n c^
oobieland
Sint Stephen Canada,
polyphemus' cave
md the Boobieland
gxpress
1 novel by
^laudio lanora
$8.50
Stephen Canada is a great sinner, a
kind of saint of sinning, and a
wild outsider in a Boobieland
world that moves past him in a
blur like an express train. In
churchy sinning Toronto he finds
loving enemies who give Wm
money and obscure his soul with
sad sex, violence, drugs.
His marriage to Myra breaks up as
she tries to find refuge in a kib-
butz in Israel, and he looks for
salvation m violence, death and at
last the voice of God speaking to
him in disillusioning paradoxes
that urge him to a bitter recon-
ciliation with living.
Claudio lanora writes vrith wild
comedy and bitter ingenuousness.
His concern is love, man's soul,
holiness, but he is never senti-
mental. Stephen Canada's life is
the frustrations many young
people feel today as they try to
Uve the ideals of peace and love.
Claudio lanora was born in Italy
and moved to Canada where he
now lives, near Emsdale, north of
Toronto. He is writing another
book.
ISBN 0-88770-052-7
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DISCARD
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HAMILTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
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IAN
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REFERENCE COLLECTION
lanora, C
Sint Stephen Canada,
Polyphemus' cave &. the
Boobleland Express
cl970
07742A16
8.50
FOR USE IN LIBRARY ONLY /
L.Jf7^
Sint Stephen
Canada,
pblyphemus'
cave & the
Boobieland
Express
Claudio lanora
new press 1970
^y(^
Copyright 1970. All rights reserved. The reproduction of
all or pari of this book by any means whatsoever,
including photocopying or any other means of mechani-
cal or electronit process, or storage or retrieval by
information systems, is forbidden, except for brief quota-
lions for review purposes only.
International Standard Book Number
ISBN 0-88770-052-7 clothbound
ISBN 0-88770-053-5 paperbotjnd
new press
84 Sussex Avenue
Toronto Canada
300 West Adams,
Chicago, Illinois 60606 U.S.A.
one
Aris Buckney sat in a corner. Big frame slumped in a
grey chair, eyelids half closed and the white of his eyes
swivelling in the sockets like maggots under the skin. He
took another puff from the slender weed and held his
breath for thirteen seconds like he was developing the
negative of his soul. Arisrides sitting half Atman half
beast lost somewhere in the horizon of the mind,
listening to my howlmg, me the tunber wolf and he the
moon.
"Aris, listen to me will you!?"
"I'm listening Steve. I'm listening."
Hot vaginal summer out there in Croesus ass-land.
Bodies sweating in circumcisial tombs of the mind. Guys
and dolls our there moving slowly like marsupial em-
bryos in cellophaned freedom. Arses on special today.
The Loblaw kind. If there is a choice todav it must be
either liberty or tail. Must want both. They want ass and
freedom. And the two of us in dinginess of soul and
surrounding, in a dark basso below street level, poking at
the dead putrefied rat we gave joybirth on the cement
floor,
'T tell you Aris, never marr\- for cash. Don't even sell
your paintings, or art, buy all you can for cheap money
but don't sell Aris. Don't sell!
"And this Quebecoise asked me, are you Catholic?
Good Lord yes! Ah then it's all right. You never saw
anybody catch a handful of kleenex so fast. She'd shoot
out of me like it was bullets coming, no kidding, and
she'd always bring the kleenex back in time. She would
have me think that it was all right because I was a
Catholic. And with protestants it would be sin for sure.
So as long as we didn't make God sad and didn't stain
Mrs, Lafayette's bedspread we were all right. Then there
was Louise. I have to tell you about Louise some day."
"Louise who?"
"Louise 1 don't know who. 1 don't remember."
"What about her?"
"That's what I'd like to know. She was a virgin."
"What's that?"
Hot out, a trapezoid of light shooting down on the
floor from the stairwell and a fly or two zigging in and
out of the light and shade, appearing and disappearing as
they do, while Stephen tries nervously and unsuccessfully
to cease the trigonometrieal effort of his ears which
fastidiously elect to follow the buzzing segments of flight
without visual coordinates. Heat coming down the stairs
too.
"Should T close the door Aris. May be a bit cooler."
"Dark as gut though."
"Turn the light on!"
"Doesn't work."
Stephen on his feet, flicking die hght switch, then
turning his attention to the light bulb hanging in the
middle of a spidery ceiling.
"Whv don't you buy a bulb?"
'T will."
Aristides' granite face with an acropohc look, curls of
Zeus upon his statuesque head and lips twisting to suck
out the last breath of placentean nurture of the soul
from the burning butt.
"Anyway I'll never marry for money again."
"How did vou get her to raise your allowance?"
"1 picketed in front of our buiidmg."
Oh, oh, and a slap of the knee, eyes of Aris on me
through the smoldering sediments of defeat and years.
"I wrote it on a placard, banged it on a broom stick
and walked in a tiny circle in front of the building until
she came home."
Ai'is face busted open with joy. Lungs blasting away
heart's liquefying thunder. Tears even. A grin craclcing
with pain the sralagmiric spear of gloom growing within
the superintestina! self, God's ghostly sperm dripping on
the deserted sands of our soul and the two of us lost and
sold in the merriment of death's charming embrace,
laughing in the dark and dusty unconsciousness of a
blind miracle. Don't look at the sun, son! Years later I
learned that 1 could prove to myself Cartesianlv that I
•was, without a question of a doubt. What excitement. I
AM! I AM! Good lord! What?
"What?"
"What what?"
"What did you write on your placard for Pete's sake?"
"I'm thy Lord, thy God. . . ."
"Go on, go on!"
"Thou shalt have no God befote me."
"Oh come on for crying out loud, what the hell did
you have on your sign?"
"Local One-two-o-o on strike. Demanding conimbia!
benefits. That's on both sides of the blasted cardboard."
Aris blowing to pieces. Stephen watching him and
cocking his head like a pigeon running the mile. Canvas-
ses splattered with paint, rusty odours and leaning back
on his grey rocker, laughing, Aris shakes the mural of
cardboard boxes which serves as a partition for his
sleeping and mating habks. One C.P.R. blanket hangmg
as a door over the knifed doorway.
"She had a haemorrhage when she saw me, in front of
the building and what have you. Fancy place with fancy
tenants and us occupying the penthouse with labour
trouble or something. She got so red in the face it nearly
burned the tips of my long eyelashes."
"Ooooo! Ooohh!"'
"1 wish I had thought of it long ago. I'm getting three
hundred a month now and I'm already thinking of going
on strike again. Only I don't want to push her hard, I
don't know what she might do."
"God you are resourceful." Aris still laughing, getting
off the chair to turn a hot plate on under the greasy
kettle. Taking a telescopic look through a jar of instant
coffee, and then shaking it, scraping it with a dirty
spoon and dividing the issuing dust between two jag-
chipped mugs. Feeble voices dropping down from the
hot pavement like alphabet noodles raining on the ears,
merely wetting the buds of notion. Background noises,
for one resourceful sitting in a basement with nothing
better to do but watch a stout, red-haired, coarse-grained
earthhng moving slowly about his ground like a spawning
fish.
"Why don't you move in with me Steve? Three
hundred dollars will go a long way around here!"
"Like heU! Anyway she doesn't dish it all out a
month in advance you know."
Axis with a teaspoon hanging from his big bony
red-haired hand.
"No?"
"No, hell no! She leaves me ten dollars every morning
on the table."
"You're kidding."
"Yeah, kidding. She figures I can't go very far with
chat, and that way I can never spend more."
"Holy! What abitch!"
"Hell, three hundred dollars wouldn't last me a day."
"That's what I mean. What a bitch!"
Aris with his big clubby hands and meaty arms setthng
a steaming mug on Stephen's leg and slurping some of
the hot Brazil piss with a noise akin to the day of
creation when Canada was bubbling oozing hot shit.
Uncultured soul this man Aris, a man without love or
hate, a man of simple unhellenic yet powerful reason
which somehow enables him to see life as his own
existence only, neither terrible nor beautiful, only in-
evitable. A man at peace no doubt. 1 envy him so much
I crave to convert him to my suffering because I cannot
enjoy his type of peace.
"Maybe you ought to give it to her more often
Sreve."
"Up her corrugated arse!"
"Z-z-z-z!"
"I'U leave her the day that [ become rich and
famous."
"You are welcome here anytime."
"You'd kick me out again!"
"Probably, but I mean well. Your suffering gets on my
nerves after a while. Any suffering gets on my nerves
after a while. Steve me boy, you go about life like an
open grave."
"It will be different when I'm rich and famous."
"Meanwhile I suggest you kill somebody. Let your
poison flow out, 1 suggest you kill someone nice. Not
your wife, maybe a little old lady, with a hammer."
Chipped mug flying across the room, over Aris's
turtled head, ripping a hole in the cardboard partition
and crashing invisibly in the other room. Stephen a
roaring charging minotaur colliding with the big frame of
Aris who was trying desperately to get out of his track
and the two of them catapulting over the rocker crashing
through sticks of wood and cardboard partition, tearing
down everything in their path like a human avalanche.
"You sonamabitch."
"Ahhh. Oooo, 000. Don't you ever squeeze my balls
again."
"Look what you have done lo my room."
"Jesus that hurts."
Aristides brought xhe chair up from the debris and sat
on it again watching Stephen tramping and kicking the
cardboard on the floor.
"I wish you wouldn't do that everytime. Every time
you come in here you tear a wall down."
"You just about flattened my boobies you Abyssinian
conunic."
"What the hell are you looking for?"
"My wallet damn it."
"What's in it?"
"Two bucks."
"Whc3's going to clear up all rhis mess now?"
"I found it!" Stephen rerrieved a black wallet and
checked the contents. Gingerly stepped over part of the
partition stiU standing on crate studs like a jagged piece
of kamikazied ship, and went to sit facing Aris as if
nothing had happened.
Sitting in silence. Silent void of disembowelled dreams
^ile voices and sounds from out there Boobieland, drop
into emptiness like coins in a cavernous inaccessible
piggy-bank. Music like a dripping cave and wind blowing
through the ribs of a skeleton propped against a rocky
wall, in the dark. The dark. A million mounted knights
pursuing their mythical dragons, out there in Boobieland,
and a million million Panchos following their noble
leaders. Let us move forward! Hip-hip-hurray! Forward
to Boobieland land of blissful doom.
Forward my imperial hemorrhoids. There are two
worlds out there, mine and theirs, but mine doesn't exist
or I can't find it. Except in bed. 1 supppose in the
battlefield too. Here let me hold a tit in my hand, just
one please sweet stranger from the other world, you have
got two.
Nosir you can't have it! Though I'm on the pUl I must
know your intentions Sir Stephen. Stranded in a pillular
world without the password. Is it love? Liberty? Peace? I
don't know. But here I have this thing full of jewels and
joy, let me put it in your little box.
"It'll surely be different when I'm rich and famous."
"That's what you think."
"That's what I want to think. Dreams were hung in
front of me hke a merciless carrot. So dumb Rosinante
lives another day, and crazy Quixote out there gets
another Uttle ride. But truth will come someday like a
pin to a balloon. And there will be nothing left not even
the memory of the sound of the wind in a dark cave."
"I'll be more selective then."
Aris yawned, nodded, poked his ear with a long
6
fingernail, crossed his eyes on the tip of the finger to see
the wax, ttien started rocking again on his chair.
"You don't believe me?"
"I'll tell vou one thing."
"Yeah! What, what?"
"I'll eat my ass if you ever do!"
"You would? I mean you would really do that for
me?"
"Damn right I would, I figure it must be easy
compared to what you have to do to make me do it."
"Don't discourage me now. I figure it's the only way
to lead a natural life and meet with an unnatural death.
And 1 just have to have a natural life at least. Any kind
of life as a matter of fact. For crying out loud Aris, do
you have any idea what it is like to be alive?"
"No. I'm too busy trying to stay alive to have the
time to find out what it is like."
"That's what I mean. Exactly! Now what I want is
just a iiitie time or means to do just that."
"You might do it cheaply, by poverty, purity and
renunciation or something or other."
"Don't give me that bag-of-vita stuff."
"Or you can go into seclusion."
"Come on, be serious."
"You won't find it in fornication which is on your
mind."
"Fornication is in the beholder. My mind is under
glass my dear Aris, I peer to see what's in it but ah I see
is reflections. I haven't the foggiest idea what really is in
my mind."
"Fornication mainly."
Stephen got up and walked to the door. "You are a
bit obsessed."
"I won't deny tliat. Where are you going?"
"I'm getting out of here. It's depressing."
Aris joined him up on the sidewalk. They stood a
minute grinning and glaring at each other like dogs, then
Aris's face opened up in a great smile, he grabbed
Stephen with his huge arms and kissed him on both
cheeks. Somebody behind them ululated like a goosed
owl. Aris shoved Stephen out of his way, lifted his fist
straight up in the air and revved up a propeller action
before he charged across the sidewalk towards a pair of
scrambhng hippies. He caught one by the shirt just mside
the doorway and pulled him back onto the sidewalk for
execution. Fist still milling in the air, Stephen watching
while a little crowd gathers around. Little guy on his
knees pleading for his life to be spared as Aris's fist
comes down on his head hke a mallet. Somebody leaped
on him from behind and started dimbing his back,
another one bung himself to the fisted arm and was
elevated off the pavement as Aris brought his fist up in
the air again. Suddenly just before the fist started to
come down, while the guy on his back had put his arms
around Aris's head and the one hanging from his forearm
started yelling stop like he was directing traffic, Stephen
leaped Into action deUvering a conversion kick into Aris's
belly. There was a great roar and scrambling of feet to
safety so that Aris and Stephen were left inside a
widening circle of spectators, glaring at each other like
mad bulls while the executed guys crawled away between
their feet. Aris's fist was revving up in the air again when
somebody yelled cops. Arm came down immediately,
spanned Stephen's shoulder in an amicable crunch and
they walked down the sidewalk laughing. Not a sign of
violence.
"I wish we hadn't been interrupted Steve."
"I really hate violence Aris."
"Like hell you do."
But i do really. Gentle nature in me, now when he
suggested the gory murder of a little old lady back there,
I could have killed him. Same when he started pounding
that fellow on the head, 1 just go berserk about violence.
Wars upset me tremendously, especially those wars in
which I can associate myself with the aggressor. It really
depresses me no end to be faced with a large scale
&
manifestation of my own nature for which I'm not
directly responsible. There I'm trying to be a good boy
and somebody has to remind me all the time of the
things I can do. I guess I'm mean really, but not violent.
Aris instead is like a storm, no meanness in it whatsoever
just a lot of destroying energy. As -a kid I used to
promise God I'll try and be better. I would think about
the mean things I had thought in the day and I would
really feel bad about it. I was a wide-eyed kid really.
You know the kind, with great big brown eyes con-
stantly being amazed at one thing or another. For a
while I really wanted to become a saint. I used to go
around blessing people on the street. God bless you! Just
like that! At first I just mumbled it under my breath,
but later on 1 actually got enough courage to stop people
on the sidewalk and bless them. I really stumped a lot of
them. A few thought I should get a good spanking.
What are you? Some sort of a smart alec?
Nosir I'm not being fresh. I love you that's all.
I ought to swat you one.
Some really got mean, upset maybe. Anyway 1 got
around to bless the whole rotten bunch until it was
brought to my family's attention and my dad took me
under his arm and put me straight.
Son you can't go around telhng people you love them.
Why not dad?
Well you just can't that's all. Besides you must not say
something like that unless you really mean it.
But I do.
You do?
Yes dad, I really do.
That stumped him for a little sixty second minute. I
guess he didn't know what to say, so he got mad. Told
me that I was never to bless anybody or say things hke
that period. If he ever heard of me blessing anybody
again he'd wallop me.
Down a crowded sidewalk, between songs and soft
spoken words. The village a corner of Polyphemus's
9
Cave. I know that one by one all these young ship-
wrecked souls will be plucked out by an enormous hand
and swallowed down the enormous belly of industry and
profit. Mammon is a whale and that guy there at city
hall the surviving vestigium of a piscine primiform,
opening his great big mouth to swallow httle Jonah for
anti-mammonistic activities.
P.P. (Paisan Pontius). Of what do you accuse them?
Big mouth from city hall. They are proclaiming a new
law.
That's bad. What else?
A new societv, and a new morality. They will not bow
to Caesar.
Oh, that's really bad!
They are a vicious sect, a threat to this system and
country which stands under God.
Under God's fhmamented ass, this country God's
shithouse. Satan's pride and joy. A little prayer; dear
God, I'll do as you say and forgive those S.O.B.'s on one
condition, that you give them hell. I want to see them
squirming m boiling oil when I come up there to my
reward. Heck, I'm onlv human. Faith in God's justice is
the only thing that keeps me from murdering a lot of
bastards.
"Aris me boy, would you say that there is something
to the theory that religion keeps the bastard on top and
the suckers at the bottom."
"Ass and rehgion Steve old boy! 1 figure religion by
itself couldn't do it."
"Shouldn't we do something about it?"
"I have been doing something about ass for twenty
years."
"You are a very honourable bastard."
One thing about Aris, he knows the score. A great
man really, a man amongst men. Nay! A leader of men
and me. little tricycle of Jesus. The way I see it, this hfe
is a game played in reverse, you know what the score is
so you just got to play the cards to match it. Aris
10
instead doesn't give a damn about playing the rules or
changing them. But I have to mope all the time because
I don't liJce the deal.
Aristides suddenly all excited, pulling Stephen bv a
sleeve, and mumbling under his breath. They step over a
row of flower boxes squaring the sidewalk cafe and
approach a couple of girls sitting at a metal table with an
umbrella growing out of it,
"Hello Tricia." Big hello with a big smile. Aris can say
almost anything with that one word. Patricia looked up
at him and said another great big modulated-elongated
hello which meant I got your message Aris, I'm wet
akeady. Aris bounced around the table Uke his ass was
pulling him to the empty metal chair. By the time he
was sitting between the two girls the bounces went
through his body like a kitten stuck inside a pillow case.
"Tricia darling, rhat's Steve there! Steve Canada
E.S.Q."
"Hello Steve, meet Dorothy Leigh. Sit down won't
you."
Stephen looked at the machined assprint on the metal
and fitted himself on it with an inaudible grunt.
"Stephen Canada?" said Tricia intrigued, while Dor-
othy looked on with shared interest.
"Yes, Canada, just like in Canada."
"Well isn't that interesting."
"Oh it's fascinating," said Aris.
Dorothy produced a pack of cigarettes out of her
purse and Steve promptly got his lighter out and held it
in front of her face eager to be of service, and then she
took all the time in the world to get a cigarette out for
herself and offer one to everybody else, and by the time
she was ready to light it the bloody lighter wouldn't
work. So everybody laughed except Stephen of course,
and Dorothy smartly flicked a flame our of her own
hghter and bt up Stephen's cigarette.
"I haven't seen you in years Patricia."
"it's more like a few months."
11
"It seems like yeai's to me honest!"
"What do you do Stephen? "Dorothy asked him.
"Dorothy is from out of town. I'm showing her the
limelights of the big city," said Patricia.
"How nice," Aristides suddenly staned showing inter-
est in Dorothy.
"Do you paint? Or write?" resumed Dorothy.
"Yeah, yeah! 1 paint, I write. Chrab walls. Mostly
climb walls."
"Steve is a true artist Dorothy. But very modest."
She smiled. "Seriously though, what do you do?"
"Nothing,"
"You must do something."
"Well you might say I do research work."
"That's interesting. On what subject?"
"Head and tail."
"Eeeh-eeh. you are funny."
"Ah aaah. Where do you come from?"
"Oshawa, well not Oshawa proper, near Oshawa."
"Aaah ah. You are pretty funny yourself."
Aris got as close to Patricia as the chairs would allow
and whispered something in her ear.
"Oh Aris!"
"Why not?"
A moment of uneasy silence.
"Would you like us to go to my apartment for a
drink?" she asked Stephen and Dorothy.
Sure said Stephen, O.K. said Dorothy and the four of
them got up instantly.
Four of us riding in a Plymouth way up to Eglinton
for a drink. I didn't beheve it, though there had been
times when I went in for a cup of coffee or a drmk and
got exactly that. Some girls are not honest at all. I mean
if some girl asks me in for a cup of coffee 1 have the
right to expect a piece of tail no? Well anyway, off we
went. Patricia driving and Dorothy and 1 in the back
holding on to each other rather conventionally.
Patricia's apartment, like most girls' apartments, neat
12
and doll-like, like some dentist's waiting-room. We did
musical chairs for a while which I find a very depressing
activity, no sooner would 1 get in an advantageous
position or stage, than up would pop Dorothy to get
some more pretzels or refill the highball glass for me, or
as I get her moaning a little and she lets herself go, dien
right behind the plastic ivy they make a sudden move-
ment and she perks up right away and pulls my hand out
of her skirt. Then by the time I was drunk enough that I
didn't reaUy care she turned on like a wolf. In no rime
at all I was lying in bed beside Aris, curtains drawn, and
the two of them were bendmg over us with great smiles
and giggles pulling our pants down. With a lirde help of
course. 1 was so drunk by then that the greatest sensa-
tion, sexual or not, was from an occasional contact with
Aris's red, hairy arse. I mean it was fun really, legs and
arms all over the darn place in the dark but 1 was
physicaUy defused, besides she had a little defect, she
whispered shyly in my ear. Nothing alarming, only it's a
little misted inside, crooked you might say. Don't you
worry Dorothy I'U straighten it out for you. It's because
the first time I had a bad job done to me. Yeah, it can
happen, I'U fix it! Hey let go of Tricia. Who is that?
Canada? Oooo! Let go of me! Let me go. Aah-aah.
Sshsh, don't yell, I'm going home. Don't go Dorothy,
you_ stop that. It was Aris. A door opened and the
musical silhouette of Dorothy was framed scurrying
away. Sobs and bare feet on* the green carpet in the
hving-room and the three of us pausing for a minute to
consider a problem.
Patricia jumped out of bed and tiptoed away.
"You stupid arse."
"Shut up Aris, I've had a hard time."
"I'll never take you to bed again."
Patricia hurried back, gathered a bundle of clothes,
and then rushed out again slamming the door shut.
Two of us lying nailed in the dark. Get up Aris. Why?
I don't want you lying here beside me, 1 don't feel
13
decent. Then you get up, get me a drink and a cigarette.
I can't go out there. Then just shut up, O.K.? We can't
just he here. Oh for crying out loud. Hey Aris. What?
You've got coarse hair on your bum, very coarse. Oh
shit. You aren't sexy at all as a matter of fact, touching
your arse makes me shiver. Brr, like that! Of course I
don't have any homosexual tendencies at all, so that may
account for me nor liking your arse. It's quite all right
Steve. T mean I'm sorry I don't like it. 1 had never seen
it before. I didn't know it was so hairy. Just a bit of a
shock I guess. Will you shut up. I had to tell you. You
told me. You're not sore? I'm going to kill you in an
instant. But in half an instant Stephen was astride Aris
and fists pumping away in the dark through a maze of
arms and hands and then the light went on and they saw
Patricia standing in the doorwav pale as a sheet.
