by André Alexis
There was disbelief, disappointment, and some surprise, but mostly there was a surge of professional current whose accompaniment was the whirr and click of cameras.
– I’ve been a politician most of my adult life, said Rundstedt. And it’s been a pleasure serving the voters of Calgary South. But I’m faced with a family crisis, a serious personal matter that has to be dealt with. It’s been an honour serving the people of Calgary South, them and all Albertans, but I’m a husband and a father first. I’ll be speaking to my constituents personally, in the next few days, to make sure they understand, but my decision is final. Mr. Yanovsky will answer your questions about the timetable for an election. And I want to thank you all for your support.
As soon as Rundstedt tried to move away from the desk, the questions began: Minister Rundstedt this and Minister Rundstedt that, but Rundstedt was true to his word and left the questions for his press secretary, Mr. Yanovsky, who felt he had been thrown to the dogs.
All in all, this press conference was a painful duty done and a relief to have finished. For a while, it even seemed his blackmailers had decided to do nothing. Whoever the Estonian worked for, however, “Larry” was not a charitable man. Having been thwarted, he (or his masters) sent all the photographs of Rundstedt (Rundstedt in Gudrun’s arms, Rundstedt “window shopping” at Cosey Corner) to the Calgary papers anonymously and free of charge, a week after Rundstedt’s resignation. And although Rundstedt was a well-liked man and a respected politician, it would have been asking too much for the Sun to refrain from publishing at least one of the photographs (with Gudrun’s nipple blacked out) under the headline:
“FUNSTEDT” IN FLOOZY FAUX PAS
It was an unpleasant surprise to find this moment in Osaka everywhere in Calgary. Worse, this image of him was one that stayed in the collective mind, despite his years of faithful and untroubled service. And later, when his department’s role in funding “gorgeous prisons” came to light, the public was inclined to believe the worst of Rundstedt. Again, the Sun:
“FUNSTEDT” IN FOUL FUNDING FIASCO
Still, neither the pictures nor the eventual outrage at MacKenzie Bowell were the end of Rundstedt. Far from it. Though he lost his influence and his hold in the political world, he was left with the things he had first set out to protect and preserve: his home, his wife, his children, his profession (law, after all). The fire he’d passed through left him in full possession of all that mattered. He had his sanctuary in the midst of the city, Calgary, for which he was made. He had managed to keep his principles, to serve his party, to help with the promotion of free trade, of national unity. And yet, how does a man learn satisfaction with what he has? How does a man whose profession (politics) was restlessness itself learn contentment?
To begin, he had to unlearn the self-consciousness public life had, in his final days of service, imposed on him. Then, he had to learn satisfaction with the life he was living. Neither was easy to accomplish, but he was helped by two things. First, he was by nature outgoing and his ease in his own skin came back to him gradually after his resignation. And then, when he’d had time to think things over, he actually felt proud of himself. He had chosen to abandon the life he wanted rather than allow “Larry” to blackmail him. As a result, he felt free to condemn the lack of principles many of his contemporaries showed, the Liberals, in particular.
– At least I knew when to step down, he’d say.
And after a while (not a long while, either) a fair number of his former constituents agreed with him. They remembered him as a flawless MP, the kind of man who’d always stood up for them, the kind of man who, compared to any Liberal of your choosing, was pretty darned honest. In fact, it was common to have someone say to him:
– You know, Alby, you should run for office again.
To which he would answer
– You know, I just might.
{49}
TWO HOUSES, ONE HOME
It is so difficult to say why certain places are hospitable. It’s a matter of feeling and sensation, something that can be conveyed only after one has surrendered to a place, been filled with it. (On the other hand, I remember a room in Arezzo to which I could not surrender. It was during my early days in Europe, before I entered Santa Maddalena. I’d gone to see Cimabue’s “Crucifix” and planned to spend the night at a bed and breakfast by the Ospedale Vecchio. When I went into my small room and closed the door, it was as if I were nowhere: no smell, no dust, no sense of history, no sense that anyone had ever occupied the room before me. It was a perfect blank, a whiteness, and perfectly unnatural. I could not sleep in it. I took my bedding and slept in an armchair in the living room, preferring the company of the mice to the nothingness of my room.)
