The Tale-Teller (16 page)

***

WHEN ESTHER BROKE OFF her story with satisfaction, proud of having provided some entertainment to the lunatic ward, she was disconcerted at the near riot that broke out around her. Instead of being soothed by her tale-telling as she had assumed they would be, the inmates were more agitated than ever.

“Come away, come away,” shrieked one as she swooped around the room, flapping her arms like a demented bird. A toothless woman with a face like an old boot and a mane of luxurious red hair, she had suffocated her eighteenth child at birth. Her other children missed her dreadfully but the hospital would not allow her to go home, and she had grown more and more frantic as the weeks went by.

“Come away, come away,” several other patients chimed in, imitating her. The more timid ones started to cry at the commotion around them, and one old man howled on all fours like a dog.

“You wicked girl,” shouted Sister Agnes, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to catch the flapping woman. “It will take all afternoon to settle them down again.”

It was lucky that Doctor Lévesque was in residence that day. Being one of the few local doctors to have been trained in France, he ordinarily worked at the Hôtel-Dieu where respectable people were sent when they fell ill. However, he insisted on visiting the Hôpital Général once a week to supervise the ministrations of the nursing sisters to the dregs of society: the poor, the disabled, the criminal, the insane. As she got to know the man better, Esther had become more and more impressed by both his expertise and his compassion.

Doctor Lévesque scolded Esther, gently, for telling the inmates stories, reminding her how much trouble they had distinguishing reality and fantasy. He tied the howling man to a chair with soft restraints, wiped the spittle from his face tenderly, and continued his rounds of the ward. He comforted a sobbing girl, examined the throat of a rigid man who claimed to be unable to swallow food, gave a sugar pill here and a pat on the back there until all the patients were satisfied that something, however inadequate, had been done for them. As soon as he moved on to the next inmate, the ones he left behind dissolved into tears or started ranting incoherently; however, for the brief moment they had his attention they became calmer and more articulate, and it became possible to see the suffering individual under the mask of madness.

“How do you manage to keep your temper?” Esther inquired, after one patient, a stunted deaf-mute of indeterminate age and gender, tried to bite him.

“Gratitude.”

“For what?”

“For not being them.”

In all her months of discussing the virtues of submission with Madame Duplessis or the possibility of redemption after death with Mother Claude, Esther had not felt as moved as she did upon hearing this. As much as she respected both women, she was not drawn to the kind of mysticism demanded by their version of religion. Esther wanted to see the effects of her actions in this world, not the next. She had no interest in the afterworld and believed neither in angels nor demons; she only wanted for her life to mean something. The doctor's practical philanthropy appealed to her in a way that sermons about sin and redemption did not.

“You are a very good man,” she said.

“No,” he replied. “Just a very good doctor.”

“I would like to learn from you to be of use. If I make myself indispensable, Monsieur Hocquart may not send me away.”

“I doubt it. The law states that only Catholics may live in New France.” The bitterness in his tone was unmistakable, and it took Esther by surprise.

“Do you think the law is unfair, Doctor?” she blurted out.

“It doesn't matter what I think, does it?”

Inadvertently Esther found herself looking around to make sure none of the nursing sisters were in the vicinity and had overheard them. Luckily they were alone; perhaps that was why the doctor had felt free to say such a thing to her. Or maybe it was because she was a Jew, an outsider, and therefore could not get him into trouble for his free thinking.

Regardless of the reason, she was grateful. It had been rare, in her experience, to meet anyone else who saw life the way she did. She determined at once to become the best possible assistant to Doctor Lévesque, and worked twice as hard as she had before: carrying his medical supplies from room to room, consoling patients in his absence, feeding the catatonic, bathing the incontinent. It was ironic that having fled a life of domestic labour back home she should be consigned to one on the other side of the ocean, but she hoped that at least in this place her work might be valued.

