Hunting Piero

by Wendy MacIntyre

  With that fatal stroke of his brush, he saw revealed the story’s full and astonishing truth: that the slain nymph was the human soul, and that the javelin which struck her has pierced that organ in her throat which enables speech. He understood well that this was the story of his own time. It was the doctrines of Savonarola that had killed and silenced her, cutting her off from the joy in the meadow, the river’s tremulous light and the graceful birds that walked upon the strand. Piero knew they all awaited her rebirth. And that when this wondrous event transpired, it would be the soul’s faithful companions of the animal kingdom, the young faun and the dog, who would greet her first and help her learn again to be who she was.

  By way of covenant with this sacred truth, he swirled the wet paint of the pale blue sky with his naked fingertips. Then he began to heat walnut oil for the glaze so that the colours of this world might shine through vivid and clear, for a century at least.

  How long, he wondered, before she woke and sang and danced again upon the strand in their dear company?

  SEVEN

  An Incident in the Ark

  AGNES HAD NO TROUBLE FINDING the house, despite the fact most of the street numbers on the weathered clapboard houses were obscured by hanging baskets of bedraggled plants or six-foot-high towers of beer cartons. She spotted “The Ethical Ark” sign almost immediately after turning on to the short street. Nailed to the front porch (she marvelled at the landlord’s tolerance), the sign was both large and garish. Yet charming too, because whoever had painted it had an arresting faux-naif style. On a sea of aquamarine, a nut-brown boat floated, its bright cargo of animals and birds jostling each other happily. Orange giraffe, silver bear, rosy flamingo, emerald tortoise, red chow and other vividly painted creatures all looked out at her with the same oddly familiar gentle smile. By the time she knocked on the outer screen door, she’d realized their sweet-tempered expression was uncannily like that of the huge man called Pinto.

  It was with this smile Pinto greeted her at the door, and a little of her nervousness fell away. College life had made her newly aware of just how limited her social skills were. She had never been to a dance or even joined a club. Apart from her sister Phoebe, with whom she had to be always tempering an eruptive envy, she had no real friend. Agnes was impatient, and consequently inept, with small talk. She hoped at this gathering simply to be able to listen, because animal rights was certainly something she cared about passionately, and also to stare, as much as she dared, at Campbell Korsakov. The prospect of seeing him again had her extremely agitated, so much so she had considered not coming at all. She had changed her outfit three times, settling at last on a dark brown, ankle-length Indian rayon skirt and a scoop-neck, long-sleeved leotard top in terracotta that she thought flattered her chestnut hair. She was letting her hair grow out after years of having it cut severely short, scorning anything that might soften her features. As her hair grew, she was surprised at how glossy and thick it was, as though all the years of harsh cropping had stimulated its sheen and luxuriance.

  If only the same principle applied to her social self: that from her years of seclusion with only books and laptop for company, she would emerge gregarious, witty, sensitive and “interested in others.” It perturbed her that, despite her new ease with her physical self, she was still at some deep level on guard. When would it come: the next unthinking or deliberately hateful remark (“Freak. Monkey-girl. Are you for real?”) that would make her flinch, and retreat?

  As she presented her bottle of Chianti to Pinto, she found herself wondering if he had also suffered acutely on account of his unusual appearance. She hoped not.

  “Wine,” he said. “Wonderful.” She had not been at all sure about the wine. But he looked at her so benignly, she felt reassured.

  “Come into the living room and say hello to Camel and meet the others.”

  He led her down a dim hallway lined with miscellaneous footwear: running shoes, sandals, hiking boots, a pair of fuchsia crocs, Tai Chi slippers, high green rubber boots.

  “Should I take off my shoes?” she asked, pointing.

  Pinto laughed. “No need in this house. Most of this collection was already here when I moved in a year ago. We’ve just got used to the look of them.”

