If he died, Prin wanted her to marry a lawyer or insurance executive with a strong, broad midriff, a man capable of carrying such love and knowing it only as love. And if he lived, Prin resolved that after the surgery he would do better by his wife.
His heart stirred.
That was all and only what was needed, all that was already good and true and beautiful about his life, and it would begin and end there, with loving her. Prin decided to sleep in the peace of this knowledge and then to get on with things, whether he woke to bright lights or Bright Light. He sighed, made the sign of the cross, and slept.
He sat up and checked his email. He liked the idea of waking to a clean inbox, or going on to eternity with no one waiting for a reply. There were a series of FWD FWD PLS DON’T DELETE messages from his mother reporting on the holy legions of village women praying for him in Sri Lanka. His father sent him links to various miracle cures for impotence that featured certain kinds of fruit and specific sleeping positions. His high-school buddies sent him Viagra offers and his sisters, who lived overseas, sent him emoji-fretted scans of the crayoned Get Well cards their kids had made for him. He was also cc’d on a remarkably long string of remarkably detailed messages exchanged by moms from the kids’ school. These set out action plans, complete with workflow charts and recommended scheduling apps, for providing the family with meals during Prin’s recuperation.
There were many messages from his colleagues at the university, who emailed him prayers and thoughts and good thoughts and best wishes and good vibes and positive vibes. A professor of corporate social responsibility promised to share her personal mindfulness space with him until he recovered. She also promised to send him an advance copy of her new book. She wanted nothing in return, only that he someday pay it forward. If Prin wanted to put it on a future syllabus, that was totally up to him. She could give a talk and even waive her honorarium, but obviously that could be discussed later. She’d send him her PowerPoint as well, just in case. Anyway, main thing was to get better, be mindful, and pay it forward!
Prin was also assured by the president of the university, Fr. Pat, that everyone was on the journey to healing with him and also that his responsibilities, when he returned to campus, would be restricted to light administrative duties. Meanwhile, Fr. Pat encouraged Prin to keep up with life on campus by reading his blog, Metaphysical Therapy. Finally, Fr. Pat shared an excerpt from a sermon by a fourth-century Irish preacher that he hoped would offer some consolation (“And no, he’s not my uncle … I’m not that old, LOL!”).
The religion of souls should follow the law of the development of bodies. If, however, the human form were to turn into some shape that did not belong to its own nature, or even if something were added to the sum of its members or subtracted from it, the whole body would necessarily perish or become grotesque or at least be enfeebled. But never your soul, Jane!
Pax and Warm Blessings, Pat
The white-headed old man could have at least cut and paste Prin’s name in place of the last cancer patient he wrote. But Prin shook for a moment at the thought of how many such messages even a university priest must send. Who was Jane? Was she still alive? He offered her a Hail Mary. She definitely hadn’t died of prostate cancer.
Nor would Prin. He was certainly on the younger side for it but he had earned a low Gleason score. Only one in every forty men with a score that low died inside ten years of diagnosis, Google had assured him, and then his smooth Asian urologist told him, “Your glandular architecture is presenting as only moderately abnormal at this point in the cancer staging.” And now, a few months later, he would indeed have something subtracted from his body, a part of his member subtracted from his member.
His grad-school ex-girlfriend, now a professor of English and Strategic Thinking at a college in Montana (according to his most recent casual late night searching) would have loved the punny poetic justice of this neo-Abelardian fate. He didn’t Google her very often. Only when he was, well, not bored, and not longing for anything in particular, but just wondering, What if? Would he, with her, be living childless and cat- and fern-filled, in Montana? Not waking up to small voices, laughing and calling. Not going to bed in softness, full of pie. He didn’t Google her this time. He just turned off his phone.
He looked outside again. The Prime Minister was on another billboard, this time snuggling two little bald black children in need of Canada’s help.
He turned on his phone. He reread the sermon Fr. Pat had sent him. Yes, he would be enfeebled, though he had been assured by the hairless Asian surgeon that there would be nothing grotesque about it, only a small scar. The only grotesquerie, in fact, was what this diagnosis had done to his soul.
The news in recent days had been full, again, of baptisms and weddings blown apart in the Middle East, of men chopped down, of women and children leaving their homes to hide in Biblical mountains, and all of them on their knees, bowed down and veiled, heaving, gasping, praying and begging for help, mercy, food, water—for themselves, their children, their beloveds.
And if God didn’t answer as they were hoping God would, then what, for them?
Nullity.
But he didn’t really believe that. Only in this life would they have such nullity—bloody, flaming nullity—and then they would go home, home, into the mind of God. All of them, all of us, we are homeward so. We are known before we can know better, we are ashes and dust to blood and mud, mud and blood to ashes and dust, then Mind. Prin had long since been known and found and kept, and still was, and would always be. No matter what happened with the surgery, or what he did, and couldn’t do afterwards. Suddenly a wire of light passed through him. All will be well. But it left a black streak behind.
Since his diagnosis, Prin had been thinking it wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this. He’d even blamed his wife. But really, he didn’t deserve this luxury of lying around thinking about it. Only that this had been granted, and he should do something about it. He could, couldn’t he?
