“And these cricketers,” he says. “Did they wear whites?”
“Always.”
“Always,” he mumbles, and for a moment appears to reflect on the word. Then he says, “Strange, eh, how some customs survive better in exile. These days, cricket become big business. TV and everything. Now the players wearing colours. Green, yellow. Shows up better on TV, nuh. Some o’ them makin’ millions.”
The regret in his voice prompts Yasmin to ask whether this is not a good thing, but her question goes unheeded.
He says, “You know, my bes’ memories of Shakti is at cricket. Her and Celia — Celia was my wife, nuh — drinking tea and eating sandwiches and watching the match day after day.”
He slows, but does not stop, at a red light. “Some laws jus’ too dangerous to obey,” he explains. “You don’t want to stop in the nighttime if you can help it.”
Assuring himself with a glance in the rearview mirror that Ash is still behind, he says, “Celia use to try to predict the cricket results from tea leaves. She had more than a passing interest in tasseomancy. Shakti never tell you about that?”
“Mom,” Yasmin says evenly, “never told me much about anyone.”
39
NO, NO, MRS. LIVINGSTON. In your left hand. Now, swirl the cup slowly. Clockwise, please. With gentleness. Once, twice, three times. There we are. The idea, you see, is to allow the leaves to settle into the pattern they wish. Now tip it into the saucer and pass it to me. There now, gently does it.
It was like a parlour game she played, you see, my friend Celia. When the cricket was slow or the afternoon long. She’d read up on it, knew what many of the symbols meant. An anchor meant success, a cat’s head peace and contentment — but if she saw a complete cat poised for battle, well, then, it was a sign of conflict. You can imagine what a horseshoe or a clover leaf meant, or a dagger for that matter. The most disappointing was when she discerned letters. Those were taken to be the initials of someone you should pay attention to, but for good or ill she could not say. I cannot begin to explain the contortions we would go into, Mrs. Livingston, to apply initials to people we knew. But there are thousands of symbols and signs and what have you, so that offered her a kind of freedom, you see. It’s the fun of tasseomancy. It’s a game of imagination from beginning to end.
But sometimes … No, I’m afraid I’m not seeing … Maybe if I turned it this way. It depends on the light, too, you see. Celia always sought indirect light. Too much brightness and too much darkness tend to obscure the patterns, for the symbols are as much a question of shape as of shadow. Let’s see now. Perhaps if you tilted the lampshade a bit, do be a dear. This way — no, no, that’s too much. Back a touch, that’s it, yes, that’s better.
Truth to tell, Celia never had anything of great interest to say. I don’t know whether my leaves were uninteresting or whether she simply wasn’t very good at it — rather like myself, might I add. She attempted to be encouraging, I suppose.
But there was this one day, when we were at the cricket. India or Pakistan must have been visiting, for I remember only dark-skinned men at play. It was early afternoon, the players had just taken the field after lunch and play was still sluggish in the afternoon heat. Celia took my saucer as I have just taken yours, bent over it and peered with her habitual concentration at the array of wet leaves.
I remember looking up from the field of play, above the bleachers on the far side, to the heat haze that dulled the colours of the hills beyond. For some reason, a comment my husband had made the night before about the weather we were having came to me. Hot and muggy weather, the sun like open flame on the skin. He’d called it heart-attack weather, and my brother-in-law, Cyril, had responded that, with the multitude of fires that were breaking out almost uncontrollably all over the island, and with the drought we were experiencing, heart attacks seemed the least of our worries. It was then that I heard Celia say, “Oh, my.” I turned to her as she pronounced her reading unsuccessful and poured my leaves back into the cup. Just at that moment, one of my husband’s political men appeared. Celia saw him scanning the crowd and pointed him out to me. I waved to catch his attention.
He ran up and came along the row to me. He was hurried, rough, he trod on toes. I was about to pull him up for his lack of consideration when he said, “Miss Shakti —” and a terrible look came over his face.
No, Mrs. Livingston. Not my husband, and not a heart attack — though this is what I, too, thought.
