Basic Black with Pearls Read online

  A few more steps brought me to 335 Bay Street, to Herbert House, where, years ago, I too went in at this time of the morning. Here, on the ninth floor, I typed addresses all day long, every day and Saturdays to one o’clock. The sight of the recessed Art Deco entrance brought back the mood of those times, a vague unhappiness, not unlike the melancholy that now overtakes me when I am alone at night. I stopped to look down at the basement window of the coffee shop where I first met Max, but it was a barbershop now. From my desk in Herbert House I could see the sign across the street, Savarin, the letters spelled out vertically on the long sign. I spent many hours gazing at the large, rounded windows of the Savarin after Max took me dinner-dancing there one night. Beneath a dome painted midnight blue we held each other all night, pretending to dance. Under the same painted ceiling, with its plaster rosettes, vine leaves and wreaths, at one of those same curved windows, a month later at noon, I was the guest of Max’s mother. The waiter led me across the dance floor, crowded during the day with tables and chairs. He led me along a wrought-iron balustrade, up two steps, to a small table where Max’s mother was waiting. She greeted us with a smile, and thanked the waiter, whose first name she knew. She sat with her back to the window; her thick auburn hair, in a coil about her head, appeared as a halo. The full light of high noon was upon me. I looked across at Herbert House, counting the floors to the ninth (did the lobby count as the first?) and tried to guess which was my office window, the fourth or fifth from the end? I recall that I attempted to cut a soft white roll in half with a knife. Permit me, Max’s mother said, and tore the bun delicately with her fingers and handed it back to me. The butter was hard and I implanted blobs of it into the soft dough. The chair was deep and in order to reach my food I had to sit forward on its edge. I ate the two rolls at once, by themselves, to the last crumb, to show my gratitude for her kindness.

  Max’s mother spoke to me of the war, of social problems, of friendship and of youth. My voice when I was young projected even less than it does now and my considered comments were lost in the noise. She toyed with her food — it was curried shrimp — but drank three cups of black coffee. I came to the bottom of my plate, a delicate white china with rose-colored flowers along the border. When I studied her features, I found her deep, brooding eyes to be exactly like her son’s. My firstborn, she said of Max, with a smile exactly like his, even to the large front teeth and the rest of the teeth much smaller, not matching in color. At that sublime moment, when I recognized her to be the (beloved) progenitor of my (beloved) Max — at that exact moment, when I would have fallen at her feet and called her Mother, she began to speak of Maximilian, and her words had the remarkable effect on me of that heavy door being slammed shut again. I cannot quote her exactly, because my hold on events becomes shaky every time that door bangs, but I think the gist of it was something like this: Maximilian has a great future and I will not permit anything or anyone to stand in his way, especially the likes of you, he’s simply a fool to have gotten himself involved, he thinks he’s in love, he’s at that age, I have nothing against you personally, I don’t even know you, what’s more I don’t intend to, you’re all wrong for him, wrong background, your mother works in a factory, there are men who are not your father living with her, use your handkerchief or tissue or whatever you can find in that cheap purse, you’ll get over it, just in case you’re scheming to see him anyway, I can tell you right now, I’m prepared to do anything to prevent that, even if I have to send him to his uncle in New York.

  I never saw Max again. Not even after he was sent back by his uncle in a wheelchair, having broken his back in a dive onto a submerged rock, was I permitted to see him.

  By this time Bay Street was busy with the final wave of office workers. It felt good to be carried along by the crowd. I set my face to imitate the faces around me, whose expressions I can only describe as a mixture of anxiety and indifference. We crossed as a pack at the lights at Adelaide Street and again at Richmond Street. Cars were unable to make any turns against our solid mass. A gust of wind at the corner of Queen Street forced me to take shelter in a hollow of gray stone. In this exact spot once stood a pawnshop whose door never opened and through whose blackened window nothing was visible. Everyone knew that the two old bachelor brothers, whom no one had ever actually seen, refused offers of millions for their miserable corner store. The brothers were probably carried out. (When we were forced to leave a condemned house, having lost the battle with cockroaches and rats, my mother cried, I don’t want to leave my little palace.) In the refuge of the Simpson Tower I was joined by a swaying figure of a man, gray-stubbled, his eyes half-closed, muttering to himself. He was a ghost of the Depression mendicant who went with someone’s dime to Child’s for a bowl of hot soup. Suddenly I realized that in my obsession with vanished landmarks I had forgotten why I was walking these old streets. I had neglected to keep an eye — the third eye — open for Coenraad. I glanced at the man beside me. He was leaning into the curved stone and dozing. In order to give him every opportunity to make himself known, I edged slowly away from the Tower towards the crowd at the curb, watching him all the while. Coenraad’s disguises are as varied and as inventive as those of artists at a Beaux Arts Ball. With the others I waited for a policewoman to blow a whistle and stop traffic in order to cross. When I got to the other side I looked back. He had disappeared. Possibly he was a wino who had gone into Simpson’s to warm up.

