Lady With Chains by Roch Carrier

Author:Roch Carrier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2013-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

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“Did you see them this morning, Virginie, on top of the furrows, did you see the little shoots? What a fine sight! It’s starting! Our real life coming out of the earth: the first shoots! They’ll grow, Virginie! We’ve sown; the earth will return to us a hundredfold what we’ve given it. Just think—outside your door there’ll be a vegetable garden. When you go out of the cabin you’ll take a few steps, just a few steps, and there at your feet, Virginie, at your feet, there’ll be potatoes as fine as you’ve ever seen at the market in Quebec, new potatoes that the rich folks from the Upper Town can’t afford to buy, and later we’ll have carrots and beets. Maybe I’ll be able to buy butter if I sell my wood to the monastery and if the monks will pay for it. Virginie, I’m going to ask you a favor… I’m a man who blushes, I can’t sell a thing. If I give my wood away, then I can’t buy butter. Maybe the holy monks won’t want to live in a monastery made from wood cut by the hands of a man the good Lord singled out for misfortune. I’m a proud man, and if I take my wood to the monks and I see a glint in their eyes accusing me of that catastrophe that happened to us… You know, Virginie, it’s the good Lord Himself, in that snow as thick and black as if the whole world had burned up, it’s the good Lord Himself who wanted a child to be sacrificed to Him, just like in the Bible when He asked Abraham to offer up the life of his beloved son; me, I’m not a holy man like Abraham, I haven’t heard the good Lord’s voice, but I’ve felt His hand on me, crushing me; Virginie, the good Lord didn’t ask us to build a funeral pyre, like Abraham, but He created a storm like I’ve never seen, so our child would be sacrificed to Him…Virginie, I’m a proud man. To be worthy of living, you have to be proud, prouder than death. If one of the monks lets me see—me, already feeling like a beggar because I must offer my wood—just a glint of reproach in his eye, I couldn’t bear the humiliation. If I can attack a bear, I don’t know what I could do to a monk in his habit. I’m paralyzed at the thought of it and I can’t take a step toward the monastery. Virginie, it’s the finest spruce, tall and straight, that the good Lord seems to have cultivated specially to make fine walls without knots, for the monks in His monastery, fine spruce that I’ve squared off well. Virginie, I’m giving you this spruce: it’s yours. The monks have no reason to humiliate you. The monks can’t criticize you for being a victim the good Lord singled out. Virginie, I’m asking you a favor like the day I

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