A Jest of God Read online

  “Jago always keeps an extra packet stashed away somewhere.”

  “Where is he tonight, Jago?” The thought has just hit me, and all at once I expect to see him walk in right now. What would it matter if he did? And yet, because I’ve been to bed with Nick, it seems to me I’d show it. I’d betray everything in my face or by some slipped and askew phrase. But what would Jago care? It’s none of his business. Yet if there were something in his face, some suggestion of the situation being furtive, I couldn’t bear that. There’s nothing furtive about it. I don’t care who knows. I do, though. That’s the trouble. If it’s concealed and surreptitious, it’s I who make it so.

  “He’s at the movies,” Nick says, glancing at me, and then I see I must have spoken with much more alarm than I meant to. “You worry too much – you know that?”

  “I know. It’s very silly. But I can’t seem to help it.”

  “It’s not exactly silly. But it’s a waste of energy. Look who’s talking.”

  “You’re not a worrier.”

  “I don’t strike you that way, eh?”

  “No. No, you don’t.”

  “Well, I never thought I was, either, until I came back here this summer. I don’t worry about anything that anything can be done about, you understand. Only about things I can’t possibly change. That is really a waste of effort. I hadn’t been back here for quite some time, as you know. I used to get them to come to Winnipeg once or twice a year. They always thought it was good of me. Good, hell. I didn’t want to come back here, that was all. They used to hate those visits, although both of them put on this mighty act of having a wonderful time. My dad used to pace around the apartment and nearly die with boredom. I used to take them to movies. Once I made the awful mistake of taking them to a Russian film – that one about the young soldier trying to get home on leave, and everything goes wrong. I guess it was the Ukraine, millions of miles of nothing but wheat fields. My mother sat there bawling her eyes out, and my dad kept making loud comments about how the Reds had ruined his heart’s earth. It was just great.”

  “You were embarrassed?”

  Nick isn’t looking at me, and again I have the feeling that he’s talking to himself, and yet, obscurely, he reaches out and moves his hand along my arm.

  “Yeh. I was. That’s what bugs me, to tell you the truth.”

  He is silent. When he speaks again, his voice is low and unempathetic, and with an edge of self-mockery as though he is warning me not to respond too seriously, and yet he cannot help saying the words aloud.

  “I have forsaken my house – I have left mine heritage – mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest – it crieth out against me – therefore have I hated it.”

  Then he draws away and shrugs.

  “Jeremiah,” he says. “A great guy with the gloomy phrase. Did you ever know my sister Julie?”

  “She was a few years younger than I. I never knew her very well. I used to see her around town. She’s married now, isn’t she?”

  “Yeh. For the second time. She lives in Montreal. They’ve got two quite nice kids, one from her first marriage. She thinks I’m a dead loss because I don’t come here more often. She can’t, she says – look how far away she lives, and how could she leave Dennis and the kids? All quite true.”

  “My sister Stacey gives the same reason for not coming home.”

  “Really? Well, how can you contradict it? What I was going to say was once when we were kids, my dad got a brainwave about painting the house. Why white, he said. Blue would be more cheerful. He used to get those free paint charts from the hardware store, and study them like he was preparing a thesis. He had the colour all picked out. It was called Robin’s Egg Blue, and it was a very violent turquoise. My sister nearly threw a fit. Nobody, but nobody, had houses that colour, she said. Where in the whole of Manawaka could you see houses that were anything except white or light brown? She raised one hell of a row. According to her, the Kazlik abode was going to be the laughing-stock of the entire province. Finally my dad got fed up and didn’t paint the house at all, not even white. About five years later, coloured houses came in, and every second person was doffing up their residence with Lime-Green or Salmon-Pink or some such godawful shade. So Julie said very nicely why not paint the house blue, Dad? But he said no, he didn’t think so, not now. I haven’t thought of that in years. Do you remember what my dad used to be called, around town, Rachel?”

  “No. What?”

  Nick hesitates, as though he regrets having mentioned it. Then he laughs and says it quickly and lightly.

