by Byron Rempel
It was true that the purple appeared after she left Christophe’s house, and before she saw Zap. There had been passion at Christophe’s, there had been uncontrollable desire. Before she saw Zap there had been ice on the streets, and the panic of trying to find her aunt. All of these truths were immersed in the pressure cooker that was an assistant professor on tenure track, trying to get noticed for the right things, and to do those things perfectly. Then the mix was seasoned with the still painful memory of her disastrous skiing episode, which she saw now was all her fault, and the stale spice of her mother repeating, during her awkward years, You clumsy girl! So that by the time Anna limped to bed and carefully covered her toes with the blanket, she believed that her purple was evidence of an eager but artless woman, and a man whose adoration was ferocious when she stood before him half naked and unveiled.His ardour wasn’t always understandable, but it was appreciated.
[
He wasn’t appreciated. He knew that, acknowledged it, and moved on. One didn’t spend one’s career and life trying to be liked, like some American cheerleader blowing all the boys over. Since he’d left Paris—and he admitted this to himself in the dark of a Saturday night, with no woman at hand—he had to prove to these imbeciles that he was a man, to stand before them and crow like a coq in the morning announced to the world what was his and what would be his. The students were the issue, those tendrils of hormone and moan, the university would be vastly improved without them. The idea came to him quite naturally as he erased the students from the classroom (keeping only the prettiest for his bedroom fantasies), and spread the university’s good will to the world beyond, the adult world. If they would give him charge of the place, if he would Chair, or better of course if he would Dean, well if he would be Chancellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Yes, that had the right sound. He lay on his back in bed and spread his legs, his toes protruding from the blanket and his hand of its own accord searched for his centre, his essence, his rule.
The university would reach out and touch the community. Influence would be greater, and history, glorious history would seep into the everyday, and the past would finally be present. He would bring in others, welcome the sociologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and just to show how inclusive he could be, the scientists and their cold worlds. He would fashion la Grande université McGill, and so what if it was blatant thievery from the French President and le Grand Paris. It was a time for action, for the suburbs were afire, and none but he could put them out.
Christophe held his cock, erect and hard in his loving hand. What he was, was a champion, a champion for women, minorities, queers. He was the progressive face of the twenty-first century, and he would need a woman beside him to show the world his taste and power. He saw himself on the dias speaking to the city, and that young teacher’s assistant beside him, her long dark hair and pillow lips, her eyes looking up to him as saviour and guide all knowing, and whatever he believes she believes, whatever he touches she shall touch, he would grab that dark hair and pull her head down to him in front of any crowd, she would take him in her mouth and swallow him because he so desired. But in his fantasy, the TA kept flickering and changing into another woman, older, smarter, thinner lipped. He resisted. He summoned the young girl again and she looked up at him but her eyes became Anna’s, the professor and her shapeless cardigan, her unkempt hair, her wine-stained skin.
He came into his hand, his mouth full of curses.
[
By Sunday morning the glow faded. Perhaps it was literal. The sky was grey, the sun hidden, Anna’s housecoat beige. Whatever the reason, Anna at breakfast had only one goal for the day, and that was to clean her house. And by that she meant that someone would clean it for her. Cleaning meant not only throwing out the rotting branches and infested wood, but also repairing the damage. She faced and squarely dealt with things last night (though this morning they remained unnamable, securely things), and she now saw that the tree was the last thing remaining between her and tenure. Once that was taken care of, there would be no thing in her way.
In her turret, the damage was crazy. She began picking at and piling up branches, but was soon fatigued and scratched. Zap had triaged the ceiling but snow and cold still found their way in. She was ready to call a renovation company, a true renovator, when she remembered it was Sunday and all good men took their rest. She would resist calling that Aunt kidnapper to come inside her fortress. Anna continued to pile up branches. Some were intricately woven together, sculpted into organic architecture. She kept Feed Me for the day, since the cat seemed to enjoy those houses. Also she didn’t want to have any contact with his owner.
By mid-afternoon the house looked no better. She hadn’t thought where she’d put the branches, so they piled up near the top of the stairs. Each time she moved branches some bits and bark stayed behind on the floor, so her work was doubled. When the phone rang she was happy for the interruption.
We are so grateful, said the Director of Pearl’s home. Often people don’t listen to our advice, they think they know everything, when each of us faces elderly family for the first time. Anna thanked her back, said it was nothing. Which was true. She’d only spoken on the phone. She hadn’t even talked to the police yet about the kidnapper, and…
“You’re so cute, you two. ‘Kidnapper.’ Did he kidnap your heart too?”
Anna began to reiterate that the man wasn’t her husband, but the Director insisted on thanking her again for sending him, because since that time Pearl had a new energy for her days. There’s nothing like family, she said, to bring back a zest for life. She looks like she’ll live forever! The idea of taking her out in the snowfall, and getting her to taste again what life is like out in the world—exactly what she needed.
Anna said she was so glad. She would come by as soon as her schedule was free. Yes, she would be sure to tell the husband what a hero he was.
