My Present Age

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  We began where we had broken off a week before.

  “All right, Ed,” he said, showing me a clammy slice of teeth and gums that he tried to pass off as a smile, “let’s review the situation. You agree Victoria paid for the books?”

  “Certainly.” I said this with great conviction, to raise his hopes.

  Benny took a tape recorder out of his desk and set it on his blotter. “Would you mind if I taped this conversation? For the sake of accuracy?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Would you mind stating that when the recorder is on? That you agree to be recorded?”

  “Not at all.”

  No one could accuse Benny of subtlety. When he had depressed the record button I put on my best Russian accent and said: “I confess to counter-revolutionary sabotage at the Krupskaya Tractor Works. Also to having uncomradely thoughts about Comrade Stalin. I throw myself on the mercy of Soviet justice.”

  “Fucking asshole.”

  I pointed out to Benny that the machine was still running. He shut it off.

  “You always were a fucking asshole,” said Benny. “You always will be.”

  “Benny, Benny, don’t you remember how you used to preach the perfectibility of man?”

  “What?”

  Of course he didn’t, because that was the past. Benny lives only in the present. There he sat, slumped behind his desk, barely recognizable to me. How many years ago was it that he had urged freedom on me, on everyone? What a noble savage he was, in revolt against the suburban decorum in which he had been raised. Benny was a Rousseauian primitive who hardily ate his meals out of an open fridge, who satisfied his poignantly urgent sexual drives with clamorous gusto, poor Ed often stumbling upon copulations that seemed to occur in every room of our rented flat except the one traditionally reserved for recreations of that sort.

  He called himself a radical but he was one only in the sense that he had bewitched a small following with his graphic, hopeful vision of the demise of bourgeoisiedom. His frizzy-haired disciples were enchanted by his scenarios of the coming desolation: the rusting barbecues; untended, rank suburban lawns; the casual couplings amid the ruins. Out of all this he promised that a new clear-eyed, hairy race would arise, free of the hateful legacies of civilized memory, suckled on mother’s milk, strengthened by goat’s cheese.

  Carried away by his own prophecies, in 1972 he led a small band out of the city to form the ill-starred Darien Commune. (It was I who helped him pick the name. “Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes / He stared at the Pacific – and all his men / Look’d at each other with a wild surmise – / Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”)

  But the goats went unmilked, firewood unchopped, vegetables unharvested. Eight months later Benny was in law school on a generous stipend granted by the father of a communard he had impregnated and then married on the strength of great expectations. The girl had been fleeing her past. Her father was a lawyer, a constituency vice-president of the Liberal Party, an avid five-handicap golfer, and a notorious trifler with women. Ferguson led the girl firmly back to the bad old life, albeit in easy stages, where she discovered somewhat to her chagrin that she was perfectly happy.

  Benny’s transmogrification was so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. He explained to his friends that he was entering the system to gnaw it from within, vowing that he was going to become a legal-aid lawyer, the comforter of widows and the fearsome scourge of slum landlords.

  I knew instinctively he was a lost man.

  And there he sat before me, what I took to be the end result of ten years of compromises, a gentleman who plays squash at The Courtyard, whose ranting fervour has cooled to mere brio, a sensitive type who writes a cheque in support of the symphony because it’s the thing to do. Although he never goes.

  Unlike me, Benny has never really been out of step in his life, will always be the very picture of fashion. Man of the moment then, man of the moment now. While I, no matter how hard I try, will be caught with my hair long when it ought to be short, my trouser bottoms cuffed when they ought not to be cuffed. I will never speak the current lingo like a native.

  On impulse I asked, “Do you like your life, Benny?”

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m serious, Benny. Do you like your life?” I was serious. I wanted to know. I have a strong interest in discovering and questioning happy people. The most surprising types are.

  “Sign the goddamn paper, Ed, and let’s go home.” He tossed the document across the desk. I looked at it lying there, one of its crisp pages turned back on itself, and I felt one of those inexplicable moments of sadness that fly across the consciousness the way a handful of cloud flies across a blue summer sky, driven by winds high above us.

