by Yann Martel
My parents' death was witnessed only by an old man and the sea. I was told that when the old man could no longer answer questions, he fell to his knees and shut himself in prayer.
Padre nuestro que estas en el cielo, santificado sea tu nombre. Venga a nosotros tu reino, hagase tu voluntad en la tierra ... Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth ...
It so happened that we were studying The Old Man and the Sea at that very moment. I reread the book not long ago at the Saskatoon Public Library. My reaction was a blend of blankness and upheaval, for my memory had mixed the work of art with my parents' death. I can't see a plane crashing into the sea. The noise, the colours, the burning, the scattering of bodies and luggage -- it's beyond my imagination. But I can see a large fish tethered to the side of a skiff. I can see it being attacked by sharks and other fish until nothing is left. I can see Old Man Santiago climbing up the beach, carrying his burnt mast like a cross, still cursed, still salao. Sometimes I have to scold my memory and remind it that my parents did not drown, their bodies found by a fisherman, but died in a plane crash, their bodies found by no one.
It was near the end of September. My second year. I had left them three weeks before, having spent the summer in Havana. The headmaster's secretary interrupted our geography class to say that he wanted to see me. As we headed for the administration block, the secretary said nothing to me except when we walked through the courtyard, at which point we could briefly feel the day.
"Such lovely weather, isn't it? Still so warm," she said.
"Yes, yes," I replied eagerly, paying attention to the weather for a moment.
She knew; I guess she wasn't supposed to say anything but wanted to say something.
The weather was cloudless for Nativity; if not, the Wise Men wouldn't have found their way. Though it is not recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, I am convinced that Christ on the cross must have considered the weather during his agony -- the heat of the day, the desire for a breeze, the passing of the clouds. Everything during his hours of agony must have been constant -- his pain, the mockery of the soldiers, his Father's neglect -- except for the weather. And so in talking of the weather, this topic of conversation as familiar to our speech as air is to our lungs, we talk of everything, for the weather, having witnessed every joy, every tragedy, is a mirror to all our emotions. In alluding to the Indian summer, this secretary was saying to me, "I'm sorry for you, you poor, poor boy."
I was surprised to find my aunt, my mother's only sister, with the headmaster. I knew her only slightly; she was a Christmas acquaintance. She had driven from Montreal. There was also a man I didn't know. My aunt was the person who informed me of my parents' death, in French, in the presence of Anglophones who probably didn't understand what she said but knew what she was saying. I don't recall her exact words. Later that day I also heard of their death over the radio. The man was from External Affairs. I was told that my life would not change, that part of my parents' pensions would go to me, that they both had good life insurance plans; in short, that the material aspects of their love would continue. In time I would receive various official papers attesting to this, and regular dollops of money. I would meet on three or four occasions with this man from External, who was in charge of my case. As for emotion, I was a spectator at its theatre. I sat there taking it calmly, nearly indifferently. My aunt was quite broken with pain. The official and the headmaster spoke gently. All of them expected me to burst into tears. But I strove to show them that I could handle it, that I wouldn't cry because I was an adult. The only thing that moved me, I recall, was that for the first time ever the headmaster was calling me by my first name. I suddenly felt deep gratitude and affection for the man -- surely a minor case of the Stockholm syndrome.
I was asked whether I wished to return to Montreal with my aunt after the funeral. The reasons why I might want this, and the length of time they had in mind, were left unstated. No, I said. The year had just begun, I was in a new house with a new roommate -- not the Boston Strangler this time, but Karol, my best friend -- there were classes to be attended, assignments to be done, pieces of toast to be burned at midnight -- I had a routine, I did not want it disturbed. My life, as they said, would not change. But I would go to Montreal for a few days. I walked back to my room to pack my suitcase.
My parents didn't have a religious bone in their bodies so there was no church service. But there was a ceremony at a funeral home in Ottawa. Since my father had been an only child, the family consisted of precisely three people -- actually, two and an in-law: me, my aunt and her husband. Still, there were so many people -- friends who were colleagues, colleagues who were friends, friends who were friends, acquaintances, former neighbours, writers, poets, editors, official representatives from External Affairs, including the Secretary of State himself, representatives from the Government of Cuba, a slew of Spanish-speaking ambassadors -- there were so many people that slowly the street became clogged with parked cars, and then with people, so much so that it became impossible to drive through and someone called the police. The police looked around, asked what the crowd was for, took note of the Secretary and closed the street, with a police car parked across its entrance. I remember the policewoman who listlessly waved her arm at cars so that they would not turn into the street.
Everyone had loved my parents. They were the perfect friends, bosses, colleagues, subalterns, contacts. An ambassador from Latin America who looked like a warty toad with hornrimmed glasses went on at such lengths about my mother's perfections, ending with the one that was clearly closest to his heart, that she was beautiful -- "pero liiiiiinda!" -- that I got the impression he would have ascended instantly to toad-heaven had my mother kissed him. A secretary told me that my father had been the best, most considerate boss she had had in thirty-two years at External Affairs, and that she had heard my mother was even nicer. A Cuban somebody, with three aides to help him, handed me a letter. It was a handwritten condolence from Fidel Castro saying that his loss was double, for "he perdido a una amiga que representaba a un pais amigo" -- I have lost a friend who was the representative of a friendly country.
