Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

“Why do you do it?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“I have to know.”

As usual, and Cyprian could have predicted this, she would not accept an easy answer or even one that allowed him to keep his dignity. Even an evasion that might ensure their happiness was unacceptable. Nothing he’d heard about his desire matched the feelings that he had when he was experiencing this form of love. Then, at those times, it was simply the most basic joy he’d ever felt. He’d always hoped that he would never, ever, have to explain it, especially to a woman. But, he thought, looking at the ruby firelight on Delphine’s face, if he had to tell a woman he was glad it was she. The way he felt about Delphine Watzka was an utter surprise to him, something he’d never expected in his life. He loved the things she said, her amusing directness, the strength she had dismissed until he taught her to develop it, and now, the kindness she showed toward this scroungy old bastard of a father. Even her insistence that he tell her the truth about this hidden side of himself was a part of her true charm.

Still, he didn’t know how to put it, and she was determined to obtain the whole truth and nothing less.

“You’re not a Pole with a name like Lazarre,” she sidetracked.

“I am not,” he admitted.

“So then what are you?”

“I’m French.”

“Plus what else?”

Cyprian paused. “Well,” he said at last. “I’m Chippewa. Ojibwe. The word my grandpa used was Anishinaabeg — the humans. Same thing.”

“That makes you an Indian.”

It was no small thing to admit this in the town where the two now lived openly together as though married, but he did at last.

“You have light skin.”

“My dad was half French and my mom was part French, too. Have you ever heard of michifs or métis?” Cyprian peered at her, then shrugged and looked away. “I guess not, but if you had, you’d have heard of my famous ancestor, Louis Riel, who died a martyr to the great vision of a mixed-blood nation — not a loose band or bunch of hunters. A place with boundaries and an actual government taking up a big chunk of Manitoba. There’s lots of us who still do dream about it! I’m descended of a famous man, Delphine, for your information. Riel. You can find him in the books of history.”

“Was he a good balancer?”

Cyprian cocked his head to the side and smiled. “He was an excellent balancer, but they hung him anyway. I guess the light side of my relatives came out in me, if not their heroics, though I did fight a decent war. All my cousins, two of my brothers, they’re brown.”

“But now I see it,” said Delphine, softening toward him and his fantasy of lost glory and a hero’s inheritance, “in your eyes and all, or maybe in your hair.” Still, she was not to be diverted by Cyprian’s sudden burst of information. “Tell me about the man beside the river.”

Her voice was patient, and Cyprain lost any hope of diverting her. His breath came short and he attempted to find the right words to describe what came over him when he knew it was going to happen with another man. He couldn’t, and was relieved when she finally asked him a question.

“Did it start in the war?”

“It started in the war!’

He said this with a surge of hope, for it was an explanation that he hadn’t thought of yet. Yes, his thoughts knit quickly. This could be another freak effect of wartime life, a consequence of living so closely with other men, a side effect of getting gassed, or of the other things, septic wounds, a trench disease, a fear-borne germ. As he scrambled about with these explanations in his mind, he knew that they were not enough. During the war he had, in fact, fallen devoutly in love with another man, whose death he still grieved. And the love itself had not been a surprise. For he’d always known. It was perfectly apparent to him that he had the feelings for men that men usually expressed for girls, then women. What could be more obvious? No, the war had done far worse things than deciding whom he could or couldn’t love.

Even thinking of it exhausted him.

“Look,” he finally said, wearily, “ask yourself the same question. Why you like to do it with men? Your answer is the same as my answer.”

Delphine nibbled some bread, poked the fire into a stronger blaze, and considered. After thinking of it for some time, she decided that she now felt a kinship with him that was more female than male. It seemed as though she could tell him anything that went on in her woman’s heart, and he would understand it, he would know the truth of it, having felt it in his own. So she was satisfied with his answer although it meant that truly, for good and all, they would not be lovers. She did not know if they would even travel anymore, putting on their show. After all, they were stuck for a time, right here, according to their pledge to Sheriff Hock. What they needed to think about, especially in the face of the money they’d been forced to spend on the hotel, schnapps for Roy, cleaning supplies and new blankets, was work. They had to think just how they would acquire work.

THIS TIME, Delphine walked over to the meat shop, a distance of about four miles. She and Cyprian had decided not to waste gasoline. Also, she needed to exercise her leg muscles in case they did resume their show — perhaps they should put it on here for a weekend or two just to raise enough to purchase a new mattress for Roy, not to mention buy a concoction that would remove the still raging stink from the floor and walls of the house. When Delphine walked into Waldvogel’s she noted the jangle of a cheerful shop bell and thought how pleasant it would be to hear it from deep in the house.

Delphine made known the purchases she sought, as before, and as before, Eva asked her to come sit down for a coffee. There was not a product on Eva’s household cleaning shelf that would serve as a strong enough cleanser for the job Delphine required, and Eva wanted to concoct something of her own.

“Believe me, I have the experience,” she said. “This type of stink is a hell of a problem. Most difficult to destroy.

“First off, a good vinegar and water wash down. Then I should order the industrial strength ammonia for you — only be careful with the fumes of it. Maybe, if that doesn’t work good enough yet, raw lye. From the first, Delphine, I suggest to fill that cellar in, not just sprinkling with lime, but packing her up with a good mixture of wood ash and dirt. You will not be going to use it?”

Delphine vigorously shook her head.

“Then good. Fill it up.” Eva sipped her coffee. Today, her hair was bound back in a singular knot, the sides rolled in smooth twists, the knot itself in the shape of the figure eight, which Delphine knew was the ancient sign for eternity. Eva rose and turned away, walked across the green squares of linoleum to punch some risen dough and cover it with towels. As Delphine watched, into her head there popped a strange notion: the idea that perhaps strongly experienced moments, as when Eva turned and the sun met her hair and for that one instant the symbol blazed out, those particular moments were eternal. Those moments actually went somewhere. Into a file of moments that existed out of time’s range and could not be pilfered by God.

Well, it was God, wasn’t it, Delphine’s thoughts went on stubbornly, who made time and created the end of everything? Tell me this, Delphine wanted to say to her new friend, why are we given the curse of imagining eternity when we know we can’t experience it, when we ourselves are so finite? She wanted to say it, but suddenly grew shy, and it was in that state of concentrated inattention that she met Eva’s husband, Fidelis Waldvogel, master butcher.