No. This is how I learnt that my parents had both perished in a fire. A cooking accident. My mother …
And when my father tried to save her he too … In that weather the flames were voracious.
My husband was at a political meeting, forging alliances. A delicate moment for him, so he sent his man with the news. You know, I don’t remember leaving the cricket grounds and, indeed, Celia told me later that my husband’s man had had to pick me up insensible halfway to his car. She also told me that in my leaves she had seen with a clarity that startled her — that “Oh, my” — a perfect, dense circle. As if the leaves, she said, had woven themselves into a black sun.
40
STORES SHUTTERED AND barred: rows of dark iron vertical and horizontal, crossed into Xs, bound into diamonds, mannequins’ stares gazing unreciprocated through protected glass.
They turn a corner. Tree trunks and greenery flitter through the headlights. And then, not far ahead, the flashing blues and reds of emergency: police cars, ambulances.
Cyril says, “But what jhunjut is this.” He pulls quickly to the side, Ash immediately behind, his lights filling their car.
They sit in silence for a moment, trying to read the pantomime in the coloured lights. But movement is minimal, and half hidden by vehicles.
A rear door opens and Ash slips into the car. He says, “Is right in front o’ the hotel.”
Cyril says, “You have another news flash for us? We have eyes, you know.”
His tone tells Yasmin that he is unnerved. She places her hand on his, to calm him. He takes a deep breath, crosses his palms on the steering wheel in a gesture of indecision.
41
THE TIGER LILIES sat in a simple vase on the coffee table, an embarrassment on display, a rebuke that would not go away. Jim, eyeing them unhappily, mumbled, “What was the fucking point anyway?”
Yasmin caressed his arm, but he would not be consoled.
When his mother brought in a bowl of potato chips, Jim said, “Mom, maybe we should put the flowers somewhere else?”
“But why, dear?” she said, taken aback. “They’re beautiful.”
Quickly, Yasmin said, “It’s Jim, Mrs. Summerhayes. He reacts.”
“Oh, does he? But Jimmy, why didn’t you tell me? I’ll … Why don’t we put them in the dining room. Yes, the dining room.”
Jim sat there on the sofa beside Yasmin, and said nothing; merely watched with an ironic detachment Yasmin found painful and unattractive as his mother scooped up the vase and bustled off with it.
Jim said, “Don’t try mediating, Yas. See? Even there she couldn’t tell me she’s allergic.”
“Has she always scurried around like that, or is it me?”
“Mom’s always been a scurrier. That’s how she’s always operated. At the supermarket, in church, preparing dinner.”
“I wish you’d told me that before.”
“Why? What difference does it make?”
“Me. You and me. Our wedding. Scurriers don’t like surprises. I must have been a big one, bigger than she could ever have imagined.”
“That’s no excuse —”
“No, but at least I’d have —”
“Here we go then,” Mr. Summerhayes called as he came in holding two glasses of sherry. He had washed, changed his shirt. “One for you and one for you. I’ll be back with mine in just a minute.”
“At least,” Yasmin said quickly, “I wouldn’t have got the idea she was just simple and hateful.”
“But she was — then,
on the phone.”
“Nobody’s just one moment, Jim.”
“But I’ve had a whole lifetime of her moments. And I don’t think I’m any further along than you are.”
Only Mr. Summerhayes, ensconced in the embrace of his armchair, retained the comfort and presence of mind to give flow to the conversation.
He talked about his efforts to master the flower bed, about the labour of digging, about the stones and shards of glass he had sifted out, and the nutrients he had kneaded in. He had been to the university library, had consulted periodicals, and had learned to marvel at how much could be done with so little. He had made several trips to the botanical gardens, had consulted a gardener at the local nursery. He had done everything right, and had been careful not to allow his desire to exceed his grasp. Hence the decision to begin with the simplicity of hydrangeas, six full-grown, healthy plants purchased at the nursery.
