The Last Season

by Roy MacGregor

  I would never know. When I came to this blessed land in Canada, what was I doing for Poland? I worked hard and I had a family and prayed and I loved Poland always, but I must here confess that I might have failed Our Lady’s message to me because I did not have the courage to trust in my own judgments.

  Part of why I write this is to fix that, even if only to paper it over the way I might a broken window in the house. I believe I have served Poland, however insignificantly, by carrying Poland to my family now in Canada, forever in Canada. It is in Jan’s children and in Walter’s Felix that the Batterinski name continues, the name of Tadeusz Kósciusko Batterinski, our father who died for Poland.

  What I can do, even if it is now late, is to make sure they remember his death. And when they remember his death they will think of Poland, and when they think of Poland they will feel the power of the blessed Black Madonna, Our Lady. And if Felix has a son and one day when I am dead this boy reads of his great-great-grandfather and the country he comes from, then I will be content and, perhaps, Our Lady will be content as well. Her message I received in 1875 I will have passed on.

  Mother of Jesus, if Our Lady has any idea what I’ve been using her power for, St. Peter is going to whistle me straight into the penalty box forever. I’m sorry, Poppa, but I can’t buy that. Love Jaja, yes, but accept that we are all part of some master Roman Catholic plan to make sure the Batterinski name doesn’t have its last fling as an asterisk in the 1992–93 NHL Guide is a bit hard to take:

  *The 62 minutes in penalties Felix Batterinski accumulated in a single game (February 23, 1979, Los Angeles at Pittsburgh) is the most any player received per game, though Batterinski’s season’s total of 254 minutes was less than Toronto’s Dave William’s 298 minutes.

  I am simply not in the mood for this. First Poppa, now Jaja, and what I need to think about is Kristiina and what is going wrong with us. I can read us easier. We have had our fight; we have had our talk; we have made up; she will call soon for another talk; I will get mad; I will call it off before she calls it off; she will win. The same pattern, always, my love life as predictable as a Toronto power play. This time, however, with Kristiina, I have never had possession so long. In the past — Carol in Philadelphia, Miranda out in L.A, how many others? I have usually been checked the moment I began the rush. Tripped by my own tongue. Checked, always, by them.

  There is no insult intended to Jaja, but it is all I can do to leaf through the next thirty pages:

  As if the Russians were not bad enough, we now had the Prussian Kulturkampf to deal with. There was, of course, no Poland in political fact, just in our dreams, and what the Russians didn’t control the Prussians did. Bismarck began his anti-Polish campaign in 1872 and its intention was to wipe out Poland in wish as well as actuality. The Germans changed the Polish place names, forced Poles to sell whatever little land they owned, and even attacked our language....”

  What’s this? Yes, Jaja said he had been a teacher but I hadn’t believed him. Teachers were nuns, not old men who worried about whether white bread would attract more minnows into the traps than rye. But here it is:

  ... It gave me great peace of mind that Christ was also a teacher. But there the similarity ended. Jesus saw inequity and he set out to equalize. He saw the outcasts and he embraced them. He gave food to those who were hungry, comfort to the ill, miracles to the lame. I shut my eyes, I admit it. The children scratched head lice all winter and I would not ask for a doctor, for fear the Prussian administrators would conclude the parasite originated in the Polish teacher. I saw them at lunch hunched over small cloth bags, their mouths pressed to the hole where small hands fumbled as they rolled their tongues in their mouths and made the Prussian inspectors think there was actually food in their bags....”

  Poppa, Poppa, Poppa — as if I’m not depressed enough! I cannot read all of this, not now. Jaja’s memories I will place with the others, not in the dresser where Kristiina might see it and ask, but in the satchel section of my travelling bag, zippered up, locked in the hotel closet.

  That way we’ll leave each other alone.