Mary’s new house, the one that had belonged to her grandmother, was immediately hospitable. She no sooner entered it than she felt the house had been waiting for her. It had nothing to do with Eleanor’s presence, its residue, but was rather like finding her geographic centre. One could as easily have said that Eleanor, who’d felt at home in few places, had been the house’s caretaker, keeping it for its rightful owner, Mary.
Before moving into her home, Mary did all she could to restore it to its best self: painting every inch of its interior, having its exterior painted, pulling up the yellowed linoleum, exposing the wooden floor beneath, wooden floors she had had sanded and revarnished. She replaced all the windowpanes and converted the house from one that had been forced to accommodate three families to one that was hers alone, the rooms painted white or celadon or cream. She kept two of the bathrooms, one of the kitchens, and left the basement as it was: stone floor, brick walls, dark, cool and dusty.
And how did this relationship with eleven or twelve rooms change her?
Outwardly, relatively little, but the change was still remarkable. Aside from becoming less earnest, a change that had begun at the death of her grandmother, Mary became more sturdy, if that’s the word, or more grounded. She had been changing over the four years since her grandmother died, so it’s impossible to say which had greater influence, death or homeowning, but on moving into the house on MacLaren, she fully assumed the independence she’d been working towards. It was, in fact, after moving in that she’d decided to leave her position at the ministry, giving a generous six weeks’ notice. Her decision had less to do with the house, of course, than with the worsening atmosphere in the office. Coolness reigned: Franklin seemed unhappy with Edward, Edward unhappy with the unhappiness. A note of annoyance was detectable beneath every word Franklin spoke to Edward and, worse, beneath the words he spoke to her, as if he thought her in Edward’s camp. Her other concerns – Mickleson and St. Pierre, the false signatures – had moved into the background or, rather, she had divorced herself from them, accepting her helplessness in these matters, but they had influenced her decision nonetheless. Not unexpectedly, the trouble of years lifted off her conscience when she told Franklin she was leaving.
– I’m very sorry to see you go, Mary. I hope it wasn’t anything I did.
– No. I just think it’s time for me to move on.
– Is there anything I can say to change your mind?
– No. Thank you for asking.
And that had been that, save for waiting the six weeks out, of course.
Finally, it was also on MacLaren that she understood and accepted that, well, yes, she wanted François; though, of course, it was unsettling to admit desire so openly to herself. She thought of it, rather, as making a place for him, and it was she who’d invited him to see the film by Derek Jarman, something about England…
Though we’d known each other since childhood, since the years my father was in medical school and we lived in the Stanleys’ neighbourhood, I had not seen Mary in a while when I dropped by her home in May. I interrupted her gardening. She was wearing a white T-shirt that read Mighty Sparrow. Her jeans were a little baggy, so that one could see the elast
ic of her light blue underwear. And on her earth-darkened feet, lime green flip-flops. I had come to see the place, encouraged by my parents who’d heard from Mary’s parents that she had moved.
We sat together in her kitchen, drinking mint tea – mint from the small herbal garden at the back of the house, with bees hovering over the lavender as if they were floating on a purple wave. I mentioned I would be leaving for a monastery in Italy.
– I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere for a while, Mary said.
– Don’t you want to travel?
– I do, but there’s so much to do around the house first.
– Maybe when you’re done, you could come visit me in Italy.
– That would be great. You’ll be Italian by then.
– Si, italiano, I said.
* * *
—
Mary was the only one of her family who adjusted easily to wealth. She wore clothes similar to those she’d worn before Eleanor died, saw the same friends, lived a similar life. Gil was pleased to have a whole floor in the new house to himself, but he felt like a displaced person. Nothing in the world was quite where he expected it to be, and he was often anxious without knowing what he was anxious about.