“But they failed to thrive,” he said, draining the last of the sherry from his glass. “So they had to go.” He sighed, turned the glass around in his palm. “However, it’s a recent enthusiasm that’s proving to be — how shall I put it? — a recalcitrant mistress.”
At the metaphor — pronounced with careful relish — Yasmin saw Mrs. Summerhayes’s eyes flutter, saw her fight a sip of tea past tightened jaws.
“Ah, well,” he continued. “I shall push on and — who knows? — one day she may see fit to surrender her virtue.”
Mrs. Summerhayes placed her teacup on the coffee table with studied deliberation. She got to her feet. “If you will excuse me, I must see to supper.”
Mr. Summerhayes said, “But isn’t supper seeing to itself, my dear? Sizzling nicely away in the oven?”
Jim said, “Spoken like a man who knows nothing about cooking.”
Mr. Summerhayes cocked an eyebrow at him. “Taking her side, are you, Jimmy? And you know about cooking, do you?”
“I certainly know more than you do.”
Mr. Summerhayes snorted in amusement. “Not much of an achievement, if you ask me.”
“Did I?”
“Jimmy,” Mrs. Summerhayes interjected, “why don’t you show — Yasmin? — your old bedroom.”
Yasmin took Jim’s hand. “Yes, I’d love to see it.”
As they headed up the stairs, she wondered about the intonation with which Mrs. Summerhayes had said her name: as if her tongue had had to work its way around the vowels.
As if she had pronounced it for the very first time.
42
AS THEY WALK towards the lights, Yasmin notices her companions’ growing reluctance; senses the vertigo of living in a country where the law and the lawless are equally feared.
Ash whispers, “This ain’t Canada, you know, Miss Journalist. You can’t just go up to a policeman and start askin’ questions. You ain’t got no first amendment rights here, you know.”
“You’re mixing up your countries,” Yasmin replies over her shoulder. “We haven’t got a first amendment in Canada either.”
It is alone that she approaches a policeman; alone that she explains the situation. She gives him her passport, shows him her room key; knows that she is — for Cyril and Ash watching her watch him take her passport to a figure flagrant with authority down through to one wearing casual civilian dress — now part of the pantomime. But even here, on its periphery yet close enough to feel the heat from the idling engines, the scene remains indecipherable.
She senses Cyril and Ash’s approach; and to Cyril’s “Well?” can only shrug.
Presently, the policeman returns. Giving back her passport, he tells her that the hotel will be closed for some time; that she can retrieve her things — no need to check out, no need to pay. He steps aside to let her through, but his palm flutters up in restraint when Cyril and Ash attempt to follow. “You stayin’ in the hotel too?”
“No, no,” Cyril says. “We just going to give the lady a hand.”
“No can do. You wait here.”
Ash says, “We jus’ goin’ to give the lady a han’ with her luggage, man.”
Yasmin says, “It’s just one suitcase. I can handle it.” To end the discussion she turns and follows another booted policeman up the stairs of the hotel, knowing as she strides along behind him that she is, for Cyril and Ash, once more merging with the pantomime.
Yet, even from within, the pantomime retains its enigmatic movement: life slowed to a flipping of frames. Mystery in shards, riddles partially posed.
43
EVEN WITH THE light on, it was a room constructed in strokes of darkness: shadows on white.
“Did you bring a lot of girls up here?”
Small, too, startlingly so, smaller even than the captain’s cabin on the World War II corvette she had visited in Halifax harbour. The ceiling low, the walls monkishly bare. A small table stood in front of the window; a narrow bed occupied one corner.
“You kidding? Mom was always home. Didn’t stop me from dreaming, though.” He appeared awkward in its confines, his limbs too long, his energies suddenly rattled and bottled up.
“So this is a virgin room?” she teased.
“In a manner of speaking. As far as I’m concerned.”
She shut the door, the brass latch clicking with reassuring authority. “So what did you dream about?”
“You know,” he said, fingers interlocking below his belt. “The usual schoolboy fantasies.”
“I’ve never been a schoolboy.”
He laughed. “Schoolgirls.”
