Crossing the City by Michel Tremblay

Author:Michel Tremblay [Tremblay, Michel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Canadian Fiction, Quebec Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-88922-894-8
Publisher: Talonbooks
Published: 2014-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

October 1912

Three ladies were standing in front of Maria in the long corridor that cut the apartment in two. Neat and tidy. Somewhat stiff. The oldest, most likely Alice, Ernest’s wife, had the vague expression of an alcoholic halfway between being controllably tipsy and hopelessly drunk. She knew where she was but for how long? She was standing upright, shoulders back, bust high, neck stretched. It was obvious though that her posture required a nearly superhuman effort and that at any moment it could all collapse. The cloak of decorum, the makeup required by propriety, would then give way to rambling and erratic gestures. Maria grasped all this in just a few seconds because this tiny woman reminded her of her husband and the rest of the Rathier family, whose get-togethers often took place amid that warning state of sobs of self-pity or gratuitous violence. So that was what her brother had married? Poor man. He was no better off than she herself had been. She didn’t recognize the others right away. Two small women in their thirties who could just as well have been forty or fifty, so much did their attire, though well cared for, come from another age: dress a little too long, shoulders a little too wide, lace collar on the one on the left, the pudgy one; bouffant sleeves on the other, the more elegant, a bitter fold at the corner of the lips, and worried brows in both cases. Women who had lived through difficult times, whose hearts had hardened prematurely. Like her, like the woman she saw in the mirror when she was getting ready for the day. Pretty, though, impressive in their affected dignity that did not, however, fool anyone. And strangely familiar. Those beautiful faces, the domed foreheads, the planes of the cheeks characteristic of …

Maria brought her hands to her heart.

Eyes close together set high on the face, bronzed complexion, the taller one with dimples …

Ernest cleared his throat before he spoke.

“You’re lucky you came on our poker night.”

Tititte! Teena!

She closed her eyes.

It’s summer. Very hot. It hasn’t rained for weeks and brush fires have started to wreak havoc around the small village of Maria. All five of them are sitting on the veranda of the big white house to take a little fresh air before going to bed. Joséphine has made lemonade with the only lemon she could find at Monsieur Connells’s, Méo has been smoking his damn pipe which smells too strongly of vanilla. As for the three Desrosiers sisters, Tititte, Teena, and Maria, they are bickering about a young man from Saskatoon; for a while now he’s been visiting their village rather often and it’s said that he is looking for a wife. He’s a good catch, apparently, son of a wealthy farmer, and the marriageable girls are all excited. Except Maria Desrosiers, of course.

“You don’t find a wife by visiting villages, for Pete’s sake! You make it sound as if he wants to buy a winter

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