She awoke an hour later to the arrival of her anticipated lunch. It was everything that she had hoped and she devoured it with relish, right down to the last, tiny, quivering mouthful. Then she reached into the night table drawer for the two wonderful books that she had stuffed into her suitcase along with the negligées. One of these books was entitled Lovelier After Forty and the other How to Develop Your Personality, A New You! Both had been written by an ex-heavyweight champion with whom she was, of course, in love. She could never hope to meet him but she was in love with him anyway. Contact was incidental. It was the tone of his words that attracted her. They were easy words; words that made her feel warm and comfortable in a way that Harold never had. During her frequent stays at the hospital she would often spend her afternoons imagining “the champion” (as she secretly called him) bending over her like a parasol of rippling muscles and shining skin, breathing easy words into her ears.
“Many a homely younger woman has, through persistence, turned herself into a beautiful, lovable, older woman,” he would whisper, and then, “You are not alone. There are order and truth and eternal reality in the universe.”
And when she danced with him upon the shores of her imagination he crooned exotic instructions into the microphone of her brain.
“Draw hips slightly forward then flick backwards quickly as if to strike imaginary wall with buttocks …,” he would sigh. Then she would sigh and chant along with his ballroom litanies, while her stark, private room turned from institution to palace, to mysterious night club, to the starlight lounge, to Hernando’s Hideaway.
During this particular stay at the hospital, dancing took up some of her time but the greatest portion of her energy was devoted to personal development; that is, the development of her NEW SELF, a self that would necessarily be lovelier after forty. There were, she knew, seven success secrets and the champion had assured her that the mastery of these would result in a young and magnetic personality. SECFIMP was the key, seven was the number:
1 S Sincerity
2 E Enthusiasm
3 C Charity
4 F Friendliness
5 I Initiative
6 M Memory
7 P Persistence
And the greatest of these was charity.
How kind she was to the champion, sewing imaginary buttons on his skin-tight clothing and cooking up imaginary feasts in her brain. She allowed him to read newspapers or watch ball games all night and she never complained. She ironed his imaginary socks. She kept his imaginary house spotlessly clean and she never burdened him with her own insignificant problems. She showed a definite interest in his career, encouraging him to confess to her those tiny nagging moments of self-doubt that afflict every man at one stage or another. But most importantly, she wore her negligées constantly in an effort to keep herself as young and attractive as she was the day she first imagined him.
He was pleased but not entirely satisfied. He introduced her to his greatest beauty secret—a three-week plan to beautify her bust contour. He assured her that no one was more interested in helping her with this delicate problem than he. He sympathized. He understood. Hadn’t he once been a ninety-pound weakling, who through persistent effort had raised himself to the very heights of power and personal magnetism? Hadn’t he counselled countless other women who were suffering from the misery and self-consciousness of possessing an unattractive bosom? Didn’t he know everything there was to know about the growth and tone of pectoral muscles? Of course he did. Of course he had. And he would help her by setting out a rigid schedule of exercises that she could begin that very day.
The weeks rolled by both in illusion and in reality. Nurses glided in and out of her makeshift gym. They trod softly on squeaky shoes. They carried their trays of Jello and Dream Whip with courtly precision. They wrote mysterious messages on the chart at the foot of her bed. They gathered in huddles and murmured outside her door. They brought in fresh white slabs of clean starched sheets. They distributed pills and tiny paper cups filled with lukewarm water. They administered enemas. Their wedding bands glowed on their smooth white hands. And they tactfully ignored the presence of the champion, to all intents and purposes didn’t see him at all. And so, of course, they couldn’t notice how, when the wheelchair, which would take their patient back to the lobby where Harold was waiting, appeared at the door, a man in skin-tight clothing put down his barbells and scratched the back of his neck, just as he might have had an insect landed there.
