by André Alexis
Colby was a drug dealer who seemed not to mind if people knew he dealt. He wasn’t casual about dealing, exactly, but at times it was as if he took pride in his accomplishment. You could see it in the way he treated the junkies who came to him. He was like a vampire who had affection for his prey. Tancred had heard him speaking to junkies pale as death warmed over as if he were their therapist, warning them about the effects of junk, advising them to return to their homes and loved ones.
Tancred assumed most of them took Colby’s advice for yet more humiliation, because his kindly advice in no way stopped Colby from being the usual monster: condescending, gouging, arrogant, refusing to give up a fleck of H or crack without being paid.
It was cruel to lecture junkies before exploiting them. It seemed to Tancred like cleaning the rust off pinching handcuffs while making sure their locks were still good.
Then there was Colby’s friend, Sigismund Luxemberg, whom everyone knew as ‘Freud.’ Luxemberg was another man fond of his own nickname. He hated to be called Sigismund, feeling that it made him sound foreign when he was, in fact, proud of his birthplace: Alexandra Park – the same projects Tancred grew up in, though Freud was of the next generation. He was twenty-two, six foot three, built like a bull, but he had a severely clubbed foot for which he wore a special black shoe, and walked with a limp. Tancred, who liked most people, could not stand Freud. Besides being sullen and prone to violence, Freud always made Tancred feel as if they had – he and Freud – unfinished business from their childhood, though Tancred scarcely remembered the young Freud, remembering, rather, Mrs. Luxemberg, her voice calling ‘Siggy’ home after school, her German accent.
For these reasons and perhaps deeper ones as well, Tancred was not pleased to find Colby waiting for him as he left his apartment. It was an afternoon, a day or two after Willow had asked him to steal her siblings’ mementos. As usual, Colby was wearing the fedora and sunglasses he wore year-round to protect himself from the sun.
– Tancred Palmieri! he said.
– It’s not nice to stalk people, said Tancred.
– I hear you, man. But I wanted to thank you.
Colby, in his early twenties, was a head shorter than Tancred. He was broad-shouldered with the build of a swimmer, his white eyelashes long. You could tell he was black, but his features were all slightly clouded by whiteness.
– You heading to Dufferin? he asked. I’ll walk with you. I want to thank you for buying coffee for Willow. Freud and I try to keep an eye out for her, but Willow’s a little difficult, eh?
Tancred said
– It sounds like you want to talk business, Errol, but we don’t have business together.
– But we’ve got things in common, Tan. That’s kind of like business. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to worry about Willow. I heard you bought her breakfast the other day and I thought, ‘That’s generous.’ But then I thought maybe you think she’s your responsibility and I want you to know that’s not true. We do a pretty good job taking care of her. How do you think a woman that dresses like Willow and wanders around high doesn’t get assaulted every day of the week?
– What do you want me to say? asked Tancred.
– Nothing! I don’t want to know anything. I was just wondering what did you and Willow talk about the other day?
– What is it, Errol? Do I look like a reporter?
– I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me, Tan. Maybe because we’ve never talked like this, man to man. I’ll be honest with you. Willow’s good for business. I’d hate to lose her and I like to keep an eye out for her.
They had reached Dufferin and King.
– I didn’t do anything for you, said Tancred. You don’t owe me anything.
– Well, I’m still grateful. Can I buy you lunch?
– No, said Tancred.
He crossed Dufferin, leaving Colby on his own.
The encounter with Colby made Tancred want to interfere in the man’s business, made him want to help Willow Azarian. For one thing, it was dangerous to let hustlers think they could intimidate you. Nothing good could come of it. But shortly after he spoke to Colby, he was encouraged to steal a number of Lamborghinis. And for a while, he was not often home.
Not that he stopped thinking about Willow or about Colby.
