“My father?”
Dorian looks at her slyly. “He seemed like a man with a secret to me.”
“Not that sort of secret, Dorian. He was simply a man of his times—they were all sort of stoical, uncommunicative, weren’t they? The fathers? It was the war that did it.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what my father was like. As I say, my grandparents, my mother never mentioned him. My father had no brothers or sisters to ask. I should have asked your father what my father was like, but your father always seemed so … intimidating. And I guess I never really thought to ask, wouldn’t know how to frame a question. And would he have told me the truth?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t.” Lydia glances toward the cottage’s front door. Carol is pushing it open. She can see her face, but can’t read it. What will be Mr. Black’s verdict? “We’ll never know. Life’s not like a novel where you can have some narrative voice intrude with the bare facts. If it were a play or film you were in, what do you think happened here, with your father, that summer?”
Dorian’s eyes follow Lydia’s glance. He itches for another cigarette. “I think … maybe your father had learned something, knew something, and told my father. Warned him? Something that would have … what? Ruined him? He was a doctor, a GP. He worked with children.”
“If you were gay in 1952 you lived a hidden life.”
“Was it so different seventeen years later, Lydia?”
27
The books sold Jonathan Black on Eadon Lodge. That’s what Jonathan said to Ívar Guttormson when he invited his colleague to see his new acquisition one afternoon on the Labour Day weekend.
“Off-road reading,” Jonathan explained his literary project in front of the cottage’s rows of marshalled book spines. “Or extreme reading.”
Ívar stroked his beard, which was much fuller than Jonathan’s, and snowy white. He grunted noncommittally. He was aware of the conceit, which was enjoying a certain vogue in literary circles, particularly in the U.S. The notion was to read through some author’s oeuvre—usually within the frame of a year’s time—and produce an amusing and not completely uncritical recounting of your armchair voyage.
But was it a good idea for young Jonathan Black, PhD, English department sessional lecturer, eager (though was he?) for a footing on the tenure track? Ívar thought not—not that he gave much of a damn anymore, being on the cusp of well-earned retirement himself and looking forward to leaving the tedious internecine struggles behind. Jonathan made do teaching three undergraduate courses a year, at ten thousand a pop. How was he affording this cottage, dilapidated as it was? There was a rumour he gambled—and with some success. Or might the cash have come from a divorce settlement? Jonathan was splitting (had split?) from his wife, a fetching little thing, who directed some human rights institute the University of Winnipeg was cashing in on. In Ívar’s day, few men benefitted financially from divorce. How well he knew: He was paying two ex-wives alimony—half the reason he was still doling out moonshine to dunderheaded undergraduates at age sixty-eight.
Ívar peered at some of the authors’ names on the faded spines, none of them immediately recognizable, proof—as if proof were needed—that obscure schlubbiness was the destiny of most writers. The road to immortality lay in placement on a university syllabus. None of these books looked like they’d seen the back end of a syllabus in generations.
“Perhaps you’ll revive some long-lost classic,” he said to Jonathan, not believing it for a minute.
“Well, it’ll be fun at least,” Jonathan grinned.
Ah, fun. There was something too earnest, eager, gauche—what was his granddaughter’s word? geeky? about Jonathan. Fun, reading all these old old books? In a year? He made a swift tally of the total: five hundred—six? And where would he find the time to more than skim half of them?
Jonathan noted the roving eyes. “I’m going to pick a shelf at random. I’m not doing all of them. There are 512 books. I counted.”
Even a shelf’s worth seemed tortuous. Ívar smiled at his colleague. Jonathan was young, energetic. They all had websites these days, these kids. They blogged. Performed at poetry slams. Wrote comic books they called “graphic novels” and (the horror!) self-published them—or “tweeted” them, for all he knew. Lots of balls in the air, irons in the fire, gigs cobbled together. They had to. And maybe that was just fine. Things change. Life goes on. Tra la la. Who knew? Perhaps Jonathan’s project (“A Year of Reading Crap” was Ívar’s working title) would be a winner and bring lustre of some sort to the department. Or perhaps Jonathan had no desire for tenure anyway.
