by Terry Griggs
He almost nabbed her up on Robinson, past the newspaper office, but then she eluded him by walking straight into a private home, right through the front door, without a hitch in her step or a second’s hesitation. Grif expected her to be chucked out on her ear, but she stayed for hours. When he crept up to one of the windows to see if he could find out what in the devil she was up to, he saw her seated at a large table, dining with the residents of the house, an unexpected but not unwelcome guest. She was sipping a glass of wine and chatting spiritedly, spinning them quite the tale, he didn’t doubt; earning her supper, the hearty meal spread out before her, while her husband starved in the forsythia bushes. Her audience certainly looked captivated, and likely hadn’t enjoyed such entertainment since those roving minstrel boys performed in blackface at the dance hall. He settled in for a long wait. She had to emerge sometime. And did, but he never saw her. Snuck out the back way, he guessed, but for all he knew, she might have gone up the chimney and dispersed like smoke.
It was only by luck, and not necessarily good luck, that he caught up to her when he did. She had grown careless, or weary of the game, or she’d had too much to drink, for she had stopped to take a piss in front of the stables. She didn’t even crouch but stood with legs astride like a soldier, skirts hoisted high, her strong, warm stream splashing into the dust. That’s not how women usually went about it, surely?
“You sound like a horse,” he said, stepping out of the shadows to confront her. “Or Niagara Falls.”
“No,” she said.
Just that? But no to what? To his sally, his unasked questions, or to him in general, to his whole existence? (Was she always going to deny her young husband?) Then again, she might not even have been speaking to him. The negative might have been meant for her moonling, her lumpish, hair-hearted pal, who had crept up behind. No, she said as he knocked Grif to the ground, and kicked him in the back, and then brought his huge fist, all rock and crater, down again and again, pounding Grif into the dark side of the night.
No, she had said. Defending him? He was touched. But much too hard.
As he shifted carefully, testing to find out which part of him screamed the loudest when he moved, the stale but comforting smell of the bedclothes rose around him. He could smell linseed too. He was swathed in bandages, around his chest and head, and on one hand. Roland had been trying to stick him back together with his salves and poultices, his healing compounds of raccoon lard, resin and beeswax. Bless him, but the boy had his work cut out for him. Grif was a pile of rubble. He tried to think back but couldn’t even recall peeling himself off the ground. The last thing he remembered was sucking a mud pie through his teeth, a dessert (just?) that tasted mostly of his own blood and his wife’s urine. He’d taken several servings, his face slammed into the stable’s muck. She must have intervened finally, called off her hound and saved his skin for another day. Or Roland, concerned about his long absence from the hotel, might have gone searching for him and scared them off.
That Grif was not alone in the room was information that seeped into him slowly, like the arrival of the morning light through the windows. Gradually, he became aware of a faint scratching noise and the sound of paper being shuffled. The odd sniff. A muted humming. Roland, he thought, fondling the wallpaper again, the skin of his beloved building. He’d be waiting patiently for Grif to come round. They would have tea and their morning chat. So, what happened to you last night? Grif wasn’t so sure he could chat. It would hurt his mouth too much, like picking shards of glass out of his lips.
He raised himself slightly to greet his friend and saviour, uncertain as to how many supportive, non-aching inches he had to rely on. He caught sight of a walking stick propped against the door frame. It had an ebony shaft and was topped with a large round silver knob.
“Lead-filled,” a voice piped up. “A handy article, especially for fending off brutes in the night. I do hope your attacker wasn’t representative of the local citizenry.”
Grif squinted at this person, who was seated at the far end of the room in Norma’s tiny chair (he still harboured hopes of her return), occupying it like a giant spider. He had a sheaf of papers in one hand and Grif’s pen, the one Hattie had given him, in the other. The man was clean-shaven and wearing a white linen suit, but it was him all right, fresh from the land of scoundrels and smiling benignly at Grif.