  It is only a week since the so-called “disastrous” Swedish trip and Turku was sold out last night. They were hanging from the rafters to see the big stud who spit in the face of Sweden. Some disaster, I pointed out with great pleasure to Erkki the Jerkki. And we won, as well, a fluke 3–2 thanks to Turku losing out on a protested goal that I’m forced to admit was over the line before my big paw hauled the puck back and tucked it under the goalie’s pads. Pekka actually scored one with his teeth when a shot of mine from the point was tipped into his face and then the net. He’s sitting on the back of the bus right now trying to suck cognac through a straw so he can kill the pain of the stitches. But even he’s not complaining.

  Not like Erkki. Erkki’s still having his hissy fit about the Swedish incident and he won’t let up on it. Says the board’s on his back and that Hauki’s been internationally embarrassed. What’s going to happen — will people boycott their goofy little wooden minnows the way France won’t have anything to do with Canadian seals? Cruelty to balsam, perhaps? I asked Erkki this and he says that’s not the point. He says my actions aren’t in keeping with the Hauki image. I felt like asking him what the board wanted me to do, attach a treble hook to my belly button, but I just walked away instead and left him to chew out his nails.

  The bus gets us back from Turku at noon the following day, and the telephone is ringing when I reach the hotel room door. I rush in, worrying, hoping, praying that it is Kristiina. I am uncomfortable, tired and nervous after the long haul home, and I am afraid the call will make me feel even worse. But I am not certain. I take it tentatively, half wishing I’d merely let the phone ring itself out.

  “Hello.”

  The line crackles badly. Someone sounds like they are shouting into an empty pail.

  “I can’t hear you!” I shout.

  The line goes dead and I place the receiver back. In a few moments it rings again, the line this time clear and loud, as if I am getting a call from the next room.

  “That you, Felix?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Matt Keening here — from Canada Magazine. I said I’d give you a shout back today.”

  “Oh yeah.” Damn.

  “Have you given any thought to my proposal?”

  I lied. “Some.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I think the timing’s not so good right now, eh?”

  “But it couldn’t be better, Felix. We should nip this thing in the bud, I say.”

  “What’s been happening?”

  “There isn’t a columnist in the country hasn’t taken a run at you. Fotheringham was so hot you could have fried an egg on the back page of Maclean’s.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure I want to do it. Not right now anyway. We’re going into the stretch for the playoffs right now and coaching needs my full concentration. You can understand. That’s what I’m paid to do. I just like to hold off for a bit, okay?”

  “How long?”

  “Until I see how things are going.”

  “But you’re not saying no.”

  When I finally shake him and hang up I realize that I have not said no, though I had meant to. Perhaps I need my say. Would Jaja be comforted to know that the name has indeed been remembered, but as something they hold up to children as a bad example?

  Just maybe there’s something be said for one final full-colour story to close out the scrapbook. A final correction.

  Pekka sure doesn’t look any hell, his lower lip rising like a waterski ramp, but at least he’s game. When Kristiina called I figured for sure it was time for a quiet heart-to-heart, but when she suggested we invite Pekka and Pia lone to the cottage, I knew I was Scot-free for a while: Pekka wouldn’t allow an undertaker a serious moment. Kristiina couldn’t possibly be going in for the kill. At least not yet.

  “Don’t dock do me,” Pekka mumbles as we’re hauling the booze and fishing gear out of
the trunk.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t dock do me.”

  “I never said a word.”

  “Well don’t. My deeth hurt like hell in dis cold.”

  Dis. I have not heard dis or dat or dem since the last time I talked to Poppa. It doesn’t even sound right in my brain any more, though it’s still my first language.

  When we cut through the spruce there is already heavy smoke rising out over the lake. The girls have gone ahead and fired up both stoves, the cottage and the sauna, and I imagine them already busy inside, turning down beds, setting the lopsided little table, melting down snow for the coffee.

