by John Moss
“There was something …” Nishimura seemed hesitant. He had stepped away from the clay edge, but moved closer again. “He’s got such a collection. Why these —” He interrupted himself, nodding at the wall and the de Cuchilleros property. “Are the fish in the pond over there the same?”
“I think they can get back and forth,” said Morgan. “A diver went in. There’s a grate near the bottom. She couldn’t feel a current but thought there must be an open flow. It wasn’t blocked with silt.”
“A grate?”
“She said the gaps were big enough. She could almost get through herself except for the scuba gear.”
“Detective Morgan,” Nishimura said with unexpected authority, “get me that big net over there, and a tub. And some more food. There’s something —”
“What …” said Miranda, trying not to impose an interrogative tone.
“Something. There’s something. Sorry. I don’t mean to be inscrutable. I just don’t know.”
Morgan returned with the net and tub. He handed Nishimura a handful of food pellets. Nishimura tossed a few to the mighty Chagoi, which was still within arm’s reach. Suddenly, the undulating red-and-white mass rose into view, and separate fish peeled away, grasping for morsels floating on the surface.
“That one,” said Nishimura. “You two wade in here, over here. In you go.”
He was serious.
They kicked off their shoes and socks, and Morgan rolled up his pants above the knee. Miranda’s slacks were snug and wouldn’t roll or bunch up. Quickly, she stripped them off and tossed them onto the ground away from the pond. She looked Morgan directly in the eye. He said nothing.
“Body-by-Victoria,” she said, “lavender briefs, micro-fibre, on sale — all prices in U.S. dollars. Order number CQ 138 something. Matching bra, underwired, super-soft lining for discreet comfort, sale price $15.99, lavender blue, dilly dilly. That should keep you going for a while.”
Morgan grinned, blushed. He would like to have taken off his own pants or something silly to even out the vulnerability quotient.
“C’mon, boys and girls,” said Nishimura, who seemed to find them puzzling. “In you go. Hold that tub under, like that. I’ll bring her over the edge.”
“Who?” said Miranda as she and Morgan waded precariously into the shallows. All she could see was a shifting pattern of red and white and soylent green.
Nishimura didn’t answer but moved around on nimble feet along the shoreline, swinging the large net deftly, then slipped it into the water. Suddenly, one fish was separated from the rest, calmly allowing itself to be guided over to the tub, over the edge that dipped down below the surface of the water, and into a tranquil holding pattern, surrounded by translucent blue plastic. Nishimura leaned out and took an end from Miranda. She shifted to the side but wouldn’t let go. She was a part of this. Gently, they lifted the tub onto the clay bank.
Miranda stood straight. Her feet slid out from under her. She fell backward and disappeared into the green water. Morgan reached for her, but his feet slipped on the wet clay and he disappeared into the green, as well.
The pool was preternaturally calm for a moment, then they both came up sputtering.
Nishimura didn’t seem amused, watching as they helped each other to dry land, both of them looking sheepish, not quite laughing, not embarrassed, as if this were illicit fun.
“Well …” said Morgan, stripping off his shirt and wringing it out. Soggy as it was, he offered it to Miranda to cover herself after she took off her blouse and swung it up in the air and away as if she would never want it again. She accepted Morgan’s awkward gallantry.
“Well?” Miranda said, gazing down at their catch. “What have we here?”
Nishimura glanced up at them both, then down at the fish that now seemed opalescent in the shaft of sunlight falling into the tub. “Look!” he said, and didn’t say anything more.
The three of them bent over the fish, which seemed oblivious to being observed as it hovered gently so as not to brush against the sides of the tub.
“Look,” Nishimura said again.
“What?” asked Miranda, trying not to intrude on whatever Nishimura was experiencing. She was curious, though.
Morgan looked at Nishimura, who remained silent. Reaching across, he squeezed Miranda’s shoulder. His damp shirt bled streamlets of water on his hand, and she shuddered from the cold of wet cloth pressing against her skin but shifted her body weight slightly toward him.
