by Norm Sibum
‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘we’ve got these pixies in our brains that contrive to keep us from our satisfactions. There isn’t a man or woman alive who doesn’t suffer from their schemes. What else is Marjerie? And what else is political life but those pixies that run amok on a collective scale?’
‘I think it’s a kind of failure on my part,’ Eleanor said, with what struck me as unnatural quiet, ‘not to know.’
She shook a pompadoured foot.
‘Failure,’ I said, ‘sure, we’ve all got that, but then, what those pixies like to do is hound us with failure that isn’t really ours to shoulder. And I think then what happens is that the ways in which we’re truly blameworthy get lost in the shuffle. In other words—’
‘In other words, yes, I know, in other words—’
Eleanor gave me a look. She was either 35 or 50-some, such were her looks. The pleasing near-plumpness, the curls, the intelligence, directness of manner.
‘In other words,’ Eleanor continued, ‘we get distracted.’
‘Something like that.’
I enjoyed being right; I was always leery of it.
‘I have trouble seeing, sometimes, what you’re good for, Randall.’
‘Oh, so do I.’
‘Closet author?’
‘Ah, the shabbiness.’
‘Dufresne would’ve put a man like you to work, and to good purpose.’
‘I have a powerful capacity for loyalty,’ I explained, a pedantic edge creeping into my voice, ‘but I don’t like taking orders.’
‘Randall, Randall. You’ve always got an answer.’
Eleanor wanted a cigarette.
Blindsided
However it is that the laws of physics operate in dreams, one was certain that if Eleanor slept with Phillip nothing good would come of it. It would only bring her, as she worked her way through the treacheries of a maze, to some minotaur-like creature: Prentiss perhaps. I would have asked Moonface to the movies, but I knew she would not care for the bloody gore of a gladiatorial spectacle. I went alone to the old odeon. I would miss her body seated next to mine. I would miss the fact that no movie had yet been made of which she entirely approved. If I suspected that what she really liked were those old roadies Hope, Crosby and Lamour, I was gentleman enough not to challenge her on it. Still, to spot silver-headed Dubois seated four rows up from the front, a tub of popcorn on his lap, was something of a surprise.
‘Trust you,’ he observed, ‘to go for something Roman.’
‘It’s a good if historically inaccurate flick,’ I answered, the pedagogue in me rising to the bait.
‘I’ll bear it mind,’ Dubois promised.
And the lights dimmed, and then the movie. And we were presented with souls who touchingly believed in an afterlife. From this belief, in the cases of a few, stemmed conscience and honour. That a few men and women were capable of conscience and honour seemed awfully exotic to me, a cynic.
Afterwards, we walked in silence to the Blue Danube for a late evening libation. Dubois was stiff and unforthcoming. And when we arrived, Cassandra on shift, even her ravishing smile was not sufficient to dispel Dubois’s funk, Elias and Serge in the galley, a few regulars indoors, young revellers on the terrasse. Perhaps they put Dubois in mind of Moonface, he saying: ‘I guess she’s out getting serviced.’
He almost smiled. Cassandra brought wine.
‘Merci,’ Dubois said, extending to her his better manners.
I raised my glass to the woman. And Cassandra turned, her ample buttocks cantaloupes, and she went back inside among such regulars as Blind Musician and Gentleman Jim in his stupor. There he was, sockless, slightly astonished at the tricks life plays on one. Then Dubois guffawed, yes, for no reason at all, and especially as there was no Eggy about; and then he got serious.
‘It’s hit me recently: I’m going to die, some day.’
His eyes, glittering with intelligence, were making something like an appeal. Those words of his seemed to go against the grain of an arch-materialist’s catechism that death was only to be expected.
‘What,’ I somewhat cheekily responded, ‘and you haven’t made your peace with your Maker?’
‘That’s below the belt, Calhoun.’
‘I assume most of us think we’ll be in our right minds at the moment of death, everything squared away, nothing left but a few regrets to inconvenience one’s spirit. I figure it’ll be so much emptier than that, that we’ll see we’ve lived to no particular purpose but to extend the gene pool and the like—’
‘Who’s the cynical materialist here?’
‘Why, it’s yours truly.’
‘Do you believe in God?’
I had no idea Dubois was even capable of troubling himself with the question.
‘Irrelevant question. The question is: do I believe in anything?’
‘Well?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Eleanor,’ muttered Dubois, ‘she’s up to something.’
