Jacintha

by Lorraine Davies

  Richard wasn’t going to tell them that his project was an homage to Jenny, and that it gave him a sense of “usefulness,” which he no longer felt about ordinary teaching, because they might ask him why he didn’t write it himself, if it was so important to him and so personal. The truth was he didn’t think he could do it well, having never written a play. And also, he could believe he was doing his students a favour by giving them an innovative way of approaching the play and a heightened awareness of environmental concerns at the same time.

  He’d wanted to be a short-story writer, had been especially inspired, indeed bowled over, by the work of Norman Levine when he first encountered it. (The only regret he had about not teaching Canadian literature was that he hadn’t had the opportunity to turn students on to Norman Levine.) Levine’s style was understated, lean, yet revealed so much; was so surprisingly deep. He wanted to write like that. For three years he wrote stories in which he strove to leave out just enough, include just enough, create a fine balance, and sent them to almost every little magazine in North America. He was rejected every time. Sometimes editors offered opinions that contradicted those offered by other editors about the same story. Some wanted to know more: What is Henry’s motivation for leaving Henrietta? Some wanted to know less: “You explicate too much. It’s obvious that Henry resents Henrietta’s success.”

  He stopped writing short stories.

  “You gave up too soon,” Carol had said when he pulled the stories out of a drawer a few years later. She read them and liked them, but said they didn’t quite sound like Richard. “Forget your idol, your Mr. Levine,” she said. “Find your own voice.”

  She was right, of course, but he was afraid he didn’t have a voice, not a compelling or original one.

  “Do we get to vote on this?” a student asked. “Because this is an English literature course, not creative writing. Not Ecology 101, either.”

  “And you are?” Richard asked.

  “Jordan Olafson.”

  “No, Jordan. No vote. Here’s the deal. I won’t mark you on your creative writing ability, but on the amount of thought you put into the project and your level of participation. Some of you are probably better writers than others, but you can all contribute.”

  Another student immediately announced he was transferring out of the class.

  “Fine.” Richard asked his name, crossed him off his list, and the young man left. “All right. Let’s get this started. Any comments? Ideas?”

  “I have a problem with the theme of reconciliation as it has to do with males and females in the play, since there’s such a power imbalance,” Jacintha said. “Miranda has to obey her father and she has to remain a virgin and is then handed over to Ferdinand. And doesn’t Prospero say early on that he created the shipwreck just for her benefit? Is the ‘benefit’ a husband, whether she wants one or not?”

  “Yes, at least partly that,” Richard said. “He says, ‘I have done nothing but in care of thee.’ We could take that as evidence that the marriage of male and female is an important theme in the play.”

  “Maybe,” Jacintha said. “But I propose our rewrite give some power to Miranda. And she doesn’t have to be the only woman in our play. If we’re going to unite male and female, let’s have equal numbers.”

  “Someone’s been reading feminist critiques,” Jordan said, and everyone laughed.

  “I have,” Jacintha said, glaring at him. “There’s nothing funny about it. I’m surprised you’ve even heard of a feminist critique.” Her voice was harsh and sarcastic.

  Richard was a bit alarmed by the ferocity of her reply. He hoped she wasn’t going to be that “one in every class” who caused discord.

  “I agree with Jacintha,” Anna said. “We definitely need some more women in our version.”

  “Yeah, and let’s sex it up,” Jordan said, apparently undaunted.

  “Enough now. I’ve split you into three groups, at random. I want you to choose a scene or part of one, and rewrite it in modern dress, so to speak, keeping in mind especially the environmental theme. We’ll read the scenes in our next class. You can start now but will no doubt have to meet again to finish them.”

  He read out their names and they dragged their chairs to separate corners of the room.

  Christ! Richard hadn’t thought this was going to be easy, but he now saw the unlikelihood of successfully herding his woolly little flock into Shakespeare’s shining enclosure.

  SEVEN

  JACINTHA, HER BOYFRIEND, Skitch, and his friend, Greg, were sitting in a red leatherette booth in Helen’s Grill, a café that looked like it was straight out of the 1950s, with lots of Formica and chrome and small jukebox song selectors mounted on the wall at each table.

