Swann

by Carol Shields

  Jimroy curses Mary Swann’s silences and admits to himself, finally, that he’s disappointed in her. Some of this disappointment he shifts to her daughter, Frances; he has, after all, come to California hoping that their conversations might spring open an unconscious revelation, something that will expose the key to Swann’s genius. It hasn’t happened, he might as well admit it. Frances’s revelations, though she furrows her brow convincingly and bites her lower lip in concentration, are too detached for revelation. Her memory is opaque and lacks detail, and Jimroy can’t make up his mind about this; is it a personality defect, this bent for invisibility, or a daughterly reflection of the larger opaqueness that was Mary Swann’s life? She refuses to talk of her mother’s death, and Jimroy knows that it will be impossible to enter that life without understanding its final moment. Reticulated detail is what he needs, and that is being systematically denied. A single glimpse, and the poems would open out and become clear.

  On the other hand, he feels a perverse admiration for Frances, especially for the distance she has placed between the harsh, limited scene of her girlhood and her glowing sun-streaked California living-room. She has an aptitude for distance. She remains distant from Jimroy, too, after all these months still cool, still polite, never for a moment presuming friendship, closed in that patrician way Audrey could never master. The hand she holds out to be shaken, though its dryness is oddly intimate, is as exquisitely bent as for a royal handshake.

  And then, unexpectedly, one afternoon a week before Christmas, settled on the sofa in the dancing light, she violated this distance for the first time by saying, “You know, Mr. Jimroy, I’m a little surprised you’ve chosen a woman for a subject.”

  “Why is that?” he asked her. “We are living in the age of women.”

  “Well, it’s only —” she stopped, gave an awkward flick of her hand.

  “Only?” He fixed his glance on hers, waiting for a response, preparing himself for injury.

  “Well, only that you seem to be a man who isn’t, well —”

  “Yes?” He held his breath.

  “Well, a man who’s not … overly fond of women.”

  Jimroy’s eyes flew to the small curled fingers of a terracotta figure on the coffee table. Neither he nor Frances Moore spoke for a moment, and the silence grew so heavy it seemed to him to be turning into water. He felt a distinct sensation of drowning. His nose and throat and lungs were filling with water. He was afraid to open his mouth for fear of it spilling out.

  “I think —” he began.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve spoken out of turn,” Frances Moore said quickly. “It’s a bad habit of mine, spouting nonsense —”

  “If I’ve given you the impression —” He felt himself groping for balance. “If I’ve said anything that gave you the idea that —”

  “No, of course not. It’s nothing you said. Or did. It’s nothing at all. I was just being—well, frivolous. Please, forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing at all to forgive. It’s just that —” and to his horror he gave out a sort of snuffling laugh.

  “Can I warm up this tea, Mr. Jimroy? It’s gone stone cold.”

  “I —”

  “Surely you’d like a little more. I know I would. It’ll just take me half a minute to boil some more water.”

  “Well, yes.” He coughed hideously. Something seemed to have entered his throat and lodged there, an avocado pit, oily and dense. Indignation seized him, but indignation at whom?—at this graceful, smooth-haired California matron rising and lifting a pretty teapot from the table? Or with himself, his awful quagmire heart, his flapping hands.

  In a few minutes she was back with the teapot, and she had something else in her other hand, a little narrow jeweller’s box covered with blue velvet. “I thought you might want to see this,” she said.

  She opened the box. “It’s Ma’s Parker 51.”

  Jimroy made a suitable sound and asked if he might examine it.

  “It was sent to me after she died. I don’t know why, but the house agent thought I might want it, At any rate, when Ma was given this pen, it was quite something. What I mean is, in our part of the country it was unusual to own a pen like this. It was a gift, a birthday gift, just after the war, I think. Fountain pens were expected to last a lifetime in those days as you must know, and Ma always kept it in this box when she wasn’t using it.”

  “Was it from —?” He stopped himself in time. The biographer’s shameless silky greed.

  “She’d write her poems out in pencil and then copy them over in ink. Then she’d burn the pencil copies in the woodstove.”

