Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  The rabbit stepped up so close to Emmett’s back he could feel the gun in its holster inside the absurd grey suit.

  Morton interrupted sharply, “That’ll be fine, Grey. Wait in the car.”

  Grey, Rabbit, chewed something between his front teeth and looked as malevolent as his size would permit. Emmett was glad to walk away from his hot little body.

  They went through a large old kitchen and outside to the backyard. Morton took a path set in flagstone. On either side the grass was wet, recently watered. The place reminded him of the house his father had kept for Sachiko, and then he was reminded of Aoi, and of his son, James, in Japan. The memory heartened him because it was his alone.

  At the back of the yard, fifty feet away from the main house, was a small cottage in the Tudor fashion, white plaster with timber braces. “Go ahead,” Morton said and watched while Emmett stooped under the low doorway before coming in after him and shutting them inside.

  They were in a pleasant space furnished in an old-fashioned Victorian way. Two men seated before an empty fireplace stood when Morton entered. They were dressed in plainclothes with black leather jackets. One of them said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Jones.” Emmett wondered where Morton’s stupid sidekick Partridge had gone to.

  Morton indicated where Emmett was to sit, and when they were all four settled, he said, “First of all, I have a present for you.” A leather legal briefcase sat beside Morton’s chair. He bent down, opened it, and removed three accordion file folders. “Here you go.” Without fully standing up, he took a step forward and placed the folders in Emmett’s hands. The plainclothes officers looked on with bland goodwill.

  Emmett propped the files upright and read the labels on each one.

  Robert Morton said, “The Jones Files. One, Two, and Three. 1949–1959. Of course, we don’t have the FBI’s stuff on you.”

  Jones 1949–1959. Emmett had been under surveillance for the last ten years, under surveillance long after he’d been “cleared” in the investigation of 1953. He suspected this, yes, but their spying on him was so professionally accomplished that he hadn’t seen it, had warned himself against becoming paranoid. He thought he’d been cured of any naive belief that his country would not purposefully set itself against him, when the RCMP had given their files on him to the US. But a residue of faith had remained despite his wariness; he’d fallen yet again for the myth of goodness. What a fool. He was unable to conceal his shock. He looked up into Morton’s smug face.

  He placed the files on the floor at his feet and then picked up one with shaking hands. It was in chronological order. His editorials published in the university newspaper, The Varsity. Copies of reports he’d filed in Ottawa in 1950. Memos he’d sent to Bill Masters as a policy analyst in Tokyo. A letter from George Miller of the Washington think tank, memos to Harold Gembey of the Security Panel. Transcripts of the interviews when he was formally under investigation.

  “It’s not everybody gets to see their file,” Morton mildly observed.

  And there were photographs. Emmett with Leonard Fischer and John Norfield walking down Avenue Road at night, Leonard’s arm around Emmett’s shoulder. One of Aoi wearing her Manchurian cloak. She is kneeling in the snow and Emmett is walking away from her, toward the camera. He hadn’t seen anyone taking these pictures.

  Suzanne crossing College Street. She’s young. Carrying what looks like a school satchel. How young they were. There’s an attitude of self-satisfaction in Suzanne that is no longer there.

  “It adds up,” Morton observed. “I mean, in sheer bulk.”

  The two plainclothes smirked, but Emmett had the impression that they rarely expected to understand Morton and didn’t care whether they did or didn’t.

  On a table beside Morton lay a black notebook. He opened it, leafing through pages of handwritten script. In a low voice, as if to himself, “Out-of-date phone listings and a bunch of poems.” He tossed it to Emmett.

  “Facts,” Morton continued, “are simple enough, I suppose. So-and-so left the house at such-and-such an hour in the company of so-and-so’s wife. That kind of thing. Simple. What’s hard, what takes skill, is in the assembly. Shifting, rearranging. Try it one way, move the pieces, try it another way. Making a picture. Right?”

  Emmett began to look through each file more carefully. His instinct was to feel shy at being observed while looking at himself. They weren’t loving photographs, not family photos, these. The mechanism of the telephoto lens. How furtive they seem, he and his beloveds. And how deluded. He tried to handle the material as if he had a right to it and wasn’t revealing a weakness for the regard of others.

