Polar Vortex

by Shani Mootoo

  Alex prepares coffee. Skye pulls open drawers and sticks her nose toward the backs of them. I tell her I’ve already done that. Nevertheless, she carries on. I want to repeat that I’ve already checked out that area, but no need, I suppose. The walk, she says, took her an hour and twenty minutes. There was a bicyclist on the trail, she says, at this time of the year, can you imagine? Normally, there’d be snow on the trail and it would have already been closed. And the lake, there’re ducks still bobbing about on the lake. Don’t they know they should be long gone? And the shore, with as many people as on a summer day strolling about.

  Prakash might arrive while she’s here. I am less concerned about him and Skye meeting, I realize. In fact, I am pleased by this possibility — friends from different ends of my life meeting, one looking through one end of a telescope, seeing traces of my past, the other through the opposite end, my present life in sharp focus. People who grow up and live in their hometowns all their lives, or nearby enough, don’t have to think about bridging gaps. It would be wonderful if he arrives while she is here.

  Skye asks for and is given a flashlight. She unhinges and pulls out the drawers completely and peers down behind the framework of the cabinet. She puts everything back and tells us that it was so strange, there were buds on some of the trees along the trail, and new springlike tufts of ornamental grasses coming up in gardens that abut the trail. A strong woman, she grabs hold of the wine fridge and shimmies it out of the very tight cranny in which it is housed beneath the counter. I couldn’t have done that. Thankfully, I am not the type to feel diminished by the physical strength of other women. Alex gets the hand vacuum and deals with the matted grey dust and mouse excrement that covers the floor like wads of dryer lint while Skye gets down on her elbows, unfazed by the likelihood, at least in my mind, that if there is excrement on the ground, there is likely dried mouse urine, too, and she shines the light all over the back and into the mechanisms of the fridge. As she does this, she tells us about her own fridge at the cottage having been brought to a sudden noisy and messy halt by a mouse that jumped into the fan at the back, a terrible splatter she had to clean up on her own because Liz was in Vancouver at the time.

  “Ooooh, that smell, can’t you smell that smell? Ooooh, that smell,” she says, to which Alex responds, “Lynyrd Skynyrd.” Skye raises her hand in the air for a high-five, and Alex lifts hers, but indifferently. Skye grabs Alex’s hand, clutches it, and forces Alex to shake hers. They know of what they speak. I don’t ask for an explanation, but I do wish Alex weren’t so lethargic. Skye’s laughing, but Alex seems so reserved. A good slap of her palm against Skye’s would have been chummier, funnier. Skye is going to sense that something’s wrong. There’s not much I can do about that.

  No dead thing is found behind the wine fridge, but the smell, that ooooh smell, definitely rises up from behind it. Something must be caught in the walls or in the subfloor beneath the cork flooring. We’ll have to live with it. So will Prakash. I have to smile. This must surely be the universe delivering to me a dose of comeuppance for the contempt I felt when one spring day I visited Prakash in the house he shares with his wife. Or shared. Who knows now — new house, no wife, new wife? Anyway, that visit was the only time I ever went to his house, and the second and last time I ever met Aruna.

  The first time, several months after he’d come back from India with her, we met outside a café in Little Italy near my home. She clung to his arm. To enter the restaurant, he tried to extricate himself, but she held on and in they went awkwardly. She was slight and shy. She wore a knee-length Indian top in shades of red and pink that was made from a shiny fabric, and low-heeled open-toed sandals. Her waist-length hair, blacker than mine, was braided at her back. Mine was as short as Prakash’s, but I had long bangs that fell to one side. I wore a white T-shirt under a vest in a flowery textured upholstery fabric, blue jeans, and tired old red-and-white sneakers. I expected my choice of clothing to do the work of instantly differentiating us one from the other, and to suggest that I was not one to follow rules, I had removed the laces from the sneakers and wore no socks. I wanted to appear “cool.” The three of us were in essence foreigners to each other. She was the most authentic Indian of us all, and I imagined she’d find me, from the Caribbean — and despite my sartorial choices — crude. Over the course of a long drip-slow hour, our differences were, in the end, not accentuated by the clothing she and I wore as much as by Prakash’s discomfort; he was juggling two different personalities within himself, one of the relentlessly pursuing man and the other of a man caught, a man with traditional responsibilities and who had to be in charge. The booth in which we sat was big enough for three people on one side; even so, she pressed against him. From my side of the table, I could tell that one hand, although kept out of view below the table, made constant contact with his leg. He shifted away from her several times, but each time she adjusted so that contact was made again. I could see his chagrin, but she seemed oblivious, like a child not comprehending being shrugged off. He would have known me well enough, I was sure, to guess I wasn’t missing any of this. Perhaps if I hadn’t been there, he might have put his arm around her and kept her close.

