She took her bag from under her arm, opened it, and took out the book. It was an old, crudely produced, little book in paper wraps – the book she had slipped unknowingly into her bag that night. As she held it in her hand now, the room rippled for a second, like a painted scene. She sensed something moving just the other side of it. She could feel the stir of magic in the air, like the seductive scent of perfume.
Things hovered on the verge of visibility – all the former trappings of the room, the house, and its ghostly inhabitant. She could hear her name being called, the sound of footsteps in the shadows of the empty house as it slowly woke around her.
The book had turned brittle since it first found its way into her purse. In the beginning, she’d been tempted to slip it into a protective cover and place it among her collection. But each night it was in her possession, he had come to her in her dreams. She knew she must end it.
“Here,” she said to the empty room, to the pigeons pacing the shelves, to the shattered windows and the cold, leaf-choked fireplace. “I’m done with it. I want none of it. It’s yours. Do you hear me?”
And she tore the brittle pages into small pieces and let them flutter to the floor, where they shriveled, shrank, and crumbled into dust.
She heard footsteps coming slowly, steadily up the stairs. The door edged open – and O peeked her head around it. When she saw Emily standing dead still in the midst of the ruined room, she let out a shriek.
“Oh my God, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” she said, throwing her hand up to her chest.
“And you me,” said Emily.
“I’ve been calling and calling. You were gone so long, I got worried.” She looked around the room, glancing nervously up at the pigeons, at the shattered windows and the glass-strewn floor. “Maybe we should go now,” she said.
“Yes,” said Emily. “We should go.”
She took one last look around the room, then turned and followed O down the stairs.
39
The trouble with poets was that most of them happened to be crazy. Either they started out that way or they wound up that way in the end. It was what you might call an occupational hazard.
There were plenty of poets milling around the Green Man at that moment. Leonard Wellman had contacted several people from Emily’s past to let them know about this special meeting of the Tuesdays at the Green Man. It was something of an anniversary, and he had an important announcement to make.
Emily was holding court in the back room, the object of attention of all who entered. Friends and fellow poets she hadn’t seen in years had come. Gigi had kindly donated cookies for the occasion. O set them out on a tray, with a note reading Compliments of Gigi’s Patisserie and a pile of Gigi’s funky pink business cards alongside.
As O bustled around, setting up extra chairs and starting a second pot of coffee, her eyes kept drifting to the door. Despite the large turnout, there was no trace of the one person she really hoped would come. In honor of the occasion, she had agreed to read a couple of her poems, and she desperately wanted Rimbaud to be there to hear them.
Who knew where poems came from? In the end, they were a gift. All you could do was accept it with gratitude and carry it into the light as best you could. She was glad for what she’d been given and hoped she’d be given more. If nothing else, this incredible summer had taught her one thing – she was happiest at those times when words stirred inside her.
The Green Man was a place where extraordinary things happened. Not the least of those things had been meeting the mysterious stranger who had come into her life here. As she fingered the little amulet around her neck, she remembered what Isaac Steiner had said: it was a charm worn to ward off evil by invoking the names of guardian spirits.
In a way, that was what Rimbaud had been – her guardian spirit, watching over her in the night, catching her when she fell, rescuing her from danger. Well, she needed watching over now. So where was he?
Her eyes went to the door again. Night was falling, and the shop had begun to fill with shadows. She glanced over at Emily, who gave her a little nod to let her know they were ready to begin. That was her cue to go and lock the door. As she passed the poetry section, she imagined Rimbaud standing there, as she had seen him standing many times before. But he wasn’t there, nor was he at the door. She looked up and down the empty street, then closed the door and hung the PLEASE KNOCK FOR POETRY READING sign in the window.
She settled herself on a chair inside the entrance to the reading room, where she could keep an eye open for latecomers. Emily rang the little brass bell to call the meeting to order, then rose from her seat and went to the front to address the gathering.
“To begin with, I’d like to thank you all for coming. I’m very happy to be here with you. As some of you may already know, the past few months have been something of a trial by fire for our little group. And, as you can see, I have not escaped entirely unscathed.” She held up her bandaged arms, eliciting some quiet, uncomfortable laughter. “But I’m pleased to tell you tonight that those troubles appear to be over. My good friend and fellow poet Leonard Wellman has some exciting news he would like to share.”
Leonard came up and stood beside her. “Good evening. It’s great to see such a large turnout. I’m glad you could come. I think I echo everyone’s sentiments when I say how delighted I am that the Tuesdays have resumed. For a good many years now, these meetings have been a source of support and inspiration for poets young and old and for all who value poetry.
“As a young man fresh out of school with a passion for writing poetry, I can well remember feeling I was some freak of nature, alone in the world. The Tuesdays have shown me that we are not alone, or if we are, we are alone together.
“Some months back, when the continued existence of our little group seemed to hang in the balance, I approached the local arts council with a request for an operating grant. I’m pleased to announce tonight that the Caledon Arts Council has awarded us that grant. And so, for the foreseeable future at least, the wolf is no longer at the door. And the Tuesdays at the Green Man will go on.”
There was heartfelt applause. Leonard gave Emily a kiss on the cheek and returned to his seat. Emily smiled down at her hands in her shy way and waited for the applause to die down.
