by Heather Burt
Outside the yellow bungalow he peered through the latticed cement wall into the sitting room, where the exoticism of the lane lost its integrity. The rattan and teak settee had cotton throw pillows from Ikea; the painted Sinhalese devil mask with bulging eyes and a hanging tongue looked down on plastic figurines of Jesus and Mary; the old gramophone sat next to the television from Singapore. The floor was polished red cement; the white walls were decorated with school photos and souvenir tea towels.
Faintly Rudy heard his aunt in the kitchen. He let himself in and sorted through the mail. There were two advertisements, a telephone bill, something from the bank, and a single letter, from his brother. He turned it over, looking for Aunty’s name. Adam’s letters were always to the two of them. “To Aunty Mary and Rudy,” the envelopes always said, and inside would be short, chatty updates on his job at the campus bookstore, his swimming, his motorcycle, family goings-on, and other things of that sort. But this letter was addressed simply to “Rudy Vantwest.” Frowning, Rudy folded the envelope in half and stuffed it in his trouser pocket.
In the kitchen, Aunty Mary was dusting Easter cookies with sugar. A kitten with matted orange fur had stationed itself at her feet, while a mob of tiny flies hovered over a jack fruit on the counter. Rudy deposited the bananas next to the jack fruit and kissed his aunt’s cheek. She smoothed her cotton dress and patted the thick twist of silver-black hair at the back of her head.
“You’re home late, son.”
“Yeah. The bus was slow.” He reached above her head for a glass.
“Want tea?”
“No, thanks. Water is fine.”
“Ah, yes. My doctor is telling me I should drink more water. Very good for the health, isn’t it. You’d like chicken for dinner?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll just finish this. It shouldn’t be long.”
“No hurry,” he said distractedly. “I’ll get started on my marking.”
He filled his glass from a pitcher in the fridge, drained it, then went out back to wash at the well. Bathing at the stone well in the pink-gold light of late afternoon was one of those entitlements, like eating rice with his fingers or shitting in the outdoor toilet under a leafy canopy, that Rudy indulged in simply because it was not—could never be—part of his Canadian life. With renewed determination to distance himself from that life, he drew a pail of cool water dotted with dead leaves, emptied it into the plastic washtub, and rolled up his sleeves. A pair of mosquitoes—enormous brutes with long, dangling legs and abdomens—danced threateningly over the tub. He clapped them both dead, pried a bar of soap from the rim of the well, and scrubbed his hands and face. Completing the ritual, he emptied the tub over the dirt and shook his hands.
Adam’s letter weighed heavily in his pocket as he returned to the sitting room and installed himself at his grandfather’s desk. His knapsack was on the floor, Kanda’s essay inside. It was a queer twist of fate, being confronted with both on the same day—though the coincidence didn’t particularly surprise him. He reached down and unzipped his bag. He would start with the essay; the letter could wait.
Skimming Kanda’s introduction, he put a check mark next to the thesis statement. (The boy had a thesis; two-thirds of the class would-n’t.) He made a few more check marks throughout the paper, circled some errors, then, turning to the back page, considered what comments to make. A further response had entered his mind, joining those he’d come up with earlier: What if your sister got in the way of a Tiger attack, Kanda? What then? But he couldn’t write that—or anything else he’d come up with, for that matter.
He leaned back, and his gaze drifted up to the framed oil painting hanging above the desk. The painting, an awkward, immature work, apparently done by Uncle Ernie, had been in Aunty’s house for as long as Rudy could remember. Its subject was Adam’s Peak, the mountain his brother was named after, rendered as a dappled green oblong under a yellow sun. Despite the clumsiness of the brush strokes, the light on the peak showed a certain sensitivity to nature, while the surrounding hills cast convincing shadows on the landscape. At the summit of the oblong was a red pavilion. The lopsided building was too large for the scale of the painting, and it seemed to Rudy that the picture would be more effective without it.
As he sat pondering this, Aunty Mary emerged from the kitchen with a cup of tea.
“I thought you might like this since you are working.”
He turned and sighed. His aunt’s attentions embarrassed him—the cooking, the laundry, the cups of tea. He planned to move out, of course. Buy a house closer to the city, ship his belongings from Canada. But for now, for Aunty Mary, he was still a child. He took the cup and thanked her.
“How are your pupils doing?” she said.
“Oh, most of them are fine.” He paused. “I just finished reading the new kid’s essay. Seems he supports the Tigers.”
“Aiyo.” Aunty shook her head. “These Tigers only care about making trouble. You must explain to him.”
Rudy looked down at the half-page on which his comments would be written. “There’s nothing I can explain to him that he does-n’t already know, Aunty. He believes that violence is the only option left for his cause.”
Aunty frowned. “And why is a young man so worried about a cause like this? He has more important things to think about, no?”
Feeling oddly compelled to defend his student, Rudy shrugged and sipped his tea. “Kanda identifies himself mainly as a Tamil. He thinks his language and culture will be best served in an independent country.”
“He is full of strange ideas then,” Aunty said. “What’s most important is our family, no? We should worry about those people, whether they are healthy and living a good life. Language and culture will look after themselves, isn’t it.”
