Leonara's Passion

Sunlight streamed through the slats of the blind, throwing fingers of light over the bed. Motes of dust shifted lazily through the streams of light. He stirred beside her; moaned lightly in his sleep. She strained to hear; was that someone's name? That most intrusive of curiosities, wanting to know, in a careless kind of way, the most intimate of another's needs.

She had been awake since dawn, studying him. To look at him like that, unaware, with no protective devices in place. Smooth cheeks, no blemishes, like a girl's. Hair tumbling in chestnut loops over his forehead, his ears. Vulnerable. That pleased her, the thought of his seeming vulnerability.

She felt tempted to bring her hand up, stroke the marbled shoulder closest to her. Instead, she brought her hand up to stroke her left breast, lingeringly. Her hand travelled with an impetus of its own to her face, then traced the scar on her cheekbone.

She turned again in his direction, was startled to see him watching her. She smiled and stretched, deliberately provocative, voluptuously. His face remained impassive yet strangely searching, wanting something of her.

He threw the light covering off and rose, walked toward the window, wordlessly. Stood there looking out, back turned to her. Like Donatello's 'David', she mused. Well formed but light, almost feline. Of course it was Michelangelo's 'David' that she preferred. As an art object, that is. As a sex object she preferred the artless helplessness of the perpetual adolescent. Eternal mother, warm and ready to receive - not nurture, receive.

All-embracing in a discriminating kind of way. Everywhere her venue. Belonging to no one and everyone. Like public property with a private lease. And this way, she mused with familiar satisfaction, life was less of a bloody bore. She needed these distractions as a release from business tension, as a cathartic outlet. And why bloody-well not?

She straightened up and shifted to her back to clasp her hands around the back of her neck, stare up at the ceiling, review her schedule. This would be a day of decisions. She had to draw up the season's calendar of public events. A Harold Brown retrospective for certain. He was currently enjoying a renaissance of public interest, might as well cash in on it. And what about a special showing of French impressionist pen-and-ink drawings? Could think of inviting the French ambassador to open the exhibition at a gala reception. Have to check the budget, think about the wine list. Talk to Sara about bringing over Jackson's exquisite mushroom drawings. She could mount that exhibition in much the same manner as the National Gallery, using excerpts from his diary to highlight the total effect. Look into the rumour of that Renoir going up for grabs; she could stretch the acquisition budget to allow for a prestigious coup.

"Well?"

She winced at the intrusion, resented her broken train of thought. Turned to regard him. His voice sounded surprisingly firm considering his state. He was picking at his fingers, again. He knew she hated that. People should control their ambitions, their emotions a little better than that. This was a civilized world they moved in.

Not straining herself with a verbal reply, she raised her eyebrows questioningly. Despite herself, annoyance turned to pleasure as the curator took over. With the sunlight playing over his flesh she could almost imagine him encapsulated in amber. Pity. As a specimen he would be simpler to deal with.

She would simply have to exercise a little more choice in future - be less eclectic? And by all means look for someone less ... what, dependent? Yes. More mature, less needy. A military type, for example. With the stunningly cruel yet beautiful face of Verrocchio's 'Condottiere'.

The sardonic half smile on her face was for herself, not for him, waiting for her response, glowering like an ill-tempered child.

"Yes, David?"
"David!"
"Sorry, Brian." She yawned, amused by the tremor in his voice.
"What's the matter? What's been happening?" His voice pleading. He meant to play on her sympathies. That was certainly assuming a great deal.

The floor creaked lightly as he walked toward the bed, settled on the rug, then leaned his head on the sheet thrown lightly over her, his eyes calf-like, appealing. She adored his long lashes.

"Absolutely nothing. There is nothing at all going on. Unless, of course" she said coquettishly, "you consider the marvellous break you're getting. A show of your own. Toronto's newest darling of the nouveau-arty set."

"Right ... and I'm grateful, of course I am! But you know that's not what I mean."
"...of course, non-objective art ... these surrealist abstractions don't do anything for me. A personal opinion, you understand." She tilted her face toward him, smiled warmly.
"Yes, I ..."

"I much prefer the Italian masters. However, I have it on absolutely impeccable authority that the latest craze among those who can afford it is for these little avant garde constructions of yours. How would you categorize them, Darling, pastiches?"
"Actually ..."
"...and with the right kind of presentation - which is what this show is all about ..."
"Goddammit! Never mind that now!" He brought his face closer, the earnest look on his face, the intensity with which he regarded her ....

"Brian, dear!"
"Look, you've got to level with me! I have to know!"
"Daarling" she drawled, wondering how long it would take him to finally accept the tedious inevitable. "Is it true that those little pellets you litter your canvases with, the ones you spray with that horrid aluminum paint - are they really rabbit droppings?"

"Jee-sus! You're not even listening to me! Yeah, that's what they are, all right. Shit! And that's what you think my work is too, I know that. Now please, give me some idea of where we're at!"

"Oh, sorry Love. Where we're at?" She repeated, then paused and the silence and his expectations weighted the air around them, suddenly made her sick of the game.
"Well, exactly nowhere" she finally pronounced, articulating carefully.
"Just like that?" He demanded incredulously. "Everything was fine. It was, wasn't it? What'd I do wrong?"

His breath breezed stale cigarettes, liquor, an altogether unsavoury excess. Her nose twitched, like a rabbit, she told herself, suppressing a giggle. Ill-timed, dearie, that would most surely devastate the poor dear, the dolt. Remember what Mama taught you; only resort to ridicule when all else fails. Give him another chance to muster his resources. She drew away and propped herself on an elbow, her hair shifting over her shoulders.

"Nothing, nothing is wrong. You've done nothing. Comes a time when a relationship has nothing to keep it going."
"How can you say that?" How can he sound so anguished? Marvellous, had no idea he had thespian talents as well. Might recommend he explore that option, give up the dabbling in oils - some other time, when he'd be more receptive to good advice.

"I'm a romantic, an inveterate romantic" she sighed. "And Lovey, there's nothing left. I'm ready to move on."

He turned away, hugged his arms around his bent knees. The silence encompassed the dishevelled bed, the stale air, his brooding figure, her condescension; her patience which was wearing thin. Old girl, she reminded herself, be kind, remember what Mama always said.

Tedious! And last night's party at the Purple Pansy; an utter bore. Waste of time ... almost. Was getting tired of all the little arty-farty backstabbings, whining. And the bloody tantrum he threw! Just because ... what the hell was his name, now?

"I satisfy you, don't I? Well?" She mocked with vigour. Blew him a well-rounded kiss.

He drew his breath. So audibly, oh dear! "You cold bitch! You're frigid, that's what's wrong!" His voice breaking, sounding almost, she thought with relish, like a castrato. Really!"
"That's better" she said, her voice deliberately encouraging. "That's more like it! Get it out of your head, let it all hang out, Lovey."

"No...I..." he disclaimed, his voice stricken now, head bent like a broken puppet's, in despair.
"It's therapeutic" she assured him. Godamm! If it isn't time for this little bedroom farce to end, she thought, with growing irritation.

He rose from the floor, hung his face pleadingly over hers. "I didn't mean it. I'm frustrated. It just ...." He began striding about the room, back and forth. Splendid, a caged pussycat.

Her eye caught the helmet glimmering on top of the French armoire. Photography was her own medium, her forte, and he had been persuaded to pose for her last night; a tipsy Cupid, resplendent in his glowing nakedness, the metal helmet set awry on his head, posing obligingly. Oh, call them Adonis, Salai or David, they're all the same; fey sprites in love with themselves and vehemently denying it.

Why didn't he go? These scenes were so damn predictable. She really was getting sick of these pseudo-incestuous relationships.

Her attention turned back to him, striding the floor. She wasn't entirely insensitive. But it might be just what he needed, a bit of anguish; self-manufactured or not, this blow to his self-esteem. Excite, perhaps, his latent genius. How droll.

She watched him stop before the portrait dominating the wall before the bed. With him, she appraised the self-portrait of the Great Man, ran her eyes over the flowing beard, the piercing eyes that bespoke his genius. "This goddamn picture! How can you stand it staring down at you all the time? Everywhere you turn, those eyes follow. It gives me the creeps!"

She glanced at the clock on the night table, yanked the sheet off herself and slid out of the bed to stride, finally, into the bathroom. Placing herself on the toilet, grateful for its unexpected warmth, she waited. Not bothering to shut the door, she grinned at him watching from the other room, his face stricken, mouth gulping air like a drowning guppy.

His face crumpled, his breathing resounded in shallow gulps. Turning with a piercing shout he plucked his clothes off the floor, slapped them hastily on; the whole thing taking seconds, then exited, slamming the door behind him, resoundingly.

She sighed, rose, flushed the toilet.