"Well!"
"Oh Patricia don't" Aris shoved Stephen off him and
Stephen who was still stunned by her sudden appearance
just went cataplunk onto the floor very uncatlike.
"Don't think whatever you are thinkmg Patricia dar-
Img," Aris hurried off the bed towards her while Stephen
did some swearing on the oak floor.
"Don't you come close to me Aris!"
"What did I do?"
"Just get on your clothes and leave."
She slammed the door again. Stephen got up and
limped around the bed holding one knee. Aris's angry
face followed him.
"Don't look at me. I didn't do anything either."
"I don't know why I put up with you."
"Heh, no more violence Aris, the lady said we should
get dressed and leave." They stood facing each other,
naked and glaring. "I'll tell you one thing though," said
Stephen looking up and down at Aris. "You may not be
sexy-looking with three legs and all but you certainly are
not effeminate either."
"Eeeeh-eee-eh'."
14
"Atta boy Aris. Don't take it so hard. Better things
ahead I assure you."
Better things ahead for sure, hidden somewhere by a
super-duper Easter bunny. Some Uke green eggs in green
grass, you know you've found one when you have
squashed it with your foot. Like this Ufe. It really must
be a wonderful thing I figure, if only I weren't so bloody
close to it. If I were dead in fact, but then I might not
be able to enjoy being dead. Dear Lord and bunny, far
be it from me to criticize your craftwork, but did you
ever realize things got a bit mixed up down here? Like
we get an awful lot of snow and ice in the winter when
it's already as cold as hell and not a bit in the summer.
Plain honest to goodness fun-flicking, cunt-Hcking,
buttocks-slapping sex is out (obscene) and twisted dys-
peptic morose squimsick unlibidinal pornographv on
stage is very highbrow stuff, and in, Negroes have better
bladder systems because of riding in the back of the bus
and now they want to ride in the front. Also they make
life very miserable for white porters who, through no
fault of their own just happened to be born white
porters. Jews are extremely anti-antisemitic people. The
good guys beat the bejeebers out of the bad guys (which
doesn't seem coherent) and the bad guys every chance
they get they beat (with four by fours even) the good
guys, which doesn't seem to make much sense. Some-
times good guys mush up good guys and only rarely can
the good guys sit back and enjoy a good humdinger
between bad guys.
Quebec, which quite frankly, is a pain in the arse for
the rest of Canada wants to separate, but the government
insists that Canada wouldn't be die same without a pain
in the arse, and perhaps never even make it to that
glorious destiny they talk about. So we must not, at any
cost, let that pain in the arse sail away with a fart. P.S.:
As one Indian to another; a world upside down isn't so
bad except when you're in the shit house. Signing off
with love your plentyimpoteotiary, Sir Stephen Nothing-
16
hereshire.
Out in a quier street in the soft night, Aris's head
pouring out a song about a sununer night and sex in the
dark and a relentless mosquito. Stephen doing the
mosquito part with zzz's and zoom zooms. Living a
serious business really. Though 1 know of people content
with sex and comfort. Sensible bastards. Thai's what
Myra would have had me do. Adjust to cultural patterns
my dear Steve, oh it is nice to have sensitivity
individuality and spirit but only if it is channeled
through accepted forms of expression. Why don't you
paint, or write? But you know damned well I couldn't
do that Myra. I'm an artist. AN ARTIST!
Don't use foul language please, it may be colourful
down on Elizabeth street, not here. Anyway that is
exactly why I suggested that you find some form of
expressing yourself.
I can express myself better by pulling my pants down
and catching a little breeze on my arse.
I'm not going to discuss it with you if you insist on
irritating me.
All right rU try it your way. Darling I need some
understanding.
I'm trying very hard.
Don't cry.
I do want to help you, 1 wish you believed me,
I believe you, here blow yoiu" nose, it gets red and
drippy when you cry.
Haaa-hu hah-hu haa-hu.
Stop now. You make me nervous.
You have to make disparaging remarks about my
person every time you get a chance.
It's not true.
Yes it is. You never said anything like that before we
were married.
It didn't seem proper.
You're lying. You were afraid to lose me. You just
wanted me for my money.
16
That too! And that.
Hahu haa-h hahuhahul
Oh hell!
I was blind. 1 was blind.
Oh shit!
I thought you loved me.
Oh Keerisr! That's what you wanted to believe.
Anyway I never got around to telling her that I
wanted to be an artist of life. The way I figure it,
painting, writing and composing or what have you, are
false arts. Seducing traps for those slightly above sex and
comfort, a deviation from the real art, which is life. The
masterpiece of that great bunny up there is none other
than me. At least if I express what I'm supposed to
express. A Geppetto-Pinocchio kind of relationship and
this here is boobieland no doubt. I must get out of it.
Christ I got to get out of it. Wouldn't somebody please
help?
"We are lost souls Aris."
"Amen!"
"You don't believe me do you?"
"Well I do, we might get a cab though."
An evil spirit suddenly took possession of Stephen's
legs. Aris watching helplessly while Stephen is jolted up
in the air legs kicking and mouth screaming, up and
down on an Invisible bronco ride and Aris after him arms
outstretched to grab ahold of him bur the legs suddenly
kicked up a burst of speed and screaming Stephen was
zoomed down Duplex Avenue and out of sight in a split
second.
17
X^wo
"Get up Myra. Get up. Get up!"
Stephen pulling Myra's foot out from under the
covers. Myra turned the bedlight on and struggled with
her free foot.
"Let go. Stephen let go!"
"Get up! Oh please get up. I must talk to you. It's
very important. It's imperative,"
"Oh for heaven's sake. What can we talk about."
Stephen releasing the foot, pointing a finger at the
ceiling and rotating his eyes, "Geppetto."
"What? You are drunk," Myra sitting up in bed and
brushing a strand of hair off her pale face. Her eyes
expanded, "Why you are soaking wet. What have you
been up to?"
"I had a little race."
"The police after you?"
"Gabriel and his heavenly Firestone Cops." Stephen
hurried out of the bedroom and came back a minute
later with a tall drink. "I only drink this to restore my
energies. Don't look at me like that. I'm relling the
truth, I'm not one of your libido-anemic friends who
need to hot-rod their Ids before they can even think of
cunt."
"Good gracious no. You have a filthy mind as it is."
"Now don't get saucy with me. You know perfecdy
well what I mean."
"I hope you didn't wake me up for a psi,'chological
discussion."
"I need a thousand dollars Myra. I just need them
badly."
Myra's face just about blew off. Stephen rolled his
18
anger into a ball of spit and swallowed it.
"Well maybe six hundred."
He waited till she had blown the horn once more
watched her holding her beUy and wiping her eves and
thought that murdering her would not be an expression
of his higher sentiments at all. Aris was right, pity really,
but one must be principled. Kill someone nice Stephen^
must not yield to your lower instincts. Killing those
bastards wouldn't help, nosir! But where the hell do you
fmd someone nice enough to kill. Someone I would have
to love so much.
"I wi.sh I could love you Myra."
"That's very high brand psychology Steve, but you
don't expect me to fall for it?"
"Please Myra, five hundred, all at once, not ten at a
trnie. Have you no heart? What's five hundred dollars to
you?"
"And what would five hundred dollars do for you?"
"Buy me a cavel"
"A what?"
"A cave. You know. A hole in a mountain where I
could retire from the world. I want to go away Myra.
But really away. There must be a cave somewhere where
I could go and spend the rest of this warranty without
ever meeting another human being."
"Well that's a new approach. You can buy a hole m a
mountain for five hundred dollars?"
"Don't try to be funny. I just need the money for a
ticket to southern Italy or Spain."
"Perhaps the Riviera?"
"You don't think I would go and freeze my arse off
somewhere in the Precambrian shield?"
"I'm just trying to visualize it. Wouldn't a hut in
Temagami be more appropriate for you? After all you
have Indian blood. You would feel quite unnatural in the
Mediterranean."
But I keep seeing myself, beard and sandals, a lonely
figure up a rocky path and thoughts like motionless
19
lizards soaking up the sun, hardly disturbed by the
passing shadows of memories and knowledge. A simple
bowl and a bed of corn husks and medication. Give God
a chance :o talk to me for a change. Here God I'll say
no more, my heart is a trumpet, blow will you, I'll make
no more noises I promise, blow no more myself, I'm no
trumpeteer I'm a bloody trumpet trying to blow into
God. Go to church, ta-taaa-:ata-taaaata! Blowing my
fucking horn all the time. Here you give it a blow for
Pete's sake. Everybody trying to get a tune out of
himself. Aris thinks he is an artist. Hey Steve look here,
how do you like this one? Oh that's just beautiful Aris.
It's a masterpiece. But what is Aris? He is an artist for
heaven's sake. Make a fart and right away your arse
thinks he's got talent. But I'll sit up there under a lion's
sun and meditate, oh yeah! On a baking rock beside a
cool cactus and let my ego gather at my feet like
morning fog down in the valley and my soul rise hke a
shimmering peak out of the long creeping shadows.
"Three hundred?"
"Why don't" you get a job?"
"1 forgive you Myra. I'm going to become a saint."
"Ah-aaaa-ah!"
Stephen with a face of fury taking a few steps towards
her, sucking air through his teeth, hands stretched to-
wards her and shaking terribly, hesitating and then
coming down limply to his side. Myra starting to laugh
again, nervously this time.
"Oooh-oooooh-ohoh!" Like that. Laugh all you want,
I'm not going to touch you with a ten foot pole. Not
even sock you in the mou±. Nosir. The days I would
pray for a Doctor Strangelove and that brand of mercy
annihilation are beyond me. I'd dream they'd start
dropping the blasted bombs and poof! No more suffer-
ing. I was the guy inside every God-fearing being who
was shouting yeah-yeah-yah! During the Cuban crisis. Let
them have it! Sockittome Baby Jesus.
Stephen with a penitent look. "I forgive you Myra."
Lifting up his inspired face to the ceiling, and bringing
up a huge balloon in the palm of his hands. "Forgive her
Lord, pray forgive her for she does not know what she
is."
"Hooo, hoGOO hoo!" Myra in terrible pain, all twisted
up and kicking her legs in a tantrum.
And I was vi'orking for the C.P.R. In Montreal one
summer, just extra help for the busy season. I never did
really work much but anyway all these guys hired for
the summer would gather at the yards every day and just
wait aU day, inside this building when it rained or out on
the tracks when it was sunny. And one day this crazy,
fire-tongued ass-slinging Jehovah's Witness came around
and told me to repent right away because I didn't have a
minute to spare, and I was inclined to agree in prmciple
at least but I didn't want to give him any satisfaction, I
mean I'd have probably done him a great harm if I had
kneeled right down in front of everj'body, because there
is no way of telling how much credit and glory he would
derive from it through his twisted mind. So I told him to
fuck off. But he was a determined bugger that guy, he
just lashed me with all the damnation he had in his hean
to try and save me. Of course all the boys started
laughing, and I told him that his God was alJ twisted and
full of shit if he had to send around arse holes like him
to invite quarter breed jerks like me to his half-witted
gathering. And he staggered back like the earth had
suddenly sphr before his feet to a view of hell, and he
lifted a Gantry hand above his head and poured out a
voice from the top of the mountain, "Aaaaaaa! The
vengeance of God is upon you. He will surely strike you
down with lightning and fire!"
Oh you son of a shit. Tell him to go aliead and do
just that. Right here and now on C.P.R. property, 1 dare
him to. Go ahead blabbermouth, tell him up there to
strike me down with a cheap bolt of lightning or to go
fuck himself. Of course 1 was talking to my God while
pretending otherwise. I just wouldn't have had the guts
21
otherwise, not because 1 couldn't take the punishment,
my God no, that was the whole idea. I'd go to any
length just to get a sign from him, any sign at all. I
would have been the happiest guy who's ever been struck
by lightning. But really I could never talk like that face
to face with the big G. up there. So as 1 said, I was
feeling pretty miserable about my own God having to be
so sweet and principled and stick to the rules and all
that, that 1 just couldn't resist the occasion to try to
make him budge. That's it Lord! Lose your temper. For
Christ's sake Lord can't you ever lose your temper and
do something? All right no mu-acles, no pleasant signs,
but at least a whiff, a little wrath, just slip one bolt
down here while nobody is looking. Even if they do,
they won't believe it was you, accident, or maybe
coincidence. Maybe you don't want to do it so that you
won't hurt this poor fucker here. I know it'll go to his
head.
Common sucker, tell your blasted God up there to
melt the dirt I'm standing on and let the bowels of the
earth swallow me down to Lucy's Joint.
But no, oh no! The little guy sort of disappeared out
of the building and everybody went back to play crib-
bage. It was just all in a day's laugh. I had really gotten
all excited, believe you me 1 half expected to be
cremated right there, at least I thought there was a
chance, and I was searing with hope, the best chance in
iTiy life to find out that God is really OK. Thar he is in
full control of things, and that therefore the bastards will
fry in grease and the good guys will be like bloody
princes. I mean life is too much otherwise. There must
be justice somewhere. Only there is a htde doubt too.
What if this fucking place is without a pilot, and here we
are and we are not going anywhere when this litde trip
around Gahleo's corner is over. What then? Poor sucker
me. Shouldn't I have killed a few bastards? Yeah man!
Yah! All right big G. I tell you what, either you give me
a sign that ever)'thing is going according to plans, or I
22
just have to take matters in my own hands. I mean I'm
sorry to do this to you, if you can't talk to me, bound
by something or other, but I can't go on hke this.
Terrifying what ail can go through your mind in a few
adrenalin spiced minutes. I pictured myself carbonized,
on the floor, soul going down to the furnace downstairs,
God up there surreptitiously slipping a little cracker
away. 1 was almost laughing I was so happy. But nothing
damn it. 1 have tried again since. I have thought the
most dastardly thoughts, sworn like a Turk, everything,
but 1 guess maybe he just knows that right down deep
inside I'm just a shrivelled up pip of love. So that won't
work. I really could play his game if 1 could just be sure
that 1 wasn't playing a solitaire. But he might talk to me
in a cave though. I just have to have a cave.
"You won't change your mind then."
"About what?"
"About a little bit of money."
"Oh you're not serious are you?"
"Of course I'm serious, 1 have to got to southern
Italy. I have to live thirty years in a cave so that I may
speak to God."
'"Eeeeeeeheehee-eeeeheeec-oo-aaah! That's enough
please Stephen, you are giving me a belly ache."
"I'll picket in front of the building again."
"Go ahead. I'll cut off the allowance."
"Allowance big deal. You are just getting an insane
kick watching me lose every bit of pride, you are trying
to emasculate me to revenge yourself for your ovm
hypocrisy. Did you really think I love you ah? My
binary balls you did. You just fooled yourself, that's
what you did, and now you can't stand yourself so you
take it out on me."
"You said you loved me! You said it."
"I only told you what you wanted to hear, you were
holding me by the stomach you were, stupid arse. You
are just like everybody else, if you can't enjoy being rich
you will enjoy not being poor, keep some poor buggers
23
starving to remind yourself how good it is to be living in
tlie country of ass and freedom and how important it is
to clobber them on the head once in a while just so that
they won't get any ideas. WeU you aren't going to
clobber me anymore, because I'm not going to give you
any excuses to do it legally and morally, I'm going to
starve damn it. Starve to death but not moan one
complaint. I'm going to go on a hunger strike that's what
I'm going to do. So there."
"Oh God. What next?"
Just saying that made him hungry as hell. He tiptoed
out of her bedroom, through the dark in the Uving-room
and brought some cheese and beer to the table in the
kitchen. Myra came to see after a few minutes.
August Twelfth, munching a salaftii sandwich in front
of the blinking T.V. set. Maybe it's August thirteenth, or
November the thirty -fourth. Why the hell do I have to
know what day it is? As I sit here in relative peaceful
mood, beer and salami, a nice little guy is brought in
front of me handcuffed and everything and shot through
the head. Bang! Blasted a corner of his brain over
towards the Azalea plant, little bits of grey matter and
blood still titillating with life and blood on my salami
and a little chunk of bone drilled a hole right through
the middle of the thick beer head and slowly sank to the
bottom of the glass. Hey you guys, watch out will you! I
mean can't a guy drink a beer in his own living-room and
not get mucked up with guck like that? The media
miracle is not complete, that guy there should have been
watching me sitting in slippers, munching salami and
sipping beer while he was getting shot through the head.
Here I light a filter-tipped cigarette, just you watch me
sucker. WATCH MEEEE! Beam this Galloping Gourmet
program to Biafra for Chrissake. Let them watch, those
yam bellies, let them watch us, 1 can watch diree
thousand starve everj' day and not build up enough
guilt-energy to send out a ripple of pain to search and
stir a cosmic conscience, but let three thousand of them
24
watch me every day, and those burnt and defoliated
watch our dear leaders, our pillars, our distinguished
citizens, plain money bags and various up-on-the-go
pricks and enough hate and disgust might be produced to
vibrate a sense of doubt through the great foundations of
divine justice. I'm for punishment and reward NOW! To
hell with this sin now pay later plan. Sockit to me baby,
I'm a lockless Samson. Electronic pillars of the Philistines
holding the structures of the government of Libido, by
libido, for libido. Assmocracies and cunt-centered culture
of Napalm Christianity. Yippie! Yeppie! Hurray! The
Yippies want that people should be free to fuck ail die
time, anywhere, whomever they wish. Aye! Aye! Maybe
that would bring Gomorrah down. Would thaB upset big
G,?
Stephen getting up standing rigidly in front of the
T.V. set for a minute with the limp piece of sandwich
hanging from his fingers, then he raises it to the ceihng,
lifts a leg way up in the air, Gibson style, and heaves the
sandwich towards the T.V., missing it however and
sandwich flattening itself on the wall behind it.
Myra looking first surprised then irritated.
"What did you do that for?"
"Didn't you see IT?"
"See what?"
"That guv there! Getting shot through the head."
"I didn't watch."
"Why the hell didn't vou?"
"Why should I?"
"What an asinine question. A guy gets shot through
the head and you don't even know why you should
watch. Of course you should watch, you stupid bitch.
Watch, watch! Oh hell I'm getting out of here."
Myra following with narrowed eyes and a little twist
of pretention on her thin lips. God will pass me by most
likely, if He is a Calvinist. But Life won't. No damn,
something's got to be done down here, the sooner the
better. Find a little temple, nor too big and well
25
constructed for posterity and crush it down. My size.
Heck. They are pouring cement down In hell, widening
the streets, must build a highway all the way down
there, for me little tricycle. And Louise wouldn't want
me to sin and do it in the front, sin is in the darndest
places really. I'll send her a large jar of vaseline for
Christmas. A nice girl really, a bit confused about God.
Confusing times. Myra got up to pick up the rest of the
sandwich and dropped it in the wastepaper basket.
Reading a book to satisfy her latent peeping-Tom com-
plex. "Bye, bye now, I'm going down town to look over
a temple. I might not be back."
Steve with a trace of palsy in his face waiting for her
reaction.
"i said I might not be back again."
Myra turned, mouth slightly open and eyes half shut,
hke she was partly submerged in the sloth of her mind.
And bobbing,
"Bye bye."
26
^Hree
Walking down St. Clair Avenue. The heart a guillotine,
going: Myra, wham! Myra, wham! At each step. Hesitat-
ing in front of this elegant funeral parlor to see any signs
of activity inside and maybe a little crowd gathering, and
black limousines pulling up front with flags and a guy in
a box with sewn jaws and varnished shoes. I have
watched many processions, parked my feet at a distance
and bowed my head, and once or twice 1 went in and sat
in the cool chapel because I have a fascination for brass
handles. I could just sit and stare at those things on the
side of tlie casket all day. That's what I want to have
when I go. Huge brass handles and a periscope if you
don't mind, to watch out for the coming of the .second
Kingdom. Kind of slow on Sundays but I know in the
house of God they are giving away little bits of Jesus
dipped in wine. When I was a kid they told mc that if I
bit him he would bleed and I never laid a tooth on him.
I was tempted I must admit, but I never had the guts.
Maybe not because I didn't want to hurt Jesus, but
because 1 would have died of shame with blood gushing
out of my mouth and sitting amongst the very faithful.
Maybe my ass. I know darn weU it was so. And Jesus in
the back of my mind getting all excited, yeah, yeah, bite
me, for Pete's sake bite me Steve! Don't worry about
them Goddamn you. Bite me! Hurt me! Let your heart
out. But I didn't, I just couldn't be ashamed in front of
my equals, in front of God yes, that's easy, but not
them. Jesus cried, in the back of my mind that is. I
heard him going, huh-hoooo-huh hoooh. He wouldn't
stop for days. So I went back next Sunday and I was
determined, oh boy. Grinding my teeth and clenching
27
my fists all the way to the altar and when the priest
slipped the thin sacrament in my mouth I closed my
eyes and just went WHHAAAAMM! Took a finger off
him, and I thought it was Jesus wiggling in my mouth
and would have surely passed if he hadn't kept hitting
me and yelling to give him back the finger. So I stopped
practising, I mean I'm not going to church anymore and
not receiving my sacraments, which for a devout CathoUc
is pretty bad, but I stand outside once in a while, and
listen to the muffled singing feeling outcast and dra-
matic. I like the feeling of being an outcast, out of God's
grace, expiating. I like to think of myself as the Wander*
ing Christian. Not all the time of course, part time, on
Sundays for example. I don't really know what I'm
trying to get at. Maybe to become a Sint, which is the
opposite of Saint, one who is recognized as having
achieved Sin. Not so easy as it seems, to really know sin.
Sint Stephen, Heck! Might as well try it this way. I
wanna get there as much as anybody else. Leave me be,
I'll go my way. Honestly. I'm on my way Jesus.
Sint Stephen dancing in the sun, empty sidewalks and
a few strangers standing in the corner waiting for a
Sunday bus. Cigar store closed, shiny cars up to Mount
Pleasant, driving slowly in their Sunday canoes. The
doors of sin are shut in the Presbyterian city. Toronto
the Good and down on Jarvis Street the whores take a
day off. Screwing all the time must be hard, I have seen
them wixh tired faces and tired feet looking down at
mens' legs and I told one that she would see Jesus
because her sin was not hers but mine. And she said,
sure Mac, why do you think I'm here getting paid? I
don't do it for nothing. And I placed my blessing upon
her arse, a papal hand lifted over her. Oh Holy Faiier,
bless this nourishment that I'm about to take. . . . Hey
cut the religion will you. It gives me the creeps. Come
do your trick and get out of here! Would you mind
covering yourself up while I finish my prayer, for my
Father's sake. Then she wanted another five bucks
28
because I had brought my father in. Bur I didn't have
another five buclis and she was satisfied with two. Which
I thought was a pretty good bargain and asked her if she
wouldn't do it again for the same rate but she said she
wouldn't do it again for a million dollars.
