Read Online Elle by Douglas Glover - Free Book Online

burial mound, and next to me lies the corpse of my spirit mother, who, now that I think of it, may have done more harm than good in encouraging my wayward heart. Rebelliousness has led me, precisely, here, where I wish I could die sooner rather than later, though for some reason — an unexpectedly robust constitution — I cannot even accomplish that.
    I have made many mistakes. I blame printed books for this, a recent invention which has led us to solitary pleasures: reason, private opinions, moral relativism, Lutheranism and masturbation. I cannot bear to go inside, where my Bastienne lies frozen in state, because she reminds me of my loneliness. All I want is to sit here and weep, but my tears turn into icicles, justas ice congeals along the shore. The whole world is freezing. (Prior to this I thought Hell would be hot.)
    I only want to be unconscious, to fall asleep beneath the counterpane of snow. But sleep evades me. The wind howls, icy fingers probe my limbs to the bone. Night follows night, the elements in fantastic disarray. The demons of fear, guilt and self-doubt assault my dreams. I am in no fit state to die, though when I try to pray, the words come out as curses. (Better to curse God, I suppose, than to go off and invent another one — I am still closer to divine grace than the Protestants.) I have my English Bible — its translator was burned at the stake, a fate which just now seems preferable to my current torment — and Richard’s tennis racquet and a baby (a still-warm lump inside me), but these are little consolation.
    In idle moments, I recall a savage girl living on M. Cartier’s farm at Limoilou. Her parents had offered her to the captain as a gift for the return voyage his last time in Canada. (Evidently native child-rearing practices are as thoughtless and irresponsible as those of the French. Dare we ask if her name means Iphigenia in the tongue of the Hochelagans?) M. Cartier’s wife, being childless, stood godmother to her when she was baptized and brought her into their home as a serving girl. She did queer work with beads and thread that delighted the ladies. I saw her only once, in shadow, at the back of a large room lit by a fire, bent so close to her needlework that she must have been almost blind. She peered up when someone raised his voice in the company. Dull, pocked skin, lank, thin hair, eyes blank from terror and loneliness — no less marooned in France than I in Canada.
    One day (it is day, and suddenly clear and still) I poke Richard’s tennis racquet through the snow and perceive a sky soblue and a world so white that it assaults me with its clarity. Nothing has ever seemed this clear — and I am French, so clarity is beauty. A lone gull shrieks above my head, then sheers off and dives for the open water. Far off, I hear the chuff-chuff of the slushy shore ice grinding in the swell. The air is so cold it seems solid; it would freeze these words were I to speak them, just as it freezes my breath. I am languid from starvation and cold. I cannot imagine why I am still alive. My persistence is an occasion for astonishment and frustration. (It makes a person believe in God — nothing this stupid could be random.)
    I unbend my stick limbs and attempt to stand but find myself sitting willy-nilly. I really am a bundle of sticks. I resemble one of those Christs behind the rood screen in the village churches, with the ribs carved outside the skin. My baby has grown smaller instead of larger, as if he entertained second thoughts about being born. I can’t feel a thing. Or perhaps I am so inured to pain that I no longer register how much everything hurts. Perhaps not starving and not freezing to death would be agony now. Perhaps I am already dead and just haven’t noticed yet. But sitting here in my feather bags, amid that clarity of ice and sky, I suddenly feel giddy. Let us not say happy or filled with grace. But my stone cold heart warms a