The Fire-Dwellers

by Margaret Laurence

  — All useless. Everything anybody says to their kids is useless. Kids don’t go by that. Or do they? Who is right, Mac or me? Maybe we’re both wrong. All I want to do is hold Duncan so he isn’t afraid. Is that wrong? What if Mac’s dead right? Duncan did make a lot of fuss, I have to admit. How to stop myself ruining him?

  Later, when Duncan has gone upstairs, Stacey follows him, first making sure that Mac is watching the news on TV in the basement playroom.

  Duncan?

  He is sitting on his bed, holding one of his model cars in one hand, turning it over and over without seeing it.

  You okay now, Duncan?

  He looks up at her, his eyes tearless, almost passive.

  I never do anything right.

  He didn’t mean that, Duncan. He only meant

  Well, I don’t, Mum. I just don’t do anything right

  — What words? I haven’t got any. It isn’t mine he wants anyway. It’s Mac’s and Ian’s, and those he won’t get. I’m far from him, too. Far even from Duncan. How did it happen like this?

  After dinner, Katie is doing her homework in her room. Stacey is bathing Jen. Mac has gone with his briefcase into the study. Duncan is looking at TV, and Ian is prowling. Then Katie’s infuriated shrieking voice.

  Mother! Tell Ian to get out of here!

  — Heaven. She’s started calling me Mother instead of Mum. How long? I never noticed before.

  Ian! What’re you doing?

  He barged right into my room without knocking. I can’t stand people doing that. Scram, you little creep!

  Quit shoving me, you, or I’ll

  Ow! That hurt! Boy, I’ll show you

  Yeh? Well, how d’you like this then

  Crash. Scream. Slam. Stacey flies out of the bathroom, hands soap-slippery, and along the corridor. She pulls Katie and Ian apart and pushes them into their respective bedrooms.

  Okay, Ian. Just leave her alone, eh?

  I was only

  All right all right – you know what I told you about knocking before you go into people’s bedrooms. And do not throw the hall chair any more, see?

  Stacey carefully knocks and enters Katie’s room. Katie is gathering up the littered textbooks, her long hair trailing on the floor as she stoops.

  Katie, I know it was wrong of him. But he’s been in a pretty low mood today. Try to be patient with

  Patient! What good does that do? He never pays any attention.

  Well, try

  You try. That’s your job.

  Yeh, well just wait, sweetheart, till you’ve got your own kids

  I’m not going to have

  Oh? Why not?

  Because it’s for the birds, that’s why.

  What is?

  The whole deal. You saying we get on your nerves all the time. You and Dad yakking away at each other – Whatsmatter? Nothing’s the matter. No need to talk to me in that tone of voice. Man, not for me.

  Stacey Cameron, sixteen, watching granite-eyed while her mother retreated softly and billowingly into temporary but recurring nerves, meaning the solace of flowing eyes and codeine for the headaches. I won’t argue any more with you, Stacey – it hurts me too much when you’re so stubborn, and it isn’t as though I could even ask your father. You wait, you just wait until you have your own children. (I’ll have them, all right, but it won’t ever be like this, my setup.)

  Stacey stands in the doorway, unmoving, staring.

  Katie – does it really strike you like that?

  Katie does not reply. She cannot, because she is crying. Stacey moves towards her, but Katie turns and faces the wall, her voice low and muffled.

  Go away, can’t you?

  — It’s her age. They’re all like that, at about this age. Of course I know that. Katie – talk to me.

  Mac, talk to me.

  Oh Christ, Stacey.

  I know I know it’s late – time for sleep – work tomorrow – but please

  It is eleven thirty and they are in bed. The light is out. Mac has just butted his last cigarette and replaced the ashtray on the bedside table. He sighs, and Stacey can feel him edging a little further towards his own side of the bed.

  — You’ll fall out of bed in a minute, Mac, if you’re not careful. What do you think it would do – pollute you, if you touched me? And yet if I said that, it would be a terrible thing to say. Unforgivable. Like what I did last night at the party. Nothing is ever looked at and torn up and thrown away like scrap paper. The abrasions just go on accumulating. What a lot of heavy invisible garbage we live with.

  Mac, about last night

  Look, I told you. Let’s drop it, eh? No use talking about it.

  Okay. But you don’t seem to drop it.

