Guy De Maupassant - "A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales"

Theodor Storm - "Bulemanns Haus"

Alexandre Dumas - "La dame de Monsoreau v.3"

Various - "Eighth Annual Report"

Editorial
This article explores Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance (1996), alongside his short story "Lend Me Your Light" (1987), focussing on the tensions between the politically-distanced cosmopolitan migrant and the socially-committed local activist. My readings draw on Radhakrishnan's notion of diasporic "double duty" — of accountability to, rather than irresponsible detachment from, the homeland. Mistry's representations of migrants, I contend, are centrally concerned not only with the necessity, but also the difficulty, of performing such "double duty" through a sustained engagement with India's history and politics. In this light, I argue that Mistry offers representations of migrants whose attempts to distance themselves from local and national politics are revealed as impossible and irresponsible. Moreover, I suggest that Mistry's representations reveal an anxiety over his position as a migrant writer, and his work seems to mobilize writing as a means of avoiding a problematically apolitical detachment from India. Thus, Mistry establishes a tension between his representation of the migrant within his fiction and his negotiation of his own migrant position through his fiction.

Fort Amity

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity




Menehwehna had answered most of the questions, standing by the bed's
foot: and Menehwehna was seated there still in the dusk.

How many lies had Menehwehna told? John himself had told none,
unless it were a lie to pronounce his name French-fashion--"John a
Cleeve," "Jean a Clive." And, once more, was not this war?

For the rest and for his own part, it was astonishing how easily, the
central truth being hidden--that the tunic in the _armoire_ was not
his--the deception had run on its own wheels. Why, after all, should
that tunic frighten him? He, John a Cleeve, had not killed its
wearer. He had never buttoned it about him nor slipped an arm into
one of its sleeves. Menehwehna had offered to help him into it and
had shown much astonishment on being refused. John's own soiled
regimentals they had weighted with a stone and sunk in the river, and
he had been lying all but naked, with the accursed garment over his
legs, when the rescue-party found them on the bank.

How many lies had Menehwehna told? John could remember the sound of
two voices, the priest's and the Indian's, questioning and
explaining; but the sound only. As soon as he shut his eyes and
tried to recall the words, the priest's voice faded down the song of
the falls, and only the Indian and himself were left, dropping--
dropping--to the sound, over watery ledges and beneath pendent
boughs. Then, as the walls of the room dissolved and the priest's
figure vanished with them, Menehwehna's voice grew distinct.
At one time it said: "What is done is done. Come with me, and we
will go up through the Great Lakes, beyond Michilimackinac, to the
Beaver Islands which are in the mouth of Lake Michigan. There we
will find the people of my tribe, and when the snow comes and they
separate, you shall go with me to the wintering-grounds and learn to
be a hunter."

In another dream the voice said: "You will not come because you weary
of me and wish to leave me. We have voyaged together, and little by
little my heart has been opened to you; but yours will not open in
return. I would have made you to me all that Muskingon was; but you
would not. When I killed that man, it was for your sake no less than
Muskingon's. I told him so when he died. Of what avail is my
friendship, brother, when you will give me none in exchange? . . ."

In yet a third dream the canoe floated on a mirror, between a forest
and the image of a forest. . . . His eyes followed the silver wake of
a musk-rat swimming from shore to shore, and in his ear Menehwehna
was saying, "Your head is weak yet: when it grows stronger you will
wish to come. Muskingon struck you too hard--so--with the flat of
his tomahawk. He did not mean it, but his heart was jealous that
already so much of my love had passed over to you. Yet he was a good
lad, and my daughter's husband. The White-coat called across the
stream to him, to kill you; but he would not, nor would he bring you
over the ford until we had made the White-coat promise that you
should not be killed for trying to run away. The man could do
nothing against us two; but he bore ill-will to Muskingon afterwards,
and left him to die when we could have saved him."

