Travelling Light

by Peter Behrens

  “But Pierre is quite a chef, you know,” said Anna.

  “Is he?”

  “Mais oui! He makes lovely things. He does coq au vin he learned from my grandmother’s cook.”

  “Really? Carry out the salad, would you.”

  Kathleen picked up the dinner plates and followed Anna to the table. John and Pierre were watching the local news on television.

  “I can’t get over it,” Pierre was saying. “Not one single bloody word about the nomination!”

  John switched off the set.

  “What’s he talking about?” said Kathleen. “Please, everyone, come and sit down.”

  They took seats at the table and John uncorked the wine. “As if there’s any power left in government. You guys, or your clients, already own the power. ”

  “Are you going into politics, Pierre?” said Kathleen. “Federal or provincial?”

  “It’s okay to be ambitious,” said John, “but you’re not supposed to show it.”

  “Where did you get this lovely bread?” said Anna.

  “The philosopher’s boulangerie way out on Laurier. Pierre, please tell me what’s going on.”

  “Well,” said Pierre, “there’s a group of us —”

  “Eager beavers,” said John. “Up-and-coming masters of the universe.”

  “You know most of them, Kathleen,” said Pierre. “Remember Peter Languedoc from McGill? He was in Ottawa for a couple of years at the Prime Minister’s Office. Louis Desbaillets, who made partner at our firm last year. I was telling John we’ve been meeting informally for almost a year now. Call it a study group if you want to. Every now and then we had a visitor down from Ottawa.”

  “This sounds exciting,” Kathleen said.

  “The bottom line is we wanted Peter Languedoc to run in the next federal election and we wanted a reasonably safe seat, preferably on the island of Montreal.”

  “Have you got it?”

  Pierre sipped his wine. “As of today. A bunch of old-­timers controlled the riding association. There was a squabble, which actually isn’t a bad thing — opens up the whole procedure, gets people out for the candidate. But the goddamn media, I am learning, have zero interest in nomination fights in ridings.”

  “What about you?” said Kathleen. “You were always smarter than poor Peter Languedoc. How come you’re not running?”

  “I guess you could call me his campaign manager.”

  “If he wins, you’ll go to Ottawa?”

  “Who knows? Not immediately. And Peter’s got to start by winning the seat.”

  When Kathleen was growing up, there’d been no roads in Labrador extending beyond the settlements. When her family left for their summer holidays, their car was shipped by rail to Port-Cartier, on the St. Lawrence. From there it was five hundred miles by road to Montreal.

  Sometimes they got out by plane. Her parents had taken her to Disneyland when she was eleven and sent her to boarding school at thirteen. She had been just starting her PhD at McGill when she met John, who was just starting his residency as an orthopedic surgeon. Pierre was best man at their wedding and found them the apartment in Outremont.

  Earlier in the summer, after Pierre had won a partnership at his firm, there had been a plan for the four of them to go out for dinner to celebrate. Pierre arrived at the Outremont apartment with a bottle of champagne, but without Anna.

  “Where’s your date?” Katherine asked.

  “It was a boring party and she was so happy there I decided to leave her. Where’s Dr. John? Let’s open the champagne.”

  “Still at the hospital. He’ll be home soon. Come on outside.”

  She got glasses in the kitchen and led him out to the balcony. Pierre opened the wine. He poured them each a glass and drank his own immediately. His necktie was stuffed into his pocket. Two buttons had been ripped from his shirt.

  “Were you in a fight?”

  “They tried to throw me into the swimming pool. Lawyers are fraternity boys. Assholes. Look, ma chère, pour me another glass, would you?”

  “Well, you’re one of them now.”

  “Bien oui.”

  “Where did you get the champagne?”

  “Took it from the party.”

  It was peaceful out on the balcony. Kathleen loved the view across the tops of the trees that shrouded the neighbourhood. She loved the calm of the apartment. John planned to teach as well as practise. They’d leave Montreal eventually and probably buy their first house in another city with a top-notch medical school and an art museum, Toronto or Vancouver, Houston or San Francisco. In the meantime the apartment was perfect. Outremont was perfect.

