Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  Chapter Eleven

  To avoid Ottawa, Emmett and his family went to Blue Sea Lake. They invited Dr. Kimura on the weekends; he was given a standing invitation — the guest bedroom came to be considered his, at the back of the cottage, beside Lenore’s.

  Kimura did his best to reassure them that the public’s suspicions would subside. He said there were many people who believed that Emmett had been unfairly targeted, just like Herbert Norman. Kimura asserted that those who slandered him would be ashamed of themselves one day.

  Lennie would not sleep. It wasn’t only an effect of the palpable tension, the anxious pall over the family since the investigation had been made public. In her infant years, her wakefulness had exhausted Suzanne; she and Emmett had spent many hours talking about how they might change their little girl’s behaviour. Now, at five years of age, Lennie still seemed to be awake all the time.

  Suzanne asked Dr. Kimura about Lenore’s sleeplessness. Kimura was casual about it and noncommittal about a prognosis. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe she’ll sleep all the time when she’s a teenager. Then you can worry about that.”

  “But what keeps her from sleeping?” Suzanne worried that it was something in her innocent daughter’s psyche, a child’s intuition that there was something wrong with the adult world.

  “Is she fussy when she’s not asleep?” Kimura asked, knowing the answer, for he had never heard Lenore cry.

  Lenore wasn’t fussy at night; she was never fussy at all. Suzanne would gently open the door to Lennie’s bedroom and find the child awake, but calm, not seeming to need anything.

  Suzanne thought about how eerie it was to find her daughter lying in the dark with her eyes open. Sometimes she would discover Lennie sitting up, quietly chatting with her assembly of stuffed animals and dolls. Lennie didn’t want a nightlight, didn’t want them to leave a lamp lit for her. When she was an infant, it was the light that would make her fuss; as soon as they turned it off, she calmed down, satisfied, peaceful — thoughtful.

  “She talks to her dolls, of course, every little girl does that.”

  “She is a wonderful storyteller,” Dr. Kimura agreed.

  Lenore told stories at other times too, not only when she was alone, not only at night. She might stop the adult conversation with a yarn seemingly inspired by something they were discussing. She could be sententious; her listeners might feel they’d been reprimanded without being able to say exactly what for.

  “You are a master of the fable,” Kimura told Lennie. He was scrambling two eggs for her. It was a hot day in June, and Suzanne and Emmett had gone down to the dock to have a swim while he gave her some lunch.

  Lennie levelled her grey eyes at Kimura. She was patient with grown-ups. Her nose was running. Kimura used his handkerchief to wipe her nose and then brought the scrambled eggs and sat down beside her at the table. “Do you know what a fable is?” he asked.

  She had the most impersonal gaze. Kimura felt foolish. She was really plugged up, breathing through her mouth. “It is a tale about animals,” he said.

  “Like a bat.”

  “Yes.” He wanted to point out that bats are indeed the only mammals that can fly, but he restrained himself, knowing that she’d find him pompous.

  “You killed it,” she said.

  “The bat. Yes, I know. I was here at the lake when that happened.” He and Emmett had trapped a bat in a closet, using a broom and a roll of toilet paper, laughing drunkenly.

  “It had a face,” she observed with some emphasis.

  “It did.”

  “It wasn’t a bat.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s okay,” she said charitably and poked at her scrambled eggs.

  “What was it then?”

  “It changed.”

  Kimura wondered if they were talking about death. He felt he might have something to contribute in this instance. He was particularly fond of the subject. “Yes. Things change when they die.”

  She granted him that. “Things change when they die,” she repeated with sad wisdom and added, “They become the next thing.”

  He hesitantly agreed, then had to ask, “And what might that be?”

  “Oh,” she sighed, “what other animal made it die.”

  “So, the bat would — be — me?”

  She scrutinized his face. “Kinda.” She laughed. Lenore laughed so seldom and it was such a lovely sound, Kimura sat back in awe. Then he, too, laughed, with tears leaking down his round face. She touched the tears with her pliable little fingers. He begged her, tell him everything. He was beginning to understand. “If a cat kills a mouse, the mouse is going to become a cat, is that right? One day? Or, when?” he asked.