  The middle-aged waitress arrived with Skitch and Greg’s orders. Her greying hair was neatly curled, her expression reminiscent of an overworked but loving mother.

  “How’s your little pet today?” she asked, referring to the tattoo on Skitch’s neck, a green snake twisting around a paler-green vine. His only other adornment was a gold eyebrow stud.

  “Fine, thanks, Betty. He’s glad you care.”

  Her smile in response was warm. “Can I get you anything else, Skitch, honey?”

  “No, thanks, Betty. This looks great.”

  Betty took Jacintha’s order for coffee and a club sandwich, and after she left, Greg said, “Jesus, why do women go for you like that — all ages. You’re not that good-looking.”

  “Oh, but he is,” Jacintha said, and puckered up and smacked her lips in a mock kiss.

  “Thanks, babe,” Skitch said.

  He had told her that he’d been picked on at school for being skinny and “girlie,” and that, to change how he was being treated, he’d shaved his head and started working out in a gym. Now, at twenty-two, he had carved biceps and washboard abs to go with his pretty mouth and innocent brown eyes. Yes, Jacintha thought, he really is good-looking. And he was remarkably good-natured, too. He certainly had been with her, considering that she had been refusing to have sex with him ever since they’d met three weeks earlier.

  “Skitch told me you’ve gone back to school,” Greg said. “What’s that about?”

  “I don’t know — I was beginning to feel a bit ghostlike,” Jacintha said. “I needed a shot of Shakespeare to perk me up.”

  “Let me know how that works out,” Greg said. “I get a bit wispy myself sometimes.”

  Skitch took a large bite of his hamburger, and mayonnaise ran down his chin. He brushed it up with the back of his hand and smeared it down the leg of his jeans. Greg was eating an avocado and cheese sandwich, being careful not to drip anything on his Indian shirt of gauzy white cotton.

  “I wish avocados could be grown locally,” Greg said. “I really should try to eat only local stuff. And we shouldn’t be drinking this shit,” he added, picking up his coffee cup. “We should drink fair-trade coffee.”

  “Try not to bore us to death,” Skitch said. “Just eat your damn food.” He finished his hamburger, scooped mayonnaise and meat juice from his plate with a finger, which he then sucked.

  “Manners!” Jacintha said, reaching across the table to dab at his mouth with a napkin.

  Skitch burped discreetly into his fist. “There, see, I’ve got manners. I know how to act. You’re the one who wants to cause trouble. You’re the one who wants us to create a cell.”

  “Like terrorists?” Greg asked.

  “Yeah, but no bombs or guns. We’ll be the Gaia Collective. We’ll organize protests,” Jacintha said. “Against the Olympics, a stupid waste of money. And for the environment and affordable housing. We have to stop being passive. I want you and Tanya and Brian to join me and Skitch and my old friend Beth in a core group.”

  “The Olympics are still more than four years away,” Greg said.

  “Yes, but that gives us lots of time to make a big noise about it. The Olympic organizers are using the time to plan their shit. For one thing, they intend to do massive
clear-cutting on Eagleridge Bluffs, above Horseshoe Bay, to ‘improve’ the highway to Whistler so that people can drive like maniacs to the slopes for seventeen days.”

  “We probably can’t stop the fuckers,” Greg said, “but we can generate bad publicity at the very least. Yeah. Beautiful. I’m in.”

  “I’ll call a meeting soon,” Jacintha said.

  Jacintha had heard about the Shakespeare seminar accidentally, although now she thought of it as fatefully. She’d run into Beth, who had lived on the same street as her several years earlier. When she’d asked Beth what she’d been up to, Beth had told her she was excited about the seminar and the professor, Richard Wilson. “I’ve heard he’s very good,” she’d said. “I’ve seen him around, of course. He’s kind of hot, and I’ve always wanted to be in one of his classes.”

  Richard Wilson. Jesus. Remain calm. It’s only a name. Probably not the man I’m looking for. “Hot how?” Jacintha had asked.

