by Colin McAdam
Eventually that area was taken by eight different developers, including me. My point is that there was a lot of land and a lot of interest. This section here, from what is now John Street to Uplands, is what I wanted to put my boot on first. You hear about homeowners now—that’s what they call you people and me—who want their privacy, who want their hills and trees and all sorts of other things between them and everyone else, and I say it’s a big bag of shit. First thing they do is wonder who the neighbors are and it’s all the same in the end, love and gossip creeping over the hills as easily as straight across the yard. And you ask any developer even now with machines that can do anything what he thinks of a proper hill where he wants to build, and he will say fuck. It’s easier to make hills than build around them, especially in those days, and that’s why I had my eye on that section there. It was flat, my friend, like the palm of a friendly hand.
There was wet mud and dry mud and wild grass and dandelions and some cement laid down from years before when people had empty messy plans. It was land that people knew they could build on but hadn’t finished thinking it through. It started at a bit of a rise, more of a rise before I crushed it, over here from the northeast and slid down smooth across the south-southwest onto the back of the old suburbs.
Good soil, some of it. Iron in it. One old man I liked kept a little garden out there that he shouldn’t have and grew tomatoes, nice red ones. Wetter at the bottom of the rise but that’s where the old houses already were, so the earth I eventually moved was dry, light.
It was foresight, and I don’t mind pretending it’s a gift. Some of the other developers, Edgar Davies one of them, thought that land there was boring. They thought they had foresight. And they were right in a way because they thought the people would want the interesting “contour” they called it, farther over here, and ignored the difficulties of building on it because they knew they could charge more. That’s eventually, to tell you the truth, what I did. But that’s not how you start. You start making the good solid houses, farther out, as many as you can, clean and simple, a white smile away from the frown of the city. I knew that then and you can feel free to admire me. Walk up to those walls and knock.
But the land, the land, that was how the land was. I won’t declare I miss it. It was an interesting time and there it is for the record. It was dirt and water and rocks.
WE KISSED AGAIN that night like wine glasses Hooray. And we also kissed in other ways that only two people kissing know, and there’s her mouth and hands and fast, and you sometimes just push hard. And we were drunk, my friend. I had never been so. Stumbling and knocking hips soft, and cheers, and where’s the truck. Up against the truck but not inside. I am in Love and it is obvious to me and some time I might tell her. Push. You come to that crossroads, and I don’t care what you hear about those days now but when a man and a woman wanted a manwoman body they just went ahead and did. And ohhh I thought about her. You’re at that crossroads pushing against jeans and she’s making noises and ohhh I am a lucky man. But we did not go inside that truck and it was the sweetest lasting choice I ever made, my body humming like a tire on a road.
“Goodnight, Jerry.”
“Goodnight, Kathleen.”
And I didn’t see her again for almost fifteen days.
FIFTEEN DAYS, my friend. I had no idea where she went. The next morning I thought it was just a hangover because I myself had a sick dizzy head. I waited thinking maybe she’d come by for lunch or maybe for the afternoon round but I never heard her horn, and waiting for it, stretching for it, put a whistle in my ears.
The next day no better and the next the beginning of Fear. Crash, kidnap, rape, or just plain new-kissed hatred. Whatever the reason, gone.
2
The Evolution of the Tongue, from Patricia to Renée
THE FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD boy, so say the sages of ages, tires of yearning for the mouth of his mother, and should therefore grow up near a fat neighbor’s daughter. Patricia Murphy, with breasts like toffee, gave Simon lessons in tongues. The fourteen-year-old boy ideally spends his days pressed hard against something else. Patricia Murphy, with crotch of impervious cotton, was free between three and four. Spin the bottle, postman’s knock: she was an artful little teacher.
The tongue began at the hyoid bone in the back of Patricia Murphy’s mouth, was first discovered by a boy named Louis, and was later explored and charted by Simon Struthers, esq., son of a great man.
Salt is tasted on the front and back sides of the upper surface of the tongue; sour on the middle sides; bitter at the back. The tip, indeed, tastes sweet.
Beginning at the hyoid bone in the back of Patricia Murphy’s mouth, the tongue stretched over several years and continues to ignite the world with pentecostal passion and confusion.
But it briefly gave way to the finger.
The brutal dry palm of Natasha McSweeny shook his fifteen-year-old plasm to a jerky beginning. (Against the wall of the gymnasium for help with her grammar and spelling.) He couldn’t suffer the abuse for long. He struggled till it was her back against the wall and he learned the might of his finger, when to deepen his inquiries or to dwell on the same point.
Then the tonguefinger was born, a rhetorician’s dream, moving its audience—Jodie, his third cousin Lucy, whoever would listen—to new heights of understanding. But as understanding grew, new knowledge was sought, the tonguefinger became obsolete. Jodie found a deeper truth with his best friend Sam, regardless of the fact that he possessed an even greater truth than Sam’s (he knew his from the locker room).
And a glacial freeze crept over.
Subterfuge began, a sign of things to come. His howling parts, so proud, so competent before, went underground. Sixteen. Seventeen. The greatest lesson still not learned, and the body turned against itself.
