Daddy Lenin and Other Stories

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  I’m sorry I told Teddy that the door to the light would be barred to him. I’m not sure why I did. Maybe it had something to do with those nights long ago when he stood hammering and kicking at our door, shouting like a maniac while I cowered in my bedroom. But now when I imagine the hollow thunder of an old man battering at a locked door with his arthritic fists, there at the end of the long dark tunnel of his life, I only hope that the door did give way and that he stumbled, roaring, into a great spill of light.

  Daddy Lenin

  THE LINEUP AT THE ATM had stalled again, leaving Jack Corbin to wonder why, after three years of retirement, three years as master of his own time, he hadn’t figured out yet that withdrawing cash from the bank near the university during a Friday lunch hour was a truly bad idea. There were eight people ahead of him, students checking their accounts, gauging how much the kitty could be pillaged for weekend festivities. Most were texting as they waited their turn, heads bent in the reverential silence of parishioners shuffling towards the communion rail.

  The queue shunted forward and Jack caught sight of the man who had just surrendered the machine. Someone who wasn’t a student, someone roughly his own age, maybe two or three years older, a man in his mid-sixties dressed in a stained trench coat, someone who came surging back up the line, legs scissoring, kicking at the skirts of his coat as if in disgust, arms savagely chopping at his sides. But oddly enough, given all this hectic action, his face was eerily composed: high cheekbones crimping a faraway gaze, bald head glowing with a serene lustre, lips tucked in a smile blending world-weariness and self-satisfaction.

  Kurt Jorgensen, Jack thought with a jolt. Daddy Lenin. Holy shit, it’s Daddy Lenin.

  Forty years ago, Rodney Stoyko had been the one to give Jorgensen his nickname, to spot his uncanny resemblance to the lovingly preserved corpse lying in state in the Kremlin. Even in his twenties, Jorgensen had displayed a virile waxy dome that, along with the trim moustache, the clipped beard of the professional revolutionary, and the glittering eyes tucked in the perpetual squint of someone gazing long and hard into a utopian future, had made him a dead ringer for Vladimir Ilyich.

  Jack could see his fellow graduate student Stoyko smirking at him, asking in a mock-conspiratorial whisper, “How are things in the inner circle? Is the fearless leader happy with the Politburo, Jackie? Any rumours of another purge to trouble the sleep of the faithful?”

  But that was Stoyko’s bitter-grapes joke after Jorgensen had made it clear that he was no longer welcome at his table in the Apollo Room, the seedy watering hole where the students Jorgensen had judged worthy of his company met on Fridays to drink beer and listen to him expound. Jack’s wife, Linda, was frequently there too, despite the fact that she wasn’t a student. She was working in a Safeway because his teaching assistantship couldn’t keep their household afloat financially. Jack naturally assumed that Linda was tolerated in the Apollo Room on the strength of his special, privileged relationship with Jorgensen. After all, he was Daddy’s chosen one, his right-hand man. Jorgensen was supervising his thesis, had even dictated his topic: Robert Brasillach, French fascist, anti-Semite, novelist, newspaper editor, and author of a seminal film study. Convicted of treason in Paris in 1945, executed at the age of thirty-five for “intellectual crimes” despite pleas for mercy addressed to DeGaulle from the likes of Camus, Mauriac, Cocteau, and Colette. Brasillach, the literary comet who had burned himself to a cinder in less than a decade.

  Jack had been given the nod from Daddy. Poor Stoyko had not; he had been consigned to Siberia because Jorgensen had judged his mind tediously, unforgivably ordinary. That was what everyone in Daddy’s circle dreaded most: banishment.

  That the man Jack had glimpsed was his old mentor was scarcely likely, but he needed to know. He scrambled out of the bank after him.

  The sidewalk was packed with twenty-somethings dawdling in the autumn sunshine. The bright, acidic light spilling from a cloudless sky flooded Jack’s eyes, dissolving the crowd of students in a swarm of colour. He panicked, terrified Daddy Lenin had melted away, vanished forever. But then his eyes cleared and he spotted him striding full throttle down the sidewalk, strollers flinching back from the maniac bearing down on them. In a frantic dogtrot, Jack pursued his quarry down College Avenue, the honking of horns and the roar of engines battering his ears. After three blocks, his head was thumping and he was gasping for breath. If this was Jorgensen, the bastard had kept himself fighting fit.

