Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Forty-Five

Only the most suspicious of neighbourhood busy-bodies spying through their sheer window curtains, would have found anything remarkable about the telephone service van parked at the corner beneath the yellowing lindens. Only the most paranoid of nosy-parkers would have found anything upsetting by the sight of the individual behind the wheel, a stout man of middling stature, of middling appearance, of middling appeal, sipping his Tim Horton's extra-large double-double in one hand while adeptly playing Angry Birds on his Blackberry in the other, the sounds of squawking birds and snorting piglets a counterpoint to the low level radio station wavering like white noise. The open carton of sugary Timbits resting on the officious looking papers on the dashboard underscored this reality, all signs and sounds of normality to the average perception. But the man in the Montreal Expo's baseball cap was only vaguely concerned with the piglet problem in his palm, he was waiting for the appearance of his subjects. He had already memorized the information on his phone, the sub-stats as he called them: Duncan Strand, 53, owner of Strand Cordage Ltd., and Lafcadio & Co., Books, Amelia Strand, 40, part-time CEGEP teacher and free-lance translator, dog named Hugh. No pics. Addresses, phone numbers, car licence number, model and colour. Landlady, Mrs Shimoda below. The information had been sent to him late the previous night. A document retrieval operation. Simple. Clean. He'd given it the name, Operation Labrador, but with the appearance in his side mirror of sleepy-eyed Duncan coming down the stairs with Hugh, he had thought perhaps the name Operation Wiener Dog would have been more apt.

Duncan noticed the van but didn't give it a second, let alone a third thought. His mind was elsewhere. Hugh sniffed at the sparse grass at the base of a maple tree, while Duncan rubbed his stiff neck and stretched it from side to side producing the sound of cracking bone which he had learned was really only air released from the joint, or so he was meant to believe. His jaw was tight and his hips were sore. He had not slept well. Too many concerns. Too many interactions. Although he could turn his personality up when required, he was truly an introvert's introvert, happiest when sitting behind his desk surrounded by his books and papers, cataloguing and describing older volumes, their bibliographic anomalies, their surface sufferings and indignities, their inner logic of signatures and size.

Hugh dragged him towards the corner of the park sniffing and inspecting along the way.

The man in the van sipped his coffee thinking that his subject didn't look his age. He put it down to being childless. Nothing like having kids to age you. The responsibilities, the worries, the demands. Wiener dogs. Not much responsibility there. A full size Dachshund was funny in itself he thought, but a miniature one was hilarious. Operation Draft Stop. He chuckled at his own wit as Duncan and Hugh disappeared around the corner.

Duncan couldn't match Hugh's jauntiness this morning—a brisk liveliness that belied his short legs—but he enjoyed watching him perform his rituals. How dogs parcelled out their pee, a little bit here, a little bit there, was a wonder to him. Canine communication. Invisible graffiti. He felt little adorable Hugh suited his personality, their personality. Much like them, he felt Hugh was an introvert but able to interact with considerable aplomb when needs must. Parties, family gatherings, professional meetings all required that effort of will to shed the protective skin and open oneself to the quandaries of life. Hugh rose to the occasion—as much as he could rise to anything—though Hugh's professional associations were not quite what he would call demanding—his veterinarian, Susan, the only one.

The fog was beginning to thin he noticed. They walked up towards Dorchester and Hugh inspected the shrubbery and grass at the corner while Duncan blinked and yawned towards the upper reaches of the RCMP head office with its aerials and communication devices hiding in the fog. He wondered what they must listen to, detect, uncover. We live in a world of terror plots and uncertainty he thought. How simple it was in his childhood in the 1960s, a world sans graffiti, sans terror, sans plots. Hugh pulled him away with a zestful interest in a garden gnome peeking at him, eye to eye, from behind a miniature garden fence. Of course there was the 1970s Québec crisis. Yes, graffiti, plots, the terror of mail boxes. Hugh pulled him further on past the early twentieth century limestone townhouses, many now divided into flats. Tribalism was rife, his Father used to say, especially in the suburbs. Duncan had never been one for groups. Somehow, he didn't think introverts were much interested in tribalism—more, I-balism, or eye-ball-ism he thought with a half smile and a turn of the head.

Upon seeing a wall of books through a living room window, his thoughts spun away from the gravity of the past, triggering a memory of a dream he had had last night: he was running with Joseph Campbell, the scholar and comparative mythologist, running with books in his arms, trying not to drop them, but failing in that endeavour, looking back, stopping to bend down and retrieve their splayed forms upon the wet grass, and all the time Campbell was telling him to leave them behind, they would help delay the shadows gaining upon them. He shook his head in bewilderment as Hugh did his business. He hadn't thought of Campbell for a dog's age. He had read his books back in the 1970s and 80s, and attended his numerous guest public lectures at Loyola College in the early 80s, and even attended one weekend seminar, mesmerized throughout by his inspiring rich throaty east coast drawl—a voice that at times reminded him of Al Pacino—his mannerisms and of course, his extraordinary vast knowledge. But Duncan had left his comparative mythology period behind him. The four volume Masks of God were in an Australian Shiraz wine box with similar volumes on religion and mythology. His soiled, annotated softcover copy of The Hero With A Thousand Faces inscribed by the author, rested upon a stack of other Campbell titles gathering residual dust behind works by Thomas Pynchon and John Updike. It had been awhile. Life got in the way. Or was the way.

As Hugh stood by waiting for Duncan to pick up after him as was the ritual, Duncan watched the light reflections of the passing cars behind him upon the limestone houses, thinking of the slide-shows Campbell provided during his lectures. He was like a magician, standing off to the side, talking with expressive gestures, casually walking close to the projection to point out a feature, or emphasis the importance of a symbol. Hugh pulled on the leash, bringing Duncan to the immediate present. He bent down with a small black plastic bio-degradable bag to perform his urban responsibilities. 

They walked on, making their full circle around the block. He remembered his brother Gavin, the one who hardly ever looked at a book, and yet the one who was able to come up with the lyrics to his tunes. Whenever he himself tried to write lyrics, the words seemed to get in the way. Gavin the extroverted introvert, however, could always find the words. They came to him. He felt them. But he was always pushing, pushing, pushing. He pushed Duncan out of their Mother's womb first he did—probably because he was in the way—and pushed himself into the next dimension pursuing that hero's journey he knew nothing about and yet everything, crashing his souped-up sports car in the early morning mist all those years ago.

Duncan and Hugh arrived back at their door, the journey's end. The service van remained in place but was of no concern to him. His thoughts had shifted, thoughts now preoccupied with his recent bibliographic discoveries, the Latin text and the manuscript in code, and with what Joseph Campbell—or his unconscious—was trying to tell him.

*

The breakfast room was empty, so Jerome began to investigate the chafing dishes on the large oak sideboard; fluffy scrambled eggs, twists of fatty bacon like the ears of giant pugilists, pork sausages in their post-sizzle sweat, home-fries huddled like warm bricks ready for the mortar of egg, fresh squeezed orange juice, fresh ground coffee, and a variety of fresh cut fruit in assorted colourful bowls. Jams and jellies and a selection of toast, but, no marmalade. A moratorium on marmalade perhaps.

A marmalade morning without marmalade was to Jerome, rather anomalous. A moniker coined, not by direct representation of Seville oranges in sugary splendour, but by Declan's wife in abstraction, a name which conjured up sentimental images by Victorian artists like Helen Allingham or Marcus Stone. A summer garden scene, flowering shrubs, women on garden benches in long dresses—drapery for the skilled eye and hand—books and letters on the seats beside them, summer bonnets and ribbons hanging on the upright, a cat playing with a ball of yarn, Marmalade Mornings, engraved in italic lettering on a brass picture frame plaque.