“You,” Grif croaked. Then all he could think to add was, “You mustn’t write lies with that.”
“Oh, never. Nothing but the truth.” The man smiled even more broadly, while holding up the sheaf of papers in his hand. “Now, where were we? Ah yes, we were about to discuss some business, before you so gallantly escorted that pert young thing out onto the lake and drowned her. I did try to warn you, you know.”
“Look—”
“Hmmn?”
“I don’t want to hear your damned plan, Mr. Nashe. I don’t want to talk business. I have enough troubles of my own. As you can see.”
“Do you not want to get your wife back?”
“Get even, you mean?”
“No, you know that’s not what I mean. Remember … the truth.”
“Wait, let’s get this straight. I hate that woman. She won’t leave me alone; she’s possessed. Worse, she’s insane. Why would she follow me all the way here? She cuckolded me with that—truncated halfwit, and God knows how many others. I tried to talk to her yesterday, reasonably, just to find out what she wants from me, to see if we could settle this once and for all, and she almost had me killed.”
“A fascinating creature. No wonder you love her.”
“I do not. And she despises me. She thinks I’m a worm.”
“You are a worm. And she’s the hook. And I have plans for both of you. Now, look, see what’s happened: you’ve told so many lies already that your mouth is bleeding. So shut up, will you, and I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.”
Moonstruck? Nah. Hugh himself was not thinking he had been cracked on the pate by a heavenly body, by some puckish, low-flying celestial object. He was acquainted with all the more earthy vehicles available to your amateur bludgeoner—rocks, hammers, wooden legs, pokers, two-by-fours—and he sensed that it was possibly one of these more humble and ready-to-hand objects that had laid him out cold by the livery stable and neatly rearranged the physiognomy of his skull. The topography of his noggin already a phrenologist’s dream, Hugh now sported a goose egg on the anterior of his head that matched a dark, incubating lump of brooding matter on the interior.
He awoke, dew-jacketed and shivering, and lay for some time blinking himself into consciousness and staring up at the crimson-tinged sky. A crow drifted by, wings creaking, and wearing a bonnet. Christ Almighty, he thought, that’s not good. He endeavoured to gather his shattered recollections of the day before. Yeah, he had been worried about Avice. At least, he figured the sentiment was worry and not some further stomach-twisting torment compliments of his hangover. That’s why he went out, to look for her. She’d been gone all day, as far as he was able to tell, and most of the night. But then what does she do when he finds her cornered by that cringing milksop? She says, No. Was she trying to protect the baby, the lily-livered funker, or was she trying to protect him, Hugh, trying to warn him about the guy’s partner sneaking up from behind with a brick? Or a bottle, yeah.
That crack on the old coconut had done wonders for his hangover, anyway. Although it might have dislodged something else, for Hugh was feeling more than a little peaky. His various mongrel notions and philosophies did not seem to have the same toothsome grip on his brain as before. As he heaved himself up, he could hear a tinkling crashing sound, like broken glass, a whole chandelier sliding to the floor, that seemed to be coming from within his head. He staggered around and gave himself a few smacks for good measure.
He got to wondering what had happened to Avice. It didn’t occur to him that she might have stayed to help him out, that she owed him at least that much. She could have fetched the doctor, or some
drinking buddy to drag him back to the Mansion House. But that would have been spoiling him. He didn’t expect that. Although he did expect something for his gallantry. Stumbling back onto the street, he decided to skip work and go see if he could find it, what he’d earned and deserved. He might even shake it right out of her, like a coin out of a bank, if she had it in her.
No, Avice had said. Then no to herself and for herself. It was her prayer of negatives, her worry beads, each bead a tough knob of denial sent against him, to ward him off. That face, lit by a slash of moonlight, had chilled her and woken her out of a long dream. When he raised his walking stick and felled poor Hugh, she slipped away with a practised alacrity. She edged around to the back of the stables and fled. The sound it made—enough to split a skull in half, even one as hard as Hugh’s. Was it possible he had survived it? She had no idea, and absolutely no intention of going back to find out. She retreated to her room, packed hastily and checked out of the hotel.
