And so that was one more thing I was going to do.
*
Loretta and I are doing what we usually do after she’s spent the night, except this morning it’s me who can’t get the water in the bathtub hot enough. I may have been the fourth man in Chatham to have indoor plumbing, but that doesn’t mean the sink doesn’t get stopped up from time to time or the tank doesn’t run out of hot water quicker than it’s supposed to. Progress breeds new problems, necessitating more progress, which breeds new problems, necessitating more . . . I shut my eyes and lean back in the tub, intent upon absorbing whatever’s left of the cooling water’s warmth.
I rub my hand all over my head, still not used to the smooth ride it gets no matter where I let it wander. The first time Loretta saw me newly sheared, she laughed; not as if she thought I looked ridiculous, but as if she thought it was funny that I would do what I did. When she wordlessly rubbed the top of my skull like a Buddhist his wise worship’s belly, I laughed too.
“This is one more reason for you to go back with me,” Loretta says. Back to Germany, she means.
Without opening my eyes, “I can take a bath in Chatham,” I say.
Loretta flicks a fingertip of cold water at me from the plugged sink. She’s at the mirror, applying her powder and paint. “Baden-Baden,” she says. “It is the most famous spa in Germany. The springs there were known even during Roman times. The baths, they were uncovered in near-perfect condition only forty years ago.”
Heraclitus may have been right, maybe you can’t step twice into the same river, but to stand where Lucretius or Seneca or Horace possibly stood, just one more bone-weary traveller aching for ancient healing waters, is almost incomprehensible. Incomprehensible and impossible. To shut down Sophia’s in order to travel to Europe for a month or more would cost me . . . a lot. And what exactly do I need a holiday from? Prosperity? Security? A life, finally, exactly as I’d always wanted it, a life no one born where and what I was should have had any right even imagining? My mother never took a holiday. Neither did the Reverend King. My life is a holiday. I change the subject.
“It’s supposed to storm tonight,” I say. “Why don’t you stay in town?”
Loretta spends most nights with me, and invariably has business to attend to the next day around town, but still keeps a small residence in Dresden. She says she’ll move to Chatham only when she can afford to buy the biggest, most expensive house in town.
Loretta applies a last layer of lipstick, turns from the mirror. “Who is it that says this is so?”
I don’t answer, only smile. She knows it’s at her expense but can’t help joining me. “And what is it you find so amusing?”
“You,” I say.
“And what specifically is it about me that is humorous?”
I close my eyes again, ease back even farther into the tub. The air in the bathroom is almost as warm as the water by now, but I don’t want to get out, am not ready not to feel almost weightless yet. “If I told you, you might change. What fun would that be?”
“Tell me,” she says.
“Nein.”
That’s all the teasing Loretta can take. I can hear the scoop of a handful of cold, whisker-filled water that’s coming my way, but don’t have anywhere to go, can only sink beneath the surface of the bath. I stay under for as long as I can, but as soon as my head hits the air, I get what I have coming.
“Okay, okay,” I say, standing, holding up both hands. “You win.” I grab a towel from the rack.
“Of course I win. Never start—”
“—a war with a German, I know.”
“Good. You are learning. Now, what is it that is so funny about me?”
Drying myself off, “It’s a compliment, actually.”
“Yes?” When I don’t answer, only smile again, she immediately dips her hand back into the sink, ready and willing to catapult a fresh assault of dirty water. “Now is when I should take your photograph,” she says.
Loretta has been after me to have my picture taken for years. At first I couldn’t be bothered to sit still long enough, although now, with her new camera, that’s not a concern. I suppose I don’t like the idea of being her only still-breathing model.
I hold up a conciliatory hand, use the other to keep towelling off. “It’s just that, somehow—and I really don’t know how you do it—you manage to sound like absolutely no one else I’ve ever heard speak before, while at the same time making yourself more clearly understood than anyone else I’ve ever met either.”