Turning the taps on full, she began to run her bath, sprinkled salts into the rushing water, the aromatic fragrance of a heady musk rising with the steam to fill the lavender-coloured room. She sniffed appreciatively and padded back to the bedroom, briefly surveyed the mess.

She lifted a snifter from her bureau. Some brandy left. She warmed it with her hands, held the glass up to observe more closely the colour shimmering on the sides of the glass, then tilted it and played her tongue in the viscous liquid.

Hands on her ample hips, she stood before the picture of the Maestro, da Vinci. the bathroom thundered a waterfall. Water, she recalled, was thought to portray sensuality ... the background of the Mona Lisa, that half-wittish, asexual creature, that clever joke.

"Old Misanthrope" she murmured. "Two can play at that game."

 

The Innocence of Rasputin

Recently I read a news report that Rasputin's daughter Marie had died of a heart attack in California. Apparently, she had been busy the last few years co-authoring a book attempting to exonerate her father of what she claimed were 'calumniating infamies'.

Coincidentally, I had a dream shortly afterward. I recall waking from the dream disturbed, yet only one scene remained clear; that I was in a bucolic setting and there saw my uncle walking toward me. He looked young and sported a full head of hair, which seemed peculiar in itself since I'd never known him young and he'd always been bald. As he approached me he began to diminish in size and his clothes appeared to melt until he stood before me wearing a fatuous smile and nothing else; a naked imp. That same dream occurred three nights in succession.

Guilt. It was as simple as that; I felt subliminally guilty because I'd impugned his memory. "Rachel, I have bad news for you", my kid brother Barry had said, calling from Toronto. His voice sounded half-strangled, a poor connection I thought.

"What?" I gulped, imagining all kinds of disasters that might really have mattered to me.
"Uncle Frank died."

At first it didn't quite penetrate. I mean, my first reaction was, why was this bad news? After all, the man had been sick for a while, he wasn't young, and furthermore he meant very little to me. Too bad, I felt, but that's life.

"Oh", I finally replied. I suppose my reaction seemed too pallid, even long-distance.

"He was a good man", Barry said with surprising piety, as though daring me to deny it.

Again, I didn't know what the hell he meant. What was so good about the man? Barry hardly knew him. Then I recalled that during his last visit Barry had been wildly enthusiastic about his late discovery that Uncle Frank was an amateur soil-tiller. Barry is a professional environmentalist, you see, with a doctorate in ecology, and he was thrilled to discover that Uncle Frank used manure instead of commercial fertilizer on his vegetables. Barry is younger than me, another generation entirely.
Mine isn't particularly dedicated to anything, while his is serious, too serious about issues that pass right by me. "You don't know what you're missing, Rachel", Barry had once said to me. "I'd like to turn you on."

"Incest doesn't excite me", I'd said, and he looked disgusted. Maybe he thought there was a natural affinity in both kinds of grass, and getting me into one would excite a latent interest in the other.

All this nonsense going through my head, and I said, almost casually, "What the hell! He wasn't such a good man..."
"What do you mean?" Barry shot back.
"He was a child-molester, our Uncle Frank."
"What the hell...!"
"That's right, dear brother. Me, he assaulted me, before you were ever born."

Silence, then a cool and very polite 'goodbye'. And that was the last time he called. Pity. I miss him.

In retrospect I think I was wrong, I should have shut up; of course I should have, but I always was impulsive. Anyway, it brought back memories, and I began to muse on definitions of good and bad; how to equate personal characteristics with one or the other, and who, really, is the final judge?

When I was about six or seven I used to run, two steps at a time, up and down the stairs to our second-floor flat. Once my mother had given me an empty  milk bottle to return, and sent me out for a quart of milk from the corner store. I tripped, missing the second-to-last step. The bottle remained intact, but I incurred a hairline fracture. I wore a cast for about six weeks. Since my mother worked, my aunt, Uncle Frank's wife, offered to take me to the hospital to have the cast removed at the proper time.

My aunt and uncle had a roomy apartment on Dundas Street, back then. I can remember him going up through a trap-door in the ceiling of the hallway to get to the roof. He'd trap pigeons up there; show them to me, their beady eyes blinking as he gently stroked their feathers. They were destined for the cookpot.

I had two cousins, a boy and a girl, both older than me. My aunt wouldn't permit me to sleep with either of them, but instead set up a makeshift bed for me, between her bedroom and her children's, beside a French door connecting the two. In the morning, before daylight, I saw my aunt get up from her bed and move like a white-sheeted wraith down the hallway toward the kitchen. I had slept badly during the night, not only because the 'bed' was uncomfortable, but also because it was my first night ever away from home. The traffic outside threw ribbons of light over the ceiling, and shadows seemed to loom from every corner. I worried too about how the 'operation' would proceed the following day - cutting the cast off. I imagined the knife slipping, and goodbye arm.

My uncle, seeing that I was awake, motioned me to get up, to come over. He lifted a corner of the quilt, inviting me into his bed. "Come, get in", he said. At first it seemed an appealing idea. Then I caught the thick odour of nightsweat and hung back, shaking my head. "Get in", he insisted, "and don't make any noise - you don't want to wake your cousins."

Obedienty, I scrunched myself into a private little ball, distancing myself from him, but surprisingly he moved closer. "I won't hurt you", he promised, weighting me down, "relax and don't make any noise."

Years later they bought a house on Indian Road, right next to High Park. My uncle transformed the paltry yard into a Garden of Eden. Neat rows of vegetables thrived under his devoted hoe. He grew fruit trees from seed and lavished care on every type of flower. although a short, squat man with a broad peasant face, when in his garden he glowed, became a voluptuary moving as in a trance through a green dream.

I disliked their house, but would go there with my mother, leave her there, and go off myself to High Park to wander around; over to Grenadier Pond, where the Queen's Grenadiers were reputed to have followed their leader unswervingly, drowning, every last man of them, unwilling to break the perfection of their suicidal march. From there to the animal cages, where bison and oriental goats were kept. Then to the smaller ponds where water-fowl abounded and if I was sharp-eyed I could catch them mating. I'd lose myself in the trees, imagining I was in a jungle and not me at all, but my hero, Tarzan of the Apes.

I was a dark-skinned child, small for my age, with long black hair. My mother would wash my hair with coarse soap that stung my eyes, and then rinse it with lemon juice, accentuating the agony. Finally, she would rake it with a fine-toothed comb; my school shed a lot of 'cooties'. My hair, curly, would snag on the comb, and it was an excruciating procedure. Once, to try to make her stop torturing me, I shouted apropos of nothing. "Uncle pulled my pants down!". She slapped me.

Well, it had been true. He had persuaded me to let him take my pants down one evening at High Park; promised me a purse of my own, real leather, just like one he'd bought for his daughter. I was an avaricious child, but I never did get that purse.

Not long after, I persuaded my mother to let me get my hair cut short. I thought I would look pert, like my cousin with her short, curly bob. My mother sent me to him. He had, you see, huge shears because he was a tailor by profession. He hefted each braid in his beefy hands and asked, "You sure?", then lopped them off. Seeing them looped on the floor, myself cropped and unbeautiful in the mirror, I felt bitterly disappointed.

As for the molesting, it wasn't only him, I'll say that much. I mean, I can remember teenaged boys who lived below our flat, trapping me in the common bathroom, unzipping their pants and exhibiting their prizes. I couldn't have been more than five or six then. A roomer on the same floor would wait to hear my footsteps in the hallway, then open his door and flash. And the old men in the park, always following me, promising goodies. I was frankly fascinated. Fascinated, I think, that men were so damned silly.

At my wedding he was there, with his bluff peasant heartiness. Holding a glass of vodka, he gave my husband-to-be pertinent advice. God, he looked like a real muzhik, that man; a Russian peasant. Which of course was what he had been. After the ceremony, when he'd had a little more to drink, he wove his exuberant way among the guests, following me and my husband around, giving us more specific advice. When we left after the reception Uncle Frank shouted after us, finally: "Have - a - good - time!"

When, years later, we bought a house of our own, he gave us a peach tree.

All the above is by way of explanation, background - an attempt to balance the weights of good and bad. Now take history's treatment of Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, also a Russian muzhik. Russian peasantry considered him a holy man, a starets. History documents him as one of the most iniquitous and unprincipled villains of recent history, a charlatan of the first order, who freely manipulated that brace of royal simpletons, Nicholas II and Alexandra. On the other hand he raged against the establishment, the aristocracy both religious and secular. "No wonder the peasants are ignorant and poor - you give them taverns and brothels, not hospitals and schools!"

Rasputin advocated social assistance for the indigent, fought against war, and later against the conscription of farmers. Naturally, he also accepted 'gifts' for his political manoeuvrings, and he delighted in lurid exhibitionism. But again, he dispensed personal largess to needy petitioners.

