Then I started drinking. My oh my, where didn’t I go that afternoon? As the day wore on I found myself on foreign shores. Let me stop for a moment. I haven’t been entirely candid about my mother, have I? Perhaps I should be now. The truth is that she wasn’t a cold woman who barely touched me, not in the beginning anyway. I’ve told that story so often I’ve come to believe it myself. The truth is, she adored me. And I adored her back. When I was little I used to believe that the world was full of brown paper bags and useless things, and I thought she did too. I believed that she saw everything, knew everything and loved everything about me.
But sometime in my early teenage years she began to turn on me. I could never quite fathom why (I suspect now it was drink and prescription pills), but she became untrustworthy, a person to hide things from. Once, when I was fourteen, I came home from school at noon (it was a half day) and found her in my room, rooting through a box of letters, adolescent love letters collected like swimming badges. I could hear her talking to herself, raging and raging and raging. I haven’t a clue what she was looking for—proof, perhaps, but of what I don’t know. There were other incidents: inexplicable explosions of wrath, the evening she ripped down the shower curtain when I was getting ready to go to a party, her throwing a friend out of the house for looking at her breasts. For a whole summer she ceased to speak to me. She passed me silently in the kitchen, the hallway, the front porch, the living room. I ate my dinner in silence; I went upstairs straight after. She never came up. But I was stronger than her, and I got used to her not loving me any more. I grew skin like cement; I became uncrackable. I shall die before I speak first, I thought, I shall die. And then one evening I heard a thump in the living room. I opened my door silently and went downstairs, and she lay on the floor, those blue eyes still open. And how sad I was. How terribly sad that we didn’t get a chance to make up. Because I had always thought we would, had always known she would knock on my door one evening and we’d be friends again. We were so fine once, she and I, when I was little, the two of us having a picnic by the side of a lake in Algonquin Park. Such a warm summer day, and I sat on a blanket and the grass waved, the leaves in the trees shushed and shushed, and in that sound I believed they were saying to me, You will be happy, you will be happy.
The afternoon wore on. The yellow cat, who now dwelled fulltime on my porch, leapt up and settled in my lap. Over the past few months I’d grown rather attached to him. I rubbed him behind the ears where he liked it specially; he purred and moaned and stretched his limbs, his fierce claws extending, finally rolling over in my lap and peering up so that I might rub his tummy. A breeze came up and seemed to blow away the clouds; they hung in wisps as though torn and scattered by the wind.
Surrounded by the shrieks of birds and children, I had the sensation of being swept away on a magic carpet. I turned my head this way and that, and the carpet took me through the city. I saw fantastic sights. I made unusual connections.
I fell asleep.
C H A P T E R 10
I awoke at sunset with a foul mouth and a seasick stomach. The last sunlight of the day gleamed off a neighbour’s steeple. I smiled into the bathroom mirror. It was a sly smile that insinuated I knew something, that we would all know it soon enough. Be patient, it whispered, you’ll see.
I left my house in search of a restaurant with white tablecloths and kindly waiters. It seemed such a comforting image, so fresh and clean, that it seemed as if I would feel fresh and clean if only I could find it. The sky changed dramatically. Reddish gold clouds hurried in different directions, as if fleeing. One had the impression, walking down my street that early evening, of going through a narrow passageway, the walls of which were smeared with dabs of brightly coloured paint. From the faces coming up the sidewalk—they moved on invisible wheels—I could see I was pursuing an unsteady course. They exchanged quick glances and lowered their heads as if my eyes were fish hooks that might catch them under the chin. Once I looked over my shoulder and saw two white faces at the end of long necks, like daffodils in a field, staring after me. For a fleeting second I thought I recognized them. I may have.
The day rushed to crowd in everything it could before darkness. The clouds had flattened out and lay in pink banks, interspersed here and there with dark blue daubs. A grey tint gathered on lawns, in bushes, in laneways, and with a puff of fragrant breath the day expired. I careened onto Bloor Street, thick now with evening strollers. It was a Friday night and with the alarm of someone who has just remembered leaving a boiling pot of water on the stove, it hit me that there might not be a table for me at the restaurant. Or worse, that it might be the wrong table, a table to the side of things, to the side of life. How tedious, how heartbreaking it would be to turn around and go home. Sad Odysseus! For no other restaurant in the world would do. I rushed forward.
“Professor Halloway?”
I heard it from somewhere behind me. It was a woman’s voice, but it registered on my nervous system like an intrusion, as if a stranger had grabbed me aggressively by the shoulder and swung me around. Standing in front of me was a young woman with black bangs.
“It’s Katrina,” she said. “From your French class.” I recognized her, but it mustn’t have registered on my features because she rushed on with, “I gave the seminar on Boileau. L’art poétique. You’ve probably forgotten.”
“No. Not at all,” I said. “Quite the opposite.”
“What are you doing in this neighbourhood?” she asked.
“I live here,” I said. “Not here here. But nearby.”
She hiccuped. “Good heavens,” she said, covering her mouth with a small hand, her eyes wide with surprise, “excuse me,” and there was something in the gesture that made me want to reach out and touch her face. But like the rumbling of a tin sheet in an amateur theatrical, I could hear a warning not to. I gave a deep sigh. The street lights came on with an audible click.
