The Delusionist

by Grant Buday

  “I have written five hundred and thirty-five pages.”

  “That’s a lot of pages.”

  “Indeed it is. Over twice the requirement.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “That would be telling.”

  “There must be some recourse.”

  Chuckie’s smile widened and his eyes narrowed. He shrugged as if it was all quite simple. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Funding cuts will render degrees useless. The Tower will crumble on its own.”

  “Well, best of luck, Charles.” Shevchenko excused himself and escaped.

  “How’s the post office?” asked Cyril.

  Chuckie seemed to enjoy that; he seemed to be having a fine old time at his grandmother’s wake. “The post office is a mill for churning paper. Same way the stock exchange is a mill for churning money. But not to worry, the system unwittingly produces its own gravediggers.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “Depends on which side of the barrier you stand. Like you, you’ll be in trouble.”

  Cyril waited, intrigued. He’d always found Chuckie the more interestingly erratic of his two nephews. “How so?”

  “The artist draws the carpenter’s chair and thus his picture is twice removed from reality. The Republic.”

  Cyril hadn’t exactly read much Plato. Drive out the lying poets or something. “Is that what’s coming?”

  “Like an avalanche.”

  “Ever hear from your mother?”

  He grinned. “Yesterday. Sent her regrets. She and Yvonne are doing fine down in Rio. She’s nursing and Yvonne got herself a part in a Brazilian soap opera.” Chuckie reached with his glass and clinked Cyril’s and then went off for a refill.

  It was four in the afternoon when Cyril got home from the wake. He wandered the house then out into the yard where he clipped seven yellow roses from the garden, fit them into a vase with some water and sugar, and carried them across the alley to his mother’s grave. Her stone was warm from the sun. He kept his palm on the granite for a long time as if the heat was a sign of her soul’s lingering presence.

  He looked up at the maple tree, thinking of the cat. Maybe he hadn’t seen it at all, maybe he’d imagined it. The thought disappointed him. Now he saw only leaves. He could see the appeal of watercolours to participate in all that light and colour, even though colour had never been his chief interest. What intrigued him were lines, the cracks in sidewalks and old roads, the fissures in walls and in stone, the grain of wood, the wrinkles in aging faces, the lines in the palm of a hand—lines which held the secrets of the future. Looking closely at his own skin revealed a mesh of fine lines. Hair was lines, veins and arteries were lines, as were spiderwebs and tree branches, and the thread that made up his clothes. Whenever he looked up he saw hydro lines and telephone lines, maps and charts were lines. To draw, to follow the line unwinding from a pen, was for him the most natural thing in the world, and the most exciting.

  The cemetery was framed on three sides by houses and Cyril could recite the name of every owner going back forty years. He’d never told anyone, not even Gilbert, but he sometimes saw the ghost of Old Man Hunt two doors down, cutting his lawn with a steel-wheeled push mower. Hunt had survived the Battle of Vimy Ridge only to die while doing the lawn one spring morning in 1957, right in front of twelve-year-old Cyril who was raking Hunt’s grass for a quarter. The old guy dropped face down in the strip of newly mown lawn as though he’d ploughed a path from the battlegrounds of France to a cemetery in Vancouver. Hunt had been a joker, always plucking nickels from kids’ ears and singing Cockney songs, and for a moment Cyril had thought he was faking, especially since only minutes before he’d told him a joke about a parrot.

  “Bloke goes into a pet shop. Wants a bird, see. I got this fine parrot right ’ere, says the proprietor. Bloke looks at it. Does it talk? Not yet, it’s young, you can teach it. He buys it and takes it ’ome and the next morning wakes up to this croaky voice saying, Shit it’s cold, shit it’s cold. Goes into the living room and there’s the parrot: Shit it’s cold. Well this chap, ’e’s very conservative, ’e is. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t swear, doesn’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Marches that bird back to the shop. Owner says no problem, next time the bird starts up you grab him around the neck and give him a good hard shake. He’ll stop. Guaranteed. So the next morning our man he wakes up to the bird complaining, Shit it’s cold. Shit it’s cold. The chap’s ’aving no part of this. He opens the cage and grips the parrot round the neck and gives him a good shaking about. Parrot says, Fuck, it’s windy too!”

