Louise Erdrich: Four Souls

Time is the water in which we live, and we breathe it like fish. It’s hard to swim against the current. Onrushing, inevitable, carried like a leaf, Fleur fooled herself in thinking she could choose her direction. But time is an element no human has mastered, and Fleur was bound to go where she was sent. Maybe in those long nights as she watched the crack of light beneath the door, she had an inkling. She thought revenge was behind that door, and satisfaction. Maybe she began to realize that she was wrong. There was only time. For what is a man, what are we all, but bits of time caught for a moment in a tangle of blood, bones, skin, and brain? She was time. Mauser was time. I am a sorry bit of time myself. We are time’s containers. Time pours into us and then pours out again. In between the two pourings we live our destiny.

Though Fleur was immensely disciplined, the wait got to be too much for her. She sank down against the wall one night, still frowning at the band of light that said Mauser was sleepless. Annoyed with everything to do with him and with her situation, she brooded. The sharp anger that kept her wakeful dulled. Her thoughts drifted. She longed for the trusting touch of her daughter, grew angry at the man behind the door, forgot him, ached for her daughter, grew angry at the man again. Felt that self-pity that they both felt, on either side of the door. Finally, resenting that she had to waste her time to take revenge, she fell asleep.

I haven’t said this, but she had a tendency to snore.

The snores of a beautiful woman are both ridiculous and somehow moving. I know. Recall, she had lived in my cabin. Slumped in that grand hallway with her face tipped back, unguarded, her skin exquisitely molded over the stern bones, her eyes up-slanted, the bitter perfection of her lips stuck half open, she breathed an even gurgling gnash. Fleur’s snores, her self-betrayal, started softly and then increased in volume as she fell deeper into her sleep. Mauser, in his bed of feather down and fancy silk quilts and ruffed pillows, set his book aside. At the sound of the snores, he was alarmed. He imagined that Fantan had come to curl at his door, out of a protective instinct or because he’d had a bad dream himself. Or if not Fantan, perhaps, he thought, one of his old hunting dogs had been mistakenly left out of his plush night kennel and might catch cold on the floor. He turned his light off, and here is why Fleur did not hear him. Mauser also knew precisely where the creaks hid in the floor. He trod his way around the noisy boards when he wished not to rouse Polly Elizabeth. Now he padded to the door in absolute silence, and opened it. As Fleur herself had greased the hinges, the door made no sound. And as it was a night of moon radiance and the light streamed in the window behind him and the windows at either end of the hall, it was easy for Mauser to see at once that the source of the rumbling snores was no wornout cur, but a woman. A most extraordinary woman — the laundress who’d revived him. Her face caught the light as though it were poured of tarnished silver. Her face was sculpted of the fabulous dark side of a mirror. Or deep water. Or time, as I’ve said. Her face gave back an idealized reflection and Mauser was caught in it. That strange beauty emitting snorts and whistles. Oblivious. He watched her curiously for a while, and then he suddenly smiled. He shut the door. Crawled back between the covers. She never knew, but here it was. Like a child reaching into the lake and pulling out a fish, like a fish flipping out of the fry pan into a stream that rushes to the lake, like a dog biting randomly and hauling from the air a rump steak, she got her prize. She had caught him in her sleep.

A S SOON AS Fleur appeared in the doorway, ready for my inspection, I regretted my impulse to copy for her that uniform from a certain exclusive hotel in the South of France. The black was never meant to set off so tight a waist, nor the peplum to emphasize those narrow-swiveling sly hips. The bodice with its inset of jet ruche and wide, starched white collar — a terrible mistake. Who could have expected it to frame such an elegant throat? And her eagle’s grace of collar-bone — perfectly! The three-quarters sleeves and tight cuffs gave distinction to her arms. I turned away without a word. I won’t mention my choice of the tinted stockings and the shoes — how I regretted the clever, shiny heels! Her feet were too long for fashion, I told myself, walking from the room, and her hands were rough with work. I tried to find comfort in these shortcomings. But what man rejects a woman on the basis of small defects in her hands and feet?

The rains were heavy and the snows worse. Mold grew in the corners of my brain. Grayish days do that to me, when I’m shut in and contemplate my small surround. I’ve the wit to do more than run this house for my sister, but my face is bleak and martial. I’ve never married. And here’s the worst. I’ve a soft heart for children, as well as all things small and helpless, and I sometimes weep into my clenched fists for fury that my sister has provided me no nephew or niece. One day I decided, in spite of opposition from all quarters, to obtain a small lady’s lapdog — a Pomeranian. A black clever-eyed bit of fluff with sharp teeth and a bitter yap. I imagined myself in some way defined by my relation to another creature. The dog would look elegant when I rode in motorcars, and fit my wardrobe perfectly as I tended to favor contrasting checks and black-and-white plaids. I would be known for my black Pomeranian and there would be a dog, at least, to sleep with me in my bed.

The breeder brought round the complete litter and I chose one at last — it took me just an hour — I picked him for his pleading eyes. Who else, after all, needed me enough to beg?

THOUGH I AM fond of my sister and do not begrudge her the lopsided distribution of comely attributes, I am nevertheless aware of her limitations. Placide was considered scatterbrained, and our tutor had often chastised her, but I’ve had occasion to wonder whether indeed she was created with a brain at all. In the aftermath of brother-in-law’s episode, life resumed a routine serenity, outwardly at least. But I had seen what I had seen. I tried to tell Placide.

“Sister,” I addressed her straight out, one morning as I posed for her in pale north light, “your husband has eyes for the laundress.”

“She’s dark as a Nubian. More to the left. Turn your head. There. Your beard is rippling up on one side and your collar shows.”

I smoothed the piece of lamb’s wool we’d taped to my chin, and persisted.

“I’ve a mind to let her go.”

“Oh, don’t!” This captured my sister’s attention. She even set her camel’s hair brush down, though she loves to flourish it. “She irons my ribbons!” Placide picked up her brush again and dabbed a minuscule bit of color on her canvas. “And the bedclothes, my underlinen, all the tablecloths and napkins. She gets them so very white, my dear, quite in contrast to her complexion!”

Placide dimpled at me, waiting for me to laugh at her attempted witticism. I did not indulge her.

“Watch out, sister, have a care. He’s quite”—I chose the word without thinking how absurd it might sound uttered from beneath a false lamb’s wool beard—“ besotted .” The wool got in my mouth and I spluttered to get rid of it.

Placide laughed out loud and shook her thin, dry curls. She wrinkled her nose, a gesture that was charming when she was a girl but which now made her look like a moth-eaten rabbit. She fluffed the silk bow on her painter’s smock as much as if to say, What would you know of men and their besottedness?