by Shani Mootoo
Harry, intrigued by Rose’s discomfort, returned to the living room. A long time passed—he heard only snatches of conversation monopolized by Shem, and he laughed when others laughed—and then Rose finally returned and joined them. Cassie got up and went into the kitchen. Within minutes she returned with Harry’s opened bottle in her hand. Rose sat up sharply and, looking at the bottle in her daughter’s hand uttered loudly, “Um …”
What more she was about to say was interrupted by Cassie. “Here’s a different wine. You didn’t buy this one, Daddy. Let’s try it.” When her father saw her with a fresh, unfamiliar bottle, he threw back the last drop in his glass and held it out to her for a refill. Rose slumped back in her chair as if defeated. She put her head down and looked at her hands expectantly. Her husband sipped in due course. With his flair for excess, he stopped the conversation with a pronounced “Ahhh!” He held up the glass and asked to see the bottle. He read the label, then asked, “But who brought this?” Harry said nothing. Rose’s lips were pursed, her eyes darting about, from Cassie to Shem and back. When Shem said it was a full and flavorful wine, one of the best he had ever tasted, that he would like to get a bottle of that to take back to Guanagaspar with him, Rose spoke up: “Harry brought that one. Perhaps he could take us to buy a few bottles tomorrow.”
Shem held the glass up and said, “Well, this place is doing you a lot of good, eh! Here’s to you.”
At four the following morning Harry awoke, plagued by a replaying of the slights of the past evening that he had at the time chosen to ignore. Anger drew him immediately into wakefulness.
He was resentful toward Rose, was reminded of going to visit her before he left Guanagaspar only to be told by Cassie that she was napping. Incidents from those days he had called ancient suddenly seemed current. But most of all, he was angry with himself for rushing to a party to which he had clearly not been invited. Had he learned nothing all of his life?
He would meet them at noon, as planned. But he would not lose an entire day’s work and income on their account. Birds were awakening in the bushes outside his bedroom window, singing one minute, squabbling the next. As he was unable to return to sleep, before the sun was up, he drove to the water-garden site.
THE EGG JUGGLER
Guanagaspar. Present day.
“Yes, it was hard for her that you show up at Miss Cassie house just so, with no warning. And you right, she was not expecting Harry St. George, the Eggman from home, to know wine from water. She hide away the bottle to spare you the embarrassment. But when Boss take a sip and liked it, she say she wanted to laugh out loud with happiness.
“She say next day when you drive them to do shopping, Boss get discouraged-discouraged. He find everything too dear. He had to count out his money and calculate how much everything cost in Guanagaspar dollars in front you, and when he realize how expensive everything turning out to be, and that in front of you he was having to change his mind about buying this and that, he get vex and start talking rude-rude to her. Then, in a store, he was waiting in the line-up to pay for something, and a white woman step in front him like he didn’t even exist. The sales-clerk, like she, too, didn’t see Boss, she take the woman goods and money. And Boss say nobody ever treat him so. How up there nobody have a clue who he is, and that get him vex for so. Madam say you pretend you didn’t see, but Boss not stupid. He feel you was watching everything. She say Boss make demands to speak to the manager, and when he ask the clerk for the manager, she say is she self who is manager. Up there, his money, by the time he convert it, ten to one, couldn’t buy him what all his life he know to be his right. That is why Madam tell you to go and wait for them in a coffee shop while they finish up their shopping. Not so, you had to do that? You see? I tell you, she tell me everything. Madam say she know she was slighting you but she was just doing what she had to do until Boss leave.
“Boss didn’t want you to know that she was staying on longer than he. He vex for so, from the start, when he hear that she had telephone you. By the time you show up at Miss Cassie house, they had already had words about you. But she was buying time. Time teach her how to get from Boss what it was she want, in all kinds of ways, without him even noticing. But I think she wait too long in the end.”
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF GUANAGASPAR
That summer past, unfolding.
