Sara leaned across to unlatch the manual lock on the back door of her car. With a murmur of greeting, Raymond Renaud swung a nylon bag from his shoulder and tossed it amid the sun-stained newspapers, snow scraper, sandals, handbag, the pool of her pashmina on the back seat, then ducked into the front passenger seat, jerking the seat backward until his legs fit. She stalled the car, trying not to look out for Juliet, and had to restart the engine, considered making a quick detour west to her house, which wasn’t far, to change her clothes and use the bathroom, but rejected the idea.
Do you need to stop by your hotel?
I am checked out.
And you’re absolutely sure you need to do this? There was a gas station at the corner of Strachan and King; no, the one at Bathurst and Lakeshore was closer.
Exhaustion seemed to press him into the seat cushions, his hands stretched taut across his thighs. He looked at her with an exhausted intimacy. Yes, he said. And then: Can we get a cup of good coffee?
Sara had to laugh. Coffee, but I don’t know about good.
There had been a lot of late-night travel in her childhood, by train, across Europe, since her father, despite his career in Foreign Affairs, hated to fly. The strained, bleached light of a nighttime train carriage: she was six or seven, maybe on the train between Moscow and Leningrad as it was then, her parents asleep on the banquette across from her, holding hands, her mother’s head resting on her father’s shoulder, and she had needed to pee and wanted them to wake, wanted her mother to wake, but her mother didn’t, and there was desolation at this, at their love that excluded her, and also defiance, and she had stood and walked down the shaking train carriage by herself, past the huge one-eyed woman whose eye flickered open, the enormous man who smelled of sausage and whose head was wrapped in a scarf, the man with the nubs of horns poking out of his head who reached out a red hand and whispered something leering in Russian, crooking his finger and beckoning to her.
In the Esso station at the foot of Bathurst Street, Sara waited for Raymond Renaud to shift past the celebrity magazines to the cashier, the heat from her coffee moving out through the cup into her hand, a packet of cashews and another of beef jerky caught in the crook of her arm, and when he didn’t move, she cleared her throat, and he started, as if he’d lost track of who she was and where he was.
Back in the car, he was silent as he set his coffee cup into the cup holder at the base of the dashboard. He had given up on charm, it seemed, and the withdrawn weight of him beside her made her fear she’d made a terrible mistake.
She tried asking, When did you learn to juggle?
Long ago. It was very accidental, all of this. He stared out through the windshield as they left the cave of Lakeshore Boulevard and sped up the expressway on-ramp. It would be almost morning by now in Addis Ababa.
When did you arrive? she asked him.
Here? Yesterday.
Were you pleased with how things went tonight?
He shot her a look as if either he didn’t wish to be disturbed or found her questions inane. Probably the last thing he wanted was to talk about the circus, and she had no desire to interrogate him, only to engage in some far more basic form of interaction, to fend off the miasma of his exhaustion. Up the Don Valley Parkway they sped, through the cavernous ravine, not all that far from the house, on the east side of the ravine, where David Ross would be lying in bed beside his wife. When Sara switched on the radio, raving jazz poured out. She’d already lost the feeling of complicity that had catapulted her toward driving, that reminded her of urgent road trips embarked upon in the past with fellow journalists, that camaraderie. Being this silent man’s chauffeur for six hours she would not be able to take.
As they neared the ramp to the eastbound 401, Raymond Renaud turned to her. Juliet said she met you in Montreal.
When did she say that? What she really wanted to know was if he’d told Juliet about the trip. And, at whatever point he and Juliet had spoken, how had Juliet described their shared past and, possibly, her own tangled history in Montreal?
I don’t remember, he said, and as Sara aimed the car into the 401’s express lanes, Do you think she’s a good filmmaker?
So this was what he wanted to know. She’s worked in television for years. I’m sure she’ll do a good job with the film.
Really she had no idea what kind of filmmaker Juliet was. You’re from Montreal, she said. I read that somewhere. You grew up there?
In Saint-Henri.
Which as far as she could remember was rough and working class and white and at one end of the island.
You were born there.
Not in Saint-Henri. We came there when I was seven. My uncle lived there. Before that, I was living for a year with my mother in Côte d’Ivoire. My father didn’t come. He stayed with my uncle.
Your mother’s from Côte d’Ivoire?
His face made a quick spasm: of course he recognized the racialized nature of this question. My mother’s from Haiti, Port-au-Prince. My father, from Rimouski. A hint of his former charm returned, or showmanship: his bright grin. That was not the usual thing in Saint-Henri, I will tell you. I was not the usual thing. But you learn, you survive. By now I am used to being not the usual thing. You?
Born in Ottawa, spent some time in Europe.
Where?
First Moscow. My father was posted to the embassy. As a secretary. Then Berlin. Later, briefly, Brussels and Kiev. You’ve been to Haiti?
Never.