It was not all tedious. She was allowed to play marbles with the younger patients and chess with the older ones, and she heard a number of wild tales — some wilder than those she herself was accustomed to telling, but which she no longer dared indulge in. This was her favourite part of the job: she was rapt with wonder as a young boy recounted with absolute conviction and considerable descriptive power how he flew around the silent countryside at night when others slept, grazing the treetops; as a wizened man with a matted beard explained that he was the illegitimate son of the King, exiled because his mother had fallen out of favour at court. There seemed to be an extraordinary number of aristocrats in hiding among the lunatics, and an equal quantity of prophets and holy men. And they all liked Esther, because she alone among the nursing staff not only listened patiently to their complicated histories but also solicited further details.

When she wasn't being entertained by the patients' delusions and flattered by their proposals of marriage, or sponging their feverish limbs and holding the basin for them to be bled, Esther continued to enjoy her occasional conversations with the doctor. He had a vein of dark humour that echoed her view of the world, and he did not seem at all bothered by the fact that she was Jewish — unlike the nursing sisters, who made insulting comments all the time.

Esther was surprised to realize, in retrospect, the lack of hostility Mother Claude had displayed towards her. Perhaps it was because she was so secure in her own faith; certainly she was less credulous than these other nuns, who were prepared to believe the most bizarre things about her. “Show us your horns, Queen Esther,” they would say, or “Would you like us to save the patients' blood for you to use in your Passover rituals?” Whenever Doctor Lévesque was around he would reprimand them, but they still managed to hiss venom at Esther when he was out of hearing. She thought of complaining to Mother Claude at their weekly tutorials, but did not want to draw too much attention to her situation. No one was talking about sending her back to France anymore, and she intended to keep it that way. This was her first summer in Quebec but she hoped it would not be her last.

It was amazing how hot the weather had become after the long winter and tremulous spring, and it was only getting hotter with each day. Esther began sweating freely even when she did not exert herself. She tried to do her chores with the same commitment as before but her energy flagged and she became more and more exhausted. She felt as though she were stumbling through fog, and her whole body hurt. When Sister Agnes yelled at her for being lazy and incompetent, a typical parasitical Jew, she asked if she might go lie down for a while, then found herself unable to get out of bed all that day and the next. On the third morning, Doctor Lévesque himself came to examine her.

“What is the matter, Esther?” he asked.

“I am so tired that I can hardly move. I can't stop shivering even though I'm burning up with fever, and my right arm hurts.”

He rolled up her sleeve to find red streaks climbing up her arm from a deep cut at the base of her thumb. The limb was hot and swollen.

“How did you do this?”

“One of the patients broke a chamber pot and I cut myself picking up the pieces.”

“You appear to have blood poisoning,” he said. Although he spoke calmly, she could tell he was worried.

“Will I die?” she asked, with no more emotion than if she had asked him the time of day. Doctor Lévesque was alarmed. Such lassitude suggested that the infection had already progressed quite far, so far that her reason was affected; surely it wasn't possible that any girl so young had no desire to live?

“Not if I can help it,” he said. “But you will probably get worse before you get better.”

Esther collapsed against the pillow, although one part of her still insisted that she pay attention so that she would learn what to do in this kind of medical emergency. Doctor Lévesque was already tying a tourniquet about her wrist and calling out curt instructions to the nursing sisters to bring boiling water and clean rags and medicinal salves. Then he lanced the wound to release a stream of pus and blood, squeezing it so hard that Esther cried out in pain as the others crowded around him. They were all black and white, so black and white it made her dizzy. Their faces frightened her, ghostly, floating above their cloaked bodies; why hadn't she noticed how strange the nuns looked before? She tried to explain this revelation to the doctor, but he told her to keep quiet and save her strength.

What was that smell? Something sweet and familiar, something from faraway France. Lavender! Someone was rubbing her sore arm with a healing lotion and binding it tightly; the aroma was so pervasive that she feared she might vomit. She closed her eyes, submitting to a wave of exhaustion that carried her away like the ocean, drowning her and then letting her rise to the surface again and again until she no longer knew if it were day or night, winter or summer, until she no longer knew who she was, or where.

