by Mark Lisac
George said, “That would make an interesting book. You know, I handled the disposition of a will about a year ago for a widow whose husband used to measure their land. She asked me if I knew of a good place to dispose of the equipment that surveyors use to measure angles.”
“You mean a theodolite?” Alex asked.
George looked at him with widening eyes. “Yes, that’s it,” he said. “A theodolite. Anyway, Mr. Jespersen, when he had spare time on summer Sundays, used to go out on his fields and measure lines with his survey equipment. They weren’t visible on the ground but he could picture where they existed according to a survey plan.”
They walked several minutes more, turned a block west and came back up toward the Italian grocery where George intended to buy a long sandwich to share, and a couple of soft drinks. Maybe two cans of Chinotto. Both he and his brother sometimes liked a touch of bitterness to offset the sweetness of the salami and the red pepper spread.
Alex began talking again. He said, “Everyone knows exactly where they are on a farm or a curling rink. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know exactly where I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“It feels like everyone I know seems to fit in somewhere. Mr. Sandro, you, the librarians, even my customers. They know how they fit in with other people. They know their work. Sometimes I feel like everyone else arrived here on earth with a map and someone forgot to issue one to me. It’s like I’m wandering around in a strange country but everyone else belongs there.”
“You fit in with me, Alex.”
“I always like walking with you, George.”
They entered the grocery and walked past the vegetable displays because George knew Alex always liked to see the produce, especially the more exotic ones that Mr. Sandro did not carry. He also liked to look at the cans of different kinds of beans, and the packages of figs, and the cooler packed with cheeses. The shelves were modern but the displays somehow left an impression of everything being stacked on polished old hardwood. Afterward they took their sandwich and the two drink cans and sat eating lunch in the park across the street. They didn’t talk much there. They heard the dry leaves rustling.
18.
OSTROSKI WRAPPED UP THE PHOTO REVIEW IN GROWING boredom. He flipped through the images at a homestretch pace. He had been talking more with Radescu. Spy girl or not, she was more company than he was used to having. Her changed behaviour was noticeable. She had stopped going out for bathroom breaks without him days earlier. She also arrived before he did every day and went out the door after him, locking up as if the room were her own apartment.
He didn’t push for an explanation. Mostly they talked about photography and cruises. He could rattle off theories of composition and lighting without thinking about it much. That didn’t slow down the review. Her stories about floating around the Caribbean or around the Bahamas with her friend Rosa occupied him a bit more. The free drinks sounded good. Being shepherded into quick walks past expensive shops in tourist towns full of people who needed foreign money as badly as farmers needed rain didn’t sound as appealing. Neither did the onboard entertainment. But he had ended up thinking she was not as dumb as he’d originally thought. Her business wasn’t being an office assistant. It was figuring out how to do whatever her bosses wanted and do it well. He became sure that she kept her own goals in mind even while she did her best to please whoever she was working for.
He left the government building and slowly walked back to his store, stretching the trip to fifteen minutes. It was late afternoon. The sun blared dully from the southwest, a smoky orange bruise in the light haze. It slipped lower toward the horizon each day and had reached the point where it intruded into line of sight for anyone looking south. Winter, it said, is coming and there is nothing you can do about that.
He walked through the scuff of dead leaves and paper litter to the shop and opened the door. Adela looked up from a book and smiled a hello.
“Jack, you are back half an hour early.”
“We’re finally finished looking at those old pictures. Now I can get back to sitting around here waiting for customers to show up. Thank you for holding the fort.”
“De nada,” she said. “Really, I was able to read most of the time here. I did vacuum the floor today and dust the shelves.”
“Good. Dusting never occurs to me. I suppose it would if the dust got thick enough.”
“It was good to be here all day and have time to myself. Roberto has been in a bad mood.”
“Oh?” Ostroski said as he stepped into the back room to hang up his jacket. He made a detour to his small fridge and came back out to lean on the counter with a beer in his hand.
“He won’t say why. I’ve learned to let such episodes pass.”
He considered her reply. “But you still worry about him.”
“Of course.” She paused and closed her book. “Jack, there is something I think I should tell you.”
He looked at her and waited.
“This city likes to think it is big but it is really a small place. I know a woman who knows Ginny Radescu. They go out to bars together and sometimes on vacations. I saw her last night at the Latin cultural centre. She told me the Radescu woman got a little drunk the last time they were out together and talked a little about reviewing those photographs with you.”
She waited for a reaction, saw only his eyes not blinking and went on. “Radescu told her you were funny sometimes and had interesting stories about the old days in Hollywood. She was a little sorry that you probably had hidden some things from her. She thought you probably took some photographs out of the collection while she was out of the room. That bothered her because she did not want to get into trouble. She did not mind you doing things behind her back because it was not her business. But she did not want to get into trouble. She is a little afraid.”
Ostroski thought over what he heard. He did not care what Ginny Radescu thought of him. He took a long pull on the beer. “This mutual friend of yours, does she know that you know me?” he asked. “That you work here part-time?”
