Next to the figure of my mother, my father looked rather ordinary. A stocky man of Mennonite descent, he was a good sport to his children — there’s no denying that — but also an uncultivated bore, insensitive to art. Though firm with his subordinates, he was a “yes, dear!” man at home. That was his main flaw. How could any woman respect such a husband? Although he worked hard, my mother suspected that he didn’t really care about money at all. The smell of dirt, the rumbling of excavators, that’s where his heart lay. Money was an accidental by-product of that gritty, grimy passion. With such a husband my mother had no choice but to become a tireless watchdog over our wealth, our servants, me, and especially my older sister, who had to report to her daily, even after she was married and had a baby of her own. I was the only one in the whole family who managed to escape.
In high school, I was expected to choose from my mother’s list of desirable professions: law, medicine, business, engineering (if worse came to worse), but certainly not acting, which had infected me like a virus, as my mother put it, since the tender age of six, and of which I would, she believed, sooner or later have to be cured.
Whenever Monsieur Leblanc, the former director of a small Parisian theatre and my mother’s closest friend, would tip his head in my direction and say: “Janet dear, there’s a spark in this boy! Look at the way he moves,” my mother would grimace as if she had just eaten a raw onion. “He loves to show off, the little rascal, that’s all,” she would reply. “Why does he always want to be the centre of attention? It’s unbearable, really.”
Later, when I was old enough to understand, she finally presented her argument. Art was the highest calling in life, but unless you had real talent, it was silly to pursue it as a career. In the absence of talent (which she didn’t doubt applied to me), how may one outdo the crowd, the multitudes, and outdo them one surely must if one was to have any hope for material success, the only true measure of a person. I ignored such talk and refused to enter a university. Instead, I got a job as a carpenter building theatre sets, which was, as my mother used to say without trying to be funny, another nail in her coffin. She was convinced that I would end up badly because of what she called my antisocial, anarchist tendencies.
But she had misunderstood me. I had from early adolescence fully appreciated the magnetic power of money. The kids who came to play with me at our home in Shaughnessy may have taken for granted the meals prepared by our staff and the swimming pool we all played in, but their parents certainly didn’t, and I saw that. Sensitive since early childhood to the moods of others, I was aware too how much people were drawn into that vortex of power and wealth. From remote acquaintances to the relatives of our servants, everybody seemed to want to be close to it, as if the confidence and ease of our world might rub off on them, or perhaps aid them in a later time of need.
“He’s the spitting image of Uncle Claudius,” my mother would say of me, having in mind a mad architect relative who had spent much of his life researching the construction of the great theatres, from ancient Greece to La Scala, and who had ended up in a London mental hospital at the turn of the last century. The only thing I had inherited when he died was a splendid collection of lithographs of famous opera houses at different stages of their existence: the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the Staatsoper in Vienna, the Bolshoi in Moscow, and so on.
It was in the Spring of 2006 that my mother announced that we were selling our home in Shaughnessy and moving into the recently built 62-floor Living Shangri-La, the tallest building in metropolitan Vancouver. Two of her acquaintances had already moved in, as had some Russian Mafiosi, according to rumours, since this particular Shangri-La had the tightest security of any building not in fact a prison. My father pulled his head into his shoulders (a sign of unconditional surrender) and paid seventeen million dollars for one of the penthouses. I think he was relieved when I said that I would rather sleep under a bridge than live in that sealed fish tank, despite its panoramic view of the Georgia Strait and Vancouver Island. After they moved in, my father called me up and told me in mock excitement that the kitchen and the bathrooms were fully programmed. The shower door, for example, automatically closed the moment you stepped in, and then, voila! it opened again after you were done. When he got into it, he said, he felt like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. “But what if the shower mechanism breaks down? How will you get out?” I said. “Your mother would have to save me,” he said. “She loves those gadgets!”
3
To many people, I’m a high-strung, irritable, easily distracted person. But that’s another misconception. In fact, I’m always alert, calm, and collected. Or maybe that’s what I want to be, or at least mean to project. And I’m focused when it comes to work, the unpaid one, which in my case is observing people. In order to know, as any actor needs to, how they move, talk, and live in their own skins, I have to pay close attention. Suppose there’s a little girl sitting with her mother in an outdoor café. She’s sticking out her tongue as far as she can, trying to get as much of her ice-cream cone as possible in one lick, while her text-messaging mama completely ignores her. Or there’s a young guy standing on a corner with a baby clinging to his chest. He impatiently pats the baby’s diapered bottom as they wait for the light to change. Sometimes I’m in awe at the strange vulnerability of our bodies: two legs, two arms, a protruding nose on the flat plane of our faces. How arbitrarily we’re stuck together, how helplessly, yet how supremely beautifully. That’s what’s so bizarre. You watch the crowds, all those strangers in their almost identical clothing: drab pants and jackets and T-shirts, their arms, legs, and chests covered with tattoos. Are we really to believe that those mannequins all lead equally drab, unimpressive lives, all rolling along identical tracks, their faces closed and expressions impenetrable? Or are their faces just masks with a mystery lurking behind each one? It’s my task in life, my vocation, to discover that mystery. What impels my desire to do so? I don’t know. From an early age I’ve yearned to know what it’s like to be someone else, to breathe the way another breathes, to dream another’s dream. As if the core of my existence were a liquid and I had to pour it into the vessel of someone else to give it form and life. Once I even tried to walk like a cripple out of sheer curiosity, merely to see what it felt like. Another time I taught myself to write and do everything with my left hand in order to imitate people who had lost their right ones in a terrible war or accident.