“Was this your bed?”
“Yes. But the table wasn’t there. I did my homework at the dining table.”
She sat on the bare mattress, her palm testing its firmness. “Where’d they get this? An army-surplus sale?”
“Comfort wasn’t a consideration.” He sat beside her, his fist thumping twice on the mattress, as if to pound it soft. “I once helped my dad put a sheet of plywood between their mattress and the box spring. Good for the back, he said.”
“Doesn’t sound as if you had much fun in this room.” But she liked the glimpse of the young man he had been: all that fervour contained.
“Oh … I don’t know. I used to smuggle in a Playboy or two once in a while.”
“So, those fantasies of yours — not just schoolgirls, huh?”
He smiled. “You know — one thing leads to another.”
“I know.” She ran her fingers down his neck, the skin soft and dry, and along the hard ridge of his collarbone. “Want to lie back? See if I can guess some of those schoolboy fantasies?”
“Yas, you’re crazy. My parents —”
She pressed at his chest, and he offered no resistance. As he let himself fall back onto the bed, she pressed in close, moulding her body to his through the encumbrance of clothing. Her lips to his ear, she whispered, “Call it revenge. Close your eyes and let me make it sweet for you.”
But she saw, looking at him, a face etched by an infectious anxiety. Sweet revenge was beyond him.
44
OVER THE SHOULDER of her escort she sees sombre-faced men and the backs of heads, white helmets and khaki caps. They move together through a sense of crowding, of stifling intimacy: everyone wants to have a look.
She sees fatigue, hears sighs and murmurs.
And as her escort precedes her into the elevator, the corner of her eye pivots backwards: catches a tablecloth fluttering down onto the security guard, prostrate, inert, skull-less.
Above the hum of the elevator she says to the policeman that last night there was a young woman on duty at the desk. Jennifer.
The policeman bites at his lower lip. He confesses to knowing little more than she does. They robbed the safe, he says, and he’s heard that the desk clerk — yes, a young woman, maybe this Jennifer, maybe not — was taken. At gunpoint.
A hostage?
Probably not, ma’am. More likely part o’ the booty. Yasmin shudders. What d’you mean — part of the booty? The policeman gestures at the opening door. Your floor,
ma’am, he says. Hurry it up, please.
45
TIME SOFTENED, MINUTES dissolving at the edges.
The sense of timelessness was seductive. But this timelessness — issued of lives lived for decades in the same manner, in the same place — was disconcerting too.
The placemats, of delicate lace, were kept in a plastic bag in a buffet in the dining room; beside them, rolled in a bag, were silk napkins.
When Yasmin admired them, fingering the texture of one and then the other in the sunlight leaking through the lace-curtained window above the buffet, Mrs. Summerhayes said, “They’ve endured the years well, haven’t they? Mr. Summerhayes and I received them as a wedding gift.”
“Ahh.” Wedding gifts: an area Yasmin thought best left unexplored. She hadn’t known what to do with the engraving of the Montreal skyline the mailman had delivered.
And perhaps exercising the same discretion, Mrs. Summer-hayes drew her attention to the cutlery, neatly arrayed on blue velvet in an oak box on top of the buffet. “Just knives forks and dessert spoons will do,” she said, setting out plates and wineglasses. “There. Shall we call the men and get on with it?”
“God, yes,” Yasmin muttered.
“Pardon me? What’s that?”
“I’ll call the men,” Yasmin said.
Garlic, the tea-leaf odour of rosemary, the meatiness of roasted lamb.
Mr. Summerhayes, leaning forward in his seat at the head of the table, clapped his hands in anticipation. “Ahh! Your mother’s specialty. Wreck of lamb.”
Mrs. Summerhayes, placing the silver platter in the middle of the table, said, “Actually, it’s a crown of lamb.”
“You must admit, my dear, that the crown appears to have been through a bit of an anti-monarchist rebellion.”
“This new butcher, I’m afraid. He’s not terribly competent. The string came undone in the oven.”
The Worlds Within Her Page 12