What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  There’s a big bang from behind me, I turn: The whole sky is alight. Searchlights, sirens, the wail of an ambulance, anti-aircraft guns. The whole lot.

  —

  I come out at a dirt road. It passes between tangled hedgerows and through orchards and rolling farmlands northwestwards. The night scent of cut fields, of earth and gold, of the rich odour of ripened blackberry and the faint perfume of rosehips with dried petals attached—these are my food and drink. Behind the hedgerows are the squares and oblongs of farms; the occasional gate marks a farmyard entrance. Sometimes, through these, I glimpse the sheen of high windows in a farmhouse. I move as quickly as I can, my body sings with energy. I know they will think of Georgina, and that I might be headed towards her, and will sooner or later take the route I’m following. How soon depends on information that I don’t have: the nature of the explosion and what it does or does not have to do with Winchell; the priorities the soldiers have been given; whether they know that Karl is missing as well; the route Bob took on his motorbike; whether they think I’m dead or alive; the lies that Pete Cooper (if he is able) will tell them.

  As I come to the path that returns me to the creek, and which will take me the rest of the way to Georgina’s house, I remember there’s another possibility: We could be experiencing enemy strikes. After all, we are at war!

  There have been, according to Georgina’s information from the admiral, several attacks by Japanese submarines on the coast, most recently only a few weeks ago, when a submarine-launched seaplane dropped phosphorus incendiary bombs into the forests of Oregon. Perhaps submarines and seaplanes are bombarding us now? In any case, everyone will be on the lookout for Japs. Could Georgina’s cri de cœur mean that increased vigilance has put Kosho at “Innisfree” in danger? Is the admiral really on our side? How much has Georgina told him? I turn the trouble over in my mind, but get nothing from it but a sense of increased pressure in my brain. Don’t speculate, Sandy, and for God’s sake don’t make assumptions, it’ll only make things worse.

  I run past the last of the farmhouses—this one with a light on, despite the blackout demanded by the explosion—my head down so as to hide my face from any farmwife gazing from her bedroom. Now, here’s a narrow bridge over a small ravine, one of the quarry cuts with which the creek path intersects, and I’m across it and the warning voice in my head says, Sandy, don’t get too far ahead of yourself. But how can I not imagine what the future might hold? How can I not invite myself to live the union of hearts of which I’ve dreamed?

  The path ahead is a keyhole into the dark, the earth beneath my feet is dry and light. There’s a whisper of leaves, and hanging moss, and I can hear the susurration of the stream picking up strength as it nears its end. My feet fly, I’m weightless, the sky glows with fire. The path twists and turns and the way winds downward. I have a glimpse over the bushes, of hills across the inlet, those hills from which I once came, then the path drops steeply and I’ve passed a crisscrossing of broken branches and sticks and leaves, and I sight, to my left, shimmering water, and I’ve leapt down the bank and landed on the tidal flat where the stream loses itself in the sea.

  I watch a line of foam write its way along the eastern shore of the little island, barely visible at the far end of the fjord, where Georgina had taken me to hide so long ago, and where I’d stumbled over the sea serpent as it had brought its baby into the world. I listen to the roar of my breath as it subsides to a hum in my ears, and I wait for the pounding of my heart to keep time with the gentle surge of waves at this juncture of fresh and seawater. If I could start all over again, open the end of the loop in which I’m standing, would I? Return to that small open boat with Georgina at the oars, stagger ashore, keep myself hidden, betray the dragon of the deep in exchange for the three years I’ve spent in prison? But it’s not a real question. There’s no going back, there’s only what I’ve done and who I’ve become, and I think about how Karl taught me that even in a circular story there must be change, and that this Sandy Grey has got to keep going. I crouch in the mud and dip my hands in the water and splash the sweat from my face: The water is cold and it stings my skin, but even as Heraclitus said so long ago, you can’t step into the same water twice. The night releases a brief rain shower over my head and shoulders, and my shirt sticks to my rapidly cooling body and I’m shivering. So it’s once more into the moss and trees and the path to Georgina’s house.

