The American Fiancée

“Do you have a wife, Horse?”

The fateful question slipped out of Floria like a belch and amused the crowd no end. Bracing themselves for disappointment, they expected the Canadian to reply that he was married and to pull a miniature tutu-wearing French Canadian out of a hat for them. They laughed nervously. What could Louis Lamontagne’s wife possibly look like? What Delilah of the North had managed to tame this Samson? Without letting the crowd stew too long, Podgórski delivered the sweetest word in the world to the ears of Floria and Beth: unmarried. The word brought with it hope and promises of better tomorrows. He was young, of course, but didn’t they say that Catholics went about nature’s duties with the utmost diligence? It was conceivable that, despite being only twenty years old, Lamontagne had already sired lots of children. The truth was not far off, but Podgórski knew only the truth that Lamontagne had chosen to reveal. He strongly suspected that his Canadian pal had, just like him, left more than one kid behind along the way, and twice already, in the space of eighteen months spent wandering America, he had witnessed the same scene: a tearful woman would find Louis after two or three months of desperate searching. Show up at an event with the longest of Lent faces. Wait patiently until the very end of the contest, then ask to speak to Louis in private. Would sob. And would leave, defeated. Teal-colored eyes in Ohio, Iowa, Michigan . . . And soon in New York, too. Podgórski, born in similar circumstances and himself father to a multitude of little American bastards, found nothing reprehensible about the matter. The sisters of Warsaw had always told him he was a child of God, and for this simple reason he had nothing to fear from men or their judgment.

“But Louis, wherever did you get those teal-colored eyes?”

“My mother was an American, from New England. She had teal eyes.”

The three hundred or so people now assembled outside the trailer turned to look at each other. An American? So this marvel actually had red, white, and blue roots? With his mysterious past and the innocence associated with every recollection of him, Louis had found a place in the hearts of the visitors to the St. Lawrence County Fair. To the young ladies listening attentively to the two strongmen recount their adventures, Louis was practically an American. A sheep that had strayed north of the border. And to the two US Army recruiters, who hadn’t missed a word of the story from the back row, Louis was more of a lamb ready to be brought into the fold.

In his thick Polish accent, Podgórski interpreted the story of the birth of Louis Lamontagne on December 25, 1918, in the church of Saint-François-Xavier in Rivière-du-Loup. Louis didn’t skimp on the details. He described how his mother, the enigmatic American, had wound up in Canada in the spring of 1918. How she had managed to put Old Ma Madeleine in her back pocket, no matter how wary the matriarch had been, no matter how many times she’d been around the block. How the American had charmed the gluttonous priest, and how, with the horrified parishioners looking on, she’d given birth to Louis Lamontagne at a live nativity scene with the help of Sister Mary of the Eucharist, a midwife whose countenance was enough to stop a hemorrhage in its tracks. Louis pointed to the faint traces the forceps had left on his cheeks: two minuscule furrows across his pink skin, just an inch below his teal-colored eyes, Madeleine the American’s eyes. By the time his story was over, tears were streaming down the women’s cheeks. If Louis had managed to win over the crowd by dint of his handsome features and generous physique, the story of how he came into the world at the tragic midnight mass of 1918 transformed him into a mythical hero who would be spoken of for years to come the length and breadth of St. Lawrence County.

“But if your momma died giving birth to you and your daddy died not long after, who raised you, Horse?”

They were lapping it up. After the tragic demise of Louis-Benjamin Lamontagne—father to Louis Lamontagne and widower to Madeleine the American—the question of who would raise the orphaned boy was in need of a quick answer.

“Sure, I’ll keep him. I won’t have lost a son for nothin’. And at least he didn’t die over in the old countries!”

And so Old Ma Madeleine raised him as her own. She even waited until he turned ten before telling him the story of his birth, a tale he already knew every word of, having picked it up from the local gossips. But it wouldn’t be entirely true to say that Old Ma Madeleine raised the boy alone; after all, it takes a village to raise a colossus his size. Louis Lamontagne was raised as much by his uncle Napoleon Lamontagne, his aunts, his grandparents, the Sisters of the Child Jesus in Rivière-du-Loup, and Father Cousineau, who was particularly fond of the boy. The priest had actually been the first to detect the boy’s natural stage presence, not to mention his incredible strength. And Podgórski told how, in August 1932, at the age of thirteen, Louis, already over six foot tall, had begun to go by the name Louis “The Horse” Lamontagne.