I reviewed the evening, a CD in the ghetto blaster. Corelli. For starters, and as Eggy would have it, just how deep were Moonface’s affections for her Champagne Sheridan, the latest one? Why, hoo hoo, if Bob and I plan another jaunt to Quebec City, and she agrees to it, agrees to come along, that is, it can’t mean they’re very deep, those affections. Oh, I guess she’s a young woman looking for her way. Effing hell, she’s but an adolescent. Ungrateful wench. After all I’ve done for her. Well, I fell over backarseward the other night. Hit my head. She called the medics. But I was alright. No harm done. And then, Eleanor. She was priming herself, so I figured, for a suicide mission, one last kick at the can. The can was a fling with Phillip Dundarave, the carpenter. But had Dubois finally run out of his capacity to pretend not to care, his mortality reaching up for him like some monster in a bog? It went like this for a while, one question succeeding another. Where was Sally McCabe? Under which rat-like footballer was she ensconced while she sniffed the wind for the answer to life’s mysteries? There could not be much about the male she did not know or otherwise suspect. And so forth and so on. And rendition. And torture. Dismembered economy. Fruitless wars. And here was Corelli on a Roman balcony, sawing away on his violin, an infinitely more sympathetic figure than Blind Musician, some poor lout in a cart on the street below being hauled off for hanging, this music the last he would hear of la bella vita without the jeering of his fellow louts dinning his ears. Fast Eddy appeared. Fast Eddy sat there in a chair, struggling with spectrely emotions.
‘I hear,’ he said, ‘how you and Eggy like to picture Moonface on her back. It’s most ungentlemanly, I must say.’
His insufferable gravitas. He had said his piece and now he was away. Great swathes of melancholy that a bow drew across lengths of gut. I had theories about melancholy, but not now, not here. Cruel life? No, life was good. Ask the billionaires.
I dreamed police dogs and admonitory headlines. I woke and heard Moonface run a shower. Was she pleased with her life? Troubled? I rose, dressed, and went to the window at the end of the Traymore hall. Here was Mrs Petrova in the cool of the morning with the old push lawn mower, she in a print dress that blazed with colour. I would head to a breakfast diner I knew. Eggs, sausages, toast. Food that tells one all systems are go; that life goes on, familiar pettiness the bedrock from which civilization’s pillars derived rootedness and stability. A pity Le Grec only opened at noon. Would our kind ever have again a thing about poetry and shepherds? Someone had, in fact, beheaded a young man in the back of a Greyhound bus, there in the boonies of Manitoba. It confused people.
Bougainvillea and Stone
I recalled the countless Roman streets I walked in fascination, commercial, residential, historical streets. But that, sometimes, an air of menace would chill me. Hooded figures. Murderous hands. Consider that there was no automatic weapons fire in those ancient, imperial days, no bombs, no missile strikes. Save for the clamour of sacking armies or street riots, murder was a silent business. Coalesce all the cries on the pa
rt of all the victims into a single groan, and it would raise no more ruckus than a butterfly’s wings. And here, in this my faded Jezebel of a town, I loved sitting out on the terrasse, watching the world go by. A cigarette. Glass of wine. The town’s old history was so many images in my thoughts of snow-fed fires and uprisings. Sin and church. Here would come Miss Meow miaowing or Blind Musician blinking stupidly, hectoring philistines. The hag would whirl around and jab pedestrians with a forefinger. Just now, Eggy seated with me, had it in for Gregory. Gregory, part owner of Le Grec aka the Blue Danube, was in the galley along with Serge, a large order for chicken pita having been phoned in, and they were seeing to it. Moonface was a bit red-eyed, having had a late one of it the night before.
‘Why?’ I asked Eggy, ‘what’s Gregory done now?’
‘He’s Greek,’ Eggy huffed. ‘He has ideas beyond his station,’ Eggy added.
‘He seems to be making a go of it,’ I suggested.
‘He’s a peasant who’s trying to create a classy eatery. Isn’t going to happen, not with this clientele. Why, we’re it, we’re the only class he’s got.’
Cassandra was fussing with some potted flowers the names of which escaped me, but that they looked like tiger lilies.
‘Now there’s a nice woman,’ observed Eggy.
‘Yes, I like her myself,’ I said.
‘She’s the classy part of the joint,’ Eggy went on to say, ‘and it’s not Moonface. Ungrateful wench.’
I turned so as to ascertain whether or not the dear girl was in ear shot.
‘Oh well,’ Eggy hoo hooed, ‘a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.’
And then he was on about the Balfour Declaration and Jews, and what a right cock-up it had been in the ensuing years.
‘Oh well,’ a tiny sparrow of a man shrugged. ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘I’m ready to depart.’
‘What, and miss out on all the babes going by? I don’t think so.’
‘Seen one, seen them all.’
Eggy was being obstreperous.
‘I’ll tell you one thing I’d like to see,’ he now piped up, his voice pure lasciviousness, his finger raised, ‘is Moonface on her tummy, her arsehole winking at the sky.’
New heights of vulgarity on Eggy’s part. I was taken aback.
