When Alice Lay Down With Peter

by Margaret Sweatman

  She went to him and tugged at his robes; she thought they might pull him right into the earth. Her hands fumbled at his chest, seeking buttons, some way out. It didn’t occur to her till much later that she was desperately trying to undress a monk. Somehow he slipped away from the rough fabric, and it opened like an acorn or the skin of the chrysalis. He emerged pale and streaked with mud.

  The lightning flicked the ground, a near miss, no sound. His first sight of a woman’s breast, white alabaster veined with blue, his first touch, as lake water moving in his hand, his first knowledge, bold, her thirsty kisses. She travelled all over, uttering her joy. His blond face, his body wrapped in rain. A sandpiper soared smoothly by, whistling its long, scared note. They were standing, a lightning rod, and just before it struck, they pulled back from a kiss and looked at each other closely, eye to eye, and then, with that leader stroke, leapt in the air still joined, straight up, united; they flew forty feet high, their nuptials in lily white light.

  Their dreams that night were of baptisms, mud baths, mustard plaster, healing poultices. They slept as their ancestors before them, but much longer, forty-eight hours, waking once in the middle of their second night to feel themselves joined by love and by Manitoba gumbo, a casement of silky mud. They heard the sociable chittering of the otters near by and knew they must be near the river. The mosquitoes died entering the force field that surrounded them. Helen no longer had fleas. They slept in thistle as soft as a bed of down.

  They were awakened by ten wild turkeys. Wild turkeys stand about two and a half feet tall. They have brown feathers and bright red wattles. Some say that they are the souls of dead monks. Whether this is true or not, no one knows. But it’s obviously a great privilege to be woken up this way, by the stolid paunches of turkeys, standing there. Quietly. It was still raining, just a little.

  CHAPTER NINE

  FINITO JOINED THE UKRAINIAN LABOR TEMPLE, where his greatest difficulty was proving that he was indeed Ukrainian (a feat he achieved with his stomach, his fondness for stoudniak, pickled pigs’ feet).

  But it’s strange that by the trick of his good looks, he would develop a loyalty to a foreign country that would lead him to war to fight for its freedom. He was a street kid who had gained a political education from the misery of riding the rails. His idealism was a byproduct of youth, but Finito’s particular brand of naïveté was the accident of a handsome face. He was inspired by his own Mediterranean charm, and he loved Spain as if he’d been cross-pollinated with her. Ukrainian by blood, Spanish by instinct. He dreamed in Spanish, though he didn’t speak a word of the language. Still, he retained a stomach-stubborn fidelity to Ukrainian food.

  Finito so believed in freedom that he gave it away, assuming it would be returned to him in kind. He had absolute faith in the success of the coming revolution. He misunderstood our local rich; he thought they had a political ideology (which of course they did, but not one that would stoop to opposition, with all the necessary self-definitions; nothing other than the dictates of common sense). In this, he was very European. He was prepared to sacrifice his life for the proletariat. When Ida took him to see Richard Anderson at his mansion, Finito thought that they were going there to assassinate him.

  Ida took him along for the purpose of dunning Richard for money. Einstein was at Princeton by then, and she wanted to bring him to Winnipeg to tell everyone what was going on in Germany. She figured she could embarrass Richard into coughing up the costs. Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland and was soon to turn his eye to Czechoslovakia. His army was getting big; he’d created an air force, and now there was the black-shirted Schutzstaffel, the SS. Richard was a bigot, sure, but he was also a WASP with colonial pretensions, so Ida thought that he’d be fretting over British security. On the way to his house, she daydreamed his apology, Richard looking sheepish, trying to make amends. He wouldn’t know anything about Einstein’s science, but like everybody, he would know he was a Jew. It was the perfect way for Richard to hide his bigotry, to appear generous and broad-minded.

  Finito loved the Anderson house. He wondered what they would use it for—perhaps a convalescent home or a nursery school—after the revolution. Maybe the headquarters for the People’s Army. He was so preoccupied with this when Richard answered the door (Richard had caught Higgins-James-whatever stealing from the liquor cabinet and had to let the man go) that Richard thought he was casing the place for theft.

  Ida was polite. “This is Mr. Richard Anderson, Finito. Shake the man’s hand.”

