Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  He heard what Rachel was saying, she was talking about the international hope in communism, she was mixing what he thought might be her Jewish version of Sunday school because she was talking about Egypt, Exodus, the ransoming of slaves. He was nervous that she was being too passionate in her speech; he’d been trained through his childhood in restraint, in ironic understatement, and he thought that what Rachel was saying might be lovely nonsense, but he was afraid that she was ultimately reasonable and that he would be called to act on her reasonable persuasion. Then he thought, I must give my life to something that will ransom my slavery, I must either redeem my life or kill myself.

  Finally, Max asked Rachel in low voice, “Where are these boxes you want me to take to the car?”

  Rachel indicated the three crates of books, and Max seized one and departed. On the third trip, he hoisted the last impossibly heavy crate onto his chest, nodded to Emmett, and left.

  Rachel put on her coat. She stretched her arms above her head and somehow the thick rope of hair disappeared under the hat. She kissed Emmett on his lips. “Now you will have to make good on your promise to move out.”

  He went to the landing to watch her descend the stairs, passing the landlady at the door. “Family documents of murdered relatives,” Rachel told her sternly and stepped out into the snow on the front porch.

  Emmett tossed out the remaining tea, rinsed the cups, put his papers with his Japanese scrawl before him, and sat for a long time doing nothing. Patches of snow from his visitors’ boots melted on the oak floor. Rachel will risk everything for the Communist Party, to protest the failure of the Canadian government to protect Jews from the Holocaust. The landlady’s clock struck the hour. He remembered meeting Rachel in Leonard’s smoky apartment several years ago, hearing the earnest students talk about a stateless, classless society; he recalled the joy he’d felt at that moment, when he realized that he might free himself from the government that had fooled him into piloting for Bomber Command. Could he redeem his life, did he have the stamina, is there an ideal that could actually lift him physically from his solitude into action, into bliss?

  Then he had an idea so contrary, so paradoxical, he laughed out loud.

  He began to pack his few belongings.

  Two weeks later, Emmett Jones wrote the entrance exam for the Department of External Affairs. He was interviewed, twice. And was accepted.

  Chapter Nine

  In April 1950, Emmett was preparing to move away from Toronto, to Ottawa, where he’d take up his position as a policy analyst with a special interest in the American occupation of Japan. He hadn’t seen Suzanne since John Norfield’s disappearance. She didn’t phone him anymore, and he was giving up on her. Moving away to Ottawa would put an end to his fixation. But he couldn’t leave without seeing her; he had to say goodbye.

  Near the streetcar stop at St. Clair, he met a boy sitting on the yellow grass and on sudden impulse he gave the boy three dollars for the bicycle that lay beside him. The freckled, redheaded boy gladly took the money. Emmett had already ridden away before it occurred to him that the redheaded boy didn’t own the bike in the first place.

  He cycled up to the McCallum property in Forest Hill. Mrs. McCallum, Suzanne’s mama, was standing on the white gravel drive between the stable and the house, talking to an old woman with a very crooked back. In the heat, the bent old woman wore a wool suit with a grey mink collar and grey kidskin gloves. She had abundant white hair arranged on her head, which sat at an acute angle, spools of hair wisping around her ancient face.

  Emmett’s bicycle made a chewing sound over the gravel; white dust rose up and coated his shoes. He dismounted and sneezed.

  Mrs. McCallum greeted him: “It’s Mr. Emmett Jones.” She turned to the old woman and more loudly said, “It’s Mr. Emmett Jones, Mother. An acquaintance of Suzanne’s. From her university days.” He realized that she thought he had a double name; Jones would be beyond her ken.

  The old woman lifted her head like a tortoise to look at him with tortoise eyes. She was something out of Lewis Carroll, beautifully grotesque with age, privately amused. He felt himself liked, and he instantly liked her. She reminded him of his boyhood, when he was liked simply for being lanky, when people were pleasant and wealthy and offhand about their wealth. She offered him a kidskin hand to hold, a soft little nest of bones, gave a light, vigorous shake, and said, “How do you do, Mr. Emmett Jones.”