  TWO

  CYRIL HAD BEEN home from the wake nearly three hours before remembering that he had his drawing class that evening. Late, but desperate for diversion, he grabbed his stuff. Over the years students had come and gone but Cyril had remained. Novak was leaner and more saurian than ever, his grey hair long and lank, the lids of his eyes like canvas flaps. This evening he wore bare feet and sandals, black jeans, a red shirt buttoned at the cuffs and loose at the collar. Cyril arrived to find him deep in conversation with Richard.

  Short, lean, with a dark beard and round metal-frame glasses over darting eyes, Richard was intensely ambitious. He’d graduated from art school—a fact concerning which he regularly reminded Cyril—and was taking Novak’s class purely for the models and the feedback. Richard was big on feedback, especially giving it. He pronounced Cyril’s work ‘alternately erratic and cautious’, and he argued with Novak—politely but adamantly—in defence of his vision. That he had a vision impressed Cyril, who wasn’t sure if he himself had one. Maybe he was just too close to his own work to be able to see his own vision. Richard’s vision consisted of crabs: crabs on pillows, crabs on the hoods of cars, crabs on a woman’s belly, crabs falling from the sky in parachutes, crabs lurking in brassieres, crabs behind executive desks, crabs in churches preaching from altars with their claws raised in exhortation. There was no denying that they were impressive crabs, they reeked of sea and rage and occasionally of yearning. These crabs dreamed. If Cyril drew a crab it would not look like a Richard crab; he knew because he’d experimented. His crabs were good, but were they idiosyncratically him? Would someone say they were distinctly Cyril Andrachuk crabs? The question bothered him more than he cared to admit. Cyril wasn’t sure he liked Richard, and it bothered him that Novak clearly liked him a lot. Their arguments were not fights but a spirited crossing of swords that seemed to exhilarate them both.

  Now Novak addressed the class.

  “Okay, my friends. I have worked a miracle for you. Bow your heads in gratitude. Kneel. Light candles, burn incense, give coins and virgins. For behold: Novak has done it again.”

  An anticipatory murmur moved through the group; Cyril’s reaction was closer to dread than anticipation. Over the years Novak had arranged half a dozen group shows, only the first of which Cyril had participated in. A couple of times he’d congratulated himself on staying out of them, especially when the scorn had come pouring down like a river of mud on their heads, but the last show had been a success, young Richard had sold all his work and been approached by an agent. Novak had been courted as well. He’d been interviewed and now had his own show scheduled. Furthermore, his popularity as a teacher had soared, and instead of one session a week he now taught three.

  “But not the school gallery. No, no. This time you play for keeps. This time we take the tips off our swords. This time we draw blood. At The Arena. Maybe Ms. Preston she is going senile,” he admitted, referring to owner and curator Pamela Jean Preston. Last month Novak had shown her slides of their work and she’d gone for it. “She has a gap in her schedule,” Novak explained. “One night. A Sunday. Not much, but maybe enough.”

  Richard led a round of applause and Novak bowed deeply to the left, to the right, and to the middle.

  The Arena was notorious. A recent show had featured a thousand and one human teeth in all their stained and carious decay. Another show was a display of evisceration photos. Then ther
e had been the fire-walker, some mad man who walked naked over hot coals while reciting at length from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

  After the class, Novak caught Cyril before he could escape. He had a surprisingly strong sharp grip. “Most people you can’t hold them back,” he said. “All they want is a show, attention, glory, praise, look at me, look at me!” He jerked his thumb at Richard. “Like Little Big Dick there.” Cyril was eager to hear criticism of Little Big Dick, that he was hollow, would soon fall on his face, and was not half the artist Cyril was. But Novak did not say that. Instead he observed that there was nothing wrong with ambition, that ambition was good, that no one got anywhere without it. “But you, you hide.”

  Richard, across the room, was taking note of the scene.

  In a low voice Cyril said, “I’m not hiding.”

  Novak did not deign to argue, nor did he keep his voice down. “Hide much longer you’ll rot. Like a potato in a cellar.”

  “We know how successful my last show was,” said Cyril.

  “Twenty years ago. And it wasn’t your show, it was a group show. Forget it. Grow up. Accept yourself. You’re good.”

