The Book of Stanley

by Todd Babiak

  Kal walked gingerly and breathed through his mouth. He expanded on his new feelings for poetry and music, and his thoughts about mountains. “Their bigness points out your smallness, and keeps you honest,” he said, his voice resembling a movie monster’s after a couple of sleeping pills.

  Was it Banff or was it the Lord? Maha couldn’t say, but she agreed that her natural defences–the layers of protective falseness that made up what others saw as her personality–were on low. In Montreal, with friends and her parents, she had refused to discuss the night in January when she and Ardeen had acquired a bottle of vodka, Sprite, and green apple syrup. So when Kal asked her why she had been keen to leave home for Banff, she surprised herself by telling the truth. “At a party, I got drunk and had sex with a guy from Académie de Roberval while his friends watched.”

  Kal stopped. They were in front of a brick house with a white “Beware of Dog” sign attached to its low chain-link fence. “No, you didn’t.”

  “I did.” Maha examined the sign, which had yellowed and faded in the sun. She wondered if the dog were now dead, as there didn’t seem to be much evidence of digging in the yard, and no stuffed animals or bones or ropes. She fought an urge to change the subject, toward the nature of dog ownership. “I yelled out ‘Make me real’ a bunch of times.”

  “Make me real?”

  “And the Lord arrived. Stanley.”

  “You had sex with The Stan. That’s…whoa.”

  Even in her jacket, Maha was chilly. So she began walking again. “I didn’t have sex with the Lord. While the guy was on top of me, I saw the Lord but I didn’t see him. I felt he was there, and knew exactly who he was.”

  “People found out?”

  “An entire generation of teenagers on the island of Montreal found out, along with my teachers and eventually my mom and dad.”

  “Shit.”

  “They were horrified. Who wouldn’t be, I guess. Things went badly with us and the next thing I knew, they were setting me up with Gamal.”

  “No wonder you left.”

  “But I wasn’t just running away from something, coming here. I was running to something.”

  Maha and Kal arrived at the front doors of the Chalet Du Bois. It was late and she was tired. A hot bath was in order, along with some reading. But since he had taken a terrible beating for her, she felt obliged to invite Kal in for a hot chocolate. If he could drink through his messed-up mouth. Before she could offer, Kal extended his hand, awkwardly, for a shake. “It was real pleasant of you to come to the hospital with me.”

  “Of course.”

  “Where did Gamal learn to fight?”

  “Thailand. I tried to warn you.”

  Kal continued to shake Maha’s hand. His grip was too tight and his hand was moist. There was a lopsided aspect to his face, on account of the swelling, so she couldn’t tell if he was making eye contact with her or looking at the Chalet Du Bois logo on the door. “Your hand is soft.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Maha gently pulled her hand back, and Kal released it. She looked down at her hand, to avoid his stare. “You’re okay getting home?”

  “For sure, yeah. I doubt there’s any more Thai boxers about.”

  He didn’t turn around, or even look away.

  “Well,” Maha said, buoyantly.

  “Well. Yeah.”

  “Good night, Kal.”

  “Absolutely. Back at you.”

  Maha smiled one last time, opened the heavy door, and walked into the Chalet Du Bois. At the stairs, she glanced back and saw Kal through the frosted window, waving.

  FORTY

  Stanley and Frieda walked alongside the rushing and roiling Bow River, its power constant and–Stanley thought–random. It seemed he was now obliged to believe in a cosmic force that controlled and sustained rivers, mountains, snowmelt, clouds, and the human heart. This is what he kept secret from his new friends who called themselves his disciples: belief didn’t lead to comfort. It only inspired more questions about the possibility of belief.

  They passed a tour group from Italy. As they did, the round-faced woman leading the tour smiled and said hello. The Italians repeated it after her, like children trying a new word: “Hello!”

  Each time Stanley attempted to hold his wife’s hand she pulled it away. They had been speaking in bursts, unable to avoid arguments. It was simple, though out of love for one another they had attempted to make it complicated. Frieda insisted they go home and Stanley insisted they stay.

