by André Alexis
He could not sleep until he recovered this connection, which had something to do with lake, but neither could he, quite, remain conscious: the very act of thinking, or meditating, on words was enough to tire him out, but it was not quite enough to pull him clear of consciousness. He tried to jog his memory. If not lake, then what? Pond, straight, lagoon, cove? (He dreamed, briefly, that he was a fjord into whose waters his own bare feet plunged, catching himself in the throat.)
Then, after hours of near sleeplessness, it returned to him, gently. It was not lake, it was estuary. It was not water. It was a word.
He was eleven. He had taken one of his mother’s books: something by Shakespeare. It was evening. The sky was darkening, the moon pale, outside his bedroom window. His coverlet was white wool. And he was reading by waning daylight. His mother never came into his room. She never troubled him, after they’d said good night. Nevertheless, she had come in. She stood beside his bed. She wasn’t angry, or at least he didn’t remember anger. She’d asked what he was reading and, when she saw the book, she said
–…
something he couldn’t remember. What he did remember was that she had taken the book and, smiling, asked him the meaning of three words: estuarie, Cybele, and bedizen. He knew none of them. She smiled and took the book from his room.
Such a peculiar moment. Why had it taken so long to recall? Because it was inconsequential? No. Although he could not recall the moments that preceded it, nor those that came immediately after, it was painful. Painful because it was sharp: he could remember what his mother wore, the pattern on his pyjamas, the disposition of the moon. Painful because, although he could remember none of her words, it was one of the few moments in his childhood in which he hated his mother, hated her with a purity so astounding that the fifty-year-old who recalled the scene apologized, reflexively, to his mother, wherever she was. God grant her peace.
Had he really felt such hatred?
Yes, he had. To this day, he hated those three words. He hated Shakespeare. He hated the bedroom that had been his. He hated the bed. He hated the window through which the moon had come. Everything, everything. The moment had poisoned the crucible in which it had been fired. The question wasn’t “Why had it taken so long to recall?” but, rather “How had he ever forgotten it?”
And yet, he’d been right to forget.
To begin with, the old lady was dead. It would do no good to hate her now, if it ever did good to hate. Also, what a thing to carry around. It would have made him miserable to relive such moments. In any case, she hadn’t hit him, she hadn’t even raised her voice. Where was the lasting harm? He had left home early and he had, since then, avoided Shakespeare; no great loss on either front. She hadn’t always been a good woman. Granted. But she had been turned into the nettlesome woman she’d become. Someone, one of the many about whom he knew nothing at all, had made her so.
Besides, the world was rank with complaint: my mother was this, my father did that. In the end, it all led to talk about talk about talk. Words, words, words. He wasn’t going to carry on about the sins of the dead.
But what if, in trying to avoid being his mother, he were to become like her all the same? Weren’t there things she, too, had sought to avoid? With her high culture and precious books, her haughty behaviour and squirrelled money, hadn’t she, in her turn, tried to run from someone or somewhere or something? Yes, almost certainly yes.
And behaving as his mother had, selfishly, was exactly what Bea had accused him of doing. On his third night sleeping on the living-room couch, a moth-eaten green blanket pulled over his legs, he finally saw his wife’s point. And, as had happened before he was married, even the hint he could side with Eleanor against his wife, however unconsciously, was enough to change his mind.
Which is all to say: a moment from Stanley Stanley’s past resurfaced and woke him to his present. He recovered his sense of direction: his wife was North on the only compass that mattered. And, the following day, on seeing her, he felt gratitude for her presence, and he resolved, in light of the gratitude he felt, to do whatever Beatrice asked of him, without regard for his fears and humiliation.
{27}
HOUSES AND MEN
When, after a long time in Limbo, her family returned to a semblance of itself, Mary began to long for her own house and, perhaps, a family of her own. This desire, naturally, changed how she thought of herself and the world. Ottawa, for instance, became the city to which she could say she belonged. It was here she wanted to live, somewhere downtown: off Elgin, say, or near the Market; though, of course, she could afford to live wherever she wanted and this made the whole process more difficult, there being so much choice.
Her longing was also accompanied by a feeling of imminent “homeness,” the sense that she would shortly discover the place she was meant to live, and this affected her feelings about work as well. Did she belong there? Was it fair for her to go on working when she had so much money? Difficult questions for a young woman who had never dreamed she might live a “life of leisure.” The “life of leisure,” when she tried to imagine it, consisted of mixed drinks sipped in dark bars, an interminable version of something by Donna Summers playing on and on while hirsute men, shirts unbuttoned to their navels, leaned back on long zinc bars, allowing themselves to be admired: Cloud Cuckoo Land. And was she obliged to live there, simply because her grandmother had left her property and wealth?
