by Lee Gowan
My father always hated my Japanese car. He never said why, but I came to suspect this was some kind of throwback to his heritage and my own; some tiny failure to assimilate. I was once obsessed by these glimpses into his past, my past, which had been for the most part so purposefully blocked off. For a time in my twenties I devoured books on China, but most of what I found there was even more romantic and distant and mysterious than my father’s westerns. Feeding and worshipping my dead ancestors was a delightfully spooky idea, and there was something appropriate about recognizing my family as my gods, but in the end I could not really take it all seriously, especially since it was the men who were venerated, while the women were soon forgotten. I was left with nothing but these glimpses of what might have shaped me, but with no glimpses of me: a girl who loved red licorice and Paul Newman. My father’s ancestral legacy remains almost entirely associated with memories like that young woman on the subway, or the boys in elementary school who called me “Irene, I-lean,” ignoring the fact that my enunciation was better than theirs.
During the time I was reading all those books on China, I changed my name to Ai, which means “love” in Mandarin and Japanese. I pronounce it the Japanese way, like the personal pronoun or the organ of sight. The Mandarin pronunciation is “Oy.” I read somewhere that the original symbol was a figure in shackles. Someone I met in a nightclub who speaks Mandarin told me that my full name, Ai Lee, means “something so disgusting that no one could possibly love it.” I don’t particularly care. I like the way it sounds.
I suppose I must have abandoned the ghosts of my family on the thirteenth floor of my first home. We lived in one of a cluster of apartment towers that sprout like mushrooms in the ravine beside the Don Valley Parkway. Our apartment was on the thirteenth floor, three doors down from the elevator. But the number you pressed on the elevator was actually fourteen, as was the number mounted on the wall facing the elevators when you stepped off, and the number on our door was 1408. When I first noted this, at age six, I asked my mother about it and she explained to me that the number thirteen was unlucky, so no one wanted to live there. This was why we lived on the fourteenth floor instead of the thirteenth.
I imagined the thirteenth floor existed below us, but that it was a dark unfinished complex of bare concrete and metal and exposed insulation, like the attic of my mother’s parents’ home in Kingston—completely empty, except for the black spirits who lived there and who had no way of escaping because the elevator wouldn’t stop for them. Sometimes at night I could hear them bumping about, searching for a way out into the world. When I told my older sister this, she laughed and informed me that there was no thirteenth floor, or if there was, despite what the numbers said, it was ours.
I told my mother that I thought we’d better move because if the evil spirits were not already living among us, unseen, they would surely arrive as soon as they figured out what floor we were really on. She was ironing one of my father’s white shirts, making sure the seams were perfectly straight.
“Evil has no more interest in the number thirteen than any other number,” she said, pumping a button to spray a thin jet of steam.
I nodded, not fully convinced.
Every evening Dad got home from the office at exactly six, and Mom would have food on his plate. We girls would take turns helping with supper or doing the dishes and generally keeping the apartment in the state of un-lived-in-ness on which my father insisted. My brother’s only responsibility was to take the garbage and dump it down the chute. Anyone would have thought he was off to the salt mines.
I am a fourth daughter. It’s been obvious to me since I was a teenager that the only reason I exist at all is that my parents kept trying until they had my brother. Isn’t it funny how we can only allow ourselves to imagine our parents engaging in sex in order to satisfy the biblical imperative? What if I could imagine them conceiving me in a moment of unbridled passion? Would I be happier then? Would I be less brittle?
Perhaps my parents were once passionate lovers. In the beginning, when, despite the obvious complications, they obeyed the brave compulsion to fall, they must have seen something exotic in one another: the Chinese man and the woman whose Protestant parents were from Kingston and whose grandparents were from Ireland. I can’t even begin to fathom the bravery of their compulsion—or at least of my mother’s. My father’s choice makes perfect sense, I suppose, considering his overwhelming desire to assimilate; but how could my mother not have seen that marrying my father would only narrow her life into a channel of scorn and ignorance? For years her parents didn’t speak to her. She knew this would happen, but she married him anyway. For that alone, she will always be my hero.