Stanley admired the persistence of his daughter’s personality, but it was not as easy for him and Beatrice to hold on to the scraps of their former lives. They visited old friends, but less and less frequently. They returned to the old neighbourhood, but their visits were sometimes awkward or peculiar, as if the place were losing its memory of them, as if part of a city could suffer amnesia.
Nor was it easy to establish themselves in the Glebe. Their neighbours were pleasant enough, but they were not gregarious in the way people had been on Spadina, or not as available, or perhaps it was the Stanleys who, intimidated by their surroundings, were more cautious. Whatever the reason, after almost two years, they had made no close friends. Although…
Stanley had grown friendly with their neighbour to the west, an odd man: tall, somewhat shy, handsome in a slightly broken way, and most unlike his name: Walter, Wally. They’d begun by nodding, whenever they saw each other. Then, one day, Stanley had asked
– How you doing?
Another day, he’d remarked on the weather. It was cold, and the drifts were four feet high.
– Yes, said Walter. It is cold.
After that, you couldn’t have said who said what to whom. Their fellow feeling, if that’s the word, was the result of small incursions made into the consciousness of the other until, almost unexpectedly, each grew curious about the other. There was not much, on the surface, to draw the men together. (Beatrice instinctively mistrusted Professor Barnes. She thought him suspicious, despite his tweed jackets, but she was not unfriendly when with him. Louise, on the other hand, she liked immediately and was disappointed to discover she did not actually live with Walter but, rather, on her own.) Walter and Stanley did share something essential, however: one was a man proud of his directness and simplicity, the other was one who had discovered simplicity by accident, after the complications of his life had almost undone him. In effect, they were both men who wanted no more from life than what they had. In this, they were unlike most of those who lived on 3rd. And so, they were, potentially at least, good neighbours.
Beatrice did her best to settle into the Glebe. She frequented its shops, grocery stores, and cafés. She and Stanley walked about the neighbourhood from Bank to Bronson, Sunnyside to Gladstone. They became familiar with the Glebe, without taking pleasure in its oddities (an apartment building with French balconies looking out over a compact, almost English park) or its surprises (a Jamaican baker who made health bread) or its beauties (the intense quiet of a summer evening, a timid bat making its bewildered way along and above the canal).
In fact, Beatrice and Stanley had become exiles in their own city: never quite at home, missing the place they had come from, which, though it was no more than a few miles away, was now unfamiliar. Ottawa had become foreign, but it was not foreign enough. So, Beatrice tried to convince Stanley that travel was what they needed, that the wide world held some solution to their discomfort, that it would put their home in perspective. (Not to mention that it was appealing to imagine herself and Stanley standing before the Sphinx or the Great Wall or the Grand Canyon.) At first, Stanley did not find the idea of travel enticing. He wanted less change, a world that stayed the same, but then…
On All Souls, Beatrice and Stanley had set out with Mary to see a film by Federico Fellini: E la nave va. They had set out early, because Beatrice wanted to spend some time in an antique dealership off Sussex. It was just as well they’d left when they did. At four o’clock, the Market was filled with people and Sussex Drive was almost impassable. They stopped and asked a young woman about the occasion.
– It’s a parade, she said.
– For what? asked Beatrice.
– Saudi Celebration Day. There’s a parade and fireworks.
The procession was wonderful. From where they stood, there were, on the street before them, two rather pale young men on horseback. Nothing peculiar about that, save that the men were not Mounties. Their hair fell in tawny ringlets, long at the back. They were exotically dressed (red leotards, umber dresses, gold doublets) and their horses were caparisoned. One of the youth held a long sword, gold with two black bands, elaborate designs on the blade; the other held up a peculiar object, Middle Eastern no doubt, that was like a chalice with a conical lid, gold studded with jewels.
