The Whirlpool

by Jane Urquhart

  So many decisions concerning this river… how to enter… where to cross… whether to turn away from it entirely. Still, it was decipherable once you had the knowledge. Here there was the whirlpool, a few miles further, swift current, further up, rapids, and even further, the giant cataract – a natural disaster, or wonder, depending how you looked at it.

  It was early morning. Fleda would be waking now inside the tent, her limbs unfolding from sleep like a flower. In Ottawa, his wife would be unfolding too. All over this time zone women would be awakening, opening up to the day. They filled his brain now. There was something in him that wanted to embrace them all, and then there was something else, stronger, which turned towards denial.

  He stepped towards the river. The sound it made was like a woman’s breath near his shoulder, incredibly gentle and quiet and calling. And then this fear of any action concerning the river, as if it were a woman. He who had been such a swimmer. The approach was so smooth, so lacking in hazards you could scarcely tell where the earth ended and the water began.

  Looking across the distance of the river to the foreign country on the other side, Patrick considered how there was always a point where one set of circumstances ended and another began. Boundaries, borderlines, territories. This swim would be a journey into another country, a journey he would choose to make in full knowledge that he had no maps, that he hardly spoke the language. Then he realized that the river belonged to no country and that fact made the whole space alien to him.

  Still, he wanted to swim.

  He walked away from the river through a narrow, dark ravine which became wider as it approached the incline. Here, oddly shaped rocks, left from the ice age, filled the gully and covered the slopes of the bank in random fashion, having been frozen in place in the midst of a tremendous natural upheaval. Hanging down towards these, sometimes covering them, were twisted vines, some as thick as his wrist. The ground at his feet was dark, damp, and filled in spots with tiny streams, all heading for the river, the whirlpool.

  He began to notice the roots of the trees that grew there. They gripped the edge of the bank, grew right over the boulders and dug their roots eagerly into the ground wherever they could find it. He could see in them the shapes of serpents and remembered the woman with her black umbrella, thrusting it through the foliage near the ground, looking nervously for rattlers. She doesn’t look for them any more, he thought. Whatever that fear was then, it’s gone now.

  It was not like his fear, not permanent.

  He remembered all the times he had returned from the river, remembered that the climb back up the bank was difficult, left your heart pounding in your ears, roaring in your ears like the noise of the whirlpool, the rapids. Patrick sat down on one of the black irregular rocks. He sat there, just listening to the water that he could not see.

  Here, in this dark gully, the noise could be any sound at all, could be a collection of streetcars, a symphony of bassoons, the wings of a thousand dark birds migrating. It could be a giant arm of ice moving over the landscape, or any number of suspension bridges falling into the gorge. Or it could be crowds, the incessant murmur of hundreds of people. Or the reverse, a negative sound, the sound of the silence when the crowds have disappeared; a vacuum of sound… neutral, harmless.

  Patrick listened, choosing the vacuum, letting the peace of it hang in his mind. Behind him the bank, the path leading to the top, the woman a hundred yards to the right of that. Beyond her, a path that led to the road and eventually to the strange child. Patrick chose the vacuum, the neutrality. The softness of water and the sound it makes, the places it goes. All decisions having been made thousands of years ago.

  The fear cleared. His spine relaxed. His hands hung limply over his knees. He sat peacefully on the old black rock for a long time.

  Then he rose to his feet and walked, through the dark ravine, back to the river.

  The Old River Man was lying on his stomach on a huge flat rock which jutted out over the water. Around him stunning scenery – cliffs striped by the ice age and an expanse of water moving from the rapids to the whirlpool. To his left, carefully wedged between two smaller rocks, was the bottle, three-quarters empty now, the label ragged where his thumbnail had torn it, over and over, as he drank. Lying on Rattler Rock (Reptile Rock) in the sun.

  It was rumoured that hundreds of years before, lizards and snakes had sunned themselves there in late summer, passing into the kind of lethargy only a reptile can muster. Only a reptile or a river man with a full bottle, emptying.

  He was halfway through the quart when he spotted it out there, floating around and around. Instantly, the alcoholic fog left his brain, his eyes focused. He pulled himself to his feet with a groan.

  The place where he kept his equipment was, fortunately, not far. He slipped between the two large rocks forming the enclosure. Even in the gloom, he was able to find exactly what he was looking for. He emerged a few moments later with several sturdy long poles, some wire, and rope, and a large hook.

  Now he was back on the rock, on his stomach, with all the equipment wired together into a sort of enormous fishing pole with a good length of rope, followed by the hook, at the end.

  “Goddam my father’s black cat’s ass!” He missed the target for the fifth time. After the third time he had taken yet another generous swig from the bottle, licking the hand afterwards that he had used to wipe the spillage from his chin. This time he merely cursed and adjusted his position on the rock’s surface, waiting like a hunter for the next revolution of the whirlpool.

  It mattered little to him whether the object he was after was animal or mineral, dead or alive. He had, in his day, performed many successful rescue missions, would have been a local hero if he could have played that role. But he wasn’t concerned with that. He was concerned with whiskey and the river. Essentially he felt it was the river he was rescuing by removing foreign objects from it.

