Mankind & Other Stories of Women

by Marianne Ackerman

  Never in a million years would I get naked in front of a man like . . . and a stranger. But I did. So did he. Down to his socks. I could’ve died of mortification but I was one thousand per cent involved. By the time he gets around to actually — I’m staring at the ceiling. The whole room starts to kind of twirl and I run my hands along his back, which is just as hard and wet as —

  Then I hear a knock at the door. A little voice: “Mummy, has Santa come yet?”

  “No, dear.”

  He stops, rolls over. Holds his breath, like he’s fully tuned into what’s happening on the other side of the door. I get up, grab my housecoat, step out into the hallway and shut the door. Take Johnny to the bathroom, carry him back to bed, tuck him in, rub his back till he drifts off and tiptoe back to my room. I’m thinking, shit, the mood’s broken. But no, he’s waiting exactly where I left him. He takes my hand, pulls me down on the bed and we are right back to where we were before the knocking.

  Well.

  * * *

  Actually, that wasn’t what I set out to tell you. I mean, it happened, yes, but my point was what happened after. When he was lying with his eyes closed beside me, pretending to sleep. I looked at him, eyes wide open, oh yes, a beautiful specimen of mankind. I could smell him, breathing. A thought struck me that I would never in a million years have expected: Vaughn. Vaughn in my bed. How I used to watch while he slept, because there was something so magical, watching him when he wasn’t talking or looking at me sideways. And I thought, the true beauty of mankind is only visible when nobody’s talking. For that to happen, somebody has to be asleep.

  At that moment, I missed Vaughn like crazy. I wished I could somehow find his true self. Help him slip out of his phoney wig, the padded jacket wrapped around his soul. See all that bitter flab drop to the floor . . . I actually shed tears, lying there, I was so damn lonesome for Vaughn. With a hunk like that asleep in my bed? Ha!

  I must have drifted off. When I woke up, he was standing by the window, fully dressed, jamming the wig on. My head felt like cement. I could hardly move a finger. He blew me a kiss. “Ho Ho Ho. Merry Christmas, my darling.” Then he started climbing out the window.

  “Don’t do that!” I whisper. “There’s a thir-tee-foot drrrr-op ...” But my voice just sort of drifts.

  The next thing I know, the clock radio says 6 a.m. I bolt for the living room, knowing full well the kids’ll already be up. But they aren’t. All my presents and more are arranged so beautifully around the tree. I burst into tears. I go into the kitchen. On the back of Santa’s note, in familiar handwriting:

  “Hi there. Front door was open. Should I take that as a hint? Found a spare key in the cookie jar, locked up and dropped it through the mail slot on my way out. Have a great Christmas and call me. Love, Vaughn.” Shit.

  See, now I’m tearing up over the son of a bitch.

  Which one, you’re asking.

  Who do you think?

  RASHMI

  WHEN MY HUSBAND died I fell apart. He was away on business and dropped dead in a place I hadn’t known he was scheduled to visit. For a while I wondered what he’d been doing there, whether he’d neglected to tell me, or I’d somehow forgotten. He was sixty-nine, fit. His heart stopped.

  For months I dreaded walking into our empty house, so resisted going out. When friends and colleagues dropped by, I made an effort to be gracious, told them I was working on my book. I printed the manuscript and spread the pages out on the dining room table. Finally they became convinced and stopped calling. Weeks passed, I spoke to no one. I had no voice, no strength. I stared out the window at the busy street below, wondering how people got on with their lives, while the most I could bring myself to do was watch television and sleep. It was an ordeal, but in some way dramatic. Pressing my nose against existence allowed me to see how little movement is actually taking place beneath surface busyness.

  One day, without warning, the desire to do nothing passed. I got up, ran the vacuum, shopped for fresh food, began to read. The manuscript was an expansion of my doctoral thesis on the Pirahä people of the Amazon rainforest, a tribe of some four hundred members whose apparently simple way of life is most often described by what they do not have: precise numbers, a concept of god, weapons, the habit of sleeping all night. I’d spent nearly two years living among them, as part of an international team attempting to crack their codes. With a burst of concentration, in a couple of weeks I was able to send it off to the publishers. Their response was quick. My book was slated for publication the following spring.

  All of this should have improved my mood, but somehow it didn’t. My husband had been a prominent scholar. We had the same publisher and I wondered if they were making a gesture of sympathy. Or had some dark force taken hold of me, shaken me out of complacency, or whatever it was that had kept me from finishing the book during the decade of our marriage? We were always busy, travelling, mainly for his work. We rarely spent time away from each other.

  My little book could easily have been swallowed up or ignored had it not appeared just in time to join the debate sparked by the publication of a leading scholar’s magnum opus. Good timing, it was hailed as prescient, awarded a prize. My stalled academic career sprang to life. I was offered part-time teaching, got invited to an important international conference in Mumbai, a city and continent we had never visited.

  I arrived exhausted and more than a little apprehensive. Somehow, I was able to speak lucidly, answer questions with something like confidence. After four days, when everybody else was leaving or going off on sightseeing excursions, I was ready for home. But in a flush of enthusiasm, I’d booked an extra week to take in the sights. Changing the ticket would have cost a fortune, so I stayed, telling myself I’d feel better after a good sleep.