At the age of 15 I became obsessed with the idea of owning my own theatre. Mad Uncle Claudius was my hero. I fell in love with opera and decided that I would one day recreate the original productions of some of the more famous ones. I would, I decided, call my theatre RetroArt to celebrate its unapologetic affection for the past. Modernism didn’t appeal to me. Minimalism, I decided, had had its day. Audiences were sick of theatre interiors that looked like urban slums with exposed plumbing and wiring against black walls and ceilings, and they were sick of Brünnhildes in rags too. It was time to revive the beauty of the old, to reproduce the splendour of the great opera houses: La Scala, Covent Garden, the Palais Garnier, with their brocade curtains and upholstery and gilded furnishings. My theatre would be a feast for the eyes, a unique experience for this city on the Pacific rim.
Under the circumstances, then, my father’s gift of the bungalow couldn’t have been more timely. I decided to rent out the basement and quit my job at the theatre, or at least to stop working there full time. All my free time would be now devoted to achieving my dream: leasing the building, finding a cast and artistic director, making costumes, designing and constructing sets, hiring an orchestra, and so forth. My rough estimate of what would be needed to get my project off the ground was at least two million dollars. An ambitious plan, indeed! I spent many sleepless nights thinking about fund-raising, about philanthropists my parents might know.
In the meantime, however, I had set about decorating my new home. I got some of the family heir
looms from the Shaughnessy house: a Biedermeier secretary and a table made of birch went into the room that served as my study. Uncle Claudius’ lithographs of the great European theatres naturally found a place on the walls of the living room. And rattan furniture with designer pillows secured a spot on the rear veranda.
I cleaned up the basement, threw out all the junk, removed the flimsy partitions, painted the walls a cheerful light-green, and highlighted the window frames and floor mouldings in red. I also picked up a bed, a desk, and some shelving and kitchen essentials at a garage sale and hung a new shower curtain in the bathroom, thus making the basement apartment quite rentable.
4
My new tenant in her jeans, scarf, veil, and retro sunglasses moved in with two duffel bags, a small suitcase, and two clay pots of geraniums — the full extent of her earthly possessions, apparently. She identified herself as Erythia.
“A very unusual name,” I said jokingly. “Kind of airy or ethereal.”
“Call me Erin. Everybody else does.”
The next day as we were examining the so-called kitchen — really no more than a counter with a hotplate, electric teakettle, and aluminium basin, she said: “I could use a microwave too, although I’m not sure where I’d put it.”
I loved the sound of her voice: diffident, uncertain. She drew out her vowels, finding the melody in each.
“I’ll have to ask the owner,” I said. “But I don’t think he’ll object.”
“Oh! I thought . . . But aren’t you the owner?”
“I’m just renting the main floor,” I said. “The owner lives in Hong Kong. I’m managing the place for him.”
Why did I lie? Having suddenly acquired property through no effort of my own, without lifting a finger, I felt a little like a con artist. Besides, my assuming the status of owner would have raised a barrier between us and I wanted to avoid that. I had already realized that I would be spending a good deal of time improving the kitchen just to be around her, just to hear that voice.
But Erin wasn’t the talkative type, and from her vague mention of the Prairies and of Nova Scotia, I concluded she had lived all over the country before arriving in Vancouver the previous year. What had brought her here? She waved her hand vaguely. “Trees. I love trees.”
That seemed an improbable reason to move to the most expensive city in Canada, but Erin assured me that she had already found a part-time job in a thrift store, with good prospects for something better later on. What about her family? Another vague gesture.
How does one get to know a woman without seeing her face? Something in Erin’s posture, in the languor of her movements, suggested that hers was a lonely, melancholic character, the naïve delight she took in the smallest things notwithstanding. That strange combination of melancholy and delight was accentuated by the way she spoke: answering after a delay, after a little pause, with a sort of question mark at the end of each sentence as if she weren’t completely sure of her own words.
She never seemed to have any visitors. She didn’t own a cell phone or have a separate land line, either, and nobody called her on my phone. She asked me once if I would consider sharing my cable TV hookup with her. I said I would get a splitter, and so I did. But I never heard the sound of a TV in the basement apartment, even though I had earlier provided it with a small one and some rabbit ears.
