“Petra Stern, CBC.”
“Is that like Rosetta Stone?”
“It’s my name.”
“Come up to use the bathroom?”
“The ever-charming Donald Gregory.”
“I just thought, since you seem to be sleeping in the car. No no—your hair is fine, Petra.” Jeans, jean shirt, quilted green vest, new hiking boots. Interesting choices. Was she planning to hound him crosscountry?
“I came to talk. May I come in?”
“My world,” he says shifting just far enough to let her in, “for you, is an open book.”
She squeezes past him into the living room, makes a show of looking around, her composure recovered. “I salute your decorator.” She looks at him with a curiosity almost genuine. “Aren’t you a bit past living in a frat house? Or are you regressing academically too?”
“Everyone these days takes an interest in my housekeeping.”
She shrugs. “You seemed to be asking.”
“Mind taking off your shoes?” he asks pleasantly. After a glance at his own scuffed and crusted shoes she begins to unlace her boots. Small feet. Green socks. The details. Where does it end? She had been expecting to take off her shoes.
“Grab a seat. Drink?”
“A bit early,” she says faintly disapproving.
“Depends when you stopped,” he says on the way to the fridge.“By all means, take a good look.” He can see her sketching a quick description for her public: Curtains drawn. A certain dim clutter. Paper airplanes, glasses, blankets. Your average indoor campsite. He pauses at the kitchen door as she clears a space on the coffee table for the tape recorder, positions the microphone. Strong move, well rehearsed. From the briefcase she takes out a notepad, pens.
When he returns she is sitting in the middle of the couch.
“Cozy?”
“Comfortable.”
An annoying feeling comes over him at times, that he’s slept with someone but forgotten everything about it. How he was, how she was, if in fact they’d gone through with it.
He’s seen her face often over the preceding days. At the bottom of the drive … at other times, coming unbidden into his mind. Grey eyes, curly brown hair. Angular bones, not quite horsey. Beauty, it is such a fine line. It was the subject of a lifetime’s study. Another lifetime. Someone else’s.
Nothing in her face strikes a clear chord of recognition. No, it is her voice. Sharp-edged, brassy. Just right for radio. Somewhere he’s heard her laugh once. A short, sharp bark.
“Surprised to see me?” she asks.
“I see you out there almost every day.”
“Then you know I’m serious.”
“Stern even.”
A cold smile hooks the corner of her mouth. She hesitates, feeling her way.“I guess congratulations are in order.”
“I hate riddles,” he says flatly.
“I had a drink last night with a Detective Curtis. They’ve decided not to lay charges against you. None, not even a goddam parking ticket. Don’t look so relieved. Self-inflicted injuries, they said. Happens all the time, they tell me.”
“I can believe it does.”
“They’re announcing it tomorrow morning.”
“You’ll drink with Detective Curtis, Petra. Just how am I to take this?”
“I don’t want to have to use your bathroom.”
“Clever girl.”
He eases onto the end of the couch. She holds her ground in the middle. “You know, I just can’t quite figure you out.”
“How so?” He sips quietly from his scotch.
“Everything in this story is breaking your way. Apart from maybe losing your job—rumours of a huge golden handshake there, too, so excuse me if I don’t cry for you—all your problems just seem …”
“To slide away.”
“And yet here you are. Half-drunk, stewing in your mess, hiding out in the country in the middle of the afternoon. What am I missing?”
“I’m on retreat.”
“Full-retreat, yes. All I want to know is why. I’ve been operating on the theory you’re a sleazeball. But a couple of things don’t add up.”
“Like?”
“Like the 911 call, like the first aid. If you’re going to run, run. What the hell were you doing there in the first place? What made you go? Then you show up at the hospital covered in blood just after the police leave. Demand to know how she is. Give your real name, for God’s sake.”
“Caring guy.”
“I talked to the nurse in Admitting. The guy was in another world. But why? Grief, fear, guilt, what? What was it, Dr. Gregory? Somebody runs out of her apartment a minute ahead of the ambulance. A married man, a professional person, eminent even—let’s suppose he has his reasons. That same somebody shows up thirty minutes later at a public hospital, shirtless, raving? What was he doing for thirty minutes?”
“Driving around?” he suggests, getting up to freshen the drink. “Looking for parking, perhaps?” He returns to sit in the willow chair facing her where she sits waiting patiently.
“Then there’s all these papers. First, why take them, then refuse to give them back—and then fold, but only after keeping them just long enough to draw attention to yourself again. Is there something you want us all to see?”
“I wanted copies.”
“So you say.”
“So I say.”
“You’re actually doing some kind of book? I was right the other day.”
“Lucky guess, Petra. Or maybe you’re just that good.”
“Someone at a legitimate press called it in from Toronto. A rumour. Somebody they knew in vanity publishing heard something. A call from a professor in Calgary. It was all I had. I figured it was worth throwing at you.”
“So I have a public in Ontario. I’m making it big.”
“So tell me. Your book.”
“History of Flight.”
“As in fugitives?”