  “You should be proud,” she told Pierre. “You’ve done amazingly well amazingly quickly. You’re a rocket.”

  He poured himself a third glass of champagne, spilling some on his pants. “All the senior senior partners were there this afternoon. We were all sucking up to them like crazy.”

  “Is that when they tried to throw you in the pool?”

  The phone rang and Kathleen went inside to answer it.

  “Are they there already?” John asked.

  “Anna’s not.”

  “Hold the fort. I’m due in the O.R. in two minutes; the boss needs me to assist. If it’s routine I’ll get a taxi, be home in an hour. If not, I’ll catch you at the restaurant.”

  When she went back out onto the porch, Pierre grabbed her hand. She laughed and gave his a squeeze, but instead of letting go, he tried to stand. He stumbled and pulled her close to him, roughly. She felt his body heat and smelled his sweat and his heavy breath. He kissed her below the ear, then tried to kiss her on the lips, but she pulled away.

  “Come on, Pierre. You don’t want to ruin everything.” Without looking at him she went inside and put on a linen jacket. When she came back, he had put on his jacket and was drinking the last of the champagne. He started telling her what was wrong with the province of Quebec, a litany he must have recited before when he was being wined and dined by all the powerful firms that had wanted him.

  And now it was late summer. Still green, but cool at night. In the cool breeze from the northwest, the rustling of leaves had a different sound, crisper.

  “I think we might have coffee in the living room,” Kathleen said. “It’s cooler in there. We can open the French doors.”

  “I love these streets,” said Anna. “I don’t mind the Hasidim, they add some colour, though it’s mostly black. Two of my mother’s maiden sisters, Tante Madeleine and Tante Louise, lived on Rue Querbes.”

  “Great dinner,” said Pierre. “Compliments to the chef, Kathleen.”

  “I don’t know how you do it,” said Anna. “Your little apartment looks so lovely, you’re always so busy with your dissertation, you are so chic — I don’t know how you do it.”

  When the coffee was ready, Kathleen brought the things in on a tray. The doors in the living room were open to the balcony. She liked hearing the northwest wind rustle the old trees. Pierre was sitting in the chair in the corner and John had sunk into the sofa beside Anna, his legs stretched in front of him. Kathleen poured coffee and handed around the cups.

  John leaned back, cradling the demitasse in his hands, and sighed. “Thirty-six hours not on call. I feel purposeless already.”

  Kathleen smiled. She stood before the window, looking out. The old iron lamps on Querbes Street were shaded by the maple trees.

  “Kathleen,” said Pierre, “do you remember Tom Katsiaficas?”

  “Sure I do,” she said, without turning around.

  “She was going out with him when she met me,” John said. “He started two years ahead of me but didn’t make it.”

  “I spoke to him last week,” said Pierre.

  “I haven’t thought of Tom for a long time,” said Kathleen.

  “I’ve
a list of alumni with addresses in our riding,” Pierre said. “I’ve been cold-calling, hitting up people for campaign contributions. One of the names on the list was Thomas Katsiaficas and it rang a bell. Then I remembered you used to go out with him.”

  “How is he? Where’s he working?”

  “That’s the point,” said Pierre. “He’s on the list as Dr. Thomas Katsiaficas, so I say, ‘What about you, what kind of practice are you in?’”

  “I think he wanted internal medicine,” said John. “His father owned a Greek restaurant in Laval.”

  “Well, he didn’t get internal medicine. He’s a veterinarian in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue.”

  “Poor Tom,” said Kathleen.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said John. “Better a great vet than a lousy surgeon. The whole point is, be good at what you do.”

  “I can’t see you as a veterinarian, Johnny,” said Pierre.

  “Why not?” John sat up on the sofa, rattling his cup and saucer. “Those people make excellent money if they’re good. We’d be outside the city on a farm somewhere, a nice old farmhouse, big garden. I’d be driving a brand-new pickup truck instead of taking the Ninety bus.”

