by Norm Sibum
To be hand-delivered to her at the Blue Danube when circumstances allow
Subject: Elucubrations
Dear Evie, and holder (apparently) of the secret key to the secret door to you know where, my heart,
It’s cold outside, today, very cold, and you are in Mexico. Therefore, as it is, today, in Montreal, weather to which we are regularly subjected, we, meaning I, finally get around to the shared project of us staying in touch, and to this end, here I am (in my West Wing, so to speak) writing you a letter so that you will not be able to totally forget us, despite your best efforts.
We don’t quite know what the fall-out will be, but a major event has taken place in this our distinguished residential establishment with which you were familiar in your capacity as Eggy’s house-cleaner and chauffeur (indeed, Eggy misses you though he refuses to admit it, his Haitian nurse and all other such women having long since abandoned him, and yes, Eggy is still among the living); but that Marjerie Prentiss, pseudo-Traymorean—perhaps you don’t recall her—went, how shall I put it, bananas, was walking around the residential hall in a state of undress, excepting the boa, that is, and the gun, and well, it’s pretty complicated to explain. I have come to believe she was sleep-walking in a way and meant no one any harm. Eggy said she was wearing her BMB, which is to say, her boff me boa, but she had no takers. Calhoun—remember him?—has no opinion. Eleanor thinks I was the intended victim. Enough said.
Our preferred hangout is still the same place, and we, we residents of the Traymore Rooms, still prefer to call it The Blue Danube, though the effing Greeks and Albanians would run the place into the ground as Le Grec. Our table, which you were often eager to join, even when we were busy discussing state matters, now has a name, courtesy of moi, which for sure you will find most appropriate: Animal Table. Mostly, it remains attended by one Arthur Eglinton, Eggy to you (this Yank you know as an exile from a sorry place) one Calhoun, Randall Q (another Yank immigrated to Canada to get away from the Evil Empire and a bucking poet about to come into his own after a writing career of some 40+ years), and a French-Canadian (Canadian nevertheless who thinks we need Jean Chrétien to return to the helm in these uncertain times as he was, like me, Shawinigan-born). We entertain visitors sometimes, particularly when we think that such a visitor might have a contribution to offer, like a good intellect, or plenty of good quality wine. Not too many have made the grade to membership so far; sorry you do not come often enough for us to come to some favourable assessment, but had you, we would have fast-tracked you straight to the chairwoman’s chair. In the summer, of course, the said Animal Table moves to the terrasse when the sun is out, and then back inside when the rain hits. A very favourable arrangement. Calhoun calls it our grandeur. If you want clarification on this matter, you will have to take it up with him. It’s too bad you’re in Mexico. By the way, Eggy is in love again. He might have given you to think you were the only one, but sorry to say, you were not. It is believed that he might be trying to hit on a new black nurse or the beautiful doctor he met when at Verdun Emergency. Can’t blame him; she was beautiful. And Moonface aka Emma MacReady, your friend and ours, is very soon leaving for South America with her beau on, they say, an academic expedition. There is some question in Eggy’s mind as to the pose she’ll strike on the beaches. We are afraid that Moonface will never be the same again when and if she returns, given what might catch her over there.
We hope that your health is fine; surely it must be.
The others of the Traymorean menagerie are doing fine. Mrs Petrova, as per Calhoun, is an immortal.
We hope that, if this letter reaches you despite the unpredictability of the snail mail, you will write to us of your exotic (I almost said erotic) experiences in Mexico.
Have a great 2009.
Friendly regards.