“Dig in, help yourself, that's what it's there for,” Declan's voice taking him by surprise, urging him on like a mild mannered drill Sargent to his grandchildren.

Declan came along side Jerome like a Spanish Galleon, all elbows. They filled their respective plates in silence, Jerome noticing a sign of concern and preoccupation on his patron's face.

After eating with little conversation other than the references to the weather and to Beaumont, Declan went over to refill their coffee cups and when he returned he finally became quite talkative.

“When I bought Castlebourne, I discovered in the attic rooms among the discarded furnishings, a wood and leather trunk containing many of the previous family's historic papers, some account books, letters and other items fit for the fireplace. Among them were old garden plans. One included a maze and a list of sayings to be used as points of contemplation while walking the thing. As far as I know, they never created the maze.” He drank his coffee pausing as if recalling the moment when he disturbed the dust of many years and unearthed the crumbling plans. “So, when I had this place built, I decided to carry through, bring it to fruition so to speak. We found a good stone worker and had the sayings carved. The trees took a bit longer, but, as you have seen, it's not too shabby.”

“And the sundial, was that part of the plan?”

Declan looked down into his steaming coffee, blinking like a discomfited chess player. “Well, the sundial was part of the old herb garden at Castlebourne, surrounded by thyme, parsley, marjoram, sage, basil, Valerian, Lovage, garlic and God knows what else. It's still growing as we speak but now with a statue at the centre. A little water feature.” He finished his coffee. “The original maze plans called for a pedestal with a top of rare black polished obsidian, a sort of scrying-stone my wife believes. If it existed, we haven't found it.”

Scrying-stone. Polished obsidian. It conjured up images of Waterhouse's painting The Magic Circle, or Burn-Jones's The Beguiling of Merlin. “I envy your discoveries,” Jerome said over his crossed knife and fork. “Do you know who drew up the original plans?”

“Yes, it was a woman named Catherine Fenton. My wife knows more about it than I.” Declan turned as if he heard something. A few seconds later there was a knock on the door and a tall, dark featured, casually dressed man entered.

“Harry, grab yourself a coffee,” Declan said, “and come and meet our friend the artist, Jerome van Starke.”

Harry ignored Declan and shook Jerome's hand like a cheerful sceptic. “So, Jerome, can I put in an order for a Mona Lisa for my wife's powder room? Just kidding, mate. Nice to meet you.” Then he sauntered over to the sideboard to pour himself a coffee.

“So Dec, what's the score?” Harry said clinking a spoon in his mug.

“Well, I think everything's arranged. Have you brought your latest drawings and plans?”

“I wouldn't be here otherwise.”

Declan turned to Jerome as Harry sat opposite him. “Harry here was my old childhood friend in Point St. Charles, before he left me for a better neighbourhood when we were about ten. Never saw him again. Strange that.” They both chuckled. “Then, about twenty years ago, there I was at a cocktail party and I hear a laugh. I turn around and see a tall man across the room talking to the hostess. I knew that laugh. I remembered it like a face. So I began a conversation with him and asked if he had a younger brother named Harrington. The man looked at me wide-eyed. Yes he did. An architect. Presently rediscovering the family roots in the Caribbean and designing fancy homes for the rich and famous. His elder brother provided me with a phone number and well, we've been in business ever since. Hotels and Condos throughout the Caribbean and quite a few splendid homes. Harry's one of the best.”

“That's . . .” Jerome tried to find the right words as he gazed upon the alluring, smooth, clean-shaven head of Harry.

“Amazing, isn't it,” Harry said, jostling Declan's shoulder like a long lost brother. “This man's senses are acute Jerome. Fucking remembered my laugh over thirty years. Meant to be I guess. Meant to be.”

*

Amelia dialled Mélisande's number at the library thinking she would catch her before the preoccupations of the day tied her down.

“What's up?” Mélisande said trying to sound cheerful.

“We wanted to invite you over for dinner tonight, just the three of us. It's been too long. Love to see you. We can discuss the manuscript papers Duncan dropped off the other day too. How about it? 6:30. Just bring yourself.”

“I'd love to. Thanks. I have Duncan's discovery in the laptop bag beside me here at the circulation desk. I really haven't had a chance to delve into it, so that would work for me.”

“Excellent. See you at 6:30. Have a great day, and don't let the eccentrics get you down!”

Mélisande thanked her and rang off. Looking around at the empty library bathed in muted rose coloured light, she had to admit, libraries did tend to attract them, 

*

A ringtone of Cheap Trick's The Dream Police alerted the man in the service van he had received a text message. Having abandoned Angry Birds, he reached out and finagled the device to read his electronic missive.

abort op. new info. doc. elsewhere.

The key was in the ignition and he pulled away from the curb with relief and a knackering for a fresh honey cruller.

Mrs. Shimoda noticed its departure and returned to her crossword puzzle, the female jig-saw piece held firmly between thumb and forefinger, a portion of a pink blossom in need of a male piece for connection and oneness.

© ralph patrick mackay

Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Forty-Four

Pavor Loveridge stood flat-footed and sweating lightly before the closed doors of the Cathedrale di San Giusto. The morning visitation period had ended. It was either lunch or prayer time within, or both. A vendor in the parking lot selling panini and hotdog fare was still occupied with a clutch of hungry stragglers, but Pavor overcame the visceral urge and began to take pictures of the church on his cell phone. The Romanesque architecture with its squat bell tower of rustic stone and the main chapel of rustic brick and stone seemed cobbled together over time. The simple Rose window over the entrance was a welcomed detail to the rather austere facade topped by the small Triestine cross.

The shade drew him away leading him to a fenced garden, and over the fence he could see in the distance a small white classical building with Corinthian columns, almost a miniature example, though more elaborate in design, of the Anglican church he had passed on the street below. The gate was open. Turning to the left he noticed a well-dressed older man, with fine grey hair and and clipped Vandyke beard sitting on a bench in the shade, his hat and a wooden black and white patterned chess box beside him. The man's legs were crossed in an urbane fashion, and he nodded at Pavor and said hello in Italian.

“Bon giorno,” Pavor returned with a nod.

“Are you American?” the man enquired.

“Canadian,” he said with a half smile, “Montreal.” He approached the septuagenarian at his siesta.

“Please, please, sit, relax. You have come a long way, no? Canada, Montreal, yes, a long way.”

“It's a beautiful spot here. Very peaceful.”

“The oldest part of Trieste young man, a place where the Romans had their Capitoline temple, and within, Jupiter, Minerva and Juno once looked down upon the citizens and visitors like yourself.” A gust of wind swept over them like an admonishment. The older man spread his arm out in a sweep of the area before them, “A cemetery too it was many years in the past,” he said wistfully. “Yes peaceful, though history, much of it sad, is all around us. This cemetery became a garden full of Roman artifacts, stone remnants, broken columns, but now, most have been moved to the Castle. And there,” he said pointing to the classical building with the Corinthian columns as if in honour of the original Roman temple, “you have the mausoleum or cenotaph to Winckelmann, the father of archaeology. A wealthy lawyer, Domenico Rossetti, long ago formed the Società di Minerva which studied and preserved the history of Trieste, and it was he who was responsible for this garden and mausoleum. A man of many arts he was, he possessed a great library with many rare works of Petrarca. The sculpture within is very well done, Canova was a student of the original artist.”

“I've heard the name of Winckelmann but I didn't know he had a Trieste connection.”

