China Blues

by David Donnell

  And she says, “It’s not working in Toronto.” She usually calls it hogtown although there haven’t been any hogs lapping up acorns down by the lake since 1790. “Maybe that’s because it’s a big city,” she says, “so why try another one?” She sips her drink, just a splash of red, she never drinks liquor, but the woman she lives with loves Martinis.

  “Small towns are nowhere,” I tell her.

  Paula is slim and wiry with short cropped thick ash-blonde hair and a smile as big as your shoulders. “Maybe,” she says, “you’re asking for the same things …”

  O yes mama I want the same things, the same things to happen over again. I love to be enthralled, and I loahv to have my heart broken.

  “Whatever they are …” she leers at me with a wonderful pleasant raisiny cinnamonny smile.

  Then we got into tasting the soup, tomato & dill, yum yum, it sure is good with that calabrese bread; she gets out some black olives and some green olives, and I make myself another drink.

  Carol would be home around 11, no point in holding supper until then. Paula says, “There’s nothing wrong with the city, Deuxmains, a big museum, a great university, lots of art galleries.” She calls me Deuxmains because when I come for supper I always have seconds. The black olives are good with a mouthful of red soup, the fat green olives are good if you let the scotch slosh around over them until you think of green birds in the jungle, lifting their wings and settling down on tables.

  She says the problem is with me. Yo, I’m bad. I’m bad. I take it out of my pants and I don’t know what to do with it. I wish to God I could find a decent teaching job at Louisiana State, and then I could go fishing on the gulf on Sundays. My other alternative right now is Algonquin Park, but I favour southern Louisiana.

  “No,” Paula says, “you’re a really wonderful guy; but,” she says, licking the soup ladle, “you’re innocent, innocente, innocente, innocente.” Paula has an MA in Italian Studies. She says, “You’re a small town boy, and you just won’t admit it to yourself.”

  I once memorized the corporate histories of the 50 largest companies with head offices in Manhattan, and here I am wondering if I have enough money to go away for the hot period of the summer, so I don’t know why anybody would call me a small town boy.

  Then she leans over the chair and kisses me on the mouth. Warm and wet. That’s Paula. Great soup, great smile. Guess I’m just an unemployed train man stealing kisses in the midnight tinsel-ceiling ballroom, after everyone else has gone home to frolic in the respectable dark.

  OPEN HOUSE

  The night air is clear and soft.

  You can walk

  north of Casa Loma and south down Huron,

  the people who gave us the word Toronto,

  and think about anything you want, housekeeping

  or Willem de Kooning.

  The bag ladies are down on Bloor Street. The

  muggers are drinking wine in Christie Pits far to the west.

  You notice the renovated Edwardian houses more reflectively

  at night. The

  stars to the south over the Toronto Dominion Bank

  building are clear and almost pale yellow;

  the accountants of BrasCan are sitting up late at night

  in their shirt-sleeves counting the month’s receipts.

  BrasCan is a multi-billion company with a base in Brazil,

  where Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote

  the Charlie Chaplin poem, where African-descent Brazilians

  invented the Lambada. This is Ontario. The grass grows

  freely and the flowers are burning dark

  as smudged coal against the unpainted wooden fences

  in darkness. Cocker spaniels were the most

  popular dogs in Massachusetts in the 1950s. Toronto

  has one of the best music conservatories in America. I think

  that butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth of this city.

  These are details at night; some of them

  in afternoon light. A leaded window pane, a semi-Gothic

  brick arch around a doorway.

  Victorian gable, chipped green,

  deep flat cement window sills. They represent an infinity

  spectrum. The cement porch where a painter was murdered

  in 1926, the year that Hemingway published

  The Sun Also Rises.

  I am quite young, but some of these houses go back

  to the 1860s, approximately the period of the Civil War.

  The police used to raid a frat house on Lowther

  on Friday nights in the 1930s. Whoever owns that completely

  rebuilt house across the street has an extraordinary skylight.

  The bourgeoisie are a problem. More so than the squirrels

  on the roof of my house,

  or the raccoon who comes across back

  yards from Madison and begs for pieces of bacon.

  The backyards are larger than you might

  expect. Those raccoons have a fair bit of room. So

  a large back deck gives observation.

  I saw

  3 species of hornet, one reddish, & a pair of nuthatches

  in May. I try to understand the world as it happens

  around me in forms of light.

  The hamburgers

  at the Food Works 3 blocks south are the best in Toronto.

  Le Bistingo has one of the best bars in Ontario.

  My Croatian friend with a festival mask tumbling

  from her head has gone to sleep for the night

  almost, but not quite, with a small white cup

  of dark Turkish coffee in one hand.

  I have given my whole life, okay, a big piece,

  to the contemplation of certain images. And where

  does that leave me?

  With a large & very specialized

  vocabulary. I have 47 different words for darkness

  including scuro, as in rosso scuro, a deep red.