Turned north in the shade of a great big building and
away from the stares of those people waiting for trans-
portation. A mad hatter there doing a crazy dance on St.
Clair. Kicking legs up in the air and going wheeee! Never
seen the likes of it in this fair and smug city, and on
Sunday too, the day set aside for reason of insanity.
Crates of infinity these Presbyterian Saxons, shipping
emptiness from the cradle to the grave. Empty vessels.
And a half breed doing a crazy step up Yonge, crossing
the street with kangaroo hops and sitting on 5ie steps of
a stone church. Music inside, from pipes, and songs from
sound boxes, standing neatly in rows and when they
finally come out through their halos, stepping to the side
not to tramp on this queer fellow squatted in the sun,
possessed look on his face and the hand stretching out
cupped for alms, bumping the guys on their calves, and
stroking the girls around their knees. Chanting gutturally.
"Bless your souls! Give alms! Limousine! Help the
almsman! You sir, may the breeze of charity in your
heart refresh your beloved departed. Thank you sir!"
Folding and tucking a dollar quickly in his pant pocket.
"Give charity! Aaahh Alms! Sweet girl! God bless your
charitable soul."
A man of a certain elegance and dignity paused to
mutter, "Shame on you. Don't you feel ashamed?"
"Not yet, I swear it to God. But I'm trying sir. I'm
trying very hard."
"They ought to take you to jail. That's what they
ought to do."
"And flog me, dear sir! And maybe nail me to two by
fours."
And another one bent down to place a quarter in the
empty palm. Giggles among the crowd down on the
29
sidewalk and now the main part of rhe congregation
pouring our after the final song.
"Bless your putrefied dead, give alms! Give charity to
the alms man."
"You poor man!"
A sldnny old lady, with a toothless mouth and limp
lips fluttering like flaps at every word. "Have you no
job?"
"No ma'am."
She opened a hrtle coin wallet with her trembling
little hands and placed two dimes, one at a time in his
hands.
"Oh that's enough ma'am," he said after the first one.
"Nonsense, I have got another one here somewhere."
"One is enough my sweet lady. From rhe heart, it
hurts."
"Oh here it is."
"Thank you ma'am, I bless you!"
"Oh that's nothing."
An assistant moving in through the crowd, looking
down at Stephen then to the little lady and not a squirt
of joy passing through the left aiu^icle. Nor the right one
for that matter.
"Give alms! Bless your soul kind gentleman."
"I advise you to get up and move away from here."
"Gee thanks for the advice. I like it here, surrounded
by kind people."
"Get going, or I'll phone the police."
"Why the poor young man, he is not doing anv
harm."
"Please lady, you go too."
"Well!"
"It's all right ma'am. You'd better do as he says. I can
take care of mvself."
"I will not.''
"Then I'll go."
"You sit there young man, sit there as you please.
Let's see if this man has the gall to have you moved."
30
"It's all right 1 don't mmd going, I don't want to
upset this kind gentleman."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. It is better."
Sint Stephen and the Httle lady with the squeaky
voice parading through the crowd under the watchful eye
of the kind gentleman, crowd splitting like the Red Sea
before this Godly couple. Up in the clear sky above
Mount Pleasant a lonely cloud sailed wispiiy across the
sun. A chuckle from heaven. Cars moving out and high
heels of Sunday walking up and down the sidewalk of
Yonge. Stephen and the lady crossed the street, lady
holding Stephen's arm.
"The people, oh the people and the things they do."
"Yes."
"Are you hungry?"
"No ma'am."
"It is almost lunch time."
"I know."
"Will you have a cup of tea with me. I live right . . .
right there. It's a quiet little place although God knows
how long it will be before they tear the whole street
down to build those unsightly apartment houses."
"Progress ma'am. Progress."
"But do they have to build them right here? 1 have
lived here most of my life. Why should 1 move now that
I'm so old? Those terrible machines are getting closer
every day. I can bear them all around me. Early in the
morning they start, Clanget\' clang! One street after
another."
"It's pretty terrible all right."
"I don't know what got into people since the war."
"I have got to go ma'am."
"Nonsense, you must have time for a cup of tea. It
isn't every day I can entertain a nice voung man like
you."
Giggles.
"Even if I do do it in a rather forward manner," she
31
added.
"All right, you are right. And to tell you the truth it
isn't every day 1 can have tea with a sweet little old lady
like you. . . ."
Steve pale as a ghost, stops dead, a thought of a gory
murder and him with a hammer dripping blood.
1 suggest you kill a little old lady with a hammer
Steve.
Steve screaming. Scared the living daylights out of her.
The little lady almost collapsed, knees buckled and her
gaping toothless hole opened without a breath.
Stephen tore away from her arm and ran away
towards Yonge Street again. The little lady watched him
as her bony breast crinkled with pain. "The poor man,"
she said, "The poor young man."
32
pour
Mount Pleasant is a nice cemetery, a lot of shade,
lawns, birds up on the trees and lovely walks, but this
httle cemetery here back of Yonge Street is the real
restful place. You go through a broken gate, down an
aUey full of litter, broken glass, and rusty cans, and you
walk into a weed patch, up to your waist, tombstones
half buried, sinking tilted, chipped and stained. The Irish
builders, brick layers and smiths rest here. Forgotten. I
only found the place one day because 1 was drunk and I
had to do something, and I went down this narrow and
dark alley. I don't think anybody knows this place is
here. But I have spent many a night here ever since. A
beautiful place to be when you want to be out in the
open, under the stars or what have you. Mostly 1 come
here when I'm sick. Really sick. Like now. I come and
sit on this here dead Irish face, lean on his block of
granite and strike a conversation. He is a foul-mouthed
guy I tell you. Swears like a Turk, but the talk is 'very
informal most of the time so I don't think anybody
would mind. Not anybody with an open mind. Anyway
though he insults me continuously I know he is pretty
lucky because I'm the only living thing in here in ages.
His name is Patrick O'Tim and he was born a hundred
years to the day before I was born, that's why 1 go and
sit with him. That is, on him. Maybe it isn't fair to the
others but one's own feelings don't ever seem to be fair
to anyone else, so it is an accepted fact around here
anyway that if I come I go directly through my own
stamped down path and sit by him. He never did
mention the fact that I stole the wrought iron cross from
the top of his stone. A fine piece of work it was, I'm
33
sorry I sold it now. Only got me a quarter because the
antique dealer was Jewish.
Steve went down the beaten narrow path, stopped at
the end of it feeling the warmth of the stone borrowed
from the sun. Looked around the perimeter of the
cemetery and listened to distant sounds coming from the
back yards and open windows of the houses around the
cemetery. Wondered if some sick person wouldn't want
to observe him through field glasses. When he was sitting
his head was as tali as the stone and his eyes averaged
the height of the dried seeds wobbling on their long
stems.
"Well Patrick old boy, how are you feeling today?"
"You fucking bastard."
"And what's new?"
"Contact lenses on a cow's arse."
"Up your jingling skeleton! You want to talk or
sulk?"
"Talk? Hear him now? Indeed do I want to talk. Heh
if I just had a little flesh on my mind, I could talk some
sense into your bleedy skull."
"If you are in a lousy mood I'll leave. I didn't come
here to trade insults across the fence."
"So what's bothering you?"
"Nothing is bothering me."
"Ugh I take it then that you have finally taken leave
of vour senses!"
"Maybe."
"Can you still feel sorry for yourself dien?"
"Shhh!"
"What?"
"Somebody is coming in."
"In here?"
"Shut up will you. A girl."
Whispering. "Do me a favour. Vacate the premises. I'll
take my chance."
Silence. Girl coming through the gate. Following
Stephen's path, letting her hair unfurl as she moves
34
slowly, ghostly among rhe tall weeds. Canying something
in her left hand and now shaking her hair behind her
shoulders like a fine T.V. ad. Stephen cocking his head
down, and peering through the blades.
"Is she coming this way?"
"Shut up Patrick!"
She lifts one arm in the air and slowly begins to rotate
from it, kicking her shoes off, like she was hanging from
a string. Very close now. Stephen having trouble to
breathe without wheezing. She rips the bag she carried m
her left hand and produces a full quart bottle of milk.
Slowly she removes the sealer and drinks from it. Then
she places the bottle on the top of a stone and begms
waving her arms and slowly her whole body finds the
motion until she moves like a silky weed growing into a
fluid current, Stephen hypnotized now, eyes popping out
and jaw like an open drawer, subconsciously ducking
lower into the weeds when she turns his way. Her
motions becoming more frantic, then the currents rip her
off her feet and she glides between the stones in a mad
vortex, eyes wild, arms and head throwing and as she
comes very close and Stephen ducks very low a blade of
grass penetrates his left nostril and sparks a blast from
his lungs. Girl like a frozen weed. Looking towards
Stephen and Stephen's head slowly emerging.
"I'm awfully sorry." Stephen sticking a finger in his
nose. "I got a weed up my nose and i sneezed."
She ran back to pick up her milk bottle. She looked
angry. She began searching for her shoes. Having a bit of
trouble.
"Please don't go away. I won't bother you. I'm dead
anyway,"
She looked suspiciously at him. Then resumed looking
for her shoes, parting the grass with her arms. Stephen
walked to her and stooped down to help her.
"What colour are they?"
"Black."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean ro peep,"
35
"Not your fault."
"! must say I enjoyed it though."
"You probably think I'm crazy." Stephen stopped
pretending that tie was looking for her shoes and looked
at her with interest.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You are a beautiful girl. Are you a dancer?"
"No."
"You dance beautifully."
"How on earth am I going to find my shoes in here?"
Girl stooping and poking around, Stephen watching
her with a queer smile, working a slender shiny black
shoe deep in the turf with his Toes and keeping his foot
on it.
"My name's Steve. Steve Canada. I'm an expert at
findmg shoes in old Irish cemeteries. You need not
worry."
"Steve . . , Canada did you say?"
"It gets almost everyone. A queer name it seems,"
"Not at all. Why it's a lovely name."
"You mean it or are you just trying to be nice?"
"Of course, 1 guess I was just surprised. Why didn't
anybody think of a name like that before?" She became
suspicious suddenly again. "You are kidding me?"
"No." Raising his hand. "I swear it. A name to remind
me of the Indian blood in my veins."
"Oh." She resumed searching. Stephen resumed smi-
ling. Then she found a shoe. "Oh here is one. The other
one must be here somewhere." She straightened up and
looked at Stephen. "You're not looking."
"Oh yeah- I'm sorr\'."
Stephen looking around straining his eyes but not
budging so that he can keep her shoe hidden under his
foot, stones glittering the slanting rays and a scent of
perfume mingling with the dried grass and bones.
"You are not looking," she cried annoyed.
Stephen immediately shaded his eyes with one hand
and gawked intensely about. But this instead of appeas-
36
ing her made her suspicious, her gaze ran slowly down to
his feet, then she saw it. She walked up to him and
while he tried to strike an expression of genuine surprise
she pulled her shoe from under him.
"Oh there it is!"
"You were standing on it."
"I told you I was good at finding shoes in old Irish
cemeteries."
"Yeah!"
"You're nor angry now are you?"
She laughed.
"That's a good girl."
"You looked so funny!" she said still laughing and
putting her shoe on. "Why were you hiding it?"
"Because 1 like you."
She frowned.
"1 really do. Boy I really like you! Do you believe m
love at first sight."
"Whoa! Stephen Canada, whoa. Not so fast please.
Speed kills you know."
They started down the path slowly.
"Are you a model?"
"Uh huh. How did you guess?"
"You have certain movements that only a model has,
nice."
"I was trying to get rid of them."
"Dancing?"
"Yes."
Stephen following her on the side of the patli.
"Why?"
"To 'be myself."
"Aye. That's very difficult."
"Especially for a model."
"Me too, I'm sort of a model."
They stopped at the unhinged rusting iron gate and
looked back inside forlornly.
She looked around for a place to leave her quart of
milk.
37
"May 1 carry it for you?"
"No, there is no need. I can leave it here. 1 ripped the
bag."
"I'U carry it, please."
"All right," she giggled. Stephen smiled gratefully.
"I'm sort}' 1 was there. 1 interrupted you."
"It's all right. What were you doing there?"
"Feeling sorry for myself I guess."
Up Yonge Street again, Stephen walking slowly with a
bottle of milk hanging nimbly from his fingers. Not
talking for a while, strangers, like a couple of snails
bumped in the dark. Antennae, fingers of the soul
exploring the mystery of hope beyond the fringe of fear.
Fear a shell hard on the inside and soft outside, no
protection at all. it keeps you inside so that trouble can
come to you. Prisoner of myself. The wandering Cath-
ohc. Must do something to tickle God's fancy or he
won't budge. This nice girl here, having a bit of the same
trouble, wanting to be herself and not knowing how.
Losing the grip, perhaps objecting to the fact that she is
letting herself be supported through being a model, lost
identity. A case which I'm fortunate enough not to have
to contend with. Or maybe that's my trouble? There is a
great choice.
"I guess you don't like being a model?"
"Oh it's all right."
"Glamorous, that's what a girl likes."
"Yes."
"Where are you going now?"
"To a party."
"A parry, at three in the afternoon? Sunday?"
"Yes, well it's not really a party. More like a glorified
slave sale. This guy is coming in from London. A great
photographer. He wants to look over us to see if anyone
could inspire him to become God for a httlc while. A
frustrated Svengall. You should see him operate."
"I'd love to."
She stopped to look him in the eyes. She looked tired,
38
Srephen didn't know whether to smile or to look sad,
managed to look confused. That seemed to sadden her.
"You can come. Anybody can come, thev hke specta-
tors."
"They, who?"
"This guy and Lady Russell, the divine hostess."
"Oh boy! I wouldn't miss it. By the way you haven't
told me your name yet, do you mind?"
"Lynn Rennle."
"HeUo Lynn."
"Hello Steve Canada."
Steve Canada and Lynn Rennie arm in arm, walking
along closed shops, guyed signs, dead neon signs, and the
sun hung up there. Incessant. Bleeding sun and thank
God on the other .side, under a sieve of stars not much
going on. Cain and Abel alike, must sleep. Murder in the
daytime, under the hleeding sun, and maybe not long
from now a satellite sun illuminating the jungle for more
killing. 0\€. How many Jesuses killed down yonder?
Shoor the bloody gorillas in die arse. Atta boy. In dem
Bordell ist liebe. Boobieland. Yack yack-dung. Hello arse
hole of heaven and plasticine Jesns. Stretch those bloody
wounds. Boy 1 love Sundays in this great Presbyterian
city, it's like the aftermath of coitus, the pullout blues.
And a litde tippy toey trip to the washroom, and
stepping on a little dribble on the way back. I always
step on a litde dribble on the floor. Clirist Lord make
this trumpet day. Tattatattaaa and what have you. Give
us the whole shabang. [ have had it. Not a pip of faith
left. Make the sun a supernova. Bang.
"I love you Lynn,"
"Oh come on!"
"Like a sister."
"We are there."
"Where?"
"Up diere,"
Shding up the gut in a cubicle of elevation, up in its
inexorable time of gears and R.P.M.'s. Smiling looking at
39
the digit light up. 14-15-P, Doors sliding open like
electrical jaws and out into a room of elegant depravity
and phony merriment, sounds of laughter from the
Boobieland express, and he with his quart of milk and
his fair lady hesitating on the threshhold of false eye-
lashes and powdered tits.
"Here we are Steve."
"Yeah. Lots of girls!"
And a ghost all In white dropped from the soup of
things and rushed to welcome them. An old whore with
a long lean face stripped to starvation, blue streaks for
eyebrows, mascara for eyelashes and a thin lipstick smear
on her bloody lips.
"Lynn daaarhng, I don't know what I would do
without you."
Masculine resonant voice reminiscent of army barracks.
Looking Stephen over with slow uninhibited pleasure.
"Who is this darling man?"
"Stephen Canada, Lady Russell."
"How do you do."
"Where, oh where did you find him daaarltng."
"In a cemetery."
"Wohh-wohh wohh! You are joking? No you aren't.
Don't tell me they are carting them away! Hey listen
boys and girls. This here dehcious hunk of man is
Stephen Canada. I want you to keep your hands and legs
off him. He is mine."
Lady Russell with a double arm lock on Stephen
leading him through the crowd to the bar, where he left
his bottle of milk, and out into the terrace where they
were alone.
"Well Stephen, you haven't said a word for a full
minute. I'm anxious to hear your voice. Do you talk?"
"Yes ma'am. Two ways, inside and out. Inside most of
the time."
"Oh no, no when you are with me, let your insides
come out my boy, I have to hear it. Would you sit down
with me. You aren't drinking. And what were you doing
40
in a cemetery? Don't call me ma'am, please don't call me
that. It is sweet of you to think so, but I'm not hke that
at all."
"OK, yes, yes, no, OK. OK."
"Wohhh-wohh-wohh ! You haven't kept ttack? Don't
listen to all I say. My name is Sara. Just call me Sara.
Are you comfortable there?"
"Very nice Sara."
"Do you think I'm very old?"
"Sixty?"
"Oh ho my dear boy, you have a dehghtful punch."
"Fifty-five?"
"Don't make it worse v/ith kindness. I asked for it. Do
you always give straight answers."
"I try.'"
Lynn appeared at the door, stood pale by a palmlike
plant.
"What is it dear?"
"Steve, could I see you for a moment?"
"Oh dear, dear, you are not going to warn him?"
"Excuse me please."
Stephen and Lynn moving inside, out of sight of Lady
Russell and into the sly stares of others, Lynn a bit
upset, quivering a bit at the mouth, lower lip pinched
between a string of beautiful teeth, and her eyes darting
suspiciously.
"What is it Lynn?"
"I don't know how to say it."
"Come on."
"Let's get out of here. Picase."
"Already? We just got here."
A glint of meanness now in her eyes of blue open
fields and menthol cigareues. "I'll warn you then. She is
a shark Steve. She'll have you in bed with her in a half
hour."
"Hohohohohohhhh!"
Lynn breaking away and the crowd silent and staring
for a suspenseful minute, then a lone giggle like a pebble
41
bouncing on the floor followed by an avalanche of
laughter. Steve retreating out to the terrace. A bit shook
up. Gulping his drink down under the watchful naked
eyes of Lady Russell.
"A sweet girl. Did she upset you?"
Stephen hesitating, being watched very intently by her
small grey protruding eyes, a nervous smile stretching her
slitiy lips and gathering the loose folds of her mouth
under her cheekbones. No eyelashes, no eyebrows, prob-
ably bald as a billiard ball.
"No, no she said something funny. She said you
would lure me to bed within half an hour."
"Who-whoah, that's not so funny!"
"Hee-heehl No? Oh come on!"
"I can try, can't I? I mean you couldn't blame me
could you?"
"No I guess not. All right, start luring me."
"I must say you arc not a hypocrite. I like you Steve,
1 would give anything to be able to lure you as you say,
but I don't think I would be very successful. Unless. . . ."
"Unless what?"
"Unless you let me undress in front of you."
"Go aliead!"
Lady Russell up on her feet, extending a hand towards
Stephen. "Come then!"
"Where?"
"My studio."
Stephen getting up reluctantly, picking up the empty
glass and making a move towards the living-room.
"No not that way."
"i need a drink. I think."
"Leave the glass here, I have a bar. [ think there is
some Mumm's left in the fridge."
Down the terrace, hand in hand, Lady leading and
Smt Stephen dragging his feet a bit. Around the corner
of the building, into another extension of the terrace,
and through a sliding glass door inside a large studio.
With bed, bar, and large emerald-coloured aquarium.
42
Lady Russell getting a bottle of Mumm's out of a
panelled fridge, two glasses out of dragon-guarded bar.
"Will you have some caviar with it, or would you like
a sandwich of some kind."
"A hamburger."
"Don't be silly."
"All righi, caviar will do then."
"Here help yourself."
Stephen heaping the caviar on a melba toast and
watching Lady Russell going around drawing one layer of
golden curtains after a.nother. Golden filtered light.
Melba toast spooning out die caviar, and washing down
the Russian with French baron bubbles. A little bit of
the jingles in the knees and exotic butterflies somewhere
in the stomach. This is crazy. I don't diink I will believe
it tomorrow. There are sharks and sharks. I think she is
brainless. Stop those kneecaps from quivering. What rhe
hell is she doing now? Taking off her shoes.
"You will stay for a half hour then?"
"Yeah. Yes. I will."
"Please do watch me though."
"God yes!"
Some striptease, might get Patrick's old carcass to
collapse a little more. Blouse on the floor, pearl white
skirt dropping to her crimpled feet. Folds of corrugated
belly and network branches of blue veins on the side of
the knotty legs. Don't stare at me like that, what kind of
a twisted kick, watching me watching her. Come on take
off your bra, am atLxious to see. Bra off. Small poplike
dribbly mammal glands and pale shrivelled nipples hang-
ing like an empty bladder bag. A stream of fish eggs and
frothy champagne fighting down through the knots and
the locked stomach. All right give it to me damn it. I
asked for it. Panties down. A yoke of a belly slipping
down held by the umbilical knot, and down there at the
ripped bottom of a V a curly sneer and fuzz. Oh God!
What a way to ruin good champagne. How long is it?
And that gloating look in her face. Should 1 tell her she's
43
had a flat. A leak of time. What now? Moving towards
the bed. Lying down and staring at the ceiling, throbbing
neck, and everything gone flat and runny on top of her.
Hand slowly gently placed at the tip of the V. Oh no!
Eyes shutting, and a little stroking motion of her hand.
A motion so slight and yet so powerful and irresistible,
drawing stroke by stroke into iis own motion, a more
inexorable force and freeing from the bonds of time and
infinity its own captive will. The magnificent force of a
thousand sighs and tears ebbing through her body at
every spent instant, entering and swelling, escaping and
subsiding. The hand now persuading and vivifying the
swaying thighs, throbbing womb, and the rising belly
into' a pulsating fluid agony. An ugly beautiful torment
streaking through her sexless body like a seed in the
sidereal night, towards tliat moment of luminous burning
unity. Stephen with a mind to escape, and a hot fury
driving down his chest and belly, his own body and will
sucked into the motion of her body, breathing her very
same breath, feeling the very same fluid agony rushing
through his body. Approaching her, standing over her,
starting to tear his shirt off. She doesn't see him, just
goes on with her own driving twisting body. Ugly and
beautiful. She is his own life, his own pain and despair.
Greed and hope, God and Satan. She is the world. She is
the coliseum and Taj Mahal, she is Chicago, a ghetto,
Buchenwald and Mary. She is an ugly bitch! Ugly bitch!
"Ugly bitch! Ugly bitch! Ugly bitch."
She didn't flinch, Stephen almost out of his mind
furiously undressing himself, and kneeling on the bed he
draws slowly his hand ro her neck in a strangling hold,
and digs his fingernails in her soft loose skin and she
doesn't flinch. He releases his grip and gapes at her for a
brief moment, then breaking into a wounded cry he
takes her hand away and slowly, but with an intensity of
desire never known to him, lies on her and lets her
feverish hand take a hold of his prick and guide it into
her whimpering body.
