The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories (6 page)

‘Now then,' my father ordered, ‘you're gonna write to the Tax Government in Ottawa and tell them, around here we know more about paying than defrauding.'

Meanwhile, the workers dismantled the scaffolding, tossing the pieces into the contractor's old truck.

‘Walls without a roof…' they grumbled.

‘… it's like a man without a head.'

September nights aren't as warm as July. The villagers paraded past our house, trying to see without looking.

My father immediately prepared to drive his black Ford to the other side of the mountains. Along came the bank manager: he'd been told of our misfortune. He hastened to offer his help. My father answered him curtly:

‘A man that takes other people's money is a thief. I'm going to put the roof on my house with money I earn from my own work, by the sweat of my brow. Thanks very much.'

‘I didn't want to hurt you. Even the good Lord borrowed. He borrowed a mother…'

‘Not from your bank.'

My father got into his car.

Through the windows of our rooms without ceilings, without a roof, we gazed at the Ford as it raised a cloud of dust on the gravel road which appeared, then disappeared, depending on the hills and trees. My father had said:

‘I'll be back with the roof.'

‘What if it rains?' my mother asked. ‘The children …'

‘A little rain never hurt anything that's growing!'

That night, lying under the roof of the vast night, I didn't dream that I was flying like a bird. A great anxiety threw my child's heart into turmoil. Was it the anxiety of all who question the night, yet know nothing of it, understand nothing?

T
HE WINTERS
of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places - the school, the church and the skating-rink — but our real life was on the skating-rink. Real battles were won on the skating-rink. Real strength appeared on the skating-rink. The real leaders showed themselves on the skating-rink. School was a sort of punishment. Parents always want to punish children and school is their most natural way of punishing us. However, school was also a quiet place where we could prepare for the next hockey game, lay out our next strategies. As for church, we found there the tranquillity of God: there we forgot school and dreamed about the next hockey game. Through our daydreams it might happen that we would recite a prayer: we would ask God to help us play as well as Maurice Richard.

We all wore the same uniform as he, the red white and blue uniform of the Montreal Canadiens, the best hockey team in the world; we all combed our hair in the same style
as Maurice Richard, and to keep it in place we used a sort of glue — a great deal of glue. We laced our skates like Maurice Richard, we taped our sticks like Maurice Richard. We cut all his pictures out of the papers. Truly, we knew everything about him.

On the ice, when the referee blew his whistle the two teams would rush at the puck; we were five Maurice Richards taking it away from five other Maurice Richards; we were ten players, all of us wearing with the same blazing enthusiasm the uniform of the Montreal Canadiens. On our backs, we all wore the famous number 9.

One day, my Montreal Canadiens sweater had become too small; then it got torn and had holes in it. My mother said: ‘If you wear that old sweater people are going to think we're poor!' Then she did what she did whenever we needed new clothes. She started to leaf through the catalogue the Eaton company sent us in the mail every year. My mother was proud. She didn't want to buy our clothes at the general store; the only things that were good enough for us were the latest styles from Eaton's catalogue. My mother didn't like the order forms included with the catalogue; they were written in English and she didn't understand a word of it. To order my hockey sweater, she did as she usually did; she took out her writing paper and wrote in her gentle schoolteacher's hand: ‘Cher Monsieur Eaton, Would you be kind enough to send me a Canadiens' sweater for my son who is ten years old and a little too tall for his age and Docteur Robitaille thinks he's a little too thin? I'm sending you three dollars and please send me what's left if there's anything left. I hope your wrapping will be better than last time.'

Monsieur Eaton was quick to answer my mother's letter. Two weeks later we received the sweater. That day I had one of the greatest disappointments of my life! I would even say that on that day I experienced a very great sorrow. Instead of the red, white and blue Montreal Canadiens sweater, Monsieur Eaton had sent us a blue and white sweater with a maple leaf on the front — the sweater of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I'd always worn the red, white and blue Montreal Canadiens sweater; all my friends wore the red, white and blue sweater; never had anyone in my village ever worn the Toronto sweater, never had we even seen a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. Besides, the Toronto team was regularly trounced by the triumphant Canadiens. With tears in my eyes, I found the strength to say:

‘I'll never wear that uniform.'

