The Museum at the End of the World

by John Metcalf

  Arseholes are cheap today!

  sang Forde

  Cheaper than yesterday!

  “Are you sure you only had two brandies?”

  “Alex and I are in the same boat, Suzy. And it’s sinking.”

  “But you’ll try.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Forde, getting to his feet, “oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”

  Then, turning back to her, he said, “And it can’t be cured or, you know, the drugs can’t hold it at bay?”

  Suzy shook her head.

  “Parkinsons usually live out a normal lifespan, but with everything just getting worse and worse, more pronounced, the symptoms, I mean. The drugs apparently become less and less effective.”

  “It’s like a fucking Beckett play.”

  “And some way off yet there’s incontinence.”

  Forde kissed the silent tears from her cheeks.

  “They often do die, though, from pneumonia. Food particles going down the wrong way into the lungs. Then bacteria. I can’t, in my faith, wish for it, Rob, but I do sometimes. For him, I mean.”

  “So,” he said.

  Then he said, “Well, I’ll go and see the boss and get my marching orders.”

  “He drools, sometimes,” she said, “you know, the swallowing, it’s difficult, but there’s a box of Kleenex and—”

  “Stop it, Suzy. Stop fussing.”

  He went up the stairs and along the landing.

  Tapped on Alex’s door.

  He heard Alex’s voice and went in.

  Alex was standing gripping the top edges of a chest of drawers.

  “So, Alexander, old cock!” said Forde, coming around him to hold his left arm, his hand travelling down the length of the arm to free Alex’s left hand from its grip on the chest.

  a gentling hand down the length of the horse’s leg before lifting its hoof

  Moved them over to the couch.

  “You’ve been talking to Suzy.”

  The voice near normal but the face rather expressionless, as Suzy had warned.

  “I was getting worried.”

  “A bit delayed. I’m sorry, Alex. It was Rideau Hall all morning.”

  “Your investiture.”

  “Not as grand as that sounds.”

  Alex nodded slowly.

  “Are you working?”

  “I’m still working on Medals.”

  Alex said,

  One was so small

  It was no good at all

  Forde said,

  With the other he won medals and prizes.

  “It’s a good title,” said Forde, “for the emotional—you know.”

  Alex needed no explanation.

  “But,” said Forde, “it’s nowhere near as good as yours.”

  Alex put his left hand, flat on his knee, then moved his right hand across, placing it over his left hand, covering it to quell the tremors.

  “What one?”

  “That title you were always threatening to write.”

  Unsmiling, Alex said,

  Fecal Matter

  *

  The more Sheila nattered, the more darkly uncommunicative Forde felt himself becoming. The looming evening could not have come at a worse time. The afternoon visit to Alex had left him scraped, bleak. Talking with Alex, the medal an elephant in the room, had left him feeling shabby.

  This bloody day, just at this time when he wanted life undisturbing, uneventful, because a story was coming into focus, the insistent images beginning to cohere, the slow forming filling his mind: a Jewish wedding, the young couple under the tent-thing, the canopy whatsit, the—what was it Sheila had given him—the chuppah! the whole thing moving closer and closer, defining itself enough for him to have given it a title

  If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem

  The old man lying on the dance floor felled by a heart attack, the grouped figures around him suggesting a painting of the Italian renaissance, possibly a Deposition, the Klezmer band playing If I Were A Rich Man, playing on and on dabba-dabba-do, on and on through the confusion, the old wife kneeling, the old man’s stricken white hand climbing her arm.

  If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem, let my right

  hand forget its cunning.

  Alex had never wavered, never forgotten, but his trembling hand was cunning no longer.

  He would never write again.

  His destination had always been Jerusalem, Zion his constant dream; he stood now staring in perplexity at a tumbler.

  By the rivers of Babylon…

  we wept when we remembered Zion.

  The instructional bumph from the Chancellery of Honours had detailed a Reception in the Tent Room followed by Dinner in the Ballroom. Each inductee was permitted a Spouse/Companion and one Guest. Inductee and Spouse/Companion had been assigned seating at separate tables so that both could benefit from “mingling and sharing the richness of their life experience.”

  life scrotums, thought Forde, life bollocks.

  Sheila had said that their guest must be Joshua or Ben, as she wanted one of them to witness this honouring of their father. Josh was her choice as being the elder and as having no visible tattoos.

  Forde was wearing the suit he’d worn in the morning as he had no other and was recalcitrant about putting on a fresh shirt. He had squabbled with Sheila about fixing into his lapel one of the miniatures that had been handed out prior to the morning ceremony, before the bestowing of the medal proper; she had been adamant.

  “Just—” she said. “On this Day of days, could you just once spare me all your piffle.”

  The bed was draped with discarded choices: dresses, blouses, pantsuits.

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  “Lovely,” he said.

  “Most becoming,” he said.

  “Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” he said, “Of course I’m not going to shave again.”

  *

  Forde tasted the flute of champagne lifted from a passing waiter—not champagne, a cheapish prosecco or cava. He downed it with a slight shudder.

  From another circulating salver, he plucked a smear of something brown on a saltine.

  “Bison pâté,” said the girl.

