The Delusionist

by Grant Buday

  He gave his head a shake and went down the steps and out the door. Before locking it he could not resist putting his face to the glass and peering through. No, Connie was not standing at the top of the stairs wondering where he’d gone. He slid the key through the slot and heard it clatter. When he got home he left John Boston a message saying he couldn’t take the job.

  “Bernard Borgland,” said Gilbert on the phone. He spelled it out, “B as in budgie, ‘o’ as in ornithology, ‘r’ as in raven, ‘g’ as in goshawk, ‘l’ as in lapwing, ‘a’ as in abracadabra, ‘n’ as in nut-job, ‘d’ as in dodo. My advice, my friend, should you decide to heed it, is to phone him, ASAP pronto. He’s a good man. Moral fibre, all that noble stuff. Rare in these decadent times.” Cyril wrote the name and number in the corner of the sketch he was making of an orange with a fork stuck in it. “He’s waiting to hear from you.”

  Cyril panicked. “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing you haven’t told me.”

  Cyril tried recalling what he had told him.

  “Towhees and goldfinches at the feeder. And there, the grosbeaks are back! Gotta get my camera.” Gilbert hung up.

  Cyril stepped onto the porch and watched three limos follow a hearse up the cemetery roadway in a stately progress between the concrete angels, the pitted Madonnas, and mossy pillars. He thought of his mother watching this. No opera lover attended Carmen more rapturously than his mother watched these death processions. “The coffin was all silver and brass and I don’t know what,” she would say. “So many roses like you never saw. And lilies. Heaps. I opened the window and I could smell them. Mourners, maybe two hundred. They cried—and they meant it. I can always tell when they mean it.”

  The affair underway right now was small, about twenty people. The gravediggers Ron and Derrick stood dutifully to attention by the shed. Cyril wondered whether their views on mortality were grim or optimistic, or had the simple fact of repetition—grave after grave, hole after hole, dug up and filled in—drained the metaphysical angst from funerals and made the entire business mundane? Living across from a cemetery hadn’t done his mother any good. She’d escaped the killing fields of Eastern Europe only to come here and be reminded every day of death.

  There had been a bit on the news the other day about mass graves from World War Two discovered in Poland. The report said they were still finding cannons abandoned by Napoleon’s army on the retreat from Moscow. The entire region was a graveyard. When he was a kid, Eastern Europe had been behind The Iron Curtain. He’d look at the curtains over their windows and imagine them made of iron, a steel mesh of chain link dividing the grim grey lands of Eastern Europe from the clear clean lands of the The West where the sun shone and the people smiled and the future was bright and prosperous. In his mind Eastern Europe was backward and brutal and smelled of boiled cabbage. Even the names were alien, not at all familiar and British, not at all Canadian: Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Ukraine. All those z’s and v’s and k’s. Slovenians and Slovaks living in cities like Bratislava, Zagreb, and Kiev, the sheds and stalls of Europe, the barns and cellars. The only thing more bleak than Eastern Europe was the ussr, vast and medieval, where parents ate their young and pigs fed on the bones. His mother had hated the Russians as much as she hated the Germans: two walls of a vice crushing Ukraine in between.

  Turning from the window, Cyril wondered if he should call this Borgland or just forget the entire business? Let Steve sell the house or knock it down and build something more profitable. The lot was too small for one of those suburban mansions but it could fit a Vancouver Special, one shoe box on top of another, two rental incomes from people who’d know nothing and care nothing of the house that had been demolished or the family that had lived in it.

  His father had done a lot of work on the place. He’d built Paul’s bedroom downstairs, done the flooring, the panelling, the ceiling, the cupboards, everything. He’d laid the carpet in the living room, even put a new roof on one spring. He’d let Cyril climb the ladder and sit with him up there in the sky, looking out over the world, all the way to the mountains.

  Cyril was tempted to get the ladder and climb up onto the roof and try to relive the moment. Instead, he got into his van and drove west where more trees grew, more sun shone, and even the alleys were paved and the trash cans shiny and dent free. Steve lived on the west side. Gilbert had lived there as well until divorce number three forced him to sell at a crippling loss and retreat to ignominious exile—Gilbert’s own phrase—in an aging bachelor suite off Kingsway, in the faceless wastes beyond East Vancouver in Burnaby.