Grif, well, he had gotten what he deserved. No, she didn’t really think that. She should have stopped Hugh. In her confusion and alarm she began to chastise herself for taking part in this whole madcap adventure. Her vendetta, absurd. Her audacity, gone. For the first time she felt genuinely unnerved, stricken, fright boring a hole right into her, a vortex into which all the perils of the world could swirl. The sight of him. Twice now—that was no coincidence. He is what sickness calls up. She was responsible, and knew it.
Early morning, not a soul in sight, she ran towards the docks as if pursued. Her jaw was rigid and her voice hoarse from straining through her teeth those small, hard—and useless—words: no, no.
Hugh’s head was teetering. He was tipping it back and forth, up and down, like a dog puzzling over some canine conundrum that lay before him. It might look as if he were attending to his inner marbles on the roll, but what he was actually doing was reading—Hugh’s version of reading, whereby he pinned a word to the page with his eye and then tried to gut it for meaning.
When he had burst into Avice’s room at the Mansion House, expecting to see her served up on the bed like a hot meal, all white-skinned and steamy, he was taken aback to find her not there. The bed was cold, not slept in since he’d vacated it. Not only that, but all signs of her presence had been wiped out. No clothing, no bowl of hair, no goddamn slice of pie—his share. He felt like hurting someone, he was so disappointed.
He knew some rumination was required, the better to understand her absence. She might have been abducted by the same devil who had thumped him, although that wouldn’t account for everything that was missing here. She was a bit finicky, so maybe she didn’t want to sleep in the same bed he’d puked in. Hey, he could understand that, although he had wiped it up with his shirt, which he’d afterwards tossed in the corner. Or, hah, she might even be hiding under the bed. She liked games, that one. Hugh immediately got down on all fours and had a look. Nope, no sign of his slippery, devious gal under the bed. But he did see something else. That book. That journal of hers that he’d kicked under there the other day and forgotten about.
Imagine being jealous of a book, of paper and cowhide and squiggles of ink. You had to watch her reading it, though, as Hugh had done, his brow pleated in distress. She had been so absorbed in it, her lovely face lit with a delight that excluded him entirely. He had no access. He couldn’t see how anyone could get what she seemed to get out of it; you’d think she was sucking the juice out of an orange. That sparkle in her eyes, the smile on her slightly parted lips—what she did with that thing was not wholesome, not right. A very strange and suspect activity.
He sat down on the bed with the book in his hands and began to flip through it. To his thick-fingered, though not insensitive, touch the paper felt like an old man’s skin. When it came to the act of literary congress, Hugh was still a virgin, and so he didn’t recognize anything unusual about the journal. He did notice that some of the ink wore a fresher face, and that not all of the inscrutable notations were consistent in form. If he had been able to read it, he more than anyone might have appreciated the author’s line of work, and even lamented that such opportunities were no longer available for a coming lad such as himself.
His eyes lit upon such words as superstitious and popish and apostles, and wandered overtop of them, and underneath, and all around, with puzzlement and mounting frustration. If only he could split one open, he reasoned, and get at the meat of it, then the rest might come easier; he’d have a method. He decided to start with a short, simple word, and chose—God. He studied this word for some time, eyeballing it like a dissenting theologian. And then, because of his intense meditative focus, or the unaccustomed strain of intellectual effort, or simply on account of the recent crack on his head, which must have let in some light, Hugh experienced something very unusual. Something illuminating. He took it for reading, but it was more like a revelation. The word God suddenly opened up for him, and displayed itself to him in all its profundity and mystery. All the other words in the journal then followed—quite literally, for they seemed to rise right off the page and clamber over him. They filled his eyes and ears, buzzing, whispering, speaking all of their individual meanings to him. Admittedly, their message was scrambled and chaotic, but all he had to do was sort it out and put it together.