And now, his finger still raised, his voice Zeus-like, thundering, humankind was but a cancer on the earth. All the collectives as have had their days had funked their chance, and he supposed no one people were any better or any worse than any other. This much philosophizing was tuckering him out; his chin began to raise his chest. I was rereading, perhaps for the nth time: In Rome’s earliest years as a city, its rulers were kings (the words belonging to Tacitus) when I heard Moonface addressing me, she saying: ‘I have a question for you.’
‘Preemptive reply,’ I said, ‘if life has no meaning, what can it matter?’
‘Cool,’ she said.
Then Lucius Junius Brutus created the consulate and free Republican institutions in general. Dictatorships were assumed in emergencies.
‘So what’s new?’ she asked.
‘Rome,’ I said, ‘the coming Principate.’
She seemed to know what I was on about. She nodded, her mouth drawn tight. It had been weeks, if not months, since she had last had a fit, knock wood, or else she was keeping mum. Eggy stirred.
‘Bloody effing hell,’ he said.
‘Why, I was just having a dream about you, Emma,’ he added, addressing Moonface by her proper name. ‘Oops, I’d better not say.’
‘Why, was it dirty?’
‘Not saying.’
He went back to dozing. The Moonface smile was triumphant, but of what the victory consisted, I had no idea. Eleanor, of course, thought the girl a twit. Dubois figured she was born for the civil service. Marjerie Prentiss was dressed to beat the heat—light blouse, skirt, flip-flops. Ralph and Phillip walked on either side of her as they came upon us. Moonface’s smile went away.
Cumulus was building, the sky looking distinctly stormy. I did not think I had the spiritual wherewithal for the visitation about to transpire. A scraping of chairs along the pavement roused Eggy, and he lifted his head.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Marjerie. How do you do?’
And then to Ralph and Phillip: ‘Why, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.’
Hands were shaken. Ralph, the steady one, explained that they were not staying; a garage sale beckoned. They had hopes of getting themselves a ceiling fan on the cheap. Eggy thought that they must have the time for a beer, surely. Marjerie’s eyes, for all that they were watery eyes, drilled holes in my jaw, erotic burblings in me now. Inspiring hips. Moonface, who had retreated briefly at the sight of these people, reemerged and asked if they wanted anything. Ralph repeated himself. Momentary interest to do with the waitress flickered in Phillip’s eyes that struck me as somewhat glassy; perhaps, he was stoned. He set them again on Marjerie. God only knew what the threesome had been up to. Scrabble? Verse recitation? Leisurely buggering? A white butterfly flitted by, heartbreakingly beautiful, seemingly lost. Moonface stood around, unsure of herself. Marjerie asked, her voice a modulated boom: ‘Well, are we going or staying?’
‘Why, stay,’ said Eggy, ‘you know, I’ve been meaning to ask you out.’
‘Who, me?’ said the unsuspecting woman, caught a little off her stride.
‘Don’t mind me,’ said the old hoser, ‘I always ask the girls. Keeps me young. I don’t expect, you know, oh bloody hell—’
Ralph, leaning forward, endeavouring to look interested, was anxious to leave. It was then I took note of him seriously for the first time. Longish hair. The famous Julio-Claudian ears large and flap-like, almost independent of the head. His eyes were not unkind. Phillip was one of those men who hid their intelligence and did not mind, rustic sidekick to his intellectual betters. He could not, however, disguise the intense curiosity in his gaze. I would not have been averse to his presence at a Blue Danubian table, just that I now had the impression he would make one pay for it sooner or later. Moonface excused herself, the phone ringing inside. Marjerie broke the gathering tension, thunder rumbling above.
‘If we’re going to get that item—’
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Ralph to Eggy.
‘Likewise,’ said Phillip.
Marjerie folded her arms across her chest and began to walk away, her arms hairy, the men scrambling after her.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Eggy, his brow furrowed, his eyes disturbed.
I saw the threesome laughing themselves silly in the corner of my eye. Tight little group.
I helped Eggy through the door, then brought in the libations and my book. What, had something adhered to my being that Moonface found repulsive? She would not meet my eyes.
§
Book III—Iron Skies and Potted Flowers
As Noted
—Emma MacReady (Moonface) Jottings
No sleep. Boffing lots. I don’t know, do I love my Champagne Sheridan?
Oddments
—Moonface tells me she is going to Ecuador. She worries that bugs will bite her between the toes. She really did mean to write a poem for me, but that ‘the world turns one way and words another, and it’s all a lie anyway’. Evie is her favourite person ever, though she does not see much of her. She is also going to Vancouver, Moonface is. False Creek condo. Where the Champagne Sheridan Srs will vet her for the position of wife to Champagne Sheridan Jr. BBQ’s. Pompeii with kayaks and dragon boats. She will mainline guacamole. I told her the spookiest moment in American political history was when Kissinger knelt with Nixon to pray. But if Americans do not like phony two dollar bills, who are the biggest phonies around?