It was on the wedding day of Alphonsine, one of the late Louis-Benjamin’s sisters who had been handed over to a merchant from the lower part of town with a house on one of the streets alongside the bay, a man from Saint-Patrice looking for a devout and industrious housewife. Father Cousineau, saddened to see young Alphonsine leave his parish, offered to take the Lamontagne family in his buggy, a cart owned by the priest but drawn by a mare who belonged to the Sisters of the Child Jesus, a weary, unpredictable old beast who was older than even the nuns could remember. And so they all went, Old Ma Madeleine and her husband, Old Man Lamontagne; their son Napoleon; the three daughters yet to be married off; and, of course, young Louis, who walked beside the buggy. At the end of the ceremony, as the party was preparing to head back to the upper town, the old mare decided to breathe its last. Just like that. Dead as a doornail.

Malicious tongues immediately pointed the finger at Father Cousineau, who was fatter than ever and never thought twice about taking a cart ride all the way out to Cacouna. But the truth was much more mundane: the mare’s time was up, plain and simple. It was sheer chance that it had happened to drop dead during Alphonsine’s wedding. But then again, luck is often no stranger when men are made into heroes.

“Why, our handsome young Louis can pull us up into town!” Father Cousineau had joked, but the young man took him at his word.

Old Ma Madeleine protested loudly and scolded her grandson while his grandfather egged him on, perhaps eager to dish out a lesson in humility to his little Louis, who was a strapping young man indeed, but who was certainly incapable of dragging a whole family back up into town in a cart, with a spherical parish priest on board to boot. The old man laughed up his sleeve. Louis was champing at the bit. Outside the church, the guests looked on in amusement at the antics of the Lamontagne family. In her white dress, young Alphonsine tried to talk Louis out of it.

“You’ll make a mess of your nice clothes!”

The argument didn’t carry much weight. Not as much as Father Cousineau was carrying anyway. He was already in the cart, on the orders of Old Man Lamontagne, squeezed in beside Old Ma Madeleine and her four daughters who were preparing to be humiliated in front of the whole wedding party. To lighten the mood, Father Cousineau gave out a loud “Giddy-up!” and young Louis reacted instantly, thrusting his massive frame forward. And the miracle happened. As smooth as you like, to the gentle creak of axles in need of a good greasing, the cart moved forward, as much to the astonishment of its occupants as to those looking on. Without batting an eyelid, Louis Lamontagne climbed the long slope up Rue Lafontaine, between two rows of spectators decked out in their Sunday best, then onto Rue Saint-Elzéar, finally bringing the cart to a standstill outside the family house on Rue Fraserville, to frenzied applause from a jubilant crowd. Breathless but bursting with pride, Louis Lamontagne was known from that day on as Louis “The Horse” Lamontagne. Podgórski didn’t mention the fact that there was another version circulating in Rivière-du-Loup about the origin of the nickname. Louis, some said, had acquired the name for an entirely different reason. But it was the first version of the story Louis preferred to tell at the strongman competition. The wedding went on for another two days, during which time half an ox, twenty-two chickens, just as many quail, and two hundred ears of freshly picked corn were eaten, with Louis wolfing down twenty by himself.

But it was at the funeral of his grandmother, Old Ma Madeleine, that young Louis Lamontagne provided the most irrefutable demonstration yet of his Herculean strength. On the morning of January 30, 1933, Podgórski explained to the crowd at the St. Lawrence County Fair, death struck Old Ma Madeleine down in her prime.

“The day Adolf Hitler came to power!” a particularly well-informed onlooker felt compelled to share with the others.

On that same day, no one in Rivière-du-Loup had an inkling of what was brewing in Berlin, but news of Old Ma Madeleine’s demise struck everyone like a blow to the heart. No one, not even her husband, was saddened more than Father Cousineau, the first to be called to chant funeral orations over the deceased’s body. It was not yet midday. Old Ma Madeleine had yawned, announced that she had not had enough sleep, that she felt a little worse for wear, and that a morning nap would have her feeling right as rain in no time at all.