He was, in the end, a victim of what we now call 'bad press'. A more indulgent muse chronicled the exploits of Byron, Boswell, and Rousseau.

Not long after my brother's call, my mother came to spend a few days with me. We walked along a pathway in a park where where I live now. It was a lovely, crisp autumn day, and we waded through leaves: their acrid odour, rising and mingling with the cool air, reminding me of High Park.

"Do you remember, Ma", I felt suddenly moved to ask her "Once when I was a child, I told you that Uncle Frank molested me?"

She stopped, turned her astonished face to mine: "What do you mean?"
"I mean that he bothered me, sexually."
"No! You never said anything like that to me, I wouldn't forget! Are you serious? Something like that happened?"
"Yes."
She tipped her face toward me. "You're sure?"
"Of course."
"If I knew!" she spat savagely. "If I knew - I would have torn his eyes out!"

We resumed our walk, an awkward silence between us, and I wondered at myself; what could my motive be, to place this burden on her? Foment an awkward distance between my mother and her sister, Uncle Frank's wife? Finally she turned to me.

"It never happened" she said, with a rising inflection. "You were only imagining things." She looked at me with her knowing eye.
"You always did have an active imagination, and you're still mischievous!"
She went on to describe what a paragon of strength my uncle had been to her after my father's death. And when his own death stared him in the face, how noble he had been, blessing his family with his continued concern for them, ignoring his own pain.

So it's true. Everything balances out. A small girl's unhappiness becomes a grown woman's spite. There is nothing to forgive, and I have already forgotten. Uncle, rest in peace.

About What It's Like to Die

 

My father had no patience with vanity. It wasn't that he was so intolerant a person, he simply had no time for frivolities. He was too busy living; earning a living and living to learn. When he wasn't working he was reading - omnivorously, anything he could get his hands on. He passed that legacy - not for work but for love of the written word - on to his children. I was the oldest.

Because he professed never to care for external appearances I was surprised after his operation to realize that he was reluctant to have anyone see him, that he considered himself, his appearance, repugnant. He had cancer of the throat.

He had always feared sickness, operations, and it was later that I was told he was given the option of an operation to prolong his life for another year or to simply let the cancer run rampant, undisturbed. By the time his cancer had been discovered it was too late to stem the tide of its inexorable growth.

He was unprepossessing in appearance. A short, broad, muscular man with black wiry hair when he was younger, his hair turned a steel grey as he grew older. This sign of age, the grey hair, had distressed me terribly; that outward manifestation of man's perishability. And his once-hard stomach gradually distended with the weight of the years which sat upon him. He was only five feet tall but when I was a child he appeared a respectable height.

My father's friends noted my fierce attachment to my father with amusement. They enjoyed teasing me, for the reaction. They would say something like: "What's so special about him anyway? He's just a little guy". And I'd reply hotly, "he isn't! He's big and strong and he's smart." Which was true. And I hated them for appearing to doubt it.

And although my replies generally brought forth gales of adult laughter, none of my father's friends disputed the fact of my father's intelligence, even as a joke. They came to him often for advice, or to have him explain a situation beyond their comprehension.

I have since learned things about my father that I hadn't known earlier, when he still lived. He had been born in Poland just after the turn of the century. Actually, about 1910. We never did know the correct date, nor did he. His family had lived in a small town not far from Warsaw. His father had been a scholar of sorts, a rebbe, but both his parents died before my father was twelve. His relatives lived nearby but they were almost destitute as were most of the country people there, so they arranged for my father to be taken care of in the local poorhouse. Soon after, an undernourished boy too small for his age, he ran away to Warsaw to try to locate his older brother, who had himself run away, years earlier.

He had no success in his search and wandered the streets of Warsaw unkempt, unfed and unhoused. He was only one of many such vagrants, children who begged for sustenance in the streets. Eventually, a Jewish philanthropic organization attempted to gather these wanderers and to provide for them. There, among other boys bereft of family, my father found companionship. Several years later the boys were sent en masse to Canada. On arrival, they were dispersed to various farming communities and my father and several of his friends found themselves working on a farm in Georgetown, Ontario, to pay off their passage. All through his life these orphan children remained steadfast friends, an extended family closer to each other than most genuine family members often are.

In the family album there was one photograph that I often looked at although it made me vaguely unhappy. The picture was that of a group of about ten young men, boys really, and the background was the farm in Georgetown. The boys wore what appeared to be leggings of some kind and underwear-type long-sleeved shirts. Some held rakes and manure forks, reminiscent of the famous American Gothic painting. The boys' heads were uniformly shaven and their cheeks were gaunt. Their eyes seemed hollow and painful; haunting. My father was the smallest among them. At first he had to point himself out to me, for I could not recognize him in the photograph.

I suppose it was because of my father's initial poor start in life and his later malnourishment as a youth that he became prone in middle age to a variety of illnesses. I recall hushed talk of Burgess' Disease and hardening of the arteries, although I'm not quite certain he had any of these. I do recall though, that once, when I was about eight years old, he was bathing and discovered that one of his big toes had turned a purple-black colour. My father rarely went to see a doctor but for this my mother insisted that he visit the family doctor, an old medical practitioner whose office stood on a corner of College Street. It was discovered that the big toe was gangrenous, or just beginning to be so, and measures were taken to save it. In retrospect, although he was never so diagnosed, I am reasonably certain that he had been an undiagnosed diabetic and it was Diabetes Mellitus which led invariably to those other disease symptoms and thereafter, his legs always gave him trouble from poor circulation. His feet were always sore and painful. Still, it wasn't the untreated diabetes nor the other ailments that took his life.

Unlike most of my father's friends who in time became quite well off,my father always had to struggle to make a living. Some of his friends ran small businesses of their own, became musicians, professionals, tradesmen, entrepreneurs. My father remained a labourer for most of his life. The earliest I can recall is that he worked at a factory, Fashion Hat & Cap, on Chestnut Street in Toronto, as a steam presser. His job was to mechanically work a steam press to block caps and that is what he did for many years. The factory was hot and dry, dimly lit and poorly ventilated. His arms and hands became so muscular from his work that years later nurses at the hospital found it impossible to check his pulse at the wrist. He used to laugh about that. He once brought home an orange that he had forgotten to eat from his lunchbag and had placed on top of the steam presser. The orange was light and hollow, all the moisture gone, preserved like an Egyptian mummy.

Both my parents were staunch trade unionists and voted for the CCF Party. Political talk was common around the kitchen table. I would sit quietly and listen, fascinated at the heated arguments that often ensued, between my parents and some of their friends as my father continued to uphold the socialist ideal and others might dispute its need and even legitimacy in this country.

In his spare time my father spent as much time as he could manage at the United Jewish Peoples' Order, the headquarters of which, years ago, was on Christie Street across from Christie Pitts Park, north of Bloor Street. There was a great number of books kept there and for a while my father volunteered his time as a librarian. I used to go to that same building every day after school to be tutored in a small classroom along with a handful of other children, in Jewish history and Yiddish. I had begun going to the Morris Winchevsky school when an old house on another street had been utilized for classroom purposes, before the acquisition of the Christie Street property and I can remember there were always kerosene lamps handy in case of a blackout as these were the war years.

Occasionally, there I would pick up some literature written by Dr. James Endicott and read it, impressed by the fervour of his arguments for a better, more equitable world. Once, my father pointed out Paul Robeson to me, a tall dark man, walking down a corridor of the building, a guest of the U.J.P.O.; there to deliver a talk in the auditorium next to where our after-school-classroom was situated.

The basement of the building - which was, I believe, an old converted church - housed a functional cafeteria set around with small round tables and wire-hooped chairs, at which there generally sat a crowd of men - talking, playing dominoes. The fragrance of coffee and doughnuts, accompanied by the click of dominoes and the murmur of bantering voices so well describes the ambiance, the homey comfort of the place.

On V-E day my father celebrated what was an especially poignant time for him by giving me a large green-covered book of short stories that I still treasure. He was forever encouraging me to read. As soon as I was old enough to understand he gave me books to read that most would consider too difficult for a child. But with these books and my father's explanations I was made sensitive to the world as it is. My father described in great detail the circumstances of the Holocaust. In this way I became extremely aware of just how special Jews are in this world; the exquisitely frail equilibrium that exists between life and death; the monumental horror of prejudice; the abomination that is war.

My father had me read Tobacco Road, introduced me to Howard Fast and John Steinbeck; tried to imbue in me a sense of fairness to other people. One of the few books he bought for me was called Palaces on Monday; it had been bound irregularly, the cover put on backwards and upside down, and I suppose he was able to pay less for it. The book described the building of the underground rail system, the subway in Moscow, seen through the eyes of a young boy and girl whose American father was an engineer on the project. Nor did he neglect the adventure writers like Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson; he wanted me to read everything.