So, while John had lain senseless, fate had been binding him with
cords--cords of guilt and cords of gratitude--and twining them
inextricably. Therefore he feared sleep, because these dreams awoke
him to pluck again at the knot of conscience. Ease came only with
the brain's exhaustion, when in sheer weakness he could let slip the
tangle and let the song of the rapids drug his senses once more.

He turned on his side and watched the sunbeam as it crept up the face
of the _armoire_. "Menehwehna!" he called weakly.

From his seat in the corner among the shadows the Indian came and
stood behind him.

"Menehwehna, this lying cannot go on! Make you for this fort they
talk of; tell your tale there and push on to join your tribe.
Let us fix a length of time, enough for your travel beyond reach, and
at the end of it I will speak."

"And what will my brother tell them?"

"The truth--that I am no Frenchman but an English prisoner."

"It is weakness makes you lose patience," answered Menehwehna,
as one might soothe a child. "Let the weak listen to the strong.
All things I have contrived, and will contrive; there is no danger,
and will be none."

John groaned. How could he explain that he abhorred this lying?
Worse--how could he explain that he loathed Menehwehna's company and
could not be friends with him as of old; that something in his blood,
something deep and ineradicable as the difference between white man
and red man, cried out upon the sergeant's murder? How could he make
this clear? Menehwehna--who had preserved his life, nursed him,
toiled for him cheerfully, borne with him patiently--would understand
only that all these pains had been spent upon an ingrate.
John tugged away from the bond of guilt only to tighten this other
yet more hateful bond of gratitude. He must sever them both, and in
one way only could this be done. He and Menehwehna must part.
"I do not fear to be a prisoner. Moreover, it will not be for long.
The river leads, after all, to Quebec; and the English, if they take
Louisbourg, will quickly push up that way."

"The White-coat used to speak wisdom once in a while," answered
Menehwehna gravely. "'It is a great battle,' he said, 'that battle
of If; only it has the misfortune never to be fought.' Take heart,
brother, and come with me to the Isles du Castor. When your
countrymen take Quebec you shall return to them, if you still have
the mind, and I will swear that we held you captive. But to tell
this needless tale is a sick man's folly."

John could not meet the Indian's eyes, full as they were of a
wondering simplicity. He feared they might read the truth--that his
desire to escape was dead. During Father Launoy's exhortations he
had lain, as it were, with his ear against its cold heart; had lain
secretly whispering it to awake. But it would not. The questions
and cross-questions about Douai he had answered almost inattentively.
What did it all matter?

The priest had been merely tedious. Back on Lake Champlain and on
the Richelieu, when the world of his ken, though lost, lay not far
behind him, his hope had been to escape and seek back to it; his
comfort against failure the thought that here in the north one
restful, familiar face awaited him--the face of the Church Catholic.
Now the hope and the consolation were gone together. Perhaps under
the lengthening strain some vital spring had snapped in him, or the
forests had slowly choked it, or it had died with a nerve of the
brain under Muskingon's tomahawk.

He was not Sergeant a Clive of the regiment of Bearn; but almost as
little was he that Ensign John a Cleeve of the Forty-sixth who had
entered the far side of the Wilderness.

He wanted only to be quit of Menehwehna and guilt. It would be a
blessed relief to lie lost, alone, as a ball tossed into a large
country. As he had fallen, so he prayed to lie; empty in the midst
of a great emptiness. The Communion of all the Saints could not
comfort him now, since he had passed all need of comfort.

"You must go, Menehwehna. I will not speak until you are beyond
reach."

"It is my brother that talks so. Else would I call it the twitter of
a wren that has flown over. Is Menehwehna a coward, that he spoke
with thought of saving himself?"

"I know that you did not," answered John, and cursed the knowledge.
But the voice of the falls had begun to lull him. "We will talk of
it to-morrow," he said drowsily.

"Yes, indeed; for this is a thought of sickness, that a man should
choose to be a prisoner when by any means he may be free."