  “When it gets born, silly.”

  “So, if a fox catches a bird, the bird gets born a fox?”

  She gently pushed her fingers into Kimura’s cheek.

  Hesitantly, Kimura asked, “And is the fox reborn as a bird?”

  She nodded, yes.

  Encouraged, he continued. “And if a bear catches a fish, the fish will be born a bear, and the bear will be a fish. Is that how it works?”

  She climbed down from her chair and up into his lap, her hands on either side of his face with a compassion that unnerved and thrilled him. “I don’t want my lunch.”

  “But I am such a good cook.”

  “I know.” She wiped her nose with her bare arm, smearing her face. He felt her forehead; she was slightly feverish. He asked her if she would like a dip in the lake. Lenore loved the water. She said she’d like to but didn’t climb down; she continued to study him. “Kim,” she said, “you eat lots of fish.”

  He agreed, he did like fish, and he liked to go out in the boat to catch them.

  “You hit the fishes on the head,” Lennie observed patiently. “Lots of you get born,” she explained, “every time you do that, Kim.”

  Suzanne came in, her blond hair wet from swimming, a blue towel around her yellow bathing suit. “Everything all right?”

  Kimura said, “I’m being trained in Lennie’s cosmology.”

  Suzanne touched Lennie’s forehead. “She’s hot.” Then, to Lennie, “You didn’t eat the nice lunch Kim made you.”

  “She doesn’t want to be a chicken,” said Kimura.

  Suzanne folded her towel and sat down on it. She was tanned and lithe from swimming. She had given over entirely to being pleasant in these weeks of Emmett’s “leave of absence,” to making pleasant meals and conversation, playing Fish with Lennie, and drinking rather a lot every night.

  Kimura wasn’t finished with Lennie’s lesson; there were nuances yet to be discussed. The egg, for example: it’s not exactly murder, is it? He would broach the subject carefully. Lenore said, “The chicken didn’t give the egg-people the egg. They took it from him.”

  “Her,” Suzanne said distractedly. She was waiting for Emmett to come up from swimming. “The chicken is a hen, a her.” Suzanne went to the end of the veranda from where she could view the dock.

  Many things turned over in Lenore’s mind. She slipped from Kimura’s lap and stood at the table, just tall enough to place her arms there; she stared at the pale yolk on her plate. She had a way of staring, absorbing and being absorbed by the smallest things.

  Kimura put his hand on her thin shoulder, saying, “Maybe the chicken wanted you to have the egg. It was a gift.”

  Lennie looked at him scornfully, then followed her mother to the end of the veranda. “I want to go to bed now.”

  “Now?” Suzanne said, surprised. “Don’t you want a swim?” Then, “All right,” picking her up, Lennie wrapping herself around her mother, being taken away, giving Kimura her owl stare when he wished her a pleasant nap. Suzanne stopped and said to him, “Will you go down? He’s so unhappy.”

  Kimura sat alone for a moment rubbing his sore knee before beginning the painful walk down the stone stairs in search of Emmett.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kimura found Emmett sitting where t
he rocks were hot and flat and fell sharply into the water. Emmett’s hands were under his thighs, he dangled his feet into the lake, disturbing the pine needles blown in last night’s storm. Kimura eased down to sit beside him.

  “I have been engaged in dialogue with Lenore,” Kimura began. “Her Socratic method grows more dictatorial with every passing year.”

  Emmett smiled wanly.

  “She is concerned for the chickens,” Kimura said.

  “I’ll bet she wouldn’t eat her lunch.”

  “No. Sorry. I used parsley. That was stupid.”

  “We’re having trouble getting her to eat anything.” The sun’s rays dove and angled into the lake. The algae hadn’t yet bloomed. “She thinks it’s cruel.”

  “It’s more than that,” Kimura said. “She’s afraid she’ll become whatever she eats. In the next life.”

  Emmett said, “Well, she might be right about that.”

  “She’ll have to take her chances.”

  “She’s just a little girl.” A pair of mallards flew low over the water, chortling, and disappeared behind an island. Emmett watched them as if he’d like to go with them. Lennie was his to protect, and he was afraid that he couldn’t do that. His love for her was a raw nerve. He didn’t trust himself with such love.