“That stack there’s Icarus.”
“We’re both doing similar research, then. Maybe different angles of the same story.”
“Right, Petra, we could work together.”
“Makes sense. Pool resources.”
“Just how drunk do you think I am?”
“I’ve talked to people you can’t talk to now.”
“Example?”
“The mother. Grace.”
“Pretty, isn’t she.”
“A high-society drunk,” Petra says.“Very, very smart and twice as edgy.”
“The father?”
“We didn’t exactly talk, no.”
“Cold fish.”
“Cold as cod.”
“Sick fish.” He offers this in the spirit of co-operation.
“Really?—what have you heard? He had a very ugly feel. Tell you what, you talk to me about him—” Her gaze wavers toward the fireplace. Don’t lose your nerve, Petra Stern. “—and I tell you what I got from the neighbour lady who saw the guy leaving Beulah’s apartment.”
“You first.”
“Isn’t it your turn?”
“Big fish, little fish.”
“All right, two for one: the neighbour, plus the Safeway clerk three hours before the call to the news desk.”
“I have enough on that in stack three,” he says, waving his glass grandly.
Petra Stern is becoming very slightly agitated in spite of her training. Her eyes have been tracing a little circuit from her subject’s face to the tape recorder, to the briefcase and back. Her discipline has been good. Now she allows herself a first frank look at the sheaves of papers stacked on the bare hardwood.
“May I?” she asks, getting suddenly to her feet and starting toward the fireplace. No doubt the placement of the stacks is becoming a worry to her.
“Certainly. But don’t touch.” Hitch in her step, a little segue into pacing in her green socks before the small fire in the hearth. “Please.” Taut swells at patch pockets front and back. Tender curves, sub rosa, belie the nam
e of Stern. Stern, Petra, he thinks, swirling the ice in his glass, that must be Indo-Aryan for butt, rock-firm.
“Try this, then,” she offers, upping the bid. “I was talking to a very conflicted Grace Limosneros, with so much to lose—”
“So many memberships—”
“Wanting to help more than she maybe knew. She let drop that Beulah thought her real father might be alive.” A pause.“You did know Jonas Limosneros is only her stepfather.”
“Stack two.”
“But I do have your interest … I can follow up for you. It’s what we do. A billion-dollar news machine. We have the resources.”
“Though fewer all the time.”
“All the more reason.”
“Be an interesting angle to your story,” he concedes.
“Done. Now you.”
“Miss Stone—”
“Stern.”
“Name indeed is destiny. Ms Stern, I have the story and you have nothing I need. And as you can see I’m very busy turning it into my story right now. A hot story.” Picking up a lighter from the coffee table, he thumbs up a small flame.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Too many competing drafts. Yours would be one more. So, if you’ll excuse me. Unless you’d care for that drink.”
“You know, you really do intrigue me,” she says. He is supposed to take this as grudging admiration. She leans toward him, a glossy sheen of silk glows briefly at the level of her second button. Tape recorder, quilted vest, hiking boots. Green silk camisole. She has come equipped for anything, all manner of inducements.
“Pray tell.”
“Look at you. Drunk, smug smile on your face, you squat in the ruins of your life, with a lighter—like a little boy about burn it all down, his belovèd treehouse.”
“And look at you, Petra—rehearsed but ready to improvise. It’s been fascinating to watch you work, close up.”
“Maybe I’ve got you all wrong.”
“You might.”
“You look more guilty than smug.”
“Guilt. A hard field to distinguish yourself in.” He finishes up his drink. No more.
“So to be distinguished you spend the past half-hour talking like a cheap crime novel?”
“A true-crime story,” he says nodding towards the fireplace.
“You find that funny.”
“Think of it as parody.”
“So you don’t really care—about what happened to her. You were just ready to blow anyway. What are you, forty, forty-five—mid-life crisis time? Is that it? Scheduled for your little breakdown?”
“Past due.”
“You’ve used her for everything else. Now as pretext—”
“To talk about me. And what a tonic that is—”
“Really, and who taught you about that?”
“Hysteria, nervous collapse, a good bout of flux. Nothing like it, for clearing the slate—”
“Who says that, Donald—your mother? Is that what she thought?”
Broken cloud lays soft shadows over the mountains, without any discernible pattern. A dappling of iron grey, grey-green.
“I suppose,” he says finally, “I should be impressed now.”
“Just part of the job. If you want a spot on the hottest dance card in town. You have a story, Dr. Gregory? I’ll run tape, you tell it your way.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten, Petra. I’ve had a little demonstration recently of how you let me tell my story. The interview on the courthouse steps is still quite vivid.”
“You find the guts to tell it, I won’t get in the way.” She fidgets a moment with her pen, an expensive ball-point. “Tell you what, you vet the transcript. To hell with it. As of tomorrow the story’s dead anyway. Final approval.”
“That simple.”
“We have the resources to get your story out.”
“Not interested.”
“You think you’ve got your little book—people don’t read, sure not some ex-professor’s vanity publication. You’ve got a story to tell, tell it to a microphone.
