by Norm Sibum
‘Not really.’
‘United Church. The boys, you know, they thought that because he was a minister, it meant I had to be a slut. Don’t know where they got that idea.’
She rolled her eyes up and to the side—
‘What about your mother?’ I thought to ask.
‘What about her? She’s crazy. Reads philosophy. Thinks I’m almost a Garbo look-alike. It’s her way of telling me I never quite cut the mustard—’
‘That bad.’
‘Yes. But I blame my father most for me being what I am,’ she said, airily.
‘Which is?’
‘Can’t stop being nice to everyone. Because he can never think ill of any idiot, and nothing gets done, and everything’s allowed. If he’d been one of those hardboiled detectives, nobody’s fool, it would’ve been so much more cool.’
‘A lot of people use certainty as an excuse to be mean.’
‘Avuncular, Randall, avuncular.’
Her voice was a little thin, and yet musical in her contempt.
Phrygian Mode
Echo was a miracle, a delight to have around. Her air of ‘places to go, things to do’—from where had it come? Her eyes were round and tawny, like the eyes of certain cats when they are alarmed or intently curious. Her stature was short, her body compact, bosom full. She once asked me in the Blue Danube aka Le Grec what I happened to be reading just then. I explained I was reading over something I had written with a view toward making it better. She then said I ought to let her have a go at it; that she was the best reader I was ever likely to have. Was it true? In comparison to Echo Moonface now seemed world-weary and jaded and much overrated. Was she beginning to get her first taste of how it is life so very often disappoints and just keeps on disappointing? Moonface was now in her digs and I in mine.
I had poured myself more wine. I would hear out the Tallis Fantasia –a piece composed in 1910, Phrygian mode—as I flopped on the couch. It was a mode about which I knew nothing, just that the violins and violas taken all together had the full bore resonance of a great pipe organ. Against the Lord with false accord. Something like emotion stirred in me; then emotion and music died away.
Eggy had said that when he was gone, he with his death-is-just-over-the-horizon-for-me eyes, Moonface would fall to me. She was his great friend and he was hers, but he viewed her as lost and confused. In light of what Moonface had just confessed, that business about her father being somewhat of a flake, and that consequently she might be an apple fallen not so far from that tree, I could perhaps understand a little more clearly how she was suffering. I attributed it to her love affairs, all of which turned out mildly disastrous. Fast Eddy was now in the room, his eyes squinted behind cigar smoke. He with his insufferable gravitas advised: ‘You should make sure Moonface goes back to school.’
‘Should I?’
‘In Ottawa, even.’
‘Classical studies?’
‘Accounting.’
Fast Eddy disappeared like a spirit who had a mission elsewhere.
Moonface, so I thought to myself, needed a little of what Echo had. There was a brief blast of music, her CD player. Led Zeppelin as a retort to my existence. Then accusing silence.
I could go knock on her door. I could go all of a few steps up a carpeted hall and recommend myself for an hour’s worth of solace. It had transpired before, our lovemaking not lovemaking as such, just proximity and exchanges of thought. Even Platonic relationships must bear up now and then under the pall of disillusionment. I could go but I did not wish it. I could go just to hear her protest: ‘But you don’t like my ears. You wrote about not liking my ears.’
I would tell her she was exaggerating. And more than likely, she would be committing to her diary acerbic asides about Calhoun and other Traymoreans. It was her leisure activity. I could go hell-bent for leather, and Dubois in his digs, hearing my intentions loud and clear, would grin. Or Eleanor, in hers, might smack her lips and figure I had finally caved. Eggy, Zeus-like, his death-gaze immortal, would remain above it all. The rain in Spain and all that. Kennedy had done for sex what Eisenhower did for the game of golf—all that stuff and nonsense. Mrs Petrova might hear the old floorboards creak and she frown, she who ran a tight ship. Later, I would rise with the birds, as would most Traymoreans save for Eggy who rose around nine, Moonface lying in her pajamas, playing with the ends of her hair. Then she, too, would get up, don a robe and cross over to Eggy’s. And he would reach for her bum and she would evade his clutches; they would carry on like a house on fire, saying vile things about vile people.