  The clearing, when I come to it, is long and wide, and with an air of once having been tended. Overgrown shrubbery edges a wide sweep of pea gravel that faces the rippling inlet and the navy blue, almost black, forested hills on the opposite shore. Behind me, on the slope, is a large dark house. Below me is a little clay-and-stone beach with an upturned skiff resting on it. Something about it catches my eye. I jump down the bank and tug out from beneath it, by a protruding corner, a wet white towel. Even before I’ve seen more than a fraction, I know it for Kosho’s, and I look up immediately, half expecting to see somewhere on the stirring water, my friend swimming to meet the king of the serpent people, Ryu-wo, the guardian of his faith. The waters grow flat under a scud of wind, the surface pocked by rain, but if anything lingers within that face of crumpled silk, it is not apparent to me. I hear footsteps behind me, turn and there’s Georgina skidding in a spray of stones down the bank to join me.

  “Christ, Sandy, what took you so long!” she says.

  It only takes a few minutes for us to make our way across the clearing and into the trees to the hut which George and Kosho have made into a dovecote. Although most of the pigeons are sleeping and quiet, a few wake and coo as we enter the fly pen. I pick up a handful of grain, and several of the birds settle quietly on my arms to peck at it. They are sleek, well fed and unafraid, and I’m struck through with a pang of longing for the simple creatures that I’ve had to leave behind. Who will look after them? Ron Signet, I hope—and that he knows enough. When the food is gone, I dust my hands on my trousers and follow Georgina through a low doorway into the living quarters. All here too, is neat. A few shirts and undershirts hang on hooks, a pair of boots lined up underneath. The plank floor has been swept clean and there are no unwashed dishes on the counter. The washbasin is empty and upturned; a bucket of fresh water, covered by a lid, stands ready nearby. I poke through the rest of Kosho’s few belongings—vegetables in a bin, writing equipment, candles, matches, a set of glasses which George tells me he used to track the pigeons in their flight. She returns several times to gaze at the made-up cot, sheets and blankets tucked, a flat pillow square at the top, a plain quilt folded across the bottom end.

  “I made that quilt myself, Sandy,” Georgina says.

  “You, Georgina? I find that hard to believe.” I, too, stare, standing beside her, at the lumpy stitched cotton squares.

  “Had to, in school,” she says. It’s not the sewing that’s difficult for us to take in, but the absolute quality of Kosho’s absence.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Two days ago. I’d gone out, and by the time I came home my sister had taken the old man away and had the locks on the house changed. When I couldn’t get inside, I came here.”

  “You sent me a message.”

  “I’d seen Dr. Love. He told me I had to get you out, and I thought you could help with Kosho. And I needed you, Sandy.” Georgina tips her head so it rests on my shoulder. “What was wrong with Kosho? Did you ever know?”

  I recall what Pete Cooper had told me about Kosho and his terrible crimes. I turn the lying words away. “Not really, George. Just the usual, I suppose, some bad mistake in love.”

  —

  I have to smash several panes of glass in the greenhouse. A flimsy door, easily knocked from its hinges, leads from there onto an unlocked French door at one end, and this door opens into the house proper. The house is cold and damp. I help Georgina light the fires and start the furnace. She heats soup and makes tea in the kitchen. We carry the trays upstairs to one of the bedrooms where we sit in arm
chairs, wrapped in blankets to get warm. Georgina falls asleep before I do—there’s so much on my mind: What I’ve left, where I am. What’s going to happen to me. Her body trembles from time to time, but her face is relaxed and her fists have uncurled and lie open in her lap. I reach over and take her hand.