44
Five
She was standing beside him, stroking his head when
he woke up.
He could only keep his eyes open until he remem-
bered. Then he shut them again wincing.
"Have a good sleep. I must go now. I'll be back
tliough."
"Where are you going?''
"I'll only be gone a Uttle while."
"What about the party?"
"They have gone."
He watched her walk to the glass door with a little
apprehension.
"I left the car keys on the bar, in case you want to go
for a little drive. And a little something for you." She
was gone before he could think of something to say.
He lay for a while trying to figure out what was
happcnmg to him. Trying to make some sense out of it
all. What did she mean she'll be back? Was he going to
be there? Did she know what he was going to do? Car, a
little something?
He got up and walked to die bar, picked up the keys
and fancy key holder, Ferrari. You are kidding. Wheee!
Stephen opening the envelope, pinching out a thin bunch
of crisp, virgin one hundred dollar bills. Counting them,
lips moving quickly nervously. Swallowing some saliva
past the knot in his throat.
Tiptoeing to the side of the bed where the pants lay
on the floor, picked them up and slipped the bills in his
back pocket. Quickly put on his clothes and picked up
the car keys on his way out. At the door he stopped and
took another look at the money.
4S
Makes me wonder whether [ would do It again. She
rhinks I would. She might know. The ugly bitch, what a
dirty trick. Never seen the Ukes of it. It must have been
hate. Get out of here now and forget all about it. Yeah,
yeah! A cave in Spain, or Calabria, What do I want with
a car? Leave the keys here. Goodbye Lady Russell, that
is goodbye world. Shit. Shit, I must think, should not do
anything' rash for which 1 might have regrets later. A
thousand dollars a throw? Must think of old age. Be
prepared and not sorry. She must be loaded. I mean
really loaded. Life is. My chance to get something out of
it and the conscience making Christian noises, wails.
What the hell! And she's not constipated like Myra, A
good heart. Maybe even a good soul. For all I know.
Mavbe ju.st a little spin in a red Ferrari. Go down to
flash it in front of Aris's cave. Get a mortician to go out
at night and dig out Patrick. I want the bones installed
here, won't need to go there everytime 1 want to chat
with him. Could remove the aquarium and hang him
there, a toe bone if he can spare, to be polished and
mounted on a chain for good luck and friendship. I can
have class and style with somebody like Sara with an
understanding heart and a few private banks. Maybe just
a little spin so that she doesn't mind. A little bit more
champagne. I can think better. If only she weren't so
ugly. Outside that is. I must be honest. Inside she's just
like everj'body else. Tender.
Stephen retrieving the champagne bottle from the
fridge, sticking a finger in a dragon's mouth, pouring a
httle in the aquarium and a httlc in his glass, tilting his
head to a sophisticated angle in front of a Munch
hthograph, then out on the terrace with wings in his feet
and jet sound effects from Stephen's mouth. Flying over
the city. Bombing a passerby on the sidewalk with
what's left in the bottle. DIE! You rotten Christian. Sun
going down. Flaming incessant. Bleeding life. Going
down St, Clair Avenue, past Caledonia. Down a slit
between two buildings. Going to heU. Where heU is,
46
where they say peace and freedom is defended. Wait for
me! I want to kill a child too. But no push-button ItiUing
for me, just give me a few cans of the jelly if you can
spare it, and I'll rub it on them with my own Christian
fingers and stick a short fuse in their arse and light them
up for you. What's it matter if it's inhuman? Oh come
on. What's the difference? I can't get the same feeling
from pushing a button. You wouldii't fly twenty thou-
sand feet over a gorgeous fuck and push a button to give
her an orgasm would you? You'd go down there and give
it to her yourself no? I mean shir, a man must have
relativit}'. That's what I need boy. I mean on the
individual base, just to know what little old me is all
about right? I mean I'm no nation, I'm not the free
world, not even democracy for heaven's sake so if I blast
somebody's guts all over the place I want to relate those
guts to my own, not to democracy or the Coca Cola
board of directors. Boy I need relativity real bad! And I
think Lady Russell has Just bought a thousand bucks
worth of relativity- up her old gut. I guess we all need it,
1 need it more than anybody else. Maybe not anybody
yet. I must be born again. Meanwhile I think I'd better
play it cool with old Sara lady and just sit in this tower
like a captured fair maiden, maybe learn spinning to pass
the hours till my lord and master should return and find
solace from her worldly engagements in my fair and
youthful limbs. Letting the empty bottle fall, watching it
with excitement, eyes granulating mouth gaping, a bomb!
A bomb. Weeeeeshhh-bang! Retreating quickly into the
large upholstered living-room, vestiges of a party, in the
butts and lip-smeared cocktail glasses. Elevator doors, the
way out and down. To floor level, maybe world level.
I'm an artist, relating the world to me, not me to the
world. Eeeee! In my own eyes tire universe! Even God!
Sara, Myra, Lynn and Aris,
Stephen answering the phone. Squeaky voice.
"Stephen here."
"Is that you Steve?"
47
"Yes, and who are you?"
"Lynn."
"Ah, yes Lynn. My fairy godmother! I must advise
you I'm already growing donkeys' ears and yes, my feet
are hoofing up. Now ci-y fairy godmother, your child is
turning into an ass."
"I told you! I was right then?"
"You were absolutely right. Twenty minutes, no more.
I love her. Where are you?"
"Oh Steve!"
"I'm not ashamed, it's relativity! Besides everything
we do, I mean just everything we do, we do it because
of fear of death, now did you know that? It's absolutely
incontestable, there is nothing in life, or I haven't found
it yet, so going to bed with Sara mat:es sense. I'll sing it
to you, Sara makes sense, yeah-yeah-yeah I Sara makes
sense, yeah-yeah-yeah!"
"Stop it! What are you going to do now?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know."
"I'U wait for her, like an impatient ardent lover, then
I'll give it to her, right in the caboose, and I'll make her
see China. I'm full of love, she proved it to me. I wasn't
attracted to her, you can believe that, but to whatever
was inside her. Something about God 1 believe."
"She'll ruin you Steve. I know she will. I have seen
her doing it before. She'll keep you for a while, give you
a sports car, money and everything and then she'll cut
you off, just when you need her instead of her needing
you. She'll cut you off like nothing."
"Sounds exciting, just like life. And death. Thanks for
warning me."
"You are quite welcome."
"What are you going to do? Aren't you going to try
and save me?"
"What do you think I'm trying to do?"
"Bur you brought me here you hypocrite. You knew
what was going to happen. How can you make yourself
48
believe now that you care?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry. Anyway I just phoned
because a man was here asking all sorts of questions
about you."
"Asking questions about me? What the hell for?"
"I don't know. He wanted to know if we had any
kind of relationship."
"Did you kick him in the teeth."
"I just told him the truth, that I had just met you this
afternoon. I don't think he believed it though."
"None of his fucking business."
"Steve "
"Yeah, what?"
"Are you married?"
"Yes. why?"
"Not happily married I gather."
"So it didn't turn out."
"It's none of my business either but 1 thought that
might explain it."
"Oh hell, 1 must be stupid on top of everything else.
What the hell are you getting at?"
"Well 1 thought most likely he was a private investiga-
tor. 1 know one, he told me the routine work thev do in
divorce cases. That's why 1 thought I'd better phone
you."
"Oh God, don't tell me that now."
"I may easily be wrong."
"More likely vou are right. The stupid bitch."
"What was 'that?"
"Muttering."
"What?"
"Muttering to myself."
"I'm sorry Steve."
"I think 1 should try suicide. At least consider it."
"Please don't."
"No probably not, I don't think much of it, although
it is a rather extravagant gesture in both the scientific
and religious points of view, but chances are that it
49
would turn out into the greatest letdown, I mean 1 could
take a load of sleeping pills and fall asleep, just fall
asleep, unconscious, and nothing Lynn, NOTHING YOU
HEAR ME! Just hke the fucking sucker 1 have been all
my life, slip away into a blank. HELL! HELL! NO.
NONO! I tell you I won't have it."
Stephen a Wagnerian figure walking stiffly to the
middle of tlie room, phone hanging from his fist and
clanging on the floor, arms outstretched and head trans-
figured, pouring out a yell, an infernal beast clawing his
heart. "Hell, I'll kill him fu-st, me! With my own hands,
I'll kill him- Plain mortal me I'll strangle him, break his
angelic wings right here and now." Stephen yelling away,
a madman searching with his sanguine eyes for his enemy
on the ceiling somewhere, invisible and elusive, and an
excited voice coming up through the curls of the wire,
out of his outstretched arms and fist, calling Steve, Steve
what happened? What's wrong?
Arms coming down now, and head dropping, voice
still calling his name, placing the receiver back to his
head.
"Yes."
"What happened, I heard a terrible noise."
"The phone fell."
"Are you all right?"
"I'm just fine."
"Do vou want me to come up?"
"No Vi\ be all right."
"Are you sure? You won't do anything silly? Please
let me know if I can help."
"Thank you. Bye bye."
I couldn't think of anything silly to do. 1 mean
nothing seems silly to me anymore. Nothmg seems stupid
or smart or tragic or beautiful, not now, maybe later it
viill seem so. Myra sending the hounds after me huh? Is
that silly, smart or beautiful? 1 don't know. So she wants
out. Imagine that. Slie came into our flop house tliat day
to look at the paintings as I came out of the broom
60
closet a.nd she looked rich. Boy she looked rich and
beautiful in that stinking slum.
"Are you Donilo?"
"No ma'am, I'm Steve."
"Oh, I see. Is Donilo, the painter, here."
"No but maybe I can help you."
"I came to look at his painting, I thought I might
want to buy one."
And 1 spread my arms in the narrow hallway indicat-
ing the stupid canvasses hung all over the place, up the
rickety stairs and everywhere and I said, "Here they are.
Ail his work. Very penetrating stuff." And she pene-
trated them with her classic eye up and down the
hallway and I tried to penetrate her with my own
can-fed soul.
"This one here, what does it represent?"
"It's called Economical Universe, you can see from the
efficient avidity of these lines and abundance of empty
space expressing the idea that God created the universe
in a rather parsimonious way. This is a verj- large
painting by the way."
"Yes it is, that's why I'm considermg it, I have a
rather large empn,' wall."
"Eeee-eeh-yes eee-eeh, well down here, in this corner,
the culminating exposition of this theory with the ap-
parition of Adam and Eve as an ultimate proof of God's
avarice. Made out of dust or mud, I'm not sure which,
and anyway, so conceived that once activated these
creatures will be destined to fulfill his work economi-
cally, by multiplying themselves and so on. Rather
original. I like it."
"Yes very. I'U buy it."
"Don't you want to know how much it costs first?"
"1 am told that this is not the way with art."
"Oh indeed, indeed it is so. I'll fetch his notebook and
I'll tell you in a minute. Would you like to come into
the living-room?"
Some living-room, not a place to sit, bacon grease
51
hanging in the air like thick soup.
"I'm afraid 1 can't ask you to sit down. No furniture
as you can see."
"It's quite all right."
"Unless you'd like to squat on the floor, on that
blanket. It's clean."
"No I'll stand. Thank you."
"Here in this pile somewhere. Oh here it is. Econom-
ical Universe . . . Three hundred and eighty dollars. Well
it is rather large."
"Would a cheque do?"
"Yes of course."
And I rolled the universe and took it out to her shiny
Jewish canoe and said bye-bye now, do come again, and
won't you have dinner with me tonight. ! can't really. A
drink then, I'd like to have a chance to get to know you,
artists must have intercourse with art lovers. I mean
communicate. 1 guess that really stumped her, because
she said yes, and I kicked a kid away from her car
without her noticing it, and that night I spent a quarter
of the Economical Uiiiverse on her and afterwards I went
up to the penthouse to assist her with the frame and the
picture and when she was kneeling on the floor I made a
crawling tackle and rolled on the carpet a couple of
times because she was resisting until with dextrous hand
and mouth I got to plug both ends of her so that the
resistance died inside of her like an asphyxiated snake.
And I always found that pulling the elastic down is
similar to some wobbly sticky drawer on a chest, you've
really got to work, first one side then the other one,
mch by hich. And I really kind of loved her in those
days, I didn't really marry her for her money, only I
guess her money made a good idea out of marriage
which otherwise, who knows. And I think she loved me
too. I'm kind of dashing really, sexy too I think, but not
a good har, not yet anyway. So now she wants a divorce.
Maybe since I got a rai.se. No, money is not die object,
money for the sake of money most likely. And now
52
Lynn, just bumped into her in a cemetery, what does she
want, the saving complex maybe? Mother-type I guess.
Please don't save me, world. My mother was saved by a
red-haired Irish priest in the bush, the whole town went
red-headed in a few years, and as I came down the trail
with Judy on my arm I saw them behind a cord of
wood, and he said come here Steve, here take a bottle of
beer and go son. And she said beat it kid, because I was
just staring at them. And then I thought that I was being
punished for my sin and God must have sent his
emissarv' direct, to lay my mother in the hardwood
mulch, which is pretty good for a halfbreed that she was.
A good drinker though. I don't know what they mean
when they talk about the alcohol problem of Indian and
Metis. Nothing wrong with them and alcohol. Boy that
town of ours must have been worse than Sodom, most
of grade one and two were red-headed, fair-complexioned
kids with hair in their teeth. Mixing the blood for a
superior race, and stingy God thinking of something as
inexpensive as sex to populate his economy class uni-
verse. That took the concept of sin out of me anyway, I
had thought I was doing something terrible laying them
on the mulch and sure I was m the unrath of God at least
and that would improve our communion. Hell! If Myra
wants a divorce she can have it. I can go and live with
Aris. Maybe stay here for a little while. Maybe move in
with Lynn and let her save me for a while. And Frank
who got his doodad bit by a pecking chicken while he
was masturbating in the chicken house. Good Lord bad
his fancy ways in those days. That's how I got my
Indian blood in the firs: place. As the ston' goes this
trapper, my great gi-andfather, sold half of Arrow Lake
for a whore and a bottle of whiskey. The whore was a
crazy [ndian and eventually out of that deal came me
Steve Canada, half whiskey, half whore and a dash of
wilderness. Grandpa the trapper died in a well, somebody
must have chucked him down there because he wasn't
drunk, and dad, (a touch of tragedy in the family) died
53
on a very beautiful Hallowe'en day, I mean Hallowe'en is
usually miserable weather, but it was beautiful weather
the day he died in the shit house. Some kids had tied
the bloomy thing to a row of freight cars loading
pulpwood right behind our lot and outhouse, and he was
inside when the thing took off for the mill. Half the
funerals we had in our town people didn't know whether
to laugh or cry, they did both after my father died. The
bloody train just dragged him in his box right along the
bloody back fences of everybody's place and they all
heard him cursing and yelling inside until he reached the
bridge over Rat Creek. Half way across the wire snapped,
like on an elevator and he went crashing to the bottom
of the ravine. And you'll never guess how my mother
died. She fell head first on an axe on the bedroom floor
upstairs. I don't know how she managed that, she was
rather bottom heavy she was, anyway that's what they
said at the inquest, accidental death. I get the feeling
sometimes that I have quite a tradition to maintain, A
bit too much for me maybe. Anyway a divorce sounds
good right now. My imagination must be anaemic, I get
constantly surprised at the things going on around me.
I'm never prepared for the next. One blow after another.
Take this Lady Russell now, 1 thought she was a nut!
Telling me she was going to strip in from of me and
then 1 couldn't resist her. 1 figured that was a hell of a
good way to make me run, but no, she was right and 1
was viTong, dead wrong. The things people will do.
And iMyra asked me one day, how deep do you think
it is inside of me? I said I don't know, I'm not equipped
with sonar down there. .-Vnd she cried, tears streaming
down her face, saying that I was vicious and always
making fun of her and from there on our sexual relations
were never the same. A bit strained. Now she sleeps with
her back turned to me and every time I feel like starting
something 1 have to edge close to her and nudge her a
little in the mandolin with it, and half the time she's
u
liable to say what do you want, or what is it? Which is
totally decompressing. I just wanted to give you a little
tune up darling! Not now, I'm tired. Tired heiJ, put away
my grease gun, no tune ups today. When? Tomorrow
maybe. Maybe uh!
Divorce is a good idea. I don't need three hundred
bucks a month from anybody. I can go to work. I'm
strong, intelligent, young, healthy! It does seem a bit of
a waste of thtrsc qualities 1 must admit. Maybe that's
what's wrong with this world. Guys like me get locked
up in factories and loaded down with mortgages and
wives and kids. I want out I guess, because I'm neither
stupid nor mean enough to fir anywhere at all. And
that's what's wrong with this generation, hippies and the
like, they are neither stupid nor mean so they just can't
fit. I hope there'll be more of them coming, things will
have to change then. Either that or one more go at it
with bombs and gases, the whole works. Mercy annihila-
tion.
Stephen pouring himself a drink and lighting a ciga-
rette, walking around the room and out dowTi a hallway
to the other parts of the apartment, inspecting bed-
rooms, bathrooms, peering inside closets and one door
let him into the studio again, out to the terrace. Walking
the two sides of the building and checking his back
pocket to feel the crisp paper worth a thousand dollars.
Coming back to the living room and finding Sara there,
standing by the bar, pulling a six inch pin out of her
head and removing the large Garbo hat with a tired
expression.
"Oh there you are. You didn't go out?"
Stephen swallowing the drink as though it wete
medicine, watching Sara unfurl the silk scarf from
around her neck and placing it on top of hat and pin on
a bat stool. "You should see the marks you have left on
my neck, 1 bruise easily you know."
"1 wonder what marks you left on me, and I don't
bruise easily."
55
Stephen moving behind the bar, leaning on it and
peering into Sara's face. Her small eyes covered with
crimply skin shingles for a moment and then her fore-
head drcvif up like a Venetian blind opening them.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean it was a traumatic experience for me, I feel
classically depraved."
"Whoa, whoa, what an imagination."
"You are evil Sara, do yon know that?"
She sat down on a stool and placed a cigarette
between her thin clammy lips, lit it and took a long
deliberate draw of smoke from it, hissing it out slowly
from a slit in her mouth, first downward then by
correcting the angle of the slit, upwards and finally
through her rather large hairless nosti-ils.
"Now what makes you think that?"
"I feel it. 1 feel it in my bones!"
"Now darling, how could you feel my evil in your
bones?"
"I don't know, 1 just feel it, that's all."
"I suggest that you feel your own evil darling. Pour
me a drink will you. And anyway the possibility is not a
matter of concern to my mind."
Stephen pouring, "Don't vou know that you will go
to hell?"
"Oh-oh-ohoh-oh! You are very amusing."
"Don't you belive in hell and damnation and eternal
fire and all that jazz?"
"Oh dear, do you?"
"Of course I do, 1 have to, I'm not rich and powerful
like you are. You must be stinking rich?"
"That I am darling."
"You are also attractive. In a way."
"Thank you!"
"I mean, you have class. Class is sexy. I have always
had a kind of erotic attraction for the Queen Mother for
example. I think that's what keeps the Commonwealth
together, still. Now I mean a lot of frustrated jerks Uke
B6
me trying to keq3 their fucking dreams alive."
"A trifle coarse but an interesting hypothesis."
"To tell you the truth 1 would have given it to you
for nothing, free, just to think of all the money you
have makes me want to screw you."
"I don't know whether to be flattered or offended."
"But I won't do it again I tell you. I guess that's why
i have waited here instead of blowing off to spend your
money on some pretty little thing. I wanted to tell it to
you, the way it is. Funny isn't it."
"Alarming, but experience has taught me to be opti-
mistic in such cases."
"No, I'll never be back. Once I go through those
elevator doors I'll never come out of them again."
Lady Russell showing a little distress, [here are ex-
ceptions to the rule. I'm about the commonest exception
to every damned rule there is. I'm like Macbeth really,
Caesarian and all. They say my mother didn't want to
have me, and believe it or not there was nothing the
doctor could do to induce me to come out of her. They
had to tie her up because she knew they were going to
open her up to save me, and she, knowing better for my
sake at least, put up a fight, she could fight that woman,
very strong she was, wild as a wildcat in heat. She
knocked two nurses and a doctor out cold before they
were able to tie her down, and dad had to come into the
delivery room, drunk and laughing all the time to help
them because they couldn't do anything with her. And
finally they did, and got me out of there and to this day
I don't know whether I was lucky or not. And now
Lady Russell thinks I'm just talking through my hat, but
I know that when I say something I stick to it, not
because of pride, hell I don't have an ounce of it
anywhere on me, but because I want to know that I can
be master of my own miserable lot. She thinks she's got
a leash on me with this thousand dollars and Ferrari bit,
and if I want some more I have to come back for It,
crawling. She'd like that I'm sure. I guess that's why she
57
gave me the money in the first place, to have me go out
and have a hell of a good time, and then to have me
crawl back to her. Nosir.
Stephen pulling the money out of his pocket holding
it in front of his nose and sending Lady Russell's mind
out in search of reassuring answers.
"You think this will bring me back don't you. You
must have developed a system. I guess you like it the
second time more when they come crawling. That's why
you left isn't it? To tempt me! But 1 didn't bite, did I?"
Sara's mummified face finally getting some colour,
heart pumping fury through the small hardened vessels,
liquefying.
"Who told you this? Was it Lynn Rennie?"
"No, nobody told me, don't worry. She doesn't know
you as well as I do."
Lady Rus.sell gettmg up and walldng stiffly away,
stopping in the middle of die hving-room and standing
there for a minute with her back turned to Stephen.
"Get out!"
"Not yet."
"Get out I said!"
Lady Russell turning around, a mean streak in her on
top of everything else. Stephen moving slowly towards
her, smihug strangely.
"Don't come near me, I warn you!"
"Oh come on Sara, I feel sexy."
Her face quivering all over the place, knees buckling,
eyes darting evaluating various possibilities of defense.
She makes an attempt to run out of the room, and
Stephen reaches her with one leap, arms around her,
mouth screaming and legs off the floor kicking.
"I'm going to screw you Sara. Heh-heh-heeee."
Steve giggling carrying the screaming kicking bundle
down the hallway to the studio, repeating over and over,
"I'm going to screw you Sara, I'm going to screw
everybody! Everybody! Eeeeeveryboddddddyyyy!"
SS
SIX
"So you see Aris, my dear friend and son of a. bitch, I
finally feel like somebody has turned the light on,
inside of me. Would you say that's kind of strange?"
"Come on Steve baby, pal and sucker emeritus, dish
our the dough will you. Pile it up here on the palm of
my hand bill by bill. I'm so excited and tense you
couldn't pass a needle up my arse. Sweet Jesus show it
to me at least."
"First 1 have to finish my story. And don't interrupt
me or I'll just get up on my legs and walk out of here."