Attack on Iran
It was a day in April, light-years into a dark Presidency. For all that a palliative and enabling media was suggesting otherwise, the darkness was much remarked upon. Melancholy had gotten the best of me. I was flat on my back on the couch. This time the music into which I would crawl and curl up was comprised of a piano, an accordion and an oud. But it was as if the musicians, both worldly and cenobitic, were making music from within the sanctuary of a flame; not that the music was fiery, it was not; it was remotely jazzy and somewhat cool in tone. But it had put me in mind of heat and summer skies, of southern winds just passing by, moody maples shimmering each leaf of which was an episode of my life. Indeed, it was madness that I lay there in that state of mind.
And here was Sally McCabe, one auditor, among others, of my mentations; and she meant to goad me into authorship.
‘Why yes,’ said Sally McCabe, politician’s daughter, pom-pom girl, beauty queen, fellow student of a high school I once miserably attended, and for years an hallucination peculiar to me, ‘I exist. Randall Q Calhoun has his theme.’
I went out of the Traymore, and there was Wendy on the street looking over the time-pieces in the window of Mrs Petrova’s shop. From the looks of it, life had just insulted this Wendy yet again. I nodded; she scowled. A few more steps and I raised the Blue Danube.
How long would the place stay the Blue Danube in name? The present owners who hailed from the north of Greece had other mythologies and geographies to honour, other dead grandeurs. Eggy was there, as I expected he would be. He had survived another winter, winter one of his besetting fears; snow and ice restricted his movements, his pins shaky. He ached for the warmer weather when he might sit out on the terrasse and eye the passing girls. No more Black Dog Girl? No matter. There would be others just as fascinating to behold, just as pleasing to regard, just as essential to his construction of the alphabet of the world.
Dubois was there, too, but not Moonface, Echo waiting on tables in her stead. A hairy old Greek with thick-lensed glasses and ugly khaki slacks was nosing about everything. Perhaps changes were coming. Already, a large, unframed photograph of the Acropolis replaced the obscenity of a tapestry, one of a snowy, alpine scene; one fit for Tyroleans, perhaps, but not the Slavs who used to congregate in the café. Ah, those steepled cypresses.
And I was surprised to hear that even Dubois believed it possible, air attack on Iran, the Vice-President pulling the strings for this in the background. Eggy said: ‘I keep saying it, Calhoun, and if you’ve been paying attention, you’d know the U.S. of A. went from adolescence to senility without passing through maturity.’
Yes, Eggy had said so many times, he so old now and having been in Quebec so long that he had forgotten he, too, was a Yank, a West Virginian, at that. Now he was on about the nosy Greek.
‘What do you suppose he’s doing?’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Dubois, having recourse to a bottomless well of expertise, ‘that he’s in the restaurant supply business, and he’s looking for a way to make some money out of Gregory. Upgrade, upgrade.’
Gregory and Elias were the two partners who made up the present management team.
‘Oh the rain in Spain,’ said Eggy, ‘it falls mainly on the plain.’
His chin raised his chest.
I had yet to speak a word. I certainly had opinions to offer on the current political situation. But here was Echo come t
o take my order and my eyes filled with her, her face so open and frank and honest, her fine hair swept away from her brow and tied in a ponytail. I had wanted to put a question to her, and finally, I did so: ‘Echo,’ I said, ‘really? How did you come by that name?’
‘My grandparents,’ she promptly warbled, ‘they’re Greek and they wanted to spite my other grandparents who are, guess what, Italian.’
This explained everything. Her smile let me know that it should. I said I would have some wine though it was early yet. Off she went with a bound in her step.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Dubois, ‘I really am.’
‘With her?’
‘No, with Hitler, you cretin.’
‘How long is that look of hers going to last?’
‘I know what you mean, but let’s say forever. Though, of course, we know better.’
