'Between the no longer and the not
yet.'
Pavor relaxed his shoulders and
released the weight of his arms upon the desk, his fingers poised on
the keyboard—an act of contrition, of supplication—as if they
were stemming the flow of unwanted letters.
'At once under the volcano, and over
the rainbow,' he typed. Thoughts of Malcolm Lowry and flying
monkeys rose briefly in his mind. He paused, then highlighted that
last sentence and pressed delete.
What was a coma? He realised he was
quite ignorant of the latest science.
'A desuetude of action concealing an
unfettered imagination.'
Were a coma patient's thoughts spinning ever upwards
like a twisting ladder of DNA? Was it an endless labyrinth excursion,
circling, passing, reaching the centre only to return to the start
and begin again? Or a maze of past emotions and experiences relived
as the mind explored hither and thither, a retracing, a
re-encountering, a déjà vu here, a vestige of life there? Science,
he thought, must be studying it in depth, at length. He imagined an
article entitled, Induced Comas and Space Flight: From Here to
Mars in the Blink of an Eye.
His Mother thought
his work as a writer was much like a coma. The imagination. Fantasy.
Day dreams. She wanted him to return to law, to real life dealing
with real issues. Writing. Perhaps writing was much like a coma. Or
the act of writing at least.
'A detachment from the future, a
moment within all moments, the unreflective harmony in the womb, a
transcendental acquiescence.'
Pavor stopped
typing and, taking up his vodka and tonic, finished the drink, lemon
slice and all, chewing the sour cleansing sweetness before spitting
it back into the glass with a shiver down his spine. He should resume his Rex Packard novel. Progress was needed. He had to
put his sense of guilt aside. Umberto, with a view indulgent with
charity, had said as much when Pavor had revealed the story of
Tullio's accident. Connecting the dots from his perspective was
solipsistic. Tullio had been tired, he had been visiting his
Grandmother in Villa Opicina. Just because he dropped by to get a few
books signed before driving into Trieste was no reason to take the
blame for the accident. And what of the rogue garbage container
slipping from its chained position? He could almost feel the tap of
Umberto's hand upon his upper arm as he had said that Goethe might
have felt somewhat responsible for the resulting suicides after the
publication of his The Sorrows of Young Werther, but Pavor
shouldn't enslave himself to guilt due to an overwrought sense of
improvidence, or as Umberto had added, if he should give a beggar
money to buy a roast chicken, he can't blame himself if the beggar
chokes on the wish bone.
He rose and walked
over to the window and watched the ornamental trees quiver in the
wind, and then his eyes followed a twist of dry leaves being swept
round the garden gnome in a miniature vortex. He stretched and rubbed
his eyes feeling like one of them, beguiled by the diversion of
chance breezes. If he had stayed at his desk writing about his
characters Rex Packard and Vernon Smythe, the accident that befell
Tullio, and the meeting of Carina and Umberto would not exist for
him. Now, now they were future characters. Their interactions had
been digested, their characters would be dissembled and finally
divested upon the page in a faceted and fragmentary fashion at some
distant and unexpected time.
Checking his watch,
he returned to the glowing screen. He wasn't very good at writing
after five, but he thought he should try and rough out a few scenes
and then finesse the details in the morning.
Sitting before his
laptop, he wiped his lips and began to type.
*
In a
café at the corner of Milton and Park Avenue, a young woman dressed
in jeans, sweater, fall coat and scarf, sipped her espresso. She was
as unremarkable as the diverse assemblage of university students
nearby. A thin book of selected poems by Rilke—accompanied by the
poet's eyes on the cover—peeked out of her brown leather purse on
her lap. She was seemingly occupied with her cell phone, but she was
also attending to the faces and voices of those around her. And
keeping her eye on the front door.
A text
message on her cell phone informed her that an identical laptop bag
had been purchased. Her partner was waiting.