  “How could a god or prophet make them any happier?” Frieda pointed back at the Italians with her thumb.

  Another question without an answer. “I’m not sure they’re happy. Affluent, sure, but happy is something else.”

  Frieda placed her hands in the pocket of her thin, baby-blue windbreaker. “Happiness didn’t exist before we could buy it.”

  A large hawk hovered over the river and the Italians, behind them, took photographs and called out.

  “I disagree.”

  “Because you’re a preacher now.”

  “I think the religious or spiritual aspect of humanity has been crushed by the desire to buy and sell, to acquire wealth and power. What I want to do, if I can do anything, is separate them.”

  Frieda shook her head. They were not far from the bridge that would lead them back to the hotel. Stanley was already due at the Banff Centre, to help prepare for his public debut as a man of miracles.

  “When did religion, as we know it, begin?”

  Stanley didn’t know the answer to this question, so he guessed. “Old Testament time.”

  “All right. When did the market economy, as we know it, begin?”

  He was trapped, as usual. “Old Testament time?”

  “In Israel and India and China, it was a time of war and suffering and capitalism.”

  Stanley knew where Frieda was heading with this, so he pulled one of her hands out of her jacket and led her up the riverbank to the bridge deck. “I’m already late.”

  “That’s all this is, you know that. It’s a sell job.” The wind picked up as they crossed the Bow River Bridge, adorned with the heads of imagined aboriginals. “Religion and happiness are both products, like new cars.”

  At the Chalet Du Bois, Stanley opened the door for Frieda and they stood in the lobby together. He couldn’t remember a more uncomfortable moment with his wife since their early dates. They stared at one another, and at the faux-rustic furniture. He was, at once, reluctant and enthusiastic about the afternoon’s planned activity.

  “This won’t take long, darling. It’s for lighting cues.”

  Frieda nodded, dispassionately.

  “Hour or two at the most.”

  Another nod. “Whatever you feel you have to do.”

  Stanley wanted to shake this attitude out of her. There was, he was certain, absolutely nothing he could say to bring his wife to his way of thinking. The more he tried to discover a solution to this fundamental problem, the more he desired an escape from it.

  Stanley was still thinking about Frieda twenty minutes later as he stood on the empty stage of the Eric Harvie Theatre, waiting for the lighting technician to finish his cues. Frieda’s doubt was not regular doubt. Historically, it had more weight and nuance than his own, Roquefort to his cheddar, provoking innumerable crises of confidence. But the rental fees had been paid and Tanya was finished with the handbills and posters. He knew what had changed in him and his wife did not. Despite the abstract quality of his ultimate goal, for the first time in his life Stanley was thoroughly motivated. It didn’t really matter, now, if he was ready. Readiness was a question for his audience.

  In the aisle, Tanya yelled at the man in the booth as various colours and angles of lights flashed on Stanley’s face.

  “No,” she said, with a stomp of her foot. “That’s too much. Go soft, muted, subtle.”

  “I like the bright orange,” said Alok. “It makes you look damn imperial, Stan.”

  Tanya growled.


  There were more than nine hundred seats in the theatre, and all of them were empty. When the lights flashed on Stanley’s face, he could not see out but he could certainly hear, and feel, Tanya and Alok, the absence of Frieda. That is, until the lights went down for ten seconds and Stanley spotted the pale girl from the Volkswagen and Far East Square. She sat next to an older woman in the back row.

  He hopped off the stage and started up the aisle toward them.

  “Get back up there,” said Tanya. “We only have another fifteen minutes with the tech.”

  By the time Stanley reached Alok at the middle of the seating area, the child and woman were gone. “Did you see two people sitting back here?”

  Alok shook his head. “Do you need a break, pal?”

  “Bush league!” said Tanya.

  The woman and child weren’t in the lobby either, so Stanley rushed out of the theatre and down the sloping St. Julien Road until he reached Grizzly Street and the cemetery. He spotted them sitting on a bench, near some old grave-markers and a vase of dried-up flowers.