  “The diplomat’s death has made people afraid,” Kimura was saying. “When people are afraid, they’re stupid. It’s easier for them to believe that Herbert Norman was a homosexual than to consider that he was murdered. Who would murder him?” Kimura put up his hand to indicate that he didn’t want to talk about a conspiracy; Emmett had gone on about it, his theory that Herbert had been murdered, maybe even by someone in Canadian or American intelligence. The potential was too great for a European war as a result of the crisis in Suez, Emmett argued. He believed that someone had perceived Herbert as an obstacle to the process and therefore killed him.

  Kimura continued, “Besides, we see much sympathy over his death. There are reasonable people in the world as well as crazies.” He waited a moment and added, “You’re grieving. It’ll pass. All the excitement will pass and people will forget.”

  Kimura could sense Emmett’s torment, but he couldn’t feel it. He loved this family, yet he didn’t want one of his own. Something in his own history — the war, possibly; the betrayal of the internment camp where he and his parents had been made prisoners of war in their own country; his medical practice, all of this had made him dispassionate. He admired the passions he witnessed in Emmett and even in his uneasy wife; he thought he would be terrified to live that way, it would be terrible to be so vulnerable in love.

  It was hot where they were sitting, fully in the sun, and Dr. Kimura was wearing trousers. He grunted and heaved himself to his feet by pushing up with his hand on Emmett’s head. “I’m going to swim.” He took off all his clothes and dove into the water. Kimura didn’t look athletic with his clothes on, but naked, he was perfect. He swam out fifty yards and returned, swimming over to the dock. He could swim as long as he kept his sore knee straight, but it hurt getting out of the water.

  Kimura was naked when the boat went by. It slowed so quickly the motor jacked up with a loud wallowing noise and the boat drifted for a minute or two. Somebody laughed. They gunned it and went on. Kimura cursed himself and went to the dockhouse. He found an inflatable yellow tube shaped like a duck that he could hang about his waist, but he opted for an old towel smelling of gas, and with this wrapped around him, he went up to the cottage. He had an inspiration.

  A half-hour later, dressed in his hakama, Kimura quietly pushed open the door to Lennie’s bedroom and peered in. She was sitting up in her bed, looking out the window. Her stillness, her isolated consciousness, startled him, but he gave her his most cheerful smile and barged in. “I have been thinking!” he announced, sitting on her bed, missing the days when he could sit cross-legged, as Lennie was. The boy never leaves the man. And this, in a way, was another aspect of what he had come to convey. He looked at her expectantly, as if he’d already delivered his good news. Lennie had a sort of peek-a-boo game where she seemed to believe that if she suppressed a smile, no one could see it. It always delighted Kimura. “Well?” he said. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

  “Ask you what?”

  “What I have been thinking!”

  She refused, her face torqued with the effort of hiding her smile.

  “Then I won’t tell you.”

  Her hand darted to his sleeve, the quickest entreaty. Kimura thought, This child breaks my heart. He forgot his meniscus cartilage for a second and tried to sit as he wished and was brought short by the pain.

  “Ah,” he said with exaggerated sorrow, “I am a hundred years old.”

  Lennie was astonished and obviously believed him.

  “So you must listen carefully because these are the words of a very old man.” Lennie listened with every nerve and fibre. Kimura always loved an audience, but this was most superb.

  “Take the duck,” he began, “or, say, the fly. Yes, the fly who becomes the spider. And the fish who becomes the bear. Or, in this case, the fish who becomes the doctor. And the bat, the bat who also becomes the doctor. Ah. Be that as it may. This, I have come, oh wise one, to discuss with you.”

  Lennie wriggled with the importance of it all, waiting for the rest.