  Morton added, “That’s most of what we’ve got.”

  There’s more. Emmett started to review Jones File One. Here is Leonard Fischer. The private density of Leonard’s body, the intense impact of the evil he’d endured. One and half million children murdered, Leonard’s sisters among them, only fourteen years ago, so many millions killed. He recalled Leonard’s phlegmy laugh. Ich schlief, ich schlief — From a deep dream have I awoken.

  He riffled through Jones File Two. He needed to see whether they’d ever photographed Suzanne with Norfield.

  Morton spun his chair and straddled it backward, tipping it eagerly toward him. “You enjoyed a reunion with an old friend last night.”

  Emmett deposited Jones File Two on the floor and picked up Jones File Three, sorting through it while he answered Morton, “Yes, John Norfield was at my home last night.”

  And suddenly it was in his hand: his son, a photograph of a little boy, the shock of love and recognition, his son, he’s looking almost directly into the lens, his wondering face clear, innocent, beautiful, and the skirt of a woman behind him, likely Aoi.

  Emmett was aware of a tightening apprehension in Morton’s attitude as Morton observed the effect of this remarkable disclosure, this revelation. Aoi had never sent any pictures; Emmett had never before seen his son, yet he knew with every fibre that it was he.

  Emmett clumsily shuffled the photos, finally sliding the photograph of the boy back into the deck. He forced himself to speak as if continuing the conversation. “Norfield came by our house. Unexpectedly.” He looked up and met Morton’s gleeful eyes but made himself continue, “He visited for a little while. Then he left.”

  “Accompanied by your wife.”

  Emmett slid the photographs into the briefcase. He had to keep talking, his voice was constricting. He had seen his son. He would not let Morton know his feelings. He said, “I’ve told you many times. Norfield was a friend in university.”

  “Now, that’s not entirely accurate, is it.”

  “My wife was a student then. Naive. We were all naive. You’re spying on school friends. You must get tired of it.”

  “Not at all.”

  Indeed, Morton didn’t look weary; he was tanned, fit, enviably clear. He watched Emmett, waiting for him to explode. “If we’re all finished here,” Emmett said, “I’d like to go home.”

  “There’s one more thing. Before we release you to the wild.” Morton stood, carefully replacing the chair at the kitchen table. “Our mutual interest — that is, the elusive Mr. Norfield — is at an end.”

  Emmett had to ask what “at an end” meant.

  “He’s come in.”

  “He’s very ill.”

  “That’s probably why.”

  “He has decided to return?”

  “So he says.”

  If that were true, John would spend the rest of his life being followed, interrogated by Morton and his “intelligence.” Surely he was intending to slip out of the country again somehow.

  “At any rate,” Morton continued with mild impatience, signalling Emmett’s dismissal, “he’s done you a favour.”

  “Has he.”

  “We made a deal. A bargain. We leave you and your wife alone, and he gives us his full cooperation.”

  The plainclothes stood. Morton picked up the briefcase and was handing it to Emmett when he
stopped, put his hand inside, and removed a white cardboard box. Emmett recognized it as a box for audiotape. Morton laid the white box on the table and then offered again to put the briefcase into Emmett’s hands. “We’ve kept you long enough. ”

  Emmett didn’t move. “I don’t need another man to bargain for me. I’ve got nothing to hide. You’ve proven that.”

  “Grey will drive you home.”

  “Yes. But not because you made a deal with Norfield.”

  “I’m sorry to have disturbed your lunch.”

  “I’m going to talk to John.”

  “That would be stupid. And irresponsible. You’re a family man.”

  This was apparently funny; the plainclothes grinned.

  “Take the path around,” Morton told him, “you don’t need to go through the house again.” He went to the door and opened it. “You’ll find the car waiting for you out front.” He looked at his watch to indicate that he had more important things to do.

  Emmett took the briefcase. He passed Morton so close he saw the spindles of amber in his eyes, as if the sun had got into him and made him invincible. He said, “I’m not part of your ridiculous bargain, Morton. I’ve got nothing to do with you. I’m not even part of your fantasy.”