  With perfect sincerity I said, “Jesus, whatever happened to us, Benny? Look at the two of us, for chrissakes.”

  Benny couldn’t even guess what I was talking about. “Look, Ed, I’ve been patient with you for old times’ sake. You were always a fucking goof. When I was twenty-one I thought it was funny. Shit, I thought everything was a joke. But I don’t think it’s funny now and I think you’re pathetic. I’m not the same guy I was. You can’t treat me like you used to. You’ve got no right to laugh at me or belittle my work. I made something of myself – which is more than you can claim. And another thing. I can’t afford to piss around with you any more, being polite. I’ve got a backlog of cases and my father-in-law is crawling up my back to get this cleared away. I haven’t got time to talk about life with you and its meaning and the rest of that crap. Pardon me, but I’ve got other things to do besides entertain you.”

  “Whatever gave you the idea you were entertaining?”

  “Sign the fucking paper.”

  I tried to explain why I wouldn’t. “I can’t sign that, Benny. It’s not really the books that matter. I want Victoria to admit to me that she wanted to please me, that she was thinking kindly of me right up until the last minute. I want her to admit that she thought enough of me to buy me a goddamn two-hundred-dollar birthday present. Bought it only one week before she walked out on me. That means something to me, Benjamin.”

  “Maybe it’s time you learned that nobody is interested in your little fucking private fantasies and what they mean, or don’t mean, to you. There is one set of rules for everybody. I’m interested in seeing my client’s property is returned. That’s all. Legally those books are hers.”

  “But morally mine.”

  “Can’t you get it through your head?” he asked. “We’re talking legally. We’re not talking morally.”

  “I’d like to hear you make that statement before a jury, twelve good men and true. Justice will out.”

  Benny’s face darkened, his hand leapt to his tie knot. It made an expensive sound when he loosened it. “Okay,” he said, “gloves off. You can drag your feet and whine and kvetch all you want. But I’m tightening the screws. I’ll have Balzac seized by court order. If it takes a year, if it takes two years, I’ll have Balzac returned to Victoria.”

  “She cares nothing for Balzac!” I shouted. “I, on the other hand, love Balzac!”

  “No matter how long it takes, you slimy motherfucker, we’ll get him back.”

  “Now we get to the crux of the matter,” I declared, leaning across the table, rubbing my thumb and fingers together in the time-honoured manner. “Moolah. The big shekels. I’m sure you’d be only too glad to drag this sordid business out. But we’ll see how Victoria feels about being impoverished so that you can persecute an innocent man at her expense. Because this is personal with you, isn’t it? You always resented me, didn’t you?”

  “No, I resented your fucking supercilious attitude, that’s what I resented!” cried Benny flushing, rising from his chair, looming above me, confronting my eyes with a vast expanse of blue pinstripe. “Who the hell were you to judge us?”

  It is a common misconception that those who don’t get involved with others’ causes must inevitably be e
ither judging or disapproving. That has seldom been the case with me.

  “Benny, if you only knew how I wished I could have believed,” I said in a subdued voice. It is the truth.

  “Believe this, Ed. If you think you’ll wear Victoria down with legal costs you have another think coming. No fucking way. Because from this moment on she’s going to be treated as a hardship case, charged with office expenses only. I’m not taking a fee. My time’s gratis. We’ll see who breaks who, you fat tub of shit!”

  That last remark of Benny’s was very foolish. Didn’t he know me well enough to realize that rude references to my physique would turn my mind to vengeance? It was shortly after this pungent remark that I skimmed the legal stationery off the top of his desk while he banged drawers in a furious search for a pack of cigarettes. I hid the paper inside my jacket.

