Clara Callan

by Richard B. Wright

  Nora whispered, “Do you think if I told them that I’m on the radio back in New York, it would help?”

  “They don’t speak our language, Nora.”

  We sat there until nearly eight o’clock. We watched the young woman put a cover over her machine and then pick up her purse and say good night to the policemen. As she passed by us, she stared down with such contempt that I felt like a common criminal. Through the tall windows behind the desks, the sky was darkening. Finally L.M. came out of the room. He was pale, but he still had his bulldog look. The little man was now all smiles and friendly gestures, so it was with relief that we could see matters had been resolved. The little man obviously enjoyed being the centre of attention. He playfully wagged a finger at L.M.

  “It is fortunate for you, Signor, that they did not apply the olio di ricino.”

  L.M. merely glared at him. I looked up olio di ricino (castor oil). Apparently (L.M. told us later) it is commonly used as a humiliating punishment for dissenters and troublemakers.

  They telephoned a taxi for us and how good it felt to be away from that uniformed brutality. Nora was holding L.M.’s hand and kissing him in the taxi.

  “What happened, Lewis? Did they strike you at all?”

  “No, no. I threatened them with the embassy. They’re a bunch of ruffians. Country boys dressed up in uniforms. It was just a show for the crowd. I could have killed that old wop though. If it hadn’t been for him . . .”

  Perhaps, but L.M. doesn’t seem to understand that he brought the whole business on himself with his outlandish behaviour on the street. Dinner in the hotel was subdued. To Florence tomorrow.

  Thursday, August 6 (Hotel Rio, Florence)

  Train to Florence through the hot dry countryside. Many Germans on board, and I could sometimes make out a few words; they all seemed to be talking of the games in Berlin. Our hotel is near the Duomo.

  Sunday, August 8

  I like Florence with its red-tiled roofs and pretty churches, but like Rome, it is filled with soldiers and policemen. This afternoon a demonstration in the piazza in front of the Uffizi Gallery. Mostly young Italian men waving flags in support of the Spanish rebels under General Franco. A kind of angry patriotism flowing through the crowd, most of the ill feeling directed against England. A number of English tourists appeared nervous as they watched the rally.

  Unpleasantness at dinner when L.M. got into a political argument with a man at the next table. I thought the man gave a good account of himself. Nora is very unhappy. Told me she can’t wait to get back to New York. Yet I am enjoying all this. I don’t like the soldiers and the policemen who seem to be everywhere, but ordinary people are friendly enough, and the cities are filled with beautiful buildings. There is also a vitality about the country that I like. I wonder if this is what attracted the Englishwoman to Rome.

  Monday, August 10

  Bags packed and waiting for the porter. We are to catch the train for Venice in an hour. A storm in the night awakened me from a dream in which I was surrounded by the priests in their cassocks and sandals. Among them was the Englishwoman’s lover, the bare ankles showing above the yellow shoes. I lay awake listening to the rain, looking out at the tiled roofs lighted by the storm. From the open windows, the sound of water spilling from the drainpipes into the street.

  (Hotel Lux, Venice)

  The train climbed the hills of Tuscany, often disappearing into long tunnels and these gave me trouble. As we hurtled into those black spaces, the carriage lights dimmed and I felt a great pressure in my chest, a tightening of nerves. A kind of claustrophobia, I suppose. Some of the tunnels seemed endless and then, just as I felt that I could no longer draw a breath, we were flung headlong into sunlight with green fields and the red roofs of farmhouses. At the station in Bologna where we changed trains the following:

  L.M.: “Do you know who was born in this town, kiddo?”

  Nora: “No, Lewis, tell me. You know everything.”

  L.M.: “Well, my little angel of the airwaves, this is the birthplace of the founder of it all. Without him you wouldn’t have all those listeners on the edge of their kitchen chairs. Marconi was born in this city.”

  Nora (looking out the carriage window as if the people hurrying by had assumed a sudden and vast importance): “Really? Gee, I used to sell Marconi radios in Toronto.”

  Wednesday, August 12 (Hotel Lux, Venice)

  Death in Venice today. Not the literary death from plague that awaits Von Aschenbach in Mann’s novel, but actual death, sudden and dramatic in the Grand Canal near the Piazza San Marco. It happened after lunch. We were walking through the overcast afternoon, following some young Germans. They were boisterously enjoying themselves and then (who knows why?) one of the young men jumped or was pushed (playfully?) into the canal. Laughter from the others as the young man splashed about in the oily water. Soon, however, it was evident that he could not swim. We were perhaps forty or fifty feet behind them, but I could see that he was in trouble. Two others from his group leaped in to help and everything suddenly went wrong. It was going to be a more difficult job than they imagined because the young man was in a panic, fighting them off, his arms flailing about. For a moment, we could see only the tangle of arms, the thrashing water, the wet blond hair. Then he simply disappeared, nearly dragging one of the others with him. It all happened so quickly. One of the German girls clutched the sides of her head and began to scream, a terrible sound in the Venetian afternoon. Others pulled the two men from the water and in their sodden clothes they sat weeping on the canal wall. A policeman began to push people away from the edge of the water. A careless few moments and a young life was now over. Nora had tears in her eyes and L.M. put his arm around her. We walked to a small gallery, but we were too upset to enjoy the pictures. This sombre mood prevailed at dinner as the conversation settled on the arbitrary nature of events, the randomness of fortune, a subject that has intrigued me since that day I stopped believing in God. Nora was adamant that events are foreordained by Him (her words); there is purpose and meaning even in calamity. If there weren’t, how could life be endured? How indeed? L.M. read her mood (the feisty Nora) and was careful not to contradict her. I liked him for that. Why tamper with another’s faith?

