Mr. Jones

by Margaret Sweatman

  “Eh?”

  “I said there are rumours, generally around the Hill, that the navy and RCAF have already moved onto bases in the south, into Florida. I hear the navy’s out looking for Soviet fishing boats off the coast of Labrador. And in the North Atlantic. Working with the US navy.”

  “I know that. You’re not telling me anything new.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I have my finger on the pulse.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what’s going on in my government.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I understand.”

  “How did you come by this omnipotence?”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me. Loud and clear.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Ha! Could have fooled me!”

  Olive was struggling to stand up. Emmett took her arm to help her. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’ve been gardening all my life.”

  “Yes,” said Emmett. “It shows.”

  A siren raced down Sussex. Diefenbaker’s crutches were on the grass beside his chair. He picked them up and stood, dropping the sack of bulbs.

  Emmett said, “Your garden is beautiful.”

  “No, it’s not,” Olive said. “Not now.”

  “You haven’t answered my question,” said Diefenbaker.

  “The tulips are his craze.” Olive retrieved the bulbs from the grass.

  “Pardon?”

  Diefenbaker pointed a crutch at him. “I said, how do you know what the RCAF has done? And who told you this gobbledygook about the navy?”

  “Of course I don’t know for certain, sir. I’m merely quoting rumours going around.”

  “Then you know he telephoned me.”

  “Sir?”

  Diefenbaker chortled unhappily. “I gave him the what-for.”

  “Are you speaking of President Kennedy?”

  “Himself. The warmonger. He wants the Russians on the defensive. And then they’ll go and bomb us.”

  “I hope that’s not the case,” Emmett said with a dry mouth.

  “Oh, you just don’t know the trouble we’re in.”

  Olive had set off for the house, saying, “Come on, Daddy.” Diefenbaker began to move across the lawn on his crutches, Emmett following, wondering if he’d been dismissed. Diefenbaker stopped to let him catch up and said, “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

  Emmett thanked him, vaguely.

  “I hear you were a communist.”

  “No. No sir.”

  “A real college Marxist.”

  They were standing close enough for Emmett to see each wiry curl on Diefenbaker’s head. He felt an odd surge of love for this crazy old man. He could almost tell him the truth. “I once admired the Soviet Union.”

  Diefenbaker gave another of his miserable chortles.

  “But I was naive, Mr. Prime Minister.”

  “Be that as it may, you’re a nice fellow. I’m not a man to shy from controversy. If you admire the Soviets, say so. Forthright. Loud and clear.”

  “I think we have to take the threat of nuclear attack from Russian missiles in Cuba very seriously, Mr. Diefenbaker.”

  “Very seriously,” said Diefenbaker, mimicking. “Well, anyway, I like you because you think for yourself. If we’re blown to bits in the next twenty-four hours, at least you can say you always spoke your true mind.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bill Masters tapped and came in. Emmett caught a quick glimpse of his ashen-faced secretary with her hand on the phone before Bill closed the door.

  Bill had gone grey since his second heart attack, and he’d lost about fifty pounds, had become a shrunken little man; he was like a bad impersonator, hardly recognizable. Emmett was always shocked to see him, though he ran into him often enough. Bill crossed the room and went to the window without speaking. From behind, Emmett thought, you wouldn’t even know it was Bill; he hadn’t seemed to be so short when he was fat.

  Bill seemed to like his new svelte self; had taken to wearing herringbone jackets with coloured shirts. The weight loss hadn’t done anything for his nerves. He looked down at the centre yard, then stood on his toes to peer out toward Wellington Street. “You know they’re talking about an evacuation,” he said.

  “Yes. I heard.”

  “More than five hundred people will fit into Diefenbaker’s concrete bunker.” He turned to face Emmett. “But not you and me.”

  “No.”

  “Head of the CBC, for chrissake. He goes.” Bill winced, trying to smile. “Bryce went out and bought a whole bunch of booze. On his own dime.” Bryce was the clerk of the Privy Council, a very practical man. “He personally told me, he’d cleaned out his own private bank account to buy it all.” Bill returned to the window; he was like a dog left behind from a family outing. “Rye. Scotch. Gin.”

