I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  Most of the others wanted to tell me things.

  When I was having a haircut the barber thought I should know the best ways to hunt duck and moose. A scientist, in charge of a unit to help the surrounding farmers improve their productivity, came over after a reading and said,

  “This is a true story. I thought I would tell it to you. Perhaps you can use it. There was this priest. He lived in the country near here. He was middle-aged. And he liked women, especially girls. Whenever he went to visit people who were sick in hospital or at home—if they were girls—he put his hand underneath the covers. Things got so bad that the local mothers got together and wrote to the bishop. Finally the priest was moved. And he was replaced by a much younger man. This young man didn’t have the other’s habits. But he began to ask for things. He said he needed a new car. The old one was too old. He wanted the house redecorated. Some special food he liked had to be flown in from Montreal. He wanted the best cigars. After a while the people again wrote to the Bishop this time complaining at the money this young priest was costing them.

  “Being chaste is expensive, the bishop wrote back.”

  And Peter, the young owner of a Chinese restaurant where I sometimes went to eat, told me that before coming here he attended university in Red China. He thought I should know the best way to steal chickens off a chicken farm.

  “You get this candle,” Peter said. “It only comes from China. When you light it it gives off smoke. And you let the wind blow this smoke over to where the chickens are. You do it at night. One whiff and the dogs go to sleep for twenty minutes. So do all the chickens. They just lie down and go to sleep. You get a handkerchief and put it around your mouth and pick up these sleeping chickens and put them in your truck. Twenty minutes later, when they wake up, you are miles away—”

  I listened to the strangest confessions, humiliations, suffering. And, as if to balance them, an amazing endurance.

  By the beginning of February I was so well known in the town that strangers in the street would smile and say hello. A tall blond woman with glasses came up to me: “I saw your picture in the paper—it looks like you.” Kids stopped throwing snowballs to call out: “I know you Mister—you write books.” When I went into a restaurant heads would turn.

  Meanwhile the invitations kept coming in.

  One of the early ones was from the professor of English at St. Vincent’s—a teachers’ college which was affiliated to the university. But as it was a hundred and sixty miles away, I kept putting it off. Until the head of the English department told me that St. Vincent’s was after him to get me to come.

  “It will be the usual thing,” he said. “A small dinner before. Then you give your reading at the college hall. And there will be a party afterwards.”

  I agreed to go next Friday.

  Four days later, in the faculty club, he came over. “I’ve just got back from St. Vincent’s. They’re very excited about you coming. They’ve got posters stuck all over the place. There is a piece about you in their local paper. And they have put you up at the best hotel.”

  He ordered coffee and doughnuts for both of us.

  “The board of governors asked me to tell you that you can be resident writer with us for as long as you like.”

  “That’s very nice,” I said.

  I was to fly to St. Vincent’s at noon. But fog came on Friday morning. The planes were grounded. The train no longer ran, although the tracks were still there.

  I took a small green bus from the bus station. Four other passengers were on the bus at the start, but they got off at the small towns on the way. For the first hour the roads were clear. Then it began to snow. The wind increased. It turned into a blizzard. Fewer cars and trucks were coming from the opposite direction and more were abandoned by the sides of the road. The driver kept stopping to wipe the windshield. The snow was coming down so fast and thick that the wipers were not clearing it. Then he stopped at a filling station to get a tow truck.

  “We’ll never get to St. Vincent’s today,” he told me.

  “But I’m supposed to give a reading—”

  “It’s impossible. I can’t get through.”

  I rang St. Vincent’s, told the professor of English the position. He said he understood, that the weather was bad there as well, and it would be best to postpone it.

  I went back to the bus and sat inside.

  “How about going back?”

  “Nothing is getting through either way,” the driver said.

  The tow truck towed us for about an hour and a half—where, I don’t know—as I couldn’t see for the falling snow. Finally we arrived in a small town. The street lights were on but there was hardly anyone in the street—snow covered everything.

  I asked the driver when he would go back.

  “Soon as the roads are open. There will be an inspection tomorrow morning at nine.”

  I said I would be there.

  I went to look for a hotel but as soon as I stepped off the main road I sunk to my knees in snow. I walked that way until I came to cross streets—the road was covered with freshly fallen snow but it was hard-packed underneath. I finally found a sign on a drab-looking wooden building that said it was a hotel.

  “Can I have a room for the night?” I asked the man.

  “It’s eight dollars a night,” he said.

  “OK,” I replied. And waited for him to give me the room key.

  “Is that all your luggage?”

  “Yes,” I said holding on to my attaché case.

  “If that is all your luggage you will have to pay in advance.”

  “I’m the resident writer at the university and I was on my way to St. Vincent’s to give a reading when the blizzard came—”

  “Is your car outside?”

  “No. I came by bus.”

  “And that is all your luggage?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will have to pay in advance—eight dollars.”

  I paid him the eight dollars. It seemed a long time since I was treated this way. I took the key and went up the creaky stairs to room two on the first floor.

