As Long as the Rivers Flow

by James Bartleman

  “Sunny side up would be great. But I’ve got to rush. I’m due at work at eight-thirty.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s only seven and I’ll drop you off in my car in plenty of time.”

  Twenty minutes later, Martha joined Linden in the breakfast nook overlooking a carefully groomed lawn, well-tended rock gardens and birdbath surrounded by mature maple and oak trees.

  “I love this house,” said Linden, as he served breakfast and joined her at the table. “I’ve lived here all my life. My parents were professors at the University of Toronto and bought it when house prices were low. They left it to me when they passed on. I certainly wouldn’t be able to afford such a place on my salary today. It’s filled with good memories and its location is great, in the heart of Forest Hill, a step away from good shopping and restaurants, plenty of walking trails and lots of friends nearby that I’ve known since I attended Upper Canada College as a kid.”

  Afterwards, Linden took Martha on a brief tour. Everywhere she looked, in the living room, in the family room, in the hallways and even in the washrooms there were books.

  “Have you read all of them?” she asked. He proudly told her that he had. “Because, “he added, “they’re the central passion of my life. I couldn’t live without them.”

  That evening, Linden telephoned and proposed that they get together for a drink once again. Martha, who was hoping he would call, agreed and soon they began to see each on a regular basis. Martha would often stay at Linden’s from Friday night to Sunday evening and they would get together once or twice a week for a meal, conversation and perhaps a movie. Then Linden made a suggestion.

  “Let’s have an old-fashioned dinner party. My friends are dying to meet you. No more than a dozen people altogether to keep it intimate. It’ll be a chance to put on the dog, bring out the family silver. I know an excellent caterer who’ll do all the work. All we have to do is to sit back and enjoy ourselves. What do you say?”

  Martha was uncertain whether she would fit into Linden’s world but he brushed aside her concerns, saying there was no need for her to be intimidated by a few ageing profs.

  Martha reluctantly agreed and sought Nora’s help in getting ready. The two friends visited several department stores looking for something appropriate to wear before settling on a little black dress on sale at The Bay. The black colour of the dress, the two women agreed, would go well with a discreet beaten silver Haida brooch Martha had bought some time before and had not yet had an opportunity to wear.

  The morning of the dinner, Nora took her to a beauty salon where a hairdresser undid her braids, washed and dried her hair and did it up in a chignon. And that evening, after dabbing some perfume behind her ears and looking into the mirror before leaving her apartment, Martha was sure Linden would be proud of her.

  At eight o’clock, Linden and Martha greeted the guests as they arrived. The door would open, there would be little squeals of greeting and delight, and Linden would shake hands with the husband and bestow a discreet kiss on the cheek of the spouse.

  Almost every time he introduced Martha, the guests said the same thing.

  “So this is who you’ve been hiding from us.”

  During drinks, they bombarded her with questions and comments.

  “Linden tells us you come from somewhere up in northwestern Ontario. From the land of snow and blackflies, eh?”

  “Do you speak your Native language? I saw that movie, Dancing with Wolves, I think it was. Have you seen it? It was supposed to be authentic. They used real Indians in some of the lead roles instead of the usual heavily made-up Italian- or Greek-Americans, and they spoke Indian dialects—or at least that’s what I heard.”

  “What are you planning to do after your undergrad degree? Law school? Medicine? Going home to help your people afterwards?”

  Martha was flustered, not knowing how to respond to such an outpouring of good will, and retreated within herself and said little. Linden came to her rescue, laughing. “Don’t everyone jump on her at once. You’ll get your chance to grill her when we sit down to eat.”

  But matters did not improve over dinner. Never before had Martha seen such an elegantly laid-out table. The overhead lights had been dimmed, and candlelight from a pair of three-branched candelabras glistened off crystal wine and water glasses and highly polished sterling silverware. Between the candles was a magnificent silver centrepiece, holding a selection of leaves in all their autumnal glory—scarlet maple, silver birch and russet oak—on a bed of Spanish moss.

  Linden and Martha took their places at each end of the table, and five guests sat down on each side. Linden had told Martha beforehand that he would entertain the guests close to him. Perhaps she could keep those near her amused? She had agreed, not fully understanding what he meant until the moment arrived.

  The waiters, poker-faced and dressed in tuxedo jackets with starched white shirts and black bow ties, entered with the first course, lobster tails with lukewarm garlic butter sauce. They exited and returned with bottles of Sauvignon blanc, and everyone looked to the host to take the lead. A waiter opened a bottle and poured some wine into Linden’s glass. He carefully sampled it, pronounced it fit to drink, unfolded his napkin, placed it on his lap, picked up his knife and fork, nodded to Martha to do the same, and the dinner began.

  Martha stared at the cutlery arrayed in front of her, not knowing which knife and fork to select, worried she might make the wrong choice and expose herself as someone who did not belong at Linden’s sophisticated party. She solved the problem by following the example of the person across the table. In the meantime, the person on her right was doing his best to get her attention.

  “I understand from Linden,” he was saying, “that you went to a residential school and had a really bad time with a priest up there on James Bay.”

