More music came out of the speaker-a concertina solo. He grinned. "Welcome to Voyageurs," the announcer said. Lucien settled down to listen. All of Quebec settled down to listen at half past seven on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. The comedy about fur traders and Indians was the most popular show in the country.
One of the Indians started complaining the voyageur had cheated him. That was a running gag on the show-in fact, the Indian got the better of the voyageur every time. He also spoke French not like an Indian but like a Jewish peddler, which made things funnier and made them funny in a different way.
As usual, everything turned out all right-and turned out absurd-within the appointed half hour. After the show was done, Lucien turned to a station that played music, poured himself some apple brandy, and settled down with a French translation of an American story: a woman who'd gone down into the Confederate States to avenge her husband.
It was a strange kind of French, extraordinarily terse and to the point. He wondered if the English was the same. Then he wondered if he could make enough sense out of written English to find out. He doubted it.
"But I can ask my son-in-law," he said. He had to remind himself Dr. Leonard O'Doull was a born anglophone. Whenever the two of them talked together, they spoke French. O'Doull sounded more like a Quebecois every year, too, losing bit by bit the Parisian accent with which he'd originally learned his second language.
At about a quarter to nine, someone knocked on the door. Wondering who could be mad enough to pay him a call at this hour, Lucien put down the book and went to find out. It wasn't snowing at the moment, but it had been and it would be, and it probably was below zero outside.
When he opened the door, his younger son waited there. "Oh, hello, Georges," Lucien said. "I might have known it would be you. What are you doing here so late?"
"Well, you wouldn't expect me to leave my house before Voyageurs was done, would you?" Georges asked reasonably. He stepped into the farmhouse where he'd been born and grown up. Lucien closed the door behind him to stop letting out precious heat. He went on, "I am not a rich man, to have a wireless set in my automobile. I am lucky to have an automobile."
"I've got the applejack out, to settle me before I go to bed," Lucien said. "Would you like some?"
"Yes, thank you, mon pere. It will warm me up after the chilly drive over, the motorcar also lacking a heater. Ah, merci." Georges accepted the glass and took a cautious sip-with bootleg applejack, you never knew what you were getting till you got it. He nodded. "This is a good batch. Strong enough to feel, but not strong enough to burn off the roof of your mouth."
"Yes, I thought the same," Lucien agreed. "Is that why you came over-to drink my brandy, I mean?"
"As good a reason as any, eh? And better than most, I think." Georges looked around. He lit a cigarette, then sighed and shook his head. "Whenever I come here, I keep expecting chere Maman to come out of the kitchen and say hello."
That made Lucien pour his own glass full again. "Whenever I come in the house, son, I expect the same thing. But what I expect and what I get"-he sighed-"they are not the same."
"Calisse," Georges said-almost more of an invocation of the holiness of the chalice than the usual Quebecois curse. He saw the book Lucien had been reading. "I went through that. A brave woman."
"I remember something about it in the papers when it happened," Lucien said. "Not much, though, and of course there was no wireless then. Strange how we've come to take it for granted in just a few years' time."
"My next-door neighbor visited me last fall," Georges said. "It was a Wednesday night, and he listened to Voyageurs. He had no electricity on his farm till then, did Philippe, though he does well for himself. He never saw the need. A week after that, he went out and got it so he could have a wireless set for himself. A wireless show decided him."
"I believe you," Lucien said. "Is this why you came, then? You wanted to tell me about your neighbor and the wireless and electricity?"
"I came because I wanted to visit my father," Georges replied. "Sour as you are, it could be that you find this hard to believe. If so… well, too bad. My neighbor Philippe cannot visit his father, for he has no father to visit. I am lucky, and I take advantage of my luck." He hefted his glass. "And if I get a knock of applejack in the side, this is not so bad, either."
Lucien looked down into the pale yellow liquid filling his own glass. Slowly, he said, "I am going to tell you something I thought I would never say to you in all my days. You are a scamp, you know, and a rogue, and a fellow who gets away with everything he possibly can and then with one thing more."
"You never thought you would say this to me?" Georges raised an eyebrow and made a comical face. " Mon cher papa, you have been telling me this ever since I could stand up, and probably before that, too."
"Yes, before that, too," the elder Galtier agreed. "But that is not what I intended to say. What I intended to say is, you are a good son, Georges. It pains me to say it, and it must pain you to hear it, but there it is. You are a good son."
Georges didn't say anything for close to a minute. When he did speak, his words were slow and thoughtfuclass="underline" "This means a very great deal to me, mon pere." He paused again, then went on, "What it means is, you are obviously senile, and suffering from softening of the brain. I am sure my esteemed brother-in-law, Dr. O'Doull, would have a fancier name for it, but that is what it is."
"Thank you," Lucien said, and sounded enough as if he meant it to make his younger son give him a puzzled look. He explained: "Thank you for showing me you really are the ungrateful wretch I thought you were, and not the caring fellow I believed I saw before. I don't recognize him, and wouldn't know what to do with him if I saw him again."
"Oh, good." Georges' voice held nothing but relief. "Now we are insulting each other again. I know how to do this. I know why I should, too. We understand each other this way. The other?" He shook his head. "What could we do if we talked to each other like that all the time?"
Lucien thought it over. "Lord knows."
His son got up and poured their glasses full of applejack again. "We can always get drunk. We know how to do that, too. How much work have you got in the morning?"
"The usual." Lucien shrugged. "How much have you got?"
"The usual." Georges shrugged, too. "But I have help, and you don't."
With another shrug, Lucien said, "It's winter. I have to feed the animals and muck out. Past that, things can wait. It's not like plowing or harvest time. If you want to get drunk, we can get drunk. Too bad Charles and Leonard are not here to do it with us."
"Winter does not make the brilliant and talented Dr. O'Doull's work lighter, as it does ours," Georges said. "If anything, it makes his work worse."
"We'll just have to drink by ourselves, then," Lucien said. "What shall we drink to?"
"How about drinking to being a small country where not much happens?" his son suggested. "The way the world seems to be going these days, we may be luckier than we know."
"I confess, I pay less attention to the world now than I did when we were part of Canada," Lucien Galtier said. "In those days, we had to worry about the United States, because the United States used to worry about us. Now the United States don't care much about us one way or the other."