“I told her some time ago that I work in a shop with old camera equipment. I don’t think I told her your name. It was not relevant.”
“And she hasn’t been asking questions?”
“No.” Morales did not elaborate unnecessarily. Nor did she make a habit of prying with questions about things that did not directly concern her. Ostroski pushed air out through his nose to signal an end to the subject and said, “Make any sales this week?”
“Business was as usual.”
“Just enough to keep the fridge stocked, buy a pizza now and then and pay the rent so I don’t have an excuse to close the place.”
“And to pay me,” Morales said, wearing her best expression of solemnity.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll stop at the bank on the way in tomorrow. Unless you’d trust a cheque right now.”
“I can wait,” she said. “You look tired.”
They usually stayed away from personal exchanges. He took another long pull from the bottle and said, “Didn’t know days of sitting could be so wearing. Your muscles get sore not being used. And your back gets stiff from leaning over a table.”
He stopped, then continued, “I don’t know if it’s more my back and eyes feeling tired or just being tired of looking at all those moments from the past. Most of them didn’t amount to much. It’s like seeing your life flash before your eyes and realizing maybe you didn’t accomplish anything aside from paying the bills.”
“You recorded many things that would have disappeared,” she said. “The government would not have paid for the photographs if you had not made a record of many things for history. You know, that’s why I am interested in preserving old buildings. People should know about those who went before them. What life was like. They should know what was important to people in the past and how their past helped make the future.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Ostroski said. “The lawyer bee
n around?”
“Not here. We have arranged to go out on Friday. For dinner, and perhaps a movie if we find one we may both like. Or perhaps to the Downstairs Club to see a singer from Montreal. She is intriguing because she paints her face blue and white. I also liked one of her songs that I heard on the radio.”
“You arranged to go out? Is that like a date? Or different?”
She gauged the angle of his eyebrows and slight smile and decided he was being humorous rather than inquisitive. “It is company.”
He listened to the silence following her short reply and said, “Are you saying I could use more company myself? I’ve got my hockey on TV and those kids in the photography class over at the college once a week. They’re full of ideas and hope. They’re about all the company I can cope with. They keep my head buzzing.”
“Yes, I know. You keep saying they are pains in the ass. But you keep going back and I have never heard you say you had to fail any of them.”
“Why should I do that?” he said. “They’ll run into enough failure on their own.”
Morales looked at the clock and said it was closing time. He said he would look after the final cleanup and the cash register. She went in back, picked up her coat and said, “Goodnight, Jack,” as she walked out the door.
He said, “Goodnight,” drank the last swallow of beer, and looked at her silhouette against the light from the street lamp as she crossed in front of the window. He assumed she was going home but realized he did not know, and that he rarely knew where she was going or why. He decided this would be a good night to treat himself to a restaurant—the Romanian place with the cabbage rolls. He had another beer with dinner there and another when he got to his apartment, but none of them helped bring on more than a so-so sleep. Too much was running through his head. Too many images from the past flashing through his semi-dreaming vision; too many memories about what he had done and not done; too many questions about why a few photographs of a former lieutenant-governor with her arm around the waist of a former premier’s wife would be important.
Next day he went to the shop and worked on a balky Leicaflex that he knew could bring a good price if he got the focus working properly again. A few customers stopped in for film and one for a lens brush. Another in a mid-grey topcoat browsed the selection of old equipment on the shelves, as was his habit about once a month. Adela arrived after lunch hour. He did not wait to talk with her but went to the bank for her pay. He brought the cash back and said he would be gone for maybe an hour to talk to the lawyer.
Rabani’s office was like a different city than the one through which Ostroski had walked the eight blocks from the shop. Outside there were drab coats and roaring diesel buses punching sooty smoke into the sky as they accelerated. A former movie theatre’s empty poster display cases were tombstones marking the end of a life that had begun in the vaudeville era. He saw silent faces intent on their own affairs and sidewalks littered with candy-bar wrappers, empty coffee cups and sugary drink cups, dust, occasional stains that looked like food spills or spit or worse. Inside the law firm was a universe of hushed voices and deep green carpet. The colour made Ostroski think of tables covered in green cloth in a quiet pool room. He wondered when he had last been in a pool room. Probably in the States, he thought.
He was shown down the corridor to an open door. Rabani stood and shook his hand and invited him to sit on one of the solid chairs in front of the desk, not one of the fully stuffed fabric-covered chairs over in a corner, apparently reserved for more intimate or delicate occasions. Good enough, they weren’t friends anyway.
“How have you been?” Rabani asked.
“Getting a sore butt and dried-out eyes. Nothing a couple of beers couldn’t fix.”
“Glad to hear it. Are you set to wrap things up now?”
Ostroski reached into a pocket. “I have the rest of the negatives here.” He put them on Rabani’s desk, just out of the lawyer’s reach.
Rabani leaned forward, picked them up, turned and held them up to the light weakly seeping in through his window.
“Doesn’t look like much,” he said as he turned back to Ostroski. “All this disturbance for a handful of pictures of an old house.”
