The Case of Lena S.

by David Bergen

  After a bit, Mason walked around looking for Seeta. She was squatting in a corner, talking to an older boy. He might have been a man. Mason stood beside her while Seeta talked and smiled and touched the man’s arm. He was squatting too and their knees were touching and they were both smoking and laughing.

  “We’re gonna go,” Mason said.

  Seeta ignored him. The man looked up.

  “Sadia wants to go,” Mason said.

  The man wore an eyebrow ring and he had an odd mouth, too wide on one side.

  Seeta looked up and said, “I’m staying.” She waved a hand, dismissing him.

  He went back and found Sadia sitting beside the patio doors and looking out towards the pool where kids were taking off their clothes and jumping in.

  “Look at them,” Sadia said.

  “Seeta’s staying,” Mason said.

  “This is depressing,” Sadia said. She took Mason’s hand and pulled him out to the car where they sat and looked back at the house. The din had lessened, though the occasional cry floated upwards. Sadia reached over, turned the key in the ignition, and said, “Let’s go.”

  They drove around town slowly without talking. They went to a Tim Hortons Drive-Thru and had three doughnuts each and a Coke. Sadia ate quickly and licked her fingers. She had a small jaw and when she bent her head and put her fingers in her mouth she looked like a monkey. Mason wondered if she shaved her armpits.

  They smoked cigarettes and ashed through the open window and Mason thought about Seeta and the man. He said, “I don’t know what she wants.”

  Sadia snorted. She said, “I don’t want to talk about her. She’s perfect. She’s skinny and she’s beautiful. You should see her naked.”

  Like a dare, these words washed over Mason and he shouldered them and looked away and then back at Sadia, who was smoking and looking matter-of-fact, as if discussions about her naked sister were commonplace.

  They were out along the Perimeter. Mason turned onto the Number 3 and said, “Sometimes I come out here with my brother and we drive fast.”

  Sadia’s face was shadowed. The nearest half caught the green glow of the dash lights. She was wearing her seat belt and it crossed between her breasts like a bandolier. “Go ahead,” she said.

  The wind rushed in through the window and snapped at Sadia’s hair so that she had to take a hand and hold it back and Mason saw the underside of her arm and he saw that she had her own tough dark beauty.

  “Faster,” she called and he obeyed, and the car shuddered around a curve. They passed through a darkened town without slowing and Mason called out “Fuck,” and Sadia grinned briefly.

  He slowed finally and pulled onto a side road and put the car in park and looked at Sadia. She leaned over and kissed him. Her mouth was soft and her tongue was interested in his. When she pulled away she looked at him as if waiting for him to say something. He didn’t. He turned away and lit a cigarette.

  “I’m not Seeta,” she said.

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t fool around. I know what I want. Does that frighten you?”

  “Does that frighten me? Jesus. What’s weird is that I wanted to kiss Seeta, which I never have, and I end up kissing her sister. You know?” He looked over at her to see if something was wrong. She was turned away from him, shaking her head.

  He started the car and pulled it back onto the highway and drove slowly, returning through the town, which lay sleepy and silent, on past the Perimeter and towards the centre of the city where Sadia and Seeta’s house lay waiting, their parents awake and worried. Sadia, just before Mason dropped her off, said, “Right about now my dad’s going crazy. He’ll be calling the cops and getting in his car to find his daughters.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mason said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. About what happened. You won’t tell Seeta?”

  Sadia breathed through her nose quickly and said, “Ha.” She seemed suddenly childish and helpless and Mason realized that the evening had gone wrong. He looked over at Sadia and thought he should say something but there was nothing to say. He dropped her off and she climbed from the car and paused, her hand on the door, but then she turned and she was gone.

