I Don't Want to Know Anyone Too Well

by Norman Levine

  She spoke with an accent which I couldn’t place.

  “It’s nice of you to say that,” I said.

  “I’ve heard other writers come here and talk,” she said. “They say how wonderful their work is. But you sounded different. Honest.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No,” she said. “I tell lies.”

  “But why?”

  “It makes life much more interesting.”

  The engineer was turning off the lights. Everyone else had gone.

  “Why don’t we go and have some coffee,” Faigel said.

  “All right. But I can’t stay long. I’m expected at a party a professor is giving for me.”

  As we were walking through the leafy streets of Sandy Hill, I told Faigel that I knew these streets, that they were part of my childhood.

  “But your parents come from Poland?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then we have a lot in common,” she said. “I was three when I left Poland after the war. My mother and father fought with the Polish resistance. We all went to Australia then to England before coming to Canada. I went to school in England. We lived there six years—in London—just off the Fulham Road.”

  “I know where it is,” I said.

  “You know what I miss—from England?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Kippers. I liked eating them raw—with juice squeezed from a lemon and pepper on top. And with brown bread. It tastes like smoked salmon.”

  “I thought I was the only one who did that,” I said.

  She put her arm through mine.

  “We have a lot in common,” she said.

  I expected that we would have coffee in a restaurant on Rideau Street. But she crossed Rideau and began to walk into Lower Town. She stopped in front of a run-down wooden house which was divided into two apartments.

  “This is where I live.”

  It looked shabby on the outside. The grey wooden steps and grey veranda, with wet fallen leaves, needed repairing and painting. Inside was worse. The wallpaper was peeling, the curtains were old and torn. There were books, magazines, paperbacks, all over the place. Things were in cardboard boxes.

  “It’s a mess, isn’t it?” she said. “But I can’t throw anything away.”

  She pushed aside unwashed dishes in the kitchen and put some coffee on a small electric stove. The light was a bare bulb hanging from a wire from the ceiling.

  “Come, sit down here,” she said.

  It was her bed—a mattress, on the floor, with a patchwork cover full of colour, made-up of small snowflake shapes. Beside it were boxes of matches, burnt-out matches, saucers for ashtrays, candles, and loose change scattered on the bare floor. How it brought back those early years in England after the war. And people I once knew with little money.

  Faigel took off her camel-haired coat—she had on a smart black suit—then her leather black boots. And went around in her stocking feet.

  When she goes out, I thought, she takes such care to look nice and neat but she lives in such disorder.

  “Clothes are very important,” she said, as if guessing my thoughts. “They tell a lot about a person. When I’m depressed—I go and buy something new to wear.”

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He works all week at a mining camp north of here. I work in a library. We live quite separate lives during the week. He has his women friends. I have my men friends. But he comes home for weekends. We spend our weekends together. I like my husband very much. I can’t find any milk or sugar—”

  “I have coffee black.”

  “Good. So do I.”

  She brought the coffee in two cups without handles and lit a cigarette and one for me. She sat, opposite, on the bed, her legs crossed underneath her.

  “You write so beautifully,” she said. “But if I may make one criticism—you never tell enough. Especially with sex. You say people go to bed. Then it’s done. I want to know details.”

  That would be telling about my wife, I thought. “I don’t know why I don’t describe details,” I said.

  “You belong to the nineteenth century,” she said. “What films do you like?”

  “Antonioni,” I said, “and Ray.”

  “Have you not seen Jules et Jim?”

  “No.”

  “You must. What about books. What do you re-read?”

  “Turgenev,” I said. “And you?”

  “Proust,” she said. “I also shoplift, about once a month. I’ve taken cocaine. I’ve slept with my husband and with another woman in the same bed. I’m just going to change into something more comfortable.”

  What is she telling me this for, I wondered. Is this the way the younger generation get to know one another? Instant intimacy.

  She came back wearing a silk blue blouse with black buttons in front—the top three she left undone. And I could see a lace see-through bra.

  “I’m not on the pill,” she said. “I tried it. But I put on weight.”

  “Then what do you do?”

  “I’m very cautious,” she said.

  Cautious, I thought. Shoplifting, cocaine, three in a bed.

  We kissed.

  “Do you like large breasts?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But most of the women I have known had small. What are you, 36?”

  “No, 34.”

  I moistened a finger and ran it lightly over her lips—it was part of my wife’s pre-lovemaking.

  But Faigel said, “Are my lips dry? I don’t wear lipstick.”

  “They are not dry,” I said . . .

  “Stop it,” she said. “You are working me up. We have gone too far already.”

  She sat up on the bed and lit another cigarette. “You haven’t told me about your wife.”

  I now knew what she meant when she said she had “men friends.” I had a feeling that when this point was reached, the others told Faigel about their wives. But what was I going to tell her?

