The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  “Tell me again. What was he like?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” she said. She swirled her glass, studying the contents.

  “You knew him for a long time. You lived with him.”

  “It wasn’t such a long time, looking back. And I don’t think anybody knew him.”

  “Hard to believe,” Cyril said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Hard to believe these days when everybody is trying to be noticed. All this Facebook stuff and gabbing constantly. Everybody looking for publicity. I remember one day a reporter showed up looking for him. I went to fetch him from the classroom but he wouldn’t come out. He seemed upset. That’s just the way he was. Private.”

  “So, when did you two get involved?”

  “Involved?” She laughed.

  “Some hot older guy—a foreigner—in the high school?”

  “Oh stop,” she said, blushing. She stood, picked up their empty glasses, turned toward the sink.

  “Mom. What do you think happened to him?”

  “I don’t want to think about it. What I am thinking is we’ll have leftovers from last night,” she said. “Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “I had a really nice dinner prepared.”

  It was nearly midnight when he texted Gloria: Just checking in. Looking forward to tomorrow. But maybe a nice long walk, okay? A little out of shape for running. Your call re breakfast. xo

  He’d been browsing in the journals for about an hour when he found the photograph. June 15, 1986. The picture was taped to the page. There were about twenty in the graduating class, all gowned and looking awkward in their mortarboards—except for Pierre. He held his in front of him, against his chest, his free hand clutching a scroll that was, presumably, his high-school diploma.

  He was in the back row because he was one of the tallest. Cyril calculated that Pierre would have been twenty-six, or close to it. He was conspicuously older—even at twenty-six there was a hint of grey in his unruly head of hair.

  He was smiling but the eyes were serious, wide and wary as if he didn’t trust the photographer.

  He carefully removed the photograph, resolved to frame it. There were so few. His dad, as Aggie often hinted, was always reticent when there were cameras around. He leaned the photo against the base of the reading lamp on his bedside table.

  He gathered up the diaries, started putting them away, year by year, in the space he’d made on a bookshelf. He would have to study them, correlate the information, cross-reference with other sources. Pierre could not have—would not have—gone to all the trouble of recording the mundane details of his existence for the span of twenty-four years unless it was for some practical purpose. The only purpose Cyril could imagine was to assist him in remembering what could not be written down.

  He took one more look at May 2000. Over and out. There was no memory from Cyril’s experience that had greater clarity than May 26, 2000. Cool clear Friday. Indeed it was. A day that was unremarkable until he found his father standing on that precious coffee table with a golf club. Home early. Cyril could confirm that: it was precisely what he’d thought. Dad’s home early for a change. Must have an early evening golf commitment. But why is he standing on the coffee table for a practice swing?

  He shelved 2000, then 2001 but as he picked up 2002 he noticed a marker of some kind wedged between the pages. It dominated late January. It was a press clipping carefully torn from a British newspaper, the Guardian. According to the entries, Pierre had been in England for weeks. Cyril had no memory of that trip—his father was always working somewhere. The pages before and after January 25 were filled with detail about weather and appointments. Except for the page on which he had taped the clipping. Part of the entry on January 26 was in Arabic.

  Cyril carefully detached the clipping and unfolded it.

  JANUARY 24: ELIE HOBEIKA

  Lebanese Militia Leader Who Massacred Civilians.

  It was a news report but also an obituary, of sorts.

  Elie Hobeika, who was killed in a massive bomb attack at his house in the Beirut suburb of Hazmiyeh, was one of Lebanon’s most controversial figures. His death at the age of 45 comes at a time when he had agreed to testify against Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in a war crimes trial that may be held later this year in a Brussels court. A leader of the Christian Maronite Lebanese Forces (or Phalanges, as they were known) during Lebanon’s bloody civil war, Hobeika acted as Israel’s liaison chief during that country’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. He was the leader of the Phalange forces in the Beirut Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila when the Maronite president, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated in September 1982.