  Once inside Eaton’s, I headed straight for the glove-and-scarf section. I could have found my way to any department blindfolded. In the past, going to Eaton’s was a day’s holiday. We basked under bright lights and examined things we would buy if we had money. It was different now: I could choose any scarf I fancied. Yet, in spite of the elaborate displays, I saw nothing I wanted. Under the neon lights the synthetic bits of cloth looked cheap and shabby. A frail, elderly woman behind the counter asked if she could help, but I noticed that she was indifferent to my reply. I sensed she was acting out a paid role for a hidden camera.

  – I want a pure silk scarf, blue, the same blue as in this tweed, I told her, at the same time extending the lapel of my coat towards her.

  – Everything we have is out on the counter.

  – Look in the drawers, I used to be able to buy special things that were hidden in drawers.

  – Everything we have is out on the counter.

  Such inane repetition, I thought, meant that the monitor was equipped for sound. I saw also that beyond giving a token performance, she would do no more. I turned to leave when a voice in my ear said,

  – Where are the silks of yesteryear . . . ?

  A derelict in prop clothes, in a stained green jacket, too long in the sleeves, loose trousers held up somehow, was standing beside me, and as he breathed in my face, which I turned towards him, he repeated, Ah, those silks of long ago. . . . He drew himself up and buttoned the one button on his jacket. It came to me that he was not drunk, his breath was sweet. He stood beside me with an air one might call aristocratic. It was all too wonderful: Coenraad as a downtown wino! Certain that I was being observed by the hidden camera, I took care not to react with the joy that was overwhelming me, lest I blow his cover. I made the obligatory gestures: I pretended to recoil, I tightened my lips in outrage. He took my hand from the counter up to his lips. At the same time as he bent his dirty, matted brown hair over the back of my hand, he raised his bloodshot eyes to mine and winked. I was reminded again of the consummate artistry in the design of contact lenses. The saleswoman forgot the spy camera and came darting out from behind the counter to avert what she probably believed would become a disturbance. I waved her back to where she belonged.

  – Think nothing of it, I told her. It is the custom in Vienna. Men do this from force of habit. Do not mistake gallantry for desire.

  To the consternation of all the clerks, and perhaps the person who monitored the TV, as customers gasped and gaped, I put my arm through his and together we
marched down the aisle to Queen Street.

  We walked in silence. We rarely speak when we are in public — he because he must be on the qui vive at all times, and I because his presence renders me speechless. Elm Street was in the opposite direction, yet I did not question why we were heading west on Queen instead of north on Yonge. Explanations between us are unnecessary: even in sleep we understand one another. At Bay, I looked up at the old City Hall tower and noted it was ten o’clock. That quick glance, no longer in duration than the jab of a needle, released a flow of images. Of green corridors and brown battleship linoleum with that morning’s footprints making a gray path down the middle; of hours on a hard oak bench outside a room closed off by a door of frosted glass, with a design in clear glass of a bouquet of flowers tied with two flowing ribbons. The sign on that door, Juvenile Court, was painted in straight black letters in two horizontal lines across the flowers. Perhaps it was coincidence, but at the same instant as my mother’s weeping face passed before me he grasped my hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. I caught Coenraad looking down at me and wondered if he noticed how long my hair had grown since that time in Montreal when he said he did not like it short.

  Further on, near St. Patrick, the same plucked chickens, it seemed, still hung head down in the window of A. Stork and Son. The small red brick building, I noticed now for the first time, had a perfect symmetry. A stone inserted under the peak of the roof had a date on it: 1881. The haphazard growth of this old part of town was revealed in the many stores selling used furniture and used clothing and used comic books and even used pornography. Behind a dirty window, in front of a dirty gray cotton curtain, was a sign, Madame Olga, Gypsy Fortune Teller, printed on a fly-specked piece of cardboard. Beneath, in smaller letters, She will tell you Past, Present and Future. Are you looking for peace of mind? Are you unlucky in love, marriage or work? Then come see Madame Olga. She will remove all evil influence and bad luck. Coenraad halted. For a moment I thought we were going in to have our fortunes told. Even though his own life is dictated by the implacable Agency, Coenraad is convinced our love for one another was predestined. As for me, I was eager to have my future foretold. But it was the door next to Madame Olga’s that we entered. I hesitated while he started up a long flight of steep stairs. His heels were worn right down. He walked bent over, head jutting forward from a rounded back. Once he stumbled. Perhaps he was just staying in character; my lover is sure-footed and always walks upright. He held open a steel fire door and waited for me. We entered a brightly lit factory. Rows of women’s dark heads were bent over whirring sewing machines. On either side of where we stood were long tables laden with bolts of brilliantly colored silks.

  At our entrance, a young woman nearest the door stopped her machine, nodded her head in a gesture of recognition, then went along a narrow aisle between the worktables towards the back, where she opened a plywood door set into a plywood partition. She came out immediately, followed by a tall man who, in contrast to her robust youth was vague in his grayness: his hair, face, the suit he wore, all created so ethereal an effect I was surprised to hear a voice. He addressed Coenraad in a language I didn’t understand. I remained perfectly still, trusting Coenraad, who sometimes has me play a small part in his work. Coenraad said, in English,

  – Here she is. I’ll be back later.