  About this time, Mason quit working as a bricklayer’s helper. Saying goodbye to the Portuguese brothers was a pleasure but Mason was short of spending money, and so he was looking for work. One night his brother Danny said he had a good job for him. It was late and they were in the kitchen. Mason was eating cereal and Danny had poured himself a beer and was standing and leaning against the counter and talking about a man called Mr. Ferry, the neighbour to the back of them, who sometimes ate in the restaurant where Danny worked. He was blind and needed someone to read to him. “He’s an eccentric son of a bitch who comes in, cane swinging, full of bluster, and expects the finest service. I talk to him once in a while and he’s odd. He asks lots of questions. Likes discussing things, not a dumb man. He’s a retired professor. Anyway, he told me that he needs a reader.” He paused and looked at Mason and said, “What do you think?”

  “I’m not a social worker,” Mason said.

  “He pays.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. Ask him.”

  “Can he go to the bathroom on his own? Do I have to feed him?”

  “He’s blind, he’s not an invalid.”

  “How’d he get blind?”

  “His wife poked his eyes out. Her name was Delilah.”

  “Shit.”

  “I hear she was beautiful. Those are the ones you have to look out for. I don’t know. Diabetes?”

  Mason said he would think about it. The next day he walked past Mr. Ferry’s house. It was a brick three-storey. The grass was trimmed, there were flowers in the beds. In the backyard there was a beat-up garage and inside sat an old car. Late seventies. A table and umbrella on the patio.

  On Saturday Danny and Mason walked over to the house. As they turned onto Wellington Crescent, Danny asked, “How’s Seeta?”

  “Seeta’s fine,” Mason said.

  “Still playing tennis?”

  “Yeah, once a week.”

  “That all you see her?”

  Mason shrugged.

  “If you’re gonna get anywhere you gotta work for it.”

  “Maybe it isn’t what I want.”

  “Okay. Fine. You were at Finkle’s party with her?”

  Mason looked quickly at Danny. “How do you know?”

  “You told me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t know, maybe I dreamed it.” He stopped talking. They walked on. He said, “She’s gorgeous. You know that? That night at our house. Even Maryann thought she was beautiful.”

  “That’s good,” Mason said. “Maybe you two’d like to ask her out. Take pictures of her.”

  Danny laughed. “It was an observation.” Then he said, “Seeta,” and as the t dropped off his top teeth into the a Mason said, “Leave her alone. She’s not like us.”

  “Is that right? Because she has a trousseau full of saris and wears bindi dots and has a mother who yells at her in Hindi and a strange man called Ajit is coming to take her away?”

  Mason stopped. He said, “How do you know Ajit’s name? She never said his name.”

  “Relax, Mason. She called one time and I answered and we got to talking and as we were talking there it was, the guy’s name, Ajit. You can’t forget that name.”

  When they had arrived at Mr. Ferry’s, Danny said, “Be polite. He likes that.”

  “I always am.”

  The man who came to the door held a pair of dark glasses in one hand. There was no evidence of a cane. He did not look blind.

  Danny said, “Mr. Ferry, it’s me, Danny Crowe. I’m here with my brother, Mason. Remember I told you about him?”

  Mr. Ferry reached out a hand and said, “Hi, Mason,” and Mason took his hand and he could smell the house and Mr. Ferry and it wasn’t a bad smell, somew
hat dry and clean, and as they entered they passed a machine running in the hallway, a dehumidifier, and they sat, the three of them, in the library, where the walls were shelves full of books and the light fell in through two large windows. Mr. Ferry told Danny to fetch some beer from the fridge. Danny left and the sound of him working in the kitchen was comforting to Mason, who had no idea what to say to the man sitting beside him. Mr. Ferry cleared his throat and stabbed a hand out at the room and drew it back in and said, “Your brother’s quite an artist in the kitchen. I’ve eaten at the restaurant where he’s a chef and he does a fine job. He told me he had a brother and I guess he wasn’t lying.” Mr. Ferry chuckled.

  Mason looked around. He didn’t think he should laugh too but he smiled and then realized that a smile meant nothing to Mr. Ferry and so he laughed and the laugh was forced and much too late.

  Mr. Ferry didn’t seem to notice. He said, “And you? Do you have a penchant for that sort of thing? For cooking?”