She said something in French.
“What?” I said.
“Is my accent that bad? It’s from Boileau. You know, that part where he says that the words that come to you first are usually the right words. It’s, like, the most famous part.”
I took a long, unsteady look at her. “Katrina, you have the most beautiful skin. I hope that doesn’t embarrass you.”
But even as these words issued from my lips I could see her face darken, distort, and for a second I forgot whom I was talking to.
“Professor Halloway, you’ve had a long day,” she said, and with the sound of her voice she came back into focus. She really was beautiful.
“I’m rather drunk, it’s true, Katrina,” I said. “Well, that’s all right,” she said, “everyone gets drunk occasionally.”
“Do they?”
“So I’ve heard.”
I had entertained a faint, wild hope that she might join me, come along for this peculiar evening, but her last sentence was like a polite disengaging.
“Even you?” I asked.
“I’ve got no head for it. One drink and I’m gone. Poof. You wouldn’t want to be around for that.”
Yes, I would. I’d like very much to be around for that.
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I’m still in school.”
“No, I mean when you’re drunk.”
“Oh, stuff.”
“What sort of stuff?”
I wanted her to say … well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? It must have been obvious to her too, because she added quickly, looking away, like a caboose separating from the main body of the train, “Fall asleep usually.”
There. Now it was clear. Surely you don’t need to hear more, I thought. In fact—and écoute bien, toi—if you leave now, you’re safe. No morning horrors. No jerking upright in bed as the ruins of the evening come back to you. In a word, nothing to be ashamed of.
“I must go,” I said.
But I didn’t. Not immediately, anyway. It’s in those moments that your life is decided, or so it seemed at that ver
y second. I put out my hand and very gently touched the side of her face. “I’ve wanted to do that for ages.”
She went very still.
“Good night, Katrina,” I said.
And she said, “Good night, Professor Halloway.”
I didn’t turn around, not once, not all the way to the restaurant, but the encounter had illuminated me, and I burst into the crowded dining room and settled at a table near the centre, just on the aisle, facing the window. The dream table. Draped in white, as if it had been waiting for me and me alone, it sat at the very centre of all things. I felt an almost romantic gratitude to the waiter, who offered me a drink, the kind a cold man might experience who is allowed to come indoors to warm up. In such circumstances a waiter assumes the stature of an authority figure, a man whose approval one is keen to cultivate. How strangely important waiters are! I felt such extraordinary warmth and affection for all of them, for their bustle and high spirits; how smooth they were, in white shirts and black slacks, gliding among the tables. One of them, an elegant blond boy, slim and lean, stopped to shake my hand. “Nice to see you again, Professor,” to which I replied, “Lovely to be back.” Lord. The rapture, the transport, of finding the right restaurant. I could actually feel a sensation of pleasure rippling my blood. And in a moment a carafe of deep red wine, lovely in the candlelight, appeared in front of me as the waiter cleared off the setting opposite me. He poured me a glass and then with a small flourish set down the carafe.
“When you’re ready, Professor,” he said.
Really, I was almost too happy. I must do something for these fellows, I thought, something to express my ineffable gratitude. Perhaps I’ll bring in one of my books, perhaps the one on Baudelaire’s early criticism, and give it, no, dedicate it to these waiters. Sign it. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. What a gorgeous idea. What pleasure that will give to all. Odd not to have thought of it before.
“Professor Halloway.” A man’s voice this time, a few tables over, a bearded man and his wife, who beamed identical grins at me.
“Ah yes,” I said, not having a clue who they were but granting them nevertheless a somewhat papal wave.
The waiter returned. “You’re quite a celebrity, Professor Halloway. Why, just a few moments ago a girl over there asked me if I knew you. I think she’s one of your students.”
I wondered if Katrina had followed me in. I looked over. “Where is she?”
“She’s gone now.”
“Hmm.” I stroked my chin thoughtfully. “Pity. But yes, yes indeed, I am having quite the evening.”
“Would you like to order now?” he asked.
In the flush of such stimulation my appetite had vanished. In fact, the very idea of eating seemed a tad depressing, as if (bear with me) in the image of my taking a meal, hands clicking busily with knife and fork over a dish of Foie de Veau à l’ancienne, I could also make out in the background an empty, rather desolate dining hall, like one might find in a restored castle, but empty, you see, no one there, just the lord of the mansion dining by himself at the end of day … Ah, that was it. It was the end of day part I didn’t like, as a teenager is inexpressibly depressed by the sounds of certain television shows on a Sunday night.
“I can give you a few more minutes.”
“That would be lovely.”
“Another carafe?”
“In a few minutes.”
He moved away. The bearded man at the nearby table said something to his escort and came over. I partially stood, but he waved me down.