"Christ no. I'll listen. Hurrv up will you."
"All right! So I promise Myra I'll commit adultery as
soon as I can with somebody else, because she just
wouldn't have the idea of naming Lady Russell corre-
spondent. I really think she is scared of her. She will
fork out five thousand dollars as soon as the deal goes
through and then I'm on my own. So tonight we are
going to have a nice quaint httle party here, and if we
remember there will be some pictures taken after which
I'll collect half of it and the other half after the
completion of the legal paraphernaha. Then mv dear
friend I shall retire in my private stateroom for a little
trip to the sunnier part of this globe and you shall never
see or hear of me again."
"Is that it?"
"That's it."
"Now cough it OUT, gimme-gimme-gimme!"
Aris's big fleshy hand extended and paddling the air
between them, eyes burning and tongue sticking out.
Stephen pulling out a bundle of crisp bills and placing
diem in his hand.
S9
"A thouuuu-sajid dollars!"
"Nine hundred and ninery-two, I sent Lady Russell
five and three this morning, I didn't have any change last
night."
"Wow!"
Aris speechless, in the middle of die room which has a
new cardboard partition, Stephen leaving him there and
inspecting the labels and the engineering of it. Shaking it
a httle to test its sohdity and stress ratio, going in past
the same grey CPR blanket he had given Aris years ago
when he had worked as a porter for the CPR on the
Toronto to Winnipeg run. Dark inside and fresh smell of
feet and gut hair like a thin onion skin on a volume of
yellowing, fading, previous testimony of presence and
bodily functions. Phew! Stephen inspecting the toilet and
sink and the sweating cast iron pipe coming down from
the center of a stratified expanding stain in the ceiling,
coming straight down behind the cigarette scarred top of
the tank and then after a confluence of y's and elbows
proceeding to immersion in the cement floor.
Stephen moving to the small window hung high on the
cement wall. Attempting to open it, and in failing to do
so tearing down the tattered greasy plastic. Under a
shower of warm fresh air from the weedy garbage
littered back yard. Breathing in with rehef and zest.
Moving to the iron bed now, where the form of Aris is
impressed on the gutted mattress, and unfolding the grey
sheet which is twisted around so many times as ro look
like a piece of ship's rope. Stephen, swinging the sheet
hits the mattress with it, blowing fluff and crumbs out
of tlie depression, taking a peek at the underside of the
mattress by lifting it up at its edge, and considering the
rust patterns of springs and coils printed on it. Then lets
it fall back and spreads the grey sheet on it, smoothing
out the million creases with his hands and then taking
another look. Tilting his head and twisting his mouth.
Sitting carefully on the edge of it and then lifting his
legs in and lying down, bouncing a bit till it sounds like
60
an old truck. Aris coming in through the blanket with
the money in one fist and looking at Steve.
"What are you doing?"
"Cleaning it up a little, making it suitable for sex. This
orange box will have to go Aris. 1 don'r go for Swedish,
contemporary, whatever. I like the split level garden
though, nice for afternoon cocktail parties if we can
think of a way to crawl up the hole. Ladies first."
Aris picking up the piece of plastic from the cement
floor, taking a quick look then tossing it out tlirough the
empty window into the cocktail garden. Walking to the
bed and standing over Stephen he lets the bills fall one
by one like leaflets on top of Steve.
"Eeee-eh-eh." Steve lifting his head and looking over
them and across to his feet. "Warm feeling Aris, warm
and protective." Arts bends down and with hand like a
steam shovel gathers a bunch of them, lifts them up like
a crane and then lets tliem snow on him again. Now he
bounces around the room on a pogo stick and weppp-
ppeeee! Then comes back, hurriedJy picks them up again
one by one, stacking them neatly on the other hand and
rushes off with them pursued by Stephen. Up the stairs
goes Axis kicking and Stephen with a hold on his pants
and foot.
"Let go! Let go!"
"Ahaaaah! Watch it will you. Give it back to me!"
"Let go or I'll kill you."
And up on the sidewalk looking down the stairwell, a
crowd of people gathering, the flower kids, costumes of
defeat. The litter fluttering waste of affluence up Main
Street, the bits collecting in the gutter of fecund society
Uke Lazarian crumbs of a rich dead God's feast, flipping
winds of haste and Yorkville a lazaret of screwball
sanity. Mammon's undigested excrement, gathering on
the wall to see two beasts down the cement steps,
tangled hissing and grunting, blood pouring out of their
teeth and fists pounding, exposed torsos out of tattered
shirts gleaming in the sun.
61
A fist of ten and twenty dollar bills exploding and
letting the petals scatter as in fall on the grunting
animals and covering the stairs in blood. A guy's skinny
hand reached down to pick one up crunched to a pulp
by a boot. Aris in a sitting position now on the narrow
stairs witli Stephen's head locked on his chest with
folding arms and Aris taking a minute to cast a glimpse
up and around to see nobody sneaking down to gather
spoils of the battle. Then a terrific spasm in his uhest
like an explosion in his lungs and a long screeching yell
pouring out of the wilderness of his head and someone
amongst the spectators commented, that was a bail clasp!
Steve's head emerging grinning and bloody among the
cheer of the crowd, wiping some of the blood onto his
sleeve and licking his upper lip. Hands like a thousand
birds picking the bills and wiping some off on his pants.
Aris sitting and trj'ing to breathe while holding the fork
of his pants. When all the bills are safely in his pockets
Steve retreats back inside followed a minute later by
defeat personified. Arms down limp to the sides, and
smears of blood on his hairy chest.
"That was the meeeanest! Filthiest! Most despicable
trick ever!"
"Eeeh eeeh! Eeeh, it was wasn't it? You taught me
that one. I'm going to castrate you with my very own
fluoridated teeth the next tune. Eeee eeheehee! Just Uke
dogs."
Stephen going through the blanket, running water In the
dirty sink, looking at his face through the grease and
dried out spit on the cracked mirror. Washing his face
and splashing water all over himself. Aris coming in with
his tattered shirt hanging from his hand and soaking it
under the faucet to wipe his chest and neck. Then
tossing it up out the open window.
"Haven't you got a towel?"
"No, no towels."
"Oh hell, look at the mess. How the hell can I go out
now?"
62
"The pants are all right, just a bit of biood on your
arse where you sat on it. Looks like you had your
period."
Stephen going to the corner beside the bed, pulling
out clothes from a large cardboard box, looking at each
piece and then tossing them on the bed in disgust. Every
piece out and then into reverse.
"Haven't you got anything decent to vi-ear? What's
this? Pants without a zipper? Ladies slacks?"
"Very good material though."
"You mean you wear these?"
"Only on special occasions, they're kind of dressy.
Nobody notices that they haven't got a zipper. A little
tricky and embarrassing though in pubhc places, unless
you have a dime. The last time I went in and started
pulling them down the guy next to me edged away and
then sneaked up the stairs before he had even finished."
"Eeeh-eee! You could snip a hole through, with the
scissors."
"You can wear them if you like."
"No thanks, I'll wear this khaki shirt. Wash my pants
before the blood dries up."
"just burn a bullet-like hole in the middle of the
stain, it's fashionable around here now. The Vietnam
line. Guys pay twenty bucks for a pajama shirt imported
from Saigon. Some are fakes, homemade. Just burn a
hole with a cigarette."
"You're kidding? You mean they really wear them?"
"Yup! This guy came back from out west with one,
and ever^'body wanted one right away. Some are pretty
gory I tell you."
"Yikes." Stephen in his underwear, rubbing the
material under the running water and being careful that
the money doesn't drop out of his pocket. Aris sitting in
bed, smoking a cigarette and watching him. Quiet in here
because this place is three quarters under ground, and
that window out there is just out of this world. Sounds
from the countrj' coming down from it. WhistUng from a
63
clothesline and birds in the distance making noises like
the teeth of plastic combs. Some kind of thrush. I don't
know mv birds very well. Except those that stay up here
in the winter, like jays and whiskey jacks, chickadees,
and crows. Too many in the summer. Of course I can
tell a robin. I can't tell those out there now. Nice
though. Reminds me of home. Not that nice I guess. But
fresh air coming in at last in this tomb. This toilet really
works. Good solid plumbing. And very convenient right
by the bed.
Reminds me of this old fellow up north. Old Jack. He
has been old for a long time, and some thirty years ago
when he was as old as ever he decided to have a woman
come up from town and kind of take care of him, do
the cleaning and cooking and whatever because he was
getting so old and lonely hving out there on one side of
Poverty Road, but no v/oman would come because he
didn't have a well by the house in chose days, and
nobody wanted to go fetch the water down at the creek
in the winter, and maybe even summer. He tried for a
few years but woman after woman came and went and
never stayed. So he got this other old fellow to come
over one day, cut a branch off a hazel bush and walk
around slowly until the rod pulled down. There is your
water Jack! Right down here, and he scraped the dirt
with the heel of his boot. Dig here, lots of water. And
he dug one, he hit rock, then he dug another one and
another one, they say he dug wells and wells one after
another for ten years before he got water. He kept
hitting this rock. The first time at fourteen feet, he
though: it was a small one so he just filled it all up again
and started digging another one a few feet away. Eight-
een feet and he hit the rock again. This time instead of
being flat, it was slanting down only summer was gone
and he quit. A few guys came over in the spring to see
the rock and from the way it was pitching away from
the house and downhill they figured that another twenty
feet would clear it for sure. Still plenty close to the
64
house Jack and there is water down there all right. A
nice stream, it's running downhill this way. You can't
miss it. And he started digging again, this time he got
down twenty feet before he hit the same blasted rock.
This time he had almost cleared it because it was
dropping off very steeply. They say he was the best well
digger in the whole region. Dug two wells every summer
for years. As soon as the frost came out of the ground hi
the late spring the whole town would say, old Jack is
gonna want to start digging soon. He was a little skinny
stringy fellow, when he pulled his shirr sleeves up you
thought he was made of old ropes inside mstead of
bones and he had a great big nose, red and blue and
yellow lumps growing out of it and getting bigger each
yeai- till it looked like a bowl of fruits hangmg from his
face. But he had the small sunken bright eyes of a sow
bear, he looked at you and you got a cold stream
running down your back and tail. Anyway he'd come
out and start his well. He'd start it plenty big, sometimes
round sometimes square. If he had tamarack posts and
steel rims from old cart wheels he'd make it round I
guess. If not square. He'd dig down in the soft sand
about eight or ten feet until he couldn't throw the dirt
up any further, then he would narrow up the hole
leavmg a ledge on all sides so as to support two or three
wide wooden planks and then when he got down another
two feet or so he'd shovel the dirt on them for a while
and then get up on it and shovel it out. Then once in a
tt^ile he'd have to come out and move it away from the
side of the hole. When the hole go: pretty deep he'd put
out four scantlings, down on each corner if he'd started
a square well and rhen nail the board on them ro hold
the loose sand up. If it were round he'd use the
tamarack poles and the rims. When he got down to
around twenty feet he would have to tie a rope at the
top of the well witli a pail hanging from it, go down the
ladder, fill the pail then go up again and pull the pail up,
then go down again. PaiJ by pail. Down into the cool
66
damp and up in the hot summer, up and down, sweating
dirt from his face and arms and eyes bUnking out of
what looked like a bone of the earth. I'd watch for
hours at a time every time I had to go by there. I would
sit on my bicycle with one foot on the fence for a while,
watching the silent hole for the moment he'd stick his
head up like a groundhog and then come out, shake the
dirt from his clothes like a dog and start pulling the
rope. It never occurred to me to help him while 1 was
there. Nobody did. The whole thing was so pathetic I
guess I didn't want to spoil it. And he dug and dug all
around his place until he got water. Only this time he
couldn't get any woman to come out and do the
household chores because while he was digging wells for
all those years people got accustomed to electricity and
he didn't have any. By the time the hydro line went by
his place and he got electricity they didn't want to go
because he didn't have inside facilities. So after a few
years of trying, he never gave up right away the old
fellow, nosir, finally he got a plumber to come and
install a pail-a-day right smack in the middle of the
bedroom, which even the plumber who was from out of
town thought was a good idea because it was right in
front of his bed and him being old and everything. . . .
So now the women started to come out again to his
place and they would take one big look at the shiny
white Bowl in the middle of the room and leave.
I left since then, but I have heard that he did move it,
built a small addition for it, and then everything was all
right until they started asking where the water was, and
he pointed at the well not a hundred feet from the
house and of course they wouldn't have that now. Old
Jack must be a hundred and fifty years old by now if he
is still alive, and he just had a hell of a lot of trouble
keeping up with the times. He's getting further behind all
the time. 1 thmk 1 have the same kind of trouble. I don't
think anybody notices it really until another generation
comes up but 1 guess you start getting behind things
66
from the time you are born and by the time you get to
be eighty you really notice it.
This old Jack must have thought himself the grand
Duke of AJmaquin when he had the whire bowl installed
in his shack, because he was still relating that thing to
the times when if you went somewhere with the team of
oxen you had to bring along saw and axe to cut your
way through the bush. And these here days are mavbe
some kind of new pioneer days with me and Aris ten
years behind and not making any headway at all.
Steve back inside his pants and out where Aris was
beginning to work on a canvas, profiles of people in
assorted candy colours, kind of laying down like cards
on shelves and a deep blue background of mfinit>'. Other
paintings stacked on the floor against the wall, and one
great big one of men all covered in what looks like
dripping tar, standing up on a chair. Aris busy with tins
and jars of various sizes, stirring the liquid, looking at
Steve as though he didn't know him. Sittmg on the
rocking chair and then getting quickly up again and
pinching the wet seat of his pants away from the skin.
Standing behind Aris, smoking and tilting his head,
"What the hell is that supposed to represent?"
"What do you think?"
"People on shelves?"
"Right!"
"No, come on, really, I don't understand art.'"
"WcU that's what it is."
"Aris, do you really consider yourself an artist?"
"Yup, Why?"
"Just wondered, you don't look like an artist."
"What do I look like?"
"A butcher, or a voyageur maybe! 1 don't know. Not
an artist."
Door open and getting dark out. Night most likely. A
new bulb burning overhead. Aris with his canvas propped
up on a homemade easel with this side up lettering on
one side, by the light coming down from up there
67
Croesusland. Polyphemus's cave. And those out there
who didn't make It to Boobieland squatting on the
sidewalk, hanging from doorways. Dopey drones peeping,
freaky peeping out of peeping dreambones and acid
kettles. Evacuated gold brick sentinels, joyless sentinels
of a peg-boy ship. Peeping out of dark. A moan of
mutiny from this chnk, and the four year skipper brave
on the bridge to hold the joy-knob on course. Towards
the brink on a placid ship on a gallop-polling-:amed
chartered sea. Computerized trendwinds swelling projected
quarterly sales up, up! Up and away to Boobieland
where the intestinal bacteria has produced a better living
mechanism to provide itself with grub, unsuspectingly
brave fierce and deluded. An asseteria full of America
kissers and these here eyeboards and blades with asses on
sling peeping behind curtain fall to see the military
generals can'ied on shoulders of the arrived and would be
arrived of Boobieland. I like these kids but by gum they
are going to be clobbered for sure because God's got a
blue helmet and goggles and a night stick! Right there at
the Golden Gates and gold barbed-wire. Off hniits signs
in heaven. Man can't save himself they say, not anymore
than a hog can hope to become anything else than ham
and bacon some time or other. Earmarked. Hell!
"Aris me friend, don't you think painting is a bit of a
waste of time and effort."
Aristides turning, squinting, and wiggUng a n,vo foot
long brush in front of Stephen's face. "Well I'm not
going to get into another fight with you today. I'm just
going to go on my way and you do what you please. So
there."
"No I mean a waste of time period!"
"Maybe it is maybe it ain't. And then maybe every-
thing might turn out to be a waste of time. So I waste
my time my way and you waste it your way."
"1 don't want to waste time. Precious thing tune is!
That's why I won't work or do anything for a living
anymore, because that's seUing time really. Isn't it?"
as
"I guess so, buc what if you don't have anything
belter to do with it?"
"Oh come on. I mean just sitting on a sidewalk is
betrer than work. I must meditate. That's what Aris, I
must meditate."
"Oh-oho-ohoh-oh."
"Don't iaugh now."
Aris with his hands outstretched toward Stephen Hke
bumpers. "No don't you start iiining me again. God you
are touchy!"
"I'm not touchy."
"Are all half breeds and Indians as violent as you
are?"
"I'm not violent!"
"You got me into three fights in two days, brief but
murderous. Now I didn't start them, you did! Wouldn't
you call that a little indicative of a bellicose nature?"
"You said things and did things that brought them up.
It's your fault not mine. Like saying that I should kill a
little old lady with a hammer." Stephen taking big steps
around the room like an oldtime waltzer or a werewolf,
slashing the air with an invisiHe hammer, going wham!
Wham! Face of late T.V. Fright night special, just
swinging his hammer all over the place and Aris with a
frozen brush sticking out of his fist watciiing him, hitting
the air and mumbling through hate gravy in his mouth,
saliva dripping from the corners of the mouth and dark
shrunk pupils in his head like a rabid dog, still going
smash, crash! Bang! Teeth grinning and blood on his
hands, Aris after him with the brush, take it easy Steve,
hey Steve, Steve! For Christ sake what's the matter with
you, and Sieve stopping in a hunched position, looking
down, staring at the cement and panting. Aris looking at
the cement floor and at him, not daring to come too
close, watching him straighten up and turning to him
with a far off grin on his face,
"Cripes. What you getting so excited for?"
"What?"
69
"Hell Steve, what's the matter with you? Are you
going out of your pointed mind?"
"A bit of superb acting I would say, wouldn't you?"
"God I thought you were sick or something."
"I just can't stand violence. Must put an end to all the
violence."
"That will be the day."
Aris a bit shook up, going back to his canvas, looks at
it with a tired expression and decides to quit. Stephen
sitting on the rocking chair watching him and smiling to
himself.
"What have you got to smile about?"
"I wa^ just seeing myself in a far-off land, sitting on a
rock on the side of a mountain and eating figs and
bread."
"Sounds terrific."
"Hey Aris. I'm hungry." Stephen bounced off the
chair, stuck a hand in his pocket and pulled out his
money under the keen interest of Aris. "Here is two
hundred bucks Aris, no here, three hundred. Buy food
and booze and invite everybody to the castle. Every-
body! Just fill up the joint to the rafters. The king wants
a party! Tell them to come to the King's party down in
Polyphemus's cave."
"I thought you'd never get around to it. Steve pal, I
take back everything I have ever said about you. Or
thought. You are just a great guy. Mmmmm-ha!
Mmm-m-ha!" Kisses on both cheeks, Steve touched, Aris
looking at the money and his face making room for the
greatest grin. Big red leathery hands with tufts of short
hair on every knuckle dividing the bills, putting some in
his back pocket.
"Eh, what are you going to do with those?"
"You don't think I'll spend all this loot on these
creeps around here?"
"Aris I want a sweU party, get lots of bodies in here,
maybe soak up some of the arthritis and consumption
swamped in these here walls, besides though I'm a httle
70
conservative I like iiippies. I like their philosophy about
sex anyway. Why can't you like them?"
"Oh I like them. Never had one of them in here
because they mistrust me. After all I wa.s here long
before they moved in. Maybe that's vi'hy. I'm not against
them. Hell no!" He took the money from his back
pocket and slapped it onto the rest in his hands. "Here,
I'll show you! I'll give them a party like they never saw
before."
n
seven
Stephen enthroned on the rocking chair under the
painting of people in tar. The first guests hesitating at
the door, peering into the dark and sniffing the air.
"Come in! COME IN!"
More people coming down the stairs and shoving the
hesitant in. One stuck his head in dubiously and asked,
"Is this where the hash is flowing tonight?"
"Free hash, and free ass, I hope."
More coming now, finding places to sit or stand,
forming groups and a tall musketeer going around staring
at the walls going "wow-ee! Just look at this place." His
voice brayed as if he was talking through a kazoo.
Suddenly he tore out of the place and came back a
minute later with tin cans of paint and brushes. Others
followed with more paint, posters, magazine covers;
rushing to the walls to stake claims, starting to paint
everything in sight.
Stephen watching appreciatively. Place buzzing with all
kinds of activities, getting crowded now and more
coming. Screams on the stairs, a big clankety racket as a
steel keg of beer bounced down the cement steps with
Aris after it, steering it inside stopping in front of
Stephen.
"Hey Steve, brought you some beer!" Big grin then a
worried look around. "What the hell is going on here?"
Looking at the walls, tits, belly buttons, hands and feet
popping out of cans, splashes of luminous paint on the
walls, and guys behind the partition painting the bowl
and pipes in tiger stripes.
"What the hell? . . ."
"They're doing a good job Aris. Brightening up the
72
place."
The musketeer is suddenly elevated over the crowd,
riding on someone's shoulders and going in circles around
the light, painting a spiral, going "Groow, groovy."
Crow-d swaying evading the drips of black paint, pressing
some of the artists against their own murals.
A guy came down with a case of booze and never made
it past the entrance. Bottles of gin changing hands quickly.
Aris all excited, yelling and trying to shove people out but
not getting anywhere. Cardboard partition failing in one
piece on the heads of those behind it and being pushed up
again from the inside. Aris tried to shut the door but
someone yelled, "Open up! Aris! It's me Chris. I've got
more booze!"
Chris bearer of booze in with another case. Aris brought
one bottle to Steve who was standing on a crate now
observing the confusion from safety.
"Nice party you have here Aris,"
Aris opening a white envelope. "1 got two ounces
Steve." Offermg it to Steve.
Steve declming with a papal gesture. "Pass it around
Aris. Multiply it."
Aris taking another envelope from his pocket and trying
to save some for a rainy day, but bird fingers from around
him reached over and pecked away.
"Hey wait a bloody minute. Don't sbove you sonofa-
bitch. Watch it!"
"Don't get excited Aris. You'U spill it."
A blond with luminous paint in her hair is pressed
against Steve's legs, and she sits on his toes. Stephen
wiggles his toes. She looks up.
"Come up, stand here with me."
A smile.
Steve and strange girl on the crate, arms around her to
support her. Not much room she says. Crowd swaying
suddenly as the beer keg is svvoing over Aris's head, gurghng
suds pouring down his open, gasping mouth and running
down his chest. Shouts and hurrays, and boos when the
73
keg comes finally down again. Smoke coming up to form a
layer over the bobbing heads.
"What's your name?"
"Meta."
"That's nice."
A bottle crashed to the floor and a girl screamed.
Followed by laughter.
"My name is Stephen Canada. Hee-keek! True."
The musketeer rode again above the crowd and started
painting the light bulb which went pop. Only the faint
light coming from the street now. Sounds of strange
goings-on down there.
Aaah! Stupid! Get your hands off me! Oooooh,
OOOOOOH. I beg your pardon! Eeeeehh-eeeee!
Aris's voice thundering above the racket. "Watch that
waU!!"
Then the sound of cloth being torn followed by the
sound of a face bemg slapped.