  For a while, I was amused by their dance, but it occurred to me that he might have wanted me to see their discomfort, and so, perversely, I pretended not to notice a thing. She seemed to speak English well enough, yet I’d ask her a question and she’d look to him to answer for her. I can even now recall him saying, in English, surely meaning to be encouraging, “Come on, you can answer for yourself,” after which he said something to her in Gujarati or Hindi — I couldn’t tell which — perhaps repeating what he’d just said in English. Perhaps it was an admonishment, but if so, it was gentle, for his tone wasn’t much different from when he spoke English. I remember her pouting, mumbling something back to him in their language, her free hand cupping her mouth to his ear, like a child. He finally answered on her behalf the questions I had directed to her.

  Then, that night, shut away in his study, he phoned me. He apologized. Although I knew what he was apologizing for, I told him I didn’t. He explained she was shy. As if I hadn’t noticed. He said he was like a teacher, always showing her, instructing, cautioning, cajoling. He said he often thought of me saying to him, Let’s do this, let’s go here, let’s try that, and wished she possessed a similar curiosity and verve.

  Months later, he invited me to come to his house. For the longest while I found reasons for being unable to go. It eventually dawned on me that to him the hospitality of a man in charge of a household, a man with a wife, was a display of success. He wanted his wife to cook for me, and he wanted me to observe as he sat back at the table with me while she served us. I decided to allow him this dignity, as corrupt as it might have been. It had been a cool, bright day in early May, and outside crocuses were just beginning to push up out of brown earth around their newly built house and you could smell the end of winter in the air. When I arrived, Aruna came to the door, her arms folded across her chest. I stepped forward to engage in an embrace, but she did not move her arms to welcome me. And so an awkwardness with me was exposed.

  The air inside their new house smelled of spices, and a nose-singeing scent of curry and cooking oil rose up out of the acrylic wall-to-wall carpeting. We sat in a living room that looked as if it was rarely used. Hanuman figurines stood in a glass-and-oak cupboard. There were two large wedding photographs, printed on canvas, framed and hanging on a wall, and on a glass coffee table were a brass lotah and tarria that I assumed were used in the ceremony. Barely five minutes had passed when Aruna excused herself and went to the kitchen. I called behind her that I’d love to help. She said, “You stay. He wants you to himself.”

  We all sat at the table for dinner, but again, before long, she got up, cleared her plate, and said she was going to watch her favourite TV program on an Indian station. When I heard the television sounds, I said, “She’s not comfortable. Is everything a
ll right?” He did not answer, he just stared at the food on his plate. I asked again, “Are the two of you okay? Or is this about me?”

  He launched into an apology and complaint. “See? She makes a point of not being welcoming to any of my friends from here. If they’re from India, she’ll entertain them.”

  “But I’m Indian,” I said, adding quickly, “Well, sort of. Heritage, ancestry. Do they count for anything? Or is it just me?”

  “It’s not you. It’s her. She won’t speak Gujarati with me. I must speak Hindi to her. She is not very sociable, but don’t take it on, it’s not personal. She’s like that. She doesn’t mean anything.”