  We continued our exchange until Benny lost patience and ordered me out of his office. I refused to go and asked him whether he’d care to attempt to remove me. Benny is a physical as well as a moral coward, so he called security, who dispatched a much-decayed specimen of the corps of commissionaires. Because of my respect for his age and his service to king and country I allowed myself to be taken by the elbow and directed through the offices of Fitch, Carstairs, Levine, and Lemieux, all the while chanting at the top of my lungs, “Free Balzac! Free Balzac!” It is a sign of the present age that no one joined in, even when he got me out on the sidewalk and a sizeable crowd had gathered to watch me chant “Free Balzac!” and make encouraging motions with my arms, urging them to participate in my demonstration against establishment justice.

  Fourteen years ago someone would have.

  7

  A few minutes ago I mailed my letter to The Beast, and that made me feel like a take-charge kind of guy, decisive. I no longer have any doubts that I’ll find Victoria. The important thing, I tell myself, is to have a plan, to organize.

  Organization, I must admit, isn’t one of my strong points. Nevertheless, fired with zeal, I take a map of the city and divide it into quadrants with ruler and red pen. These quadrants I number 1, 2, 3, 4, ranking them according to what I calculate would be the likelihood of Victoria’s choosing a motel or hotel within their boundaries. Pausing to admire the map I feel a stirring of confidence; this disciplined, logical approach to the solution of a marital conundrum is entirely un-Ed-like. It is a new, somewhat invigorating experience. I gnaw my pen and consider. On the whole this is proving to be a success. I forge ahead.

  Next, I mark the approximate location of all hotels and motels on my map with tiny pencilled o’s, using the addresses given in the Yellow Pages as references. This afternoon I’ll drive to these places and scout their parking lots for Victoria’s battered blue Volkswagen. If I fail to find it, the corresponding zero on the map will be inked red, thereby eliminating it. It’s strange how closely linked fastidiousness is to a sense of control, even power. This exercise is making me feel better, without a doubt.

  The careful plotting of hotels and motels takes me until one o’clock. It’s amazing how many of them there are to be found in even a moderately sized city of 150,000. When I’m finished I beam down at my neat and tidy handiwork.

  There is, however, no time to rest on one’s laurels, because the car has to be loaded with supplies for an extended patrol of wintry streets. God only knows how long it will take to unearth Victoria. I set to packing a cardboard box. Items: a thermos of black coffee laced with brown sugar and dark rum, to keep the cold from creeping into my bones; a carton of Player’s Plain; a family-size bag of Dad’s Chocolate-Coated Oatmeal Cookies. And last of all, a two-quart red rubber hot-water bottle into which I’ll void my bladder if I become car-bound on an extended stake-out. (I remember this as an article employed by a hard-bitten gumshoe in a detective novel.) Thus equipped, and nothing left to chance, I climb into my little yellow Fiat and drive off in search of my wayward wife.

  Eighth Street runs through the heart of Quadrant 1. It is one of the city’s chief arteries of entry and exit and therefore is bordered with fast-food franchises, service stations, shopping malls, family restaurants, chain stores, and plenty of motels. Prime hunting ground.

  Moving in a westward, spasmodic flow of traffic that lurches through intersections and bucks along in the ruts worn in the road ice, I cast cautious glances to my right, eyes peeled for motels. It is mid-afternoon, the lowering sun strains behind a fine, crystalline snow which fuzzes the outlines of the signs that picket the roadside. Some of these signs wink and blink with violet or orange neon; others solemnly revolve in the grease-stiffening cold. The majority, however, are megaliths that loom against an ashen sky, pharaonic testaments to hamburger empires. The golden arches of the House of McDonald are prominent, as is the boast “4.6 billion burgers sold.” (A tyrant’s brag, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”) The Family Size Bucket of the colonel from Kentucky squats impaled on a sixty-foot concrete pole, sullenly vying for attention with the intaglio of A & W, a mahogany-and-orange blandishment against a pale winter sky. Nearby the huge sombrero and yucca cactus of a burrito palace are rimed with gritty snow and old ice.