He found a tinder-box and lit the night-lamp--a wick floating in a
saucer of oil: then, having shaken up John's pillow and given him to
drink from a pannikin, went noiselessly back to his corner.

The light wavered on the dark panels of the _armoire_. While John
watched, it fell into tune with the music of the distant falls. . . .

He awoke, with the rhythm of dance-music in his brain. In his dream
the dawn was about him, and he stood on the lawn outside the
Schuylers' great house above Albany. From the ballroom came the
faint sound of violins, while he lingered to say good-bye to three
night-gowned little girls in the window over the porch; and some way
down the hill stood young Sagramore, of the Twenty-seventh, who was
saying, "It is a long way to go. Do you think he is strong enough?"

Still in his dream John turned on him indignantly. And behold!
it was not young Sagramore, but Dominique, standing by the bed and
talking with Menehwehna.

"We are to start for the Fort, it appears," said Menehwehna to John.

"Let us first make sure," said Dominique, "that he is strong enough
to dress." He thrust his hand within the _armoire_ and unhitched the
white tunic from its peg.

John shrank back into his corner.

"Not that!" he stammered.

Across the lamp smoking in the dawn, Dominique stared at him.



CHAPTER XIII.


FORT AMITIE.

The Fort stood high on a wooded slope around which the river swept
through narrows to spread itself below in a lake three miles wide and
almost thirty long. In shape it was quadrilateral with a frontage of
fifty toises and a depth of thirty, and from each angle of its stone
walls abutted a flanking tower, the one at the western angle taller
than the others by a good twenty feet and surmounted by a flagstaff.

East, west, and south, the ground fell gently to the water's edge,
entirely clear of trees: even their stumps had been uprooted to
make room for small gardens in which the garrison grew its cabbages
and pot-herbs; and below these gardens the Commandant's cows roamed
in a green riverside meadow. At the back a rougher clearing, two
cannon-shots in width, divided the northern wall from the dark tangle
of the forest.

The canoe had been sighted far down the lake, and the Commandant
himself, with his brother M. Etienne and his daughter Mademoiselle
Diane, had descended to the quay to welcome the _voyageurs_.
A little apart stood Sergeant Bedard, old Jeremie Tripier (formerly
major-domo and general factotum at Boisveyrac, now at Fort Amitie
promoted to be _marechal des logis_), and five or six militiamen.
And to John, as he neared the shore in the haze of a golden evening,
the scene and the figures--the trim little stone fortress, the white
banner of France transparent against the sky, the sentry like a toy
figure at the gate, the cattle browsing below, the group at the
river's brink--appeared as a tableau set for a child's play.

To add to the illusion, as the canoe came to the quay the sun sank, a
gun boomed out from the tallest of the four towers, and the flag ran
down its staff; all as if by clockwork. As if by clockwork, too, the
taller of the two old gentlemen on the quay--the one in a gold-laced
coat--stepped forward with a wave of his hand.

"Welcome, welcome, my good Dominique! It will be news you bring from
Boisveyrac--more news of the great victory, perhaps? And who are
these your comrades?"

"Your servant, Monseigneur; and yours, Monsieur Etienne, and yours,
Mademoiselle Diane!" Dominique brought his canoe alongside and
saluted respectfully. "All my own news is that we have gathered the
harvest at Boisveyrac; a crop not far below the average, we hope.
But Father Launoy desired me to bring you these strangers, who will
tell of matters more important."

"It is the wounded man--the sergeant from Fort Carillon!" cried
Diane, clasping her hands.

"Eh, my child? Nonsense, nonsense--he wears no uniform, as you see.
Moreover, 'Polyte Latulippe brought word that he was lying at the
point of death."

"It is he, nevertheless."

"Mademoiselle has guessed rightly," said Dominique. "It is the
wounded soldier. I have lent him an outfit."

The Commandant stared incredulously from Dominique to John, from John
to Menehwehna, and back again to John. A delightful smile irradiated
his face.

