by Rana Bose
Without any prodding, she immediately started to chat. “That painting. Did you notice the sparkle in it?”
I said that I had, of course.
“Well, it’s one of those things. You know what I mean? Very subtle. You wanna talk about it?” She sipped her coffee and raised her eyebrows. She spoke like a bougainvillea plant would. Sprightly petals and wilted leaves. Reticent and sensitive with thorn on the branches. She took another sip. “Once I noticed that, too, you know, so I asked him what was in the paint. And he said ‘diamonds, my dear, diamonds,’ in an off-handed way, but then he obviously regretted having said it because he added he was just kidding.”
Diamond dust! And that’s why he didn’t have any lights shining on it. It made it too obvious. She looked into my eyes and I could see she was searching for some recognition.
The snow seemed to have a life of its own. Her eyebrows had lifted and her mouth was partly opened. For a moment, I felt the flakes coming down my entire body, condensing into droplets of moisture that flowed down ridges in my torso.
“I knew you had noticed. You can tell when a person’s got it.” Her confidence had returned. She asserted that the doctor was a strange man. That he hauled her into his office after I had left and gave her the third degree. She was scolded for mentioning the painting! She confirmed she was still there when I went back. You know!
I enjoyed her gathering energy. I told her I heard her protesting. I knew something was wrong and I didn’t like it. But I had no reason to stay. To be honest, I told her, I was upset she hadn’t shown up to have coffee as she had agreed. “I’m glad to meet you again after so many months.”
“Same here! Same here!” She put her palm on the back of my hand and looked at me again with questioning eyes. “You thought I was an idiot, right? Like the way I just walked away from a promise. I was mad, ready to quit on him. You don’t think I’m an idiot, do you? By the way, my name is Myra, Myra Banks.”
“I’m Chuck,” I replied, putting my other hand on top of hers. It felt warm.
She told me that he had given her the pink slip when she went to work the next day.
“Arse-hole! But I wanted to quit anyway.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I was partly responsible.”
“Oh! It’s nothing. Life goes on.” She was silent for a while, looking out at the cars and the people in the street.
I asked if she remembered the name of the artist. I was trying to get her attention.
“Yes. She signs L. St-Onge. Her first name was Linda. She was his wife. She died in a plane crash in Trois-Pistoles while he was having an affair with a lady he later married. I guess that’s another story.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked out to the street again, looked back at me and then got up and said, “Gotta go. Got an audition and then classes.”
She thanked me for the coffee and left like a gust of wind. I never got to ask her what audition, what classes? I saw her cross the street briskly with her head down.
The next day I remembered her lips teasing the edge of the coffee cup. I remembered, too, her legs as she crossed the street. I saw them as the choreographed footwork of a dancer on a darkened stage, a follow spot trained from the hips down to the arched heels. I saw again the rip in her stockings, and behind it all, diffused and sparkling, the snow fell gradually.
Even though I had originally been irritated at her masticating, casual persona, a change had now taken place. Removed from the receptionist’s desk, she seemed distressed, less snappy and cocksure. A withdrawn distraction seemed to glow in her eyes.
I took to parking myself in the same café where we had met, taking the same seat beside the same window. It was like I was on a cliff top overlooking an undulating valley. My insides groaned and knocked around like the clanging of a lonesome broken gate on a windy promontory. Trois-Pistoles. I waited. Would she sneak in from behind and put her arm on my shoulder? Would she sit next to me as I quietly added to my diary?
My expectations had been founded on a single chance encounter. I realized I needed to discuss this with Nat, or perhaps his mother—and, if necessary, my grandfather. The plane crash story was way too much to keep concealed.
Chapter Four
Broken China
After hearing the Trois-Pistoles story, I felt unnervingly implicated, intrinsically culpable. It was the kind of story that triggers benign fidgety violence. I kept pumping staples into the air, and into the window next to my desk with a desktop stapler. The anxiousness of expecting an unbearable outcome, that could be both life-changing and yet tear things apart. I went to the courier company for several weeks somewhat bothered. I was unable and incapable of figuring out where I had previously run into the name Trois-Pistoles before.
