by Rana Bose
This fucking insanely laid-back kid with no concept of the nature of my evening was asking if I was okay! Although, to be fair, at least he had my name right.
I abandoned the Hôtel Majestic in an intoxicated, melancholic, state; the kind of night where the moon is an unwanted follow spot and inebriated crowds spill out from the clubs wanting to fight. My body bounced from lamppost to lamppost, hitting every youth to mid-life chicane possible in a two hundred-metre walk home. I landed on my bed around midnight.
It was 1 p.m. the next day when I finally arose to call my boss and say that I couldn’t make the afternoon shift. She didn’t sound happy.
I checked my emails. It was brutal.
“You thought you could dick me around, didn’t you? You thought I’d just turn up like I did and it didn’t matter that you were holed up with another chick? I even brought my blaster so we could tango and what did you do? Stuck it to me! So, you can shove it! And by the way, you pay for the smashed-up mirror! Okay? Because they don’t have my whereabouts and you’re not getting them, either. It was your idea to meet there and you pay for it. Know what I mean? If it wasn’t for that friend of yours, I wouldn’t have bothered. He told me you were a sincere Indian dude with some Armenian mix or something. He egged me on. Sincere, my ass! What is it with you fucking guys who hang around the Plateau? Don’t you have any backbone? And let me tell you as well, I was not all wet thinking of you, there were things I wanted to discuss. Don’t bother. —Malia”
I was totally at a loss as to how this could have happened. Had Mrs. Karamanlis done it deliberately, or had it been an honest mistake? I went back two nights later to confront her. She appeared angry but not livid. Nor did she try to extract any compensation from me for the broken mirror. “Chudd! I told you I don’t like theesh types! They break the mirror; they make the messh and leave!” She said that from a distance, drying the glasses behind the bar, not looking me in the eye.
I was fearless, knowing I had done nothing wrong. “I’m sorry about what happened, but why did you send her to the floor above? She and I waited for three hours, each in the wrong room. She thinks I stood her up.”
Mrs. Karamanlis rolled her eyes. “Yes, I shcrewed up and Dino shoulda been smarter, but he wasn’t. He’s a shtupido, you know. Sho we’re even. Sho I forget the broken mirror. You want to meet her again?” She looked at me with eyebrows lifting and a sparkle gathering. I knew then that she wanted me to continue with the ledgering.
But it was her handwriting. Why had she done it?
Chapter Six
Like a Warm Blanket
“Dear Malia, you will probably not believe me but I was in the room below all along and heard you play the tango and then break the mirror. I didn’t know it was you. I sat there waiting and after you still hadn’t come three hours later, I finished off the two bottles of wine I had wanted to share and went home feeling hopeless, not knowing you were mad as hell right above me and rightfully so. The lady who owns the hotel either played a mean trick on me by sending you to the wrong room or she made a genuine error. I apologize for the screw-up, but I still want to meet you. I would like to know you better. I will be at the Café Palmas on Friday evening at 7 p.m. if you wish to meet me. Awaiting hopefully, Chuck.”
She never turned up.
Given the evidence of Nat’s role in setting up an encounter that wasn’t, I figured I should share the bad news with him. I flagged him down as he cycled along Boulevard St-Joseph. Recently back from auditioning in New York, he wore a sleeveless cycling jersey which showed his muscles, taut and glistening. He shared a brilliant smile.
“So, how’s it goin’?” he asked.
I assured him it had been a disaster, and that if he’d been the one who arranged it he should’ve told me, instead of putting me through such a complicated arrangement. I explained all that had happened and he was genuinely amused, as I thought he would be.
“So, who was it?” I asked.
His smile turned mischievous. He wouldn’t divulge, which is why I suddenly knew. “Myra?”
“Of course!” he said, with a wry look. “But I didn’t tell her it was the guy she’d met at the chiropractor’s office. I wanted her to be surprised. I told her you were a friend, an interesting dude, and it would be good if the two of you met. You can’t beat up on me, bro!”