  He turned abruptly left and ushered her ahead of him into a room filled with many more people than she had anticipated. She froze. For an excruciatingly long moment, she was confronted by floating blotches of pink, beige, ivory and tan. Faces, she told herself. How she detested these ghastly tricks her nervousness played. Then she felt the light touch of hands upon her shoulders, and everyone and everything took on their proper shapes. Campbell Korsakov was standing before her, crystalline and perfect. To her surprise, he kissed her European fashion. She felt the brush of a butterfly’s wing, on one cheek and then the other. He stepped back, and said: “Agnes, so glad you could come.”

  Hearing him speak her name, she felt she was stepping into it fully for the first time. On his lips, “Agnes” no longer sounded quaint, plain and tediously forbearing, but electric and absolutely consonant with her boundless imaginative world. She was Piero’s nymph, and Campbell the young satyr gazing down at her. But she was not at all dead. Pinto showed her where she could sit: a bunchy lime green beanbag pillow on the floor. As she nestled into it, tucking her long skirt under her legs, Campbell began rapidly introducing the others. He sat with his knees drawn up on an old armchair, once covered in a proud maroon velvet, its gentility now as distressed yet comfortable as the rest of the furniture in the room. “Kit McCready,” he announced, as the striking redhead from Fergus Jonquil’s class entered the room with a glass of wine in her hand. She wore an open-necked shirt of watered silk: an iridescent peacock blue that made her magnificent hair look even more glorious. This was the first time Agnes had been able to study Kit’s features closely. She saw, with some rankling discomfort, that Kit’s angular beauty was remarkably like that of Botticelli’s Venus floating on her gigantic scallop shell. So perfect I could spit, she thought childishly; then she upbraided herself. In her fixation on Kit, who had positioned herself gracefully on the wide arm of Campbell’s chair and begun ruffling his hair, Agnes missed the names of at least two of the others.

  She vowed to pay closer attention. She hoped she did not look ridiculously squat or pugnacious, ensconced in her lowly beanbag. It was a relief when Pinto brought her a glass of wine because it gave her something to do with her hands. He then somehow folded his great height into the space on the floor beside her, and sat with his back against the wall and his massive trunk-like legs stretched out in front of him. She did not feel at all crowded, but rather shielded and comforted by his proximity. Perhaps he sensed this because he bestowed on her one of his gentle smiles, and then shut his eyes as if sinking into a meditative trance.

  Pinto’s return had interrupted the introductions, which now resumed. Next was Minnie, a woman with very short white-blonde hair. The name must be ironic because Minnie was not at all small. She was obviously dedicated to working out, and the skimpy sleeveless T-shirt and spandex leggings seemed deliberately chosen to show off her formidable musculature. Then there was Zeke Jones, whom everyone called Zebra. “I’ve loved them since I was a kid,” he told Agnes. Zebra was wiry and had a narrow, chiselled face with fine brown eyes. He projected a highly charged, restless energy, and kept crossing and uncrossing his legs, and tapping one foot and then the other on the floor. “And yes,” he responded to her unspoken question. “I always wear something with black and white stripes; at least . . . whenever I can. At my grandmother’s funeral, for example, it was a bit difficult . . .”

  “Okay, Zebra. We get the point.” This from a very small man in a brown velour jacket with a hood. Although the house still held the heat of the late autumn day, he had his hood pulled up and the jacket tightly zipped to the neck. He was sitting on the edge of the couch to Agnes’s right. Looking up at his pale, pinched face and his mouth with its small, badly spaced teeth, she was put i
n mind of a bad-tempered elf. Horace’s brow had a permanent vertical crease, which gave his features a gloomy, censorious cast as he stared out from under his dark hood.

  “Horace,” he informed her. “Horace Fairhaven. I’m the voice of reason in this bunch.”

  Someone (was it Campbell?) made a sound like a seal’s bark. Pinto sighed deeply.

  “Did you say something, mine ever-elegant host?” Horace fixed his malign frown on Campbell.

  “Bugger off, Horace.” Campbell put his knees down and sat very erect in his chair. It pained Agnes to see him looking so upset. Kit, she observed with envy, was stroking Campbell’s forearm just as one would soothe an agitated child.

