‘Isn’t that what you want? To be drawn and quartered by love?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s he doing here? How old is he? Does he know about the gallery and is he pissed off about the binoculars?’
‘He’s not pissed off. Amused rather. He’s a salesman. Are you ready? What do you think he goes around convincing people to spend their money on? He makes them want and need and feel they can’t survive without what?’
‘A singing toilet seat?’
‘Surveillance cameras. Drop cams. Keep an eye on your kids, your nanny, your lover. All that guilt I felt looking through a pair of binoculars, not even filming or recording, and how does the object of my desire, the cause of my spree of voyeurism, spend his days? Remember he took out a bible, a pair of handcuffs, a yarmulke, and the Quran? Remember how he sat down on his porch and emptied all these curiosities out of his briefcase. I think I mentioned it to you?’
‘Maurice, I don’t remember.’
‘For every customer he pulls a surprise from his briefcase, a surprise that will set them at their ease. As if by accident, while fishing for a sales contract, a pen, or his cellphone, he slips out an object that he intuits they’ll find familiar. They glance over and the object catches their eye, then he puts it away without a word. The bible, handcuffs, a yarmulke, a copy of the Quran. He doesn’t have to say: I’m Jewish like you, or Muslim like you, or Christian like you, or, wait here while I change into my leather and locate my whip. Whatever they’re into, they feel understood. They relax. They imagine the possibilities of a drop cam. The risk is in reading the household wrong. He has only a matter of minutes to collect clues before deciding which lure to use. A Bible, the Quran, a yarmulke, handcuffs. It’s all about slipping them in and out of sight quickly. The wrong one could backfire, and the timing has to be right. He’s made more sales than he’d ever dreamed of making. Do you remember the image that advertisers inserted into an ice cube in a glass of Scotch in the sixties? It was of a man and woman kissing. Bruce walks into a client’s front hallway, from there into the living room, assessing his surroundings. Casually the seductive object slides from the darkness of his briefcase into full view, remains tantalizingly visible for no more than a second before he snatches it back. A wrong guess, an offensive choice of object, could cost him a sale or worse. He gets off on it.’
‘And you’re in love with this magician salesman?’
‘Fallen. Utterly.’
‘And him?’
‘I’m not sure he takes anything seriously, not even what he loves most. When he first moved back to Australia, he exported Aboriginal art to China. His passion for the art didn’t stop him from exploiting it. He bought Aboriginal designs and hired Pakistani weavers to make cushion covers, eyeglass cases, and wall hangings. I ought to loathe him. Now, here he is, hawking surveillance cameras, which I hate. Little machines designed to control and betray. He won’t stay, Julia. He’ll get restless, go back to Australia, or back to Milan, and I’ll die of sorrow. I adore him. And how does he feel about me? You’ll have to ask him, dear Julia.’
‘Will you introduce me?’
‘Not yet.’
Daisy
I’ve read it again, start to finish. There’s a moment when Kamar walks into a bookstore on Bloor Street, a big, neonbright room boasting reduced prices on new and used volumes, from paperback novels to hardcover art books. All are being offered for next to nothing. Kamar has slept fitfully. She feels that the woman who has taken her in and agreed to house her for the next six months is waiting for her to make a mistake. The woman is holding off until Kamar lets her guard down, then she’ll sell her into prostitution. Kamar wants to believe that this woman’s kindness is true, but as soon as she relaxes, terror slaps her awake. This woman would like her to drown in milk, the milk of kindness. Milk is being poured over her head, blinding her, so Kamar feels. She watches the woman’s every gesture. Kamar smiles and attends English classes. The woman has taken her shopping for clothes. More kindness. The woman wants to ask Kamar many questions but restrains herself so as not to frighten the young refugee, so evidently troubled. Kamar senses the woman’s self-restraint and wonders what other desires she’s reining in and for how long the woman’s self-restraint will last. Kamar’s paranoia grows. The more concerned and watchful her sponsor becomes, the more endangered Kamar feels. As soon as the woman tries to sell her, Kamar will run. Kamar has a plan. She keeps a bundle of provisions on the ready, moving it nightly from one hiding place to the next inside her sponsor’s house. She has no idea where to go next. Kamar has a friend, Amira, a young woman she met in the camp in Turkey, one of the fortunate ones also offered a chance to start over in Canada. Amira now lives with her nine-year-old daughter in a small apartment near Dundas and Sherbourne, and has offered to take in Kamar. But Amira is hoping to move soon, as every time she opens her door and steps into the hallway the man from the apartment opposite opens his door to stare at her, his hands exploring between his legs. Amira worries about her daughter. They try to slip in and out of their apartment as quietly as possible. Kamar would live under a bridge rather than face such a man daily.
