What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  You trail the woman: You’re a young Chinese boy training to be a herbalist. The scents of musk and fungi cling to you: But you throw off this persona. You’ve discovered gold in the mountains or you’re the owner of an island producing sugar and coconuts; you’re a musician and painter. Your being is the green of trees and full of song. Your gift to the woman whom you will never know is your unlived life.

  When you reach the park, you stop. The woman sits down on a bench. She opens her handbag. Time hangs on a slender golden thread. Almost you return to your uncle. Instead you sit down too. You’re close to her. You can sense her body, deep in its reeds and bamboo, but you’re an innocent. You turn to her with a smile: You want to tell her about yourself, and about another uncle, at home—a silk merchant. You would like to give her a bolt of silk to match the feathers on her hat. You have no words. Your silence slices the air. The woman holds her purse to her stomach. You reach out from your youth with thoughts of the silver beauty of ponds, and what you might see if you looked below the surface, and the woman runs.

  She stops and faces you: You want to show her who you are. You open your palms to display their emptiness. Her summer dress lifts in the breeze and brushes your legs.

  Every day there are choices, and this is yours: to raise a hand to the smooth skin of her face. To treat her like a friend.

  —

  You lie on a wooden bunk in a cramped room. You are facing the wall. Your days are spent washing the clothes of strangers. Your nights are full of sobs. The men around you listen to you weep as if it is water running into a creek. Sooner or later you lift your eyes as you cross between buildings in the morning and see the surrounding trees: Their voices whisper poems of abandonment. After a time you listen carefully, and begin to write them down on the walls of your prison.

  —

  Now you are on a ship: No one has told you why. You’ve been gathered with the others into trucks; you’ve ascended a gangplank and been given a chair and drunk soup and visited a lavatory. Through the portholes you glimpse snow-covered hills. They pass away. Light and darkness pass away. An old man dies. You sit up in your bunk and you’re hungry again; through the porthole you count the variations of grey. Questions frame and reframe themselves. One day the bed linen is changed; another day you eat an apple. You spend weeks like this.

  You arrive at a port. The ship is unloaded and loaded. Once more you set sail, and travel among islands and past boats: All this is familiar. You could be dreaming, but you’re not. You feel old. Your youth waits for you far away in that left-behind park. Your uncle still stands on his threshold, a hand shading his eyes, watching for you. In the park, a man has opened the aviary: The birds fly free. You dream of your return, and of the woman, of course.

  Some of the men stop eating; all have boils on their gums. This time the ships in the harbour have guns. Still nothing has been said about where you are going. Then you anchor offshore, and you’re told to gather your parcel of underwear. The police, when they come on board, are armed.

  There’s a knocking. Knock knock! I stumble to the door and open it. Ron Signet stands there. “Were you asleep?” he says, taking in my dishevelled appearance. My pyjama jacket is mis-buttoned. My flies gape. I hold them together.

  “This won’t take a minute, Sandy, I need to talk to you.”

  “It’s all right, Ron. Come in. What is it?” The fragment of an ending that I’d held in mind slips away. Ron Signet from Porlock.

  He steps into my room. “I thought it might be better if you had some warning.”

  “Warning, Ron? What about?” I’m annoyed. Another few minutes and I’d have been done. I thought it was going well.

  “It’s just that…it’s just that…”—he toes the floor in worry—“I’m sorry things have turned out the way they have.” He stops. I nod at him. Ron plods on, “The thing is, Sandy, the farm overseer. Not that Dr. Frank wanted it this way. There wasn’t much choice.” Ron hems and coughs. I sit down, for I begin to sense what’s coming. “You see,” Ron says, “considering his recent bereavement, it seems the best thing all round. Less demanding. More outdoors. The simple life. Nature…I thought you should know. The appointment came through today. Pete Cooper’s going to be in charge of the farm.

  “I’ll be gone in the morning. Back to my old job. I’ll still see you, I’ll check up on you in Deceased Property.” Ron’s smile is strained.

  My stomach tightens. “Pete Cooper? Here? In charge?” Ron backs out of my room.

  I shut the door. I sit down at my table. There was more. I know there was more. I can’t believe I’ve lost it, the story cut off. Just like Karl. It’s gone. I put pen to paper for one more line: The water is warm, the sea calm, the current carries you home.

