Blood Brothers in Louisbourg Read Free Page A

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    At St. Malo the ship sat in the harbour like a floating bee’s nest. Sailors climbed all over it, loading it and preparing it for sea. At first glance I shook my head. Something about it didn’t look seaworthy to me, even though I didn’t know anything about sailing and had never even been on a boat before. There was nothing quick-looking about it; it just looked heavy, stumpy and slow. For two days they continued loading it until I thought it was going to sink. I smiled when they picked up my chest and carried it on board.
    Finally, my father boarded the ship with his regiment and all were given sleeping quarters below deck. As I watched the soldiers march on board I thought the ship would sink for sure. Then I began to realize that there was a relationship between wood and water that was beyond all manner of reason. A ship was to a sailor what a donkey was to a farmer – a beast of burden.
    I had to confess there was a moment, just a brief moment, when we first came under sail – when the ship cleared the harbour and caught its first gust of wind with full sails – when I felt a tinge of excitement. I felt the pull of the ship beneath my feet. I turned and looked at my father. He was as excited as a child.
    â€œHow now, Jacques?” he yelled.
    I smiled a little. I couldn’t help it. A few hours later we were barely out of sight of land when I fell into the worst case of seasickness anyone ever had. Thus began the worst month of my entire life. I felt so sick with the movement of the sea that I truly wanted to die. Night and day I lay on my bunk, except when my father forced me to my feet and onto the deck for fresh air. I wanted to die, just die and put an end to the terrible sickness in my head and stomach.
    But I didn’t die. Neither did I improve. At first my father was understanding. He laughed and said, “The sea will do you good. Give you the stomach of a man.” But after a week or so of my lying around whimpering like a dog, I think he began to feel embarrassed for me. “Come on, Jacques! Pull yourself together. Find the man inside of yourself!”
    I didn’t care. I didn’t care about his stupid fortress or stupid war or stupid ideas of what a man was supposed to be, I just wanted to get off that cursed, floating nightmare. Halfway across the Atlantic, which I was beginning to believe stretched on forever and ever, and just when I thought things could never get worse … they did.
    I had soiled my clothes with sickness and my father went looking through my chest to find more. I never knew he was looking. He found the chest. Then, he found the violoncello. Filled with frustration and shame on my account, he broke into a rage when he saw the instrument taking up so much space, space that might have been filled with the muskets, pistols and swords of a “real” man going to war. He never said a word to me, just passed by with the body of the violoncello in one hand, the neck and bow in the other. I clambered out of bed after him. By the time I reached the deck he was already at the stern of the ship. I had hardly eaten in weeks, and my legs were wobbly. I made a desperate attempt to catch him, to yell at him to stop, but I was too late. Raising the violoncello above his head, he threw it overboard into the sea. The wind howled like a demon as the violoncello disappeared beneath the waves without a sound.
    We didn’t talk anymore after that. He occasionally barked a few orders at me and I obeyed, but I never looked at him or answered. I was fully prepared to suffer a whipping if he insisted on giving me one, and I think he realized that. Perhaps he felt he had gone too far. I never knew. My seasickness cleared up shortly afterwards. Something changed inside of me too, though I didn’t know what it was. My father, no doubt, must have thought it was a change towards manhood. But that was the last time we ever made direct eye