Then Sue Hawke came smashing through the ice, older, larger, and a new world was born, finally, and very, very quickly. Always too quick for Sue. He was proud again, roamed the earth again in wiser form.
He learned hands all over again from Catholic Marcia (even feet on one occasion). From two whose names I have forgotten he learned that the neck can taste like butter and if one smacks the buttocks just so they will blush like a nectarine. Anthea, Sarah, Rebecca his almost fiancée. The body settled into what he thought was its final form, and the tongue still licked its purpose.
He was not an unattractive man.
There are many I have not named.
So why, when he picked her up in the car, would Renée not take his kiss?
Was he nothing but a colleague?
HE WAS A MARVELOUS mystery to many in those days of promotion and change. Simon Zelotes, sedulous, defiant, triumphant amid the jeers of nonbelievers. He did the jobs that others could not. His skin had the sheen of conviction. Simon Magus, perhaps not moral, undeniably charming, he gave them what they wanted. He exhaled the smoke of Delphi and many gathered around him.
He changed memos from stiff syntactic graveyards into cloistered gardens of the Word. He, Simon Struthers, arrived at C Wing seemingly out of nowhere, and changed the warp and woof of the place with the elegance of his texts. He made C Wing (floor twelve, Thomson Building) into a long sword of concision, driven into the side of our dull civil edifice to startle not to kill.
He had one or two affairs, sexual.
WALK WITH HIM down the pale new hallway of the Thomson Building, strangers all around. Light blue carpet, men in brown trousers with pens clipped to shirt pockets.
What sort of man will he be in this new job?
Simon wears a suit, dark blue, and a fresh white shirt. He is not yet sure whom to mock and whom he should defer to.
The Thomson Building, on a square modern plan, has yet to reveal a comfortable spot for him to be alone. The toilet on level twelve is cold.
His first few memos are clever.
WHEN SIMON AND RENÉE first met it was a perfect introduction to the challenges of the job. For the month leading up to the dinner at Madame
Berger’s, they worked on a minor memo. The issue, as it would always be, was land. Should it be touched, or not.
She arrived at his office with a folder in hand, and a friendly tickle of her nails on his door.
“Hello, Mr. Struthers. I am Renée le Mesurier, from down the hall.”
He held her hand and squeezed it.
“I’ve got a C9 here that needs a redraft and a general change of focus before it gets properly adjusted for the perusal of the whole Division. The focus is all wrong, to tell the truth, thanks to Leonard, who, you may as well know, never understands this sort of thing. Do you have the time to do this?”
“Nescafé or percolator?”
He made a preliminary catalog.
Legs: tapered, certain, cereous behind the knee?
Wrists: like ankles of a doe.
Eyes: Greek! But blue.
Line from Ear to Chin to Shoulder: Serpentine.
Tan-skinned Renée is a patch of truffled soil, and he is a canny pig.
“The question is, how do we fill the memo? At the moment we are in the gathering stage, and for several weeks,” she says, “Leonard and I have been trying to put this together. What Leonard doesn’t understand is restraint, Mr. Struthers. A C9 tells us how to act, but never that we should. It is about information.”
“Frank.”
“Yes.”
“But controlled.”
“Yes.”
“A guide stepping forward.”
“Yes.”
“His hands behind his back.”
“I think we understand each other.”
“I think I can help you, Renée. Tell me about the topic.”
“I wouldn’t want to tell you everything, Mr. Struthers. Not in one sitting. There is a long history to this issue, which I could not make interesting. For thoroughness you should probably go to Leonard.”
“Let’s hang thoroughness for the moment.”
“I agree. Let’s just say the issue is conservation. Preservation.
Do you have an opinion on preservation?”
“That depends on the thing preserved.”
“Interesting. That’s partly our problem. What is the thing preserved? Do you like questions, Mr. Struthers?”
“That depends on who asks them. Would you like to call me Simon?”
“This topic is full of questions, Simon. The first question, when Leonard tried to help, was exactly as you guessed. What is the thing preserved? The thing preserved is land. Land. But the next question is, is it?”
The desk stands between them like a fat governess. “I think I understand you, Renée. The question of preservation of land is never about land. It is about preserving what land might be. Land discovered is land used: either land pretending to be unused (children flying flapping kites), or land already developed. Preservation of discovered land is a moot pursuit. And preservation is anyway irrelevant when considering what might be, since past and future lead us in opposite directions. The issue is promise. Since we are fooled by promise in preservation’s clothes, it is appropriate only to ask questions, as we think something is lost as soon as use or preservation is decided. But questions won’t fill the C9, our Division won’t be informed, and what of the Public Good?”
Foreigners are often impressed by a certain sort of language, especially when they are not foreigners but Canadians pretending to come from France for the sake of cachet.
“Exactly. I have to confess, Simon. I was beginning to lose hope. Sometimes a new person, a new perspective. You may be just what the issue needs. I am so pleased you understand. It is actually all very interesting, but one forgets with all the process.”
“Shall we sit down?”
On his desk they constructed a Stoic’s porch, a brightly colored repository of learning that was all about inaction; and throughout he could only wonder if her fingers tasted like cinnamon.
