The Old Brown Suitcase Read Online Free PDF

grey pavement and thick air for the gold and green fields of the Quebec countryside. Peaceful villages emerged, surrounded by wooded hills and farms.
    As we went further into the Laurentians, we passed lakes that looked so clear and cool I wished we could have stopped and jumped into their bluish-green water. Finally I saw a sign that read Ste. Adèle, and after another kilometre the car stopped in front of a large farm house.
    It was nothing like the
pensions
my parents and I had visited at Polish summer resorts. There, the resort buildings were large, elegant and white. Usually they were set inside orchards or surrounded by rose bushes and trees, and were close to the water and forest. In contrast, this Canadian
pension
was a sprawling rust-coloured wooden farm house with a wrap-around veranda. A tawny cat sat in one of the windows while chickens cackled on the side of the yard behind a wire fence. Two trees graced the front yard, and several flower beds brightened the entrance. No one was in sight to greet us. We took our luggage from the car and went in, walking through a wood-panelled hallway into a lounge. Mrs. Rosenberg surveyed the room with a look of distaste that said it wasn’t anything like her elegant home in Westmount. I liked it a lot.
    Two large couches and three brown velvet chairs stood welcomingly on a worn, rose-coloured rug. The couches were covered in beige fabric with a faded pattern of red roses. The velvet of the chairs was quite bald in places. Here and there stood wooden tables with china animals and ashtrays; several floor lamps with frilly shades bowed over the couches and the chairs. Above the mantle of a red brick fireplace hung a painting of a farmer loading his wooden cart with wheat, his horse standing patiently as several children looked on. Surrounding the farmer and the children were fields and wild flowers.
    The room smelled of mildew, mothballs and lemon, which brought back the memory of Babushka’s cottage in the Polish countryside.
    The Rosenbergs wanted to leave, so we followed them out onto the veranda. Mrs. Rosenberg and Mother exchanged goodbyes with the usual niceties.
    “You must come and stay with us again soon, my dear Lucy,” said Mrs. Rosenberg sweetly, to which Mother replied with equal sweetness. But I had the impression that Mother didn’t really want to stay there again. Of course she couldn’t say that, could she?
    Father and Mr. Rosenberg shook hands heartily, and Mr. Rosenberg offered his help if we needed anything. Somehow I felt that he really meant it. We watched from the porch as they drove away in a cloud of dust, leaving us suddenly alone and apart from the rest of the world. At least with the Rosenbergs, we could communicate in our own language.
    A small, slim woman came out of the house onto the veranda. Her blond hair was done up in tight curls, and she wore a dress patterned like the couches in the lounge. Her face was oval with a straight nose and wide blue eyes. She was attractive in an angelic sort of way. When she shook her head the curls bobbed up and down like springs. I couldn’t tell her age. I was fascinated by her red furry bedroom slippers.
    “Please enter,” she beckoned. “I speak no much English only
français. Je m’appelle Marie.
”
    Father spoke to her in French, only twice having to look up a word in his French/Polish dictionary. As she described the rules of the house and the meal times, I found I could understand her. It was wonderful to know that we could communicate with her, even if it meant sometimes using a dictionary.
    Marie showed us upstairs to our rooms. In the room where my parents and Pyza were going to stay, everything was green from the wallpaper to the scatter rugs and bedspread. I followed Marie’s furry slippers up a steep wooden staircase to an attic.
    It was hot and stuffy, but when she opened the window the country air dispersed the heat. The room had blue cornflower wallpaper, a wood-panelled sloping roof, a