Basic Black with Pearls Page 7

  – Help! she cries in a whisper, I am a prisoner of my mad father!

  I look around me, but there’s no one else here. The girl and I are alone in the dining room on the garden.

  – Help! You must save me. My father has kept me locked up here for two months!

  My mind darts this way and that: I have never turned my back on someone in need, yet, right now, I don’t want to start anything I can’t finish. She is so young, barely seventeen. Still, I have been warned against taking up with strangers. I say to her,

  – Tell me about it. Sometimes it helps to talk it out.

  She cringes back into her niche. I realize that troubled persons are especially sensitive to professional jargon. I ask her what I can do.

  – Take me with you!

  That is impossible, of course; I cannot permit anyone to interfere with my purpose. I push past her and fling open the casement windows.

  – Here, out this way, it’s easy — put one foot over the sill, see how low it is, then the other foot, jump, and you’re free!

  She remains in her corner, shaking her head.

  – There is nothing beyond this painted room. No sky, no trees, no garden. Oh these artists and their tricks! They deal in illusion: everything is a matter of perspective. See those pink flowers? You would imagine that you could just reach out and pluck them. Not at all. The pink flowers are two storeys below in the garden next door. It’s not only what he paints in — all those green trees and the lovely blue sky — it’s what he leaves out — that’s part of the deception too. What you don’t see is the twelve-foot stone wall around the yard. There is no gate. There is only the door to the kitchen of the concierge and he has been given orders . . . One time I did try to escape. I jumped and landed on cement, not on a bed of flowers as I had been led to believe. I sprained my right ankle. See, it is still bandaged. I hobbled to the kitchen door, crying with pain. At the sight of me the concierge ran to the telephone, while his wife helped me to a chair. Later, from their conversation, I reconstructed what my father must have said — Poor child, she suffers from petit mal, her mother thought the sun would do her good. No, no, not my daughter, I am not so old as that, she is my niece from Canada. The villain, denying his paternity!

  I move over to the table on the other side of the picture where there is an open-backed chair. I pull it forward and sit down. For an instant she comes out of the shadows to tell me not to disturb anything on the table.

  – I myself am not in a position to help, I told her, but I travel a lot. Is there anyone I can contact on your behalf?

  – Yes, yes, when you get to Paris, tell the Canadian Consul of my plight and persuade him to intervene with the local authorities here. I warn you, that will not be a simple matter in France. I, as a minor, have no recourse to the law against my father.

  I promised. She came and sat opposite me at the table and told me her story.

  – I left a harsh life in Rimouski for the glamour of the Riviera. My poor mother was on relief, I had to leave school, the Depression was getting worse and worse. My mother traced my father through relatives in the Old Country and discovered he was living in Antibes, a place, she thought, where everyone was rich, even in those times. And so I came to live with the father I had never known. I am the same age as my mother was when they . . . when I was conceived. I think my father sometimes forgot who I was: he had a strange expression on his face when he looked at me. But now he looks at me only with anger, sometimes even with hatred. He won’t speak to me. Worst of all, he won’t let me out of this room. For my own good, he says. I have had nothing to eat for a week but dry crusts of bread; I drink coffee made with chicory. The fruit in the bowl? It is made of wax. No, there is nothing in the pitcher. It has all been created for effect. My father is penniless. I have written home for money. He says my mother will have to pay if she wants me back. I explain that my mother is on welfare. He says I am lying because everyone in America has money. Tears come to my eyes.

  – Why is he doing this to you?