  I suggested we go to the TV room and watch with her. The furniture was all Indian, carved wood and brass tops, except for three leather sofas, strewn with pillows in embroidered fabrics studded with mirrors, from which rose a sweet and oily fried-dessert fragrance — sugar, oil, rosewater — an odour with arms that pawed at me and wrapped itself around and around me like an affection-craving child. The stinging scent seemed to pose a test; how you took to it marked you as either one of them, who would stay easily, or an outsider who couldn’t wait to leave.

  Neither Skye nor Alex has noticed I haven’t been paying them attention. If I were facing them, they’d see on my face what could be a smile. But it’s not a true smile. It’s the silly spread of embarrassment, for what I suppose is a kind of shallowness on my part.

  Prakash may not want to escape the instant he arrives, but at least the smell of this dead thing might allow him to turn up his nose.

  He and I are both Indians who were born and grew up outside of India, and we’re vastly different, one from the other. And he’d say his Indian wife is different from both of us, too. An Indian from the Caribbean. An Indian from Africa. And a real Indian, from the subcontinent. But he and she speak Hindi. I don’t. There were — are — so many things between him and me, separating us. It would never have worked.

  Even if Alex and Skye saw the contortion on my face, I’m safe; another of the many oddities in the design of the human form: the body, a manifestation of some considerable length, with only two tiny slits we call eyes in English, tiny relative to the size of the whole, each slit about one and a half inches wide, with which to apprehend the physical world, and both placed an inch away from one another, give or take the fraction that makes each one of us unique, and way up at the top of the whole length of the person. This time the oddity is an asset rather than a flaw. If Alex and Skye had been looking at me, they would have seen the awkward thing I was doing with my lips and interpreted it as a sign that I was listening and was amused by them, or that I am pleased with my syrup, which I seem preoccupied with, but my eyes are impenetrable — they are a shield. Thankfully, no one can see the pictures and thoughts behind them. At the same time, what is good for one should be good for the other — and there are definitely times I wish I could see behind Alex’s eyes.

  Skye, still on the ground, makes herself comfortable, crossing her legs. “If we were vultures — and believe it or not, I saw one this morning sitting in the top branches of a naked tree — this smell would intoxicate us. We’d be smacking our great big beaks and clapping our smelly feet in delight.” She is a forensic pathologist and never fails to drop ingots of related trivia: “Do you know they defecate on their own feet to keep them cool?” she says. Sometimes it’s best to ignore Skye’s delight in trivia. Alex and I make sounds of disgust. She carries on, of course: “Talking of vultures, did you know turkey vultures can vomit up their food and use it as a projectile at anything or anyone that bothers them? They can send it flying as far as ten feet! Imagine that!”

  “And humans use solid projectiles to get their points across, too,” says Alex, as she flicks the towel at Skye, purposely missing her. It’s good to see Alex livening up at least a bit. Hopefully her mood will change completely and things will be better for the rest of the day.

  Alex is telling Skye she’s begun the chapter on forgeries that could have changed history. Skye says, “Have you decided if you’ll tackle your theory about Valla’s analysis of the Donation of Constantine? You should, Al. It’s brilliant.”

  I guess they discuss her work. Before I can stop myself I say, “What’s that?”

  She looks to Alex to answer, but Alex remains tight-lipped. It is Skye who enlightens me. “Lorenzo Valla. A fifteenth-century Catholic priest. He did a textual analysis of Emperor Constantine the Great’s decree that supposedly gave — that’s the donation part — Rome, and much of Western Europe, to the Roman Catholic Church. He is said to have proved the decree was a forgery.”

  This is why I like Skye. Without judgment, she answers. Even if I am not actually enlightened, I am at least acknowledged. Alex, on the other hand, has looked away, as if she wishes I hadn’t exposed myself. Or I suppose that look-away of hers could also mean, See, this is what I have to deal with, someone who isn’t interested in what I do. Oh, I’m being foolish. I am being unnecessarily defensive. It is just that around Skye I often feel a great warmth, as if I am an actual person, and this lays bare the coolness that has come between Alex and me.