There was one stretch in particular: he’d driven one of the Lambos to Vancouver with Olivier and they’d taken the train back. It was the first time they’d spent so long together since they were children. Both of them missed Clémentine and their mood led to thoughtfulness. It was on the train ride home, for instance, that Ollie had confessed his enduring love for Eleanor Bronte, a classmate who’d died when they were in grade school. When Eleanor died, Ollie had ceased to believe in the importance of anything: money, fame, property. After Eleanor, nothing meant what it had meant while she was alive. So, the nine-year-old Ollie had become a nihilist. Not that he knew what nihilism was at the time. It was, rather, that a habit of mind, like a seed, took root in hospitable ground. He was a nihilist still. He was also good-humoured, good-natured and loyal. If you asked him why he was these things, given that he did not believe in anything, he’d answer that it was boring to be foul-tempered, unpleasant and disloyal. As he did not like to be bored, he was what he chose to be. Nothing had value beyond what he provisionally gave it, even life itself.
It was strange to think that the death of a nine-year-old girl had been so influential on his friend’s life. Stranger still to think that Eleanor’s death was at the heart of what Tancred found admirable in his friend. Though he did not believe in anything, Ollie chose to be who he was. He was loyalty and honour exemplified, and though Tancred could not follow his example – Ollie being eccentric – he’d have done anything for him.
As if he were having similar thoughts, Ollie had asked if he regretted being a thief.
– No, he’d answered.
But his own answer did not satisfy him and, his conscience very much on his mind, he spent hours talking to Ollie about why he stole. And what had it come down to? Why did he steal? It was a matter of talent. He was talented. Maybe, in the beginning, he’d wanted attention. Or maybe he’d wanted to rebel, resenting as he had his father’s refusal to acknowledge him. But those were all psychologists’ excuses, if they were excuses at all, and they were none of his business, because he could not see himself from that angle.
The difficult thing to express was the feeling of it. Though Ollie had helped him steal on a number of occasions, it was not the same. On his own, Ollie would never have stolen anything. He did not feel the exhilaration, the humiliation or even the wanting to be caught. Tancred did. He understood the emotions. But none of those feelings kept him at it. What did was the thrill of getting things right.
It all had to do, no doubt, with how he’d begun. At the age of eleven, Tancred had been taught to pick pockets by Malcolm Something-or-other, an Englishman, long gone but still the only one of his mother’s companions he’d ever liked. Malcolm had learned his trade when he was a boy in Northampton, and he’d made Tancred aware of things like tradition, telling him often about the ‘trade’ he was passing on.
– You’re not the first to do this, he’d say. Remember that.
Over the years it took him to master the art of stealing watches, wallets, passports and such, Tancred had found the idea of a ‘trade’ helpful. It gave him a sense of belonging. And as he moved on to breaking and entering and then to more targeted theft, the things that interested him most were rightness, doing work flawlessly, and tradition, doing work in the spirit Malcolm had passed on.
– If it’s a trade, Ollie asked, how will you know you’re good at it?
– When I’ve done it for as long as I want without being caught, he’d answered.
– Don’t tell me you don’t like the adrenalin, Tan.
Well, yes, that too.
As he thought about how calm he felt at the rush of adrenalin, Tancred abruptly recalled a photograph
he’d found when he broke into the home of a man whose Lambo he’d stolen. The keys to the car had been left on a kitchen counter, right there for the taking. Beside the keys, a picture of a man and a woman. There was no way of knowing if it was their car he’d taken, but the memory reminded him of Errol Colby. He’d felt contempt for the way Colby treated the junkies who came to him, his victims. But how was he, a thief, any better? He simply refused to acknowledge those he stole from, as if he were playing a game to which everyone knew the rules.
– But everyone does know the rules, Ollie said. Nothing’s permanent. You can’t take anything with you. Why worry about cars?
Tancred had thought this way himself at one time. It now felt too convenient.
– Because they choose to worry about them, Ollie, he said.
– Too bad for them, said Ollie
as the train moved past brush and skinny trees like it had something urgent on its mind.