Anna’s jaw was misaligned. Her jaw malfunctioned before, when exams skewed her perspective, doctorates stretched her nerves. Misalignment was an occupational hazard. Her whole career, whatever sense she made of life hinged on the difference between the true and the forged. But Anna was trained to spot legend. It ran on synthetic oils. In history, there were no clear motives. Great Men were slippery. So now, surrounded by duplicity, her teeth didn’t touch.
She knew she ignored the lie of her own romance novel. She understood this.
[
They don’t align, Zap said. These joists and studs. He was up on the ladder, changed into white T-shirt and clean jeans for Anna. As much of a costume as anything else, he figured. Feed Me purred on the penultimate step like a lovely assistant.
Zap put him on his shoulder and brought him down. “Your cat sure is friendly. You stay down Rochester.”
“What did you call him? I thought he was Feed Me.”
“You call him that, I thought you liked it. Names don’t matter to him. The tag is just instructions for people who find him.”
“He’s not your cat?”
She warmed to him, he could see that. The Pearl manoeuvre paid off, as he knew it would. And she couldn’t turn to anyone else for the roof. Maybe he’d pushed a little far with the husband thing, but uttered words were magic. Something those in the writing business didn’t always understand.
“Listen, I’ll give you the job, but there’s a few ground rules.”
“Shoot.”
“No calling yourself my husband.”
“No husband,” he said. He’d try to repeat the word as often as possible.
“Like I said before, respect my personal space.”
He nodded. Personal was a good word too.
He rained down uttered words. Usually the kinds of words he liked and admired, not ones used to hide behind stone walls of obfuscation (he threw that one in free, for her). And speaking of stone walls, did she know the Moors introduced stone castles
to a wooden Europe, because of the lack of timber in North Africa, and Spain provides most of the world’s roofing slate, and what about that spaghetti sauce you had on the stove, and he may as well stay and stir, not that he’s a husband or anything, no worries.
There’s family, he said, stressed the word while they ate spaghetti at her table, a brother, Wolf Zaporzan up in the Laurentians built hunting outposts and ski huts, a sister Skye Zap who was a psychic and inner child babysitter, and a whole Slavic goulash of backyard distillers and trustworthy used car salesmen that culminated in this species of beast you see before you, do you have any fresh Parmesan?
[
Anna poked her head in the turret and breathed in the smell of cut wood. Zap behaved himself, and her bruise turned from purple to light green, her thoughts of Christophe from obsessed to incidental. In the evening the carpenter went to the other side of the brick wall, but when peace finally descended on the house she sat in front of her laptop and stared. That inventiveness of Zap, that was supposed to pour out of her too now. She needed potency in her teaching, in her romance novel. In her life. With all she’d crafted over the years she should concoct one Harlequin per coffee break. Write the whole romance on her phone in a doctor’s waiting room. Hell, she could spray-paint it on the structural supports of the ramshackle Turcot Interchange if it came to that, with all the other lovesick vandals. But in the half-finished turret, among the sawdust, nothing came.
One last look before night. Zap rebuilt the ceiling so you wouldn’t know. His work was joyful deception. He told lies to buildings, whispered to them true and real and they swooned under his touch. He had no interest in new. Like the cat, again on the ladder. A stray. Who knew what else was a lie. Family. Education. Pedigree.
She found a happy medium of half listening to him. He talked while he worked, like others whistled. Built stories. A new tool in his hand could inspire a tangent. His stories weren’t the usual carpenter chatter you could ignore. He crafted stories about one thing and led to another. Turret design was excellent for shooting arrows along the castle wall, for instance. That led to a one-hour debate about the best advances in twelfth-century castle building, which Zap knew a surprising amount about, and then to the underestimated role of women in castle and bailey design, of which he was unaware, and Anna raised her voice and touched his shoulder once and Zap’s back muscles twitched.
Zap had rebuilt machines and buildings and clocks with his father Petro. To remake the past was not the idea. To pay homage was. Hadn’t studied anything. Not like her. He’d read books, he had to admit. He’d toured the heritage buildings of the city. Seen some stuff in the British Isles, also learned to drink there. Not self-taught—didn’t believe that was ever true, since everybody had a hand in his education.
So now he used all modern conveniences to make things like new, the best devices the latest theories, and yet carried tools and ancient methods like relics. A great wooden hammer spilled from his toolbox, useful for stubborn emergencies, and he wielded a knife wrought from iron mine castoffs. She watched him work and remembered her father tinkering with noble materials in the garage. Not always sure of the technique, but of the intent.
At her university office she tried to channel Zap’s creativity. A no trespassing sign for students hung on her door: History in the Making. But all she managed to create anew was a bilingual version of her sign: À la recherche de choses perdues. She left tasks unfinished, students agitated. Soon it would be Easter and exams and her performance review would rear its slimy head, but it was useless to look for creativity here. She shuffled through the snow back to her redoubt. What was she building?