  What do you mean, I don’t seem to drop it? It’s you who

  Well, you go around being gloomy and not talking – naturally I don’t expect you to like what I did but was it really so terrible? I’d rather you got mad and yelled at me and then it would be all over maybe and we could forget it.

  If I did yell at you or beat you up, would you really like that any better?

  I only meant saying something, to clear the air. I didn’t mean beating me up, for heaven’s sake. I’d walk out on you if you did that.

  — Would I? With four kids? How could you walk out on him, Stacey, whatever he did or was like? You couldn’t, sweetheart, and don’t you forget it. You haven’t got a nickel of your own. This is what they mean by emancipation. I’m lucky he’s not more externally violent, that’s all. I see it, God, but don’t expect me to like it.

  Stacey, I don’t care to discuss it. Is that clear?

  Yessir.

  Cut it out, will you?

  Cut what out?

  That act.

  Oh Mac, please

  She has turned to him, and put her hands on his shoulders. For a moment he lies still, while she undoes his pajamas and begins slowly touching him where she knows it will have effect. Her hands move across the hair on his chest and down to his sex. He stirs then, and suddenly, abruptly, almost roughly, begins making love to her.

  — Strange that the hair under his arms and on his chest is auburn but between his legs dark. Can’t see the color but I know it. The mole on his right shoulder. The scar on his thigh – right here – where he got gashed playing hockey when he was a kid. I know every inch of his skin. Mac? You want me?

  Yes, now he does.

  I do too, Mac.

  You do what?

  Want you

  Yeh, I know I know. Now, Stacey?

  Yes. Now.

  Stacey rises to him, her legs linked around his, and cries out as she always does without knowing it. He comes in pain-pleasure silence as almost always, telling her only through veins and muscles and skin that he is with her. When it is over, they separate because his weight on her ribs always makes her cough after a few moments, and anyway he always has to get up and go to the bathroom.

  — Did I take that christly pill this morning? I was feeling so grim – can’t remember. Yes, I did take it. Along with the blue Richalife and four aspirins, with second cup of coffee. All these considerations.

  The apartment was cramped and dingy, and they had hardly any furniture. It’s ours, Stacey – just think of that – fantastic, eh? And they slept in each other’s arms and legs all night, with peace, and wakened whole.

  You okay, Stacey?

  Oh yes.

  Good night, then

  Good night

  Within minutes she can hear Mac breathing deeply in sleep. Sometimes he moans in his sleep and she always asks him the next day if he had a dream but he can never remember. Tonight he is quiet. Stacey turns over on her right side, and pulls her legs up so she is lying Z-shaped.

  — Tonight I’ll sleep. Let us be thankful for mercies, whatever.

  The rain forest is thick, matted, overgrown with thorned berry bushes, the fallen needles from the pine and tamarack bronzing the earth. Smell of moss, wet branches, mellowly rotten leaves. It is
very difficult to walk through. The wild brambles stretch out their fish hooks to tear at exposed skin. The ground is spongy underfoot, for the moss tops centuries of leaf mold. She has to continue, bringing what she is carrying with her. The thing is bleeding from the neck stump, but that cannot be helped. The severed head spills only blood, nothing else. She has tunneled at last through the undergrowth. Now she has the right to look. She holds it up in front of her. How is it that she can see it? What is she seeing it with? That is the question. The head she has been carrying is of course none but hers.

  FIVE

  EVER-OPEN EYE BOUGAINVILLAEA BURGEONING, EDGING STREETS WHERE BEGGARS SQUAT IN DUST. MAN BURNING. HIS FACE CANNOT BE SEEN. HE LIES STILL, PERHAPS ALREADY DEAD. FLAMES LEAP AND QUIVER FROM HIS BLACKENED ROBE LIKE EXCITED CHILDREN OF HELL. VOICE: TODAY ANOTHER BUDDHIST MONK SET FIRE TO HIMSELF IN PROTEST AGAINST THE WAR IN

  Bloody fools. What do they think it’ll accomplish?

  I know. But they believe

  Any coffee left, Stacey?

  Yeh. I’ll heat it up.

  Stacey comes back from the kitchen and hands Mac his cup. He is sitting in the old chintz-covered armchair which was their second piece of furniture, the first having been their bed, and which has now been dismissed to the basement TV room. Mac’s legs are stretched out full length, and the frown lines between his eyes are still there even after an entire evening of no work.