  They come out onto the porch as we ease the toboggan down the slope. When I turn she waves a hand mittened in pink angora, and the innocence of the action almost causes my knees to buckle with need. She has on her white ski pants but has removed the top. The braces ride over a black, grey and white test pattern of a sweater and form convenient brackets around her breasts. The air has heightened her colour as if she had on make-up, though I know she wears none; it is precisely this freshness and purity that makes her so precious. Pia stands beside her, less committed to the excusion than Kristiina; Pia is there for the drinks, the laughs, the sex. With her red hair tangled by the wind and her eyes dark from the sleep on the way up, she stands like the saucy opposite of Kristiina, awkward, as if out of her element. Surrounded by wind and cold air and sunshine, the trees, the frozen lake and the smell of burning birch, Pia seems discontented, as if longing for a more suitable natural habitat for herself. A bar, maybe. Perhaps the bedroom. Kristiina, on the other hand, seems as much a part of the setting as the snow itself.

  “All we need now is the fish,” she calls.

  “Grease the pan!” I call back, laughing.

  “Are you going out right away?” she asks.

  I look at Pekka. He nods, unwilling to speak.

  “Sure. Why not?” I say. “We’ll leave you two here to warm up the place.”

  “No, we’ll be shoveling off the roofs,” Kristiina says.

  I hear Pia groan. It is nothing compared to what I feel. The snow she should leave for us, when we’re through fishing. She should be in the kitchen, waiting for us with hot drinks and a snack, her voice drifting out as pleasurably as the lines wind in — “Did you catch any fish?” — with us saying nothing but dropping the catch at her feet while she ohhs and ahhs in appreciation. This is unnatural.

  “Leave it,” I say. “We’ll do it after.”

  This time Pekka groans.

  “Don’t be silly,” Kristiina says, laughing. “We’ve nothing else to do, have we, Pia?”

  Pia agrees half-heartedly. “Sure.”

  I say nothing, trusting in my eyes to express my anger. But when I look there is no eye contact to be had. Kristiina is booting the ice from the shed door, muscling it open to get at the shovels. There is nothing to do but deliver the toboggan to Pia’s feet, swoop up the auger and bait box, and stomp off through the drifts to fish.

  The ice is thick. We select a place just out from the point where I figure a rock shoal should run out toward a near island, and Pekka and I take turns on the auger, finally cutting through at a point near the end of the tool’s potential.

  It is numbingly cold out in the open. There are no trees or knolls to break the wind and we end up with our backs to it, jiggling the lines just to keep warm.

  “I hab one!” Pekka shouts.

  I try to remain calm. “Let him take it. Easy now!”

  But Pekka is too excited. He jerks the line and the line slackens, the fish freed.

  “You’ve got to give them line,” I say. “Let them take it right down, okay? Then when you hit you’ll set, understand?”

  Pekka nods.

  I feel something at my own line, delicate as a mosquito on a shirtsleeve. I loosen the line, picturing the fish below as he nudges up, perhaps a poke with his nose first to see if there’s any life to this twisted, dead minnow. Silently I count ten and then yank upward, fast, short and very hard.

  “I’ve got him,” I say quietly.

  Pekka shouts and drops his own line to watch. I would never watch, at least not directly. I take my purchase in carefully, making sure I don’t tear the hook from his mouth. The fish turns slowly, exhausting quickly and conceding. I see him rise. He enters the hole defeated and arrives on the other side to my victory.

  “Fantastic!” Pekka shouts, then grabs his mouth in pain.

  “It’s a goddamn pike!” I say. “Isn’t it?”

  “Bike?”

  “Pike!” I repeat. “‘P’ — pike!” And then realize Pekka can’t pronounce it anyway.

  He shakes his head, confused. No matter. I can see by its snarl it is pike: the snake has followed me even here. Danny or Poppa would shoot it or take an axe to it.

  “Hauki!” I say, suddenly remembering that this is what our team name means.

  “Ah,” Pekka says. “Hauki. A good one.”

  “A damn pike,” I say.

  “He’s good.”

  I say nothing. I set the line again and return to jigging, praying for a whitefish. This has not gone the way it should. When the wind shifts I can hear the sound of shovels scraping on the cottage roof and from time to time the gasp of heavy snow falling onto itself.

