by Thomas King
Mimi’s right. How many times have we walked around an injustice? Ignored intolerance? Rewarded bigotry and racism with silence? By the time we walk downstairs and step out of the hotel, I’ve already come up with more than a dozen instances without even trying.
“I’m not angry,” Mimi tells me as we come onto the bridge and work our way through the crowds. “I’m just disappointed. That’s all.”
Up ahead, a tour group is gathered around a saint, while a guide explains why martyrs matter.
When we get to the middle, Mimi stops and looks out at the river and the city. “With all that we could do,” she says, “we do this.”
The world being what it is, I have, on a number of occasions, contemplated suicide. But I’ve never been able to come up with a good note. Once, I went on the Internet to see if anyone had had more success with this than me.
The poet John Berryman had written “I am a nuisance” on the back of an envelope. Vachel Lindsay, another poet, had left the message “They tried to get me—I got them first,” while the actor George Sanders wrote three suicide notes, the pithiest of which said “Dear world, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”
None of these is particularly impressive. I would have liked to have come up with the line from the Gloria Shayne Baker song.
“Goodbye, cruel world, I’m off to join the circus.” Short and clever.
But Baker had beaten me to it. However, she didn’t commit suicide. She died of lung cancer at age eighty-four, so the line might still be available.
In one of my weaker moments, I shared my dilemma with Mimi.
“You want to commit suicide?”
“I was thinking about it.”
“But you were worried about the note?”
“I think it would be important.”
“Bird,” Mimi had said, “if you’re that concerned about the quality of your prose, you’re not suicidal. You’re just having a bad writing day.”
“Okay, what would you do?”
“Me? Suicide?”
“Yes.”
“Book a room at a nice hotel with a large tub,” said Mimi without much thought. “Dark chocolate. Some wine. Hang a sign on the bathroom door that said ‘Do Not Enter, Suicide in Progress.’”
“I’m serious.”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
AFTER THE MOUNTIES LEFT, I had walked down to what remained of the Littlechild camp. There was a child’s toy in the grass, along with a plastic container blown into the water by the wind. A spoon and a fork lay next to a tipi stake that had been pounded flush to the ground.
The only thing still standing was the firepit.
In the end, Writing-on-Stone wasn’t much of a story. The people who had been at the camp were taken to Lethbridge, where they were reprimanded and released. Littlechild was charged with trespassing. She was given a year’s probation and was barred from setting foot in any provincial or national park.
There was a protest by Native students at the University of Calgary in support of the short-lived camp. Littlechild was supposed to speak at the event, but she didn’t appear, and no reason was given as to why she didn’t show.
By then, I was back in Guelph.
Safe and sound. No worse for wear.
A couple of months after the incident, there was a story in the Calgary Herald about a family who had wandered onto the abandoned campsite. One of the kids took a picture of the firepit and put it on her Facebook page. It showed thin wisps of smoke rising out of the ground.
That day at Writing-on-Stone, I had watched the police douse the fire with water and turn the ashes, but in spite of their best efforts, the coals had persisted and continued to smoulder.
SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE.
The sun is shining. The day has gotten hotter than I find comfortable, but as Mimi loves heat, I’m hoping that the warmth will cheer her. With any luck, she’ll forget about Budapest and the refugees before the day is out.
I try to do my part. “Are there any churches you want to see?”
Mimi cocks her head and narrows her eyes. “Who are you, and what did you do with my sweetie?”
“Today’s your day,” I say quickly. “We do what you want to do.”
“What happened to ‘let’s just wander around’?”
“We can wander around and see a church.”
“We saw a church the other day,” says Mimi. “Up at the castle.”
“There must be more than one church in Prague.”
“Maybe I’d rather go shopping.”
I stop in my tracks and wait.
“Prague must have one or two thrift stores.”
For me, thrift stores are in the same category as the garbage bins behind fast-food joints. For Mimi, they’re gold mines just waiting to be quarried.
I try to maintain a neutral tone. “You fly all the way to Prague to go to thrift stores?”
“What’s wrong with recycling?”
I’ve got nothing against recycling. I separate plastics from organics. I use hemp shopping bags. We have several solar panels on the roof of our garage. We’re thinking about buying an electric car.
“I don’t know why you dislike the idea of used clothing,” says Mimi. “You get a wider variety of choices at a thrift store.”
“Yesterday’s fashions at today’s prices.”
“You sound like a snob.”
“Used underwear?”
“Everything is washed,” says Mimi, “and you can wash it again when you get home.”
“A thong. Tell me you would buy a used thong.”
“We all can’t buy new clothes, throw them away, and buy more new clothes.” Mimi has her hands on her hips. “Maybe we could find you a shirt.”
“What’s wrong with my shirt?”
We get across the bridge in good order. At the first major intersection, we have to make a choice.
“Does the guidebook even mention thrift stores?”
“It does,” says Mimi. “But none of the stores is close.” Mimi makes a right-hand turn at the first intersection and stops. “We can walk or take a cab.”
“Farther than that pizza restaurant?”
“Maybe,” says Mimi. “So, what do you want to do, and don’t hurt my feelings and say that you want to go home.”