After the afternoon’s shopping adventure, which ended in few purchases, Harry chauffeured them back to Cassie’s apartment. Shem had become reticent, acknowledging Rose’s attempts to elicit a little humor and politeness with grunts and general unpleasantness. Rose boldly insisted Harry eat something before leaving them. He declined, saying he had an engagement that he was already late for. Shem wanted to know what kind of engagement. Harry hesitated. But then he took perverse delight in answering Shem Bihar forthrightly. He belonged to a wine-tasting club, and the club’s monthly tasting was scheduled that night. “Wine tasting!” Shem chuckled. He asked if guests were permitted. Rose laughed and said, “You inviting yourself to a private club? And besides, you want to go and drink tonight? You will get high, and the mood you are in, I can’t take any back chat tonight, you know.” Shem got serious again and shook his head at her. Harry decided to defy her, only in order to calm him. “It’s men only,” he offered. “We haven’t had a guest before, but these men are my good friends. You’d be welcome, I’m sure.”
All in all, Rose seemed pleased that Shem and Harry were going off to do something together. Harry stopped at a liquor store. Shem picked out a costly bottle of Puerto Rican rum. That would be his contribution, he said proudly. Harry reiterated that it was a wine club, they drank only wine at these meetings. Shem asked who these people were. His first friends in Canada, Harry told him, fellows who had come from India, Sri Lanka, Fiji, and two were Indians from East Africa. Shem insisted that Harry stop to get a carton of grapefruit juice, some lemons, and several bottles of soda water. He would make an old-fashioned rum punch that would be better than any wine. “Just you wait and see,” he said.
The Once a Taxi Driver members obliged good-humoredly. On Shem’s insistence, the bottles of wine remained uncorked. After his second punch, and questions about how they met, what work they did, and more, Shem asked why it was that so many Indians drove cabs in the city. One of them blurted out, as if the question had been much asked of him before and the answer well considered, “Connections.”
Shem turned to Harry. “From cabdriver to gardener. You should have stayed in Guanagaspar, boy! At least there you had those two little gas stations. You know, they have been shut down now.”
Harry’s friend Anil spoke up. “But this man is no ordinary gardener, you know. He has his own business and employs eight men. He has some of the biggest accounts up the coast. Harry, you should take him to see the golf course and your gardens at some of those big houses.”
Harry did not correct Anil. He currently employed only five full-time workers, and had long ago given up the golf course. In any case, he was rather pleased that Shem was finding out there was more to him than he knew.
Shem fired a question. “But you are a gardener, aren’t you? What does he mean you have employees? In any case, it is gardening that you do, not so?”
Harry said, “I design and execute gardens from scratch. Then, in some cases, I do the maintenance. Well, not me personally, but I have a crew who does that part of the work.”
“Design? Well, come now. You would have had to go to school for that, not so? So, you have certification? You see, for my profession, one needs a degree. Papers, articling, credentials. You can’t just put up a sign and call yourself attorney general, you know.”
Partap raised his eyes and said, “Attorney general? You mean to say we have an attorney general in our midst? From which country did you say you are?”
“I am the attorney general of Guanagaspar,” Shem said proudly.
There was silence and then hard, heckling laughter when Partap, assuming a pose of true quizzicality, said, “Wh
ere is that?”
Good friends, indeed. But this all seemed foolish and painful to Harry, and it had nothing to do with his quiet, unassuming friends. It had everything to do with Rose, with Shem, and with Harry, with Shem’s embarrassments earlier that day. Harry said, “Yes. I am a gardener, it is true. And we are all ex–taxi drivers here. Each one of us owns a business now. But nothing was handed down to us. We had to work from the ground up, for everything we have nowadays. But you know, you are right, we will, no matter what else we achieve, always, in the eyes of many, remain taxi drivers. Once a taxi driver, always a taxi driver. Not so, fellows?”