The old man stroked his moustache and bearded chin. “A violent end, a violent end. With his friend the Italian sculptor Cavaceppi, he was travelling north to Germany to revisit his homeland. They reached Munich but Winckelmann had changed his mind. He had been away too long perhaps. He wanted to return. They travelled to Vienna instead and met the royal family and he was given honours of gold and silver medallions but still he continued in his desire to return to his cherished Rome. What does one think? He left Cavaceppi in Austria and made his way to Trieste. Alone. Waiting to catch a ship for Venice, he stayed at one of the old hotels near the harbour, and befriended an Italian peasant staying in the next room who was also waiting for a ship. Arcangeli was his name and he had a criminal past. Winckelmann was secretive about who he was but showed the man his medallions. Well, you can imagine. Arcangeli tried to strangle him with a rope but Winckelmann was strong yes, and then the thief stabbed him before fleeing. When Arcangeli was caught, he defended himself by saying Winckelmann was a spy, a Jew reading a book of magic. Of course antisemitism was not new. The book was Homer's Iliad. In Greek. He was punished by death on the wheel, Ixion, yes, in front of the hotel. Another violent end. And so the wheel of life turns, and turns, and turns.” He paused to brush away a small leaf that had fallen upon his shoulder. “This mausoleum would not exist if Winckelmann had decided to stay in Germany or travel to Greece with another scholar, and yet he must have been disappointed in his return, finding the northern world cold and harsh in comparison, while the warm south, the Classical world, was his dream, a dream to which he returned.” The man shook his head. “Only to find a nightmare, yes, incubo. And to think, he could have stayed in Germany and met Goethe.”

“You know the story quite well.”

“I have had many hours to read, many hours. So,” he resumed, “the realm of chance yes, the decisions and choices of life. In the Cathedrale there are the tombs of Don Carlos and his descendants, the Carlists. But for a woman slapping a man, Don Carlos and family would have ruled Spain. Chance, decisions, choices.”

“Who slapped whom?”

“Well, King Ferdinand's third wife died leaving no heir. Don Carlos, his brother, would inherit the throne. But no, Ferdinand marries once more and a daughter is born. But Calomarde, a rogue and President of the Council of Castille, persuaded the young wife that civil war would break if Don Carlos was passed over for this girl, yes? The young wife persuades the dying Ferdinand to sign a decree of revocation but the Queen's sister slapped Calomarde across the face and took this paper and destroyed it. So, due to that slap . . ,” he made a gesture of with his hands before him as if pleading with the goddess of Fortune, “their bones lie here in the Chapel of Saint Charles Borromeo far from Spain. Such is life, no?"

“Yes, I see. Such is life.”

“Umberto Forlan” he said offering his open palm.

“Pavor, Pavor Loveridge” he said shaking the man's hand. He noticed the bowl end of a pipe peeking out of the man's breast pocket like a periscope.

“Pavor, Pavor, your name is European, not English?”

“My Mother was born in Czechoslovakia, my Father was English. Pavor Kristof Loveridge is the result.” He pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to him.

Umberto slipped on a pair of reading glasses and squinted at the card bookmarked by his aged thumbnails, nacreous and lined like old beach shells. He nodded and sighed. “An author, man of many words, yes? What books do you write young man?”

Pavor crossed his ankles. “Crime and spy novels, mysteries if you like. Two of them have been translated into Italian. Your English is very good,” he added to change the subject.

“After the war there were many American and British soldiers in Trieste, 'whatever the weather we must move together' was a poster I remember, so there were many occasions to learn phrases and words, many opportunities to ask questions. My Father was self-employed, a photography studio,” he said placing the card in his shirt pocket, “and I used to help him when not in school. Many soldiers came in to have their photograph taken, photographs to send to their Mothers, wives, or sweethearts, and there I was, observing, listening, absorbing everything before my eyes. They were all so spic-and-span or prim-and-proper yes, with their fine uniforms, shining medals and boots, fresh faces and short cropped hair.” He paused looking into the middle distance. “Sticks of gum, chocolate and the occasional coin. I was fortunate. Many were less so. Many. I was only five when the war began, and the American and British troops didn't leave until 1954. Yes, it was about this time of year, the leaves were turning yellow and we hoped the approaching winter winds would be mild.” He laughed lightly to himself. “I just recalled the names the soldiers used for the British Generals in charge, 'Terry Airey' and 'Tom Winter.' It was Major General Thomas Winterton who was here during that last year of the occupation, the worst winter weather and wind on record. Appropriate to his name yes? It was as if all the torments and terrors of the war had swirled up from the depths of hell and swept across the land.” He passed an age-spotted, heavily veined hand through his fine hair and took off the reading glasses which had been propped on the end of his nose which Pavor noticed had a fine tracery of broken blood vessels like rivulets of lava. “Peace had finally come. My parents were secure once more, and I had wanderlust I think the phrase is, yes? With the money I had saved, I went to New York where an uncle lived. I worked in commercial photography, magazines, fashion and that sort of thing from 1955-1967, and picked up more English there. My future wife as well.” He laughed. “Well, it was she who picked me up. A model. We returned to Italy and I took over my Father's studio and cared for my Mother. Now, at 77, I am retired. An old man, as you see, in a cemetery.”

“You must have had great experiences with photography during those years,” Pavor said.

“My Father called photography 'a bridge of time,' 'ponticello di tempo.' Yes, I did, exciting times. But the bridge has changed. In place of studied snaps, we now have the panorama of everyday life, complete, yes? This is good. And this is bad. What must I say, people used to respect the lens, pose before the novelty of the technology and the technologist. Smiles were of course denied, only imbeciles smiled. Then America, smiles were everywhere, yes? And money. There was a time when it was a challenge to discover the nature of an individual hidden within, since everyone was so much alike on the outside; now, it is all revealed on the exterior, people have turned themselves inside out, or so it seems to me.” Umberto had crossed his arms during his light-hearted rant. He turned to Pavor with a smile and said, “Narcissus in the garden?”

“May I take your picture?” Pavor said roistering his cell phone self-consciously.

“Ah, it is good you have a sense of humour. Why not, snap away.” He posed while Pavor took a photograph and then shook his head despairingly when shown the result. “Have you been inside the Cathedrale?”

Pavor settled back on the bench trying to decide what story he had to offer the man. The ineffable truth? The path of his procrastinations? His multi-faceted inhibitions? The hesitations and fears of reoccurring experience? The compromise of his shadows?

“No, I've been wandering and stumbled my way here. The Cathedrale was closed when I arrived.” Pavor crossed his legs in imitation of Umberto. “I parked my car near the Piazza di Trinità and walked out onto the stone pier. At the end of it, I braced myself in the Bora by holding onto that circular brass directional device, it almost felt like a steering wheel of a large truck, gave me a sensation of being at the helm of an enormous barge. Very clever how the artist made it look like it was encircled with rope.” Pavor hesitated over the details of his recent peregrinations. “I wandered along the harbour and then began my overland route. Happenstance and serendipity have guided me here.”

Umberto gazed at him sideways with increasing interest. “Bora? Young man, this is but a light breeze. You must come back in February or March. The past few years the Bora has been ferocious. I remember 1954 the year that broke all records.” He paused remembering the past and shook his head. “Perhaps that is what prompted my departure,” he said, looking down at his suede shoes as if they were the ones that had launched him on his travels. “Now, I venture off to Capri for three or four weeks when the weather is difficult here. Many writers have sought refuge there. Have you been?”

“No, but I'd like to visit,” he said wondering if Umberto had ever met Graham Greene and other writers. “I am staying in Villa Opicina till the end of next June. House sitting. A Professor of Archaeology here in Trieste is teaching in China, and my agent arranged it so I could be alone to concentrate on my next book.”

Umberto looked at Pavor's hands and noticed he didn't have a ring. “You are unmarried?”

