Go West!
When we woke up next day, Sunday, we felt as if we had always been together, known each other, belonged to one another. The crises of mutual adaptation were gone in an unthinkable past. Only the occasional pinprick of daily life would remind us that one plus one once made two before being magically transformed into one.
At Mass, in the impressive Quebec City Basilica, we thanked the Lord for having forged us into one flesh and burned our hearts into one permanent live coal. We also dropped a substantial note in the collection plate.
After Mass, we met one of Danielle's college-day girl-friends on the street, who cheerfully asked her: "What are you up to these days?"
At Mass, in the impressive Quebec City Basilica, we thanked the Lord for having forged us into one flesh and burned our hearts into one permanent live coal. We also dropped a substantial note in the collection plate.
After Mass, we met one of Danielle's college-day girl-friends on the street, who cheerfully asked her: "What are you up to these days?"
Danielle shyly glowed and said: "I got married yesterday."
* * *
Our five days at Montreal's International Exposition began under a blue sky and ended in the same way. In between, we had clouds and rain. But we were immune to the vagaries of the weather, and I finally visited Switzerland with my Swiss wife: the Swiss pavilion, where we had lunch on two occasions. Danielle was proud to have me taste some of her native land's specialities: first, some dried goat's meat; then, some perch filet with almonds.
The initial indistinctiveness of my palate was now largely a matter of the past. Mrs Quéloz's culinary virtues had gradually tamed my rustic tongue. Her chicken cooked in white sauce and served with an incomparably seasoned rice had me begging for seconds. She also exquisitely prepared pork chops, tender rabbit, and whatever else she chose. The main quality of her cooking came from overseas: the secrets of seasoning and balancing foods, unknown in our wild lands. Ketchup would have spoiled the taste of her French fries. But I never lost the taste for my own mother's cooking, There was no competition between the two — they were altogether different approaches to a man's stomach.
Danielle was my "Swiss" wife? So we thought. Switzerland is a country that allows dual citizenship. In other words, its citizens are allowed to take another country's citizenship without loosing their own. Thus Danielle and her parents had got the Canadian citizenship and kept their original one. To maintain her Swiss citizenship after her marriage, all Danielle had to do was fill in a form saying she wanted to remain Swiss after her marriage and send it to the Swiss embassy before we married. We both agreed that she might as well keep her dual status, as benefits might come out of this and she loved her country of origin. She filled up the form. Visitors came. She tidied up her room and desk, slipping a bunch of papers in her drawer... where she found, after our return from Montreal, an unsent Swiss-embassy form. Since then, there is much Swiss in Danielle's body, mind, and heart, but none in her legal papers. Though she felt a slight twinge in her heart, Switzerland was already a past happy memory compared to the adventure we were undertaking.
The miracle of marriage began working during our honeymoon though we first noticed its negativity. Before her present commitment, Danielle had been a fervent mathematician, her intended goal in professional life. Now all this was changed. In one of the Expo's pavilions, there was a revolutionary machine for the times, a computer that taught arithmetic. Danielle found pleasure in attempting to solve an elementary problem. She rapidly typed in her answer. The computer wrote how sorry it was that she had made a mistake and offered her another try. Startled, Danielle put a bit more attention to her problem and typed in another answer. The computer was grieved at Danielle's second error, and proceeded to explain step by step what she should have done and benignly gave her the correct answer. All of it was very simple, but Danielle's mind was now proven to be elsewhere. We laughed a lot. That was the end of her career in mathematics.
The positive side of the miracle was unearthed by Mr Quéloz next Sunday.
While she lived at home, Danielle had never tried cooking. Because she was an only child and her mother "did not work" (as the saying goes), and since Danielle was very active in school work and youth organisations while her mother was quite possessive about her things in the kitchen, Danielle did not develop a taste for culinary matters — save the eating — and her mother had no wish to have her meddle in the pots and pans. Of course, during the last year, her mother had suggested that the time had come for Danielle to learn to cook, even though Georges said he would be satisfied if Danielle made only hot dogs. Danielle agreed that she should learn the art, but she also had to learn teaching . That job did her in. There was no energy left to fix meals.
The first Sunday in our apartment, we had invited Mr and Mrs Quéloz for lunch. Danielle decided she would serve pork chops. She got the recipe from her mother and worked hard at it. She phoned her mother a few times that morning for particular instructions. Then her parents arrived, were seated with us at our table. The meal was served. Mr Quéloz ate some chops and readily said: "It tastes very good."