  There’s no wind or rain to rattle the windowpanes, so I’m not sure what has wakened me this time. It’s still dark out, but there’s a suggestion of grey in the stippled plate of water, under clear starlight, that I can see outside. As quietly as I can, I get up and move to the window. Nothing. Yet still…

  Within a minute, dressed in an old coat of Georgina’s father’s, I’m back at the little boat and I’ve upturned the skiff, pulled the oars from under the thwarts and rowed out into the inlet. I feel like I’m in a dream, floating over the cold sea with the scent of seaweed in my nostrils and the bow of the little boat slicing true through the shallow wave crests that mark deep water. I think about the sea serpent and how she rose to meet me, once, from the depths, when I needed her, and how she swam in rapid undulation towards the little island in order to have her pup. I’m almost there, at the northern tip that is really the mountaintop limit of a trench scored through the ancient rock of the ocean floor: a slit that may descend to the core of the planet, and out of which has arisen life in all its forms—diatoms, plankton, spiny fish, molluscs and cephalopods—generations of what look to us like evolutionary impossibilities, and yes, I’m thinking along these lines when there emerges ahead of me—from where it has waited and watched—how long!—the tall black snout of a submarine. I back-paddle furiously, and I hear—how could I have missed it!—the deep quivering thrumming of its diesel engines and the thrust of its propellers as it nears the surface. Now there’s the rest of the conning tower and the black bulk of the wheelhouse, tons of water streaming from its sides—thank God I’m to the rear and not in the way of its massive bows—I crank my head over my shoulder as I frantically row towards the shelter of the island, and hear the deck guns swivel, and then its entire length of several hundred feet lies quiescent on the surface behind me.

  Be still, my heart! The bow of my little craft nudges against a rock. I lay the oars across the seats, and reach out to the rock to steady us. The thud of my heart and the rushing of blood in my ears obscures the first sounds, but then I hear quiet voices and the unmistakeable splash of a rope as it drops from the deck of the submarine to the sea. From the other side of the rock, like an arrow taking aim at a target, appears the sharp silhouette of a canoe: The figure in it glances over at me, then resolutely turns away. I watch open-mouthed as the canoe quickly reaches the side of the submarine, the figure detaches itself, and begins to climb the rope ladder. Tide and current ease the abandoned canoe away in uneven drifts and slops towards Patricia Bay and I lose sight of it. I hear a few more low murmurs as the figure reaches the deck. Within seconds, it seems, hatches are closed, the engines restarted and the submarine drops below the waves.

  You can’t stay where you are in a boat, not for long, you can’t not participate when you’re bobbing on waves. A cramp in my arm makes me let go of the rock, and I have to take up the oars. My mind is full of thought and wonder but I’m strong, I’m Sandy Grey and I’ve exercised with homemade Indian clubs and I don’t stop rowing until I’m back on shore.

  The house still sleeps. The whole world.

  In the morning I get up, bathe, shave with Georgina’s father’s toiletries, put on one of the shirts he’s left behind and go downstairs. George is already at the breakfast table. A silver teapot nests in a padded stand in front of her, the toast rack is full. She spoons marmalade the colour of summer onto a china-blue plate.

  “All right, Sandy?” she says. I nod and smile as if we do this every morning. Georgina unfolds the newspaper beside her plate. The headline reads: “Attendant Injured, Inmate Burned to Death, Patient Nabbed after Manhunt.”

  I read the piece quickly. The farmhouse where Winchell and I had left Pete Cooper had been set on fire and the body of a man identified as me—Sandy Grey!—had been found burned to death in its smoking ruins, The Storehouse of Thought and Expression—which must have tumbled from my pack—found lodged beneath him. The “nabbed patient” had wandered out a “mysteriously unlocked door.” There’s no mention of Karl or Winchell, nor of the explosions and gunfire.

  “Eat your toast,” Georgina says. We wait all day for the police or army or even for Georgina’s sister and the lawyers, but no one comes. The long winding driveway remains untrammelled.

  —

  Sometimes, even in a life that is less than a third over (all being well) there can still be a happy ending. It is important for people to know that. None of Winchell’s bullets hits their mark, no soldiers or policemen died. Winchell made it safely to the truck Bob had left for him at another breach in the wall. Where he is now, I do not know, but he carries with him the letters written for the families of the Russians and if the comrades are any good at all, they’ll get him and the letters where they have to go. Karl and Bob are safe as well, although the admiral, who gave me the information, won’t tell me more. My country’s need for secrecy about the escape of a German and a Communist, and a Japanese act of war on the coast, have worked to my benefit. Who could have guessed it?