  The same couldn’t be said of Jack Corbin. Thirty-five years teaching high school had worn him down. Keeping the rowdy elements in check in the classrooms had always been a problem for him; anxiety over disruptions had kept his stomach constantly flipping and churning, turned him into a squeamish eater. But in retirement he had recovered his appetite and all those pounds he had gained were taking a toll.

  Suddenly, Jorgensen veered off the busy thoroughfare and disappeared up a side street. Rounding the corner, Jack saw that his prey had slackened pace. Maybe he was looking for an address, or maybe the quiet of this residential enclave, the stately elms spreading a yellow, shimmering vault of leaves above the roadway, had subdued his frenzy. It definitely was a pleasant area, what Jack’s wife, Linda, who had acquired a real estate licence after their two girls had flown the nest, would describe as a mature neighbourhood. In the 1950s, the majority of the children and grandchildren of the original owners of these houses had removed themselves to the new suburbs, opting for reliable wiring and plumbing.

  In time, many of the spacious family homes they had deserted had been subdivided into cheap rental accommodations. But recently the district had undergone a gentrification blitz and was hurriedly being restored to its well-heeled beginnings. “Location, location, location,” as Linda was fond of saying. Within walking distance of the university, the river, and the downtown, this neighbourhood resoundingly tinkled the location bell three times. Plus, it exuded character, a DINK couple’s wettest dream.

  Yet here and there a relic still teetered, and Jorgensen was making for one of these, a three-storey with plugged eaves sprouting rusty weeds, windows curtained in dusty sheets and fading Canadian flags, its siding eczemaed with scabby paint. Cutting across a lawn patched with naked earth and dead grass, Jorgensen bypassed the front door and slipped around to the side of the house.

  Jack hesitated, ambled up and down the sidewalk, doing his best not to signal to any onlooker his interest in this rotten molar in the jaw of the street. Either Daddy Lenin’s run of bad luck had continued, or living in that corroded wreck was his way of defying the soul-destroying embourgeoisement he had mocked back in the Apollo Room days. Either way you cut it, Jack thought, age does strange things to you. This ghost-hunt was proof enough of that. The only sensible thing to do would be to return to the bank, get his cash, find a place for a cup of coffee, and let the psychological dust that this apparition had raised settle. But instead, he crossed the street, located a side door where a neat, hand-lettered card mounted by the doorbell proclaimed K. Jorgensen.

  Jack stabbed the button, loosing a strident, nervy buzz. Dead silence. No footsteps, not a rustle of movement. Perhaps Jorgensen suspected proselytizing Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Jack rang again, then again. Finally there came the sound of shoes punishing a stairway. The door flung open. Daddy Lenin’s face had lost all traces of the Buddha-like serenity it had radiated in the bank.

  “What!”

  “Professor Jorgensen. It’s Jack Corbin.”

  Daddy scanned his features, scrutinized them closely, running a thorough identity check. A shrill whistling erupted downstairs that diverted Daddy’s eyes. “Shit. The kettle,” he said, whirling around and clattering back down the stairs.

  One thing Jorgensen had never been known for was courtesy, and Jack took his having left the door open as a tacit invitation to follow him. At the bottom of an unlit stairway a door stood ajar. Through it, Daddy could be seen at the kitchen counter of a gloomy suite, spooning loose tea into a pot. Jac
k stepped across the threshold, shut the door softly behind him.

  A stench of mouse, sewer gas, and mould burrowed into his nostrils. The place was tiny and sparsely furnished. An Arborite table and two chrome-legged chairs took up most of the floor space in the kitchen. An air mattress in the living room sat on a ratty carpet stained with blotches of god only knew what sordid liquids. There was a bum-hollowed armchair, a floor lamp, a small bookcase painted midnight blue. A simple wooden crucifix hung on the wall above the bookcase, witness, perhaps, to Jorgensen having finally consummated his flirtation with Catholicism. Back in the day, Jack could remember Daddy paraphrasing Charles Maurras, something along the lines that he preferred to give his allegiance to the learned procession of the councils and the popes rather than put his trust in gospels penned by four obscure Jews.