  The trees along the banks on the other side could fool you. They were at that stage when their colour was the same as in springtime. You might think they were beginning, instead of beginning to end. But the River Man knew that this was almost autumn… followed by winter and ice in the river. The water didn’t fool him either and it never had. That’s what made him different.

  He flung the pole out into the whirlpool one more time. It was as if everything around him was drunk except for this small area of concentration. Everything was a blur except for this bundle of flesh and clothing caught in the current.

  He felt a tug on his pole. The hook had made contact. “Easy does it, Charlie,” he whispered as he began to pull his equipment into shore.

  His attention was now occupied by descending from Rattler Rock without letting his catch escape. One awkward move and the whole tedious process would begin over again. Once he had lost not only the body, but his equipment as well. At that point he had been angry enough to tear the whole goddamned escarpment down. But you never really lost anything in the whirlpool forever. Eventually it came back around again. All it took was time, patience, and a new hook.

  The body was coming in nicely…. The hook had connected, amazingly enough, with a belt buckle. The River Man shook his head. He had never seen this happen before. This way the body was being drawn forward from its centre, the rope looking like a thick umbilical cord, the limbs trailing loosely, slightly behind the torso.

  On the opposite shore the River Man could see the red hat of a man who was fishing for a more conventional catch.

  This one hadn’t been in the river long, he could see that. He hoisted the body up onto the stone beach and returned to the cave to fetch the old tarpaulin to cover it up. Three small boys appeared out of nowhere to watch his activities. “Keep an eye on it,” he said.

  The River Man wrapped his fist firmly around his bottle and headed along the shore towards the path that would take him up the bank into the world.

  On a stump outside the tent, Major David McDougal sat waiting for his wife. He was beginning to become
concerned. Already half an hour past the dinner hour and no wife, never mind no food. Punctuality was a word that Major David McDougal had understood completely, it would seem, since the day he was born. Where was his wife?

  She had wandered off before, of course, but never for this long. Often, she went to some distant part of the woods to write in that damned book of hers or to gather who knows what number or variety of flowers, and for who knows what reasons. But she understood his need for punctuality and always returned in time. Why should she choose this day to make an exception to rules she had learned so well?

  Nothing, McDougal concluded, was predictable about women, including their predictability.

  He rose and stomped testily into the tent, to look inside; something that had not occurred to him he should do until now. He would find that notebook of hers and read it. What had she been scribbling, anyway, all those afternoons at the edge of the bank? He looked all over the tent, even under the bed and in the laundry hamper, which he noticed had not yet received yesterday’s socks and underwear, and found no notebook. So, she was off somewhere writing, he decided. And her Browning books were gone as well. She was off somewhere writing, reading Browning, and recording her elevated thoughts. Women had such vague and dreary ways of wasting time. He would give her the Laura Secord lecture when she returned. What if she had decided to mope dreamily around reading poetry instead of delivering messages. What would have happened then.

  He imagined his wife’s contrite expression as he, kindly but firmly, pointed this out to her.

  Back outside, he moved around to the opposite side of the tent to gaze at the frame of the carriage house. The sun threw a gridwork of straight timber shadows all over the foliage around him. Architecture making its geometric statement on the landscape. The solidity of the work pleased the major. He knew the beams weren’t going anywhere, that they would be there for a long, long time.

  After nightfall his unease changed gears, shifted dramatically into panic. Something had happened, he was sure of it. He had already broken open his emergency supply of whiskey and his thoughts were becoming somewhat disjointed. He was having horrifying fantasies concerning treacherous acts involving male American tourists, whom, he believed, even while he was sober, you should never trust. Any American was bred to want to take over things; your water supply, your mineral deposits, your entire country, your wife. “The bastards,” he mumbled quietly to himself, ominously eyeing the 1812 musket he kept in a corner of the tent for just such occasions. And, even worse, the thought struck him suddenly, she might have been kidnapped by an American military historian who had heard about his work and was even now trying to obtain, by God knows what form of terrifying means, information concerning his views on the Siege of Fort Erie.

  Either you tell me how many pages he has written, Madam, or I will rip open that muddy calico dress of yours from the neck to the knees.

  “The swine,” growled McDougal, promising himself to look into the matter of armed sentries at all border crossings.

  By ten o’clock, he had finished his emergency supply of whiskey and was working on his emergency supply of gin. He was ready to declare war. Something American had happened to his wife… there was no other possible explanation.

  A third of the way through the gin, he began to become embarrassed. How does one look for a lost wife? How does one admit to the authorities that she was left alone in the woods, a perfect lure for the ever-present enemy? How does one convince the authorities that something American has happened to your wife and that action would have to be taken immediately? It was hopeless. They would let the Yanks take anything, everything, and never bat an eyelash.

  Large, angry tears filled his eyes. The tent became blurry. It was as though McDougal’s world were evaporating right before his eyes, cartwheeling vaguely away into another nationality, taking everything familiar with it.