“I know this fish,” said Nishimura.
“I know her.”
“Personally?” asked Morgan.
“Yes.”
They were stunned.
“You’ve never seen such white. Just look. It’s layers upon layers of the purest white over white over white, like a blessing. The red’s perfect, like continents floating on a pure white sea, like perfect wounds on a sacred relic. This fish is a holy thing.” At his own pace Nishimura tried to clarify. “It’s the Champion of All Champions, the Supreme Champion of the All-Japan Koi Show two years ago. I saw her there. I know her.”
“How?” asked Morgan.
“She was never missing. As far as anyone knows, she’s cruising peacefully in a vast clay pond in Niigata, breeding a fortune.”
“A fortune?” echoed Miranda.
“The owners were offered four million for her after the show. In U.S. dollars. They turned it down.”
“Gosh,” said Morgan.
“Holy smoke!”
“My goodness,” said Miranda, smiling.
“Indeed,” said Nishimura.
“What a fish!”
9
Carp
The next day Miranda and Morgan had lunch on an open verandah projecting over the Elora Gorge. Below them the river ran silent and deep, cutting through layers of sedimentary rock millions of years in the making. The restaurant itself had been a large mill. Five storeys of fieldstone, with dressed limestone at the corners and around windows and doors, it appeared to be held together by the generous application of cement, not pointed between the stones as in a more formal design but smeared thickly across the walls so the stone pressed through in a rustic patchwork that made Miranda homesick for Waterloo County, for all the old Mennonite and Scottish-built farmhouses and the rare stone barns like the one down from Waldron on the way to Galt.
“It’s beautiful here,” she said.
They were the only ones eating outside. Cool air rising, lifted by the September breeze pushing through the gorge, carried the scent of the river, sending a shiver through Miranda.
“You want me to get your coat from the car?” Morgan asked.
“I didn’t bring a coat, Morgan. Thank you, really. It was a nice thought.”
“This is another world. A stone’s throw from TO.”
“You’ve travelled through Europe …”
“When I wasn’t much more than a kid. I know. I’ve lived in London, hung out in Rome. You would love Italy. Siena’s the most beautiful city in the world.”
“You were in love in Siena?”
“It’s possible. I remember sitting in the Campo. It’s a huge cobbled catchment for rainwater. It dips to one edge. There’s a system of cisterns under the city. I remember sitting at a café, day after day, watching tourists, trying desperately not to be a tourist myself. I don’t remember if I was alone or not.”
He did; he wasn’t. But it seemed inappropriate to mention a woman whose name he couldn’t even recall.
“But you’ve never travelled near home?” she asked.
“When I first joined the force, I’d go to New York for the weekend, Chicago, New Orleans a couple of times, San Francisco. Just to make sure they were there.”
“What about north?”
“It’s big and empty.”
“Absolute nonsense! Have you ever been to Muskoka? It’s a ninety-minute drive.”
“To see where Rosedale spends the summer? Never had the need.”
“Do you know why?”<
br />
“Just didn’t.”
“No! Everyone goes there. It’s beautiful. Goldie Hawn has a cottage in Muskoka.”
“No kidding, Miranda. Kate Hudson’s mother? Kurt Russell’s life partner? I’m astonished. Let’s drive up this afternoon.”
“Go to hell!” She smiled.
Morgan had hated it when they had to deal a couple of times with movie actors. He liked movies. When he was a kid, he sneaked into the big downtown theatres through the fire exits. And when he was a student, he spent more time at films than at pubs. He watched DVDs at home. Movies were life in the perpetual present. He liked that. They were parallel worlds that made sense if only because they had limits. Actors as people, especially celebrities, undermined the illusion. He was fascinated by how people made movies, not how movies made people.
“I’d like to go to Muskoka,” he said. “I like Muskoka chairs.”
“Also called Adirondack chairs.”
