Come Back

by Rudy Wiebe

  Sunday October 21

  With parents/Denn to church, and first thing saw A (not since July 30) from the top of the stairs, standing in the doorway of the youth room below. So perfectly there, I could be dreaming. She saw me too, then quickly walked out of sight, but as I walked down the stairs she came back, for a moment looked up at me again. Those beautiful green eyes, sad, what—Hi. We were face to face, and I—I turned left as if I needed the washroom. After that I never saw her, she disappeared. She wasn’t in their car going home / talked with parents, told them I’ll move out, as soon as I find a job

  Monday October 22

  Made an even bigger fool of myself. Borrowed pickup, at noon I parked near Rowand School and waited—but A didn’t go home for lunch. I stayed the whole noon hour, then parked in a different spot and saw her in the schoolyard, just watched her stand around, talk with other kids. After school drove to Rowand again. She came out and I followed until she was walking alone. I drove up beside and offered her a ride home. She took off her glove and glanced at me once, but she says, “It’s okay, I’ll walk.” I drive away in a daze

  Written across Tuesday 23–Friday 26

  Feel like suicide the next few days. She doesn’t care one bit letter huh! / drove blue pickup out to Aspen Creek / alone, empty cabin, bare trees at night groaning in the wind. Good music for me. Ripped open the 2 metre beaver dam below their lodge, twice, but they just patched it together every night / why am I anywhere

  October Saturday 27

  Our family at Grant and Joan’s for supper. Ailsa with Denn and Colin in family room downstairs but of course I have to stay, talk with adults. Then A comes upstairs face painted and dressed like a clown! Hallowe’en child

  Like the buffoon, the clown is the mythic

  inversion of the king, of the person with

  enormous power seemingly reversed

  All of a sudden I’m shaking. A dances around the living room close between us, doesn’t look at me, the boys come and yell and chase her back downstairs. The red ball hides her perfect nose. Okay God, your joke good for you

  November Wednesday 7

  I have not—no, I said a couple of sentences to her in church—she said Hi in a crowd but otherwise she ignores me—runs away in fact. I see no future. Just end it. I can’t Three day job, Edm. National Film Theatre, attendance survey.

  SPIRAL NOTEBOOK (3): November 7, 1984

  I can’t forget that distorted clown. Things are worse than before I left. Such a waste— what am I doing? Is there a pattern I could figure out—

  God (reason behind/beyond existence)

  NKinski (innocence) / ideal / EKirkby (maturity)

  Ailsa / closer to reality / Joan

  So maybe if I talked to Joan more I … but obviously A and her mom are still not reality to me, I don’t really … what are they really like, what they think, what in Paris, Texas the NK character says she hasn’t tried to see into another person’s mind, from their point of view—I do not even want to see into my own mind, but then I do not excite myself—only some others excite—o bla bla bla I miss Miriam, researching her anthro MA in the old quarter of Quito, Ecuador—and her letters, not since September in London—“travelling alone … I’d get too lonely and feel more scared of things i.e. I’m quite brave in a group but not alone.” Ahh Mir, the heavy, heavy difference of “lonely” and “alone” / I’ve never even talked to sweet Mir about A never to a single soul but she’s always been so considerate and gentle, every minute since I was born, my beautiful sister full of fun and forever friend, I can’t remember one quarrel or long yell leave alone fight, it sounds brother-and-sister impossible but its true because of her / maybe talk to her I should I should “I love you and think about you a lot” yes, I do both too my sweet and only sister, and do you have an inkling of what I feel? I should visit you in S.A., bury myself in Spanish, learn to be a different person— But now Leo says he’s quit his job at Edmonton Transit as of November 30 and will fly to Miriam in Quito for Christmas. And what will happen between them—o Mir, the dangers of studying Spanish—maybe if I’d been born like him, in Argentina and tortured half to death by politics and been forced to flee (not try to escape) my own country, maybe then I’d know what I wanted when I wanted it and do something. Not just sit at cafes below the Acropolis—in the bedroom where I grew older.