We rode under a ghost moon. Even in the waning day it threatened to pour out its powers on the barren hills. I didn’t know where he was taking me, but if I didn’t cling to him I’d be in the sand. We took hidden pathways that he unveiled. I tried to ask him where we were going, but had only learned a few borrowed words from the scholarly tongue of the Arabs and they only were able to communicate with hand signals. When we stopped he conjured dates and almonds. I gingerly reached for his robe and pulled it aside to see how the wound was healing. The scar was too fresh for this travel, and still pulled apart at places. I disappeared for minutes, came back with my habit pockets filled with herbs and plants to lay on his chest. The first time I tried it he grabbed my wrist, and my balms fell on the ground.
[
The Dean opened her door to Christophe, gushed how she loved his approach, how his work on troubadours brought a new energy into her department, and how she envisioned, perhaps this spring, a concert of troubadours. That was all well, but Christophe had something more ambitious in mind. And Christophe sat down with her and over wine they talked of the job of Dean and how you were hated and loved, and how university politics were like tournaments and jousting, a long process of selecting the knights. Christophe offered that in those days, if knights lost the competition they lost their horse and armour as well, and destitute and hopeless often committed suicide. But there was another way, he looked in her eyes and through his wine, and that was the war game was love. Even in those brutish times, there were ways of moving up that were refined – poetry raised the lady of the court to heaven alongside the newly minted Virgin, it flattered her above her station. And grateful for a reason to live she brings the poet into the court. Romance rises as an alternative to sport—or death.
He cannot see himself embracing the Dean, who keeps close to her husband in the American way. He could, if he had to, but he preferred not to. There were less egregious methods. She is not swayed that way like the students, or assistant professors.
The troubadour concert, he says, is exactly what I’m talking about. On the grounds in the front of the traffic, the students, the office workers—this is what could reach out to the community around us. Because it is all about benefitting the students, he said, and if the reputation and visibility of the university grows and funding grows because of that, so much the better. But we cannot transform the university, we cannot transform Montreal, the world, without acknowledging history. We must encompass all around us, la Grande McGill. For as the greatest writer said: Truly innovative art is in the search of things past.
The Dean was easier to reach than he imagined. Impressed with language and accent and fine tailoring. With reaching out. She was ambitious herself, ambitious enough to imagine herself out of the Dean’s position, entering the tournament of politics in the grand world beyond. Which suited Christophe fine. The sooner she moved on the better. She loved the idea, la Grande McGill; she knew very well of Christophe’s work on le Grand Paris with the President of the Republic, and who better to organize it and fill a committee with the appropriate people, only she had her agenda full now, and till the end of the year, but could he draw something up?
Christophe needed Professor Hill. She would be his right hand, she knew the workings of Quebec politics, McGill, she looked perfect beside him, not taking the spotlight, only accentuating his lines, his suits (they would have to shop for her, tone her down, class her up). She would distract, and together they would show Paris how it was done, Paris would regret kicking him out to the colonies, Christophe would once more be a man.
[
Anna, in her comfortable robe and wool socks, took her work to bed. But she kept drifting towards her romance instead. She was a spy, decoding. She headed somewhere, but like her nun she lacked a divining compass. They had abandoned their convents. They looked for truths, and searched where they could, in the dark corners of the middle of the night, in fluorescent classrooms. In essays, in chick lit. Anna summoned the Moor and nun to her bed.
“If you don’t trust me to help you I won’t,” I said. “You can die out here for all I care.”
He didn’t let go of my arm until I shook myself loose. I kept my chin up and my eyes on the distant hills. I got up and walked toward those hills by myself and left the brute to wither alone
with his pride by these rocks. But I was back before sundown, because death and danger came quickly there. For the first time, I longed for the walls of the cloister, was nostalgic about the chores I did every day. I turned from the Moor and began my prayers, fondled my rosary. His figure a dark shadow out of the corner of my eye. I would scratch his eyes out with the cross if he grabbed me like that again.
A deep rumble came from his robes, his words a stew of resentment. I heard snapping and clicks, and soon a small fire blazed in the space between us. A rabbit roasted above it.
Eyes closed, jaw unaligned. The streetlight sparkles through the frost on the inside of her lids. She opens them and sees snowdrifts of exam papers on the floor around her. All that thirst for knowledge. All those past lives. What do they want from her? She pulls a random paper off the pile. Not at all random: a student proves romance’s Arab origins with quotes from mystical love poems of Sufis in Andalusia. Her eyelids fall hypnotized again as she reads of the concept of conceptualizationing an entangled post-reflexivity as a generative methodological move in post-intentional gender specificity:
My heart can take on any form: a meadow for gazelles, a cloister for monks. For the idols, sacred ground, Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim, the tables of the Torah, the scrolls of the Qur’án. I profess the religion of love; wherever its caravan turns along the way, that is the belief, the faith I keep.
By the last lines Anna has quit this world on a flying magical thinking carpet, peopled with Xs and Ys, carpenters and academics, fallacies and entanglements, knights and natives and Moors.
17. Black Ice
“Your hemoglobins,” Dmitri says, tapping the side of his head. “Breaking down. Good thing.” Anna knows her bruise shows yellow. These are the final stages, Dmitri tells her.