  “She’s attractive,” I said. “Intelligent.”

  “I expected her to be that,” Faigel said. “What else?”

  “She’s not well,” I said. “She had a lump in a breast removed—about nine months ago. But why should this interest you?”

  “I’m very interested,” she said. “My mother died from cancer. I go for checkups every six months. Does it affect sex?”

  I hesitated. “Yes.”

  And to change the subject I said, “Do you like Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt?”

  “I don’t like jazz,” Faigel said. She looked at her wrist-watch. “I think you had better go. I have to get up early.”

  She left the bed and walked across the room to a cluttered table. It wasn’t only the neatness in her dress, the care she took with her appearance, that stood out. But also the style with which she moved in these shabby rooms.

  She came back carrying a small diary-like book. “I can’t see you tomorrow,” she said looking in the book, “I have an appointment tomorrow. It was made a long time ago . . . And my husband flies in on Friday night . . . How about next week on Tuesday? I can see you on Tuesday. Let’s have an appointment for Tuesday.”

  “I don’t like appointments,” I said quietly.

  She took no notice. She wrote in the book and said, “We’ll come together on Tuesday. I look forward to that.”

  And I left her.

  When I came out, to my surprise, I saw that the clock in the Peace Tower said it was almost half past one in the morning. In any case I had forgotten the address of the professor’s house.

  For the next three days I enjoyed myself. After living cut off from people, I felt as if I was suddenly thrown into life again. I didn’t think anything of going a hundred and twenty-five miles to Montreal for dinner with a film director who was
interested in one of my stories and coming back later to Ottawa that night. And I like the fall—the colours, the trees, the fallen leaves, and the thin veneer of comfort that modern machinery and money give.

  My publisher arranged for me to give another reading the next week. But on Saturday morning I received a cable from England—sent by our neighbour—to say that my wife was not well, could I come back. The earliest flight I could get on was Sunday.

  I didn’t phone Grace. But I did try to phone Faigel. I tried several times, even from the airport. But I guess she didn’t answer the phone when her husband was home. Or perhaps they had gone away for the weekend.

  My wife was in bed when I returned. After three days she was able to get up. But Canada had a mail strike. The mail strike went on for six weeks. And by the time it was over there didn’t seem to be any point in writing to either Grace or Faigel. What was there to say.

  I remember the merchant navy man who joined the train at Truro. He was going to Glasgow. He had just left his ship at Falmouth. His wife didn’t know he was coming back today. He hadn’t seen her for three months.

  “I have her picture on my cabin wall,” he said. “For the first few days of the voyage she’s nice and big. But as the weeks go by—she gets smaller and smaller . . .”

  Perhaps, I thought, even when we are with people it’s a kind of pretence. Nothing really matters.

  CHAMPAGNE BARN

  I didn’t notice the birds until I saw them flying. Red-winged blackbirds. A flutter of black. Then a flash of red on the black. Lovely to see. I’d follow a bird as it came level with the window, then watch it go quickly back and disappear from sight. Then I’d look ahead to pick up the next flutter of black, then the flash of red on the black, and follow that for as long as I could.

  I was on a train from Montreal to Ottawa. It was early June.

  On the second day in Ottawa the local CBC people came to interview me in the small park opposite to where my mother lives. I was sitting on a park bench talking to the camera.

  “That new building. Across the road. It’s for senior citizens. But when I was a kid it was the terminus of an Ottawa streetcar line called Champagne Barn—”

  When a thin old woman came up. She walked right into the film and said to me. “Aren’t you Mrs. Snipper’s boy?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You look like your mother. I’m a near neighbour of hers in the senior citizen building.”

  Then she noticed the camera on the tripod, the cameraman behind it, the sound recordist.

  “Who are these people?”

  “From television.”

  “Have they come to take a picture of our building?”

  “No.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Interviewing me.”

  “You. What for?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  She didn’t say anything after that. Just had a good look and walked away.

  When the interview was over I went across the road, through the glass doors of the senior citizen building, to the elevator. Mr. Tessier was also waiting. As we were going up he said, “I’ve seen a lot of people die here since I first come five years ago.”

  “How many?”

  “Sixty-eight,” he said.

  I got off at the second floor, where my mother had her apartment, and Mr. Tessier went up to his on the third.

  “How did it go?” my mother said soon as I came in.

  “All right. Except a thin, tall lady came up in the middle of the interview and began talking to me. She said she was a neighbour of yours.”

  “That’s Mrs. Sobcuff. She has to know what’s going on. Come, sit down and eat.”

  I went to wash my hands in the bathroom.

  “I can’t eat all that fish.”

  “It’s delicious,” my mother said.

  “But I can’t eat two pieces.”

  “Try.”

  I began to eat a piece of fish with a sliced tomato and sliced cucumber.

  “Eat with bread,” she said.

  “I’m trying to watch my weight.”