It
didn't take her long to walk the two and a half blocks to the
second-hand book shop. She browsed the window ledge of bargains while
checking the reflections in the window glass for anything suspicious
passing behind her. It wasn't necessary, but habit and conditioning
had created a need, the fulfilment of which made her feel physically
and mentally at ease. Not wanting to waste time, she entered the shop
and casually approached a table holding a display of philosophy
books. She scanned the bindings for what she was looking for, and
picking out two, she quickly paid the young man who seemed more
interested in pricing books than looking at her figure. A minute
later she was opening the door of her partner's car. He handed her
the bag and she placed the books inside.
“Fifteen
minutes,” he said.
She
nodded and watched him get out and walk towards the University. If
there was an asset to turn the head of a librarian, it was her
partner, a physically striking young man with blue eyes that could
charm the age spots off an older woman's hands.
Finding
it odd he didn't carry a bag, Mélisande Bramante had noticed the
handsome young man enter the library, and watched him disappear
towards the extreme right of the stacks. He must know what he's
looking for she had thought. She was in the middle of filling out an
online order for monographs when she heard a groaning thud followed
by the sickening sound of falling books and cascading paper. A prime
example of the dreaded shelf collapse if there ever was one. She left
her sheltered desk near the door and went to investigate. Why was it,
she wondered, these incidents generally happened while her boss was
at lunch? But with each step her empathy eased her annoyance. She
hoped no one was hurt.
The
young woman with the laptop bag hearing the noise, waited a few
moments outside the library door. She noted only two other pairs of
shoes besides her partners leather slip-ons. She quietly entered. The
two students hunched over their computers were away from her line of
sight, so she quickly exchanged the laptop bags, noting the weight of
the target bag was almost identical with its fake, and was out
the door and down the stairs before her partner had a chance to
fluster the librarian with his charm.
It was
fifteen minutes before the young man returned to the car. He had
helped the librarian fix the shelf and put the books back. All part
of the plan.
“No
problems?” he asked.
“In
and out without a snag,” she said, putting the book away, her
thoughts still tethered to Rilke's poem Eve, the last line
winding its way around her like a snare. “How about you?”
“Easy
peasy,” he said sticking the key in the ignition. “The librarian
had interesting tattoos on her arms. Didn't expect that.” He turned
to her. “What about you? Do you have tattoos.”
She
smiled. Make him think about it she thought. “How about that new
Thai noodle place on St. Catherine Street?”
The
young man looked at his watch and then softly touched her arm.
“Sounds good but, I have a dental cleaning in thirty minutes. It
will have to be next time. Can I drop you off.”
“No,
it's fine.” She handed him the spare key set. “I'll walk back to
my car. The bag's in the trunk. For their eyes only.”
On her
way back to her car she caught her reflection in the bookstore
window, her muted double staring back at her with questions she
didn't want to hear.
*
The
coastline of Norway around Bergen appeared to be as if a mirror had
been dropped and the jagged fragments were the result. Arthur
Roquebrune sat at his desk at Wormwood & Verdigris with a
map before him, debating whether he should travel to Bergen to escort
Thérèse home. Morally he felt obliged to make the excursion but
logically he felt it wasn't necessary. His adversarial legal idiom
hit the ball back in forth in his mind like some kind of dialectical
tennis match. And how could he justify it to his wife and his
partners? In addition, he would be meeting Martine Haugen again, the
woman he'd made a fool of himself over after that third glass of wine
ten years ago at that conference in Paris. No, too embarrassing to
relive that brief infatuation. Martine Haugen could see Thérèse off
at the airport in Bergen, and he could meet her here in Montreal at
the Trudeau International Airport, and then drive her to Varennes to
stay with her Mother. First-class, all expenses paid by him through
the David Ashmore funds.
In
consultation with Thérèse's Mother, he would then provide her with
additional financial assistance from the investments and also call
upon his good friend and client, Edward Seymour to provide
preliminary psychological consultation. Between them, they had enough
connections with specialists at the Royal Victoria Hospital to repair
her memory loss and help her resume her normal life. She had already
shown signs of progress.