Harry’s good friends, recognizing the guest’s prickly disposition, aware that a rivalry was taking place and that there was potential for unpleasantness, said almost in unison, “Hear, hear, once a taxi driver, always a taxi driver. Let’s drink to that, and to our good guest, the attorney general of Guanagaspar.” They raised their glasses in the air, and before Shem could begin again, they dispersed into smaller groups, talking among themselves and ignoring their venerable visitor.
Shem fell asleep in the car on the way back to Cassie’s apartment. As he was quite drunk, Harry did not want to simply leave him on the street level and drive away, so he accompanied him to the buzzer. He told Cassie to come and get her father. She and Rose came down. Rose was annoyed and embarrassed. She left it to Cassie to thank Harry. Alone at the curbside, Cassie asked Harry if he was available the following day. He had no interest in wasting more of his time with that man, and not knowing Rose’s mind, Harry also did not care to spend more time with her. He would spend the day up at the water garden. He told Cassie he had to work. She said her mother would be disappointed, as she had hoped he would have time to take them to the area where he lived; she wanted to see his house. Cassie said she, too, was free and had been expecting that he would take them up that way. She said her mother would love the greenery, the mountains, the coast. She asked Harry if there were eagles up there at this time of the year. Harry ran his hand through his hair pensively. He smiled at her and said he was his own boss and could put off work for a day. He would return to fetch them before eleven the next morning.
A SHOW OF HANDS
The first time Shem was about to light up inside the car, Cassie snapped, “Dad! Ask first! You’re going to smell up the car and all of us!”
Harry stopped so that Shem could enjoy his cigarette at one of the many lookouts along the scenic highway. At the house, when he flicked a smoldering butt on the path that led to the beach, Rose stepped up behind him and quietly picked it up. She disappeared into the house, where she put the butt under running water before disposing of it in the garbage can. She contemplated the flower wands in the vase on the dining table. Outside, she asked Harry if he knew whether or not those flowers in there—delphiniums, he informed her—might grow back home. She was indeed mesmerized by the size of the rhododendron blossoms. She used a pocket camera to take a photograph of Harry standing beside the bush. She took pictures of the mountains backdropping the Sound, of Shem and Cassie with the Sound behind them, and one of Harry in front of the house. She wanted to know how cold the water in the Sound was and if anyone ever swam in it. Before Harry could answer, Shem did. “It must be like ice water, but of course people here would swim in it. They do all kinds of crazy things here, just to say they did them.”
Shem asked Harry if he did his own gardening or if he got the workers to do it. Shem said, “But you have all of this and no wife, man? It’s time you got married, don’t you think? There must be someone we don’t know about. Not so?”
Harry was compelled to take them to the water garden. They were uncomfortable traipsing through a private yard until they realized there was no one around, that the owner was away on holiday. Rose paid attention to the variety of roses, to the groupings of colors, and to the juxtaposition of differently textured plants. She sniffed open blooms and pinched old leaves and spent buds from the flowering plants.
Cassie had wandered off, leaving Shem and Harry together.
Shem persisted. “So, the owners tell you what they want, don’t they? Do they supervise you?”
Shem walked around surveying the pond, the work mess on the lawn, and at the outside edge of the property, a natural spring that bubbled out of the ground and flowed into a canal. He approached Harry. “But you didn’t go to a university and get a degree, did you?”
Back in the car, Shem, sitting in the front passenger seat, was pensive. Harry drove down the main street in Squamish, trying to decide upon a restaurant that might serve Canadian beef, a good steak, as that was what Shem had announced he wanted to eat. Suddenly, Shem perked up and said he had a suggestion. Harry should tap in to the spring and direct it upward, and in so doing create a fountain, or build a wall and let the water from the spring come up behind the wall and cascade down the front, a waterfall! He turned back and said to Rose, “Now, if there were a spring near my property, that is what I would get a contractor to come and put in, not so?” Rose lifted her chin in the air and said, “Uh-hm.” Encouraged by her response, Shem asked hadn’t Harry thought of that? It seemed so obvious to him.
Cassie spoke out, attempting to sound as if she were teasing her father. “Dad! But why you interrogating him so? Since when do you know anything about landscaping? And how would you like it if we came telling you how to do your work?”