Gift
Monsieur Delacour was certain that it was spring. “Spring is here,” he announced, silently, to himself. The thought rattled in the rafters of his brain, avoiding altogether the area phrenologists label voice. Monsieur Delacour hadn’t had a voice for years. Some mysterious being or event had snatched it away from him and, the truth was, Monsieur Delacour couldn’t have cared less.
He also didn’t care about his left side. Whoever or whatever had snatched away the voice part of his brain had also made off with the area that controls the left arm and leg. And so Monsieur Delacour got around with the aid of a wooden crutch and his wonderful talent for hopping. A long, thin man, who had always resembled a large wading bird, Monsieur Delacour had adjusted, years ago, to his one-legged method of transportation. It suited him just fine. Later a doctor would actually remove the non-functioning left leg. But, at the moment, it was still attached to Monsieur Delacour. Still, he didn’t care about it. Not one bit.
He did, however, care about spring, and now, despite the winter chill that still hung in the air, he knew it was spring. His stubborn belief was based on the fact that today, for the first time in six months, a tiny feeble ray of sun had entered the damp octagonal square where Monsieur Delacour’s house occupied a corner. The sunbeam had paused briefly on a mouldy stone wall and then had quickly disappeared as if it were in a hurry to visit more attractive places; where grasses, or even weeds, were conceivable.
But sun, you say, can enter enclosed spaces even in winter. Not these spaces, not those winters. The sun had barely the strength to drag itself above the horizon, never mind the bravery to invade the narrow twisting streets and the slimy paved piazzas of Monsieur Delacour’s home town. Tall mossy walls everywhere, grey-green vegetation of the parasitic variety, everyone relocated or dead of the plague in the year 1527; that’s what it was like. We tourists love places like this. We think they look like the environments of fairy tales. We have never lived there.
But Monsieur Delacour loved it too—because it was his home town and because it provided him with a corner in which to live. Here he did what he could with his chickens and rabbits, did what he could with his wife. It had become apparent, early in his relationship with her, that whoever or whatever had snatched away the parts of his brain labelled voice, left arm, and left leg, had decided to leave the area marked privates totally unaltered. Hence Monsieur Delacour could do a great deal with his wife. And at the moment that we find him watching the sun on the wall he had eight children. And there would be more.
Monsieur Delacour’s wife was a handful. “She’s a handful,” said Monsieur Delacour, silently. Then he chuckled to himself. Like everything else the chuckle rattled in the rafters of his brain, refused, as it was, the release of vocal cords. A large woman, whose remaining teeth had been seriously eroded by the constant assault of chocolate, Madame Delacour was interested in everything: from weather to underwear, from school to defecation, from witches to astronauts, from politics to wheelchairs. And she would talk to anyone; to you or me or dogs or cats or chickens or the mayor or the curé. It was all the same to her.
It was winter that made her a handful. In a town where nothing happens in the summer, less than nothing happens in the winter and Madame Delacour became bored. Nothing helped: not the television, which by virtue of its size blocked the only window in the house; not the kids, whose collective naughty imagination would keep the most blasé among us on our toes; not the constant supply of chocolate which was made possible by cheques from the s
tate that arrived at the door. Winter bored her, absolutely and completely, and nothing helped. Nothing, that is, except death.
Madame Delacour was fervently drawn to the drama and ceremony of death. Not her own, of course. That was, as she wisely knew, a party she could not attend. But anyone else’s fascinated her. She appeared at all the funerals she could, dressed appropriately for the occasion in her vast purple dress and with lipstick smeared all over her wide mouth and sparse teeth. She mourned with the mourners and eulogized with the eulogizers. Often her sadness was sincere, but more often the excitement that death causes in a small town cancelled all but the most fleeting of sorrows. Madame Delacour at a funeral was like a child at a birthday party, and the corpse like a brand new, recently unwrapped gift.
But there was a small problem. There were simply not enough deaths to keep her occupied. The tiny population of the town could only produce a certain number each year, and although most of these occurred, conveniently, in the darkest and most boring part of the winter, Madame Delacour became restless and dissatisfied. Boredom waited for her on the street after each funeral. She began to invent deaths.
