by Mark Lisac
“That would be good.”
“Are you eating good meals?”
“Yes. Mr. Sandro lets me have old carrots that haven’t sold. And old bread. I make hamburger sometime. Peanut butter is good when you can put thin slices of carrot on it. Mr. Sandro let me have a package of raisins last week. That was so good with the peanut butter I couldn’t decide whether it was an ordinary sandwich or dessert.”
“You remember next Tuesday is our night out at the café?”
“Is it? That would be good, George. I like going to the café with you. You listen to my plans for the book and I always feel better about what it’s going to end up like.”
“Who’s Walter Benjamin, by the way?”
“He died years ago. He was a German philosopher and cultural critic, but he never learned how to fit in with the society and culture around him.”
“Sounds interesting. I have to go now. I’d like to give you ten dollars so you can buy some bananas to go with your peanut butter, and some milk.”
“Oh? Thank you. I would like that. Thank you very much.”
Rabani got up and smiled at Alex. He wondered if he was smiling like a weather man. He wondered if recurring light was the opposite of light captured once in a photograph—ongoing life rather than a memory dead and gone. He walked back to his car, waved and drove off. He thought he should visit his mother’s grave sometime soon so that it wouldn’t be so much like lying the next time he told Alex that he had seen her last week. He wondered if refusing to think of his job as social work came from knowing the pain of caring for others. And worse, of letting them down.
4.
BECKER FINISHED HIS BACON AND EGGS, PUT THE DISH AND cutlery into the washer, cleaned the greasy frying pan, put on his red-checked flannel jacket, and went outside into the last of the morning darkness.
He picked up the bag of dog food and opened the wire gate of the kennel. His four dachshunds and his Doberman pinscher—the “babysitter” that was actually more gentle than the smaller dogs unless provoked—milled around him as he poured out their morning ration.
The smell of dog hair mingled with the smell of dirt and morning dew. He knew the moist smell would linger until the sun rose above the row of caraganas. The fragrance of the scattered lilacs inside the caragana belt had dissipated; it was waiting to re-emerge next spring. That was fine with Becker. He liked the lilac fragrance but it was strong enough that he liked not having to smell it all year.
He turned the tap on the outside of the shed wall and filled the water dishes. He rubbed all the dogs on the head or behind the ears and patted the sides of the ones he could reach. Then he walked out, propping the gate open behind him so that the animals could have the run of the acreage for the day. He had long since stopped thinking about how he would have preferred to leave them free in the evening too. The neighbours worried about their own single dogs being attacked by a pack. He admitted to himself that their concerns were a handy excuse; he worried, too, about them possibly wandering off. He didn’t like seeing them chained. He let the Doberman stay out on summer nights as a guard dog. Having the dachshunds out too might help control the mice. The owls in the trees along his property line helped some but were not consistent.
He went back into the house for his office suit. Arlene was still in bed, but awake, watching him knot his paisley tie.
“Will you be late tonight, John?”
“Probably. There’s a committee meeting and that dinner with the museum people could stretch out. They probably want to corner me afterward about a grant.”
“Do you really have to leave this early if you’re going to be late coming back?”
“We’ve been through this. First thing in the morning is when I can get some work done without an endless string of people coming into the office. You’ll take care of the dogs’ supper?”
“Better than mine, I suppose. You know I don’t like cooking for just myself. Besides, I’m not feeling well today. A little fuzzy and congested.”
“Well, try to get some fresh air. It’s going to be sunny.”
“The dust from the leaves will be in the air. You know that bothers me.”
He took his brown-checked jacket from the closet and turned to her as he put it on. “You could try a dust mask.”
“I’ve told you, I’m not going around here looking like an invalid.”
You’re less like an invalid than anyone I know, he thought. But he said, “Maybe you can go into town, then. There must be one of your friends available for lunch.”
She looked at him as she sat up and received her quick morning kiss. She watched him walk out of the room, telling her, “I’ll try not to make it too late.”
Outside, he climbed into his full-size sport utility and made his patient way to the road. It was only out there that he stepped on the accelerator hard—where she couldn’t hear the engine wind up and think he was rushing to get away from her. He never rushed anyway. The quick morning talk with his wife and the slow drive out to the road had long ago become as much part of the routine as feeding the dogs. Routine had seeped into his life like summer heat. It was easy to give in. That was part of the attraction of the new admin assistant; she was not routine.
He passed other vehicles fast until the morning traffic grew thick enough toward the city that he had to slow down. The drive took him about forty minutes. There was plenty of time to think but he didn’t use all of it. He pulled into the legislature parking lot still not sure how to deal with Ostroski.
He spent the next few hours on the usual run of business. At five to ten he walked out and down the hallway. It was wide enough but claustrophobic with the sense of unyielding time—the high dark baseboards on the plaster walls, the art nouveau light fixtures, the terrazzo floors that had been walked on by generations of politicians and secretaries, and by campaign supporters who hoped that encouraging words and handshakes would sublimate into a façade of friendship that could turn into a job or government grant. Becker felt he could hear the decades of footsteps. He wondered how long he could last before he started seeing smelling the wool of bulky suits that had been worn in the days before frequent dry cleaning.