  “Ah.” Morton smiled sadly. “And here I’ve been feeling so close.”

  Chapter Three

  Blue Sea Lake

  The ryegrass on the lawn by the lake prickled Lennie’s legs and shoulders and neck, but she focused hard on infinity, which rose farther than the feathery clouds and travelled deeply past the sky.

  Summer was a time to recover from Grade One, to let the giants of Classroom 1-B shrivel and wane. She and her mother “got away” the minute school ended, at twelve noon June 28, the car packed to the roof, somewhere in all that stuff a new bathing suit for Lenore.

  Grade One was behind her. And good riddance. She hadn’t been the most popular girl in 1-B, not by a long shot. Peter Robinson in the desk behind her had called her “a hairy fink” when she wasn’t there to hear him. That nice boy Adam had informed her of this. And face it (a phrase Lennie liked, “face it,” or “let’s face it”), her two best friends, Sarah Martin and Jenny Walker, weren’t her best friends anymore.

  Sarah and Jenny would be going to a different school in another neighbourhood for Grade Two, for something called “Acceleration.” The teachers said they were “above average” and chose those two morons to take a bus to another school. Anyway, Grade Two was in September. Far away, far as Mars.

  Sarah and Jennie might have been smarter, but Lennie was more intelligent. Her Grade One teacher, Mrs. Duncan, called Lennie “a dreamer.” Lennie had felt the holy ghost swell through her blood when she heard this; she’d thought it was a compliment. But Mrs. Duncan has betrayed her. Things happen in patterns. Lennie understands that she will be betrayed often in her whole entire life.

  An airplane cut the sky, a hurting, carving sound. Up there, her father told her, it’s always today; he said that if you go up out of the sky, past the blue ocean of air, if you travel up and out of here fast enough, time no longer happens. What we have is gravity pinning us down, forcing us into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries.

  This is a great loop of thinking that Lennie tried once to explain to Sarah and Jenny. Sarah and Jenny fell backward together onto the couch in Jenny’s den, which is a room of windows above the garage, the two of them rolling their eyes and saying, “Really, Reilly, you’re a riot,” whatever that means. It was their new saying. They put on an English accent when they said this.

  Lennie remembered how sick of herself she was that day, just standing there like a clown in her red stretch pants that bagged at the knees. She tried to tell them that if you go way up into outer space fast enough you don’t get any older, you’re always just how old you are now. Seven. Forever. She drew her hands over her head to illustrate what she called “the great domain of life.” Sarah and Jenny said, “Really, Reilly, you’re a riot,” and broke open a box of Ritz crackers, intending to eat the whole thing. Gravity and time pressed on Lennie so hard she went home. She hadn’t seen either of them since, and wouldn’t see them all summer because they went to Anglican Summer Camp. Lenore would never go to Anglican Summer Camp. She’d die there.

  The lake shushed at the shore. Seagulls floated on the hot wind above where she sprawled on the grass and sent herself into space. Faster than light, Dad said, means faster than time.

  When it rains after an atom bomb, the rain burns holes in people’s faces. They start to throw up. When they look in the mirror, they’re melting, their skin falls off in globs of pus. They run outside and die in the middle of the street with everybody watching from their picture windows.

  The secret atom got out. The man in her mother’s photographs took it to Russia. Lennie had wanted him to like her and think she’s pretty. She’s ashamed of this. She might grow up to be a murderer or a thief. The great domain of life hurts inside her chest. The man in her mother’s photographs came to her house and liked her. The photographs are her.

  Except for Kim and except for Dad and President Kennedy, men smell bad. They make cigarette burns on the tables in the living room. One man stepped on her toe at a cocktail party and didn’t even notice. Cocktail parties are revolting. Jenny’s parents have them and they boil lobsters alive.

  But the hardest of all is knowing Dad is a spy. A spy and a communist. Adam told her way back in Grade One, he told her nicely. There are hardly any nice boys, but he’s one. He told her when they were at the sandy end of the schoolyard where the stinkweeds get tall and nobody else could hear, and he told her like it was something he felt she should know and he felt sorry to have to be the messenger. He has a nice voice, Adam. Lenore saw he felt sorry for her. Shame is hot as pee.

