Every Day We Disappear

by Angela Long

  Children ran onto the road, screeching, laughing, mimicking the rickshaw cyclist’s strained expression and my repose. I knew in my gut there was something wrong about all this. Some travellers refused to travel by cycle-rickshaw.

  But the rickshaw cyclist laughed along. He turned and waved as we crossed a bridge and rounded a bend.

  We stopped where pyramids of oranges, grapes, guavas and pomegranates were stacked on a cart. He pointed to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook and pulled a crumpled bill from his pocket, handing it to the vendor. He kept one small banana and passed the rest to me. “Eat,” he said, and began to pedal again, peeling the banana as he rode. Next he stopped to buy homemade popsicles out of a foam cooler. I offered him rupees, but he shook his head and mounted his seat. We ate the popsicles quickly, drips flying behind us as he pedalled.

  In two hours we reached Lumbini. The town looked deserted. “Where?” he asked, coasting along the main street. I’d thought about this question, had consulted the pages of the Lonely Planet while he bought bags of peanuts in the last town.

  “The Korean Monastery,” I answered. I’d read of its clean rooms and kimchi. He stopped and asked two men standing outside the telephone office for directions. The men talked loudly and gesticulated. They stared at me like hungry wolves. I stared straight ahead, as I’d learned from the women of India. I sat very erect to let them know they shouldn’t mess with the likes of me.

  “No good town,” the rickshaw cyclist said. “Nepalis, no good people.”

  As we entered the gates of the temple complex and its monasteries, I began to feel more uneasy. The rickshaw cyclist stopped, asking the gatekeeper directions. The man gestured towards the forest, then asked, “Are you alone?”

  It was too late to turn back. We’d come too far. Besides, this was the birthplace of the Buddha. A holy place. No one would take such chances with their karma, would they?

  We cycled along a gravel footpath beside an artificial lake. Two swans glided past. “Please keep off,” read hand-painted signs on a vast expanse of dead grass labelled “Peace Park.”

  Beyond the grass, the forest began, and we turned down another, narrower gravel path. I imagined the Buddha walking among these trees. Talking to the birds. Amused by the map of international monasteries that had sprung up beside the creek: Thailand, Germany, Vietnam, Burma. Ornate-looking domes and construction cranes poked out of the forest canopy.

  We spotted Korea on the map and crossed a wooden bridge. Our tires fishtailed in the gravel. The rickshaw cyclist strained at the pedals, his straight back finally beginning to slump. I was about to offer to walk the rest of the way, but then an enormous structure the colour of wet cement appeared on the horizon – a three-tiered pagoda-like temple with bamboo scaffolding crisscrossing its outer walls. We arrived at the black wrought-iron gate of the Korean monastery. The rickshaw cyclist rang the buzzer. A man in a grey cotton pantsuit peered out of a building inside the gates and looked at me. The gates swung open.

  I dismounted, and the rickshaw cyclist began to follow me. But the man in the grey pantsuit held up his palm, shooing him back onto the gravel. The cyclist disobeyed. He left his rickshaw and entered the monastery. We gawked at the enormous unfinished temple before us, the men perched on the scaffolding, the sound of drilling echoing through the chambers. I took him aside, pushed the bills into his hand – twice the price we’d negotiated.

  He stuffed the bills into his pocket and thanked me with his eyes downcast. “No good place,” he said. He looked at the man in the pantsuit who still hadn’t smiled. “I bring you back to India?” he offered.

  I watched as he mounted the bicycle and pedalled off into the late afternoon light. He turned and waved as he rounded the corner.

  part three

  Between the Planks

  There is a gap between here and there, between a dust-filled street in a dusty subcontinent, and a cedar plank cottage in a west coast rainforest. A gap unchinked by hours of buses, planes, boats, by all those litres of fuel, evaporated. It all trails behind me, clunking along like a string of tin cans on a newlyweds’ car – all those bodies of water, swaths of land, and this plank of western red cedar. I run my hand along its grain, remembering the faces – airport officials, ticket sellers, chai vendors, and that little boy standing by a pile of garbage on the side of the road where the buses pulled in, holding up torn trousers with one hand – all that suffering bunched up in his palm. The bus drove away. The plane took off. The boat sailed. And there is a gap between here and there. I can feel it blowing between the planks – cool as a northwest wind in a west coast rainforest.