  “No,” Mason said. “I don’t. I’m a terrible cook.” He wondered how long it would take for Danny to rejoin them. Mr. Ferry’s eyebrows were very thick. He raised them now and said, “I see,” and crossed his legs. Smoothed his grey pants. Said, “What’s your favourite book?”

  Mason did not have a ready answer. He thought about books he had read recently but considered them – Junky, for example – too unseemly for Mr. Ferry. The silence stretched out and Mason panicked and he said, “First Love.”5

  “Turgenev.”

  “Yes.” Mr. Ferry’s hands were old but his face looked younger. His hair was greying. Mason had no idea of his age. He thought Mr. Ferry might be older than his mother but there was no guarantee. To keep the silence away, Mason said that First Love wasn’t really his favourite, it was just that he’d been reading it for a class. “It was easy to read,” he said.

  “Hmmm. Well, it’s certainly a thin book, isn’t it?”

  Mason said that it was. Very thin.

  “Though thin is not bad, is it?”

  Mason said that it wasn’t.

  “The thing is,” Mr. Ferry said, “to ask how long a book is seems a bit of an insult. Rather like asking how big someone’s penis is.”

  Mason looked at Mr. Ferry. He looked towards the kitchen where Danny was clinking bottles.

  “Don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I guess.”

  Mr. Ferry said, “I’m frightening you. It’s a tough question. A stupid question. What’s your favourite? Like asking a parent if he has a favourite child. Danny’s your brother.”

  Mason didn’t know if this was a question but he said, “Yes. He is.”

  “Does your mother love him more than she loves you?”

  “She’s never said that.”

  “Does she love you more than she loves him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Ahh, so there’s a possibility.”

  “Danny’s older, he’s hardly home. I’m usually home so I guess that makes me easier to love. You know?”

  Danny finally came back. He was balancing three bottles of beer on a tray. Mr. Ferry called out, “Your mother, Danny, how old is she?”

  Danny set the tray down. Passed a beer to Mr. Ferry, who said, “Thank you.” Handed a beer to Mason and took one himself and sat down. “Forty-three, I think.”

  “Four,” Mason said.

  “See?” Mr. Ferry lifted his bottle and said, “Cheers,” and he drank and when he was finished he placed the bottle on the table beside him and turned his head towards Mason and said, “Why would a boy your age want to read to an old man like me?”

  Mason looked at Danny, who motioned for him to answer.

  Mason said, “I was working for Jack and Jim Costa, they’re bricklayers, and now I’m not and I need a job.”

  “A job?” Mr. Ferry said. “That’s all?”

  “He likes to read,” Danny said. “He reads all the time. I told him that you were a big reader and so was he and that this made sense. Didn’t I tell you that, Mason?”

  Mr. Ferry swivelled. “Did he?”

  “Yeah, he did. And it’s true, I do like to read. I’m just not sure if I like what you like.”

  “Does that matter?” Mr. Ferry asked.

  Mason said he wasn’t sure, though he guessed maybe it didn’t matter. He said he’d be quite happy reading whatever Mr. Ferry wanted.

  Mr. Ferry nodded his head at this as if Mason had said something important. Then he said that Mason would read to him twice a week in the evening for two hours each time, on Tuesday and Thursday, and that he was to enter the house without knocking and he was to make sure that the cats did not escape – “I have two of them, Minnie and Albert, and they are precious” – and he was to come in after he’d taken his shoes off and he was to sit to his right and he was to read until he was asked to stop. “Do you understand?” Mr. Ferry asked.

  Mason said that that would be fine and then Mr. Ferry said he would see Mason on Tuesday. They finished their beer then and Mr. Ferry and Danny talked about food while Mason walked over to the shelves and studied the spines of the many books.

  So Mason read to Mr. Ferry, sometimes coming on Saturday as well when he was invited. Mr. Ferry sat in an armchair and Mason sat on a wooden chair to his right, as requested. A collection of books lay on the small table at his side, and from this pile Mason read Memoirs of an Egotist; a short book on being modern; various philosophers, Hume included; and most of Kierkegaard. “Good depressing stuff,” Mr. Ferry said. “Especially Kierkegaard. He did all his wild living as a university student and then repented and thought we all should repent with him. He loved a girl named Regine and watched her from a distance, rather like Terence’s Phaedria, who fell in love with a cither player and followed her to and from school. Kierkegaard asked Regine to marry him and then broke off the engagement two weeks later. He felt he had to decide between Regine and a higher calling. Regine said she would die. But then she up and married another man. This is what happens, isn’t it? We are betrayed and then we move on.”