Rudy opened his mouth then shrugged again. “You may be right.”
“Do you think this Kanda is involved with the Tigers?”
“I doubt it. But who knows? The Tigers employ kids a hell of a lot younger than him.”
“Ah, yes.” Aunty shook her head. “They give machine guns to children. It’s a sin.”
Rudy gulped down most of his tea and stared at the back page of Kanda’s essay. In the brief silence, the ticking of Grandpa’s old clock and the thrum of the electric fan were strangely loud.
Then Aunty sighed. “I think our government is putting itself out on the murunga branch.”
Rudy looked up, surprised. His aunt never discussed politics. “What do you mean?”
“Ah, it’s an old expression. When someone is feeling very proud of himself, we say he is sitting on the murunga branch.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and shook it out. “As you know, the murunga is a very tall tree. It also has very brittle branches. You can climb high up in this tree, but then the branch breaks ...” Her voice trailed off.
“And how does that relate to the government?”
Aunty wiped her forehead and cheekbones. “The government is feeling very proud these days. They believe that capturing Jaffna will put an end to all this fighting. But I think these Tigers will make sure the army’s murunga branch comes crashing back to the ground.”
“You and Kanda agree on that much,” he said with a wry smile. “And Dad. What does he say? ‘The Tamil man and the Sinhalese man will never get along. It’s not in their nature.’ Or some rubbish like that?”
His aunt stuffed the handkerchief back in her pocket. “Ah, no. You’re right. We must be positive, isn’t it. It’s Easter.” And on that, she turned and went back to the kitchen.
Rudy picked up his pen and composed his comments.
Kanda: Your essay is quite well organized and the prose is clear and engaging. There are some problems with grammar and punctuation, as marked, but they don’t seriously detract from the success of your paper. The essay has a strong, attention-grabbing thesis, and you offer plenty of good evidence in support of it. The major way in which the paper could be improved would be to give some conside
ration to the best arguments in support of the other side. The most convincing arguments are often those that show they understand their opponents’ position and can reasonably refute it. You have the potential to be an excellent writer. Keep up the good work.
It was a long way off what he wanted to write, but it would have to do. At the bottom of the page he wrote “B+” then reached for the rest of the essays in his knapsack. As he shifted position, Adam’s letter crinkled in his pocket. He decided to save it till Aunty Mary had gone to bed.
LATE THAT EVENING, after chicken dinner and more marking, Rudy slouched at the desk, tapping his pen against the cover of his diary. Mosquitoes hovered around him, but he was too tired to bother lighting a coil. Too tired to write, really, but it was something of a ritual, his nightly communication with Clare Fraser—begun on a cold Christmas day back home and carried out ever since. He told her about his afternoon, about reading Kanda’s essay and missing his bus stop, then he left his diary in his bedroom and went to the shower shed in the backyard. The green plastic enclosure was dimly lit by a pair of bulbs fixed to the back wall of the house. Overhead the black sky was pierced with stars. Rudy hung his sarong over the door and turned on the water. It fell from the broad metal shower head, straight and heavy and warm, like a monsoon downpour. He backed into it, watching a rupee-sized spider scurry across the concrete floor, reached for the soap, and lathered his hands. Eyes closed, he masturbated with dull frustration, a desire for release of some kind. He thought of his ex-girlfriend Renée’s muscular thighs and prodigious breasts, of the girl in Kanda’s essay, walking by herself early in the morning, of Clare. He came easily. Relieved, if only temporarily, he rinsed off then stood still under the spray in the shower’s green light. At the faint sound of the dining room clock striking eleven, he turned off the water and hurried to dry himself before the mosquitoes moved in.
In the bedroom he put on a T-shirt, an ancient souvenir from the Toronto Jazz Festival, with gaudy splashes of turquoise and pink. His sarong was covered in red and gold elephants.
“A real fashion plate you’ve become, machan,” he heckled his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Turning sideways, he sucked in his belly and straightened his shoulders, ran his fingers through his damp hair and cursed at the amount that came out. He considered doing some sit-ups while the air was cool, then he remembered Adam’s letter.
He imagined what it would say.
I think we need to talk about our relationship, Rudy. I’ve tried to connect with you, but it hasn’t really worked, has it. What have you got against me? I don’t think I’ve deserved your coldness ...
The more Rudy imagined, the more real the words became, until he felt he knew the contents of his brother’s letter precisely. A vague memory came to him. He was twelve or so; Adam was still little. They’d built something together in the backyard. It was a rock sculpture of some kind, but it all fell apart. What he remembered most clearly was picking up one of the rocks and throwing it as hard as he could. But he couldn’t recall what his target had been.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
Leaving the letter in his trouser pocket, he unknotted the mosquito net hanging over the bed. He made his way around the mattress, tucking the net underneath, leaving a small gap through which he finally crawled. Safe inside, he reached his hand out to switch off the bedside lamp then tucked in the rest of the net.
2
THROUGH A GAUZE OF CLOUDS Clare glimpsed the grey-white landscape, cut through with ruler-straight roads and patched with rectangular roofs. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. On the headphones Gilles Vigneault was singing “Mon Pays,” but her mind wasn’t on the music.