  Pinto said to Agnes: “Some of the other members couldn’t make it this evening. There’s Harriet and Lupo . . .”

  “Those dithering old farts!” exclaimed Horace.

  “Horace, that’s enough!” Kit said sharply.

  “No it’s not, Kit, darling. It’s not nearly enough. Because tonight we’re going to roll in the same warm cuddly crap you so-called activists always cart out. You’ll raise a glass to that sucky framed portrait of Fred the Bear and say how wonderful it is that he was liberated from the dreadful circus in England where they fed him stale cake and made him ride a little unicycle around the ring, and then chained him up the rest of the time. You’ll say: ‘He looks so happy now in the animal sanctuary in Northern Ontario, ambling about freely with snow on his nose.’

  “You’ll talk about how saintly Jane Goodall is and what a selfless, inspiring example Barry Horne set for animal rightists everywhere. Not that any of you would have the guts to do what he did.

  “Then you’ll yammer on about whatever guilt trip that pretentious idiot Fergus Jonquil has inflicted on you this week. And finally, when you’ve all had enough to drink and smoked a few joints, you’ll start to wallow in sentimentality. We’ll hear what your dear old dog or cat or tortoise meant to you, or how excited you were when you first saw real live giraffe running in the wild when Mummy and Daddy took you on a South African safari.

  “But you never do anything. You never even talk about any of the real nasty stuff. Like . . .”

  Zebra groaned and put his head in his hands.

  “Like the sheer sadism that drives vivisectionists to clamp animals down and cut them open without any anesthetics. Over 100 million animals all around the world, splayed on operating tables, having their eyes and guts ripped out.”

  “Shut up, Horace!” Zebra’s face was as white as the stripes of his shirt.

  “No, I won’t, fetish boy. You know what you need — what you all need? You need to wake up and face the ugly facts. Take one of those tours of the Cambodian killing fields and watch the North American college kids fork out $500 for the pleasure of firing a rocket launcher at a real live cow. Talk about participatory history! All those piles of human skulls really get these kids going. Disgusting little sadists, every one of them!”

  “That’s sick, Horace,” Minnie said.

  “Of course it’s sick. To be human is to be sick. Sickos. That’s us. Isn’t that correct, jolly green Buddha?”

  Pinto shifted his weight ever so slightly on the floor beside her. How keenly she empathized with him as he strove to ignore the little man’s mockery. She felt her own muscles tighten in the old conditioned response. Would it be her turn next?

  What did happen next took Agnes utterly aback. Kit stood up, and in one fluid movement was kneeling on the floor in front of the cross-legged, frowning Horace. She put her hands on his shoulders and spoke to him so softly Agnes did not catch it. Then Kit began stroking the back of Horace’s hand.

  Everyone in the room watched this odd, tender scene in silence.

  When Kit stood up, she was holding Horace’s hand. They made a discordant picture, given that Kit was a good foot taller than the little man in his hood. Was she the only one thinking how like a classic fairy tale princess Kit looked — one who had found herself fatally stuck to a malign little creature under whose spell she had unwittingly come?

  Yet Kit sounded completely self-possessed and in control as she announced: “I’m going to give Horace a drive home. Unfortunately, I won’t have time to get back for the meeting. Regrets.” She included them all with a graceful sweep of her hand; then kissed Campbell on the brow and left quickly with Horace still grasping her tightly by the hand.

  Agnes sat rigidly, feeling uncomfortable and confused. What on earth could the relationship be between queenly Kit and spiteful Horace who had succeeded so well at poisoning the atmosphere?

  Pinto started to say something to her, then apparently changed his mind.

  “Horace is Kit’s uncle,” Zebra told her. His voice had a new tinny quaver.

  “Half-uncle,” Campbell corrected him. Campbell had his head down, intent on manufacturing what Agnes assumed was a joint. He had a book on his knee on which he had laid out three rolling papers glued together accordion style, and a little pile of leafy herb. Agnes’s only knowledge of recreational drugs came from television, films and novels. She had never even taken a puff of a regular cigarette. Would it be impolite or impolitic to refuse if she was offered marijuana?

