The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  Then they were gone, God knows where—it occurred to him that it might well have been to her place and he had a fleeting, nauseating image of them in the shower. She had looked lithe and lean, head high and proud and the glistening flush of pleasure on her lovely face. He realized he had never truly given her full credit for the bodily perfection that he had just observed in motion, a product of intelligent self-discipline.

  It was as if he had just seen her for the first time and then he realized that this was partly true. He’d never really seen her running because he would have been beside her (or a bit ahead). Whenever he had been fully conscious of her body they were so close that the only sense that really registered was the sense of touch.

  He hadn’t noticed much about the man she’d been running with. Slightly shorter than Gloria, thick in neck and torso, broad of shoulder, scalp shaved and shiny. Possibly a weightlifter, synonymous, in Cyril’s view, with shallow, narcissistic. No, this can’t be serious, he thought. He was the opposite of Cyril, clearly not her type.

  He felt an almost overwhelming need to run after her, to pound on her door. He had his cellphone in his hand, scrolling through the numbers. A slight poke of a finger would restore the connection, would bring her back.

  “Don’t be such an idiot,” he said aloud. And then he was angry at almost everyone he knew, starting with himself.

  Aggie was in the kitchen, the counter littered with bowls and pans, knives and wooden serving spoons. “Ah, there you are.”

  Cyril went straight to the cupboard below the sink, extracted the plastic jug of vodka. “Will you be having the usual?”

  “Supper’s almost on the table,” she said.

  “I’m not hungry,” he replied. He half-filled a water glass, plopped in two ice cubes and retreated from the kitchen.

  “What about…?”

  “Don’t bother,” he said, and climbed the stairs.

  He sat on the side of his bed for five minutes, sipping the vodka. “Fuck her,” he said finally. “Fuck everybody. Gloria. Aggie. Pierre. Lois. That thick-necked bald-headed fuck she was running with. And Suzanne, for fucking with me and fucking up my focus.” And then he felt a momentary elation, maybe from the vodka or maybe from a thought: “I have a job. Thank God for work.”

  He randomly pulled several of his father’s diaries from the shelf.

  It was like trying to learn about a chef by reading recipes. The one revelation Cyril could take away for sure was that his father didn’t trust anybody in those early days in Canada. But not even in a diary? Written only for yourself?

  After morning class, to Macdonalds with AGNES for burger. She has new car.

  Pierre made no record of how they’d met. There were frequent references to Agnes, but nothing to suggest an emotional trajectory, or intimacy. Then, out of the blue, on May 30, 1987—Marriage Agnes today. Fr. A, Pius, Peggy, Al M, Sam W, Johnny Abbas. John MacNeil. B. Shebib. Irving. Reception at Cedars. J Campbell from CB Post show up. Sent away. Drove Halifax late. Lord Nelson Hotel.

  The next three days were blank.

  Then it was back to the delivery of furniture and appliances. It seems he drove a truck in those days for a family named Schwartz. There were frequent references to Irving, who owned the truck and seemed to be a friend. Irving many questions. V. interested wars.

  June 5, 1987. Three trips Eskasoni w. irving. Indians all get new stoves. Irving friends of Indians. Jews and indians all same history, irving say.

  He was interrupted by a knock on his bedroom door. “Everything okay in there?” Then the door opened.

  He stared at his mother.

  “Sorry,” Aggie said and started to close the door. “It’s just—you really should eat something.”

  “I was just looking at the day you guys got married,” he said.

  “Are you sure you should…?”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “He didn’t reveal much.”

  “There wasn’t much to reveal. A small ceremony in the vestry at St. Anthony Daniel in Sydney…”

  “The vestry?”

  “He didn’t have any proof of baptism or confirmation or anything and, anyway, he didn’t really care about religion. But he wanted Father Aboud to marry us. Only Mom and Dad and a few friends came. And then there was a little party at the Cedars Club. That was nice.”

  “And you had a honeymoon in Halifax.”

  “Let me see that.”

  “I don’t think so. It gets pretty steamy in Halifax. The Lord Nelson, eh?”

  Now she was in the room. “I don’t believe a word of it. Even if it were true. Steamy, for God’s sake. Give me that.”

  He handed it to her.

  “Right,” she said. “The Lord Nelson.” Face flushed, she flipped through the next pages. “You’re nothing but a big liar.” She tossed the book at him. “I’m going to bed. But you should eat.”

  “Wait. June ’07. Help me remember.”

  She sighed. “So we’re back to that, are we?”

  “Just work with me.”

  “I had the one visit from the police. They only wanted to know when I had last seen him or spoken to him.”

  “But weren’t they interested in earlier in his life, when you were…together?”

  “Why would that have anything to do with anything?”

  “Maybe there was something in his past. Maybe he had enemies.”

  “They might have asked if he had any connection with Lebanese people here but I would have said that was highly unlikely. He wasn’t like that. He had no time for that stuff. He had friends all over. Jews, Scots, French, Micmac. You name it.”

  “What about…”

  “You have to understand. In many ways, your father was always a stranger. To me and everybody else. I find even talking about it difficult. You live with somebody for years. You think you’re sharing everything. Then one day you realize you really didn’t know that other person. And it dawns on you, that you only know what another person wants to let you know.”