  Worried the little girl might disappear again, Stanley approached without taking his eyes off her. There wasn’t room to join them on the bench so he sat on the ground, at the edge of the path that ran before them. The woman wore a black dress and a gold-coloured cardigan. Her clothing didn’t seem old-fashioned but her posture did, and so did the straw sun hat she wore over her light-brown hair. The woman avoided eye contact haughtily, as though Stanley had insulted her.

  The girl spoke first. “Call me Darlene,” she said. The girl, whose luminous skin was so beautiful it seemed to be made of tinted glass, was dressed the way children dressed when Stanley was young–like miniature adults. She wore a dress with a long coat that appeared to be cashmere.

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Stanley Moss.”

  “My name is Mary Schäffer,” said the woman, who did not look at or even acknowledge the presence of the girl beside her. Stanley recalled the woman’s name but couldn’t remember why. She offered her hand, inside a tight black glove. “I am here to find out who you are.”

  “Stanley Moss. I’m from Edmonton.”

  “Are you a demon? Abbadon or Dagwanoenyent or Gaap?”

  The girl laughed. She formed her right hand into a gun and pretended to shoot herself.

  “I don’t think I’m a demon.”

  “Well, demon or not, this is highly irregular. We have decided you must explain yourself immediately or risk expulsion.”

  “Expulsion from Banff?”

  “Don’t sass me. Don’t you sass me.”

  The girl rolled her eyes.

  “I speak for my entire community,” said Mary Schäffer. “We’ve been watching you and we demand that you clarify your presence here.”

  Stanley smiled, as the girl seemed to indicate this was a joke. He looked around quickly for cameras. “You represent Banff, somehow. The town council?”

  Mary Schäffer stood up off the bench, stepped around Stanley, and began walking down the worn path that zigzagged through the cemetery. Stanley got up to follow and then, with an elegant slide off the bench, so did Darlene. “I’ve been here in this capacity for almost seventy years but the community has been in place for much, much longer. Thousands of years.”

  “What community?”

  “She’s not a good listener,” said Darlene.

  “And you are the most potent irregularity we have come across.” Mary Schäffer sniffed at some flowers in an old wooden barrel. “Now, who sent you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you here to rule us?”

  “Rule who?”

  Mary Schäffer sighed. “Do you have a list of demands? Have you come from Mictlan? Feng Du? Yomi? Rangi Tuarea?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re hostile.”

  Stanley clapped his hands together. “I’m not hostile. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I was in Edmonton, dying, and this blue light and loud rumble came through me, from the sky, and…” It was clear Mary Schäffer was not listening. There were unripe berries on a small bush in the graveyard and she had busied herself in pulling them off and stuffing them in a breast pocket of her black dress. “Hello?” he said.

  “Are you here to unseat me? To become mayor?”

  “Mayor of Banff?”

  “Fine, then. Perhaps I’ll have you killed.”

  Stanley looked around. The child was now sitting up on a handsome plinth with its inscription worn off. He was having trouble understanding this conversation. “I haven’t come here to take your job. And if you’ll let me explain myself, I will. I have come here–”

  “My patience has run out.”

  “Before you threaten me with further violence, can you tell me who you are? Maybe you can help me understand what’s happened. I was on my deck one morning. I was quite shamed, actually.”

  “You take me for a fool, don’t you?”

  “No. No. Ms. Schäffer, is there someone else you’re talking to? I really don’t understand you at all.”

  Her front pocket was now full of berries. Stanley should have known the names of the bush, and the berries, but they were lost to him. This absence in his memory, and the frustration of speaking to this obviously crazy woman, was demoralizing. Mary Schäffer began walking away, and disappeared into a white spruce. Her child consort, Darlene, had not followed, but she was gone too.

  Stanley sat on the bench in the Old Banff Cemetery and attempted, briefly, to figure out what had just happened. His black shoes were scuffed. A demon, surely, would have more impressive footwear.