  “Nestor the Jester.”

  “But it wasn’t meant badly –”

  “He didn’t mind the name. He used to play up to it. He adored it when he could get a laugh. He always thought people were laughing with him, never at him. At least, that’s how he seemed to me then. Now I don’t know.”

  I am afraid to reply in case I say the wrong thing.

  He gets up and begins roaming around again.

  “I’ll bet Jago’s got a mickey of rye hidden behind the stove or some unlikely place.”

  But he can’t find any, and it’s getting late.

  “I have to go now, Nick, really.”

  “Oh, well, all right. If you say so.”

  The town is totally asleep as we drive back. We don’t talk much, and then I remember something I meant to ask him.

  “Was your brother the one who was always going to take over your father’s place?”

  “Yes. He wanted to, of course, and I didn’t. But it wouldn’t have made any difference even if I had wanted to. He and my dad got on well together. I guess I never realized until this summer how much older the old man is getting. He needs more help than Jago can give him now.”

  “Surely he’d never suggest that you –?”

  “No,” Nick says. “He’d never suggest that. Only – well, it’s kind of difficult to see what to do, that’s all. He can’t cope here for ever, and he’ll never give it up until he drops dead. He won’t hire anyone else – he refuses completely. He says it wouldn’t pay him. I don’t know what he’s saving his money for. So he can pass it on to Julie and me, I guess. I don’t know about Julie, but I don’t want it. Actually, he doesn’t want to pass on his money, such as it is, at all. He wants to leave his place to someone who cares about it.”

  “And there isn’t anyone who does, now.”

  “No. I wonder if a person could make themselves care about something? I guess that wouldn’t be possible. It wouldn’t solve anything.”

  Nick couldn’t make himself care about something, if he didn’t. Nor about someone either.

  SEVEN

  “Hello, dear. Have a nice evening? What time is it?” She’s wide awake. I swear she doesn’t take a sleeping pill on the evenings I’m out. She takes benzedrine instead.

  “Very nice, thanks. It’s just twelve.”

  “Oh, you are a Cinderella, aren’t you?” Mother cries with a carolling laugh.

  This coyness, with its concealed undercoat, the tint of malice, for some reason shocks me. But when I turn on her light, I see she’s frightened. Why? Her face has a blanched-almond look, whitely wrinkled, unnaturally soft.

  “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

  “Oh yes, dear, perfectly all right. A little restless, perhaps, that’s all.”

  “Too much bridge, maybe.”

  “I would have thought that,” she says petulantly, “although the girls did think it was a little odd, your going off like that, not that they actually said anything.” Then, pinchingly, like a bee sting, “was it a party, Rachel?”

  “No. Why should you think so?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that your breath is – you know. I suppose I’m a little more sensitive to that particular smell than most people.”

  “I had precisely two drinks, if you want to know. Nick took me to his house – to meet his family.”

  Why did I say that? Why did I have to? She’ll find out, likel
y, and then she’ll be more upset than if I’d told her straight out. She won’t find out. How could she?

  Her face has gone even more wan and sunken.

  “Rachel – is it serious?”

  “Serious?”

  “Yes – I mean –”

  So that’s it. I ought to have seen. She’s wondering – what will become of me? That’s what everyone goes through life wondering, probably, the one absorbing anguish. What will become of me? Me.

  “No, it’s not serious.”

  “Well, dear, I mean to say, of course it’s your own life, as I’ve often said –”

  “It’s not serious. He’s just – a friend. Try to sleep now. Did you take your sleeping pill?”

  “Not yet, dear,” she says. Then with a cosy smile, certain she’s speaking the gospel truth, “I forgot.”

  She sinks down, relaxed now, and when I give her the pill, she’s all prepared to sleep, out of sheer relief.

  Is it serious, Rachel?

  Sitting beside my bedroom window, in the darkness, I smoke and look at the stars, points of icy light in the hot July black of the sky. If only she wouldn’t question me. If only I could stop myself from answering. Why can’t she ever sleep and leave me alone? Or die.

