Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction

by Claude Lalumiere

  She walked away.

  She walked, and then she walked faster — and then she ran. She did not look back until she reached her building. She braced herself on the front door, panting. She dared to look behind her; Shadow was nowhere in sight. She stepped away from the door.

  If she let him go now, she would never know how this would end. There would be so much left unresolved. Anyway, she was certain that he would find his way back to her, no matter where or how she abandoned him. But would he want to come back to her? Natasha was not ready to have that question answered yet.

  When she returned to the park, Shadow was stretched out on the grass beside the garbage bin where she had left him. A young man bent over him, ruffling his white fur. He looked up in surprise as Shadow clambered up and trotted toward her.

  “Is that your dog?” the man asked, straightening. A leash dangled from his hand. In the distance, a Dalmatian sniffed and pawed at a pile of leaves. Natasha had never seen him nor his dog at the park before. “I was about to call the Humane Society.”

  “He’s his own dog,” Natasha said. Shadow sat at her feet, waiting. She bent down and picked up his leash.

  “I can see that. Got away from you, did he?” Although he smiled, there was a sadness in eyes. It intrigued her; the emotion was foreign, exotic. Lately Natasha felt only the numbness of anticipation, as if she were on a cross-country bus trip, powerless to do anything but count away the passing nights and days.

  “Yes,” she said. The man’s dark eyes were heavy-lidded and long-lashed, and the hand that held the leash looked strong. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

  “I am only passing through,” he said. “My name is Ameer.”

  “Natasha,” she said. “Thank you for looking after Shadow. Would you like to come back to my place for coffee?”

  He blinked, and then smiled again. The sadness remained his eyes, but that was fine with Natasha. Her eyes likely betrayed something, too.

  Natasha took Ameer and his Dalmatian on a tour of the condo’s silent rooms, feeling a little like Bluebeard. “Do you find it lonely in this large place?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Not lonely enough, with Shadow.”

  The last stop in the tour was the master bedroom. The room was a war zone — barren, desolate, stripped of anything of value. Everything meaningful had been squirreled away for better times: photo frames lay face-down in drawers, jewellery rested furtively in secret compartments, the good sheets were wedged at the back of the linen closet. Only the goldfish bowl still stood on the dresser, but they would never reveal what atrocities they had witnessed, and they would never judge. Goldfish were like that — as neutral as Switzerland.

  “My dog only makes me feel more alone,” Ameer said.

  He perched on the bed. Natasha sat next to him. She had not offered him coffee yet as she had promised. The dogs curled up at their feet: a peaceful, domestic tableau that could shatter at any moment with the right word or action. There was something comforting and alarming about this ritual, this rigmarole, this pantomime that could only end in love and — and what? Hate? Hate was too strong a word. Detachment, perhaps. Or alienation.

  “In what way?” she said. Here is someone who understands, she thought, who can help me understand what has happened to me.

  Ameer teased the Dalmatian’s muzzle with his fingernails. The dog’s tail thumped from side to side on the carpet like a metronome, timing her master’s silence.

  “I will tell you my story,” he finally said, “and you can judge for yourself.”

  The Story of the Husband and the Parrot

  In hindsight it was my fault for not trusting her. But let me start at the beginning. I was young and in love, and extremely jealous. I had married a beautiful, agreeable woman, and I looked forward to spending the rest of my days in domestic harmony. But jealousy was my downfall; suspicion, my rival.

  In hindsight I should have also trusted myself to be a fine husband and man enough for her. Instead I bought a parrot to spy on her, a loyal bird that told me all that occurred in my house while I worked during the day. Many times my wife was shocked that I knew the details of her daily affairs — the errands she ran, the phone calls she received, the friends and neighbours with whom she conversed.

  Being a clever woman, my wife soon discovered that the parrot was betraying her. She threw a towel over its cage and ordered her maids to deceive it thus: one shone a flashlight intermittently above its head; the second sprayed water between the gilded bars; the third ran a blender beneath the cage.

