Finding Again the World

by John Metcalf

  “Are you the poet?” said the plump woman.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  He smiled.

  “We had a nudist last week,” she said.

  * * *

  Panty-hose. Stocking-top. The whites of their thighs.

  Seated in the centre of the room on the footstool provided, he read to the assembled ladies. He read from his first Ryerson chapbook.

  He read his Dylan orotundities:

  In a once more summer time than this.

  His Auden atrocities:

  Love, now, like light.

  He read for forty minutes, giving them Nature, Time, and Love.

  The pièce de résistance proved to be lox.

  With rye bread. And cream cheese. Salami. Half-sours. Parma ham. Lima bean salad with mint. Devilled eggs and sculptured radishes. The cheese-board afforded Limburger, Gouda, Cheddar, Danish Blue, Feta, and Gruyere.

  Are poets different than other people?

  Salami.

  . . . or do you wait for inspiration?

  Potato salad.

  “No, of course not. It’s my pleasure. For. . . ?”

  “Bernice.”

  Jenny. Helen. Shirley. Joan. Ruby.

  WITH BEST WISHES.

  Nine Distance Travelled at $6.00 (Author’s Discount $2.00 = $18.00 Profit).

  “Well, I don’t want to sound pompous, but I suppose you’d call it vision.”

  Radish.

  “Pardon?”

  “. . . was wondering if Bernice had arranged a lift downtown for you? Because I’m leaving soon if you’d like a ride?”

  * * *

  “Over there,” she said, as they crunched across the gravel. “What my dear husband calls ‘the Kraut bucket.’”

  He wondered how old she was. Thirty-five. Expensively styled black hair. A year or two more maybe. Her strained skirt rode higher as they slammed the doors. He glanced at the nylon gleam of her thighs. She seemed unconcerned.

  “Cigarette?” she said.

  He leaned towards the flame. Her perfume was heavy in the car.

  She blew out smoke in a long sigh.

  “I liked your poems,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m not just saying that. I thought they were really good.”

  “I really appreciate that.”

  “You’re very polite—a very polite person, aren’t you?”

  She turned the key and roared the motor.

  “What makes you say that?” he said.

  She shrugged.

  “Nothing.”

  As they turned out of the drive, she said, “How do you stand it?”

  “Stand what?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” she said.

  He stared at her profile.

  “Why do you go then?” he said.

  “Stand what!” she said.

  “What the hell did you expect me to say?”

  She shrugged and then crushed the cigarette into the ashtray.

  “Are you married?”

  “No,” he said. “Why?”

  She turned onto the access road to the Trans-Canada.

  “Kids,” she said. “My dear husband’s dinners. Even Bernice Wise is a vacation.”

  She snapped on the radio.

  They settled into the drive back from Pointe Claire. She drove with angry concentration. The nylon sheen of her thighs green in the glow from the radio dial. The winding and unwinding notes of a harpsichord, the intricate figurings, absolved him from conversation. Mesmeric the rise and fall of headlights, the steady bore of the engine, the weaving patterns of the lanes of traffic; mesmeric the play of light and shadow, the approach and fall of overpasses, the rush of concrete void. The heater was making him drowsy. The words were drifting. Her gloved hand moved on the gear-shift.

  Trying to break free, the swell of words lifting and stirring like pan ice.

  Mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa, nec illi,

  Terra, gravis fueris: non fuit illa tibi.

  The final movement of the poem, dear ladies, changing direction, terra, changing direction, terrain the vocative.

  All, all, dear ladies, a question of balance.

  “rigidus caespes”

  “Sod” was ludicrous; he toyed with “rock,” “turf,” and “stones.” He was being trapped into the literal again; the morning at the Montreal Herald was repeating itself.

  “Charles Pevensey has a PERSONAL subscription to Reader’s Digest.”

  Pleasing.

  There was something about the toad-like Pevensey that had been working on his mind all day. An echo of the name’s sound. Epitaph on Salomon Pavy. Because it was an echo too, he knew, of Ben Jonson. Epitaph on Elizabeth L. H.

  Pevensey. Pevensey.

  Penshurst.

  COUPLETS.

  It needed couplets. That was the connection. The bastard needed couplets. He sat up and patted his pockets, finding a pencil stub in his shirt. His pad was in the Air Canada bag on the back seat. Removing the cigarettes from his package, wrapping them in the silver paper.

  “Yes, please,” she said.

  “What? Oh, sorry.”

  “Will you light me one?”

  As she took it from him, she said, “I’m sorry I was bitchy before.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Just one of those days,” she said.

  He spread the inner part of the packet on his knee and started to write, then scribbled over the words.

  The car stopping and starting now. Neon signs. Salada Tea. Traffic lights. Uniroyal Tire.

  They turned south onto Decarie heading downtown. Past the first of the restaurants.

  “Mr. Haine?”

  She glanced in the rear mirror and then smiled at him.

  “If you want to write it down,” she said.

  “What?”

  “It’s 743-6981.”

  Gentle as flowers . . . he wrote.

  “And if a man answers?”

  She laughed.