"Then you bring us a good gift indeed! Welcome, sir, welcome to Fort
Amitie! where we will soon have you hale and strong again, if nursing
can do it."

Here, if John meant to play his part, was the moment for him to
salute. He half lifted his hand as he reclined, but let it fall
again. From the river-bank a pair of eyes looked down into his; dark
grey eyes--or were they violet?--shy and yet bold, dim and yet
shining with emotion. God help him! This child--she could be little
more--was worshipping him for a hero!

"Nay, sir, give it to me!" cried the Commandant, stooping by the
quay's edge. "I shall esteem it an honour to grasp the hand of one
who comes from Fort Carillon--who was wounded for France in her hour
of victory. Your name, my friend?--for the messengers who brought
word of you yesterday had not heard it, or perhaps had forgotten."

"My name is a Cleeve, monsieur."

"A Clive? a Clive? It is unknown to me, and yet it has a good sound,
and should belong to _un homme Men ne_?" He turned inquiringly
towards his brother, a mild, elderly man with a scholar's stoop and a
face which assorted oddly with his uniform of captain of militia,
being shrivelled as parchment and snuff-dried and abstracted in
expression as though he had just lifted his eyes from a book.
"A Clive, Etienne. From what province should our friend derive?"

M. Etienne's eyes--they were, in fact, short-sighted--seemed to
search inwardly for a moment before he answered:

"There was a family of that name in the Quercy; so late, I think, as
1650. I had supposed it to be extinct. It bore arms counterpaly
argent and gules, a canton ermine--"

"My brother, sir," the Commandant interrupted, "is a famous
genealogist. Do you accept this coat-of-arms he assigns to you?"

"If M. le Commandant will excuse me--"

"Eh, eh?--an awkward question, no doubt, to put to many a young man
of family now serving with the colours?" The Commandant chuckled
knowingly. "But I have an eye, sir, for nice shades, and an ear too.
_Verbum sapienti satis_. A sergeant, they tell me--and of the
Bearnais; but until we have cured you, sir, and the active list again
claims you, you are Monsieur a Clive and my guest. We shall talk,
so, upon an easier footing. Tut-tut! I have eyes in my head, I
repeat. And this Indian of yours--how does he call himself?"

"Menehwehna, monsieur. He is an Ojibway."

"And you and he have come by way of the Wilderness? Now what puzzles
me--"

"Papa!" interposed the girl gently, laying a hand on her father's
sleeve; "ought we not to get him ashore before troubling him with all
these questions? He is suffering, I think."

"You say well, my child. A thousand pardons, sir. Here, Bedard!
Jeremie!"

But it was Menehwehna who, with inscrutable face, helped John ashore,
suffering the others only to hold the canoe steady. John tried hard
to collect his thoughts to face this new situation. He had dreamed
of falling among savages in these backwoods; but he had fallen among
folk gentle in manner and speech, anxious to show him courtesy; folk
to whom (as in an instant he divined) truth and uprightness were
dearer than life and judged as delicately as by his own family at
home in Devonshire. How came they here? Who was this girl whose
eyes he avoided lest they should weigh him, as a sister's might, in
the scales of honour?

A man may go through life cherishing many beliefs which are
internecine foes; unaware of their discordance, or honestly persuaded
that within him the lion and the lamb are lying down together,
whereas in truth his fate has never drawn the bolts of their separate
cages. John had his doubts concerning God; but something deeper than
reason within him detested a lie. Yet as a soldier he had accepted
without examination the belief that many actions vile in peace are in
war permissible, even obligatory; a loose belief, the limits of which
no man in his regiment--perhaps no man in the two armies--could have
defined. In war you may kill; nay, you must; but you must do it by
code, and with many exceptions and restrictions as to the how and
when. In war (John supposed) you may lie; nay, again, in certain
circumstances you must.