It pleased me, these great numbers of people, these tributes personal and official. So much grief expressed by others seemed to lighten my grief. As if it were measurable in kilos, and all these people took a little load until I was left with only a few grams. I avoided looking at the two caskets. The worst thing about them was that I knew they were empty.
In many ways I denied my parents' death. When one is an adult, one's parents' deaths are usually a slow, waning process, first one, then the other, and these are a painful reminder of one's own mortality. They are death echoing death. But I was still fully imbued with that quite stupid, invincible thing called youth. My parents' sudden, foreign deaths struck me not as the tolling of a bell, but as another stage in my ever-expanding, metamorphic life.
A further mitigating factor in my callous resilience was my environment. Grief and tears were incongruous at Mount Athos because the place in no way reflected my loss. There was little difference between Mount Athos the boarding school and Mount Athos the orphanage. In fact, the orphanage turned out to be a better place. Suddenly, previously indifferent masters began smiling at me and taking interest in my studies. Suddenly, my enemies and bullies began holding themselves at bay. I became untouchable. That year at Mount Athos was my best.
I remember Thanksgiving, for example. My aunt's clumsy attentions had been unbearable and I didn't want to return to Montreal so soon. I decided, quite happily, to spend the long weekend at empty Mount Athos with Karol and Michael, who lived too far away for the trip home to be worthwhile.
But no, that wouldn't do for a boy who had lost his parents so recently, thought the school. And so, because of me, the three of us were put in charge of Mr. Broughton's house, hardly two kilometres from the school, while he was away with his family. He had animals -- donkeys, sheep, goats, chickens, a cat
named Shakespeare -- which we had to feed. It was in giving the donkeys straw that I discovered that straw and hay are not synonymous. I liked the way the chickens pecked at their grain, in motions that were so quick, robotic and precise. We went for long walks along the shores of Lake Ontario. Mr. Broughton's stone house was crammed with that careful clutter of material objects that only sedentaries can accumulate, that breathes life into a home even when there is no one there. Mr. Broughton had several prints by the Canadian artist David Blackwood, haunting scenes of the hard, sometimes terrible life of Newfoundland fishermen and their families, engravings that were scratched out in fine lines of black and white with only the occasional, vivid use of colour -- red for a house burning down, for example. One night we carefully unhooked the Blackwoods from the walls, brought them to our bedroom, lit up the room with candles and stared into them until we were practically hypnotized, feeling that we were the ones who were shipwrecked and lost, starving to death on a lifeboat, or running up a hill to our burning house. Shakespeare stayed docilely in my arms the whole time. I had a wonderful four days at Mr. Broughton's house that Thanksgiving, every moment intense and memorable.
And anyway, what was I supposed to do? Cry in front of other boys? Cry in the arms of masters who had only recently acknowledged my existence? Was I thus to strain my new untouchability?
When I thought of the tragedy that had struck me, I would think, "They died together. This strikes me as very important. It gives their lives a completeness, an unshattered wholeness, with no messy debris. And they died quickly, which means painlessly. And they led happy, successful lives. I'll never see them again, but I'll remember them and talk to them in my head. That's nearly as good."
I burst into tears under the head of a hot, noisy shower a number of times, but mostly I relegated my grief to the dark basement of my consciousness, there to swim about and have the effects that Freudians will delight in surmising.
As Trinity term started, the last term, I realized that I was nearing the end of the assembly-line of education. This dawning of freedom felt more oppressive than liberating, but I dealt with things quickly. I dismissed the hundred million things that a soon-to-be 18-year-old boy could do with his life and decided to continue with my formal education. After poring over university calendars in much the same way I had pored over boarding-school brochures, I made my choice of three Ontario universities and carefully filled out the computer-friendly standard applications. My freedom securely restricted, I felt better.
You don't get much mail when you're a single child with no parents. Every day I saw boys with fat letters in their hands or, worse still, parcels under their arms. I stopped checking my mailbox. Why open it when all I would see would be an empty universe, when all I would hear would be a great sucking empty sound? The person in charge of the mailroom was an amiable, chatty woman by the name of Mrs. Saunders. Every week she had a boy assigned to her who helped her sort through the mail at lunch-time and place it in the mailboxes. When my turn came up, I asked to be excused from the duty.
It was the sensitive issue of mail that sparked an incident that I wouldn't mention if it weren't that it was on that day, in the evening, while masturbating in the shower, that I first noticed that my erection was smaller.
A letter from my aunt, short and not very interesting, really, but precious nonetheless, had been found by the groundskeeper in a bush, postmarked three weeks earlier and already opened.
I found Mrs. Saunders and asked her what boy had been working for her that week.
"Three weeks ago? Let me see ... that was Arthur."
"Who's Arthur?"
"Arthur Fenton."
Fenton?