  He said he was pleased to meet her, and the old woman announced, “You’ll have to come to tea.”

  Suzanne’s mama sized Emmett up, regarding him with cool warmth. “You’re not carrying any books,” she observed.

  “I was wondering if Suzanne is at home.” He realized that he might have phoned first; he’d been impatient.

  Mama’s eyes widened. “She’s not here,” she said with some surprise. “She has a ‘studio’ on Avenue Road. She camps out in her ‘studio.’” She took in Emmett’s disappointment. “You didn’t know.”

  He looked down his dusty shoes. “We’ve been out of touch.”

  “It’s on Avenue Road,” said the old woman decidedly. He guessed that the grandmother did not disapprove of Suzanne’s “studio.” Then she added, “Have you seen her photographs? They’re pretty good.”

  Mama gave directions to Suzanne’s “studio,” and the two women silently watched him remount the bicycle and waver on the gravel drive out to the street. When he reached the pavement, he stole a look in their direction and saw them deep in discussion.

  Suzanne had been drawn from her darkroom to the front window to stare out at the street, and there was Emmett. She felt a pang of jealousy for his boyish handling of the bike, the long leg swung over the seat while it was still moving, Emmett letting it drop on the frowsy margin of weed, then rapping at the door as if he didn’t really care if he didn’t find her there. She opened the door at once.

  She was in the midst of a project and had taken down the exterior sign that read “McCallum Photographs” because she didn’t want anybody to interrupt while she was at work on this new stuff. She was in a large room with lots of wall space and three clotheslines strung from wall to wall to dry the prints.

  She’d had been up since five that morning and had kept herself going with brandy and coffee, as was her routine: to sleep from one until five or six, work in the darkroom till ten and then have a bath, go to bed for another couple of hours, rise, and go out and take photographs. She liked afternoon light. Today, she’d strayed from routine, skipped the bath and morning sleep, kept up the spiked coffee in the darkroom, not necessarily because she was making great advances with the work but because she couldn’t stop.

  It was eleven o’clock when Emmett made his surprise visit. She’d emerged from the darkroom a few moments earlier, her heart pounding. Her vision was as she imagined a fly’s vision must be — stills flashing at three frames per second. When she saw him swing his leg off his bike like a boy, she envied his healthy unconsciousness.

  Emmett noticed the purple shadows under her eyes. The room smelled of burnt coffee and booze and a chemical reek that he’d soon learn came from her darkroom. Her puppet-like movement unnerved him. When she embraced him stiffly, he could feel her ribs raking out from her spine. He said he was sorry to drop by so suddenly, and she said, “No!” and waved for him to come inside.

  As he walked between the lines of photographs, he could sense her holding her breath.

  In every print there was a figure walking away over an expanse of concrete or lawn, a man or a woman, sometimes a dog, always images of their departure, their private intentions. He was struck by the geometry of streetscape and her skilful use of film, the depth of field, detail and focus, the pocked texture of cement, veins of creosote in a telephone pole, a brick storefront, rusty trash cans. Somehow the colour of rust was suggested in the black-and-white film, just as the blades of grass crisscrossed by afternoon shadow suggested green. A formal presentation of the banal, her stark attention to emptiness. And he
thought, She’s still grieving for Norfield.

  When he told her the photographs were “good,” she laughed sharply and said, “No no.”

  He asked her, Could they go out for something to eat? She said that would be nice, but she wasn’t fit to be seen so why didn’t he come through here? They walked through her curtained darkroom and into her suite at the back of the building.

  She told him to have a seat at a rickety white table while she took a knife and sawed at a loaf of bread that had been left there. She was skinny but crazily beautiful.

  “There,” she said, smiling and throwing down slices of the stale bread, sitting, then jumping up again, “I’ve got butter!” But her fridge was empty except for a jug of water.

