The Traymore Rooms: A Novel in Five Parts

by Norm Sibum

  What can I say? Soon enough, I was to receive a shock. We had arrived, having left the highway for a series of secondary roads and then a road best described as tertiary, the car kicking up shards of crumbly stones. We drove up a hill, cows at pasture on either side of the road. Strange heapings of rock in the fields. Gaunt but stately maples. Now here she was struggling with the padlock of Gar’s old cabin, I smarting from her silence. At last, she got the better of the lock, and she pushed open a creaking door. Must and mildew. Old paperbacks, ancient newspapers. A rumpled copy of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Kerosene. Stacks of firewood and a kindling box. An old iron kettle on a cook stove. It was a mouse I heard inside a wall. Clare was no country girl, but rather than register disapproval of the shack in its neglected state, her eyes widened and seemed curious. She poked at dust thick on an old, cracked wood table; she inspected her mittened finger. Perhaps she saw all she needed to see. She grabbed me and put a kiss on my mouth.

  Hours later, and I was back in my digs; and, as if wondering were possible, I wondered what it had all meant. So much for the beautiful and the good and the true. She had laughed after that kiss, and it seemed to me she said, ‘Yes, just what I thought,’ this as I was trying to get my hands under her sweater and up to her breasts, as if, contact made, I would know everything I ever needed to know. She guided them with her mittened hands. And then, in a silence as deep as the silence which greeted the creation of the universe, she put mine away from her; and she held me, or rather, she let me hold her; and she shivered a little in our embrace; and then she dabbed at something in her eye, pulled off me and said: ‘I’m not going to apologize. It seems I’ve been doing this all my life. Voila! Marriage with Gar. It would be better if I just burned this place down.’

  And then, an after-thought, perhaps, and whether it was clear-mindedness on her part or more confusion, she added: ‘Don’t think I didn’t love Gar. I suppose you’re a nice enough man in your own way. Silly of you not to have a phone. I’m going away for a while. Somewhere utterly unreal. Disneyworld? Fiji? Well, we once rented in Umbria, Gar and I, for a couple of months. I rather liked it. Near Orvieto. Have you been there? Maybe I’ll look you up when I get back.’

  The beautiful, the good and the true had departed her eyes. She was tired and angry. It was as if men like me had snatched the beautiful, the good and the true from empty air and foisted them on her, just because, well, someone had to have those eyes. She had been much younger than Gar when they married. She would be a handsome woman even in her old age. In a silence as deep as the creation of the universe, one was never going to know for sure how resentful she had been of men and their expectations. I was relieved our lovemaking had not gone further. I fervently wished it had.

  As for myself, I was now branded an incurable loner; oh, not in any dignified sense of the word but as a law unto myself; a law that had come bearing no gifts. Clare’s kiss had done the trick; she had been a solar wind that came my way and passed. My failure to draw us both one step closer to some emotional disaster gave me cause to wonder just how feckless I was, unfit for such chance as society brings. And this in what was effectively a commune, what with Moonface always traipsing over to Eggy’s, Eleanor and Dubois banging away on Eleanor’s four-poster. Mrs Petrova went to church, and maybe she played bingo, and so had a life beyond her shop and her renters. So that it was yet another shock when in moved a new lodger.

  Breached

  Traymoreans exchanged intelligence at the Blue Danube.

  ‘He seems alright,’ said Eggy. ‘Don’t know what the fuss is about.’

  ‘Shining head,’ I said.

  ‘What’s his name?’ Moonface asked, ‘does anyone know?’

  ‘The name hasn’t appeared on his letterbox yet,’ said Dubois.

  ‘I think he told me,’ I said, ‘but I was so flustered it went in one ear and out the other. It was something like Osgoode. He was carrying an open satchel. I distinctly saw a Bible and other religious paraphernalia.’

  ‘You bet,’ said Eleanor, ‘and I know I heard a prayer meeting raising the rafters in his room. There’s been a lot of traffic up our stairs all of a sudden. Women.’

  ‘Maybe he’s on to something,’ suggested Eggy.

  ‘He’s a door-slammer,’ said Dubois.

  ‘A shining head,’ I repeated.