Two men in suits pass us. One guy takes a quick look at his wrist, and I see a flash of gold and remember Oz that first morning.
“Watches,” I say before I have a chance to think it through. “I’d like to look at high-end watches.”
“You want a high-end watch?”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t even like watches.”
“There are lots of things I do that I don’t like.”
Mimi nods. “Such as follow me around thrift stores.”
“Maybe if I had a nice watch, I’d feel better about myself.”
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” says Mimi, “but I suppose there’s no harm in looking.”
The store Mimi wants to visit is the Prague Thrift Store on Budecska in the Vinohrady district. She’s in through the door and immediately disappears into the racks of clothing. I have not been in all the thrift stores in the world, but the ones I have been in all smell the same. And they look the same. The one on Budecska could be Value Village on Silvercreek. Or the Mission Thrift on Victoria. Or St. Vincent de Paul on Elizabeth.
Same smell. Same look.
Akin to being trapped in a laundry hamper.
On the surface, donated clothing looks to be a simple proposition. You donate clothing to a charity. The charity sells the clothing in their stores. The profits help people in need.
And if that’s the way it worked, it would be a no-brainer. But it’s not.
Charities get more clothing than they can possibly use, and they get clothing they can’t possibly sell. Of the tons of donations they receive from a caring public
, thrift stores manage only a small percentage. The rest is shipped to developing countries such as India or Kenya or Chile or Tunisia, where it competes with developing textile industries in those countries, or is thrown into landfills, or is taken out into fields and burned.
In 2016, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda tried to ban all imports of second-hand clothing, as a way of protecting their textile industries, as a way of keeping North America’s refuse out of their landfills. Almost immediately, the US stepped in and threatened sanctions if anyone tried to close down the free world’s favourite garbage dumps.
I’ve mentioned this to Mimi on a number of occasions, and she agrees that the matter is problematic.
Still, it’s hard to pass up a Dolce & Gabbana organza blouse for $6.50.
I wander through the store trying not to touch anything. All the usual suspects are here. Jeans, tops, purses, belts, hats, children’s clothing and toys, jackets, books. Everything arranged in tight rows with no room to pass.
A cornucopia of First World detritus.
The store is not all that large, but Mimi has vanished. Some thrift stores have dressing rooms. Some have curtains pulled across a dent in the wall. Some force you to hold the article up and guess.
Men’s clothing is at the back of the store. To keep boredom at bay, I flick my way through the T-shirts on the off chance that something catches my eye.
Mimi and I have different ideas about T-shirts. Mimi doesn’t like them. Doesn’t matter the colour or the image. For her, a shirt without a collar and buttons isn’t a shirt.
It’s a paint rag.
For me, a T-shirt is the daily default, provided it’s a black crewneck with no breast pocket.
There are a dozen black T-shirts on the rack. Only three in my size, which makes a decision easier. One shirt says “There’s a 99% Chance I Don’t Care.” Another has a Nike swish symbol, which kills any chance of my ever being caught alive wearing it. The last black shirt has an image of a stylized Indian on a horse racing across the prairies.
I’m holding it up against me, looking for a mirror, when Mimi turns the corner.
“That’s worse than the one you’re wearing,” she says.
“I sort of like it.”
“How about ‘sort of’ putting it back on the rack?”
“Did you find anything?”
It’s a rhetorical question. Mimi has her arm draped with clothing. “I’m still thinking.”
I hold the T-shirt up again. “I could wear it on special days.”
Mimi closes her eyes for a moment. And then she opens them. “Remember that White guy who was selling T-shirts at the Toronto powwow?”
“The guy who was dressed up to look like Buffalo Bill?”
“Remember that one T-shirt?”
In addition to the standard run of “Homeland Security,” “Red Nation,” “Warriors,” and “Native Pride” T-shirts, the guy had shirts in several different colours that said “Will Dance for Booze!”
“This shirt is almost as bad,” said Mimi. “Plus, it’s black.”
I wander the store while Mimi tries on the clothing she isn’t going to buy, and I wonder, not for the first time, if the majority of the junk has arrived here courtesy of death.
Someone dies, and whoever is left standing has to deal with the accumulations of a life. Jerry gets the piano. Thelma gets the silverware. Angela gets the painting hanging over the sofa, which the parents bought when they went on that cruise. The dining room table and chairs go to a niece who just got married, and the TV winds up in the basement of a nephew who is working on a man cave and just needs a neon beer sign to finish off the room.
The rest is sent to a thrift store, because it’s cheaper than renting a Dumpster. This is not, strictly speaking, recycling. It’s more a version of abandonment.
When Mimi finds me, I’m holding a kitchen implement of some sort that looks as though it could double as a sex toy.
“Don’t get excited,” she says. “It’s for pasta.”
“You find anything?”
“I talked to one of the clerks,” says Mimi. “She gave me the name of a street.”
“A street?”
“Near the clock.”
“We’ve seen the clock.”
“Watches,” says Mimi. “Parizska is the place for watches.”
“You want to go watch shopping?”