  Sometimes I think about the dead man who was misidentified as me, and wonder who he could have been, and sometimes, on the bush patrols I fly, in my new identify, for the air force in a Norseman float plane based at Patricia Bay, I see a man walking the hills and fields, with his head down and his hands stuffed into the pockets of his heavy jacket. He’s a slight figure, looking neither to left nor right. He walks to keep warm. When this happens and I remember Alan Macaulay and how he’ll never fulfil his dreams or have his darling Peggy, and I recall the difficulties I’ve experienced and the acts of my tormentors, I head out to the open coast and vanquish my troubles in a play of light. Back and over the surge and wash of the ocean, scanning for Japanese subs, I fly low over white sand beaches with an eye out for the sea lions that bask on rocky outcrops and on the whales that follow their own form of necessity as they migrate and mate and feed and play and die; and on the flocks of birds that travel the ancient skyways between their homes. The birds and I, we own the skies together.

  So how am I then, overall?

  With the wearing out of her grief, Georgina has settled. Now that the house is all hers—the old man having died without changing his will, the sister taking her share in money—Georgina gardens and loves her admiral and looks after Heather—my Heather!—while Heather waits for the birth of her baby. Heather’s husband is still missing in action, and one love can’t replace another, but I believe that someday, somehow or other, Heather and I will live together and I will bring up that baby as my own.

  When I can, I take Heather for walks. The field scents raised by our passage are those that belonged to our childhood: dandelion, buttercup, cow parsley, wild thistle, wild orchid and the blue camas flowers of the bouquet that Heather held when we celebrated our marriage as children. Although I do not speak of this to her, more than once I’ve slipped from the wedding that was to the one to come: Heather dressed in blue silk to match her eyes, and wearing a blue velvet hat with a veil; there’ll be pink champagne for everyone, malt whiskey for the men and gin for Georgina who will understand my happiness and be happy too with her admiral.

  The ceremony will take place out of doors during Indian summer, the golden hour of the year, when the veils between worlds are sheer, and all is rich and ripe and outlined in brilliant nimbus: All who wish may attend, both wild creatures and tame, and the good people—Drs. Love and Frank and their wives, and Bob and Winchell and Karl and even Ron Signet if he wants to once he thinks things over.

  And the ghosts who search for joy beyond their deaths: Alan Macaulay, Georgina’s Brentwood, poor Tom who will have recovered his cleverness, all the Russians, and Kosho—alive or dead. For it is clear to me as I help Heather step across a narrow place in
the creek that she and I will have happiness to spare and it will flow from us like a river, like the waterways of the world which through flood and drought and war and pestilence are nonetheless never-ending, and I see a better time coming, when all the world’s countries will sit down together and settle their problems and there’ll be no more war. For all is held in the perspective of time, and as for me, I crossed out of time the moment I escaped from slavery. Somehow, during the years of my incarceration, and in my nighttime journey across the peninsula from the asylum, I have stored up a reservoir of good fortune. And if I am to give advice to anyone, it is this: Never give up, no matter how bad things look and Be true to your heart and You can always count on love.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Shirley MacDonald of Clinical Records, East Lawn, Riverview; Dr. Robert Menzies of Simon Fraser University; the National Archives, Ottawa; and the staff of the Royal British Columbia Archives for their assistance with the research aspects of this book. Jody Patterson also provided some important details.

  My love and thanks to Michael and Xan and David and Carol for their support; my especial thanks to my cousin Gerry for his story about true love. Thanks as well to Margie and Rooth for telling me of their Cadborosaurus sightings. Other friends—particularly my women writer friends—have kept me going. Paddy Grant gave me valuable feedback, and my editor Ed Carson continues to be an inspiration. I would also like to acknowledge Malaspina University College and my friends and colleagues there. As for the GTBB and our Sunday afternoon concerts—those who were there will understand.

  Chapter One of What It Takes to Be Human was commissioned by CBC Radio’s Festival of Fiction. The B.C. Arts Council provided financial assistance during the writing of parts of this work. My thanks to both.

  The Storehouse of Thought and Expression is modelled, to some extent, on Adventures in Thought and Expression, Albert Blohm and Charles W. Raubicheck, Prentice Hall, NY, 1932.