  FORTY-ONE

  The television festival was over, but a number of Tanya’s colleagues habitually stayed in Banff for an extra week. Officially, the development executives lingered to meet with industry professionals and spirited rookies in a less hectic atmosphere. Unofficially, it was an opportunity to drink excessively and commit a final round of adultery before flying back home to dirty diapers and unmowed lawns.

  Tanya arrived at the Banff Springs Hotel wine bar on the evening before Stanley’s coming-out party. The executives had shed their suits in favour of garden apparel–tan slacks and white shirts, spring dresses, unnecessary sunglasses. Eight men and six women sat at a couple of long tables pushed together, two bottles of Beaujolais and an Okanagan white before them.

  It was the exquisite hour between day and night. The sun had just dipped below the peaks, so the valley was drowned in dreamy pink light. Judging by the gentle slurs in their voices as they welcomed her, Tanya’s colleagues had retired to the bar before dinner. And then dinner had failed to happen.

  The very important, very attractive people had already flown back to Los Angeles, leaving only Canadians and Australians and Brits–cynical protectors of their national identities. Tanya sat in a chair near the oak-framed window, under a chandelier. She recognized immediately the violent mixture of self-loathing and defensive pride that bubbled up in Canadians, Australians, and Brits at the Banff World Television Festival in the days after the Americans departed.

  We’d never make that shit. Oh, to have an audience.

  Of course, her colleagues had questions. There were rumours that Tanya had resigned from Leap: who had head-hunted her? A BBC producer named Johnson Quayle who was blind in his left eye and, she had been disappointed to learn on a drunken evening three years previous, functionally impotent, had heard she was moving to London to work for MTV Europe.

  Tanya answered the question by distributing the hand-bills she had so carefully designed, advertising the event as “A Night of Mystery and Grand Amazement.” She had also brought five copies of The Testament, an eleven-page booklet of The Stan’s tenets and principles. It was a hasty compromise, at this point, between her and Alok’s interpretation of Stanley Moss and how best to attract six billion people to him. “This is the future, my friends.”

  Johnson Quayle glanced at the handbill and led the questions. “A magic
ian?”

  “No.” Tanya sighed. Why were people so damn literal? Even smart people? “No, I’m talking miracle, here. This man has genuine powers.”

  “Superpowers?”

  She poured herself a glass of the Beaujolais, since none of her former colleagues was sober or polite enough to do it for her. “The word miracle has been hijacked by comic books and glorified jugglers, hasn’t it? I’m talking about an old-time religious miracle that will initiate a new age of spirituality.”

  “You’re New Age now?” A woman from across the table, heavily involved in the Toronto International Film Festival, removed her sunglasses. Tanya could not think of her name. Her blond, curly hair seemed blonder and curlier than it had last year.

  “This isn’t a bunch of crystal-rubbing and drum-beating. It’s authentic.”

  Johnson Quayle put his hand on Tanya’s and squeezed. This news seemed to have aroused him. “A cult.”

  Tanya was glad she had come to the wine bar. It was an insight into the marketing and communications challenge that lay before her. Tomorrow night’s event had come together so quickly that she wasn’t quite prepared for its dangers. Tanya had to take control of the context straight away. Otherwise, her colleagues in the media–slaves to simple, mechanical thinking, she now understood–would have the power to interpret The Stan. Tanya decided not to finish her glass of Beaujolais. She would be up all night, preparing for tomorrow.

  “It’s not a cult. You have to forget everything you know and leave your skepticism in the lobby. You must be open to the transcendent, to the extraordinary.”

  After she delivered these lines, which sounded like lines even to her, the wine bar was silent except for Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, the soundtrack for every overpriced hotel wine bar in the world. Then, beginning with Johnson Quayle, her colleagues laughed.

  For a moment, she missed the routine of her former life. Johnson Quayle had seen a dentist since the last time they’d met, and his teeth were remarkably straight and white. Despite his performance, or lack thereof, in days gone by, Tanya figured that if she had not decided to leave this world behind, she would be in the throes of a short-term affair with Johnson Quayle.