The Barclay Family Theatre

by Jack Hodgins

  Just as any female in the world might do in the circumstances, he supposed, the disfigured woman pulled the pins out of her giant hair-do and let it fall long and shiny and black around her shoulders. Sitting on her heels and gently rocking, she began to comb it, her one remaining beauty. Weins had seen Mabel doing the same, humming to herself in front of a mirror, if things got tense and she needed to let off steam. Think what she might do if she had a mane like that. Mabel, of course, had never looked as feminine as this woman looked when she slipped both hands under the hair at the back of the neck and lifted the whole weight of it up over her head to hang down in front of her face. With her head bent low, she made each stroke of the comb a long slow gentle caress. With chilly goosebumps rising on his arms, was Weins supposed to believe this was really a man he was watching?

  He wasn’t stupid. If that woman down on the stage was really a man (with wife and kids at home for all he knew) was he any more or less disguised than the people who paid for the right to sit here and watch him perform? When he looked around at the audience, how much of what he thought he saw was genuine? Mabel herself, in fact, was a mystery. After all these years of marriage could he claim to know how much of her was real, how much disguise? When she raked through the contents of her purse as she was doing now, was she really so upset by this play that she needed one of those pills out of Dr. Lewis’s free-sample drawer, or had she decided that she wanted to appear to be a highstrung sensitive matron, greatly affected by the play? In this country where you had to learn everything from scratch and nothing at all was familiar, you couldn’t be sure that anyone was what he seemed.

  And things down on the stage were getting worse. Weins remembered dreaming once that all his teeth had decided to fall out, one after the other, like tiny white pieces of chalk in his hand, but he’d never imagined that hair, like this poor soul’s, could come away in great chunks in the teeth of a comb. Clots of it lay around on the floor. Clumps fell out of her hand. When she tossed her head back, her forehead was bald nearly as far as her crown. People everywhere gasped. Mabel beside him held her hand over her mouth; her face was wet. Another sudden shout from behind made everyone jump. The poor woman staggered around again, falling apart, while that fool of a man was making it just as obvious as he could how repulsive he found her to look at now. All over the theatre people were screaming out names.

  “Sit down!” someone shouted behind him. Weins found it was himself that was standing. “Sit down!” — in the chaos of shouting names and beating clackers and the racket from down on the stage he could make out the words only because they were English. Standing, he was prepared to shout too, but why should he shout? If he hollered his own name into the din would anyone notice or care? An impatient tug at his pant leg reminded him: Mabel would notice, of course, and definitely care. She would think he had lost all his marbles, and as it was, she probably thought he was about to dive over the rail and fall on somebody’s head. It was time he got out of here. Turning, he threw one leg over the back of his seat, pulled himself up into the empty row behind, and made for the closest door.

  Out in the hall he didn’t know which way to turn. Why hadn’t he paid attention while coming in? All he knew for sure was that he had to go down a ramp, and several flights of stairs. Stalled like this, he could only gape at Mabel, who burst out through the door, her hand still rooting inside her open purse.

  “Wait, just wait, just give me a minute to find my . . .” She pried open the purse for a better look. Hissing with frustration, she shook it, then moved over to the wall and squatted on her heels while she hauled out the contents and laid them on the carpet. Lipsticks and wallet and Rolaids and wadded-up Kleenex and an Instamatic camera and a sketch-pad and some pencils. Her white slacks bulged, her flowered top rode up her hips to bunch at the waist. Her tourist costume, she called it, including the pair of glasses that hung on a chain from her neck and rode the waves of her breathing bosom, and the long white scarf that was no use at all, just something she had to keep throwing back over her shoulder. Travelling, she lived in the outfit, she called it her second skin. “Just wait, I’ll be with you in a minute. Wait.”

  What did she mean by that? “Listen, you don’t want to go where I’m going.”