On a Wednesday morning, a grey Mercedes-Benz pulled up and parked itself outside my office window. The driver left the car running as he walked across to an adjoining office. There was nothing to it, except the Benz kept idling outside, the clanging of its diesel engine penetrating through the glass. I looked at it a few times and was convinced that I was remembering a scene from a haunting film from the past that was re-enacting itself again. In that film or an advertisement, perhaps, a woman had jumped out after parking a Mercedes on a hilltop on a foggy morning. She clutched her coat while she held onto a box and the wind blew her hair into long curls. She dropped the box into a hole and started kicking dirt into it, with her high heels, to cover it up. Cover-up. The box.
Then this man at my courier office returned to the car and suddenly, everything came back to me. Like a detonation. I knew where I had run into Trois-Pistoles.
Several years ago, a lady wearing a rather outsized pair of dark glasses, a long parka-style coat, and a long necklace bouncing against her soft contoured chest had walked in after parking her Mercedes. I remembered the diesel engine idling outside then, too. She came saying she had a package to be delivered to a town in the Bas-St-Laurent, the region located along the south shore of the river east of Quebec City. I was an apprentice at the time, learning the trade, anxious to please. I remembered her being cautious as she carefully put the package on the counter, and yet in a terrible hurry as she filled out the waybill. She insisted it be put on the flight the next morning. Trois-Pistoles!
“And not on any other,” she distinctly said. “I need it to get there tomorrow morning. Okay?” Said with Teutonic belligerence.
I told her I understood the urgency and assured her it would be on the right flight. Without exception. Besides, there was only one flight each day to Rivière-du-Loup, the airport closest to the town of Trois-Pistoles, where the package was addressed.
She kept looking at her Mercedes-Benz, which she had left running, as if drawing strength from the sound of its presence. And then she left.
The next morning, I rifled through the archives at the back for the waybill slips from years ago. I eventually confirmed that, indeed, on June 16 of 1998, I had sent a package to be delivered to Trois-Pistoles on the next day’s flight. Je suis complice. I stepped out and was confronted by a swift slap to the face. The howling wind ensured that I understood that.
I made my way to the Sherbrooke Street city library, shivering in the spring haze. When I crossed the six lanes on Sherbrooke, I felt I had walked over water, hot coal, ice, and a mudslide that kept sucking at my feet like I would never make it across. The pedestrian sign still said there were fifteen seconds left and yet every step swallowed up many more seconds than I thought it should. I found the newspapers for that day and the following week and looked through them with fingers that quaked on their own. I discovered from the June 19 news report that not only had Linda St-Onge died in an airplane crash two days prior, but that her body, as well as those of the two pilots and others in the plane had not been recovered. Not a trace, not a memory, not a protest, not a poem, nor an insurrection had happened. Elimination with extreme prejud
ice. Obliteration.
There were unverified reports that local villagers had heard a sound and seen the plane on fire. The RCMP had taken up the case.
As I continued the research, I learned that the case was very quickly closed shut, cold. Eventually I discovered a short summary of a final report that suggested that the plane had been caught in a freak crosswind which flipped it over prior to its descent into the water. While some parts of the plane had been retrieved, the exact cause of the crash would probably never be known.
At the end of that week of anxiety and regret, I decided to revisit the sombre Dr. Roberge. On arriving at his office, walking as if again in pain, I was told that he had recently sold the practice to a younger doctor. I acted shocked by the news and asked the receptionist where the good man could be found, as I truly appreciated the help he had been to me. She immediately suggested that I see the new chiropractor. I sighed and said I would think it over and asked again where Dr. Roberge might be.
“In the Bahamas,” she answered. “He and his wife moved there. It’s not as if they don’t have the money.”
“He got married?” I exclaimed.
“Years ago,” she laughed at my foolish query. “To one of the Gabriel-Jacops.”