  Emmett told Bill, Diefenbaker’s bomb shelter still wouldn’t be very much fun, even with Bryce’s booze.

  “Better’n being fried on the outside!” Bill’s voice had changed too, from a frog to a cricket. “Jesus!” He came and plunked himself down in the chair opposite Emmett’s desk. “Something I want to ask.”

  “Okay.”

  Bill — this strange new Bill — squinted at him. “You ashamed, you feel justified, you feel what?”

  Emmett asked him what he meant.

  “The Russkies. What do you make of them? Now they’re on our doorstep going to blow us all up.”

  “There have been madmen for as long as there have been men.”

  “Sure. But destroy the whole world? I want to know. What do you feel?”

  “Unreal. I feel unreal.”

  “Well, it’s real, pal,” Bill said angrily. “Answer my question for once. Don’t give me none of this real-unreal stuff. You were a communist. Now how do you feel?”

  “You’re bringing this up now? Now you’re frightened, you’re accusing me?”

  “Be straight, Jones. It’s the end of the world.”

  Emmett paused. He and Suzanne and Lenore might be dead tomorrow. Or, worse, they might survive for a few days before succumbing to radiation sickness. He hated Bill’s show, this death’s door inquisition. If he and his family were going to be extinguished along with another hundred million people, it didn’t mean he had to speak to Bill about his real feelings. He said, “I was wrongly accused. You know that.”

  Bill sniffed. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

  “Yeah. Sure. I gave the Russians information about the layout in Cuba, possible access from the sea. I took photographs so they could formulate better plans, land surveys from British railways. I kept them abreast of Castro’s revolution. I was the Who’s Who of Cuban unionists. I arranged liaisons between Russian apparatchiki and Che Guevara. I was instrumental in arranging Castro’s oil and sugar imports from the Soviet Union.” He paused then added, “And tonight, my family and I are escaping by helicopter to safety in the Crimea.”

  Bill’s face, at first almost gratified, soured. “I stood by you.”

  “Yes. You did. And I’m grateful. So why are you turning against me now?” He spread his fingers on his desk and leaned forward.

  Bill, staring at him, blinked and gazed around the room. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted somebody to blame.”

  “You should go home, Bill. Ethel will be worried.” Emmett came around the desk to usher Bill out. He touched the skinny shoulder. He felt canny. Alert. He asked Bill, would he be able to get some rest if he just went home to Ethel and trusted that nobody was going to pull the trigger tonight?

  “How about you?” Bill asked. He gripped Emmett’s arm; he seemed to have swung from anger to love. “How’s Suzanne? Is she scared?”

  “She’s fine. I made her a bomb shelter.” He laughed, forcing Bill into a nervous chuckle. With the door open, Bill turned and hugged him. Emmett heard his secretary give a gasp of despair. He would send h
er home. No doubt, her husband was already waiting in the parking lot.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Emmett didn’t tell his secretary anything just then but again retired behind the closed door. Raw inside, in the pit of his stomach, raw with a suspicion that he’d been emptied forever, that pretending, feigning, living by proxy, this was all that was left to him; he was dry in his soul. What he knew was no secret: Canada’s Bomarc missiles were actually filled with sand; there was no nuclear deterrence there or in the Voodoo interceptors — this was what Oscar wanted confirmed, but it was bankrupt information, pretty well public knowledge. The prime minister wanted the missiles in Cuba to vanish into fantasy, wished them to be phoney photographs, fake evidence manufactured by the CIA. Diefenbaker, the prairie lawyer, needed to have faith in objective information, a loving God, unaligned multiples, disinterested confirmation from the UN, and at the same time, he needed to believe that his nemesis, the handsome Jack Kennedy, was working in subterfuge, from a hidden agenda.

