by Rana Bose
Transcript: “The plane must have encountered a catastrophic decompression after an explosion. It exploded in the air over land and the perimeter of fragmentation is more likely over land than sea. I believe there are many parts still lying out there on the land waiting to be retrieved. A postman making deliveries reported he had heard a very loud crack in the skies at the exact time of the plane’s supposed mechanical failure, but that he was behind a row of houses and couldn’t see anything. No one recorded his testimony, and yet everyone knows he was an honest man who would not00 make this up.”
Transcript: “Forensic examination of destroyed objects are fundamental to understanding a crime scene. It is critical to understand what type of explosive might have been used and to spectrally analyse the remnants for chemical traces and spikes. No such activity was undertaken on the pieces discovered when the small plane crashed over Trois-Pistoles. Was there a flight data recorder? No independent body—as required by the International Civil Aviation Organization—investigated the incident.”
Transcript: “It was left to the RCMP and the SQ to close the book on that case. There were no survivors and out of some 16,000 parts that belonged to the plane, only some fifty pieces were recovered. The arc of recovery was arbitrarily reduced, confining it to a limited area over the waterway. The efforts at recovery were abandoned early.”
Reverend Gagnon was aged and feeble at the time I spoke to him, but there was no mistaking the sharpness of his mind. I enjoyed our encounter. He had served in the Canadian forces during WWII in Europe and had a strong technical background. He spoke English as fluently as any Englishman in Montreal but with better grammar. He had prepared for the interview and chose every word for its clarity and accuracy.
He was not excited, nor demonstrative, but spoke as if simply doing his job as a responsible man of the cloth, seeking justice in the facts.
Mr. Bhatt, I am very relieved that someone has revived interest in this cold case. I believe the Reverend is still around and you may want to talk to him. If there is anything I can do, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Jacques Belanger,
Caracas, Venezuela.
Chapter Ten
Two Reflections
On my way home I picked up avocados, tomatoes, eggs, milk, mango juice, and sourdough bread at the corner market run by a Tamil family. When I reached home there was a note stuck to my mailbox. I took it and went upstairs to my apartment. The note said “Call me. 514 980 4246. Malia.”
Why was she Malia again?
I put the food away, changed out of my office clothes, washed up, and called. She never even said hello. “Can you come over right now?”
“Of course.”
It takes about ten minutes. In my mind, I rehearsed what lay ahead. I’d remain collected, in control, and would glide through whatever might happen. Thank God there was no Mrs. Karamanlis involved. With every step, I felt my resolution build. I also tried not to step on the cracks in the sidewalk, having persuaded myself, as a child, that it’s preferable for one’s feet not to fall on any of the fine brass dividers cemented in the pavement. It was a meaningless superstitious game. Such was the tension she could induce.
The door opened slowly. She stood in front of me in a long black skirt with the hem on one side lifted nearly to her shoulders. Her hair had been raised in two peaks. Her lips, like a crimson sunset, were on fire. Her lace blouse was the same scarlet. Her cheeks were rouged. A blue light shone behind her, casting long shadows. She didn’t smile as she looked me steadily in the eye. As I stepped in, she put her arms out. I entered them to give her a hug but she dropped her arms, swung her skirt like a matador and then raised them again around my neck; her eyes closed, her lips almost touching mine. Then she opened her eyes and kissed me gently, before leading me into her living room.
There was a lamp on either side of the room, no rugs, and little furniture. She walked over to a CD player on a shelf and punched a button. A tango started. She lifted her arms again and this time held me gracefully. I knew a little bit of tango, so that helped me along in the beginning, quite speechless. Suddenly she whirled around, kicked a leg out and wrapped it around me as if we had been doing this forever. Out of my league, fluid and flawless, she leaned back, arching. She neither spoke nor smiled. She had it all choreographed and went about it as if driven, her head thrown back, her face whipping from side to side, whisking me around as if I were a life-sized rag doll. Then she looked down to the floor, fitted her whole mid-section into mine, and led me in a vigorous trot towards the wall only to stop at the last possible moment. I felt awkward but overwhelmed.
After ten minutes, the music ended and she gave me a hug, took a rather curt bow and led me to the couch, next to one of the lamps. I sat down, still holding the palm of her hand. She slowly released herself and went to the side table where she had placed two glasses and a bottle of red wine. She poured and then returned to me with an “Enchanté!”
“Are we going to talk?” I asked, looking at her lips—red poppies ready to burst—and trying to sound concerned. “I thought from your note that something was wrong.”
“We had planned to dance, hadn’t we?” There was a hint of a smile. She noticed me staring at her lips and brought them closer to mine. Then she put them softly against my neck and slipped her left palm inside the open section of my shirt, resting it gently on my collarbone. Her fingers wandered and loosened the top button of my shirt. I could feel her moist tongue begin to lick my upper lip gently before she raised herself on the couch and wrapped herself around me in a firm and flower-scented embrace. With her knees between my legs, she held my head and kissed me slowly. I put my arms around her and held her—every single muscle in her body was coiled like a spring. I ran my hand down her back and then towards the inside of her thighs. She was muscular, supple, and warm. Her body responded to my touch in waves and her lips began to travel. Tremors ran though her body and collided with tremors in me. She looked into my eyes.