Hand still loaded, “That is all?” she says.
“That is all.”
Loretta finally surrenders her liquid artillery back into the sink, grabs the end of my towel and wipes her hand dry. “Of course,” she says. “It is because I am German. A German says only what needs to be said.”
When I met her, Loretta talked with a German accent, thought with a German brain, acted with a German will, but was rarely ever German, only in the last year or so referring to herself as being anything but her, Loretta. Approaching thirty, maybe, or perhaps the news of her father’s death. Around this same time, too, the first talk of her returning to Germany for a visit, specifically Rocken, her birthplace.
“The return of the prodigal daughter,” I’d said.
“Do not be foolish. I simply wish to make all those who made me suffer when I left there suffer tenfold upon my return.” Loretta claims she never dreams, and I have no reason to doubt her. Loretta doesn’t need nighttime’s dark hints and shadowy hunches; Loretta’s mind is hers.
“The best revenge is a well-lived life,” I said, trying again.
This one she thought about for a moment. Eventually, “Of course,” she said.
By the time I’ve dressed and appear in the kitchen, the water for the coffee is boiling on the stove and two plates have been set on the table. Henry, smelling Loretta’s sausages bubbling in the frying pan, has quit his customary spot in front of the library fireplace and is sitting at attention in the middle of the kitchen floor, waiting for either a lucky accident or a kind handout. When Loretta decides to cook, Henry isn’t, like his master, a strict vegetarian anymore. Henry likes it when Loretta decides to cook.
“One soft-boiled egg for Mr. Pythagoras,” she says, placing just that in its tiny silver cup in front of me. “And for Mr. Heinrich and myself”—Loretta sets down her own cupped egg then thuds an enormous sausage from the grease-popping pan onto her plate, along with a fat plop of dumplings—“something just for us, ja?” Something just for them, plus an already prepared, neatly arranged tray of fresh rolls, three kinds of preserves, and various cheeses for all of us to share. Loretta eats like a German too.
After Henry has been hand-fed his designated share of the sausage link and dismissed back to the library (“That is all, Mr. Heinrich, be a good boy now and lay down elsewhere”), Loretta proceeds to cut and spread, to spoon and swallow, to fork and chew, in the process not neglecting to go over in detail her entire day’s itinerary. There’s no need to go over mine. Mine is the same today as it is every day, the same as it’s been since the first day I opened up Sophia’s.
“Even after I pay this man, this Hanna, to take care of the roof, I still do nicely. This time next year, I already make back what I spent, and after that it is all profit.” Loretta celebrates the success of her most recent investment by spreading her roll with an extra-thick measure of peach marmalade. The way she studies me while she chews tells me what she’s going to say next. Every time she purchases a new rental property, it’s always the same topic. “I know of another house, on Prince Street, near the park, that would be an excellent investment for you. Why not we should look at it this afternoon, after I am finished at the bank?”
“Because I like the house I have now,” I say.
“Do not be difficult, David, it is tiresome. You know what I am saying. It is foolish for a man with the capital you possess not to let it work for you.”
“I don’t need my money to wor
k for me. I work for me.”
“Yes, and work too hard, too. There is no reason for you to be at that place of yours every single night. Not anymore. At the very least, you need to hire someone to work for you occasionally.”
“Work alone is noble.”
“You sound like my father.”
“It’s Thomas Carlyle, actually.”
“A minister, no doubt.” Unless it’s to read to me, Loretta makes it a point of pride never to pick up a book.
“A British writer,” I say.
“He sounds like a minister to me.”
Because she’s right, he does—sounds like the Reverend King, actually—I pick up the coffee pot and pour Loretta a refill.
“See?” she says. “Whenever you do not know what to do, you play at being bartender. It is reflex, you cannot help it.”
“I know what I have to do,” I say, stacking Loretta’s plate on top of mine. “I’ve got to clear this table, then I’m going to fix the bathroom drain, and then I’ve got to take Henry for his walk.” Hearing the w-word, Henry trots back into the kitchen and sits in the doorway, ready to go when I am.