  That first day and night alone in my hotel room watching television felt much like the dark time after my husband’s death. I forced myself to get a plan. As an anthropologist, I’ve developed a preference for social connections over what some might call common sense, which may be why I put myself in the hands of an independent guide who was also the sister of the guy who ran the newsstand near the hotel: because I couldn’t bear to do anything as simple as jump on an air-conditioned tour bus.

  Her name was Rashmi. She was my age, had three children, two in high school and one in university. Each of them, she assured me, had above average intelligence and ambition. Her rates were reasonable, her knowledge of the city profound, eccentric, sadly critical, yet never for a moment did I believe anything but her love. Through Rashmi’s eyes, the clash of poverty and wild luxury, the speed, smells, colours, the noise — a relentless din of car horns, roaring motors, screeching crows, hawkers — were all part of some elaborate work of theatre; the people, players in a celebratory pageant, a hymn to life. And weren’t we envious, those of us born on the outside? Grateful for a glimpse into this older, wiser, magical drama of existence?

  I flew home to glacial Montreal with a suitcase full of colourful shawls, cotton blouses, teas and spices from Crawford Market. Walking through the door, I was shocked at the pale blandness of an environment so carefully constructed to reflect my modernist soul. The souvenirs went into a bottom drawer. The teaching term started. I can’t say work was particularly interesting, but with publication and the prize, my career had a momentum of its own.

  I was sitting in some interminable seminar, half asleep, when a message came up on my phone. “I was overjoyed by meeting you . . .” A thank-you note from Rashmi, the one I should have written, if I’d had good manners. Gratitude soon arrived at a point: Did I remember saying she would be welcome to visit me in Montreal, anytime? Had I really meant it? Anytime? Like, soon?

  Of course, I meant it! I might lack the instinct of etiquette, but I do appreciate spontaneity. Anyway, I was bored with a routine whose saving grace was distraction from dark thoughts.

  * * *

  She arrived bearing a large suitcase that felt empty when as I carried it up the outside stairs.
A short, plump, darkhaired woman in her early fifties, she looked a thousand times less sophisticated in jeans, running shoes and a fake fur jacket than she had in her gorgeous saris. Yet the patrician elegance I’d noted in Mumbai was in her bones. The atmosphere changed with her presence, as if a high-pressure area had moved in and banished the low. Clouds lifted, the wind died down. She was the same Rashmi, exuberant, gracious, and yet different.

  On our last day in Mumbai, she had invited me home for lunch, presented her husband, who sat in a chair, staring out on a dark alley at chickens, children and a desultory pair of oxen. Apparently, he’d been let go from a teaching post at an international high school, and was depressed. During her first days in Montreal, she talked a lot about Mumbai, her family history and dynamic, as though she were seeing it from a distance for the first time, which I suppose she was. Her mother’s people were Parsis, part of the tiny, influential community of Zoroastrians who fled Persia to escape religious persecution sometime around the tenth century. On her father’s side, she can trace her family back to the mid-eighteenth century. They were fishermen on the island of Bombay. By marrying outside the tight Parsi community, her mother had broken with them, a detail she confessed had had a lasting impact, implying it might explain her need to get away. I don’t mean to suggest we talked a lot about her feelings. I had to read between the lines. I have never known a person who could be so cheerful, so open, and yet remain mysterious.

  The moment she unzipped her suitcase on the bed of my spare room is one I won’t forget: a cloud of Indian smells escaped.

  “I will cook for you,” she declared, taking out a huge plastic bag full of colourful pouches, every shade from the hot earth spectrum of spices: red, orange, brown, yellow, gold, sand, plus whole cardamom pods and nut-sized peppercorns.

  My apartment soon filled with kitchen smells. She worked as if on a mission. Tentatively at first, a mild curry, which I praised. After that she let herself go, rummaged through my cupboards for pots and utensils I’d forgotten about, making lists of things she needed from the Indian stores along Jean-Talon Boulevard. I’ve never spent so much money on out-of-season tomatoes. But then I’d never imagined they could taste like they tasted under Rashmi’s touch.

  All very exciting, but combined with the sounds of chopping, simmering, transferring liquids from pot to pot, it was also distracting. I began to go into my office every day. It just seemed natural to get up and leave the building, after depositing a cup of tea at her bedside. She slept in the afternoon. Sometimes I’d hear her up in the night, tiptoeing across creaky floorboards, fumbling for the bathroom light. Occasionally, sobbing.

  The earthy palette of spices she’d brought over burst forth into a splendiferous array of dishes. Like the saris of Mumbai, no two were alike. Each new dish, more dazzling than the last. I have to imagine she eased me in, because my digestive system behaved admirably. Yes, my poop did smell funny, but it was not a bad smell, at least no worse than the aftereffects of flesh and starch from my regular diet.