  I arrived home that night and consulted my feathered confidant. What news of my wife’s affairs? I asked.

  Ah! I could not see or hear anything but the terrible lightning, rain, and thunder, it said.

  Of course, I knew this to be false; it had been a bright, temperate day. I assumed the parrot was mocking me. In a fit of rage, I seized the poor bird from its cage and dashed it to the ground, killing it. Only later did I learn from the maids of my wife’s trick, and I regretted killing the one creature who had been true to me.

  When I confronted my wife, she flew into a fury. What does it matter? she cried. What right have you to spy on me?

  She then pronounced words that had no meaning to me until she uttered, I command you to be half-marble, half-man.

  The force of her enchantment sent me flying into the nearest chair, where I found myself unable to move, as if I had been tied down. I had become marble from the waist down, and yet my head, torso, and arms were flesh.

  My wife confined me to the bedroom, where for many months she took cruel pleasure in her power over me. She would lock me alone in the room for days until I begged to see another human face. She would sit on the bed and stare silently at me while I feared she was devising a new torment. Some days she would simply ignore my presence as if I were an unused armoire. If I protested, she would threaten to turn my upper body into stone as well.

  She particularly enjoyed gratifying herself with my marble phallus while I sat helpless and humiliated. Sometimes she would bring home a man or a woman, or both, and I would be forced to watch their carousing — or worse, her lovers would ill-use me as well. I could still move my arms and was often tempted to strike her — but I remembered the parrot and how quickly and unnecessarily it had died.

  Eventually one of my wife’s maids, a clever girl who knew a little sorcery, took pity on me. One night, while my wife was out, she cured my affliction and promised to avenge me. I begged her to not punish my wife too severely; we were married, and I still loved her, despite the pain we had made the other suffer. The sorceress conceded.

  When my wife returned home, she was transformed into the Dalmatian that you see now. The sorceress disappeared in a puff of smoke, and I never saw her again.

  I have since realized that, although my wife wronged me, I had wronged her as well. I have been travelling from city to city for the past five years, searching for the sorceress. I wish her to change my wife back into a woman so that we can forgive each other.

  Ameer named all the cities he had visited. It was a long list. Evening had fallen, limpid and languorous. His voice grew louder and clearer in the still air; night always amplifies sound and lends gravitas to feelings that would appear trivial in daylight. Natasha wondered if Scheherazade’s stories would have held her husband’s attention if she had told them during the day.

  Finally Ameer fell silent, his downcast eyes hidden by long lashes. Natasha wished she had lashes like his, if only so she could hide behind them. A tear slid down his cheek, and she envied his ability to cry. She could not cry for fear of appearing weak or manipulative. She brushed the tear away with her thumb so that she would not have to look at it.

  She slipped an arm around his shoulders. He’s lost someone, too, she thought. Another casualty of the war between the sexes. His hand was a tent
ative weight on the underside of her breast. Natasha shivered, moved by his gentleness.

  This is not a revenge fuck, she thought. I am not that type of woman. I am doing this because I want to.

  They shut their dogs in the bathroom.

  Shadow told the Dalmatian a story of his own. He told her how he had turned Natasha into a human. She ignored him; Dalmatians tend to be deaf. He tried to mount her but slipped off her narrow backside. She nipped him on the back of the neck. He retreated to the corner. She greedily lapped stale water from the toilet.

  Drums woke Natasha the next morning. She floundered in the queen-size bed; lately she had been defiantly sleeping in the middle. She turned her face toward the bedroom window’s light. A shadow flickered on the blinds. Ameer was slipping into the jeans he had discarded the previous night. Natasha feigned sleep.

  He opened the bathroom door. The Dalmatian bounded out and stuck her muzzle into his hand. When Shadow followed, Ameer pushed him back into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Ameer left the bedroom, his hand still on the Dalmatian’s head. Oh, the shame of being dumped at dawn without even a thank you ma’am. Natasha covered her face with her hands as if blinding herself would make her disappear — in a puff of smoke, perhaps, like Ameer’s sorceress-maid. That would have been nice — an escape from the long days and nights of uninformed anticipation.