Feeling a sense of freedom that comes with strangers in a strange land, Pavor welcomed the chance to reveal secrets, welcomed the chance to release the suppressed emotions hammering away at his consciousness. “I was married once. When I was doing my undergraduate degree, I met Victoria and we married and had a child, Tamara. I took a Master's degree and then I studied law, and practiced for a number of years in Montreal. Life was good. On a trip to visit her Mother, my wife's car was hit by a truck. Tamara was with her. It was a long time ago. I lost my direction. I gave up law and started to write.” Pavor felt both guilty and relieved to have told someone, and realized that only before the eyes of experience could he have relinquished his story, only before a man like Umberto, a stranger sitting in a cemetery telling him stories of the past, could he have been so arbitrary with such an absolute.

The wind in the trees filled the awkward silence between them. “I am very sorry for your loss,” Umberto said, tapping Pavor's knee. “Life,” he said shaking his head knowingly. “Do you have someone else special in your life?”

“Yes, yes, I've invited her to visit.”

“Good, good. So, my friend, what is this book you are writing?”

Pavor shifted on the bench and looked up to the trees and their yellowing leaves like desiccated smiles. “A friend of mine is an investigative reporter and she told me a story at a dinner party back in January. It was a story she thought I would find of interest for one of my novels. I've been sketching it out in my head for the past nine months. She was investigating the death of a man who worked in the secret intelligence world, research of some kind. His lawyer gave her his journals and papers. He believed he had been slowly murdered by his employers by the abuse of new-found scientific techniques. He was single, no close family. The motive is what she couldn't discover. There is always a motive. Money didn't seem to be one. He was comfortable and had no vices. He lived a simple life. Yearly visits to New York to see the new plays. Museum visits, that type of activity. Cultured and quiet. A reader of non-fiction. History mainly.”

“A disagreement with his employers perhaps? A motive for them?” Umberto offered. “Perhaps he was preparing to reveal secrets. Secrets concerning these scientific abuses.”

“Yes,” Pavor said squinting up to the trees. “That's one possibility.”

“Or love, that ultimate motive of our species, no?”

Pavor looked up between the trees to see layers of fair weather clouds like jagged coastlines moving towards each other in the cross-currents, the vapours swirling backwards, dissimulating, deflecting, deforming, before silently colliding, merging in a display of aerial tectonics. He wondered if the edges of clouds were fractal.

“Love, hmm, I never considered that possibility.”

*

“Hei?”

He didn't recognize the voice of the woman who answered the phone. “Hello, my name is Arthur Roquebrune, I'm calling from Montreal for Thérèse LaFlamme, or Tess Sinclair as she sometimes calls herself. I am a friend.”

Martine Haugen was struck with the familiarity of the man's name, her thoughts now divided between the recollection of the past, and the immediate enquiry for Tess. “Hello Mr. Roquebrune, my name is Martine Haugen, yes Tess has been staying here as my guest. I have been away a number of days. Tess was not here when I arrived today. She didn't leave a note so I imagine she is just out shopping. Shall I have her phone you back?”

Arthur Roquebrune sat at his desk, his mind likewise searching the past as her name was familiar to him. He saw a very tall woman, six foot two perhaps, long straight blond hair, long pale features. Where had they met? “Yes, that would be very kind of you.” And as he gave her the phone number at his home and at his office, he remembered. It had been at a conference in Paris. “Your name seems very familiar to me Ms. Haugen. Did we meet in Paris in 2002?”

“I was just thinking the same, yes, the conference, of course. Your name seemed very familiar to me as well. You presented a paper on the rights of the deceased.”

“Yes, very kind of you to remember. It seems so long ago. Well, I am very pleased that Tess has found such a good friend. Tess can call me anytime, no hesitation. Thank you very much Martine. Farvel.”

“Very good Arthur. Farvel.”

He eased himself back in his leather chair remembering Paris and the affairs of the heart.

© ralph patrick mackay

Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Forty-Three

Not wanting to make a movement that would signal to Hugh she was about to get up, Amelia Strand slowly opened her eyes and was relieved to see that Hugh's little bed in the corner was empty. As quietly as she could, she dragged up the extra blanket and brought her calves and thighs together under the sheets. Hugh was likely propped on the front window-sill looking for life. A touch of the cat in him, ears alert, observing, thinking obscure thoughts. She had left dry nibblies in his dish last night so he should be content. For now. One of them would have to get up and let him out for a pee. If only they had their own house with a fenced back yard, they could just open the back door and let him out while they stood with crumpled hair and creased face, scratching, preening and yawning like a monkey in a cage, waiting for him to do his business before they slipped back to bed for an extra ten minutes. Uncle Edward's coach house would fix that. She should make a list of the benefits of moving there, the pros and the cons. Running out of dog food and a litre of milk would be one of the latter. The nearest dépanneur, a minor trek.

She listened to Duncan breathing. Not quite a snore, although he was known to. She remembered the first time she told him he snored. Duncan had worried he was turning into his Father, a man whose snore could have stripped wallpaper. A good pillow and a gentle elbow seemed to work for them.

She stretched out her foot behind her scoping the proximity of Duncan's warmth. He must be facing the wall, his back to her. She was always curious to see her friend's bedrooms to discover who slept on what side. She thought someone should write a university paper on the topic, 'The Dominant and Subordinate Spooner, or, Position and Possession in the Marital Bed.' Sounds like the kind of papers she had translated in the past. She remembered Mélisande's bedroom. She had been over for tea and had used the bathroom. Her bedroom door was open and she noticed her side of the queen size bed was on the right. Natural for a single person. One doesn't sleep on the side of the heart. Too much pressure. Uncomfortable. She wondered what changes would occur if she ever married Pavor. Would he assume the dominant right side?

For a moment she was unsure what day it was and what was on her agenda. Wednesday? More floral work. Correct some of the papers for the course she was teaching. Dinner tomorrow with Uncle Edward and Noel. Ask Mélisande over for dinner. Her to-do list faded as she breathed deeply feeling the draught of sleep pulling her back.

If only they both had steady jobs, steady paychecks, benefits and security. Scrambling to hold the ends together, forever throwing the stepping stone ahead of them, one stride at a time, was tiring. So many of her old school friends had surpassed her. Houses in he suburbs, kids, cottages and capital. She couldn't rely on inheritance. Uncle Edward may be mortgaged up to the hilt and holding vast debt for all she knew. He might have nothing left to leave them. She clenched her teeth thinking of her parents having abandoned them in their mid-teens to go off to some hippie commune. Uncle Edward had been their saviour. Her younger sister, married and living in California, had kept in touch with their parents, but Amelia only received a greeting card once a year in celebration of the summer solstice, may the sun be with you, like some greeting from Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Her elder brother, who had written their parents off, was living in New Zealand working as a dentist.

She felt Duncan rousing, gently rising from his side, making his way around the end of the bed, unhooking his robe from the back of the door and slipping out with his slippers, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him. The clip clip of Hugh's little feet down the hall strangely reminded her of the sad trotting of the horses in Old Montreal, a carriage ride, shorts, sandals, cameras, seeing but not seeing. If only the tourists looked deep into the blinkered eyes of the horses, she thought, the one feature of all of us on this Earth that truly communicates and binds us as one, they would change their minds and walk. But it was tourism. Looked good. Picturesque. Horses had performed such tasks for thousands of years. You can't change the world Amelia she thought. Not in the blink of an eye. She squeezed hers shut and breathing deeply, fell back into a light sleep.

*

His concern was palpable. He liked that word. Palpable. He noticed it had appeared with more frequency in the books he read. Or was it only the blurbs? 'Palpably memorable!' 'The characters are palpably prodigious!' Sounds like a breakfast cereal. 'These butterfly flakes are palpably delicious!'