  Martha, preoccupied with trying to master her silverware, apologized and asked him to repeat his remark. He did so and added, “I’m sorry. Perhaps you don’t like to talk about it?”

  Martha was embarrassed. She had not expected Linden to share her confidences about Father Antoine with anyone else, even with a friend. Annoyed, she said nothing and concentrated on eating her dinner.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” the guest continued, in between a bite of food and a sip of wine, “but the press are full of stories about the terrible things that were supposed to have gone on at those schools. On the other hand,” he said, hoping Martha would laugh at his wit, “there’s always the bright side. Maybe you could make yourself some money suing the Church?”

  When Martha still did not respond, he tried another approach. “Have you heard of an author called Vladimir Nabokov?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Martha said, relieved that her neighbour had apparently given up prying into her personal life. “What sort of writer is he? Can you recommend any of his books?”

  The guest was happy and looked forward to imparting his insights on the iconic Russian émigré writer to someone obviously in need of enlightenment.

  “Nabokov,” he told her, “was one of the giants of twentieth-century literature. The book I recommend you read is called Lolita. It’s about a middle-aged pedophile by the name of Humbert Humbert who becomes obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl and takes advantage of her over a two-year period. On the face of it, it’s a repugnant story of rape and exploitation. But on a deeper level, literary critics and professors of literature, like those of us around this table, have long considered it to be a wonderful and moving love story, full of passion, tenderness and social and political satire.”

  Martha put down her fork, her dinner ruined. Why couldn’t he just drop the subject? What kind of a person wouldn’t know the difference between love and rape? Obviously he had never met Father Antoine. Did everything he knew about life come from books? But before she could tell him what she thought, the guest on her right spoke up.

  “I’ve always been fascinated by the north,” he said. “In contrast to the ignoramuses in this room, I�
�ve been up there. Way up there! When I was a boy, I used to spend my summers at a wilderness camp on Lake Temagami. We used to go by canoe all the way down the Moose River to James Bay and take the train back from Moosonee to Cochrane. It made me feel like a real Canadian.”

  Martha, deeply offended by the remarks on Lolita by the first guest, took out her anger on the second.

  “Why do you think that’s such a big deal?” she said. “A lot of us from up there don’t believe people down here think Natives are real Canadians. At least we’re not treated like we are.”

  “You’re probably right,” he said, surprised at the vehemence of her reaction. “We pretend we’re better than the Americans who slaughtered their Indians in the nineteenth century but look how we deal with ours today.”

  Martha said nothing and a stony silence prevailed among the guests at her end of the table in contrast to an animated discussion led by Linden with those around him. They were hotly disputing the merits of the various authors short-listed for Canada’s most prestigious literary award, the Giller Prize. The award ceremony was scheduled to be held in the coming days and everyone had an opinion on who should win. Those in favour of Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe were squaring off with others who thought the award should go to Wayne Johnston for The Navigator of New York, and there was much good-natured arguing and laughter.

  There was a pause as the waiters served the second course—rack of lamb, potatoes, green beans and caramelized small carrots—and filled the glasses with a red Merlot. The discussion resumed, this time with the people from Martha’s end of the table entering into a completely new debate with those from Linden’s side, this time happily and inconclusively on the relative merits of Canadian and French wines. During a lull in the conversation over dessert, however, as they ate their crème brûlée and drank their ice wine, the guests turned their attention back to Martha.

  “I teach English literature,” a woman sitting beside Linden said, peering down the table at her, “and have always been struck by the role the north and Indians play in our literature. Which author, in your view, most accurately depicts that reality?”

  By this time, Martha was frustrated at not being able to hold her own in the discussion. None of the people she knew talked about literary prizes or authors or fine wines. The only author she had studied in any depth who wrote about Indians was Duncan Campbell Scott, and she had no intention of starting an argument over him with a group of people who probably shared Linden’s view that he was a poet of “deep artistic sensitivity and humanity.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I just don’t know enough about the subject to say anything sensible.”

  “Now since you’re Indian, I bet you know a lot about Native art,” another woman said. “It’s the big fashion here in Toronto. Norval Morrisseau? Does he ring a bell?”

  Martha was now thoroughly irritated. The woman was obviously talking down to her since Morrisseau was the best-known of all the Native artists of the Woodland School that had come into its own in the previous thirty years. But she knew something about him the other people in the room did not. Morrisseau came from Sandy Lake First Nation, not far from her home reserve, and the legends he portrayed in his paintings were ones she was familiar with from her childhood. When she had first come to Toronto, she had been surprised that he would dare reveal the sacred teachings of the elders, apparently claiming that he was a modern-day shaman using art to share his heritage with the wider world. But after reading that he was an alcoholic, she had concluded that he was a fraud, just churning out artwork that betrayed his culture to buy booze to feed his addiction.

  Then one day, out for a lunchtime walk in Yorkville, one of Toronto’s most elegant shopping districts, she saw on display in an art gallery a Morrisseau painting depicting the Wendigo. To her horror, it was the Wendigo with the lewd face of Father Antoine as it had appeared to her in her nightmare after she returned home from residential school and had haunted her nights repeatedly in the ensuing years. She had rushed away in a panic, pushing her way frantically through the tourists crowding the sidewalks, afraid the monster would float free from its canvas prison and come chasing after her. And from that moment, although rationally it made no sense, she could not help thinking that Morrisseau, if not a shaman, was a bearwalker and someone to be feared.