And so it came to be that, after a few long dark winters, almost everyone in the town had been reported dead three or four times before they, in fact, expired. Madame Delacour became, as Monsieur Delacour so aptly and so silently put it, a handful. Even the dogs and the chickens avoided her chatter. Everyone likes to discuss the actual death of a neighbour, but invented death is something else. It’s foolish to weep and bemoan the fate of a friend who, at that very moment, is buying two tins of pâté and a grosse baguette in the local épicerie. And it’s most embarrassing if and when the friend in question finds out about your outburst of emotion. And so, as Madame Delacour found fewer and fewer people with whom to discuss imaginary death she turned more and more to her husband.
Monsieur Delacour loved his wife. And it wasn’t that he was against death either. He just didn’t care about it one bit. Someone or something could come and snatch it away for all the difference it would make to him. He was far more interested in the children, chickens and rabbits who all fitted nicely, if a little snugly, into his small corner in the square. He liked to watch their numbers increase. It was something he could count on. He wished his wife had something she could count on too, for Monsieur Delacour was as certain as could be that all of the important deaths had already happened.
Because he could not speak, Monsieur Delacour’s thoughts consisted mostly of observations and explanations, which he put to himself in the form of announcements. Questions were, you might say, out of the question since they could not be articulated. And only occasionally did he make decisions; only when it was absolutely necessary. He felt it was necessary now.
“Spring is here,” he announced, silently, to himself. “In spring Madame Delacour visits the larger square near the church and watches the tourists come and go. Then she makes up stories about the people she has seen there; movie stars and counts and earls, thieves and convicted murderers, millionaires and soccer players, queens and presidents all stream into her imagination and the power of death subsides. She will be perfectly happy watching this parade of strangers that lasts through the summer and on into the fall. But then the fanciful funerals will begin again. Something has to be done about her.”
And, oddly enough, just that morning Social Services had decided that they must do something about Monsieur Delacour. Around nine o’clock a plump, cheerful man had leapt out of a white van. Then he had dragged a brand new wheelchair into Monsieur Delacour’s kitchen. He had sat in it himself in order to demonstrate its safety and efficiency. He had shown Monsieur Delacour how to work the gears and manipulate the wheels. It had shone in the grimy kitchen as brightly as a diamond tiara. It was like a carriage for a king. And Monsieur Delacour didn’t care about it at all. It seemed to him to be just one more contraption that might be snatched away at any moment. So, as soon as the white van had pulled away, Monsieur Delacour hopped outside to his stone bench in order to watch for spring.
It was the combination of the change of the season and the appearance of the wheelchair that gave him the idea and that brought about the decision. He would give Madame Delacour the wheelchair for the winter. He didn’t, after all, care about it one bit and, unlike the use of his voice, left arm and left leg, he could be sure that he had donated it to a worthy cause. With a little goat’s bell attached to it, and a colourful cushion placed in the seat, it would be the perfect vehicle for her imagination. She could spend the winter months inventing the illnesses that had forced her into the chair; illnesses that were awe-inspiring but not fatal—a party she could attend. She would turn her attention away from other people’s deaths and towards her own diseases.
Monsieur Delacour leaned back against the cold stone wall behind him. Anticipation rattled happily through his brain. First he anticipated the summer afternoons when the sun would warm (though never dry) the stones around his corner. Then he anticipated the seven pink petunias Madame Delacour could place in a box outside the single window that the television blocked. Then he thought about his own death, which he didn’t care about in the least, but which would be the greatest of his gifts to Madame Delacour. And finally, with a definite smile, he thought about Madame Delacour, herself, and how she would look in her winter wheelchair, moving through the streets of town, accompanied by the distant voice of a tiny bell. Freed from the clutches of boredom her face, he decided, would reflect a combination of invented pain and immeasurable happiness.