  Mason said he wasn’t sure. And he wasn’t. When Mason read Kierkegaard he did not understand what he was reading and Mr. Ferry did not explain. Much was made of nothing. One day he read the parable of the girl who is in despair over love because she was betrayed.

  When Mason had finished reading, Mr. Ferry held up a hand and said, “Have you ever been in love?”

  Mr. Ferry’s question was not unexpected. During the readings he liked to lecture for a time and then ask Mason personal questions, and Mason had become used to this.

  Mason thought about Seeta. She seemed, at that moment, a speck in the distance and he said, as if she had already disappeared, “There’s a girl called Seeta. She doesn’t know, though. Anyways, she’s getting married.” He explained that the marriage was planned and that Seeta was quite willing to be married to a stranger.

  “How old is she?” Mr. Ferry asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  “And you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  Mr. Ferry felt for his glass of water. Mason slipped it into his hand. He drank and put the glass back. He lifted his head. “What does she look like?”

  Mason said he wasn’t sure how to describe her. He said she had thin legs. They played tennis together and she had a terrible backhand but she was enthusiastic. “Her body’s like a spring. She’s pretty. She’s got dark skin.” And then he said, and he wasn’t sure why, because it seemed an unnecessary observation, that she had a hollow on the outside of her knee when she sat. “Between the ligaments and the muscle,” he said. “On both knees.”

  Mr. Ferry’s head was turned to the light that fell through the circular window of the far wall. “My wife played tennis,” he said. “She wore a white skirt and white shoes. She was as light as a bird, as bold as a thought. She left me.6 Have I ever shown you a picture of her?”

  “No.” Mason could see Mr. Ferry’s eyes and he imagined his wife in her white skirt and shoes, l
ight as a bird, poking his eyes out.

  Mr. Ferry said he would show Mason the photo another time. “In any case, pictures are deceiving, they don’t tell the truth.” He rested and lifted a hand to his temple. Then he asked, “And what will you do with Seeta?”

  The question seemed suddenly perverse and made Mason pause. He said, “Can we talk about something else?”

  “That’s fine,” Mr. Ferry said. “Absolutely. Be wary of the blind pervert.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Yesterday I was trying to recall my life at sixteen. I was very ignorant. More concerned with poetry than girls. Your mother called me the other day to find out who I was. She told me you write poetry.”

  “She did? She thinks I’m Wordsworth.”

  “Perhaps you could read some of your poetry to me some time.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Only if you like.”

  “Should I read on?” Mason asked, holding up the book.

  “Of course.”

  And so Mason continued and eventually the old man slept, his hands twitching. And on Mason read, till his two hours were up, his voice floating around the large room, the slim book opened in his lap like a cipher.

  In his Creative Writing class, taught by a man who resembled a young John Cleese, Mason had been befriended by a vain and dreamy boy named Turbine, who believed that movies were the most important thing in the world. Turbine spent his evenings at home eating and watching movies. He was a big boy, fat some might say, who thought he was a genius and believed that one day he would live in Hollywood and write film scripts. He liked to read his work to the class and was usually full of opinions. Mason spent time with him; thought he was all bluster and bulk, but didn’t mind Turbine’s presence.

  Turbine called Mason “My pristine poet,” or “Dylan,” or, in more mocking moments, “Sylvia.” He said he liked Mason’s poetry. “You aren’t sheepish and sentimental. Or vague. I hate vague. If there’s a frying pan on the stove, just call it a goddam frying pan.”

  Mason didn’t like Turbine’s scripts. They were bloody and too full of “fuck’s.” He didn’t say so; instead he complimented him on his long poems that were, he said, like Ginsberg.