I suppose I should tell her.
Or was it just sex? Was my mother only unable to resist my father’s touch? Not brave at all? Or can there be bravery in surrendering to one’s own body? Yes.
Whatever the case, I still believe they’d have turned exclusively to sex for sex’s sake if a boy had arrived earlier. I would have never been born. My father may have turned his back on his past, may have abandoned the ghosts of his family, but his attitudes to sons and daughters aren’t much different from those of his ancestors. He sees my brother as his connection to the future, and for that reason my brother is the only accomplishment that gives his life any real meaning.
When I was fourteen, my father bought the Victorian house in Little Portugal where he now lies dying. The house has four bedrooms, which meant that we all had our own space, as my two eldest sisters had already gone off to university and met the men they would marry. It was a bit mind-numbing, all of that space, after our tiny apartment. There is a yard too, where skunks and raccoons sometimes troop through looking for garbage and an extended family of squirrels claim squatters’ rights on the proud old elm. There are worms and robins in the spring. The wilderness in our backyard.
I remember once sitting on our floral couch, crying because a boy at school had dumped me for a prettier girl. My father walked into the living room. He asked me what was wrong. What could I say to him? I told him that my heart was broken. He looked me up and down, then opened his paper and said, “Did you take some aspirin?”
You’d never have guessed there was a romantic bone in my father’s body, except that his favourite movies were westerns. He had read Zane Grey when he was a boy in England, and once, apparently, he confided to my mother that when he’d left the jolly old motherland it was with a secret expectation that he was coming to a continent populated entirely by cowboys, and that—just maybe—he might become as carefree and easy as those cowboys himself.
I know of only one gift the cowboys gave him. Perhaps that gift is all my father will leave to me: my deep love of tobacco. My earliest memories are of him smoking. I remember being fascinated by the way he could hold the ghost of himself in his mouth, then breathe it out his nostrils in slowly curling tusks. I remember, as a child, thinking of the smoke as his spirit gradually escaping from his body—that my father’s soul was made manifest in the shapes he exhaled. He wasn’t a sensual man, except when he smoked. I stole my first cigarettes from him when I was fifteen and smoked them in the backyard with that boy who would soon dump me.
Fucking cowboys.
He loved those cowboys so much that when there was a western on, that’s what the whole family had to watch. And there had to be complete and utter silence. If you so much as gasped when somebody got shot in the gut, you risked being sent to your room.
Why is violence so aesthetically pleasing?
The pilot announces our descent. I put the camera and the script back into my bag. The locations, at least, might be exciting. It’s a brand new landscape. To me. I raise my tray and prepare myself for disaster. I hate landings. They’re almost as bad as takeoffs.
We disembark down a stairway to the tarmac. They have a couple of the covered ramps connected directly to the building, but perhaps they want to offer us some fresh air. The sun is brighter than I’ve ever experienced—must be the lack
of smog to properly filter the light—and I find myself reaching for my sunglasses, even though I’d resolved not to put them on at least until after I’ve met my assistant, Greg Turnball, not wanting to look too “Hollywood.” I’m dying for a cigarette, but know I’ll have to wait. Apparently there’s something dangerous about mixing jet fuel and sparks. Isn’t that how I got to Saskatchewan?
Once inside, I stand and wait, looking anxiously at every stranger to see if he or she might be there to meet me. No one is. I watch the other passengers meeting their families, their lovers, their associates—hugging and kissing and shaking hands. Alone among them, I retrieve my bag from the carousel, then watch them file out the door until there is only me and a frustrated couple who have lost their luggage. At last I dig out the business card the associate producer gave me and call the number.
“Chinook Pictures.”
“May I speak to Lance Taves?
“You’re talking to him.”
“Mr. Taves? It’s Ai Lee, your locations manager. I’m at the airport, and I thought Greg Turnball was supposed to meet me. But he’s not here.”
“Oh? Right. You’re at which airport?”