In the bookstore Kamar opens a volume on Middle Eastern art. She sits on the floor between the shelves, drying tears from her face with her sleeve and turning the pages, and nobody bothers her. When several minutes have passed, a young man asks, ‘Are you okay?’ Her nod satisfies him, and he leaves her alone. She flips from fourteenth-century Syrian ceramics to an Iranian tablecloth, a sofreh, onto which Nazgol Ansarinia has inscribed the prices of food sold in the streets of Tehran. The prices rise and fall the length of the finely woven cloth. On the next page, Nazgol has taken fragments of contradictory articles from newspapers, all recounting the same event, and arranged these divergent reports in a pattern that mimics the ornate use of tiny mirrors in traditional Iranian design. Kamar closes the book. From the shelf she takes a square, white volume featuring on its cover a Modernist building whose walls slope at interesting angles. The book’s title names the building: The Aga Khan Museum. She opens the book and enters the museum. In front of her hangs a tapestry pierced by over one million golden pins. The heads of the pins, tiny gleaming dots on black cloth, and on blue where water flows, depict a formal garden, a place of repose inspired by Rumi, replete with animals and flowers. On the opposite side of the tapestry, Kamar’s eyes encounter a golden forest of penetrating sharpness. Pointing straight at her are the million tips of the tightly arranged pins, which on the other side of the cloth form the garden, its blossoming plants and wild animals. Your Way Begins on the Other Side, she reads, and the artist’s name: Aisha Khalid. Kamar sets aside the book on the Aga Khan Museum and stares at her legs leading to her feet. When a few minutes have passed and her heart is beating less wildly, she takes several more art books from the shelves and looks through them. Theodore Bauer 1921–1986. The desperate energy of his drawings convinces her that Bauer has seen inside her head. She must have the book. A sticker on the front announces that the price has been reduced by 60 percent, due to defects on pages 12 and 30. Also pages 35 and 36 are missing. She purchases the Bauer, emerges onto the sidewalk, is overwhelmed by noises and movement coming at her from all directions, and heads for a park, which she is quite certain she walked past earlier in the day. On a bench in the shade of a tree, she opens her new book, takes a pen from her purse, and draws on top of a painting by Bauer. She adds the words Girl disguised as a paper kite, then turns several pages before again drawing overtop another watercolour. Girl growing under the earth is the name she gives to the altered picture. She inscribes her new title in the pleasing blue ink that flows from her pen. Her other re-workings of Bauer’s drawings and paintings she names: Kamar’s eyes being stolen, Kamar in a box, and My mind impersonating a field of flowers.
Shall I, as F. H. Homsi, offer Don’t Get Me Wrong to a small, independent publisher? F. H. Holmes is not an option. On this point Clara is unyielding. I will have to be forthright with the publis
her. An advance from a publisher, made out to F. H. Homsi, would be of no use to me or to Clara. The publisher will have to be someone whose taste runs to odd books, ones in which language implodes in places, a person sufficiently peculiar and risk-prone to agree to work with me as I play stand-in for an utterly inaccessible author who insists I adopt a Syrian pseudonym. Oliver Bodinar of Gimbal Books: he, I think, is the right person.