  When Cyril finished he read it a second time. Why would his father care enough to cut this out and save it? Maybe it was for the reference to the man he now presumed to have been his namesake, Bashir. Or maybe not. He read it for a third time, all the way through.

  Hobeika claimed that there were 2,000 Palestinian terrorists hiding in the Sabra and Shatila camps. When given the green light by Israel whose defence minister was then Ariel Sharon, to enter the camps, the Phalangist militiamen slaughtered more than 1,000 men, women and children.

  Born in Kleiat, in the Lebanese province of Kesrwan, Hobeika left school after completing his exams…

  He tucked the clipping in a pocket of his backpack. He would take it to the office, follow up, check if there was archival footage of this Hobeika. He turned out the bedside light. He lay in darkness, mind struggling to reconcile conflicting images. His father looking out of place in a group graduation photo in Cape Breton. His father standing on an expensive coffee table positioning a golf ball. A street lined with crumbling buildings, smoke-blackened holes where windows were supposed to be, vegetation growing out of craters in the pavement. Wailing, ululating women. His father with a gun.

  In the darkness he could detect a small red winking light.

  He sat up, switched on the lamp.

  It was a text from Gloria and it was brief: B’fast not possible. Didn’t hear from u so made other plans. Ttyl.

  20.

  Nader was half sitting on Cyril’s desk, leg hooked over one corner, arms folded. They were both watching Suzanne who was standing in the middle of the newsroom talking to Hughes, clutching a sheaf of paper in one hand. “I wonder what that would be like,” Nader said.

  “What,” Cyril said.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t wondered too.”

  “Not sure what you’re getting at,” Cyril said, knowing exactly.

  “I’d be petrified,” Nader said.

  Cyril laughed. “Petrified? Petrified means hard.”

  Nader laughed. “Man, you’re worse than I am.”

  “Whatever you’re driving at,” Cyril said, opening a file folder.

  “I bet she’d want a full debrief afterwards,” Nader said. “She’s big on…um…context.”

  Cyril looked up, studied Suzanne, struggled to control his face before the wistfulness revealed itself. “She might surprise you.”

  “I’m sure she would. You know that she and Hughes were once—”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m trying to picture it.”

  “I can see it. Look at them.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  Nader stood, stretched, yawned. “Maybe just once, I’d take my chances. A little humiliation could be educational for a dude like me.”

  “Let me know,” said Cyril. “Or on the other hand, don’t.”

  “I hear Manville took a run at her,” Nader said, “and couldn’t get to first base. But a fella can dream. Right?”

  Nader started to move away but Suzanne called out, “Don’t go anywhere.” Then walked over to them.

  “How was everybody’s weekend?” Her tone was flat, uninterested.

  “My weekend was busy,” Nader said.

  “I’d like to hear about it. Hughes’s office in ten?”

  “Sure.”

  H
ughes’s desk was piled with folders, newspapers, books and DVDs. He was leaning on his elbows, hands cupping his face. His eyes were weary.

  Suzanne patted a place beside her on the couch, said to Nader: “You sit here. I’ve been hearing from Hughes. You have been busy.”

  “After Friday prayers, I hung out for a while,” Nader said. “I think we’re making some headway but everybody is being super cautious, as you can imagine.”

  She nodded. She looked at Cyril. “And what about you, young fella. What did you get up to?”

  Cyril felt the warmth in his face. “Very quiet weekend,” he said. Then he remembered his father’s diaries. “Just a second,” he said. He went to his desk and fetched his backpack, returned to Hughes’s office. “Suzanne mentioned that you read Arabic.”

  Hughes tilted his head and made a face. “I suppose,” he said.

  Cyril retrieved the two notebooks from the backpack, put them on the desk. “These were among my father’s things. Sometime when you have nothing better to do…”

  Hughes picked one up, examined it. “1983,” he said. “Is that when your dad came to Canada?”

  “Around then.”

