The Colonial Hotel
Page 14
You are half a sister. Our daughter has the name for River. She came forth into the world quickly in a single push and gush. I caught River in my hands, wiping her clean, separating her from Oenone, and then handing her back to her mother. As she nursed I heard Oenone sing a song to her that I remember from my first days of recovery in the cell. They bury the placenta here.
Eyes and ears and mouth and nose, is what I sing to her, knowing that’s not the beginning, but that it’s all I can recall my own father singing. I see my father’s eyes in River, and I see my eyes. Are they your eyes too?
My daughter, here is the end of what I write. Here is all I have to give you. Once I had nothing but time, and now I have almost none left. I hold the baby with arms that are weak. Oenone feeds both the baby and me, one after another. I shrink under the helpless curse of this disease, the originating site of which I will never know. I am withering so quickly. It is my time now. There are no gods to intervene and deflect this arrow. The last truck has left the village. Oenone did not look up at it, did not look at me with hopeful eyes that I might ask to be put upon it, that I might wish to live and see this baby that I now hold grow into a child, then a young woman, then a mother herself.
I have written all there is; this is my course, to die in Oenone’s arms. I will be a father to River in the way I have been to you. As I have already been with you the entire time, so will I be with her. So, I ask you: share this story with your sister. Read the words to River. Tell her I mean them, my fatherly love, for her too, in equal measure.
And, Helen, I forgive you.
* * *
Oenone
RIVER, MY CHILD, GATHER THE threads of this. Although they bring pain, his final days are yours to hold too. They keep this complete, commit this to memory. Do not cut out and let fall away the pieces that do not make you smile. He let the light shine in through the open door onto his face and you must always do the same and tell it as it was. That way the future is the past, one and the same.
My child, on his last day Hector and I carried him to the sea on a stretcher made of poles and woven reeds. We lay Paris at the water’s edge. The tidal water rose in inches to take back the coloured pebbles. His feet became wet as the waves reached him first with tentative fingers, then armfuls of itself.
I tell Paris that he is my son that was taken by a snake. That the snake has come for him too. I went to the town, I confess to him now, to try to get blind medicine. To be sure nothing would save him. I know, he murmurs. Just as I sought out the blind nurse after my boy was bitten, I tell him.
Paris tries to speak. I wet his lips.
What was her name? he manages.
I speak the name Helen. I remember her face clearly. She was unable to save my son, I say, as I have been unable to save you. Helen grieved along with the rest of us—all crying as a single woman into the godless dark. She escaped the capital before the war, to save her own child that was deep in her belly. I thanked her with my heart. Her presence was a sign: that she wasn’t able to save my son made me certain there was no other life ahead meant for him. I did no wrong. My son’s story was always to have ended where it did, at the mouth of a snake. She and I were one then, and are one now again, at the same place.
Paris did not speak after that.
So my child, feel us there on the beach. We three are one. Feel him, his thoughts, desires, final words. She touches my face, cool. Yes, child, there. That is him, let him come to you. Her fingers make the shape of my cheek, jaw, brow, and lip. The sea rushes out and in. Feel him. Water dampens my neck and is trickled onto my papery tongue, salt. Old books my father owned are being lifted off the shelf and read, his voice is alive again here in my ears. Ah, she coos.
His brother Hector shifts his weight and lays him down on the pebbles and sand, building his head up, his breathing light and occasional. Then come the faces. First, those ancient but familiar, neighbours and teachers, fellow regular passengers on a train, classmates, then come distant cousins, my aunt Hesione, my father is leaving to go to work, I am treating patients in hospital, and last in a swoosh of hung washing and laughter, my mother’s face is before me—I am a boy and she my known world.
The faces continue. Guards long gone, fellow prisoners tortured or released, dead or escaped. Then come the villagers and their familiar ways. Lastly strangers come. Those I’ve never met, or was supposed to meet had I avoided capture. They draw close and fade back, my only chance to be with them, to see where I had not gone.