“Ah,” I said, as if the name meant something to me. “Gabriel-Jacops. Of course, I knew that.”
“Good-day, Mr. Bhatt. Should your pain continue, do consider the services of the new doctor.” My pain? Right! My pain.
I looked at her compounded face with its professional demeanour. She did not chew gum, nor talk incessantly on the phone, nor ignore her client. She showed, I thought, an annoying lack of tempestuousness. I was comparing.
A newspaper from the Bas-St-Laurent stated that the Jacops Foundation had sponsored a show in Montreal of the works of Linda St-Onge in which she had integrated diamond powder paste donated by the same foundation. The paintings, completed in her Trois-Pistoles studio, had been auctioned off and fetched a handsome sum for several charitable donations.
The unplanned encounter between the rich divorcée and the sophisticated chiropractor in a vernissage under helium lights, the casual greetings and exchanges of smiles at a black tie gathering organized for charity, the problems expressed about a strained pampered lumbar, the appointment made to try to fix the problem, the strong hands in the right place. To fix the problem. When had Linda actually found out?
I went back to the archives and again sorted through the waybills. The name of that lady in the Mercedes-Benz was Mary Salvaggio. Of course, not the name I had expected. But, of course. Nor had there been any closed-circuit security TV at the time of the transaction. She had stated in the form that the contents of the package were dried flowers. I made photocopies of all the evidence I had.
I found him standing near the front of the gates to his father’s business, his head to one side, his shirt hanging below his denim jacket. The new street lamps on St-Laurent silhouetted him like a character out of The Big Combo. Noire gem. The temperature had fallen. Steam rising from the manholes added greyness. The lamplight bounced off the steam as it moved away in a slow drift towards the south. Nat looked down at the pavement, a cigarette hanging loose from his lips.
He didn’t look good. His father—and his father before him—had been running the Meeropol tombstone business for over a hundred years. It was situated squat in the centre of the Main. Two weeks prior, Mr. Meeropol had gripped his chest and slowly collapsed on the pavement. For a while no one had noticed, because there was a car right in front of him and hardly anyone was on the sidewalk. By the time an ambulance was called, he was long gone. Nat Meeropol was informed while he was in New York waiting for an audition for a role in a movie. He rushed back immediately to Montreal, and for the first time in his life, became directly involved in the family business.
We had gone to school together at West End High and had never fallen out of touch. He’d come to my parents’ downtown apartment and my grandfather, who was into names, jokingly referred to him as Nathuram, Mahatma Gandhi’s killer. I’m not sure that went down too well with Nat when I explained to him that Nathuram Godse belonged to the Nazi-like extremist Hindu nationalist party at the time of the great partition of India. Nat, in turn, took jabs at my grandfather by calling him Biswas for no reason at all other than it being the only Indian name he could remember, having once read Naipaul.
Nat travelled to New York to improve his chances as an actor, but returned to Montreal as often as he left. Every time he came back we’d sit at a St-Laurent deli and devour a mountain of smoked meat on thin slices of rye. He’d be wiping mustard from his chin and complaining loudly about “outertowners,” meaning folks from the suburbs who lined up noisily on the weekends as if on some cultural outing. Nat provoked people for no reason or at the slightest pretext. I’d control him as best I could, and then we’d walk up to a coffee shop to watch the people go by. He was exuberant, charming, and a roughneck and brawler when required. Hands and feet synchronized in style as he amused folks with cool greetings, a slap of the hands, a fist to the chest, and an exaggerated bow. All the establishments knew him. Some called him “Hollywood” but never to his face. I knew, because they’d refer to him as “Yer buddy, Mr. Hollywood,” when I was on my own.
That was the pattern of our lives, summer and winter. The transitional seasons went by unnoticed, undocumented. But, I took notes.