  —

  They say that the second attempt at writing may not be the same as the first, and so I have found it to be. Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I see that this “tale” wasn’t what I wanted to write at all! There’s too much Sandy Grey in it and not enough Karl. Karl—even with his German background in the psychological—would hate it. It describes a grey area, part real and part fantastical. It contains Sandy Grey’s thoughts about a character not unlike himself. There is no escape in it, no romance at all! The tone is cool. I’m sorry, Karl, I think. I’ve let you down. I put out the light and then I lie down and close my eyes. Othello leans over his wife: “Put out the light, and then put out the light.”

  —

  It’s not as bad as I’d feared, although I admit I’m keeping notes, just in case there is need for documentation of Pete Cooper’s rule. I won’t risk losing my hard-won modicum of freedom because of him.

  We rise at dawn and breakfast together: Each of the farmhouse inmates takes a turn at the cooking. Mostly, Pete Cooper stays out of the way, except to give daily orders.

  We meet again at dinner, but generally, because we’re all so busy, the dinner’s brought over from the main kitchen and we have little to do but eat it. Pete sleeps in Ron’s old bedroom. In the evenings he goes out to the pub and one of the other guards checks on us; but since we’re all hoping for release, and we have our own rooms, there’s no trouble.

  The only ruffled feathers now are when Georgina comes to visit since she and Pete don’t get on. Why would they? He knows that she knows what I know—which is that he was behind the massacre at the rabbitry.

  I give my story to Georgina to read. She looks it over quickly: “Champion of the underdog, eh, Sandy?” she says. “It’s a little different than your usual, isn’t it?”

  I put it away. I’m sorry about her response, which seems curt. I suppose my face betrays a sulk.

  George lays a hand on my arm. “Don’t misunderstand me, Sandy. It’s just fine, but it makes me think.” There are tears in her eyes and I recall that George too has had her freedom taken away more than once and felt helpless.

  “How’s your father?” I ask her.

  “Mad as a hatter. Setting fires in the basement. He thinks we’ve still got a wood furnace so he puts in paper and kindling and tries to light it. I’ve told him a hundred times we burn oil now, but he doesn’t remember.

  “He’s still ‘the lumber baron,’ though,” she says. “He follows the company investments and goes over the household accounts. I have to explain every penny.

  “Then my sister turns up and I have to do it again.” She shakes her head. “She sneaks around, poking her nose in.”

  “George,” I say, deeply concerned. I can smell the gin by this time. “You need something to look forward to. You can’t spend all your time with your father.”

  Deep shadows patrol her eyes. The loss of her son, other losses. “I’m fine, Sandy.” She smiles the slow smile that makes my stomach flip. “Really fine,” she says.

  “I’d do anything for you, Georgina,” I say. “I owe you my life.”

  We’re sitting at the kitchen table. It’s evening. Pete’s out and the others are in their rooms. I take her hand. “You know that things
are going pretty well here. I’m working hard….”

  She removes her hand from mine and squeezes my bicep—“I’ve noticed! You’re getting in shape, Sandy!”

  “Don’t joke, Georgina.”

  “Why not?”

  I start over. “I’m close to finishing my treatment, Dr. Frank says. Once I’m done, they’ll have to reconsider my sentence.”

  Her eyes are steady headlamps. I blink in their brightness.

  “With the war on and all, I think they’ll let me out. I’m young, I’m strong, I’m not stupid. More to the point, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I’ve never thought you were stupid, Sandy.”

  “What about it, then?”

  “What about?” Her eyelids flutter as if she knows but doesn’t know what I’m trying to say. I swallow hard to clear the way to get the words out.

  “Georgina, will you marry me?”

  She jumps away—the chair skitters back a good two feet. I guess it’s the shock, but she recovers quickly and laughs. She’s on her feet. “Sandy, you’re just a boy! And what about Heather? Didn’t you say you’d love her forever?”

  “There’s love and there’s love, Georgina, it’s not the same!” I get up and grab her hand again. “I love you, and I know you love me, it’s always been that way.” The hand in mine stills, chills. I let it go. I know, from my work with rabbits and pigeons, when a creature is frightened. “I’m sorry, Georgina, but you have to listen to me. I shouldn’t have sprung this on you but I’ve been thinking about it. We understand each other, you and I. You need me.”

