David (15 page)

I watched his face for at least a flicker of anger, either because of the scriptural sanction for the sort of beatings his own father had endured for so much of his life or because I'd had the impudence to remind him of them. Either way, annoyance was better than indifference.

George kept casting.

Now
I
was angry. I flipped again, the accumulated bookmarks sticking out of the bible fluttering in the July breeze. I stopped at Ephesians. “This is from the New Testament,” I said.

George thought he had a bite—teased his line a little, waited—then realized he didn't. He cast again.

“I said, this is from the New Testament.”

“I heard you the first time.”

We both knew that both books were holy but that the New Testament was holier. I read what was written.

“‘Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.'” I didn't wait for George to ignore me. “‘As you would serve Christ,'” I said.

“I think you've got me confused with someone else. I can see
and
hear just fine.”

“So say something, then.”

“If I had anything to say, I would.”

“The Bible condones slavery and you've got nothing to say.”

“What did the Reverend King say?”

“It doesn't matter what the Reverend King said. I'm asking you what you think.”

“And now I'm asking you: what did the Reverend King say?”

I picked up a small rock, tossed it in my hand. “He said that what some translators call slaves were actually servants.”

“Well, there you are.”

“But what he didn't say is that even if they worked as household servants, that doesn't mean they weren't bought, sold, and treated worse than livestock.”

Still sitting, I lobbed the rock into the other side of the pond, away from where George had cast his line.

“Cut it out,” he said.

“It wasn't even near you.”

“It doesn't matter, you'll scare away the fish.”

I watched the circles the rock made in the water grow larger and larger until they weren't circles anymore, were only water again.

“Besides,” George said, pulling in his line, “you've heard the Reverend King, the Bible is just man's words. And man isn't perfect—God is.”

“So some parts we're supposed to ignore and other parts we're supposed to believe.”

George pretended like he was concentrating on his line but couldn't resist nodding—once, leisurely, indulgently—as if I were a pesky child who'd finally agreed to settle down.

I couldn't stand his calm, I couldn't stand his certainty. I picked up another rock, a bigger one. “So let's ignore ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,' then.
Let's ignore ‘Thou shalt not kill.' Let's ignore ‘I am the son of God.'” I pitched the rock into the water not two feet from where George was standing. It plopped. It splashed the cuffs of his pants.

“I told you not to do that,” he said.

“So what?”

“So you shouldn't have done it.”

“Why not?”

“Because you shouldn't have.”

“Why not?”

“Shut your mouth, David.”

“Why should I?”

“Shut up.”

“Why?”

George dropped his fishing pole and charged up the hill, giving me just enough time to raise my fists in front of my face. I'd never been in a fight before—neither had he, as far as I knew—but we'd both seen the same outdoor boxing match his father had taken us to in Chatham, so I stood ready for him to stop running and put up his hands. That was how real fighters fought.

He caught me in my stomach with his shoulder and didn't stop moving until I was on my back and he was on top of me, a knee wedged deep into the dirt on either side of my chest. He needn't have worried about me going anywhere—his shoulder had forced me to forget how to breathe. I couldn't speak, let alone fight back.

He sat on me with his fists clenched at his sides, watching me imitate a dying fish. When he saw air finally going in and coming back out of my mouth, he stood up. I stayed on the ground and watched him pick up his fishing pole and patiently gather in its line.

He put his pole over his shoulder and started down the
path home. I waited until I knew there was no chance I'd overtake him before I got up.

*

So I was confused. So I was skeptical. Mostly, I was excited.

Before my next birthday, I'd be a university student. In Toronto. With unrestricted access to Canada West's largest and best libraries. Plus, I was going to buy a slate grey fedora, just like the one I'd seen a white man wearing once in Chatham.

I copied out the same sentence from Pascal into my notebook to soothe myself whenever the occasional doubt pinched my conscience, made me question the appropriateness of my training for the ministry.

The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him
.

Maybe I didn't know God as well as I used to—as well as I would have liked to—but I was still very, very fond of Him.

Mr. Rapier said that there were musical concerts every week in Toronto. There was even an orchestra there that performed monthly. You cannot believe the beautiful sounds a full orchestra is capable of, he said. It is truly something one must experience for oneself.

And so that was one more thing I was going to do.

*

Loretta and I are doing what we usually do after she's spent the night, except this morning it's me who can't get the water in the bathtub hot enough. I may have been the fourth man in Chatham to have indoor plumbing, but that doesn't mean the sink doesn't get stopped up from time to time or the tank
doesn't run out of hot water quicker than it's supposed to. Progress breeds new problems, necessitating more progress, which breeds new problems, necessitating more . . . I shut my eyes and lean back in the tub, intent upon absorbing whatever's left of the cooling water's warmth.

I rub my hand all over my head, still not used to the smooth ride it gets no matter where I let it wander. The first time Loretta saw me newly sheared, she laughed; not as if she thought I looked ridiculous, but as if she thought it was funny that I would do what I did. When she wordlessly rubbed the top of my skull like a Buddhist his wise worship's belly, I laughed too.

“This is one more reason for you to go back with me,” Loretta says. Back to Germany, she means.

Without opening my eyes, “I can take a bath in Chatham,” I say.

Loretta flicks a fingertip of cold water at me from the plugged sink. She's at the mirror, applying her powder and paint. “Baden-Baden,” she says. “It is the most famous spa in Germany. The springs there were known even during Roman times. The baths, they were uncovered in near-perfect condition only forty years ago.”