As usual, he was charming and I was disarmed. “I do want to meet her. It was good being in email contact with her, even if she was Malia at the time. She was attractive and straightforward. I liked that. Now it’s all fucked up.”
Not only was Nat surprised by the turn of events, he thought it offered a curious twist to the explosion over Trois-Pistoles and how I’d learned about it. “It all adds to the narrative, doesn’t it? Look! It’s an amazing story that continues to grow! You gotta follow up, man! This isn’t goin’ away. You said you wanted to write.” He pointed to my head. “You got a story brewing there, no? Up there! Pot-a-gold, man!”
It worried me that Myra of the chance encounter was so different from Malia of the emails. Although the last email had been in character. I could see the pout on Myra’s mouth as she fired it off.
We continued to Café Palmas and each of us ordered a pint. Nat was cheerful and confident, strange given that he casually mentioned he hadn’t been successful at any of the recent auditions, either in New York or Toronto. He told me he wanted lead roles, not the marginal characters in sci-fi shoots being offered around Montreal. He had limits, he said, principles. At that point he lowered his head, stared into his glass, and told me he was considering his options.
“What options?” I was blunt.
“Damn! So, she was actually there all that time?” He was avoiding my question. “And the bitch Karamanlis pretended she didn’t know? Like a Coen brothers’ script, man! All you need is a sociopathic killer, a fake kidnapping, and then someone tossed from a fire escape! Surreal! Great!” He had no intention of answering me.
“My ass! Not so surreal for me!” I said in a sulk. “I even brought along two glasses and a pair of roses to go with the two bottles. I had to drink both of them myself. It didn’t help I was hung over the whole next day.”
He laughed and then, suddenly serious, stared frankly into my eyes and asked if I was going to write her.
“You think I need a woman that bad? Are you pimping for me?”
I lied. A lie for the self, a lie for the listener, and yet another, freely given away to anyone who wants to believe what is clearly not true.
Nat knew. His heart was like a soccer field in spring, open and clean. I couldn’t hide from him. “Okay, okay,” I relented, “I already wrote her and she didn’t respond. But I don’t want you setting things right.” I tried not to show my irritation. “I need to do it myself.”
“I’m with you all the way. You figure it out, man! I got other things to do.” His cool was electric. A charged cool, which I liked. She was insane. Possibly dangerous.
We chatted for another hour and parted at ten. I went back to my apartment while he headed off on his bike to his mother’s. I watched him getting smaller. He was clearly happier and in good physical shape. But he hadn’t shared his options.
He’d been in all the school plays. In our senior year, he directed the annual production while I ran the light board. We were coaxial in some ways, rotating around with the same opinions: everyone knew if he didn’t like something I wouldn’t either, and vice versa. “Thick like dakoos,” my grandpa would say. Like dacoits, brigands, thieves . . . he meant it in a loving way. One looked after the other. Nat had always called me when he felt like doing something. If we didn’t do something together it was because one of us was out of town. If I didn’t hear from him there was something wrong. It was inconceivable to me, and I suspect to him as well, that we would consciously deceive each other. “I’m gonna go to New York and be in the movies! Nothing’s gonna stop me!” He had laug
hed as he said that during our final year in high school.
No one in Nat’s family had gone to college. His grandparents on his father’s side had emigrated from Russia to New York in the early 1900s and later moved to Montreal. They were not particularly religious, although they had made monuments even in the old country. Nat’s father was like a gnome. He rarely spoke. He moved through his tombstone maze like a child, hopping in and out, running his hands over the granite and marble, calling in his workmen to highlight flaws. He worked furiously, his sallow muscular arms dripping with sweat. I’d stand outside the fence as Nat tried to catch his attention. He’d appear suddenly from behind a large tombstone and nod quietly. Then he’d be gone.