She told him she’d gone for a week to Port-au-Prince after Aristide was returned to power. Nights up the hill at the Montana, the hotel where all the journalists and UN workers stayed, and where rats as big as beavers had scuttled across the lawns, and fires had burned on other hillsides and the ak-ak-ak of gunfire was loud enough that she’d dosed herself to sleep with extra-strength Nytol. She didn’t say that; she said, I went out with a couple of UN peacekeepers a lot of the time, and my translator, to talk to people about how they felt after the election.
He nodded.
Beyond Scarborough, then the Rouge Valley, the pale blank slate of sound bafflers rose up beside them, cutting them off from row upon row of swollen, immodest homes, all but their limitless grey peaks. Every time she passed out of the city along this highway, more good earth had turned into surging, self-replicating piles of brick. She would gun the accelerator and speed past the desolate ranks, weaving around the transport trucks, aiming for the stretches of highway beyond Ajax and Whitby where the lake appeared, on the right, glinting like a body freed from the confines of shirt or dress.
Maybe he, too, needed to feel himself in motion, to travel through this landscape rather than fly over it. This could not be his only reason for wanting to drive. She was aware of his lips, the wide bridge of his nose, the sleeve of his jacket, a hand’s breadth from her arm. There was a wall in him, and beyond it some darker turmoil pushing up. He did not have to move for his restlessness to churn the air, swell, flood out through his limbs, fill the car, and press against her.
Why are you in such a hurry to get back to Addis?
Something happened.
Everything in him, she thought, resisted speaking to her. She thought, I can’t do this. She would take the next exit, somewhere in Pickering, turn around, and ferry him west to the airport, or find a gas station, a truck stop and cajole someone else, a trucker, another driver, to carry him onward.
As if he sensed her retreat, his posture shifted. She felt him move. I am under a lot of stress. I’m sorry. One of my performers is injured.
That’s not good.
When she glanced over, he was staring at his hands in his lap as if they were unattached, creatures that he was surprised to find there.
She waited to see if he’d say anything more before continuing, What happened to him, or her?
He fell during a rehearsal.
Was he badly hurt? She thought back to the show in Copenhagen, wondering which boy it was.
He can’t move his legs. Th
ey say paralyzed from the waist down.
Oh, I’m sorry. His words hit her in the gut, entered her foot pressed to the accelerator, her hands gripping the wheel. Of course you want to get back.
Nothing like this has happened before. We are so careful. It is terrible that it happens when I’m not there.
Who is there, was there, when you’re not?
Our trainer, Tamrat Asfaw. He works with them every day. He called me this afternoon. They are all in shock. This happened only today, yesterday, Friday morning.
So you knew during the show.
I felt sick. I wanted the whole time to vomit, flee, get away, be with them, and I couldn’t. Half of me is there, not here. It was the hardest thing to do, all this talk tonight. A nightmare. I couldn’t tell anyone there what happened. Not yet.
Is the boy in hospital?
Yes, for now, though I don’t know how long he will stay or what kind of care he will need. He had angled himself partially to face her, seat belt pinning him in place, and he looked wide-eyed and small with fear.
How old is he?
Twelve, around that.
Do you know how it happened?
They were practising a balancing routine, Tamrat says. They do it all the time. They’ve done it a thousand times. They climb on each other’s shoulders. There are four boys in the bottom row then three boys then two then Yitbarek on top, with one foot on Moses’s shoulder and one foot on Bereket’s, and he leaps into a somersault and lands. They were on mats. Tamrat says he lost his balance, maybe someone wobbled. He was beginning the jump, but he twisted and fell. He is not careless. He fell on his back. When they went to him he couldn’t move his legs. They got him in the truck and took him to the hospital.
In a truck?
Yes.
Have you spoken to the doctor?
Not yet. Not his family. He let out a rasping sound.
Which one is he? Yitbarek — She was casting back again to the show she’d seen, the pyramid act, boys climbing up each other’s bodies to stand upon each other’s shoulders, what boy had been at the top, boys of around twelve, boys juggling, boys on stilts, the boy in blue.
He’s, he’s the — Twisting in his seat, he threw up his hands, as if to ward her off or distract her from the fact that he was near tears and couldn’t speak.
She had to keep her eyes on the road. Maybe when you get back you’ll find out it isn’t as bad as you think.
You have no idea.
I don’t. But people do recover from spinal cord injuries, some do.
He was silent. They passed the sign for Clarington. He said, You don’t think of the worst until it happens. You don’t think the worst will happen until it does.
Is there any kind of health insurance?
Not yet, he said. There should be, but there isn’t. It’s because of the UNICEF grant. We are supposed to have this money and we don’t have it. In the beginning, you know, we were so small. All of it was voluntary, me and the children, we did it in the afternoons and on weekends, and then more children came, and we started the school and the school for street kids, and the NGOs heard about us and came onboard, but it was still so — Nobody has any money. The children can’t pay. No one can pay for classes or equipment. We feed them. We are in a borrowed place, a local councillor has given us space for offices and to rehearse. We teach the street children so maybe they can go back to the street and busk and make money. No one has money to see the shows. And it’s okay for me to give up my job and live on very little because I am called to do this, everything in my life has led to this. But I still need money for the circus.