  “Such a loss!” Jimroy had already heard this story of the burnt poems, but couldn’t stop himself from murmuring, “They would have been of great interest to scholars today —”

  “Well yes, but —”

  “First drafts are highly prized, almost —”

  “Yes, well —”

  He went on, relentlessly. “How wonderful it would be if one or two had survived.”

  “They didn’t, though.” She said this firmly and snapped the case shut. “I think that tea should be steeped now. You will have a little?”

  “Please.”

  “I’ll just get you a clean cup —”

  “Please don’t bother.”

  “It’s no bother,” she said, and excused herself.

  What he did next simply happened. He found his hand on the rounded velvet top of the box. Then he lifted the lid, marvelling at the strength of the spring. After all these years, to open so stiffly! It twinkled against the satin lining, a dark blue pen with a fine marbled finish. Then it was in his hand, then in the inside pocket of his new denim sports jacket. He closed the box and positioned it on the table between the bowl of wet flowers and the stack of magazines.

  Thief. Robber. He knew he was taking a shocking risk. Frances Moore would suspect him at once. Even if several weeks went by before she reopened the box, she would remember that he had been the last person to see it.

  But she would never believe him capable of common thievery, not Morton Jimroy, biographer, Distinguished Visitor. She had given him hours of hospitality, hours of her shared recollections. She had trusted him, and why not? A man of his reputation. He would never bring himself to abuse such a trust!

  She would search for the pen under the woven sofa cushions, run her hand across the patterned rug. She would ask herself if there had been a newspaper on the table and if she might have placed the pen on top of the paper and, later, tidying the room, thrown it out? In the end she might decide that that was what had happened, the only explanation.

  She would blame herself for her carelessness, berate herself—a thought that made Jimroy shiver a little with perverse pleasure. She would remember that she had been flustered; and now Jimroy was grateful for their awkward scene. Still, she might decide to question him directly. He would have to be prepared for that. Did he remember that afternoon she had shown him the Parker 51? Yes? Did he remember her replacing the pen in the case afterward? It seems to be lost, she would say mournfully, and he would exclaim, “What a pity!” Had she looked under the sofa, under the rug? Perhaps when she was tidying the table …

  He relaxed against the soft cushions and awaited his cup of tea. A sharp sigh, almost a whistle, escaped his lips, and his hand reached inside his jacket and touched the fountain pen. The pen of Mary Swann. The pen that had written:

  Ice is the final thief

  First cousin to larger grief.

  He would probably not be seeing Frances Moore again. There was nothing more she could tell him, she said, and she would be occupied in the days ahead with Christmas preparations, the return of her son from Princeton, the return of her husband from a lengthy lecture tour. And he himself would soon be off to Toronto for the Swann symposium.

  At the door they shook hands gravely. A tinted mirror on the foyer wall sent back a reflection of cordiality.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Jimroy,” Frances said, her
composure restored, her strong, finely veined hand extended.

  “Merry Christmas,” he returned, once again his extravagantly amiable self, and hurried down the flower-lined driveway, almost running. He imagined the wind rubbing the hair on his head and exposing spots of pinkness, a soft baby’s scalp. The smell of eucalyptus was in the air. Green, green, everywhere he looked it was green. He gave a queer little leap into the air as he rushed along his way.

  How extremely kind of Ian Lee and his wife, Elizabeth, to include him in their Christmas Eve festivities next door. A last-minute invitation to be sure, but his unpressed pants gave off, he hoped, a creditable air of self-forgetfulness, of social ease. We adore having you, Elizabeth Lee said, and planted a holiday kiss on his cheek. Would he mind helping mix the punch? Would he take the cheese tray around for her? Isn’t the tree a dream! Visitors from other parts of the country are always surprised that Californians have Christmas trees, aren’t they? Of course they cost the earth. Had he met the Gordens, the Kapletters? Yes, that was real holly, not the imitation stuff. Was he sure he wouldn’t like a little more to eat himself, one more plateful? Surely another glass of wine, Ian’s special wine, the one he only drags out for Christmas; it goes down like velvet. She was stunned by the news from Africa. This was a violent world. It seemed only yesterday that she and Ian had lighted a Christmas candle for Poland, though they’d both thought it a Reaganesque gesture, empty and theatrical; but, well, why not? Christmas was the time to be aware of others less fortunate, the time to be at peace. No one should be alone on Christmas Eve, didn’t he agree? Ah, yes, he did agree; emphatically. (The irony bit, but not deeply.) Yes, yes—his uxorious voice, coming on like corn syrup.