“Here. In Saskatoon.”
“Really? What are you doing here?”
“I’m … Greg was going to show me the locations he’d tracked down so far.”
“Is that so? Well, isn’t that a bugger? Greg was really looking forward to meeting you, Ai, but unfortunately I had to fire him.”
“Oh!” I wait for further explanation, but the line hums. “What happened?”
“What’s that? Oh, with Greg? Eventualities, as they say. No matter. You’re here. You’re on the job. Which is fortunate, because I just got a call from Herzog, and he and Aspen are flying into town tomorrow, so they’ll likely want to see some of the locations.”
I can feel myself getting dizzy, and I wonder if I can put my head between my knees without drawing too much attention to myself. “Yes, but … it’s Mr. Turnball who knows the area.”
There is another silence as he considers my statement.
“Mr. Turnball is a mean drunk with a wounded and blackened soul and a bad attitude. He hates you. He hated you without even meeting you because your success reminds him of his own lack thereof. He told me it was either you or him. So I fired him. What else could I do? Not that it was easy for me. He’s a friend. I know his family. I’ve watched his kids grow up. The oldest is thirteen now and needs his teeth fixed. But it had to be done.”
“Oh.”
“We’re hiring a replacement, of course, but it’ll take a day or two to get all of that sorted out and them up to speed and all the whatnot and wherewithal sluiced through. Meanwhile, rent yourself a car. Keep the receipt, and we’ll cover it, of course. Are you booked in somewhere?”
“Yes. I think.”
“So, what makes you so good that Herzog couldn’t do without you?”
I consider the question. “I really wanted the job. I really wanted to work with James Aspen. I’m not sure why they chose me.”
“No? Neither was Greggy boy. Sure had his shorts in a knot—the fact that they hired somebody from Toronto to oversee him. I told him to look at it as an opportunity. Everything is an opportunity. You obviously know people. Americans.”
“I do know a few Americans.”
“They’re the people to know. Like Jerry Herzog. You known Jerry long?”
“I’ve worked on a few of his productions. I guess he was happy with my work.”
“Good guy to know. How well do you know the area?”
“I’ve never been here before. I’ve read over all the material.”
“Great. Well, Jerry and Jim are here tomorrow, and they’re really looking forward to seeing some of the locations, I’m sure. The old man is really something. I haven’t actually met him yet, but I’ve talked on the phone a couple of times. He’s … very human. I might have been talking to my own grandfather. He asked me how the fishing was this year. Apparently he’s an avid fisherman.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Very spiritual. He kept talking about his soul—telling me about the danger his soul was in.”
“Pardon?”
“Yeah. He said his soul was in grave danger. Two or three times. Couldn’t get him off the topic. I’m trying to talk to him about crew and he keeps insisting that he’s staring the devil in the face. He was beginning to sound a little off, if you know what I mean. A little lulu.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, I guess we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“Looking forward to it.”
And he hangs up.
I rent a Toyota, out of some mistaken sense of familiarity. It’s only the name I recognize. What I get is a sleek and silent machine that seems to want to drive itself. At first I can’t put it in gear and have to go back into the depressing little cubicle of an office—I have this unfortunate habit of trying to imagine the lives of people who provide me services—to tell them there is something wrong with their car. A young man only half my age comes out, gets behind the wheel, and puts the car in gear. He shrugs at me, puts it back in park, and gets out. The young man wears a muscle shirt and has a tattoo of a high voltage tower on his left shoulder, and the expression pasted on his face tells me I have been worthless since the day I was born. Not that I take it personally. I’m sure it is the same expression he uses on any woman as impossibly old as forty. I get in and try again, but the car refuses to respond to my commands. Helplessly, I turn to him, and he raises his eyes to the ceiling.
“Put your foot on the brake.”
I do, and the car slips into gear without any resistance. The young man shakes his head and walks away.
I wonder if venturing out alone into the wilderness in a car that knows more than I do about driving is a good idea.
I’ve only just pulled out of the airport when my cell rings. It’s Mom, of course.