The last of them, she comes close, but instead drifts away before I can see the face. Carry my name forward, I call after her. I am Paris. I am left alone then, with the wind. I am on a beach and there is wind. I leave with the water and wind, you stay here, I say to no one. I will leave, you stay, stay. Say my name. Stay.
My child, you must let his journey come to its rest here, at the beach where he took his last breath, the sea at his waist, his ghost brother holding his back and head, me at his side touching his face as he became absent, breathing in short stutters, then no breaths, then a small one, then none, none, one, none, none, no more.
Let the funeral plans begin, for we shall celebrate the life of the great blind doctor Paris. He who served our people and witnessed our war, saw us at our worst, wearing our darkest mask, and forgave us nonetheless. Let the food be cooked and the wine be poured. Let the dresses be sewn and the ribbons be tied. Let his friends and former captors mingle and sing as one under the same stars, no longer together for war. There will be no pyre. Let the tide turn and bury him in its currents—as was his wish.
Give me his child who he held just yesterday, whose beating heart he listened to with his ear and smiled. Healthy, he said. River will live long, he said, and we will tell her his prophesy. So give me his baby girl and let me pull her to me, hot and wet, with my hands and let me feed her milk.
Let his story be passed from mouth to mouth all across this country. Drum beat to drum beat. Let the truth of him—the blind doctor who did not leave, did not shame, or blame, or maim—rain from the clouds and seep into the lakes and rivers, into the gills of fish, onto the hooks of fisherman, inside the mouths of our children. Let us all rise and accept his great goodness.
Let us cross what cannot be crossed. Let the sky be the sea. Let the reflection be the object itself. Let the music in the reeds be the wind, and the frightened animal separated from the herd be the hunter. Let the dirt take the tears into it and become fertile. Let the meal be hunger and let the eye be the ear. Let the cure be the curse.
My child, Paris is your story. He is his own evidence and defence. He is no more than what you have of him. He breathes only when you do. Therefore, my child do not let Paris be an unspoken name in the night, a young doctor in a photograph leaving for our faraway country. Memorize his writings, the story of his life that he wanted to leave behind. Find the people he wrote about and share his story with them. His is a story that is indistinguishable from your own. If he is ever searched for, let him not be a pencilled name on a list of missing foreigners, an illegible signature in a guest book at the Colonial Hotel. No, let his name be the sun, the sky, the food, and all that is good.
* * *
Notes
The quotations are from: Ovid’s Heroides, XVII: Helen to Paris (Translator, Harold Isbell); H.D.’s epic poem Helen in Egypt, Leuké, Book II [2]; and the final lines from Lord Tennyson’s epyllion “The Death of Oenone.”
The pronunciation of Oenone is: ee noh nee.
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge, and am grateful for, the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.
My tenure as Writer in Residence at St. Mary’s College of Maryland gave me the gift of time to work on this book. I am grateful to Ruth Feingold, Karen Leona Anderson, and Jerry Gabriel.
This story began as a sequence of poems. Adam Sol and Gordon Johnston separately made compelling
arguments for a novel. I thank them both. To Dean Cooke, my deep appreciation for believing in this story.
My thanks to the following writers, friends, who read various drafts: Michelle Berry, Lorraine Brown, Dr. Anthony Jeffery, Jay Johnston, and J.C. Sutcliffe.
To my editor and friend Michael Holmes, to Emily Schultz, and the good people at ECW Press, thank you.
Finally, to my first reader, Wendy Morgan, and to our children, Thomas and Ivy, much love.
Copyright © Jonathan Bennett, 2014
Published by ECW Press
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Bennett, Jonathan, 1970—, author
The Colonial Hotel : a novel / Jonathan Bennett.
ISBN 978-1-77090-519-1 (ePUB)
Also issued as: 978-1-77090-518-4 (PDF); 978-1-77041-178-4 (bound)
I. Title.
PS8553.E534C64 2014 C813’.6 C2013-907757-X C2013-907758-8
Editor for the press: Michael Holmes
Cover design: Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design
Cover photo: Gräfin. / photocase.com
Author photo: Rebekah Littlejohn
The publication of The Colonial Hotel has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and by the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.