The Douglas Notebooks by Christine Eddie

Author:Christine Eddie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Canadian Fiction, Canadian Author, Fables, eBook, Christine Eddie, Love Story, Kindle
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2013-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

The day was spent digging. Douglas chose the middle of the clearing to bury Éléna, across from the house, very close to where the vegetable garden usually was. Fastened to his shovel like a castaway to the only reef in the ocean, he extracted from deep down in the ground, where it was still frozen in places, heaps of earth and pebbles that he arranged around the grave.

When the walls seemed perfectly squared, he lined them with fir boughs. Then he took Éléna from the log cabin and laid her in the grave, her face turned towards the tamaracks at the end of the clearing. He lay down beside her for a moment, and if there had been witnesses, they’d have thought that the lovers had simply dozed off. When Douglas was too numb to lie there any longer, he uprooted himself and wandered around the grave, then sat beside it. He played the clarinet until evening, only breaking off to moan. It was well into the night before he resolved to bury Éléna’s body. First, he unscrewed his instrument, placed it in the leather case, and rested it gently in the arms of his love.

In the house, he worked hard to wash away the last traces of blood. When he had finished, the sun was rising. He went back outside and lay down on the cold earth that covered Éléna. Overwhelmed, he sank into a heavy sleep.

The commotion that was livening up the doctor’s house was far from going unnoticed. Léandre had cancelled his appointments and now only opened his office for cases of extreme urgency. The sick would have to be patient.

The most preposterous rumours spread faster than the flu in winter. One, about the permanent closing of the clinic — something dreaded by the population of Rivière-aux-Oies — created a new agitation. It was assumed that an epidemic, undoubtedly a serious one, had struck the village and that the doctor himself was incurably ill and had to restrict his activities and impose a quarantine. Or the house was infested by a rare breed of cockroach, something that had happened before, but how then to explain why he’d bought such huge amounts of talcum powder? Could an insect invasion be treated with baby powder?

“His lights are on practically all night.”

“If you ask me, he entertains young ladies and you’d be well advised to keep a close eye on your daughters.”

“He does it in hiding, he’s certainly not offering them a wedding in white!”

(And so on and so forth.)

When Rose’s lungs had expanded and one neighbour thought he’d heard a baby cry, the whole village, for once, was flabbergasted.

Léandre’s internship in pediatrics was only a vague memory, and the doctor felt that he was not at all prepared to take in a newborn, even if she showed none of the most worrisome signs of prematurity and even if this unexpected custody would be temporary. Distraught, he got organized as best he could.

At birth, Rose weighed a bit over two kilos and slept, at most, for a few hours at a time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.