by Thomas King
“What?”
“It means to stroll or wander. If we walk slowly, as though we don’t give a damn, people may think that we’re French.”
Mimi runs her hand along the stone wall. “I met a woman at the beach. From Scotland. She just got in from Budapest.”
I’m still a little annoyed with Mimi for running off and leaving me. After all, it wasn’t my fault that the note got lost.
“It’s only six hours from here by train.”
I would have liked to have seen the beach, to have seen the swans, to have that experience in common with her, so that when she told the story, I could add some little detail to make the moment come alive.
“What do you think?”
“About?”
Up ahead, a large, blond woman in a blue cape is having her caricature done by a street artist. The woman sits on a stool with one hip cocked up and a shoulder thrown back, as though she is posing for a movie poster from the ’40s.
“Budapest. Just for the day,” says Mimi. “We could catch an early-morning train and then come back later that night.”
“You want to go to Budapest?”
The artist has accentuated the woman’s eyes and lips and chin, so it looks as though her face is going to explode. Her hip is the size of a truck tire.
“That Scottish woman I met? Carol? She said you can still see bullet holes in some of the buildings in Budapest from the 1956 invasion.”
“You want to go to Budapest to see bullet holes in buildings?”
“And there are cast-iron shoes along the Danube, a memorial to the Budapest Jews who were killed and thrown into the river.”
“Lovely.”
“The victims were ordered to take off their shoes before they were shot.”
“In Budapest.”
Over Mimi’s shoulder, I can see Kitty climb onto the stone wall and get ready to throw herself off.
“And, if we go to the university, there’s a memorial that’s not in the guidebooks.”
Eugene just stands there and watches as Kitty leans out over the water. The twins are yelling at her, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Chip has his cellphone out and is taking pictures.
“Carol says that between the bricks on one of the buildings, there is a narrow copper strip with the names of the professors and students who were sent to concentration camps.”
“What happened to going to castles, churches, and museums?”
Mimi doesn’t break stride. “There’s Buda Castle, some famous hot baths, and the Parliament building, which Carol says is amazing at night, but we won’t have time.”
“We won’t have time for anything.”
“Budapest is close, Bird. It’s so close.”
I wait. Sometimes, when I wait, a problem goes away. Sometimes, it doesn’t. “It’s only for the day,” says Mimi. “Think of it as research.”
“Research for what?”
“Life,” says Mimi. “Think of it as research for life.”
MIMI DID NOT HAVE an easy childhood. When she was eight, her father was killed. Martin Bull Shield was on his way back from Waterton Lake when he had to stop to fix a flat tire.
“Hit and run,” Mimi told me. “Guy drove off and left Dad to die.”
Mimi’s mother buried her husband and moved the family to Lethbridge.
“Why didn’t you stay on the reserve?”
“I think Lethbridge was a way to get away from the blame and the pity.”
“Why would anyone blame your mother for your father’s death?”
“Bad luck,” Mimi told me. “People tend to see bad luck as contagious.”
“The guy who killed your father? Was he drunk?”
“Probably.”
“They ever catch him?”
“Rob or Bob somebody. Real-estate developer in Calgary. Showed up in court with a couple of lawyers, his wife, two kids, and the pastor of his church. Man was real remorseful. Talked about his personal life and how his business had been doing poorly and how financial anxiety had left him depressed.”
“So he got drunk, jumped in his car, and killed your father?”
“Cried when he got off.”
“Hit and run, and he got off?”
“Judge didn’t want to destroy the life of a good man.”
The night Mimi told me about her father, we went walking on the Golden Gate Bridge. The sky had been clear, but you couldn’t see the stars because of the lights of the city.
“At Standoff, you can see the stars.”
“Canada sounds nice.”
“Maybe you’ll come and visit.”
“Maybe.”
“How do you feel about sex?”
I had never had a woman ask me that question before.
“Did I shock you, Mr. Blackbird Mavrias?” Mimi leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “What do you think we should do about it?”
WE FIND A SMALL CAFÉ on the Old Town side of the bridge. We share an order of beef sliders. We each get one, and Mimi cuts the third one in two and eats both halves.
“So, we get up early tomorrow and go to the train station.”
“What about breakfast?”
“We’ll get something at the station or on the train.”
“What if we can’t get tickets?” I wipe my hands on the napkin. “Maybe everyone is going to Budapest to see bullet holes in walls and the train is booked.”
I can see that Mimi’s mind is made up, so there’s little to be gained by trying to stand in her way.
“And seeing as it’s Hungary,” she says, “we’re going to need another guidebook.”
AFTER OUR STROLL on the Golden Gate, Mimi and I went back to her hotel room. She didn’t wait for me to make the first move. She simply unbuttoned her blouse and took it off.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“You mean like, now?”
Then she took off her bra.
Afterwards, as we lay in bed, I told Mimi about my father. He hadn’t been killed by a drunk driver. I was three when he simply walked away from a wife and two kids, and never returned. For years, I was sure that it was my fault. Then I blamed my mother. By the time I got out of high school, I realized that I had never known him at all. That he was just a handful of old photographs.