  And then he was home again. It was midnight, and he was heating himself some warm milk, hoping he would be able to sleep. There was such a weight of silence in the little house, such chilly stillness. He had slipped his old knitted vest on over his pyjamas (blessings on Mrs. Lynch) and happened to catch a glimpse of himself in the bedroom mirror. How shockingly like an old man he looked tonight. He was white-faced and thin, the wormy, rheumy, pink-eyed old gent of his nightmares, mouth dragging down, cheap pyjamas crushed around the collar and not very clean. He was only fifty-one, he reminded himself. Almost fifty-two actually. He looked again in the mirror. It must be a trick of the hour or perhaps the season. “Old,” he said noisily. “Old, old.” In the frame of the mirror he had stuck the Christmas cards he had received, six in number. One was from the moony, cheese-faced Rose Hindmarch in Nadeau, Ontario. A snow scene, hills, a barn, and a little boy pulling a sled.

  Old, old. He had drunk too much of Ian and Elizabeth’s wine. Well, why not, it was Christmas after all—as Elizabeth had remarked at least three times in that rather tedious hostessy voice of hers. (There it was, surfacing again, his caustic self, that sour maliciousness rearing up even on this night. Yes, but it was a regulated malice; he did practise abstentions, did hold back, aware, even if nobody else was, of that pool of unformed goodness at the bottom of his being. And poetry, thank the gods of poetry, without poetry what kind of monster would he have been?)

  Down, down his throat went the warm milk. Ah, better, much better. What was it Dr. Johnson had said about the power of warmed liquids?—something or other. He felt a surge of strength akin to munificence. Merry Christmas, cheery Christmas, glad tidings, the time when no one should be alone. His hand was already on the telephone, already dialling the magic digits that connected with Audrey’s mobile home (quel euphémisme!) in Sarasota. How amazing that he should know her number by heart. In the back of his brain he offered up congratulations. Not bad, Jimroy, a man of your years. You may lose valuable possessions and forget names, but the real juice is still running.

  Audrey’s telephone rang and rang. He checked the clock and calculated the time difference. She was probably too lost in sleep to hear the ringing of the phone, though he remembered that she had always been a light sleeper. Even the clicking of the electric blanket used to disturb her sleep). Audrey, Audrey, Audrey, dear Audrey. If he had been a little more patient, if his nature had been inclined toward … what? … instead of always belittling, accusing, haranguing, those thunderous verbs of incompatibility. If he had waited, been kinder, Audrey might be here now.

  He dialled her number again, and once more the phone rang and rang. He felt the old anger returning, damn her, but then the thought of her fuzzy corona of hair, her large kind hands. He would never be able to sleep now. He would be awake all night, shivering and staring into the mirror and listening to the sound of his own breath.

  And then, from nowhere, came the thought of Sarah Maloney, asleep in Chicago. He could get her number from the long-distance operator. Why not? It suddenly seemed the most important thing in the world to know what Sarah Maloney’s voice sounded like. He loved her, he loved her. He had every right to the sound of her voice. He was a lover, a fifty-one-year-old man, slightly drunk, with a slightly drunken heart that was reduced, through no fault of his own, to a shuddering valentine. Darling Sarah, beloved.

  No, it was a despicable thing to do, especially at this hour. It was worse than that: it was perverse. He went to the mirror again, peered at himself and said without mercy, “This is unspeakable.” He noted with interest that the colour had come back into his face. A sense of disgust refreshes the spirit, a fact that always inspires chills of uneasiness in Jimroy. That trembling of his hand, was that lasciviousness or was he only nervous? Nerves, he decided, congratulating himself yet again. How troublesome but indispensable the body is.