‘My boy, first you're going to try it on! If you make up your mind about things before you try, my boy, you won't go very far in this life.'

My mother had pulled the blue and white Toronto Maple Leafs sweater over my shoulders and already my arms were inside the sleeves. She pulled the sweater down and carefully smoothed all the creases in the abominable maple leaf on which, right in the middle of my chest, were written the words ‘Toronto Maple Leafs'. I wept.

‘I'll never wear it.'

‘Why not? This sweater fits you … like a glove.'

‘Maurice Richard would never put it on his back.'

‘You aren't Maurice Richard. Anyway, it isn't what's on your back that counts, it's what you've got inside your head.'

‘You'll never put it in my head to wear a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater.'

My mother sighed in despair and explained to me:

‘If you don't keep this sweater which fits you perfectly I'll have to write to Monsieur Eaton and explain that you don't want to wear the Toronto sweater. Monsieur Eaton's an
Anglais;
he'll be insulted because he likes the Maple Leafs. And if he's insulted do you think he'll be in a hurry to answer us? Spring will be here and you won't have played a single game, just because you didn't want to wear that perfectly nice blue sweater.'

So I was obliged to wear the Maple Leafs sweater. When I arrived on the rink, all the Maurice Richards in red, white and blue came up, one by one, to take a look. When the referee blew his whistle I went to take my usual position. The captain came and warned me I'd be better to stay on the forward line. A few minutes later the second line was called; I jumped onto the ice. The Maple Leafs sweater weighed on my shoulders like a mountain. The captain came and told me to wait; he'd need me later, on defense. By the third period I still hadn't played; one of the defensemen was hit in the nose with a stick and it was bleeding. I jumped on the ice: my moment had come! The referee blew his whistle; he gave me a penalty. He claimed I'd jumped on the ice when there were already five players. That was too much! It was unfair! It was persecution! It was because of my blue sweater! I struck my stick against the ice so hard it broke. Relieved, I bent down to pick up the debris. As I straightened up I saw the young vicar, on skates, before me.

‘My child,' he said, ‘just because you're wearing a new Toronto Maple Leafs sweater unlike the others, it doesn't
mean you're going to make the laws around here. A proper young man doesn't lose his temper. Now take off your skates and go to the church and ask God to forgive you.'

Wearing my Maple Leafs sweater I went to the church, where I prayed to God; I asked him to send, as quickly as possible, moths that would eat up my Toronto Maple Leafs sweater.

T
HEY USED TO
tell us that rich ladies in the big cities wouldn't buy fur coats unless they were made from our foxes. These rich ladies thought our foxes had a ‘sheen' the rest of the foxes in the world were deprived of. So our foxes were reserved from birth for the coats of some rich lady or other. The breeders would often make fun of them as they threw carrion to the animals: ‘There you go, a shovelful of guts for the fat lady'. A fox is a fox, after all, and why would the good Lord make our foxes finer than anyone else's?

As the men waited for winter to end they would talk about these things, smoking their pipes. Monsieur Josaphat said:

‘Me, I think the reason our fur's better looking than anywhere else is because of the water we give our foxes.'

His firm belief triggered off some laughter, but the men sucked on their pipes and put all their mockery into their expressions. Monsieur Josaphat, disturbed by his own opinion, was taken aback for a moment; he felt himself turn pale and it made him furious. Those who hadn't dared to laugh before, roared now.

Monsieur Josaphat was the biggest fox breeder, the one with the largest number of grilled cages: when people heard the captive beasts howl at night they used to say: ‘It's Monsieur Josaphat's foxes again.' Our mothers prayed that the animals wouldn't escape from their cages, for there were always some children around. The other main breeder, Ferdinand Chapeau, didn't have quite as many cages, but every year he built new ones and bought new mothers. It was his ambition that one day Monsieur Josaphat would sell out to him and he'd become the only breeder.