  “Oh, you know, just generally sexy. Kind of blond. Blue eyes.”

  “Young?”

  “I don’t know — forty-five, maybe a bit older.”

  Jacintha’s heart had started to pound, but her expression remained neutral. She prided herself on revealing only those emotions she chose to. Someone had once complimented her on her poise, and she liked the word. Poised, yes. Now, she thought, smiling to herself, its other meaning might apply.

  “I’ve been thinking about going back to school,” she’d said to Beth. “I’ll see if I can get into that seminar.” She’d almost completed her third year at Simon Fraser University as an English major when she’d dropped out three years earlier. Transferring to UBC would be no problem.

  “That was a very quick decision,” Beth had said, her eyes wide.

  “My favourite kind,” Jacintha said, smiling. She remembered how easy it had always been to impress Beth. “See you in class.”

  When Jacintha had arrived home, she’d done a tarot reading about the possibility that she had found the man she was looking for. Her thoughts buzzed, her body buzzed, as though she’d had too much caffeine. She had mixed feelings about tarot divination and usually did it just for fun, but this time the message could be important.

  She used the High Priestess as the signifier, and the card she turned up for the past was the Knight of Swords, and for the future, the lightning-struck Tower. Two supporting cards were the Fool and the Magician. She’d laughed at that. A Shakespeare seminar. Caliban and Prospero. Perfect. And swords and lightning predicted trouble; someone brought crashing down.

  “You’re playing in the major leagues now,” she remembered a friend and fellow tarot reader saying when a similarly large number of Major Arcana cards had appeared in a reading. In this present reading, the Tower was reversed, meaning things could backfire, but Jacintha never credited reversals. The ancient images and symbols were what mattered. They had a power that, even at her most skeptical, she found hard to dismiss.

  Her mother, Catherine, had taught her tarot, starting when Jacintha was six years old. They’d sit on the big bed and take out the deck and play in the short but blissful time between when Catherine finished work and when she fell asleep from exhaustion and alcohol. Catherine, wearing only her lilac-coloured silk robe, embroidered with butterflies, would be fresh out of the shower, smelling of perfume. The perfume was called Poison.

  “That’s not a very nice name,” Jacintha said, the first time she heard it.

  “But it smells nice, doesn’t it?”

  Beside Catherine on the bedside table would sit a bottle of whisky and a full glass already poured. Jacintha would sit close and stroke the silk and the soft skin of her mother’s leg where the robe fell away.

  “Pay attention now. Here’s the Fool. How silly. He’s about to step off the cliff.”

  “But he looks happy. Will he be all right?”

  “Maybe. Some fools are protected by angels. And here’s the High Priestess. Magical. She’s an old soul who can get whatever she wants. Now, here’s Death.”

  “He scares me.”

  “Don’t be scared. This card means only that a big change is coming. Changes can be very good. Remember when the teacher you didn’t like left your school and you got a teacher you liked better? A good change, wasn’t it?”

  The biggest, most awful change came when Jacintha was taken away from her mother.

  That was after she was raped by a “client” of her mother’s, a john, and Social Services deemed Catherine an unfit parent. Sometimes Jacintha thought she shouldn’t have run crying to the neighbours, but she was only seven years old and the man had hurt her so much and she was so scared.

  She was fostered by a kind, middle-class couple, Edith and Charles Bennett, who looked after her until Catherine died and adopted her when she was twelve. They let her keep her mother’s surname, Peters.

  Catherine had given her an exciting history, which Jacintha had believed for a long time. She had realized its falseness when she was thirteen, but even now she carried it in her body and attitudes and strategies. It still served her. She had her mother’s beauty: the carved cheekbones that could have been Slavic, eyes the cold blue of a northern sky, the heavy inner fold of the eyelids suggestive of the farthest steppes, and the dignified posture of the Russian royal ancestry her mother had claimed for them.

