The Amazing Absorbing Boy

by Rabindranath Maharaj

  That night I waited impatiently by the kitchen table for my father’s arrival. I gazed at the pocket watch before me; the dolphins seeming to be stranded in the tablecloth’s wavy brown patterns. My father got home a little after eight-thirty and seemed surprised to see me in the kitchen this early. I had rushed home, bypassing Union. “I got something for you.”

  “A letter?” He spoke quickly.

  “No. A pocket watch.”

  “Oh.” He followed my gaze and scooped up the watch. I saw him looking at the dolphins. He placed the watch against his ear and walked to the television. I wished he might have told me that it was a strange watch or it was exactly what he wanted; nevertheless, every now and again, he shook the watch as if testing. During an advertisement he cleared his throat as if he was about to say something and I felt a bit embarrassed for no reason. Finally, he went into his bedroom. That entire week I pretended that each night he was examining the watch and coming up with ways to improve its design. When next Che came into the shop, he immediately asked about the watch and I put my finger against my lip for I didn’t want Barbarossa to know of the transaction. I tried to change the topic. “What sad truth?” He seemed confused. “That you discovered in the mountain. And the cloud people.”

  I wanted him to reveal they were a secret tribe hidden away like Black Bolt’s Inhumans but he said, “Ah yes. It was in Chile.” He drew his coat around him as if it was suddenly cold. “They had been chased away from their land by my family who were ranchers.” He paused a bit before he launched into the most amazing story. There in the mountain, he fell in love with one of these displaced women and soon he joined a ragtag group of guerrillas fighting against the rich ranchers, his family included. One night a daring plan was hatched: a selected group would journey to the capital, mix with the crowd and kill the president during one of his “bogus lectures delivered from the palace’s balcony.” According to Che, the assassination failed because the police had been tipped off, and only two of the group escaped. Deep in the jungle there was a showdown between the two survivors. “It slowly dawned on me that the man next to me, a brute of a peasant, coarse in every possible way, was actually an informant who had sold us out. Each night I slept with a dagger next to me. One morning it was gone and so was the traitor.”

  “What happened then?” I asked impatiently as he seemed lost in his thoughts.

  He bowed like an actor in one of those carriage-and-sword movies. “Here I am before you.”

  “And the woman?”

  “I never saw her again.”

  “Is that who you wanted the Russian doll for?”

  “You might say that, yes. You might say that.” Again, he sounded like an old-time actor.

  “And the traitor?”

  He took a deep breath. “It’s of no consequence. We must forget the old battles. If we don’t then we—”

  “Grow stooped from their weight?”

  “Remarkable. Remarkable.” And with that, he left. This was a long conversation and during the day, I noticed Barbarossa watching me, his tiny eyes dull beneath his swollen forehead.

  During the following weeks, it seemed that Che’s relating his story had somehow cleared his mind and put him in a good mood, for now instead of constantly talking of his wife he frequently hummed a Spanish song, “Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera.” His fluttery voice made the song seem sadder than the versions I had heard often on the Trinidad radio stations. Once while Barbarossa was staring out suspiciously from his office Che closed his eyes and sang, louder than ever: Yo soy un hombre sincere/De donde crece la palma/Y antes de morirme quiero/Echar mis versos del alma. I asked him its meaning and he told me, “I am an honest man/From where the palm tree grows/And before dying I want/To share the verses of my soul.”

  He had a good singing voice and I couldn’t understand why Barbarossa was so annoyed afterwards. “This is not Massey Hall. Please explain that to—”

  “Che?”

  He walked away, grumbling.

  I couldn’t picture palm trees growing on a mountain but I felt it was a beautiful song with a catchy rhythm. Sometimes I found myself humming a line at work and Barbarossa would come up to me immediately as if he had super-hearing.

  During my last week at the shop, I asked Che if he was going to return to his mountain any time. I told him that I too was leaving this place soon. He shook my hand and bowed like these Mexican actors on television. Then in the same dramatic way, he pointed to his chest and said, “My mountain, it is here. In the morning, I smell the grassdews and in the night, I hear the clouds brushing the trees. But when I die my body must be carried to the highest peak to be laid next to my wife’s grave.” He said something in Spanish and when I asked its meaning he said, “My grave must be caressed by the purest fog. No snow shall fall on its dirt.”

