Mr. Singh Among the Fugitives

by Stephen Henighan

  I told myself that if these days were depressing by comparison with those I had lived as a literary squire, they were far better than my years with my cousin. Then I had lost myself; now I had chosen to change who I was. Then I had been dependent, now I was independent. Then, celibacy had been imposed upon me … And now? Now I was waiting for Ric to tell me who he was.

  After work I wandered uphill out of Old Montreal until I reached René-Lévesque or Sainte-Catherine. I found my way to bars or clubs or a movie, or a café where I sat down and read. I had been in Montreal for less than a month when I walked past the mansion where I had spent my final joyful hours with Milly. It was boarded up. The club had closed and the old wooden house was falling into disrepair. It was gone, as my provisional beard was gone. I was no longer in drag; but who had my shaving exposed? I sat at bars on the eastern stretch of Sainte-Catherine, enjoying the closeness of other men’s bodies. Thoughts of Milly clustered like a barricade, preventing me from moving on. Chyou had vanished like my beard: she had been my lover and it had ended; but with Milly nothing had ever started, and for that reason nothing could finish. If I had been able to complete her separation agreement, that document that had thwarted me, would we still be teasing each other today? Would I have survived disbarment, or avoided it, to loiter longer in the gardens of loiterature? Or would Milly’s departure for Saskatchewan have drained away my protective moat, leaving me exposed and vulnerable to being dropped by television panels and charitable boards? The rumbling of these trains of thought through the tunnels of my mind carried me into a past I had abandoned, stymying my exploration of the life of Ric Singh.

  In my second year working at the tabloid, it happened. A press release crossed my desk: not local poets this time, but a reading sponsored by a major publisher, featuring writers who were famous. I began to type it into the “Literary” column on my screen. My fingers slipped on the keys as I realized that the first name was that of the bearded swashbuckler. The second name rang a distant bell. I closed my eyes and remembered the girl from the Annapolis Valley who, like me, had done favours to people who mattered. My reading of the newspapers in recent years, and particularly of the book sections, had informed me that her career was on the rise. Now, I saw, she had the same publisher as the swashbuckler, and read with him on an equal billing. Her record of service was immaculate, her upward trajectory unstoppable. I clenched my fists for a second, then leaned forward, preparing to save the entry. Only then did I see that the two writers were being introduced by the president of the University of South Saskatchewan, Dr. Millicent Crowe.

  I drew a tight breath. I typed Milly’s name into the entry and saved it. One of our scribblers later wrote two paragraphs on the swashbuckler and the girl from the Annapolis Valley. The reading became one of our three “Top Picks in the Arts” for that week.

  At the end of the work day, I went home to my flat. I did not want to leave my bedroom until Milly’s visit to Montreal was over. If I saw her, tough Ric would disintegrate, shattering into the fragments of a disgraced southwestern Ontario lawyer. Yet if I let this opportunity pass, when again would I have the chance to talk to her? The only thought that perturbed me more than not being able to settle into my life as Ric was the prospect of being merely Ric forever, of never recovering my vanished glory, of not knowing what had really happened between us. I should ignore this literary event, as I ignored so many others. I would not be the man I was now if I allowed spirits from an earlier incarnation of my soul to agitate and disturb me. Yet my anxieties bore me away. They would not allow me not to take a peek at my Milly.

  The event took place in a large conference room at the back of a five-star hotel. As I entered, glad of the darkness, I glanced at the long table and the brightly lit podium at the front. A voice hissed at me. My heart contracted: but it was not Milly, it was Miguel. I hesitated; tonight I wanted to be alone. Miguel stood up and waved. Seeing I had no choice, I sat down next to him. I thought of all that I could not explain to him; of how a certain R. U. Singh, attorney-at-law, did not belong with him but with the famous figures preparing to read and speak. Three years ago I would have been up there with them, my turban bobbing at the front of the room. Only the weight of Miguel’s hand on my shoulder prevented Ric from dissolving into R. U.