  “Hmm,” Hughes said, flipping through the pages. “Can I hang on to these for a while?”

  “Of course,” said Cyril.

  “Great,” Suzanne said. “Look. I’ve got some news.” She was smiling at Cyril now. “Good news and bad news.”

  “Let’s have the good news,” Nader said.

  “Cyril has been reassigned to work with us. I talked to Doc on the weekend. He agrees and he’s pretty sure that he can swing a contract down the road a bit.”

  “Wow,” said Cyril. “You’re kidding.”

  “Don’t get too excited,” Suzanne said. “It’ll be a temp contract. Maybe, if you’re lucky, for a month. But these things have a way of putting down roots if you’re any good.”

  “So what’s the bad news,” Hughes said.

  “Same as the good news. Cyril has been reassigned to work with us. As an intern for the moment. What do you think?”

  “I can’t see any downside,” Cyril said.

  “Right answer,” said Suzanne. “So let’s get busy.”

  “Oh,” said Cyril to Hughes. “And there was something else. It was folded up in the diary for 2002.” He rummaged in the backpack until he found the clipping from the Guardian.

  “What’s that?” said Suzanne. He handed it to her.

  She scanned it quickly. “Holy shit,” she said. “He knew Hobeika, obviously. You know who Hobeika is…was?”

  Cyril shook his head. “Just what I read there.”

  “Well, you can look him up,” Suzanne said, laughing. “What a piece of work he was. I’d forgotten someone took him out. I sure hope that they weren’t friends.”

  “Let me see,” said Hughes. She handed the clipping across the desk to him and he read it quickly. “Wow.”

  Cyril listened carefully to the conversation as it unfolded, and when he started to become confused by details that were contingent on half-remembered background facts, he pulled a notebook from his backpack and started writing down fragments so he could reconstruct what he was hearing later. Radical voices in the mosques. Fundamentalists attacking the pragmatic secularists. Visiting imams, some of them dangerously persuasive. Young folk bored, and in many cases, insulted by a Western culture that manipulated style and taste and values for crass commercial reasons. Kids raised in homes with firm, faith-based convictions being pulled this way and that by the materialistic culture.

  As Nader analyzed the situation, Cyril began to see and hear another Nader—engaged, a little bit outraged. He was describing young people caught in the middle of an age-old dynamic: older people brainwashing and recruiting young idealists to fight their wars.

  But there was something new and sinister in the political equation—a violent medieval vision plotting to replace modern corruption with something probably worse. A fundamentalist dictatorship. Young idealistic people were responding sympathetically.

  “As if,” Hughes interjected, “corruption was unheard of in the caliphate.” He shook his head.

  Nader smiled. “People have had six hundred years to forget the inconvenient part of history—six centuries of colonial oppression.”

  “Talk to the Jews about oppression,” Hughes countered, “and the Armenians, the Serbians. The Irish. Don’t get me wrong but—”

  “So how do we get people to talk about this?” Suzanne interrupted.

  “Not so easy anymore,” Nader said. “They’ve been burned so many times. Right? They’re hyper-vigilant about spies.”

  “So what about you?”

  “They know where I work so they probably assume I talk about it to you. But they trust me. So far.”

  “But they’re going to be careful, right? When you’re around.”

  “Yes. But in a way I take attention away from the people they really should be worrying about. Man, some of these mosques are so infiltrated,” Nader said. “They have no clue. I know three guys who are actually working for CSIS right in the middle of everything. One of them is a real agitator. There are times I want to expose the bastard.”

  “You were going to talk to your spy contacts about a meeting,” Suzanne said.

  “Yes. I think it’s going to happen. They’re getting worried. There are rumours about youngsters making plans to go to Syria, young Sunni guys who are really, really upset about what happened in Iraq.”

  “Fucking Iraq,” said Hughes, tossing his pen down.

  “Why Syria?” Cyril asked.

  They looked at him, suddenly remembering his presence. “Who wants to go first?” Suzanne said, smiling.