Despite the fact that our family lived in a small flat - two bedrooms between two adults and three young children; a tiny kitchen that seated us only because we were all so small, the adults and the children; and a bathroom shared with another family and a boarder - my father was determined that I would receive other kinds of stimulation normally reserved for people with money. One of his good friends was a house painter and an amateur musician and agreed to teach me to play an instrument. The oboe; I still have that oboe. Ancient and faded now, it must have been quite old even then. My music teacher was a kind and patient man but I was a frivolous child and had no inclination to learn, even to please my father. Oboe reeds cost $.25 each then and they were a luxury my parents could ill afford. Every time I heard the ridiculous squeaks my puffings elicited from the instrument, I would break up laughing, my teeth clamping on the delicate reed. Finally, my father decided I was not meant to express myself musically.

Another memory I have though, is confirmation that he was quite capable of musicality himself. I have a hazy recollection of sitting high in the balcony at Massey Hall with my mother and peering down at an orchestra on the stage. There was a man sitting on the right-hand side and back of the orchestra and on his lap was an immense glittering, gold-belled instrument. My father played a tuba, an instrument almost as large as he himself. Not long ago my mother told me he had also played a fiddle, but I had never heard him play one.

Although he could never afford to become a real collector, numismatics fascinated him and he collected foreign coins. The coins held an attraction for him and when he came across an exotic coin my father would add it to his collection. He kept a metal strong box in a cupboard which he would sometimes open with a key. The box contained a few papers, a few brown daguerreotypes, and the prized coin collection.

One of the old faded photographs in the box was of a dark bearded man; another was of a young boy standing beside a wicker planter. These depicted my father's father and my father himself - and there were a few others. Once he picked up one of the photographs and showed it to me. The picture was of an oval-faced dark browed young man with black hair. The man had a thin mustache. I detested mustaches. "Who do you think that is?" my father prompted.

"Hitler", I said positively. "It must be Hitler."

A pained look crossed my father's face. He said nothing, merely took the picture from me, turned away, shut himself away from me.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "What's the matter?" Thinking about it now, I'm not certain whether my reply had been impish or whether at that tender age all mustaches were synonymous with the hated Hitler; reason compels me to believe I was just being mischievous, for why, even then, would I think my father would cherish a photograph of that hideously detestable monster?

Later my mother told me it was a photograph of my father's brother. My father, for years after the war, believed his brother was still alive. He wrote endless letters to agencies and individuals looking for information about his brother. There was no information to give, none was received. Without doubt he, like other millions of hapless innocents, provided fuel for the ovens at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka.

Waiting for the Messiah - a Memoir, Irving Layton with David O'Rourke

 

Waiting for the Messiah - a Memoir, Irving Layton with David O'Rourke
McClelland and Stewart, 25 Hollinger Road, Toronto
c. 1985. Hardback, 264 pages.

 

To this reader, it is hard to reconcile the initial chapter of this book with the succeeding ones. Indeed, the further one delves in this memoir the more it appears as though the reader has been made privy to the maturing of a writer. The beginning chapters have a naivete, an arrogance and even a kind of silliness (deliberately playful, let us dare hope) which is off-putting and unworthy of the literary stature of this man, despite his flamboyance and provocative style.

But, for those of you who may decide to embark upon this reading adventure, a word of advice - persevere. It's worth it, for the work steadily improves and becomes less tendentiously tedious (the initial style and content going far to give credence that some people will do anything for attention and that advanced age is no guarantor of social or emotional maturity) and progressively interesting.

Less, alas, as a result of Layton's own life experience, more as a fallout of his place in the times he writes of, and his relationships, close, tenuous, distanced or what-have-you, with other, more interesting, and sometimes more talented people than he.

Which is not to deny the man's estimable talent. I have tried to in the past, mind, when his misanthropic and seemingly misogynist attitudes have infuriated me to the point of denying the man his due - and my adversary-in-opinion has been none other than my husband, an ardent admirer of this latter-day bard - an unhappy experience.

Layton begins his memoir, logically enough, at the beginning. We are informed that the incipient poet was 'born with the smell of baked Challa in his nostrils', a startling revelation but infinitely less so than his other well-known claim, that he was born with the messianic sign - already circumcised. This affectation does not grow dim with the passage of time, but since it offers a kind of comfort to the man there is no point denying him that cushion.

During his growing, and omnivorously-reading years, he imbibed stories of the lives of other saviours and heroes, including Moses, Buddha, Alexander the Great - whose own births were accompanied by bizarre circumstances, as his was. Thus was born a legend of self.

Once departing from that thesis, we are introduced to life in the Lazarovitch family, with father Moishe, a soft-spoken, pious and scholarly man who brought the shtetl with him to Montreal; mother Klara who shrieks curses down upon young Irving's hapless head; siblings Avrum, Dora, Esther, Gertie, Harry, Hyman and Larry. And, of course, the extended family members, most particularly the men whom sisters had wed, and whose foibles and coarseness are discoursed upon at length. Layton's childhood was not a happy one.

In a background of grinding poverty, in a family whose orientation was mercenary (how else survive in the hostile environment for immigrant Jews in turn-of-the-century Montreal?), the emerging intellectualism of the young boy with a mischievous temperament was a puzzle and a nuisance to his family. While Layton was increasingly drawn by education, with an emphasis on literature and the beauty of language, his increasingly alienated family demanded that he assume the life of an itinerant peddler, an occupation at which, fleetingly, given his gregarious character, he was able to succeed very well at.

But Layton had a self-vision of a glory greater than earning dollars with which to support himself, and eventually evolve into budding mercantilism. His love of, and admiration for poetry, was first inspired by the beautifully rendered readings of Tennyson's Ballad of the Revenge by one of the few teachers for whom Layton had some modicum of respect at Baron Byng High School.

In total, Layton's experiences with teachers in general throughout the public school system, and on into college were dismal, demoralizing affairs for the budding scholar/poet. Insensitive clods they were, demineralized, myopic, harsh, coldly demanding and censorious of the high-spiritedness of a rebellious adolescent with a penchant for learning, but only in the environment of nurturance, which was, alas, a scarce commodity.

He had a budding romance, both with a young woman (and by extension, her mother) and with the dialectic of communism. With the former because he was a normal, lustily yearning young male, the latter because it was socially verboten. After that flirtation, Layton dabbled, with friends who drew him into their circle, with socialist ideals. He met, and became a personal friend of David Lewis whose analytical and brilliant mind he appreciated, but whose oratory he felt was far from brilliant. Through Lewis he met Abraham Klein, then a young articling lawyer, and language-precise, fiery poet with whose help he was able to master Latin, and make his senior grades.

A chance encounter led him to attend college, at a time when Layton was drifting along, with nothing much else to do but earn the odd dollar to keep a roof over his head and go to meetings at the Young Peoples' Socialist League communist meetings, and Horn's Cafeteria, the hangout for social radicals of the time where social responsibility, proletarians' rights, Marx and Engels, the Communist Manifesto, the evils of the capitalist class, unions and labour were discussed with resounding vigour, and the pilpul of opinion had its day.

In that forum Layton was exposed to the explosive mixture of socialist and communist thought, Trotskyism, anarchism. It was a heady, pleasing ongoing experience for the young man, which he balanced with his private readings of Shelley and Keats, trying to hone his own, by then, not inconsiderable skills, both as an orator, and a poet. Very little of the social cant, of the traditional exposition to which he was exposed was taken at face value; he observed and trod daintily among the ideals and ideas, although his admiration for some of the exponents knew no bounds.

This was the Quebec of the Catholic Church with its stranglehold on the thoughts and minds of Quebecois; it was the Quebec of Arcand, and of police brutality. And this was a Layton whose mind and heart were torn between social activism and literary endeavour. In the end, his literary ambitions emerged victorious, although there is an inescapable thread of social activism in the warp and woof of his literary work.

The college of Layton's choice turned out to be Macdonald College, chosen for the logical reason that it was the only institute of higher learning which he could manage to afford. Associated with McGill University, the only degree this college conferred was that of Agriculture and this explains neatly why Layton's degree is in this area.

Because of the cautious, conservative, intellectually stilted atmosphere of the college, Layton decided that he would form a speakers' club which he called the Social Research Club. To its regular meetings he invited the then-president of the Royal Bank of Canada, followed in fairly rapid succession by the pacifist Lavell Smith, the fabled Dr. Normal Bethune, and the founder of the CCF, J.S. Woodsworth. His plans to also invite Tim Buck were thwarted by the organized efforts of other members of the student body who feared the college would be irremediably tainted red, thus scuttling their future plans for a civil service career.