Julia
Last night, a child’s drawing woke me. I was asleep, so must have dreamed the drawing. It looked familiar. Wax crayons had been used to create a boat with a single sail. Not tilting, not propelled by wind, the boat becalmed in flat water occupied the centre of the page. A minimum number of straight lines and pale colours had been recognized as sufficient to express what mattered. I saw my sister’s touch, her eye and hand. It was a drawing familiar to me from when I was small. All Clara’s drawings from long ago had the same clean lines and stillness. I realized, when I woke from contemplating her picture of a motionless sailboat, that the tenderness I’d once felt for her I still felt, underneath my distrust and fear. Not all the tenderness she inspired in me had died as I’d hoped it might die.
This morning I left a note taped to her door. I did not say in the note that if she once more shot arrows at me from her tower, I would walk away forever. ‘Dear Clara,’ I wrote. ‘Last night, I dreamed of a drawing you did as a child. It was of a sailboat, done in crayon. I liked it. The boat looked peaceful. But that’s not why I’m writing to you. Alice has fallen and fractured her shoulder. She’s recovering well, in a home for seniors, where she can press a button for help and feels safe. All best, Julia.’
Clara
My sister has left me a note. ‘Alice has fallen,’ writes Julia. A fractured shoulder has landed Alice in an institution for seniors. She is recovering and feels much safer with a button to press, one that will bring help running to her side, day or night. I have been informed of Alice’s plight, so that I cannot escape visiting Alice. Julia is once more playing the role of Alice’s messenger. I feel sorry for Alice. I don’t know why, but I do. It is possible that I feel affection for Alice, when conditions allow it, when Alice behaves, though I don’t know for sure. If my distrust precludes affection, then what I feel is dutiful concern, nothing more. I may never know for sure what I feel for Alice.
Maurice
‘Oh,’ rising in his throat, ‘oh, oh,’ spilling out, ‘oh,’ and his laughter infecting every person in the room. I am jealous. Put me in your mouth and drink me, Mr. Fancy Shoes, Mr. Blue Door, Mr. Handcuffs, Mr. Yarmulke, Mr. Quran, Mr. Bible, ready as you are to seduce anyone, not just to sell surveillance cams, but for the giddy pleasure of it, anywhere, any time.
Daisy
‘So, Oliver, what do you advise?’
‘Hire a good lawyer. We have one we use. He could make up a contract for you both to sign, giving you power to act as F. H. Homsi and declaring the work to be Homsi’s property. But is Clara Hodgkins competent to sign? Might she claim coercion later on?’
‘She might not sign.’
‘Then you have no choice but to give her back her work.’
‘If she signs, I’m protected legally, maybe, but...’
‘You don’t need to do this, Daisy. I love the manuscript. I agree, it should be published. I want Don’t Get Me Wrong to become a Gimbal book. But yes, we could find ourselves in a very uncomfortable situation.’
‘Ideally, Clara signs a contract giving F. H. Homsi power to make all decisions over her manuscript, and Homsi’s earnings belong to Clara, minus a small fee for me for playing the role of Homsi. In all communication with media, should media show any interest, I respond as Homsi, who refuses to make public appearances or to do interviews, except in writing.’
‘We could plan a well-timed reveal. Leak the story of how the manuscript was delivered to your front porch by someone whose name we refuse to divulge. You come forward and confess to being Homsi. I defend your right to pose as a non-existent Syrian author. You defend yourself. Clara stays safe.’
‘No. We don’t plan to reveal anything. Homsi isn’t a game. Homsi is a necessity. Here’s my bigger fear: what if the book doesn’t succeed as well as Clara feels it should and she takes out her anger and disappointment on herself, or it succeeds too well and she reacts who knows how?’
‘It’s all insane.’
‘I’m willing to be Homsi.’
