“Our turn!” Gail exclaimed.
“No way! I’m not going to grill myself like a sausage.”
She began taking her clothes off. “Come on! We’ll purify ourselves. Start a new life. Turn a page on our shitty past.”
“Our” shitty past? Was that what she said?
She tore her clothes off, threw them in the grass. “Come on, join us! Get naked!”
Susan stripped as well. It was the first time I’d seen her without colourful layers of shapeless clothing. Feeling watched, she crossed her arms over her generous breasts. Gail was becoming impatient; she grabbed her arm and both of them, hand in hand, jumped over the flames that licked at their calves, shouting in raw, reverent voices, “Light! Light! Light!” Flames on every hill, roaring from all the bonfires, a fireman’s nightmare in the middle of a thirsty, dry country.
Then came a grotesque series of two-bit rituals, including a pathetic moment where each was invited to throw into the fire something they considered the principal barrier to their happiness. Everyone began searching the desert scrub for an object that might represent their obstacle. An emotional woman spoke of incest by her father when she was eight; she threw a mouse’s corpse into the fire, and the crowd applauded. Feverish, Gail turned towards me and asked me for my wallet. I thought she was joking. She insisted, “Give it to me, please.”
“No.”
“Give it to me!”
Something angry in her eyes, uncompromising. She seemed ready to explode. I gave her my wallet, thinking she wouldn’t dare. But she dared. She pulled out every single bill, showed them to the assembly.
“Please, Gail…”
She looked at the crowd and said, “Hello. I’m Gail.”
“Hello Gail,” they answered together.
She raised her head, pushed her long blond hair from her face. She was naked, like most of them. The prominent bones of her pelvis practically tore through her skin. Displayed like this, for all to see, I didn’t find her quite so desirable. She disgusted me, even. We can’t keep going on this way, both of us.
She brandished the bills, shook them in front of the flames. “This money perfectly symbolizes my family and my ex-husband. Rich people who never have enough. They have no qualms about breaking the lives of those around them to get even richer, just a bit — scandalously — richer.…”
Applause, words of encouragement, “Go for it, Gail, we’re with you!” She smiled, counted out the money — two hundred dollars. The crowd purred with pleasure.
“Gail, don’t be ridiculous … Give me those bills back….”
She snickered, staggered, her small breasts quivering like boiling water. “You’re rich too! You have to be, to be carrying this much money!”
“Yeah! Go for it Gail!”
I gritted my teeth, grabbed her by the arm. “Tell me, how are we going to pay for gas on the drive home?”
She moved away from me brusquely, barked a sarcastic laugh. “You’re ruining everything with your capitalist preoccupations!” Spoken with the same tone as Ken Lafayette.
I said, trembling with indignation, “Capitalist? Who’s been taking care of you since you got here? Who’s going to pay for your studies?”
She choked, “Ah! See that? You keep telling me it makes you happy to do it! But you’re lying! You were just waiting for the right time to criticize me! Just another form of control. You think that by paying me you’ll be able to put me in chains?”
Around us, the crowd was stirring. “Leave her alone!”
“Yes, leave me alone.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying. You smoked too much hippie grass.”
“That’s none of your business!”
“Fine, I’m going to go get some air. Better put an end to this discussion. You might regret what you say.”
“Regret what I say?” She mocked my inflection. “I’m telling you what I think — at last! I can’t breathe, Romain Carrier, because of your false benevolent attentions!”
Like a knife in the gut. “Fine! Go back to Montreal! I’m not your goddamned jailer!”
“Yes, you are! You just don’t realize it!”
A sensation of vertigo, nausea. She challenged me with her eyes, took the two hundred dollars, and threw it in the fire. Shouts of joy and incantations. The bills burned, quickly reduced to sparks carried by the wind. Gail was laughing, her head thrown back, triumphant. On her moist skin, shining with sweat, the flames danced, reflected like in a mirror. She turned her feverish eyes towards me, and we knew, at that very moment, that something had been irreparably broken between us.
A guy with long hair, completely naked, placed a hand on my shoulder. “It’s only money, man. Don’t take it that way.” He pointed at Gail. “Tonight, you helped her free herself from her demons. That’s worth all the gold in the world.” He slapped my back and made his way towards Gail, leaned towards her and said something in her ear. She burst out laughing. He took her by the waist, the bastard, and she let herself be taken, all the while looking at me straight in the eyes, a vengeful smile on her face — I’m not your thing, your property.
And suddenly, a light burst into the sky, burning like a giant comet. Flames exploded from the other side of the hill and thick smoke began to rise, covering the light of all the solstice fires. Thick black smoke. And shouts, enough to put ice in your veins.
