Andreo shrugged, releasing his grip on Warden’s shoulder. He stood and walked over to his desk.
“I am not boring you, am I?”
“No—go on.”
“Tell me—if love were a colour, what colour would it be? Red like a beating heart? Or purple with passion? What do you think?”
“I think love would be colourless,” Warden said after a moment.
Andreo smiled. “So do I,” he said.
Andreo pulled a portfolio from his desk drawer and opened it. It was filled with photographs of children, some poorly dressed, others somewhat better off. In one, a blind girl crouched in a garden, holding a flower to her face. In another, an adolescent boy supported himself with his arms on the shoulders of two smaller boys, his left leg ending in a stump wrapped in rags.
“Here you see the exquisite flower of politics,” Andreo said. “These are the children of war—political wars, economic wars, religious wars, racial wars. There are many kinds of struggle, many places needing healing.”
Warden took the book into his hands, touching the cool plastic cover. Page after page revealed dozens of similar images. What connected them was the smile Andreo had coaxed out of each child.
“When we have pity on all things, only then can we be noble,” Andreo said, turning a page.
Warden’s heart fluttered like a small bird trapped inside a cage. He stared at the barely recognizable features of a child’s face disfigured by fire. The boy grasped an orange kitten to his chest, radiating an instantly recognizable human joy beyond the suffering and disfiguration.
“What makes me dwell on the fact a child has died or is in pain? Why not just forget it and go on with my business? Do you think I imagine I can change such terrible things or stop the suffering by taking my pictures? What can I do?”
He shook his head dumbly.
“So what good is it, you must be thinking, that one silly man takes his pictures and remembers such things? I tell you. It is like television. Even when it is raining outside I can turn it on and find the sun shining somewhere. These photographs remind me that something exists beyond the sorrow and the suffering.”
He closed the book.
“In my simple way, I am trying to show people how we leave ourselves closed off to one another. If we truly want to help one another, we must be open and caring—there is nothing else.”
Andreo reached for Warden’s hand.
“You are a very privileged young man, Warden, because you have been allowed to bring beauty into this world. Your image is written on the face of it.” He looked over to his camera. “And I have been allowed to capture it, and for that I shall always be grateful.”
27
While waiting for the cologne company’s decision, Warden made plans to return home. He felt as though he’d suddenly awakened to the realities of a full-fledged winter coming on. Grief and mourning intact, he was ready to face his family.
The coast of Canada opened like a wound, bleak and empty in the dawn. Banks of fog hung over grey water, peeled back here and there to reveal small icy crags on the Newfoundland shores. It offered little more now than it had to the Vikings a millennium earlier, leaving scant traces of their presence on the barren rock. They floated by like a feather in mid-air, trespassing above the unchanging landscape.
Lisa walked breezily toward him through the airport lounge, cigarette in hand. She hugged him and lifted one of his bags as they headed out to the car.
“Welcome back to Trauma, big brother,” she joked. “You’ve come home to a cauldron of burnt nerve endings and poisoned minds—mine mostly. Mom hardly talks to me and Dad swears I’m not his daughter. School has just about done me in. By the way, I got my license yesterday, so you’re taking your life in your hands.”
Sunlight lit up the car’s interior as they joined a long line of traffic jostling into the city. Along the roadway, trees burned into the sky with the speckled drift of autumn. Warden suddenly realized he would just be starting his final year at university. Except for everything that had happened.
Lisa was talking. “It’s my first month at university and already I’m miserable. I study all night and spend the day sleeping. I rarely see anyone except when Mom brings a tray of food to my room. Usually she just leaves it outside the door.”
“No doubt Dad’s been giving you the When-you’re-through-it-will-all-have-been-worth-it speech,” Warden said.
“I have that one memorized by heart. The competition to get into university was vicious. I don’t know why. I’ve never seen so many rats clawing to be let inside a cage before. But now that I’m in, I just may stay. I’ve already decided whatever it is out there they call life I want no part of. I haven’t read a paper in weeks. When I do I just flip to the TV guide to catch all the re-runs of Let’s Make A Deal. Better than life itself. And much easier.”
She stabbed out her cigarette and looked over at him. “And how are you, Ward-Boy? How’s your friend the pop singer?”
“It’s over,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Oh-oh. I knew something was wrong. You hadn’t written in a while. I’m sorry to hear it, if sympathy will help. I’ve got a monopoly on it these days”
“I’m all right, but thanks.”
“Well, I hope so. You’re going to have a lot of smiling to do while you’re here. I need some help getting back into Mom and Dad’s good graces again.”
In his room the linen seemed freshly changed, though the bed probably hadn’t been slept in since he was last home. His mother came out from the kitchen wiping her hands on an apron.
After his nomadic lifestyle of the past year-and-a-half, home life felt reassuringly mundane. It seemed he once again belonged there with all that was settled and solid. His mother seemed happy and even surprised him by expressing interest when he suggested an outing. When his father returned from work they caught up on one another’s lives, eating supper like a family again and watching the news together.
