"You're what?"
She was excited. She picked up his glass and drank from it, watching him over the brim.
"Maybe we can steal one," she said. "Change the picture. A friend of mine did that."
"Maybe we can," he agreed.
She was fondling him, eyes alight. I've tried everything I could think of, he told her. Explored guest bedrooms, looked in parked cars. No one carries a passport round here. Been down to the post office, got the forms, studied the formalities. Visited the town graveyard looking for dead men of my own age; thought I might apply on their behalf. But you never know what's safe these days: maybe the dead are already in some computer.
"What's your real name?" she whispered. "Who are you? Who are you?"
A moment's wonderful peace descended over him as he made her the ultimate gift. "Pine. Jonathan Pine."
* * *
All day they lived naked, and when the rain cleared they took the boat out to an island in the centre of the lake and swam naked from the shingle beach.
"He's turning in his thesis in five weeks," she said.
"And then?"'
"Marriage to Yvonne."
"And then?"
"Working with the Indians in the bush." She told him where. They swam a distance.
"Both of you?" he asked.
"Sure."
"How long for?"
"Couple of years. See how it goes. We're going to have babies. About six."
"Will you be faithful to him?"
"Sure. Sometimes."
"Who's up there?"
"Cree mainly. He likes Cree best. Speaks it pretty well."
"What about a honeymoon?" he asked.
"Thomas? His idea of a honeymoon is McDonald's and hockey practice at the arena."
"Does he travel?"
"Northwest Territories. Keewatin. Yellowknife. Great Slave Lake. Norman Wells. Goes all over."
"I meant abroad."
She shook her head. "Not Thomas. He says it's all in Canada."
"What is?"
"Everything we need in life. It's all here. Why go further? He says people travel too much. He's right."
"So he doesn't need a passport," Jonathan said.
"Fuck you," she said. "Get me back to shore."
But by the time they had cooked supper and made love again, she was listening to him.
* * *
Every day or night they made love. In the small hours of morning when he came up from the disco, Yvonne would lie awake waiting for his brushing signal against her door. He would tiptoe to her and she would draw him down on her, her last long drink before the desert. Their lovemaking was almost motionless. The attic was a drum, and every movement clattered through the house. When she started to call out in pleasure, he laid his hand over her mouth and she bit it, leaving teeth marks in the flesh around his thumb.
If your mother discovers us, she'll throw me out, he said.
Who cares, she whispered, gathering herself more tightly round him. I'll go with you. She seemed to have forgotten everything she had told him about her future plans.
I need more time, he insisted.
For the passport?
For you, he replied, smiling in the darkness.
She hated his leaving, yet dared not keep him with her.
Madame Latulipe had taken to looking in on her at all odd hours.
"You are asleep, cocotte? You are happy? Only four weeks to your wedding, mon p'tit chou. The bride must have her rest."
Once when her mother appeared Jonathan was actually lying beside Yvonne in the darkness, but by a mercy Madame Latulipe did not switch on the light.
They drove in Yvonne's baby-blue Pontiac to a motel in Tolerance, and thank God he made her leave their cabin ahead of him, because as she walked to her car, still smelling of him, she saw Mimi Leduc grinning at her from the next-door parking space.
"Tu fais visite au show?" Mimi yelled, lowering her window.
"Uh-huh."
"C'est super, n'est-ce pas? T'as vu le little black dress? Tres low, tres sexy?"
"Uh-huh."'
"I bought it! Toi aussi faut I'acheter! Pour ton trouss ― eauuu!"
They made love in an empty guest room while her mother was at the supermarket, and in the walk-in airing cupboard.
She had acquired the recklessness of sexual obsession. The risk was a drug for her. Her whole day was spent contriving moments for them to be alone together.
"When will you go to the priest?" he asked.
"When I'm ready," she replied, with something of Sophie's quirkish dignity.
She decided to be ready next day.
* * *
The old curé Savigny had never let Yvonne down. Since childhood she had brought him her cares, triumphs and confessions.
When her father struck out at her, it was old Savigny who dabbed her black eye and talked her round. When her mother drove her to dementia, old Savigny would laugh and say, She's just a silly woman sometimes. When Yvonne started going to bed with boys, he never told her to slow down. And when she lost her faith, he was sad, but she went on visiting him each Sunday evening after the Mass she no longer attended, armed with whatever she had filched from the hoteclass="underline" a bottle of wine or, like this evening, Scotch.
"Bon, Yvonne! Sit down. My God, you are glistening like an apple. Dear Heaven, what have you brought me? It's for me to bring presents to the bride!"
He drank to her, leaning back in his chair, staring into the infinite with his leaky old eyes.
"In Esperance we were obliged to love each other," he declared, from somewhere in the middle of his homily to intending couples.
"I know."
"It is only yesterday that everyone was a stranger here, everyone missed his family, his country, everyone was a little afraid of the bush and the Indians."
"I know."
"So we drew together. And we loved each other. It was natural. It was necessary. And we dedicated our community to God. And our love to God. We became His children in the wilderness."
"I know," said Yvonne again, wishing she had never come.
"And today we are good townspeople. Esperance has grown up. It's good, it's beautiful, it's Christian. But it's dull. How's Thomas?"
"Thomas is great," she said, reaching for her handbag.
"But when will you bring him to me? If it is because of your mother that you do not let him come to Esperance, then it is time to submit him to the test of fire!" They laughed together. Sometimes old Savigny had these flashes of insight, and she loved him for them. "He must be some boy to catch a girl like you. Is he eager? Does he love you to distraction? Write to you three times a day?"
"Thomas is kind of forgetful."
They laughed again, while the old cure kept repeating "forgetful" and shaking his head. She unzipped her handbag and drew out two photographs in a cellophane envelope and handed one to him. Then handed him his old steel-framed spectacles from the table. Then she waited while he got the photograph into focus.
"This is Thomas? My God, he's a pretty boy, then! Why did you never tell me? Forgetful? This man? He's a force! Your mother would kneel at the feet of such a man!"
Still admiring Jonathan's photograph at arm's length, he tilted it to catch the light from the window.
"I'm dragging him off on a surprise honeymoon," she said. "He hasn't got a passport. I'm going to press one into his hand in the vestry."
The old man was already fumbling in his cardigan for a pen.
She held one ready. She turned the photographs facedown for him and watched him while he signed them one by one, at child's speed, in his capacity as a minister of religion licensed by the laws of Quebec to perform marriages. From her handbag she drew the blue passport application form: "Formule A pour les personnel de 16 ans et plus," and indicated for him the place where he must sign again, as a witness personally acquainted with the applicant.