  What do you nuthatches think? Do you think rosso scuro

  is a darker red than those cardinals we saw

  yesterday? I sit out on the deck after late supper

  with my feet up on the white pine crossbar

  & read back issues of LIFE magazine.

  I suppose I could be making love, or going for a walk,

  I still haven’t seen Ju-Dou

  or that new German film by Paul Verhoeven.

  Sun streams through the front living-room

  windows and makes patterns on the board floor. The pictures

  of Willie Shoemaker standing beside Wilt Chamberlain

  are a study of two different sports.

  Willie is grinning, the mouth beautiful;

  Wilt is balancing the ball on one fingertip.

  The greyhound is the most beautiful dog in America.

  They have long legs, deep chests,

  & truly wonderful faces.

  My favourite novels are very often

  about people in new cities.

  My friend criticizes me occasionally

  for leaving criss-cross stacks of papers

  on various tables, or bureaus,

  & for shaving every other day, but we reach

  an agreement fairly easily.

  I am happy in a deep inner sense

  like the comforter on the bed or

  the peach on a white saucer on the kitchen table.

  The Chinese family across from my backyard

  have built an amazingly wide 2-stairway porch

  out of fresh pale lumber that glows

  in the after-supper light.

  AT JOHN & CAROL’S

  It was a good hour – we sat in the living room on the broadloom and had beer, and apple pie that Carol had made earlier in the evening. John warmed it up and there was cheese. Clips from Rita Hayworth’s films but also 1000s of very effective still photographs with voiceover: New York, Los Angeles; Frank Sinatra, Aly Khan, who was quite a good polo pla
yer, Orson Welles, I like Citizen Kane but I’ve never seen The Magnificent Ambersons. She had a beautiful face and she was a great sex symbol. I enjoyed the film, I like documentaries better than a lot of feature films, but it didn’t give me any special feeling of what it must have been like to be her, although all the guys, myself, John, Frank, agreed that those dresses, and she had great legs, were a key aspect of her image. Sure, Frank says, but what if she shaved her head like Sinéad O’Connor and put on some Wrangler jeans. Different period, says John, totally different period. I try to stay out of this conversation, I want some more apple pie, some ice cream, but Frank pushes it, he says he thinks Rita strikes him as being very much like a guy in drag, but, sure, she was having fun. I think he misses the point a little bit and say so. Carol says, Shave her head, put her in Wranglers, she’d still be one hell of a powerful woman.

  Most of the women I know are into psychology, film production and, in one case, botany. She wants to go to the Sahara to study desert flowers. I might go too, but I don’t think so. How would you feel about a documentary on Steve McQueen? asks Carol, she’s annoyed, she picked out the tape. And I say I wouldn’t bother watching it. I like a lot of American films, Five Easy Pieces, Body Heat, look, this could be a long list. But Steve McQueen was just a klutz, besides he was rough on Debra Winger.

  RASPBERRIES

  Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel,

  when they were still together

  made a song called

  “The Sounds of Silence.”

  That’s what my sadness

  is like, dark, light,

  I saw the video in b&w;

  & it’s like a bowl of raspberries. You know what a

  delicate sweetness raspberries have when they’re fresh,

  just faintly bruised

  & you pour Ontario cream over them.

  Hello darkness,

  my old friend,

  that’s how it began. The song has a welcoming quality

  to the first 5 words,

  & then an effect of almost happy sadness. Art Garfunkel

  who,

  (& look, I don’t know if either one of them

  liked raspberries, for that matter,

  maybe yes,

  maybe no) did an excellent job of singing

  the high notes on that song.

  Art was disturbed as a child.

  He had funny hair & he was Jack Nicholson’s

  roommate in Mike Nichol’s film Carnal Knowledge.

  Boy, are you sorry you missed that one,

  you know

  you can still see it.

  Anyway that’s what my sadness is like,

  dark, light,

  & it’s like a bowl

  of raspberries. You know what a delicate sweetness

  raspberries have when they’re fresh,

  just faintly

  bruised & you pour Ontario cream over them. I lower

  my face over the bowl &

  the fresh country earth scent

  of the raspberries rises up to my big nose.

  Jack?

  I’ve no idea of how Jack is,

  he was really excellent in The Two Jakes,

  although the reviews were poor.

  But these raspberries fresh & almost as red

  as Carol’s undone tomato-red shirt

  with the yellow leaf patterns,

  the round bowl, the fresh Ontario cream,

  I picked them

  in the dark with my bare hands, no blue&grey canvas

  gloves for me,

  but I confess to a certain lack of

  moroseness; I am constant but indifferent, & hungry,

  so I lift the bowl up gently,

  looking out at you

  from under my thick eyebrows, fresh cream, no evening

  gnats in this bowl

  & let the raspberries tumble into my throat.

  WHAT KIND OF MAN WEARS JOSEPH ABBOUD?