His wife, on the other hand, Mrs. Meeropol, yearned for an opportunity to talk. She’d stop and chat whenever we met at the newly renovated grocery store on St-Laurent. She was tall, ineffably handsome, and walked like a film star from the fifties, gracefully. Her hair was bobbed and fell about her shoulders. She wore long skirts, sunglasses, and fire-red lipstick. It made for an extremely vivacious smile. Her husband was rarely seen with her. “Hello Chuck! Come by sometime and join me for tea.” Electric invitation.
And I’d nod my head. “Yes, Mrs. Meeropol. I will. Soon! I don’t need Nat’s permission, I know!”
She was fond of me. Every time I went over she sat me down, elegant and exquisite, and we chatted. She had the air of a celebrity, a quality that clung to her naturally, as if she were forever the calm, in a sea of tumultuous admirers. She always found interesting incidents to discuss. That was her forte, remembering unusual things from the past that no one else thought to bring up.
The front door to their house had two entrances, like a duplex. Theirs was the one on the left. It was a neat, small green door with a window frame on top. You took your boots off and left them outside on the black mat. The narrow stairs, polished Canadian oak, rose straight up. They were slippery. You had to be careful in winter when wearing thick socks. Hidden helium lights on the ceiling lit the way. The vivid colours from numerous paintings and photographs jumped out from the walls. There was no depressing darkness anywhere, no web of cracks in the plaster, no creaking stairs. The wood hadn’t been darkened by veneer.
The landing above the stairs had a wall with a built-in bookshelf. There must have been several hundred books in it. I knew Nat’s father was not a reader, so it was Mrs. Meeropol who collected them, discovering vast new territories across mountains and rivers from her Bagg Street home. There were mostly history books interspersed with a selection of novels, both known and unknown. There was also a stereo system on it. Faintly audible melismatic chants seeped from the bookshelf speakers. I asked if she listened to Buddhist music and she laughed and answered, “No, no, neutral. I find it soothing.”
She liked the songs that drew from different ethnicities and left me with the impression of nomads wandering in a high steppe among plunging mountains and valleys before one prodded the sheep home at dusk.
She had a small corner in which the books she currently read lay strewn, page-marked, on a glass-topped coffee table. Behind that was a large lamp that curved over the reading area and spread circular warmth onto the shaggy rug beneath the leather chaise longue. There was in her face the longing to share ideas, and I knew that Nat was impervious to that. It’s strange, but parents create resentment in their children to their own passionate interests. Nat wouldn’t give her the time of day.
Whenever I visited, she sat me down, served tea with biscuits, and explored the possibilities of some new topic. She might begin by asking about my work or something simple like that, and then refer my answer to a recent book she’d acquired. Sometimes I felt honoured—and sometimes I just felt sad.
If the conversation went well she sometimes expressed pleasure with herself. “My friends say I’m an elitist but I dismiss that totally. I look at things fresh. Without the tint. Neutral!” This she said with a gentle, mischievous smile. And she told me stories about the Main I can’t forget. The spirits gathered as the fog hung low.
“Oh! Yes, they are all slowly fading away. You get to talk to so many people. Is it not?”
“People came here to work, sell, and grow families. They lived above the stores. Some sold stuff they made or grew themselves. There were crisp pickles in big wooden vats in the windows. You see the street lamps? They don’t have the same glow they used to have. It was different before. You walked down the street and there would be a haze hanging over like a low cloud, you know, like protection. People walked slowly and hung around outside their stores. Everyone knew each other. When new immigrants came, we all helped out and took them in. The women—they wore long skirts even when pushing carts around—would band together to help the new arrivals. Yeah?”
I had no reason to disagree with her. “How long ago was this?” I asked, taking mental notes for my diary, as I saw black and white images building up in my mind.
“Oh! Not too long ago. Moshe was still in Brooklyn. His dad was running the business here. Everyone thought Moshe was too short to join, you know, just five feet five inches! Then he brought Moshe here in the early fifties and my mother moved from New York after the war. We both spoke Yiddish. His family was strictly Russian. Mine was a mix of Russian, Polish, and maybe some German. We got married here in that synagogue across the street. There was a printing press right there on the other side and across was the big Warshaw’s market with the deli close by. I was twenty and he was twenty-five when we got married. All the Catholics went to the school on the corner of Clark and Bagg. It was called Devonshire. Jews couldn’t attend Catholic schools, so most went to Protestant schools instead. Ha!”