  That statement was typical Daddy. Épater la bourgeoisie had been Jorgensen’s style from the moment he had arrived on campus as a young professor newly graduated from the Sorbonne, reeking of worldly Left Bank sophistication. An American army brat, his father had been attached to NATO headquarters in Brussels where a preteen Daddy, contrary to expatriate custom, had insisted on attending a French-speaking school where he had become fluent in the language.

  It hadn’t taken long before the new addition to the History Department was a focus of interest, gossip about him flying thick and fast. Edna McElroy breathlessly confided to Jack that Daddy had liberally sprinkled the word fuck in a conversation she had had with him about a research paper she was working on. And then the juiciest of juicy stories broke, one concerning the philosophy prof George Carson. Apparently, one night when a lovesick Carson had rung Jorgensen’s doorbell, it was answered by a naked coed, her thighs streaked with semen. How anyone knew any of these very intimate details was never explained. Nor was the source of the rumour that Carson and Daddy were romantically involved ever identified. It was accepted on faith that Jorgensen had decided to coldly terminate his involvement with a male lover by sending a female conquest to greet him at the door.

  Jorgensen had been a tough man to get a handle on, not only in regard to his sexual tastes but also his political orientation. A self-declared right-wing anarchist – no one among his students could define what that was – he scorned “suckling-pig free enterprisers,” detested liberals and “their masturbation fantasies about welfare mothers,” and abhorred “Modern Times Marxists eager to grind every one of us up in the cogs of the state apparatus.”

  A loud thud snapped Jack out of his saunter down memory lane. Jorgensen had banged the teapot down on the table and was irritably rattling mugs and spoons. “Sit,” he commanded and Jack did as he was told.

  Daddy dropped in a chair, ran his eyes around the apartment, feigning puzzlement. “No, just as I thought … I don’t have a telephone. So you didn’t get my address from the phone book. So how the fuck did you find me?”

  “I spotted you in the bank just now.”

  “You tailed me?”

  “I was curious. It’s been a long time, Kurt.” Jack was making sure not to repeat what he had done earlier, humbly address Jorgensen as professor. That was a tactical error. Professor was forty years ago, this was now.

  “A blink of the eye in the face of eternity, Jackie.”

  “Before you left here, you promised to keep in touch. I heard nothing from you.” He waited for a response. Jorgensen offered none. “So what have you been up to for all these years? I’m curious.”

  Daddy Lenin lifted the lid on the teapot and peered down into it as if it were a shaft sunk into a rich reservoir of memory; setting it gently back in place, he said, “Decades of playing wandering scholar, that’s what. One-year teaching stints filling in for professors on sabbatical. Holding the fort for nervous breakdowns and alcoholics in treatment or addicts in rehab. But another tenure track job –” His shoulders rose in weary resignation. “After what happened here, no chance of that.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “I can’t offer you sugar or milk. I don’t use them. I have my girlish figure to preserve,” was all he said, slopping tea into their cups.

  “Neither do I.” It wasn’t true. Jack gingerly sipped the scorching tea and waited for Jorgensen to fake some curiosity about his life. But Daddy’s gaze was directed to the floor, which seemed to have captured all his interest. Jack had a bird’s-eye view of the top of his bald head, jaundiced by the fitful fizzing and stammering of the fluorescent tube overhead. “Me, I became a high school teacher. I’m retired now,” Jack finally volunteered.

  Jorgensen lifted his eyes. “Yes, chinos – is that the right word? – and a cotton button-down shirt. I assumed from your wardrobe that you had entered the ranks of some conventional, mind-numbing occupation.”

  Dockers and Arrow shirts were how Linda uniformed him now. Jack surmised she preferred to come home to someone who dressed like her clientele. “I wasn’t left with many other options than teaching high school,” Jack said defensively. “Not after what happened to me when you left the university. Having you as my thesis adviser was two strikes against me. The examining committee was in an unforgiving mood towards anybody thought to be in your camp. It was guilt by association. Guess what? Their verdict was that my thesis lacked balance. They said I needed to re-examine and rethink my entire approach to my topic. I left without my degree.”

  “Does that mean you stood by your guns, stood on principle, Jackie? How unlike you. How surprising.”

