Until I Find You

by John Irving

  There then comes the inevitable scene in which the amnesia victim recovers his memory. (Knowing Jack Burns, you can see this coming.) The nurse has gone off to work at the hospital, and Jack's character wakes up in her bedroom. He spots one of her uniforms on a chair--her clothes from the day before. He puts them on, and when he sees himself in the mirror--well, you can imagine. Flashbacks galore! Unseemly behavior in female attire!

  Thus the audience is treated to a second version of the Halifax Explosion. We get to see the disastrous life of a transvestite prostitute, leading up to that other disaster--the real one. As Bird observes: "In this moment of agony a greater number had been killed or injured in Halifax than ever were to be in any single air raid on London during the whole of World War II." But what was Doug McSwiney thinking?

  Jack hated those movie meetings where he went in knowing that he detested the script, but he liked the director and the idea behind the film. He knew he would be perceived as the interfering movie star who was trying to distort the material to better serve himself. Or in this case--in Doug McSwiney's eyes, without a doubt--the Academy Award-winning screenwriter (talk about beginner's luck!) who was trying to tell a writer of McSwiney's vastly greater experience how to write.

  Aside from Halifax being his birthplace, Jack was beginning to wonder why he had come--this being well before he touched down in Nova Scotia, where he had last landed in utero thirty-six years before. Maybe this would set back his therapy, as Dr. Garcia had warned.

  Jack checked into The Prince George; he made a dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant called the Press Gang. The restaurant was virtually across the street from the corner of Prince and Barrington, where William Burns had once played the organ in St. Paul's. Close by, on Argyle and Prince, was the St. Paul's Parish House, where the Anglicans had put up Jack's pregnant mother; it might even have been the building where Jack was born, no C-section required.

  St. Paul's was built with white wooden clapboards and shingles in 1750. In memory of the Halifax Explosion, the church had preserved an unfrosted second-story window--a broken window, facing Argyle Street. When the Mont Blanc exploded, a hole had been blown in the window in the shape of a human head. The face in profile, especially the nose and chin, reminded Jack of his mother's.

  The organ in St. Paul's had been erected in memory of an organist who'd died in 1920. The organ pipes were blue and white, and there was a second commemoration of another organist.

  TO THE GLORY OF GOD

  AND IN GRATEFUL MEMORY

  OF NATALIE LITTLER

  1898-1963

  ORGANIST 1935-62

  They must have needed a new organist in '62. There was no commemoration of William Burns, who Jack hoped was still among the living. He'd come to Halifax to play the organ in St. Paul's in 1964. (God knows how long William had stayed; there was no mention of his ever being there.)

  Jack went outside the church and stood in the Old Burying Ground on Barrington Street, looking in the direction of Halifax Harbor. He was wondering what would have happened if he and his mother had stayed in Halifax--if they might have been happy there.

  Jack knew that what was called "the explosion window" in St. Paul's Church--that perfectly preserved head, in profile, which memorialized the 1917 disaster--was better material for a movie about the Halifax Explosion than that piece-of-crap screenplay Doug McSwiney had written. Jack was embarrassed to have come all this way for a meeting about a film he knew would never be made--not with Jack Burns as the amnesiac transvestite prostitute, anyway.

  Furthermore, Jack didn't ever want to meet Doug McSwiney. He decided he should just tell Cornelia Lebrun how he felt about the project, and leave it at that. (Jack knew there were a lot of movie meetings that could be avoided if people just told one another how they felt before they met.)

  Jack knew that Cornelia Lebrun was staying at The Prince George, too, but he'd learned from Emma that it was better to express yourself in writing--especially if you're pissed off about something. Before dinner, Jack had just enough time to go back to the hotel and write out what he should have told the French director in a simple phone call from Los Angeles.

  He had a personal interest in spending a little time in Halifax, Jack explained to her, but he would not be associated with a film about the Halifax Explosion that trivialized the disaster. Jack wrote that he was attracted to the character of Le Medec, and wanted to know more about him. Jack pointed out to Cornelia Lebrun that his physique was suitable for the role of Le Medec, and that the sea captain's reported moodiness and truculence were well within Jack's range as an actor. (He mentioned his gift for accents, too.)