“In the Adirondacks. I like Muskoka chairs and I like Muskoka launches, the old-fashioned inboards.”
“Where did you see those?”
“Along the Toronto waterfront.”
“Fall colours in Muskoka, Morgan! Just imagine walking out of a black-and-white newsreel into a Cinemascope romance with wraparound sound. Let’s go together. I used to go with my parents. We’d get up really early and drive to Muskoka and back the same day. Let’s get this business over with and we’ll take a vacation. Not boy-girl. Just a trip to see colours.”
“Next year for sure.”
“Next year …” Her voice dwindled into awkward silence.
They had talked in the car on the way from Toronto. After waiting a day to sort out memories and responses, emotion and judgment, she had poured it all out in a torrent. It was like a confession on the verge of hysteria, but he was neither analyst nor priest, just a friend. At one point she had had to pull over to regain composure, but had insisted on not giving up the wheel. He had listened, and when her account rounded out to completion, he had talked about ordinary things. He had felt it was important to keep up the usual banter, to give her confidence in who she was now.
“You’re a really bad driver, Morgan,” she now told him.
“What made you say that?”
“If we go to Muskoka, I drive.”
“Are you okay?” He gazed through the gaps between the floorboards of the verandah at the river beneath them and looked over at the restored mill made from the stones of the gorge.
“You know, being his executor? You don’t have to do it.”
“I’m not a little girl, Morgan. He can’t hurt me now. And maybe a lot of good can come from this. I’ll squeeze something out for Molly’s daughter …”
“Jill.”
“Don’t worry about me. For weal or woe, I’m involved.”
He frowned, with a twinkle in his eyes. “This place isn’t one of his mills. You don’t see any gryphons embla-zoned on menus?” Why had he said that? Was it meant to be funny? He might have become morose, interrogating himself, but Miranda drew him out.
“I think the Griffins’ mills were smaller,” she said straightforwardly. “Except for the ones in the Don Valley. Most of their wealth came from real estate. They kept the country mills for Robert Griffin’s amusement — his country adventures. He didn’t sell the one at Detzler’s Landing until the late 1980s.” She paused. “It was him, you know, Morgan. I’m not sure it really matters if it was him or not. Knowing the enemy is a snare and delusion.”
“Sometimes I wonder about you,” he said. “‘Snare and delusion,’ I’ve heard. ‘Weal or woe’ — where did you get that?”
“Voices from other times. It’s an ancient expression. Check out Caedmon. I’m bluffing. My dad used to say it. So did his dad. It means for better or for worse.”
“I figured out what it meant. But mostly we don’t go around speaking in medieval epithets. Or is that what we do now when we’re being evasive?”
“What am I evading? I’m not saying it wasn’t him. I’m saying I’m not sure it matters — if it was him or not. Do you want coffee?” She signalled for two coffees.
“The bastard must have been in his forties.”
“Does that make it worse?”
“Miranda, for goodness’ sake.”
“I don’t know if it was rape.”
“For God’s sake!”
“To hell with God. It was sexual. Understand that!”
“Damn! It wasn’t your fault. It was rape!”
“Listen, it was the culmination of a summer of testing, flaunting, I don’t know, playing with fire. It was after a year of wondering, dreaming dream lovers, a winter of waiting, playing kissy-face with Danny Webster, who turned out to be gay, and then it was summer again and I went out there of my own volition …”
“You were raped.”
“I don’t know.”
“You were seventeen.”
“Just turned eighteen. What’s your hang-up on age? My friend Celia got pregnant with her second child when she was eighteen.”
“Eighteen is only grown up when you’re eighteen. You were playing with sunlight and shadows. And then it was real, this guy in his forties. He raped you, Miranda.”
“I just don’t know,” she said, looking wistfully into the gorge, shuddering again from the chill air rising.
“That’s the point. You blocked it out for twenty years.”
“It was traumatic, for weal or woe.”
“There’s no ‘weal,’ Miranda, no good side to rape.”