  Lennie knows her father loves her. He still picks her up like she’s a baby and talks to her at night when she can’t sleep. He’s handsome. He’s very intelligent. He has a boy called James who lives in Japan. And he is a communist spy. Often the work of forgiving him makes her eyes sting with tears.

  Lenore’s friends’ dads give them nicknames: “Muffin,” “Doll-face.” When they were in Grade One, Sarah’s father spanked her and Jenny and Sarah for running through the living room after Sarah’s mother had waxed the floor, so Lenore never went back there; they always had to play at Jenny or Lennie’s houses. He made her bend over and then he whacked her bum. The shame is on him. Jenny’s dad tells knock-knock jokes and sits on the floor beside the hi-fi he got her; he also bought Jenny a Harry Belafonte record. These fathers aren’t communist spies. But they’re simpletons.

  Sometimes she envies simpletons, but she wouldn’t want one for a father. Simpletons send their moron children to Anglican Summer Camp. She raises her legs and waves her feet in the air.

  Suzanne threw their bags into their rooms, collected the saucers of mouse seed from the corners of the veranda, put the food away, and went to her darkroom — what used to be a pantry between the kitchen and Lenore’s bedroom at the back of the cottage. She closed the door behind her, and without turning on the light she breathed in the sour stench.

  She would have a show opening in the fall, her work along with the work of several other “women photographers.” A journalist from the newspaper was coming to the cottage soon, this afternoon, to interview her “in her native habitat.” She and Lenore had to take the boat back to the landing for three o’clock to collect the journalist. Too soon. She’d barely arrived.

  She’d been interviewed before. But she was anxious about it. The rush to get away from Ottawa as soon as Lenore was released from school, all the packing and watering the garden and the blinds drawn and Emmett tied up till tonight; she couldn’t stop this automatic rush forward, and her nerves were crisp, prickling across her face.

  Suzanne stood in the pitch-dark. She’d let go of the door handle, and in the small, familiar space she had the sensation that she didn’t know where sh
e was, that she could be hanging upside down or one step away from a deep pit. Outside in the bright world, white poplar and aspen clapped in the sun, the gulls cried over the lake. She was still — what — shiny, glinting from her encounter with John. How like him to show up that way, mysterious, bitterly unromantic and very, very romantic too. He was bad for her. She had escaped him. But seeing him again had made her feel seared, singed inside, nervy yet beautiful.

  Now John was gone, gone for good, to live in Russia where the streets are wide and the winters cold. He’d told her, Leningrad looks like Ottawa. Imagine. Broad streets that look like Wellington Avenue, John said, but the buildings there are pink and yellow, drab from war. He might be back in Russia by now. She will never see him again. Eventually, slowly, this pain will subside, she’ll no longer feel this way, like the strings on an instrument, stretched, pitched, played by him, awful, grotesque, almost unmanageable; she’d scolded herself, driving here, she was afraid she’d get in an accident so distracted was she, listening to his silence as if for a code. But she has Lenore now. There is Lenore. There is Emmett. She’ll recover again, and there will be Emmett.

  She felt a surge of hope. She had a good life. She loved her family. Here in this space, she intended to do good work all summer. She shuffled a step backward, then again and again before she felt the cool pine door at her back, the door handle jabbing her, she opened the door to the heat, to colour, and went to find Lennie.

  There were the pale blue shorts, the matching jersey, stretched out on the lawn. Lennie’s bare arms rose and twined like thin white snakes. Suzanne couldn’t hear her, but she guessed that Lennie was talking to herself.

  Lenore’s loneliness in this past school year, the patient way she took it, filled Suzanne with fearful admiration. It reminded her of when Lennie first learned to swim, the moment of letting go, seeing her buttery baby pedalling through the water, no strings attached. Now, Lennie’s narrow chest like a birdcage, her aloof sideways approach, her reserve, and Suzanne yearning to gather the kindling of elbows and knees. She let the screen door bang shut and walked across the lawn. “Hi.”