  “Can’t you sit down?” he asked.

  She sat, tapping her foot.

  “I met your grandmother,” he told her.

  For a moment, Suzanne’s face relaxed and fell open. “Did you?” She was so rapt it cost her further effort to think this through. “You were at the house?” She darkened. “You saw Mother?”

  “That’s how I knew where to find you.”

  She nodded, Emmett, watching her, thinking of her as a pearl in a string of pearls. When he told her he was going away, she gave him a stricken look. Then she asked, “Are you going to find the old woman?”

  He was amazed. This was a story he’d told her years ago when they’d first met; a not-entirely-true story about his childhood in Japan, a story about the “old woman,” Sachiko, his father’s mistress. Suzanne had turned his life into a fairy tale. He told her that he didn’t know if he would find Sachiko. Maybe she’s dead.

  But Suzanne yawned and with one finger tipped a dry piece of crust, letting it fall back onto the plate. “Well,” she said, “we’ll miss you.”

  “We.” Did she mean her mother and her? She was fractured, multiplied by the loss of John Norfield. It was hopeless. Anger pressed his jaw tight. She was oblivious, caught in a light, mesmerized, he’d been wasting his time.

  What was it about Norfield that had captured her? Emmett would exceed Norfield, he’d better him, he’d prove to be the better man. He’d cut free of both of them. He said he had to go and finish packing.

  She saw him out distractedly. He imagined that she was embarrassed. She was astute about men; she’d long understood that he was attracted to her, and she was uncomfortable. Let her have her ghost, Emmett thought, the mysterious Norfield who has vanished liked smoke. Let her live on smoke.

  They didn’t embrace. She held her front door open while she watched him pick up his bike and when he was ready to go, she said, “Well. Goodbye.”

  From the street he turned to look back at her over his shoulder just as she was swinging her door closed and their eyes met. Only a few minutes ago he might have been encouraged by the confusion he saw there. But he was through with that. He rode quickly down the falling slope of the city.

  Chapter Ten

  Emmett moved to Ottawa and began his career as a policy analyst, dealing with reports coming out of Tokyo where the Canadian government had a Liaison Mission whose main job was to explain in bureaucratic lingo the American occupation of Japan in the wake of the bombing. He taught himself shorthand and typing so he wouldn’t always be dependent on a secretary. His modest salary with External was twice what he’d been making as a translator.

  His anger toward Suzanne cooled and hardened. He counted the years since he’d got “tangled up” with her and with Norfield as lost years. His relations with them now seemed quite corrupt — as if he’d been their pet, their audience.

  He threw himself into his new job at External Affairs. He was thirty years old; he had catching up to do.

  In his capacity as analyst, he soon became fascinated by reports written by a man by the name of Herbert Norman who was working out of Occupied Japan. Herbert Norman described the circumstances of the current American military occupation there in a style that Emmett would try to emulate: lucid tracts, with cultural allusions dating back far before the Meiji era.

  He studied Herbert Norman’s writing and researched his sources. He sought out other publications by the man, editorials in Amerasia composed in the 1930s in the midst of the Depression; this was youthful work, provocative, pretending to apologize while the writer admitted he was “stepping on the toes of economic, political and national vested interests.”

  Emmett worked hard, stayed late into the night or smuggled files home for his private hours, sipping Scotch while he worked, letting his mind play. But it wasn’t enough to be reading. He needed to have real influence. He couldn’t sleep and there was never enough work — not enough to make him feel substantial. He needed a sense of glory that certainly wasn’t available to him in the well-mannered offices of External Affairs.

  He pushed his superiors at External to give him a posting in Japan. He cultivated the mentorship of a senior civil servant by the name of Bill Masters, a professional bureaucrat who liked to see himself as a key player in the careers of young men. Bill was convinced that Jones was his very own creation, a delusion that Emmett encouraged.