  West Broadway took Cyril past Steve’s office—where he nearly veered off the road—for there were Gilbert and Steve in the entrance to the building: laughing. Steve with his big grin, hands in his slacks pockets—did Cyril detect or only imagine the motion of Steve jingling his keys as though his balls were just so big they demanded to be rung like bells?—wearing a white shirt and red tie. Gilbert wore one of those safari shirts with all the pockets, and of course his fedora. Gilbert reached out to clap Steve on the shoulder then they shook hands as though sealing a contract. Fists tight to the wheel, Cyril continued on by. Loop the block? And if they spotted him? He didn’t care. He wrenched the wheel and booted it down to the first intersection, then went right again, and a third time, until he was back at Broadway waiting to rejoin the traffic which had suddenly become bumper to bumper in a conspiracy to delay him so that by the time he made his second pass Steve and Gilbert were gone.

  Suspicion twisted his guts. Not knowing what else to do he kept driving and ended up at the beaches, Jericho, Locarno, Spanish Banks, where the late May crowds were already frolicking in the hot spring sun. He parked and watched, yet volleyball games and frisbee throwers couldn’t divert him from the image of Gilbert and Steve laughing like pals, buddies—conspirators. Could they have run into each other accidentally, Gilbert on his way past just as Steve happened to emerge from the office, or were they concluding a meeting?

  Sailboats tilted this way and that in a silent regatta. Freighters sat as if welded to the sheet metal sea while off to the right stood the city, silver and grey, a glare of sunlight flaring on the imperious glass and metal. Cyril leaned out the window and stared into the sun for a full minute and then shut his eyes and rested his head on the steering wheel and took comfort in the after-image flame that hovered like a visiting spirit.

  FOUR

  KINGSWAY ANGLED LIKE an appendix scar across the belly of the city. Cyril drove slowly, trying to hit the red lights, hoping to run into a traffic jam that would cause him to miss his appointment with Bernard Borgland altogether. He passed a desolation of strip malls, the coloured plastic pennants fluttering above the car dealerships, making them appear all the more shabby and desperate. There was the dark brick vault of the old Technocracy building. He remembered houses along here, the remnants of an orchard, the interurban trolley with its oak-trimmed cars.

  Borgland’s office was around the back of a drab old house on a drab grey street built in the black-and-white TV era of the 1950s. Who ran a business from a basement nowadays? Dope dealers? Tupperware salesmen? Cyril recalled a dentist he’d gone to as a kid whose torture chamber was in an old house with warped linoleum floors, peeling wallpaper, battered wainscotting, and a ceiling draped in chains of cobweb. An office should be in an office building, that is if it was a real office, occupied by a real professional. The cement steps leading down to the door were painted red, a weird and ominous colour choice. What was this Borgland up to? Cyril had decided that he didn’t care about the will, that he was ready to let Steve have control of the house, that he was not about to engage in some legal battle much less undergo a series of five psychiatric sessions with some stranger, however well or ill qualified to evaluate him. No. Forget it. As he’d told Gilbert, he didn’t need the money, though of course he could use it, who couldn’t, but that was hardly the point because no matter how you looked a
t it the whole thing stank. So why was he here at the top of these red steps? The only answer he could give himself was curiosity—maybe a perverse curiosity, maybe innocent curiosity—to see the guy’s face, to hear what he might ask, to hear what he himself would say in response to whatever it was the guy might ask. Just to have a look. Who, after all, could resist having a look when it was you who were being looked at? And of course he could walk out any time he so pleased, simply stand up and flip the guy the finger, or wave, or shake his hand, say excuse me, whatever he wanted, and stroll on out.