After two days, he phoned Milan to find out if there was any word from the cologne people. He listened as Calvino’s wine-coloured voice rose and fell in soft undulations.
“They don’t know whether they want you or not, darling. They think you’re becoming over-exposed.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them your price was going up.”
Warden hung up feeling a sense of vacancy where there should have been regret.
He went for a walk. The Toronto skyline had grown, but the streets seemed empty. Nothing looked familiar in the tall buildings as he passed through the business district. Lights gleamed in the falling dusk with the impermeability of money.
When he returned, his mother was upstairs. Lisa had gone out. He talked with his father a while, both of them stabbing at various subjects with little success till a buzzer sounded on the stove. Eating seemed like a series of gestures engaged in solely to protract the time. After washing the dishes Warden tried to read, but his attention faltered. He thought of phoning Ivan and Rebekah, but it was the middle of the night there and he had nothing to say that couldn’t wait another day or even longer.
His father went to bed. Warden curled up on the couch with his book again. He woke to find it closed on the floor beside him. His forehead throbbed. Purple flickers danced on the wall leading upstairs.
His mother’s door was closed. The flickering light emerged from beneath it along with the sound of voices. He knocked and entered. A TV cast ghostly rays around the room, distant lives inhabiting far off galaxies. His mother was asleep. He stood there guarding her from he knew not what, watching her face in the light of late-night re-runs.
Faces stared down at him from the walls, a gleaming shadowland gallery: grandparents standing alongside aunts and uncles at forgotten family gatherings, former children long since grown and raising children of their own. He studied a wedding photograph of his parents—his mother in a long white dress, hair trailing over her shoulders, and his father in a smart black tuxedo. Th
ey seemed to be watching him back, those lovers about to become his parents, as if they’d foreseen this moment years hence when he would be examining them.
He wasn’t sure when he realized his mother really was watching. She began talking about an advertisement she’d seen him in recently.
“I thought you had eye make-up on,” she said gently.
He was embarrassed. “Yes—I did, I think.”
“We’ll have to trade make-up secrets someday, honey,” she said and they both laughed.
He was struck by a sudden urge to crush her in a grip that might last forever or annihilate them both. There was so much missing between them—all the things that had happened—too much ever to catch up on. He wanted to tell her about Joshua and his music, how his eyes looked at night and the sound of his voice, about the rough comfort of his arms and all the things he’d wanted to do to help others.
“Mom…”
“What, dear?”
“Nothing—everything.”
“That’s a lot—could you say it a little slower, do you think?”
“Well, I just wanted to tell you things … about me.”
“Like what?” she said, her voice as soft and startling as a first snow.
“Well, I had a friend…and I wanted to tell you about him.”
She reached out a hand. “Was he a good friend?”
“I think he was the best friend I’ve ever had—except for you.”
And suddenly he was crushing her in his arms, unsure whether his pain was for having missed her or for losing Joshua. He told her all the things he’d wanted to tell her about Joshua, and Rebekah, and Ivan’s multi-coloured hair, as she caressed his head and wiped his tears.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know—somewhere in London, I guess.”
“You must have loved him very much,” she said. Her voice was like a child’s, full of belief in Christmas and miracles. “I’m sure he knows that.”
They lay there unspeaking for a while.
“Will you be going back soon?” she asked at last.
“I hadn’t thought about it. I could probably stay a while longer,” he said.
“You mustn’t stay too long,” she said. “You have your career to think of now.”
He started to protest, but knew she was right. There was no sense in the pretence of an argument.
“Do you remember when you were a little boy how you would sit with your face pressed right up against the TV screen? I would bring you your dinner and put it on the floor beside you not to disturb you.”
He laughed at the memory.
“You were my golden child,” she said. “You asked so many questions I knew I could never answer. You wanted to know everything right away.”
They talked for a while then silence came in to regain possession of the room. Sometime later he woke with a start. His heart beat like a ghostly drum. The fuzzed-over TV screen, signed off for the night, had retreated to a landscape of petrified dreams. He got up and turned it off.
A glow crept into the room from the far side of the valley, lighting his mother’s silhouette. She lay there like a bird, wings tucked under the blanket. Around her eyes the skin had relaxed, revealing the lines of age creeping into her face like little lies thieving around the edges.
Warden went downstairs and out into the garden. The air carried the cool crisp edge of autumn. Across the valley the dawn glowed in the windows of houses there. Early morning commuters passed along the streets. It was the beginning of a fine September morning. For a moment it all seemed to hold, executing a magical truancy in time. The rooftops, the garden, the valley—none of it had changed. And he, being changed, was no longer part of it.
28
When Warden returned to England, the oncoming season was less in evidence than it had been at home. Rebekah and Ivan were pleased to have him back. They spent their evenings in and made plans to do things together.