“I do not need you to tell my story.”
“But it’s not your damn story anyway, is it Donald? Here’s a chance to tell the side we don’t push. You saved her life. Didn’t you?” See the stern face of a hostile community suffused now with sympathy. Petra, thank you. “She would have bled to death—right?”
She’s become annoying. He has become tired, dead tired. Can’t she see. Why doesn’t she go away. She should be made to go away.
He looks out the window, never wanting to look at her again. Somewhere to the south, brush is being burned. For miles south, all across the foothills, light breaks through gaps in the clouds. Where it angles through the smoke, it is like the spotlights of some vast ball game. Angling all across the rolling checkerboard fields. This field on this day shall receive the blessing of light; these shall remain in shadow.
Soon the gold light will sallow and the scarlet turn to rust.
“You keep thinking I have nothing to offer you in return. But you’re wrong. I took the call, Donald. I was at the news desk. She spoke to me. I heard her voice. I heard her plans for you. What she said, Donald, you need to know….”
“Tell me what she said.”
“Your turn, Professor Gregory. You talk, I talk.”
Truth or dare.
“How did she …?”
“Sound? I know heartbreak when I hear it.”
He considered this.“Petra, the stern romantic. Who’d have guessed?”
“This hasn’t a fucking thing to do with romance.” Her hands twist at the shaft of her pen. “It’s just a chord, breaking. Very soft, very clear.”
Prepare to greet the faces that you meet.
Face them.
JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ
chorus
1: Of wonders I would sing to you—a miracle.
2: What, what is it? Tell us all!
1: Stop, wait—that I might speak.
2: Well, what is it? Quickly, please. I’m dying to hear!
1: Stop, wait—and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.
verses
As I say,
there was a girl
of tender years,
the age of ten and eight.
Stop, wait—
that I may tell you of her.
This child
had acquired great knowledge
despite being female
(or so it was alleged,
though little do I see
how this could be believed).
Stop, wait—
that you may discover what I mean.
Because, it is claimed
by I can’t say whom,
that women only ought
to learn to weave and sew.
Stop, wait—
I’ll tell you what I know.
It seems, by virtue of superior reasoning
she could tie sages up in knots;
a slip of a thing, persuading
these great scribes and scholars of whatever she thought!
Stop, wait—
I’ve told you nothing yet.
For soon enough they said
she was a saint, no less,
yet in no way did these books she read
detract one bit from her saintliness.
Stop, wait—
the matter is not ended there.
It is said Lucifer
never sleeps; when he heard
she was not only learned but saintly
he took form as a Mephistopheles—
Stop, wait—
there is much else to learn.
There was something Satan
was desperate to determine:
if there truly was a woman
whose learning surpassed his.
Stop, wait—
that I may tell you something more.
To this end, how does he proceed?
He goes to tempt an emperor
to bring her
by force
to apostasy.
Stop, wait—
There is one more thing yet in store.
Dear Lord, how brutally
the Emperor sets upon her,
but she lets herself be martyred
so as not to be defeated.
Stop, wait—
but a few words more are needed.
Ask no more—
to know what one such as Catherine
is made of, and this forever.
I know not. Amen.
NIGHT OF PAZ
[29 Dec. 1994]
GATES THROWN WIDE—S says the convent’s open not just for NewYear parties but for the celebrations—1995! Magical tricentenary of the passing of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Continuous cycles of conferences concerts plays and special celebrations. Year of mysteries, stunning disclosures—the recovery of Sor Juana’s purloined medallion. A rediscovered inventory of all the items in her cell—and rumours of a new poem … no one will say for sure….
And all the angels dark and light of SorJuanismo jetting in and flying back home to Mexico from all over the globe!—Lavrin Luciani Bergmann Alatorre Merrim Luiselli Glantz Bénassy Muriel Buxó … the whole honour role.
And Paz. Octavio Paz comes all the time to the Claustro.
S knows him or did once—Sweet S waits to tell me till now? He was a close friend of her father before a big falling out.
Paz is coming!!! In two days. A party to ring in the Great Year. First year of the new bundle—to fire the fifty-two-year millennium / talk about acceleration—what the Aztecs couldn’t teach us about time.
And conflagration.
Then she says he may not come. His heart, his health. His cats. No one knows. Octavio Paz!—a whole convent aflutter, impaled on pins and needles.
[30 Dec. 1994]
All day yesterday and the past three S spends in the Claustro theatre for rehearsals while I stay away. Our first quarrel.
Oh S I’m so sorry.
S was many many years ago an actress on the stage, and once the childstar of a bad very bad film—of the silent era—her laugh and sweet lovely blush, no S you are beautiful and thirty-six is young—and now for visiting performers I am the Claustro’s unofficial—you have an expression in English—welcome wagon?
The play the fucking play! New Year’s Eve! Night of Paz! …
Who never wrote. Never once, to me.
S and I fight—for this? No this is the Great Year of the Phoenix of America. All this is supposed to be for her.
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