He got into the elevator and rode up to the executive floor. There he walked past the portraits of former premiers and lieutenant-governors. Some looked alive, especially the early governor in an evening suit, white cuffs showing, cigarette in hand, bearing an amused expression of an Edwardian gentleman with a good income and a taste for whisky and cards—what had a man like that really been like out here at the farthest reaches of British settlement? Some looked full of themselves and stared out at the future as if it was wasting their time. Some had their eyes averted as if they knew they had not stood up to a crush of dire events and did not want the failure in their faces to be put on display for future generations. No fear of that happening with Morehead, he thought.
The premier was ready to see him. Becker had watched him long enough to know that starting exactly on time meant he took this business seriously.
“Good morning, Premier.”
“Good morning, John. Have a seat.”
Waschuk was there, too. The chief of staff instead of the EA. Another sign that Morehead wanted action, and wanted it fast. If he had still been in doubt, the premier’s neutral expression would have told him all he needed to know. The famous Morehead grin was nowhere in sight. There was no offer of coffee.
“Do you know why I like being premier, John?”
“Must be either the pay, the adulation, or the pleasure of not having to wonder how long you’ll be in cabinet.”
Morehead still wasn’t in a smiling mood.
“I’d have left you in Industry but it was too big a job. An American-born premier is one thing. Having an American-born senior cabinet minister as well would have been pushing it.”
“Plus, I didn’t back you for the leadership.”
“Neither here nor there after I won. I like the job for two reasons. One, I show that a re
tired wide receiver can run a big organization as well as any retired quarterback. Two, the pay isn’t great but it lets me buy a new car every two years.
“Here’s what I don’t like about it: having to get along with all the cabinet ministers. And control them if necessary. Getting along with the other guys on the team wasn’t always easy. But they all had skills and were willing to work hard. They had to. They were constantly competing for their jobs. There isn’t enough competition when a party’s been in power for decades like ours has. Carelessness sets in. Sloppiness. That can eventually bite you on the ass. It just takes a little longer than in football. What was that business with the dog all about and has it ended or not?”
Becker knew the question was coming and didn’t have to search for an answer. “Jack Ostroski has never been happy with the sale of his photographs to the government. What’s really burning him up, though, is that he wants some of the pictures back. He says there are some personal ones that aren’t of any historic or artistic value.”
“Personal how?”
“I think they mostly involve a woman he once knew. There are probably no more than a few dozen of those. Maybe not even that many. One problem is that he won’t identify them. He wants the right to go through the collection in private and take out whatever he chooses.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“It would set a bad precedent. My deputy isn’t happy about the idea of reneging on a sale. Letting him cull the collection in private would be worse. But now that he’s come close to throwing one of my dogs off the bridge it’s impossible. We’d be giving in to threats.”
Waschuk cleared his throat, his way of asking permission to speak. Morehead looked at him and Waschuk started talking in his flat voice. It always sounded from his first few words as if he was running out of breath. Becker always thought the layer of fat around Waschuk’s middle might be squeezing his lungs. Or maybe he had to push out the words forcibly, reluctant to let anyone know what he was thinking.
“We’ve had the pictures for a year. Why are they a problem now?”
“He’s objecting to a possibility that the archives may plan to digitize them eventually and make them available publicly on this new Internet utility. Says he could have lived with them being stored in a filing cabinet. That way they’d be just a quiet little example of the government spending money on art that wasn’t going to interest anyone in a few years. They haven’t even been catalogued yet.”
Waschuk squeezed more words out of his barrel-bellied frame: “That doesn’t sound like it’s worth kidnapping a dog. If his reasons ever get out, it will only make people curious about the pictures. We need to know three things. Is he likely to do it again? Is there more involved? And does he have a pile of crap he can dump in front of a fan aimed at us?”
“You know the answer to the first one. He’s obsessed enough to pull a stunt like he did. He might do something nuts again. The other two I don’t know. Maybe something will come out that will tell us more. We’re negotiating with his lawyer.”
“He’s got a lawyer,” Morehead said. “Great. Unpredictable, probably unhinged, and with an agent. Who’s we?”
“I’ll work on it with my deputy. He knows the business arrangement that was made for the pictures. He’s tight-assed and mealymouthed. He’s still sulking because I won’t approve his plan to commission an opera about the province. But he has a good head on his shoulders for this kind of thing.”
“That’s it then,” Morehead said. “Keep us informed.” Meaning: communicate with Waschuk. “And don’t screw up. If you think anything’s getting out of hand, let us know right away.”
“I’ll do that. We’ll try to wrap it up fast.”
“You know, I never liked the idea of the government taking those pictures. You start collecting art, it encourages people to keep producing more.”