Danielle smiled, pleased. Her father took a second bite. Then, surprised, he looked up and said:
"It tastes GOOD!"
Yes, Danielle had managed a very tasty meal. Since then, her reputation as a super-cook has become a fact of life. I had to wait a year and a half for her to spoil a meal.
The miracle had its explanation. Danielle is a total person. She puts her whole mind into doing something she loves, labours at it, and succeeds. When mathematics were in her mind, she persistently worked at and mastered that. When she opted for life, out went the mathematics and in came... well, among other things, ravishing meals.
* * *
Living together made us discover some incompatibilities in habits which could not have been known or felt till them. Thus, when cooler days came, before going to bed, I shut the bedroom window. Danielle protested: "Oh no! There must be some fresh air coming in while we sleep."
"This is not fresh air; this is cold air."
"But I have always slept with the window at least slightly open," said she.
"Not I," said I.
She insisted that she would be miserable in a stuffy room, promising that I would myself greatly benefit from the invigorating night air. She did not make it a test of wills. She was freely submissive, but argued her point. I could only surrender: "All right. But I'll catch a cold."
"Nonsense", she said.
The next morning, I sneezed. I had a cold. On that point, nature made me win. Danielle got accustomed to a closed window on cold nights.
A more serious matter had to be smoothed over. If we caricature it, Danielle was the stingy one and I was the squanderer. Her parents had correctly taught her that a penny saved is a penny earned and mine had correctly taught me that money was there for the using. On our wedding day, I was down to my last penny whereas Danielle had now a generous sum. Of course, I had no debts — except for the usual student loan — and I had a job waiting. Danielle had also a generous non-calculating nature, except for wasteful spending. But these opposing habits made long discussions inevitable. Should we go out to the restaurant or not this evening? Well, hadn't we recently gone out, Danielle would ask. Do we not have the means to go out, I would counter. And the debate would go on till one side or the other won a bitter victory. Bitter, because of the tiresome discussion in which neither really wanted to be a victor and both only wanted the other to get the better in life. Our life-saver was a budget — the only good thing we got from marriage-preparation courses.
Our first spending could not be budgeted because we had to acquire the permanent things in life. But, afterwards, we divided our revenues in the various categories of our spending. We were thus finally able to alter the tone of our discussions: do we have some money left to go out tonight? If so, by golly, let's go. If not, well, forget it. Spending became fun and saving a matter of routine.
In fact, we had only one quarrel in the following months. It was a ticklish matter. I rapidly discovered that nudity brought a contact I was unaccustomed to: I was ticklish. Danielle generally respected my discomfort till it gradually went away. But, one night, she went beyond restraint and tickled me out of bed. I first lay on the floor beside the bed, waiting for my torturer to repent and call me back. As this was not happening, I got up and went to sleep on the sofa in the living-room, covering myself with a coat. But the coat was shorter than a blanket. Either my feet or my shoulders would be cold. I was punishing Danielle.
The reason for Danielle's silence was simply that she had fallen asleep right after I had been floored. She had not noticed me leave the room. In the middle of the night, she woke up, wondered at my absence, found me shivering in the living-room.
"What are you doing here", she asked in a tone of incredulity.
"You tickled me", I meekly argued.
"Come back to bed", she said simply.
Oh, the joy of a warm bed!
* * *
We had chosen the adventure of life. We foresaw our ten children as an imaginary dream somewhere in the haze of the future. Our first boy would be Michel. Our first girl would be Christine. Why? Because we liked those names. They had the ring we wanted. And neither was outlandish, oldish or new-fangled. Would our first baby be a boy or a girl? We could not know. And we did not care. We only hoped to have a healthy baby, though we should be committed to him (or her) in whatever shape or form he came.
* * *
Danielle's last month of teaching had been rather hard. Her replacement teacher, during our honeymoon, had lost control of Danielle's difficult class and Danielle had to fight her way through the final weeks. Then the school year was over: the results were in. There was the unfortunate end of Nathalie's awakening, already mentioned; but in general Danielle had succeeded in that year's work.
We visited our friends to bid them adieu and were off West to Manitoba, by train. A thirty-six hour trip, for which I had taken a cabin with upper and lower berths. This trip allowed us to take in the empty vastness of northern North America. For endless hours we saw forests and lakes devoid of human presence. Surely, if ever there was an overpopulation somewhere on this planet, it was not here.