  “Ahhh!” she could smile again; the pill bottle was there after all. While she twisted off the lid she tilted her head and looked up at him steadily. “A wrestling match?” Into her mouth went a flat white disc. No need for water, she’d learned long ago how to swallow these things without. “You’re leaving this for a wrestling match?”

  He nodded. He knew what she thought: a disgusting spectacle, as uncivilized as fighting cocks. When he’d told her he wanted to watch a match on Jill’s television set, she said it should be illegal. His only hope, if he judged by the look on her face, was to take the initiative. “I’ll catch a taxi and be back here to pick you up before this thing’s even over.”

  Though she looked down to put everything back in her purse he knew what she was thinking. Or was it only that he was thinking it himself? How could a man like Jacob Weins, who was used to living in a little isolated pulp-mill town of under two thousand people, expect to survive in the kind of jungle that waited for him out there? “What you’ll do if you step out into that crowd is get yourself lost. Have you forgotten where you are?” In case he had, she reminded him: the largest, most crowded city in the world, where they didn’t believe in street signs. He’d never be seen again.

  “So . . . ,” she said, snapping her purse shut and standing to pull the flowered top back down over her hips. “If I can’t persuade you to stay, I’ll have to go too.” She tightened her lips in a forced-cheerful manner, slid a look to one side, and released her breath in a long slow audible stream down her nose. To show her patience. And tossed back the end of her scarf. Here was a woman who had much to put up with in a husband.

  His stomach hurt. Was she about to remind him of that Oregon lake? It wasn’t in her to be so brutal, but he saw in her eyes the temptation: out of her sight he was a man who could not be trusted to look after his own best interests. Out of her sight in a city like this was worse. How could she be sure that the next she’d hear of him wouldn’t be news of a sudden decision to swim the Pacific home? The twenty years of their marriage had been only an introduction; it was in the past two years of retirement that she found out what he was like.

  Weins loved this woman. He supposed that “love” was the word. At any rate it was something to be remembered. Whatever it was, he couldn’t see her trying to hide her concern for him without wanting to put his hand against the soft white skin of her throat. Her own hands were as rough and hard as roots. Brought up milking cows on a dairy farm, she had raised two daughters from different husbands, kept a garden year after year, and taken care of minor repairs around the house. But he couldn’t imagine hands he’d rather hold. Was he a soppy sentimentalist? He supposed he was. Her hair was dry and brittle from years of that reddish-blonde dye, her chin that used to double only when she was looking down had taken on a permanent twin, her stomach required a girdle even inside those slacks and hidden beneath the folds of that floppy smock, but she was a woman still, and made him aware that what he was was a man.

  If a gorgeous blonde in a string bikini were to throw herself at him, would he turn up his nose? Since nothing of the kind had ever happened and wasn’t likely to (as long as he kept this belly) he could only guess that what he would do is run. So what if half his reason for running from her would be fear? The other half would be from knowing all that Mabel could offer him that no stranger in the world could match. Still, though it wasn’t hard to imagine giving up a blonde for her, it was damn well nearly impossible to imagine giving up this chance to see a Japanese wrestling match. Or to imagine sharing it with her, when he knew she would hate every minute, and spoil it with her distaste. “You stay where you are, see this through to the end. Nothing will happen to me. I’ll go back to the hotel in a taxi and phone that young man of
Jill’s. He’ll make sure I don’t get lost.” Because she pursed her lips, nearly convinced, he couldn’t resist a temptation: “If a beautiful geisha tries to seduce me I’ll tell her I’ve got a disease!”

  “What!” Horror and laughter both. Given a choice between being unfaithful and telling a stranger lies, Mabel could only search for a third solution. But what it was, or what she began to suggest, was sliced in two by a piercing scream from inside the theatre. This was not just another enthusiastic shout from the audience; something was wrong. Weins got to the door before she did, and pulled it open.