  Finito smiled at Ida indulgently and then shook Richard’s hand with an air of such revolutionary fatalism that Richard thought he was pitying him for losing Helen and his cold dignity became absolutely Germanic. He invited them into the sunroom at the back of the house. Ida had pictured this conversation taking place in Richard’s office; they hadn’t been home long, and she still retained many male assumptions. She felt ashamed of Helen’s elaborate murals. She stiffened, remembering Daniel. Ida’s husband had not come home, had not contacted her, and though she had resigned herself to this, still she wished that she’d understood his strange music, and she wished that he had given her another chance. She was as uncomfortable as Richard was (seated on a Louis XV chair that had somehow escaped Helen’s modernist redecorating), with all the mannerisms of a Female Visit. It felt especially unhappy in this female-less house.

  Richard assumed that Helen had sent Ida. He had not grieved for Helen. He would not. It was likely neurasthenia, of a sexual sort, enticing Helen to low life and dirt. Helen had probably sent this Jew to get money from him. He was not so much hurt as disappointed.

  Only Finito was relaxed; as a revolutionary soldier, he had to be calm and alert during a crisis. He was about to witness his first political assassination. He felt only love; as the hunter loves the hunted, so Finito loved Richard. He looked at Richard gravely.

  “You know—,” Ida began.

  “Of course,” said Richard.

  “—Einstein,” said Ida.

  “Oh,” said Richard.

  “He’s in Princeton now, you know.”

  “Great rugby team. Wonderful school.”

  “The Nazis ran him out of Germany.”

  “Top-notch. You’re close to New York.”

  “We’d like to bring him here.”

  “Einstein.”

  “And we need your help.”

  “Who is ‘we’?” Richard looked at Finito. Finito was gazing at Richard passionately. “Is something the matter?” Richard asked.

  Finito nodded slightly.

  Ida said, “The professor is very busy. And some say he’s very shy. We need to offer him… something.”

  Richard met Finito’s eye. Finito’s smile was sad and Spanish. God, I hate queers, thought Richard.

  Ida stood up. Richard could feel Finito’s eyes upon him, and he crossed his legs, took his silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket, removed a cigarette and tapped its end, put it in his mouth and, without looking, was reaching for the crystal lighter when his hand touched Finito’s. Finito was thinking, This is the man’s last cigarette! and he held out the lighter with great ceremony. Richard felt their electric touch. He turned his attention to Ida; she would be one of those women who turn into men when they age. “Tell her to go to hell,” he said.

  Ida knew immediately. “Tell her yourself.” Then, “We’re not getting along that well these days.”

  “Comrade Ida punched Comrade Helen in the jaw,” Finito explained. “It is difficult for a Communist and an anarchist to remain friends. It is very difficult. They love each other, but Comrade Helen never forgives.” His heart pounded after his long speech.

  Ida said, “She’s not involved with this. She’s been… otherwise occupied.”

  “She is expecting a child with Bill, the ex-monk!” said Finito. It was wonderful to live at such a stratospheric level. His handsome nostrils flared. A publishing house! That’s what we’ll put in here!

  Richard tweezered his cigaret
te; he slipped his fine Italian shoe from his heel, dangling it from his toe. The pain burned in his veins.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ida.

  Smoking, Richard shook his head. Finito realized he’d made a mistake. He suddenly felt homesick for Spain. I don’t like Canadians, he thought.

  “We’ll go,” said Ida.

  Richard rose automatically to usher them out. At the front door, she turned to him. “Will you give our cause some consideration?”

  “No,” said Richard. He was going to go to sleep. Finito was already down the front walk. It was a desperately ordinary day. Richard looked down into Ida’s brown eyes. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you. Einstein was run out of Germany because his so-called science is soft. He’s iffy. Now is not the time for iffy. He’ll upset people. The market doesn’t need it. I don’t need it. Now’s the time for clear thinking and clear people.”

  “Richard.” He flinched to hear his own name. Ida was too familiar. She stood close to him, looking up. “Something terrible is happening. This man…” Richard tugged at his ear, squinting, though it was overcast. “This man is evil!”

  Richard did not believe in “evil.” He stood coldly.