“No.” Mimi rolls her eyes. “You want to go watch shopping. I want to watch.”
The clerk’s exact instructions were to go to the clock, walk around the square, find the rich people, and follow them. This proves to be easier than it might seem. And Parizska is lousy with watch shops.
“You get to pick one store,” says Mimi, “and one store only.”
“I am the master of my fate.”
“So, choose well.”
We walk along Parizska for a few blocks in each direction. And then we do it again. I look at the watch shops, while Mimi reads the menus posted at the restaurants along the way.
“Okay,” she says, “who’s the lucky winner?”
I choose the shop with the security doors and the armed guard, the shop with the dark wood and polished brass. I have to ring the bell and wait for someone to let us into the small foyer. There we have to wait for the door to close behind us before the door in front opens and lets us into the shop proper.
By the time I step into the shop and clear the guard, I’m feeling important.
I had expected that I would be free to roam the store, stroll past the cases, look at the watches, nod my head appreciatively as I go by, but this is not what happens.
As soon as I make my way to the first case, a tall, elegant woman floats over as though she’s a sailing yacht coming into harbour.
“Good day,” she says with a soft British accent. “American?”
“Canadian.”
“Even better.” Her smile is quite impressive, full lips and bright white teeth, and I’m glad that I did not buy the T-shirt. “How may I assist you?”
“Watches,” says Mimi, who tries a smile of her own, just for fun. “The master of his fate and the captain of his soul would like to examine watches.”
“‘Invictus,’” says the woman. “William Ernest Henley.”
I know a little about Henley. When he was about sixteen, he lost a leg to tuberculosis. And then, less than ten years later, he was told that he might lose his other leg. Instead, he got a famous English surgeon to work on the remaining leg, and after multiple surgeries, the leg was saved. He wrote “Invictus” while he was recovering.
“Invictus” was one of my mother’s favourite poems. I had always thought of it as an ongoing quarrel that Henley had had with medical science. She used it as a buffer for misfortune and poverty and the desertion of a husband.
“My name is Sophia. Are you interested in any particular brand?”
“Something expensive,” says Mimi. “My captain is feeling the clutch of circumstance.”
“Bird,” I say. “Just call me Bird.”
“Mr. Bird, how good to meet you and Mrs. Bird.”
“Bull Shield,” says Mimi, the smile all but gone now.
Sophia is tall, with auburn hair and blue-grey eyes. She’s dressed in a fitted black shift with a string of pearls, and looks as though she should be stepping out of a limousine at a film opening in Cannes, rather than showing watches to a couple of senior citizens from Canada.
“Bull Shield,” says Sophia. “Is that Blackfoot?”
Even Mimi is surprised.
“My husband is German,” says Sophia. “He’s crazy mad for Indians. His big dream is to attend a powwow in Alberta. He will be very jealous.”
“What’s your most expensive watch?” asks Mimi.
“Right now,” says Sophia, “we have a Patek Philippe on consignment from a collector for 3.6 million euros.”
A deep silence fills the shop.
“But you are going to wear this watch,” says Sophia. “Yes?”
&nb
sp; “Of course,” says Mimi.
“So, I would not recommend the Patek. That is a watch you put in a safe and hold for appreciation.”
As I sit in the chair, I realize that Rolex is the only brand of expensive watch that I know.
Sophia shakes her head. “You do not want a Rolex. Everyone has a Rolex. Do you drive a Chevrolet or a Ford?”
I don’t drive a Chevrolet or a Ford, but I’m not sure I want to tell her that I drive a Subaru.
“Then you must not buy a Rolex.” Sophia pushes away from the desk. “Wait here, and I will bring you several excellent watches to consider.”
As soon as she leaves, a young man comes over. He could be Sophia’s younger brother.
“May I bring you a coffee or a glass of wine?” he asks. “A bottle of sparkling water?”
I’m enjoying myself. I try not to look at Mimi. “Wine would be great,” I say.
“And you, madam?”
“Water,” says Mimi, her voice military grey, as though she’s just ordered the bombing of a small village.
Sophia is back almost immediately with a velvet tray and five watches spaced equidistant from each other. At first glance, they all look disappointingly like the Citizens and the Seikos that decorate the malls of the world.
“Fine watches are a very personal acquisition.”
I try to read the brands off the faces of each watch in the hope that the name will trigger something in my subconscious, but the print is much too small.
“I don’t know.” I glance at Mimi. “You see anything you like?”
Mimi isn’t biting. “Oh,” she says, “I like them all.”
Sophia moves in quickly. “Let’s start with the Audemars Piguet,” she says, and holds the first watch up to the light. “This is an example of Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak collection.”
“Of course,” I say with authority.
“Pink gold. Thirty-seven millimetres. Crocodile strap. Note the distinctive case and the extraordinary work on the face. This is a watch that is immediately recognizable.”
“Price?” says Mimi.
“23,700 euros,” says Sophia.
“And this one?” asks Mimi.
“Ah,” says Sophia. “This is a favourite of mine. The Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso. Pink gold again. Rectangular case. But whereas the Piguet is an automatic, the Jaeger is hand wound.”