With this girl's eyes upon him, worshipping him for a hero, John
discovered suddenly that here and now he could not. For an instant,
as if along a beam of light, he looked straight into Militarism's
sham and ugly heart.

Yes, he saw it quite clearly, and was resolved to end the lie.
But for the moment, in his bodily weakness, his will lagged behind
his brain. As a sick man tries to lift a hand and cannot, so he
sought to rally his will to meet the crisis and was dismayed to find
it benumbed and half-asleep.

They were ascending the slope, and still as they went the
Commandant's voice was questioning him.

"Through the Wilderness! That was no small exploit, my friend, and
it puzzles me how you came to attempt it; for you were severely
wounded, were you not?"

"I received two wounds at Fort Carillon, monsieur. The proposal to
make across the woods was not mine. It came from the French sergeant
in command of our boat."

"So--so. I ought to have guessed it. You were a whole boat's party
then, at starting?" John felt the crisis near; but the Commandant's
mind was discursive, and he paused to wave a proprietary hand towards
the walls and towers of his fortress. "A snug little shelter for the
backwoods--eh, M. a Clive? I am, you must know, a student of the art
of fortification; _c'est ma rengaine_, as my daughter will tell you,
and I shall have much to ask concerning that famous outwork of
M. de Montcalm's, which touches my curiosity. So far as Damase could
tell me, Fort Carillon itself was never even in danger--" But here
Mademoiselle Diane again touched his sleeve. "Yes, yes, to be sure,
we will not weary our friend just now. We will cure him first; and
while he is mending, you shall look out a new uniform from the stores
and set your needle to work to render it as like as you can contrive
to the Bearnais. Nay, sir, to her enthusiasm that will be but a
trifle. Remember that you come to us crowned with laurels, and with
news for which we welcome you as though you brought a message from
the General himself." A sudden thought fetched the Commandant to a
standstill. "You are sure that the sergeant, your comrade, carried
no message?"

John paused with Menehwehna's arm supporting him.

"If he carried a message, monsieur, he told me of none."

Where were his faculties? Why were they hanging back and refusing to
come to grips with the crisis? Why did this twilit riverside persist
in seeming unreal to him, and the actors, himself included, as
figures moving in a shadow-play?

Once, in a dream, he had seen himself standing at the wings of a
stage--an actor, dressed for his part. The theatre was crowded;
someone had begun to ring a bell for the curtain to go up; and he,
the hero of the piece, knew not one word of his part, could not even
remember the name of the play or what it was about. The dream had
been extraordinarily vivid, and he had awakened in a sweat.

"But," the Commandant urged, "he must have had some reason for
striking through the forest. What was his name?"

"Barboux."

John, as he answered, could not see Menehwehna's face; but
Menehwehna's supporting arm did not flinch.

"Was he, too, of the regiment of Bearn?"

"He was of the Bearnais, monsieur."

"Tell us now. When the Iroquois overtook you, could he have passed
on a message, had he carried one?"

While John hesitated, Menehwehna answered him. "It was I only who
saw the sergeant die," said Menehwehna quietly. He gave me no
message."

"You were close to him?"

"Very close."

"It is curious," mused the Commandant, and turned to John again.
"Your falling in with the Iroquois, monsieur, gives me some anxiety;
since it happens that a party from here and from Fort Frontenac was
crossing the Wilderness at about the same time, with messages for the
General on Lake Champlain. You saw nothing of them?"

Again Menehwehna took up the answer. "We met no one but these
Iroquois," he said smoothly.

And as Menehwehna spoke the words John felt that everyone in the
group about him had been listening for it with a common tension of
anxiety. He gazed around, bewildered for the moment by the lie.
The girl stood with clasped hands. "Thank God!" he heard the
Commandant say, lifting his hat.

What new mystery was here? Menehwehna stood with a face immobile and
inscrutable; and John's soul rose up against him in rage and
loathing. The man had dishonoured him, counting on his gratitude to
endorse the lie. Well, he was quit of gratitude now. "To-morrow, my
fine fellow," said he to himself, clenching his teeth, "the whole
tale shall be told; between this and the telling you may save your
skin, if you can "; and so he turned to the Commandant.