“You never saw him again?” Mimi stuffed all the pillows under her side so she could watch my face. “He never came back?”
Mimi’s mother had had five kids. My mother only had two.
“Don’t know that numbers mean all that much,” Mimi told me. “For a woman, critical mass is generally achieved with one.”
Neither of our mothers had remarried, even though in those days, that was the thing to do. Protection, security, support, companionship. A man was supposed to provide all that. Maybe after the death of her husband, Bernice Bull Shield had figured out that the only shelter she would have in her life would be of her own making.
Maybe after my father left, my mother had come to the same conclusion.
It wasn’t that men didn’t try. Several were even persistent. One guy bought me a bike, an end run around my mother’s defences.
“He bought you a bike?”
“He did.”
“What kind?”
“Think it was a Schwinn.”
“What’d he buy your brother?”
But she hadn’t let any of the men any closer than the kitchen table and a cup of coffee. I don’t know that I would have liked having a stepfather, and my mother never asked me. Maybe after trusting one man, she wasn’t about to make that mistake twice.
Nor had she been willing to lose time over a situation she couldn’t control. She took back her maiden name, fiddled with mine and my brother’s, got a job with the Southern Pacific, and raised two boys.
“So, your father taught you that men can just walk away whenever they feel like it?”
“He didn’t teach me anything.”
“But the example is there.”
I had always wonde
red what happened to my father, if he married again, had more children, or if remorse had overpowered him and he had lived the rest of his life with regret.
Probably not.
But I liked to think that his betrayal had scarred him in some way.
Mimi snuggled in against my chest. “I never had a bike.”
“What did you have?”
“Horses. There were always horses.”
The hotel bed was overly soft, and I had to prop myself up on one elbow. “You think I could have a pillow?”
“Why? You thinking about going to sleep?”
SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE.
It’s almost midnight. We walk back to the hotel. The room is hotter than before, and even with all the windows open, I can see that it’s never going to get cool. The air conditioner is still making encouraging noises, and the spiders are still moving about on the ceiling.
Mimi sheds her clothes and crawls into bed. “We have to get up early,” she says. “The train leaves just before eight.”
“This is a bad idea.”
“You’d rather stay in Prague and go to the Museum of Chamber Pots and Toilets?”
I ease into the chair by the window and open my book.
“Could you turn off the light?”
“I can’t read without light.”
“It’s too late to read.” Mimi begins rolling herself up in the blankets. “You can read on the train.”
I turn out the lights and move the chair closer to the window. There is some illumination that finds its way into the room from the light standards on the bridge, but not enough for reading. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I’ll close my eyes and try to imagine what I might do to make the world a better place.
And because I like easy answers, I generally blame greed and racism, arrogance and sexism. I blame individuals and corporations. I blame the social norms and political structures that allow such destructive ideas and behaviours to breed and flourish.
Line them all up against a wall.
Of course, this is not an answer.
Still, I figure it’s better than doing nothing.
So that’s where I start my evening, sitting quietly in the chair, indulging my rage. And in no time at all, I’m able to turn my anger back on myself.
What have I done to make the world a better place? I write stories. I take pictures. At least I did. Now, I don’t even do that.
Nobody read your stuff anyway. Eugene leans against the radiator, his hands jammed in his pockets. Bleeding-hearts crap.
He almost got shot at Oka, Desi reminds Eugene.
Sure, says Eugene, but they missed.
And he did get death threats for his piece on the Kinder Morgan pipeline.
Death threats? says Kitty. We’re getting death threats?
The twins sit together on the bed. How about we talk about something happy? says Didi.
How about you stop feeling sorry for yourself, Chip barks at me, and start kicking some ass. That’ll make you feel better.
Sometimes when Eugene and the Other Demons gang up on me, I fight back. Blackbird Mavrias, I begin, First Nations photojournalist. Winner of a National Pictures of the Year award and an Aboriginal Achievement award.
That and a buck fifty will get you a cup of coffee at Timmy’s, says Eugene.
What about the death threats? says Kitty.
As well as an award from the Canadian Association of Journalists for outstanding journalism.
You kick some ass, says Chip, and they’ll pay attention.
Old news, says Eugene. You’re old news.
I leave Eugene and the Other Demons to their own devices. Chip picks an argument with Eugene, and Kitty tries to scare the twins with her disaster tales. I go back to saving the world from the safety of a comfortable chair with the potent power of my imagination.
MIMI AND I LAY awake in that San Francisco hotel room the entire night. “So, what do you know about Canada?”
“Rose Marie.”
“Rose Marie?”
“It was a film,” I told Mimi. “My mother took my brother and me to see it.”
The film was awful, but I remember being impressed with the Canadian landscape. Especially the untamed rivers. I could imagine wolves haunting the banks, cougars stalking the treeline above the white water, grizzly bears crouching in the shadow of a cascade.
Mimi was amused. “That’s it? A movie?”
