Order of Good Cheer Read Free Page B

“
petit googoo.”
    Lucien continues uphill, into the rain. Bernard will find him. Perhaps because he commenced his walk while thirsty, and continues thirsty (or perhaps it is the molasses), the rain causes the foliage and its myriad greens to look lush and sweet-tempered, as if all could be eaten and enjoyed.
    How is it, Lucien wonders, that the savages hereabouts know what can and what cannot be enjoyed as food? Has it simply been a process, undertaken countless years ago, of tasting?Swallowing a slight bit, then putting one’s ear in one’s stomach, as it were, to listen for first whispers of illness? And had this trial by fatal error possibly taken place in France in its darkest early years too? For how else would their own knowledge have come about? The Bible makes mention of husbanded foods and of some others profane, but there is no list of wild plants, no warning as to which mushroom causes a devilish shouting death and which is as fine as meat in the stew. At home, in the forest behind St-Malo, none of these thoughts would have come to him; but on this path, amid all these glistening and seemingly beckoning leaves, shoots, cones, curls, pods, hoods, mosses, of which at least half he is ignorant, the savages’ knowledge as to what here is
food
seems like wisdom of the most miraculous kind.
    According to Lescarbot, a crude and somewhat bitter tuber found inland up the great Canada River has been unearthed and occasionally shipped and offered in the best dining rooms of Paris. He told Lucien he tasted of it once and said it was not special, but that its hard-gotten nature, like anything from the ends of the earth, embellished its appeal. The chefs call it, simply, “Canada.” As if in the tuber they were eating the very earth of this place. Lucien pictures a fine lady, head and neck falling gooselike across the table, her cheeks aflush with culinary courage, asking, “Please, may I have more Canada?”
    Monsieur Champlain, who has seen this tuber on his voyages and knows its Algonquin word, asked Membertou if it grows here at Port-Royal. While our savages have a different word for it — Champlain had to describe it with his hands — it does grow nearby, in scattered fashion, and Membertou, pursing his lips in distaste and shrugging one dismissive shoulder, said he bids his women search it out only when all are hungry.
    Though the gardens are in and showing some green, Lucien hears much nervous talk of food. When the nobles speak of itamongst themselves it is in the voice they use to discuss fortifications or ships that may or may not arrive in the spring with supplies. And Lucien has noted what looks like a constant difference of opinion between Messieurs Champlain and Lescarbot. (He understands that what he has witnessed is no more than what these gentlemen let escape in front of the regular men; so their arguments in privacy must be almost violent!) In short, Champlain values the savages’ food, and Lescarbot doubts it strongly as profane. The pinnacle of this argument involves the “pale, giant pine,” which Champlain insists he saw cure men of the scurvy disease in Hochelaga, to the west. And so the map-maker looks for this tree in this region and so far he has not seen it. He says the Algonquin use the word
annedda
for it. But Membertou stares blankly both at this word and at the description of the tree as Champlain draws it eagerly in the air with his hands, jumping to his toes, like a boy, to show its great height. Likewise he describes the needles (which he says are the cure when they are dried and boiled), comparing them with other trees’ foliage, claiming, “no, longer than that” and “yes, patterned, a weave, but less simple.” He hunts for this tree always, and asks the rest of them to as well. Those several others who survived St-Croix also hunt for it — one would have to say fretfully — and Lucien understands that this is