“Excuse me, but I am not finished, please,” she says, taking back her plate.
I don’t let her slow me down, pile cup and silverware and saucer and whatever else I can grab on top of my own plate. Loretta absently butters half a roll while watching me work, like a physician observing a patient exhibiting all the telltale symptoms of an exotic disease.
“You are a strange man,” she says.
I pretend to ignore her, dump my first batch of dirty dishes into the sink, return to the table for another load.
“You work hard—you work very, very hard for many, many years, just like me—to make a life for yourself, and then, once you have made it, you choose not to live it.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” I say, not bothering to look up, wiping down the table, careful, though, to keep my rag clear of Loretta’s continuing feast.
“You know what you are, David?”
I rinse my rag out at the sink, keep my back to her.
“You are spilt religion.”
I don’t know what she means, but I’m enormously insulted anyway. I hang the rag over the pump, turn around. “You’re having a very un-German day,” I say.
“I am sorry?”
“That’s the second thing you’ve said in the last two minutes that’s entirely illogical.”
“Oh.” She seems relieved, folds a piece of cheese in two and places it in her mouth. “No, you just do not understand.”
“Really. Enlighten me.”
She can see that I’m angry now, so smiles, knows she finally has my attention. “It is quite simple, really.”
I watch her chew, swallow.
“You are a Christian without a Christ.”
Now it’s my turn to smirk, although my smile doesn’t feel right on my face, feels like a new shoe you desperately want to fit but know deep down doesn’t.
“And that doesn’t make any sense either,” I say.
Loretta rises, wipes her mouth one last time with her napkin before letting it drop to the table for me to pick up.
“Doesn’t it?” she says.
*
We met the summer I turned seventeen.
Every illicit passage I read in place of what the Reverend King assigned me to study intimated earthly enchantments I had never known. Every reprieving spring breeze reminded me I had a body as well as a soul, wasn’t just a shivering spirit waiting around for celestial translation but was also a corporeal creature with dirty, idyllic desires of its own. Every time I told myself it was forbidden, was out of the question, to put it out of my mind, instead of ears waxed shut with cooling, calming silence, an obstinate echo never failed to answer back: Why? And: Why?
If it was going to happen, though, there was no chance of it happening in Buxton, that much was certain. If I wanted it, if I really wanted it, I needed to go into Chatham to get it. Alone. I couldn’t even risk telling George.
I told my mother I had to ride into town on Mr. Freeman’s horse to pick up a parcel for him from the hardware store. I told George and his father I needed to borrow their horse to ride into town to pick up a parcel for my mother from the drugstore. Two wrongs made it right, and it was the first time I’d ever been alone in the city.
It was Saturday afternoon, and the streets being so busy with honest commerce made it easier not to imagine that every set of eyes was watching me, knew and disapproved of what I was doing. I stopped to stare in store windows and tipped my cap to elderly strangers and even purchased something so as to better resemble a real shopper, a candy apple on a stick from the same general store George and I always used to visit when we’d accompany his father into Chatham. The hard candy coating tasted like cherry shellac, and the apple itself was mushy, nearly rotten, collapsed in my mouth on the very first bite. I threw it away and headed south along King Street. Procrastination is the thief of time, the Reverend King liked to remind us.
I had a plan. First, I needed to find someone who could make the transaction for me. Second, I had to ensure that, whoever he was, he didn’t know I was from the Settlement, because if he did, the Reverend King would know what I’d been up to before I had time to get back to Buxton. I walked to where the majority of the Negro saloons were and lingered far enough away that no one would think I was trying to get inside, but close enough that I could spot an especially drunk patron upon leaving, just the kind of person who’d know how to get me what I wanted and who wouldn’t be morally opposed to doing it. I pitched rocks up into the billowing branches of a weeping willow tree and waited. It was Saturday afternoon, workingman’s payday, so I didn’t have to wait very long.