Definitely not mounted police.
Then came a boy on a white horse. He wore red leotards, but he had on the most unusual gold spurs, spurs so long they looked as if they could have punctured the horse. On his head, there was a crown of a rough metal along the side of which there were gold circles in which there were alternating squares of purple or red stones, the whole topped by long, triangles of gold, which stood up on the crown like broken glass.
After that, there were countless men and horses. Some of the men were bare-headed, but most wore red toques. All walked side by side, in silence, in a determined crush towards wherever it was they were going. All were on Sussex Drive, with the Château Laurier, the Parliament Buildings, and the river behind them so that, for a moment, Stanley was confused. What had become of his city? He recognized the buildings behind the procession, knew the street well, knew where the river was, though it wasn’t visible from where they stood. But the costumed men were so unusual, it seemed for a moment they had been superimposed on Sussex or that Sussex was poised beneath them. In any case, they did not, initially, make sense together: Sussex and the Saudis. And yet, it was like pineapple and chocolate. Once you’ve tasted them together, you can better appreciate the sweet and citrus of the pineapple, the bitter and coffee of the chocolate. For the duration of their march, the Saudis made the city both more like itself and less so. Ottawa was dissolved in the Middle East, which was dissolved in Ottawa. Stanley and Beatrice were happy to stand in the street, watching the parade until it crossed over the bridge to Hull, to the Museum of Civilization.
The effect of the procession was deep, but not immediate. Stanley thought little of the parade, save that it had given him an hour or so of wonder, distracting them from antiques, restaurants, and movies. The oddest aspect of the parade was how quiet it had been. Parades, in Stanley’s experience, were noisy affairs: bands, bandwagons, brass, whistles, bells, and voices. There was none of that here. The men in procession were quiet, and what one heard were the voices of the spectators and the clop-clop of the horses’ hooves on pavement.
This added to Stanley’s pleasure and he was tempted to say something positive about travel, but as he and Beatrice made their way through the crowd, the only words that came were
– We’re going to miss the movie.
That night, Stanley dreamed of his mother on a rhino’s back. The entire night, he dreamed of processions and circus a
nimals. And then, towards morning, he dreamed that nothing would stay itself, that whatever he touched (a leopard, a soldier, a horse, its rider) turned to paper. A disturbing inconstancy, one might think. Yet, it seemed to Stanley, who woke as he touched a lacquered wooden table that rippled and tore, a thrilling impermanence. He’d awakened just before seven, turned to Beatrice, shaken her gently until she woke, and said
– I think we should go to Rome.
– Why, Stan?
This was something he could not explain. Perhaps his curiosity finally got the better of him. Then again, perhaps he had begun to tire of leisure. Being a man of modest wants, the pleasure he took in acquisition was, increasingly, theoretical. He did not want a new car or a new house or a new anything else. So, why not travel? Or, perhaps, some devious sense of entitlement made itself known by this longing to travel.
All interesting ideas, but…
The reason Stanley could not rightly explain his desire to travel was that it was something mysterious to him. Most likely, it had been in hiding. For good reason too: Eleanor had taken pains to drive all of his desires underground. The Arabian parade and Fellini’s rhinoceros had touched something in him and Stanley himself was surprised to discover that the child who’d wanted to know the wide world, to read his mother’s books, was still part of him. He could, of course, have suppressed this longing, but he did not, because there was no need. Instead, despite his own misgivings, despite his having suggested it would be better for the two of them to stay home, he said
– I think we should go to Rome.
Why Rome? That was easier to explain than “why go at all?” Rome because he assumed there was nothing there for him. Rome because there was no deep reason for Rome. There was reason to go to London. London was the city his psyche fluttered towards. London was strange (and yet it was within), London was the city of his inheritance, the city of books, and London, above all, was the city of the man who had been his father. It would have meant a revolution in his soul to have said, “I think we should go to London.”