The Tale-Teller (18 page)

***

IT TOOK ME A couple of months to recover my health and more to recover my spirits after the death of my guardian, Monsieur Fourget, in the Sahara Desert. But my rescuers, a couple named Az'ar and Faghizza, tolerated my silent misery. Though from the outside they looked as different as chalk and cheese, he thin and solemn, she fat and merry, they were alike in their good hearts and in their profound generosity. They made no distinction between their own flesh and blood and me — whatever they had they shared: food, shelter, love. With them, I began to learn what it means to be truly human. And with them, I found a home.

Now, this home was in its own way a desert island, cut off from the rest of the world, with a peaceful rhythm and few occupants; a good place for me to recover my health. My hosts asked very little of me, but as I regained my strength I began to long for meaningful activity. It turned out that Faghizza was a revered healer among the villagers, so she offered to teach me her trade. This appealed greatly to me because my most fervent wish was to pay her and her husband back for their kindness. I began to learn the secret powers of the medicinal herbs she grew, how to lance infected wounds and bind broken bones, how to soothe the troubled minds and comfort the aching bodies of those who came to her for help. She said that I had good hands and a quick mind, and that I had been sent by God to be her helper and her adopted daughter.

One day a stranger, his blue eyes blazing from a sunburnt face, was carried into the village on a stretcher, delirious with snakebite. To my astonishment, the man spoke perfect French, even when he mumbled or shouted in his fits. Faghizza and I tended to his wound, which was severe, and it is no lie to say that we saved his life. When he recovered, we learned that he was a trader en route to the coast and that his name was Yousef — or at least, that was what he told us it was. This did not bother my hosts, accustomed as they were to people having but a single name, but it intrigued me, suggesting that he was travelling in disguise. I was so used to travelling in disguise myself that I felt an immediate affinity for the fellow. We were both strangers in a strange land, and he was full of entrancing tales of the places he had been and the wonders he had seen; I could listen to him for hours. My heart burned within my chest like that hot wind the Arabs call the
simoom
, until I finally recognized a passion I had never felt before.

***

“ENOUGH,” HOCQUART INTERRUPTED ANGRILY. “You have made yourself quite clear. No
simoom
of love burns in your heart for me.”

“But you are not in love with me either, Monsieur Hocquart,” Esther protested.

“I thought that, with time, we could learn to love each other.”

“We might learn to accept other. But you deserve better.”

“I offer you marriage and you have the nerve to pretend that you are rejecting me for my own good?”

“Dear Monsieur Hocquart,” she began. “It is precisely because you have always been so kind to me that I must reject your proposal.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are a man with great responsibilities and therefore you need a wife who has been well brought up; someone who can run a household and knows how to behave in public. But I am not like that. I would bring you nothing but trouble.” There was a moment of silence while the Intendant absorbed her comments. It was hard for him to accept that the girl had responded to him as though they were equals rather than acknowledging his power over her. This behaviour, more than anything else that had happened during the year of Esther Brandeau's residence in Quebec, made him realize that religious conversion would not tame her fundamental independence; nothing would.

He sighed. “You realize that you have rejected your last chance to stay in New France.”

“But I'm so happy living with Madame Lévesque,” Esther said, panicking. “Please, Monsieur Hocquart, I beg of you. Don't send me away.”

“Remaining here is no longer an option.”

Hocquart walked over to the same window where Esther had been standing, trying to catch his breath. But the air outside was thick as soup and offered no relief for either his constricted lungs or his baffled mind. He was mortified to have made such an absurd proposal. How could he have been so reckless of his own reputation?

Nor did he relish the task ahead of him: arranging for Esther's passage home. The foolish girl was already sobbing as if her heart would break. He recognized belatedly that her facade of invulnerability was entirely that: a facade. Unable to bear her grief or his own humiliation a moment longer, he walked out the door without saying goodbye.