“What … What is it?” Eyes filled with fear. Someone said something about coyotes, there were quite a few in the sector. “No!” a woman shouted in terror. “No! The children.…”
A cacophony of shouts, mixed in with the roar of fires, amplified by the echo of the valley. We began running, climbing the hill. All these intoxicated people, falling, naked men and women, shouting in horror. At the top of the hill, we could see the downwards slope, and a terrifying spectacle — the great tent was burning. “How many children? How many are there?” a man was shouting, disoriented. Five? Eight? Ten? Twelve? “I … I don’t know,” a woman said, crying. Some of the women were distraught, on the edge of fainting, calling for their children, frenzied, looking for them, the children they’d forgotten were there. A few children stepped from the darkness, their faces fearful, and hugged their relieved mothers. The rest of us watched, horrified, powerless, as the nightmare unfolded. Cries, shouts, tears. “How many children? Can someone tell me, for God’s sake!” Ten? Twelve? The flames were too high, too wild for any of us to get close.
Gail was shaking like a leaf. “Susan,” she sobbed. “We need to find Susan.” Her distraught eyes searched the crowd. “Where are your clothes?” I asked her. She didn’t know where she’d left them. Too bad. I put my vest over her shoulders and ordered her to follow me. We found Susan near the stream, in a state of shock. She had put her clothes back on and couldn’t stop sobbing. “Tell me it isn’t true … that it’s a mistake, that it’s a dream.…” I felt nauseous, a wild buzzing in my ears. The fire. The cries. The cries of dying children. I took both their hands; they let themselves be led to the Westfalia.
The night was deep by the time we left that twisted place. We saw the emergency vehicles arrive, two fire trucks and four ambulances. But it was too late.
A deserted road, no light but the moon. My wallet was empty; we would run out of gas soon. Anyway, where would I find gas? No service station would be open at this hour, but I drove on anyway, no faster than twenty-five miles an hour, with tension in my neck and an incessant drumming in my skull. To flee that place, to get as far away from it as quickly as possible, to no longer see the gruesome glimmer in the rear-view mirror.
In the back seat, Gail and Susan had fallen asleep, knocked out by emotion and the grass they’d smoked. After twenty minutes, I saw a neon Mobil sign on Route 49, shunted this way and that by the wind. Relieved, I slowed down, brought the Volks into the gravel parking lot, filled with weeds. My headlights shone on a beaten-down building
, with what seemed like a single lamp inside. I parked the van, cut the engine, and waited for the owner. Around six in the morning, an old pick-up parked next to me, and a guy in overalls climbed out. I woke Gail up.
“Give me your watch.”
“Where are we?”
“I said your watch.”
“Why?”
“To pay for gas.”
She shrugged, turned towards Susan. “Don’t you have any money?”
“No, Gail. Leave Susan out of this. I want your watch.”
She stiffened. Her hair was dirty, her forehead stained with ashes.
“Are you crazy? It’s worth a fortune! Howard gave it to me. You could buy a car with it.”
I exploded, “You’re crying for a watch that your husband who beat you gave you? I can’t believe my ears! You should have thrown the goddamn watch into the fire! Not my money! I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth!”
She smiled unkindly. “But you didn’t mind taking the millions that Dana Feldman left behind, right?”
I choked back terrible words, “What’s Dana got to do with anything?”
She didn’t answer. “You know what?” I continued. “I learned at least one lesson from this night with your gang of idiot friends. You’ll always be a daddy’s girl who expects to be treated like a princess.”
“I hate you!”
“Enough!”
Susan raised her voice. “Cut it out!” Exasperated, she put her hand in her bag and pulled out a fistful of bills. “Go, take them, for God’s sake. And for the love of God, shut up!”
When we got to San Francisco, Gail took refuge in our bedroom and stayed there for the rest of the day. At supper time, I knocked softly on the door; she pushed me away with an “I’m not hungry!” That night I slept on the couch. Early the next morning, she was waiting for me in the kitchen, ready to leave.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“I called Susan. She’s coming to drive me to the airport.”
9
After Gail left, I wandered through the city until late at night, then returned to Telegraph Hill, exhausted, upset, and relieved all at once.
A full moon overhead, mottled with filmy clouds. A late June heaviness hung in the air; it was humid, and a handful of boats could be seen on the bay, their owners taking advantage of the summer heat. The apartment was bathed in darkness. I threw my keys on the table in the vestibule and flicked on the light switch for the ceiling light — nothing happened. Same thing for a small lamp on the table, the living room lamps, and my office lighting. A power failure? I could see light pouring out of the windows of my neighbours’ place on Calhoun. Maybe a problem with the fuses. I groped forward in the dark, the only light coming from the moon. Then I saw the fan turning in the bedroom. So not an electrical problem. What’s happening? My heart began beating faster. In front of me, at the end of the corridor, the kitchen window was completely open, its drapes dancing in the wind. “Is someone there? Gail? Is that you? Did you come back?” I entered the kitchen and saw that the chairs around the table had been moved and lined up along the wall, all except one.
“Gail, if it’s you, well … this isn’t funny.…”
Then a noise from behind, startling me, followed by a croak of laughter.
“Ken, what the fuck are you doing here?”
“That’s no way to welcome a friend.”