  And you are?

  The man had bounced out of a knot of people like a steel ball bearing binking in a new direction on a bagatelle board into a new pocket of nails.

  “Robert Forde.”

  Denis Markle. I’m the Miramichi Herald. And in what field of endeavour…?

  “Services to literature.”

  “My, my! Charming, charming. Actually, I’m in search of Saguenay and Athabaska… we Heralds…

  He smiled vaguely, White Rabbitish, and pottered off into the heating throng.

  Forde acquired a large scotch from the bartender, who dispensed with the precision and impassivity of a croupier.

  Sterling fellow, thought Forde, deserving himself of a medal.

  Services to Humanity

  Josh, he saw, chatting to a young woman with a layered haircut and very large, purple-framed glasses; doubtless, just chatting; sadly, not chatting her up. A world of wasted possibilities.

  Josh approached holding a flute.

  He eyed the glass in Forde’s hand.

  “Liquor,” he said.

  In stage-Irish, a Juno and the Paycock accent, his Joxer Daly accent, Forde said,

  “And a blessing it is, a blessing.”

  Then,

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “Listening to that woman in a sari.”

  A strange creature who, despite the sari, was stoutly, lumpishly un-Indian. Blonde brillo-pad hair, a sparkly thing in her nose. The over-the-shoulder wrap of the sari exposed the left side of her waist bulging out in rolls. Her bared left arm was festooned nea
rly to the elbow with metal bangles and sparkly glass bangles, the sort of bangles sold in cheap Indian Import shops that smelled of sandalwood incense and patchouli.

  She jangled as she gesticulated.

  “Who the hell is she? said Forde.

  “She’s the CEO of an NGO called CICA.”

  Forde eyed him.

  Joshua worked in the Civil Service as an AS-5 in Supply and Services. Forde had little idea of what AS-5 meant—he’d heard Sheila say it and hadn’t been interested in inquiring further—nor had he any idea of what Josh actually did beyond, he assumed, supplying things and servicing them. Though he made efforts to deny it to himself, he found Joshua stultifying. His haircuts cost about half of what Forde was paid for a short story or article in the literary magazines.

  “‘Seeka,’ people seem to say it,” said Josh. “An acronym of Canada India Child Adoption.”

  “Hmmm,” said Forde, turning back to the barman.

  “I hope,” said Joshua, “and pray, that you’re not going to—”

  “Mere anaesthesia,” said Forde.

  “Because you know how much it hurts her when you get—”

  “Thank you—” said Forde “—Joshua.”

  When the throng was herded into the Ballroom for Dinner, Forde was seated beside Joshua on one side and a large, fattish man on the other. The combined, confluent chattering was so dense, it left Forde straining, watching lips, teeth, eyebrows, eyes, words and occasional sentences drifting his way. Sheila, his lifeline, hopeless tables away.

  He became aware, white cuff, black-clad arm, of a hand reaching across his place setting, picking up his name-card.

  The man then grunted and dropped it.

  Rumbled.

  “Don’t recall your citation at the ceremony. Your award was for…?”

  “Services, so it said,” said Forde, “to literature.”

  “Publishing company?”

  “Nothing so exciting.”

  “Well?”

  “Writer.”

  “Would I have heard of you?”

  Forde more squarely turned to look at him, took in the embonpoint, the black glass studs in his starched shirt front, the acreage of rubicund face, was instantly visited by Gore Vidal’s description of Senator Edward Kennedy as three hundred pounds of condemned veal. Putting both hands flat on the table, he said, “Well…”

  Joshua, who’d been leaning anxiously, said, “Don’t! Please!”

  Smiling beatifically, Forde said, “Well, it depends, of course, on your reading habits, but most probably not.”

  He paused.

  “Though it gives one something to aim for.”

  Waiters and waitresses were circulating with bottles of wine from British Columbia. Forde endured Joshua’s reproachful eyes as he quaffed the rather nasty acidic red.

  …we wept when we remembered Zion…

  The woman’s painful voice was cutting through the babble of lesser voices.

  “Oi,” said Forde: “Think of waking up to that. What’s SAP?”

  “SSAP,” said Joshua. “It stands for Sahel Sahara Acacia Project. They plant acacia trees to stem the southern advance of the sands.”

  …though headquartered in Ouagadougou…

  Query was heard around the table.

  “What did she say?”

  “It sounded like ‘Ouagadougou.’”

  “Good heavens!”

  “It’s the capital.”

  “What of?”

  “Burkino Faso.”

  “Burkino what?”

  “What was Upper Volta.”

  “Always changing things.”

  “Funny. We’ve got an acacia tree in the backyard.”

  “That’ll be a False Alcacia.”

  “Nothing false about it, I can assure you, pretty white flowers, and these long, black, dangling—”

  …so we called the compound ‘Dar Es Salaam,’ Arabic for ‘House of Peace’ or ‘Haven’…

  “We were there on a cruise. It’s a port.”

  “A family of thorny, leguminous…”

  “She’s talking about a compound. In Burkino Faso.”

  “We were advised not to disembark.”

  “Yes, it’s in Tanganyika.”