  The Italian Doggy

  He told me he wanted to be my little Italian doggy and follow me everywhere. That was before Haida Gwaii. Fifty-three degrees north, one hundred thirty-two degrees west—formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, or, as the locals called it, the edge of the world. It was the kind of place that escaped Ice Ages, where endemic species such as kinnikinnick and giant black bears flourished. It was home to Sasquatch trackers, German opera singers, dope dealers, Tartar goat herders, Greenpeace activists, and an Indigenous people once known as the Vikings of the Northwest Coast.

  It took a while to arrive at the edge of the world. Especially if you began in Kathmandu. It had been there, on the rooftop of the Tibet Peace Guest House, that Giuseppe and I looked for Everest and saw nothing but the polluted haze of the Kathmandu Valley. Our eyes had begun to smart. “I know a place with the freshest air in the world.” I had said.

  We were freshly in love then. We spent our days eating momos and drinking pots of Nepali spice tea on the single bed of Room 204. An Italian jazz musician and a Canadian poet – poetessa, as Giuseppe was fond of saying. Two days remained before he was due to fly back to Italy. We had yet to mention the f-word. The future was challenging at the best of times, but even more so when people of two different nationalities met abroad. Especially two people with Fine Arts degrees who still stored their belongings at their parents’ homes and had no imminent job prospects.

  Giuseppe wanted to know more about the fresh air. I told him of a land of white sand beaches, sparkly blue waters, and emerald-hued forests. “People don’t even lock their doors,” I said. Poetry in the dunes. Wild strawberries, huckleberries, sea asparagus. “People just leave their keys in the ignition.” The sound of the surf, of rain on the roof.

  We stopped en route in Vigevano, Italy, to visit his family. There we slept beneath hand-embroidered sheets and walked upon white marble floors. His mother ironed handkerchiefs of the finest Italian linen for Giuseppe’s upcoming voyage. I should have warned him then.

  I should have warned him about the cabin awaiting us at the edge of the world – a cabin named “The Empress.” It was one of several off-the-grid cabins that comprised Rapid Richie’s Rustic Rentals Reasonable Rates (otherwise known as Rrrrrr!). I should have explained “off the grid” meant no running water or electricity. An outhouse. A Coleman cooler for a fridge. It meant wool socks and jeans and getting dirty. It meant crouching in a blue plastic tote and having someone pour tepid water down your back to get clean. Those were the days before this lifestyle choice acquired a sort of glamour, and became the stuff of reality TV shows and the dream of inner-city hipsters.

  By then I’d learned Giuseppe had trained at conservatories bearing the names of famous Italian composers. He’d worked at the music library of La Scala. He’d played gigs with the likes of Lee Konitz and Bob Mintzer. But I’d also learned he’d never done typical Canadian activities, like ice skate, or camp.

  “Do you like to camp?” I asked.

  “Camp?”

  “You know, sleep outside in a tent.”

  “Why would anyone want to sleep outside when they can sleep inside?”

  Giuseppe worried about things like damaging his hands. His fingers were like ten golden ingots, each a precious tool to press a key o
f his beloved sax. When his father asked him to prune the rose arbour, I could see him wince in anticipation of potential damage. The skin on his hands was as soft and unlined as kid gloves.

  We strolled through Vigevano’s Piazza Ducale – an ornate affair of frescoes and archways that Leonardo da Vinci helped design. Giuseppe pointed to a short black skirt in the window of one of the posh boutiques lining the perimeter.

  “That would suit you, with a nice pair of high heels,” he said.

  If only he’d known I was the kind of girl more suited to rubber boots. But I dared not tell him that back then. I watched the Italian women strut past, and admired their blood-red lipstick and put-together look that could only come from centuries of advanced civilization. In Piazza Ducale I suddenly figured out what I really wanted to be – Italian.