She dreamed of being tossed by a violent storm that swept away everyone she'd known or loved, a storm that left her sodden clothes sticking to her limbs and her mind full of terror. Maybe she was on Noah's ark; there were chattering apes there, peeling bananas with their feet, and solemn camels batting their long eyelashes, and a fierce golden lion whose red mouth opened into an enormous cave which swallowed her alive. It was so dark inside the cave that she could see nothing, but there were voices echoing all around her, calling many names:
Estrella, Esther, Aissata, Estella, Esteban, Edza, Aziza
…

At one point she was lifted up and carried outside; she could smell flowers and trees and feel the warm summer air on her skin, so light and gentle after her clammy bedding. She struggled back to consciousness, whimpering, trying to open her eyes. “Don't worry, little Esther,” she heard a man's voice say. “You are coming home with me.”

She tried to speak, to thank him, but nothing emerged but “
Gracias
.” Surely that was the wrong word? But the man seemed to understand what she meant, for he replied, “
De nada
.” When the warm breeze ruffled her hair, she heard herself cry out in the same half-forgotten tongue as though she were someone else. When she was settled comfortably into the back of a carriage with blankets heaped around her, she found herself drowsily crooning a lullaby from another life:

Y anoche, mi madre
cuando me eché a acordar
soñabo un sueño ...

And when she stopped, forgetting what came next, the man finished the verse for her:

tan dulce era de contar:
que me adormía
y a orias del mar.

TWELVE

“Si neviim no somos, de neviim venimos.”
(We may not be prophets, but we are descended from them.)

LIKE CLOUDS SHIFTING IN a high wind, the startlingly vivid dreams dispersed, leaving behind only the welcome memory of her mother's face. Esther woke up to find herself in an unfamiliar bed in unfamiliar clothes. She sat up — lightheaded, confused, but herself again — and drank greedily from a full glass of water sitting on a table within arm's reach.

On the same table there was also a delicate blue and white porcelain plate holding two biscuits. She slowly ate one, then the other, savouring their sweetness and the way they dissolved so lightly upon her tongue. She had no idea how long it had been since she had last eaten but she was very hungry. She finished the glass of water and then, as more time passed, began to grow restless. Assuming she must be back at Madame Duplessis's house despite the fact that she did not recognize anything around her, she called out tentatively, “Claire?”

Instead it was Madame Lévesque who came bustling in.

“I am delighted to see you looking so well, Esther,” she said, her rosy face aglow over a dress of brilliant red satin.

“Are you the one who has been taking care of me?” Esther asked, abashed.

“Yes, my dear.”

“Why?”

“Gabriel and I thought you would recover better here than in the hospital.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Madame Lévesque laughed. “Why do you find it so hard to accept that people care about you?”

Esther swallowed. “It's too hard to explain.”

“Try. It is not good for you to hold things in; it will only make you sicker. And believe me, I am very good at keeping secrets.” Madame Lévesque sat on edge of the bed and took the girl's cold hands in hers.

“Tell me about your real family, Esther.”

Esther looked down at their hands, entwined together. Her hostess's were gnarled with arthritis, their skin wrinkled and their veins prominent as ropes. Her own, by contrast, were childish and unformed. Her fingernails, ordinarily bitten to the quick, had grown in during her long illness and were remarkably clean. She scarcely recognized them. Indeed, many things were strange, from the soft rose-coloured shawl around her thin shoulders to the long hair braided neatly down her neck. Maybe if she was this brand-new person she would be able to live in the present; maybe she could stop running away from the past. Besides, this woman had saved her life — did she not owe her the truth?

She took a deep breath, lay back down on the pillows, and began.

“My mother died of typhoid fever when I was four years old. She was … not married. She was a simple housemaid, uneducated.”

“But you loved her.”

“Very much.”

“And after she died?”

“My father brought me up because he thought it was his duty, not realizing how impossible it would be for his wife.”

“Was your stepmother cruel to you?”