  So Osgoode, first name unknown, a shining head, had—in his late twenties or thereabouts—rented the old Lamont apartment, the one we Traymoreans thought Mrs Petrova was saving for her son. Except for Eggy, none of us had ever laid eyes on this mythical son. Perhaps Osgoode was that son in the spiritual sense; in which case I might have to modify my view of Mrs Petrova. We would get over it, I figured; we would soon enough accept the intruder, this enemy within our gates. I myself was a tolerant fellow, but what with the war and the corrosive political atmosphere; what with the zanies with their fingers in every pie; executive pies, Pentagon pies, Department of Justice pies; what with Nazis calling peaceniks Nazis and peaceniks calling Nazis fascists; what with terrorists skulking in the shadows of every lawn’s pink flamingoes (and was it all horseplay or was the rhetoric a prelude to much worse behaviour); and so forth and so on, and my good graces were fewer; and I was more frequently drawing lines in the sand; and soon, as if I ever had much ground on which to stand, I would have no ground left at all to support my pins. Clare had kissed me, that much was certain, every molecule of me hissing I would never see her again. It had been a strange interlude. ‘Copy that, Houston.’ I could neither see nor hear Gareth Howard, my oldest friend, dead in his grave. I would have to wake him.

  We Traymoreans had commandeered the Blue Danube for an hour; it being our purpose to discuss the new lodger. We alighted on the café’s chairs like a single flock of birds. Eleanor called the meeting to order, she with her frosted curls. Dubois was handsome and vain, Eggy’s shirt littered with bits of food. Moonface was luminous in her black denims and white blouse, one that she usually buttoned to her neck, but that now provided a glimpse of her bosom’s swell. She had been getting her toes wet, no doubt about it, in affairs of the heart; James, her Nigerian friend, was the man of the hour, and yet she kept him from us. There was pain coming for her. I would be a cad were I to point this out.

  ‘Well,’ said Eleanor, touching the wrist of her beau, vain and handsome Dubois, ‘are we going to Florida or not?’

  ‘Are we? Do I have anything to say about it?’

  ‘But of course,’ said Eleanor, draining her glass of wine and wondering if there was more.

  ‘One thing’s money in the bank,’ she said, ‘it won’t be the same—the old Traymore.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ said Eggy. ‘Montcalm threw the battle. Hoo hoo.’

  In actual fact, sightings of the Osgoode creature were rare. We heard him well enough, as well as his gang of True Believers trooping up and down the Traymore stairs. We heard him slamming his door. He was not interested in us. And then a letter from Vera told me all I needed to know: Clare was with her there in Costa Rica. I had visions of a thatched hut, one wired with the latest technological wizardry, including some gigantic plasma TV, Karl watching the World Series via satellite. For sure, I would never see Clare again, now that she was in Vera’s clutches; now that I was effectively cut out of the loop. I could see them—Vera and Clare, each woman tall and willowy—carrying on like two kissing cousins, like two peas in a pod; Karl playing the bemused and mild-mannered and ever reliable patriarch. Normally prompt in responding to correspondence, I would sit on this one, this chatty treachery on Vera’s part. I whipped up my inner turmoil to a fine froth. I knocked on Eleanor’s door.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you may as well come in. But I’m betwixt things, if you know what I mean.’

  I did not know what she meant.

  ‘Bob, that louse, he’s reneging on his offer to take me to Florida. He’s saying he’s lost his appetite for Disneyworld. He’s heard somewhere that the people who work there work for next to nothing. S
ince when has he developed a conscience? Between what am I betwixt? Relationships are absurd. I need love. Hell, I’ll settle for sex. True, I get sex. But he’s got marriage without the commitments, one of which is that a promise made ought to be kept. I’m thinking a kiss-off is in the offing. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Plenty. But first, whence all this venom you have for Bob? I thought you had things pretty much the way you wanted.’

  ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘Why this sudden craving for the mercenary and vulgar?’

  ‘Don’t know. But all the world goes to Disneyworld. Sometimes I’d like to be in with the world, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t know what you mean. And bear in mind, the world always exacts a price.’

  ‘Sometimes you don’t know you’re alive until you pay the price.’

  ‘Pay for what,’ I said, exasperated, ‘a spectacle? A little fame? Cuddles?’

  ‘You’re so damn Christian.’