  “Good isn’t always enough.”

  Impatience hardened Novak’s face. “Don’t fuck with me. You want to fuck with yourself, fine, go into a closet and shut the door and fuck with yourself, but don’t fuck with me.”

  Departing students skirted wide around them. Richard was the last to go, a smirk tickling the corners of his mouth.

  “What are you?” demanded Novak.

  Cyril stared.

  “Decide. And soon.”

  “Okay.”

  But Novak hadn’t finished with him. “Did you know I have a son?”

  It was the first Cyril had heard.

  “Twenty-five years I haven’t seen him.”

  Cyril waited, unsure whether there was pride or lament in that statement and wondering why Novak was telling him.

  “His mother called last night. Every year or so she calls. Our son, Istvan, he lives with her. He’s this fat.” Novak spread his arms wide. “He sits. He does nothing.” Novak made a face like a toad. “His mother blames me; I blame her. Same as always. A mess. When we emigrated she was homesick. She wanted to go back. Didn’t matter that in Hungary there was no meat, no milk, no coffee. Didn’t matter that they lived on potatoes, that the phones were tapped, that everyone was a rat. Me, I’ve never been back and I never will go back. I don’t go to Hungarian restaurants. I don’t go to Hungarian clubs. I don’t even talk to Hungarians. Fuck them. All they do is dig up the old dirt. Scratch their scabs and keep the wounds raw. I’ll tell you the happiest day of my life was the morning I woke up realizing I’d begun dreaming in English. Free at last! But her, she was always talking Hungarian to him. He must know his roots! I said bullshit, roots are a ball and chain. She was horrified. It was like I spat on the cross.” Novak exhaled long out his nose and contemplated the problem of his ex-wife and his lump of a son. At last he shook his head as if there was no solution. “And then there is you,” he said coming to the point. “You are doublefucked. And do you know why? Because you are nostalgic for the ball and chain you never even had.” Putting his palms together as though to pray, Novak rested his chin upon his fingertips and after a moment’s thought he stated, “I make it simple for you: join the show or don’t come back to the class.”

  Steve sat enthroned in a black leather chair behind an oak and brass desk. Not solid oak, but plastic veneer, a piece of furniture made of particle board slapped together on an assembly line. Cyril felt a faint disappointment in his nephew and at the same time grim satisfaction. He evaluated the sloppy paint job on the office walls: beige colliding like a storm surge against a white ceiling, not to mention the drips and roller marks. Cyril had been running his own painting business for twenty years. Interesting how Steve hadn’t offered him the work; he was slighted though at the same time relieved.

  Bad paint job aside, the walls testified to Steve’s success. There was his university diploma, his law school diploma, wedding photos, honeymoon-on-Kauai photos, pictures of Courtenay and Candace at birth, one, two, three, and four years of age. There were pictures of Steve and Marlene grinning beneath the Eiffel Tower and in Saint Peter’s Square. There were pictures from their various cruises, including one of Steve cradling a bottle of Dom Castro port, 1953, and, in the centre of them all, one where he had his arm around the shoulders of Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet. Yet what spooked Cyril were the photographs of Cyril himself. He and Steve rarely saw each other more than twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, but there he was, uncle Cyril, as a kid, as a teen, in his twenties. He should have been touched; in fact he felt as though he’d been spied upon.

  Cyril remembered Steve eating flies from the window ledge. The flies had always been alive—fresh meat only for him. Since then his interest in cuisine had flourished.

  The office was in a bright new building on Vancouver’s west side, but somewhat tainted by the fact that Steve’s one window looked across an alley at a water-stained apartment with sagging balconies. Still, Steve’s clothes were impeccable, his charcoal suit enlivened by fine silver stripes and his cerise tie charged by bolts of silver lightning. As for his hair, it was styled short and dyed blond and oiled straight back, while his ear gleamed with a red stud. Cyril wore jeans. They were fairly new, not yet faded and thereby demoted to work pants. His shirt was grass-green, button-down, short-sleeved. He wore no watch, no ring.

  “Grandma and I were always close,” Steve said. “But toward the end we really talked. She really confided in me.”