When I saw him standing in front of the Meeropol Monument factory, I sensed the down in that sulking air. His eyes were red and he looked sideways when I called out from across the street. There were a bunch of fancy cars in front of an upscale restaurant, and he was looking bitterly at the valets who were getting into one car after another. They must have seen his father collapse but hadn’t bothered. With their shades and white suits on, they had slid into car after car to drive them away to a parking lot on St-Dominique. Folks doing their job, like it was the most serious profession in the world. Yet on the sidewalk an old man, known to everyone in the neighbourhood, lay dying. I walked across and put my hands on his shoulders and he was a bit startled.
“Yo! Let’s go for a drink, man!” he said, like I needed sympathy. We went to the Las Palmas. In the lighting that hung down over Boulevard St-Laurent his slouched walk accentuated his hurt. A fog hung low over the street.
“Remember the last time we were here and Martha Parizeau was there?” I said to distract him. Martha was a well-known dance critic, past her prime. She worked for one of the smaller tabloids.
“Yeah! That kurva! I don’t see her writing much these days. Waz-up with her? She still around?” He seemed a bit more energized as he took a long slurp from his tall glass. La Fin Du Monde.
“You know, she had a daughter who tried acting for a while. You know where she is?” I knew he had known her.
“Yeah! Yeah! Sweet tight bitch!” He seemed to remember. His shoulders were rounded and he narrowed his eyes and pointed his fingers at me. He was remembering. He never took notes. He remembered. “Martha Parizeau was married to Gerry Banks, a broker. They had a cottage in the townships. But one of them was having fun on the fly and they broke up. So, the broker broke up! Hah! Hah! That was the last time she had a regular fuck. No fun since. She was never happy with any of the shows she reviewed. She trashed everything. Everyone was below her. She had trained with Merce Cunningham years ago. That was her only claim to whatever. Her daughter was Myra. Yeah, Myra Banks. Think she wanted to become an actor.”
He said actorrrr in a derisive manner. I was annoyed.
“Ain’t seen her in a while. Last time was in a St-Denis studio. Heard she worked as a clerk somewhere on the side and sometimes she just walks around in a daze. You know what I mean? Ah-hah! She’d be doing the gutter glitter and no one would know, man. She’s goooouud.” Slow, curled up consonants.
“Actually, she was working at the front desk of the chiro you sent me to, just there across the street.
That’s where I met her. Just so you know. And then she got fired, I think. She did seem a bit distracted.” I looked curtly at him in the eye.
“No kidding! Oh! Yeah? How’d you know she was Martha’s daughter?”
“You told me, Mr. Meeropol, when I mentioned her last time. You said she was strange.”
“Oh! Did I? She and Martha didn’t get along. Poor thing. She is cute, ya know!”
“Weird! Here’s her mum, all stand-offish and super critical, no sex you say, and her kid goes all out?” I was probing him.
“Hold on! I didn’t say she went all out, Chuck. That’s not what I said. Maybe it’s not the way it seems on the surface.” He said this with great emphasis. “Like, I think she’s had a plan to be an actor. She even tried singing. She dances well. Only sometimes she gets into a screwed-up mood; maybe walks around kind of lost and folks think she’s turning tricks. But she’s no hooker.” I liked these sudden orbiting introspections in him. He hovered and then landed.
“I didn’t say she was. Have you seen her lately?”
“Like my old man, you know. He never went out of his way to hustle for business. Folks came to him. You do what is natural. Know what I mean? She does what comes natural to her. And she don’t care what the hood thinks. And that’s pretty cool with me.”
I hadn’t been successful. I thought he was going to chat about his dad now. But he didn’t.
“Yeah, actually she’s quite a pleasant chick. Definitely friendly.” He continued talking about her and I wanted to listen. I needed to hear what he had to say. My distraction was widespread and growing. I wanted to find Myra. Bring her in. I needed her badly inside my head. There was a life force in her that surrounded me like cool water in a brook in a mountain pass somewhere in Armenia, or in the Caucuses, in Turkey on the Bosporus, or maybe in Kashmir or Azerbaijan, some distant place I had never been. My mind flapped its wings, like a gull careening from side to side, diving, swooping, and skimming the surface of water and earth as I tried to call her to me, but I couldn’t bring her in. She flew by.