Making the question of work still more difficult to resolve was the fact that she began to see Rundstedt’s department for what it was: a place with a clear purpose. It was, according to Franklin, dedicated to the preservation of culture, her culture, her country’s culture. And she believed him. That is, she began to see it as an interested citizen might. Rundstedt and Franklin were there to keep criminals from remaining the scourge they were. She wanted to help them in this. So, how could she leave?
With the desire for home and family and work, there came the question of men. One of her friends had lightly asked what she looked for in a man and Mary was surprised to find she had not, until that moment, thought of the matter in quite that way. What, in fact, did she look for in a man? Too difficult to answer. Were there men in her life for whom she felt more than admiration or respect or friendship? No, there were not. What there were were negative exemplars, men for whom she felt the opposite of longing: Edward Muir, for instance.
What was it about Edward?
He’d left a bad first impression, certainly. On first meeting, it seemed to her that Edward had leered, looking her over in a way that suggested handcuffs; whether for her or for him was unclear. She’d had much time in his company since, and he had not made the slightest untoward suggestion or undignified comment, yet it seemed to her that the leer still lurked in him, and she was never able to shake the feeling that Edward wanted something sexual from her.
Was she alone in these feelings? No. Most of the secretaries who knew him, including Mr. Rundstedt’s personal secretary, Ruth, found him off-putting, though, to be fair, a few of them, taken perhaps by his boyish looks, were enamoured. Mary had heard one of them say she wouldn’t mind if he “nuzzled her tits for a few hours.” A thought, amusingly put, that left an unpleasant impression, but it proved Edward was not without admirers.
There were other points in his favour. He did his work well. Even she, uninclined to look kindly on him, could see he was efficient. He navigated through Parliament and parliamentary sludge like an expert. (His years as a page had served a purpose, no doubt.) From time to time, he could be very funny. He did expert imitations of a handful of MPs, and his Joe Clark was strikingly good. His humour was bitter, as if those he imitated had done him some personal wrong. But talent is talent and Edward was talented.
So, again, what was it about him that was off-putting?
At heart, it had something to do with his imitations. Though he had never imitated Franklin, where Franklin was co
ncerned Edward was not his own man. He was openly faithful to Franklin, in a way that suggested not following but toadying. He repeated, in his own way, things Franklin said. There was, or seemed to be, nothing in him that was not connected to Franklin. So much so that one could have said Edward’s problem was Franklin, and it made you wonder if he wouldn’t have been a better man elsewhere, working for someone who did not take Edward’s devotion so much for granted. At least, it seemed to Mary, Franklin took Edward’s devotion lightly and, at times, it was as if Edward believed the same thing or felt himself in thrall or felt himself in the wrong place. One afternoon, he’d said, apropos of nothing
– I’ve got a good memory for figures, you know. I think I’d have made a good banker or something.
Another afternoon, he’d asked, again without prompting
– You ever wonder what it would be like if we spoke Latin? Ave Maria, gratia plena…
On both occasions, he’d seemed bewildered, and confused by his tone, she had laughed at him and had then been embarrassed by her own laughter. Whoever Edward was, he was more vulnerable than she had imagined, and yet she disliked him still.
What about Franklin, then, if we’re speaking of men?
No, that was now a closed book. Though he was as friendly as ever, Franklin had become a man with a mission. It was a worthy mission and he had not lost his soul. Every morning, he asked how she was doing, and he asked after her parents, but it had been some time since she’d wanted to share the details of her life with him, because she felt it was important to keep out of his way. Now that her parents were reconciled and she no longer felt guilty about their discord, she did not think her life and concerns worth the distraction from politics and penitentiaries. But perhaps she was being too cautious. Hadn’t he invited her to his apartment for boeuf stroganoff? Yes, he had, and the evening had left her feeling flattered, impressed but out of place: flattered by the invitation, impressed by the stroganoff, but uncomfortable in the company of Edward and Franklin and two clerks from Parks and Recreation. No, that’s not quite right. The company was fine. What was odd was convivial Franklin, his spare apartment, his Russian books, his love for classical painting. On seeing his apartment, Mary realized Franklin was not the person she thought he was.
Whatever it was she wanted in a man, he was not for her any more than Edward was.