  Okay folks, why’d you give me such a great Canadian childhood?

  Hopeless

  The problem is you can’t have anyone else, you only—maybe can’t even—have yourself. So why do I worry. I can’t help it if my emotions take control of me can I

  DAILY PLANNER 1984: November Sunday 11

  I hardly dare say a word to Joan who’s as lovely as her daughter, just to be in their presence is … I play my silly thought games—A will save me—fool, no one saves you, only yourself. I do have a few things to say, I just can’t do anything. Not even shovel snow off the walks unless Mom asks me. If only my being would cease

  November Wednesday 14 and across Saturday 17, Sunday 18

  Life mucks on, always, somehow. I still exist at church, to be ignored with a “Hi.” If only Germany and Duino—ugggh—this mind bullshit why A why did you go after me in Mainz only to ignore—yuk—all I do is ping-pong back and forth about that stupid letter, never yet mentioned but there in every glance we

  Edm. National Film Theatre, “a non-profit organization devoted to the study and appreciation of cinema.” May hire another assistant if gov’t. funding comes through/January. Fat chance.

  November Friday 23

  Lucked out: hired by NFT, assistant administrator, $150/ week, start Monday 26, yes! And I can get out.

  November Sunday 25

  Stay at church for open lunch. A has cut her hair short, comes in and talks to BR, must be dating him. I can’t stand it, go down to washroom.

  SPIRAL NOTEBOOK (3): Nov. 25, 1984

  The problem is, if I could distance myself from this entity called “Gabe” I would laugh loud and sing: but since I am I it seems I can only weep.

  I seem to hear chuckling, somewhere. Laughter in the dark. I hope I’m providing these beings with a good time, because I certainly hate it. Why create feelings only to laugh at them. I say, who wants to exist only to be tortured

  Hey! What am I doing? I’m free. But I have nothing to say. Or I do have a few things but I just can’t / in this basement room I can’t / things leak out of my head, that’s what eyes are for, to leak tears—or get mad at—poor Mom

  Naturally I’m too feeble to go through with anything because the right time, right place would be the Oldman River the last week of April c. 21–30/85—but that is a long way away. Too bad I don’t get run over in the street / like Dad says of poor stories his students write all the time: things get too complicated to handle so here comes the Big Truck, Smash! All problems solved, end of story. Just step out

  Just “lucked out” with a possible dream job, and you talk The Big Truck Ending. In your life, Gabriel, there was a truck, but it was no easy gimmick ending.

  The Oldman River—Hal suddenly remembered, startled: was one thread of that longing a subliminal Paul Robeson bass with which he cradled his tiny son around the room when he would not sleep, arms tight but hopefully comforting

  “… tired of livin’ an’ scared of dyin’,

  but Old Man River he just keeps rollin’ …”

  Not “Old Man” Mississippi; Gabe named it right: Oldman, that mythic Blackfoot glacier water winding across Alberta 500 kilometres south of Edmonton, past the town where Hal lived his teens and they sometimes visited Grandma and Grandpa fast on a weekend, driving down most of Saturday and leaving again Sunday just before they had to go to that prehistoric Mennonite service Hal did not want his children to suffer, the church where Gabe and his cousins were teen pallbearers for both grandparents. Dearest Gabe, always so precise: on the last page of Daily Planner 1984, on the complete 1985 calendar, April 21–May 4, was underlined. And in both years April
28 was circled in heavy ink.

  How could that—in what kind of thinking could that be “the right time, right place”?

  The story of that river place Hal blurted out after he accidentally cut Gabriel’s arm, the yellow chainsaw he later hurled into the county dump. He was talking and talking, anything to keep Gabe awake with that curly head in his lap in the back seat of the station wagon with Dave driving gravel roads like a fiend to get to the Breton Hospital, holding the twisted tourniquet above Gabe’s left elbow not too tight and his cut arm wrapped—where was Yolanda! Not in the front seat—missing? impossible—talking to keep those brown eyes staring, conscious and open as the stones sprayed in the wheel-wells, the car swerved and leaped, nattering anything that slammed through his head and Gabe breathing, held …

  Is it “Me and my body” or “Me and my head”?