The next time Tancred spoke to Willow was the very evening he returned from B.C. He’d got a boneless chicken curry with a ‘buss-up shut’ from Ali’s and he was walking home along Cowan. The street was its usual self: scruffy and untrustworthy at Queen, gradually more genteel as one walked toward the lake.
As he went by Masaryk Park – a patch of grass that sometimes had outpatients and junkies for decoration – he saw Willow sitting on the steps of St. John’s Cathedral. She was sitting alone, staring straight ahead. She did not acknowledge him. So, he’d decided to leave her to her reverie when she called his name.
– I thought you’d forgotten about me, she said.
Before he could explain his absence, she began to tell him about Oshun.
It was a strange non sequitur, but Tancred had been moved. It was not only that Willow remembered the portrait of Oshun in his living room or that talk of the goddess brought memories of his mother – a Christian who’d delighted in stories of the goddess. It was that Willow seemed to know a good deal about Oshun: myths, folklore and all. He himself knew little. So, he’d sat with her and listened – the two of them on the steps of the church as the sun set. They even shared his buss-up shut, though Willow ate so little that, in the end, there was more than enough for another meal.
She did not mention inheritances or the screen her father had left her. So, it occurred to Tancred that she’d forgotten about them. And who knows, perhaps she had. It’s always difficult to say what’s on a junkie’s mind, aside from junk. Yet here was one whose mind he could admire. Willow was brilliant, despite her sickness, despite her self-destruction.
He wondered why she had surrendered comfort and security for heroin.
– Why’d you start using? he asked.
Meaning: why would someone like you – wealthy, favoured, cultured – choose to live in such a terrible corner of hell? The answer was, naturally, complicated, but not so complicated that he could not understand.
4 A Task Accepted
The worst of it, when Willow was younger, was being told how fortunate she was, how thankful she should be, despite the death of her mother. She had been blessed with intelligence and beauty and wealth. She did realize, didn’t she, that she’d been blessed? And she would say ‘yes’ and bow her head and accept the condescending praise she got for her good manners. It was almost a relief to grow up thin, with a mild case of scoliosis that gave her body a slight but noticeably eccentric curve. She moved from the realm of the beautiful to that of the ‘elegant’ – a realm of fashion, education and silence, things she at least aspired to master.
From early childhood, Willow had felt herself judged, held to standards that had nothing to do with her. Her parents warned them that, because they had money, they would be treated differently, that people would have unspoken and, occasionally, strange expectations of them. Her siblings, each in his or her own way, managed to deal with the feeling on their own, but Willow found foreign substances helped best. She began drinking and smoking from the age of twelve. She was discreet, always, where alcohol was concerned. But there was no great need for discretion with cigarettes. Her father smoked and was only dutifully annoyed when he discovered his youngest was a smoker, too.
In those days, Willow’s most persistent habit was discretion. She found ways to hide her drinking and its effects. It was only when she drank heroic amounts that her intoxication was noticeable and, even then, she kept quiet and, mostly, to herself. Drink was not a means of losing her inhibitions. It was another way of being alone. It was joyless, but it did bring her relief from the feeling of being observed and, for the most part, it allowed her to function. She earned three doctorates while a drunk: Philosophy (summa cum laude with congratulations of the jury, École normale supérieure, 1976), Doctor of Letters (University of Tokyo, 1981), Comparative Literature (summa cum laude, Harvard, 1990). She was not alcoholic, not by her own measure. By her own measure, she was only a drunk – that is, someone who drank to pass out.
It was not until much later, back home and in her forties, that she discovered her drug of choice: heroin. This discovery was a surprise. The first time she’d tried it had been at Harvard. She had snorted it at some gathering or other and it had done nothing much for her, although, admittedly, it had not been as annoying as cocaine or meth, both of which tasted like laboratories felt. But the first time she shot it, heroin was like discovering that a legendary panacea actually existed. She’d loved it at once: the euphoria and its afterglow, the clean taste it left in the mind, the liberation from thoughts about looks, station, fears and neurosis. Yes, the things she loved – languages, philosophy – faded, too, but that was to be expected and, besides, it was tolerable to lose something when you gained such a pleasing alternative.