  It is in the face of all this visual chaos, so opposed to order and simplicity, that I suddenly, perhaps a little guiltily, recall my vow to simplify my life. When I made that promise I had in mind the image of the ancient Greek subsisting on a fragment of pungent cheese, coarse bread, a handful of sun-warmed olives, a little watered wine; a man who discussed the Good, the True, the Beautiful with grave delight, and piped clear music in a sylvan glade. But I feel the absence of hills clothed in myrtle and thyme; of the Great Mother, Homer’s wine-dark sea. Good resolutions, it seems, require good scenery.

  Here amid the Ponderosas, Bonanzas, Gulf Services, Consumers Distributings, Speedy Mufflers, Firestones, Smitty’s Pancakes, Dog ‘n Suds, Canadian Tires, Essos, Burger Kings, and Sambos, I spot the Sleepy Hollow Motel nestled in an urban thicket of sign poles. I touch the brakes, wrench the wheels out of the tire tracks that ladder the pavement, and with the sound of a car horn blasting outrage behind me slither into Sleepy Hollow’s driveway.

  Parking lot succeeds parking lot and that of The Palisades offers nothing more than did those of the Sleepy Hollow, Slumber Land, The Rest Eezy, or The Motorola, all of which I have subjected to a thorough inspection undertaken on foot.

  Bundled against the cold, my parka hood tightened until the drawstring is lost in my jowls and my chubby features are scrunched, I gloomily tramp about in search of Victoria’s crumpled and dented car. Since four o’clock the wind has been rising and now it is unbearable, running over exposed flesh like a flame and licking tears into my eyes. Fingers and toes have turned brittle in mitts and snow boots, and my lips feel like leather. Having completed my circuit of the premises of The Palisades, I crawl with a grateful whimper into the comparatively milder climate of my car, light a cigarette, munch a cookie and drink a lot of rum and coffee.

  I’m going to be arrested. It would be just my luck. I see myself, a suspicious figure lumbering through the six-o’clock darkness of a winter’s evening. Ed tripping over shards of caked snow broken up and scraped into ridges by a snow-removing machine. Ed skirting the long, harsh patterns of light thrown by the windows of occupied rooms, weaving between parked cars, hugging the barracks-like building, daring to hope that a peep through parted curtains might reveal my lovely Victoria, and having my feverish hopes chilled as snow spills over the eaves and cascades into my eyes, icing my hot, expectant face.

  And then, from behind, the strong hand gripping my collar.

  I sip from my thermos, stamp my feet on the floorboards. Perhaps it is too late to continue my search. In the night, at a distance, the cars look the same, all wear skullcaps of fresh snow.

  The L-shaped courtyard of the motel carves the stinging wind into eddies. Waste paper suddenly darts out of the darkness of the parking lot to rise into the bright, streaming snow lit by the one remaining fun
ctional floodlight set on the fake log ramparts that give The Palisades its name. There they fly erratically like hunting bats; or flap languorous wings like rays moving in a strange, sunlit sea, before swooning and tumbling back into blackness.

  I am not at all surprised that Victoria has chosen to hole up in a motel while she tries to reach a decision as to what to do about this unexpected pregnancy. She has always shown a preference for rented rooms as the setting for the momentous decisions of her life; crappy little rooms where nothing familiar, nothing invested with awkward memories, can influence her. It was in just such a room (framed reproductions of a Portuguese fishing port, television chained to its stand, worn and snagged carpet) that a number of years ago she decided we should have a child. That was in Toronto in an “economy hotel” where I had been reluctantly taken to relieve a lingering depression.

  What was the cause of my melancholy? I cannot say exactly. Some of it was that I did not like my job. I was a lowly library assistant, which meant I shelved books for eight hours a day. More of it was that I had the feeling Victoria was drifting away from me. I had always assumed that she saw the world much as I did, but an offhand remark of hers one day contradicted this notion. We were talking about the past and she said, “You know it’s strange, but hearing other people talk, I’m always surprised by how little of the past I remember. I seem to live pretty much in the present.”

  I didn’t believe her; I told her she remembered as well as anyone. It was just that she remembered different things. I would prove it to her. “Tell me something about the first year of our married life,” I said.