  “Need you, Sandy?” There’s something in her voice that bites my soul.

  “Someone has to look after you, George.”

  We hold eyes.

  “We have kindness and friendship, Sandy. What else is there? You know I’m too old for you.”

  “You’ll never be old.”

  She turns away and looks out the window at the main building. If you don’t look outside, it could almost be a normal household. The wood-burning kitchen stove warms the evening. Dishes drain in the sink. Somebody’s left the milk pitcher on the counter. Georgina sits down at the table again. Her fingers gather crumbs from the surface into a little ball.

  “I’m going to marry the admiral,” she says. “He’s asked me and I’ve said yes.”

  “You’re not!”

  “He’s good to me, Sandy. I am going to marry him.”

  “He’s too old for you! He’s already left you on your own when he knows you can’t manage!”

  “Is that how you think of me?” She’s made half a dozen spheres of crumbs by now. Her head’s tucked into her collar. I can see the effort it takes her to look up. “Listen to me, Sandy. After Beau—my husband—died, there was just Brent and me. It wasn’t easy. I lived for that child. Nobody helped me. Not my father, not my sister—they stayed away. Then Brent grew up, and it wasn’t enough.”

  I can feel, like splashes of icy seawater, all the thoughts Georgina doesn’t say. Her life with her son, her drinking and staying out late. The effort it has cost her just to survive. And me. Once a stand-in, maybe, but no more. Just Sandy Grey.

  We’re still sitting there, our spines ramrod stiff in the kitchen chairs, listening to the electric clock on the wall tick, when Pete Cooper ambles in. He stops short when he sees Georgina, scratches his balls, then shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on the back of the door. He walks round behind her. He catches my eye, makes an airplane diving motion with his hand, shakes his head, twirls his finger at his temple. Sign language for “Since the death of her son she’s crazy.”

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “Pardon, me, Sandy?” Georgina says.

  Pete turns pale. My words mean “Your son’s dead too, you bastard.”

  Now Pete’s face is dark. “No visitors in here after sunset, Mrs. Jones-Murray.”

  Yes, it’s nighttime and we hadn’t noticed. She stands. She holds out her hand. “Goodbye, Sandy.”

  I stay where I am and refuse her hand. I’m aware it looks bad, but I can’t help it. She should have said earlier about the admiral. She shouldn’t have let me make a fool of myself.

  “Oh,” she says, right on the point of going, while Pete Cooper folds his arms to watch us. She flips open her handbag. “This came for you. I found her, Sandy. I found your Heather.”

  She’s spoken gently, so gently that I’m able to raise my eyes and meet her look of earth and sex and love and loss. I suddenly see, as I hadn’t before, how far Georgina’s travelled ahead of me. It’s time for me to catch up.

  Everything’s changed and not changed. I still love Georgina, but I can’t stop myself from raising Heather’s letter to my lips. It smells of hay and meadowsweet. It smells like Heather, her small triangle of a face lit up from beneath by the buttercup I held in my fingers.

  “I’ll be seeing you,” Georgina says. “Don’t take any wooden nickels, Sandy.” Click of her heels. Turn of handle in the door.

  Upstairs, on my own again, I sit at my table with the letter. Heather lives in Winnipeg. She’s been to business college. She works for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the fur department. She’s married to a pilot in the RCAF. He’s already won some medals. She remembers me. She writes, “Weren’t we funny as kids!”

  How will I answer her? What will I say about me? She knows where I am but not why. It is kind of her to write. Kind! How hateful.

  I pick up my pen.

  Dear Heather,

  I’m glad to hear from you. There’s not much to say from this neck of the woods. Maybe sometime you could come and see me and we could talk. I’d like that. Do you remember when we ran away together? It was the happiest time of my life.

  Yours, as always,

  Sandy Grey

  EIGHTEEN

  August 29 and following, 1942

  I keep waiting for Georgina to say she’s sorry for not wanting to marry me and for keeping me in the dark about her engagement to the admiral, but she doesn’t. We carry on like always, we’re kind to each other, but I still think she’s making a mistake. Georgina needs someone warm and young to love her! Georgina thinks, for her part, that I take Heather’s letters too seriously: Heather is lonely because her husband is away in the war, and she’s young and not used to being on her own; once the war is over and Heather’s husband returns, that will be the end of it. So Georgina says.