“I don’t expect that we can finish this in one sitting.”
“That would be hasty.” But stay.
“Would you like to stop?”
“No. But . . .”
“I agree.”
HIS OFFICE HAS the same blue carpet, handprints on walls, and smells of budget. Its memories can be counted in days and its paint is like spit on paper.
Those prints over there, low, fingers down, were the hands of Renée supporting her affable self: black hair and a handsome smile. Renée visited his office most days, the issue was demanding but the visits were short.
“Basically,” she says, “we are faced with a choice. I don’t really know how to put the choice in words, but as a question it is this: What sort of a future will we choose for this city? It is simple enough. I don’t know why I keep coming back to the beginning like this, to the choice. It is a choice between parkland or concrete, but it is so much more, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“And Land and Environment can’t help us. Ten years ago this wouldn’t be an issue, but now it is not clear which way, politically, this should go. I think the Minister is inclined to encourage development. He is a practical man. And I am inclined to agree with him. But politically?”
“Politically?”
“Politically there are questions. The Minister could be credited with supporting a Division that specifically protects the environment.”
“Protects the body of the environment.”
“Hmm?”
“From depredations.”
“Yes.”
“From people.”
“Yes. Which . . . I don’t know, Simon. I am inclined to think that is nonsense. I like people.”
“I like bodies. It is a matter of whether one likes restraint or not. Here are you and I, at this desk, discussing the fate of a piece of the city . . . Hand me that memo . . .”
Silk!
“Where was I?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you be going to dinner on Thursday?”
ALL THOSE MEN in brown trousers. Whom would he befriend? They all have faces like clocks, expressions changing predictably as time ticks to ten, twelve, two, four thirty, home! when their true selves appear. Would any of them invite Simon home?
He never liked men.
AT THE PROSPECT of possible naked scrutiny, he tends to withdraw, momentarily. His confidence, like his penis, retreats. That explains why he was rather quiet in the car with Renée. It is not because he found her unattractive or uninteresting. Certainly not. In fact, he watched her through her window over the previous night or two, once he had got her address.
MANY OF THEM were below him anyway, these brown-trousered types. No need to consider befriending them. Rising in the public service was achieved by saying nothing to the right people.
But surely some were interesting. Hobbies, stories, collections of dreams on display in their homes. Certainly Simon was interesting.
BUT HE WAS the type of man, you see, who inspired distrust. It wasn’t his fault.
As a boy, he was sometimes asked by his mother to read aloud for his father’s friends when they came to dinner. What a precocious little monkey we have. He read with perfect enunciation. His apple cheeks were meant to charm. But there was a tacit acknowledgment shared between him and those friends of his father’s, an acknowledgment that he didn’t understand many of the words he read and that his charms were purely superficial. No one trusts a boy who seems clever; and he knew he wasn’t clever. We will call you a genius, we will notice your beauty, but we will never be convinced. He accepted their lack of conviction.
The tie he wore at school when he strode into his teens was always perfectly tied with a neat little dimple. “Simon is always so neat,” the girls would always say. “You always dress so well.” The other boys hated him for the notice of the girls. And beneath the girls’ admiration was that hint of distrust.
How fruitful this became when he grew up. Women watched him when he entered a room. He was charming at cocktail parties. He always had witty things to say when he had an audi
ence. (And nothing to say when there was only one other.) The other men in the room, seeing the women so blatantly attracted, would distrust him, call him a poseur. To the women, this suggestion of being untrustworthy, hollow at the center, made him sexy. In this adult world, the consequence of his suspicious charm was that instead of being beaten up after school, he was promoted. People distrusted him to the extent that they felt he must be, should be, powerful.
Women loved him; men, despite themselves, ensured his rise because he could attract so many women. His rise made the women all the more amorous and all the more suspicious, and soon.
If his latest appointment owed something to the lingering force of his father’s legacy, it was also the product of widespread distrust. And so here he was in this pale blue office.
DINNER WAS ON THURSDAY, and Simon had agreed to drive Renée. So on Wednesday, at around midnight, he found himself standing on the fence outside her house peering through a window down her hallway upstairs. He had a good view, could see clearly, but the bedroom, the bathroom, the livelier rooms of a stranger’s house, couldn’t be seen from outside. He saw her cross the hallway once.
It was not something he had done before. I think it was completely out of character. At other moments in his life as he walked down nighttime streets he had stopped, as we all do, to look into brightened windows. (“What a dramatic painting!”; “I wouldn’t have put plants there.”) But the stops were brief, they never gave him what he hoped for, and he never, very rarely, thought of going closer to the windows and watching for almost an hour.
Renée had given him her address so he could pick her up for dinner, and without thinking, without pausing, he simply found himself standing on her fence late on a Wednesday night, hoping for a look at her. And disingenuous as it sounds, he was only searching for a sense of belonging. He was trying to fit in. Certainly, he would have been pleased by a glimpse or more of her naked, but he was there to learn other secrets— any secrets that would help him to feel more comfortable in the middle of all the change. People and places belonged to him once he knew their secrets.