  – Because I disobeyed him. Just once. Once, that’s all. I had a rendezvous with a young man against my father’s orders. I met Emil at a tea-dance at the Hotel Renoir. I was out for a walk, I heard the music and I went into the hotel. I was lonely and bored. Emil was alone too. We danced. He is a student from Heidelberg. My father says he is a pimp employed by the hotel to turn me into a whore like my mother. Or else he is a German spy. He says the Germans are everywhere. It’s true, but only as tourists. I promised Emil I would come to the hotel the next afternoon. My father forbade me to go, but I went out just the same. I am accustomed to being on my own, with my mother away looking for work most of the day. You must believe me — my father will not — that we were never alone, Emil and I. We talked and drank lemonade and danced. I went right home when the dance was over. It was only six o’clock, but still my father was enraged. There was a terrible scene. Like mother, like daughter, he kept saying. The next morning a doctor came. I can’t imagine what he was told. The doctor tried to get me to lie down and spread my legs. I refused. Then he and my father tried to force me to submit to an examination, but I fought them both. Finally, while my father held me, the doctor put a square of wet gauze over my face. When I woke up, the doctor was gone. I was nauseated and sore all over, but otherwise unharmed. I am to stay in this room, my father says, until money arrives from my mother; or until he finds someone willing to pay a handsome price for my virginal favors, whichever happens first.

  – The world has changed, I suggested. Young women are no longer at the mercy of men.

  – What you say may be true, but that does not free me from my father.

  – I know someone who is employed by the American government. I’ll get him to use his influence with the Ambassador in Paris.

  – It’s no use, she whispered, I’m just a young girl. They will take his word against mine. Then she retreated quickly to her corner and faded back into the wall.

  In Paris, I was so caught up with waiting each day for Coenraad’s arrival, so obsessed with thoughts of the joy awaiting me, each morning recalling the delirium of the night before; the next night waiting for his return, waiting for the knock on the door, waiting for his entry . . . that I forgot about the girl in Antibes. Not until it was too late, when the American Embassy had to be barricaded against rioting students in ’67, and Coenraad got a message to me to leave immediately and I was on a plane to London, did I remember my promise.

  I hoped she got away from her father and out of France before it fell. In the light of subsequent events, the rise of Nazism, the war, the defeat of France, I wondered about Emil. Was he who he said he was? I will never know. I wept all day, every day. The doctor came again and said I was very ill. He, my father, would be well advised to send me back to Canada. While they regarded one another very seriously, I found my voice.

  – You’ve had your revenge, you’ve made my mother pay, you’ve punished me, no more, no more, let me go . . .

  I thought I heard her cry out. Someone cried out. It was a long-drawn-out cry of despair one hears at the graveside. I looked about and saw two policemen coming towards me. Perhaps it was not too late to appeal to the law. In the midst of my recounting to them her tragic story, they exchanged conspiratorial glances; they looked at one another every few seconds as if to reassure themselves that they had both, at the same time, seen and heard the identical thing. With one accord they moved from a position facing me to stand one on either side. I saw determination on their faces. I saw also that their uniforms were brown. I heard something about a doctor. A cold was numbing my limbs; I could not move. Not until they took hold of my arms with unexpected gentleness did I realize they were gallery guards.

  – I get these attacks, I spoke slowly and distinctly, as one does in a foreign country, petit mal, I’ll be all right in a few minutes, thank you, and declined further help with a firm step backward. Coenraad, h
ad he been with me, would have applauded my inventiveness. I would have nudged him to pay particular attention to the sincerity with which I lied my way out of an embarrassment: the way I looked the guards straight in the eye and the way I placed a hand on the shoulder of the shorter one. Coenraad has said that my inability to dissimulate is more of a vice than a virtue; that I hold nothing back; that there is no mystery about me whatsoever. It isn’t as if life for me has been a mere matter of honesty, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf. She also said that candor is the greatest vice. It seems to me that in a confusion of extremes one either lies or tells the truth, whichever works best. Up until now the risk of deceit has, for me, been greater than the risk of truth.