  “How will your body get there? So high up?”

  “By mule.” He pointed to Barbarossa’s office.

  Chapter Thirteen

  VAMPIRES IN THE MIST

  The night after my first class at the Centennial campus, I really missed my mother. My father, caught up in whatever was worrying him, didn’t seem too interested that the programme would fast track me to a high school diploma. (Though I shouldn’t complain, as his silence was a real improvement from his mockery.) My mother, though, would have been even prouder than the few times I surprised her with a high grade at Mayaro Composite. The preparatory course was mostly boring, as it repeated a lot of my subjects from Mayaro Composite and I couldn’t wait to be a bona fide college boy. There were a few oldish people in the class, which was surprising, and sometimes when our English and history teacher—a chubby, smiling lady who wrote “Mrs. Dragan” on the board but told us to call her Jolie—was mentioning some Canadian history fact, I would see these old people listening real attentively. Me, I sometimes pictured Mrs. Dragan trying her best to keep her flames in check and when she smoothened her dress to sit I pretended she was fluffing down the scales on her bottom. The boys who were my age seemed quite bored of her lectures but the older students, many with foreign accents, were always jotting down notes and asking questions. In Trinidad, everyone would say that they were slackers or were in the class to avoid housework or something.

  At the end of my first week, I wished even more that my mother was alive and here in Canada, so I could return to her in a tidy apartment and say, “Remember when you used to say that I was wasting my time with these stupid made-up books?” Maybe she would bend her head a little to the side and say in a tired voice that could signal either resignation or approval, I could never tell, “Yes, son. I couldn’t see that.” And I would explain that, although the pay was no better than any of the others, my most interesting job ever was at the Queen Bee movie shop, which rented only these old B movies with pirates and cowboys and monsters posing and crouching against dusty sepia backgrounds. I would tell her, “See, I got this job because of my knowledge of comic books. And it’s perfect too because I just work on Wednesdays and weekends.”

  Two years before I came to Canada, before I even knew she was ill or would soon die, she gathered all my old comics, Green Lantern and The Legion of Super-Heroes and The Inhumans and X-Men—all the comics I liked, illustrated by Mike Mignola and Gene Colan and Klaus Janson—and burnt them right outside the back step. I was so mad that I told her that I was leaving, never to return. I rushed out from the house to the beach, still in my school uniform. I would have been fourteen, and looking back at it now, I can’t believe I was so childish, and that my mother always fell so easily into this game of me running away. Did she not expect that I would return home once I got bored from walking along the beach and throwing seaballs into the water?

  I never understood why she hated my comics so much, or my monthly trips to Liberty cinema in Rio Claro to look at these old pirate and gladiator movies, because she herself would often have a Bollywood movie in the VCR while she was sewing by the living room window. Her only explanation was that this make-believe
world I was falling into spelled real trouble. A dreamland, she said. As if her Bollywood dramas were any better.

  Queen Bee video store never stocked Indian movies, although I don’t think anyone would have noticed them in between the old Yang Yu karate films and the Hammer vampire movies and the cheesy space flicks with their bathtub rockets and dustbin robots. The owner of the store, Mr. Konrad Schmidlap, was one of the stillest persons I had ever seen. His severe lips and nose looked as if they had been soldered to his bony face, and he moved like a gloomy pigeon whenever he was inspecting the shelves. I felt that his knees were trembling with each step, though I would never tell him that because he seemed hard of hearing. He reminded me a little of Peter Cushing from these old vampire movies.

  When I had inquired about a job in his place, he seemed so blank that I immediately regretted entering his store. It was a good thing I remained though because during his interview, he asked just three questions. The first two, about my previous experience and my age, were easy enough, but his last question was completely unexpected. He asked me why aliens always travelled about in pods. Although his voice was stony, I felt this was some sort of joke, so just as seriously I told him that aliens used mother-ships or saucers to travel from planet to planet. They used the pods to hibernate inside until they were ready to harvest. I wanted to laugh at what I had said but Mr. Schmidlap crooked a finger and I followed him to his little corner desk.

