The Dead Child

Gabrielle Roy translated by Joyce Marshall

W
hy then did the memory of that dead child seek me out in the very midst of
the summer that sang? When till then no intimation of sorrow had come to
me through the dazzling revelations of that season.
I had just arrived in a very small village in Manitoba to finish the school
year as replacement for a teacher who had fallen ill or simply, for all I know, become
discouraged.
The principal of the Normal School had called me to his office towards the end of my
year’s study. “Well,” he said, “there’s a school available for the month of June. It’s not
much but it’s an opportunity. When the time comes for you to apply for a permanent
position, you’ll be able to say you’ve had experience. Believe me, it’s a help.”
And so I found myself at the beginning of June in that very poor village—just a few
shacks built on sand, with nothing around it but spindly spruce trees. “A month,” I asked
myself, “will that be long enough for me to become attached to the children or for the
children to become attached to me? Will a month be worth the effort?”
Perhaps the same calculation was in the minds of the children who presented
themselves at school that first day of June—“Is this teacher going to stay long enough to
be worth the effort?”—for I had never seen children’s faces so dejected, so apathetic, or
perhaps sorrowful. I had had so little experience. I myself was hardly more than a child.
Nine o’clock came. The room was hot as an oven. Sometimes hi Manitoba, especially
in the sandy areas, an incredible heat settles in during the first days of June.
Scarcely knowing where or how to begin, I opened the attendance book and called
the roll. The names were for the most part very French and today they still return to my
memory, like this, for no reason: Madeleine Berube, Josephat brisset, Emilien Dumont,
Cecile Lepine. . . .
But most of the children who rose and answered “Present, mamzelle,” when their
names were called had the slightly narrowed eyes, warm colouring and jet black hair that
told of metis blood.
They were beautiful and exquisitely polite; there was really nothing to reproach them
for except the inconceivable distance they maintained between themselves and me. It
crushed me.
“Is this what children are like then,” I asked myself with anguish, “untouchable,
barricaded in some region where you can’t reach them?”
I came to the name Yolande Chartrand.
No one answered. It was becoming hotter by the minute. I wiped a bit of perspiration
from my forehead. I repeated the name and, when there was still no answer, I looked up
at faces that seemed to me completely indifferent.
Then from the back of the classroom, above the buzzing of flies, there arose a voice I
at first couldn’t place. “She’s dead, mamzelle. She died last night.”
 Perhaps even more distressing than the news was the calm level tone of the child’s
voice. As I must have seemed unconvinced, all the children nodded gravely as if to say,
“It’s true.”
Suddenly a sense of impotence greater than any I can remember weighed upon me.
“Ah,” I said, lost for words.
“She’s already laid out,” said a boy with eyes like coals. “They’re going to bury her for
good tomorrow.”
“Ah,” I repeated.
The children seemed a little more relaxed now and willing to talk, in snatches and at
long intervals.
A boy in the middle of the room offered, “She got worse the last two months.”
We looked at one another in silence for a long time, the children and I. I now
understood that the expression in their eyes that I had taken for indifference was a heavy
sadness. Much like this stupefying heat. And we were only at the beginning of the day.
“Since Yolande . . . has been laid out,” I suggested, “and she was your schoolmate . . .
and would have been my pupil . . . would you like . . . after school at four o’clock . . . for us
to go and visit her?”
On the small, much too serious faces there appeared the trace of a smile, wary, still
very sad but a sort of smile just the same.
“It’s agreed then, we’ll go to visit her, her whole class.” From that moment, despite
the enervating heat and the sense that haunted us all, I feel sure, that human efforts are
all ultimately destined to a sort of failure, the children fixed their attention as much as
possible on what I was teaching and I did my best to rouse their interest.
At five past four I found most of them waiting for me at the door, a good twenty
children but making no more noise than if they were being kept in after school. Several of
them went ahead to show me the way. Others pressed around me so closely I could
scarcely move. Five or six of the smaller ones took me by the hand or the shoulder and
pulled me forward gently as if they were leading a blind person. They did not talk, merely
held me enclosed in their circle.
Together, in this way, we followed a track through the sand. Here and there thin
spruce trees formed little clumps. The air was now barely moving. In no time the village
was behind us—forgotten, as it were.
We came to a wooden cabin standing in isolation among the little trees. Its door was
wide open, so we were able to see the dead child from quite far off. She had been laid out
on rough boards suspended between two straight chairs set back to back. There was
nothing else in the room. Its usual contents must have been crowded into the only other
room of the house for, besides a stove and table and a few pots on the floor, I could see a
bed and a mattress piled with clothes. But no (hairs. Clearly the two used as supports for
the boards on which the dead child lay were the only ones in the house.