  It was a small gloomy room—the kind I used to have in my early days when I was poor. A bare light hung from the ceiling. And I needed it on all the time. There was an iron bed, a rickety wooden dresser. No chair. A cracked enamel sink with only one tap working. And every time I turned on the tap it made a wailing noise. The wallpaper was stained. I felt cold. I went over to the thin green-painted radiator. No heat. There were two grey blankets at the foot of the bed and a disinfectant smell when I pulled back the covers.

  I felt hungry and tired. I looked in my attaché case and took out the toothbrush, the toothpaste, the shaving lather and razor, and the copy of my book that I brought for the reading. But in my rush, or absent-mindedness, I had forgotten to take my cheque book. Not that I would have had any luck cashing a cheque here.

  I took out all the money I had and counted. It came to nineteen dollars and some change. If I’m stuck here another night that’s another eight dollars. The ticket back is ten dollars. That left me a dollar and the change. I counted the change—thirty-seven cents. No need to worry, I said, I might be able to get away tomorrow. What I need now is food (I had been five hours on that bus) and a good night’s sleep.

  I went out to find a restaurant. It was still snowing. I went to the main street. The stores were on one side. The other side consisted of open fields covered in snow and some trees that were almost hidden. I went into a small supermarket and bought a loaf of bread, a tin of sardines, and two apples. That left me forty cents to spare.

  I came back to the room. I ate the bread and the sardines sitting on the bed with my coat on. Then I dipped pieces of bread in the sardine oil. And washed it down with an apple.

  I lay on the bed with the coat and the grey blankets over me. I thought that now
that I was earning my living from writing and giving readings I was past things like this.

  I went to sleep. And when I woke I was hungry. I ate the rest of the bread with the last apple. I remembered from my hard-up days that it was important to have something to keep up morale. I went out, found a small restaurant, had a cup of hot coffee and asked the woman if she sold any cigars singly.

  “These,” she said, “are twenty-five cents each.”

  I looked at it wondering if I had enough.

  “This one is fifteen cents.”

  I took the fifteen-cents cigar, smoked it slowly. The tobacco was kind of green. I took a long time over the coffee. Then went back to the room in the hotel to lie down. Instead, I went to sleep.

  Next morning when I woke up I was cold. I brushed my teeth and shaved in cold water and went out. The snow was still falling but it wasn’t so thick. I walked to the bus station. The bus was in the garage. I found the driver—a different driver—in a stand-up eating place next to the bus depot. He was finishing his breakfast.

  “No—no buses today,” he said. “Next inspection tomorrow.”

  “What time?”

  “Around nine in the morning.”

  “I know the ticket back cost ten dollars,” I said. “Could you give me a ticket. And I’ll pay when we get back?”

  “We don’t run the company on those lines,” he said.

  I felt hungry and light-headed.

  “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “Thanks.”

  He paid for his breakfast and handed me the saucer with the cup of coffee.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

  When he had gone—in my nervousness—I spilled half of the coffee before I had my first sip.

  I went back to the hotel.

  “I’ll stay another night,” I told the man.

  “That will be eight dollars.”

  I paid him.

  All I had left was the ten dollar bill. I put it in my back buttoned-down pocket.

  “How cold is it?” I asked the man.

  “Thirteen below. But near here it’s been thirty-five below.”

  Saturday morning, I thought, I’ll go to shul. It will be warm. There might be a bar mitzvah or some kind of kiddush afterwards.

  “Is there a synagogue here?”

  “No,” he said, looking suspiciously at me.

  “Where’s the nearest church?”

  He gave me directions.

  It was a wooden church painted grey in a snow-covered field. There was a narrow path freshly cleared to the door. A few cars and a few trucks were sunk in the snow by it.

  As I opened the door a man in an ill-fitting blue suit said:

  “Bride or groom?”

  I must have looked puzzled. For he said:

  “What side are you? Bride or groom?”

  “Bride,” I said.

  “To your left.”

  I went to the left side and sat down on the wooden bench at the back beside the Quebec stove that had large tin pipes going up and across near the ceiling. I don’t know what kind of church it was but it was very plain, very austere. There weren’t any religious figures or stained-glass windows. About thirty people were separated by a wide aisle. Those on one side looked at those on the other. We all had our coats on. Up ahead, slightly raised, were the bride and groom. And the preacher in a plain grey suit. There was a small wooden organ to the right where a woman was playing.

  The wedding ceremony didn’t last long.

  Afterwards the guests walked in ones and twos along the snow-covered street—icicles hung from the boarded-up houses—down a turning to the main street and to a better hotel. And at the top of the stairs, in the centre of a large room, the bride and groom were sitting, side by side, on chairs against a wall. The guests came up to them, in ones and twos, with their presents.

  I stayed near the door. There was food. A buffet. I guess that friends and relations of the bride thought I belonged to the other side. Just as the other side thought I belonged to the groom.