“And my arm hurts too! It hurts like the dickens.”

At noon, the whole family—Napoleon, Louis, the three girls, and Old Man Lamontagne—sat down, absolutely famished, to an empty table. The table hadn’t been set, there wasn’t a plate in sight. They looked at the clock. Were they mistaken? They found her in bed, smiling, feet and hands crossed, head wrapped in the mauve kerchief she always wore when taking a nap. They took off the scarf. Her eyes were staring out at the bare branch of a maple tree swaying in the winter breeze. A bright light, bleak and cold, flooded the room. It was Old Man Lamontagne who closed her eyes. Father Cousineau arrived soon after.

“Her heart?”

“Or her soul?”

“And how old was Old Ma Madeleine anyway?”

Podgórski translated as best he could the fact that no one in Rivière-du-Loup was altogether sure of Old Ma Madeleine’s age. Born in Kamouraska to a family that had long since passed on, she had lived her life without a birth certificate. On the day of her wedding, she had made up a birth date to keep the priest happy and never spoken of her roots again. Her husband was puzzled. Her heart? Yes, no doubt her heart had suddenly stopped beating.

The wake was held in the Lamontagne home. There filed past Old Ma Madeleine’s open casket, in order, three of her cousins who were still alive and had made the trip over from Kamouraska, all the Sisters of the Child Jesus, Father Cousineau, the worthies of Rivière-du-Loup, her children, her son-in-law, and, finally, young Louis Lamontagne, the last to kneel before his grandmother’s casket and mumble his way through a prayer amid the crying and the wailing. Since the cousins from Kamouraska were there, the others took the opportunity to ask them a few questions of a practical nature.

“What should we put for the year of birth on the gravestone?”

“We don’t know. Madeleine was our older sister. She was already married by the time we were women.”

“Did she leave behind a birth certificate? A certificate of baptism?”

“Nothing. All we have left of her is a pair of socks she knit for her father in 1898 or 1899, we’re not exactly sure.”

“But she must have a date of birth.”

“She never spoke of it. She never talked about herself. She was a humble, simple woman.”

Meanwhile, Louis stumbled his way through the Our Father, skipping a syllable or two. “Give us this day our bread and forgive us our trespasses . . .”

“Our daily bread!” Old Ma Madeleine cut in, lying there in her casket and causing everyone at the wake to fall silent.

“She’s right, Louis. You missed a word. It’s ‘our daily bread.’”

Shamefacedly, Louis corrected himself and closed his eyes. Father Cousineau gave him a clip around the back of the head.

“. . . our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and deliver us from evil. Amen.”

“Amen,” chorused the twenty or so people gathered in the Lamontagne’s parlor.

A little white cloud escaped from every mouth because, at Old Man Lamontagne’s request, the windows had all been opened wide so that Old Ma Madeleine’s remains would not decompose before her far-flung relations could make it to the wake. It was just as well she’d died in January: those who die in July are buried before there’s time for their grandchildren’s prayers to be heard. The deceased’s daughters served hot tea while Father Cousineau continued the orations alone, this time in Latin, a language in which he was unlikely to be contradicted by a dead, illiterate old woman. A handful of contemplative nuns from the Order of Saint Clare, who had just settled in Rivière-du-Loup, were next to visit the dead woman in the cold house, notably Sister Mary of the Five Wounds, Sister Mary Saint Paul of Jesus, and Sister Jesus Mary Joseph, formidable prayers every one of them, come to relieve the mourners of their duties toward the departed. Not that the Sisters of the Child Jesus were lacking in piety, far from it. Their orations were every bit the equal of the Order of Saint Clare’s, but let’s just say that when a Poor Clare begins to pray anyone else is destined to finish a poor second. If it had been a matter of teaching someone to read or bringing a child into the world, they would have been spared the visit from the contemplative nuns, but instead there they were, brought up from the lower town by sled along icy, dangerous roads. They arrived just as Father Cousineau’s stomach was beginning to rumble.

“I have some roast and potatoes left over in a pot,” Old Ma Madeleine muttered to the parish priest, no stranger to his insatiable appetite.

The old woman sighed. Now they wanted to know—since she seemed clear-headed enough—what she had done with the sugar. Instead of wearing herself out giving instructions she’d only have to repeat the following day, Old Ma Madeleine got up to fetch the sugar bowl herself before returning to her casket.