We didn’t have anything in Roseville to match the wild rivers in the film. We had Dry Creek, a brown, sluggish ditch of a water-course that staggered along through valley oak and scrub, home to a scruffy gang of muskrats and a lazy flotilla of overweight carp.
In Rose Marie, Canada looked clean and fresh. I didn’t see any of the actors sweat or slap at a single mosquito.
“Actually, it was a musical. Set in Canada. Mountains, forests, Mounties.”
“Singing Mounties?”
“Mounties don’t sing in Canada?”
Mimi began laughing. She was still laughing when the sun came up.
MIMI WAKES ME at six the next morning. I’m still in the chair and, once again, my neck is stiff, and the world is no better for all my efforts.
“Do you have your diabetic supplies?”
“Yes.”
“Needles, insulin, test strips?”
“Yes.”
“Money, camera, dark glasses, hat?”
I hold up the items in turn, so Mimi can check each one off her list.
“You’re going to love Budapest.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Remember when you didn’t want to go to Athens,” she says. “Remember how well that turned out?”
The train station is crowded; streams of commuters flow off in all directions. Mimi pauses on the bank for a moment and then plunges into the currents and steams straight ahead to the ticket window. I hang back, hoping that the train to Budapest is full or that the woman at the wicket doesn’t speak any English.
After Old Town Square and the Charles Bridge, I had expected that the station would be housed in a crumbling relic, and there is an older part that is historic and ornate, but Praha hlavni nadrazi proper is modern and shiny with bright red pillars and blue accents. There are wide ramps that take you up and wide ramps that take you down. Quick and efficient, so long as you know where you’re going.
Mimi appears out of the crowd, holding a fistful of brochures. “I got the tickets and a map,” she says. “No guidebook, but these will tell us what we should see while we’re in Budapest.”
“We won’t get there until mid-afternoon.”
“That is correct.”
“So, we’re going to get off the train, look at bullet holes, and then get back on the train? That’s not much time to see the place.”
“Staying overnight isn’t going to kill us.”
“Overnight?”
“I found an interesting hotel in downtown Budapest.” Mimi hands me one of the brochures. “Hotel Astoria. The Nazis used it as their headquarters in World War II, and the KGB took it over when Russia invaded Hungary.”
“We can’t stay overnight in Budapest.”
“Stalinist chic and centrally located.”
“We have a room here in Prague.”
“And we’ll still have the room when we come back.”
We’re really going to Budapest? Kitty wraps her arms around herself. Do you remember what the Russians did to Imre Nagy?
There’s a large screen in the middle of the station that shows the trains and the platforms. Our train is not on the list.
“They don’t give you the platform in advance?”
“It’s announced about fifteen minutes before the train leaves.”
Kitty is turning around in tight circles. Why don’t we just go to Chernobyl or Fukushima while we’re at it?
“We don’t even know where the platforms are.”
The train doesn’t leave until just before eight, which gives us time to find something to eat. Mimi already
has the Prague guidebook out and is going through the choices.
“There’s Salanda and Burger King, but neither of them gets very good reviews.” Mimi turns the page. “We could eat at Café Coffee Day, but it looks as though they only have coffee and muffins.”
“Any restaurants nearby?”
“Restaurant Zvonice is just outside the station,” says Mimi, “but they don’t open until eleven thirty.”
“Grocery store?”
Mimi turns more pages. “Billa. Let’s try Billa.”
THE LAST NIGHT that Mimi was in San Francisco, we grabbed dinner at Tad’s Steak House on Powell.
“Steak, garlic bread, salad, and baked potato.” I opened the door for Mimi the way gentlemen did in the movies. “Best meal deal in town.”
“And cheap,” said Mimi. “I like that in a man.”
“How about tomorrow we go out to Cliff House?”
“Can’t. Tomorrow I fly back to Toronto.”
I had forgotten about that. “You live in Toronto?”
“Guelph.”
“Guelph?”
Mimi handed me a business card. “I teach art at the university.”
“Thought the Blackfoot were in Alberta. And Montana.”
“My mother lives in Alberta. On the reserve at Standoff.”
“But you’re in Ge . . . Gel . . .”
“Guelph,” said Mimi, with only the hint of annoyance in her voice. “Do you live with your mother?”
“So, if I want to see you again, I’d have to go to Guelph?”
After dinner we went to a street dance in Union Square. There was a trio playing, guitar, bass, sax. I wasn’t much of a dancer, and neither was Mimi, so we just stood in one place and swayed back and forth, until the band stopped and everyone went home.
I HAVE THIS RECURRING expectation that when we go to fascinating places, we’ll be surprised and amazed by what we find. It’s a misconception, of course, and as we walk into Billa, I can see that the grocery store in the train station will not be an exception to the rule.
“We can get yogurt for breakfast,” says Mimi as we wander the aisles, “and sandwiches for lunch.”
“Just like back home.”
“Bird, if the food was exotic and unusual, you wouldn’t eat it.”
“Slightly unusual would be okay.”