  Another good role, among the real people involved in the historical disaster, was that of Frank Mackey, the pilot who didn't speak French. And there was a third role of interest to any actor--that of C. J. Burchell, the counsel for the Norwegian shipping company. At that time, Burchell was the best-known maritime lawyer on the Eastern Seaboard. Representing the Imo's owners, Burchell was--in Bird's words--"capable of the most ruthless court-room tactics." Given the judge's bias in favor of the Imo, and how local opinion was stacked against the Mont Blanc (and the French), Burchell must have been further encouraged "to attack and browbeat witnesses."

  What need was there for a fictional story? Jack asked Cornelia Lebrun in his letter. With almost two thousand people killed and nine thousand injured--with nearly two hundred blinded--who cared about an amnesiac transvestite prostitute who gets burned a little and loses his (or her) clothes and his memory and his wig? Jack told the French director that McSwiney's screenplay, in a word, sucked. (Dr. Garcia would have cautioned Jack against this particular interjection, and--as things turned out--she would have been right. But that's what he wrote in the heat of the moment.)

  He apologized for wasting Madame Lebrun's and Mr. McSwiney's time by agreeing to a meeting in Halifax, which he now believed was pointless. Jack added that his one look at the so-called explosion window in St. Paul's Church drove home to him how McSwiney had managed to write a disaster movie both prurient and banal; he'd made a sordid love story out of the Halifax Explosion.

  Jack forgot to tell Cornelia Lebrun that he remained interested in working with her as a director, which of course had initially persuaded him that the meeting in Halifax was a good idea. He also forgot to tell her that he'd been involved in enough cross-dressing to satisfy whatever slight yearning he might have felt for transvestite roles; as an actor, Jack didn't feel it was asking too much to be allowed to be a man.

  Notwithstanding these omissions, he left a great mess of pages at the front desk of the hotel--a virtual ream of Prince George stationery, to be delivered to Madame Lebrun's room. Then Jack went off to the Press Gang restaurant for a solitary dinner. When Jack returned to the hotel, he inquired at the front desk if Cornelia Lebrun had left a message for him; he was told she was in the bar.

  Jack had only a dim idea of what the French director looked like. (A small woman in her sixties--about the same age as Miss Wurtz, he thought.) He spotted her easily. How many women in Halifax were likely to wear a suede pantsuit in lily-pad green?

  "Cornelia?" Jack said to the little Frenchwoman, whose lipstick was a bold orange.

  "Zzzhhhack Burns!" she cried, but before he could kiss her offered cheek, a large, hirsute man forced his way between them.

  The man was bigger than any of his book-jacket photographs, and more hairy than a lumberjack. Jack had been unable to read the fur-faced author's novels due to the persistence of the rugged outdoors on every page--a characteristic relentlessness in the prose. (Fir trees bent by the wind, the gray rock of the Canadian Shield, the pitiless sea--harsh weather and hard drinking.) Even the whisky on the author's breath was bracing--Doug McSwiney, of course. Jack was reaching to shake his hand when McSwiney's left hook caught him on the right temple. Jack never saw it coming.

  "Suck on that!" McSwiney said, but Jack heard only the suck; he was out on his feet before he fell. He should have had the b
rains to expect a cheap shot from a writer insensitive enough to turn the Halifax Explosion into an unwholesome love story.

  Jack came to in his hotel room. He was lying on his back on his bed with his clothes on but his shoes off; his head was pounding. Cornelia Lebrun was sitting on the bed beside him. She had wrapped a wet washcloth around some ice cubes, which she held against the swollen bruise on Jack's right temple. The drunken, bearded bastard could have killed me, Jack was thinking.

  "Eet's my fauld," Madame Lebrun was saying. "I can't read English when eet's in writing-by-hand."

  "Longhand," Jack corrected her.

  "I asked Dougie to read your notes out lout to me. Beeeg faux pas, oui? I theenk the word sucked was what deed eet to heem."

  "Or banal--or prurient, maybe."

  "Oui. Alzo hee's dreenking."

  "I've had bad reviews myself," Jack told her. "I didn't try to club Roger Ebert to death with my Oscar."