  Gentle as flowers make the stones

  She pulled into the right-hand lane and took the exit to Queen Mary Road.

  “You know something?” she said.

  He grunted enquiry, crossing through a word he’d written.

  “You’ve got a cruel mouth. I bet a lot of women have told you that.”

  “Me, cruel? I’m nice,” he said.

  “James Haine,” she said. “Does anyone call you ‘James?’”

  “No. Nor Jimmy.”

  Dare he use “comfort?”

  “Actually,” she said, “my name isn’t Rena. Well, it is, but my friends call me Midge.”

  “Midge?”

  “Short for Midgicovsky—from school.”

  “That’s a nice name,” he said. “I like that.”

  “And you have got a cruel mouth.”

  “Oh, Grandmama!”

  “What’s that meant to mean?”

  A girl’s name—two syllables.

  “You’re making me sound like the Big Bad Wolf.”

  “What?”

  “You know. All the better to bite you with sort of stuff.”

  She laughed.

  “Well, you have,” she said. “And anyway, you don’t hear me screaming for help.”

  That comfort . . .

  “Anyway, I like it,” she said. “You’re different.”

  He glanced at the Due de Lorraine bakery as they turned onto Cote des Neiges. He used to buy warm croissants there in his richer days. Surprise her with coffee, cognac, croissants. After writing all night, walking up in the early morning with the dog before she was awake.

  Two syllables.

  She braked a
nd changed lanes.

  Gentle as flowers make the stones

  That comfort Liza’s tender bones.

  Turning off Cote des Neiges, she took the road leading up to the Mountain.

  “It’s so beautiful up here at night,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you? I always come this way on the way home.”

  On the left the cemetery spreading up the slope for acres behind the black railings; mausoleums, statues, crosses, the dull glimmer of the endless rows of polished marble headstones.

  Past Beaver Lake. On to the summit.

  She parked the car at the Mount Royal Lookout, silence settling as they gazed over the lights of the city. A ghostly wedge from the revolving sweep of the searchlight on top of Place Ville Marie shone against the cloudbank to their left, shone, disappeared, shone.

  “I never get tired of this view,” she said.

  He nodded.

  She sighed.

  “Jim?”

  As he turned, she stretched across, her arms reaching out for him. She kissed his chin, the corner of his mouth, found his lips. Twisting towards her in the awkwardness of the seat, the gear-shift, he put his arms round her, one hand on a breast.

  “Hold me,” she whispered.

  His back was hurting.

  Her mouth was hot and open. Squirming, she reached up and unhooked her brassiere. After a few moments, she pushed her face into his neck.

  “That’s the sad thing about getting old,” she said, her breath hot and moist on his flesh, “having your breasts fall.”

  “Not old,” he mumbled.

  She kissed him open-mouthed, then biting gently at his lower lip. She was breathing heavily.

  “Get in the back,” she whispered.

  As they kissed again, her legs were stirring restlessly. His hand moved over nylon. She lifted herself, pulling up her skirt. She stretched out one leg and drew the other up, gasped as his fingers found her.

  “We can’t,” she whispered. “We mustn’t.”

  Her breathing was throaty.

  “I’m off the pill and I haven’t got anything with me.”

  His fingers were moving.

  “You don’t mind?”

  She moved her bottom further off the edge of the seat; she was gripping his other arm and making noises.

  The side of his face was sweaty against the shiny plastic upholstery.

  She was arching, arching herself towards him.

  Suddenly her body went rigid and she clamped his hand still. They lay quiet, the race of her breathing slowing. Her eyes were closed; her face slack. He watched the sweep of the searchlight against the cloudbank.

  Lie lightly, Earth . . .

  No.

  After a minute or so she moved her legs, easing herself up.

  “Mmmm,” she sighed.

  She pushed him towards the other side. Her hands undoing his belt buckle, she whispered, “Go on, lie back.” She was pushing up his shirt. She lay with her cheek against his stomach and then he felt the heat of her mouth on him. Her hand moving too.

  Her hair was stiff, lacquered.

  He grunted and she moved her head; sperm pumped onto his stomach.

  They lay in silence.

  He could feel the sperm getting cold, running down his side, cold on his hip.

  “There’s some Kleenex in my purse,” she said.

  She wiped his thigh and stomach, and pulling down his shirt, snuggled up against him, kissing his mouth, his chin, his neck. He stroked her shoulders, back, running his hand down to her buttocks and up again. She pulled herself higher until her cheek was against his.

  “Was it good for you, too?” she whispered.

  “Mmm.”

  He felt a mounting excitement.

  All, all, dear ladies, a question of balance.

  And he’d found it.

  His balancing pole, as it were, commas.

  COMMAS

  No risk of falling now; no staggering run up the incline of a sagging rope.

  Earth COMMA lie lightly on her COMMA who COMMA

  Living COMMA scarcely burdened you.

  Tears were welling in his half-shut eyes, the lights of the city lancing gold and silver along his wet lashes, the poem perfect.

  Gentle as flowers make the stones

  That comfort Liza’s tender bones.

  Earth, lie lightly on her, who,

  Living, scarcely burdened you.

  Feeling his hot tears on her cheek, she lifted her head to look at him.