  Why can’t she die and leave me alone?

  And if she did, it would leave me alone, all right, completely. Would that be any better? I don’t mean it, anyway. I couldn’t really mean that. Of course we have our ups and downs, she and I. But as for wishing anything bad to happen –

  You mean it all right, Rachel. Not every minute, not every day, even. But right now, you mean it. Mean. I am. I never knew it, not really. Is everyone? Probably, but what possible difference can that make? I do care about her. Surely I love her as much as most parents love their children. I mean, of course, as much as most children love their parents.

  Nick – listen – I love you.

  My forehead is on the windowsill, and then finally I’m able to look up and out. I don’t know what I’m doing. The curtain is drawn back so the room contains the uncertain outer light, the grey light of the evening, the leaden light of the moon. And when I turn around I can see myself in the mirror, not quite see but almost, the silver fishwhite of arms, the crane of a body, gaunt metal or gaunt bird.

  I can’t bear it.

  Listen, my love – whatever your terms – I don’t make any conditions. Nick, do you know what I love about you? I love the way your voice sounds, deep but with that scepticism I used to fear and don’t fear now, and the way your skin feels, and the hair that grows blackly down to your belly and around your sex, and the muscles that lie within your thighs. It was good – wasn’t it?

  – They are in a warm concealed place, a room but not a room, a room nowhere, very apart, locked away, no one able to knock and enter, nothing around, only this bed. The spasm of love, and then his eyes opening, and his praising voice saying –

  Relax, Rachel. And I say I’m sorry. There was a Hudson Bay point blanket on the bed, scarlet with one black stripe, almost as needle-textured as the grass, and the thought shot in and out of my head, why would anyone want such a heavy blanket on their bed in the very height and heat of summer?

  Why did it have to be that way? All right, God – go ahead and laugh, and I’ll laugh with you, but not quite yet for a while. Rachel, stop it. You’re only getting yourself worked up for nothing. It’s bad for you. Why bad? I’ve felt a damn sight better since I stopped considering my health.

  That’s interesting. I have stopped. I didn’t know. The reason is so plain. Anyone looking at it from the outside could see why, and smile. Don’t they think I know?

  – The car, his. He turns off the engine, and they are in the quiet, and he bends towards her, but with an unforeseen deliberation, as though he’s forming words in his head and hasn’t quite achieved them. She has no idea what he is going to say. “Rachel, look, honey, I’m not so marvellous at saying things –”

  No. All wrong. He’s quite good enough at saying anything he wants to say. And he doesn’t say honey. He says darling. Somebody else must have said honey, but I can’t think who it could have been, or when. Maybe it was the salesman who travelled in embalming fluid. Do that part over again.

  – He makes a slightly flippant thing of it, but the reality is obvious to her, the tension of him, the sureness that hides some unsureness.

  “Listen, darling, do you think life as a Grade Eleven teacher’s wife would be a fate worse than –”

  No. He wouldn’t say it like that. I don’t know how he would say it. Maybe I can’t imagine it only because he never would. Why not? There’s nothing wrong with me. He said he liked my shoulders. And the skin of my thighs. He said –

  Nothing else. He said nothing else. He told me about his grandmother’s samovar. But that was my fault.

  I’m out of my mind. Mad as any Grecian woman on the demented and blood-lit hills. I’m sitting here thinking of all this, when I should be doing something. I must get up now. I must go to my dresser and take out what is there. I must walk ordinarily to the bathroom, and perform the ritual ablution.

  I don’t know how. I have never done it. Anyway, with a thing like that – an antique – a museum piece. Imagine the kind of museum that would harbour it. Go on – laugh. Laugh, angels. Angel-makers – that’s what they used to call abortionists.

  What is woman that you forsake her

  To the claws of the grey old angel-maker?

  That’s all wrong, of course. It’s really Kipling, about the seafarers – to go with the grey old widow-maker. I must do something about myself right now or it will be too late. How much time have I? I don’t recall what the books said. The tadpole might swim instantly to its retreat, and burrow in, for all I know.