  “My great-grandmother was a cousin of the Duchess Catherine, named after Catherine the Great,” she’d told Jacintha. “Her last name was Petrov, but later the family changed it to Peters. She fled to Canada in 1916, just before the revolution that killed the royal family. She lived in obscurity from then on, as we do now. But we know who we are.”

  “My little Tsarina,” she’d coo as she braided Jacintha’s hair and pinned it crown-like to the top of her head, and Jacintha had felt the pomp and ceremony — although she didn’t have those words — strengthening her spine and tingling her skin. “Important” was a word she had.

  “Your great-grandma was important, wasn’t she?” she’d ask.

  “Yes, and so are you.”

  Living in the endless present of their two small rooms, full of clutter, empty of hope, Catherine had needed a history more uplifting than her real one.

  After the tarot lesson, Catherine would say, “Get yourself a cup of milk now, before bed,” and Jacintha would lift a cup from the grubby sideboard beside the stained sink and see a cockroach scuttle away.

  But sometimes when Catherine was drunk she ranted, and a recurring name in her tirades was Richard. “He hurt me the most,” she would say. “Richard, Dick, prick. I could have loved him. I would have loved him. He should be punished for hurting me.”

  And then, still babbling, with “Richard” the only clear word, she would pass out.

  Jacintha asked once or twice how this Richard had hurt her — had he hit her, pinched her? She had seen bruises on her mother’s arms, and once a black eye. But her mother said it was nothing like that, and not to worry about it, so it became relatively minor in the things she did worry about, like the frightening men she sometimes saw her mother with on the street.

  After Catherine died, Jacintha was given a small box of her meagre possessions: a few pieces of cheap jewellery, photos of Jacintha as a baby and small child, a red hair ribbon that Jacintha remembered wearing, an old theatre program, a ticket stub from a rock concert, and other odds and ends. And among all these was a photo of Catherine with some other people. On the back she had written “Richard and me at the Driftwood Pub on his 23rd birthday,” and under that the date, including the year. She would have just turned nineteen. She is smiling, raising a glass of beer to the camera. Two men in the dim background appear to be talking to each other. Their features are unclear.

  The photo was tucked into a book of poems, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the first part of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. “Richard Wilson” was written inside the cover.

  As a teenager, Jacintha had been interested in the photo and book, but she hadn’t dw
elled on them, hadn’t wondered too long about who Richard was.

  But then, last month, something had changed. Her adoptive mother, Edith, had relayed the story Catherine had told her about Richard Wilson. Why Edith had waited so long, Jacintha didn’t know. Perhaps she hadn’t thought Jacintha was ready to hear it any sooner. And Edith was probably right. It was upsetting, but she was old enough now to deal with it.

  So she had begun to look for him.

  She phoned all eleven of the Richard Wilsons in the Vancouver phone book and said, “I’m looking for an old school friend named Richard Wilson. He’d be forty-eight by now.” Most were polite, one slammed the phone down, and two were flirtatious. The men eager to tell their ages were between twenty-nine and eighty-five. One said, “Well, I’m pushing forty-nine,” and when she asked if he’d ever lost a book of Blake’s poetry, he said proudly that he had never once owned a book of “pomes” in his life.

  She googled the name and found one elderly British actor, two British artists, an internationally known lawyer, and a famous Shakespearean scholar, all to no avail. Anyway, although it was not impossible, it was unlikely that “her” Richard had become famous.

  Two dozen Richard Wilsons were lined up on Facebook in a very un-roguish gallery, but most, not surprisingly, were a lot younger. The one who was forty-eight informed anyone who might be interested that he was a loyal Torontonian who had lived there all his life.

  She realized she’d have to start looking further afield — across Canada, for a start — and use more sophisticated methods, but she felt out of her depth and was considering hiring a private detective.

  Then the universe, the gods, the angels, maybe just coincidence (was anything ever just coincidental?) had lain the information she wanted, like a ripe peach, into her waiting lap. This Richard Wilson was an English literature professor who could easily love Blake as much as Shakespeare.

  She would think of a plausible reason to ask him his age, and she would do it so nicely that he would be pleased to tell her.