  Giuseppe’s mother wanted me to be Italian too. I could tell she was puzzled by her son’s choice of mates – the sunburned nose, the mousy hair, the sandals in April, the wardrobe I’d acquired after seven months of travelling in Nepal and India: long flowing tunics of colourful cottons.

  She took my measurements and began to sew a summer dress for me to wear at the edge of the world. A dress of sheer cream silk with camel-coloured polka-dots.

  Giuseppe and I strolled arm-in-arm amongst the chestnut trees on the grounds of Castello Sforzesco, eating gelato. Policemen rode past on shiny bicycles with fenders. I’d begun to think we should stay here forever, but Giuseppe was keener than ever to see the edge of the world. He couldn’t wait to swim in the sparkly blue waters. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the temperature of such waters rarely breached ten degrees Celsius. Instead, I allowed Giuseppe’s illusions to fester. I allowed him to pack the white linen chinos, the Renato Balestra shirt, the black Speedo.

  And then one day – after thirteen hours of planes, eight hours of buses, and thirty-one hours of ferries – we finally reached the edge of the world. Once upon a time I’d thought taking the long way was the only way to go. That it gave me a better perspective of the geographies traversed, and time to adjust to new surroundings. But now I knew taking the long way meant spending the night at a youth hostel filled with drunken nineteen-year-old Australians, searching for a bus station at six in the morning while pulling an oversized Italian suitcase uphill in a town that stinks of pulp mill, sleeping on the puce-coloured carpet of the Raven deck with the Haida Bucks basketball team on board a ferry, walking five kilometres along train tracks in the rain to find a sandwich. Taking the long way meant the loyalty of your Italian doggy might wane. And the culinary delights of BC Ferries’ Canoe Cafe would do little to revive him.

  “What’s that?” Giuseppe asked.

  “Vinegar. Don’t you like vinegar on your fries?”

  Giuseppe looked out at the dark seas swelling around us. Tonight we were due to cross the Hecate Strait – the fourth-most-dangerous body of water in the world.

  “Just another eight hours,” I said, digging into the fries.

  It was six in the morning when we finally saw land. Giuseppe wondered about the bus to our next and final destination.

  “There’s no bus on the island,” I said.

  “Taxi?”

  It began to rain, of course.

  “We’ll have to hitchhike,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You know, stick out our thumbs and get a ride with someone else.”

  “I know what hitchhike means. No.”

  “No?”

  “I will not hitchhike.”

  I should have felt compassion by then. My doggy had black rings under his eyes. One of the wheels of his suitcase had broken off. But maybe I wanted to test his mettle.

  “There’s no choice,” I said.

  “I’ll walk.”

  “It’ll take days.”

  “I’ll walk.”

  It was our first real argument.

  “We could rent a car but it will be very expensive,” I said.

  “Good.”

  “It’s probably not open yet. We’ll have to wait.”

  “I don’t care.”

  He seemed happier once we were driving the red jeep up-island. At that point, we still had our tans from India, and memories of warmth. We sang silly songs and drove further into the north.

  Finally, tarmac turned to gravel and we drove through a tunnel of conifers, veering away from the potholes. The forest thinned to a scraggly stand of Sitka spruce and stagnant ponds. A sign: “Rapid Richie’s Rustic Rentals Reasonable Rates. Rrrrrr!” We drove up Lupine Lane and parked in the sandy parking lot.

  “We’re here!” I stood and breathed in the fresh air.

  Giuseppe sat in the jeep, shivering.

  “Wait until you see the beach. It’s just a few minutes down that path,” I said.

  Silence.

  “Why don’t we go get the key to the cabin?” I asked.

  When we opened the blue door of The Empress, it became even more obvious I’d made a mistake. Last season’s mess greeted us. Plates caked with spaghetti sauce filled the makeshift sink. Sand, dead leaves, crushed crab shells on the plywood floor.

  “What’s that?” Giuseppe pointed to the bed. At first I thought he meant the futon, the tangle of polyester sheets. But then I saw the telltale scattering of chocolate brown, like cake sprinkles.

  “It’s mouse poo,” I said.