  “You’re crying,” she whispered. “Don’t cry.”

  She brushed the backs of her fingers against his cheek.

  “Jim?”

  He stirred, shifting himself of some of her weight.

  “Jim?”

  She nestled against him.

  “You know something?” she said. “You’re very sweet.”

  DANDELIONS

  George kenway straightened his shoulders and sat upright to ease the pang of heartburn. He breathed deeply until the pain began to fade, its sharpness settling into a dull ache in his teeth on the left side. He took the bottle of aspirins from the centre drawer of the desk and shook a couple out onto his palm. When the pains had first started he had thought he was suffering heart attacks.

  It was probably lack of exercise. That, and sitting hunched over the desk. When the spring came again he would really try to get himself into shape. He pulled his stomach in and looked down, but the grey cardigan Mary had knitted him still bulged. Tennis might do the trick. He stared down at the mother-of-pearl buttons. Or walking. Walking was quite pleasant. He pushed his spectacles higher on the bridge of his nose.

  On both sides of the central aisle, the shelves stretched down the length of the narrow shop. There were no customers. In the silence, he could hear the sounds of the old beams and floor boards. On the desk lay Imprint and Book News; he had not yet read them. The paperback order forms, too, were waiting to be completed. The pencil in his hand doodled over the yellow pad drawing tiny, interlocking circles in endless repetitions.

  The bell above the door jangled. A woman with a child came in. He looked at her over his glasses and inclined his head in welcome. He never approached customers now. He did not want to say Can I help you? and hear the ritual I’m just looking, thank you.

  “A book for a boy, madam? This boy? Over in the far corner.”

  Over in the far corner with all the trains and planes, the fire engines and the spaceships, the brown bunnies and the cuddly bears; with all the fat, pink pigs in trousers, the winsome pups and patient horses. He glanced at his pocket watch. The glass was scratched and yellowed. It had belonged to his father. Mary had made a shammy-leather pocket for it in the waistband of his trousers.

  Business was slow, even for a Monday. Twenty-odd paperbacks, a book about the care of budgies, two copies of Middlemarch because they were doing it on TV and an enquiry:

  I can order it for you.

  And the traditional lie:

  I especially wanted it for today.

  He wrapped the book in brown paper, sticking down the flaps with tape. So much more sensible than string. Farm Friends. And change from the tin cash box in his drawer. He walked towards the door with the woman but stopped to straighten the Penguins and Pelicans. He would have to re-order, too, on the new gardening books. A very popular line.

  He moved back past Gardening and Cookery, Religion (Common Prayers in white leatherette and Presentation Bibles), Modern Literature (low again on the Cronins and Shutes), Hobbies, Travel, and Adventure, towards his desk.

  He had put his sandwiches in the desk drawer. He wondered what they were today. Cheese and tomato, perhaps? He hoped they weren’t fish-paste or luncheon-meat. Those always left him so thirsty. She’d promised shepherd’s pie tonight. He’d always
liked that. It was an attractive name, too. Shepherd’s pie. As he put his hand down to open the drawer, he noticed the sticking plaster across the back of his thumb. He thought, as he always did, what an unpleasant colour it was; that unnatural flesh colour, almost salmon, that children produced in their paintings. A nasty scrape on one of the wing nuts of Roy’s bicycle. And the wheel still wasn’t straight. That would be another job for tonight. He’d probably have to take off the brake blocks. And the front hedge couldn’t go much longer. It was silly, though, how upset she got about things like that. He would have to buy a bottle of machine oil for the clippers on the way home.

  The sandwiches were wrapped in grease-proof paper and secured with an elastic band. He looked at his watch again and decided to wait until one o’clock. Another ten minutes. Perhaps he could lose weight if, every day, he left one sandwich. But then, he knew that he would eat it with his afternoon cup of tea.

  Sometimes, in the long afternoons, after the day had been divided by the sandwiches, he saw the shelves as he had always imagined them, the rows of calf-bound volumes, gilt titles, gilt decoration on the spines, the light hinting on the mahogany richness of the old leather. Standing along the bottom shelves, the massive folios—Heraldry, County Visitations, Voyages, Theological Disputations, and Chronicles. The air would be heavy with the must of old paper. Lying open on his desk, or perhaps propped against his works of reference, would be a sixteenth-century German blackletter with quaint woodcuts of vigorous tortures and martyrdoms, and in the glass-fronted cases behind him a few incunabula and the Aldines and Elzevirs and the volumes with the fore-edge paintings. In the heavy portfolio beside the desk there would be the Speed and Bartholomew maps, single leaves from Caxton, a few autographs, and pages of medieval manuscript brilliant with gold, blue, and scarlet illumination. And to his few customers—for most of his trade would be through his scholarly catalogues—he would say:

  “Well, the title’s foxed and there’s some worming in the last signature, but it’s a rare volume. Not recorded in Wing, I believe.”

  Or he’d say:

  “It’s a pleasing book. A very representative binding.”

  He still bought catalogues of the sales and read the report from Sotheby’s every week in the Literary Supplement. It was Friday’s chief pleasure.