  Down on the stage the woman was disengaging herself from the point of a sword. Mabel gave him a look that said Now see what you’ve caused me to miss, and pushed right past. Blood spurted up from the wound, and spilled itself down the woman’s kimono. How had it happened? The old man couldn’t have done it — he was quivering at the far end of the stage, frightened out of his wits. And the woman appeared too surprised to have done it deliberately. Some kind of crazy accident. Down to the floor on her knees she dropped, a fragile heap, and lifted — tentatively — her white hands to her own pale innocent face. Unable to believe. Cringing sideways, she seemed too weak to lift her eyes. Kaw kaw kaw — her falsetto complaints had turned to feeble questions. After all this time, was she really unprepared for her death? When she lowered her hands she appeared to Weins to be trying to hold onto the floor — like someone who was afraid of floating upward.

  He recognized the posture. The way that woman resisted floating reminded him of himself at the bottom of that lake in Oregon. All he could think of to do down there was dig himself into the sand and hold on to whatever weeds he could find. Everything in him ached to float to the surface; his hair lifted like seaweed, the cords in his throat stood out like ropes and threatened to explode to the air on their own, even his eyes felt as if they would pop out and leave him behind. Yet it had taken two divers several minutes to pry him loose from the bottom and drag him up to the world again, and air.

  The baby, abandoned on the floor of the stage, began to howl. The mother, almost too weak to move, ignored the wailing doll and dragged herself into the little sleeping room in the far corner. “Look,” Mabel said, “she’s going to close herself in. How can she leave her baby?”

  The answer was obvious. The woman who had thought nothing of making an unholy uproar when she’d been poisoned and disfigured by her husband was too well brought up to cause a fuss when she’d finally been outright killed, or to let herself die in front of an audience. It would be like having her face-paint wiped off in public, or the kimono stripped from her thin male body. Unmasked, exposed — not only would she be destroying illusions, but she’d be committing other betrayals as well.

  He understood. As she slowly closed the sliding wall to separate herself from her baby, from that old man and all this riveted crowd, she turned that innocent face up to the balcony. To Jacob Weins, by the door. His heartbeat quickened, ridiculously. Was she trying to tell him something? Well, he knew what it was. That she didn’t understand. It had been painted right into her face from the beginning, he could have told her, it was right in her makeup from the start of the play: she was just not able to understand a single thing of what had been happening to her here.

  And he? What did he understand? That it was no accident she’d chosen him out of all these hundreds of gawking faces in the theatre? She may have recognized another victim of the masquerade. When the sliding wall clicked shut, a chilling shudder ran up his back. What had she left him with, goddamit? Whoever was clacking those wooden sticks together had gone mad again, people all over the audience were shouting. He had to get out of here fast. When a rat the size of a dog ran across the stage and dragged the screeching baby off between its jaws, he pushed his shoulder against the door. Like the silly old bald-headed man down there on the stage, Weins knew it was time to escape.

  II

  From this hotel window Weins could look down on the narrow street, the fenced-in yard of a private home, and the wide green stagnant water of the royal moat. He preferred the moat. He preferred, in fact, the opposite bank of the moat, the jungle of leafy trees where the Emperor apparently lived beneath one of those barely glimpsed roofs. Over there, he was thinking his royal thoughts. If he knew that Weins was thinking of him, would he invite him across? The two of them, if they got together, could find they had much in common. Weins had once been himself an authority figure, a leader of people, and imagined they wouldn’t have trouble finding a lot to discuss.

  What must it be like, for instance, to be the only person in the world to have signed a paper declaring yourself not a god? Weins was curious to know. A man with a thing like that in his past — weighing no doubt on his mind — would likely be glad of a friend. He might even leap at the chance to sneak off (in disguise of course) to watch a sumo match in a crowded arena. To clap eyes on those powerful thighs! To see those enormous force-fed stomachs in action! The former god might be interested to learn that the biblical God was supposed to have come to earth once as a wrestler. That was about all that Weins could remember from his Sunday school days but it was something he couldn’t forget. Some other Jacob rolling around in desert sand locked in combat with this superhuman stranger who refused to give out His name. Neither Weins nor the Emperor would expect to see God or gods in the sumo arena today but they might be lucky enough to see someone who was almost as famous: Wajima, the man who’d gone up through the ranks to Grand Champion in less than four years. An incredible feat. Women were crazy about him, they tacked his photo up over their beds like a movie star. Children fought for his autograph. Men worshipped the ground that he walked on. Surely His Highness would take pleasure in watching a champion at work, in the company of a friend from abroad.