Layton experienced a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that exposure to these fiery speakers of the time, some of them exceedingly controversial, opened up the minds of their student listeners. Even so, the reputation that Layton acquired while at the college was not that of a social facilitator, but that of a rabble rouser, and both the unlikely appellations of 'Hitler' and 'Trotsky' often crowned his reputation there.

Layton mourned the sad fact that while at college the literary-poetic idols held to review and admiration were those of the era of Edwardian England, and as delightful and earth-shaking at their time as they were, they did not reflect the social and cultural tradition of the country and the times which he inhabited. He professes to some bitterness at not having been exposed to the works of T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane, and Walt Whitman, let alone Canadian poets like Lampman, Bliss Carman or E.J. Pratt.

This lack left him with the impression for too long, he felt, that he could do no better than to emulate their style. It was when he became exposed through his own search and pique to the work of these ground-breakers that it dawned upon him what progressive poetry, free verse reflecting the temper of the times could really accomplish.

The man, obsessed with the earthiness of life, of passions unleashed, scorning convention and the limpid and sexually repressed poetic style of his peers, evolved a poetic address uniquely his own. One that shocked both the reading public and the then-literary establishment. It was not 'polite'.

He writes of his marriages, of his attachment to women, to his ideas and his poetry. He writes of the joy and ecstasy of creative achievement, of self-affirmation in the final realization that one is yes indeed, a poet of incalculable creative ability. Which there is no denying Irving Layton is.

This is a good book, a rewarding book, and in its own way, a revelation, Messiah complex aside. For in his very own, inimitable way, Layton really has been a messiah; he has helped to unleash unbridled sensualism in poetic expression, given it a fire of his own devising, and brought poetry where it belongs, in the gut as well as the mind of the reader.

Abrasive and even abusive he can be at times, but where is there a poet whose totality is perfection? It is unfortunate that Layton's very well-publicized divergence of opinion with Elspeth Cameron and his dismissal of her 'unauthorized' biography of him did not result in an increased public interest in his own book. One has the impression that the increased notoriety he might have traded upon as a result of the acrimonious exchanges in the media would translate itself in brisk sales, but alas, volume one of his memoirs has not sold well.

Still, he's preparing to write the second volume of Waiting for the Messiah and this reviewer, however inclined to be critical as I am, intends to wait for that messiah. Stay tuned.

 

Our Jewish Heritage

There has always been great curiosity expressed with regard to origins; where did it all begin, and how? Geologists, paleontologists, historians, social anthropologists (long before modern science recognized these divisions in intellectual investigation and gave them their present nomenclature) assiduously sifted rock and sand, bones and crockery, deciphered hieroglyphs, pored over ancient writings and tried to make sense of it all. Logically, everything, every phenomenon, be it geologic, biological or cultural-sociographic had to begin somewhere. So where did that peculiar strain of people -- Jews -- originate, and how?

Somewhere in the Middle East, we know. They are grouped, not with Caucasians, but with the Armenids. This originally nomadic, pastoral group had been little documented in the ancient writings of other people, and it is assumed that reference to a group termed 'the Habiru' in casual and brief mention of a group of troublesome nomads is the first recognition of their existence as a distinct group by another and better-lettered early culture.

From that undistinguished beginning we have a people somehow bound together by a common destiny, a gradually enlightened culture, and a homophilic socialization. This group has ascended the heights of human endeavours, both singly and collectively; it has plumbed the depths of human despair and degradation, and somehow, survived intact. An achievement that no other ancient cultural-ethno-social group can claim. From the ranks of this people have come first and foremost, ideas which have revolutionized civilization, concepts which have paved the way to humanistic enlightenment, and moral and legal laws which have fathered those of the entire Western world. Jewish religion, philosophy, art, jurisprudence, medicine has had an impact on the world whose like has not been equalled by any other single group of people.

As humanists millennia ago, it was recognized that all life is sacred, and from that recognition was enacted moral and ethical laws to protect the very quality of life, and life itself. At a time when slavery was common (when it was sometimes a practical economic solution to survival for the chronically indigent) Jewish law proclaimed that every seventh year any person held in bondage should be deemed a free person.

Because of the respect with which the people termed 'the Habiru' viewed life they eschewed common practises seen in casual and brief early cultures that practised human sacrifice as an appeasement to their gods. Jews viewed this practise with repugnance and replaced such sacrifice with animal sacrifice. And to protect animals, strict laws ensuring humane slaughter were encoded.

And though, like most religions a great many prohibitions (meant to protect both the individual and the status of the religion) became ritual dogma, they could be suspended if under special circumstances life would be endangered by their enactment. Jewish law was not meant to be absolutely inflexible. The law-makers recognized human frailty and the need to be elastic in interpretation so that exigencies could be coped with.

Some very early and forward-thinking Jews wrote a wonderful series of literature embodying all possible human conditions, and at the same time they conceived of monotheism, a startling departure from the pantheism (worship of many gods) then customary throughout the early world of religion. Jews, in this context, were enjoined to regard themselves as 'the chosen'. Not particularly 'chosen' as being better or in some manner elevated above their fellow creatures, but as given the responsibility to present a moral example that others might follow and in this indirect way ennoble the world of humankind.

It was a bold decision indeed for a people to determine, even collectively, even involuntarily, to regard themselves as a shining example toward the rest of mankind. Some might term it, with justification, hubristic. But here is where the precept "Act Unto Others" evolves from. If no other guidelines existed for human behaviour, that one alone would suffice.

And the individual was never forgotten. Everyone's 'right' to quality of life was recognized. Welfare or charity then was not the pejorative it has since become. It was the community's responsibility to care for all of its members and this was a responsibility taken seriously, not grudgingly, nor condescendingly.

Children were regarded as a blessing, and they were universally loved, protected and cherished. Education was always held in awe, and avidly sought. Yet the work ethic also was finely ingrained and respected. Uncouth behaviour, which might encompass anything from rudeness to gambling, or a disregard for others, to drinking to excess, was looked upon with revulsion.

Well, it is true that Jews also looked upon themselves, privately, as being distinct, different - other and above. There were Jews, and there were the others - Gentiles. Gentiles could not be presumed to be as steeped in the values and virtues of life as Jews, and therefore, suspect. There was always this great apartness - us and they.

Because of this exclusivity of apprehension, there arose also an exclusivity of thought, and dogmatism crept into the culture, and the interpretation of the popular religion, and Jews often became inward-looking; intellectually and for practical purposes, immune to change. Yet there arose also those who chafed at the bonds imposed and from their ranks came our Thinkers, those who looked further - our two Moseses, our Spinoza, our Marx, our Sholem Aleichem, our Freud, our Herzl, our Einstein, our Chagall.

And there were others - our scientists, philosophers, musicians, artists, writers, philanthropists, jurists, economists, men of medicine, financiers, inventors, industrialists, teachers and yes, even politicians and soldiers. These outstanding and often brilliant people collectively enriched the world with their contribution to the great fund of knowledge being accumulated and utilized.

Although Jewry has produced paragons, it has also produced by far a larger number of quite ordinary folk, the great majority of whom are undistinguishable from those of other backgrounds and traditions. And within the groupings of Jews themselves lie great fractiousness and even bigotry. Social strata have always existed, creating cultural and social ghettos between Jews themselves.

When at one time Sephardim were considered the cultural aristocracy of Jewry, the Ashkenazim were considered the peasantry. With the passage of time that perception has reversed itself, and we see its results in present-day Israel. And Jewish politics is as diverse as the population it represents, further creating internal strife.

Jews, in the collective sense, were in the past imbued with a great vision. Those people have been the progressives, those who stimulate change and progress. Yet these progressives have always been shunned by the established order within the Jewish tradition until the inexorable change occurred and the passage of time softened and blurred their offence, and they were looked upon with pride.

We've produced, as a people, some excellence - and a great deal of dross. Where does the excellence come from, one wonders? As a great amorphous mass of humanity, we've expressed a collective desire to be greater than a mere human might aspire to; greater than the sum of our parts.

We've attempted to be close to a supreme being in our religion; we've tried to behave as the god would have us do. We have tried to better the lot of humankind. Have we succeeded to any great degree? Lamentably, no. The task seems too great. The obstacles placed in the way of fulfillment too overwhelming. Although we have committed ourselves to an ideal which is part way achievable, singly we have not tried to live the ideal nor cared enough for others to strive together to achieve that ideal.

Yet this singular group, with so much potential did return to its roots. A proud and representative number of Diaspora Jews, some by Zionist conviction and zeal, some Holocaust survivors, and others returnees from countries where Jews have not felt comfortable, or have been openly oppressed, live in a state founded in the original land of their forefathers. In that land the ideal was to be realized finally, the dream fulfilled.