  "Clup who to dead?" the little Frenchwoman asked.

  "It doesn't matter. I don't want to be in the movie," he told her.

  "I would cast a Frenchman to play Le Medec, Zzzhhhack--no matter how goot your axzent ees."

  She would never get the movie made, anyway. Later that year, after the terrorist attacks on September 11, it would be too difficult to find financing for a film about the Halifax Explosion--even with a movie star in it. Suddenly, disaster movies weren't all that appealing. (This feeling would persist for a whole year or more.)

  Something about the Halifax Explosion appeared on Canadian television, but that happened a couple of years later and Jack never saw it. He didn't even know if it was a documentary or what Miss Wurtz would have called a dramatization. Jack only knew that Doug McSwiney had had nothing to do with it. And after that introduction in the bar of The Prince George, Jack doubted that he would ever work with Cornelia Lebrun.

  The hotel sent a female doctor to Jack's room while Madame Lebrun was still attending to his head injury. The doctor told Jack that he had a mild concussion; from the beat of his pulse in his right temple, he might have disputed the word mild with her. She also told him that he shouldn't sleep for more than two hours at a time. The doctor left instructions at the front desk to give Jack Burns a wake-up call every two hours; if he didn't answer his phone, someone had to go into his room and wake him up. And he shouldn't travel for another day, the doctor said.

  That night, between the wake-up calls, he had dreams of being on a movie set. "Hold the talking, please," someone on the set would say, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  "Picture's up."

  "Stand by."

  It made Jack realize that he missed the process. Maybe it had been too long since he'd made a movie.

  In the morning, Jack walked along Barrington Street, looking for something to read. He found a bookstore called The Book Room. The owner recognized him and invited him to have a coffee with him. Jack volunteered to sign some books--just what they had on hand of the screenplay of The Slush-Pile Reader. (Emma's paperback publisher had published the script; in most bookstores, the screenplay was on the shelf alongside the movie tie-in edition of Emma's novel.)

  The bookseller's name was Charles Burchell; he turned out to be the grandson of C. J. Burchell, the legendary maritime lawyer who'd led the court-room attack on the Mont Blanc's captain and pilot. When Jack told Charles that he thought he'd been born in the St. Paul's Parish House, Charles told Jack that the vestry of the church had been used as an emergency hospital in the days following the Halifax Explosion; the bodies of hundreds of victims had been laid in tiers around the walls.

  Charles was kind enough to take Jack on a tour of the harbor. Jack wanted to see the ocean terminals, particularly the pier where the immigrants landed. Charles also drove Jack to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Jack was curious to see the Titanic grave site. Halifax had seen its share of disasters.

  Jack walked with Charles among the gravestones.

  ERECTED TO THE MEMORY

  OF AN

  UNKNOWN CHILD

  WHOSE REMAINS

  WERE RECOVERED

  AFTER THE

  DISASTER TO

  THE "TITANIC"

  APRIL 15, 1912

  There were many more.

  ALMA PAULSON

  AGED 29 YEARS

  LOST WITH FOUR CHILDREN

  Some were just names with their ages.

  TOBURG DANDRIA AGED 8

  PAUL FOLKE AGED 6

  STINA VIOLA AGED 4

  GOSTA LEONARD AGED 2

  Others were just numbers.

  DIED

  APRIL 15, 1912

  227

  A small headstone marked J. DAWSON had the largest number of flowers--bouquets of flowers dwarfed the headstone, almost obscuring the oddly familiar name. Charles told Jack why the name was familiar. The character Leonardo DiCaprio played in the Titanic movie was named Jack Dawson.

  "You don't mean he was real," Jack said.

  "I have no idea," Charles said.

  The J. DAWSON on the headstone could have been a different Dawson. Jack Dawson, DiCaprio's character, might have been invented. But since the movie had been released, visitors to the Titanic grave site put flowers on J. DAWSON's headstone because they believed he was that character. Worse--whether or not Jack Dawson in the movie was related to J. DAWSON on the headstone, the young girls bringing flowers thought there was someone in that grave who had once looked like Leonardo DiCaprio.

  "Movies," Jack said with disgust. Charles laughed.