  All right. I’ve got the thing in my hands, the old crimson smelling of decayed rubber and the musty sterility of antiseptics that went down the drain years ago. I never heard my mother rise, at nights, and tiptoe into the bathroom. How silently she must have gone. And he, probably, turning away so he would not need to witness her returning. Blaming himself, or her, for something or other. Wasting everything in a regret as futile as deception.

  There. I’ve got to the bathroom and she hasn’t awakened. It’s all right. Quiet, Rachel. It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. It’s to be done and ignored. There. That wasn’t so difficult, was it?

  Oh God – quick – I can’t help it – don’t let her awaken and hear. Something revolts, something revolts me and revolts in me and –

  It’s over. Vomiting, I’m purged, calmer. Did she hear? I go back to my bedroom but I can’t sleep. I have to get up and take the equipment in my hands as though it were a dead foetus, something to be rid of forever. I can’t throw it out. It would be seen in the garbage tin. I climb on my flimsy white dressing-table chair and put it into the highest shelf above my clothes cupboard, among the old hats. A small pale straw hat tumbles out, ribboned with icing-sugar pink. I had that hat when I was twelve, and it’s still here.

  I’ll never touch that contraption again. Never. I must do something, though. I must tell him. I can’t. What would he say? What on earth would he think, that I couldn’t organize myself better?

  Women like me are an anachronism. We don’t exist any more. And yet I look in the mirror and see I’m there. I’m a fact of sorts, a fantasy of sorts. My blood runs in actual veins, which is as much of a surprise to me as to anyone.

  What would become of me? I can’t believe it could happen, though. A thing like that – to grow a child inside one’s structure and have it born alive? Not within me. It couldn’t. I couldn’t really believe it could ever happen.

  Nick, give it to me.

  It seems four in the morning, but it’s not yet one. Prowling, I light an unwanted cigarette, and put it out again. Then, looking from my window, I can see that the light is still on, below, in the Japonica Funeral Chapel.

  These stairs were carpeted the year my father died, the stairs from our apartment
leading down to the ground. Grey background, and all the red roses are scuffed now from being trodden on. I can’t see a thing. I couldn’t put the hall light on, in case, but I know where the trampled roses are on each step, and seem to feel them under my feet. The carpet makes the stairs silent, but not silent enough. If she wakens, I’ll say I forgot to lock the downstairs door.

  The door into the Funeral Chapel is much wider than ours. Hector Jonas replaced my father’s plain door with a shinily varnished one, fitted with wrought-iron staves and loops and swirls, so it looks like the door of a keep or a castle prison, but false, a mock-up. Ye Olde Dungeon, as in a Disney film, where even the children know that the inmates are cartoons. And yet I hesitate to knock.

  Go ahead, knock. He’ll answer.

  He’ll think I’m off my head. What am I doing here? I should be asleep. This is no place for you, Rachel. Run along now, there’s a good girl. This is no place for you.

  Tick – tick – tick –

  My fingers on the door sound like the beating of a clock or a heart. He won’t hear. Tick – tick – like the heart that kept pulsing under the floor in that famous and awful story, and when we were listening to it being done on radio years ago, Mother said “Turn it off.”

  Footsteps – shy, suspicious, shying away from opening the door. And then the latch released.

  “What the hell’s going on? Who –? Well, for Christ’s sake. Pardon my French. It’s you, Rachel.”

  Hector squints around the edge of the door, and all I see of him is an anxious green eye and a pate like a pink stone, smoothly bare and vein-mottled. Then he opens the door and stands there in dubious welcome, a short rotund man in brown wrinkled trousers and shirt sleeves and indigo braces with brass adjusters.

  “Can I help you?” he says, not meaning it, only unconsciously reverting to his coffin-side manner, a blend of dignity and joviality.

  He’s wondering what I’m doing here, and now the notion occurs to me – maybe he thinks I’ve long admired him from afar and now at last have gone berserk enough to declare my burning spinster passion. I can hardly stop myself from laughing out loud. Hush, Rachel. Steady.