Although the thick stone walls of the Lévesque house kept it relatively cool, outside the sun beat down, casting long noontime shadows across the grass. A gaunt brown dog lay panting in the heat and a horse, his reins looped loosely around the fence, flicked his tail at a buzzing cloud of flies. It would be pleasant by the river, Hocquart supposed. Instead of trudging back to work he could go down there and watch the boats sailing back to France, or to the West Indies, or who knows where: more attractive places, places he would never go.

But after a few minutes of brisk walking, his pace slowed and his anger at being rejected began to cool. He realized, with some surprise, that he was more relieved than hurt. Perhaps he really was too old to change, after all.

***

27 September 1739, Quebec

 

Monsieur Pelissier, to whom I wrote about the adventures of the Jewish girl, Esther Brandeau, who arrived in this country last year disguised as a boy, has written me that she appears to be the bastard daughter of David Brandeau, a Jew of Bayonne, who told him that he has eight more children at home. She is so flighty that she has been unable to settle down, neither in the Hôpital Général nor in any of the other private homes in which I have placed her. The Warder of the prison finally took charge of her and keeps her there. She has not displayed consistently bad behaviour, although she is so capricious that she has been sometimes accommodating and other times resistant to the instructions which zealous ecclesiastics have tried to give her. I have no other option but to send her home. The Sieur Lafargue, captain of the ship
Le Comte de Matignon de La Rochelle
has been charged with returning her to Monsieur Bellamy.

 

— From the Intendant Gilles Hocquart to the
French Minister of the Marine.

***

“OVER THERE,” VARIN POINTED with grim satisfaction. “
Le Comte de Matignon de La Rochelle
is the ship that will take you back to Bayonne, where you belong.”

Esther walked along beside him silently, her eyes downcast. They were accompanied by the two guards the King had ordered to watch over the girl on the voyage. Monsieur Hocquart did not think an armed escort was necessary but the last letter he received from His Majesty had insisted on it, assuring him that he would be recompensed for the expense. The girl was utterly passive, so there was nothing for the soldiers to do but carry her possessions: two bags of clothing and a few farewell gifts. Hocquart himself had given her a beautifully illustrated copy of
The Thousand and One Nights
and Madame Duplessis an edition of the letters of Marie de l'Incarnation. Madame Lévesque had given her a pair of candlesticks and several candles, that she might have light to read these books by. Marie-Thérèse, ever practical, had simply filled a handwoven Indian basket with food for the journey.

Naturally the Intendant was too busy to see her off, and the precise time of the girl's departure had been kept secret from the others so as to avoid unnecessary commotion. Varin was grateful for this; far too much attention had been paid to the sneaky little Jew already. He was relieved she wouldn't have the opportunity to make one last scene today.

She finally looked up to see where he was pointing. Her face became more animated. “A fine vessel indeed,” she said. “Who is the captain?”

“The Sieur Lafargue.”

“Is his name really Lafargue?”

“Yes.”

Esther started to laugh, though her face was streaked with tears. She picked up her skirt in both hands and ran quickly up the gangplank, unaware, as usual, how much leg she revealed. The guards stumbled after her, burdened by her things. On the dock, a few men snickered and pointed, making rude comments; Varin told them to shut up and then called Esther's name, insisting that she come back.

“You are my prisoner!” he shouted, feeling foolish.

But the girl didn't glance back at him, or at the land that had been her home for the last year.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE TALE-TELLER IS A
fantasy improvised on a suggestive but poorly documented historical incident. Most of what we know about Esther Brandeau comes from the report filed by JeanVictor Varin de La Marre, which follows in my translation. The original, as well as Intendant Gilles Hocquart's observations about the girl's year in Canada, are available in microfiche from the National Archives of Canada, series C11A–B, 71 and 72. Letters received in reply from France may be found in 68 and 71; excerpts from some of these are quoted in my novel as well.