  He was always there by the time Bill Masters arrived at eight a.m. When Bill saw Emmett at his desk, he’d stop for a minute and happily observe, “At it again, Jones? Don’t burn yourself out.”

  Emmett kept Bill aware of his restlessness and ambitions. He let Bill know that he was testing External, that he wasn’t sure if it was the right career for him. Bill had boasted to the prime minister that he’d made a talented new recruit. Prime Minister St. Laurent didn’t like a department with a lot of coming and going. It was important to retain talent, to foster a stable civil service that would keep the Liberal Party in power.

  It paid off quickly. Bill Masters arranged for Emmett to be posted to Tokyo for six months on probation, with an extended contract if he worked out, at the Canadian Liaison Mission to Occupied Japan. He was to start work there early July 1950.

  On June 25, North Korea attacked South Korea. The UN Security Council voted to go to war against communist North Korea. The Russians, North Korea’s allies, boycotted the United Nations that day, so the vote in favour of war was unanimous — though no one was permitted to call it a war: it was called “a police action.” The execution of the war in Korea would be in the hands of US General Douglas MacArthur, who was also running the American occupation of Japan from his offices in Tokyo.

  Emmett told himself that he was going “home” to Japan. He was also returning to war.

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  June 30, Bill Masters, Emmett’s newly acquired mentor, took him to the airport. Bill got a real kick out of launching his protégé on his first foreign assignment, and he talked at Emmett right up to the departure gate, giving him the lowdown on his own successes (“and that’s just the half of it”), his stories pivoting around the countless times he’d been pursued by inferior associates. “So I told them, ‘Look’” — with one stubby finger Bill tapped at his wristwatch — “‘I don’t have time to dick around. When you fellas finally figure out the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground — get back to me.’”

  It came time for Emmett to board the plane, and Bill’s voice rose in pitch as he talked faster. They were calling the flight when Bill began to recount an incident in 1945, just before the end of the war, involving Amerasia magazine and J. Edgar Hoover. A complicated story involving thousands of stolen classified documents from British and American Intelligence that Hoover’s FBI discovered in Amerasia’s New York editorial offices. Bill kept saying, “You understand? This is the FBI we’re talking about here. Herbert Norman was writing for Amerasia. That makes Herbert Norman hot, in the eyes of J. Edgar Hoover. You’re going to meet Herbert Norman in Tokyo. Comprendez?” But there wasn’t time for the whole story, the plane was waiting, its engines drowning out Bill’s voice, and Bill said, “Do I have to spell it out?” He embraced Emmett, his eyes filling with tears, and said, “Choose your friends like you choose your enemies and you’ll do fine, s
on.”

  Emmett walked across the tarmac, the sun on his back, his shadow stretching ahead. Bill shouted something, but a weedy wind was blowing, an orange sun bulleted off the belly of the airplane, a North Star. He passed a rippling red flag, climbed the stairs to the plane, was greeted by a pretty blond, and took his seat. Peripherally, he could see Bill, looking diminished, standing where he’d left him. Emmett was troubled by Bill’s loyal witness to his solitary departure and the whisper of small, inflated significance. Bill’s warning against Herbert Norman had actually enlivened his hope that the man would work with him. He needed to feel the edge of conflict. Being a Canadian civil servant, he had already learned, could be like living in a padded cell. He had to have access to something radiant, something much bigger than himself.

  The North Star stormed into the air. The aircraft was unpressurized; it was like being inside a steel drum in a hailstorm — the noise was deafening, it was cold, the constant vibration drilled into him. The plane was a pig compared with the Lancaster he’d piloted. But he was flying to Japan. He comforted himself through the long flight by conjuring memories of the home he would soon see again.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tokyo was hot, and everywhere there were beautiful Japanese women in western dress, hundreds, thousands of beautiful women, unaccompanied, cool, and apparently untroubled. Japanese blossoms wearing Betty Grable shoes picked their way through the rubble of bomb craters, delicately stepping over the amputees begging on the streets, the homeless and the orphans who lived in the railway stations.