  No, I didn’t stand on principle, thought Jack. And fuck you too. “The writing was on the wall. It was clear they were never going to pass me whatever I did. It was pointless to continue.”

  Jorgensen was absorbed in rolling a cigarette. Jack remembered all those nights he had spent with Daddy, chain-smoking, drinking Scotch, he hanging on to Jorgensen’s every word, swept along in the dance of ideas, filled with optimism, youthful prospects, and hopes. “I didn’t have the luxury of fighting lost causes. I needed to find a job. A year in the College of Education qualified me to teach,” Jack said. “After all, I had a wife to support.” How apologetic, how pathetically self-justifying that sounded, this making of excuses for failing to live up to the pedal-to-the-metal bohemianism Jorgensen had held up to his disciples as the ideal. Did anyone use the word bohemian nowadays? Did the young aspire to that quaint condition anymore?

  Daddy Lenin struck a match and held it to the tip of his cigarette. “Poor baby, toiling away in the dark satanic mills of public education. Did the little woman appreciate it? Your sacrifice? Are you and she still together after all these years? What was her name? Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. Linda. Was it Linda?”

  “Yes, Linda.” You don’t remember her name? What a load of horseshit. “I’m happy to say we’re celebrating our fortieth anniversary next month. We have two lovely daughters, Rebecca and Smith. Both professionals, both married, each with a child.” He realized this prim description of his offspring was a mistake. It might elicit admiration in the circles he and Linda travelled in now, but it was likely only to incite disdain in Daddy Lenin.

  And how right he was. “Smith. Interesting name for a young lady,” said Jorgensen. “Of course, there was a bumper crop of female Caseys, Sidneys, and Dylans some decades ago. But somehow Smith conjures up a burly lesbian hammering sheet metal rather than the soccer mommy portrait you paint.”

  “It’s Linda’s family name,” said Jack. “Smith.” He could feel Daddy Lenin edging him further into a corner, driving his back to the wall as he had always done. He tried to counterattack. “And what about you, Kurt? I don’t notice any signs of blissful cohabitation here. Any significant other?”

  “No, still wandering lonely as a cloud.”

  “How’s that at your age?”

  Jorgensen studied the end of his cigarette. “Just fine. One thing at our age, there’s never a shortage of willing divorcees and widows.”

  I’ll bet, thought Jack. All of them eager for a guy in a stained trench coat to flash them his w
ithered package, scoot them off to his groovy bachelor pad, and send them into transports of ecstasy on a leaky air mattress. Daddy Lenin the lady-killer. How far he had fallen. In comparison, Jack felt he had done all right. It wouldn’t hurt Linda to see that. “Look,” he said briskly, “we should get together. Why don’t you come by for dinner? Weekends aren’t great – Linda’s a real estate agent now and weekends are her busiest time for showings – but a weekday would be good.”

  “Ah,” said Jorgensen, “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not in the market for a cozy cottage.” He gestured to the suite. “I can aspire no higher than this.”

  “Nobody’s trying to sell you anything, Kurt. All we’re talking about is dinner, a few drinks. Talk over old times. How about it? What do you say to this Monday?”

  “What time?”

  “If you came by for drinks about six that would be great. I can’t guarantee Linda will be home exactly then, but she shouldn’t be much later. Then we’ll eat.” Jack took out a pen and his seldom-used appointment book, scribbled down his address, ripped out the page, and laid it in front of Jorgensen. Before any objection could be raised, Jack bustled to his feet. “Good, it’s settled then. See you Monday.”

  “I’d never have thought you susceptible to nostalgie de la boue, Jackie. But it’s a bad day when you don’t learn something.”

  “Hardly nostalgie de la boue, Kurt. Just a little get-together.”

  They parted then. Once out the door, Jack unleashed his pent-up anger, savagely scattering fallen leaves with his feet as he marched up the street. Nostalgia for the mud, he thought. That about sums you up, cocksucker. Never happy until you had landed somebody in the muck. For five or six blocks Jack carried on like this until his rage suddenly died, leaving him feeling spent, depressed, and hungover the way he always did the morning after one of those dinners Linda hosted for her boisterous real estate colleagues and professionally hearty business contacts.