Still with his fingers crossed, Pavor continued to make his way along the Via San Michele, many of the old three storey buildings, he noted, were in need of a renovating spirit; their crumbling surfaces were stained grey with time and neglect, their shutters cracked and warped, their street level facades with their rotting window frames, flaking stone and graffiti embellishments, were sad and unwelcoming. Not a place to walk at night he thought. The incline became steeper, the buildings taller and finer in an example of immaculate conservancy. Sweating slightly, he approached the crossroads ahead, and watched his reflection bend in the convex street mirror like some carnival fun house image. These corner conveniences reminded him of oversize dentist mirrors. Common in Europe but practically nonexistent in Montreal.

Light and breadth of space lay before him with its pedestrians and scooters making their everyday excursions. He turned onto the Via San Giusto, almost tempted by the aroma of the take-out roast chicken issuing from the open door of a Trattoria on the corner, but on he trudged, keeping left, putting his back into it, until he reached another convergence of streets and a rough stone fortress wall rising fifty feet in the air—the wall of Troy it seemed to him—the fortification of the Castle of Giusto. He stood, catching his breath, relaxing on his heels, looking up at the top and imagining Helen on the ramparts of Troy looking for her Paris on the battlefield below. A fitting subject for one of Jerome's paintings. The weeds and grass growing out from the uppermost level of the wall diminished it in Pavor's eyes, nature, the all-consuming, could reduce it all to rubble with time. 

As he rounded the corner on the narrow sidewalk beside a low, seemingly derelict building crumbling and overcome with decay, he looked across the street to see a black cat sitting on a pedestal drinking fountain built out from a concrete facing attached to the wall. Thirst and curiosity led him over.

“What a handsome cat you are,” he said, wondering if cats the world over responded to tone. “Molto bello,” he added, as he neared and turned his head sideways inquisitively. The cat responded by getting up on its feet and stretching its back, tail in the air. Pavor wanted to pet the stray but was wary of fleas or a cat scratch. “Molto bello. Are you lost, or are you a cat of the streets?”

“Dante, vieni qui, salta, salta,” a voice said from above.

Pavor looked up to see a large half-moon opening in the wall, one of three he noticed, ancient drainage openings no longer in use. A young woman reached down with a scratching board and the cat jumped onto to it and up into the cave dwelling. She petted her Dante and ignored Pavor. She had long brown hair pulled back in a pony tail, jeans and running shoes and some kind of hooded sweater. She looked around twenty.

“Perdonami, il tuo gatto è molto bello, “ Pavor offered. Seeing she didn't respond, Pavor asked her why her cat was named Dante.

“Il suo naso, il suo profilo è come Dante,” she said.

Pavor laughed. “Ah, il suo naso, si, the nose, yes, Dante.”

Pavor could see how she could scale the wall using the fountain as a stepping stone. Refuge, but certainly not safe at night he thought. He looked up to see in the angle of the wall, an old-fashioned street lamp attached a few feet above the openings. At least there was light. And water below. Pavor felt suddenly quite ill with his modest wealth and freedom, and asked her if she needed food.

“No, la Chiesa fornisce cibo per me e Dante, grazie,” she said gesturing to the Cathedrale di San Giusto.

Pavor nodded wondering how he could help. “Do you like to read? Ti piace leggere?”

“Si, mi piacciono i libri.”

Pavor withdrew Tullio's copy of his book and taking 40 Euros from his wallet, placed them within like bookmarks sticking out so she could see them. Retrieving his pen, he asked what her name was.

“Perché?” she asked the sky.

“Voglio firmare questo libro per te. Io sono l'autore.” Pavor could always buy another copy of this book and inscribe it to Tullio again. “Il mio nome è Pavor Loveridge.”

“Carina, Carina è Dante,” she said. “Grazie.”

Pavor propped the book on the fountain, and inscribed the book to Carina and her Dante, 'may this bring you good fortune and happiness.' He drew a line through the inscription for Tullio, closed the book and handed it up to her.

In the silence that followed, he bent down and drank from the fountain, the water was surprisingly cold and sweet.

He hoped she didn't sleep there during the night. “Spero di non dormire di notte,” he called up to her.

“No, certo che no, io non sono pazzo,” she said with a laugh. “Durante il giorno, si, ma non di notte.”

“Buono. Spero che ti piace il mio libro,” he said, truly hoping the book would give her some enjoyment. “Buona fortuna Carina è Dante,” he added with a wave as he made his way up the street to the walled Cathedrale.

She was about the age of his daughter Tamara. 

The silence followed him up the street like a shadow.

© ralph patrick mackay

Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Forty-Two

MobyDick Shipchandler Co., Istanbul, Turkey.

Pavor watched as the semi-trailer truck slow-geared past on the way to the commercial port further on, the driver in the sheer faced cab, a powerful chin with a massive tattooed forearm, the captain of his own ship, call him Ishmael with his Moby flash-frozen in the trailer behind. MobyDick Shipchandler out of Istanbul. Four foot blue lettering on a white semi-trailer truck. He needed that. A jolt of East and West to pull him out of his maunderings along the harbour. The name on the truck brought up memories of Melville and also Conrad's Lord Jim, Jim working as a water-clerk for a ship chandler's business in distant tropical ports, ever moving from port to port in the romantic pursuit of a fresh start.

The cars, trucks and motorbikes sputtered and farted past as he waited on the sidewalk to cross.

It had been a half-hour since Pavor had left the stone pier and its dark iron cleats behind, the winds having prevailed upon him; a half hour since he left his conjectures over how many people have simply walked to the end of that long stone pier and descended the few slime-slick stairs, water rilling in the crevices, and surrendered themselves to the cold dark waters. A long half-hour.

Nearby, to the bronze sculptures on the side of another set of stairs, these leading down to the water in front of the Piazza Unità, he had made his way, and had gazed upon these realistic depictions of two woman sitting on the concrete ledge sewing the flag of Italy, their dresses rippled like water, their hair furrowed by the imaginary wind. One woman had an all-knowing, all-seeing expression, wistful yet bemused. Sewing time itself. The sculptures had made him think of the numerous modern naturalistic bronze sculptures in Montreal, the man reading a newspaper in Westmount, or the couple embracing on a bench, and many others. There must be thousands of similar statues around the world he had thought, an art movement away from austere representations on high pillars and plinths, towards art for the people, eye to eye. He had wondered if there might be a correlation between freedom and natural interactive art, the more 'democratic' freedoms available, the more natural and accessible the art? He had stood looking at the bronze figures—not realizing tourists were hoping he would move so they could take photos of the bronze sisters—remembering when a friend of his had shown him a photograph of the statue of John Diefenbaker in his home town, some prankster had climbed up and screwed a cigarette between the former prime minister's lips and fitted a condom on his outstretched finger, an example of the perils of representation.

A grey and white butterfly flittered around Pavor's head before swiftly flying towards Bennigan's Pub across the street as if the smell of Foster's and other fine ales were mimicking Valerian, lavender or the blue flowering Hyssopus high on the Mountain slopes over-looking Trieste. It should be sunning itself around Miramare Castle he thought. Equally lost as himself perhaps.

Using the crosswalk near the marina where he had found himself, he made his way over to the city side of the harbour, redirecting his thoughts inland, towards the hospital and the possible answers awaiting him. At the corner of the Piazza Venezia, he made his way past the spicy aroma emitted by a Chinese restaurant that tried to seduce his hunger, but his fluctuating thoughts were preoccupied with Ishmael, Lord Jim, Mélisande, sculptures, doctors, nurses, and Tullio on a gurney possibly clinging to life like Ishmael to Queequeg's coffin.