Ívar was eager to leave. A host of friends and acolytes was waiting for him at his summer home where he and Maya, wife #3, were hosting a little end-of-summer soiree. He probably should have invited Jonathan—still could, but, oh, somehow the boy didn’t fit. He was an oddball, even by English department standards. He took a last sip of the brennivín Jonathan had thoughtfully provided and, as he exited through the screen door, gave him a piece of advice whose wisdom would become apparent four weeks later:
“You really need to do something about that old spruce in the yard.”
Jonathan removes a carton of cream from the GE Monitor-Top fridge, glancing again at the antique warranty on the kitchen wall behind, void now these last seventy years. Wow! He loves the fridge. He loves the Victrola in the living room and the Quebec heater and the iron bedstead—all the stuff in his new possession. Eadon Lodge is so awesome. It’s like Dylan Thomas’s boat house or Roald Dahl’s gypsy house or Vita Sackville-West’s writing tower. But that microwave sitting on the old kitchen wood stove is getting the heave-ho. He flicks open the carton’s spout. Did Dylan or Roald or Vita have a microwave? Duh, no.
Jonathan pours the cream into his coffee (okay, the coffeemaker stays; how else do you make coffee?) and looks out the window to the fallen leaves rolling and twisting across the faded grass and to the denuded aspen bent against a wind that has been rising all afternoon. The leaves are audible in their turmoil—a lovely autumnal rustle. The spruce tree branches, too. They creak. Off to the east—he can make this out if he twists his head—the October sky appears as a grey blanket spreading low over the lake. Jonathan feels a funny little frisson. He recognizes it: he’s nine, at his grandmother’s in Fort Frances, on the veranda, playing Trivial Pursuit with his cousins as the rain thunders on the roof. But he’s inside, where no danger intrudes, warm, safe, and dry. How cozy is Eadon Lodge? It’s awesomely cozy. A log fire is crackling in the living room right now. Parchment lampshades cast a mellow glow. He has a fridge full of prepared food, for his own private little Thanksgiving picnic. (Maybe keeping the microwave isn’t such a bad idea after all.) He will read, write, think, maybe watch a film on his laptop (okay, another concession to modernity), then pack up a shelf of books into boxes. These he will take to the city for winter reading, for his off-road project, which he could tell Ívar didn’t think highly of. He’s looking forward to the coming storm, anticipating the contrast between the comfort of the cozy little cottage and the turbulence of the evening—just like at Grandma’s. He’s not worried. Eadon Lodge has stood for eighty years.
This cottage property is the most expensive of his whimsies—more expensive than the Porsche 911 Turbo he bought when he was in grad school at Queen’s. That riveted everyone’s attention, including Sara’s, who probably wouldn’t have paid attention to him in any other circumstances. He sold the Porsche after a few weeks. He only bought it for babe-magnet purposes and after a few weeks needed the cash. Jonathan plays poker.
Played. He played poker, first, in tournaments when he was an undergrad at the University of Waterloo, then, when he was in graduate school, online as well. It was a roller coaster, man. Cloud nine. Rock bottom. Big paydays. Horrendous downswings. But he learned mucho. Became a Zen master of his emotions. He did not cease from mental fight, nor did his cards sleep in his hand i
n those crazy days. All that and completing his master’s thesis, too! But, in the end, playing poker for a living felt neither productive nor constructive. Sara helped him see the soullessness. So he banked his winnings, which are so nicely and sufficiently income-producing that he can tell the tenure committee to stick it up their collective ass, if it suits him. Unfortunately, money can play an ugly stepsister in divorce. Sara’s said she doesn’t want anything, wants the split to be amicable, and he’s inclined to trust her. She, unlike he, comes from money. Her daddy’s rich. Sara is Daddy’s girl, but Daddy has a ruthless streak.
Jonathan returns to the living room, sets his coffee on the old pedestal desk, and goes to stuff another log into the Quebec stove. The fire within crackles satisfyingly when he raises the metal lid, sparks fly and vanish into the air. Eadon Lodge will be his perfect summer base for uninterrupted writing and thinking: no Internet here, no TV, no phone—well, no landline. The only thing he’ll change is the cottage’s name. The carved sign over the door—Eadon Lodge—will go. He will have another one done—Black Lodge. It’s so perfect. After all, one of his many projects is examining “Northern Gothic” as a mode of national allegory in Canadian writing and “Black Lodge” seems, well, sort of northern Gothic-ish, no? Jonathan glances at the long shadows cast by the lamps. So Gothic! Well, in the most obvious sort of way. It’s mid-afternoon but outside the dark blanket is drawing tighter over the sky. A few steps past the old Shaker rocking chair to the living room window confirms it. The leaves and trees continue their macabre dance. And he can hear the waves hurling themselves against the shore. And he, inside, so cozy.
