“I can tell you where it is,” my Western counterpart replied. “It’s been in the same house for decades. Now that you mention it, there’s been a pile of work out there recently. The new prez is some big shot from the East. She’s having the place renovated.”
“Can you tell me whether she’s having a fountain built in the back garden?”
“A fountain? Are you serious?”
“It’s a detail I’m trying to verify.” I heard a catch in my voice.
“A fountain on the prairies! That would be a new one. I can’t say. Maybe I should send somebody out to take a look at the renovations. There could be a story there. Do you want me to get back to you about the fountain?”
“No,” I said. A chill had settled between my shoulder blades. “I’ll cut that part.”
I had lapses such as these, yet I grew more confident in my life. I was no longer the passive fellow who had sat in his flat above the rapids and waited for others to do him favours. I told the left-armed fast bowler that I had decided to pursue the journalistic, rather than the legal, thread of my career, and that it had led me to Montreal. I gave him to believe that my passion for the bodies of white women coursed on unabated. If I wished to receive a share of my father’s estate—the reduced share of a fifth son—I could not allow the fast bowler to suspect that the aspersions cast on me at the Academy had borne fruit on another continent. He must not know that I spent my evenings on the eastern stretch of Sainte-Catherine and my nights in the arms not of white women, but of a man who was nearly as brown as we were. I could not reveal that I went out to brunch on Sundays with groups of men who exchanged gossip about the lives and feelings of other men. I shared with my eldest brother the news that I had discovered an island chain in the Caribbean where I took a holiday every year. I did not tell him that the purpose of my visits was to consolidate the masquerade that I had been born in that place.
The tabloid’s editor left, lured away by a corporate in-house magazine. I took over his job on an interim basis. Management put me on probation. Three months from now I might be confirmed as editor; even if I wasn’t, the experience would stand me in good stead. The paper’s layout and organization was my responsibility. I tilted the coverage more towards the arts and international news. I decided which stories ran, and on which pages. One day the new deputy editor sent me a story from Canadian Press. “It’s too crazy to run,” he said, coming over to my desk, “but you might get a laugh out of it.”
I looked at my screen and froze. A photograph of Milly appeared: Milly hunched and glowering, her pale suit accentuating the sickly pallor of her face, as she was escorted out of a boardroom by men in suits who gripped her arms as securely as the bouncers had seized mine.
The President of the University of South Saskatchewan has been dismissed for misappropriation of funds. Dr. Millicent Crowe was removed from a meeting of the university’s board of governors on Monday after a local newspaper revealed that she had drawn on an internal budget to refurbish the president’s official residence. Among the extravagances attributed to Dr. Crowe was the importation of marble from Carrara, Italy to construct a fountain in the backyard … Dr. Crowe, an American, was said to have alienated senior administration and the board of governors with her aggressive style.
Fugitive (Failed).
“You see that?” the deputy editor said. “An Italian fountain in Saskatchewan! What a laugh.”
I closed my eyes, imagining long afternoon conversations with good wine and illustrious company. I could do Milly a favour, in my small way, by burying this story.
“Maybe on the back page?” my deputy said. “Just for kicks? Or do you want to forget about it?”
“No,” I said, “if it bleeds it leads. I want that photograph at the top of the front page, and the story right below it.”
He looked startled.
“You heard what I said. This woman almost became president of McGill. The end of her career is big news.”
Later, consumers of mainstream media would learn that Montreal journalist Ric Singh had helped to break this story. In doing so, as I alone knew, he had relinquished his allegiance to fugitives. I went back to work, untroubled by any life prior to my present.
acknowledgements
I thank Linda Leith for giving Mr. Singh a home and Katia Grubisic for editing the manuscript with just the right ear. I’m grateful to my stepfather, Robin MacDonald, for his extensive comments on an early draft of this novel, as well as for several decades of conversation about Victorian novels.
also by stephen henighan
Novels
Other Americas
The Places Where Names Vanish
The Streets of Winter
The Path of the Jaguar
Short Story Collections
Nights in the Yungas
North of Tourism
A Grave in the Air
Non-Fiction
Assuming the Light: The Parisian Literary Apprenticeship of Miguel Ángel Asturias
When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing
Lost Province: Adventures in a Moldovan Family
A Report on the Afterlife of Culture
A Green Reef: The Impact of Climate Change
Sandino’s Nation: Ernesto Cardenal and Sergio Ramírez Writing Nicaragua, 1940-2012.
Mr. Singh Among the Fugitives Page 13
