Blackouts are a regular occurrence, often followed by a sudden disruptive surge as power returns. Mónica rubs her husband’s shoulders. “Pobrecito.”
Again the resigned tone. It is this attitude that Manuel must regularly flee, or he, too, will be drawn into the sinkhole of passivity.
An idea strikes him, an old one, many times courted and just as many times denied: this time if he wangles a visa, he may never return. It would serve them all right for not appreciating his talents. With Lucia on the warpath, recent life has been a misery. Their daughter is well placed as receptionist at the hotel. His job here as father and husband is over.
Mademoiselle Gagnon from Montreal has been trying to reach Manuel all day. “Is something wrong with your phone down there?” she asks.
Manuel has to laugh. He’s talking over the din of late-afternoon conversation at Café Bohemia, a place frequented by tourists that features an operating telephone.
“We’ve pulled it together,” Mademoiselle Gagnon tells him. Her French accent is musical, sliding into his ear like Afternoon of a Faun. The knot in his stomach finally begins to uncoil.
“Thank you,” he says after a moment, realizing he is close to weeping. His future is in the hands of others. The patrons of the café, mainly tourists and local guides, watch with interest. He’s become a familiar figure in recent days, darting in and out to use the phone.
Mademoiselle Gagnon says, “Of course you must finalize things on your end.”
Manuel doesn’t feel a shred of guilt about Eric’s arrest. Until three months ago when Lucia booted Manuel out of the house, his only involvement in Eric’s shenanigans was eating the roast chicken that magically appeared on his plate several times a week. Since then it’s been rice and beans with a scoop of Chef Ana’s unnamed fish when he’s desperate for protein. He pictures Montreal’s shiny streets and bustling bistros, a riot of flavours. Fortunately, he’s been granted a generous per diem. His attendance as judge at the festival guarantees a higher quality of competitors. This is not vanity but simple fact.
Manuel spends the following day cycling between state funcionarios in their cubicles, watching them laboriously type the necessities of his case. None seems to share his sense of urgency. Of course, he hides this urgency by sitting with an arm slung over the back of the chair and legs crossed. One must be slightly haughty and never reveal a hint of desperation.
He is sent to the next office and the next carrying his growing dossier and multiple copies of his passport until he ends up in a tiny cabinet where a young man earnestly dabs at a cracked keyboard and stares at the monitor that remains blank. Without speaking to Manuel, he disappears for twenty minutes and returns with a plug-in hard drive retrieved from another office, but soon realizes there is no cord to attach it to his own computer and begins to rummage around in a box at his feet, pulling out wires and cords and tossing them onto the floor. Tourists find such poverty quaint, along with the crumbling facades of the once-noble colonial buildings.
Manuel clears his throat. “I have business with you,” he reminds the functionary who has worked himself into a sweat. Startled, the young man pulls himself up. He is light-skinned, almost blond, with blue eyes. Manuel has copperish hair, what’s left of it, and freckled skin.
The lad grabs his file, then begins to scrutinize each page for an interminable length of time.
Manuel shifts in his seat. “I understand there will be a further tariff to pay,” he says with the proper mix of pride and obsequiousness.
The young man rises from his chair, closes the door, and returns, pressing his buttocks against the edge of the desk. Now he is facing Manuel.
“Fifty dollars,” he says, meaning the convertible pesos worth twenty-five times the national currency.
Without moving a hand toward his wallet, Manuel says in an equally calm tone, “Shall we say thirty?”
The youth considers, drops onto his chair, and puts his feet up on the desk. “Forty-five.” He stares at the ceiling, the picture of patience.
Manuel peels off the bills and slides them under a coffee cup on the desk.
Suddenly, the computer screen springs to life, and Manuel spots his own name printed on the monitor. A rash of typing ensues, then without a word the functionary disappears from the room, clutching an ancient floppy disk and leaving Manuel to cool his heels for another twenty minutes. Will there be another “tariff” to pay? He’s half asleep in the airless little room when his tormentor returns with a freshly printed form.
“Your visa,” the youth announces, handing the paper to Manuel with reluctance. The precious tarjeta blanca.
Nine
Mark’s uncle has finally pushed off. Out the door he goes, spry as a bird, tossing his vinyl suitcase down the front steps, not bothering to thank Lucy or Mark for their hospitality, nor offer a farewell to the boys who’d already left for school. His forehead shines as he smiles. In his mind he’s already disappeared from this sorry excuse of a city. The limo idles curbside, plumes of exhaust meeting autumn air while Uncle Philip’s suit jacket whips in the wind.
He wears no overcoat, having left this bulky item stashed in the cupboard down the hall. It is an unnecessary burden in the torrid climate he is about to enter. He will return in six months to reclaim it. Mark’s uncle insists on limousine service to Pearson International because he likes plenty of leg room before the arduous flight to Southeast Asia. Of course, he was too cheap to pitch in for food or wine when he stayed here en route.
Lucy feels a faint spasm of guilt on thinking these thoughts, for it was Uncle Philip, music lover extraordinaire, who quite unexpectedly mailed her a cheque last year with the note: “If you’re going to enter this competition, you’ll need an excellent teacher. I hope this will help.”
Thanks to him she’s been working with the divine Goran.
Lucy watches the driver fit suitcase into trunk, then hold the passenger door open for Uncle Philip who, once settled, rolls down the window and calls out in his sunny voice, “Back in the spring, dear.”
As if she’ll be counting the days.
She shuts the front door, twists the lock, and breathes clove-scented aftershave mixed with breakfast bacon, a now-familiar brew. With luck there will be no interruptions until four o’clock when the twins amble home from high school. Her husband, Mark, works as a security guard at the Art Gallery of Ontario and doesn’t get off shift until suppertime. It’s his dream job, or so he claims. He loves standing in the eighteenth-century room surrounded by lacquered paintings by little-known artists, making sure school kids don’t jostle or touch anything, or some jackass doesn’t take a knife to the brittle canvases. He claims to thrive on the long stretches of nothing, punctuated by bursts of activity. It gives him time to think — about what, Lucy has no idea. She pictures him standing guard in front of the portrait of some long-forgotten Cornish merchant whose manicured hand rests on a globe.
Uncle Philip is on his way to Thailand. He flies first to Toronto from his home in Halifax to break up the trip, and he’ll stay here again during his return, only then he will be tanned and relaxed rather than snippy with excitement as he was during this visit. It’s Lucy who gets roped into preparing hot breakfast and lunches because she is the one with a flexible schedule. Uncle Philip sits at the kitchen table and reads her copy of Harper’s, dripping sugary coffee over its pages, making early-morning throat-clearing noises. He combs his hair over the butter dish, and after eating, holes up in the bathroom for a marathon flossing session. She hears pops of loosened string and later finds herself sponging dislodged food particles from the mirror.
Yet Uncle Philip was the one who slipped an arm over her shoulder last night and said, “I have great faith in you, my dear.”
But now he’s gone, they are all gone, and Lucy has the house to herself. Beginning at noon she will practise her guitar. No point in trying to do this once the boys come