We can’t ever really know anyone else, can we, she began.
Depends what you mean by know.
What life is really like for them, what they really think. It’s impossible. We’re all locked inside ourselves.
You mean you are, Clare.
Maybe. But I think it goes for everyone. We can imagine somebody else’s life, but we’ll never know for sure if we’re right.
Yeah, well as far as that goes, who’s to say we know ourselves any better? Who the hell is Clare Fraser?
Sometimes I think I know. When I’m back here, it’s obvious. The question seems pointless.
The plane dipped gently, and the seatbelt sign chimed.
What made you think of this anyway?
I was thinking about my parents. What they were like when they were younger ...
Their sex life you mean.
Emma. It’s not that. It’s nothing to do with that.
Oh, come on. You’re dying to know if—
No, never mind. We’re about to land.
THE PEOPLE SURROUNDING CLARE and her mother in the arrivals hall had waiting faces—necks craning, eyes searching. The greeters hovered in heavy coats and clumpy boots, dripping dirty puddles of melted snow on the linoleum floor. The passengers streamed endlessly through the sliding security doors and around the luggage carousel, underdressed, burdened with parcels, a little dazed. Like camera flashes, faces lit up as searched-for parties or pieces of luggage were spotted, and gradually a uniform wave of satisfaction swept through the crowd. Beyond their superficial uniformity, however, the people in the crowd were, as always, unreadable, their circumstances unknowable. Even the most banal of exchanges with any one of them would involve infinite risks: a smile could be tactless; a comment about the weather could trigger terrible memories. How could one tell? Sensibly averting her eyes from these strangers’ faces, Clare watched the assembly-line progress of suitcases rumbling from the chute and sliding into place on the carousel. In her head, the conversation with Emma competed with the hurried, desperate voice of Gilles Vigneault.
Go on, ask her.
I’ll ask her in the car.
You’re such a chicken.
Dans la blanche cérémonie, où la neige au vent se marie; Dans ce pays de poudrerie, mon père a fait bâtir maison.
I just got here.
You’ve only been gone three weeks. And it’s just your mother. What are you worried about?
I’m not worried. But it is my mother. We don’t talk about that stuff.
Et je m’en vais être fidèle, à sa manière, à son modèle.
Don’t talk about it then. Just get a yes or a no.
I’ll ask her, Emma. When the time’s right.
You promise?
Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver ...
She reached in front of her mother for her suitcase and hauled it awkwardly onto the luggage trolley. As they made their way out through the mob, she kept her eyes down. The conversation in her head drivelled on, a secret necessity, until they exited into the vast, frozen airport parking lot, where at last she relaxed her grip on the trolley and allowed herself to look around. Like her fellow passengers, she was underdressed—jeans, T-shirt, running shoes, rain jacket—but at home.
“It’s a pity Easter’s so early this year,” her mother said. “It hardly seems the season for it.”
“Mmm. You’re right.”
“Did you have a good flight, pet?”
“It was fine.”
“Was the food all right?”
“Not too bad.”
“Was there a movie?”
“Yeah. I didn’t watch it.”
She’d fallen asleep listening to Traditions Québecoises on the headphones. Leaning against the window she’d dreamed of a solitary man on a snowy plain. It could have been Gilles Vigneault—the man in the dream was singing—but he was wearing her father’s overcoat. His grey hair blew wildly in a whistling gale that threatened to drown his voice completely. In her dream, Clare struggled to hear him but caught only meaningless fragments.
She paused to zip her jacket, and her mother took over the trolley and hurried on, the hemline of her skirt swaying in perfect alignment with that of her black wool coat, her coppery bob dancing over the collar. Clare followed. Shutting out Isob
el Fraser’s chit-chat, shutting out Emma, she searched the frigid air for her father. She’d been back home almost an hour; it was about time they spoke.
It must be a wee bit warmer in Vancouver these days, he said, predictably.
His voice was perfectly intact. He’d been gone so long (heart attack in the driveway, on his way to play golf) that many of the particulars of his existence could be difficult to retrieve. But the voice of Alastair Fraser, no less real than it had been in life, lingered, indefinitely it seemed, in Clare’s head.
You say that every time I go out there, Dad. Vancouver’s warm and rainy, just like Scotland. You’d hate it.
Aye, I suppose I would. He spoke in the scant, reluctant way he’d always spoken, never uttering more than a sentence or two, a measured observation, a pellet of sensible advice. But only at home. You’ll be moving out there then, I suppose, he said next, and Clare clenched her hands in her pockets.
I don’t know. Maybe.
She’d been thinking about it. “It’s time, Clare,” the real Emma had insisted, just the night before. “You’re stuck in a rut and it’s not doing you or your mother any good. Listen to me: I’ve known you forever. It’s fine to be close to your family, but there’s a limit. You’re thirty-one, for God’s sake. I’ll help you find work. I’ve got heaps of connections at the college.” It all made sense. And Vancouver was a nice enough place—slower than Montreal, which suited Clare fine. Each time she visited, the idea of moving there gained appeal, until now, she realized, it was pressing inside her with just enough urgency that she could, perhaps, act on it.