  On his first attempt the lines to Chicago were busy. Of course, it was Christmas; of course the lines would be busy on this night of all nights. Families and friends calling each other from every part of the country; lovers, husbands, wives, children, even the most wayward of them reaching out for affection. He could picture them all in their millions, standing in shadowy hallways, dialling into the darkness with faces that were composed and hopeful. What a wonder it was, the bond that joined human beings. An act of faith, really, faith over reason. Over bodily substance.

  The second time he dialled, the call went straight through. On the third ring he heard the phone being lifted. A woman’s voice—it could have come from the next room—was saying, “Hello? Hello? Who is this please? Hello.”

  Enough. Quietly, happily, he replaced the receiver.

  Unspeakable. Unpardonable.

  And yet, in the fresh morning sunlight it seems to Jimroy entirely harmless. What damage has he actually done, and whom has he hurt? He has never understood the science of casuistry, its fierce labours and silly conclusions.

  There he is, sitting in the Flanners’ backyard feeling ruddy and healthy. He has risen early, a smallish act of atonement, then eaten a bowl of instant oatmeal and drunk a mug of hot coffee, and now, with one of his Winnipeg cardigans buttoned up to his chin and a pair of warm socks inside his sandals, he is working on his book in the quiet of the garden. Christmas morning. I saw three ships … He breathes deeply, offers up an earnest prayer to the blue sky. Astonishing, that blueness. The flowers and weeds around him have coarsened with new growth, and the trees have a fresh lettucey look—how absurd, how delightful that growth should continue even in the month of December.

  He is going over some notes covering Mary Swann’s middle period (1940–1955) and making a few additions and notations with a freshly sharpened pencil. It is highly probable that Swann read Jane Austen during this period because …

  The sun climbs gradually and warms the backs of his shoulders. By noon he is able to unbutton his cardigan and fold it over the back of his chair.

  He hears a sharp rapping and looks up. It’s Elizabeth Lee next door, waving at him from an upstairs window. A moment later Ian appears, a muzzy bulk behind her, and they both wave. It seems to Jimroy that they are mouthing something at him. Merry Christmas? Yes.

  He knows what they’re thinking. There sits Jimroy. Alone. Working, and on Christmas Day. Actually working. S
ad. Pathetic. That life should come to this. Later they will embrace—already Ian’s hand is on Elizabeth’s breast, or so it appears from this distance. They have each other, their erotic transports, but poor Jimroy loves no one and must do without the solace of Christmas Day sex and domesticity—poor sad Jimroy.

  Ah, but how mistaken they are. How he would like to tell them of his happiness. But the condition embarrasses him; he would never be able to describe it. Even if he could they would never believe him, thinking instead: Jimroy’s being brave, one of your hard-bitten Canadian stoics.

  This is happiness, he wants to tell them, these scrawled notes, these delicate tangled footnotes, which, with a little more work, a few more weeks, will evolve into numbered poems of logic and order and illumination. The disjointed paragraphs he is writing are pushing toward that epic wholeness that is a human life, gold socketed into gold. True, it will never be perfect. There are gaps, as in every life, accidents of silence and misinterpretation and the frantic scrollwork of artifice, but also a seductive randomness that confers truth. And mystery, too, of course. Impenetrable, ineffable mystery.

  Jimroy believes, or is beginning to believe, that the intervening mysteries compensate for the long haul between birth and death, bringing into balance early deprivation and enhancing the dullness of stretched-out days and nights. Always authenticity is registered by the inexplicable. He thinks gratefully of the kilted stranger with his—what was it?—his sporran, who sat by his side and reached, albeit feebly, for his friendship. He thinks, warmly now, of the return of his luggage by the airline. Of the lost photograph he will surely stumble upon tomorrow or the next day. Of these fragrant West Coast roses, budding, blooming, replacing themselves without complaint. Of the healing perplexity and substance of Sarah Maloney’s voice. Of the small solid fact of the fountain pen that Mary Swann, poet extraordinary, once held in her human hand, and that now rests uniquely beneath his cotton socks in a bureau drawer in the state of California, amazing, amazing; he is skewered with joy.