Danielle slept through nearly all of our trip. We had the bottom bed done for the day-time sitting leaving open the upper berth so she could sleep. As she had never made so long a train trip, we figured that the train's rhythm was conducive to putting her asleep.
As we entered the Manitoban flat-land, Danielle — daughter of the Alps — suddenly began sniffing and tears appeared in her eyes. She felt a mixture of homesickness and insecurity, springing from fear of this new land which would be her home. It was an emotion which lasted but a moment then subsided. A few hours later, my mother and father were there to greet their smiling daughter-in-law and their son come home.
As we drove through Winnipeg heading for St. Boniface, Danielle looked back and suddenly exclaimed with excitement: "What is that up there?"
We stared blankly into the emptiness she pointed at.
"That, up there", she insisted. "It looks like a mountain.
We burst into laughter. It was a dark cloud that covered the horizon and rose up into an otherwise clear night sky in the shape of an alpine mountain. But not in Manitoba. Danielle winced. But we all loved her, and she soon forgot the whole thing.
We crossed the bridge over the Red River which separates Winnipeg from its twin-city, Saint Boniface. In a few minutes we were at my boyhood home. The evening was joyous. The next morning we would go to the apartment my parents had found for us. As I used to wake earlier than Danielle and as she would be tired from a long trip into the unknown, I told her I might be walking the streets of my home-town when she woke. That must not be, she insisted. She became slightly panicky. She made me promise to wake her up, instead, so that she could come with me.
* * *
My good friend, Chesterton, was quite right when he said that a man who had always lived in a forest would probably not know what a tree was. I had always lived in Manitoba, save my three years in Québec, and did not know what flat-country was till I saw it with Danielle's eyes. In fact, she always metamorphosed everything for me, revealing it its true exciting nature rather than the indistinct blur I perceived. I prefer her account of a conversation with another person rather than to have that conversation myself. Somehow that person's words gain depth when expressed through Danielle's voice.
I had noticed that Québec was an uneven country. I had tired walking up and down the slopes of Québec City. A normal healthy city should be level. Danielle, for her part, had never noticed anything really uneven in Québec compared to the true mountain country of Switzerland. Québec was quite flat, the only semblance of slopes being in the sector between lower town and upper town. As for the Laurentians, which Quebeckers called mountains, they were merely hills.
I had told Danielle of Aulneau street near my boyhood home, which had an inclination of six feet over a distance of one hundred feet. This was our slope, and when bicycling we had to pedal hard to get up it. I would try to by-pass it when possible. On the other hand, coming down that street was a thrill: no pedalling.
On our first morning, I took Danielle for a walk. I saw our national slope through her eyes, and, yo my amazement, it just wasn't there. The ground was level except for a barely perceptible incline. Danielle had to wait for winter time to have physical, or rather scientific, evidence that there was a slope there. One day, as she passed by, she saw a city bus that had slid sideways in the icy street, blocking traffic both ways. A policeman was desperately trying to untie the knot. Logic would have it that if the bus slid, there was something to slide on. Danielle broke into uncontrollable laughter. Both the policeman and the bus driver gave her resentful looks.
The following summer, as Danielle had walked about St. Boniface in a pattern unfamiliar to her, she suddenly saw a side-street that had quite a slope. She wondered what street that was and looked at the sign-post: "Aulneau", she read. She realised that she was becoming a Manitoban.
Later, when people from Québec or Switzerland suggested that the Manitoba flat-lands must be monotonous country, Danielle would instantly contradict them: "It is another kind of country. It has its particular charm. In the countryside, one can drive into the sun. It is like being on the ocean, the edge being the sky. The fields of yellow mustard plants, of green or golden grain, are a feast for the eyes."
When we flew above the western prairies, we always marvelled at the chessboard of the fields below marred occasionally by an irrational waterway which refused to move in a straight line.
Thanks to Danielle, I developed an affection for a physical land which I thought I knew and had never truly seen.
* * *
The apartment my parents had found for us was the semi-basement of a private home. It had gigantic windows all along our long kitchen and a corridor that separated our apartment in two halves: bathroom and kitchen versus living-room and bedroom. The windows gave us light and fresh air; the corridor gave us spaciousness. The rooms were large enough for ease and comfort. The owners of the house were extremely accommodating. For example, one time it was in the middle of the month before we realised that we had forgotten to pay our rent. They had not mentioned it and were simply waiting till we remembered. Though they had three teen-age daughters, there was rarely a night party over our heads.