  But Jack saw it then--this was where that hair-faced novelist and screenwriter had gotten the idea to make a love story out of the Halifax Explosion. It was a bad idea to begin with, but it hadn't even been McSwiney's idea. He'd stolen it from the Titanic movie; he'd ripped it off from a graveyard full of children!

  "Does Doug McSwiney come from Halifax?" Jack asked Charles Burchell. Since Charles was a bookseller, Jack knew that Charles would know.

  "Born and raised," Charles said. "He's an awful man--he's always punching people."

  The Titanic grave site gave Jack additional grounds for wanting to kick the crap out of McSwiney, and Jack still had a headache. (As cheap shots go, a blow to someone's temple is asking for trouble.)

  Jack went back to the hotel and took a short nap. He probably did have a concussion, mild or not, because he wasn't feeling well. He was wondering why Michele Maher hadn't called him--just to say she was looking forward to lunch or dinner, or whatever. Maybe she was shy; probably she was busy. Jack didn't sleep very soundly, or for long. At the first ring of the wake-up call, he sat up too suddenly and saw stars. The stars continued to twinkle while he brushed his teeth.

  A separated shoulder would be a justifiable injury to inflict on Doug McSwiney, Jack was thinking. Given that McSwiney had hit Jack with a left hook, he was probably right-handed; if so, a separated right shoulder would be a good idea.

  Jack called Dr. Maher's office and once again got Michele's nurse, Amanda, on the phone. "Hi, Amanda--it's Jack Burns. I'm calling to confirm breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

  He could tell right away that something was wrong; the formerly friendly Amanda was ice-cold to him. "Dr. Maher is with a patient," the nurse said.

  "What's with the Dr. Maher, Amanda?"

  "No breakfast, no lunch, no dinner," Amanda said. "Dr. Maher doesn't want to see you--she won't even talk to you. I canceled your reservation at the Charles."

  "Maybe I've misunderstood you," Jack said. "I have a concussion."

  "That girl gave you a concussion?" Amanda asked.

  "What girl?"

  "I'm talking about the Lucy business--the photographs, the whole story. Don't they have news in Canada?"

  Jack could see that flaming paparazzo as if the photographer were still standing at the foot of the driveway, snapping away. One of the sleazier movie magazines had bought the photographs. The story, and the tamer of the photos, had also been on television.

  "You don't come off very
well," Amanda explained.

  "I did not have sex with that young woman!" he told her.

  "I'm sure you didn't," Amanda said. "The girl just knew that you wanted to, and that you definitely would have had sex if she hadn't called her mother."

  "That's not true! I called the cops and asked them to come get her! I waited outside my own house until the police came!"

  "You had a naked eighteen-year-old in your bed--you even have the same psychiatrist," Amanda pointed out. "You knew Lucy when she was a child--you beat up her father! And why did you keep her thong, and those terrible pictures? There was a photo of what looked like another naked eighteen-year-old on your desk! There were photographs of a naked woman's tattooed breast on your refrigerator!"

  "I threw all that away!" Jack shouted.

  "Where? On your front lawn?" the nurse asked.

  "Please let me speak to Michele," he begged her.

  "Michele said, 'If Jack calls, tell him he's just too weird for me.' That's what the doctor said," Amanda told him, hanging up the phone.

  Jack turned on the television in his hotel room. It took him a while to find an American network among the Canadian TV channels, although (as Leslie Oastler would soon inform him) the Lucy story had already been picked up by the Canadian media. When he found Headline News, Jack discovered that he was the lead item in the entertainment segment.

  When Lucy was told that her pink thong had been recovered from Jack's trash--together with those incriminating photographs, which Lucy had earlier described to reporters--she speculated that Jack must have wanted to have some keepsake of her visit and had therefore hidden her thong from the police. Apparently, he'd had second thoughts and had thrown out the thong with the other "evidence." (The thong looked really small on TV; it appeared that Jack had stolen it from a child.)

  Jack needed to see the sleazy magazine itself before he could understand everything that was incriminating about the photographs--that is, the ones not fit for television. He left the hotel and walked over to The Book Room. Charles Burchell was a bookseller; Charles would know where every newsstand in Halifax was. Naturally, Charles already had a copy of the movie magazine.