  “Which makes everyone a stranger?”

  “More or less.”

  Wednesday, March 30. 1988. Son born. 8:30. I am in del. room with Ag and doc and nurses. Hold baby to see and there is eye contact. V. dark eyes stare at me, no blinking. I see recognition, but also curiosity. Very happy day.

  Wednesday’s child. He struggled to remember the nursery rhyme. Monday, fair of face. Tuesday something about grace. Then Wednesday.

  He googled: Wednesday’s child…is full of woe.

  He turned out the light, climbed into bed with his clothes on.

  Timeline. The word brought him fully awake. He checked the bedside clock. It was 4:00 a.m. There was a soft breeze shifting a drowsy curtain, usually enough to send him back into slumber. But the word just sat there. Timeline. He swung his legs over the bedside, remembering a research tip that Nader had given him.

  “What you need is a timeline, man. It requires you to take stock of everything you know and when you do that, it’s amazing how much you’ll discover that you don’t know. And when the picture becomes clear, you see what you need to know and just how much you don’t need to know.”

  They’d been killing time on a sidewalk patio on King Street. Cyril was nursing a beer. Nader was rattling the ice cubes in his much-diminished Coke—his third.

  “Do you really think you’re better off drinking that stuff?” Cyril asked. “By my calculation you’ve had almost a gallon.”

  “It’s the culture, man. I’m not averse to a discreet shot of Appleton Dark to improve the flavour. But I never developed a taste for the pint or even wine. Just don’t see the attraction. Though I do get a kick out of watching other people getting off on it. Especially when it gets them yakking. You know what I mean?”

  Cyril nodded.

  “Gotta get our stimulation somewhere. Like when I have coffee? None of this double-double for me. I order four-by-four.”

  “Four-by-four? Ah…never mind.”

  They sat watching
the passersby. It was a warm autumn evening, people heading home or to the bars. Nader shook his head. “Before you know it, all that lovely flesh will be buried in layers of wool and Gore-Tex. What a crime, winter. Crime against humanity.”

  The waiter paused by the table. “Refill?”

  Nader nodded.

  “I’m okay,” Cyril said. “Timeline, eh?”

  “It could be the key.”

  As he left for work that morning, Aggie asked, “Will you be late tonight? Someone has to plan the meals here.”

  “Probably,” he said.

  Nader dropped a thick sheaf of papers on his desk. “Been doing your work for you, brother.”

  “What’s this?”

  “I printed off some Lebanon stuff from the ’76 to ’83 period to get you going on the timeline. Focused on the civil war, how it got started, up until the bombing of the Marine barracks.”

  “What Marine barracks?”

  “October ’83. Somebody drove a truckload of explosives through the front gate of the U.S. Marine base in Beirut and blew the whole place up. Hundreds killed. It’s all here.”

  “Marines in Beirut?”

  Nader laughed. “Just read it. Make notes of the key dates. Arrange everything chronologically. High points of those days all usually involve mass murder. I’d mostly forgotten about Sabra and Shatila.”

  “Okay. I heard something about that…the clipping from the Guardian.”

  “Good. The Hobeika guy was up to his neck in it. There’s more about that massacre here. I’d put a lot of that stuff out of my head. Heard too much about it when I was a kid.”

  “You had people…?”

  “No but my mom was born in Gaza. So.”

  “And your father?”

  “Persian. I’m a hybrid, man.”

  “So. Tell me more about timelines.”

  “What you gotta do is pick a starting point and work forward chronologically, dates and developments. So let’s say you start in—let’s say January ’76, and what happened. Then move forward.”

  “But that’s the problem. From January 1976 to 1983 is pretty much a blank.”

  “Nothing is blank. Your father was somewhere, doing something. You try to figure out where he was and what was going on and you’ll probably get a good idea of what he was up to. He was a refugee, man. So he was not unaffected by events. You say his immediate family was wiped out? But I gather what you’re really after is what happened to him more recently, yes? Five years ago. Why the disappearance. This much you know: he went into hiding, sort of, but you know where he was…and what happened out there. Right?”

  “Not a hundred percent,” Cyril said.

  “Okay. Maybe you need two timelines. Think back. When was it? June?”

  Cyril suddenly felt uneasy. “It’s all kind of a blank. I was nineteen, man. He was always absent. I never really gave it much thought until the police showed up.”

  Nader produced a notebook and a pen, wrote briefly. Cyril watched him, wondering. Should I tell him? Should I confess that I was relieved that he was absent so much that spring? How even when they told me to anticipate the worst, my first thoughts were of myself? How I felt, in a sick way, safe? From him?

  Nader put the pen away. “Key question, always, right after what is why. You might be surprised that the answer is sitting there, maybe in bits and pieces, but it’s there somewhere.”

  Cyril struggled to return to the moment, the here and now. He knew too well the why of his feelings in June 2007—and why he’d never be able to confess them to anyone.

  Nader said, “Start with the diaries. Correlate with these clippings.”

  “Diaries are strange,” Cyril said. “Coded secrets, sometimes. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes. But codes can be broken. That’s why they’re fun.”