  A man who wore a garish purple tie got up to welcome us, recite a list of sponsors and remind us that books would be available for sale and signing.

  He introduced Milly. She walked to the podium in a white pantsuit, her billowing blond hair throwing into relief a stiffness in her stride that had not been there before. With the fading of her feminine fluidity, her slacks now lent her a mannish air. Milly, like me, had been melted down to a male essence. If the young men in the club could see her now, they would imagine that it was she, not I, who was in drag.

  “This lady is a big shot,” Miguel whispered, leaning close to me. “They say she’s going to be the next president of McGill.”

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Milly said, in her neutral, even, clearly articulated voice. It was her professional speaking voice, not the voice she used for private conversations; even so, it drove a spar of heat into my chest. “I’m going to start with a confession. I am a Fugitive. When I say that, people assume I am a political refugee—or a criminal.” She paused for the laughter, then went on: “Fugitive, for me at least, has a different meaning. I grew up in the old American South, partaking of a literary culture dominated by the ghosts of a school of critics that included my illustrious relative John Crowe Ransom.”

  I was outraged. Milly had broken our pact. She had drawn attention to the fact that she was not Canadian by birth, daring to place herself outside the circle within which she and I had danced. I groped to understand how, after the effort she had made to Canadianize her accent and antecedents, she could do such a thing. Was it the spirit of the post-Cold War era that freed her to embrace a heritage she used to renounce as a liability when it dripped from her husband’s every drawled word and exaggerated gesture? Her confident tone—when had Milly been less than confident? When had she done anything without having calculated the consequences?—allowed me to see that being a university president had made her impervious to the opinions of others. Her position had bestowed on her the prerogative of ignoring what Canadians thought. She was above the fray, as the masters at the Academy used to say in admiration of people who were superior to their peers, ensconced in the high-salaried establishment (I wondered how much a university president earned), oblivious to petty griping or assertions that she did not belong. Her talk, an introduction to the two writers and an essay on the value of art and the Arts, was also an advertisement for her own prominence. I suspected that Miguel was right. Dr. Millicent Crowe had come to Montreal to audition for an important job. Among the audience in this crowded theatre were movers and shakers who were in attendance not to hear the writers, but the woman who was introducing them.

  I stared at the stage with such intense concentration that I was oblivious to the warmth of Miguel’s palm on my thigh. Milly finished her speech, and bowed to acknowledge a round of spirited applause. The readings passed in a blur. The swashbuckler read in his muted, remotely English accent. His eyes darted, half-squinting at the crowd, in the same expression he used to send in my direction when spinning tall tales of the Orient by the fountain, seeming to fear I would expose his exaggerations. The young woman from the Annapolis Valley shook her blond curls and read with a passion that folded into self-absorption of a strain that the crowd found charming. Then the man in the purple tie was back on stage, exhorting the crowd to buy the writers’ books and have them signed. In an instant, huge queues had formed in front of both writers. Milly sat between them at the long table, smiling in satisfaction, as though each writer’s success were her creation.

  I got to my feet.

  “Are you going to buy—?”

  Ignoring Miguel, I walked to the front of the room and inserted my
self between the twin lines of book buyers. I strolled towards the table. Ahead of me, bathed in the lights, I saw Milly smile, then respond to a comment made by the swashbuckler as he signed a book. The man in the purple tie came up behind her. She reached up and shook hands with him over her shoulder. She made a comment to the young woman writer, then laid a hand on her shoulder. Her head turned and she looked forward again, taking in the writers’ twin lines of book-clutching admirers, the crowd that continued to mingle behind my back in the gloom. Her face was folded into a wide-mouthed smile whose familiarity drilled into me like no other facial expression on earth.

  I walked towards her. I felt as though I were approaching the Queen to be knighted, or the Governor General to receive the Order of Canada.

  No, not the Order of Canada.

  I would ask Milly why.