  “Oh, I can see you enjoying all that. You’re no Albert Schweitzer.”

  “What is it, then?” said Kathleen.

  “Mainly,” said Pierre, “it’s you. You would never have married a man who flunked out of med school.”

  Kathleen shut the doors. “You’re right,” she said. “I married John, didn’t I.”

  “Top of his class, rookie of the year, hot-shot surgical resident. You would not have settled for a prosperous animal doc.”

  “I think she made an excellent choice,” said John. “I ought to take her to the races some time — she can really pick a comer.”

  “You’re being very silly,” said Anna. “It doesn’t work like that at all.”

  “Doesn’t it?” said Pierre. “I know it’s not supposed to, but I wonder sometimes.”

  Kathleen turned around and smiled, framing herself against the French doors.

  “Look at her,” said Pierre. “She knows us; she can tell you.”

  “I love you just the way you are,” Kathleen said.

  Pierre gazed at her. “You’re incredible.”

  Anna laughed. “She’s a wonderful cook, you needn’t tell me that.”

  Cool night outside, dry rustling of leaves, pale street light.

  “A drink,” said John. “Can I get anyone another drink? More wine? Drop of brandy?”

  WANDA

  We arrived at Newark sometime after midnight. Jane was carrying her briefcase on a shoulder strap as we came off the plane, and I held a copy of my book, Chaos and Dexterity: Conflict Management in Regional International Systems. We’d met while working on a U.S. Navy–sponsored dyadic analysis of Syrian–Israeli air battles of the 1973 war, and after some weeks of desultory academic flirtation I had married her, hoping to banish Wanda from my dreams.

  There were two Port Authority policemen standing in front of a poster for the Gerhard Richter show at MOMA. One of the cops had a hold on a girl, who was trying to wriggle free. We tried to get as close as possible. Someone told us she had been turning tricks during the flight and had drawn a plastic knife on a passenger in the first-class lavatory. The girl was young — eighteen, nineteen — and didn’t look different from any ordinary passenger. She could have been a college kid on spring break. When the cop took handcuffs from his belt, she started screaming as if she was being attacked. The cop tugged her arms behind her back, then slipped on the plastic cuffs, which made a plasticky clicking noise as they closed around her wrists.

  We had come to New York to meet with Hermillo Kruger, who had been Jane’s thesis adviser at Columbia and was now a United States senator. We were scheduled to lunch with H.K. the following day, somewhere uptown. Jane was eager to maintain and strengthen their relationship. Washington connections are most essential in our field.

  We reached our hotel at Gramercy Park after a racketing cab ride through the tunnel. Jane immediately drew a bath. While she was in the tub I checked the Manhattan directory for Wanda’s number. I wanted to call her but was afraid I would not be able to control the excitement in my voice, and that Jane would overhear. I had always told her Wanda was a fling, a flirtation. Jane always laughed and said she didn’t believe me, that I was still in love with Wanda even if I’d not seen her since New Orleans.

  She lived in the east Fifties. I found what ought to be the correct number, but instead of dialling it immediately I dropped the directory back in the drawer and began hanging clothes in the closet. I promised myself that I would find Wanda in the morning. She wasn’t expecting to see me in New York.

  Jane came out of the bathroom wearing the hotel terry cloth robe, towelling her hair, and we went to bed.

  Jane was prone to insomnia, and the prospect of seeing Wanda made it hard for me to find sleep, but sleep we did. However, in the middle of the night I awoke with a feeling that I was drowning. Water was surging and foaming all around me and I could taste brine at my lips. Then I realized Jane was on top of me and we were in a hotel room in New York City, making love. The windows were open, a breeze was tossing the sheer curtains, and I could hear traffic down on Lexington Avenue. A few seconds later Jane came violently, and I found myself climaxing. We did not speak. After another moment she rolled off me and we rested, tangled, dead, until first light.

  Wanda was a cousin of Joe Crozier, who had served with me in the First Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam in 1970. Joe had problems after the war and I’d always tried to help him by lending him money and giving him a place to stay whenever he was in California. Six months earlier, Joe’s father had phoned from New Orleans to say Joe had been killed in an explosion on a drilling rig out in the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard had searched for a week without finding his body. They concluded that sharks had eaten him.