  “You’re not fat.”

  I finished one piece. And began the other.

  “Why don’t you eat?”

  “I had something earlier,” she said. “I eat a little bit but every two hours.”

  And to prove her point she came back with a piece of hot chicken on a plate.

  She ate quickly.

  “Slow down,” I said.

  The phone rang.

  She had it beside her on the table.

  “We’re in the middle of eating,” I said. “Let it ring.”

  “No,” she said. “Hullo. Yes. Hullo, how are you?”

  She walked with the phone into the next room, her bedroom. And I could hear her say: “Did you go to Rideau Bakery? Did you get bread? What did you get? Rye. Was it sliced?”

  She talked like that for twenty minutes while everything got cold.

  When she came back she said, “Without the telephone I don’t know how I would go through the day. It takes up three or four hours. That was Esther. She would like to take you out for a meal. She’ll pick you up at six.”

  “How is Esther?”

  “Her health isn’t very good. But she phones me every day.”

  It had been hot and sticky. A few minutes before six I went down to the entrance of the senior citizen building to wait for Esther. And a sudden summer storm. The wind increased. The poplars began to sway and rustle. The sky got darker. And the rain came slanting across the park.

  When Esther drove up I ran to get in beside her.

  “We need this rain,” she said. “I know a good place in Eastview. The food is excellent. It’s French.”

  Esther’s my spinster cousin. In her late forties. Around five foot eight and a hundred and fifty pounds. Large, dark eyes, black hair, heavy bones. Her nicest feature is her eyes. She was made a fuss of as a child, as she was the youngest. Then, when she was twelve, her brother Hank was born. And the fuss was all about Hank. Esther worked in the office of my uncle’s wholesale fruit and vegetable business in the market. She did the accounts, saw that the drivers had the right load to deliver, checked the money when they cashed in at night.

  I liked going to the market and to Uncle’s store. It was always a bit dark when I walked in. But there was the immediate smell of rotten fruit and crates lying all over the wooden floor. Hank would throw me apples and oranges until my pockets were full. Esther would give me a hand of large bananas to take back. And, when no one was looking, Uncle would slip me a dollar and say: “Go and see a movie.”

  Uncle died while I was away in England in the war. And two years ago Hank died from cancer. Then Esther sold the business.

  “How are things?” I asked her.

  “I wish I could have a rain check,” she said. “I sure would live it differently. I had to go to a doctor for an examination. He said it was the first time he had seen an intact hymen in someone of my age.”

  This was the first time Esther had talked to me like this. I guess I was too young before.

  “Things have changed,” she said, “since the business was sold. I don’t get up early any more. I go to the library. I take out books. But I can’t remember what I read. In the evenings I stay up. I’ve got some Bristol Cream. I drink that and watch television. I get so involved with what’s on. I talk back to it. Throw things at it—”

  The rain stopped as we drove into Eastview. The sky got lighter. The grass, the trees, the painted wooden houses looked full of colour. She parked the car by a small wooden hotel.

  The restaurant was on the ground floor. There were round tables with white tablecloths. The two waiters wore some kind of theatrical soldier’s uniform. We both ordered steak and mashed potatoes and vegetables.

&nbs
p; It arrived covered in gravy.

  She tasted hers.

  “It’s cold,” she said. “Waiter.”

  I tried mine. It wasn’t cold.

  A waiter finally came to the table. “The meat is cold,” Esther said. “The potatoes are cold. I would like it changed.”

  He took our plates away without saying a word.

  “Why shouldn’t I tell them to take it back?” she said angrily. “We used to sit like dummies before. Not any more. If you keep quiet and don’t make a fuss—you go under.”

  After what seemed a while the waiter returned with both plates.

  She tasted her steak.

  “It’s better now,” she said quietly.

  I tasted mine. It was just the same.

  “Yes,” I said. “Much better.”

  Esther drove me back to the senior citizen building. When I came in Mother was reading the Journal.

  “How did it go?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you have?”

  “Steak, potatoes, and vegetables.”

  “Esther will be home now,” she said. “Why don’t you give her a ring and tell her you had a good time.”

  “But I just saw her.”

  “It won’t hurt to ring her up and talk to her.”

  “But I only left her fifteen minutes ago. And I was with her a couple of hours before that.”

  My mother picked up the receiver and dialled.

  “Hullo, Esther. Yes, he said he enjoyed himself very much. Thank you. It’s very good of you. All right. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

  She hung up.

  “The important thing,” she said, “is for people to think well of you. So they will have good memories of you.”

  “They don’t remember for very long,” I said.

  And to change the subject I asked her, “Where are my things? Where’s the officer’s uniform?”

  “I gave them away when I moved into here,” she said. “What’s the use of carrying all those things along.”

  “I wish you hadn’t given away the uniform.”

  “But you weren’t here,” she said.