Shem retorted, “I am only trying to understand the difference between a regular gardener, a designer, and a landscapist. It seems like the boundaries blur in this country. But I am sure that up here, a notary public wouldn’t offer to defend in a court of law.”
In the rearview mirror, Harry noticed Cassie roll her eyes. Rose’s teeth were clenched. She had pressed a finger to her lip, indicating to Cassie that she leave the issue alone.
Fortunately, at that point, they were coming upon a spaghetti house advertising on its billboard that it served steak. Harry asked Rose if Italian food was good enough for her. She said, “Oh yes, anything, as long as they also serve steak.” Harry said that almost any place in the area would serve steak, so if she preferred something else, they could carry on. Watching Harry in the rearview mirror, she reiterated that as long as there was steak on the menu, they could go there.
A STORY OF SILVER AND A LITTLE BRASS
Guanagaspar.
“Madam say when they get back in Cassie’s apartment, Boss didn’t mention a word to Cassie, but he went in the bedroom and close the door. When she went in to pack his clothes for him, as he was to leave next morning, he tell her how all day everybody was contradicting him and making him feel like he was small and stupid. He tell her how you come up here and just because you could buy house with a view and because you can hire people to do your work, you think you rise up to their level. It didn’t please him one bit to be driving in your car all day. He say you don’t know your place, that you think money is all a person need to step out from a backward fishing village, and how you playing landscape man but you really nothing more than a yardman. He didn’t want you becoming a nuisance, thinking that because you living up there in Canada, you rise up in class. He didn’t want you thinking you could telephone or come and meet Madam and take all kind of liberties. Madam say she couldn’t wait for Boss to leave. He talk and talk, and she remain quiet and pack his clothes in the suitcase. She went in the bed with him and play she fall asleep straightaway, but soon as she hear him breathe like he sleeping, she open her eyes and all night she lie awake thinking about the flowers you plant and how you take care of that house and yard all by yourself. She say she wonder in truth if you had a madam of your own, hide away somewhere. She picture the mountains across from your house, a little snow on them, and she imagine herself swimming in the water in front your house, and she tell me how she couldn’t get it out of her mind how you had asked her if she wanted to eat spaghetti or if she wanted you to look for something else for her to eat.
“When Madam came back here, she was not the same Madam who
had left for Canada three months earlier, you know. That place make her strong-willed, and it put ideas in her head. She was brisk, and her voice—you know how she used to be quiet-quiet? Her voice get bright. And almost every day she went to bathe in the swimming pool. She was looking after herself. I don’t mean going to the hairdresser and that kind of thing. But rather, she stop eating too much fat and meat and say how she feeling like a young woman again, and how, sudden-sudden so, she want to be fit. She exercise, swim two-three times a day, back and forth in the pool, you see it there, nobody else using it. First few days Madam look like her age was in reverse. A few times after I gone into my room for the evening, I had to go back into the kitchen, as I thought I had forgotten to turn off the radio. It was no radio: it was Madam singing, humming old-time tunes, and even making up her own words and music as she herself sat there doing work that the yardman is supposed to do—polishing the silver and the brass.
“Sometimes I walk out there to find her holding up a piece of silver from on the sideboard, a cake knife, for instance, or from the coffee table down in the front of the house, a crystal ashtray in the palm of her hand. One day I find her taking out her collection of expensive coffee cups and teacups that she used to use only when her lady friends used to come for tea, and she take out the little-little spoons to look at them, too. Just sitting, looking at all them things. I never see her do that kind of thing before. Those were nights when Boss was out until two-three in the morning, and you didn’t know if it was really work he was doing, as he say it was, or if it was gallivanting. And gallivanting in this place always involve a woman. When I ask Madam what she doing out there late so, she hold up the items to the light as if to see them better, and she say, ‘Piyari, these things pretty, and they dear for so, it is true, but they don’t talk to me. In my next life, I will have no need for things like these.’