  From the way the old man spoke, I could tell he expected me to drop everything and come to the memorial service at St. Augustine’s Church in New Orleans. I was the only non-African-American there. Afterwards there was a wake at a tavern in Marrero, across the river. People were hugging each other, dancing, howling. I stepped up to the bar, and it was there I met Wanda. She was tall as a sunflower. She told me she had a good job taking care of a rich old man in New York City. While she spoke she touched my wrist. Her fingers were dry and cool. She told me she never came home to Louisiana except when relatives got killed or married.

  We danced and I bought drinks. When she offered me a ride back to the French Quarter, we headed out to the parking lot and found her car, a big Lincoln Town Car with New York plates. She asked if I would drive. When we were on the highway, she turned to me and said, “Do you believe the dead stay dead, or do they come back to cause trouble?”

  She had lowered the passenger window and the thick Louisiana night was pouring in, smelling of rot. In the moonlight her skin was almost blue. I took my hand from the wheel and touched her knee. She didn’t object and I moved my hand higher. I told her that of all the dead I’d seen, not one had ever caused trouble, unless he’d been booby-trapped. She moaned and slid down on the seat and I pushed farther and rubbed between her legs. She was already wet. We were barrelling along an expressway, crossing the river, re-entering the city proper. It was almost three o’clock in the morning and there were no other cars on that highway. She was almost on the floor, with her skirt pulled up around her hips and her right hand out, planing in the rush of sweet, muddy air.

  I took the first exit after the bridge and drove through the French Quarter to my hotel. We left the Lincoln in the hotel garage and took an elevator to my room on the ninth floor. She asked if Joe had ever spoken of her, and I said I couldn’t remember him doing so. During the war, she told me, she had gone to church every week, lighting candles for her cousin. His parents and sisters
hated her — for family reasons, she said. They wrote Joe with all kinds of lies about her. When she moved to New York City, they told him she had gone off to marry an old white man, and when Joe got out of the army, he would not come near her or answer her letters. But she never stopped loving him.

  When she said this, she was wearing a sheet wrapped around herself and staring down at me like a Yoruba princess. I believed her, and envied Joe. I’d always thought of his life after the war as a series of ridiculous escapades, but now I saw that there was grandness in what he had been denied. He had been in and out of jail on assault charges and petty larceny, had slipped from one questionable job to the next. Yet every week, Wanda told me, she stepped around the corner to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and lit a candle for him.

  When I awakened in the morning, she was dressed and standing at the foot of the bed, her lips open in a kind of smile, showing ivory teeth. Before I could sit up in bed the door had clicked shut behind her. I ran to open it but she had already disappeared down the corridor. I hurried back to the room and the French doors, twisting the latch and stepping out onto a narrow wrought-iron balcony. A few moments later I watched the big green Lincoln pulling out from the hotel garage and moving down St. Charles Street.

  I was flushed with such despair that I thought I’d died and my soul had passed from my body. I grasped the iron rail, covered with a film of soot that I could feel soiling my hands. I stared down at the cobblestones until I could identify the colouring and texture of individual blocks. I was in the grip of some natural law, inviolable and direct as gravity, and was prepared to vault that iron railing with no more thought than I would have given to stepping out for a carton of milk or a newspaper.

  Then some internal thermostat opened up and cooled me. I felt light-headed and there was pressure ringing in my ears. I stepped back inside the room, closed and latched the French doors. I remember turning on the television and sitting on the edge of the bed watching a morning news program: a blonde woman asking questions, then rough footage of tanks moving down a street. I passed out.

  When I woke up, it was noon. I felt well. Sunlight poured in the window and New Orleans lay sprawling and yellow beneath a light river haze. I felt I had been cured of something. Dropping to the carpet, I did a brisk thirty push-ups. Then I got dressed, and after a room-service meal I took a cab to the airport and made my flight to California.