He was standing on a chair, behind the door.
“How did you get in here?”
“Through the window.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Why did you come in here, like, like … why did you break in?”
He chortled, “Break in!”
“What did you do to the light bulbs?”
“Unscrewed them.”
“Why”
“Simple precaution.”
“Precaution for what?”
He came down from his perch, his shorter leg almost tripping him up. He dug one hand into his pocket, and pulled out a light bulb that he screwed into the lamp over the table. Raw light exploded on his sweaty face; he was panting as if he’d been running, and I wondered how he’d managed to climb the outside wall and through the window. An accomplice?
“What do you want from me?”
He ignored me, scanned my kitchen. “Nice place,” he said. “And here I was thinking you were in some wretched state.”
“Who gave you my address?”
“They say she’s pretty, the girl you were living with.”
“Bastard!”
He grabbed my hair, pulled it back. I screamed in pain.
“Let me go, for God’s sake!” He let go, pushed me against the wall. “What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy?”
Stunned, I watched him limp to the refrigerator and grab a beer. He opened it, dropped the cap on the floor. “I’m talking to you, Ken!” He closed his eyes, took a long swig. His face was strained, his hair greasy and long, his clothes wrinkled, a stale smell came off him. He wiped his mouth with his hand, and said in a soft voice, “Sit down. I’ll tell you.”
The FBI was looking for him, for having set up a GI coffee house at Fort Ord, south of San Francisco. GI coffee houses were opened by civilians just outside military bases, where soldiers could get together, listen to music, get drunk, smoke, and, especially, talk freely, without a sergeant’s gun at their temple. In that smoke-filled atmosphere, a mix of students and soldiers congregated, and an abundance of subversive and revolutionary literature circulated that had convinced more than one GI to try insubordination, even desertion. The authorities petitioned the courts to close the places down.
“The cops came in two days ago. All the employees were arrested for public nuisance. Now they’re looking for me. I need a place to stay for awhile.”
I paled. “You’re welcome to stay tonight, but after.…”
“After what?”
“You’ll need to find something else. You know the risk I’m taking by sheltering a man the FBI is looking for.”
“You’re not understanding me, Roman. I’m asking for hospitality. The same I offered you in Berkeley.”
He’s serious, the son of a bitch? I had to stop myself from laughing.
He continued, “If I’m arrested, I might go in for six years. Imagine, you brought tons of GIs to the other side of the border.…”
I stiffened. Pete talked? Pete told the FBI about going to Vancouver?
“What do you mean tons?”
“It’s your word against the committee members in Berkeley, if you know what I mean. A simple phone call, and.…”
He’s trying to trap me, the bastard!
“You disgust me.”
“Come now, don’t be that way. You let me live here a while. You act as if nothing is happening, you buy enough food for two, like in the good old days.” He laughed. “You’ll see, we’ll find common ground, you and I.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I let him stay, unable to defend myself after ten months spent with Gail. She’d burned me out, emptied me. I’d lost almost twenty pounds and begun suffering from insomnia again. My eye was weaker, it tired more quickly, especially when I drove, leaving painful headaches during the day. I was in a pitiful state, and Ken understood that quickly enough. His daily threats, barely veiled, put me constantly on edge, “You know, a lot of them know all about your little trip to Vancouver,” and my name, he repeated, would come out during Pete’s trial. I could only stare at him, fearful.
I made every meal, and he never lent a hand. He would serve himself huge portions and bring them to his room. He never brought the plates back to the kitchen, just left them there to dry out until I picked them up, filled with rage, and tried my best to clean them. Sometimes, weary looking guys came over to the house. They spoke softly, one of th
em had maps with him, maps of San Francisco and California, which he rolled out on the living room floor and studied closely. If Ken really was on the lam from the FBI for his GI coffee house, they never spoke of it. They talked about the great coups they might organize — occupations, blockades, climbing tall towers, suspending banners. And, perhaps, acts of sabotage. But I didn’t want to hear any of it, and so I tried not to listen.
Ken Lafayette had been holding me hostage for two weeks, and Bobby still knew nothing. He often asked me questions, worried for me. “What’s up with you? You’re not doing well, I can tell. Are you sick?” I started avoiding him, and he held it against me. “What did I do, for God’s sake, for you to run away from me!” One afternoon, as I was about to leave the office, he made a beeline for me. His face was hostile and his eyes threatening behind his glasses. He told me to go into the small room reserved for microfiche archives, and closed the door behind us.
“Okay. Enough games. Tell me everything, and I’ll leave you the fuck alone.”
“Bobby … I’m just not feeling all that well. That’s all.”
“Take a few days to rest, then.”
His voice was dry, without compassion.
“No!”
He blinked at my tone. “No?”
“No. I’m telling you I don’t need a day off.”
He sighed, and gazed at me for the longest time, suspiciously. “As long as you don’t tell me what’s going on, we’re not going anywhere. We’ll spend the night here if we have to. And the next one too.”
Métis Beach Page 28