"Something going on down there Meta!"
"Eeeek-keeek!"
"You laugh funny Meta. I like you."
"Do vou mind doing it on a crate?"
"Mind what?"
Stephen holding it in one hand and with the other
bringing Meta's hand over to feel it. "Mind this."
"Aaaah!Put itaway!"
"Hey don't push please. Oooo ! "
Stephen falling in the dark, landing on people. A bit of
panic.
"Hey! What the hell? Excuse mc please."
Deciding to take his chances down here. Feeling some-
thing soft, examining it with his hand.
"Hey fella. Oops 1 beg your pardon."
Moving through the crunch, feeling his way, saying
mentally this one no, and this one no, and what is this?
This one yes! I think. But what is this?
"Is it taken?"
"Move on you jerk."
"Aris?"
74
"Steve?"
"Yeah!"
"I'll be done in a minute Steve. Here have a drink
meanwhile."
"Hey who do you think T am?"
"You are a sweet girl, now don't pull out!"
A slap. Mademoiselle in distress.
"Aris you uncouth bastard. That's no way to treat a
lady."
"Oh shit!"
Move on Aris. You're not a gendeman. Move on and
turning to her, may I help you? He's a rather crude man he
is. What's your name? I wish i could see you a httle better,
you must be beautiful. You feel nice. Here here don't be
upset. No harm done, I believe 1 came just in time. Want a
drink?
"Please!"
"You'll have to drink it from the bottle I'm afraid, no
place for etiquette here."
"Awful place."
Took a drink though. And asked, "Who are you?"
"I'm a prince, European prince!"
"Oh go on."
"Truly, I'm also your host, and will feel miserable if you
are not having a good time."
"I don't like this stuff for sure, what is it, gasoline?"
"Just gin I'm afraid."
"He ripped my panties off."
"He did? I don't beheve It. I mean it is unheard of!"
"He did though."
"Let me take a look."
"Ugh ugh."
"Oh he did tool Unbelievable!"
"You are not any better."
"You feel nice though. My what roundness, firm, I'll
buy you silk ones if you permit me."
"Mm no you won't."
Gently manoeuvering her mind back on the right track.
76
With one ear following Aris's progress through the
crowd. More rearing, some screams and sounds of faces
being slapped. A girl weeping, being escorted out, and
others trying to come in.
And she is a little short which makes it difficult, but
now she is helpful, on her toes. Rewarding struggle. And
these miniskirts are dandy. I like miniskirts for all occa-
sions, and Indian-style aprons even better.
And wc were six years old, in a barn. Told her to take
her clothes off because we were doctors. Me and Frank. He
was all sex and pimples as far as I can remember. Lie down
now we said, and being scared of doctors she did. But
being only students we examined it with two short sticks,
poking at it and everything. Then Frank being rather
unimpressed stuck his stick in like a flag pole and she
screamed, and from that time I have a certain reverence for
it. And that silly girl told her mum, and soon the whole
town was laughing at us, telling us that we would go to jail
and some fucking bastard even told me that God was all
upset. And once in a while I still think about it. Like now.
And this pethaps is not the proper way,
"You still haven't told me your name."
"Kate."
"Oh Kate!"
An now it's better. And I gave Kate a string of pearls,
they came out of me one by one, and she took them with
a sigh and a violent shudder. Sobs came out of her mouth
like large bubbles from the depth of her soul and dark
mystery of life. Oh Kate stop this violent motion. There
are people. And one of them behind Stephen shoved him
rudely and protested.
"Hey! Goddamn creep, you knocked my hash down!"
"Pardon me your cuntship!" And forgetting his princely
manners he struck him two-fisted on the side of the face.
More screams, real panic this time and Stephen is hit
from behind, more imprecations and fists flying, and Aris
letting out a chilling yippeeeee!
Going through the crowd like a tank, shoving smas hing
76
yelling advancing towards Stephen and Stephen towards
him, climbing over rhe bodies of the fallen.
More room now with the commotion pouring out into
the street and in the middle of the room, Aris and Steve
taking a minute off from the battle to grin at each other.
"Steve my boy I like you!"
"Same here Aris!"
And just as Aris aimed a fist at Stephen, Stephen
crashed an empty bottle of gin over his head. Aris stag-
gered. Shook his head incredulously and squinted at
Stephen who was still holding the neck of the bottle in his
hand.
•'Ahhhh Steve! That's not fair! "
"Christ Aris, you must have a skull like a Neanderthal
man!"
Half of the defeated crowd still trying to escape through
the door, and then suddenly they are turned around as
there is a great commotion and sirens screaming outside.
A flashlight beam bounced in the dark and two cops
were framed In the doorway. "This is ±e police. Nobody
move!"
Steve and Aris tearing through the partition, pulhng a
guy down from the window because he was taking too
long, kicking his legs over everybody's head and others
trying to catch his feet so as to give him a push. Now Steve
is hoisted up and shoved through by Aris. Out in the dark
garden checking his bottle and his pant pocket, pulling
Aris out of the hole and then giving a hand with another
one and another one until a beam of light comes up to
their faces a voice saying hey you, don't move! And who
moved? We shot out of there and across fences and down
alleys like outlaws. Stopping after a while to take a slug in
the dark. Whoooo boy, that was close. I should say. You
and your bloody parties! Not very respectable at all. Gee
whiz we weren't doing anything wrong. Just drinking and
that. You'd think they'd let us have some legitimate fun.
Maybe they didn't know it was legitimate. Hell they
should check first.
77
"Hey Steve, what do we do now? "
"Wc become fugitives."
"Come on. I mean I can't go back there tonight."
"I suggest you drop in on Lady Russell. She'll put you
up for the night."
"You think she would? "
"Worth giving it a try."
"WhatwiUI say?"
"Give her a buzz, cell her you are an artist looking for a
sponsor."
"At this rime of night?"
"Artists don't chink about things like that. Try to think
like an artist."
Aris thinking, plotting avenues of hope to success and
riches. A gallery and champagne glasses tinkling. . . . What
a break. Out here amongst shadows of old cars and sagging
garages it seems a world or two away.
"Here, give it another swig. Get some courage. She isn't
that bad actually, suitable for marriage. Good companion-
ship and door opening to high places."
"I'll do it."
"Atta boy! Just don't tell her you know me."
"Oh don't worry. I won't kick on an empty stomach. I
need help. Boy I need help!"
"She is a patron of the arts Aris. I guarantee you she'll
listen verv attentively. Here let's finish this up so we can
go to a phone booth without being molested by the
police."
Me and Aris a bit like soldiers of defeat, walking down
this narrow dark lane with hearts like fat cats crawling in
the darkness and inside the theatre of thoughts a wTccker
yard with late model dreams gutted out and rusting and
new ones being built from pans like Frankensteins of
hope. And I know Aris will get his jalopy going someday,
become a great artist, world renowned, maybe he and
Lady Russell will go for a world cruise and the people that
run the factories will read it in the morning paper.
Well knaivii Toronto artist Aristides Bowels Buckney
78
and Mrs. Buckney, formerly Lady Sara Russell, left Canada
today for a world cruise. Mrs. Buckney denied rumours
that their long journey was necessitated by Mr. Buckney 's
health. This is a purely sentimental journey, she told
reporters and friends gathered at the dockside, a chance to
dedicate a year of our lives to ourselves. So be ir.
"Aris my friend I see a bright future for you if you play
your cards right."
"I hope so."
"I'm positive."
And out on College Street we cornered a telephone
booth, Aris inside under glass.
"Lady Russell? My name is Aristides Bowels Buckney.
You don't know me Lady Russell. Nobody knows me.
Yet! But I'm an artist Lady Russell, a great artist I think
and I have heard that you are a patron of the arts."
Aristides Bowels Buckney indeed. He'll do!
79
Eiglit
Stephen left Aris at the corner of College and Yonge,
left Aris and another fifty dollars. Generous heart and Aris
needed some money to buy a new shirt and trousers for
the appointment with Lady RusseU in the afternoon of the
following day. Must make a good impression Steve. Yeah
sure, but don't go there all spruced up and without a
crease like a cheap Woolworth gigolo. Play it cool man.
Walk into the lion's mouth with a halo over your head. A
bit of artist negligence about your person will give the
touch. Yeah, yeah! Sure sure!
Drove home in a cab, tiptoed through the hall and
found Myra packing suitcases. Threw one glance my way
hke 1 was a mere noise. A mean shadow under her chin.
Eleven thirty and she is packing. Things streuii all over the
living-room and a bunch of legal papers on the coffee
table.
Steve watching her for a minute and then moving to the
bar, casting a forlorn look at the Donilo painting beside
him. Watching her making quick martial trips to her bed-
room and carr\'ing clothes, folding them in, pressing them
down and looking about for a shoe to fill in the sides. A
mean shadow under her chin as I said, funny thing, you
can tell by the shadows on one's face what kind of mood
she's in. When she's in a miserable mood she's all shadows.
"What are you doing Myra?"
"Packing, can't you see?"
"Can I help?"
"No thanks. You can sign these papers if you like."
Stephen walking to the coffee table, a side glance at the
papers, picking them up gingerly and with a worried look.
"What are they?"
80
"Application for a divorce."
"Application fot a divorce. Is that how it is done?"
Myra shaking her head, going on wath her packing, a
little bit more shady under the chin,
"I'm going to obtain a divorce through Scotland, my
lawyer tells me. It rakes a while and it is kind of compli-
cated but legal and they guarantee I'll obtain it."
"Scotland, my God." Taking a quick drink. "What if I
don't sign?"
"Up to you." She slammed the suitcase shut with final-
ity. "It doesn't really matter anymore. I'm leaving tomor-
row. If you sign I'll give you the money you have asked
for, if you don't you'll get nothing. It's up to you."
"And where are you going?"
"To Israel."
"TO ISRAEL!"
"Yes, to Israel."
"You're kidding! I mean why to Israel?"
Myra walks over to the coffee table, picks up the papers
and holds tbem out ro Steve as though it was an old
newspaper. "You want to sign or not?"
"If I don't sign would you take me to Israel with you?
There are great caves in Israel!"
"Sign or don't sign, then go where you like."
"I'U sign. Where is the money?"
"First sign!"
"You don't trust me? I'm your husband. Let me just see
it, OK?"
"Ugh ugh, and you talk of trust! " She went back to the
chesterfield where her suitcase was and her bag and came
back with a cheque in her hand. She held it in front of
Stephen. "Here. Certified!"
"Gimme a pen quick!"
Back to the purse and bringing him a pen. Myra's finger
pointing at the crosses on die dotted lines. Four signatures.
And another tall drink. Reading the cheque, folding it in
his black wallet and a smile.
"I'm sorry our marriage didn't turn out. I really am
81
Myra."
"Huh!"
"I mean I really thought you only wanted sex, or
needed it and I needed security. What did you really
want?"
"It doesn't matter now."
"Sure it does, I want to know if it was my fault. I feel
responsible. What are you going to do in Israel for heaven's
sake?"
"You'll never believe it."
"You aren't going to a kibbutz?"
"Yes."
"Ooooh-oooh-oh and ooooh-ohh-oooh! Myra darling
you have flipped."
Stephen hopping to the middle of the room, disre-
garding Myra's sour look. Spreading his arms like a magi-
cian about to perform. "I can just see you darling, driving
a tractor, submachine gun in the holster, Biblical sun
emerging from the rugged red granite hills of Palestine,
casting long lurking shadows upon the land of Jacob.
Danger, death and glory, and yes, God! Never further away
than the whispering of the wind on the eucalyptus
trees. ..."
"Oh, funny, very funny!"
"Listen, do you know what they do there? They pluck
chickens, mold cement blocks and dig ditches. You don't
see much glory doing that here. Why the hell do you think
it'U be so noble over there?"
"None of your business, but if you really want to know
I'm going to be a teacher,"
"Oh great! Lots of luck!" Stephen walking up and
down, pacmg his fury. Myra ignoring it. "You Jewish
people stink. STINK! You hear? Worse than Negroes or
Indians. I just can't stand people with special status, group
status or whatever it is. National, religious or racial you all
stink. That's what I think."
"All right, so we stink."
"Yes, absolutely."
82
"Fine."
"Don't you humour me. I know what I'm talking about.
I'm saying that anybody that ain't got the guts to stand up
out there all alone in front of Gad and stick a finger up his
arse, without a flag waving and band playing, is a stinker!
A dumb fat arsed critter, a foetus of a soul not worthy of
hell or heaven. That's what you are Myra, a foetus in
search of a womb. You don't want to come out, you are
a "
"Go ahead, you can say it."
"A Jewish pig! What do you think you are really
doing?"
"I don't know. Right?"
"Right!"
"But you will tell me."
"Yes."
"Go ahead."
"You are just going there, to Israel, the womb, up a
metaphorical cunt because you don't want to be Myra
Rosenburger period. That's too little for you, got to hitch
on to something big."
Myta finished up her second suitcase and left with some
clothes, Stephen following her to her bedroom, a bit of
confusion gathering in his mind, loose ends, too much to
say and do, and time a bottle neck letting things pass one
by one and one must rely on his judgment as to which one
should come first. Often things get stirred up by emotion
and small things are caught and big things missed.
"When are you leaving?"
"Tomorrow."
"Gee, tomorrow. What will I do?"
She turned around smiling. "Why don't you go way out
there, stand up all by yourself, under God, and do what-
ever you said people should do."
"Eee-ehhe-eeeh! Very good." Shaking a patriarchal fin-
ger at her. "I will, don't you worry. As soon as 1 know-
exactly how best to express it. I mean you know that I was
just using it as a figurative analogy. I mean sticking the
83
finger up one's arse isn't the real thing actually."
"No, what is it then?"
"1 don't know just yet. Wish I did, the idea is there! I
really want to do it don't you worry."
"Well whatever it is Stephen, I hope you find it. I hope I
found mine. God knows everybody needs it."
â– 'Yeah, that's true. Well ! still think I'm right, what I
said anyway, but I'm not holding a grudge against you. If I
talk like that it's because I love you really. Don't mis-
understand me, you don't know what kind of love I'm
talking about. That's the kind of love that makes me say
things like that about Jews and Negroes. 1 actually love all
the bastards."
"Gee thanks!"
"Nothing phony about it, I really do love all the sonsof-
bitches in the world."
Myra banging a drawer shut, expressing unwillingness to
pursue the subject, Stephen following her into the living-
room again, watching her tidy up, place the suitcases on
the floor side by side, and slipping the divorce papers in a
big envelope.
"What about this place?"
"There will be some real estate people in tomorrow.
You can stay undl it is sold."
"And the furniture?"
"Goes with it."
"Can I have the cheap Universe?"
"What for?"
"For sentimental reasons."
"You can't. It would leave an empty wall."
Stephen walking around musing, scratching his head,
nodding gesticulating his hands, reviewing the covered
ground. Myra with a mellow look.
"You can have the car."
U
Nine
! drove Myra to the airport today. Carried her suitcases
for her, an embarrassing moment when they announced
her flight. Didn't know whether to kiss or shake hands.
Teetered on our feet.
"Well!"
"Well, that's ir then,"
"I guess so. Take care uh."
"You too, and lots of roma.nce."
"Bye."
"Bye."
And afterwards I rushed back to the penthouse, pulled
the cheap Universe down and rolled it, carried the colour
T.V. set down the elevator to the garage and chucked it in
the trunk. The stereo set wouldn't fit. Filled the back seat
of the car with liquor, cigarette boxes, small antiques and a
wooden horse. Yanked the cut crystal chandelier from the
ceiling and was going to open the door when the real estate
woman came in.
"It fell off!"
"Are you Mr. Canada?"
"Yes, nice of you to pur it that way. I'll have this
chandelier up for you in no time."
A suspicious look. I can tell she is a hardened business
woman. Followed her in to the living-room with the chan-
delier hanging from my hand. She takes a dirty look at the
hole in the ceiling with the hanging wires. The empty
coasters on the floor.
"Your wife gave me instructions that the furniture
would be included."
"Ah, yes, indeed, beds, armchairs, dining-room set, the
whole shebang."
m
"Television?"
"I'm just raking it to the repairman. Tube went click!"
"!t isn't necessary."
"I insist."
Business woman with a hatdened heart looking at the
empty frame leaning against the wall.
"I was given the painting for a keepsake."
Inspecting the dining-room, and then the bedrooms,
Steve attempting to place the chandelier on the floor but
the pieces came apart.
"You know you are not supposed to remove fixtures."
"I wouldn't dream of it. If you don't mind I have to go
now. I believe you have the keys?"
"Yes."
"I'll leave the chandelier here. I'll have it installed as
soon as 1 can,"
"Fine."
Sheeessus what a woman! Thinking 1 would remove the
fixtures. Just for that 1 should rent a truck and get every
stick of furniture out of the place. One must stoop low at
times, pride is a fence, and if Aris moves in with Sara I can
stay at his place for a while. To reflect upon the new roads
open to me. Must not make grave decisions under strain
and impulsively. Maybe that's how Myra got the idea of
going Co Israel. She was under strain I believe, plus the
common syndrome of parasitism. Hitching on to some-
thing big and noble. A cause. Flag waving for Pete's sake,
I'll have none of that! There is nothing bigger and better
than Sint Stephen Canada, a bit underdeveloped I admit,
but wait till I move into that cave way down there in
Calabria. Simple life and concentrate on the Atman, Legs
folded, eyes half shut fixed to a point in the middle of the
forehead. Dissolve into cosmic experience. A feeling of
darkness, and I guess evervbody strives for eternity.
People on the sidewalk casting a look at the car with the
trunk flapping open and shut and the raan mside singing in
a fine baritone voice, Flas Anybody Seen my Jesus.
He parked the car on a side street and walked up Yonge
86
to the little Catholic cemetery. Going to say farewell to a
dead friend. Woman on a back porch shaking a rug watch-
ed him walk up the narrow path, sitting down on the tall
twitch grass and leaning his head against a tilted stone. Hot
sun up there and a bit of wind blowing here and there like
ghosts playing a football game in this bone orchard.
"Well my friend, I'll be going away soon!"
"Like hell you are!"
"Yessir, I am! I'm retiring from the world. I'm going
to become an ascetic. That's what. There is no love left
in this world my friend. No love left. They have even
made pills out of Jesus, they have. And you know
something? 1 don't give a damn anymore. Not a pinch of
shit. Up with libido power! If God doesn't want to wipe
us out we are going to wipe out God. Serves Him right
too, all this peek-a-boo-stuff is a fraud. I guess He can't
do anything about it anymore than I can. So I'm cutting
out. Ever)'body for himself I think."
"So you are going to fold your tail and yip away."
"I'm not doing any such thing. I'm just being realistic,
that's what."
"Then I suggest that you consider keeping a goat in
your cave, for milk and you know what. A tall pair of
boots too, so [hat you can stick the hind legs in them in
case the beast is recalcitrant. I hear that pretty soon they
get a liking for it and become affectionate."
"You fucking cadaver!"
"Eee-eeeh!"
"The days of the prick are over for me. I'll cut it off
first! Send it to Louise. I never knew anybody that
could put it to so many uses. She'd shave with it, put it
under her armpits like a thermometer, use it as a brush
to powder her nose, lipstick, plunger, just about every-
thing but put it in. She can have it when I'm down
there. I dreamed once that life was a party, everybody
dressed up elegant and pleasant, laughing and drinking
and I was naked. I tried to get them to look at me but
they couldn't even see me. I screamed and yelled but no
87
luck, and this buder kept coming after me with a
tuxedo, saying that if I wanted them to sec me I had to
put it on. Which was a queer tiling as dreams go because
usually I would dream that I forgot my pants at home
and somebody would see me and I would die of shame.
Anybody will tell you that this kind of dream expresses
the necessity of feeling shame, and there I was trying to
feel it but nobody could see mc. Very frustrating I tell
you. So 1 finally killed the butler who was only rr^'ing to
be helpful even though he was dumb enough not to see
what I really was trying to do."
"Oh well, ! know what you need then!"
"What, go out in the streets naked?"
"No, kill somebody! Maybe a nice little old lady with
a hammer! A catalyst for your vague feeling of shame
and guilt. That little lady you met Sunday! You liked
her, kill her Steve."
"Aaaaahhh!"
"What's the matter?"
Steve up and about stamping a snake into the turf,
fists beating the side of his ovm head like a band drum,
doing a tarantella.
"Hey, stop bouncing up and down and tell me what's
wrong."
"You fuckmg bastard!"
"Ah cut it out!"
"I won't do it I tell you. 1 couldn't"
"I would if I were you. You need it man, boy you
need it! Cursing God and making fun of Jesus is not
good enough for vou, not anymore. You've got to blaze
a new trail Steve. You are an artist and you must express
the insensibility of the world around you. Something
senseless like that would develop your soul and a glimpse
of reason. You do It and you'll be standing out there all
by yourself. Nobody will be able to touch you anymore.
You'll be in the fifth dimension."
88
'Ten
Fifrh dimension my arse. Why would I do a thing hke
that? A sense of tragedy? Self reahzation? Phony bastard
that Patrick! Thinking that I would do that just to show
the bastards what they are. Maybe get Jesus to shed a
tear or two. Never! I'll sit here and meditate.
Steve, in Aris's basement, sitting in front of the colour
T.V. set. Something went wrong with it during the
moving and there is only a dot of light flicking off and
on in the middle of the amethyst screen. Cardboard
partition folded and stamped down to one side, broken
bottles and a piece of black nylon pannes shoved to a
corner, beer and paint coagulating on the floor and
drunken flies buzzing over it. Night coming to the city as
on the stage, with the dimming of lights and the turning
on of spotlights. Outside there are some goings on of
human nature but 1 don't want to take part. All alone
with my misery for a while. No more marching down
University Avenue ro the American consulate for me. No
more sleeping in bags in front of City Hall. I'm out of all
this misery on the stage. I'll sell the car and T.V. and
install a few comforts when I get there. Mavbe air
conditioning, a broadloom and a goat for milk isn't a
bad idea. Only for milk, though I know it is difficult to
ignore pleasure if even from a critter like that. Imagine
his gall to sli^est something like that! Just hkc an
Irishman. More tail and more milk that's what my dad,
God rest his soul, said about our cow, and mum who
was dirtier than a cow's arse anyday, said, filthy man.
And I gave up milk. But he was right, and honest and
that's what's lacking above everything else, like this
Trudeau mon choux, who is supposed to take care of me
89
but can't stop worrying about his own hair. Well God-
damn it Jesus how can you stand for that? Oooo that
makes me sick. And I have a touch of it too, devious
bastard I am! Never saying what's on my mind, have to
act civihzed all the time, hke if tail was the furthest
thing from my mind when 1 meet a good looking chick.
Hi how are you? What's your name and all that educated
malarky. And that's why I don't go to church too, I
mean if I heard a sermon about how we have to be good
and love our neighbour and stuff like that I'd Goddamn
puke right at crucified Jesus' feet, I would. All that
singing and joy and when I received my confirmation
amongst some other shmucks, a bunch of old broads
sang, Oh We the Virgins of Jesus, and I felt like 1 was
being castrated. The damn things they put in your head.
