The Town Below. Roger Lemelin
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he said, “the Gonzagues are going over to sit in our seats!”
“Shall we throw them out?” asked Jacques, who wished to show Lise what a fighter he was.
“No,” replied Denis, “let’s watch them. I have an idea that you’ll get further with her than they will.”
Colin looked at his friend closely to see if he was joking. Denis had an ironic smile, but he was laughing at the Gonzagues. Jean felt himself a man, one who could have all the women in the world if he liked. The truth was, these pious young men, in their efforts to make an impression upon a girl as well educated as Lise and one who sang so well, were comical enough with their mincing little gestures and mannerisms. Simperingly they passed their cigarettes, exchanged their bingo tickets, and indulged in all sorts of affectations, accompanied by cluckings of the tongue that ended in small bursts of laughter. Nearly all of them were haberdashery clerks and extremely conscious of the clothes they wore. The tallest and palest of the lot was bending over Madame Lévesque’s shoulder to inquire about the result of her last euchre party.
“Just look at that big lummox; he wants to have her!” Jean was indignant. He had a vision of himself giving the Gonzague a terrible thrashing, one that would take all the hide off him.
“Bingo, ladies and gentlemen. All tickets are sold.”
With forefinger and thumb raised, the women waited eagerly for their numbers to be called as they darted keen, threatening glances at the figures that were not upon their tickets. Flora Boucher, Madame Langevin, Féda, Germaine, some of the other housewives, and the sacristan — all hovered over the first row of five digits like beasts ready to pounce upon their prey. Those who had heart trouble or were more excitable had a hand to their bosom. The only sound was that made by their rapid breathing and the snapping of the beans used in indicating their numbers.
“Thirty-six, thirty-six,” called the announcer in his matter-of-fact voice.
It was an English circus that had brought bingo into fashion, at the last provincial fair. The womenfolk were always blaming the announcer for their bad luck and having him changed every week. The passion for gambling aroused the primitive in them, and toward the end of the game half-stifled exclamations were to be heard from some of them while others expressed themselves in animated and colourful language.
“Stir them up a bit, will you?” called out Chaton’s wife, who could tell a dirty story better than anybody in the parish. “It’s always the same numbers!”
“There are only seventy-five of them,” was the announcer’s tart reply.
“I don’t seem to have any luck,” remarked Madame Langevin, becoming discouraged.
“My numbers are all shot,’” said Germaine, resentfully.
“I had a good card three weeks ago,” Féda informed them.
Flora said nothing.
The sacristan was depressed. “I haven’t had a single number that came out. It’s disgusting!”
“Quiet! You can’t hear what he’s calling.”
“What luck!” Flora suddenly exclaimed. “Mon Dieu, I’ve got one! Seventy-two! O Saint-Anthony and Saint-Gaston, make it come out!”
“Did you get a good one, lady?” asked Bidonnet. “Is she a lucky woman! She always wins. But then, she follows my way of playing it.”
“Soixante-et-douze, seventy-two!” sang out the announcer.
“Bingo! Bingo!” shouted Madame Boucher triumphantly.
There was a great hubbub, with Flora insisting that she would take a hall lamp. Above the exclamations of chagrin on the part of those who saw their chances vanishing, the announcer’s voice was audible: “Spread them out! We’re going to check.”
“It would have to be her again!” said the jealous mother of the Langevin twins.
The Latruche sisters, who disliked Flora because her raffling of Gaston’s hens offered them competition in the sale of tickets from house to house, now came up to examine her numbers and make sure that she really was the winner. Flora herself was all smiles. She felt so kind and charitable at that moment. Then Féda, who was near-sighted, chanced to look down at her own number. Her eyes and mouth grew round with surprise.
“Stop!” she cried. “I have it, too! I had it before she did. I never noticed.”
“Bingo! Bingo!” screamed Germaine and Féda in concert.
“It’s a little late, Madame,” said the man who was doing the checking.
“What do you mean, a little late? Just because we’re not educated like some other people, do you think you can make fun of us? That prize belongs to me!”
“It’s no use, Madame Colin. It will do you no good to shout. The prize is mine and I’m going to keep it.” And Flora aggressively pressed the lamp to her bosom and at the same time thought of Gaston, to whom she had promised a dollar.
“It’s the first time I’ve won. Do you think I’m going to let you rob me of it? Never!”
“Will you take a necktie, Madame?”
“One worth thirty sous,” said Germaine disdainfully; for she had a sense of values.
The Latruche spinsters encouraged Féda with a glance. She now recalled Tit-Blanc’s insult and blew her nose, tearfully. “You’ll pay for that, Boucher,” she said.
“You can call me Madame. Yes, Madame. We didn’t get married in a hurry, Barloute.”
“I noticed you had them fast enough!” screamed Germaine.
Féda felt her fingers curling. “Policemen,” she said, “don’t come around talking to me for hours at a time.”
Pinasse Charcot with his commandant’s voice broke upon them.
“Quiet! Second round.”
The silence was unbroken. Asking Madame Langevin to watch her number for her, Flora hastened to Bédarovitch’s place to sell him the lamp before he closed. He would, as usual, offer a dollar for the grand prize and later resell it to the parish committee for $1.25, the regular price being $1.50. On the other hand, a number of housewives who frequented bingo parties and kept their prizes as trophies had parlours that resembled a lamp manufacturer’s warehouse. These lamps were never lighted but were displayed to visiting relatives from Montreal. The result was an epidemic of lamps consigned to perpetual darkness, amounting to a sort of strike against the light company.
The second act was about to begin, and the Gonzagues still occupied the seats they had usurped. The friends now came forward with Denis in the lead. He gave a resounding kick to the first chair in the row, and Lise, turning, caught sight of him and was at once thrilled and flustered. Pretending to be astonished, the Gonzagues hastily decamped. Then it was that Jean realized he was no longer a vendor of worms. His gestures were expressive of a new and delightful sense of power; he felt that he could sweep everything before him if he chose.
“Will you smoke, Denis?”
“No, thanks; I don’t use tobacco.”
The curtain went up. The Buveuse de Larmes was now to receive her punishment. Denis had a feeling of lassitude. Was he the jeering lad of a short while ago? How did the world really look to him, anyhow? He wished he were somewhere else, in some Eden where he knew no one and where there would be nothing to do but feel sorry for himself, or rather for his past. Nonchalantly, he contemplated the back of Lise’s white neck — how white it was! — As revealed in gleams and flashes between her dark, wavy curls. He imagined her as being a stranger to her sex, a woman in body only. The two of them would flee this filthy suburb, would go soaring up to the magnificent clouds above, where there would be no question of rising any higher. And then, in turn, he felt a great desire to have her fall in love with Jean and to render Jean wholly his debtor