  The missiles were real, and there were already enough of them in Cuba to blow up North and South America: this is what Emmett believed. He also believed that the Russians would do it; they’d use nuclear missiles if they were forced to prove themselves, to avoid humiliation, forced to prove the success of their revolution. This was how it worked — every system carrying within itself the seed of its own death.

  When External first began to send him to Cuba, in the first blush of the revolution there, he’d taken some good pictures for the Russians, he’d done some very handy sleuthing right under the noses of the embassy staff. Even Kennedy in those early days of the Cuban revolution had admired the socialist freedom offered by Castro. Time magazine had called Castro “a humanist.” Prior to all that, in Emmett’s posting to the Liaison Mission in Tokyo, he’d done good work too, he believed even now; the massive UN force against the North Koreans was unjust; he had believed that it was the occasion for communism, imperfect yet inevitable. The photographs he’d taken of the Yalu River had gone to his Russian contact and he’d felt good about that, it had been an honourable risk in the name of freedom, of justice.

  Later, when Jim Smith had forced him to work for the CIA, he’d given up; he’d fed the CIA only the most obvious information, stuff they already knew; he’d never tried to achieve any useful espionage for the Americans. Just when it might have been useful. He could almost laugh at himself. But then he thought, I’m not very funny.

  He opened his door to tell his secretary that she could go home, but she had already gone. His phone rang. He let it ring. The only person he’d answer to was Suzanne, and he was on his way home now. But something made him change his mind, and he picked up.

  “Emmett?” A man’s voice.

  “Who am I speaking to?”

  “It’s Harold.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Harold Gembey,” said the voice.

  Emmett warily answered, “Hello, Harold. Anything wrong?”

  “I just want to talk to you. How about you meet me outside. I’ll be parked right on Wellington.”

  “Okay,” slowly.

  “It’s your wife. It concerns her.”

  “My wife.”

  “Your wife and daughter.”

  “I see.”

  “Five minutes.”

  “No,” Emmett said. “I’ve got some things to do first. Twenty minutes.”

  The person on the other end hesitated, then agreed.

  Emmett couldn’t go home. Whoever was on the phone would follow him there. He wanted, at this hour, he yearned to be with Suzanne and Lenore. But he would use what little talent he had left to make them feel, if not safe, then completely loved. He thought, if this passes, if this crisis is resolved, if the world survives, I’ll get Kimura to help me bring my son here. And Aoi, if she wants to come. He’ll look after them. Lennie will be happy.

  Twenty minutes. The duration struck him as a gift, a bit of bliss, a reprieve from this headlong rush toward disaster. He thought he would take the time to practise something. In the future, if there were one, he would live a single life, no secrets. The drapes moved, he saw them move, though there was no one in the room with him. The sordidness of the nuclear standoff struck him clear and hard with a wave of sickness.

  He considered leaving his office right now, going outside, walking down toward the riverbank, past the public path, farther, down into the bush where the leaves had fallen, in the burnt orange dogwood and crisp, dun oak, to sit and be alone, to avoid meeting whoever was waiting for him in a car on Wellington Street. A stack of papers lay on his desk, the pen he liked to write with, a blue cup he used for paper clips, a pretty thing he’d taken from Suzanne. By the window (where the drapes moved), a softly worn leather chair, black leather softened grey. The carpet too was worn, its dark pattern. Dark oak furniture, forest green walls, the oil painting in its gilt frame above the door, The Capture of the Halifax.

  The mantel clock on the credenza chimed. He must not go near his house. Whoever was waiting outside would follow him there. He would protect his family by staying away.

  Emmett was enthralled by the oak wood, by the worn wool of the carpet, by creased leather, and a shadow that moved in the wake of sunlight through the drapes (that moved, with light, with time’s passing). Everything is something different from itself. Life is beyond us all.

  He remembered Lennie’s totem, her mortal exchange, her childhood apprehension that we become what we kill. Maybe he was so afraid right now, he had fallen in love with fear.