  ‘I’m as pagan as a grotto and a grove.’

  So yes, the good woman was annoyed. With apologies, I took my leave.

  And I knocked on Eggy’s door. It being windy and raw outdoors, Eggy decided to stay in and read a book and drink himself senseless. It seemed sensible.

  ‘Women,’ I said to Eggy, he in his overstuffed chair. I was opposite him in another chair. It was as if we were opposing rooks on a chessboard.

  ‘Women,’ said Eggy. ‘Oh really? The particulars, please.’

  I gave him those particulars. Eggy then responded: ‘I can’t speak for those women. I never met them, but it seems to me your Clare is still hanging on to her husband. She smells him on, what’s her name, oh, Vera then, and she smelled him on you. It’s called grief. Don’t interfere.’

  ‘My God, you really make the most of a nutshell.’

  ‘It’s what I get paid the big bucks for,’ smirked Eggy, ‘the really big bucks.’

  I took my leave of a sparrow of a man.

  I had my forebodings: nothing good could come of Osgoode. I was addicted to symmetries, and the undoing of them made for chaos in my view. The unravelling of the Soviet Union slingshotted the West to some apogee, and then the tailspin. Or say that if a new breed of inner circle scoundrel had hijacked the Constitution, well then, one could expect other hijackings at street-level. The hearts and minds of the neighbourhood. As I myself was so tired of pointing out, I was not a political animal. Even so, I had long since noted a change of pressure in the air, the formation of fronts and storms and serious unpleasantness. My nose was out front of learned parts of my mind; parts that were cautioning against foretelling the future or reading false lessons from the past. Granted, polite society was a criminal world. Granted, the Underworld was the World of the Light of Day. One lived so as to obtain and exercise leverage: a committee vote or the barrel of a gun in some alley. One lived so as to secure yet another ordinance favouring the lifestyle of the rich at the expense of the poor man’s bad habits. Some quarrel over a seat in the bus was a life and death matter. Would the waiter return one’s cold scrambled eggs to the kitchen for a heating up? Or would he advise one to soldier on? Everyone was getting thin-skinned and petty and hankering for release in ever more bizarre entertainments. And the thing is, everyone knew it and would prefer to know nothing else. Like so, I figured, Germans had accommodated Hitler so as to accommodate themselves. I was certifiable, investing Moonface with powers she did not have. To Eggy who had given her it, her nickname was a joke; to me it was a sign. Life does not read as historical romance. You are born; you putz about; you die.

  Social Beast

  What was he going to do, winter coming on, his pins not as steady as once they were? In his rooms, I asked him, and Eggy responded: ‘Oh, I suppose I’ll hibernate. Live off the fat of my body, you know. Hoo hoo.’

  Then it seemed he would now succumb to one of his spells, his head sagging. But he came around. And he reached for the wine on the lamp table beside him. Instinctive fingers secured the stem of the glass; and then, dreamy ballet, he swept it toward his mouth, sipped, and swept it back again to its place of rest.

  ‘You’re fishing, you know,’ he said. He continued: ‘Well, it were better not to have been born. I go to bed. Will I wake up? Will I touch a woman again? There are idiots I’d happily hang. Drink and Moonface keep me going. Drink and Moonface are not luxuries. Now and then a page of Herodotus gets me over some hump, if it does not put me to sleep. Most storms pass, as did the wives and my labours in the marketplace. What stays with you, what turns the soul hot and cold, aside from the business of having been born; well, what it was for me, is Korea. The things I saw there. Stupidity and intransigence don’t even begin to tell the tale. Did you ever hear of No Gun Ri? No, I suppose not. Did you know I was in the Signal Corps? Ah, tropospheric-scatter. Hell, there were spies in my unit back in Aberdeen. It put McCarthy on the warpath. We drowned Pyongyang in napalm. Do I sound like I’m on a soapbox? My apologies. Moonface, get your sweet behind over here, your child-bearing hips. Think she heard me? Whoop-de-do.’

  No, she could not have; she was at the Blue Danube, marking time while she looked forward to post-graduate life. She was seeking her niche or else she was terribly distracted.

  ‘You know, she’ll fall to you,’ Eggy said, ‘when I’m gone.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. She has a mind of her own.’