  Summer’s here & tons of light pours hot butter sun waffles through the big leaded windows of my dining area/front hall & the living room wide arch to my left. Always a good idea to have the living room to your left, I suppose. It’s white, fresh, with a good floor & the sun pours in. I have a 7′ × 3′ table that I bought from Wilkie, a friend, up against the front hall rad. Tons of space for papers, folders, unread books, typewriter, the works. Much better than the middle room I used for a study. I shower in the morning & work all day in my underwear. I don’t need very much after all. Rent, of course, but not much else. I don’t even eat that much in the summer. It was always my best time when I was a child. Steaks & mashed potatoes are winter food. So I’m regressing & advancing at the same time. I’m becoming slimmer & more relaxed & civil with my friends.

  The trees are huge outside. Dark green. Good view of big dark green trees loaming up above houses as far west as Brunswick. Birds fly around. Nothing unusual that would interest my friend Carol. Starlings, pigeons, sparrows. The good birds, if you want to make a differentiation between colours or size, are outside in the back eating my Armenian landlord’s lingonberry tree and crapping on his red ’86 Buick Skylark. Am I writing very much? 8–10 pages a day which is probably more than I should be, but I’m in love, or impatient, or maybe just too sure of myself. I have decided that I am a man who was never meant to wear clothes. Dressed I merely exhibit the fact that I’m a largely unpublished writer, a genius, perhaps, thank you; naked, almost, I return to my usual more competent seraphic self. i.e. I am more creative. I produce more work every day, enjoy even the simplest meal, pace myself more slowly in love-making & sleep like a child.

  My old friends, I love you so much. But every day I reject more & more of the tinfoil you have tried to pass on to me; & every day I become healthier, stronger & more, I believe in my heart, what my parents originally had in mind. Listen to enormous amounts of classical music. Spend a lot of time in the sun. Royal Comfort, & Calvin Klein. One slice of Steele’s Bakery dark rye with peanut butter before morning coffee.

  YOU CAN’T ASK EVERYONE TO PLAY LIKE COLTRANE

  All those abrasively angry honking

  tenors & hoarse

  sad altos expressing black anger

  & closing me out.

  It pulls at my heart

  walking through this club in the middle of a set

  & sitting down for a drink before going on

  somewhere else to eat. Because it is so visceral

  & makes you think about intention.

  It makes you

  feel guilty for buying all those Joni Mitchell albums,

  all those Tom Waits tapes,

  all those

  Ry Cooder CDS.

  It’s not just me. I can see it

  on the faces of both my friends. We listen

  & then drive north to a different place

  before going to eat. How far down can J.D. Souther

  get? How far up can Loraine Segato go?

  We want

  hot licks we want blue to be an ice-cube

  gently laid on the eyelids we want brass to be

  the colour yellow maybe Van Gogh’s yellow

  or maybe Matisse in a certain mood? As it is, we

  don’t even listen to Mingus that much anymore.

  I haven’t listened to that album Mingus Ah Am

  for over a year or 2.

  It’s easy to slide away

  from something you love

  & grew up

  believing you understood as naturally

  as putting your wristwatch on in the morning. But

  things change,

  for a while, I guess.

  We don’t even seem to care if we’re missing

  a certain edge.

  A certain perception is being

  offered & we’re missing it. My friends are

  dumb white boys with good ears,

  & they seem to be

  saying,

  “You’re talking about the outer dark. Okay,

&n
bsp; so where’s the moon?”

  You see what I mean,

  as if

  we don’t

  understand the idea of falling in a moonless night?

  LOST BUFFALOS

  A New York friend of mine,

  Paul,

  said to me one afternoon in a bar in Jamestown,

  “You’ve never had any buffalo in Canada,

  have you, David?”

  No of course not you breadhead.

  No, he was a good friend. I said, No,

  the buffalo

  used to stop well south of the North Dakota border

  in the 1720s

  & turn around,

  sullenly,

  & head back toward Bismarck. Where once there were

  many buffalo, and no oil, of course; & now there is

  oil; & there are no buffalo at all.

  And he said,

  “Why haven’t you mythologized them? & don’t give me

  that ‘peaceful capitalism’ bullshit.”

  We were

  drinking New Amsterdams with a plate of fried clams,

  & I found it very difficult to answer his question.

  Similarly a friend from Montreal, Anglophone,

  you know,

  his last name is English but he speaks much better French

  than that chinless wonder, Boor ass ah,

  said to me,

  & this wasn’t in a bar so much it was in a kitchen

  at a party in Scarborough & the kitchen table was a mess

  of bottles & glasses & corks

  & one wet dishcloth

  I guess that was the bar cloth, he said, I don’t know a lot

  about the States,

  we’d been talking Melville & Florida & Ken Kesey,

  separately, 3 subjects,

  we were a little pissed, a nice guy, but we weren’t drunk,

  he said, “I don’t know a lot about the States, but they don’t

  have any peace movement down there, do they?”

  No, of

  course not. The peace movement even turns up in fiction

  for Christ’s sake, & in films like FTA,