Robert Dubois
Traymore Rooms
Montreal, Qc., Canada
§
Part Five
MOONFACE RETURNS
Book I—The Page Turned
Chicago School of Physics
Who can know what is around the next corner? Edward Sanders, aka Fast Eddy, happened to turn a corner and went smack against a sparrow in flight. It was the rudest of surprises, and then he died. Marjerie Prentiss stays elsewhere, for the time being, either with her mother or with Ralph, her intended, in the Townships. It was necessary that she go. Dubois considered she had not been in her right mind. Right mind or not, the police pointed out she had had no license for the firearm she waved about, starkers in the Traymore hall. The inevitable ologists perhaps have had their way with the woman. Robert Dubois, impossibly vain and handsome in his 66th year is, even so, less vain and less handsome of late, the result perhaps of what he calls cluster headaches. He had suffered from them mightily prior to the time I arrived on the scene, and now they have returned, the pain so intense he lies on his bathroom floor dry-heaving for hours on end. Eleanor R, the long time apple of his eye, she simply leaves him to it, unable to bear the spectacle of his discomfort. Arthur Eglinton on the other hand, Eggy to Traymoreans, in his 82nd or 83rd year—I have lost track—is hale and hearty, so to speak. He has had his little episodes and his little strokes and still, all bundled up, stutter-stepping with his cane, afterburners switched on, he makes his trek from the Traymore to the Blue Danube almost daily, and drinks his wine and holds forth. His memory of verses is not, as it turns out, as limitless as it has seemed: he repeats himself, but no matter. Good verses can stand the repeating. A new president sits in the White House; and though, one’s expectations rise and fall like a yo-yo on a string, at least the man is not as despised as was the previous occupant. We are a few days shy of Valentine’s Day. The air reeks of rotting snow. For the time being, it looks like Phillip Dundarave will hold down Prentiss’s apartment, he one of her stalwart swains who very nearly wrecked Eleanor’s relations with Dubois. My name is Randall Q Calhoun. A student sublets Moonface’s digs while she is away in Ecuador.
Runaway Train
Life moved too fast for the critical conscience. By the time one worked out the nature of one’s relations to A; by the time one established whether or not one could live in some uneasy peace with an obscenity, the world had already put B in one’s path, and one flailed one’s arms about. The futility of it all. In any case, I joined Dubois in the Blue Danube. Glowering afternoon. Dirty snow on the streets.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what’s the word on your headaches?’
‘Catastrophe,’ he answered, leaning on the French pronunciation of the word.
He had had to cancel his breakfast engagement with an ex-prime minister, a childhood friend of his, also a Shawiniganite. They would try again but Dubois was not holding his breath. He compared his pains to the birthing pains of women in labour. I suggested he ought not make too much of a point of that; women might resent the comparison. Antonio, the Albanian-Italian waiter set a grilled cheese sandwich on the table. Antonio’s dream was to play for a great soccer team. AC Roma, for example. Antonio awaited our customary badinage, but as none was forthcoming, he drifted into the galley where Gregory the owner was cooking. It seemed that he, along with his partner Elias, had made a go of things with the place. How a possible recession would affect business remained to be seen. Cassandra, wife to Elias, was also in the galley. She had the body of a fertility goddess. She was tired, and she was biting her tongue. I said I had a bad feeling about things. Dubois arched his brows. He knew what was coming: politics.
‘Israel is tacking hard right,’ I said, ‘and you know what that means.’
‘Yes,’ said Dubois, ‘so what does it mean?’
His tone indicated he did not much care. And I knew better than to insist. As for Moonface—classical scholar, waitress, would-be sexpot and now, world traveller—no one had heard from her. She had, however, airmailed our way a snapshot of herself c/o Le Grec aka the Blue Danube. It showed her posing on the scree of some Ecuadorian mountain. There was no way of telling from the somewhat
diffident smile whether she was in good spirits or bad. It would seem the dear girl continued feckless, even in an exotic landscape. Eggy was sure she would ditch her Champagne Sheridan there, and return to us, her true companions, wiser for the experience.