  With thoughts of Coenraad again as pervasive as a fever I returned directly to the King Edward. In this mood there is always a feeling that by sheer concentration I can conjure up my lover. As I pushed against the heavy glass of the revolving door I tamed an impulse once inside to run across the lobby to the desk and demand my message. It has been my experience that eagerness born of anxiety sets up a perversity in clerks, so that without as much as a turn of the head or a shift of the eyes, they will say No. I have tried a brisk step with an air intended to suggest the snapping of fingers, but I fool no one: I simply do not command the respect of those paid to serve. I am forced to see myself through their eyes: a woman, no longer young, in a tweed coat open over a plain black dress. A closer look would reveal only that the pearls around my throat are genuine. Since I am a middle-aged woman travelling alone, I cannot be identified by the company I keep. I carry one small suitcase; there is not even a briefcase to give me a little prestige. I am regarded as a woman with no apparent purpose, offering no reason for my presence. When I leave, everyone’s attitude changes: they smile as I pay the bill; another clerk voluntarily checks to see if there is a final message. Even the ubiquitous fat detective with the fat cigar nods goodbye from his position in the big chair. Their fears are ended. I have caused no disturbance. I am not insane; no men were seen leaving my room in the middle of the night; no vengeful husband has stormed in; the police have made no enquiries. With a split-second timing I always wonder at, my bag is placed in the front seat beside the driver in a waiting cab. I have no alternative but to get into the taxi and state my destination.

  But right now I had to make the arduous journey across the expanse of carpet in the lobby of the King Edward. My shoes were still wet and uncomfortable. I began to limp. The clerks and the tired old men dressed as busboys, and some botanists heading for the Bacchus Bar at the other end, all watched with sympathy. I dragged my left leg towards the desk. When the odds are against me I go into an act. See, I’m crippled, I haven’t had your advantages; it’s been rough, but what can you know about it. I got the idea at a concert. A famous soprano came onstage, emerging slowly from the wings, pathetically dragging her lame leg behind her, and as we followed her painful path to centre stage, we were not only without criticism but we had our palms together ready to applaud before she opened her mouth. By the time I reached the desk, the clerk was truly sorry he had no message for me. He wished me a pleasant evening. I limped to the elevators. In my room I stayed just long enough to change into my other pair of shoes. Downstairs again, I was careful to remember to limp back across the lobby. A busboy ran forward to start the doors revolving slowly for me.

  On Yonge Street I found myself part of an indeterminate crowd. They will, I know, finally go into Simpson’s or Eaton’s or Woolworth’s for something to do. I stayed on the east side of the street in order to avoid the same temptation. I crossed only after I got to Elm Street, although I did linger in front of Loew’s Downtown to look at the stills of movie stars about to make love. At the corner of Dundas a sudden chill wind came up. The United Clothiers showed overcoats and parkas in their window.

  When I turned the corner on Elm Street I found that where Number Four might have been there was a patch of dying grass and a green park bench. Number Forty, then, became my destination, but as I looked up the street I saw only devastation. Except for a couple of magnificent old brick buildings, four storeys high, the entire centre of Elm Street had been wrecked. What was left habitable were a few small restaurants, houses with renovated fronts with signs proclaiming they were clubs — Order of the Eagles, Orange Order, Order of Serbian Veterans, Order of Elks, Order of Croatian Veterans — and parking lots, the backs of the Mount Sinai Hospital and the Sick Children’s Hospital. I passed old homes boarded up, awaiting, I presumed, demolition. What type of disguise would Coenraad find suitable for this mongrel street? As I walked along, the street lamps came on. The white light of the sodium vapor lamps created stark shadows. Few people were about. A young girl about twelve passed me and I began to ruminate on Innocence and Its Loss.

  This is the type of essay I write in my head and save up to tell Coenraad. I can’t very well talk about Innocence and Its Loss with the bellhop. It isn’t that I automatically assume that a bellhop is incapable of metaphysical insights. “I’ve seen everything” is also a statement of profundity. It’s just that I do not want to start something I cannot finish. No sooner do I get a dialogue under way than I have to leave. Suppose he is troubled by his place in the scheme of things, as I am by mine; and I come along and, with the best intentions in the world, probe his soul with stiletto questions, such as, How long have you been a bellhop? and he, at age forty-seven, begins to consider his existential dilemma and he ceases to be content with being a bellhop — is it my fault that he quits, goes on unemployment insurance, doesn’t know how to begin a day on his own, takes to drink — am I responsible for his fate?

  Yet, even though on abstract issues Coenraad is, I feel, an original thinker, I am reluctant to involve his intellect when we are together. Once I queried him on the phenomenological aspects of his work — all that spying and interrogation; all those disguises and mysteries; all that moving about from country to country; all those ploys and stratagems — is he satisfied to go on this way?