  In Mumbai, she had taken me to a Jain temple, explained that the sect’s sterner members avoid all root vegetables because microbes are damaged when they are yanked from the earth — so strict is their belief in nonviolence toward any living things. She wasn’t a Jain, but her respect for their codes was strong. When she presented me with a sumptuous mutton dish, I sensed disgust, and insisted she take meat off the menu. From then on, we ate vegetables of many colours and textures, scads of chickpeas, lentils, nuts, beans, unnamed grains and peppers — red, green, yellow and very hot — always swimming in pungent sauce, sometimes smothered in yogurt to quell the fire, but I got used to it. I looked forward to meals, refused to spoil my appetite by nibbling on empty calories. I lost weight. I’d never felt cleaner, more energetic or happier than during the months Rashmi cooked for me. Like most women, I sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a wife. Someone to do what I had done for my husband, that is, everything that had nothing to do with his work, and organising distraction so he could be better at his work. My fantasy wife would be like Rashmi: intelligent, quiet, industrious, cheerful, and mysterious.

  When Montreal’s inevitable spring snowstorm hit, she insisted on going out into it wearing only her jacket, a thin cap over damp hair. Three minutes later she was back. I bundled her up in layers of wool, a fur hat that probably violated her religious principles and gloves resembling hockey gear; then donned the same myself so we could walk together through the sparkling streets.

  “Your city is so quiet,” she purred. “Where are all your people?”

  I could have told her they were watching TV or staring at computer screens, waiting for spring, a three-day blast of fresh air and dandelions before the onslaught of sweltering summer. Instead I led her silently through the deserted streets, turning at the monument of an angel in flight to head up Mount Royal. She asked me about logs strung in rows across white fields, and laughed when I said they were the tops of park benches, buried in snow. Our three-hour walk through woods and around Beaver Lake seemed to satiate her curiosity for the city.

  One day a letter came. I found it in a wad of magazines and bills at the door as I was heading out, and impulsively took it with me. I had no intention of opening her mail, but looking at the neat, colonial handwriting on a newsprint envelope, I was pretty sure it meant bad news for our ménage. Later, I pretended to find it in the stack of letters, and handed it over. She put it out of sight while we ate dinner, drank tea, watched Downton Abbey.

  Neither of us slept much that night. I stared at the ceiling, tried to read, while in the room down the hall, she paced.

  Ever thoughtful and careful, she waited three days before announcing it was time to go home. I still don’t know what the letter contained, or who wrote it, although I suspect her husband. Hopefully, he’d overcome the bad stretch.

  Watching her pack, I was tortured by unanswered questions, regrets. Why hadn’t I taken her around town? To Quebec City? Out into our beautiful countryside? Instead of sitting at home in front of the fireplace, stuffing myself and basking in the warmth of her company? Why did I not pay more attention, at least write down a few recipes?

  At the end of a great trip to an exotic place, you’re always sure you will return. We both felt it when I drove her to the airport, that we would meet again and instantly become confidantes, tell each other our deepest thoughts, dreams, concerns, pick up the bond that had formed during two very different but important phases of our lives. As the plane took off, I had to look away.

  That night I ate in a restaurant, alone. I couldn’t face the kitchen.

  * * *

  After a season of mourning and the resurrection of my career, I am back where the journey began, at an academic conference. Rio de Janeiro. The subject is a sparse people on whom a complex tribe of scholars have chosen to fix their attention. My paper went over well. It was on the Pirahä language, which is unrelated to any other tongue, containing just eight consonants and three vowels. Yet the intricate register of tones, stresses, syllable lengths can be sung, hummed and whistled, providing hunter-gatherers with a masterful means of communication in the jungle. We agreed there is much to learn.

  My husband’s death is still mysterious. A member of his department took care of arrangements, so I was spared first-hand contact with the circumstances. He died of natural causes; that much is sure. For a time, a shadow hung over my grief. The possibility of betrayal. Losing him was such an enormous event. Pangs of jealousy seemed petty, self-indulgent. I resented fate. I was angry, and in that black cloud, chose to ignore what I did not want to know. Now it — the possible it — doesn’t seem to matter.

  Last night at the conference dinner I sat beside one of his protégés, a promising young scholar from Africa, heard all about his many successes in the field. He walked me back to my hotel, invited himself up for a nightcap. He is lying beside me now, naked, asleep, dreaming no doubt of our dear Pirahäs.

  So why am I thinking of Ras
hmi?

  Her presence set my soul on fire. Her departure, painful at the time, was also a gift. She made me see that a room at the end of the hall, or the other side of the bed, are the same. What counts is the bond, the here and now. Even if every breath taken speaks of the distance between.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again I would like to thank my good friend Mark Czarnecki for reading and commenting on several versions of these stories. His overview and attention to detail made them all better. Thanks also to readers Veena Gokhale, Rana Bose, Nia Campbell, Elise Moser. To Cheryl and Yves Trépanier, for wise council. And to my faithful listener, Gwyn Campbell, who is always the first to hear a new story.

  The title story Mankind began as a monologue presented as part of Urban Tales at the Centaur Theatre in 2014. Thanks to director Harry Standjofski and actress Leni Parker for their help in shaping the fantasy.