  EVER-OPEN EYE A HILLSIDE AND SMALL TREES SEEN FROM HIGH AND FARAWAY. THE SMOKE RISING IN ROLLING CLOUDS. VOICE: ACCELERATED BOMBING IN THE AREA OF

  Mac?

  Yeh?

  Oh – nothing. I just thought it was kind of flickering for a minute, there.

  — Why talk? Mac doesn’t like to, and he’s right. What good does it do? Can we do one goddam thing? No. And what are my reasons, anyway? I said to Jake one evening two three years ago that I had this feeling like the fall of Rome and he said you’re not afraid it’ll happen; you’re afraid it won’t. Since then I always wonder. Anything for a little excitement? Goddam you, Jake Fogler. It’s a lie. There are still a few things I do know. At least, I think there are. But even those are mixed now. Like laughing amid the desire to puke re: that newspaper interview with that woman somewhere in the States. He came home on leave and it’s like all his reflexes have been changed, sort of. His little sister jumped out at him from behind the door, just for fun, like, and he only just stopped himself in time from karate chopping her. Little sisters of the world, watch it, eh? Never mind the broken-hearts bit. Broken necks are the concern these days. But I laughed as well. Conditioned into monsterdom, like the soldier. The look on Ian’s face that time I pitched them both to the floor. And my eyes, covered with blood that wasn’t there, so I couldn’t for a moment see anything but rage. Stop the noise, just stop the noise. That’s what I thought. How can I ever make up for it? What if it happens again? That precise thing won’t, but something else may. In God’s name, what is Mac like, in there, wherever he lives?

  EVER-OPEN EYE THE SON OF ROBIN HOOD IS CANTERING ALONG THROUGH SHERWOOD. LUCKILY THERE HAPPENS TO BE A SIGN ON A ZIGZAG PIECE OF BOARD AS IN NORTH AMERICAN NATIONAL PARKS. NOTTINGHAM 3½ MILES.

  Boy, this one’s as old as the hills. You ever seen it before, Mac?

  Yes, I think so. May as well watch it anyway.

  Yeh, may as well.

  Ian nineteen, in love with the uniform he is wearing. Jen, eleven, talking by this time, suddenly startling him and yelling as she jumps out from behind a something. Ian’s lifted hand caught by himself in mid-strike. His face not his own, and yet his own, belonging totally to the embryonic cougar which has always been there.

  — No. No, Stacey. Do that one over again.

  Ian nineteen in plain well-cut business suit, having just graduated (early, admittedly, but he is bright) from university, now entering his first job. There is a great future in the sale of nasal contraceptives, tapes of apes and rapes, instant-color chameleon embalming fluid and deep freeze for cancer patients who will be melted and resuscitated when a cure is found. This year a Volkswagen; next year a Jaguar. Like a mighty army moves the unbesodden; brothers we are treading where saints have been introdden.

  — Very funny, doll. Try again.

  Ian nineteen quitting university. I am a dropout. I opt out. Let the maggots crawl. I believe in peace, love, expanded consciousness and nonviolent violence. Ian, poet, artist, musician, going his own way.

  — Nuts. Never Ian. Duncan, maybe. Anyway, what’s the use in opting out? Maybe there is, but it’s beyond me. I can’t reach it. I’m in forevermore, like it or not.

  Mac?

  Mm?

  What shall I put on those charts for Richalife? Where it says energy snap-up and that.

  You mean you haven’t put anything?

  Well, no

  Oh for Christ’s sake, Stacey. Well, give them all to me, then. I’ll do them.

  For all of us?

  Somebody’s got to.

  Yeh, well I guess that would be the best thing. Mac, I would’ve thought you wouldn’t have to work quite so hard now you’ve got a city area.

  It’s the exact opposite.

  I thought maybe I’d ask Tess and Jake in on Thursday. Will you be home?

  No. I have to go to a rally.

  A what?

  Rally. R-A-double L-Y.

  Oh for heaven’s sake. Well, can I come, too?

  You wouldn’t find it interesting.

  How do you know?

  Now look, Stacey

  Okay okay. You don’t want me to see Thor. You’re afraid I’ll disgrace you. Well, I wouldn’t.

  I did not say that. Did I say that?

  Not in so many words. But that resigned tone of yours

  Good God, Stacey. I can’t say anything right, can I? If I have to check on my tone every time I open my mouth

  Oh, I know. That’s how it sounded. But I didn’t mean

  What precisely did you mean, then?