  He remembered Lennie’s totem and he could see her, standing on one leg, stork, to meet his eye, and he saw that she had become beautiful and that she would forgive him not easily but through an act of will. Her slender body, her impersonal grey eyes, her mouth. Now he let his own world change shape. Now he let in the knowledge he’d forestalled until he was ready. That Lenore was John Norfield’s. Norfield fathered her. Norfield’s hovering over their lives; Suzanne’s obsession, all those posing actors and strangers and gestures, and the haunting, the grief she inscribed in a landscape.

  Among the files so generously donated back to him by Robert Morton, there was, he first thought, none of Suzanne with John. Emmett had found this too unlikely to be reassuring, and when he finally had a chance to peruse them in private, he had discovered that this was not the case; there was a photograph of them together: one. Dated 1951. Precise location unknown but not far from home. John had come back without Emmett’s knowing.

  Was it only a perverse sort of ecstasy at the eleventh hour that made it so easy to see that it didn’t matter? A sublime indifference he might have learned from his daughter. Lenore was his daughter too. He loved her out of dutiful fatherhood instilled in a man of ordinary talent. But the love he felt was also instinctive, adoring, pleasurable; he would give his life for the pleasure of saving hers.

  Emmett sat down at his desk. He took the pen he liked and wrote three letters: one for Suzanne, one for Lenore, and one for Dr. Kimura, asking Kimura to find his son, asking him to help Aoi and James to safety.

  Are the letters to Suzanne and Lenore truthful? he asked himself when he had finished and was sitting back to reread them. They were more than that. It was something to build life on, the everlasting changefulness at the heart of things, the intricate and ever-changing expressions of love. He found he was good at it, love.

  Less than an hour later, Emmett Jones stood on the roof of Kimura’s apartment building. Below, the smallest branches of the treetops shivered when their last leaves fell. The common garden, seven storeys down, was going to seed, pale yellow pods pinned to dry stalks, and the darkest red ivy twining the spikes of the iron fence. Beyond the iron fence, the broad river turned on its sullen currents.

  Emmett took out his cufflinks and slid his watch over his hand, then placed these objects on the ledge that ran the circumference of the roof. In the pocket of his suit jacket he felt the weight of the three handwritten letters. He took off his suit jacket and fold
ed it so that his letters were hidden, and placed the jacket several feet away from his watch and cufflinks. He stepped up onto the ledge.

  He loved the trees, their nearly infinitesimal movement when their leaves let go. Deliberately, he removed his glasses and set them down.

  Out on the river, a white boat drifted lazily, a white blur. There were nuthatches somewhere, their low whistle, whi whi whi. Emmett envied the boat on the river, the nuthatches in the trees, the garden as it collapsed into late autumn. He envied and loved it all.

  He realized that not so very many minutes had passed, and quickly he turned to look behind his back, and then again faced the river. He leaned into the air, slowly gave himself until his weight began to lift from his feet, until he learned what it was like to be airborne and then how it was to fall.

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  Dr. Kimura had stayed home from the medical clinic that day; his meniscus cartilage was torn again. He was sitting in his penthouse, reading the Ottawa Citizen while listening to the radio for news of the missile crisis when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something dropping past. Kimura limped painfully to his large picture window with its beautiful view. The pane of glass radiated heat. He saw a pleasure craft, a wooden cabin cruiser, drifting on the river. The boat suddenly veered toward shore. He saw a woman sitting on the top deck of the boat; she was clutching two children to her side, and she was screaming. With his crutches, Dr. Kimura took the elevator down seven storeys to the doors at the back of his building, yielding to the patio and garden.

  The cabin cruiser had already moored to shore, and a man was running from the boat toward the iron fence encircling the garden. Dr. Kimura stood on the other side, and for several moments, the two men stared at the tall spikes of the fence. Suddenly the man fell to his knees, and the doctor could hear him being sick into the grass. On the boat, moored at the shore, the woman was still screaming. Kimura said, “For god’s sake, get your family away from here.

  “Take the boat to the marina,” Kimura said firmly. “Get your wife to take the children into the cafeteria there, give them hot chocolate or something.” Kimura manoeuvred his crutches on the soft ground. “I’ll phone the police.”