A man weaved out of the saloon while attempting to light his cigarette like a newly vertical infant chasing after an elusive butterfly, until he saw the fifty-cent piece in my hand. The man stopped, carefully lit up, shook and dropped the dead match. He was skinny but had a bulge over his belt like he’d swallowed a small pumpkin, whole. His eyes were mostly red, as if he’d been up all night, and there was a scar on his right cheek that moved when he spoke.
“You’re just a kid,” he said.
I didn’t answer, held up the coin between my thumb and forefinger. I’d planned on this very sort of objection, was proud of myself to have been so prepared.
The man blew a smoke ring and looked me over. Although he was coloured, there was little chance he had any close contact with anyone in Buxton, but the way he stared worried me anyway. I was contemplating running—he’d had a hard time walking, there was no way he’d ever catch me—when he said, “Go around back, and don’t say nothin’ to nobody unless it’s me, understand?”
I nodded, and he reached for the fifty-cent piece. “Not until I get what I came for,” I said, sticking it in my pocket.
I thought he might try to take it from me—I’d allowed for that possibility too—but the man laughed instead, then coughed, then laughed and coughed at the same time.
“Just don’t talk to nobody,” he said, and went back inside the saloon.
Later, back in Buxton, in bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. Not because I felt guilty or was worried I’d be found out, or even because I was excited at the idea of what I’d chanced and done and gotten away with.
I couldn’t sleep because I felt like someone different, as if the person who’d ridden off that morning wasn’t the same person who’d ridden home that night. I got up from bed and went to my desk and lit the lamp, opened the book of ancient Greek epigrams that Mr. Rapier had bought and brought back for me from Toronto.
Drink down the strong wine: Dawn’s but the span Of a finger.
And shall we wait for the lamp that brings Good night?
Drink, drink to joy, dear friend: for soon we’ll have
A lonely night for sleeping, and that’s for ever.
It was true and I knew it, and not just because I’d read it in a book, but becau
se I knew it. And behind the big hill at Deer Pond, underneath the heap of dead leaves and fallen branches where I’d hidden it, there was still over half a bottle of whiskey left.
I’d wanted wine, as in the epigram and in all the poems I read, but when I complained to the man in Chatham, he’d said, “Wine’s for old ladies and priests. A man’s drink is whiskey, boy. You’re a man, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” I said.
*
Lies, lies, lies: there was such a thing as heaven on earth. All it took was a pint of cheap Chatham-bought whiskey, a book of ancient Greek poetry, and an unobserved drinking and reading spot high atop the big hill overlooking Deer Pond. Add a dash of the not-insubstantial earthly pleasure of doing what you’re not supposed to be doing, as well as wilfully disregarding much of what you are, and you’ve got yourself a can’t-miss recipe for real-life rapture that bypasses Judgement Day altogether and gets right down to all the good stuff. Just shake and stir, and be prepared to shake and stir.
Watching me get drunk, however, was as far as I could persuade George to join me in breaking one of the Reverend King’s most sacrosanct edicts, and even that had taken some convincing. It was a good thing I’d paid such close attention to the Reverend King’s patient elucidation of the Socratic method; you never know when you’re going to need to induce someone to do something they don’t want to do.
“Has he ever said that it’s wrong for a person to be in the presence of alcohol?” I said.
“You know he has.”
“Really? I thought that what was forbidden was to drink alcohol.”
“That’s what I meant,” George said.
“But that’s not what you implied. You implied that it’s prohibited to simply be in the presence of someone who’s drinking alcohol.”
We were walking through the bush in the direction of Deer Pond. George had agreed to accompany me but had made it clear he was turning right around as soon as I pulled out the pint bottle of whiskey hidden in my coat pocket. The moon was freshly risen and burning white, but we didn’t need it to get where we were going. Our four feet alone had worn a path over the years that would deliver us safely there.
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