  “Horace has had a difficult life,” Campbell said as he sprinkled the herb liberally along the seam of the central rolling paper.

  “What crap!” Zebra exploded.

  Minnie laughed ruefully. The others either frowned or shook their heads.

  “Horace,” Zebra addressed Agnes, “is our group’s burden. He shores up our moral development by testing our forbearance. Isn’t that right, Pinto?”

  “He doesn’t always come to the meetings,” added a rosy-cheeked, fair-haired young woman whose name Agnes later learned was Perdita.

  “And we thank heaven for that,” Zebra sighed, rolling his eyes.

  “Agnes should be told his story,” Pinto said.

  Campbell, who was now applying the tip of his tongue to the glue edge of a very tightly packed slim joint, nodded.

  “Yeah. Sure.” He lit the joint and took two deep draws, then passed it to Perdita, who inhaled once daintily and handed it to her partner. “Pablo?”

  Pablo did not look at all Spanish or South American, but was as fair and rosy as Perdita. They might be twins, Agnes thought.

  “Can you explain, please, Pinto? Sometimes I just can’t bring myself to talk about Horace calmly.”

  Campbell then abruptly left the room.

  Pinto angled his shoulders so that he could speak more easily to Agnes face-to-face.

  “Kit’s grandfather suffered from Alzheimer’s disease,” Pinto began.

  “Completely gaga,” Zebra chimed in. “Loco.”

  Pinto sighed before continuing. “Yes, okay, Zebra . . . Kit’s family is very wealthy and for some reason — maybe duty or shame? — they decided to care for the old man in their own home . . . well, it’s a mansion really. So he was on an upper floor.”

  “Madman in the attic,” Zebra put in.

  “I doubt it, Zebra. Probably an upper floor, as I said. But her grandfather was very well cared for, Kit says . . .”

  “How would she know, Pinto? She wasn’t even born then.”

  “Well, Zebra. That’s what her family told her. That’s the official story.”

  “Story. Exactly.” Zebra rolled his eyes.

  It dawned on Agnes that this explanation amounted to a privilege. She was being taken into a confidence that was initially Kit’s but now belonged to the group as whole. She experienced a distinct buzz of pleasure, wholly inappropriate to the tale’s dark substance. Yet the frisson persisted at the simple delight she was accepted.

  “Kit’s grandfather had round-the-clock nursing, of course,” Pinto continued. “There was a whole roster of private nurses and care providers. One of them was a very small woman. She was Irish, and she was wonderfully good with the old man because her accent made him happy.

  “Kit is of Irish heritage,” he added.

  “Anyway, one da
y the unthinkable happened and he overpowered this Irish nurse and raped her.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed Agnes, gritting her teeth in reaction to this act of raw violence and its consequences. In her mind’s eye she saw the tiny figure of Europa overcome and mounted by a huge shaggy bull.

  “Thus occurred the gestation of the horrible Horace,” Zebra said.

  “Don’t fuck around, Zeke. It isn’t amusing — for anyone!” Campbell glared at his friend, who squirmed in his chair.

  “Sorry, Camel.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Campbell shrugged.

  Agnes thought how much she would hate to incur his anger.

  “The family felt responsible, of course,” Pinto continued. “They offered to make provision for the child and ensure the Irish nurse was financially comfortable for the rest of her life. Legally, it was all pretty murky because Kit’s grandfather wasn’t in his right mind and couldn’t be held criminally accountable for the crime.”

  “It must have been dreadful for the nurse,” Agnes said.

  “Yes,” Campbell said. “But it was one of those really strange things where a disaster turns out to be a gift-in-disguise. The nurse — her name was Kelly Fairhaven — was a young widow. She was lonely. She thought about it carefully and decided she wanted to keep the baby. She was one tough lady, I guess . . . resilient, I mean. And she and Horace never wanted for a thing . . . materially anyway.”