  “Where are you from?” a man asked me.

  “Out of town,” I said.

  I didn’t stay long. Long enough to have three ham sandwiches and two cups of coffee.

  Then I went back into the street.

  For some reason I couldn’t find the hotel where I was staying. The town wasn’t that large. If you walked five minutes in one direction on the main street that was it. There were several side streets to the one main—but I kept getting into places that ended in dead ends.

  I managed to get back to the main street. The place was now packed with people walking, people shopping. Outside a music store, over a loudspeaker, someone was singing, “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon.”

  I felt like a vagrant.

  I saw a bit of ice on the road and with a run I went down it. I was hungry and cold. But when I came back to the room my cheeks were rosy.

  I lay down on the bed. Because of these last few years I had forgotten how it was to be poor. Now that I was back in it, I was hungry. All that had happened to me since the last book was published seemed some kind of fraud. I was a writer. In my world nothing is certain. I needed this reminder, I told myself.

  Now, I must get myself out of it. I tried to remember what I used to do. I went though the pockets—of my suit, my overcoat. Not a cent. In my hard-up days I always left a coin or two in the pockets. What could I sell? There was the copy of my book from which I was going to read at St. Vincent’s.

  I went out again. I couldn’t find a bookstore. But I did find a secondhand place that had a lot of junk (mostly furniture) lying inside in heaps all over the place. There were some battered paperbacks on the floor.

  A woman finally came.

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to sell you this book,” I said.

  She picked it up, turned a few pages. I hoped she wouldn’t come across the parts I had marked with a pen that I usually read.

  She closed the book. “Fifty cents.”

  “It sells for $5.95. And it is almost new.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  I took it.

  If I had to stay another night I could try and sell her my watch. But she would never give me eight dollars for it—of that I was certain.

  With the fifty cents I went out and got myself a hot dog and a cup of coffee. And wondered what I would do tomorrow if I couldn’t go back.

  Outside it had stopped snowing. I went to the hotel room. I felt hungry and cold and went to sleep.

  Sunday morning I slept in. I looked at my watch—ten to nine. I didn’t have time to wash or shave. I walked as quickly as I could to the small bus depot. The bus was outside, its engine running. The door was closed. The driver was not inside.

  Two men, also unshaven and unwashed, were standing by the door.

  “Is it going?”

  “Yes,” they said.

  I went into the office and gave the driver the ten-dollar bill. He gave me a ticket.

  When I came out the two men asked me if I could buy them a cup of coffee as they hadn’t had any breakfast and they were broke.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I got back to the university town at noon. That evening I was a guest at a dinner party given in the Army camp, in the officer’s mess of the Black Watch. There were fourteen of us, some with wives in evening dress. The young officers wore their dress uniforms. We sat in tall straight-backed chairs around the table. The lighting was by candles. We were waited on by two waiters. There was fish and white wine. Roast beef and yorkshire pudding with red wine. Then champagne with some exotic dessert.

  I looked at the others. They were young, attractive, well-fed, well-dressed. How secure they all appeared. And how certain their world.

  But outside I
could see the snow, the cold, the acres of emptiness that lay frozen all around.

  GRACE & FAIGEL

  In October I was on my way to Ottawa to give a reading at Ottawa U. But when the taxi brought me to Montreal’s Central Station, I realized something had gone wrong with my watch during the Atlantic flight, for I arrived forty minutes early. There was nothing to do but wait. I didn’t mind that. There were these small purple-blue lights, and soft music being played, and plenty of room. In the soft light the men and women walking by were well-dressed. They wore bright clothes. They looked carefree. It was very pleasant just to sit, to look and listen. Or to walk along the marble floor. The signs, by the newsstand and cafeteria, were in French and English. The public telephones were of the kind that you touched the numbers, no dialling. And when you touched a number, it gave off a delicate plaintive note. It was so different from the run-down English stations I had left behind.

  Then on the train, sitting in a soft seat, by the window, looking at the trees. With the sun on them they looked like coloured smoke. How smooth the train moved. How comfortable, I thought. How clean. What luxury.

  I am forty-nine. And since I was twenty-five I have been living away from Canada in England. It was in England that I met my wife, had our children, watched them grow up. But every so often I leave wife and children and make these visits to Canada.

  In England we live an isolated life. The apathy of a seaside town in Cornwall, out of season, is hard to believe unless you have ever lived in it. So these trips to Canada. They shake up the system. I always come back to England wanting to do things. And for the first two weeks I do phone London, send cables, write letters. But then the life that we live in Cornwall takes over. I begin to feel cut off. And soon it is as if I have never been away.

  I looked at the young woman on the seat across the aisle. She was reading a paperback with a large L on the cover. She had a small boy of about eight opposite her. He was half-sitting on the seat and standing up. He began to recite, in a rush: “A Cub Scout always does his best thinks of others before himself and does a good turn every day I promise that I will do my best—”