  So he took a deep breath and descended those red steps. At the bottom he was confronted by a door of yellow cedar varnished to a high gloss in the middle of which were brass theatre masks, tragedy and comedy, each with its own knocker. A test? Choose Mr. Sad and you revealed your inner desolation? Opt for Mr. Smiley and you were hiding it? He solved the dilemma by taking one knocker in each hand and rapping them both. The door swung open revealing an impressively tall though disturbingly young man.

  “Cyril.” He spoke warmly as though it was a much anticipated reunion.

  They shook hands, Cyril noting the slender wrist, long fingers, perfect pink nails, and delicate skin of a guy who’d never gripped a hammer or a paint brush much less known the bark-coarse texture of a callus on his own palm. Borgland looked thirty, tops. On the phone he’d sounded so much older. How could Cyril be evaluated by a boy? How could he take counselling from a kid? Bernard Borgland’s complexion was so smooth and hairless it was almost raw—a soft breeze could abrade it—while his chestnut hair was so curled and bouncy he must surely have visited a salon. He did, however, wear a reassuringly conservative charcoal suit.

  “You opted for compromise and balance,” said Borgland, nodding to the knockers. “That’s good. That’s healthy. Come in, come in.”

  Cyril tried not to flinch when he spotted a milky-eyed Doberman regarding him like a blind seer gauging the state of his soul.

  In spite of being below ground level the office was surprisingly bright and airy, with potted bamboo, pine panelling, a varnished fir floor, and rattan furniture. On the walls were framed photos of tropical vistas, beaches, reefs, palms, and an undersea shot of a school of black and yellow fish with long elegant gown-like fins. There was no couch, which was a relief. The idea of lying down had been worrying him; it would make him feel even more vulnerable than he already did. Borgland directed him to a wicker chair which creaked as he settled in. How many others had sat here weeping as they confessed their misery? Trying not to fidget, he positioned his hands palm upward on his thighs as though meditating, except that instead of calming him the sight of his upturned mitts made him think of small dead animals with their legs in the air. He moved his fingers and that made him think the animals were still twitching. He turned them over so that they rested palm down, except now they resembled crabs. It occurred to him that he had absolutely no control over his mind. All of three minutes he’d been here and he was exhausted. Incense burning in a bowl emitted tart sweet smoke, a clock ticked, the Doberman exhaled like a walrus.

  “Do you mind dogs?”

  “Dogs are fine.”

  “Some people find Sigmund disturbing,” said Borgland. “If he bothers you I can send him out.”

  “No, no,” he lied, unwilling to admit that at the age of five he’d been humped by a Doberman and that to this day they spooked him. It had been an enormous beast with a spiked collar, and it had crossed its paws around little Cyril’s shin and humped his leg, growling every time he’d tried pulling away. He noted the eerily glutinous eyes of Borgland’s dog.

  “Cataracts.”

  Cyril nodded. He’d heard that owning a dog was supposed to calm you down and make you feel involved, though it seemed to him that resorting to an animal for companionship was the depth of desperation. His mother said there were no dogs or cats during the war because they’d all been eaten. Like stringy veal, she’d added.

  “Let me tell you a little about my approach,” Borgland was saying. “That is, my approaches, because I have a range. I’m not strictly a Jungian, but I do think that some of his views are valid. Are you familiar with Carl Jung, Cyril?”

  “Symbols have more than one meaning,” he said, impressed at himself for remembering. Borgland was genuinely pleased, and Cyril was proud and at the same time indignant that Borgland should be so surprised. Did he look like such an ignorant labourer? “Exactly. Do you dream?” His tone implied that dreaming was a decision, that on a given night you might decide to do a bit of dreaming while on another you might opt to give it a miss.

  “I dream. Yes.”

  “The ancient Greeks called dreams the Thousand Sons of Hypnos. Hypnos being the god of sleep. He’d send dreams to deliver messages to mortals.”

  Cyril discovered that his hands had clenched themselves into fists. He forced them open and pressed them flat to his knees.

  “The brain is like a forest,” Borgland continued, “a forest that is self-aware. And that self-awareness actually influences how it functions and how it grows. Follow the same paths through the forest and they widen and become roads, and those roads become harder to avoid. In fact, they become habitual routes. Ruts, if you will. This occurs in both the conscious and unconscious mind. Unresolved fears breed recurrent dreams, and so a cycle develops, a potentially undesirable cycle.”