Why in this life did he enjoy so much better a place in the mind of God than any of the poor people hiding in those old, holy mountains? Huddled behind a boulder, hearing a jeep with a black flag and bearded young men bristling with blades and guns hammering up the mountain pass, coming for you and your kids.
If he survived the surgery, Prin vowed he’d be a much better husband, and also do more with his life than support his family as one of the world’s leading scholarly experts on representations of seahorses and other marine life in Canadian literature. He would do something worthy of all that God had granted him.
He slept.
6
Prin looked up into the bright lights above the operating table. He could only look for so long before having to close his eyes. What should have been blackness behind those closed eyes was orangey-red, the amber of ember light. There was a radio playing ragtime music in the background, and doctors and nurses in masks were complaining about their phone plans. Which meant this was normal and all was well and all would be well. He was wrapped in a heated blanket and told to count down from ten, nine, eight, but he said Hail Marys until seven, slix, fi, fo Mary, fee of grace…
Deep, deep he went. He dreamt he was in a restaurant that only served seahorses. He stood at the hostess booth, giving a lecture. Refugee families kept coming in, asking about wait times for tables.
“He’s awake!” one of the girls said.
“Daddy!” another of the girls said.
“Princely! My only beloved son! Praise Jesus!” Prin’s mother Lizzie said.
“My wife’s only beloved son! Praise Jesus and also all religions!” said Kareem, Lizzie’s new Muslim husband.
“You, Molly, give him the rest of that Big Mac. He’s hungry,” Prin’s father Kingsley said.
“Daddy, how do you go to the bathroom now?” another of the girls asked.
“Hi, love. The doctor told me the operat
ion was successful. How are you feeling? Are you okay?” Molly said.
“Molly. I am. I love you,” Prin said.
He began crying. A nurse explained this was a possible side effect of the anaesthesia, and through his tears Prin insisted the tears were real and tried to say why but just cried more. The nurse shrugged and went to get the doctor. Molly smiled and wiped his tears and was about to tell him that she—but by then the girls and Prin’s mother had shouldered their way in between them, everyone sobbing except Prin’s father and Prin’s stepfather. The two older men were nearer the door, standing beside each other and not making eye contact.
He loved all of them, just then. He’d come through. He didn’t even mind his new stepfather being there. His mother had met him, an Ismaili grocer, at his store, Kareem of the Crop. Kingsley made a poor big show of not being offended by Kareem’s presence at family events. He also made a big show of passing a metal detector over his body every time he saw him. Lizzie boiled but Kareem laughed it off. After all, he drove a newer old Cadillac than his new wife’s ex-husband, and with a vanity plate no less—GO2HLAL.
“Seriously, how do you go to the bathroom now?” Kareem asked.
Then, in a loud, discreet voice, Lizzie asked Prin if he needed her help … “that way.” She was already tugging at the sheets.
“The men of my family, stand up!” Prin’s father said.
He then ordered the room cleared. He needed to speak with his son. He stalked the hospital room in his loafers and corduroys and Harris tweed jacket, arms behind his back, intensely studying an invisible line on the floor.
His family line, now.
Unless.
“Son,” Kingsley said.
“Dad,” Prin said.
“Son,” Kingsley said.
“Dad,” Prin said.
“Do you know how hard I worked, to give us this life in Canada? I came here with a suitcase and a transistor radio. How many televisions did you grow up with? More than most people have in brothers and sisters!” Kingsley said.
“Yes, Dad, thank you.” Prin said. Again.
“And?” Kingsley asked.
“And thank you … very much?” Prin said.
“NO! I didn’t do all of that just so my last name would die on some operating table in Toronto,” Kingsley said.
“Oh. Well Dad, I’m not sure there’s anything to be done,” Prin said.
“What if I’d thought that way fifty years ago in the British High Commissioner’s Office in Colombo when the clerk informed me that my application to Canada had been misplaced? When he told me he wasn’t sure there was anything to be done? Where would we be now?” Kingsley asked.
“In a hospital in Colombo, with the same situation?” Prin said.
“Of course not! You would have grown up eating real fruits and sleeping in traditional poses. Didn’t you get my email? Whereas here you’ve been polluted by a rotten civilization. Apples on steroids and memory foam! But good news, son! I have a plan,” Kingsley said.
“Dad—”
“I know, I know, first you have to get better. Listen, you don’t have to worry about having more children. I am your father. I have a plan,” Kingsley said.
What plan?
“What worries me is whether you’ll be fully healed before the father-son pickleball tournament in April. I had her ask the doctor—”
“You mean Molly?” Prin said. Again.
“I know her name! I asked her to ask the doctor, and he said you’ll be okay before then, before April, so you can play. You’ll play, right?” Kingsley said.
“Yes, Dad, if I’m better by then,” Prin said.
“Good. Now, the plan. I’m going to pay for you to go to Sri Lanka next summer. I will come with you. And we’re going to visit the best healer in the village. You’ll come back ready to start the family,” Kingsley said.
“I already have four children,” Prin said.