  I walked forward, step by step. Her smile dried up as she saw me coming. I glimpsed no warmth in her face, no recognition, only the wariness of the public figure managing the unruly crowd. Even though she was unfamiliar with my beardless face and turban-less crewcut crown, I felt certain that my gait, my carriage, would tell her instantly that her old, dear friend R. U. was paying her a visit.

  I placed my hands on the table and looked down into her face. “I am also a fugitive,” I said.

  “A fugitive, at least in my sense, is not a refugee.” She hadn’t recognized me. She was on automatic pilot, responding as one did to half-witted comments from the punters by repeating basic tenets of one’s talk. In doing this, she had given me my opening.

  “You think that just because I am brown I must be a refugee! That is racism. I am as Canadian as you are—”

  She looked terrified. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t suggesting—” She glanced over her shoulder as though to check whether the man in the purple tie had overheard the exchange. “I would never say that. You’ve misunderstood. I was speaking of the critical movement in the U.S. South—”

  “If you’re from the South, you must be a racist.” I could not resist pricking her with one more jibe. Then I laughed with all the gusto my chest could muster. Now, I thought, she would recognize me, in spite of my changed appearance. My laughter had been a constant feature of our friendship; along with the pattering of the rapids and her husband’s drawl, it had been the soundtrack of her village life. “You must not let me get the better of you, Milly. You and I were fellow fugitives for so long.” I stared down into her face. Her features had become motionless. “Come on, Milly. It’s your old friend R. U. Don’t you recognize me? Did you think I would disappear forever? This is Canada. Nobody goes away. Didn’t you tell me that was a reason to be cautious in my dealings with people? Because here in Canada people always come back?”

  “You’re talking gibberish,” she said, looking down at the table.

  “‘The United States and India are big enough for people to disappear into other lives. Canada is not.’ Well, you were right. Here I am. Remember the last time we were together in Montreal? How we sat in that gay club and planned our futures?”

  The young woman from Nova Scotia directed a worried look in my direction, then a questioning look at Milly. I addressed the young writer. “I was present, miss, when it was decided that you would become famous. We were all sitting at the oak table in Milly’s back garden, the fountain was on, and Milly said—”

  “You’re delusional!” Milly looked up into my face. For a brittle moment, our eyes met: eyes that had gleamed together in complicity, both in private and under bright lights. Now, rather than inviting my companionship, they deflected my gaze. Milly glanced at the swashbuckler. He kept his head down and continued signing. He was more Canadian than she.

  Milly’s mouth tightened. I sensed that she had reached a decision as to how she would address me. “You’re delusional, and I don’t know who you are.” She answered the young writer’s interrogating glance: “This nutcase has the crazy idea that he knows me.”

  “Nutcase!” I said. “How dare you!? I am R. U. Singh, the southwestern Ontario lawyer. Your neighbour for many years, who did you favours just as this young woman did.” I appealed to the young woman writer. “Have you heard, miss, of the southwestern Ontario lawyer R. U. Singh?”

  “Ric!” Miguel’s hand pawed at my sleeve. “What are you doing, man? You’re gonna get into trouble.”

  Milly smiled. “Ric! You’re suffering from delusions, Ric. You think you’re someone else.”

  The ruckus had caught the attention of the man in the purple tie. He approached Milly from behind, waving to figures in the wings. Milly cocked her head as though addressing an auditorium, though I could see that her words were directed at the young writer, and at her host. “You’re right that I had a friend named R. U. Singh. He ran into difficulties with his law career and moved back to India. You’re not R. U. Singh!”