  The next morning he awoke abruptly from a dream concerning Robert Browning’s views of military life and realized his wife was gone. Because he had not undressed the night before, he was able to spring immediately from his bed, leave the tent and rush distractedly into the woods calling her name. Not expecting an answer by now, but calling nonetheless, as people do who have irrevocably lost something. He could actually feel her absence in the atmosphere, feel that the acre was making a statement about the improbability of her ever returning to the spot. It seemed to him absurd that when she was so undeniably gone the kettle and the dish pan should still be where she left them, that the hammock he had placed at the edge of the bank still remained.

  Looking from this edge down towards the water, he could see the River Man, a tiny elf, fishing for something with his strange equipment. Then he could see him reeling in his catch. Major McDougal turned away, disallowing the conclusion that was trying to gain entry into his mind. He decided instead to make a thorough search of the woods up and down the bank. Some time later he saw the men descend the bank with their wicker basket. Still he refused to look carefully at the information that was being given to him.

  He searched behind every shrub and behind every thicket. He called and called with his best military voice, until his voice left him altogether. It was late in the afternoon before he decided that he would have to visit the funeral home.

  As McDougal sat on the streetcar that would take him to Main Street and the undertaker’s, a sudden series of memories flashed through his mind concerning an old aunt of his, one he had known only superficially. He recalled, now, how she had died, slowly and in stages, not so much from disease as from withdrawal… the whole process taking years.

  First, she had refused to visit Toronto ever again, giving up forever her spring and fall shopping trips. But, when several months later, she had decided not to venture beyond her own garden gate, relatives were called upon to do errands for her. David had been one of them. When winter came, she settled into her parlour and her daily path was reduced to that between kitchen and parlour and bedroom.

  One day, when he arrived with a loaf of bread, he found her ensconced in her bedroom at two in the afternoon. Claiming that she felt just fine, she announced that the only way she would leave the room would be feet first. At this point she should have died, but she didn’t. This stage lasted five years, during which her sole occupation was the ordering of an endless series of bedjackets from Eaton’s and Simpsons catalogues. After her death, sixty-seven of these garments were discovered in her bedroom closet and dresser drawers.

  Now it occurred to McDougal that his life had been moving down a path which would eventually carry him through the door of his still-unconstructed house. And while he had imagined walking through the door of the house, he had never considered stepping back outside. The perimeter of his own life was shrinking. He was just like his barely remembered aunt.

  When he arrived at Grady and Son he was startled to find that it was Patrick, rather than his wife, in the basket. The sorrow he had carried with him on the streetcar spilled out now and he began to weep.

  “So young,” Maud commented sympathetically. “A real tragedy. Was he related to you? Whom should we contact?”

  “I don’t know where she is,” replied McDougal. “I don’t know how to contact her at all.”

  Leaving the undertaking establishment McDougal went directly to the museum to look at ammunition. Bullets, gunflints, grapeshot, cannon-balls, caged and harmless in their glass cabinets.

  There was peace here, and the major knew it. Emptied of drama and emotion these artifacts would not be making any further statements, any further journeys. They would remain here now, stunningly innocent and clear, years after their complicated performances involving death and pain. They had become three-dimensional documents locked away in rooms.

  McDougal was comforted by the sight of these objects carefully arranged on fabric, safely catalogued and housed. He stayed there with the tips of his fingers resting on the cool glass, looking over his shoulder only once when he thought he might have heard the rustle o
f a woman’s skirt on the oak floor.

  The young man was beautiful. Maud had not been prepared for that. The drowning had hardly affected him except to place a thin, hardly noticeable film across his eyes. But that was merely death. The rest of him was undamaged, perfect. He was like a dead child.

  She had seen the film before, many times. It reminded her of the caul which had partially covered her child’s face at birth, except that here, in death, it only covered the eyes. The caul was supposed to make the baby exceptionally lucky, all through his life. Her mother-in-law had said so… had said also that it was a preservative against drowning. Later, it seemed that many of the river bodies carried this charm, fragments of it, in their eyes.

  A gift that had come too late.

  Her mother-in-law had wanted to keep the caul. She told Maud that in Ireland it would be dried and cut up into pieces so that each member of the family might share in the luck. They would carry fragments of it around in their back pockets, to ward off curses, to ward off drowning. Maud could never understand this. She was revolted by the membrane and insisted that it should be disposed of. Until the moment of her death, Maud’s mother-in-law maintained that the baby was odd because his caul had been taken from him and destroyed.

  Maud was no longer in mourning. She had dressed today for the first time in bright yellow, the colour of her autumn flowers. She had discarded everything, all the crape, all the mauve and black and white cotton, all the kept things connected with death.

  She and the child had carried the boxes of teeth and keys and rings, tie-clips, shoelaces, and laundry-markers out to the wagon. Jesus Christ and God Almighty would take whatever Sam and Jas and Peter didn’t want off to the dump.

  And then they had brought in the beautiful drowned man.

  Gazing at his pale corpse, now, Maud heard her mother-in-law’s voice again… the way she said the word caul, the word blessed, the word cursed. Beside her the child stood transfixed, his face pale and shining. He said the word “man” three times, slowly and deliberately, and then the word “swim.” With one hand, he reached towards the corpse’s cuff but Maud pulled him back, closer to her own warm body.