“She's
piecing things together,” Martine had said. “Filling in the
blanks, seeing the picture of her life take shape.”
Jerome
van Starke would play an important role and yet Jonathan Landgrave
had not yet returned his calls. Very unprofessional he thought. But
he gave him the benefit of the doubt, thinking Landgrave could be on
a brief holiday. Whenever he saw Jonathan about town, he was
generally well-tanned, it was either a short golfing holiday in
Florida, or an escape to St. Lucia for a week, and once he had told
Arthur he had just returned from Tahiti. Tahiti. Robert Louis
Stevenson. He pictured Stevenson sitting on his veranda, dark eyes,
drooping moustache, and long hair, basking in the humidity of the
islands. This aroused a desire to browse the small blue volumes of
his Tusitala Edition of the writer's works when he returned
home that evening. He imagined himself sitting in his study, baroque
music on low, a copy of Virginibus Puerisque and Other Essays
open on his lap, soft macaroons and a hot cup of tea. . . . He
sighed. The age of 67 and he was still prone to the occasional
daydream.
Thérèse
and her condition, however, must stay paramount in his thoughts.
Martine had informed him Thérèse remembered a moment before she had
been found wandering. She had heard the door bell, and upon opening
the door, a scentless spray like a mist blown by the wind, fell upon
her face. No other details until she found herself on a street bench,
confused, wondering who, what and where. It had been Martine's
contact information in Thérèse's small woven wallet that had
allowed the local police to make contact with her.
Roquebrune
didn't want to know what the science was behind the spray, all he
wanted was a status quo, a return to normality for them all. The
rights of the living were trumping those of the dead.
*
Standing
before the family crypt at the cemetery, Duncan pulled away a spray
of tall grass at the corner of the modest granite structure and began
to wind it around his fingers. All the old Strands were there. From
his Great Grandparents to their descendants including his Grandfather
and family. Names and dates. Names and dates. The death of Phoebe
Strand in 1885, age 3, and Hiram Strand in 1915, age 19, a reminder,
he thought, of the tenuous nature of the individual carried away by
the flow of history. Whether it was disease or war, accident or old
age, the family was fairly representative of its time. His parents
were nearby in a separate plot along with his brother Gavin upon
which he had just left a small bouquet of flowers. There was room for
a few more Strands, especially since cremation and an urn would only
require a small hole in the ground. Shallow spade work of an hour at
most. Probably less. His younger brother, a fifty year old bachelor
living in Ontario would never have children. And he and Amelia would
never have children, so it was the last of the Strands. He was the
end of the tether, a dying metaphor if there ever was one. All those
jokes about his surname, the play on words, the innuendos growing up.
He had often wondered if his family had adopted the name of Strand
when they launched themselves into the cordage business so long ago,
or conversely, had they taken up the business because of the name.
The family was fairly stranded now, beached, shipwrecked, high and
dry, the business at the end of its rope. A dying metaphor.
He
wondered if a diversity of future Montrealers strolling in the
cemetery enjoying the fall colours or the spring flowering trees and
shrubs, the birdsong, the sun and shade, the odd woodchuck and
rabbit, and the omnipresent squirrel, would walk by, as he walked by
old tombs of forgotten families, and read their names and think,
perhaps, how sad it was there were no longer family members to tend
to memory. A cautionary thought.
The
sepia melodrama of the thought slipped away as he passed his hand
over the rough stone and the self-evident deterioration around the
letters. We are the stone dust of the letters the carver sweeps away,
he thought.
He made
his way back to the old office near the gates of the cemetery. The
thinning fog clung to the tops of the evergreens where a crow perched
calling in the mist. Humans, he thought, had outgrown their auguries.
He kicked a stone along the path thinking that the native Canadians
who used to scale this mountain would have attended to its call, read
the sign, understood the meaning. A crow in a cemetery on old native
land. What foothold did anyone really have he wondered.