  I nod with my chin as Alex responds to Skye, “Well, it’s been written about from all angles, ad nauseam. My question about Valla is what exactly were his motives in having taken on such a controversial analysis. Why did he, what motivated him, a Catholic priest, to place his patron’s desires to take on such an analysis above the authority of the Vatican? These are questions not about the supposed gift, not about the forgery, not about Valla’s exposé of it, nor about the Church, not even about his patron’s motives, but about Valla himself — man of God or not — about the nature of loyalty, self-preservation, patriotism then and now, how this links up to the leaking of documents today. I mean, I’m making a leap here certainly, not an impossible one but an important one. These questions are on my mind. That Valla’s assertion that the treatise was a forgery might have been a calculated lie is one of many angles.”

  To this, no one says anything. The stirring of the ingredients in my pot, the scraping sounds I make, are embarrassing. I let go of the spoon and busy myself more quietly. After some seconds, Alex adds in a low, almost despairing voice, “Is this kind of work of any real importance? Does anyone care? If we, as a species, carry on as we do, will there be any of us left to care?”

  I understand her despair about the state of the world today — I even share it. But I have no idea about this Valley man, or whatever his name is, and despite how surprised I am to hear her so vocal today, it irks me that she has carried on so about him and about her work. She doesn’t usually talk with me like this about what she’s doing. Clearly she has with Skye. I’d listen if she did. But then again, it’s true she’s invited me to lectures in the city and abroad, given by her and others, and I’ve chosen not to go along, but only because half of this is all gibberish to me.

  It’s as if Alex is using the occasion to let me know that Skye — or if not Skye, specifically, then someone who is not me — shares knowledge in common with her. But to what end? I wish she wouldn’t use Skye to fight me. Skye and I are alike. I think it’s that Skye is Catholic and I am Trinidadian. Not all Trinidadians are Catholic, as I, case in point, am not, but I would wager it could be assessed — perhaps by someone with Alex’s brain — that all Trinidadians have Catholic traits. Open, warm-hearted, generous, forgiving. Like Skye, we sense what’s going on around us, we want to take care of others, and we tend to blurt out what’s in our hearts. Most of the time, at least. Alex might be an atheist, but her background is Protestant, private. Closed. She tends to hold her thoughts and feelings to herself. She too is an observer, but this does not allow her to excuse and forgive, but rather to calculate, analyze, and critique. Nothing is believed by her until it can be seen and proven. It’s what makes her a good theoretician, a good critic, I’m sure.

  “Well, you can ask such questions of the work we all do,” S
kye says, looking first at me and then at Alex, meaning, clearly, to include me. “None of it will change the price of corn, or how fast the ice melts. But doing the work affirms our existence, especially now, in the face of an uncertain future,” she says, pointing beyond the sunroom, out toward the lake. “And I’ll contradict myself by saying: write it all now, as if — and in case — there won’t be another chance, another book — although your theories about Valla can well fill an entire book.”

  So Skye, it is clear, knows that Alex has many theories, so many they can fill a book. If Alex talks with Skye about them, and not with me, then I am not to blame. I’d listen, yes, if she were to try. It would, in my case, be as if she were teaching me, so I wouldn’t be able to participate as well as someone who already has a depth of knowledge about these things. But at least we’d be sharing conversation about her work. If she invites me to another lecture, given by her or by someone else, here or abroad, it would serve us well for me to go. I hope I soon have such an opportunity.

  But is there anything I can teach Alex? Sometimes, facing Alex, I feel as if I’ve come from a backward place — and a place known to her, too, before she and I even met. Despite all my time in this northern white wonderland, it seems I have picked up nothing with which to impress even a banana slug.

  Alex raises her eyebrows and nods, almost resignedly, as if to say Skye has a point. She mentions another topic of her book that is supposedly less known but, as one would have guessed, Skye — and not I — knows that one, too.

  I continue to stir the syrup, and consider that Prakash can be to me what Skye appears right now to be to Alex. A kind of foil that validates her. So will he, then, validate me in front of Alex?

  And seeing this home I share with her, so different from his, will validate me, and he’ll conclude that I’ve landed on my feet and therefore no longer need him as I used to.