Willow could have remained a stay-at-home user. Her money allowed her that choice. Moreover, the first time she shot up had been with one of her mother’s friends, Mrs. Fraser, a woman in her seventies who only ever used at home.
Strange moment: she had visited Mrs. Fraser and had, as she did when she was being discreet, turned down an old and rare whisky, when Mrs. Fraser brought out a black leather pouch with what looked to be a gold zipper. In the pouch was all the woman’s paraphernalia: rubbing alcohol and cotton batten, sterile needles, a World War II naphtha lighter, a silver plunger, a silver spoon and long silk scarves to tie off an arm or leg. She was old-fashioned. She cooked her shots with citric acid. And she believed that silver, having medicinal properties, was good for her arthritis.
– I’m feeling a little flushed, Mrs. Fraser had said. I apologize for my manners. Would you like to join me?
Willow politely admitted that she had never shot heroin, though she had tried it.
– Oh, it’s not the same when you sniff it, dear, said Mrs. Fraser. Let me show you.
With little more fuss or nerves than if she’d been serving ginger snaps, though with more precision, Mrs. Fraser herself had prepared a shot for Willow, using a disposable needle and plunger she kept for guests.
The afternoon was odd, its pieces not quite consonant: Mrs. Fraser’s makeup – too much rouge, a skin-tone face powder that stopped at her neck so that paleness began at her neckline; the smell of an aggressively floral perfume; the way Mrs. Fraser’s hands shook as she prepared Willow’s needle; the feel of the living room – wall-to-wall white carpet, indigo-and-orange drapery, indigo sofa and armchair; an impression of pink or pinkishness; and then, while she was high, Mrs. Fraser’s talk of redecoration, a subject that seemed to come up again and again, though really, Mrs. Fraser must have mentioned something about wallpaper or throw rugs once or maybe twice and Willow’s mind had taken it in and held it so that, along with the ecstasy, there were thoughts about furniture.
Willow’s introduction to the ritual of shooting up was unusual, but only slightly. There were not many like Mrs. Fraser, it’s true. For one thing, few addicts – wealthy or otherwise – were as old, and very few old women were as open about their habit. Rarer still: those willing to share their paraphernalia and their heroin. It m
ade Willow wonder if Mrs. Fraser had recognized something in her. On the other hand, Rosedale, where she and Mrs. Fraser lived, had at least as many addicts as Parkdale. They were better sequestered, but if you were a member of ‘society,’ as Willow had been, you were bound to know one or two. Though she was grateful for the introduction to junk, Willow no more wanted to shoot up with Mrs. Fraser than she would have wanted to shoot up with her own mother.
For years, she shot up in her Rosedale home, alone and in private. Her habit grew, but her discretion was such that, she imagined, few knew of her addiction. In fact, her family did know she was an addict. What they did not know was the extent of her addiction. She was careful to be herself – an innocuous version of herself – in their company. So, her discretion was at least partially effective. At her father’s death, however, everything changed. Rosedale, her home, became a torment. All of it reminded her of him and she could not bear to be there – not even in her own house – when she was not high.
Which is where Errol Colby came in.
– No, we’re not close in that way, said Willow
answering a question Tancred had not even thought to ask.
Willow had never been much interested in sexual congress of any sort. This was not said as warning to Tancred or as an excuse for what some called her coldness. Her libido had been low long before junk squelched it. She supposed that she was heterosexual. When she was much younger, she had been aroused by men. She was not aroused, in that way, by women. At least, not that she knew of. But, given her lack of interest in sex, the thought of an emotionally hectic union – billing, cooing, pecking – filled her with indifference.
She had never been in love, but this thought in no way saddened her. On the contrary, Willow found it amusing that she had devoted so many years to the study of literature – novel after novel, poem after poem – devoted to the thing she had never known nor much desired: romantic love. This did not stop her from being curious about Tancred’s emotional life. On a couple of occasions, she’d asked if he’d ever been in love.