I figured she must be in her late seventies, but she looked like she was in her late fifties. She must have had Nat pretty late in her life. The skin on her face was still flawless, like a polished apple, smooth, pink, with a blush of red.
“Most of the buildings you see now were built in the 1890s. Dogs were allowed to roam everywhere. Some had leashes, but most didn’t. They peed in little squirts all over the place and sauntered across the street like they owned it! Most of the big houses were owned by the Weinstein family. Lot of cold water flats. They owned all sorts of businesses, importing stuff from Russia, Poland, and Hungary. Sometimes they made stuff here for export: furniture, food, pickles, sausages, cheese. They also ran the housing business, you know, and quite a few were lawyers. They lived here, traded here, and died here. There was no other place to go. The synagogues were all here, too.” Then she sighed.
“When Moshe got involved in the business, his father told him it wasn’t just a business but a service to the community. Look up at the sky, he said, and you’ll see, if you’re doing well, there’ll be a fog above that looks down at you. The Chinese came and settled further south, where Chinatown is now. There was a fog over Chinatown too, near de La Gauchetière. That’s where all the bars were during prohibition. The Americans came to drink and dance with the girls. Imagine, no girly bars in New York! So they came here. I went to one of the dance bars with Moshe. You know he was short, so we moved around with me leading most of the time. His knees reached my shin, barely. Most of the time he’d sit down and I’d dance with others. Yeah?” She said all that with a big smile on her face, breathless.
I listened to her with absolute adulation. “Tell me more about the fog. I don’t see a fog here anymore.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. It was more like a dome than a pall.” She stopped and looked out through the back window, distracted. Then she began again, more concentrated this time. “You know, I guess the streets weren’t as warm as they are now. We had nearly four whole months of good warm summer weather. And six months or so of clean hard winter. None of this back and forth, one day warm, next day freezing like now. The heat in the cold months didn’t rise as high. The lights didn’t give out so much heat either, and they were lower. So, there was fog hanging low around each
lamp; a nice, diffused glow like in a Van Gogh—you know? There were real neighbourhoods then, Jewish, Portuguese, some Greeks, then Little Italy further north. In the Jewish stretch, all the way up to Rachel, there were Hungarians, Russians, Slovaks, Poles, Austrians, and Bavarians. The snow was powdery on the ground and the tramcars went by noiselessly. The snow remained white in the winter. It didn’t get caked with mud. I guess there weren’t that many cars. The night was quiet and friendly. Not noisy. My mother came here with me when I was ten years old. She had lost her husband in the war. He was a partisan in Yugoslavia who went into the mountains and never came back. So, my mother moved to Montreal with me because she heard there was a needle trade business here. Her family encouraged her. We had an uncle who came with us, and he arranged for us to stay at a friend’s house further north near Parc. But my mom didn’t like it there. She wanted to live on St-Laurent, so we rented a flat from the Weinsteins and lived in a building near Rue Rachel. That’s when I met Moshe. He came out of the fog walking toward me! You know what I mean! Like from nowhere! I was only a teenager. We had met once in Brooklyn and recognized each other. There was a bakery at the street corner and for three cents we got Langos, like a Hungarian flatbread with some cheese in it. Then we walked up and down the street. His pants were falling down because his hips were not so wide and his hat flew off in a gust of wind and we laughed. You still want to know what the fog was all about?”
“Yes, Mrs. Meeropol, I want to know.”
“It was like a tenderness of the soul transferred from one generation to the next. A yearning for the villages we had left behind, for the factories and ghettoes that were ghost towns now, a quest for quietness when all the guns kept on pounding.
“It was like an inaudible grief that came with the refugee mindset of being displaced. People didn’t talk much about it. They simply nodded their heads and observed the rituals.