  – Love me, he said, ask no questions. Coenraad always eludes my probings.

  I stepped up on the porch of Number Forty. It was perhaps the last house remaining on Elm Street. On my left was a large window, we used to call it the front-room window, with a round green sign glued to the corner nearest the steps. The imprint said, Metro Toronto Licensed Boarding House. There was a bell but I hesitated to use it. Whom would I ask for? I have no way of describing Coenraad, except, perhaps, as a single man, recently arrived in Toronto. In a city this size, I realized, the description would apply to thousands of men. The door, I noticed, was within an inch of being shut; it yielded to pressure. I found myself in a dark hall. Dark, because no one, not the landlady nor any tenant, would replace the burnt-out 40-watt bulb. Dark, too, because every door was shut tight by the occupants, even though, I recalled, they have nothing to hide, neither goods nor dignity. Yet they insist on privacy. At this hour, there were smells of frying lard mixed with odors of old dust and with those strange emanations of skin and breath and cloth, still lingering, of countless people who have come and gone in this hall.

  As I stood there in the dark I was assailed by doubt. Where in this tenement would I find Coenraad? There were three storeys and perhaps even a basement of rooms. Someone brushed against me and for a moment my heart leapt. But he (it was) opened the door into the room to the right of where I was standing. The smell of beer on his breath confirmed he could not be Coenraad, who never drinks, on or off duty. He left the door ajar: I had only to turn my head to see inside, but that was not necessary. I know this type of “light-housekeeping” room very well, with its two-burner electric plate; with its battered brown studio couch that opens into a bed and a half; with its tall, dark, veneered, double-doored wardrobe. One door has a cracked mirror; the other door holds a small key in its broken lock and is always open unless a wedge of newspaper between it and the frame keeps it shut. When the door is opened the wad of paper falls to the floor and is not replaced
, so that entire weeks are spent staring at the worn shoes and old coats inside. There is also a small radio sitting on the table beside the toaster.

  Through the open doorway I could hear the television. Then over the electronic voices I heard real shouts, then a crash and a woman’s (real) scream. Such sounds are not unfamiliar to me and I listened for the sequence I knew to be inevitable. First, a scraping sound. I imagined she has pulled forward a wooden chair which she holds an inch or so off the floor, ready to swing it either for protection or for assault. I visualized her strong, heavy arms. Then I heard her voice, rich with rage, Get away from me you drunken bastard the next time you’re late you can take your own goddam supper stay away I’m warning you don’t you dare touch me . . . And he, I’ll come home any fuckin time I want I’m your husband I’ll clobber you if you don’t put that fuckin chair down . . .

  By holding up my wrist to the gleam of light from the doorway, I saw that it was only six-thirty. At first I was puzzled by the woman’s complaint — after all, only children eat dinner before seven — until I recalled the fried herring and the potatoes and the urgings to “finish already.” Someone would always say, I’m too tired to eat. It would have been barely six o’clock. When the table was cleared, it would have been understood that the final obligation of the day had been discharged by everyone. There would be released in us then a surge of freedom — the remaining hours belonged to each of us alone. The house would quiet down. The door to the street would open and close discreetly.

  The television voice was clicked off in midsentence. I heard the man speak in low, insinuating tones; then the woman’s in reply, soft now; and, finally, their door being (kicked?) shut. For several moments I stood there in the dark and breathed in the smells of the poor, thinking that Coenraad, were he with me now, would take my hand and pull me out of this place, exactly as he did that time when our rendezvous turned out to be a hovel of a hotel in Manchester. He has an aversion, which I do not share, to poverty. Coenraad refuses to reveal whether, like me, he once was very poor or whether he has never known deprivation. I agree that in his line of work, with days and nights fraught with danger, he needs to be able to count on something. He can count on me; I think he knows that; I could love him anywhere. And yet . . . I am always drawn back to poverty. I am aware that there are a dozen streets named Elm, in the suburbs, in Rosedale, in North York, still, on my first day back, I sought the shabby streets of my youth. Suddenly what I thought was self-evident in the message now appeared vague and uncertain: Did I really expect to find Coenraad here?