  Cyril acknowledged the profound depths of Steve’s relationship with his grandmother even though, frau Vogner story aside, he suspected it was Steve who’d done all the confiding, Cyril’s mother never the sort to bare her soul—at least she’d never bared much of it to him.

  On the desk were a computer and some papers, a champagne flute full of pens and pencils and a red ceramic bowl heaped with black liquorice. Steve pushed the bowl forward.

  Cyril declined.

  Chuckie, comatose until now, woke and heaved himself forward with a grunt and pawed up a handful then flumped back into his chair. He wore stained sweatpants and a stained baseball shirt and a grubby ponytail. Slapping the entire handful of liquorice into his mouth he chewed loudly and wetly then dug a wad from a tooth and examined it before sucking it from his finger and resuming his masticating. Steve glanced at Cyril as though to bond over such lamentable manners. Cyril opted for an expression of innocent neutrality. After all, both boys had always regarded their uncle as a chump.

  Cyril looked again at the photographs. Steve followed his gaze. “Grandma gave me the ones of you.”

  “I wondered.”

  “I think she kind of wished you’d have drawn her.”

  Cyril was frankly surprised.

  “She told me,” said Steve. “All grandpa’s stuff but never her. I don’t know,” he added quickly, seeing where this was going and switching tracks before it was too late, “just what she mentioned.” He shrugged.

  Connie and Cyril had once gone into a photo exhibit titled Portraits of Old Europe. Big black and white images of refugees plodding along dirt roads, aristocrats in decayed splendour, peasants in fields, gypsies in covered wagons. Connie had asked if he ever drew his mother? He said she wouldn’t let him. But he’d never asked, he’d have been afraid to. All those statues of the Virgin, did he draw those? He hesitated and said sometimes. But she saw through him. Liar. Yet she was smiling. Then why did you ask? Because I like to see you work without a script.

  Steve picked up a document and passed it across to Cyril. “The will. All pretty simple.”

  Pushing himself up from the depths of the leather chair, Cyril took the papers then sank back down with the seat exhaling beneath him. Last Will and Testament. Helen Mary Teresa Andrachuk. He stared at the print, the thick bold lettering, the smooth white paper. Was he supposed to read it all right then and there? He
paged through, noting titles and clauses and subclauses marked with Roman numerals. V was five, X was ten, and C was a hundred. Or was C fifty and L a hundred? Aware of Steve and Chuckie watching him he adopted a discerning expression.

  Steve paged through his own copy and repeated that it was all fairly straightforward, and for the next half hour he talked while Chuckie began to snore.

  Cyril did his best to follow all the legalese, the pursuants and heretofores, and finally blurted: “Who gets the house?”

  “Well, you. Just like I’ve been saying.”

  Cyril waited for just what he hadn’t been saying.

  “Chuck and I get twenty-five thousand cash and everything else is yours.” His clean-shaven face was wide and smooth and open while his cheeks glowed with a purplish flush. “Though,” he cautioned, “this is all contingent upon—” he coughed “—a psychiatric evaluation.”

  Cyril moved back through the phrase with caution, like a tightrope walker going in reverse. Evaluation. Psychiatric. Contingent.

  Chuckie was sitting forward now while Steve sat with his fingers on the edge of his desk as if about to play a piano—or leap back in case uncle Cyril got violent.

  “Psychiatric evaluation?”

  Steve shrugged at a hard but inescapable fact.

  “I go to a shrink?”

  “That you, yes, well—” Steve swayed his head side-to-side as if to say that was a bit blunt. “That you discuss a few things and get the thumbs up. Either that or I take control of the house.” He tagged this last part on as though it was scarcely worth mentioning.

  “You get the house.”

  Steve backtracked. “Take control of the house. But you’d live in it. If you want.”

  “But you’d own it.”

  Steve had no choice but to nod at his uncle’s lamentably simplistic phrasing. “In effect.”

  Cyril gripped his knees to steady himself. See a shrink or Steve got his mother’s estate. He looked at Chuckie who pretended to be absorbed by the state of his fingernails. Cyril understood: his breakdown. He preferred to think of it as his lapse, his episode, his brief bad patch due to guilt over his brother’s death. Others saw it more bluntly: it was a breakdown.