  The shoveling eventually stops and I am pleased, but no more fish bite and I am distraught. What man ever returned home triumphantly with pike? Pekka is beginning to freeze. He beats his arms against his sides and has pulled his sweater neck up over his mouth.

  “Let’s quit,” he says finally.

  I have been waiting for that. The pike I can now blame on him; Pekka didn’t have the patience for whitefish.

  Our silent walk back is broken by the crack of the cabin door. The sound bursts into the bay like split firewood and Pia’s head hangs sideways out the partly opened door, her long red hair falling, nearly touching the snow.

  “Hey! You cold enough?”

  “You bet!” I call back.

  “Catch anything?”

  “Bats caught a bine one!”

  I wince.

  “Great!” Pia calls. “Shall we have a sauna first to warm up?”

  Sounds marvellous. “Sure!” we both call at the same time.

  Suddenly the door bursts fully open and Pia, laughing, runs naked out onto the porch. The cold hits her like a groper and she unsuccessfully wraps her arms around great, bouncing breasts. Behind her I hear the unmistakable giggle of Kristiina, and then she follows, also naked, jumping off the porch into the knee-deep snow and then brazenly high-stepping in a flush-faced march toward the sauna house.

  “Hakka päälle!” Pekka shouts, forgetting his lip. He buckles and hangs on to it, cursing. “Paska!”

  When I see that it is Kristiina he stares at, I have to hold myself back. I should deck him. That goddamn Pia! She talked Kristiina into this, that little tramp — making a fool of her best friend. They must have been into the booze.

  Pekka doesn’t even act as startled as I would expect. I myself am too stunned to speak. I have never seen Pia in anything other than a clinging dress or tight jeans before, and though my mind has tried to imagine, it has clearly fallen short. I am afraid to look again. Pekka, however, stares at Kristiina as if she is in a magazine. He tries to whistle but can’t. He tries to make a snowball but the snow is too cold and won’t pack. He gives up, giggling closed-mouthed, and hurries after them toward the smoke of the sauna.

  I do not know what to do. Cursing Pekka, I lean down and gather up the equipment he has dropped and the board-stiff pike.

  When Pekka goes through the sauna door and the giggles are shut off, it is as it has been so many times in the past: me, alone, cleaning up after a day’s fishing. I have half a mind to simply walk to the cottage and gut the fish, just to let them know Batterinski takes the outdoors seriously, unlike them.

  But while I can imagine, I cannot follow through. If I was just out fishing alone and this scene happened
in my mind, I would follow through in my mind, ripping off my clothes as I raced to the sauna and bursting in on the heaving-breasted, saucy redhead and her lithe angelic friend while they squealed in delight and spread their legs in greeting. But no, this is not in Batterinski’s mind, and in reality I am standing here with a toothy, useless fish in one hand and a basket in the other.

  There is laughter in the sauna. It had better not be at me. But what then? No, it had better be at me. Those bastards, leaving me out here....

  The sauna opens and Kristiina’s head leans out. She shines with sweat and her entire body bursts with fog as it slides further out. She is giggling, unable to speak, and I imagine right through her, right through the door and the dry wall and the birch and see a puffing, fat-lipped Pekka tickling her from behind with his erection.

  “Get in here!” she commands.

  I drop the fish and basket, walk over slowly as if we have not met.

  “Hurry up! It’s cold,” she laughs. She reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling me and yanking the door open with her other hand. Pekka is not there. His clothes are neatly hanging from the wooden peg.

  “Take off your clothes, silly man!” she orders.

  I do, only shucking my jockey shorts at the last moment when I decide it would not make the point intended. Pia would think I was ashamed of my size when in truth I am ashamed of Pekka. No, outraged — outraged that he is in there naked and my woman is also in there naked.

  Inside I do not focus quickly, but when I do there is no grunting and slipping and sliding on hot rocks, no tongues and missing fingers and steaming pubic areas. Pia and Kristiina are sitting on the top bench, their heads lowered and hair falling and sticking on their faces as they lean forward intently toward Pekka. But he is not standing there waving an erection at them. They stare at his back, and he sits like them, only one step further down.