  Now he didn’t quite know how to express his idea. It was too great. The full-leafed summer sun pressed forward. He had come to tell Lenore about the totem, the synchronicity between things; that the fish didn’t get caught — it yielded. One form for another and another. That what drives life is not appetite or the will to conquer but something entirely benevolent and joyful. “I have come,” he began again, “to remind you of something. Because, Lenore Jones, Lennie the Penny, Princess of Jones, Lennie loon, loosey goose of the McCallum Tribe, this is something every creature and every blade of grass — everything in the whole wide world is born knowing. But sometimes we forget. So as your friend and doctor — ”

  Lenore was on her knees, imploring, pulling at the sheets and shouting, “Tell! Tell!” and he could hear Suzanne approaching, calling from the kitchen, “What’s all that racket? Lennie?” He was out of time, he’d let his golden tongue get the best of him. He said, “The fish loves the bear, and the bear loves the fish. As I love the fish. It’s love, Lenore. Everything in the world is made of love.”

  And then Suzanne was in the room, and the sweet air, the sweet piney air was green, green with blue shade, the red floor of the forest beyond Lennie’s bedroom windows zinging in the heat. Kimura felt like Cupid, he had shot his pretty bow, he’d found the mark, a direct hit to the heart.

  Lennie fell back on her bed as if she truly had been struck. She put her bare feet up, pressed the tender young soles of her feet to the window screen, the sun speckled in the delicate pattern of the screen on the child’s skin.

  Her mother stood uneasily at the side of the bed. “Everything all right?” she asked brightly.

  Dr. Kimura searched Lennie’s face for a signal that his words might have made her happy. Lennie was rapt, focused on the leaves of the white poplar clapping lightly or on the silvery shimmer of the screen. Kimura wondered what he had just told her; he wondered what he meant by love. He was no longer confident that he had any right to use the word. The beauty he saw everywhere was terrible, terrible beauty.

  PART FOUR

  Chapter One

  Ottawa, 1959

  Emmett lay beside Suzanne in early sunlight. She was awake, turned away from him, he could hear her swallow, could feel her thinking. Crossways at the foot of their bed with its white cotton sheets lay Lenore. Skinny, tanned Lenore, wearing light white cotton pyjamas, lifted one narrow foot to scratch a mosquito bite on her ankle, then replaced the foot so she was lying straight, assembled, taut as a sapling.

  He remembered a lunch hour in a coffee shop many years ago in Japan, watching, fascinated by a young office worker who sat bolt upright with a full cup of cold coffee c
lutched in his hand, sound asleep. Buses, trains, park benches were always occupied by Japanese men in white shirts and black suits, briefcases on their laps, upright, sleeping deeply, and women in housedresses with shopping bags, not dozing — sleeping, soundly sleeping. The Japanese are superb at sleeping in public, their jaws closed, chins raised, no drooling. Beneficiary of the dream.

  But Lennie would not sleep; something in her refused it. Emmett thought of this as an economy: like a ledger, it balanced — someone else must have all the dreaming because she had none. And again he remembered, today is Lenore’s seventh birthday. How many hours had Lennie now been awake? He did some math in his head.

  Lennie had been awake for 58,400 hours and she was only seven years old.

  East-facing bedroom, sunrise. The three of them on a sunny cloud. “Happy Birthday, Lennie,” he said. He could hear her receive this, heard her tip her head back against the sheets so her throat was exposed, her narrow chest raised by her wing-like shoulder blades, her immeasurable quivering, a fine filament. Suzanne rolled over and sat up, golden hair tumbling. She reached and stroked Lennie’s skinny arm. “Happy birthday, baby,” she said.

  Lennie smiled without showing her teeth. Something of a young monk, he thought. A Buddhist smile of patient suffering, though he didn’t think that she was in any physical pain. She likely hadn’t closed her eyes all night.

  Late last night, on a street near home, Emmett had been out walking under the streetlights, the fragrant leafy trees, hearing only the quiet mallet of his own footsteps. He rounded the corner and saw his house, the table lamps lighting his living room. His legs ached. Exhaustion made him feel shy; he just wanted to go to bed.

  His front door was unlocked. The entrance and hallway, the stairway, all were in darkness but for light cast from the living room. He heard Suzanne speaking quietly and seriously, one sentence levelled after another. Her seriousness, the adult, sober containment of a situation, it was dry and sexless and made him feel separate, critical of her. He entered the living room in expectation of some difficulty he’d have to dispatch without losing his temper.