  “Tanzania, you’ll find, now.”

  “Always changing things.”

  …something of a setback when most of our male volunteers were massacred by Tuareg marauders and the young women…

  “Not to be argumentative, but I distinctly remember that this port, Dar Es Salaam, was the capital.”

  “The capital now, I think you’ll find, is Dodama.”

  …not to put too fine a point upon it, the young women were handed about among the Tuareg and then sold on into slavery in northern Mali…

  “Despoiled?”

  …and avoidable, but no security-vetted army officer could be found who spoke Tamasheq to carry out negotiations… perfectly possible to have traded our girls for four-wheel drive vehicles the Tuareg prize for the tobacco smuggling…

  Forde studied the printed menu.

  “See that, Josh?” he said.

  “‘All food items sourced in Canada’

  Croquettes (Prince Edward Island)

  Fiddlehead Greens (New Brunswick)

  Caille/Quail (The celebrated Game Bird from Alberta)”

  Game of any kind, feathered or furred, summoned instantly Vile Bodies, a book precious to him, a lodestar in his life.

  Waugh describing a game pie.

  …full of beaks and shot and inexplicable vertebrae…

  Forde moved his wine glass to the side, giving the waiter easier access.

  Joshua watched.

  A loud-talking woman at the other side of the table was apparently CEO of an NGO called GAM.

  Forde indicated her with a slight movement of his head and raised his eyebrows.

  Josh said, “Goats for African Mothers.”

  Forde pieced together that her organization collected money to buy goats that they gave to village women. The goats seemed to thrive on even the sparsest and unpromising vegetation. It did not take long before a flock was established; milk, meat, leather for the production of handicrafts, wallets, for example, sold internationally in One World shops. A simple, practical solution to poverty.

  Then the piercing-voice woman moved into high gear again.

  SSAP—GAM

  GAM—SSAP

  It was like listening to bloody ping-pong.

  …the other major setback, a devastation of the acacia plantings by an extraordinary and entirely unforeseen explosion in the native goat population…

  “Wine, sir?”

  “Absolutely,” said Forde.

  Picking up the charged glass, glancing left to Fatso, right to Joshua, he proffered it in toast proclaiming,

  “Jerusalem!”

  Touched to his lips British Columbia’s acidic bounty.

  Joshua made a business of sighing.

  Fatso frowned.

  Puzzled.

  “Enough?” repeated Forde.

  He got to his feet with, his mind supplied, lissome grace, placing his chair neatly back under the tabletop.

  To Fatso, he said,

  “Sitting too long. Plays the dickens with the old wound!”

  Placing the flat of his hand on the crown of Joshua’s haircut, he said,

  “Remember the ref’s last words before he ducks under and out.”

  He stooped and whispered,

  Protect yourself at all times.

  *

  Of the intricacies of prose in English, he thought it more likely than not that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and his/her buddies knew bubkess.

  The pleasures o
f the medal, well… it possibly offered him some slight protection from the more rabid of his critics, but as he’d said to Suzy, it was frippery, like the emeritus status denied to Alex, a bauble.

  During the grinding ennui of the Reception, a man had materialized beside him at the makeshift bar and, touching his lapel miniature, had blurted out, “I feel that this, well, for me, it validates a lifetime of work.”

  He had requested Ginger Ale.

  As he walked on into the evening, there played in Forde’s head one of his fantastic monologues, his farragos, his habitual fanfaronades…

  I, sir, am unable to share your feelings in that I think continually of those who were truly great, of those who left the vivid air signed with their honour.

  A dry-clean-y smell about the man, a carbon tetrachloride miasma.

  Rented, probably.

  Full formal rented fig except for, stubbornly, Forde felt, coarse grey Walmart work socks in sandals.

  Possibly a Quaker.

  After the noise and heat and pomposities of the mansion, after the ping of SSAP and pong of GAM, after Joshua’s reproaches and Joshua’s condescension, the cool of the evening was a pleasure, few cars passing, the trees becoming still shapes, eldritch cries of nighthawks stitching invisibly through insects above the banks of light left on in government edifices.

  Dark emotions swarmed him

  He felt heartsick at his failing contact with Joshua.

  Anger.

  But it was Alex he was ridden by.

  Certainly he would call in markers, do what could be done, but it would be a rearguard action, the delay of defeat.

  White strips on the carpet.

  Something to aim for

  The path below the Parliament buildings and the Supreme Court, the path alongside the river was dark and quiet. Only small river sounds, but a sense of the weight of the water coming down.

  He slowed to a stroll, needing to absorb the silence.

  Some distance ahead of him, he saw a patch of light and, as he drew closer, saw a man, a man fishing. Closer, and he saw at the man’s feet a small Coleman lamp, a folding canvas stool, a canvas bag. The lamp was dancing light out over the river’s currents. As Forde drew level, the man was raising the rod with his left hand, lifting the line out of the water, the line swinging in and caught in his right hand, light glinting on the brass rig, off the brass stem, three brass arms, from which hung short, baited lines.

  There was a word for such a rig—he’d used one himself as a boy, sea-fishing—his mind chasing the word… but it was gone.