Cousineau and Louis took refuge in the kitchen—the only warm room in the house—to vie for the leftover roast, while the Poor Clares, indistinguishable in identical habits that revealed only the middle of their bloodless, angular faces, took turns reciting a series of rosaries that went on for three days and four nights, until they were absolutely certain that Old Ma Madeleine’s soul was resting in peace. Old Ma Madeleine, meanwhile, joined in fervently with the Hail Marys and the Creeds, delighted to see such a fuss being made about her. The Poor Clares eventually returned to their monastery, leaving behind a house in mourning and a perplexed Old Ma Madeleine. Sister Mary of the Five Wounds whispered some words of reassurance in the dead woman’s ear on her way out.

“Real rest is still to come. This first death has freed you of your earthly obligations. You can stay on for a long time yet, until your real rest begins. But rest assured: we only die twice.”

What she meant by that, while not in so many words, was that Old Ma Madeleine would never again have to sweep a floor, knead dough, nail down a shingle, shovel snow, bring children into the world by the dozen, knit their clothes, chop wood, haul rocks, take care of the poor and the innocent, train animals, drag home huge slabs of meat to satisfy Louis’s appetite, watch over the sick, console the unfortunate, suffer through the itchy dry skin of winter and the insect bites of summer, crush beneath her heel the mice that nibbled away at her flour reserves, beware her neighbors, pray on her knees, pray lying down, or pray standing up. In short, she had been freed from her life as a French-Canadian woman.

There was not a hint of the fragrance of flowers in the air of the Lamontagne parlor: it was January. Only a handful of funeral wreaths of willow, fir, and cedar released a resinous perfume into the frigid air. And so died Old Ma Madeleine, on the very same day that Adolf Hitler was named chancellor in Berlin. The good woman wasn’t one to make a fuss, and so she answered the nun with no more than a weak “That’s what I was wondering, too.” By this, she meant that she had understood. She would take it easy until she died a second time. She would be allowed to do some light housework: hulling strawberries, shelling peas, coring apples, that kind of thing, to relieve the boredom at harvest time. They asked Old Ma Madeleine what she thought of it all, if she was glad to be dead or if she would have liked to have lived a while longer.

“I have to say, I’m mighty relieved,” came the reply.

In Gouverneur, the temperature was reaching a record high, but nothing in this world could have persuaded the crowd to move from the trailer where Podgórski regaled them with stories of an ice-filled world, a cooling breath on foreheads that glistened with sweat. They imagined the soothing caress of snow on damp skin, they began to dream of frost-covered windows, of the echo that can only be heard in wintry lands: the crisp clarity of a shouted voice across a snowy field, the sound of the cold. Better than a rain shower in May, the story of Old Ma Madeleine’s funeral had brought relief from the oppressive heat to the people of Gouverneur and beyond. Louis was doing them good, and Floria was more than willing to pay him back in his own coin on New York’s behalf. A photographer’s flash went off: two strongmen immortalized in their trailer, sitting around a half-eaten turkey and grinning. The contest would be starting up again. The crowd left the men to their stretching.

Excited to the roots of their hair, Beth and Floria Ironstone were the first to reach the venue for the final event: the horse lift. The animal in question was already standing beside a pole similar in size to a telephone pole, in which iron rods had been inserted about a foot apart. Each competitor had to mount the horse—the most docile animal in the county—then, secured to the saddle with a harness whose broad straps covered his shoulders, hoist himself thirty feet up off the ground—with the terrified animal strapped onto his rear end—while clinging onto the post’s iron rods, the post itself securely anchored in the ground. It was known in the industry as a “summer event,” quite simply because it was difficult to organize in the theater halls that hosted the shows once the cold weather set in. Another challenge was to find a sufficiently obedient animal that would put up with a slow skyward ascent five times in a row; plus, needless to say, an owner with nerves of steel who would allow their animal to take part in the dangerous game. As luck would have it, all these conditions came together in Gouverneur, and the master of ceremonies beckoned the crowd to come gather around the strange-looking pole. The Warsaw Giant, Idaho Bill, The Great Brouyette, then Podgórski and Lamontagne formed a ring around the master of ceremonies and drew straws to determine who would hoist the horse first. The Giant got the nod, followed by Podgórski, Idaho Bill, Brouyette, and, lastly, handsome young Louis.