We looked at Eggy, Dubois and I, at the half-asleep half-man, half-angel who seemed to have lasted forever with all his accumulated sins, his soul, beyond question, black with them.
‘Has the old sod asked her out yet?’
Dubois laughed, saying: ‘He’s intimidated. Can you believe it? That slip of a girl has got him knocked back on his heels.’
‘Poor Moonface,’ I said.
‘What about Moonface?’ Eggy thundered, that sparrow of a man awake again.
Gypsy
Eleanor was despondent. She knew things between her and Dubois were fine but that, somehow, they were not. She wanted marriage; he was good with the status quo—her dinner table, the postprandial bed. I was taken aback by the woman who answered my knock at her door, she of the frosted, the gilded curls. What was with the gypsy skirt which, as she spun around on her high-heeled slippers, was crimson and full-bodied and the very spirit of death-defying gaiety? Confronted by sharp fluctuations in mood, and I run for the hills. She tra-la-lahed: ‘Mr Calhoun, to what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘I’m not sure. Have you joined a folk club?’
‘Funny, Randall, momentously funny.’
I followed her into her kitchen, one that was perhaps the finest of all the Traymore rooms; that skirt of hers twitching and switching and twitting me. The commodious kitchen was conducive to talk and the baking of edible delights, to political forums and all around philosophizing. It was a refuge from mean spirits and idiot minds. Even so, I knew she wished to launch into a tirade concerning Bob Dubois but was holding back out of deference to my tender sensibilities. She was a woman who usually got what she wanted without too much blood being let in the process. Yet she expected her men to have backbone; she was often perplexed by demonstrations of male diffidence, especially mine. She said: ‘So I hear there’s still another new waitress in Dodge.’
‘That would be Echo.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘That pixie, she’s unstoppable. A terror. A warbler. A winner of hearts. It’s not clear yet whether she can win minds.’
‘A warbler,’ said Eleanor, ‘you don’t say.’
It was as if she had an idea of what I meant.
‘Yes, she’s got me believing again that anything’s possible. I haven’t felt this way since the days of my youth, that is, before I caught that fatal football back in high school and incited all the furies of the universe to hound my steps ever since.’
‘I’ll bet Moonface is feeling something like a pinch.’
‘The possibility has crossed my mind. And Eggy’s, too, I might add. Bob? I think he’s vastly entertained.’
‘That sounds like my man.’
I rolled us a couple of cigarettes. I wondered if she would break into the amaretto, a substance for which she had a weakness. She made no move to the cupboard. She sat on her chair, her thighs spread wide apart under that voluminous skirt, her thoughts elsewhere. Once in a while sparks had flown between us, but it had never amounted to anything. It had always been my belief that she harboured a secret crush on Marcel Lamont, a one-time Traymorean no longer in the world. Eleanor convinced me that Lucille Lamont murdered her husband by way of leaving him with a case of gin, right in front of our noses, in the Traymore. It is to say she went away to Ontario for a family visit, and Marcel not only drank himself silly, he drank himself dead. Lucille Lamont would never be caught out in her soft-core crime; Eleanor and I, we could only hope that, one day, some god, some agency of fate, some glaring flaw in the Lucille Lamont character, something, at any rate, would get the best of her in a spectacular and emotionally satisfying way, satisfying us. But what with the ghost of Fast Eddy flitting about Traymorean haunts, why not then, the supplicating ghost of Marcel? Was his death not a classic instance of a man having been prematurely cheated of his just desserts, the very thing that terrified those most superstitious of people—the ancient Romans? Who had no love of vengeance-exacting spooks? Perhaps Marcel believed he had deserved his lot; and death was final.
‘Moonface,’ Eleanor ventured, ‘is not going to like this other chickadee stealing her glory.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. She seems adrift. She’s frightened of something.’
‘Tell me another. She has always been scared, scared of her own shadow, scared of men.’
‘I don’t know, she’s never been particularly frightened of me. And she’s never been afraid to be left alone with Eggy.’