Of course, as to men…they were not the necessity (to her, home was), at least not for now. Though she admired her parents and held their marriage as something of an ideal, she was Eleanor’s granddaughter in her independence. She was not cantankerous or niggardly, as her grandmother had been, but she imagined she, too, could live without a husband, as Eleanor had done, if she had to.
And it was with this thought, the thought of Eleanor living proudly on her own, that the idea of keeping Eleanor’s house first came to her granddaughter.
{28}
DEMOCRACY
It is a beautiful room: high-ceilinged, though not as high as one imagines, wide, though not as wide as one imagines, with a tall chair at one end (stately is the chair) and, at the opposite, the doors by which Members enter (stately, too, the doors). Wood, wood everywhere, and stone: the magnificent wood of benches rubbed smooth by the arses and elbows of a thousand men (mostly) and women (occasionally): stately the arses, stately the elbows. Oh, I sing the body electric, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you…It is the House of Commons: Question Period, all the accents come at once.
Speaker:
Will the Honourable Member…
Oshawa (NDP):
What?
York Centre (L):
Mr. Speaker, will the…
Speaker:
Order. The Honourable Member from Oshawa has the floor.
Oshawa (NDP):
Mr. Speaker, will the Prime Minister please tell us why public funds have been wasted looking…
Wasted? He can’t say that, can he? There is loud, grumbled resentment from the Conservatives, but Oshawa presses on.
Oshawa (NDP):
Why funds have been wasted on commissions looking into prisons? Why funds have been wasted…
Now, really, that was just provocation. More grumbling drowned him out.
Speaker:
Order! The Member from Oshawa has the floor.
Oshawa (NDP):
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Prime Minister tell the House why the public needs new prisons?
Essex-Kent (L):
(aside, to Essex-Windsor) Young Cassius has a green and hungry look.
Essex-Windsor (L):
What?
Essex-Kent (L):
(points to Oshawa) Young Cassius…he has a green and hungry look.
Essex-Windsor (L):
What the hell are you talking about?
Essex-Kent (L):
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Jim was right. The NDP are going to try to make something out of this prison thing.
Essex-Windsor (L):
Oh…well, yeah, of course. Why didn’t you say that?
Gander-Twillingate (L):
What are you boys talking about?
Essex-Kent (L):
Julius Caesar. Young Cassius with the green look.
Gander-Twillingate (L):
Who?
Essex-Windsor (L):
Exactly.
The Prime Minister rises to answer the Member from Oshawa.
Prime Minister:
Uhh, Mr. Speaker…
Gander-Twillingate (L):
(aside) The chin that walked like a man…
Prime Minister:
Unlike the Liberals and the NDP, the…uhh…Conservative Party has never wasted public funds…
Now that was uncalled for…provocation, grandstanding…The hue and cry of the Opposition, the appreciative noise of the Conservatives drowns out the messiah from Manicouagan.
Gander-Twillingate (L):
Wipe the shit from your chin, lad!
Qu’Appelle-Moose Mountain (PC):
That’s telling ’em, Brian!
Cariboo-Chilcotin (PC):
’ear! ’ear!
Speaker:
Order! The Honourable Member from Manicouagan has the floor!
Prime Minister:
As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, the…uhh…Conservative Party does not play with public funds. Nor do we play with the public’s trust. We have always been the defenders of law and order…
Cariboo-Chilcotin (PC):
’ear! ’ear!
Brandon-Souris (PC):
Hear! Hear!
Davenport (L):
Aw, go on!
Prime Minister:
We have always…uhh…defended law and order, because we are not only interested in the economic health of this great land of ours, but also…
Oshawa (NDP):
Answer the question!
<
br /> Burnaby (NDP):
Answer the question!
Beaches (NDP):
Hear! Hear!
Essex-Windsor (L):
They’re on their own on this one, eh?
Gander-Twillingate (L):
Who?
Essex-Windsor (L):
The NDP.
Gander-Twillingate (L):
That they are. It’s a motherhood issue, boys.
Essex-Kent (L):
What?
Gander-Twillingate (L):
It’s a motherhood issue. No one wants to shoot down a few good penitentiaries. We could use a few prisons out our way, I’ll tell you.
Essex-Kent (L):
Really?
Gander-Twillingate (L):
Yes, sir. I’ll tell you, we haven’t got a big population, but it’s mostly crooked. I’m with the Tories on this one.
The Prime Minister, the boy from Baie-Comeau, the Magus of Manicouagan, has given the floor to the Right Honourable Cabinet Councillor to the Secretary of State, Albert Rundstedt by name: Westerner, well dressed, crookedly smiling.