But the
famous and accomplished who were buried at the cemetery certainly
appeared to have one. Anna 'King of Siam' Leonowens, John Abbott, Sir
Hugh Allan, David Thompson, the Molsons, the McGills, the Roddicks,
and John Redpath whose odd Victorian neckbeard always made Duncan
think of one of the characters from the Planet of the Apes
movies. And of course Sir Alexander Galt whose house became the
funeral home where he experienced something beyond him, and later
danced in the disco conversion with his Hong Kong born girlfriend, a disco where he had once mourned.
“Look
on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” he said loudly, spinning
around as the crow flew off gracefully towards the south. A grey
squirrel, startled, sat up on its haunches, hands together holding an
acorn, contemplating the strange nature of a man talking to himself.
“David
Ashemore, David Ashemore,” the older woman said as she typed the
name into her computer. Her dark hair in an old-fashioned perm
reminded Duncan of his Mother's hair, forever darkly set in time.
“The location of David Ashemore's resting place, here we are.”
She was reading silently from the screen, but also recalling a
request for this location about eight months ago. “He's resting in
the sculpture garden, a niche on the east side of the circular
granite wall that surrounds it. Would you like one of our
maps?”
“Um,
sure, why not. Thank you.” Duncan unfolded the brochure, the map of
the cemetery displayed before him, the pathway lines reminiscent of
the borders of countries. “I don't suppose David has had many
visitors,” he said, feeling in the mood to talk. “No close family
left. Parents long gone. No siblings. Rather sad.”
The
woman smiled up at him. “Well, you never know, there's always
someone, like yourself for instance. Or . . .” She hesitated,
realising her sympathy might lead her over the line of accepted
discourse with a patron. “Do enjoy your visit, and if there's
anything we can help you with, anything you'd like to know about our
services, please don't hesitate,” she said, giving him additional
brochures.
He
nodded, thanked her and made his way out.
A niche,
a columbarium niche was very appealing, especially the indoor example
listed on the brochure. Some niches even had window glass and space
for photos and personal items, like one of those shadowboxes that
crafty people create. Year round visiting without the worry of heavy
winter weather, your loved one looking back at you from beside his or
her urn. Mementos like a favourite book, a pen, a stone, a shell . .
.a golf ball. A pretty penny though he thought. A pretty penny. What
was Yves ranting about, the loss of the penny? The phrases relating
to the coin would outlive the penny itself. Penny for your thoughts,
in for a penny in for a pound, penny wise pound foolish, penny
pincher, a penny saved is a penny earned. His Father was fond of that
last one. Not that it helped. Duncan thought of his Grandfather's
little framed cartoon over the old oak desk at Strand Cordage,
two men at a bar with the words written above, “Yer pays yer money
an' yer gets yer—froth.”
All of a
sudden Duncan felt immensely tired. Tired of having kept the Strand
business going. Tired at having tried to keep the family together.
Tired of trying to hold on the past. Tired.
He
stopped to watch two squirrels chase each other around the large
trunk of a Maple tree, their movements based on sound for they could
hardly see each other due to the breadth of the trunk and the
quickness of their feet. Somebody wrote about squirrels chasing each
other. Was it Wittgenstein? Orwell? Or . . .and he remembered it was
from a William James essay he was reading a few months ago, a nice
edition of Pragmatism (1907), which he had purchased from an
estate sale. He would have to look it over again when he got back to
the shop. See if he could glean an insight into . . . squirrel
behaviour.
As he
approached the sculpture garden, he noticed a man working nearby. The
circular granite wall was inviting and he gravitated towards the
eastern arc looking at names to the accompaniment of clipping sounds from
the man's pruning scissors. David Ashemore 1958-2011.
Simplicity itself. But for the small red rose in a small holder
beside his name. Who, he wondered, had left the flower? A mistake?
There was a blank stone beside his so it could only by for him.
If they
had remained friends would he be standing here? Had he attended Lower
Canada College and been primed for scouting at McGill by Professor Petherway as possible material for intelligence work (Petherway intoning
Beowulf's rich guttural northern voice, a mixture of Germanic, Icelandic and Scandinavian sounds to their fresh ears) would their destinies have been exchanged? Would David be
standing here? Would he be lying there?