“That’s right,” Becker said. “Apparently that was the point, aside from owning the pictures themselves. We’re supposed to be proving the place has culture as well as oil. Art collecting is an old hobby of the rich and famous. All the way back to J.P. Morgan. All the way back to the Medicis. Probably even before them.”
“If you say so. I just had a couple of reclining chairs fitted into one of the government planes, with compartments underneath for beer. Maybe they’ll end up in a museum someday. You know what? I don’t care. The chairs and beer I can use. Pictures are for people who are satisfied with seeing something and knowing they can never touch it.”
“Good morning, Premier. Henry. I’ll get back to you soon.” He had almost blurted out a specific day but he was wary of overpromising.
His own immediate agenda went in another direction. His new admin assistant was single, only moderately talkative, good at applying just the right amount of makeup, ready to make a joke but rarely a pointed one, unafraid of making eye contact but never in a way that could be read as a challenge. Better yet, she liked an occasional drink and didn’t mind having one in a small bar that Arlene and her friends would never want to be seen in.
5.
OSTROSKI FELT THE PAPER-THIN BLADE BETWEEN HIS THUMB and index finger. He thought it represented the value of old technology. A device often had many uses after it was invented. It could be manipulated, reshaped for different purposes. The flat safety razor blade had that advantage. Cartridge blades had only one use and could be used with only one handle.
Ostroski was using the flat blade as a tool this morning. It was remarkable for its thinness and sharpness. He sliced slowly into a matte intended for framing photographs. This one did frame a photograph, a nice Ansel Adams shot of a moon over a stark landscape.
He made three incisions. Then he took three single frames of negative film and inserted one into each whisper-thin cut. When he was satisfied all three pieces of film were well into the matte and away from the edge, he remounted the matte and photograph into the frame. Then he moved his chair back to the wall on the side of his store and hung the photograph back in its original place. He had never thought about hiding the negatives before but the skirmishing over other pictures had awakened an instinct to be careful. After moving the chair back he opened the blinds on the front windows. Anyone who finds that deserves to have it, he thought. But anyone looking for it would never look there, he was sure, because they’d be too dumb to think any sort of art had a practical purpose—like hiding residues of violence.
It was one of Adela’s days off so he stayed in the front of the shop. He thumbed through old photography magazines and dusted the displays. A good camera was worth keeping clean. He made sure his were in good shape. If they worked like new they should as much as possible look like new.
A handful of customers wandered in during the day. Potential customers. Only one of them genuinely looking for a purchase. “The place is getting to be more and more like a museum,” he muttered. “I should charge admission.” He wondered when he would stop worrying about talking to himself. The trouble was that when he no longer realized he was talking out loud to himself would be the time to start worrying.
At noon he went into the back for a salami and lettuce sandwich and a cup of coffee. He brought the cup out front, set it on the counter, and started reading his magazine again.
Two middle-aged men came in during the next three hours looking to sell equipment. They had decent 35mm cameras, a Canon, and a Pentax with a wide-angle lens, but there were too many of those around. One other guy was looking for a leather cover for a Pentax. Ostroski dug through his box of covers and found the right fit. That made him feel good. A good camera needed protection. He didn’t talk to the guy about that; he was running a business, not a club. The lawyer walked through the door late in the afternoon.
“Hello, Jack.”
“Afternoon. Just touring the up-and-coming business area? Looking for hot properties?”
“Maybe they will be hot someday. Oil prices can’t stay down forever. The office work is done for the day. I got down to the take-home work and tho
ught I’d drop in here to let you know how the talks about the collection have been progressing.”
“Progressing. That means nothing is settled. Does it mean there’s been progress? Must be important news to rate a visit instead of a phone call.”
Rabani faced his client across the counter. He assumed it was Adela’s day off if she wasn’t there. He didn’t ask about her. He was disappointed but he was also relieved not to have her there. He needed his wits about him when he talked with Ostroski.
“They don’t want to renegotiate. They say that would set a bad precedent. They also aren’t happy about the idea of you going through the collection and identifying material to be set aside. They aren’t necessarily opposed to identifying pictures that could be kept private for a certain period....”
“Like until I die.”
“Like that. Or they might go for an arrangement that would require permission for the photos to be viewed, and then only in person rather than on the Internet. But they want to sort through the collection themselves first. They’ve decided that should be something of a priority but staff are in short supply. It may take six months or so.”
“What would that sorting involve?”
“Making a general classification—by subject matter and date. It’s possible they might ask you for help firming up information about photos that don’t have much to identify them. They said they may even be able to find some money in the budget to hire you as a part-time assistant for that.”
“Buy me off for the price of a few beers, you mean.”
“I know it’s not what you hoped for, Jack. The issue is that the government has full ownership rights. They bought a collection and paid for it. They don’t want to start paying twice for anything.”
“But they’re willing to hire me as a part-time assistant.”
“It’s a gesture of goodwill.”
“It looks to me more like a gesture of worry.”
“Why would they be worried, Jack? You aren’t thinking of anything like another dognapping, are you?”