The house was near the end of a relatively new residential area. Beyond that, there was a creek some twenty feet wide called the Seine river, undoubtedly in memory of the French Seine that crosses Paris and flows to the sea. We picnicked many times on large flat stones in the vegetation near the riverside. Once we saw a jack-rabbit running about. Another time a beaver swam by. Then there was the time we met a skunk. It was as scared of us as we were of it — both parties went in opposite directions.
* * *
The Sunday after our arrival was June 25. La Broquerie had organised the St-Jean Baptiste day — one day late — with parade, village picnic and all. La Broquerie is my mother's birth-place, where her father — a Boily — still lived with my eldest aunt. A brother owned a village store was her brother and another had a farm. St-Jean Baptiste day, on June 24, was the national feast day for the French-Canadian community through-out Canada and was to become the Québécois National Day nationalistic fervour would take hold of the only Canadian province with a French majority.
My parents were proud to take us to the party and show off their exuberant daughter-in-law. Danielle's meeting with the Boily tribe was a matter of love at first sight. She was spontaneous, gay, lovely and always interested in what others told her. The Boilys, for their part, were informal, open, hospitable and readily adopted this strange girl with a queer accent as one of the family. In St. Boniface, where my mother had other brothers, in Ste Rita at my aunt's home, and in La Broquerie, we were always welcome. For a young woman conditioned by a more formal way of life, it seemed to her that she was served on hands and knees. In most of these homes, life was made abundant by the presence cousins, more numerous than Danielle could ever have imagined. In the other homes, the cousins had already gone off into the world, but the nests were still warm with affection.
With Danielle's frank cheerfulness and ready sociability to carry me, I must have seemed transformed for the uncles and aunts who were used to a more reserved even sulky boy, who often did not accompany his parents in the years before he left for university. Now, Danielle and Georges would suddenly knock at the door, and Danielle would be kissing, fussing all over, cheering up the home whence the children had left or having fun with them where they hadn't.
Manitoba conquered Danielle through this ebullient family, because Danielle conquered them.
On that June 25, my father was proud to have just bought a picnic container made of styro-foam which kept the lunch cool. We were all seated at a picnic table when I got up, backed out of my bench, and stepped onto the container, breaking its side. Usually, my father would only have said: "It's all right." After all, it was a silly accident without terrible mishap. But the showing off of his daughter-in-law to the tribe and friends must have made him nervous. He showed some anger at his son's bungling idiocy. But if Danielle's presence had caused the nervousness, her charm instantly soothed it.
* * *
At the beginning of July, I was teaching a summer course again at St. Boniface college. The subject this time was modern philosophy. Danielle and I were inseparable. She came to my class, to the delight of a group of students composed largely of adults, because Danielle would not let my statements go unchallenged. Discussions were abundant as I had chosen to teach the French Philosopher Descartes' Discourse on Method in a dialectical manner. I first defended every statement made in this indefensible piece of literature. After that, I hoped to end the course by overturning Descartes' apple cart.
Thus I had to defend the absurd suggestion — curiously popular among intellectuals — that ignorance is the cause of evil. Descartes suggests that a man acts badly only by mistake, by the ignorance of the true result of his actions. The solution therefore consists in giving everyone an infallible method of knowledge; and human perfection would inevitably follow. Of course, such a position is completely devoid of the simplest insight in everyday living. When a person chooses not to study or do his work properly, it is not because he is ignorant of the grunts and groans which will follow. It is because he hates work and prefers other things. But, by my rules of the game, I had to stick by Descartes. And I did. And Danielle argued. I answered back. She stuck to her guns. Completely taken in by our debate, we did not realise how the squabble between husband and wife was amusing the whole class, till I said: "A perfect person with correct knowledge can only act correctly."
Danielle charged in: "There is not one man in the world who is perfect."
The class exploded in laughter, and we joined in when we realised the double meaning.
* * *
Not all the students were adults. One of them, Maurice — better known as "Moe" among his friends — was a college boy who still had one year of college to get his degree. Maurice was the son of some of my father's friends. I had even played at his home when I was a big boy and he was a little brat. That summer we struck up a conversation with him and invited him over for supper. He became the first of a good number of close friends found in class and nourished by Danielle's cuisine and our conversation. As Danielle espoused my way of life, mainly private and intimate, we rarely went out to anonymous social gatherings. But we regularly had someone over for lunch or supper. Though we got to know few acquaintances, we made many personal friends.