  Ida, tone-deaf, persisted. “He’s not going to stop with Czechoslovakia. He’ll take it all. We’ve got to stop him.”

  “Envy makes people small,” said Richard, sizing her up. “It’s a tough world, Ida, I’m sure you agree. Not a place for weaklings. I’m not afraid of strong men. I like a success. Christ, Hitler’s turned that country around. Three years ago, they couldn’t borrow a dime. Now? They’re the strongest in Europe. Three years. Now tell me you don’t admire that.”

  Ida shrugged and turned to go, careless of herself, mumbling at her own feet, “Poland’s next, then Denmark and Norway.” She was talking all the way down his leafy driveway, all the way down to the street, where Finito joined her like a kid embarrassed by an eccentric mother (and only six months minus ten minutes ago, he thought she was sexy; subtract six months plus ten minutes, and he thought she was a man). “He’ll make friends with the Soviets, the Italians, the Fascists in Spain. He’ll take Holland, Belgium, France. You’ll see. He wants Britain too.” She was so mad she thought she’d faint. From the street, she shook her fist at him where he stood on his stone portico, wearing his smoking jacket and that half-smile. Ida yelled at him, “You fucking idiot! You arrogant lackey!” Richard’s gardener heard the racket and came to peer at Ida. Ida saw the gardener. “And you!” she cried. “Slave!” She stopped. Finito was walking ahead a little ways. She followed him, grief-stricken, exhausted. The great houses were not listening. “Slaves,” she muttered. “Even the rich. Slaves.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  IN THIS COUNTRY WE HAVE TWO RELIGIONS: Winter and Summer. Our doctrine of Winter is stern and dutiful, an Old Testament faith in the laws of Cold Night. But Bill, an ex-monk now, was decidedly of the Summer faith. We could hear it in his laugh, we could see it in his wonderful feet. Then we would think, No wonder he became a monk, with a laugh like that, with his fat square feet, it’s too delicious!

  Helen wore a dress the colour of bluebells, her black hair grew fast and she was the most pregnant woman the world has known for many centuries. She did not divorce Richard or marry Bill. She would never be owned again. She often felt happy, brilliantly so.

  She was deceptively tall and he was deceptively short. When they waltzed, and they did, enamoured, they were of equal stature, she in her Raphael dress and he in the white pyjamas that had replaced his brown monk’s robe. He became famous in St. Norbert. Everyone trusted the man who—though he might have left the church—conducted his life with simplicity, in elegant poverty, a celebrant of modest things: a well-carved wooden spoon, a candlestick.

  And the baby grew in her womb. But there was a darkness in Helen’s light, like the moon’s path across the sun. Her happiness was a camouflage. Now that she was in her mid-thirties, her beauty was at its height. The air surrounding her seemed to hesitate, withheld. Bill no doubt was capable of seeing ultraviolet rays; he recognized his love by this shine. So their union was the garden in a desert. But Helen never lived in only one place at one time.

  April. Dirty snow remained in the willow shoots. It didn’t flood at all that year. The riverbank was a torte of sand, clay and roots, and the sun was already hot. Ida and Finito appeared in the old beat-up Ford I’d given them, looking for Helen and Bill, so I directed them down to the riverside, where they’d gone off for one of their gently sporadic conversations.

  Ida lumbered through the path to the “dock” (yet another construction of oil drums and pine), her face beaded with sweat. She had revived her shabby fur coat. She launched herself onto the platform, tipping icy water over Helen’s and Bill’s backsides, and she handed Helen yet another pamphlet on “The Tasks of the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement.” Finito followed, careful to stay dry, a prairie boy after all.

  Helen looked wearily at the pamphlet. She and Ida were at odds, partly because Helen felt that the Communists were only helping Hitler gain ever more power in Germany. Helen had a seething hatred of Fascism, which she shared best with Finito, because Finito was frankly obsessed by the prospect of war against the Fascists in Spain. Together they spent hours talking about Franco, their fearful fascination bringing them so close to the events in Europe that, sometimes overhearing them, I would imagine they were gossiping about nasty friends. Helen had an aversion to broad strokes; she insisted on details, the pennies that derail mass movements. The anarchists in Spain had not yet joined the coalition with the Communists; Spain was still the only place on earth where an anarchist army (a fission) could fight for liberation. And Helen was growing ever more uncomfortable almost anywhere on earth.