  When she heard the front door close, Natasha sat up and punched the second pillow on the bed. She was angry at herself for being hurt that Ameer had left. She was the one who had invited him back to her place, had let him touch her. She did not want to be a cliché — the clinging girlfriend who demands constant attention, or the gold-hearted Girl Friday who gives too much and gets hurt in return. She did not expect Prince Charming either, nor did she believe that, if she were virtuous and clever enough, she would find salvation.

  But she did not know what else to do, how else to feel. She should have listened to her mother, who had scolded her for reading fairy tales as a child. Perhaps if she had read the stories her mother had wanted her to read — depressing-looking novels with Newberry Medals stamped on the front cover — she would have known what to do. But she doubted she would have learned about adult relationships from those books.

  The bedroom window hummed; the drums outside were growing louder, deeper. It was late summer, so it was not Chinese New Year, St. Patrick’s Day, or Christmas. Curious, Natasha climbed out of bed, threw on one of Paul’s old T-shirts, and shuffled out onto the balcony.

  A high-school marching band strutted down University Avenue and crossed Dundas Street. Androgynously uniformed teens clutched flutes, trumpets and glockenspiels; pudgy adolescents struggled to keep sousaphones aloft; baton-twirlers cartwheeled in flickering jailbait-short skirts. It was the start of a typical Sunday parade.

  The streets were lined with people — families with children, gaggles of teenagers, curious passersby. It was as packed as if it were the Santa Claus Parade or the Gay Pride Parade. Ameer and his Dalmatian stood trapped at the intersection, unable to cross University Avenue. Natasha felt sadistic satisfaction — then checked herself. Yes, smugness was acceptable. There were no female stereotypes that were based on smugness. But she was still angry at herself for having let Ameer take advantage of her vulnerability. Even if she had been the one to ask him over. Hypocrite, she scolded herself.

  A pair of wide-sleeved Chinese dancers traced curlicues in the air with fluid lengths of silk ribbon. Belly-dancers came next, onyx-haired and almond-skinned, their arms and feet bare except for loops of fine silver chain from which hung bells — sweet-tempered, silver bells from the size of a ladybug’s egg to a calf’s eyeball. Their midriffs undulated in steady waves, and their serene faces did not betray the pain of dancing on hot asphalt. Natasha concluded that the parade must be a multicultural celebration.

  Then — oh, a menagerie! Not a celebration after all; the parade was a tribute. A veiled woman led a camel by a leash. A ruddy-cheeked, ginger-whiskered old man steered an ostentation of peacocks. Little girls in pink dresses clutched trembling white rabbits and ferrets to their chests. A chattering capuchin monkey scampered on and off the back of a grey dappled pony. All of the animals had golden bows tied around their necks — except for the monkey, who had soiled his and stuffed it into a newspaper vending box.

  Where there was a menagerie, there was a circus. A clown teetering on stilts handed down balloons to the children in the crowd. Fire-eaters belched flame from soot- and wax-coated lips. Three generations of Chinese acrobats balanced on a single bicycle. Tumblers and jugglers, dressed for a harlequinade, cavorted around a knot of body-painted contortionists.

  Forty young men and women draped in white followed. Their ebony skin glowed, burnished by the sunlight reflecting off the jewelled caskets they carried. Each casket was open, and bore a jewelled egg on a red velvet cushion. Each egg bore a mechanical bird. The young men and women wound up the tiny birds and launched them into the sky. Nubian slaves, Natasha thought. There are always Nubian slaves in a tribute.

  The birds soared and swooped on sapphire wings. They shat cream-coloured pearls on unattended parked cars. Their amber beaks chattered — karak-kak-ak-ak-ak — over the whirr of their tiny internal clockworks. When they tired, they spiralled lazily down to their eggs, where their bearers would wind them back to life.

  It was a dowry fit for a sultan’s daughter.