For a time it appeared that the original social humanist precepts, the ethics and vision that the prophets of old exhorted; fundamental human values that would enrich the whole while permitting each and every citizen to live with individual grace, would come to pass. The forward thinkers, the socialists, the kibbutzniks, the Labourites, began to fashion the experimental state and the state blossomed, becoming a noble ideal actually fruiting.

Soon, though, the original concept and dedication to egalitarianism gave way gradually to creeping elitism as one social-cultural group disparaged the 'backwardness' of another. And religious fundamentalism with its insistence on strict observance began to force its opinions into state structure.

Hostile neighbours stimulated the siege-mentality which bred militarism, rightist nationalism and xenophobia. In a world that was increasingly perceived as being unsympathetic to Israel, Israel further isolated itself, this time deliberately, by carrying a big stick and using it, and aligning itself with other rightist, nationalist regimes. Once the Labour Party and its socialist precepts was ousted and that of the rightist Likud installed, it could be predicted in which direction Israel, the emotional fount of world Jewry, was headed.

Today an encircled country defies the rest of the world and bitterly denounces its most immediate neighbours. This is bitter gall for a people whose origins, whose roots are so far removed from anti-humanism, from the military ideal, and colonialism.

This situation cannot continue. World Jewry, so possessive and loving of Israel, for the first time begins to caution that country that its focus and mentality must undergo a change and direct itself more in keeping with its traditional view of itself, and its people.

Israelis, stricken by their own hapless direction, ambivalent about their feelings toward their neighbours, uncertain of their country's future, are beginning to re-assess national policy and their own place in the world structure.

There will be a turn-about to the spirit which underlies that elusive, little-understood element, the Jewish soul; sensitivity to one's fellow companions on the earth. And with that change in direction Jews will once more strive to fulfill an ancient precept, and to charge themselves again with the responsibility of the 'example' of the chosen.

This essay was written decades ago. The extent to which Israel finds itself currently in desolation in reflection of the aligned malevolence gathered against its existence dedicated to itself as a Jewish State while still accepting within its borders, its scope of acceptance of non-Jews and offering them citizenship and an equality seen nowhere else in the near geography does fulfill its obligation to itself and to the world at large. The government in power labelled as 'right wing' is an administration with few choices but to persevere and continue to prosecute Israel's case before a hostile world while forced to engage its deadly enemies in an existential battle for survival.

All Kinds of People

Chad stuck his head around the corner of Owen's divider, took in his lowered head, his preoccupation. "Leaving soon?" Without lifting his head Owen waved his hand in dismissal; he'd stay until he finished the job. That was the trouble with Chad, with Ted, with all of them; no sense of integrity.

A stream of personnel left the adjoining cubicles and the stenographic pool. Finally the switchboard girls left. But for the drone of the canned music everything was still.

Finally he stretched and patted a sheaf of papers into a neat pile. Looked his desk over. Pencils sharpened to the vanishing point, stacked in a cup. He reached over to rip a calendar page off - start the morning in a new month. Owen swivelled and rose, walked around the partition to the nearby windows and looked down on Bank Street.

Snow fell on the typical rush-hour arras. Below, people swarmed, running for buses, striding to their destination; deserting commerce.

Owen stood there, his thoughts a scramble of bitterness at his age, lost opportunities, the static figure. Staying late was an occasional treat that he indulged in, having the whole floor to himself when he dreamed himself in control. But not tonight. Things had come to a head.

How was she, he thought, qualified for the position? A degree in business management? Didn't working on the job for twenty years more than make up for an interrupted education? He was a victim of the diploma mystique. Of tokenism to feminism - not to mention influential friends. "Own!" He turned slowly. Again, "Ow-en!" Who the hell...? "Ow-en!" He realized that the voice was floating at him from the office. Blurred, husky, but he recognized it.

Moving in line with the door he saw the edge of the mahogany desk, but no one standing there. Again, his name was called. He walked toward the office.

There she sat, a tall brunette, heavy, with mismatched eyes. Out all afternoon. Lunch, liquid style, by the look of her. No wonder everything kept getting stalled. He wasn't the only one beginning to notice the back-up.

"Hi there Own!", slurred past her lips, a grin spreading pacific intent. Her eyes appeared unfocused. The oval one remained fixed on him, the round one seemed to have a life of its own, serving from side to side, as though trying to hide from him. She waved him closer, her motion uncertain.

"Yes?"
"Own - why're you always so ... standoffish?" She giggled.
"Is there something you would like? I was just about to leave."
"What's the matter, Own? Don't like women?"
"Ms. Petersen, I am not accustomed to bothering with women who cannot control themselves. If there is nothing I can do for you as a civilized human being, I would like to leave."

His stiffness, his obvious censure seemed to sober her. She brought her teeth down on her upper lip and sighed. Her right eye stopping its erratic flight.

"Sorry", she mumbled. "You intimidate me."
"If that's all ... can I call a cab for you?"
"Yes, please. But wait ... I want to talk with you ..."
"I'm sure it can wait."
"No ... please! Look, I know you don't like me. Maybe in your place I'd feel the same way. But I know the department depends on you. You're practically irreplaceable." She smiled, trying to placate him.

And you, he thought grimly, are quite expendable. He felt nauseated by the wave of anger he felt, his antipathy to her. He turned to leave.

"No, wait ... let me continue", she said softly. "I...I'll be leaving for a .. leave-of-absence. About two months. Owen ... can I count on you? I mean, would you consider coming back as acting head for that time? Not for me, you understand ... for the department."

Bail her out? Look after things while she took a break? She had the prestige of the position and the salary. He had this acrid acknowledgement. He shook his shoulders diffidently. "I may consider it."

"I'll see you receive an acting head's salary for the time involved", she offered.
"I'll consider it."

When he got off the elevator at street level he nodded at the security guard, walked through the marble lobby and pushed open a set of oak doors. Cold air swept past him, eager to invade the lobby he had quit. He paused on the top steps to withdraw a scarf from his briefcase, wound it around his neck, then adjusted the collar of his coat around the scarf.

The wind whipped his pant legs as he plodded forward kicking clods of already melting snow before him.

He was the third person to arrive at the bus stop. As he'd expected the buses were running slow and before long a dozen people stood beside the stop, stamping their booted feet, drawing scarves around their heads. Several women sought shelter back from the stop, in the entrance of a travel bureau the window of which boasted a sun-tanned beauty under a southern sun.

Owen liked the weather. The cold cleared his head and the snow appeared beautiful swirling in the light of the street lamps. It was generally still light when he left the office - now it was quite dark and the traffic was visibly snarled and backing up.

Finally the bus arrived, number 85, and he embused. But not before the three women who'd been sheltered had pushed their way on before him.

The ride was slow and halting; traffic responding hysterically to a snowstorm. Owen found himself becoming overheated, looked with annoyance at the bus driver, sitting comfortably in his shirt sleeves. He loosened his scarf, took off his gloves and laid them on his briefcase He glanced across the aisle and recognized one of the counterwomen from the Woolworth's across from his building, and looked away.

A few stops away from where he regularly disembarked the bus stopped and couldn't continue. He decided not to wait.

He took to a side street, following a route he often took in good weather when he might spontaneously get off the bus before his stop. The wind had picked up again. Glancing up, he saw the naked branches of an elm frantically combing the sky, leaning with the wind.

Ahead of him he heard a commotion, saw people running out of nearby buildings. then he saw flames licking from the window of a building. He quickened his steps and walked across the street, stopping on the sidewalk in front of the building. Orange licks stretched out of windows, lifting with the wind. An acrid odour wafted on the air and sharp cracks broke as the fire gained momentum.

People ran back and forth. Someone shouted that the fire department had been called. Other people ran from the entrance of the building, some without outerwear, some carrying children, yelling about their possessions.

From above where Owen stood, a voice shouted, "Help!" Owen raised his head and looked, fascinated, at the face of a man, his mouth stretched impossibly. "Help me!" the man screamed. In his arms he held a child and beside him appeared the form of a woman. There seemed to ensue a hurried consultation. The man tried to push the child at the woman. Then the man turned his attention back down to the street. "Please!" the man shouted.

Owen glanced around him. Three women stood nearby, looking helpless and frightened. "Help us!" the man implored, "if you could form a ring ... "

Smoke rose languorously from the building, the wind picking it up and dissipating it. As quickly, new columns formed. The cracks, the roaring sound of the fire increased perceptibly. Now it seemed that all the windows were leaping flames on the second floor and some of the windows on the third floor, the top. The man appealed to them from the third floor. Owen heard himself shout to the man.

As he turned the street onto his own sidewalk, about three blocks from the fire, Owen heard the urgency of fire engines, sirens ululating. Snowflakes fell in clusters; they had turned him into a ghostly apparition.