Heraclitus may have been right, maybe you can't step twice into the same river, but to stand where Lucretius or Seneca or Horace possibly stood, just one more bone-weary traveller aching for ancient healing waters, is almost incomprehensible. Incomprehensible and impossible. To shut down Sophia's in order to travel to Europe for a month or more would cost me . . . a lot. And what exactly do I need a holiday
from
? Prosperity? Security? A life, finally, exactly as I'd always wanted it, a life no one born where and what I was should have had any right even imagining? My mother never took a holiday. Neither did the Reverend King. My life
is
a holiday. I change the subject.

“It's supposed to storm tonight,” I say. “Why don't you stay in town?”

Loretta spends most nights with me, and invariably has business to attend to the next day around town, but still keeps a small residence in Dresden. She says she'll move to Chatham only when she can afford to buy the biggest, most expensive house in town.

Loretta applies a last layer of lipstick, turns from the mirror. “Who is it that says this is so?”

I don't answer, only smile. She knows it's at her expense but can't help joining me. “And what is it you find so amusing?”

“You,” I say.

“And what specifically is it about me that is humorous?”

I close my eyes again, ease back even farther into the tub. The air in the bathroom is almost as warm as the water by now, but I don't want to get out, am not ready not to feel almost weightless yet. “If I told you, you might change. What fun would that be?”

“Tell me,” she says.

“Nein.”

That's all the teasing Loretta can take. I can hear the scoop of a handful of cold, whisker-filled water that's coming my way, but don't have anywhere to go, can only sink beneath the surface of the bath. I stay under for as long as I can, but as soon as my head hits the air, I get what I have coming.

“Okay, okay,” I say, standing, holding up both hands. “You win.” I grab a towel from the rack.

“Of course I win. Never start—”

“—a war with a German, I know.”

“Good. You are learning. Now, what is it that is so funny about me?”

Drying myself off, “It's a compliment, actually.”

“Yes?” When I don't answer, only smile again, she immediately dips her hand back into the sink, ready and willing to
catapult a fresh assault of dirty water. “Now is when I should take your photograph,” she says.

Loretta has been after me to have my picture taken for years. At first I couldn't be bothered to sit still long enough, although now, with her new camera, that's not a concern. I suppose I don't like the idea of being her only still-breathing model.

I hold up a conciliatory hand, use the other to keep towelling off. “It's just that, somehow—and I really don't know how you do it—you manage to sound like absolutely no one else I've ever heard speak before, while at the same time making yourself more clearly understood than anyone else I've ever met either.”

Hand still loaded, “That is all?” she says.

“That is all.”

Loretta finally surrenders her liquid artillery back into the sink, grabs the end of my towel and wipes her hand dry. “Of course,” she says. “It is because I am German. A German says only what needs to be said.”

When I met her, Loretta talked with a German accent, thought with a German brain, acted with a German will, but was rarely ever
German
, only in the last year or so referring to herself as being anything but her, Loretta. Approaching thirty, maybe, or perhaps the news of her father's death. Around this same time, too, the first talk of her returning to Germany for a visit, specifically Rocken, her birthplace.

“The return of the prodigal daughter,” I'd said.

“Do not be foolish. I simply wish to make all those who made me suffer when I left there suffer tenfold upon my return.” Loretta claims she never dreams, and I have no reason to doubt her. Loretta doesn't need nighttime's dark hints and shadowy hunches; Loretta's mind is hers.

“The best revenge is a well-lived life,” I said, trying again.

This one she thought about for a moment. Eventually, “Of course,” she said.

By the time I've dressed and appear in the kitchen, the water for the coffee is boiling on the stove and two plates have been set on the table. Henry, smelling Loretta's sausages bubbling in the frying pan, has quit his customary spot in front of the library fireplace and is sitting at attention in the middle of the kitchen floor, waiting for either a lucky accident or a kind handout. When Loretta decides to cook, Henry isn't, like his master, a strict vegetarian anymore. Henry likes it when Loretta decides to cook.

“One soft-boiled egg for Mr. Pythagoras,” she says, placing just that in its tiny silver cup in front of me. “And for Mr. Heinrich and myself”—Loretta sets down her own cupped egg then thuds an enormous sausage from the grease-popping pan onto her plate, along with a fat plop of dumplings—“something just for us,
ja
?” Something just for them, plus an already prepared, neatly arranged tray of fresh rolls, three kinds of preserves, and various cheeses for all of us to share. Loretta eats like a German too.

After Henry has been hand-fed his designated share of the sausage link and dismissed back to the library (“That is all, Mr. Heinrich, be a good boy now and lay down elsewhere”), Loretta proceeds to cut and spread, to spoon and swallow, to fork and chew, in the process not neglecting to go over in detail her entire day's itinerary. There's no need to go over mine. Mine is the same today as it is every day, the same as it's been since the first day I opened up Sophia's.

“Even after I pay this man, this Hanna, to take care of the roof, I still do nicely. This time next year, I already make back what I spent, and after that it is all profit.” Loretta celebrates the success of her most recent investment by spreading her roll with an extra-thick measure of peach marmalade.
The way she studies me while she chews tells me what she's going to say next. Every time she purchases a new rental property, it's always the same topic. “I know of another house, on Prince Street, near the park, that would be an excellent investment for you. Why not we should look at it this afternoon, after I am finished at the bank?”

“Because I like the house I have now,” I say.

“Do not be difficult, David, it is tiresome. You know what I am saying. It is foolish for a man with the capital you possess not to let it work for you.”

“I don't need my money to work for me.
I
work for me.”

“Yes, and work too hard, too. There is no reason for you to be at that place of yours every single night. Not anymore. At the very least, you need to hire someone to work for you occasionally.”

“Work alone is noble.”

“You sound like my father.”

“It's Thomas Carlyle, actually.”

“A minister, no doubt.” Unless it's to read to me, Loretta makes it a point of pride never to pick up a book.