  I know that a relationship by mail can’t go far. But the fact that Heather writes at all from her prairie city means that she remembers what passed between us. Our bond is deep and permanent. One day she may remember it all, in every detail, and come to the right decision. One day the promise of “forever” will mean what it means.

  I’ve grown to enjoy composing letters: Writing to Heather has taken over, for the time being, my attempt to pen The Romance of Stanley Park. Not that I’ve given it up entirely, but every work has its time and place—does it not?—and at the moment I’m too busy, anyway, for anything longer than a note.

  The Storehouse of Thought and Expression advises that a letter should never overstate or be afraid to declare the truth. I describe my life, truly, as a via media. I’m neither in the war nor quite out of it; I’m not completely imprisoned, neither am I free. I am deeply involved in small animal husbandry but would you call me a farmer? I dream of the dead (lost Tom and the other deceased of the East Wing, and Georgina’s husband and her son, Brentwood) as if they are living and of the living (Karl, Bob, Winchell, Kosho) as if they are dead. I’m walking a path looking neither to left nor right. The troublesome Alan Macaulay is a distant memory. I navigate between Pete Cooper and Dr. Frank, between Georgina and Heather, between all that I know and the great realms of my ignorance. Between—as a pilot would say—heaven and earth.

  Waiting for a letter from Heather, now that Georgina is preoccupied with her wedding plans, gives me something to look forward to.

  Ten days ago the Canadian troops in Britain were sent to attack the French coast.
When Heather wrote to me about this, she knew that her husband had been in the raid, but not what had happened to him. The newspapers drew a picture of fierce sky battles on the scale of the Battle of Britain, and of landing craft storming the broad grey beaches with troops and tanks. They reported German sources as describing a successful counterattack and many prisoners taken. She was angry that while her husband was “risking his life” others were safe in their beds. I, for example (she did not have to point this out), was raising pigeons and dabbling in writing. I could have answered that I am not incarcerated in an asylum for the criminally insane by choice. I could have drawn her attention to other newspapers which reported that the first units of allied commandos had returned to their British base in gay spirits. That there wasn’t anything to worry about. I didn’t. I do not trust the newspapers, one way or another. There are bound to be casualties, and none of the accounts will be strictly true. Truth is always a victim of war. In any case, my troubles are my own and not to be misunderstood as anyone else’s, even Heather’s. I remained silent. I thought of Karl and cultivated the art of patience.

  Since then, Heather has telegraphed that her husband, Dave, is safe. She is sorry if anything she might have written has offended me. I do not know everything about my love for Heather, but I do know that not only is love patient, but love endures. Love, such as ours, forged in childhood, is a lifelong contract.

  Every day I spend as much time as I can in the fly pen. It’s made of one-inch wire mesh to keep out sparrows and rats, and I’ve extended the wire, and pegged it down a foot into the ground; there’s another foot or so bent away at the bottom of the pen for extra insurance. I scrape the gravel and sand clean, rinse off the landing boards, change the bathing pans and refresh the bowl at the base of the drinking fountain which is connected to a constantly running hose. For feed I’m using a corn base with some kafir, peas and red wheat. I also add in vetch and hempseed and mix my own mineral mixture of oyster shell, limestone, charcoal, granite-grit and salt for the hopper. Several times a week I change the nesting material—the pigeons like the commercial oat straw and sage grass the best—and I’m experimenting with adding in small amounts of our own hay. Best of all, these mornings, while the air is still cool and you can smell the hidden scents of the vegetation of the fields and woods in that hour of the sun’s first touch, is that I get to handle the birds. Already most of them will come to me, even without grain to lure them. They are intelligent, gentle birds: When their wings spread and when they take flight, and the sun streams through their pale feathers, they make me think of angels—how I imagined they might be, the size of fairies or doves, when I was a child. Heather and I used to say that angels watched over us: Hers sat on her shoulder; mine hovered near an ear, whispering, so I believed, into my dreams. I used to have such dreams! It was the greatest pain to me that the angels didn’t help us when we needed them.