  Of course this wasn’t the kind of thing he’d mentioned to Jill’s young man. When he’d finally got through on the phone he’d kept the Emperor out of it. No use pushing his luck. Now all he had to do was wait here for Hiroshi to come down that moat-edge pathway to get him — just as soon as he escaped from the office where he spent his days listening to businessmen practising English. He wasn’t a qualified teacher, he was an unemployed movie actor who was waiting to be given his next role. If you could speak the language at all, according to Jill, you could find people who were eager to pay you for it. They were desperate for the promotions that would take them to the States for conferences or a university. And this fellow Hiroshi, who’d lived in Toronto as a student once, spoke English better than Weins.

  On the phone the boy had been eager to help him out. Aware of the shock he’d caused when he was sprung on them at the airport (her live-in boyfriend, Jill had called him), the fellow would break his neck in order to ingratiate himself with Mabel and Jacob Weins. Mabel had proved herself to be nearly a hopeless cause. She didn’t like to pass judgment on anyone, she said, but the things that people did could still embarrass her. While Mabel tried to adjust to the things that people did, the boyfriend concentrated all his generosity on Weins. Anything he wanted, he only had to ask. Any place he would like to go, Hiroshi would see what he could do. When Weins had called to ask directions to sumo, he’d seemed to be glad of the chance to be of some help. “A good thing you did not try to go there on your own,” he said. “You almost certainly would not have got in. Tickets, you must understand, are purchased ahead of time, seldom at the door. Businesses buy up whole blocks of seats for their employees and customers.”

  Weins, he said, would have found himself stranded there.

  Did that mean he would have to go home without seeing the only thing he wanted to see in this place? Weins watched a column of schoolgirls come down the street while he waited for the youth to answer. In blue pleated jumpers and white blouses they followed a grim-faced woman in single file. “No, no, one of my students . . . I’m sure, if you could just wait.” He was certain he knew someone who had tickets for today’s basho, he said. Give him an hour to do some persuading, and then he would come b
y the hotel. They would go together.

  But so far there’d been no sign of him. Instead, a pack of joggers thumped up the paved stone pathway in their white karate suits and headbands. Were they crazy? They had to be, to move any faster than they were forced to in this humidity. Like living in a laundromat as far as he was concerned, or being forced to spend time with the hot wet pulp in the paper mill. This beer and the rattly air-conditioning were only now beginning to cool off the sweat he’d worked up just crossing the street from the taxi.

  He ought to change his clothes, get out of these sticky things. He regretted even that he hadn’t some brand-new clothes to wear for the occasion, something appropriate. (If it really were the Emperor he was going with, could he get away with this touristy shirt and these baggy nondescript pants?) Getting himself a new suit of clothes was in fact something he wanted to do before he went home but he hadn’t managed it yet. On the verge of stepping into a tailor’s shop on half a dozen occasions since they’d arrived, he’d changed his mind at the last minute every time. The reason was simple. He didn’t know what he wanted. Just an outfit made to measure was hardly enough to know; he couldn’t begin to imagine a style or material he’d like. Since that mountain slide had buried everything he owned in the ocean he’d had nothing to wear that felt as if it belonged to him, nothing that fit him right, and not the faintest idea of what he would like to buy.

  It would make a difference if he were still the mayor of Port Annie. WHERE THE FUTURE WILL GET ITS START. Printed on a gigantic banner across the road for visitors to see, that slogan had tempted fate. The future had got its start by wiping the town of Port Annie right off the face of the earth. The trouble with slides was that they weren’t content with whisking away your home out from under your feet, they took everything else as well.