"Monsieur," he said with a meaning glance at Menehwehna, "I beg you
to accept no part of our story until I have told it through to you."

The Commandant was plainly puzzled. "Willingly, monsieur; but I beg
you to consider the sufferings of our curiosity and be kind in
putting a term to them."

"To-morrow--" began John, and looking up, came to a pause.
Dominique Guyon had followed them up from the boat and was thrusting
himself unceremoniously upon the Commandant's attention.

"Since this monsieur mentions to-morrow," interrupted Dominique
abruptly, "and before I am dismissed to supper, may I claim the
Seigneur's leave to depart early to-morrow morning?"

The interruption was so unmannerly that John stared from one to
another of the group. The Commandant's face had grown very red
indeed. Dominique himself seemed sullenly aware of his rudeness.
But John's eyes came to rest on Mademoiselle Diane's; on her eyes for
an instant, and then on her lashes, as she bent her gaze on the
ground--it seemed to him, purposely, and to avoid Dominique's.

"Dominique," said the Commandant haughtily, "you forget yourself.
You intrude upon my conversation with this gentleman." His voice
shook and yet it struck John that his anger covered some anxiety.

"Monseigneur must forgive me," answered Dominique, still with an
awkward sullenness. "But it is merely my dismissal that I beg.
I wish to return early to-morrow to Boisveyrac; the harvest there is
gathered, to be sure, but no one can be trusted to finish the stacks.
With so many dancing attendance on the military, the Seigniory
suffers; and, by your leave, I am responsible for it."

He glared upon John, who gazed back honestly puzzled. The Commandant
seemed on the verge of an explosion, but checked himself.

"My excellent Dominique Guyon," said he, "uses the freedom of an old
tenant. But here we are at the gate. I bid you welcome, Monsieur a
Clive, to my small fortress! Tut, tut, Dominique! We will talk of
business in the morning."


Alone with Menehwehna in the bare hospital ward to which old Jeremie
as _marechal des logis_ escorted them, John turned on the Ojibway and
let loose his indignation.

"And look you," he wound up, "this shall be the end. At daybreak
to-morrow the gate of the fort will be opened. Take the canoe and
make what speed you can. I will give you until ten o'clock, but at
that hour I promise you to tell my tale to the Commandant, and to
tell him all."

"If my brother is resolved," said Menehwehna composedly, "let him
waste no words. What is settled is settled, and to be angry will do
his head no good."

He composed himself to sleep on the floor at the foot of John's bed,
pulling his rug up to his ears. There were six empty beds in the
ward, and one had been prepared for him; but Menehwehna despised
beds.

John awoke to sunlight. It poured in through three windows high in
the whitewashed wall opposite, and his first thought was to turn over
and look for Menehwehna.

Menehwehna had disappeared.

John lay back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. Menehwehna
had gone; he was free of him, and this day was to deliver his soul.
In an hour or so he would be sitting under lock and key, but with a
conscience bathed and refreshed, a companion to be looked in the
face, a clear-eyed counsellor. The morning sunlight filled the room
with a clean cheerfulness, and he seemed to drink it in through his
pores. Forgetting his wound, he jumped out of bed with a laugh.

As he did so his eye travelled along the empty beds in the ward, and
along a row of pegs above them, and stiffened suddenly.

There were twelve pegs, and all were bare save one--the one in the
wall-space separating his bed from the bed which had been prepared
for Menehwehna; and from this peg hung Sergeant Barboux's white
tunic.

It had not been hanging there last night when he dropped asleep: to
that he could take his oath. He had supposed it to be left behind in
the _armoire_ at Boisveyrac. For a full minute he sat on the bed's
edge gazing at it in sheer dismay, its evil menace closing like a
grip upon his heart.

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