A word about Fenton: he was an odious little twit. In the protracted armistice that was declared about my person after my parents' death, he was the one breach. I hated him viscerally, as he did me. I believe our relationship truly embodied the cliche "personality clash". Immature, affected, arrogant, spoiled -- no one liked him. He should have been a real zero, a Christian in Croydon's Roman circus. But Fenton was untouchable too: his parents were filthy and famously rich. (They visited the school once, chauffeured Rolls-Royce and all. Their little Arthur trotted along on one side, the endowment-seeking headmaster on the other. Looking at Papa Fenton, at his expensive suit that made his flabby paunch and weak shoulders look smart and sharp, at his silk tie-knot so crisp and impeccable, loudspeaker of his power, I suddenly understood the Pol Pot urge to be expeditious, the quick-fix joy of red terrorism, the Joseph Stalin adrenalin rush. Ah, to have had an Uzi and to have mowed them down!) Fenton would have had to set Bill, the headmaster's basset hound, on fire before the headmaster would have cleared his throat at him.
But I didn't care. I wasn't afraid of him -- he was no Croydon, I was stronger than him -- and this was it. I was going to rip his eyelids off, I was going to tear his ears off, I was going to break every bone in his body with a hammer, I was going to -- I left the mailroom, my face red, my head throbbing.
Imagine this play:
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
INSANE RAGE, a seventeen-year-old boy
ANNOYING IMMATURITY, a seventeen-year-old boy
MINOR CHARACTER, a seventeen-year-old boy
SCENE: a staircase
(Minor Character is to one side of the stage. Annoying Immaturity is coming down the staircase. When he is at a small landing, Insane Rage, holding a letter in his hands, appears on stage, and sees Annoying. He bounds up the stairs, stands squarely in front of him and blocks his way. The exchanges between the two are in tense, angry voices, but with no shouting)
INSANE RAGE (showing envelope, glaring at Annoying):
What's this? Why did you take it and open it?
ANNOYING IMMATURITY: I'll take full responsibility for it.
INSANE: I want to know why you took it.
ANNOYING: I'll take full responsibility for it.
INSANE (placing his hand on Annoying's chest and slowly pushing him against the wall): Don't ever do it again.
ANNOYING: Just watch it or I'll punch you across the room!
INSANE: Yeah, right.
(Insane steps down to the stage floor. Annoying follows him.)
ANNOYING: Rage, you're an asshole!
(Annoying Immaturity punches Insane Rage in the face and turns to leave. Insane takes hold of him and brings him to the ground, though Insane remains standing. Insane looks at Annoying but does nothing. Annoying gets to his feet. Insane looks at him but does nothing.)
MINOR CHARACTER (interposing himself): You guys should cut it out.
(Exeunt omnes.)
CURTAIN
I couldn't hit him. For all my fury, against all my expectations, I could not hit him. Placing my hand on his chest and pushing him against the wall, which was only a foot or so behind him, was as far as I could go. I stepped down the stairs -- moved away from him -- because I was so confused. Even when he punched me in the face -- and to be struck in the face is to be struck in the soul; it's an attack not against a provincial stomach or leg, but against your very capital -- even then I could not hit him. I thought, "I can hit him now, I have the right." But all I could do was bring him down to the ground. Not throw him down, not push him down -- bring him down, with the guiding help of my arms. Once on the ground I noticed that his head was near a radiator and I thought, "If I hit him in the face with my knee, his head will strike the radiator." But I could not. As he was getting up I thought, "I can easily kick him now." But I could not. When he was standing I thought, "I can hit him now, he's standing, it's fair play." But I could not. Then it was over.
I went to sit in the chapel alone. I was both dazed and elated. I couldn't hit him. What an amazing discovery! How incredibly unexpected! Suddenly I no longer resented Fenton. I thought of him carefully, went over my worst moments with him, encounters that had left me seething, that had launched me on sessions where I tortured him elaborately. I glided over these moments without feeling even a ripple of annoyance.
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br /> In the days that followed I was careful to avoid him, but within a week he no longer perturbed me in the least. I said goodbye to him on the last day of school.
That night after our confrontation, just before lights-out, I took a shower and indulged in my secret pleasure. That's when I noticed it. I was certain that the motion of my hand had greater amplitude before. But then the thought slipped my mind -- my orgasm was such that I thought I would faint. My legs wobbled and only by leaning against the shower wall was I able to stay on my feet. By the time I had recovered, my penis was losing its stiffness and I was ready for bed.
Graduation day came, at last and so soon. I watched all the parents. I walked about the whole school to have a last look at everything. I was sick of the place. A slippage in my marks right at the end of the school year reflected this. I nearly failed physics. And I did not participate in the usual festivities of a high-school graduation.
But after Mount Athos, what? For all its flaws, for all the misery, it was the only organized home I had. I sat quietly in my room, bare now. I took in the washrooms: the long row of sinks, the toilet cubicles, the showers down whose drain so much water, soap and sperm had flowed. I looked at the classrooms, the gyms old and new, the various playing-fields, the decrepit pool, the squash courts, the dining-hall, the chapel. I stood near the stone cross and took it all in. Memory is a glue: it attaches you to everything, even to what you don't like.