Monsieur Josaphat's foxes and Ferdinand Chapeau's foxes drank the same water. Their cages were set up on adjoining plots of land. In the middle, between the cages, a natural basin was always filled with fresh water, summer and winter. All year round, Monsieur Josaphat's foxes, and Ferdinand Chapeau's, enjoyed the best water. The villagers were in the habit of saying that the water they drank wasn't as tasty as the foxes': ‘If you want proof,' one wag said, opening his shirt, ‘my hair hasn't got the same sheen as the foxes'!' Monsieur Josaphat and Ferdinand Chapeau came in turn to the basin, with two horses pulling a sleigh made of big pieces of pegged cedar; they would fill two or three barrels with the precious water, return to their cages and empty the barrels into wooden troughs. The foxes would cry out with pleasure and smile sinister smiles.

In those days, Monsieur Josaphat thought the water was useful only to quench the foxes' thirst; he still hadn't understood that it contained a magic ingredient that made the foxes' fur shimmer like the soft brilliance of the water. But
then, all at once, he understood: an inspiration. Now he could no longer doubt. How could he have raised foxes for so many years without knowing that the splendour of their fur came from his water? His water was truly a precious possession.

For several years he had allowed Ferdinand Chapeau to dip water from his basin — not out of generosity, but ignorance. This water, with its miraculous qualities for the foxes' fur, belonged to him. This water had beautified Ferdinand Chapeau's furs for years, and Ferdinand Chapeau had never given him anything in return. He would never give him anything. Ferdinand Chapeau had offered to buy all the scraps from the butcher; if the butcher agreed, Monsieur Josaphat would have been forced to buy food for his foxes in the next village, or even farther. That's the kind of man Ferdinand Chapeau was, whom all these years Monsieur Josaphat had so generously supplied with water. Thanks to this water, received with never any payment, Ferdinand Chapeau strutted about, flattering himself that he had the finest foxes in the village. Ferdinand Chapeau was prospering. Hadn't he already boasted that he'd soon be able to buy Monsieur Josaphat's business? But what would Ferdinand Chapeau have been without his water?

That day when he went, as was his custom, to fill his barrels at the basin, Ferdinand Chapeau was bowled over by what he saw: a fence around the basin. On it was a notice: ‘It is strictly forbidden to take any of this private water under pain of a lawyer's letter payable by the receiver. Signed: The Proprietor.'

In vain did Ferdinand Chapeau trace lines, find guide marks, boundary-lines beneath the snow, recall that his
father's horses and his grandfather's had drunk water from Monsieur Josaphat's basin; in vain did he read and reread notarized documents and government forms. His fate was sealed: the water belonged to Monsieur Josaphat's land.

A farmer from the other end of the village who had too many children and who had gone into debt at the village tavern, allowed Ferdinand Chapeau to persuade him to sell his water. In the days that followed you would see his two horses pulling the sleigh and the three barrels down the village street; he didn't look up. The angry man whipped his animals relentlessly. The children heard him mutter words they didn't dare repeat to their parents.

None of the villagers understood Monsieur Josaphat's decision. He had to explain: ‘There's nobody got the right to harvest your oats, there's nobody got the right to take your horse, there's nobody got the right to take your wife; and there's nobody got the right to take your water'. Sometimes, when he knew Ferdinand Chapeau had gone in search of water, Monsieur Josaphat would come up to his cages. It seemed to him that the fur of Ferdinand Chapeau's foxes was losing its lustre.

Then it was spring. The air grew warm, the foxes demanded more water. Monsieur Josaphat added a padlock to the little gate that opened onto the spring. Once again Ferdinand Chapeau studied the limits, the boundaries, he noted the line of the fence, analyzed the conditions attached to the possession of the lots from the earliest days. There was no possible doubt: Monsieur Josaphat was unattackable.

By June the land had absorbed the springtime water. For
Ferdinand Chapeau it was time to look for a spring for his own property. For several days he had been searching for a discreet bubbling of water on the surface, a water hole that wouldn't be a muddy swamp. Suddenly, among the rocks, he discovered a trickle running through the moss: the water was so cold it cut your fingers. This living water was just as fine as Monsieur Josaphat's. To be so pure this water had to run — but where? It disappeared immediately, creeping beneath the ground. And where did it go? Ferdinand Chapeau examined the conformation of the land. Beneath the knolls, water — Ferdinand Chapeau's water — and its underground current flowed, quivering and fresh, rushing towards Monsieur Josaphat's basin.