He saw the living room drapes of his house move slightly; knew Evelyn had been watching for him at the window. He stamped his shoes on the porch, slapped the burden of snow from his shoulders with his gloves and smiled at his wife's face as she opened the door.

"What a storm, Owen! I thought you might be late. Poor dear, you must be chilled. and hungry." She helped him out of his coat, watched as he bent and pushed off his shoes.

The warmth of his house, the redolence of his evening meal, his wife's solicitude, enveloped him.

After dinner Owen sat in the living room, smoking his pipe. The radio was on in the kitchen and the sound of the news interfered with the record he was listening to. Owen left the strains of The Blue Danube, intending to shut off the radio.

In the kitchen he saw Evelyn leaning against the kitchen counter, absorbed in an interview that was part of the eight o'clock news.

""...I was holding the baby ... I wanted Tanya to jump first with Kenny ... she was afraid. I yelled down to the street, people there, for help. I wanted to have them form a net." The man's voice broke. "Someone down there shouted at me, "Stop whining - you're going to die'!" It became obvious that the man was incapable of continuing. The news commentator took over smoothly, his voice a groomed monotone as he described the fire, the casualties.

Evelyn turned to Owen, her face drained of colour. "Why would they interview the poor man? Why put him through another ordeal?"

"You know newspeople are ghouls", Owen said soothingly. "They exploit situations. Want to satisfy the public's curiosity."

"Owen! Did you hear what some man shouted at him?" Evelyn looked close to tears, her lips trembled. Owen felt a surge of emotion for her, wanted to protect her.

"It's all right dear." He encircled her with his arms, drew her out of the kitchen. "Don't feel so badly. After all, it's just another instance of what I've always told you. There are all kinds of people."

Michael Rowed His Dream Aboard

His English teacher, the final year of high school, encouraging him to write poetry, "Learn to express yourself. You'll find it's a good outlet for your emotions. Poetry is the only completely honest medium", Mr. Stevenson said.

Michael read Eliot, Pound, Frost and Wilde but he felt dissatisfied. Accidentally, he discovered the biography of Sir Richard Burton, felt a current of recognition, and went on to read Burton's translation of Sheikh Nefzawi's "The Perfumed Garden". His head reeled. And he unburdened himself.

In the school library, writing. The poem held everything he dreamed of, and it was honest. His name scribbled on the top.

Was it accidental that he left it there or had he forgotten? Did he really think someone might come across it, be struck by its tender pathos, the passion, the genius of it?

The school office was nicely appointed; the only part of the building that didn't resemble a jail, a barracks.

"We won't tolerate this kind of ... obscenity!" Mr. Pearce spat out the distasteful word, jowls trembling in outrage.

Michael almost panicked. They threatened to throw him out of school. It was two months before final exams. He was humble, explained it to Mr. Pearce as a temporary lapse. He was not himself. He didn't really think that way - maybe it was something he'd read somewhere. And no, it wasn't true that he'd written it for Gayle Pointer. He didn't know who'd picked it up, given it to her.

"You're on borrowed time, Brack, remember that! Henceforth, your behaviour will be the model of circumspection."

"Yes sir."

***********************************************************

His father looking at him with that grim expression. Michael forced himself to pick up his fork, lift a piece of potato, open his mouth to receive it, chew.

"I'm talking to you!"
"Yes sir, I can hear you."
"Where did you pick up that kind of thing - not here! Not from us!"
"No, sir."

His father, shoving back his chair, rising. "I won't sit here with him ... none of us have to, Rachel! From now on see he eats before we do."

Michael rummaged about in the accumulated debris of the night table in his parents' room until he found what he was looking for, knew they were there. He punctured them, every one, then carefully rolled them. They looked innocent, untouched.

**************************************************************

I'm sorry Mrs. Brack", the doctor had said when he was a year old, in the grip of a prolonged high fever. "Even if he pulls out of this you can't expect him to live long."

Later it was, "Even so, he'll be a vegetable. He'll never be able to communicate, to talk. I've heard of other cases like this one. He'll be a vegetable for however long he survives."

It was relatively easy to abort a foetus, withhold medical support from a newborn. Harder to do anything about low expectations for an infant. He was already an established fact, an entity to deal with.

He walked, he talked. Animated, like a hopeful robot, waiting for some response.

"Jesus Rachel! Can't he even act like a normal kid? What's he keep staring at me for, with those goggle eyes?"

*******************************************************

When he was nine, he had an Abyssinian Guinea Pig, kept it in a cardboard box with rumpled newspapers. Freddie. It dug into, under the newspapers, made itself a private little cave. The animal knew him, recognized his step, his voice, squeaked for attention when it heard him.

Michael fed it lettuce and apples. The animal dogged his footsteps, a bundle of brindle fur. Soft and warm, he let it snuggle under his shirt, next to his skin. It loved him, liked him for being warm, for caring for it.

Once, his hands stopped in their caressing motions over its back. Stopped and went back to check, again and again. The hump grew day by day and then there were other, smaller humps.

Freddie wound down, his squeals were faint and instead of following Michael, he sat there,squatted on the floor, still.

Michael buried it in the backyard, under his mother's rose bed. The roses grew bigger and brighter than ever that year. He hated the smell of them. They smelled corrupt.

************************************************************

At the university cafeteria, him sitting alone at a table for four. Seeing someone whom he recognized from one of his language classes come in. Michael rose, waved for attention, indicated the empty chairs beside him.

The searching face stopped, glanced at him, an annoyed expression fleeting across the face, then continued its search.

It wasn't just him, that he'd contaminate anyone. It was just society. Space was precious. No one wanted anyone else to intrude on their privacy. No one looked for unwanted intimacy, even the superficial kind his invitation represented.

It wasn't just him.

*********************************************************

Factory smoke hanging thick and pungent over Cornwall. Himself wandering along the bank of the St.Lawrence, watching ships pass. Seagulls swooping, riding the crest of the wind, shrilling.

There were Greek immigrants there, industrial workers. In his grade five class, one who took him home. A big warm family who saw nothing different about Michael. They fed him lamb and rice parcels rolled into grape leaves, taught him Greek words.

The shawled grandmother, brooding and immobile, dreaming of a lost blue sky, the balmy Aegean, olive trees as gnarled as she was, but productive in their venerability.

Michael discovered a facility for languages. And when he spoke the foreign words, remembering them from visit to visit, expanding a lean vocabulary, his tongue no longer faltered and tripped, extending the words impossibly.

*****************************************************

The first individualist who insisted on worshipping Aten when everyone else was dedicated to Amon-ra and the lesser gods. The narrow, aquiline face. Narrow shoulders and pendulous belly. But refusing to be idealized. No shapely waist and wide shoulders to depict him. Nothing but the reality would do.

Michael felt an affinity to the antique figure, a recognition of self. The face, proud and noble. No one could tell that that face, his frailty, his misshapen figure was not beautiful.

Of course, after his death, the jealous priests exhorted restless hordes to erase all evidence of his greatness, to chisel his name out of posterity.

The Brotherhood of Man is the safety of the masses, the sameness of physiognomy and predictable aspiration. There have been, and are, a handful of others and they suffer, Michael consoled himself.

*******************************************************

Studying at the university library late at night. The place almost deserted, huge and hollow sounding. He could hear his breathing almost, his heart beating like strange music filling the empty spaces of the chamber, bouncing off the books.

Michael let his mouth fondle the Chaucerian Middle-English, felt his fluid tongue quiver with the beauty of the sounds playing in his head.

The sound of something rasping. Over at the card catalogue, a lone figure pulling out a drawer, lifting it out, taking it over to a table, laying it down and bending over to riffle through the cards. A woman, small and dark, her backside rounded, pointing at him.

A warm flush suffused him and he felt himself, tumescent.

What would happen? If he silently approached, placed his hands on her hips and drew her toward him. He could feel her against him, the softness and warmth of her. He could lay his face against her hair and the freshly washed fragrance of it would cradle him ... but she turns around, angry and frightened, lifts her hand, palm open, to slap him. Calls him 'creep!'

He retreats, stumbling in his confusion, apologizing, his voice tripping over the words, agonizing.

But she's gone, doesn't hear his explanations. She's gone to the other end of the library and he watches, frozen, as she talks excitedly to a security guard. Sees as the guard turns to stare at the end of her wildly pointing finger, Michael standing there, exposed.

It hasn't happened, none of it. Michael is still sitting at the library table, still tracing the words with trembling finger on the book, and the girl has found what she was looking for, shoves the file drawer back in the cabinet. Her heels click businesslike and impatient on the floor, echoing through the silent chamber as she walks off.

******************************************************

"I'm the first one in my family to break away from the duenna-mold. I'm the oldest. It'll be easier for my sisters."