  Ida insisted on being “reasonable.” Helen’s resentment (she could still feel the impact of Ida’s blow) was not reasonable, so according to Ida, it did not exist. Helen was extremely forgiving, but her ideals were almost savage. She had to forgive all the time, just to get through the day. Ida was always showing up like this, with a book, to stare Helen down and talk about “the larger issues.” Why the hell does larger mean truer? At any time, Helen could think about her own jaw and feel Ida’s little fist there, like a cyst.

  “I saw Richard,” Ida announced, looking at them blandly.

  Helen nervously checked the path.

  Ida shook her head. “Don’t worry. He’ll leave you alone now. Poor bugger. Next thing you know, he’ll be contributing editor of Deutsche Zeitung.” Finito laughed his quirky laugh. He adored foreign expressions. “Anyway,” Ida said, sighing, “he knows about the baby now. Finito told him.” Now Ida laughed while Finito looked anxiously at Helen. “So obviously you won’t be bothered by him any more.”

  The heat pressed down on Helen. Bill pursed his lips, an extravagant show of displeasure.

  “In fact,” said Ida, “I imagine Richard thinks you’re cured. He was always talking about getting you with child.”

  “Why don’t you ever shut up?” asked Helen.

  Ida would not accept personal prejudice. “Oh, come on, Helen. It is too funny. Kirche und Kinder, all that. You’re the perfect wife now. Just not his. Don’t you have any sense of humour any more? Or do you just—what?—produce milk.” She nudged Helen’s arm. She missed Helen really: she wanted her buddy back. “Come on,” she said again, “there is a certain divine justice in it.”

  Bill softened, tipped his head. You can hear a river, even on a windless day.

  Helen had been more or less holding her breath ever since Ida hit her. So. Richard would leave her alone. And go his way, into the New World, like all the happily prosperous burghers in Winnipeg.

  “I got a letter from Daniel’s uncle,” said Ida. She found it increasingly difficult to speak of personal matters.

  “Does he know where Daniel is?” Helen asked.

  Ida shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that.” She reached inside her coat for her tobacco. “He’s from the German s
ide. There’s Zimmermans in Russia, Poland; this side stayed in Germany.” She withdrew two cigarettes already rolled. Lit Helen’s. “His son was killed by the Nazis. Some kind of street brawl. They said he was drunk.”

  “Oh,” Helen breathed. “Ida.”

  “Well, we have to do something. Obviously. So I thought we could bring Einstein here. He could give a talk or something. People just don’t know. Or they don’t care. Richard sure doesn’t give a shit. Pardon my German,” she added, to Bill.

  “I could talk to him,” said Helen.

  “You!” Ida laughed bitterly. She touched Helen’s belly. “I think you lost that vote, Mama.”

  Helen took a deep drag of her cigarette. Ida was right. It was irrevocable. How he must hate her. Helen felt that old impulse to go towards the war zone. She nervously touched Bill, who sat quietly beside her. But she was pinned to her fear of Richard.

  HELEN’S CHILD, MY GRANDDAUGHTER, was born in May 1936, just as Italy occupied Ethiopia. Conceived in July, the baby took a full ten months to be born (there was a wild turkey for each month of gestation), abiding in utero the contrary gospels of the two religions: the dance of Summer (as well as the poignant agnosticism of Fall) and the no-dancing of Winter. A little girl. Stalled till mid-May. It would turn out to be a typical move, a natal pattern in which she would persist all her life. An innately a-theological child, deeply irreligious, and fixed to the cusp. They named her Dianna.

  She was born with her eyes wide open, solemn and attentive, as if what she was seeing for the first time was a confirmation of some earlier appraisal. One of those refined babies, slender and long of digit, her narrow face dominated by discerning eyes. She almost never cried, but she rarely slept. Such a degree of consciousness filled her father with awe. She would lie for an hour in Bill’s arms while they stared at one another, Bill stroking the space between her eyebrows. He began to carry her around in a sling he strung at his chest.