“How soon are you coming home?”
“Is Dad okay?”
“He’s getting worse.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s failing. It won’t be long now.”
“That’s what the doctor says?”
“What does the doctor know? He says make him comfortable. How could I possibly make him comfortable? I can’t even make myself comfortable.”
“What makes you think he’s failing, Mom?”
“Every day he’s just a little less there. Every day he slips away a little further. He’s always been such a quiet man, so sometimes I almost forget that this quiet is any different. And then I remember that soon he won’t be here. Soon I’ll be all alone.”
“Mom …”
“Have you met James Aspen, yet?”
“No. My plane just landed.”
“Well, I won’t bother you any longer. I just wanted to hear your voice, to see if this number would actually work.”
“It works, Mom.”
“Yes, I guess it does. I love you, dear.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
But she’s already hung up. I put the phone back in my bag.
“One must learn to believe in the beauty of compromise without compromising all that is beautiful.”—James Aspen
EXT. PRAIRIE VISTA. DAY.
The sun rises on an empty world. Then, in the centre of the long line of horizon, we make out a black dot that will eventually prove to be the shape of a man on a horse trotting towards us.
In the beginning there was the word. No location can ever hope to offer the perfect incarnation of what the word comprises. Every location is a compromise. As James Aspen says, one of the marks of genius is the ability to see the beauty in the compromise.
In truth, from what I’ve read, the main element of James Aspen’s artistic credo is control. He’ll shoot a scene a hundred times if he has to, until he gets exactly what he had envisioned. He is the same with locations, demanding that they conform to the standard of his imagina
tion. For this reason, he does much of his work in the studio, constructing the world as he sees fit. Landscapes, though, can be a problem. That’s where I come in. My specialty is landscapes.
From my briefcase I take out a large-scale map of the district with mileage radii drawn from Saskatoon. All of my tools are in the bag. My cameras: both digital and 35mm. Colour and black-and-white film. Tape measure. Compass. Guidebooks to the district. Propaganda literature from the government film department. Sketchbook. I also asked Greg Turnball to send me as many postcards of the district as he could find, and he sent a half-hearted response before I called and demanded more. Now I know why. Hates me, Lance Taves says. Probably he’ll always associate me with postcards of harvesting machines in wheat fields. Often I substitute these overly romanticized images with my own versions, shooting them in a more appropriate relation to the director’s previous work.
I left the city limits behind a few miles back, and now, after checking the map, I leave the highway, pulling onto a dirt trail. Before long I have left behind any trace of civilization.
It’s like diving off a cliff. If not for the vehicle I’m driving, I could easily be in another time, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. I might even be on another planet. All that holds me to the earth is a horizon distinguished by a thin white line, bordering the blue from that brown earth. The immensity of space makes me feel more than alone in the world: I feel terribly alone in the universe. But at the same time there’s something soothing. Grass growing between the tracks brushes against the chassis. Some small furry animal runs across the road. I stop the car and get out.
The light, again, is alarmingly bright. And the dry wind sweeps across the world and pushes like some greater force demanding you to lean. I take some photos. Earth and sky. Wild rose bushes. Bluff of trees. Earth and sky. I smoke another cigarette, then I get back in and drive on. When I reach the lip of the valley, which is the actual location, I get out and start snapping again.
What distinguishes my work is my talent with a camera. My photographs, however, are meant for a very small and specific audience: producers and directors. A friend likes to tease me about how catering to this audience had made me develop a very specific aesthetic. It seems obvious that the photograph has undermined reality, but my friend says my photographs undermine photography. “Your photographs reveal, to their very particular audience, what needs to be seen, what might otherwise be missed, and they manage to do this while conveying the suggestion that what is there in reality is much more beautiful than what has been contained by the frame. Actual composition is left to those great men and women of vision who are your audience. They are the ones who will undermine reality by making the landscape into a beautiful world on a screen. That is your talent. You convey the potential for exploitation, and you do that by your contrived failure to exploit.”