In
The Tale-Teller
, the fact that Esther Brandeau was Jewish is revealed only in the spring of 1739, when communication with France resumed, rather than upon her arrival. I wasn't interested in writing a whole book of religious controversy. What intrigued me was Esther's character — what made her brave and foolhardy enough to run away and what made people in New France hold on to her until a direct order from the King forced them to send her home. That in reality she blurted out her true identity as soon as she was challenged influenced my interpretation of her as a fantastic storyteller rather than an intrepid adventurer. Someone so fearful of authority could never have passed as a boy for five long years, including a stint in jail.

Information about Varin, Hocquart, Governor General Beauharnois, and Mother Claude de la Croix comes from the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
. The translations from the works of Marie de l'Incarnation are Joyce Marshall's from
Word from New France: The Selected Letters of Marie de l'Incarnation
(Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967). The Wendat phrases spoken by Madame Duplessis are borrowed from the beautiful “Huron Carol” written by Saint Jean de Brébeuf. The story of the scholar who fell into the water has been freely adapted from that recounted in
Jewish Folktales
, as told by Pinhas Sadeh and translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin (NY: Doubleday, 1989). And the Ladino proverbs known as “refranes” that introduce each chapter were found in
The Sephardic Tradition: Ladino and Spanish-Jewish Literature
, edited by Moshe Lazar and translated by David Herman (NY: W.W. Norton, 1972).

I am not alone in suspecting that there were some hidden Jews among Quebec's early settlers, as there were in all the other North and South American colonies. Rabbi Arthur A. Chiel, in an article for the Manitoba Historical Society published online at
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactions/3/jewishhistory.shtml
, suggests that Marc Lescarbot, whose
Histoire de la Nouvelle-France
was published in 1609, was of Jewish descent, because Lescarbot demonstrated an unusual knowledge of Hebrew and attempted to prove that the First Nations were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. More wide-ranging and scientific in its ambitions, the
anusim
project at
http://www.familytreedna.com//files/18/71/92/f187192/public/canadiananusim/default.aspx
is currently seeking DNA proof that there were crypto-Jews among early immigrants. Corroboration may also be found in an interesting article by Jean-Marie Gélinas about his family's roots, posted online at
http://www.gelinas.org
. Both sources cite the registers of the “Saint-Office” (the French equivalent of the Inquisition) as evidence that the name “Lévesque” was considered Jewish at the time my story takes place.

Gélinas also provides commentary on, and links to, Pierre Lasry's 2001 novel about Esther Brandeau,
Une Juive en Nouvelle France
, published in English as
Esther: A Jewish Odyssey
in 2004. I deferred reading both Lasry's novel and Esther, by Sharon McKay, until after I completed my own book (having begun it before I was aware of Lasry's and before McKay's came out) and was relieved to discover that our interpretations of the girl's character were entirely different. For a fascinating exploration of the range of such interpretations throughout Canadian history, see Nathalie Ducharme, “Fortune critique d'Esther Brandeau, une aventurière en Nouvelle-France” (2004).

Joaquin's stories appeared in an earlier form in
The University of Windsor Review
39.1 (2006) thanks to Marty Gervais. For financial and moral support when it mattered, I am happy to acknowledge the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, Cormorant Books, Dundurn Press, Black Moss Press, and Sumach Press. Martha Baillie, Rachel Klein, and Carolyn Smart were my first readers, and this book is much better for their advice. Helen Dunmore's encouragement has meant more than I can express. My agent, Alisha Sevigny of The Rights Factory, believed in Esther from the start, as did my amazing editor, Marc Côté, whose rigorous aesthetic pushed this story to be as good as I could make it, and whose own ancestors arrived in New France in 1637.

My biggest debt is to my husband Toan Klein and our children Jesse and Rachel, for filling my days with love and our trip to France with chocolate — the secret recipe for which was brought to the Pays Basques by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. These days, every town in the area has at least one
chocolatier
but few have any Jews. When Esther Brandeau lived in Bayonne, there were thirteen active synagogues. Now there are none.

There is, however, a synagogue in Quebec City.