?”

He c***s a brow. Yes, that could do. In the Hall of the Mountain King. He rarely gets to bang the lower keys with such pleasure.

Bernard comes closer and fixes his silk necktie again. “Remember, Honoré, you’re a special, most talented boy. But some men are like wolves. You must learn to keep up a strong front.”

“I’m not weak.” He turns and walks away.

“No, you’re not,” Bernard says behind him. “But you will make some men feel weak and that’s a dangerous thing.”