“You’re a lovely man, Morgan. Someday I’d like to marry you.”
“For weal or woe.” He smiled. “Miranda, if you don’t think it was rape, that’s simply not fair to the girl you were.” He paused, thinking of her as an eighteen-year-old. She looked like Susan, her dark hair turned auburn. She looked like herself, through a lens softly. “It’s not fair to the woman you are. You were foolish perhaps, but Griffin had all the power.”
“Guilt, Morgan. The fact that I feel guilty implies responsibility.”
“No way! Guilt is how you deal with something. It’s not the thing itself.”
“Do you want me to admit I’m a victim, that I’ve suffered? I didn’t even remember until Wednesday night.”
“Blanking out doesn’t make something not happen, Miranda. Anaesthetic doesn’t mean the surgery didn’t take place, or leave scars.”
“It wasn’t violent. I didn’t get beat up.”
“I don’t believe you said that, Miranda. The charge of sexual assault has misled us. There’s no such thing as non-violent rape.”
“It was him, Morgan.” She was looking over at the British racing green Jaguar XK 150 parked by the railing at the side of the mill. “That car — for Christ’s sake! What are we doing driving that car?”
“Vengeance?” he suggested.
The coffee came. Miranda glanced away from the waitress, who asked if there was anything else she could get them, fussing over them, trying to catch hold of the drama. “No,” said Miranda. “Not another fucking thing.”
“I’ll get you your bill,” the waitress said, scurrying back into the mill.
Miranda looked up at Morgan and smiled through tears. “I don’t swear, Morgan. I do not swear.”
Morgan leaned across to cup her hands in his. “Why don’t you cover the bill? It’ll make you feel better.”
She stared at him with a depth of affection that disturbed them both. “I’ll write it off against the old bastard’s estate. Let’s give the waitress a fifty, no, a hundred-dollar tip. She’ll wonder about us for weeks.”
“Grab immortality where you can,” said Morgan. “However conditional.”
Miranda shifted into reverse, started to back up, muttered, “Vengeance is mine,” jammed the gears into first, and roared forward to an abrupt halt, bumper to the rail.
“Glad you stopped,” Morgan said, gazing out over the precipice ahead.
“Don’t move,” she declared, l
eaping from the car. In less than ten minutes she returned, wearing a first-of-the-season ankle-length black shearling coat, tags still fluttering from a sleeve. “Let’s go. Detzler’s Landing. Let’s get outta this ‘puke-hole.’”
As they drove down a side road, Morgan said, “One-Eyed Jacks.”
“Marlon Brando, the only film he directed,” she confirmed. “‘Scum-sucking pig’ — from the same film. That’s all I remember.”
They drove on in silence until Morgan leaned over and said, “He followed you.”
“Where?”
“To university.”
“Morgan, you’re scaring me.”
“Well, how else —”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying it’s very disturbing to think about that.”
“Can you remember him in your other classes besides semiotics?”
“I don’t remember him anywhere. He’s in the photograph. I don’t know whether I remember him now, or the picture, or the corpse.”
“Repressed memory syndrome, you know, it isn’t straightforward.”
“By definition.”
“The invented past doesn’t just peel away like the husk of a coconut, and then the shell falls open and there’s the meat and the juice inside. It’s not that simple.”
“That’s an astonishingly inept analogy, Morgan. I don’t really need to go there. How about an orange? There’s juicy stuff in nice neat segments. Or stripping back the skin of a banana, and there’s that firm and tender shaft rising to the light. Oh, God, I hate Freud. I don’t have a syndrome, Morgan. I just needed to forget. It’s too easy to give something a label and then expect the symptoms to conform.”
“Your coat.”
“What?”
“It comes down to your ankles.”
“It’s supposed to.”
“I like it. It’s a good coat.”
“Damn right.”
They drove in silence for a while, then she said, “It’s for winter.” After a dramatic pause, she intoned, “Now is the winter of our discontent … made summer … by … my new coat.”