  Then he who I thought was Coenraad brought his worn heels smartly together, raised my hand once more to his lips and said,

  – Dear lady, it has been most agreeable. Here you will find what you are looking for.

  It was apparent I had been taken in, after all, by the man’s fine manners. Am I a child, always confusing hopes with facts? I wondered. The steel door was closing on its pneumatic rod behind me.

  – Now then, said the owner or whoever he was, have a look at these materials, pointing to a long plywood table with silks, we can make up any style you like, squares, oblongs, triangles, large and small. Lowest prices in the city.

  – Who was that man? I asked, still uncertain.

  – Laszlo? He is my countryman. Any business he brings my way, he receives compensation. Now, how many dozen? what kind of business? boutique, department store, beauty parlor? extra discount for quantities above two dozen.

  – There’s been a mistake. I want only one scarf, a blue one, for this coat.

  – Laszlo is never mistaken, he is my countryman. I know him very well. He is sensitive. He can recognize a buyer immediately. Comparison shopping, were you? You won’t find more beautiful silks anywhere. These are from France, flown to Miquelon, they find their way to Montreal, if you comprehend my meaning, and then are sent to me by another countryman. That’s why I can sell silk scarves at the prices I do.

  The women at the machines looked up every once in a while with interest. They spoke quietly to one another, yet obviously made themselves heard above the noise for they often laughed. I wanted to stay in this room of rainbow silks shining in the light of a dozen neon tubes. I was tempted to beg to be put to work, to be given a social insurance number, to belong with these smiling women. I could learn their language, I could fit in, I felt, I had been one of them a generation ago, I know this district, I know exactly where to go for a paper cup of coffee that will spill over on top of the bagel with cheese in a bag. But all I managed to do standing there was to convey in dumb show the fact that I was not who he thought I was. At that he propelled me, almost pushed me, along the aisle back to his office. No sooner were we behind the door than he grasped my wrists in his two hands and forced me to my knees. Red spots appeared high on his waxen cheeks; light came into the flat yellow eyes. I stayed on my knees, waiting.

  – Who are you, who sent you, how did you find me?

  Just as suddenly, he released his hold on me. He fell back into a chair, his hands hung loose at his side, his face became pallid again.

  – Thank God I have been caught at last.

  I remained on my knees, helpless in the sight of his intolerable pain. Come, I told myself, stop for a moment. Your pursuit of love will wait half an hour. And by the time he discovers what a coward you are in the presence of pain, you will have gone. Comfort him if you can. And don’t worry about consequences: you are a stranger to him no matter who he thinks you are; whatever it was that had happened, it had nothing to do with you and you cannot be blamed.

  – Tell me, Tatele, who is after you, what crime did you commit?

  – Ghosts. No one was left alive. I am the only one and I do not want to live. There is no one, no one to forgive me. I dream of an avenging angel who will confront me with my sin. Only death will end my nightmare.

  It was my intention to raise my eyes to his in sympathy and understanding, but my gaze was arrested by an old crackled photograph being held before me. It was a picture of a small dark woman, who stared out with the knowledge of her fate in her eyes, the look that comes, as I have seen in similar pictures, when all fear is gone and only the certainty of death remains.

  – Imagine, he said, how accurate the Germans were, that when the Red Cross found Miriam’s final photograph in a cabinet in an office in Warsaw after the war, they knew at once whose wife she had been.

  One hand was stroking my hair. He could not have known I was immobilized by the touch of his hand on my head. No one had ever done that. But then, I had never been on my knees before.

  – In the middle of the night the Nazis came. I was half asleep, waiting for Miriam to come back to bed. She was attending to the children in the other room, they had bad colds and were feverish and she was up every four hours with the alarm clock to give them aspirins. I had no thoughts when I heard banging on the door and shouting in German. I mean to say, I have no recollection of deciding to abandon my family to their fate. All I can tell you, all I have been able to tell myself, is that my body had a will of its own. I jumped out the window of our bedroom. I ran. Once my body knew it was safe in the forests it knew so well, my mind, no, wor
se, my imagination, took over and has never ceased to this moment. Over and over I see my brave, frightened Miriam, my Yankel and little Shmuel being taken away, the children half asleep, their noses running from their colds. I see Miriam fingerprinted, tattooed, photographed, filed and gassed. Day and night I have prayed that God punish me, but He chose His own means to scourge my soul. I prospered. I don’t care about money, yet it keeps accumulating. I give away as much as I can to orphans, to the lonely and the sick; I turn no one away. I have been publicly honored. At last God took pity on me. This body that betrayed me in youth is being punished in old age. These arrogant arms are feeble; these treacherous legs have lost their strength. One day I fell in a coma in the street. People thought I was drunk and stepped over me. The police came; I went willingly; I thought the uniformed men were Nazis come to reunite me with my wife and sons. I was not put in a camp; I was taken to a hospital; I was cared for as if I were deserving. I have diabetes, holes in my stomach that bleed; a heart that tightens with memories. With each new illness I bless God.