  “In any case, the most important one is gone. Disappeared.”

  “Someone made it disappear.”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever made the boat blow up,” Nader said.

  “But if it was an accident?”

  “I think we can assume that if it was an accident, he and the diary would not have so completely disappeared. There would be something, fragments. I mean, think of plane crashes in the ocean. They find briefcases, documents, bodies, kids’ toys. Somebody made that boat blow up, my friend. Maybe your dad. Maybe someone else. I figure once you’ve found the ‘why’ you’ll know the ‘who.’ ”

  “Okay. I hear you.”

  “And have you considered going down there? Check it out. Maybe talk to witnesses.”

  “There were no witnesses.”

  “Still, there’s nothing like seeing for yourself. And surely there was someone who at least heard something. It was an explosion, man.”

  “Maybe.”

  Nader looked away, squinted. “Here comes Hughes.”

  Hughes had one of the diaries in his hand.

  “So far I haven’t found out much,” he said. “Some of the entries raise a lot of questions, though. Everything elliptical. Reading between the lines, lots of torment. I wish my Arabic was better. But I’d like to take another pass. What about you, Nader? How’s your Arabic?”

  Nader raised his hands defensively. “Conversationally okay. But reading? Uh-uh. I’m learning, though. Now, Farsi…”

  “So I’ll have another stab at it,” Hughes said. “Okay with you?”

  “Sure,” Cyril said. “But why do you say ‘tormented’?”

  “He’s trying to write a poem in one place. About killing.”

  “About killing in general?”

  “Yes, but the hook is something specific. Something personal.”

  “In 1983.”

  “Well, the specific killing seems to have been in ’82.” Hughes hesitated for a moment, then said, “September ’82. A woman.”

  “Sabra and Shatila,” Nader said. “September ’82. There were lots of women.”

  “What’s confusing me,” said Hughes, “is that your father was living in Kfar Matta when he was writing this in 1983.”

  “What’s Kfar Matta?” Nader asked.

  “It’s an old Druze village in the Chouf Mountains. The Druze were mortal enemies of the Phalange, especially in ’83.”

  “Maybe he was a captive,” Nader said. “After the massacre.”

  “Uh, no,” said Hughes. “These people didn’t keep captives very long, if at all. Especially somebody like Cyril’s dad who was in the Kata’ib. As far as I can tell, Pierre was there for months. Got special treatment. And now I’m extrapolating, but it looks like he left the village near the end of August. Somehow hooked up with the Israelis when they were pulling back. Obviously saw what was coming. Ends up in Canada…September sixteenth, 1983. That was one date he was specific about.”

  “I wonder why,” Cyril said.

  Hughes studied him for a moment, then sighed. “Well, I guess it was a big moment in his life. Real sanctuary, finally. But it also might be significant that the massacre in the Beirut camps started on the night of September sixteenth, 1982. Exactly a year earlier.”

  At the top of the long legal writing pad Cyril printed DAMOUR, JANUARY 1976. At the bottom of the page: CAPE BRETON, CANADA, SEPTEMBER 1983.

  He stared at the space between, lost in a sudden vapour of anxiety. Seven years to fill. He remembered the DVD, the Norwegian documentary from 1976. Fished through the paper rubble on his desk. Found it. Sorted through a stack of paper until he found the script translation, then the name of the English speaker in the documentary. Dany Chamoun. Phalange Militia Commander. Aftermath of massacre at Karantina refugee camp. January 1976.

  He took the DVD to a screening room and watched the documentary again. And then again, without sound, without the script, scanning faces for his own.

  22.

  What he missed most acutely about Gloria was all the talking that they did. They talked incessantly, in restaurants and pubs, in cars, on buses, jogging, and in bed. She knew his secrets. Did his fat
her have a Gloria, someone that he truly trusted with his secrets, with his codes? Could he have been so isolated that he trusted nobody?

  His timeline now had four pages: Damour and Karantina; Sabra and Shatila; Kfar Matta; Canada. Three waypoints. The most daunting gap was from 1976 to 1982. Something happened in that period that would explain his father’s life and probably his death. He was now convinced of that.

  Who was his father’s Gloria?

  The answer was obvious.

  Lois had called him, left a message. All he had to do was call her back. He remembered the friendly tone, the “Hey you…”

  Five rings before the machine kicked in but then he heard her voice talking over the recording. “Just hang on a sec.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hey.”

  “You were trying to reach me?”

  “Ah…yes. How are you?”

  “I’m okay. Look. I was going to call you. A hundred times. After that last thing. I was a complete—”

  “Never mind,” she said. “All things considered, it was nothing. You’re sure you’re okay, though?”

  “You know what? All things considered, I am. The internship is turning into a job. For one thing.”

  “Wow, that’s great. Amazing, actually.”

  “Well, it’ll be a temp position, but isn’t everything nowadays. It’ll be up to me. And fate.”

  She laughed. “That’s the way to look at it. Life is temporary, after all.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Dad, actually. Can I come by sometime?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Anytime. Plus we have a little bit of business to tidy up, you and I. Okay?”

  A jolt of panic scattered all his thoughts and words.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”