Duncan
wandered over towards the gardener, an older man, swarthy, strong,
pruning the rose bushes with meticulous care demonstrating years of
experience.
“Another
year, another pruning,” Duncan said, trying to start up a
conversation.
The
gardener stretched his back and nodded his head as if measuring
Duncan for his personal philosophy, sizing him up for his
understanding of the world. It was then Duncan noticed one of the
man's eyes was not quite eyeing him, a glass eye he thought.
Difficult work pruning with one good eye. Duncan checked the man's
hands, all fingers present and accounted for, a sign of skill,
prudence and patience.
The
gardener with the weathered skin pocketed his pruning scissors and
withdrew a pipe which he fiddled with and then lit with delightful
puffing sounds. He exhaled the fragrant smoke in an arc above them
and approached Duncan.
“Do
you know much about roses then?” The man's voice was surprisingly
soft.
“Very
little, I'm afraid. My Father planted rose bushes I remember, tea
roses I think, back in the middle 1960s, one for each member of the
family. Perhaps he should have chosen peonies instead. Less work,
more dependable.”
The man
nodded, smoke rising past his fake eye without it blinking.
“The
root stock is the key. Good hardy root stock grafted into delicate
flowering varieties.” He rested the pipe between his lips as he
surveyed the rose bushes nearby. “But they are care
intensive that is to be sure. Pruning just so, preparing them for
winter, mounding around their bases, protection always needed due to
the frost and thaw, frost and thaw. Have you ever visited the
Botanical Gardens? Enough rose bushes there for a Queen. Very
impressive and interesting due to the varieties. But you must think
of the petals, the beauty of one flower, eyes up close, the scent of
the beauty filling your nasal passages hitting that area beneath the
eyes. Hit right between the eyes is a good phrase to describe the
experience. That's the way to truly appreciate a rose. Much like a
glass of wine.” Using his pipe as a directional device, he pointed
to the flower beds. “The bushes here are few but they are fine
specimens.”
The
gardener's reference to hit between the eyes made Duncan immediately
look at the man's glass eye and he had caught his glance.
“Have
you worked here long,” Duncan asked.
The man
removed his cap and scratched his thinning grey hair. “Must be
going on forty years. Yes. I don't do as much heavy work as I used to
do, but I still like to feel the earth in my hands, tend to the
roses, inspect the trees. Variety we have, yes, to be sure, variety
we have.”
“It's
so lovely here. I can stand in the cemeterey and not see or hear the
city that surrounds it, and I feel I'm in the country with
these extraordinary old trees and wildlife.”
The man
smiled. “When I get home from work every day, my good wife says
'So, how was your day in the country?” He chuckled. “Two worlds
in one day I have, two worlds in one day.”
“You're
lucky to work in such a place. Fresh air. Nature.” Duncan turned
towards the granite wall. “I'm just visiting an old friend I lost
contact with. Died fairly young, early fifties. No family. It's odd
that I just discovered a flower beside his name.”
“Is
your friend's name Ashemore by any chance?”
Duncan's
eyebrows lifted at this. “Yes, that's right. How'd you know?”
“Since
the spring a woman visits once a month and leaves a rose. Like
clockwork. She asked me once if it would be alright to use
one of the roses from the bushes here if she forgot her own. When I
see her I say hello. We exchange small talk, the weather, the
plants.”
“I was
best friends with David Ashemore when we were very young, and then
our paths diverged and we lost track of each other. His obituary was
the first time I was reunited.” He paused wondering whether the
visitor might be the young woman at the funeral home. “Was she a
younger woman named Tess Sinclair, auburn hair, about five foot seven
or eight?” Duncan asked feeling he was pushing the man too far,
overstepping propriety.
“No, I
don't know her name, but she was not as you describe. An older
well-dressed woman, expensive clothes. Blond hair. Petite. I thought
she might have been his wife.”
© ralph patrick mackay
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