Margaret Laurence - The Diviners

THE NEW CANADIAN LIBRARY

General Editor: David Staines

ADVISORY BOARD

Alice Munro

W.H. New

Guy Vanderhaeghe

CONTENTS

For
the Elmcot people
past present and future
and for the house itself
with love and gratitude.

but they had their being once
and left a place to stand on

Al Purdy
Roblin Mills Circa 1842

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My deepest thanks to the following:

Ian Cameron, who wrote the music for Lazarus, Song for Piquette, and Piques Song, and who did musical arrangements for all the songs, and tape-recorded them for me so I could hear them sung;

Sandy Cameron, who set down the musical notations;

Prue and John Bawden, who transcribed the songs;

Jocelyn Laurence, who typed the manuscript for me;

Bob Berry, Paula Berry, David Laurence, Peter MacLachlan, Joan Minkoff, John Valentine, who helped with either the singing or the playing of the songs, or with the obtaining of copies of the musical scores and Xerox copies of the manuscript.

I should like also to thank the Canada Council for the Senoir Arts Award which assisted me during the writing of this novel.

(Music 1973 Heorte Music)

PART ONE

RIVER OF NOW AND THEN

ONE

T he river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green water in the opposite direction. This apparently impossible contradiction, made apparent and possible, still fascinated Morag, even after the years of river-watching.

The dawn mist had lifted, and the morning air was filled with swallows, darting so low over the river that their wings sometimes brushed the water, then spiralling and pirouetting upward again. Morag watched, trying to avoid thought, but this ploy was not successful.

Pique had gone away. She must have left during the night. She had left a note on the kitchen table, which also served as Morags desk, and had stuck the sheet of paper into the typewriter, where Morag would be certain to find it.

Now please do not get all uptight, Ma. I can look after myself. Am going west. Alone, at least for now. If Gord phones, tell him Ive drowned and gone floating down the river, crowned with algae and dead minnows, like Ophelia.

Well, you had to give the girl some marks for style of writing. Slightly derivative, perhaps, but let it pass. Oh jesus, it was not funny. Pique was eighteen. Only. Not dry behind the ears. Yes, she was, though. If only there hadnt been that other time when Pique took off, that really bad time. That wouldnt happen again, not like before. Morag was pretty sure it wouldnt. Not sure enough, probably.

Ive got too damn much work in hand to fret over Pique. Lucky me. Ive got my work to take my mind off my life. At forty-seven thats not such a terrible state of affairs. If I hadnt been a writer, I mightve been a first-rate mess at this point. Dont knock the trade.

Morag read Piques letter again, made coffee and sat looking out at the river, which was moving quietly, its surface wrinkled by the breeze, each crease of water outlined by the sun. Naturally, the river wasnt wrinkled or creased at allwrong words, implying something unfluid like skin, something unen-during, prey to age. Left to itself, the river would probably go on like this, flowing deep, for another million or so years. That would not be allowed to happen. In bygone days, Morag had once believed that nothing could be worse than killing a person. Now she perceived river-slaying as something worse. No wonder the kids felt themselves to be children of the apocalypse.

No boats today. Yes, one. Royland was out, fishing for muskie. Seventy-four years old this year, Royland. Eyesight terrible, but he was too stubborn to wear glasses. A marvel that he could go on working. Of course, his work did not depend upon eyesight. Some other kind of sight. A water diviner. Morag always felt she was about to learn something of great significance from him, something which would explain everything. But things remained mysterious, his work, her own, the generations, the river.

Across the river, the clumps of willow bent silver-green down to the water, and behind them the great maples and oaks stirred a little, their giant dark green tranquility disturbed only slightly by the wind. There were more dead elms this year, dry bones, the grey skeletons of trees. Soon there would be no elms left.

The swallows dipped and spun over the water, a streaking of blue-black wings and bright breastfeathers. How could that colour be caught in words? A sort of rosy peach colour, but that sounded corny and was also inaccurate.

I used to think words could do anything. Magic. Sorcery. Even miracle. But no, only occasionally.

The house seemed too quiet. Dank. The kitchen had that sour milk and stale bread smell that Morag remembered from her childhood, and which she loathed. There was, however, no sour milk or stale bread hereit must be all in the head, emanating from the emptiness of the place. Until recently the house was full, not only Pique but A-Okay Smith and Maudie and their shifting but ever-large tribe. Morag, for the year when the Smiths lived here, had gone around torn between affection and ragehow could anyone be expected to work in such a madhouse, and here she was feeding them all, more or less, and no goddamn money would be coming in if she didnt get back to the typewriter. Now, of course, she wished some of them were here again. True, they only lived across the river, now that they had their own place, and visited often, so perhaps that was enough.

Something about Piques going, apart from the actual departure itself, was unresolved in Morags mind. The fact that Pique was going west? Yes. Morag was both glad and uncertain. What would Piques father think, if he knew? Well, he wouldnt know and didnt have all that much right to judge anyway. Would Pique go to Manawaka? If she did, would she find anything there which would have meaning for her? Morag rose, searched the house, finally found what she was looking for.

These photographs from the past never agreed to get lost. Odd, because she had tried hard enough, over the years, to lose them, or thought she had. She had treated them carelessly, shoved them away in seldom-opened suitcases or in dresser drawers filled with discarded underwear, scorning to put them into anything as neat as an album. They were jammed any-old-how into an ancient tattered manilla envelope that Christie had given her once when she was a kid, and which said McVitie & Pearl, Barristers & Solicitors, Manawaka, Manitoba. Christie must have found it at the dumpthe Nuisance Grounds, as they were known; what an incredible name, when you thought of the implications. The thick brown paper stank a bit when Christie had handed it to her, faintly shitlike, faintly the sweetish ether smell of spoiled fruit. He said Morag could have it to keep her pictures in, and she had taken it, although despising it, because she did not have any other sturdy envelope for the few and valued snapshots she owned then. Not realizing that if she had chucked them out, then and there, her skull would prove an envelope quite sturdy enough to retain them.

Ive kept them, of course, because something in me doesnt want to lose them, or perhaps doesnt dare. Perhaps theyre my totems, or contain a portion of my spirit. Yeh, and perhaps they are exactly what they seem to bea jumbled mess of old snapshots which Ill still be lugging along with me when Im an old lady, clutching them as I enter or am shoved into the Salvation Army Old Peoples home or wherever it is that Ill find my death.

Morag put the pictures into chronological order. As though there were really any chronological order, or any order at all, if it came to that. She was not certain whether the people in the snapshots were legends she had once dreamed only, or were as real as anyone she now knew.