  “Do you think you can harvest these?” he asked, pointing to a stack of old videos in boxes. Later, I debated whether he had made a joke, because while I was arranging the videos on the shelves he shot out a quick, grating sound, which sounded like a stubborn gear grinding. After my first week, he showed me how to file the movies in index cards, and set me behind the counter. To tell the truth, that made me feel important and a couple times, when the shop was nearly empty, I quietly practised a few expressions in Barbarossa’s fussy manner for the customers who had returned their movies late or who were lingering to view the posters. “You think this is a place for viewing pictures? The art gallery is in Front Street. Next!”

  Many of the people who strayed into the shop were young men with thoughtful sleepy eyes and little beards and canvas knapsacks. They usually asked for movies by Bunuel and Cassavetes and Polanski—which we never stocked—before they moved to the horror section. They may have been college students and sometimes I felt like mentioning in an offhand manner that in a single term I would be taking their courses. By the end of my second weekend, I was able to recognize the regular customers. There was a middle-aged man with a small chin squashed against his neck who liked these old movies that all began with “Carry On” and even older cartoons. He talked about Woody Woodpecker and Tweety Bird as if they were real and were his longtime friends. He was always complaining about a nasty girl and at first I felt it might be a co-worker or something, but I later realized it was the little girl who was always pulling away the football from Charlie Brown. “Such a little bitch. I believe she grew up to become a prime minister.” He had a low-pitched British accent and I wished he would say through his nose something like “Pip, pip, old chap. Tally ho.” Another customer, who was ancient enough to have limed with Roy and Norbert at the coffee shop on Parliament Street, only borrowed these seventies blue movies, which Mr. Schmidlap kept in a special drawer below the counter. He described some of these movies but used words like mons veneris and pudenda that somehow made them seem less porny. One of his favourite was The Devil in Miss Jones.

  One evening as I was about to close up, Dr. Bat walked in. At first I couldn’t recognize him as he was wearing an oversized hat that covered half his face. I was about to call out to him when a woman in a sari escorting two boys said something to him in Hindi. He spotted me then and seemed a bit embarrassed I had seen him with Madam Bat and the Baby Bats. He hung back when Madam Bat asked if there were Bollywood movies here. When I said there weren’t any, she asked, waggling her head, why the shop’s name was Queen Bee. I said the B stood a kind of old-fashioned movie, not for Bollywood. She didn’t seem to believe me so she walked down the middle aisle with her Baby Bats.

  “How is Paul?” I asked Dr. Bat.

  “He returned to birthplace for pedigree property redresses.”

  “Newfoundland?”

  “Alberta. Chinooks and such.” Just then Madam Bat returned and Dr. Bat walked away hurriedly.

  I guessed Dr. Bat was talking about some property Paul had returned to claim; and in the night when my father asked me once more about any letter from Uncle Boysie, I wondered if he had his eyes on the house in Mayaro. But why would he, since he was living in Canada? Two days later during Mrs. Dragan’s description of the “two Canadian solitudes” (which was very boring in spite of its nice title) I noticed the boy in the seat before me drawing in his copybook instead of taking notes. I had seen him before, always sitting by himself. He had droopy eyes, his hair was cut into uneven tufts, and one nostril was flatter than the other. After the class, I asked him if he was drawing a comic book. He seemed startled I had discovered him and I remembered my own irritation at the chimera peering at my letter. I decided to leave him alone but as I was stuffing my books into my bag he said it was a picture of their old house in Cuba. As he didn’t have an accent I asked him if he was from there and he said he arrived in Canada, with his grandmother and two sisters, when he was four.

  “What about your parents?” I asked. He opened his book to his drawing and I noticed two stick people staring out from separate windows. I guessed his parents were still in Cuba. “What’s that in the yard?”