“I saw you on the educational channel,” he said. “I thought you were terrific. I particularly enjoyed that remark about Lautréamont …”
Seeing a mist of well-meaning confusion in my eyes (a look I had deliberately planted there because I knew exactly and precisely what he was referring to but wanted, for the purposes of my own insatiable vanity, to hear it restated, not to mention the planting in his bushy head of the notion that I dropped these bons mots here and there like a maiden dropping flower petals, whereas I had, in fact, rehearsed that very remark over and over, a dozen times, on the way to the studio, to the degree where I noticed a fellow subway passenger staring as if I were a madman talking to himself), he obliged me by saying, with relish, as if he had a tasty bit of roast beef in his mouth, “You said that Lautréamont was The Monkees of the Symbolist movement. I can’t stop repeating it.”
I chuckled appreciatively, as if to suggest no, I didn’t recall the remark, per se, but its very outrageousness was something that, with a certain amount of resignation, I had come to expect from myself after all these years. How charming was my self-effacement.
“Anyway,” he said, extending his hand, which I shook, “you were like a wrecking ball.”
“That’s a compliment, I gather.”
“Indeed it is.”
His wife waved shyly. The second carafe arrived at the table. He bowed ever so slightly and withdrew.
I pondered this “Monkees of the Symbolist movement” remark for a bit, and gradually, like cocaine, its effulgence wore off. In effect, it did not inspire quite the transcending echo of arma virumque cano. But it did set off some rather odd thoughts about Arthur Rimbaud. For a split second I believed I had him, this ungraspable young genius who had abandoned poetry at nineteen. I believed I saw with absolute clarity not the meaning of his work—he was too good for that—but rather how his brain worked, the poetic process by which he arrived at the imagery of his final Illuminations. I understood them not as a coherent message hiding in a coded language, a code that God-hungry undergraduates or tenured duffers claimed occasionally to crack, but rather as a series of extraordinary associations for and of themselves. It was a thought that came to me through the side door, so to speak, a thought I caught myself having rather than one I had set out to have and wrestled into lifelessness, like the marlin ripped from the ocean whose colour dies within seconds of its flesh pounding the gunnel of the boat.
I called over the waiter and asked for pen and paper, which he supplied, and I began to write in a large, confident hand. At which point the shriek of a chair leg on the tile floor drew my attention to the window, where I saw Katrina, I’m sure, walk by on the street. Sensation compounded sensation, but I continued to write, my attention focused like a laser beam on the thought processes—like a fast-motion view of a pearl forming in the shell of an oyster—of this lanky boy from the northern provinces. For six pages I wrote clearly and calmly before putting down the pen.
She was long gone by then, Katrina, and I wondered why I had not risen from my seat and chased out into the street after her. Perhaps because we had parted on such a good note that to see her again the same evening, even drunker now than before, might abrogate a possibility down the road. Yes, possibly that was it. But somehow I didn’t feel the satisfaction with that answer that you get when you’ve truly solved a problem. No, it was something else, something more elemental perhaps: the possibility that sex might not be all I had heretofore believed it to be; that it might be instead a sort of subway stop on the way to somewhere else. What a curious thought, that sex, this thing which had always struck me as the heart of the matter, might be only a way of clearing your head, rather like clearing a table, so that you could get down to the real business of life. But what was that? Well, one’s work, of course. One’s real work. I sighed abruptly. It had been unnecessary, I reasoned further, for me to pursue a course of action (running after Katrina and, in a perfect world, going to bed with her) because I was already doing (working) what I would invariably return to in the cool-headed aftermath. Which led me to an equally unfamiliar conclusion: that my choice to teach, and to teach French literature in particular, had not been as casual, as arbitrary, as I’d thought, the response to a teenage jilting, but rather an act of self- preservation, an instinctive nudging toward—get this—happiness. The notion that for years and years I had actually been working toward my happiness as opposed to against it struck me as a revelation of biblical proportion.
Suddenly I realized I was starving. There was a nervous ache in my stomach, which hinted at a piece of shuddering machinery. I swept my gaze down the menu and with a feeling of fiscal impunity ordered the lamb chops.
“They take about twenty minutes.”
“Splendid,” I said. The waiter refilled my glass with a flourish.
The noise in the restaurant increased. From over near the bar, behind which a young man prepared an after-dinner tray of coffees, I heard a flamenco guitar, whose hesitant introductory notes announced themselves and then appeared to stand in the foyer, waiting to be invited the rest of the way into the room. I listened carefully. I knew that piece of music, knew where it was going next. The guitarist responded with a flourish and then another. A pair of girls beside me, one pregnant, were talking about a trip to Aruba, the nuisance of lining up at the airport three hours before the flight. I was eavesdropping on them when the name came to me: Concierto de Aranjuez, the first symphony, I recalled, to be composed for the acoustic guitar. But it had been used in so many westerns that one could not hear it without also seeing the cliché of a cowboy walking down the centre of a windswept Mexican street. And yet it was a rather compelling image, this man with the cigarillo. Stirring almost, in a way you would never want to admit.
I took a sudden, involuntary deep breath, as if my body had commanded it. How like the days of my childhood today had been. How symphonic. There was no other word for it. And my goodness, what a long day. Well, hardly a day, for time seemed attenuated, like soft toffee pulled slowly over two or three days, the variegated incidents stuck like stones, some precious, some vulgar, here and there. The day, it seemed now, had started almost a year before. The day of the clinking hangers.
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