More likely, the beaded secretions have dried on him. Beneath his brown suit, his air of decency, is he not one of the carnal’s many minions, just like he is? A brother in slavery!
Father Lanthier signs with a slightly trembling hand and returns the document. He watches the hand reach toward him, wanting to take it and cover it in kisses, just to smell, breathe in the possibly guilty warmth, sniff the other’s sin and at least find consolation in not being the only sinner. “The truth is, I’m going crazy,” he says to himself, wanting to cry as the man takes out his money and hands him a large bill. He tries to give him some change, but the man stops him with a gesture — with that ambiguous, perhaps guilty hand.
“For the poor, Father. And many thanks for sparing me a two-hour wait.”
He watches him leave, a fairly good-looking man, really, young; it is easy to picture him with a woman’s breasts pressed against him, naked, all ... God! God save me from my life!
Ten minutes later, although it is just before lunch and an odd time of day for it, Father Lanthier, armed with a horsehair bath glove, plunges himself into a tub full of cold water. He’d like to rip off his skin with it, but an image floats before him, no matter how hard he scrubs, an image with long, soft, undulating hair, over-large brown eyes, a sensuous mouth with large yellowy teeth, a demented laugh that pours over him like spittle, like a philtre, a sacrament, a heavenly blasphemy. And large breasts, moving, too white below the shoulders’ bronze skin, breasts that descend like caresses, rain, smiling moons that have reinvented roundness, the fullness of his plunge, of sweetness.
Once again, he is overcome, he is hard to the breaking point in the icy water, which, far from appeasing him, exacerbates his tumescence to the point of pain. It is the devil, inside him, arousing him, possessing him, and damning him here and now in this tomb of icy metal. Stretched out on his back, legs apart, he imagines above him a vulva, red and black, descending toward him like the Pentecost, descending slowly toward his desire and misery, an enormous flower that will bury him in its smiling folds, envelop him in death. “Oh, God!” he whispers, and everything within him that responds to God’s name fights the pounding of blood in his body, hoc est enim ..., the hiccups of the gorged beast, flesh desecrated, seed profaned.
6
The harsh midday light, just slightly tempered by a weak breeze, scorches everything, seeming even to penetrate the shadows gathered around the trees. Contrasts blur in the white air. The neighbours’ radios and TVs can be heard blaring out various stations, intercut with brain-numbing commercials. Cooking odours and the sounds of dishes being washed emanate from several houses. At Lucie’s, lunch is served on the veranda, whose enormous screened windows look out over the river. The room adjoins the kitchen, in which ground beef is sizzling.
Marie-Laure and Frédérique, the two oldest girls, are shuttling barefoot between the table and their mother, who’s been making hamburgers and pouring ice-cold orangeade into glasses, non-stop. Tousled and sweating, the smell of her recent frolics noticeable from ten feet away, Lucie finds it hard to hide her satisfaction when she thinks of her recent victory over the priest. Now let the good Father try to lecture her! Let him try to side with the mayor against her! With one flash of desire, she has garnered his allegiance forever. She has nothing more to fear from him, from this essentially human personage with his podgy middle-class hide. He even managed to give her some pleasure, with his well-preserved virility and brand new desires — always exciting to find in a man that age. “That one must have spent more time on prayer than pleasure,” she thinks, with a hint of pity. Now he’s at her mercy. It’s not that she wants to use his weakness to get undeserved favours from him: that’s not her style. But at least she’ll be able to count on being left alone to live in peace with her little ones.
“Children, do you want any more hamburgers?”
Her question doesn’t penetrate the atmosphere enveloping the joyous table, which is replete with talk and laughter, the sounds of chewing and utensils. A peremptory noise ignites a burst of hilarity.
“You pig!” cries Marie-Laure, indignant, to an exultant Fernand.
“What’s the matter? It’s only natural! Here comes another one!”
The commotion begins anew, louder still. Before it can die out, Gervais brings it to a climax with a stentorian burp. Everybody is adding something to the general glee, some with their mouths and some otherwise. Only the two older girls want nothing to do with the gaiety, which Lucie listens to indulgently.
“Let them have their fun,” she tells the girls. “It relaxes them, and they’ll be quieter later.”
“It’s just too much, Mom, it’s outrageous! I’ve never heard anything so rude!”
“Poor Marie-Laure! It’s the nuns who are filling your head with those high ideas! If we had to listen to them, we’d never have any fun.”
“Well, they’re right in thinking that we Tourangeau kids are a badly brought up bunch!”
“What? What are you saying? Badly brought up? You’ll find out one day, my girl, that having good manners is not about walking around with your thighs clenched or being as neat and shiny as a new pin. Being well brought up is about heart, generosity, and, as everybody knows, the Tourangeaus are generous to a fault.”
“Generous, Mom! When we have to beg!”
“We don’t beg, my dear! We take charity, which is different. But everything we get is owed to us, and don’t ever forget that. The good doctor Tourangeau gave his all for this parish, up till his dying breath, and usually for nothing. Those who benefited can surely now honour us with their old clothes. What’s more, I never asked those people for a thing. It was the priest who took it into his head to get us some help. He needed some poor people so he could perform his charitable works! Too bad for them. I’m not changing how I live or think, not one bit. Nobody’s going to lecture me, understand? Do you understand, Marie-Laure? I just want you to realize that the nuns are hypocrites, and that my way of looking at things is the right way. Otherwise, you’ll never be happy.”
Marie-Laurie withdraws behind her pretty, stubborn features. She, like Gervais and Bernadette, has inherited her father’s red hair and porcelain skin. Her distant Irish heritage sets her above this tribe, primarily made up of dark Mohawk complexions.
“Marie-Laure,” inquires Fernand, “what do you do with your big farts? We never hear them!”
“I think she farts in her head,” says Gervais.
“No,” interrupts Vincent, a big Jules Verne fan, “she farts faster than the speed of sound.” There are great bursts of laughter at the idea.
“In Around the Moon,” explains Vincent, “the characters wonder why they didn’t hear the boom of the cannon that shot them into space. That’s like us with Marie-Laure.”
“Her big farts have put us into orbit around the moon,” crows Gervais, as Fernand, dying of laughter, falls off his chair.
At the end of the table, Corinne and Stéphane listen to the noisy exchange, smiling and silent. As for the jibes aimed at Marie-Laure, only a glimmer of cruelty in their gaze attests to their participation in the overall glee.
“You’re all ganging up on me. I’m leaving,” Marie-Laure declares, taking off her apron.
“I’m with you,” says Frédérique, getting ready to follow. “Hey! You haven’t eaten yet,” Lucie interrupts. “Stay. Your brothers will apologize.”
The two sisters leave the room, their heads held high, and the laughter subsides.
“Well, children, that’s too bad for you. You, Gervais, are going to wash the dishes, and you, Fernand and Vincent, are going to dry.”
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