He sits in one of the armchairs at the desk, sips coffee, remembering he mentioned his northern Gothic interests to the woman he bought the cottage from—Lydia? … Lydia … Eadon. Eadon Lodge. Duh. He recalls the glance she gave him, though he can’t find a word to describe it. Penetrating? Haunted? Bit Gothic, really. She seemed more interested in his long-range plans for the cottage than in his academic pursuits, though she worked for some sort of quasi-academic publisher in California. He assured her that he had no intention of changing a thing in the cottage. The … er … unique nature of Eadon Lodge was its attraction to him—and he meant it: Weeks earlier, he had seen Guy Maddin’s surreal documentary My Winnipeg and yearned with every acolytish bone in his body to make his own My Cottage. Besides, if he wanted any old second home at a beach, he could have purchased any of dozens on offer. “Fear not,” he said to her in his best superhero bass, bowing ludicrously, “I shall treasure this cottage as you and your family have treasured it, lo these many years.” She managed a smile at this bit of theatre, though the smile didn’t rise to her eyes. Her companion—who the heck was he? her husband? his face, so familiar—merely shot him a single lifted eyebrow.
Despite the caffeine from the coffee, despite the tumult outside, despite the tasks ahead, Jonathan feels heavy-lidded. Why not a short inaugural nap on the couch, lumpy thing that it is? He imagines the old couch, lumpy or no, being as comfortable this afternoon as his childhood bed. There’s one of those lovely Hudson’s Bay blankets in the corner cupboard. He’ll fetch it. He will dream afternoon dreams.
Jonathan awakes to cold air pouring along his cheeks. A louvred window across the room, improperly fastened, he guesses, groggily, has flown open. Was there a crash? Did he hear a crash? He struggles out of the blanket and pads across the room to shut the window, lifting his cellphone from the desk to check the time. Barely an hour he’s been asleep? Maybe. The wind sieved by the screen is uncommonly strong—and, now, almost howling. He stares out to an agitated tracery of tree boughs, flailing shadows in light more late evening than late afternoon, startled at the weather’s increased vehemence. He pushes the louvres back into the frame, but now the covering curtain jerks and billows. Shit! There was a crash. The window glass shattered against the edge of the bookshelf. Shards glitter along the couch. The fire from the heater will not subjugate this cold.
Jonathan’s an academic with hands as pudgy as yoghurt, but he’s not a complete boob, having grown up on a farm near Hanover, Ontario. Among the inventory, stored in the sleeping cottage, are plywood sheets—left over from some renovation, though he can’t think what. He can use one to cover the broken window. Hammer and nails are in an old trunk here, in the cottage. Easy peasy. He can do this. He drops another couple of logs into the Quebec stove, fetches his jacket, moves through the chilly kitchen to the door, pushes through, and steps into a blast of wind and barrage of leaves whirling around his body like a host of frenzied sparrows. He catches his breath, or, rather, a gust of chilled air races to plug his nose and throat. The scene before him is transfixing. A wild cacophony of heaving, groaning tree branches plays counterpoint to wind rising from howl to screech to shriek, and over there, the roar of waves pounding the shore. It is thrilling. Not even a branch, ripped from a nearby tree, thudding at his feet, keeps Jonathan from stumbling, head bent, toward the beach. He steps over it, the window task forgotten, hugging his jacket against the flailing leaves, passing through the gate to the grassy rise over the sand. Lash me to the mast, boys! This is epic stuff!
But there is no sand. No beach. No shore. The water crashes along the verge at his feet, sending a mist of spray along his exposed skin. Stunned, he gazes at the heaving lake waters, great grey ridges, wide grey chasms, thrashing and churning, violently restless, exploding with spume. Now exhilarated—the scene is electric—he shouts, “Let Jove fly with his thunderbolts!” but his ears strain to hear his own voice against the roar and shriek. His eyes travel to the sky, barely a shade lighter than the roiling lake, here and there delivering a sickly light to silver the massive coils of water. Jonathan attunes himself to it all, eyes roving the land, the lake, the sky, so that he can later call up each detail of this ominous, Boschian scene. He takes deep breaths of the air, intoxicated by the ozone. It is amazing that anything can withstand this assault of wind and water.