  The talk then shifted to poetry and I said how much I liked Stevens’s “Sunday Morning.”

  “I met Stevens once,” L.M. said. “At a party down in the Village though the man is no bohemian. Did you know that he works for an insurance company? Three-piece suit, the whole kit and caboodle. Looking at him, you’d never know he was a poet. Of course, Williams is a doctor. These guys have to make a living too.”

  I would have enjoyed hearing more about Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, but L.M. had moved on. Still, it was the most enjoyable meal that the three of us have had together on this trip.

  The day after tomorrow Nora and I return to Rome and then to Naples to catch the boat for America. L.M. goes on to France and Germany. He is an interesting man, brilliant in his own way, but self-indulgent to a fault. He wears you down with his relentless opinions and his forceful nature. He is far too vivid to be lived with for long, and I think Nora realizes this now. I have enjoyed meeting him, but I will not be sorry to say goodbye. For the first time in weeks, I miss Whitfield.

  Friday, August 14 (12:30 a.m.)

  An hour ago L.M. made a pass at me, but I don’t want to make too much of this; he was a little tight and he didn’t persist. I had just finished packing for tomorrow and was getting ready for bed when I heard the knock. Thought it was Nora, but when I opened the door, Lewis was standing there in his rumpled linen suit, looking a bit down in the mouth, not a trace of the bulldog in his face. Wanted to come in for a minute and I asked him why. He said he wanted to apologize; he had behaved badly on the trip and now felt contrite. Before we parted in the morning, he “wanted things to be right between us.”

  I should have told him to go to bed, but I didn’t and he came into the room and slumped in the gr
een baize chair by the window. He said nothing but stared at the floor. Nora told me that L.M. suffers from spells of depression and had been seeing a doctor about this in New York.

  Through the open window behind him, I watched the dark shapes of passing gondolas with their lanterns. After a while L.M. said, “Your sister and I are having a rough time of it these days, and it’s made me miserable. I have a lousy disposition anyway.”

  I was wearing my dressing gown and I could see that he was looking at my feet and legs.

  “I’m fond of Nora,” he said. “She’s a sweet woman.”

  His voice trailed away and he turned to the window to look out at the boats. All evening I had been thinking of the young German tourist. It was almost unbearable to imagine him lying under the weight of all that dark water. Then L.M. said, “You’re so unlike your sister.”

  I told him that this was true, though not perhaps as true as he thought. In fact, we were alike in many ways. He wanted to know in what ways, but I didn’t feel right talking to him about any of this. I wondered if Nora were now asleep. I hated the idea of talking to L.M. in my room while Nora was sleeping. So I told him that it would be best if he were to leave. He shrugged and then got up and stood there looking down at me. I was seated on the edge of the bed and after a moment he sat beside me. I was going to get up at once, but he put his arm around me and began to rub my neck. It was a clumsy gesture, foolish in the extreme, and he was saying something I couldn’t catch. It might have been a line of poetry. I smelled the drink on him and oddly enough thought of Hamlet’s words to his mother about Claudius. Something about paddling in your neck with his damned fingers. I wasn’t about to play the hysterical old maid, but neither did I want his hands upon me, and he didn’t pursue matters. Either he was too tired and discouraged or he didn’t think me worth the struggle. Then, like some character in an old bedroom farce, Nora was knocking at the door. I could hear her voice from the hallway.

  “Clara, is Lewis in there with you?”

  When I opened the door she looked in and saw him sitting on the bed.

  “What the hell is he doing in here?”

  “Not what you might think,” I said. “All is well and Lewis is on his way.”

  And so he was, quite subdued as he passed by her stare. After he left, Nora stayed a while, packing herself into the green baize chair, drawing her legs up and clasping her knees, just as she used to do on Saturday nights in our bedroom when she would talk about the cute salesman from the wholesale company or the shy young man in her acting class. She told me that she and L.M. were probably finished.

  “The whole thing has just run its course. It’s burned out,” she said. “Lewis is just too demanding. I can’t take any more of it. Let him go back to his brainy women. The night we had dinner in Rome with that awful little fruit? Remember? That was it as far as I was concerned. Lewis just sat there and laughed at me all evening. Well, to hell with him. There’s plenty more fish in the sea. I’m tired of his sulks and his demands. Always after me to do unnatural things in bed. Brother!”