He felt like he was entering a maze as he made his way down the narrow Via Torino, which curved round to the Piazza Attilio Hortis, a leafy refuge from the winds. The large chestnut trees and Pines provided a welcomed canopy for shade and softened light, an ideal resting place for his already tired feet. Sitting down, he watched the other park denizens and passersby, tireless mothers with their children in strollers, a few elderly men in windbreakers and caps sitting on a bench deep in conversation, arms crossed as if contemplating a chess move, the bicycles and motorbikes passing on the side streets, a woman tugging on the dog leash of her unseen pet intent on smells and odours on the other side of a low shrub, and the dark-winged figures in the trees above looking down on it all with possible distrust. Two short, jowly elderly men, one with a wooden cane slowly scuffed past him, their hats and well-cut suits from another era, brothers perhaps, like mirror images of Jorge Luis Borges. Next, two elderly woman, once again, one with a cane, possibly sisters, arm and arm, their kerchiefs and low-heeled shoes emblems of acceptance and propriety. A procession of twins or married couples? Friends reacquainted off for a stroll and a breath of air? Pavor wondered how they managed the heat during the long shuttered summers.

No one paid any attention to Attilio Hortis, the former head of the public library honoured with a bust on a plinth in the centre of the park. His nose had been broken off, a paper weight on someones desk or crumbled dust swept away by the grounds keepers long ago, Pavor would likely never know. The expression was a bit haughty, even from afar. People, with a capital P, do not like haughty when it comes to book learning it seems. The lawyer turned librarian had a name that evoked, for Pavor at least, Attila the Hun and Horticulture, such was his cultural bias.

Good old Hortus warranted a photograph for Mélisande, so he took out his cell phone and walked over to take a series of shots of the white stone bust while the old men on the bench stared at him open-mouthed as if surprised that a damaged sculpture of a forgotten librarian could possibly be of interest to anyone. Turning around, he made his way over the dusty ground to Italo Svevo who stood in Bronze on the sidewalk nearby, book in hand, hat in the other, a Triestine stroller frozen in time. With the toe of his shoe, he swept a few leaves off the bronze plate affixed to the sidewalk and took a number of photographs, Svevo lost in thought, perhaps thinking of that near-sighted, guitar strumming exile from Eire. Pavor had hesitated with James Joyce as many have, and finally having read Ulysses for a University course, he had felt riven from his Jamesian fixation, the author weaving the English language, history, Catholicism and the classical past and wrapping the reader like a top and pulling the umbilical cord and setting the reader off into a vortex of dizziness, coming to rest on the soft rich earth, eyes to the sky, head spinning, re-birthed with the depths of the idea of love, yes, yes, yes, love. This aroused a memory of the picture he took of Mélisande one crisp yet dusty spring morning, Mélisande leaning on the plexi-glass surround to the Robert Indiana sculpture in old Montreal, the psychedelic colourful letters spelling LOVE, evocative of the Beatles music, I love you, ya, ya, ya, a counterpoint and contrast to the nineteenth century limestone architecture that loomed above and around it. Mélisande, love, marriage, equanimity and contentment. Were not Joyce and Svevo married and conventional? Italo Svevo, the elder protégé of the younger Irish flanneur, had fallen within the Joycean shadows, and yet his writings were still unknown to him. People had told him he should read The Confessions of Zeno, As A Man Grows Older, and A Life, and though he owned paperback copies purchased from The Word bookstore and Grange Stuart Books back in Montreal, books taking up valuable real estate on his jumbled shelves, he had yet to venture into them; three more books on a seemingly endless scroll of a books-to-be-read bibliography easily catalogued by his love, Mélisande the librarian.

He wondered if Joyce had frequented Benington's Pub. Perhaps there was an unpaid bar tab framed and labelled, a tourist tidbit, a draw for the wayward scholar. Another pint if you will, sir. Another toast to that fearful jesuit. Such places as the pub and the Chinese restaurant provided a change for some, but Pavor had avoided them, their appearance so much like places back in Montreal. He had tried to seek out the little family run establishments where locals gathered for local sourced foods and recipes, from seafood and pasta dishes, to sauerkraut and sausage soup, so diverse the cultural mix of Italian, Austrian, Hungarian, Slovenian and Croatian cuisine available. His stomach gave a preliminary growl, a troubling presentiment of possible hospital cafeteria food. Checking his watch, he decided his landfall was well behind him, the journey to the hospital at the centre of this maze of streets lay before him like an uphill endeavour, and so off he trudged like a reluctant Theseus without his thread.

Adrift without a map, he headed along the Via di Cavana with its stylish shops and small restos, where locals let their dogs pee against the light posts and flower stands, then took a right on Via Madonna del Mare, its narrow sidewalk just enough for a svelte solitary stroller. He yielded to an older woman and her plump canvas bags in each hand like comically over-sized boxing gloves, by walking onto the street only to have a spluttering Vespa make him jump with its horn. Looking over his shoulder, he caught sight of an attractive young woman, gleeful in profile—was that a wink? ogling his tight pants—her scarf flowing behind her like a banner.

On he walked, the crumbling buildings and their proximity producing in him a sense of claustrophobia. An officious flag fluttered above a doorway ahead of him, and as he approached it he could make out amidst the strange illiterate scrawls of graffiti, a ghostly sentence half scrubbed away on the stone base of the building. He crossed the street making his way between the line of parked Vespas and motorbikes, and took out his note-book and pencil and began to write the words down.

Il futuro non e'scritto.    il passato non si riscrive.      riprendiamoci il presente.

He could see the shadowed remnants of other words scrubbed away from previous scrawls of protest, as if the rough stone was a poorly cleaned black board of unrest. It is written in the future not the past, reclaim the present. And further on, in a different hand, La liberta é tutto. Freedom and everything. A brass plaque revealed it to be the offices of some state magistrate. The seemingly endless playing out of the past and the present, the pyramid of old wealth over the positionless strugglers beneath, the generations rising and falling in a cycle of circumstances, stoically impaired. The writing on the wall, letters falling between the cracks.

Ahead, a four storey building with lemon coloured upper floors caught the sun. A huddle of five youths stood before the rusticated doorway, their cigarettes and conversation in the air; three young women and two men, not anarchists and futurists, but pleasant students before the open door of learning, the public library, a building more reminiscent of an apartment block. The address number was 13, making him wonder if Italians lacked a superstition over the number.

“Biblioteca?” Pavor enquired disingenuously.

Roused from their closed thoughts, they welcomed the chance to interact with a stranger. “Si, si, biblioteca,” said a tall, very thin young man, his thick dark hair tousled above his long neck helping to exaggerate his pronounced Adam's apple. Confident, and sensing a late season tourist in their midst, he flourished his cigarette in his long fingered hand, sweeping the air before him, “Yes, but books in Italian, yes, no many Inglese. Sistema Dewey. You look for James Joyce?”

“His ghost perhaps, il suo fantasma,” Pavor said with a smile.

Their laughter united them. “Si, il suo fantasma ossessiona Trieste,” the youth said with open arms, “garda, eccolo!” he said pointing to an old man who had emerged from a side street and was walking away from them, cane in one hand, “James Joyce!” They all laughed and bumped shoulders, enjoying the moment.

“Al secondo piano si trova il Museo Joyce,” one of the bespectacled girls said looking up from her cell phone.

“Oh, grazie, domani, domani,” Pavor said pointing at his watch, and with a friendly nod he was off.

“Buono fortuna!” they called after him.

He turned and gave them a friendly wave, “Grazie, buono fortuna.”

Could Joyce really haunt Trieste? Dublin perhaps, but not Trieste. How could anyone dominate a city of countless lives and diversities of experience? Cities are inexhaustible. A hundred writers would come up with a hundred different stories, each representational, each capturing a time and place.

Stubbing his toe, Pavor managed to keep upright. Why do people look back? To admonish the uneven stone? To fix it in memory for the next time? To reveal to others that the fault was not in their stride, but in the stone? His thoughts and steps had brought him to a crossroads, a thirty foot cobblestone circle surrounded by three buildings, their concave colourful facades facing each other like three card players, the balconies and flower boxes their cards held close to their chests. The ground level windows and doors were protected with iron bars like laced boots, a common sight in Trieste, a leitmotif, a motivo conduttore or was the Italian phrase filo conduttore? The two streets climbed before him. Left or right? He chose the darker one to the left, and climbed the Via della Valle, thinking of being with Mélisande in Old Montreal, playing tourist, ice creams and window shopping, coins for jugglers and mimes. It would be about 6:30 a. m. in Montreal now. Still asleep. Clio pawing or kneading the covers perhaps.