Ah, Hugh. This certainly wasn’t the first time a book was misinterpreted and subsequently caused a great deal of trouble. If only Avice had been there, she could have prised the journal out of his hands, gently, as if he were only a child, with a child’s hunger for secrets withheld. She could have said, more kindly than usual, No, this is not for you. Let it go, you don’t understand. Not at all. No.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
16 fps
Fenwick Nashe ran his fingers appreciatively over the body of the machine. He was quite taken with the thing. Under sixteen pounds it weighed. Light as a feather compared with that two-hundred-pound brute, the kinetograph. It was of French origin and design—elegant, portable and all the rage overseas. Fenwick had acquired it from a fellow in Quebec. How acquired was of no account, although, recalling it, a flicker of amusement eddied across his lips. Camera. Projector. Film printer. You could even eat your breakfast on it if you wished, or store a box of Mr. Kellogg’s healthful horse feed in it. A brilliant invention, a piece of furniture that had the power to seize and transform the world. It was nothing but a curiosity to most, a clever device, but Fenwick saw it as a machine capable of manufacturing dreams and money in about equal proportions, a lucrative counterfeiting indeed. He personally had witnessed the success of Andrew Holland’s kinetoscope parlour in New York—and Holland a good Canadian boy, at that. Twenty-five cents he charged to enter one of his peep-show booths, where you turned a crank and watched a single film loop of some trained bears disporting themselves, or a dentist at work (horrors!), or Gentleman Jim Corbett laying some sucker out flat in the boxing ring. People were entranced, couldn’t get enough. And this (he patted his machine) was miles ahead in ingenuity, as Mr. Edison, dispenser of light and light-fingered—in the realm of ideas, anyway—was quick to realize.
Fenwick began to scrutinize the audience of townsfolk gathering in the hall for his show. He had no hand in the machine’s invention, but he could see its potential clearly. As clearly as that mole—no, it was a tick, stuck like the head of a hatpin in that fat fellow’s neck. The mayor, didn’t Roland say? Well, even if these hayseeds didn’t see it, an aperture to the future had opened and his sharp eye was positioned in exactly the right place to take it in.
Optical toys intrigued him. Magic lanterns, zoetropes, even those simple paper disks with strings attached that you twirled in your fingers until the pictures on the opposite sides merged—all entertainments that relied on illusion. What a deceiving organ the eye can be. What a trap for the desired. He was partial to early theories on the nature of vision, how light was said to shoot out of the eye and then return to it with captured images, and how, as a consequence, it was given to contamination by
fantasy. The communal collusion involved in this day’s experiment should prove to be very interesting. When he turned the handle of his cinématographe, exposing the reel of film to its light source at sixteen frames per second (well, no fewer than twelve; he wasn’t a machine), his audience would see, projected on the screen, not what was really there—individual photographs printed on celluloid—but one single picture come to life before their wondering eyes. In this hall, which did resemble a church, now that he thought of it, with rows of seats like pews, he, priest of the new technology, was going to perform a miracle. What did visionaries experience, anyway, except their own private screenings, those diverting illusions to which we are all susceptible with the right equipment? St. John spoke of the mind’s darkness confronted with the bright light of the Divine, and could he, Fenwick Nashe, not provide a similar—if secular—illumination? For a little fee?
He scanned the room. All appeared to be in order, everyone was in their assigned position and the seats were filling up nicely. There was bound to be a crowd. No one in this rustic thorp, this one-eyed town, was going to miss such an opportunity. Demonstrations had already occurred in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and some here would have read about them in the Globe or the local papers, the Gossip, the Expositor. Fenwick had no great desire to be a cultural missionary, bringing his enchantments to the periphery of civilization, but he had a particular reason for stopping here, and at present she was seated in the front row, about as far away from him as it was possible to get. Her aversion not an obstacle in the least. He didn’t need proximity for the kind of intimacy he was after.