"But there's something nice about that, too. It means they care about you, doesn't it?"

"Yes, they do. But you've got to understand, it's all done to protect the girl's reputation. If they suspect she's done something wrong, she isn't worth anything on the marriage market."

"Oh."

He likes her, her casual acceptance of him. Her fragile height, and her black cap of hair. Her defiance of old-world custom while still maintaining about herself an old-fashioned rectitude. Ramona.

"Tell me something else, Michael - it's fascinating."
"Okay well ... marmalade! Know where that comes from?"
"No."

"When Elizabeth had Mary in the Tower, one of the warders felt sorry for Mary. He cooked up some slivered oranges and sugar and took them to her, saying 'for poor Mary-my-Lady'".

Michael reads to Ramona from his original Beowulfian text, his voice a Teutonic sing-song, masculine and controlled, the Old English mellifluous and soaring. He feels himself transported, exhilarated, as much by the perfection of his sly transpositions - Essex to Kent to the more common Wessex dialect - as by the rapt expression of respect on her face.

Next time, he promises, he'll render the original texts of Averroes, Avicenna and Halevi. She hangs on his words, sees him as he is meant to be seen, as he sees himself.

Of course she can't understand what the rare words mean, but she understands well enough what they are meant to convey. They are a consecration, a sacrament. Michael's love song to her.

At a Byward Market store, he found a shawm. Oh, not the real thing, but a folk instrument, made in mainland China. Only a few dollars, and he was delighted to have it. Taught himself, slowly and painstakingly, the fingering. Learned to soak the reed beforehand, and to blow up his cheeks to force wind through the narrow aperture.

The sound was harsh, demanding, like a wounded bird. It was perfect. He could play medieval music on it. He could read his Middle English and then play the appropriate music; recreate for himself a more admirable time in history.

He haunted the Medieval and Renaissance sections of Treble Clef, waiting for any new materials that came in. He learned the musical conventions of the time both by reading its literature and by listening to the recordings of early music groups.

He'd try, when he saw someone else looking for such esoteric music, to break ice.

"Let me know, will you, if you come across something by Musica Antiqua of Amsterdam?"
"I'm looking for the Academy of Ancient Music of London, myself."
"Play anything?"
"Yes, rauschpfiffe and recorder. You?'
"Ah ... shawm, and I'm looking for a krumhorn."
"Hey, great! You play with anyone?"

But he'd always spoil things, somehow. His enthusiasm, perhaps, and the accompanying physical signs. His bobbing head that withdrew into his neck sitting on his hunched shoulders; the twitching left eye, made him resemble a nervous turtle. If they were too well-bred to laugh outright, they'd walk away coldly.

In his desperation to redeem himself, he'd spout gratuitous information after them. That the sackbutt was the forerunner of the trombone, and the curtal was the forerunner of the bassoon, the shawm that of the rauschpfiffe. No one really cared. No one came back, impressed.

****************************************************

"Michael, everyone has headaches!"
"Not like this, mother, surely not like this? I didn't always have them."
"There's always something the matter with you! If it isn't your back, your feet, your eyes, it's something else!"
"I can't help it, it's not my fault."
"Not my fault either, but it's time you learned to put up with your ... uneven health. And for god's sake, don't complain when your father's around, you know how mad he gets."

At last the headaches went. After suffering them eight long years and no one believing him. The Ottawa ophthalmologist discovered what was wrong, told him that what the other eye doctors had been doing was treating each eye individually, forgetting that they had to mesh for clear vision and the new lenses would correct the right eye that always seemed to be looking straight down at the ground.

With the new lenses, he had to learn distances and perspective all over again. Peoples' noses now leaped out at him, the ground was further away than it had always been. The result was that he seemed more awkward than ever during the period of adjustment. It was like discovering a new dimension and he thought he knew how the 14th-Century Florentine artists must have been stimulated, delighted and frustrated by their attempts to come to grips with the new reality.

Temporarily, he became again a figure of mild ridicule as he stumbled, learning to re-align images.

****************************************************

Mr. Seguin has worked for the Merchant Marine Branch of the Records Division of Transport Canada in Ottawa for thirty years. He's an ugly, fat little man, with an engaging manner, and he knows how to handle people. Mr. Seguin has recognized in Michael someone with whom he can discuss opera.

Every holiday Mr. Seguin and his son go to Rome or New York for the opera season and Mr. Seguin goes backstage to personally greet, like old friends, international opera stars with whom he has become acquainted over the years.

"Don't tell me, let me guess", Mr. Seguin says, sniffing the air, eyes shut, "that's a Cape Breton ... not a Lunenburg odour."

How does he do it? He's usually right, although one fish smell seems the same as another to Michael. The men step off the elevator, clothes reeking of their livelihood, to renew their merchant-marine licenses. They're sometimes pugnacious, shy, or resentful, and Mr. Seguin jokes with them, putting them at their ease in the cold atmosphere of the government office.

"You're doing fine, just fine Michael", Mr. Seguin encourages him. "There's a CR-3 in your future."

Michael nods his appreciation, doesn't tell Mr. Seguin that it isn't this kind of security he's looking for, but his Aten.

**********************************************************

The Maggiores are a big family, close-knit and volatile, Ramona tells him, warning him.

When Michael comes by to share their Christmas dinner by invitation, he's introduced and later can't remember - Vittorio, Vincente, Aldo, Mario, Anna, Rosa, Clarissa, Maria - which names belong to which faces. Ramona smiles empathy.

They're voluble and excitable, a throng of flailing arms and legs - rising voices - rushing over to hug each newcomer. And they're also sympatico and courtly in a now-forgotten way.

Dinner is seven courses of fish. Dinner takes four hours as each dish is savoured, wine is had with each, then a half-hour interval, while everyone talks, and the next course is served.

Michael ate the eel boiled in the eelskin, thought it was bland. And one other fish, whatever it was, a herring of some sort, that he couldn't eat for the bones. All the other courses were a blur of tastes and exhortations - "take - take!"

After, when everyone rose from the table, he made his way to the opposite end, where Ramona sat with all the other women.

"No", she whispered urgently, colouring. "You've got to stay with the men."

He experienced some difficulty following the Sicilian dialect. They spoke so rapidly - of soccer, cars and politics.

*******************************************************

"Isn't it hard?" Ramona asks him, "working all week and then coming out to evening classes?"
"Need is the mother of necessity", he quips, feeling strangely naked.
"I mean, what's the point if you've got a job anyway?"
"I've got a goal."
"What?"
"I want to teach speech therapy."
"Why? Why that?"
"Because ... because they said I'd never speak. Because everyone laughed at me when I stuttered and fumbled my speech."
"Michael ... you don't, anymore!"
"No, I don't. And it's because ..." He broke into a melange of tongues. Meaningless to her, the kaleidoscope of languages. She could see that he was teasing her, speaking musically, lightly, humorously.

"I've almost got my B.A. I need my M.A. and then I'm set", he tells her. She nods. She has an immense respect for his determination. His facility impresses her.

********************************************************

Michael's had two wisdom teeth surgically removed. They were impacted. Although they hadn't bothered him yet, his dentist said they should come out before they caused serious trouble.

He's in his new quarters. The room's larger than his old one, the bathroom not as far down the hall. Nice, except that the refrigerator doesn't work properly and isn't big enough to accommodate everyone on the floor.

He's sorry he left his old place with such bad feelings on both sides. But he hadn't made as much noise with his music as they said he had. Not nearly as much as the kids playing their damn rock.

His closest neighbour, the man next door, is from Nigeria, black as the Queen of Sheba. His name is Abo, and he grins whenever he sees Michael, and ducks his head from that great height, in acknowledgment.

Abo is always carrying books and keeps his portion of the refrigerator stocked with exotic-looking foods. Since the fridge doesn't work well, they quickly go bad and stink up all the other food, but Michael doesn't want to say anything. He likes the white-on-black greetings.

Once, Michael saw Abo hurrying along Market Street holding a live fowl under his arm, and wondered what the black man was intending to do with it.

Now, he feels feverish, and turns in his bed, annoyed that he doesn't feel like studying. She'd said ....

*********************************************************

"I told them I'd be studying late at the university, she says, bringing the fragrance of an afternoon snowstorm with her, lightening his room.

"How do you feel?"
"Dreadful", he groans.
"Poor boy."
"Absolutely awful."
"Oh, Michael!"

How could she like him? Want to be with him? She's touchy about her height, thinks she's a dwarf, but she's perfect.

"Ramona ..."
"Michael?"
"Ramona, have you ever heard of Nefertiti?"
"The Egyptian queen?"
"Yes."
"That's all I know, that she was an Egyptian queen", she says, sliding out of her skirt, her slip, raising her sweater over her head.