He ran a hand across his mouth before continuing, and maybe it was easier to talk about all this than the boy. So UNICEF heard about everything we’re doing, the work with children, the social circus work in communities, and said, We will support you. Big multi-year funding to help us as an organization, and I thought, Fantastic, this will be our breakthrough. There’s an application, a grant. They say, It is a formality, and it is approved, we sign a contract. But this is over a year ago. There is still no money. I call them, I send emails, I say, What’s going on, where’s the money, and they say, It’s coming, but it takes time. How am I supposed to plan? We have grown so much, and we are stretched so thin. We need things, we need insurance. I am not trained in all this, but I am trying to hold it all together.
In his lap, his fingertips pressed against each other and released, pressed and released.
It sounds like a lot for one person to do.
Yes, yes.
How much money are you talking about?
One hundred and seventy-five thousand US.
A serious sum of money by any account.
Yes. I want to buy land so we have a permanent home, and pay the children for their work and time. I’ve borrowed against it. There are other funders, but no one else can offer this level of support. I’m talking now to the Cirque about multi-year funding. But with UNICEF, we have a contract, they promised me money, and I’m trying to look after the children and go out into these communities and do the work, and they can’t even tell me when the money will come. What do they want me to do?
I’m not offering excuses, but you’re dealing with a very large, top-heavy, and rather dysfunctional bureaucracy.
Who are supposed to take care of the welfare of children.
Yes, only in an organization of that scale, there’s no one person accountable, and things sometimes do move unconscionably slowly. I’m not trying to defend them.
You think I am naive.
It’s a difficult business model. To be dependent in this way. I don’t envy you.
So what am I supposed to do, he shouted. His voice dropped. I’m sorry. His hand reached out to touch her arm before skidding away. She had a sudden image of him flying through the air with his children, high over the ocean, and wondered if there were times when he shouted at the children too. No insurance, she thought, this wasn’t good. I can’t believe the thing that’s happened, he said. It is so terrible, I think, if I go back, it won’t be true, it can’t be. When she glanced over, he was touching his knees with his fingertips, his thighs, the edges of his jacket. If I was there it wouldn’t have happened, if I had stayed, if I had not come away. If he fell, I would have saved him. He is, of all of them, he is —
You can’t think that.
But I do.
They passed the Welcome Port Hope sign, a trick, two places welling out of the dark, though Sara had no idea where Welcome was. An irradiating pair of halogen headlamps sped up from behind her, blinding her through the rear-view mirror before the car passed and became a pair of red taillights receding into the dark. Headlights flared from across the meridian, and the broken white line of the lane divider strobed up from the dark tarmac to either side, small flares glimpsed across his face, felt on hers.
She tried again: Would I have seen him, Yitbarek, perform in Copenhagen?
Raymond Renaud was silent, as if holding himself against all that churned through him. Yes, he said at last. You would notice him. He’s small but not the smallest. He is so alive when he moves. He does the act with the torches. He came to us in Dessie in the north. After a show he found me and he was so excited to show me what he can do. He was imitating the others, and even then you could see — he was so quick, so flexible, so daring, he just has so much natural talent. I said to his parents, You must let him come with me. You must let him do this. He is that good. I will make sure he stays in school and does all his schoolwork. I will look after him, I promise.
He clapped a hand over his mouth, bent forward against the seat belt, as if he were about to be sick.
Raymond, are you okay?
He started up again, eyes shining. I am responsible for them. Don’t you see? They are in my care. Everything has been so crazy, like a runaway horse. I am trying to hold on to the reins. When I get back, I will do everything for him, raise money for him, do all the rehabilitation, whatever it takes. I will tell them all,
he will walk again. We will all be stronger, we will come through this.
She looked down at the speedometer to find herself racing along at one hundred and forty, past the sign for the Big Apple, then the Big Apple itself, round and large as a house, the car shuddering only when she lifted her foot from the gas. Raymond seemed unaware of their speed. He sat back, palms pressed to his eyes, breath ragged, body shuddering a little, wildness charging through him, as if, left alone, he would have gone galloping through the night, and in his grief he reminded her of David, which made her heart move toward him. I’m doing my best to get you back as soon as I can.
Other moments surged up, out of the dark and those delirious hours of night driving. Somewhere between Brighton and Trenton, calmer now, a presence more felt than seen, he said, The year we were in Côte d’Ivoire, in Agboville, my mother and I, I was bitten by a snake. It was under a chair, outside, I reached for it. She was a nurse, but she did not know this snake or its venom or its antidote so she took me to an old woman who sucked the venom out. She says it was in a clinic, but I remember it as a hut and dark. It was not at the hospital where she worked. I know she was terrified. She thought she had brought me to this place and killed me.
Your father didn’t come with you?
They were having some trouble. He was often away. But she went back to him.
They met in Montreal?
He met my mother and my aunt. Angèle and Philomène. The Désir sisters. He had to choose. That is the story.
Accusation Page 5