Yes, and now that Moonface had been absent from us for some weeks, it could be determined, however imperfectly, to what extent she was central to the lives of Traymorean males. There were fewer erotic burblings, perhaps, to do with her sandy hair and prominent incisors and modest bosom and child-bearing hips; but she had, even so, pride of place in our hearts. By virtue of her presence, if nothing else, she was always putting us in mind of our less than noble pasts. She was sharpening our views of what the future might portend, for in wishing her well, we would speculate as to what obstacles might complicate her happiness. Eggy pretended not to take her absence amiss. No, he would note that the café did not seem as well run as when she waitressed, patient and polite with her customers even as she parried our raillery. And he would go on about the poor review a performance of Verdi’s MacBeth had recently received; and then, with one of his rabbit leaps of logic, he would speak of Haitian Nurse—a charming young woman of his acquaintance—and how, ambitious, she was intent on rising in the world of medicine; and how, in her busy schedule, she managed to fit in visitations from the man (alas, not Eggy) whose sole purpose in life was to attend to her sexual needs. Cozy arrangement, so Eggy reflected. Eggy had had his wives and mistresses, but one might conjecture that the course of love and lust in his life had not run as smoothly as he might have liked. Well, Dubois was suffering. All the world could see it was so, he holding his head as if it were the most fragile of flowers, attempting to entice the pain to go elsewhere. The trademark hairline cracks of his cheeks which had, however inexplicably, given him a somewhat distinguished air, seemed to be widening into chasms.
By reputation the finest of all the Traymore rooms, Eleanor’s kitchen had become a home away from home for me. It was her salon; it was, at times, a trysting-site. She was crocheting when I entered, having left Dubois in the café, he wondering if he might just curl up in a fetal position on its floor.
‘Lampshade,’ said Eleanor, she of the gilded curls and revealing blouses and flambouyant skirts and pompadours.
‘But it’s not human skin,’ she drolled morbidly.
What PBS documentary had she been watching?
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ I said.
‘Bob’s having another attack of those headaches,’ I continued.
‘Oh that. Well, he’ll be lost to us for a while,’ she sighed.
‘Is Dundarave now a full-timer among us?’ I asked.
‘No idea,’ Eleanor said, with exaggerated innocence.
She and Dundarave had been almost an item.
‘In fact,’ she went on to say, ‘I think he’s found himself a woman.’
‘Not Jarnette?’
I saw in my mentations a smiling and confident looker of rich chestnut tresses with whom I had had a brief episode.
‘She’s moved on to other pastures, I should think. Phillip’s going to bring his new flame around for me to check out.’
Eleanor’s tone seemed utterly neutral. And I rolled myself a cigarette and I was suffered to roll Eleanor one, as well. I turned down her offer of an amaretto.
‘Well, I’m having one,’ she announced.
And she lay her crocheting on the table and went to the cupboard for her supply of the amber; and she dispensed some into a brandy snifter.
‘Are you sure?’ I was asked.
I was sure. Perhaps it was an hallucination: sunlight salon of hardwood flooring and high, mullioned windows. Tall and leafy plants. Grand piano. Some Noel Coward-like figure in a white smoking jacket having at Debussy. The beautiful Sally McCabe playing peek-a-boo from behind a Chinese folding screen, large birds and arbutus painted on it. She was an on again, off again visitation in my thoughts. We had been at Polson High together so long, long ago, down there in an America the most peaceful rustics of which were lethal.
‘So what do you think of Suzie Q?’ I inquired of Eleanor, shaking off the vision.
The student subletting Moonface’s apartment went by the name of Susan, cognomen unknown.
‘I think she was warned off us by Moonface. She’s minding her own beeswax, and anyway, she’s rather plain and broad in the beam—’
‘Yes, but she’s bright, or she looks that way. Moonface said she was one of the more dedicated students in her classic’s class.’
‘Well, maybe you two will have something to talk about one of these days. Who was it? Virgil? The poet, you know, you were always going on about?’
‘The very same.’
‘Virgil Shmirgil. Anyway, I’d say we’ve had enough excitement in the old Traymore to last us a while. And I’ll be very surprised if Moonface hangs around when she gets back. You guys aren’t getting any younger, and she’s waking up to the fact she’s got a life to live. I mean, Eggy grabbing at her tush non-stop—is that a life?’
Unable to settle down to any work in my digs, I retreated to the Blue Danube, a Traymorean watering-hole. I did however add to the hopeless incoherence of my notebooks that little salon-interlude, the hallucination that waylaid me in Eleanor’s kitchen. I had not actually heard the music. Debussy’s Canope? Eggy and Dubois were hammering out the terms of a wager, Dubois looking freer in his countenance.
‘Let’s get this straight,’ he said, ‘by this time next year, if Canada shows a GDP rate of growth at 3.5 per cent or better, you’ll pay me 50 bucks?’