  Not wanting to be negative in everything she said, Martha searched for some way to sum up her mixed feelings about Morrisseau that would not provoke the laughter of a group of strangers. But before she could provide her views, someone else, a man this time, broke in.

  “I’ve always thought the paintings of the Woodland School have an uncanny resemblance to the early Picasso. The Demoiselles d’Avignon in particular, with its primitive African mask influence. There’s also a brutal primitivism and raw emotion in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ballet. What do you think, Martha?”

  Martha was confused. She had not heard of Picasso or Stravinsky. Was her questioner trying to humiliate her by deliberately asking her a question he knew in advance she could not answer? Had he really just insinuated that the art of her people was primitive? Primitive meant savage, did it not? At residential school, the nuns had said Indians were Stone Age savages. Surely this individual was not calling her people Stone Age savages? Her feelings were hurt.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about,” she said.

  The dinner guests exchanged puzzled looks and the conversation around the table came to a halt. The farewells after dinner were less enthusiastic than the greetings had been at the beginning, and Linden looked relieved when Martha told him she wanted to sleep in her own bed and went home.

  Martha did not sleep well that night, tossing and turning and reliving the events of the evening. The dinner had been a failure and she suspected Linden blamed her. He was probably right about that. She had been thin-skinned when she should have been diplomatic, and if she was to keep him, she would have to learn to hold her tongue. She would have a frank discussion with him to put matters right.

  The next morning, therefore, she called him to propose they get together at the same coffee shop near the university where they had first met socially two months before. She wanted to have a “heart-to-heart” talk, she said. When Linden did not reply, Martha asked him if he was still there.

  “I’m still here,” he said. “You’ve just taken me by surprise. I’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

  Martha arrived first, and after ordering a black coffee, waited at a table next to a window streaked by raindrops for the arrival of Linden. It was a dreary, rainy, late-November Toronto Sunday morning. A happy chocolate Lab went by dragging through the puddles a laughing teenage girl in a yellow raincoat. A few minutes later, a grey-haired, expressionless middle-aged woman, a dirty-brown kerchief around her head and wearing a loose, heavy once-fashionable coat, shuffled along, leaning into the wind and pushing a shopping cart filled with plastic bags stuffed with old clothes and empty beer and liquor bottles. From time to time, a gust of wind tore wet leaves from the nearby trees and slapped them against the window.

  His hair wet, Linden pushed open the door and went over to join Martha. After kissing her on the cheek, he removed his coat and sat down.

  “Now what have you got to tell me that’s so important you wanted to meet me here rather than over at my place,” he said, leaning forward and smiling confidently. “I hope I’m not in trouble.”

  “Of course not,” said Martha. “We’ve really hit it off in the short time we’ve known each other and I thought it would be a good idea to see where we’re going, especially after last night. But first why don’t you order a coffee and let’s talk about something else for a while.”

  For the next hour, Martha and Linden drank coffee and leisurely rehashed the events of the previous evening. They both laughed when they remembered the earnest seriousness of the guest who wanted Martha to provide an expert opinion on the links between Picasso and the Woodland Sch
ool.

  When Martha thought the moment was right, she broached the issue of their long-term future, confident that Linden would want their relationship to continue and become stronger. If that were not the case, surely he would not have insisted on holding a dinner party in her honour.

  “You’re really special to me, Linden,” she said. “But our backgrounds are so different. Do you think we can have a future together just the same?”

  But Linden’s reaction was not what she expected.

  “Martha, Martha, my dear, adorable Martha from the north,” he said. “This is a surprise. I’ve always tried to be honest with you. I really like you, but I’m a little worried when you mention a future together. When I had my divorce, I concluded I’d never be the sort of person who would ever want to be tied down. We’re friends. Why not leave it at that? If at any time, either of us want to see someone else, we should feel free to do so.”

  “Then maybe it would be better,” Martha said, “that we didn’t see each other again.”

  Once again, Linden said she was being ridiculous, but he said it in such a way that Martha knew the relationship was over.

  Martha’s heart was pounding as she trudged back to her apartment in the rain from the coffee shop. How could she have misinterpreted the signals coming from Linden so badly? She now regretted being overeager and pushing him to commit himself. Perhaps if she had given their ties more time to mature, he would have come to care for her as much as she did for him. But now that was too late. Now all she had left were regrets.

  But by the time she met Nora for lunch several days later, Martha had come to a different conclusion. After describing in detail the events of the dinner party, she told her astonished friend that she and Linden would not be seeing each other again.

  “I was naive and it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. But what makes me so mad is that I now think he used that stupid dinner to put me on display like an exotic animal. It was some sort of exam to see how I’d perform with his friends and I failed. Just like I flunked his term paper on Duncan Campbell Scott. The more I think about it the madder I get, and the happier I am to be rid of him.”