The parents had undoubtedly done all they could for their child. They had covered
her with a clean sheet. They had given her a room to herself. Her mother, probably, had
arranged her hair in the two very tight braids that framed the thin face. But some pressing
need had sent them away: perhaps the purchase of a coffin in town or a few more boards
to make her one themselves. At any rate, the dead child was alone in the room that had
been emptied for her—alone, that is to say, with the flies. A faint odour of death must
have attracted them. I saw one with a blue body walk over her forehead. I immediately
placed myself near her head and began to move my hand back and forth to drive the flies
away.
The child had a delicate little face, very wasted, with the serious expression I had seen
on the faces of most of the children here, as if the cares of the adults had crushed them all
too early. She might have been ten or eleven years old. If she had lived a little longer, I
reminded myself, she would have been one of my pupils. She would have learned
something from me.
I would have given her something to keep. A bond would have been formed between
me and this little stranger—who knows, perhaps even for life.
As I contemplated the dead child, those words “for life”— as if they implied a long
existence—seemed to me the most rash and foolish of all the expressions we use so
lightly.
In death the child looked as if she were regretting some poor little joy she had never
known. I continued at least to prevent the flies from settling upon her. The children were
watching me. I realized that they now expected everything from me, though I didn’t know
much more than they and was just as confused. Still I had a sort of inspiration.
“Don’t you think Yolande would like to have someone with her always till the time
comes to commit her to the ground?”
The faces of the children told me I had struck the right note.
“We’ll take turns then, four or five around her every two hours, until the funeral.”
They agreed with a glow in their dark eyes.
“We must be careful not to let the flies touch Yolande’s face.”
They nodded to show they were in agreement. Standing around me, they now felt a
trust in me so complete it terrified me.
In a clearing among the spruce trees a short distance away,
I noticed a bright pink stain on the ground whose source I didn’t yet know. The sun
slanted upon it, making it flame, the one moment in this day that had been touched by a
certain grace.
“What sort of girl was she?” I asked.
At first the children didn’t understand. Then a boy of about the same age said with
tender seriousness, “She was smart, Yolande.”
The other children looked as if they agreed.
“And did she do well in school?”
“She didn’t come very often this year. She was always being absent.”
“Our teacher before last this year said Yolande could have done well.”
“How many teachers have you had this year?”
“You’re the third, mamzelle. I guess the teachers find it too lonesome here.”
“What did Yolande die of?”
“T.B., mamzelle,” they replied with a single voice, as if this was the customary way for
children to die around here.
They were eager to talk about her now. I had succeeded in opening the poor little
doors deep within them that no one perhaps had ever much wanted to see opened. They
told me moving facts about her brief life. One day on her way home from school—it was
in February; no, said another, in March— she had lost her reader and wept inconsolably
for weeks. To study her lesson after that, she had to borrow a book from one of the
others—and I saw on the faces of some of them that they’d grudged lending their readers
and would always regret this. Not having a dress for her first communion, she entreated
till her mother finally made her one from the only curtain in the house: “the one from
this room ... a beautiful lace curtain, mamzelle.”
“And did Yolande look pretty in her lace curtain dress?” I asked.
They all nodded deeply, in their eyes the memory of a pleasant image.
I studied the silent little face. A child who had loved books, solemnity and decorous
attire. Then I glanced again at that astonishing splash of pink in the melancholy
landscape. I realized suddenly that it was a mass of wild roses. In June they open in great
sheets all over Manitoba, growing from the poorest soil. I felt some alleviation.
“Let’s go and pick some roses for Yolande.”
On the children’s faces there appeared the same slow smile of gentle sadness I had
seen when I suggested visiting the body.
In no time we were gathering roses. The children were not yet cheerful, far from that,
but I could hear them at least talking to one another. A sort of rivalry had gripped them.
Each vied to see who could pick the most roses or the brightest, those of a deep shade
that was almost red.
From time to time one tugged at my sleeve, “Mamzelle, see the lovely one I’ve found!”
On our return we pulled them gently apart and scattered petals over the dead child.
Soon only her face emerged from the pink drift. Then—how could this be?—it looked a
little less forlorn.
The children formed a ring around their schoolmate and said of her without the
bitter sadness of the morning, “She must have got to heaven by this time.”
Or, “She must be happy now.”
I listened to them, already consoling themselves as best they could for being alive.
But why, oh why, did the memory of that dead child seek me out today in the very
midst of the summer that sang?
Was it brought to me just now by the wind with the scent of roses?
A scent I have not much liked since the long ago June when I went to that poorest of
villages—to acquire, as they say, experience.