‘That’s the general idea,’ Eggy said.
He was wearing a dark sports jacket of thick tweed, a royal-purple one-point kerchief peeking out of the pocket. Natty, Zeus-like Eggy. It was Dubois who had been showing his age, of late.
‘And I suppose Moonface is on her backside somewhere on white sand, looking up at the stars. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills—’
‘Sacrilege, Eggy,’ I observed, ‘the way you intend it.’
‘Well, why not? Effing hell. From whence cometh my help—’
It occurred to me that, earlier, Eleanor had not made the slightest attempt to flirt with me. This was new. And Eggy was old, 902 years of sin and meanness and angelic cheer.
‘You’ll renege as you always do,’ said Dubois.
‘I beg your pardon.’
Eggy was chuffed. Now Antonio stroked Eggy’s pate.
‘We love you,’ said the waiter.
‘Oh eff off.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘the new Current President, you know, the Unflappable One, the one in whom millions of wretches have invested hope, he’s at the controls of a runaway train.’
‘Who asked you?’ Dubois put it to me.
‘Oh, I think he’s right,’ Eggy said, his finger raised.
‘That’s all I need,’ Dubois noted, ‘two more pundits righter than rain.’
Had I misjudged Marjerie Prentiss? Was she such a loathsome creature as she seemed? Was she not just looking for love in the way any weed seeks the light of the sun? Could she, over time, learn to be less repellant? How failed was my failure? That I had not written Hamlet, let alone “Easter, 1916”. That I would lie on my bordello-green couch and my bones mock my sentience. That morning, Mrs Petrova, as she always did, arranged her gewgaws for display in her shop window, she in curlers, a bloom on her cheeks, and great age. It did not look like she knew the meaning of failure.
‘Yes,’ said Dubois, ‘two more effing opinionators.’
I left my two colleagues arguing Wolfe and Montcalm and the Plains of Abraham. They would be on about it until the last star flamed out in the galaxy. It was their immortality. Then again, Eggy, about to get bested in the exercise of logic, would abruptly shift gears, and waving his arms, indicate that a certain coterie of bastards ought to hang. Hoo hoo. But Dubois, of late, seemed to have lost interest in the evils of the American empire: torture, greed, hubris, whatnot beyond measure. In any case, as I went
up the Traymore stairs, Susan the new lodger was coming down them. I greeted a pair of wary eyes of indeterminate colour. Eleanor was wrong: this Susan was not as plain as all that, her bulky winter coat giving her the appearance of being broad in the beam. I made way for her descent. She might have thanked me; she did not. And yet, as she reached the bottom of the stairs, she turned, and looking up at me, said: ‘You’re Randall, aren’t you?’
‘That I am.’
‘Oh.’
She pushed through the door into the small foyer and then, presumably, gained the street. Her voice was not unpleasant. As I was about to unlock my door, Eleanor popped her head out hers and motioned me her way.
‘I’ve got company,’ she whispered, ‘help me.’
A strange woman was at table in Eleanor’s kitchen. Phillip Dundarave, beer and cigarette in hand, was pacing the floor like a caged bear. Women found him attractive. He had the air of a man in whom rage and shyness were always vying for the upper hand. Wanda Schneider was a stunner to look at, and yet, she left me cold. It was a mystery to me why some women, however advantaged with physical charms, simply did not move me, when even women who some might consider homely could turn my knees to jelly. Moonface was no beauty in the accepted notion of the word, and yet she had captured every iota of my being.
‘Wanda, this is Randall,’ Eleanor said, and she seemed unaccountably stiff in tone.
‘Hello,’ I said, and the woman and I exchanged nods.
I thought her a tennis player, perhaps. Tanned, athletic-looking. Sharp, clean features.
Sally McCabe Presents Moonface
I had need of music, whiskey, a smoke. I gave Eleanor a look which she knew well, and she did not press me to stay; Wanda Schneider itemizing her interests in life: real estate and hiking. She had met Phillip some years ago in the Townships, employing him to do carpentry work on her cottage. They had a fling, and now, it seemed they had resumed relations. For the well-heeled, sex often seems an entitlement.