The aroma of desire, the audacity of the unspoken, the wanting, had peaked. She unveiled her breast. It quivered as I ran my lips over her brown nipples and the warm palm of her hand slid down. My shoulder blades curved around and nearly touched as I held my breath and she ran her lips over me. Everything that followed was without words. There were occasional cries that sounded like deep calls for release.
Then we lay on the couch, our arms tight about each other. She rested her head on my shoulder and briefly fell into a light sleep. When she opened her eyes, I put my finger on her nose and was about to ask a question when she put her finger to her lips and said “Shhh!” She rose and went to the kitchen to bring back grapes and more wine. Every time I tried to start a conversation, she put her fingers to my lips to silence me. She put her arms around me and again put her face on my shoulder. I sensed that her body was again tightening. After a while she looked up at me and I realized she’d been crying. My shoulder was moist from her tears. Then she got up abruptly.
She walked to her bedroom and returned in fifteen minutes, dressed in her usual skirt and blouse, looking like someone else. The rouge was gone. The hair hung loose around her shoulders. There were reflections of her on the window; one on the inside window and one on the outside. She said with a glowing smile, “Well hello there, Chuck! How are we doing?”
I must have hesitated as she right away got testy and added, “So, what now, are we going to talk or what?” I wasn’t mystified any longer. I finally got it. Malia was not Myra. Myra was not Malia. They were different! Chuck had finally got it!
That night I invited Myra to a small Italian restaurant just north of Jean-Talon. We walked all the way up St-Laurent, taking about twenty minutes. We kept no particular pace, just ambling along, the way tired torsos walk freely. She didn’t hold my hand. We chatted all the way about Linda St. Onge; not about her paintings, but to develop an incursionary foray, a plan of attack. A c
ommando operation into the core of the frozen case.
At the restaurant, she ordered a boring prosciutto and melon appetizer and sipped a martini. I had a glass of whisky with no ice and a superb mozzarella cheese ball with a light batter and a sharp red dressing, whose name made no sense to me. Sounded like a battle cry. Like in a war zone with golden tomatoes being sliced in the air and dripping slowly down. We smiled but didn’t touch. We both pounced on our racks of lamb and, feeling pretty stuffed, skipped the desert. I walked her back to her apartment. With a wistful look on her face she said, “Thank you, Mr. Bhatt.”
I had her telephone number now, but did not ask when we’d meet again. I felt I couldn’t, as if it was presumptive. I did manage to say, “Please call me sometime. I am listed as Chuck Bhattacharya.”
She turned and left. She didn’t call for several weeks and I pursued the cold case of the St-Onge murder alone. Needless to say, the sudden and long intervals between her appearances had taken on a different meaning in my life. It gave me confidence. A sense of single-minded purpose. A self-sufficiency that was absent until now. The fog hung high. With clearances, like holes of hope. Indecision, hesitancy was something I relied on. I had pulled back always. Making weighty considerations, whereas others sprang into action. I was now fortified by the clearances. I was in a position, now to decide.
Chapter Eleven
Khyber, No One Passes
My grandfather had not been keeping well. He suffered from a chronic cough. Nor was my grandmother working at my parents’ restaurant. She had a knee problem and it was too hard for her to stay standing while kneading the dough for the rotis. My father bought an industrial-size dough maker to replace her and he found it did the job, quicker. Effectively, my father had shafted my grandmother. Retrenched.
My parents remained very busy. My mother managed the business administratively while my father experimented with the menu. In the Summer Review, he was mentioned as one of the city’s most innovative chefs. The restaurant itself looked great. My mother had redesigned the menu as well as the interior. She had placed a steel counter around the bar, stainless steel lamps along the walls, and not a sign remained of Taj Mahal-style archways or elephants running wild along the headboards.
All this to explain that when I needed to talk it made good sense to bypass my parents and head directly to the grandparents, who had moved to a two-bedroom condominium with a large balcony near the Lachine Canal.
I must have walked in looking a bit down. My grandfather immediately perked up. “Ah! I see storm clouds!” We sat down to chat, but he treated the occasion as if we were preparing to climb a great mountain, attempting to break through the hovering fog and on to where things were calm and safe. My grandmother brought us a bowl of chips and two beers, informed me she had started to take swimming lessons at the local pool, and left.
My grandfather asked about “Nathuram,” the fascist Gandhi-killer. I told him Nat was struggling in his acting career and I hadn’t seen him for a while. I added, though, that he seemed to be maintaining himself in good physical shape. “Maybe,” I surmised, “he has a new girlfriend.”
“He visited us, you know. We had a long chat.”
“Really? Nat was here?”
“Yes, for several hours. Asking questions. About Afghanistan. He also brought some Muscat wine, which he knows I like.”
I was mystified. Nat had visited my grandparents, on his own, in their new place? It was nice that he had brought over the bottle of wine, but why? Then I realized that I had been over to visit his mom and taken her Armenian sweets my mother had made. Nothing unusual there. But it wasn’t like Nat. He wasn’t a chatterer. He was a doer.