  “What kinds of things?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Nora said, giving me a peculiar look of dislike. But why, I wondered, had she brought up the subject if she didn’t want to talk about it? And why, for that matter, did I want to know?

  Sunday, August 30

  Arrived home yesterday and glad to be here. Marion looked in after church today, eager for news. “How was it, Clara? What did you see?”

  Oh, I tormented the poor girl with larky tales of handsome men. Told her that I almost took a lover, there among the ancient stones of Rome. A swarthy, young man who wore a black tam and rode a bicycle.

  “Clara! You didn’t!”

  “Well, I might have. He was very good-looking.”

  “You are really something, Clara Callan.”

  “Am I really, Marion?”

  Saturday, September 3

  To Toronto on the train and then the streetcar to the Exhibition. Walked past the kewpie doll stands in search of my errant knight. There are women who work at these carnivals and I wondered about their lives: the rough lovemaking in the caravans behind the tents, the smell of onions and frying meat in the air, the cheap glitter of this world where men and women fight and couple and carry on as others do before they vanish into oblivion. No Charlie this year!

  Tuesday, September 8

  The scrubbed faces of the children on opening day. The smell of soap and ironed pinafores in the classroom. For as long as I can remember, I have always felt renewed at the beginning of another school year. What do I feel this year? I feel wayward. Here came the word out of nowhere. Wayward! I love its sound and may even have said it aloud this morning. Two or three pupils glanced my way, I think. While they were doing their first lesson, I looked up the word in the dictionary.

  Wayward: 1. Disposed to go counter to the wishes and advice of others or to what is reasonable; wrong-headed, intractable, self-willed, perverse. 2. Capriciously wilful; conforming to no fixed rule or principle of conduct.

  Exactly. Sleeping poorly these nights. Mrs. Bryden asked after supper whether I was all right. Saw my bedroom light at three yesterday morning. Up, I suppose, for her nightly tinkle.

  135 East 33rd Street

  New York

  September 12, 1936

  Dear Clara,

  I trust all is well and you’re settled in for another school year. I’m back in business too and everybody was glad to see me. You should have seen the mail while I was gone! Well, Italy wasn’t everything we thought it might be, was it? Some experience, huh? I might have known Lewis would behave the way he did. I could see signs of it long before we left New York. I guess I was just dazzled by the big-shot intellectual. But then I’ve always had bad luck with men. Why can’t I just find a nice ordinary guy who wouldn’t be so mean or such a show-off? Such fellows seem to have dropped off the face of the earth.

  His Lordship sent me a postcard from Paris saying he didn’t think we were suited for each other and thanks for the memories. Couldn’t even face me to say goodbye. What a crumb! Him and his fancy friends! Remember that awful little fruit with the yellow hair in Rome? I should have slapped his face that night. Thrown his wig onto the floor or something. Oh well, we live and learn. Now that I’m back on the shelf, I’m spending my nights reading or listening to the radio. Evelyn is also feeling blue. Her showgirl friend from Texas “has taken a powder,” to use Evy’s phrase. She went back home after getting a letter from her high school sweetheart who said he was still in love and wanted to marry her. How about that? Anyway, Evy is pretty glum about it all and she’s now talking about a change in her life. She is thinking very seriously of moving out to California to write for the movies. Apparently a number of the studios have been after her. Gee, I hope she doesn’t go because I can’t imagine living down here without Evy. At the same time, I hate to see her so unhappy. She really fell hard for that girl and she’s taking all this badly. Why don’t you drop her a line? She thinks the world of you, and I know she’d be tickled to hear from you.

  Well, I have to wash my hair. Evy and I are going to the movies tonight. Any chance of you coming down here for Christmas? I’d love to have you and I know the three of us could have a great time. Why not think about it?

  Love, Nora

  Whitfield, Ontario

  Sunday, September 20, 1936

  Dear Evelyn,

  I am writing this in the midst of a terrible storm. Such wind and rain! I feel like one of the three little pigs being blown at by the wolf. Thank goodness I’m the one in the brick house! This tumult must signal the turning of the seasons. We always have unsettled weather at the equinox, but this afternoon is unsurpassed in my memory. Sheets of rain against the windows and it seems to be coming at me horizontally rather than vertically. An astounding display of nature in commotion. Not a soul on the streets. Whitfield truly is the deserted village on this wet autumn afternoon.

  I have been
wondering how things are with you. No doubt Nora has told you of our Italian holiday. I don’t think she enjoyed it as much as she thought she would. But then does reality ever meet our expectations? I, on the other hand, enjoyed it more than I dared to hope (the pessimist’s occasional reward). Rome was so utterly different from anything in my admittedly limited experience that I was caught up in its vividness. I felt so alive there, even though I was often frightened by the sheer maleness of the culture. The streets seemed to be filled with young men in uniform prowling with a hungry eye, while the women covered their heads with kerchiefs and fled to the nearest church. But what churches and ruins there are to see!