“Well, there are pictures and there are pictures. Putting up a flag doesn’t look like much. If you had the negatives from the flag raising at Iwo Jima you’d have something. It all depends on what pictures mean to someone.”
“This should satisfy them,” Rabani said. “You should receive your cheque in a couple of weeks.”
“Good. I’ll be glad to get this over with.” Ostroski stood to leave. He sat down again when asked to wait for one more thing.
“The government will be satisfied,” Rabani said. “I’m not sure I will be.”
“You don’t have to be. You’re the middleman.”
“That doesn’t mean I can keep my eyes shut to everything. You told me you were going to be taking out photos of a Norma Minton and a Gloria Sandring. I understand you removed a number of photos of someone described as Norma Minton. But none of any woman named Gloria. How did that happen?”
“I noticed that, too,” Ostroski said. “Didn’t find any of her.”
“I asked how that happened.”
“Must have never left any of her in the collection.”
“Never left? When would they have been taken out?”
“A long time ago.”
Rabani watched for eye movement or shifts in posture. He thought he might be seeing a hint of Ostroski’s mocking humour but wasn’t sure.
“I’m not playing games with you. I got rid of those pictures years ago.”
“You said you wanted to make sure they never saw the light of day or ended up in anyone else’s hands. What was this about if you’d already thrown them away?”
“A long time ago I didn’t want them in my hands either. That was a mistake. I thought I could tear them into little pieces and throw them out and that would be the end of it, but that backfired. I got rid of the pictures. I couldn’t get the way she looked out of my head. I knew there wasn’t much chance but I hoped I’d find one or two still in the collection. I didn’t. Now I’m stuck with memories of what she looked like, and the memories probably make her a lot closer to perfect than what she would have looked like in a photograph. Pictures don’t work the way you think. If you look at them often enough you get your fill of them. Eventually, you don’t need to look at them more. You move on to other things. I’ve never been able to move on from her.”
Ostroski didn’t give it a dramatic reading. His expression remained impassive. “You happy now?” he said.
Rabani moved his lips out, considering what he’d just heard. He took a long breath in and said, “I could be happy. I believe you. That leaves one other loose end, though. There’s some thought you took photos out of the room when the Radescu girl wasn’t there. If they weren’t of Gloria Sandring, what were they?”
“So the spy’s been at work. Her boss didn’t tell you what they were?”
“Why would they tell me? Maybe you took more than one kind of picture out of the collection.”
“Nope. Just a few, all of the same subject.”
“Dammit, Jack, I’m trying to help you and you act like it’s fun to play games. This is serious.”
“Yeah, I know. Okay, I took some pictures of the old lieutenant-governor, Hesperia Tindall. The girl showed some interest in them. Why would that dried up old prune be of any interest to anyone? And why especially the ones of her with old George Manchester’s wife?”
“You jeopardized the whole arrangement to satisfy your curiosity about something inconsequential?”
“What do they care? There are dozens of pictures of Tindall in the collection. For that matter, what proof do they have I took anything? You don’t even know if I’m pulling your leg about this. How do they know the Radescu girl didn’t take anything?”
“For Christ’s sake.”
“I thought lawyers were trained to
be unemotional, like scientists looking down at mice running around in a box.”
“That’s enough. I repeat, did you really jeopardize the whole arrangement to satisfy your curiosity about something inconsequential?”
“You just collected the negatives they asked for. A handful of other pictures aren’t going to wreck the agreement. I’m not wrecking it either. I’m not holding any more negatives of the Roussel house and there are no prints except for the one I told you I gave the hooker and nothing in it was identifiable. She may not even have it anymore. Hell, I don’t know if she’s still living around here or even still alive. And if some other pictures are inconsequential, why are they grinding you about them?”
“I thought there was a reasonable person under that crusty joker act. All right, you can probably get away with it. That concludes our business. I’ll send you the bill.”
Ostroski stood up and headed for the door. When he reached it he turned and said, no wry crinkles around his eyes or his mouth this time, “You still have a lot to learn about people, George. I hope you learn fast before you learn the hard way.”
19.
IT HAD TAKEN FOUR DAYS TO CAP THE WELL. BECKER DROVE out to the same bush site every day for the media. By the time he did the final show the national networks were carrying the story. He was amused to think people who had no idea who he was would see him in Newfoundland. He had been there once for a ministerial conference. Icebergs off the coast and throat-burning rum. A cold, damp wind on the hill east of the harbour. But somehow part of a deep historical network. Not like the end-of-the-world feeling you got looking out across the Beaufort Sea up in the Arctic. He had been to ministerial conferences in many places now. Get into politics and see the world. The dells and woods of Wisconsin seemed far away and ordinary after all the years. He wondered if all the immigrants who had crossed the Atlantic since the early 1600s had thought that way about the Old World—whether after seeing the New World the old one had seemed far away and ordinary. Yet where you came from was never completely ordinary; it was indelible and had a pull to it, like gravity.