  ‘She’s lost,’ Eggy insisted, ‘and when she looks around, she sees there isn’t much help.’

  It had been a while since I heard Eggy this serious. In Kamarouska a kiss and a thought for Algonquins.

  I was never going to know exactly what it was that chilled his soul when he had been a young sparrow in Korea; but it was as if something were trying to reassemble in his eyes so that I could view it; oh, not as a movie to watch at one’s leisure but as a manifestation of pure horror that takes one unawares. Then Eggy’s eyes closed. Gone for lunch. His chin drooped. My audience was over. For a moment there, as he was delivering me the fruits of his wisdom, Raphael might have painted him as he did some cardinal, or was it a pope? Then again, a cartoonist might have sketched the Eggy frame. Pomp and circumstance and the veiled fist of power were always somehow never far from the absurd; but when what is absurd is suffused with thorough-going cynicism, then what is merely absurd seems a thing to pine for, as in falling through time with tights, bells and jester’s cap. Evolutionary drift.

  Eleanor R, big spender, took me to the Blue Danube for dinner.

  ‘Oh,’ said Moonface, working extra hours, ‘I shall have the pleasure of serving you.’

  ‘Just put food on the table and a bottle of wine and don’t be cute about it,’ said Eleanor with some fire.

  Moonface gave me a ‘what’s with her’ look and set about her task.

  I said to Eleanor, ‘Why do you always give her a hard time?’

  ‘She’s a dreamer and she leads men on.’

  ‘That’s news to me. She’s almost asexual by my estimation.’

  ‘She’s always got that maybe I’ll let you kiss me, maybe I won’t simpering in her eyes. It’s supposed to drive men crazy. If I were a man, and happily I’m not, I’d find it boring and counter-productive. From the sounds of it, at least that McCabe gal of your high-school days didn’t mess about. Wham, bam, thank you, gents. Now let’s get on with the party.’

  I thought the good woman was gravely mistaken but I was not about to swim against the tide.

  ‘She’s trying her best,’ I said, ‘in a not very helpful world.’

  ‘Oh piffle. I wonder what God thought men would be useful for. Adam may’ve had a rib to spare but Eve copped the brains in case you’re looking for yours.’

  We ate in silence, now that Moonface had brought us the cabbage rolls and sauerkraut and Hungarian wine. To change the subject, and because I was still curious; and even though I sensed the justice of her suspicions vis-à-vis Lucille Lamont, I had never had enough of Eleanor’s reasons. Perhaps it should have been
as obvious to me as it was, apparently, to her. Even so. Even so.

  ‘Have you heard from Lucille since her last letter?’

  Eleanor was wolfing her food down. She gulped from a glass of wine. Then, absurdly dainty, she dabbed at her mouth with a serviette.

  ‘No, haven’t heard from the witch. I expect the cornlands of Ontario have withered and will never sprout corn again. Grass turns black where she walks. Men keel over dead at the sight of her. Who wouldn’t, the way those frightful tits of hers clank together under her greasy sweatshirts? You know, some time ago, you got me thinking about redemption. I don’t believe I’ve done anything so bad in my life that I have to think about the eternity of my soul. But, mind you, if I must, then it seems I’m to be stuck with the nasty business of prosecuting her in my soul until hell freezes over. This is a hypothetical, you understand, and it may seem petty of me, but how was that woman ever anything but guilty as sin, innocent though she might be (and I give her one chance out of ten that she is) of Marcel’s death? I liked him. It’s as simple as that. He may’ve been as guilty as sin, too, and she have her reasons. You have your notions and intellectual preoccupations, your writing and your musings, your woman-wary soul, but you’re not so complicated as all that. Eggy is Eggy, which is to say life has refined him to a single pure speck of something or other, and the wind is going to blow away whatever it is soon enough. And Bob, well, Bob is pretty straight-forward, likes his mind, his body, his dinner, his nooky; but Marcel, his eyes were a battleground between joy and sheer terror the legions of which were in hand-to-hand battle and dying in one another’s arms; as if, and you tell me, you’re the expert in these matters, as if he were seeing angels all the time and it wasn’t so wonderful.’

  ‘Close enough for folk music.’

  Eleanor gave me a look.