“I know that! I love my granddaughters! It’s not about them, son,” Kingsley said.
“Then what, Dad? Really? You know, you must know, the chances of my having another child are—”
“Don’t say it,” Kingsley said.
But there was no command in his voice, only cracking. Kingsley’s nose tingled like someone had just smashed it with a mango. But damn them, he never cried when they’d smash his nose on all those walks home from school in a Colombo laneway. When he wouldn’t cry at the smashed nose, the older boys would make him walk past the canteen where his mother worked.
The first chance he had, Kingsley applied to leave it all behind and start again.
Clean slate.
White as snow.
Canada.
And you don’t build a life like this, you don’t keep it going, by dwelling and dwelling on why your wife left you or why she then married a terroristic grocer or how it could be that the man lying in a hospital bed is still, is always, your child, your little boy on the bench of the Caprice, or how it could be that something has been taken out of him that could have killed him. Damned cancer!
But it was gone, and now what mattered was what happened next, what needed to happen next, to keep it all going and going and going.
“Fine. If you can’t, then I will,” Kingsley said.
“You will what?” Prin said.
But Kingsley had already gone into the corridor to call everyone else back into the hospital room. The girls crowded around the bed. Lizzie pulled out her bag of rosaries. Parking was by the hour, so Kingsley invited Kareem to offer a prayer of thanks for Prin’s successful operation, which confused and quieted Lizzie and her beads. Kareem demurred until Kingsley commanded him to recite. Then, after Kareem’s longish prayer to a sort-of-every-God, Kingsley asked Molly if she and the girls wanted to visit a martyr’s shrine north of the city for some real prayers… and candy! The girls cheered.
7
A few weeks later, on Mardi Gras, Kingsley dropped Molly and the girls at the martyr’s shrine. He handed out bags of leftover Halloween candy.
Promise kept!
Molly tried to say—but father and son were already driving away.
Prin didn’t complain as much as he might have. Just as everyone was getting out of Kingsley’s already moving car, he had seen Fr. Pat, the president of his university, step down from a luxury motor coach and lead a group of white-haired women and men with canes and walkers into the same shrine. Seeing Prin out here, like this, upright and moving about with only mild discomfort, Fr. Pat might have asked him if he wanted to return to work earlier than planned.
Prin didn’t want to go back just yet. He was very much enjoying his time at home. He made breakfast, he walked the kids to and from the bus, and otherwise puttered around, reading, napping, praying, doing some simple stretching exercises, sorting the mail and salting the sidewalks, deleting, unread, every message from work, and in all this he gloried in thinking and thinking about what he was going to do with this new life, and in feeling pretty much like he was already doing exactly what God desired that he do. Because now and then, Jesus must have puttered. And meanwhile, of her own silent accord, thanks be to God, Molly had changed her sleeping position.
Feeling so contentedly Christ-like, Prin had been looking forward to offering a prayer of thanksgiving at the martyr’s shrine where centuries before, missionaries had founded a church upon the spot where, by pious tradition, a little Indian girl had seen a vision of the Virgin that turned her brown eyes blue. But his father had other plans. As Prin and Kingsley pulled into the parking lot of a giant metal barn, Prin pictured Molly and the girls there in the church, kneeling before the image of a blue-green Mother Mary floating among the cedar trees and, above them, with them, dangling from the rafters, dozens of cobwebbed crutches slowly turning in the small breezes that came every time a pilgrim opened the great doors.
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��So, just to check, when he says ‘No more bets, gentlemen,’ what do you do?” Kingsley asked.
“Sorry, what was that, Dad?” Prin said.
“Did you get hearing cancer, too? This whole time, I’ve been telling you how we’re going to bet at the roulette tables. When he says ‘No more bets, gentlemen,’ you throw down ten chips!” Kingsley said.
“I like that we’re spending time together like this, Dad, but—”
“We’re not spending time together. Whether you have your prostate or not, don’t talk like a woman, Prin. We’re here because you survived and we’re going to celebrate by winning enough money to pay for our flights to Sri Lanka,” Kingsley said.
“Dad, about that. Were you really serious, in the hospital, about planning to remarry?” Prin asked.
“You must have been confused by the medications,” Kingsley said.
“So that means—” Prin said.
“Why is that priest looking funny at you?” Kingsley asked.
Prin looked over. It was Fr. Pat again, standing in the middle of that same sea of white-haired people, only now they were all struggling to pull on plastic green poker visors and bright, beaded necklaces. Before Prin could duck and tie his shoe, the two men made eye contact. But then Fr. Pat knelt down to tie his own shoe.
Why would his boss be avoiding a conversation with him? Did he know some terrible news, like Prin’s committee assignments for when he returned?
Prin told Kingsley he’d meet him at the roulette tables (“TABLE FOUR! THE ONE WITH THE DEALER WHO SMILES LIKE HE DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH. LOOK FOR THE SHORT, FAT ARMS.”) and made his way across the dim, dinging, crowded space. Fr. Pat got up just as he reached him. He was well into his seventies, like many of Prin’s colleagues at the university.
Original Prin Page 3