  I don’t know. I’ve lost it.

  This is the first evening I’ve taken off in weeks, and now you

  I’m sorry. Honestly, Mac. I know. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.

  Look, Stacey, are you feeling okay?

  I don’t know. I’ve been getting these headaches

  — Is that true? Or did I just make it up? I say I am not much in love with the lies, but they don’t get less – they get more. How can this be? God forgive me a poor spinner.

  Well, you better see the doctor, then. No – I think I’m exaggerating. It’s nothing. It’s just from looking at the TV all evening. I’ll take a couple of aspirins.

  — I haven’t got a headache at all. Yes, I have. As a matter of fact, now that I notice it, it’s excruciating.

  Maybe you need glasses.

  Yeh, maybe

  EVER-OPEN EYE THE SON OF ROBIN HOOD STANDS BEHIND KING JOHN AT RUNNYMEDE, MAKING THE RELUCTANT MONARCH SIGN THE MAGNA CARTA.

  — Sometimes a person feels that something else must have been meant to happen in your own life, or is this all there’s ever going to be, just like this? Until I die. What’ll it be like to die? Not able to breathe? Fighting for air? Or letting everything slide away, seeing shapes like shadows that used to be people, nothing real because in a minute you won’t be real any more? Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with me now and in the hour of my death. If only I could say that, but no. My father’s dead face, looking no different except the eyes closed, and I thought his face had been dead for a long time before he died, so what did it matter, but I didn’t believe that. Something should happen before it’s too late. Idiot-child, what more could happen? What more do you want? You’ve got – yeh, I know, God. No need to write me a list. And I’m grateful. Don’t take me seriously. Don’t let anything terrible happen to the kids.

  Click.

  Well, c’mon, Stacey, it’s getting late.

  Yeh, so it is

  Doctor Spender’s waiting room is walled with plants – tall rubber plants with le
aves slickly green as though varnished, ferns drooping like miniature willow trees, needled cacti. They are real, not plastic, and this, obscurely, gives Stacey faith in Doctor Spender’s medical abilities. Stacey is the only person waiting. She riffles through magazines, looking only at the pictures. She is wearing her black skirt and a yellow tailored blouse, so it will be easier to strip to the waist in case he wants to listen to her lungs.

  — Should I tell Mac I’ve been? I don’t think so. If there is something wrong, it would only worry him, and if there isn’t, he’d think I was neurotic. Boy, he’d sure be right about that. I shouldn’t have come. There isn’t a darned thing the matter with me. I wish I’d worn my blue suit instead of this skirt. Katie’s right – it looks like Victoriana. Does it, hell. Why should it? I only bought it last year. What does Mac think about Thor? What does Mac think about? What are you thinking about, Mac? Oh, nothing much. Well, what sort of a nothing? For heaven’s sake, Stacey, what does it matter?

  Mac recounting, once, something that happened a long time ago. Don’t know why I did it, but when I was a kid Igot mad one day and shoved my fist through a pane of glass in the kitchen window. You did? It doesn’t sound like you. What did your dad say? Oh, he was furious, but he didn’t strap me. He said that even if I had lost my self-control, he wasn’t going to lose his. What did he do, then? Made me pray with him, for self-control. Sounds pretty funny, likely. Well, not all that funny. The prayer bit didn’t do much good, but he was right about the other. Yeh, I guess so.

  — What really happened? How was it for him?

  Mac, about Ian’s age, listening to his mother’s softly chiding voice. Must remember you are a minister’s son, dear, and set a good example. It isn’t asking very much dear and of course a BB gun is out of the question and it hurts me so when I hear you using swear words and. Mac, maybe only the once, when it was too much, his face like Ian’s face, inheld, bitterly uncommunicative, lashing out, not knowing he was going to smash the window until he had done it. Matthew, towering like Moses, bearing in his eyes the letter of the Law. Kneel down, Clifford, kneel down right here in the study with me, and we will both pray. Mac, longing for any whip rather than this one, knowing this occasion would never arise again, must not, looking at his father’s clamped-shut eyes, listening to the flat voice calling upon the lord of all the galaxies to bear witness to a fragmented square of a brittle substance called glass by some of the users of it who lived on a small planet and who must learn not to break, not by not wanting to, but by some other reinforced and steel means.