  “It’s okay,” said Cyril. “I can look it up. But so what if young guys want to go over there to get involved. Better there than here.” He smiled, feeling slightly confident for the first time.

  “And what do we do with them when they come home more fucked up than when they went?” Suzanne asked.

  Hughes rescued him. “Cyril has a point. I remember young warriors all fired up about the menace of communism, going off to Vietnam—young Canadians. And back in the thirties, we forget the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion. Idealists and young communists heading off to stop the fascists in Spain…they came back, joined the army, fought Hitler, came home again, had babies, got jobs and mortgages. Got old and died. Oldest story in the world.”

  “We’re trying to do a doc-u-mentary, guys,” Suzanne said wearily. “Not the history of boys…”

  Hughes gave her a sour look.

  “Nader,” said Suzanne, “my takeaway is that you’re close to getting that background briefing from CSIS. Am I right?”

  “I’m close. They’ve asked for names. Who’ll I say?”

  “Tell them you, me and Cyril.”

  “I don’t know how you do that,” Cyril said, outside Hughes’s office.

  “Do what?”

  “Come and go in the mosque, walk that line.”

  “No problem,” said Nader. “I’m a believer. People know that. There and here. I believe in what I’m doing, both places. Sometimes that works. The big word nowadays, I hear, is authenticity.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “Who said anything was simple?”

  “Coffee?” Suzanne said, smiling at him.

  They walked together toward the elevators. Waiting there, Cyril said, “Thanks.”

  “Like I said, it’s temporary. At least for now.”

  “Isn’t everything?” he said. She did an exaggerated double take.

  “Wow. You sound like Hughes.” Poked him playfully, then sobered. “Let me say just one thing. If your dad was, in any way, tied in with Elie Hobeika then maybe you’re better off not knowing. Okay? Take it from me. He was one bad dude.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But look…I hope you’re going to be okay with this.”

  “With what?”

  “Me, working on the team.”

  �
�Why wouldn’t I be?”

  The elevator dinged in front of them before he could answer. It was crowded. They squeezed in. At the bottom she plucked his sleeve, led him off to one side as the crowd dispersed.

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay with you working on the team?”

  “Well, you know…”

  “Wait now,” she said. “Let me guess—you’re asking if our working relationship might be affected by, um, recent events?”

  “Something like that.”

  She studied his face for a long uncomfortable moment. Finally she said, “I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. That was then, this is now. Okay? Now let’s go get that coffee. It’s your turn, by the way, now that you’re nearly on the payroll.”

  He dialled Gloria’s number but it rang through so he left a message. “I’ve got some good news. Call me back.”

  But she didn’t call him back, so he sent a text: Got some exciting news today. Can we get together?

  The reply was prompt and it was brief: getting 2gether prolly not a good idea just now. Wots the news?

  He studied the cryptic words for what felt like a long time. The casual coded lingo acknowledged history and intimacy. But the meaning was clear.

  He texted back: Understood. News not all that exciting. Be well.

  21.

  Gloria hadn’t even noticed him. She had cantered by, face flushed with the exertion of her run or by the momentary merriment she was sharing with the man who was beside her. Cyril had been trudging through a little park not far from the office on his way home—a lovely evening for a walk, or for a run. And runners were not uncommon in the parks or even on the sidewalks. So he hadn’t reacted when he’d heard the running feet behind him. The thought that passed through his head had been of all the places in the world where running feet behind him would have paralyzed him. Then as she swept by he recognized the hair, the golden ponytail threaded through the open space on the back of the familiar ball cap.

  His first reaction was the kind of thrill he always felt when he saw her unexpectedly. He’d almost called out. But he caught himself in time. They were estranged. The thought hit him like a sucker-punch. The bond between them had stretched and frayed. He’d never doubted that the bond was intact, but at some point, it had obviously broken. Any stranger would have seen that there was a connection between the two runners, something comfortable and clearly physical.