Congratulations Steve, now you belong to Christ! Soldier
of Jesus you are. And everybody kissed the Bishop's
ring, and I did too though I felt like an ass because I
thought everybody else knew why they were kissing the
ring and I didn't. So I went ahead and kissed it feeling
involved in a great big mystery, miles of blue heaven in
my head and the puzzling presence of God.
Stephen restless, gets up, walks to the blinking T.V,
set, looks at the dot of light for a minute and then,
bangs his fist on it. Dot of light exploding, covering the
screen with light and then picture appears, the picture of
a rice paddy and a skinny guy in black pajamas being
dragged out of the water, being propped up and shoved
with rifle butts in front of Stephen. Guy full of wonder
and fear staring at him square in the eyes and as though
Stephen had suddenly given an order to soldier standing
guard beside him he gets his face smashed in by the arse
of an M.I., and Stephen's boot went right to Vietnam.
Right through the glass and everything, thunder and
crackling hghtning of the electronic hell and Steve's foot
is almost disintegrated. Runs to the door and watches
the set sizzling and smoking like a dying monster. When
it's fairly safe again, he goes back and pours himself a
SO
drink with shaky hands.
Two quick drinks and the reappraisal of twentieth
century dilemma, do you watch it, or not watch it? Do
you really believe that you can't do anything about it or
is it just comfortable? Who the hell wanes to get his head
busted by the pigs? And the CB.C. provides expiatory
programs for those who choose impotence. Two thou-
sand V.C.'s were killed today. Christ! Just like injuns
they kill 'em. Massacred a whole town from the chief
down to the last squaw. Wheee! Custer rides again! and
again. And again! Kerisr will he ever stop riding the
sonofabitch? Who will be the next injuns? But oh, he
looks good when he rides out of the fort at the head of
his troops. He looks real good I must say, almost makes
me wish he'd never run out of injuns. Eee-eeh! I'll drink
to that. That's the truth. Sit down here dear friend, have
a drink and some pretzels while we watch this guv being
shot in the arse for tlie security of the free world. But I
tell you one thmg my friend, Cm leaving tomorrow. I am
leaving tomorrow.
91
£leven
Wednesday afternoon, Stephen with a blue flighr bag
walking downtown. Toothbrush and new leather bound
Bible in it along with passport and a first class ticket to
Greece, a last minute change. Toronto is a modern
Cinderella City", a working class woman without husband
or reputation and with an eye open for either. Some-
thing in leavmg that discovers new faces, brings famibar
places into sharper focus. A glow of sadness stirring,
within the long winter of failure, the widow of love,
regret. Over my heart passed the shadow of a bird of
prey, dark wings of gloom circhng above. Hope in the
future built on the rubble of the past.
If the big steel bird crashes I'll be set free like wild
circus animals in a train mishap. The mind must accom-
modate the will to survive with constant delusions. How
can delusions of the morrow make today bearable?
Better days ahead my friend! Better days my arse. Free
sex in the streets would be about the only way, I figure
our whole civilization is the result of a controlled supply
and demand for tail. Let everybody get it whenever they
want it and for nothing and the whole structure will
collapse. Everybody too pooped and nor interested to
screw his neighbour, metaphorically that is. Empires were
built when tail was scarce and crumbled when tail was
plentiful.
Five hours to rake-off time and Stephen growing
restless, went into a bar and in between drinks decided
to phone Lynn.
"Hello, is Lynn Rennie there?"
"Lynn? Oh no! She's left. Who is speaking please?"
"Steve Canada, I'm a friend of hers. Where is she, do
92
you know?"
"She is on her wav back home, to Newfoundland."
"Newfoundland?"'
"Yes, she went back to get married. Gave up her
career. . . ."
"That's good, and what are you doing this after-
noon?"
A moment of hesitation, fingers twirling the curly
wire. Nice voice and disposition.
"I need company real bad!"
"I'm sorry, I'm busy this afternoon."
"Goodbye and take care of your bubblegum."
"What?"
Another coin and dial Lady Russell's number. If she
answers it just hang up. Feel kind of lost. A hunk of
lead in my chest and bird feet in my throat. If that big
steel bird crashes m the Atlantic I'll be free. There will
be heads rolling in heaven oh Lord! No use sending me
to hell either, hell won't hold me. I'm coming straight up
there swinging my fist oh Lord. Yessir! There will be
changes made by gum!
"Hello? Aris?"
"Yeh, is that you Steve?"
"Yep, that's me all right."
"Where in hell have you been. I must have phoned
your place a hundred times!"
"I slept at your place. How are things with you?"
"Super! Just super! I'll have to tell you all about it."
"I'm leaving at nine thirty-five, tonight. Going to
reece.
"To where?"
"Greece my friend!"
"Tonight?"
"Yep, inside a big bird."
"Where are you now?"
"At the Golden Egg, having a drink or two."
"Just you wait there, don't move. I'll hop in mv red
Ferrari and be there in thirty seconds tlat. Don't move.
93
OK?"
"OK!"
Sint Steve Canada perched on a stool, blue flight bag
on his knees watching his face over a row of liquor
bortles in the mirror behind them. Aztec face staring
back. Wild eyes and dark choppy hair a bit ruffled, like
wind gone by, and 1 have nothing against whores except
I like the straight approach. Can't stand the class of this
one, perching herself next to me in a largely empty bar,
and pretending she doesn't even know I'm there. Bar-
tender down at the other end of the bar with a foot on
a box of pop bottles casts a glance down this way and
does not move. Whore with red flaming hair and a large
mole beside her mouth chewing gum and wiggling her
necklace with long tapered fingers. Watching me from
the corner of her eves. Jaw going up and down like a
dozing cow.
"Beat it will you!"
Her face stretched into a blank dumb stare. "Are you
talking to me?"
"Yeah, beat it!"
"Hey! Who do you think you are?"
"Just fuck off baby, fuck off!"
Bartender moving slowly down the bar, sliding a damp
cloth on the black marble. A couple of business men at
the other end, watching.
"Is there something virong?"
Whore trying to look innocent and offended, managing
to look choleric instead.
"There will be unless you tcill her to get away from
me!"
"If you don't like it, you move! "
"Yeah! Why don't you move?"
"If she isn't out of my sight in half a minute I'll tear
this joint to pieces."
Bartender taking a deep breath, eyes going back and
forth Uke windshield wipers. Making a decision.
"All right Rosie. Do as the man says."
94
"Hey Harry!"
"Go on Rosie, 1 don't want any trouble, and neither
do you."
Rose got down with a huff, threw her head back and
cursed at Steve under her breath.
One thing women can't affect is pride. They might
feel it but can't look it. Pride is one thing that just isn't
physically possible for them. They just aren't built for it.
And Myra was a great one for trying it. And a great
champion of equaUty. Look Myra as far as I know
women were created just to relieve men from the burden
of bearing children and just so that men wouldn't decide
not to bother to fertilize their eggs they were made
attractive. So as far as I'm concerned once they stop
bearing children and being attractive women are just not
of any use. So what's this equality bit?
But 1 think we are playing right into their hands. It
won't be long and they will have us screw into glass
tubes. Progress comes with a question mark. But I'll be
gone by then and pity for those who come after me for
I jusi made ±e hole a little bigger. Just as those who
came before left it a httle bigger for me. And someday,
God or no God, the blasted grave will have to cave in. If
anything I should apply myself to making it cave in a
little sooner. And so died Samson and the Philistines!
Aris came in beaming, face like a luminous watch still
glowing with sunshine, hopped onto the stool where the
broad had been sittmg and hung his arm around Steve's
neck.
"You know that Httle Sebring bug of mine will do one
hundred and sixty-five miles an hour? Scotch and soda
please. Hundred and sixty-five miles an hour. Wheeee! I
went past a cruiser so fast he thought he was in reverse.
Slammed the brakes on he did, instead of stepping on
the gas he was so excited, and piled up sixteen cars over
him. Bang bang bang! Heeee-hee. Can vou imagine? Yeah
I did honest! 1 just let it rip! I figure if anybody can
catch me Sara can bail me out. Oh she's a sweet girl she
95
is! Steve my boy I love her! I mean I really do! Now I
finally know what love is."
"Great Aris, just great. 1 knevir you'd hitch on to the
express. I kind of wish I could."
"What's this story about you going to Greece?"
"I'm practically there."
Aris leaning, head snapping back to get a wide angle
view of Stephen. "Oh come on pal! What kind of a stunt
are you pulling? You aren't really serious about going to
hve in a cave and all that?"
"Aris my friend I just have to. The dark hour is
about. Darkness moves upon the face of the earth!"
"Oh, come, shit! Better days ahead, I'U keep an eye
open for you, maybe get you set up with some of Sara's
younger acquaintances. Besides you've got some money
now, and I can always help out until I get you fixed up.
I'll have connections soon."
Steve stirring the highball around in circles, watching
it with an empty smile.
"1 have to try it Aris. I just have to go. Just do mc a
favour will you."
"Name it boy!"
"I'll leave the car here. . . ."
"What car?"
"Myra's car. She's left."
"Where the hell did she go?"
"To Jerusalem."
"You're kidding!"
"Honest to God. Anyway she gave me the car. Now I
couldn't seU it this morning, I didn't feel like being
chiselled by some bright jerk on Danforth, so if you sell
it for me and keep the money, maybe deposit it in a
bank in case I want to come back someday."
Stephen's head hanging sadly in the soft light and
piped music.
"1 don't believe anything anymore Aris. I've got to be
prepared for almost anything nowadays. No confidence
at all."
96
"Cheer up Steve. Here have another drink. Think it
over for a while. What's the rush anyway? I mean you
can still go to Greece in a week. Let me try to set vou
up huh?"
"No thanks. I just got out of a lousy deal like that. 1
won't sell myself anymore."
"Oh come on! Who's talking about selling anything?
It's just a straight trade. You make it sound a bit like
Faust."
"In a way we are all cheap Fausts. Real cheap ones."
"Oh hell!"
Both of them with hanging heads now, glasses swivel-
ling on the smooth marble, a pair of economy class
Fausts. Aristides bails out instantly. "Come on! Let's go
for a ride!"
"Where?"
"Anywhere, come on."
Driving didn't help though. Steve sat slumped in his
bucket seat staring ahead idly as though Ms mental
processes had come to an end. Every time Aris would
cast a glance at him he would grip the steering wheel a
bit tighter, take a deep sigh and speed up a little.
it wasn't long before they were speeding along 401 in
the direction of the airport.
"Hey where are you taking me anyway?"
"I'm going to dump you off at the airport, ajid hope
never to see you again." Steve looked puzzled. "God I
hope I never ever see you again. You really are a creepy
fellow Stephen. Do you have any idea what there is
about you that I like? There must be something."
"Slow down will you!"
"Not a chance. I wanna get there tight now, say
goodbye and never look back."
"Slow down or I'll hit you over the head with my
Bible and toothbrush."
"Go ahead!"
"We will crack up!"
"Just go ahead!"
97
"All right, but to be fair you must know that 1 have
nothing to lose, while you have. Now anyway."
"True. A life of ease and comfort. Could have been
yours!" Aris slowed down.
"She'll dump you as soon as you start depending on
it. All she wants is to see you crawling the way she had
to. I guess that's what everybody really wants, comfort
for their miseries and failures from knowledge of greater
miseries and failures. No wonder this fuclcing world isn't
getting any better! Everybody is trying to make it just a
little more depraved than himself in order to make his
existence bearable if not altogether virtuous. And not
only on the personal level. Communism glorifies itself on
the faults of capitalism, and capitahsm of cour.sc finds
abundant self-motivation in the failures and excesses of
communism. It goes on all the time, between people,
nations and taces. Everj-' evil is related to some greater
evil until one's own evil seems not only preferable but
altogetlier admirable."
Aris gave him a wry expression. "So what? Who the
hell cares? I don't give a damn about this world or the
next if there is one."
"I don't give a damn about the next either to tell you
the truth. It's this one here that bothers me. There must
be something either beautiful or grandiose about it.
Something grandiose whether absurd, evil or beautiful.
But I'm so unable to escape the smallness of me that 1
can never find out. And I want to find out Aris, I just
have CO."
"Suit yourself. If you want ray opinion it's a. waste of
time. Unless you enjoy it. I suspect that you do. Some
search for Ught, some for darkness. I guess you enjoy the
darkness."
"You've got it wrong Aris. The truth is that I just
don't want to delude myself, like you, Myra and Lady
Sara Russell. I'm not going to wave any flags, I'm going
to tear them all down, including my own as soon as 1
know how. Especially my own."
98
"Sounds like suicide to me,"
"Ah-aaah-aahl You aren't getting it at all Aris. I can
see ir now. That would be all right if I wanted out, but I
want IN Aris. 1 want IN. I want to be right in the
middle of it, beyond justification, reasons or cause. To
be aware of neither God nor death but of myself. Of
life. It is only then that God wUl understand his
creation, because only then will it be complete, and
then, only then, He will be able to judge Himself. He
may commit suicide then."
"Eee-ee eeh!"
"Up to now man has been struggling with two real-
ities. One is that he is a creation of God, and that seems
to be good, and the other one implied by the same, that
therefore he is not God. , . ."
Aris put his hand on Steve's head, he looked at him
constricted with pain. "Do me a favour Steve, cut it out
will you. I haven't twisted my mind like that since High
School, i thought everybody left stuff like that either
there or in a whore house."
"I've never been to High School."
"You must have been in a whore house though!"
"Yeah, that's where I got my degree. I hved for three
months one summer in an old Ford behind a cat house.
An old Ford with cement blacks instead of wheels and a
little chimney sticking out of the roof. They would let
me in for breakfast, around two o'clock in the after-
noon. And I would sic there eating doughnuts and coffee
and take down notes of their conversations. Some dillies
I tell you."
"I have heard waitresses talk, i never thought I could
blush, so I can imagine,"
"Maybe you can, anyway take it from me, they know
of another world. Or a completely different perspective
of the same one. Felt like an alien and after a while I
had to leave because I was beginning to suffer home-
sickness if you can imagine. They were good kids
though, once in a while when business was slow diey
99
would give me a free ride and 1 would say a prayer for
their souls. One of them had a plastic rube with a httle
electric motor in it and a feather twirling inside. She'd
plug it in, stick my doo-dad in and speed up the work of
nature. Guaranteed to achieve erection within thirty
seconds. Made in West Germany, It really did work. Very
handy on a busy day I was told. Time is of the essence."
100
X'Hrelve
Aris dropped him off at the departure level. He was
anxious to leave him, they grinned at each other and
shook hands.
Steve checked in at the airline counter, had lunch in
the restaurant and sat down on a green leatherette bench
to read a book about the mercenaries in the Congo. He
just opened the book at random and began to read:
. . . We were in an open field, nine of us working over
this coon. We had him over an oil drum, belly up, Bill,
Neb and I working on his legs, holding them down
like planks and crashing our boots on them. Red
O'NeiJ and Enrich kicking in his rib cage and the other
holding his arms and head. Louis Norada, a good-
looking kid from Portugal was working on his fingers,
twisting and breaking them while helping to hold on
to the coon. He was going about it so methodically
and conscientiously, checking each finger as he went
along to see that he hadn't missed one. The coon
yelled like mad for a while, always a few yells behind
because there were so many bones cracking, and then
after a while he quit. By that time of course we were
finding it difficult to go on with it, breaking every
bone in a man's body isn't easy. It was kind of hard
to get the unbroken parts to stand up against the
pressure of our boots. We would hit it hard only to
have the leg bend where there was a break already, so
we quit, a little reluctantly but we quit. It was
chowtime anyway and we had worked up a good
appetite. . . .
Stephen let the book fall to the floor and concen-
trated on the nauseating feeling coming up like smoke
101
from his burning guts. That's it! Be sick! Be sick! Vomit
right here! he kept telling himself, using the feed-back
technique, but instead his eyes became hot and damp
and a white impotent fury got caught within his lungs
like a wild beast. People sitting and dozing were sianled
by the eerie scream and they watched fearfully as he ran
out of the building swinging a blue flight bag over his
screaming head.
102
Thii'teen
He remembered the house. She had pointed it out to
him with cheerless pride. A small building of stones and
bricks, with bay windows, porches, heavy trim and a
steep cedar-shingled roof. Its line suggesting 3. conscious
effort to accommodate in its structure both nature and
man, and thus achieving a degree of harmony and an
awareness of shelter and comfort not from defiance but
assent. Yet the very roof whose lines guided the eye to a
simple fusion of confidence and submission, is now
dominated by the straight, cubic, high-rise apartment
building, it looms high and massive, rising in a never
changing pattern as if in a process of self-reproduction.
Floor after floor, until for no more understandable a
reason than its prodigious grov^th, it stops there abruptly
and dramatically. Frozen in its own dynamic force as an
incomplete statement of man's changing mood. Others
beside it share the same redundant urge and the same
inexplicably arresting fate. Their flat horizontal roofline
nciriier defiant nor submissive but heedless of both
nature and man.
She wanted me to have tea with her, and 1 think I had
murder in my heart. Like now maybe. I'm going to try
and kill her Jesus, just for you! Goddamn Jesus I'm
going to try! Something absurd and senseless lilvc that
might make sense.
Stephen up the porch steps. Stops and tilts his head
like hstening to faint faraway sounds. Mirages of
thoughts going through his mind like newsrcels projected
into clear undulating water. A bit of propaganda on
behalf of humanity' and her, showing man's great accom-
pUshments from tlie wheel to the bubble chamber and
103
discovering the DNA molecule. Men at work with yellow
heimers, turning rivers, joining oceans and riding giant
earth-moving machines in pulsating dusty clouds and
desolate manscapes. Rockets soaring and the super-
structures of ocean-going vessels gliding across orchards
and fields. And here, crowds surging through the streets,
pouring into a square. An angry crowd. Their chant
rising in anger and growing into a mighty beat, heaving
waves of passion into the deep widening chasm of
contempt. Shouting peace! Peace! In anger. A magic
unifying rhythm of hopelessness held together by sub-
conscious roots of hate pressing at the gates of a nation
of Judases. Then suddenly the rhythm is broken, a
tremor of terror sweeps over the multitude as the forces
of lunacy and the mandate of contempt are unleashed at
the weak fibre of hope. The crowd splits and shrinks and
sways as if suddenly ablaze, flames driven by a swirling
wind that tatters and gapes the thin tissue of piety.
There are screams and flashing lights and throbbing,
rushing, widening gaps of littered pavement appearing as
the mob is attacked in spasmodic bursts, and the same
gaps are filled in again and again, each time with less
force and conviction as fear and hate swell and wane.
Now terror and bitterness match the horror of the soul
and the dark gulf of comfort is stained with blood like
the altar of a sioney bloodthirsty God.
"Oh! HeUo! Come in, come in young man! It's so nice
to see you again."
And the high priests of the country of Judases pacify
the God and wash the blood off the stone, point spears
at the sky and count the dead so that if you're six feet
wU and good at putting a puck into a net you may
jiHitly become rich and famous and not fall prey to that
great deceiver from Nazareth. And then man will of
course conquer space, and there will be prophylactics in
heaven.
"Please sit down won't you. No here, here you will be
more comfortable. I'll put some water on for tea. You
104
will have some won't you. Of course you will, you look
tired. You don't look well. Tea will do you good. Just
sit there and rest."
And the media a great smother, a solid state vaginal
muzzle disseminating misery, electronic Promethean self-
serve curse with the claws of Vietnam or Biafra as close
as the flick of a switch. The extent of my impotence
revealed completely now via sateUite. Here media! Eat
my gizzards!
"1 won't be a moment. Do smoke if you wish, there is
an ashtray there beside you, . . . You're welcome."
Really a sweet little lady.
So Stephen you think you are going to have the guts
to do it?
I don't know!
That's what you came here for, to kill her. Didn't
you?
Uh-uh! To find out.
Like hell!
Honest to God!
Eeeh-ee eh. And three quarters!
True nevertheless.
I know you came here to kill her, you are going to
pick up that heavy waterball with the quaint snow scene,
and sneak up on her and smash her head in. She's going
to buckle down as though her legs had disappeared,
maybe an eye popped out of its socket from tiie blow
and then lie there oozing blood like a spilled bottle. And
then you are going to feel tragic, make some smart
theatrical moves. Like kneeling beside her maybe try to
replace her eyeball, lift her head with pity and hear the
jagged bones make a noise hke a lugubrious rattler. Then
maybe you are going to notice the blood on your hands,
eeeeeehhhh! God! Stare at them, and a strange light in
your face, dramatically lift your eyes and extend your
bloody hands so that God and Son can see them and be
ashamed.
Uh-uh. I came to find out. Just as 1 said.
105
"Here we are!" She came in carrying a tray. A small
woman with quicl<. segmented movements and friendly
mockery in her eyes. She places the tray on the table
beside Stephen, pours the tea and Stephen helps himself
to the sugar and cookies. She sits across from him on a
faded velvet chair, and watches him with a smile. "'Drink
it, drink it, it will do vou good. Poor boy you really
look all in."
"Yes thanks, I'm a httle tired."
She watches him with strange affection. She has a
small sharp face and her silver hair is combed straight
back into a large bun like a pigeon's rail. He looks at her
head and can't help imagining the brittle bone splintering
under the scalp until he feels teeth sinking in his
stomach.
"Why did you run away the other day?"
"I was a bit upset. I'm sorry 1 did that."
"Oh you poor thing, you must have had a hard timel"
"Yes, a little." * '
"I can imagine. Young people have a hard time."
"1 guess."
"1 had a boy just like you."
"Oh?"
"Yes. He died in the Second World War."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"He was so young. So foohshly young."
Stephen pinching his pants, a little uncomfortable,
avoiding her eyes and smile.
"He simply had to go. I couldn't understand him at all
then. We just couldn't communicate. He was so shy, how
do you say, an introvert. Kept all his problems to
himself. Now it is different."
"Now?"
"Yes, but drink your tea. Now we have nice long
talks."
"You do! I mean you do?"
"Oh yes, yes yes! And other young men like you.
They are happy now. Peaceful."
106
She tilted her head and beamed an inward smile. "So
peaceful now."
"I'm sure."
"Very soon I'll be able to join him. li will be so
nice."
"Yes, so nice. Very S0077."
Stephen picked the waterball up from the table. I
think I'll do it now Jesus. Just you watch. It seemed
enormously heavy. He held it up and tried to focus his
eyes on the flakes of snow that swirled slowly around a
log cabin. He looked at her and had to squint because
ber image seemed out of focus and waving fluidly in
front of him. He tried to get _U£ but an enormous_
nauseating feeling seemed to weigh him"aown. She
watched amused at his puzzled expression. He tried again
dumbfounded.