“It is somehow fitting that this wonderful news should come to us now,” she said. “For it was twenty-five years ago this month that Leonard and I and a small group of others initiated these readings. None of us at the time ever dreamt they would continue this long.
“Styles have changed over the years. Voices have changed. But many things remain the same. Writing is a lonely business, and writing poetry is perhaps the loneliest kind of writing. No one gets rich writing poetry. But that’s not the reason one does it.
“You write because you must – because, for whatever reason, you have fallen in love with words – with the taste of them on the tongue, the feel of them flowing through the pen, the sight of them on the page. And as long as this world retains its mystery and wonder, there will be those who continue to fall beneath the spell.
“I have grown old in this work, but the spirit leaps in me still. If we are to keep the spirit of poetry strong, there must be new voices to come and take up the task, poets who bring their youth, their passion, and their vision to this age-old craft. Poetry is many things, but above all else, it is the constantly renewed vision of hope. To that end, I am pleased to present to you tonight a young woman ready to take up the torch. I give you – Ophelia Endicott.”
Right up until Emily said her name, O had been searching the room for the young new voice Emily was going on about. Now, as applause filled the air and heads turned to her, she felt her heart pound and her cheeks burn. Gathering her manuscript from where she’d tucked it on a nearby shelf, she made her way to the stage. She set the sheets down on the podium and glanced nervously over the group.
“Thank you,” she said. “When I told my aunt I might read tonight, she failed to m
ention that she might call me up first. I’ll have to talk to her about that a little later. I have a couple of things I’d like to share with you. Both were written this summer and both, I suppose, are about poetry.”
She cleared her throat, took a deep breath, and began to read the “Garden Sculpture” poem. When she finished, she glanced apprehensively down at the audience. There was Emily, beaming up at her. Beside her, Leonard Wellman was giving her the thumbs-up sign. Miles was there as well, and beside him Gigi was sitting with Tiny from the Mind Spider – both, in their own way, poets themselves. For wherever something was done with grace and beauty, there was poetry.
Sitting sedately to the side was Isaac Steiner, who’d been such a help in the difficult weeks following the fire. He had witnessed with them the remarkable change that the carriage-house books had undergone during that time. The smell of mildew and damp that had seeped deep into them, and which nothing they did seemed able to remove, had mysteriously faded. Rippled pages had flattened, and the foxy brown spots that marred many of the books had disappeared. It was as though they’d been under a spell that had suddenly been lifted. Emily decided to donate several of the miraculously restored volumes to the university for Dr. Steiner’s research. She was adding the remainder to her private collection as a nest egg against whatever surprises the future might send her way.
The room was full, but there were guests the others couldn’t see. Tucked in a corner at the back, Mallarmé was smoking one of his delicate French cigarettes. Pound was stroking his beard and staring intently at the ceiling. Miss Dickinson was nestled quietly in the shadows, the whisper of a smile on her face.
O’s eye drifted to the doorway. And there stood Rimbaud, leaning against the door frame, looking at her through those dark heavy-lidded eyes of his. His hands were pushed deep into his pockets, and his hair was rumpled. He gave her that crooked little grin, and something inside her melted. Emily followed her gaze and saw him standing there too. She turned to O and gave her a nod to let her know they were waiting for her to read her second poem.
“Thank you very much,” said O. “Now the title of this next poem will, I’m sure, have a familiar ring to it. It’s called ‘The Green Man.’ ”
Up until then, she had been reading from the sheet, afraid the words would slip from her mind as she stood on the stage. But as she started up again now, she recited the poem purely from memory. The words came slow and sure. She lingered over each before she let it go. There were plenty of people in the room, but this was meant especially for one.
“When first I saw you
Suspended above the oblivious street,
Your weatherworn face, your words
Reduced to rusty squeaks,
Speech seemed something that eluded you.
The vines that spilled
From the margins of your mouth
Wound about you, bound you.
I longed to lop them away
And free you …”
In a week’s time, she’d be heading back home. She wanted Rimbaud to promise he’d write to her, send her gifts of poems on pale blue paper. She wanted to say she’d be back at the Green Man next summer and hoped he would be too. All she had for now were the words of the poem, but she sensed he could hear those other thoughts as clearly as if she’d whispered them in his ear.
“… It was only later I learned
You spoke in ways
I failed to understand.
I lacked the glossary for leaves
And branches, the lexicon for life
That roots itself in mystery
And reaches for the light.”
When she’d first arrived at the Green Man, she would never have imagined herself standing here, reading her work. But from the moment she stepped through the door, she’d sensed this was a place of magic. It had worked its magic on her. She was not the person she had been. She had joined the ranks of those crazy people who call themselves poets.
It was her business now to believe – in the power and beauty of words, in the spirits that move among us always, in the worlds of light and dark that neighbor us – to believe in the possibility of the impossible.
Outside the shop, the Green Man swayed in time to the words of the poem. The vines that sprang from his mouth curled and wound about his head. The carved leaves fluttered lightly in the breeze. One of the birds that sheltered among the branches opened its beak in song.
The End.
ALSO BY MICHAEL BEDARD
A Darker Magic
Redwork
Painted Devil
Stained Glass
William Blake: The Gates of Paradise
The Green Man Page 20