My grandpa was revolted by the war in Afghanistan. Maybe he had driven the conversation to its unusual length, wanting to vent? Had Nat merely been a convenient outlet for his streaming opinions? It was possible. These inferences went by me in the first nanosecond. I had come to discuss Myra, or Malia, or both, to gather the wisdom my grandfather might offer regarding the weird and wonderful feelings she caused in me. I was a transforming nerd looking for mentoring—but mostly courage. My grandfather gently tolerated it. However, he only wanted, once again, to talk about Afghanistan.
“I told your friend that Canada had no reason to be there except to play second fiddle to the United States.”
“Where?” I was distracted.
“In Kandahar!” he said. And he continued, while he wheezed in a disturbing way.
“I explained to him the real reason. The Tories believe that military spending provides employment, jobs, and industrial growth. That’s cow manure, you know.” The filmy skin on one side of his face quivered. “This is all about the guilt of not having fought in Iraq. Do you really think young men and women are being sent off to die because this government thinks there are terrorists in the hills and caves of Afghanistan planning to attack us? Rubbish! This Afghan war has no meaning for Canada’s young. None. Besides, the more you bomb their hills, the more terrorists you grow in our cities. The fellows who carried out the attacks weren’t living in caves. They were living in France, England, Germany, and elsewhere, before they came legally to the United States.” He said all this with great energy, enjoying his beer. I noticed, however, the wheezing was increasing. I looked again at the filmy side of his face. What really did that to him? He had never actually told me.
He pointed to a picture perched on one side of his desk that I knew well. It was a faded grey shot of a massive gate, like a mini Arc de Triomphe, with a rickety tin sign hanging on it that said ‘Khyber Pass’. Under it were men in long Afghan tunics wearing huge headgear standing beside a few mules. They had Enfield rifles slung on their backs. A few had daggers visible beneath their tunics.
He used to show me the same picture when I was a kid, telling me that the people who lived there wouldn’t let anybody pass if they hadn’t come in peace. ‘The Khyber Pass’, he’d repeat ominously, eyebrows raised. In West End High when I did a presentation on Afghanistan—I don’t know why I chose Afghanistan—I, too, raised my eyebrows while telling the whole class that no one would pass through those gates unless they came in peace. My teacher, Mr. Leblanc, was suitably impressed and gave me high marks. From then on, he called me Khyber Pass when we met in the corridor. I liked that, considering it respectful, not derisive.
Nat had attended my high school presentation and asked a lot of smart questions. I had even taken him back to meet my grandfather to further discuss the subject. That was years ago. But now, for some unexplained reason, he had come again, and this time on his own.
“No one will win against a mountain tribal people,” my grandfather was saying. “They fight generation after generation, hidden away in the mountains, swooping down with fresh waves of their children until, exhausted, you find no reason to continue.”
“So, it’s a lost cause?” I said. “Try convincing the media.”
“You won’t beat them. No helicopters, drones, missiles, MANPADS, or Hummers will defeat them. They’ll sit in their caves and snipe away at you one by one, and if at night you’re not careful, they’ll come down to slit your throat and hang your head from a post for everyone to see.”
He pulled out a map from inside an old National Geographic and put his finger down on it firmly. “Here, in this pass, in a village called Daar, they make every kind of gun you can imagine. They even made antique guns like Gatlings if that’s what makes you happy. Otherwise, they make AK47s, Uzis, Mausers, Brownings, Glocks, you name it. Anything that makes you happy!” He laughed and wheezed simultaneously. “There are lathes in every hut and little kids hammering out cartridges before loading them with gunpowder; I tell you, they’re ready to meet any army, which is what the Soviets learned when the Afghans started trading poppies to buy shoulder launched missiles and turned the Pass into a tank cemetery. For us to pretend we’re on the side of a just cause is sheer folly. Everything that the Am
ericans have brought in there from pancake makers and toilets to baseball bats and Coleman stoves will be packed up in 53-foot containers and shipped back or simply melted down by the Taliban. By the way, how is work going?”
I ignored that particular question and started on about Myra, telling him that she was a very attractive but eccentric person. He listened patiently and then said, “It’s important to have friends who are stable.” He went to get another beer for each of us. He was, I knew, thinking things through.
“What did you mean by ‘stable’?” I asked as he returned.
“You know, there comes a certain point in time when you can’t blame the things that don’t turn out right on your parents.” He said this looking at me. I thought he was going to bring up my dad, but he didn’t. He actually meant it in a more general sense.
“There used to be a time when parents controlled everything the child did right up to college and even beyond. If you were from an upper-class family and your parents were well educated they’d set the standards and you’d follow, like getting into good colleges, fighting for scholarships, all of that. It’s not like that anymore. Nowadays kids are more influenced by their friends. They’ve developed this strange notion that parents are an accidental happening, something that gets in the way, an impediment to independence. Social workers talk about broken homes but don’t seem to understand that society itself is broken. It’s society that sets standards nowadays.”