Arriving at the end of this small street, he turned right on Via San Michele. Not a soul in sight. Coming to a small white mausoleum-like building, a Neoclassical facade with two Tuscan pillars and additional posts beneath the pediment with its small cross, a smooth, simple and unadorned white washed building. Christ Church, Anglican. The address was 13. He began to worry about Tullio. Two thirteens in a row made him feel his desultory steps were being guided by a higher hand. If the number was not inauspicious, then the library and the church could be seen as positive signs, a possible location for a marriage ceremony, and Tullio would be found sitting up in a hospital bed complaining about the food. He stood before the whitest,  most reflective building he'd come across in Trieste, and crossed his fingers.

*

Upstairs in Jerome's painting studio, Arthur Roquebrune quietly paced the room, his hands clasped behind him, whistling softly. The nervous whistle filling the silence with innocuous innocence, it's just me, the well-meaning landlord. He scanned the worktable, the bookshelves, the floor and furniture for anything anomalous. There had been no answer to the phone, nor to the door bell, and he thought he might look about in the early morning light for other possible clues. Justifiable under the circumstances, a dispensational right, at 6:45 a. m.

Certainly Jerome was interested in Bronzino, the stack of McGill library books on the painter and the studies of the portrait of Lucrezia Panciatchi, made their silent case.

The oddly titled book by the author P. K. Loveridge lured him, intrigued him, and he opened it to the title page and read the inscription to Jerome by the author. A close friend of Jerome's. Trieste. Fetid paints? He sniffed deeply but couldn't say they were fetid. Slightly astringent perhaps, a touch of linseed oil in the air, but not fetid. Trieste? He wouldn't have left for Italy without telling him; he had arranged with Jerome to be made aware of any long excursions abroad, and Trieste was hardly a long weekend. Turning over a few pages of the book, the name Mozart caught his eye, and he stopped to read a poem:

-A lyric sadness in the air. Mozart?

Or Haydn? Almost sounds like Arvo Part.

-She is superb this busker near the curb.

-A balm for equine meditated flight.

-She raises all our darkness to the light.

We join the crowd. The pigeons we disturb

Advance and peck the concrete looking lost.

Our coins, festina lente, tempest-tost.

The sharps and flats and pitch are anchors thrown

To still our stride, like snares of sound our own

Hearts recognize. Becalmed in placid seas

Of melody, she bows us into port,

Slow sarabandes for landfalls soft, they court

Our wayward variations with a breeze

Of interlude. You take my arm and draw

Me on, exampla of Newtonic Law.

He turned back to the title page, making a mental note of the publisher Oxtoby & Snoad, Rye, as a possible outlet for his translations, and put the book back in place and went to the window. When would this fog relent he wondered? He would have to phone Jonathan Landgrave. Honesty generally proved to be the most reliable remedy. No point going in circles like a circus bear on a bicycle.

© ralph patrick mackay

Yes Cecil, A Long Story Short, Part Forty-One

It wasn't the quality of the light, nor the sound of the distant birds, nor even the emerging aroma of brewed coffee slowly rising into the house, weaving along corridors and slithering under doors that awoke Jerome, it was the undeniable pressure upon his bladder. He found the will to drag himself to the bathroom, his mouth a dehydrated cave of undesirable exhalations. After peeing he splashed warm water upon his oily face, scrubbed the sleep from his eyes and massaged his temples, water dripping down into his ears. Whatever had been in the curative drink the night before, had eased him into a sleep of the dead. There were dark crescent moons under his eyes, and his left one was bloodshot, a maze of red lines leading from his brown iris like lava flows from a dark volcano. He drank cold water from his cupped hand and decided to get right in the shower.

As the hot water massaged his scalp, neck and back with a rejuvenating pleasure, images arose with the steam around him, like wavering reflections in water, a confusion of Thérèse, Lucrezia and Proserpine knocking on his door and entering, the liquid diaphanous dress flowing beneath the long auburn hair as she approached the bed, her hand reaching out towards him. At times such as these he felt his art and his dreams distorted the longitude and latitude of his reality, the remnant images like colours at variance on a lost canvas. He turned and let the hot water flow over his face, washing the images down to the miniature vortex at his toes, a whirlpool for the visions of the night.

As he dried himself with the plush towels, additional dream images resurfaced. Pavor, Mélisande and Thérèse were talking to Lucrezia and Declan, standing in what he felt to be an art gallery, Bartholomew and Thaddeus behind them, playing billiards on a circular table. They didn't seem aware of his presence, and he felt himself hitting something, a wooden frame, a gilt wooden frame, and they all turned towards him and began to talk and point and he realized he was behind a picture frame, in a picture, captured in paint, immobile, and they stared at him like a painting themselves, grouped together like Rembrandt's The Syndics of the Draper's Guild, expressions of surprise, indifference, sadness.

He must ask Declan what was in that late night tonic.

He dressed quickly trying to slough off the night and embrace the day. He approached the window as he slipped into his leather coat; he could see the dawn was hiding behind the heavy morning mist which hovered over the garden maze like a wedding tent. He made his way out and along the corridor, and as he descended the main staircase, he heard noises from the kitchen below, and a faint aroma of coffee. The longcase clock remained at six o'clock and he approached it quietly and listened, but couldn't hear it ticking. He walked down a corridor leading to a sun-room which provided access to a patio on the side of the house; from this he stepped out into the damp morning air. The leaves upon the path were no longer messages of an oracle, but mere smudges of burnt umber, the lawn, a swath of cobalt green slick with dew.

As he walked across the lawn towards the maze, he stopped and turned to look back, a beautiful golden stone manor house with pinnacled gables, the vapours hovering above the roof line, no faces at the mullioned windows, no signs of activity on the grounds. The architecture was Jacobean in style and gave Jerome the sense that each stone had been imported, with perhaps a spirit or two. His three-arched window was in a castellated tower to the right, an eclectic feature that was like a Gothic exclamation mark to a long Jacobean sentence. He turned and continued walking, drawn towards the opening of the maze.

Before the entrance was a large flat stone in the grass with an inscription in Roman letterforms:

Go. There. With. Here.

Go there with here? The dense evergreen hedge material, some kind of Cedar he thought, was aromatic and soft to the touch and about nine feet high. He advanced, his sudden entry disturbing a small fluttering of chickadees, and then he hesitated, feeling the dense humidity of the air, the claustrophobia of the cave. He reached out his arm and followed his inclination to turn left, his fingers combing the wet evergreen foliage. Go there with here? He was not unfamiliar with labyrinths having attended, with Thérèse, Mélisande's facilitated walks, but he was less familiar with mazes, though he did remember that if you kept a hand, either hand, on the hedge, you would eventually find the centre. Walking on, he thought of Thérèse and the Rossetti poem he had read the night before, the last lines of each stanza having stayed with him, lines about a soul drawing another soul closer. “My soul this hour has drawn your soul a little nearer yet.” He said the words softly like an offering to appease the forest gods, rousing a memory of exploring his grandparents basement when he was a child, frightened by the darkness, saying the Lord's prayer under his breath as he had quickly made his way to the stairs.

Turning a corner, he could see in the distance a dead-end, but he continued on in case of a blind opening, and finding an opening to the right, followed it to a crossroads and he kept left again, the path leading to a true dead end, one that provided another stone in the grass, with another inscription, the Latin in large letterforms, the English beneath:

Nosce. Teipsum.