“She was always angry with me. She called me ‘the bastard' or ‘that ugly girl' and made it clear that I was not a real member of the family. But her oldest sons were kind; they let me sit in on their lessons. I loved my brother Daniel very much. He was my champion.”

“Why didn't your father protect you?”

Esther couldn't resist the sympathy flooding into her from Madame Lévesque's hands. She found herself revealing things she had never told anyone else before.

“He was rarely home. Sometimes he returned late at night to find me sobbing about something vicious his wife had said to me. He always asked me to forgive her and to understand how hard things were for her. But even as a child I wondered why I was required to forgive her for things she did on purpose when she never forgave me for things that were not my fault.”

“It is no wonder you ran away,” Madame Lévesque said, gathering Esther into her arms as though to protect her from any future harm. “But things have changed, Esther. Here in Quebec you have people who care for you.”

Esther shook her head and turned away, her shoulders shaking with the sudden onslaught of the grief she always tried to conceal. Madame Lévesque got up from the bed and returned with a dainty embroidered handkerchief. She waited quietly until the girl blew her nose and regained her composure before resuming.

“You know it's true, my dear. While you were sick, you had lots of visitors.”

“I remember very little,” Esther said, grateful for the change of subject.

“Madame Duplessis came often with that maid of hers, the one who squints.”

“That was my friend Claire. And Marie-Thérèse, Monsieur Hocquart's housekeeper, came to see me too, didn't she?”

“She sat beside you for hours, praying for your recovery.”

“There was also a man I didn't recognize. Quite handsome, with bright blue eyes.”

“My youngest son, Joseph, visiting from Montreal. Perhaps you were less sick than we thought, if you were able to notice his good looks.” Madame Lévesque smiled.

“Now you are embarrassing me.”

“Well, you are at the age when you should be thinking about men.”

“Please stop, Madame,” Esther said. Her hostess was amused to see that she was blushing.

“Why? Are you really so different from other girls?”

“I suspect that there are others like me, who would rather have the wind in their sails than a baby in their belly.”

“That may be,” Madame Lévesque replied, laughing. “But few of them would have the courage to act on their desires.”

“Why do girls always have to give up their dreams?” Esther asked, with a trace of her old spirit of defiance.

“Do you think that men can do whatever they want?”

“At least they are not prevented from doing things simply because they are men.”

“There are other limitations people face, Esther.”

“Such as poor health, or poverty?”

“Yes, or lack of education, or being the wrong race or religion. Like my darling husband.”

“What do you mean?”

Madame Lévesque mumbled, almost too softly for Esther to hear, “It may be dangerous for all of us, but I thought you ought to know.”

“Know what?”

“That you are not the only one who has needed to wear a disguise.”

“I don't understand,” said Esther, but even as the words left her mouth she realized that she did. The doctor's sadness and the cryptic comments he sometimes made began to make sense. The voice singing Sephardic ballads when she was sick had not been a feverish delusion as she'd assumed — it must have been him. He was the one who brought her here in the carriage. In her delirium she had failed to recognize the significance of that moment, which seemed so obvious to her now.

“But his name is Lévesque!”

“His grandfather's name was Cohen. It is a more or less literal translation.”

Esther could not believe what she was hearing. “Are there any other Jews here?” she whispered.

“A few. But they live in hiding. I cannot tell the truth about Gabriel to anyone — not even my sisters or close friends like Madame Duplessis.”

“Do your children know?”

“We waited until they were adults to tell them, worried they might otherwise endanger their father by some inadvertent comment.”

“Would it not endanger them as well?” Esther asked, bewildered.

“I doubt it. My family, as you know, is quite prominent. We raised our children to be good Catholics and they are raising theirs the same way. I hope that by the time they are adults no one will care about their grandfather's religion.”

Madame Lévesque smiled. “You know, Esther, I thought you would feel less solitary if I told you my secret. But now I realize that it was I who felt alone.”

“Thank you for trusting me, Madame,” Esther said, rising unsteadily from the bed to give her a fierce embrace. “I will never betray you.”

“I know you won't, my dear. And besides,” she laughed, “who would believe you?”