  You in my lap, in my arms.

  DAILY PLANNER 1984: December Wednesday 12– Saturday 15

  Got pictures developed:

  Solitude: Sanctuary of the Sensitive Soul (Duino Castle in mist)

  Ardor: A Demiurgic Quest (A walking away, forest)

  Neither pic really much of anything? hnnnn

  Finished Nabokov’s Glory. In the end Martin finally ACTS. Sadness soaks me. “… to create such a protagonist but not include talent with his keen sensitivity … how cruel to prevent him from finding in art—not an ‘escape’ (which is only a cleaner cell on a quieter floor), but relief from the itch of being!”

  So much feeling with no talent, uggggh

  Demiurge:

  Plato - deity who fashions the sensible world out of eternal Ideas

  Gnostic - creator of the material world

  an autonomous creative force, uncontrollable yes indeed

  December Sunday 16

  Church concert p.m. A there with J, Grant sang tenor. After A came straight to me, said she was so glad she was old enough not to sing in the children’s Christmas program. She looked me in the eye unblinking, surely she was hinting at my only letter? She definitely does not hate me but—how can you talk in a packed church lobby chattering Christmas

  December Friday 21

  Finished Nab’s Laughter in the Dark hmm a cruel novel, to be in such clutches. Denn went to Youth Group swimming party. Much too young for me, but I imagine Ailsa in a swimsuit—God you do create beauty, it exists in this world. Thank you for letting me see her, only please, now let me get to understand and see the mind behind those stunning green eyes.

  December Sunday 23

  Didn’t go to church—not up to seeing but impossible to be close situation. Suddenly remembered a song we learned in college, singing in my head:

  I sing of a maiden that is makeless …

  he came all so stylle where his mother was,

  as dew in Aprylle

  that falleth on the grass

  Happy memories of Xmas singing … why didn’t I sing in that choir after the first term? So many questions

  December Tuesday 25

  A and J, Grant, Colin come over in evening after Mom’s Christmas turkey dinner. We all play games on family room floor. Fireplace fire. Always nothing but family, very good for what it is, laugh and snack and joke and chatter and everything warm / the back of her head, her slender hand reaching / she plays every game so intently, completely / friends, family happiness / lying in me like a burning log

  December Thursday 26

  With parents, Denn to Aspen Creek, cabin in deep snow. Plowed a track in. Tree trunks a grey wall splintering, crashing with cold. Chain-sawed firewood, shovelled. Then Fred arrived from his home in Winnipeg, great, played ping-pong, pool, lots of crazy laughs remembering Italy and Greece. Karen O now at Ohio State / Fred phones her a lot. He wants to study law at UofA starting January. Great I have a job / find apartment together?

  December Saturday 29

  Fred and everyone left p.m., no church for me. I scrape a few inside logs, sand smooth knots again. I love the long bulges of warm walls. The moon over the creek. Moving around in this empty house silence.

  Alone. With my futile dreams.

  Why am I?

  The universe even if beautiful should not

  exist. A bad dream in God’s sleep …

  Laughter—somewhere there is laughing—

  Do I make you happy?

  Silence. Sometimes a log in the wall cracks, not loud like when we first built it, more like an afterthought—hey, don’t forget me. Logs fit together thick, round, each trimmed and layered in its exact place and shape, holding its weight. Good to be a log.

  December Monday 31

  Usual four families back at cabin for New Year’s—including J, Grant and Colin but no A. Usual celebration, enormous bonfire in deep snow, Dad pounds it with logs, showers of flames shoot above trees / take photos, eat, sing, talk, listen to music till 3:30 a.m. with J the last to go. She’s so exquisitely gentle. She nor I say a word about A. She stayed in the city—with friends overnight it seems.