  The poo was scattered throughout the drawers where his fine Italian handkerchiefs would lie, on the counters where the Sicilian pecorino would be sliced. It was everywhere.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  By now I could only wonder why it had taken him so long to conclude he’d arrived in a country of barbarians, and that I, despite my charms in Tibet Peace Guest House’s Room 204, was one of them.

  “This is unacceptable. No Italian would accept this,” he said.

  I waited for him to get back into the jeep and drive into the waning light. But he didn’t. He opened his suitcase. He extracted a set of his mother’s hand-embroidered sheets, snapping them expertly above the futon. I swept up the mouse poo. He boiled pots of water. We cleaned until the frogs began to sing.

  Notes from Off the Grid

  1. The Road

  First a sign: “Proceed with Caution: Narrow, Winding Road.” The forest thickens. Cedars creep back to the edge. Moss grows in mufflers, hangs in gossamer veils. Tamped pathways rusty with leaf mulch all lead towards the Pacific. Cabins built of driftwood and salvaged glass. People who chop wood, collect rainwater in barrels. They light candles or propane lanterns, tune to CBC on battery-operated radio. Or they listen to silence.

  2. Silence

  It has a sound, a fullness. Heavy with sigh of tree, and space between breath. Ripe with pause between birdsong and crash of surf. No one tells us it’s addictive. The ear seeks it as a musician’s seeks a Bach “Partita” or an Ellington “Suite.” We crave its harmonious overtures, and well-timed rests. Crunch of foot on leaves. Knock on wooden door. Creak of rusty hinge. Steaming kettle and clanking teacup, rat-a-tat-tat of conversation. This is why – we think, all the while holding up our end of the conversation – this is why people become hermits.

  3. Conversation

  It’s about firewood – too wet, too knotty. About driving past Rose Spit, all the way to East Beach, chainsaw ready for bucking logs washed up from the world. Yellow cedar, mahogany, even yew. It’s about storm reports from Thailand, catching waves that have travelled thousands of miles. Huckleberries ready to pick, salal berries ripening soon. Staying up all night canning coho, or pickling sea asparagus, or bottling elderflower wine. It’s about the price of gas, the size of engines, the durability of tires (on these roads). Freight charges and air mail, Okanagan peaches five times the price. It’s about Shauna pregnant for the first time, Estrella for the third. Everyone seems to be having babies. “Careful of the
water,” they say.

  4. Water

  We collect it in blue plastic eighty-four-litre garbage pails. It hits cedar shingles, drips into a trough, runs in a thin, steady stream. It’s the colour of pale urine. They say it softens skin, brightens eyes. We boil it. Drink Earl Grey, rooibos, apple-cinnamon. We bathe in a basin just big enough to crouch. Wash each other’s backs, feel it trickle down our spines, penetrate membranes. We feel it seep into those parts of ourselves we never knew existed.

  At The Empress

  We dance in silence across plywood. We sleep to the sound of singing frogs and a wind blowing from Alaska. We walk amongst sea stars, moon snails and empty shells of Dungeness. We imprint ourselves here, every day, in the wet sand, and every day we disappear.

  Looking for the Forest

  Some couples have make-up sex. Others bake. The other night, Giuseppe asked if I’d like to bake some coconut “macaronis.” Even though it was only eight o’clock I was already in bed, and had been there for three hours, feigning sleep. I lay there angry about something Giuseppe had done or said; I couldn’t remember what.

  “Macaronis?” I asked. Giuseppe held the Joy of Cooking to the light. For the first time that day, I smiled.

  “We’re just missing a couple of ingredients,” he said with his charming accent. It turned out we were missing two out of the four ingredients that go into making coconut macaroons. Like most angry people, I didn’t really want to be angry. The “macaronis” were a perfect excuse to get out of bed.

  “Let’s go to the bakery,” I suggested.

  Luckily, we lived within a few minutes’ walk from The Moon Over Naikoon bakery. The bakery and I had a tacit agreement. When it needed ground ginger or an onion, I retrieved these items from our cabin. When I needed a teaspoon of vanilla or an egg white, the bakery’s sliding glass doors slid magically open and all was well.