One time, Maurice had broken up with a beautiful — by his account — blonde. Things had been getting serious and he considered that times were not ripe for serious involvement: which was a wise but hard decision. That evening he had come to our place. While we chatted, he suddenly found a long blonde hair upon his vest. He held it up with a short laugh. We laughed along with him. After he left, Danielle explained to me what had gone on. I could always master the ideas we exchanged but Danielle was in touch with the heart.
"Did you notice Maurice's queasiness when he found the hair on his vest?"
"No", I confessed.
I had only laughed along and teased the unfortunate guy. Danielle had known better and taught me better.
* * *
Since our arrival in Manitoba, Danielle had developed an excessive sensitivity in her breasts. And she was still unusually sleepy, though we had long been off the train. We were very ignorant. But we did know one symptom. Danielle's period was late. We wondered. We waited. We hoped. Finally, Danielle went for a test.
By luck, the doctor who had assisted my mother some twenty-five years ago when she had given birth to me, was still in practice. He was certainly a man of experience and Danielle was thrilled to seek his help. The doctor confirmed that the test was positive: Danielle was pregnant. Drowsiness, breast-sensitivity, absence of menses, all made sense.
A child in her! Our child. The fruit of love. Words fail to express the mysterious insight we had in the gift of life within the personal passion that had engulfed us. We wrote to all our friends, we told everyone. I grinned. Danielle smiled. We were happy, just so happy.
Danielle was now ravenous. She had to eat regular meals and in between. At one time, we were taking a long walk from St. Boniface across the Red River to Winnipeg. She suddenly became weak-kneed. She simply had to eat. We stopped at the first restaurant we could find. Danielle ate there the tastiest toasted tomato sandwich of her life. When, at some later date, we passed by that restaurant again, I reminded her the time she had eaten there. She could not believe her senses. The place was dingy, stinky and dirty. It had not changed, but one day it had been an oasis in the desert.
During these early days, Danielle was cleaned the apartment to make it as spotless as her mother's house would always be. She scrubbed the floor till she was dizzy, but the result was worth the effort. So we thought.
Awakening one Friday morning, Danielle noticed that she had suffered a small vaginal bleeding during the night. We were ignorant. We wondered about it. We did not like it. But, naively, we simply wished the thing away. We had breakfast and went to class. In between courses, Danielle told me that more blood had trickled down. Worried, we phoned my mother. As soon as she heard the news, she abruptly ordered Danielle back to bed, and told us that the baby could be leaving. Danielle blanched. Her eyes watered. I tried to comfort her. It could be nothing at all. All she must do was rest. Yet anxiety had taken hold of us.
The presence of Michel or Christine had been incomprehensible bliss. The possibility of loss was too painful to be imaginable.
Our doctor was on vacations. He had passed us on to a colleague. We phoned him. He renewed the order that Danielle stay in bed and told us to see him the next morning at the hospital if the bleeding continued.
I nursed Danielle with food and company. We hoped and prayed, but readied ourselves, if must be, for the worst. Morning came. Danielle went to the toilet. The water went red in the bowl. Back in bed, we noticed that the blood was a brighter red. We had to go to the hospital. Before leaving, Danielle had diarrhoea and suddenly a strong contraction. We knew it was over. At the hospital, the doctor cleaned Danielle out... cleaned the tiny corpse away. He tried to help us with reason, assuring us that Mother Nature expelled a child when his development was impaired. It was the best for the infant, he said. We believed him. But we felt Mother Nature had been terribly brutal. We accepted God's will. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh", as the saying goes. But He does pack a whollop when He delivers a punch.
The following week, I went back to class alone. Danielle had to convalesce. This was the final week of summer courses. Everyone was kind and things went well. But somehow the zest was gone. Danielle was no longer there to give the needed ring to my words. Only ideas remained. And I also failed in my commitment to truth. After five weeks defending Descartes with able sophistry, I had been too convincing. I simply could not reverse my students' adherence to the Cartesian system with a few brisk refutations, as I had hoped to. This was a disappointment and a lesson. Students are generally not dilettantes with ideas. They are people open to direct honesty.
The course ended with a pleasant traditional observance: the class thanking their teacher with a gift. During the last week, I had so often said that Descartes was an ass, that I was given an ass made of china. I baptised it "Descartes". We were all merry. That was it.
* * *
Danielle and I went to the beach for a week. We rested. She recuperated. And we came back to make ready for my first full-time teaching job.
