On rainy days bicycle wheels splashed through puddles. Car exhaust pumped through my window, making my eyes smart, yet I sucked in the complex flavours of diesel fuel avidly. This was the world, my only world now. There was a man who had a bronchial condition, and when he passed my window he scraped his lungs with a deep, phlegmy cough. The hacked-up mucus landed with a splat, inches from the bars: it was a sound I dreaded.
I hated him, the Phlegm Man.
As I loved the woman with the red shoes. My Angel. They were all mine.
And in this boy’s room in Canada, even the desert rat finally fell asleep in his nest.
2
RITA LEANED OVER TO POUR FROTHY MILK into my coffee cup and I stared down the front of her blouse. This was an unexpected gift, buoyant cleavage for the just released prisoner and I was grateful, painfully so. She licked milk off her finger and smiled.
“Enough?”
Her son was watching, his spoon dangling into a bowl of Mini Wheats, hair drooping over his smooth round face.
“Yes, thank you.”
“How long’s he staying?” the boy asked in a mopey voice.
“Just through the weekend,” his mother replied. “Then he’ll be moving to the campus.” She looked at me. “Syd called about lunch later today. He asked if you were nice. I said you were.”
“Do you think I am nice?” I asked the boy, who shrugged and said, “I guess so.”
His mother and I laughed, a nervous clatter. I was handed soft rolls with a tub of jam to go with the dish of eggs. It was easy to be astonished by the presence of such food in my hands as I sat in this modest kitchen in this city at the edge of the continent.
The walls were decorated with copper moulds of leaping fish and Andreas’s scribbled drawings. Welts showed where the plaster had been repaired and painted over. On the tiny counter were several appliances, their cords crammed into a single outlet. I hadn’t eaten in a kitchen since I was a child, only in formal dining rooms with sober mahogany furniture, or in restaurants and cafés. I had expected something entirely different, that I would be sitting at this moment with a group of men wearing suits in a high-ceilinged room, stacks of documents shuffling across a table, self-important throat clearings and speeches.
Andreas ate one Mini Wheat at a time, tilting it this way and that in his teaspoon, then prying at its lacy strands with his teeth. His small body was clothed in seersucker pajamas displaying pictures of rearing horses, and he stared at me with his mouth full of cereal. When I smiled, he flushed and looked away.
The professor lived on a wide, tree-lined street.
“This area’s very expensive now,” Rita assured me as we parked next to a mailbox. “Sydney bought years ago, before the Hong Kong money flooded in.”
To my eye, the houses were not imposing, mainly wide bungalows coated with siding, or the ubiquitous grey stucco. Yet there was a cared-for look to the lawns, which were rimmed with flowers and rows of clipped shrubs, and the cars belonging to these householders were of the understated but expensive breed. The air seemed cooler here, more perfumed.
“You’ll meet the lot of us today,” Rita said, reaching behind to grab the bottle of wine from the back seat. “The entire board of the Vancouver branch of the Alliance.”
It was Sunday and the rain had finally let up, revealing, as promised, the shimmering backdrop of mountains pressing against a crisp blue sky. Our mountains at home are more rounded and ancient, buffeted by wind and ocean spray and the searing heat.
“They’re dying to set eyes on you, Carlos, after such heroic efforts.”
I scraped my shoe on the front stair to remove a clump of grass. She’d spoken lightly yet the words went directly to my heart. I could imagine these heroic efforts: who had been bought off, what layers of officialdom had been bribed or threatened, and what other worthy men had been overlooked because, I, Carlos, had been selected. If only my clothes were finer, my jacket tailored, as they would be at home. I wanted to make a good impression, but something was happening; I felt a clumsiness in my body as I arranged myself to enter the house. A smile had popped on my face, but it was too soon.
“We’ll go through to the patio.” Rita pushed open Sydney’s front door without knocking. The foyer was dark, lined in varnished wood, and smelled of lemon polish. Directly inside was an umbrella stand holding a single canvas umbrella, alongside it a bench made of cane. The tile floor gleamed. A mirror, oval-shaped within a gold frame, held not a smudge. Above, a chandelier dangled dozens of crystal teardrops which twisted in the breeze of our arrival, speckling the walls in light.
“His place is always like this,” Rita whispered.
I followed her through the front room, which was a small cube, barely containing the heavy dining table and leather-seated chairs. I wondered if all rooms in Vancouver were so cramped. How odd that in a land with so much space the rooms were meanly proportioned. Perhaps in a northern climate it was easier to keep such spaces warm.
“William Morris paper.” Rita indicated the walls with their pattern of foliage.
She’d told me earlier how our host was an expert on the French Enlightenment philosophers and had named his thirteen-metre sailboat Rameau’s Nephew after the novel by Diderot. I spotted a photograph of this craft on the cluttered surface of his fireplace mantle.
We travelled through a miniature sitting room, rimmed by glass-fronted bookcases and framed posters of Impressionist painters from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on toward the back of the house.
“Is he homosexual?” I said, gazing at the art nouveau lamps.
Rita touched my shoulder. “Shhhh. Of course he is, but old style, very discreet.”
The kitchen was large and bright, oddly spacious in comparison to the rooms we’d just passed through, with built-in pine cupboards and terra cotta tile. Every surface was immaculate, as if this were a showroom, not a workplace. There wasn’t a trace of food preparation and no encouraging smells. Where was his maid, his cook?
Rita slid open the glass door at the rear and poked her head out.
“Sydney?” She trilled his name. “Your guest of honour has arrived.”
The chatter of the small assembly abruptly stopped and seven people rose to their feet as one.
So I entered their world, the smile now taking over my face, and with it came the realization that this smile could never be broad enough, or warm enough, that my existence was an automatic disappointment, even to myself.
“Welcome, Carlos, welcome.” A handsome man of about fifty with a thatch of grey hair embraced me. “I am Sydney Baskin, president of this little cadre of radicals.”
I bobbed from the waist, grinning, a parody of the grateful refugee. So alert was I to any hint of dismay that when I spotted a tightening of my host’s smile I wanted to say, “Be patient, I am not yet sure where I am.” Wicker chairs were set in a semi-circle around a little pool made of flagstones and cement. The bottom was painted blue, and darting through the water were delicate fish, orange and black. I thought of the irises back at Rita’s house, and the flaming bird of paradise. Perhaps these were official CAFE colours.
Sydney introduced me to the half-dozen people in his garden, and each shook my hand with boisterous enthusiasm.
“Welcome, my friend!” Professor Daniel Rose, a stooped man with unruly hair clapped me hard on the shoulder. “We’ve been waiting for this moment!”
There was a strong whiff of gin and I recognized the giddy smile of an amateur boozer.
“Daniel,” a woman, surely his wife, reached for the back of his shirt and tugged.