I was fascinated by my new tenant, in large part, I now realize, because I couldn’t see her face. I didn’t doubt that it was exquisite, just like the rest of her. Lying in the darkness, I tried to imagine it, without knowing exactly how to direct my thoughts. Dark, almond-shaped eyes? Or perhaps blue, or light-green, my favourite in women. What does it feel like to be always hiding your face, I wondered. The actors of classical Greek tragedy performed in masks. Japanese Noh theatre uses masks too, as do contemporary Venetian masquerades, but only for a short time during the performances. Erin, however, hid her face all the time. Once I put on dark glasses, wrapped my head with a scarf, and covered my face with a veil to see what it would feel like. I broke into sweat and found it hard to breathe. I tried to reproduce her way of speaking too: brief, halting sentences with pauses in unexpected places. But of course none of that helped me get a better grasp of who she really was. Erythia, Erin. I could also have called call her Airy for being so light on her feet, or Dee-dah-dee, for imitating chickadees so precisely.
Once I dreamt that I was making love to her, gently kissing and caressing her body inch by inch up to her neck and then slowly removing her scarf. But just before her face was finally revealed, I woke up.
5
In the summertime, I often found Erin on the swing in the backyard. Her slender body gently swayed thanks to subtle propelling movements I never quite managed to catch, as if the air itself were moving her. The way her small bare feet dangled in the air was somehow touching, too. When she saw me, she would wave her hand, and I would notice the pale, almost translucent skin of her arm, bare to the shoulder. She loved wearing bright summer dresses. The black headscarf I first saw her in had been replaced by azure or lilac or pink ones to match her outfits. Only the dark triangular veil that covered the lower part of her face remained unchanged, as did her sunglasses. I complimented her once on a blue sundress with a pretty pattern.
“You like it? I made it myself. I make all my clothing.”
Dressing up for me then, I thought not without pleasure.
“Careful with these ropes though,” I said. “They’re rough. And probably as old as the house itself. I should put some tape on them so you don’t hurt your hands.”
“Where are you going?” She jumped down from the plank as I was about to go back inside. It was like her to ask personal questions with innocent faith that they would be answered.
“I have some work to do and then some people to meet.”
“Do you manage other houses too, or only this one?”
“Managing houses? No, I mean yes, on a part-time basis. But I’m also trying to start my own theatre.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Can I see it then?”
“There isn’t anything to see yet.”
“But when there is?”
A regal Steller’s jay with a dark crest and deep-blue breast, wings, and tail landed on the branch above Erin where the swing was attached and began to examine us with a quick, bold gaze.
“Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird of Happiness,” I said, pointing out the jay to her. “Do you know Maeterlinck?”
She shook her head.
Perhaps commenting on our presence, the jay produced a raucous, scolding cry.
“They only pretend to be magical. They’re really nothing but crows in a fancy disguise,” Erin said with a soft laugh, and I imagined her scattering small translucent pebbles..
6
For the previous two summer months there hadn’t been a drop of rain, and our alder was already starting to lose its leaves. From an upstairs window, I watched Erin working with a rake to clear the already carpeted backyard. She had filled three large lawn bags and lined up their amputated human-like forms against the backyard fence. A pile of leaves at the alder’s base remained to be collected. Unaware she was being watched, she put down her rake and sat down in the pile, immersing herself in it, motionless for a moment. Then she picked up a leaf and held it against the sun, carefully examining it. After pressing it flat on her hand, she put it into the remaining lawn bag. She continued in that manner until the bag was full. Then she got to her feet, shook out the back of her dress, and went to her basement, dragging the bag of leaves behind her. What could she possibly want the leaves for? Puzzled, I stepped away from the window.
A few days before Christmas I almost tripped over a small parcel by my front door, a present from Erin. It contained two puppets, a traditional Neapolitan Punchinello and the Muppet Gonzo, with a postcard written in a childish scrawl,
with the letters moving in different directions: “Dear Mathew! I hope that your dream for a theatre will come true very soon.” I racked my brain about the best way to respond and finally decided on the microwave that she had mentioned but which she never got. With the gift I included a note: “Dear Erin, I hope that the microwave helps. But if you ever want to use a real oven, you’re welcome to use mine anytime. Perhaps we could even cook something together?”
Three days later I found a folded piece of paper stuck under my back door. “Thank you for your thoughtfulness! Yes, I’d love to make dinner together sometime. But right now I need to ask a favour. Would the owner give me a two-week rent delay? I’ll pay as soon as I get a new job. Thanks again, Erin.”
“Oh, hell!” I muttered, referring not so much to the state of her affairs, as to disappointment in myself. I was suddenly sure that I had foreseen this scenario all along, although in fact I hadn’t suspected anything of the sort even a minute before. “How do I know,” I said to myself, “that it wasn’t all planned beforehand and that she was looking for a free ride when she moved in? What should I do now? Give her an eviction notice and look for somebody else?” Although I did need the money, I didn’t want another tenant. I wanted her.
Two days later, I left a note under her door: “Don’t worry about it. I’ll cover your rent for the next month. You can pay me back when you get a new job.”
I don’t know exactly what inspired that sudden generosity, but somehow I had managed to overcome my suspicion, no small feat for somebody like me. I got yet another “thank you” note, this time explaining that she had lost her job but was sure to find another one and that the landlord shouldn’t worry as she was entitled to welfare in the interim. The naïve openness with which she revealed what other people would certainly try to hide — going on welfare — painfully reverberated in me.
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