  “Goats,” he said as if it should be obvious the squares with tails and boxy heads were animals. “And that is a turkey.” He pointed to a fan.

  Maybe the Cuban boy’s drawing was still in my mind during the weekend because the minute this old Filipino fella with raisin bumps all over his face came into the video shop, I had this idea that he said little prayers while he was cutting off the necks of turkeys. To bless their souls or something. He had a very flat face as if he used to regularly roll off the bed to fall on his face when he was a baby. He returned on Wednesday and on the following weekend and I soon began to think of him as Mr. Real because he used this phrase so often. The name on his card was Toktok Magboo and it was easy to guess his taste in movies from his clothes as he was always dressed in a long grey overcoat and a felt hat, and even in the late evenings he wore a tinted horn-rimmed glasses. His thick eyebrows seemed like grey mushrooms sprouting from behind his glasses. But for his dark brown colour and his accent, he could easily have sprung from one of the B movies he always requested every Tuesday and Friday.

  He returned his movies promptly although there was really no need to because nobody else wanted films like Plan B from Outer Space and Broccoli Banzai and Nazi Ballerinas and Vampires in the Mist. Besides, they were all videos. Once he was standing behind a girl who was returning Electra, with his copy of The Japanese Pit. After the girl had left, he said, “These special eppects is too much nonsense. Who will believe such a thing?” He raised both hands above his head like a comic book superhero preparing to fly off. “Good twattle.” He sounded a bit like the old porn movie man. I glanced at his video case. A woman was running away from a group of Japanese armed with enormous swords but right toward a pond crowded with skeletons. Up in the completely red sky was a low flying airplane with a rope dangling from somewhere behind a propeller. When he noticed my gaze, he had said, “Pom this I get all my inspiration.” I did not understand what he meant but from then on, I began to stare at his brand of movies on the shelves. Occasionally, when Mr. Schmidlap was not there, I would pop one into the VCR.

  They were the stupidest films I had ever seen. Nearly all had women with big overflowing breasts and curly red hair and wide-open eyes. These women were forever getting in trouble with monsters that crept out from ponds and stalked out from tombs and dropped from spaceships. Thankfully, they were saved in the nick of time by men who didn’t talk much
but mostly chewed at their cigarettes. I just couldn’t understand the hold of these plastic monsters and toy submarines and dirty unshaved men on Mr. Magboo but during each of his visit, just to make conversation, I mentioned some stupid piece of a movie.

  He liked that. He revealed to me his favourite actors and their special lines that he repeated in his singsong voice. It was a bit difficult to follow him as he changed the letters f and v into p and b but I gathered that he liked the English Hammer movies with Peter Cushing who always looked half-dead telling Vincent Price “Begone, spawn of Satan or face my wrath.” I think Vincent Price was his favourite actor, although he also liked Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. Even though I didn’t really enjoy Mr. Magboo’s movies, at least I was able to fulfil my side of the conversation whenever he mentioned some scene or memorable line like, “Sorry, Nancy, I’m a loner. That’s the way it gotta be. Parewell.” Some of the movie phrases, similar to comic book dialogue, stuck in my head and I wished I had some friend to practise them on. Quick! To the air chamber. God help us all if this doesn’t work. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

  I used a couple of them in an essay where we had to describe a memorable event. Mrs. Dragan was not impressed and she asked how long ago I had learned English. I said that it was all we spoke in Trinidad and she stared at me as if I was lying. She liked the Cuban boy’s essay and when she returned it, he was beaming. After the class, I asked what he had written and he talked about his family’s early days in Canada when his grandmother would take the whole bunch of them for rides on the subway train. “She didn’t have much money so we rode the trains for hours on end. To me it was an excursion.”

  His name was Javier and as we walked to the Centennial College Loop, I noticed he had a limp. When we got there, a couple girls were waiting for their bus. One was tall and real pretty. Her bottom crack and the tattoo above it was showing and when I mentioned this to Javier, he stared at the ground as if he was embarrassed. I believed he did not have many friends. Still, he got an A in his essay and I felt his grandmother would be pleased.