Look. Into. Thy. Self

He took out his pocket sketch pad and pencil and wrote down the two inscriptions just in case they could be clues to some grander puzzle, intuitive guides for a macrocosmic conceit. They could, however, only be early Latin examples of the plethora of pithy sayings he had been seeing of late in shop windows and on t-shirts, those 'keep calm and carry on' emblems of free thought. Then again, the stones could also be tell-tale crumbs to help him find his way out.

He walked back the way he came, passed the opening and then turned left, then left again, then a right and walked a considerable way until he came across a stone in the grass even though the path led ahead for quite a distance. He wrote down the inscription:

Ibant. Obscuri. Sola.

Sub. Nocte. Per. Umbrum.

To this there was no English equivalent provided, but his rudimentary Latin gave him the gist of the meaning, and he wrote underneath, “Under lonely night, they went dimly under the shadows.” He thought he wouldn't want to walk the maze at night.

The cawing of a crow startled him, and he continued on.

He wasn't sure how much time had elapsed as he traipsed within the maze, but he had come across three more stones and three inscriptions:

Non. Tardum. Opperior.

Not. For. The. Slow. Do. I. Tarry.

Ut. Umbra. Sic. Vita.

Shade. Is. Life's. Pattern.

Homo. Quasi. Umbra.

Man. Is. A. Shade. Of. A. Shadow.

It was not long after finding the last of these inscriptions that he found his way to the centre, where he discovered a carved stone pedestal with a large bronze sun dial on top. Around the bronze dial he read the words:

Salvagesse. Sans. Finesse.

The words seemed very familiar. 'Nature not Art.' A dog barked in the distance and he heard faint voices, echoes of rising vowel sounds. He noticed that around the base of the pedestal there were English words carved in the stone:

And Thou Like Adamant Draw Mine Iron Heart

He braced his hands on either side of the top of the stone pedestal gazing down at the sundial, and he sensed a spiral of mist circle round him, as if he had set in motion a roulette wheel and it had created a disturbance in the air. "Salvagesse sans finesse," he said trying to read the shadow on the dial. It seemed to him that both nature and art were reluctant to work together. Feeling faint, he walked over to one of the stone resting benches and sat down to copy out the inscriptions. His stomach growled. Breakfast must be soon he thought, but he rested and read the inscriptions over. Eight inscriptions and yet, any overall meaning was lost to him. He quickly sketched the pedestal and sundial, noting the Celtic carvings between the base and the top and then made his way to the opposite opening in the hedge where another stone was inset in the grass:

IO. VADE. E. VENGO. OGNI. GIORNO.

MA. TU. ANDRAI. SENZA. RITORNO.

He noted the inscription in his booklet and walked on, more quickly. After numerous turns and dead ends, he came to yet another stone:

Vestigia. Nulla. Retrorsum.

As he pencilled the words down, he heard a strange sound of heavy breathing, a sound of many feet running, something that reached down into the depths of his instinct for alarm. The sound of an animal. He stumbled backwards and against the hedge as if trying to force his way through, and then the animal came around a corner running towards him.

“Beaumont?” he called out.

The black Labrador Retriever slowed and wagged his tail, his amber eyes were sharp with intelligence, his pink tongue, white teeth and his glossy black coat revealed a happy, healthy dog. Jerome bent down on his knees and called to Beaumont who, recognizing a fellow spirit, came to him and licked his hands and face. Jerome ran his hands into his fur and told him what a handsome dog he was.

“Have you come to lead me out Beaumont? Do you have the key to this maze?” And at this question, Beaumont turned and began to retrace its steps looking over its shoulder as if to beckon Jerome to follow. Beaumont was off with a confidant stride and Jerome had to pass over four further inscriptions without stopping before reaching the opening in the maze where he found Declan waiting, leaning upon a large bow, a quiver of arrows over one shoulder.

“Useless as a chipped anvil in this weather,” Declan said, gazing over Jerome's head at the sky. “The sundial,” he added, feeling Jerome had failed to catch his meaning. “You did make it to the centre?”

Jerome, still recovering from the exertion of the run and the surprise at seeing Declan, managed to nod a response. “Forgive my curiosity. I hope you don't mind?”

“How did you sleep?” he asked, ignoring Jerome's question.

“Soundly, though the tonic you recommended must have helped. What's in that by the way?”

“Oh, I couldn't tell you,” he said, looking down at Beaumont, “my housekeeper's secret remedy.”

Jerome nodded again, looking at the man before him in his Wellingtons, brown corduroy trousers, green Beaufort jacket with corduroy collar, plaid scarf and tweed cap, black Labrador Retriever at his heels, an image of a country man from another country, from another time.

“Looks like we both worked up an appetite. Come on, let's go back to the house, I can tell you all about the maze over breakfast.”

“Were you out hunting this morning?” Jerome asked.

“Yes, the duck and the Dodo down by the pond,” he said with a wink, and with a pat on Jerome's shoulder, he said, “Don't worry, no exotic meats this morning, just a classic English breakfast. My wife calls them Marmalade mornings.”

“Marmalade mornings?”

“It's always morning somewhere in the world, though the fog here seems to be against the day.” Declan pointed at the sky with his bow, a barren gest, “Fog was so dense yesterday, bird landed on the stone balustrade near the house, then slowly fell, dead at my wife's feet. Must have hit a window. It should have been flying towards grace. Perhaps it did. Not a way to get a party going." Declan paused a moment looking up as if inspecting for damage. "Beaumont brought it over to Belford for burial.”

They continued again over the wet grass in silence, Jerome not knowing how to respond to such an alliterative statement. Was Belford a person or a place he wondered? What party? Declan turned to him and said, “It's just us for breakfast, my wife has her routine of yoga, though she does like to join me once in awhile for a marmalade morning.”

Beaumont ran ahead of them towards the house, at ease and content. “Beaumont certainly knows his way around the maze,” Jerome said.

“Beaumont's a clever soul. Sometimes I think he has access to other dimensions, of course his sight and smell is well beyond our scope.”

As they approached the house, Jerome mentioned that they had an old world array of classical statues in the garden nearby, and asked if Declan had imported the statuary.

“Auctions, private sales, a few from Castlebourne. Some of them are made of Coade stone, and others in marble. The Hermes, the libation bearers, and the Venus are old copies. Provides a setting for my wife's contemplative walks.”

“You must have a talented gardener.”

“Belford Owens, the husband of our housekeeper. He has a breadth of old world knowledge. Eccentric though. Some days he'll talk your ear off, while others, you wonder what you might have said to put him off.” Declan quietly chuckled to himself. “He smokes a pipe. Not many pipe smokers left. Almost a lost art.” He paused before the large oak door with carved rossettes. “My Father smoked a pipe after the war, but now, it's a rare bird who brandishes such an instrument.”

“Do you smoke a pipe?”

Declan opened the door wide. “Well, only with Belford from time to time. I like a nice aromatic tobacco blend with hints of chocolate and vanilla. Brings back memories.” Declan swept his arm towards the open doorway, inviting Jerome to enter. “I'll see you in the dining room in few minutes, I'll just take Beaumont and my hunting gear to the stables. You can take off your wet shoes and leave them by the door. We're informal here. Don't worry if you have holes in your socks, we all do, at some time in our lives.”

Back in his room, Jerome remembered, while washing his hands, where he had seen the words 'salvagesse sans finesse,' the bookplate in the Rossetti poems. Sitting on the bed, he opened the book and looked down at the old engraving showing two stags rampant beside a shield with a ship on waves, a helmet over the shield with closed visor and flowing ribbons, and the motto below on a thin ribbon-like scroll, salvagesse sans finesse. The family name beneath, Bertolais.

© ralph patrick mackay