The Drawing Master
All but one of his students were drawing the canopied bed. Eleven of them were fixed, with furious attention, on the object, puzzling out the perspective and gritting their teeth over the intricate folds provided by the drapery of its rather dirty velvet curtains. Pencils in hand they twitched, scratched heads, scratched paper and erased. Individually, each studied his neighbour’s work and vowed to give up drawing altogether. Collectively, they laboured with a singleness of purpose worthy of great frescoed ceilings and large blocks of marble. All for the rendering of a rather tatty piece of furniture where someone, long forgotten, had no doubt slept and maybe died.
He walked silently behind the group, noting how the object shrank, swelled, attained monumentality, or became deformed from notebook to notebook. What, he wondered, brought them to this? In a building full of displayed objects, why this automatic attraction to the funereal cast of velvet and dark wood? This must be the bed that the child in all of them longed to possess; to draw the dusty curtains round and suffocate in magic of contained privacy. It would be as cosy and frilly and mysterious as the darkened spaces underneath the fabric of their mother’s skirts. The womb, he concluded, moves them like a magnet in all or any of its symbolic disguises.
The twelfth of the bunch was drawing a stuffed bird. Mottled by time and distorted by the glass bell that covered it, it pretended, without much credibility, to be singing its heart out perched on a dry twig. Its former colours, whatever they might have been, were now reduced to something approaching grey. The face of the young man who had chosen to reproduce this bundle of feathers was reflected once in the glass bell and again in the display case, and was also greyish. The drawing master glanced quickly over the young man’s shoulder and discovered, as he had expected, a great deal of nothing. Fifteen years in the profession had taught him to read all signs with cynicism. A student who kept aloof from the crowd, or chose alternate subject matter: these, to his mind, were social rather than creative decisions.
“You must like birds, Roger,” he commented wryly, and then, “There are some who seem to prefer beds.”
The young man’s face acquired a spot of colour, but in no other way did he respond to the remark.
The drawing master moved on. At this point there was little he could do for them except leave them alone. This was usually the case once he had taught them the rules: he believed, through it all, that the rules were the bones of the work. Within the struct
ure they provided, great experiments could be performed, giant steps could be taken. And so his students suffered through weeks of colour theory, months of perspective. They reduced great painting to the geometry of compositional analysis. Like kindergarten children, they arranged triangles and squares on construction paper. Then, after a written test, in which the acquired basics were transposed to paper, he hired a small bus and drove them to this old, provincial museum, where he allowed them to choose their own subject matter. Year after year, the drawing master searched in vain for the student who would make the giant step, who would perform the great experiment, just as year after year he looked for evidence of the same experiment, the same step, in his own work.
The drawing master moved on and now he was looking for his own subject matter. For he had brought with him a small bottle of ink and a tin box in which he kept his straight pen and his nibs. He could feel this paltry equipment weighing down his right-hand pocket, altering somewhat the drape of his jacket. Aware of this, he often rearranged the tools giving himself the look of a man with an abundance of coins that he like to jingle. Then he shifted his shoulders back and mentally convinced himself that a slight bulge at the hip could not alter a look of dignity so long in the making. There were still, after all, the faultless cravat, the leather pants, and the well-trimmed beard speckled with grey.
And now he began to move past display cases; one filled with butter presses, another with spinning wheels, still another containing miniature interiors of pioneer dwellings, complete with tiny hooked rugs and patchwork quilts. He paused briefly before the collection of early Canadian cruets, interested in the delicate lines of twisted silver. But they turned to drawings so quickly in his mind that the actual execution on paper seemed futile and boring and he walked away from them. Past blacksmith’s tools and tomahawks, past moccasins and arrowheads and beadwork, past churns and depressed glass, past century-old pottery from Quebec and early models of long-silent telephones, past ridiculously modern mannequins clothed in the nineteenth century, until he found himself looking through the glass of a window and out into the fields.
Storm Glass Page 5