Warden began pursuing his work again in earnest. His booker at the Smart agency was pleased by his newly reformed attitude, confiding that had he not been such a good breadwinner they would have sacked him long ago for his erratic behaviour. He set about making up the damage he’d done to his reputation. He was becoming reacquainted with a life he barely remembered, finding peace and contentment waking in the early hours. Mornings he spent in the garden behind the flat, the sky outlined by an optimistic pink light that began each day.
He felt a renewed interest in life, strengthened from within. When it rained, the streets smelled of forests and mist. The clouds glowed with quiet expectancy as the light fell like shards of sky. He went out walking one afternoon and returned feeling exultant, more than just an echo of his former self.
As he came in the door, the telephone was pulsing in short flat tones. He picked up the receiver. At the sound of the other voice, he felt canyons gaping below.
It was Joshua, inquiring how he’d been. Asking to see him.
Warden stood beneath the arches behind the church. The sky was grey and dismal. He stamped his feet and rubbed his hands together to keep warm.
Joshua came striding toward him across the churchyard. It took all of two seconds for the full weight of Warden’s emotions to come tumbling down again. Joshua’s voice was soothing as he spoke. Warden remembered the first time he’d heard it, how the ragged edges seemed at war with the world.
They talked for fifteen minutes, catching up. Warden told him of his trip home and the failed cologne campaign. Joshua had been abroad too, travelling in Europe and drumming up support for his political interests. He’d just returned from Germany where he’d been working with an underground resistance network.
Wheel of Fire had been disbanded and reformed into several splinter groups. One of them had retained the group’s name, picking up on the success they’d abandoned. Their first single was just making its onslaught on the pop charts.
“Do you miss it?” Warden asked.
Joshua ran his hands through his hair. “No. It all seems a lifetime ago.”
Warden was aware of light filtering through the clouds as they spoke.
Joshua grinned. “But I miss you,” he said. “You were right when you told me that once you love someone you never stop loving them.”
Warden wanted to say that he saw Joshua’s face in every landscape, that there could be no other face for him. “I—I think of you a lot,” was all he said.
His heart pounded as though there were only one more thing left to say. He looked into the grey vista of Joshua’s eyes, registering all his reawakened feelings like a barometer of hope.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
Joshua shifted. His grin faltered. “I’m leaving again. To continue my work with the group.”
The vistas in his eyes rolled on into other landscapes, moved by a great efficiency of purpose. Warden realized he’d never been there at all. There was an awful sound of distance in his voice when he spoke again.
“South Africa was just a start. There are terrible things happening in other countries. Unimaginable horrors. Rwanda might be next. And Zaire is going to reach a boiling point soon if something isn’t done. It’s difficult to fight back,” he explained. “In some of these countries people aren’t even allowed to organize publicly or gather to protest the government.”
Warden envisioned Joshua on the front lines, putting flags into people’s hands with rallying cries. He wanted to accuse Joshua of becoming a cliché, but he knew that was just being cynical.
“But why do you have to fight…?”
“Because it takes too long. These people try to do everything by the book. If there’s even a suggestion of resistance or a simple request for de-investment by multi-national companies, it can be interpreted as criminal activity,” Joshua said. “You’d be surprised by what’s going on right under our noses. In some cases, the authorities can do whatever they choose to stop us.”
The ecstasy of martyrdom glowed in his eyes, a dark angel riding on
his shoulders. Paper heroes, fallen idols.
“Some places where we’ve staged protests, the police have opened fire on crowds. Many of the political leaders are in jail facing death penalties for their beliefs. They can detain you for as long as they want. But don’t worry,” he said, placing a hand on Warden’s shoulder. “I won’t be doing any gun carrying. I’ll be an organizer from this end of things—sort of a fundraiser for a political party, except we’ve been outlawed by the government. That’s why I wanted to see you, in fact. I need to ask a favour.”
Joshua took an envelope from inside his jacket and held it out. “They’re bonds,” he said. “You could negotiate them for us.”
There were ten paper bonds inside. Ten blue-green slips made out for £5000 pounds each.
“I can’t do it without their making a credit check on me,” Joshua said. “But you could do it, Ward. With your clean-cut good looks they’d never suspect you for a second.”
Warden hesitated, looking into Joshua’s eyes as though reading their depths. His breathing felt restricted, his lungs congested. He coughed and felt the congestion dislodge slightly. An absurd idea presented itself. Maybe love is a chest cold, he thought. A chest cold loosening bit by painful bit.
“What would I have to do?”
Joshua outlined the simple actions that would allow him to deposit the bonds into a foreign account that someone in another country far away could access.
“I even have a name for you to use,” he explained, as though it were a game they were playing with his identity. “It can’t be traced back to you.”
Warden hesitated.
“Take your time to think about it.”
“If I think about it, I won’t be able to do it.”
“I could tell you where we got the bonds…” Joshua began.
“I don’t want to know,” Warden interjected.
“And it’s not without risk. I can’t promise you that.”
“What if I don’t do it?”
A Cage of Bones Page 21