‘You’re not the intimidating type. Eggy’s decrepit.’
‘That’s not what I want to hear.’
‘You’re a softie, Calhoun. The classic liberal mind that’s had too much high life.’
‘Eleanor, my goodness, you’re threatening analysis at my expense.’
‘I’ve got a brain. It’s served me well.’
‘Of course it has.’
A not unfamiliar silence took over the room, Eleanor on her side of things, I on mine. There was nothing baking in the oven, so I only just noticed. Dishes had been washed and put away. Counters were bare and clean. A clear vase of store bought freesias on the table. True spring could only be just around the corner. I only just noticed them, as well. Eleanor rose and then, slowly circumnavigating the table, she came to a stop behind me. She rested her hands on my shoulders. I cannot say she sighed so much as she sang some brief but undetectable dirge. She had operatic tendencies. I was worried she might attempt to kiss me. She grazed the back of my neck with a mischievous finger. Then, stepping away, she went and pressed her midriff against the edge of the sink, all her weight on one foot, the other foot lifted from the floor. She was now and then inimitable. I had the overbearing sense that there was so much flying around in her mind by way of thought and worry (not to mention her penchant for flirtation) that it would prove futile to say, ‘A penny, my dear, for your thoughts?’ Besides, it was an expression I detested. I could only say: ‘Eleanor, you seem awfully restless.’
‘I am, Calhoun, very much so.’
Herodotus
Love of father for son is as fraught with blindness as any other love. I have long suspected the futility of thought, for all I have been rational enough to eschew the mysticism of loons. The less said about my father and his reptilian brilliance, the better. I was in no danger of receiving his blind affections. Sometimes the father, perceiving all too clearly the flawed character of the son, simply cannot stomach the view and turns away from it. Perhaps Marcus Aurelius, Roman Caesar, believed that responsibility would activate the better parts of Commodus’s nature, Commodus his son and Caesar to be. There was nothing to activate but the appetites. A great deal of pollen swirls about in the air.
Fallujah. The Americans, thinking it payback, having at the place with all their ordnance. The mad going mad. Imperial pique. The mind stretched so very thin between two polarities of absolute illogic. It was what happened to bodies that fell into black holes, subjected to unimaginable forces. I would have loved to know whether Tacitus ever giggled in the face of beastliness.
Moonface moped. Perhaps Eggy was right about her and she was lost. Despite the odds, Gregory, the new proprietor of the Blue Danube, was maki
ng optimistic noises in the galley. It was as if he would cook and people eat and pay him for it, and his labours and his expectations have rhyme and reason in dark days getting no lighter. He took the world on faith, his boyish grin impervious to the mutability of fortune that was, in any case, nothing he could not address. New toys, new for this café, at least, were popping up almost every day. Touch screen computer for tabulating orders and bills. A flat-screen TV replaced the old set, where it was attached high on a wall. In time for the hockey play-offs, and I supposed, the Euro Cup. Various other electronic gadgets whose functions escaped me. A new menu, its cover cobalt-blue, its gold lettering Greek script. More images on the walls: white coastal villages. Sparkling seas. Pomegranate sunsets. Such-like. A rise in the price of a cup of coffee. I wished Gregory the best. I wondered, could I excite myself enough to make a play for Moonface? The cynic in me was beginning to wallow in cynicism.
The previous year or so had been a time of transfigurement for one Randall Q Calhoun. A grand enough word for that little something that had shifted in the Calhoun soul, that perhaps amounted to nothing more than a wave-tossed pebble, than particles of sand streaming down the sides of a depression in a lunar dry protectorate. Fast Eddy was now at my table, stub of a cigar in his mouth, unlit. He nodded at Moonface, saying to me: ‘Have you told her yet?’
‘Told her what?’
‘To resume her studies.’
‘Her trail’s gone cold on Virgil.’
‘I would prefer she do accounting or take up some useful science. I know Eggy wants her to dedicate her life to the study and the writing of history. A reasonable enough Plan B.’