"Don't try to get up. You will be fine in a few
miniirps "
Her squeaky voice seemed to travel laboriously
tnrougn miles ot ITqiiiS" air. He tried to say something
but his parched mouth felt as though it had just ceased
to belong to him, and his jaw fell open and he realized
he wasn't even going to try to shut it, nor did he care
to. It was a strange sensation. He felt as though his
senses were suddenly spread through miles of space, his
feet unreachably distant. All his senses seemed to retract
from his body like rays of light, receding back to his
mind, which began to feel brilliantly aware but isolated,
unable to respond, unwilling to make an effort. The
shghtest effort.
"You will be better soon. It won't be long. It won't
be long now, you poor boy," she was saying in a
comforting voice.
He saw her get up, move smibng over to him, and saw
her caress his face though he could not be sure he felt
anything.
"You see I have put some poison in your tea." She
107
looked at the empty cup and she seemed satisfied. "You
will be fine in a minute. It will be all over. All over! All
over, my dear boy! You will have peace!"
"Eeeh-eeeh!"
"You laugh!"
He was glad she had said it. He wasn't sure it had
come out of him. But he had laughed. That's all that
seemed to matter at the moment, and that moment he
knew belonged to him, only to him. It was his moment.
Totally his, and therefore as good as an eternity. And he
had laughed at it.
108
Fourteen
Heee-heee! Ouch!
Great Manito I'm laughing again! Then it was all true!
Life goes on after death. Oh Lord forgive me! And
where am 1? Not paradise i know. Can't expect that
nosirree. I'll take what 1 deserve and not a beep. Be nice
though, great grassy plains and never ending herds of
buffalo! Or did the white man get here before me? Can I
open one eye now? Just one quick glance. No better be
patient Steve, take these moments to do a little soul
searching, repent! Repent! That's it!
Lord I repent. Instantly. I'm sorry I doubted You and
yelled at you sometimes. I cursed You I know. Please
accept my apologies. I merely wanted to provoke You,
to see if You were there. 1 had no right though, I take it
all back. I really like You, Cm sorry I had my doubts. 1
really am! I'm sorry that I tried to upset You just so
that You would give me a little sign. Gnawing doubt I
guess. Believe You me when you are down there you
really need a httle sign some times. Ooooo boy did I
need it at times, I didn't expect anything too fancy,
mind you, no angels singing or comets nor Gabriel in
person, I just thought that if I swore at You hard
enough maybe You could have given me a quick throm-
bosis or something like that. Nothing too elaborate as I
said just a little sign, maybe cripple me. I would have
been so happy oh Lord, Really. I'm just saying this
because I want You to know that I didn't mean to ask
too much, and that I'm soriy even for that. I want You
to feel free to punish me if you must. Just give it to me
Lord, I won't mind a bit! Heee-hee I won't mind at all
now that I know that everybody else is gonna get it for
109
sure. 1 guess that is what really bothered me, thinking
that, if by chance, You weren't here, those bastards
would get away with it while us suckers were being good
boys because we were so damned scared of damnation.
"Lord have mercy on my soull"
"Steve."
Oh, an angelic voice from without!
"Yes mv angel."
"How do you feel?"
"Not too good if 1 may say the ttuth, but I don't
mean to complain. Nosir! I mean 1 can take anything 1
deserve, gladly."
"Oh my poor poor darUng!"
"It's quite all right I assure you, don't trouble yourself
1 pray you. I'm quite content. Quite!"
"Oh my sweet darling, how brave and generous."
"Well . . . now that you mention it, I was rather brave
and generous m my life. No conceit mind you, just glad
that some of my better qualities have not gone un-
noticed. But then I should have known that."
"Boo-hoooo-hoooo! "
"Pray don't afflict yourself."
"Bbbooooo-hooo!"
"I beg your pardon, may 1 open one eye now and see
you?"
"Yes. oooh yes yes my darling!"
"Thank you." My God I'm kind of scared. Every-
thing's foggy. Sounded a bit like Myra, had me worried
for a minute.
"If you don't mind I'd like to open the other one too,
I can't see very well and I do wish to see you."
"Oh my darling darling."
"You do look a bit like Myra."
"Oh darling, I'm Myra!"
"You are?"
"Yes darling."
"But how can it be? Myra is in Israel!"
"1 didn't go darling. After you left me at the a,irport, 1
UO
did some chinking and I realized you liad been right on
many counrs. So I went to the cottage to think things
over."
"But how did you get here?"
"As soon as I was told what had happened to you 1
rushed over here."
"Gosh you needn't have done that!"
"I wanted to be near you. I have never left your side
since they brought you here."
"1 guess that as an Indian I went third class."
"What do you mean darling?"
"Well hell, you got here before ! did apparently, and
I'm lying on my back really whacked out believe me."
"Oh Steve darhng, you'll soon be all right, beheve
me."
Stephen able to see clearly now, Myra's face kind of
dribbly, lower lip quivering like she was mumbling the
rosary.
"Oh Christ!"
"What is it?"
"I don't want to get angry."
"Why, what is it Steve?"
"I'm getting a funny feeling that's what."
"What is wrong darling, what is it?"
"I don't know, something is wrong."
He stared at the ceiling with a strange smile. She
looked on trying not to appear too worried and puzzled
at his strange behaviour.
"Heee-heeee!"
"What darling?"
"Hee-hee, looked like a Ught fixture hanging from the
ceiling. Silly!"
Myra looked at the light fixture then at Steve and said
nothing.
"It does look like a light fixture though, I must say
that but anyway Myra I'm sorry for what you did. I
didn't know you felt that way about me. Really, I never
dreamed you had it in you to rush over here the way
111
you did. Didn't think you had the pluck."
"Of course I would!"
"All right I'm sorry. I just didn't ioiow that's all."
"Don't worry about it."
"I wish you hadn't in a way, makes me feel kind of
indebted to you."
"Please."
"Could T have a drink of water? My throat is very
dry."
"No darling, I'm awfully sorry, you aren't supposed to
have any."
Eyes of Steve crawling on the ceiling with fear, staring
wide open, drawing funnels of fear. She watched him
giddily.
"You know Myra," he started with a whisper. "This
place . . . you and me here. . . ."
"What? What darling?" she urged him.
"I'm getting the funny feeling that this ain't it! Like
this is not where I'm supposed to be. Like something
went wrong DAMN IT!"
"Doctor Jones said that you'll be up and around in a
day or two," she said reassuringly.
"Doctor Jones?" he said miserably.
"Yes, Doctor Jones!" she reassured him again.
"Oh NOOOOOO!"
She whimpered something, he didn't hear her. His
head sagged back and his eyes resumed staring at the
ceiling and inside him he felt the old dark enemy
stirring, baring his fangs and in a moment his chest was
tipped open.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! "
Myra fled from the room, came back a minute later
followed by nurses and interns,
"Now now what seems to be the problem?" asked one
looking down at Steve.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH! "
"SHHHHHH!"
"HAAAAAAH-HAAAAAAH! "
112
''SSHHHHHH-SSHHHHH!"
"DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU!"
"NOW NOW!"
"DAMN YOOOOOOOOU!"
And another pretty nurse rushed in with a syringe, but
before she could get at him Steve was up on the bed,
bouncing up and down and they trying to catch his legs,
took 3. couple of trampoline hops to gain height, right up
CO the ceiling, and then tlew over their heads landing
with a thump and disappeared down the corridor mini-
gown flapping open behind him.
Down the stairs half-naked and half-wild. Wings of the
forebears on his Huron feet. Taking four steps at a time,
toes gripping the cool terrazzo floor and out in the
lobby causing a Utde furor, even a little panic as he
swung out of the door knocking a few people down. Still
flapping and hopping up University Avenue, in this busy
hour, like a wild rabbit loose on a Grey Cup field.
Ran up to College and there with a red light and
crowd at the curb, a spirited citizen saw him coming,
spread our his arms, shouted, "HEY STOP!" and got his
nose smashed in, but not before he got ahold of Steve's
mini-gown, and as Steve yanked away the sterilized gown
tore off him leaving him for a brief gasping moment
naked in the middle of the Presbyterian intersection.
Hesitating, not from shame but fear. Afraid and vulner-
able, and though some laughed they were relieved when
kicking up a burst of speed Stephen quickly disappeared.
113
Fifteen
Myra found him lying on the chesterfield with a
highball balanced on his bare chest. She stood looking
down at him, twitching miserably, trying to think of
something to say that would not irritate him.
"Steve."
"What?"
"Please Steve, don't scare me like that anymore."
He merely frowned. She waited patiently.
"Would you mind telling me who took me to the
hospital,"
"The police, they had that kooky old lady under
surveillance for a while."
He sighed heavily.
"They suspect she had poisoned others."
She waited again, but still he didn't seem interested.
"Thank God!" she said retlectively.
"Yeah!"
"I brought you your flight bag."
Stephen up on his feet, grabbing the bag from her,
unzipping it and checking the contents. Counting the
money.
"It's all there," she reassured him.
Steve going to his bedroom followed by Myra. Putting
on a checkered shirt.
"Where are you going?"
"Don't hound me Myra, I don't think I can take it
right now. ! have had a hard day."
"Yes, you are right. I'll leave you alone." She started
away.
Stephen squinted suspiciously. "Where are yow going?"
"I'll go to the cottage for a while. The phone is
U4
connected, you can phone me or come there any time
you like. 1 won't bother you,"
"Good. I mean I think it's a good idea. I need to be
alone for a while. Meditate. I mean it too. no fooling."
Myra starting away again.
"Hey! I got a better idea. If you don't mind I would
Uke to go to the cottage. I won't wreck it this time I
promise."
"But of course!"
"You don't mind?"
"Of course not. I'd rather stay here any day, it's kind
of boring being there all alone."
"I think it is the best place for me right now. Sort
things out,"
"O.K.," she said happily. "Then it is settled. Do you
have the car?"
"Yeah! i mean i hope so. I'd better phone Aris right
away."
Steve hurried to the phone followed by Myra's pleased
gaze. He took the receiver off the hook and just before
he started dialing, in a rare impulse of wanting to be
liked, he looked at her, smiled and said, "Thank you
darling."
115
sixteen
Myra and Aristides Bowels Buckney to see me off. Myra
sustaining a quivering smile over some dark female
premonition no doubt. And Aiis with a bastard grin of joy.
Still laughing at my narrow escape. Took a last look in the
rear mirror for the guilt that was in a fleeting thought of
uxoricide. Can't stand moping females and their dark
premonitions nor the gentle web they spin around you.
Gunned the car out of there, did ninety past Mount
Pleasant Cemetery. I don't think I'll ever like cemeteries
again even though I would like to sneak into that other
one some night with a bottle of gin and a shovel and dig
my old friend O'Tim out. Hee-heee! Just his musty skull,
slune it up nicely and put ir on the bedstand where Myra
puts my aUowance, or used to. Give her some religion. I
think maybe she is losing her grip on money. And if I
don't ever see her again I would be much better off still.
Beware of females bearing gifts. Her love has the quality of
damp smoochy kisses. Then of course, if I could subdue
some of my more passe male syndromes, we could have a
good go at it. Yes darling, of course darling, thank you my
dear! Things like that. Call it refinement. Show more
affection and appreciation Steve. A few kisses now and
then and consideration for the female inferiority complex.
Or is it? Emasculate myself a little to help her strive for
equality. Reduce the difference that's what. Preserve only
what is necessary for intercourse and call it lovemaking.
Not fuck. Say fuck Myra! SAY IT! I want to hear you say
it. Nosir, so shy. She can't say it. Must work toward
demaleization. Can't you say fuck though? Oh darling I
can't, it makes me blush. All right Myra I'll compromise
this far, but no more, say screw! Can you say screw? A
116
moment of hushed tension, suspense, then shutting her
eyes and pucketing bet lips she enunciated in a high
falsetto voice, screw.
NOOOO! NOT LIKE THAT DAMN IT! Like you mean
fuck, Uke blood and guts and arse. Oh shit! ! don't want to
live in a woman's world. I don't want to adapt or
semi-castrate myself. I'd rather die. Yayay. Not that again.
I've got to get away. For good. Away. AWAYYYY!
Turned cast on four-o-one and in my heart the flutter of
bird wings. AWAY! Drove in silence for a while and chen
listened to the bloody radio, from south of the border the
reading of grim news with evangelical fervour. One hopeful
note; a group of American milhonaires is making an
effort to buy North Vietnam and thus end the war
honourably.
Past Oshawa a few miles, and then turned towards Lake
Ontario on a dusty and bumpy road. Passed the dilap-
idated tilted Jenkins farmhouse and stuck a tongue out at
his dirty kids sitting on the fence by the road.
Stephen turned the car engine off and sat for a while
looking out at the lake and hstening to the distant roar of
the highway behind him.
This is going to be just fine! Just fine! Oh God . . . it's
got to be.
117
seventeen
In another hour Stephen had all rhe boxes of groceries
stacked in tlie small kitchen. There must have been enough
there for a year.
"Not forty-eight cans of beans?" Myra had exclaimed.
"Yep. ['m fond of beans."
"And twenty-four cans of Libby's spaghetti?"
"Yep. I'm rather fond of spaghetti too."
"How long do you plan to stay then Stephen?" She had
a worried look again.
"A few days anyway."
"Well then you don't need that much. There are some
groceries left there anyway. Besides, you can always pop
up to town if you need something."
"But 1 don't intend to pop up to town, nosir. I don't
want to see a living soul while I'm there. Nosir. Not a living
soul. You hear! And don't you phone either. Please Myra,
no phoning, OK."
"OK. I won't, [ promise. But why so many beans?"
"I get hungry when I'm alone."
"I should say."
Stephen grinning at the pile of groceries. "Christ that's a
lot of beans."
Went for a brief slow walk along the beach, under the
clay cliffs hke a convale.scent recuperating from a long
illness. Rickets of the soul. Must not do anything too
strenuous. And not more than one whooppeeee four times
a day. Not too much excitement the first day.
And the first night, sleepless night, buried in the dark
silence and solitude. God It was dark and quiet. Turned a
Ught on in the kitchen after a while and opened all the
windows on the side to die highway to hear the distant
118
struggle of the truck trailers grinding on the asphalt
arteries of civilization. But in the morning woke up fresh
and ready, dragged a chair down to the water and sat in it
watching the sun swell and gush up from the horizon. Saw
the wind sliding over the lake, rippling. And from far out a
flock of seagulls come riding high on the wind. Close to
shore screaming and breaking their flight to land on the
shimmering surface.
And he let the silky breeze feel his presence for a
strange affirmation of his solitude, of an isolating aware-
ness that his body, the motion of the wind and the heat of
the sun would establish in sense a space.
Alone on the beach, testing the sweet smell of water and
decaying seaweed, thinking that for sure this time, he'll
give up worrying about the human race.
Every day went for walks along the marsh feeling like a
poet, heart caught in the irons of the mind. Scared some
cottontails down the path and in the pond saw the beaver
unzip with his nose the still reflection of the sky. The
heron slide down to stand on one leg in the shallow water.
From Jenkins' farm that wisecrack of a rooster crowing its
forced awakening sound vertically in the air. And in the
evening watching the sun go down behind the rising fields
and over the glowing horizon. The sky catching fire and a
confused wind blowing about irresolutely. The crows
leaving the grain fields, lifting and fluttering in a high
spiral, like bits of burnt paper blown up by the heat of the
fire that night, slowly put out, leaving at last, for a little
while longer a thin darkening cinder under the smouldering
grey. Back to the cottage at night, telhng himself he would
never go back. No, never! Not even to the highway to buy
a hamburger at the gasoline station. Not a coke! Nothing.
Hermit.
And the next days more of the same. Enjoying the
corny beauty of nature. Filled with the purple of dawn
and the glowing moonlight. Growing restless. Was happi-
ness really born a twin? A feeUng of emptiness in all this
charming beauty and peace. Started getting up later,
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missing the dawn and the beaver in the pond. But carrying
on a conversation with himself, monotonously at first but
then developing into a dialogue for two voices. A high
pitched one and his own, A thing which he lived to regret
because the high pitch of it irritated him no end. Also it
soon became too arrogant.
"What are you going to do today Stephen?"
"Go for a walli. Then I'll have a little swim and maybe
collect some coloured stones."
"Hee-hee-heeeeee! "
"What's so funny?"
"Collect coloured stones. Eeeeehheeel"
"Oh shut up!"
"And what are you going to have for lunch?"
"Pork and beans."
"Not again?"
"Sure, they're delicious."
"1 would rather have bacon and eggs. Are there any
more eggs?"
"No, no bacon either."
"I want bacon and eggs!"
"You can go to hell!"
"You'U have to go to town sometime. Why don't you go
today and then we can have bacon and eggs."
"I'll not go to town and that's that."
"What when the beans run out, what then Steve boy,
you'll have to go to town then!"
"I don't want to see a human being do you hear. Not
one. I'll write to the grocery store, send them a list and tell
them to deliver it when I'm not here."
"Hey, that's a good idea. I must admit."
"Not bad indeed!"
"And what will you do when the money runs out?"
"Shut up will you! Just shut up!"
"There is only one bottle of gin left you knowl"
And that day, great billowing clouds gathered om-
inously over the cottage and started to pour rain and shake
the cottage with tremendous thunder claps. Listened to
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rhe rain all night, on the roof, going tock-tock. Shit.
Towards morning weak, tired and restless staring at the
grey ceiling and starting to see things. What the hell is this
anyway the Sistine chapel? Is that me and God coming at
me with a finger? Watch it now! Watch it! That's not
where! And still coming at my behind with his finger, and
me lifeless watching him come at me for the moment of
creation up my arse. Ouch! And then he backs away and
comes at mc again. Oh Lord not again. For Pete's sake
don't create me again. And again he did. Ouch! Now hell!
I've got to hand it to you God. I've really got to hand it to
you! Through your infinite wisdom, your fantastic mercy
and insatiable love you have fucked me again.
Stephen up on his elbows, staring right through the
ceiling pouting his mouth to spit. "Poooch!" and yelled.
"YOU HAVE FUCKED ME AGAAAAIN!"
"OH LORD!"
"OH LORD!"
Got up, tiptoed to the living-room and smashed the old
radio with the driftwood lamp. Bang! Bang! Stood
grinning, looking at the smashed pieces and the lamp
hanging loosely from his hand.
"Now what in tarnation did you do that for?"
"It was bugging me!"
"Getting weak eh! Afraid that you might turn it on just
to hear what's going on out there?"
"No. It was just bugging me for a couple of days."
"Now what are you going to do with that bottle of
gin?"
"I'm going to have a drink! That's what."
"Christ if someone saw you now! You look a mess."
"So what!"
"If you are thinking of going back to Toronto I suggest
you wash and shave. You'd give Myra a fit."
"Eeeeh-eeeh!"
"Seriously Steve, if you are thinking of going back,
you'd better not drink."
"But I'm not damn you. I'm not going back."
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"Oh yes you are Stephen. You might as well admit it.
Outside of hating humanity and doubting God what is
there? Collecting stones? Butterflies? Watching the dawn?"
"I hate people!"
"That's the spirit Steve! Go hate them!"
"1 don't want ro,"
"Is that why you don't want to go back? Because you
don't want to hate people?"
"Oh come on! You know beuer than that."
"Maybe you don't even want to hate Myra"
"Oh shit!"
"Think about it Stephen. Think! Even if you don't give
a damn about God, don't betray Jesus. He was a swell guy
he was. Go back, Stephen, don't hide, go back and hate
them. Sockittothem Steve. Attaboy Steve, drink this
bloody bottle up and then go give it to them."
"Shut up! SHUT UP!"
"Come on Steve, don't get mad at me. You aren't going
to get out of it. You know I'm spelling it out for you jus:
like it is. You got to go back Steve. That's it, have another
drink. Attaboy, now you are getting it. Fee! that burning
inside! What is it? Hate? Isn't it? It is. It is! Good boy
Steve. That's the old spirit. You can't betray Him, right?"
Took another gulp and tore out into the rain and
darkness, yelling like a madman. Ran in and out of the
lake then ran back inside hopping up and down dripping
wet and shaking the whole cottage. Yelling, I won't go
back. World's full of shit, yeah -yeah -yeah. Don't give a
damn, yeah-yeah-yeah!
Ripped out of the cotiage again yelling, "Goddamn it!"
Ready to jump into the lake again but froze in his tracks
by tlie faint sound of Jenkins' cock crowing. Came back
with a shattered fearful look on his face. Dressed furiously
and grabbed a bunch of strings, shoelaces and elastics from
the kitchen drawers. Wallced up to the car, kneeled in the
rain and took the fancy hubcaps off the wheels. Tied two
together with bits of string and shoelaces and wore them
after a few fittings, one on his chest and one on his back.
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One more tied on his head.
Rain making a loud sound. Started up the field fierce.
And indeed I tell you 1 shall not betray you before the
cock crows thrice.
Eyes adrift and legs wading, water in my shoe making a
sucking noise. A knight up a field, wearing G.M. armour.
Advancing with clenched fists and terrifying eyes. Light-
ning shining on the chromed helmet and impressing a
puntillared landscape in his eyes. Going to kill that
sonofabitch. How dare he mock mel I'm the sacred beast.
Run for cover you scheckels, I'm coming back! The sacred
beast is nor dead yet. I'm not dead yet and you keep the
distance of the hyena from the body of the lion that is still
dirobbing with life, and fear the day that brings the
mighty warrior to another feat, to another dragon to be
slain! Lightning blue flashes and a grey darloiess about,
jumping over a puddle and the armour makes it difficult,
approaching the chicken-house. Sneaking inside gripping a
.shovel like a two-handed sword. Dark like hell in here and
a fearful cackle swaying, dividing before mc, curling and
rolling along the wall and then suddenly in the dark the
frightened cock crowed a quickie for the dignity that was
in it. Shh-shut up you sonofabitch! Where are you?
Bumping into the wall, more loud cackle and the
sonofabitch starting to crow again. Swinging the shovel
with mighty anger and an explosion of chickens. Swung
^ain and again squashing some chickens to the ground.
Wings hit him on die face flapping against the walls. Took
one baseball swing to hit some in mid-air and colhded with
something tremendously hard which blasted the shovel
from his hands and collapsed the whole roof. The rest of
the rickety old frame moaned and creaked for a minute
then crumbled down on him.
Stephen crawled out of a mess of chickens and chicken
shit, bloody feathers stuck on his face and hands and heard
old Jenkins yelling from a window upstairs and then the
loud bang of a twelve-gauge shotgun.
Bird shot clanging on the metal roof, as he ran across
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the yard, over the fence and hid in the bullrushes.
Heard Farmer Jenkins and the kids yelling in the yard,
what was It Bob? I dunno! I saw him! I saw him! T'was a
great big monster with a shiny head and one arm sticking
out of his ear! Go on! T'was so! I saw him! Aaahh!
And later on the four-o-one, they saw a wild madman
with a hubcap on his head, driving in the rain with the top
down, swinging a fist over his head and singing, "Has
anybody seen my Jesus?"
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