  Cyril flashed on a picture he might draw, of a head or a skull dense with a thicket of bamboo sprouting from the nostrils and eye sockets and ears. “Okay, I get it.”

  Borgland smiled. He had a habit of stroking his clean-shaven chin as if he had a goatee. Maybe he wanted a goatee but couldn’t yet grow one. “So you understand that we’re doing a psychological profile.”

  “Got it.”

  “So let’s begin at the beginning. Why do you think you’re here, Cyril?”

  He could accuse Steve of being a conman and manipulator, but would appear angry and vindictive. Or he could say this was his mother’s revenge, but would appear paranoid. “They think I’m unstable.”

  “They?”

  “My mother and my nephew.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think I’m as stable as the next guy.”

  “Do you?” Borgland’s tone was that of a benevolent teacher offering a wayward though essentially good-hearted student a second chance to come clean and tell the truth.

  Cyril forced himself to breathe evenly and meet Borgland’s gaze. He spoke in a measured tone, “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  Cyril permitted himself to look around, noting again all the bamboo and thinking he’d like some in his yard even if it might not be his yard for long. In hot countries bamboo grew two feet a day, an inch an hour. Yes, he should get some bamboo, a hedge tall enough to block out the cemetery. It struck Cyril as utterly revolutionary that he could block out the cemetery and look out the kitchen window and see bamboo instead of graves, bamboo full of birds, bamboo rustling in the breeze. If he could keep control of the house he could sell it and then move somewhere with whole jungles of bamboo.

  Borgland politely cleared his throat. “Do you still have nightmares about your brother Paul?”

  Cyril’s heart lurched. He felt himself sinking into a swamp and feared he’d made a grave error in coming. “No.”

  “No?”

  Cyril shook his head.

  “No nightmares?”

  “Not really.”

  “So sometimes?”

  Cyril’s fists were locked as tight as knots; he forced them flat to his thighs. “I understand what he went through. He was traumatized. He was angry. And he was small. His growth was stunted. He had brittle bones, bad teeth.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I was afraid of him.”

  “Because he tortured you.”

  Cyril balked at the word. He tried to appear relaxed and reasonable. “All brothers fight.”

  Borgland picked up a pencil and was about to write on a pad when he paus
ed and looked enquiringly at Cyril. “It won’t bother you if I make a few notes now and then?”

  “No,” lied Cyril.

  “You didn’t feel the need of a therapist after your breakdown?”

  Breakdown. It made him think of a car, dead on the side of the road. Okay, he’d skidded a bit, lost control on a curve—yet only once, and only for an instant—it had been a stressful time and afterwards he’d straightened out and carried on. “My brother had it tough. It wasn’t fair what he lived through.”

  “The famine and then the war,” said Borgland. “Your family was caught up in terrible events. You were fortunate to escape them.” Consulting the file on his desk, Borgland put his fingertips together. “What do you remember about your father?”

  “He smelled like metal.”

  “Was that good?”

  “It was him.”

  “Did he hit you?”

  “The old man? No.”

  “Never?” Borgland maintained eye contact.

  “Not that I recall.”

  “So it’s possible. It’s common to block out traumatic memories.”

  “No. He wasn’t violent. He didn’t even shout.”

  “Are you angry at having to be here?”

  Of course he was angry at having to be here, even if he could walk out any time he wanted. He forced himself to take a couple of low slow breaths before responding, and when he did he was careful to speak calmly. “It’s frustrating. I helped my mother financially. I moved back in and took care of her, took her to her doctor’s appointments, did most everything. I mean, I run my own business, I’m steady, responsible. These things  . . .” He waved dismissively, “they happened decades ago. I was a teenager. And no one was hurt. And the breakdown—I was upset. I had a couple of bad nights, that’s all. And now this.”

  “So it’s unfair.”

  “It does sort of feel that way, yes.”

  “A misunderstanding, then?” Borgland had a pen ready to record Cyril’s response.