  DAILY PLANNER 1984: Telephone Page

  1985 Options

  - continue as I am

  - continue: leave next summer for good (where)

  - end it

  - just spill my guts to someone (who)

  - talk to Fred, we go to Australia

  - if only I had more imagination (less)

  DAILY PLANNER 1985: January Tuesday 1

  Make vow at cabin not to enter Mennonite Church Edmonton in 1985. Joan, Mom, Grant hear it / the people, the place has never helped me live. And I’ve had enough of seeing a distant A (didn’t say this out loud) no A, every Sunday—enough already.

  Make series of photos, snow patterns, little Sara N (6) dancing in snow, beautiful profile, always turning her laughing face away just before I snap and breathing clouds.

  January Thursday 10

  Have not seen Ailsa since Christmas Day in family room.

  James Joyce / “Araby”: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and shame.”

  I realize I have really nothing to offer people / the sadness of it all, lost due to my extreme nervousness of character. And always, foolishly, thinking ahead.

  January Monday 28–Tuesday 29

  At last! Away across the river! 2 bdrm apt. with Fred in Westview Tower, 108 St. #305, split rent $485 a month, phone, cable, everything except parking (who needs it). Good walk to NFT across town the winter city white and cold.

  Socrates on being after death: “I have to see. If I survive there can be no fear about it. If I don’t survive, how can there be fear? If I don’t survive, I don’t survive. Then where is fear? There is nobody there, so fear cannot exist. If I survive, I survive. There is no point in getting afraid about it, no reason. But I don’t know what is going to happen. That’s why I am so full of wonder and ready to go into it. I don’t know.”

  (Doesn’t sound much like Jesus)

  February Wednesday 13

  Spent today: food - 20 drink - 50 sweater - 20 dishrack/tray (brown) - 11.26

  5:30: Joan’s Master’s degree exhibit, UofA Art Gallery. Beautiful surround of washed watercolours, much blue. A present of course, walking, looking so intensely young, beautiful. I nod and say nothing to her, mind numb. Crowd of university, church people, I can’t even say “Chagall”—what a complete WUSS I—o give it up

  In the vague mist of old sounds a shimmery

  light appears: the speech of the soul is about

  to be heard. Youth has an end: the end is

  here. Framed like a blurring picture. It will

  never be, you know that perfectly well.

  What then?

  Wait

  What is reality? Did I see it looking over that gulf at Duino Castle fading into deep distance like a cloud in rain over the great cliff and thinking only of A? Did I see it then, and did not know? The impossible letter

  February Friday 15–Sunday 17

  National Film Theatre Marath
on: Stayed up for a total of 61 hours 27 minutes 9 seconds without any sleep, not one wink. Get to apt. and in bed by 7:27:09 pm Sunday

  February Monday 18

  Day spent sleeping listening to music decide not to go see Night of the Shooting Stars by 7:20 / going insane, o Ailsa Craig, where is the Fairy Rock of Comfort

  Going insane. The impossible letter. WUSS: both “wimp” and “pussy”? Drink: 50 …

  The light beyond Hal’s barred basement window was almost gone. Much too late for him to make the call to little Emma in Toronto; her school-day story would not be heard today. He could be there, walk hand in hand with her across the street and into the park, watch her climb, slide, push her higher and higher on the swing, her curved little body yearning upwards. Was the gorgeous catalpa tree now in blossom there in deepest Ontario?

  Never yet without Yo.

  The buried pasts: diaries, notebook pages, loose and random scribbles surround him wherever his glance falls. The body language of a blue ballpoint groping across paper: like a residual cancer, a spiritual gangrene gnawing its repetitions out through Gabriel’s fingertips. An entire page labelled “March 17/85” lies open as a column, and on every line

  Ailsa Helen

  Ailsa

  repeated top to bottom, twenty-two times, ending with

  I sit here alone and where are you, what are you feeling / please

  Paper suddenly so toxic it burns Hal’s hand; he drops it. For the love of God, Gabe, DO SOMETHING WITH YOURSELF!