‘I’ll have our lawyer prepare two contracts, one for you to become Homsi, and another for the sale of the manuscript to Gimbal Books. Give me a bit of time to get that sorted out. Then you’ll ask Clara to sign both contracts, you’ll sign both, and we’ll see how she responds.’
‘I meet her next Thursday.’
‘That’s tight. I’ll do my best. If you wake up tomorrow, Daisy, and have a change of heart, you do know that you can abandon this adventure? Lots of good books exist. Though none quite like this one. Damn. As soon as she’s signed, we get right down to editing and release the book before one of us gets cold feet.’
Clara
I swam away from my parents’ island. Many miles of water separated me from my goal: the shore of a smaller island farther out. Having to cross a large distance appealed to me, the hard fact of it. Swimming the crawl was, in my experience, no more difficult than breathing. All that was required was that I move my arms and legs in calm, steady strokes. That I swam with such ease perplexed my parents and my sister. Polyplexed, preflexed, polyglotted them, it did. I was not considered strong. The muscles that propelled me hid themselves from view. My muscles remained a mystery, which I did not fathom, could not fathom, and I attributed my swimming ability to the calm I felt when suspended in water. The inevitability of each movement performed by my legs and arms made the world logical and self-evident at last, a world willing to embrace me without demanding that I speak, without demanding that I explain. What do you need defined? I can start with your knees. Shall we move down? The queen is permitted a certain freedom of movement denied the knight. Who is your pawn? My father and a friend of his had agreed to oversee my progress. They would do so from the safety of a rowboat, into which I might climb were I to become exhausted. That was their plan. How I would find the energy to heave myself into a narrow rowboat without tipping it, were I too weak to swim, was, I suspected, a question to which neither my father nor his friend had given much thought. However, I did not intend to become too tired to swim. The boat was yellow and much valued by my father. It was made of fibreglass, modelled on the skiffs in which he’d rowed as a university student. If I could remove him from the day that I swam to that faraway island and back, I would do so. But there he is, Jack Hodgkins in his yellow boat, pleased with his skill at rowing. He braces his feet, leans in, then pulls back on the oars. I do not remember. Unwanted penetration of smiles and whispers, unassailable generations of winks and nods, highest bidder walks away with my little fists. To remember would mean death. He is a dangerous man but not as dangerous as my mother. He desires me. His desire angers him. I am the object of his anger. I am the object of their game. I seal all my orifices. Do not enter. Daily, the world would stuff itself inside me, if I let it. See not, hear not, speak not. All fornicators shall burn in hell. I am a certified virgin. Once I was well out into the bay, my mother, Alice, came down on the rocks. She stood below our cottage and aimed her binoculars at my small head, which protruded from the water. Next, she swooped her gaze from left to right until she located my potential rescuers in their rowboat. Deep in conversation, the two men had allowed the boat to angle away from me. The distance separating us was growing with every pull my father gave to the oars. Alice passed the binoculars to the wife of the man accompanying my father, this woman having expressed her desire, her fermented longing, to see the widening gap between swimmer and boat. Alice did so reluctantly, and right away asked that her spying device be handed back. I would learn of this drama only as I heaved myself out of the water onto the rocks of my parents’ island, much later, having covered the d
istance I’d set out to conquer, a round trip from our island to the island that we stared at while eating our meals, or when we looked up from reading, while seated on the front deck, or when we raised our heads while drying on the smooth granite point. Always we stared at the same view, at the same island never the same, bright and dark dancing across it, mist swallowing it. Much of my childhood has been erased. The view of that island remains, and the sensation of swimming. How is it possible to obliterate years and years of visual, olfactory, and auditory content? Content being what is contained, not a feeling of contentment. I do not mean that I was contented but that I was the content of someone else’s fantasy. I do remember the sensation of being caressed by water, of belonging to the water as it gathered itself into waves.
If Clara Page 7