The horse bore The Warsaw Giant’s 220 pounds without complaint. The contender was strapped to the saddle with the harness and the horse’s saddle straps checked one last time. Then everyone held their breath. This was an especially dangerous event: once the strongman reached the top of the pole, he could lose his grip at any moment and come crashing down to the ground with his mount. It was up to the Giant and the others to use their heads and be a good judge of just how strong they were. The Giant got halfway up the pole, but was forced to turn back before reaching the top. His forearms had begun to shake, a clear sign that he was close to letting go. A nervous murmur rippled through the crowd. With a tear in his eye, the Giant waited until he was released from his harness before uttering what must have been a Polish profanity. Podgórski crossed himself and looked offended. The Giant spat angrily before striding off. He was known to be a proud man; it was better to stay out of his way whenever the red mist descended.

Podgórski looked Beth in the eye as he was hooked up to the horse. He had secretly decided she was prettier than her sister. But Beth had no idea the Pole was eyeing her so greedily. The sad fate of the Warsaw orphan meant that, due to his squint, girls could never tell when he was looking at them. Determined to engrave himself in Beth’s memory forever, Podgórski grasped the first iron rod with a firm right hand. His muscles went hard and his eyes immediately returned to their normal axis. The crowd aahed in admiration. A few laughs rang out. As he climbed the rungs, Beth couldn’t help but admit he was actually quite a dashing young man.

“Such a shame that he’s cross-eyed the rest of the time,” she whispered to her sister, who had also fallen under the spell of Podgórski’s unwavering gaze as he strained to lift the calm and sleepy horse off the ground.

Invigorated by the thought of Beth Ironstone, Podgórski reached the top of the pole without even realizing it. He climbed back down slowly and the crowd sighed in admiration once the horse’s hoofs touched the ground. Beth quivered with joy.

Next, Idaho Bill took his turn. He huffed and he puffed, and managed to haul his load almost to the top of the pole, higher than The Warsaw Giant at any rate, but not right to the top like Alexander Podgórski. He had to turn back four rungs from the top. The Great Brouyette, meanwhile, went into the horse lift with nothing to lose. He had barely gotten over his shameful fall at the start of the car pull, and this time only a win would allow him to save face. The good man also managed to lift the horse higher than The Warsaw Giant, but not quite to the top of the pole. He still had three markers left to climb when he made the decision to come back down, to the crowd’s applause.

And so Louis Lamontagne was firmly attached to a horse that would now be subjected to its fifth ascent in a half hour. But an animal has only so much patience. When the mare felt the Canadian’s weight on her backbone, she felt what one, without exaggeration, could only call exasperation. Louis, trailing in the standings, had to win the event if he was to beat The Warsaw Giant. Perhaps he paid too much heed to the distance between the rungs on the pole and not enough to the starts of the animal that was growing restless between his thighs. In any event, he was barely halfway up the pole when the horse awoke from its torpor, whinnied, arched its back, thrashed its legs, thrust its head around, and kicked out, exerting, in short, a tension that was simply too much to bear on Louis’s aching arms. The distraught animal forced him back down the pole. The crowd groaned with disappointment: the favorite had just lost a make-or-break event. Some tried to convince the master of ceremonies to give Louis Lamontagne a second chance, but all of his rivals were up in arms at the idea, apart from Podgórski that is, who had no hope of winning the contest anyway. The crowd’s pleas failed to move the master of ceremonies. The contest rules were clear. To win the horse lift, a strongman needed to rely not only on his muscles, but on his ability to calm his mount, which Lamontagne had manifestly failed to do. Three points went to Alexander Podgórski, two to The Great Brouyette, and one to Idaho Bill. The two great rivals, Louis Lamontagne and The Warsaw Giant, were tied. But there’s nothing more disappointing than an even number at the top of the standings. There can only be one winner. The master of ceremonies was ready for this eventuality and announced that, per official contest rules, the men would arm-wrestle for the title. The match would take place immediately, on the outdoor stage where a brass band had just massacred a Viennese waltz or two.