And yet, with that thought, it strikes him that this tumult may be only a beginning. Where are the Jovian thunderbolts? Where is the rain? Coming. Soon. And with more force. He can sense it, with a sudden and visceral acuity. He turns, glimpses Eadon Lodge with its windows glowing port holes, riding the storm like a ship, and races toward it, through the gate and back into the yard, heart pounding. The shed is unlocked—he unlocked it earlier looking for a better broom—and he finds the plywood sheets, stacked neatly by size. He grabs a small one in front. But outside, in the gale, the board flails and thrashes like a sail in his hands, sending him careening across a lawn strewn now with frail branches and tree twigs, threatening to tear away from his grip. As he nears the cottage steps, a jagged flash of lightning renders the sky white, thunder crashes like a barrage around his ears, and a wall of rain descends out of the darkness, drumming onto the board, onto his head and jacket.
But he is inside now. He shakes off the drops, whisks the board through to the living room, scrambles for hammer and nails from the old trunk in the bedroom. Rain pounds on the roof, pours through the broken window, drenching the curtain, the wind behind setting magazines and papers skittering across the floor. Jonathan jerks the couch below the window aside and sets the plywood over the window, balancing the bottom on his knee as he grapples with hammer and nail. Loud as the punctuation of metal on metal is, it is nothing to the screeching intensity of the wind and rain attacking the cottage walls, which creak and groan under the assault. Shaken now, Jonathan glances at the tension rod that bolsters the sides of the cottage to see that it’s holding, and misdirects his hammer. He howls as the hammer smashes into his thumb. The plywood swings dangerously on its hinge of a single nail, striking a bookshelf, sending a row of books tumbling to the floor and onto the glass-sharded couch. Somewhere else—from the dining room—comes the sound of more shattering glass—one of the old gas lamps, he is sure, but covering this window is his imperative. The cottage will be restored to coziness soon, but is it shaking? Or is he shaking?
He removes his bruised thumb from his mouth and quickly completes the window covering. He could abandon the cottage, run for cover to the car, away from the canopy of demented trees, and considers this as he gathers up some of the fallen books—they’re from the chosen shelf for his project.
And then he stops, his ears alerted to a new, low, terrible moaning and his mind races over the landscape outside. He has a sudden vision of that old spruce tree a few metres from the bathroom window listing and keeling, its ancient roots straining against the anchoring earth, but to no avail. Surrendering to the gale, it plunges horrifyingly, tearing through the roof and collapsing the cottage like a house of cards. And it’s as though Jonathan Black is possessed of strange foresight, for a moment later, as he hastily throws Dead Men Tell No Tales into the cardboard box, a great ripping sound like no other that afternoon—or ever—rends the air. Jonathan sustains five seconds of absolute paralyzing terror, his mouth open in a silent scream, before a weight too brutal to imagine sends his insubstantial body through the splintering wooden floor and the stove explodes into a spree of liberated flame.
28
Dorian frowns up at the airport TV screen, at the bobblehead reading the news. Shut up, he mouths.
He returns to the script on his knees and tries to concentrate. It’s Patrick Hamilton’s Rope. Again. Charmaine, his agent, is unaware of the … incident the last time he was associated with a production of this play. That was in 1981. The Toronto Free Theatre. Guy Sprung directing. Him in the role of the callow undergraduate, Granillo. No one then—as far as anyone knew—had mounted Rope on stage since Christ was a pup. Written in 1929, a half-century later it couldn’t even be branded a chestnut, so far had it fallen from the repertoire, but Sprung has seen the 1948 Hitchcock film version in a repertory cinema in New York and thought he could make it “relevant,” as the saying went in those days, setting it post–Vietnam War rather than post–First World War. Now there seems to be a new vogue for it. The Old Vic is mounting it in London. Dorian is reading it for A.C.T. in San Francisco, for the 2009–2010 season. With Iraq war overtones, no doubt.
Paul Is Dead Page 22