  A cheer rose from the spectators. The parade’s star attraction rode into view in the back of a crawling baby-blue vintage convertible. Natasha leaned over the balcony railing. She could not see his face, but she knew what he looked like. He was good-looking, but not so good-looking that you did not trust him. A charming, disarming smile. Eyes that crinkled in the corners when he laughed, and, when he laughed, he made you feel as if you were the only woman in the world who could make him happy. He had black hair, brown hair, blond hair, red hair. He had brown eyes, green eyes, blue eyes, grey eyes. He looked however you wanted him to look — your perfect picture of a perfect man. He had a battered, old-fashioned oil lamp tucked into the waistband of his pants, which he idly stroked.

  A balloon escaped from a child in the crowd and drifted up to Natasha’s balcony. She reached out and grabbed the dangling gold ribbon that tied it. The balloon was white and had a man’s face screened on it in gold metallic ink. It was the face of the man in the convertible, most likely. He looked a little like Paul. Natasha let the balloon go. She did not watch it float away.

  The air was redolent with cinnamon, rose petals, and car exhaust. “He’s an impostor!” Natasha yelled down at the parade. “A liar, a thief, he’ll only bring you grief!”

  Her hands clutched the balcony railing, the knuckles bone-white with fury. She screamed, “He’s not what he seems, he’ll deceive the woman he marries! Hasn’t anyone read A Thousand and One Nights? Or seen that Disney movie? It’s the lamp, that fucking lamp!”

  At eleven stories from street level, no-one could hear her save a flock of sapphire wings. The jewelled birds seized the oversize sleeves of her T-shirt in their golden talons and yanked her away from the railing. Karak-ak-ak, they scolded, diving off the balcony. One bird remained, however, its clockwork innards grinding to a halt. Its emerald-lidded eyes shuddered closed. Natasha caught it in the palm of her hand. She wound it up, but it disintegrated into a sandalwood-scented puff of dust and rusty springs. She brushed its remains into the geranium planter.

  Shadow scratched at the bathroom door. She slipped back indoors and let him out. He padded across the room and scratched at the bedroom door. She let him out again. He navigated around the living room set to the foyer and scratched at the front door.

  Natasha did not know anything about dogs and was confused by his sudden single-mindedness. By the time she realized what he wanted — and was downstairs, dressed, pacing as he squatted on the sidewalk — Ameer and his Dalmatian were
gone. The asphalt was littered with flaccid balloon fragments, confetti, and animal shit. Leaflets fluttered in the gutters. Natasha read them as Shadow pissed against a concrete planter. One of the belly-dancers was offering classes at the local community centre.

  The phone rang.

  Natasha emerged from the bedroom with a half-full laundry basket and paused. Next to Shadow, she dreaded the phone calls the most. She was tempted to turn off the ringer, but she worried that people would come to her door instead, looking for Paul.

  The closest phone was in the sitting room. Natasha set the laundry basket down by the sofa. Shadow was lounging on the rug, watching her. His mouth was open and his tongue skimmed the floor. Natasha let the phone ring three times, and then picked it up.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “May I speak to Paul, please?”

  “He doesn’t live here anymore,” she said, flatly.

  “Oh?” The caller paused. It was a woman, and she didn’t sound as if she believed Natasha. “Can you tell me where he is now?”

  “No,” Natasha said, and hung up the phone.

  The phone rang again. Shadow’s ears perked up. Natasha told him, “It’s not for you,” and picked up the receiver.

  “He’s not here,” she said.

  “Who’s not here?” a brusque female voice asked.

  “Oh. Hi, Mom.”

  “So,” her mother said, without even saying hello, and Natasha knew that she had a hard conversation ahead of her. “So. Aunt Helen says you got a dog, that you brought it to her clinic.”

  “Yes,” Natasha said.

  “What does Paul think? Isn’t he allergic?”

  Natasha pinched the space between her brows, anticipating the headache that conversations with her mother always sparked. She had been wondering when and how she would tell her parents. “Paul and I … Paul’s not here. He left me.”