  Her listeners looked assuaged. The man in the purple tie flicked a hand in my direction. Two tall young men in red blazers and black slacks broke through the queue of the swashbuckler’s fans and slipped behind me. Each one seized me just above the elbow with a grip that burned my flesh. “Monsieur, you leave now!” In his Québécois accent, “leave” sounded like “live.” You live now. Yes, I thought, I’m living, I’m still alive, however hard that bitch may try to kill me. I swore I would cease being Ric. I would return to Toronto, reassume my identity as R. U. Singh, disbarred southwestern Ontario lawyer, and denounce Milly. Yet even as they hauled me away, Miguel trailing in our wake like the embarrassed owner of an aggressive hound, I knew that no one in Toronto would heed me. The South Asian community groups, whose support I would need to take my case to the media, loathed me. Television and radio producers would flee from having me on their shows. It was hopeless. One never feels so hopeless as when one is being manhandled. As they hustled me back up the aisle between the two long lines of well-dressed people waiting to have their books signed, I shouted: “Why did you do it, Milly? Why did you complain about me to the Law Society? One day we were best friends and the next day you betrayed me!”

  The young woman from the Annapolis Valley had stopped signing. Her eyes were fixed on me in consternation. Milly paid no attention either to her or me. She had stood up and was shaking her head as she chatted with the man in the purple tie. That was the last time I saw her in person.

  A moment later I was out on the cold Montreal street. The bouncers waved their hands at me. “Stay away, Monsieur! Go home if you do not want more trouble.” Then, one lowered his voice: “Espèce de Tamoul!”

  I had been in Montreal long enough to know that the final words meant the bouncer had

  recognized me as East Indian, not West Indian. He was not being complimentary about this fact. Layers of my being crashed down on each other. I felt as vacant as the derelict club where Milly and I had communed for the last time. Before I knew what had happened, I had burst into tears.

  “Ric,” Miguel said, giving me a hug. “You lost it, man. You thought you were somebody else.”

  “I am somebody else.”

  “We’re never who we think we are, huh?” He clapped my shoulder. “Come on, man. Let’s go have a beer.”

  “It’s too late for a beer,” I sobbed. “If I have a beer now, I’ll cry all night.”

  He smiled. “Come to my place. I’ll stop your crying.”

  fifteen

  jude the obscure

  I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

  My rage roared on for days after my ejection from the hotel. I asked my boss if I could write an article for the tabloid. He gave me cautious assent, yet I was too angry and confused to put words on paper. All of my credentials, my degrees, the professional status I had flaunted, had melted away. There were no more B.A.s or M.A.s to summarize my life, merely the private designation Fugitive (failed). I had failed to become what Milly was. Yet, starting on the night of that last encounter, I began to become someone else. Late that
night, as Miguel inhabited me, I inhabited Ric as I never had before. I became the person I had chosen to be. The sting of Milly’s dismissal lingered for weeks, delaying my sloughing-off of the final leavings of the southwestern Ontario lawyer. Yet, as one skin peeled away, another grew. I continued to read gloomy fin de siècle fiction: Gissing; late, pessimistic Thomas Hardy; the socialist novels of Jack London. My days of Kim, burned by the Indian sun, meeting the woman in white, were over. But, though I was obscure, I did not suffer the fate of Jude. My mind caught the glimmer of possibilities, the bright lights of the twentieth century peeping over the horizon of the literature I read as my body cavorted towards the twenty-first century in a brotherly wrestling with Miguel. I realized that like the southwestern Ontario lawyer R. U. Singh, the Montreal journalist Ric Singh could have a career on his own terms. Indeed, Ric would be less dependent on others’ approval than R. U. had been. My loitering in literary gardens had given me a range of reference possessed by no one else in my office. Two years after joining the tabloid, I was promoted to deputy editor. From this position I would be able to jump to another publication, then another, until I was writing real journalism.

  I could not suppress all of my memories. I accepted that it would be unhealthy to do so. So, one day, I allowed a niggle of curiosity to become a quiver of action. In a momentary lull in the daily rush, I looked up the number of our sister tabloid in Saskatchewan. We shared content with other papers in the chain; now and then it fell to me to speak to editors elsewhere in the country. “Hello,” I said, with newshound gruffness. “This is Ric in Montreal. I’m fact-checking a story on the houses of university presidents across the country. What can you tell me about the residence of the president of the University of South Saskatchewan?”