Drive-by Saviours (29 page)

All this disciplined denial left Bumi with an itch across and throughout his body. He was almost certain that parasites were eating him alive and probably everyone who ate off the plates he touched too. At least he had Dr. Cherian to blame if he was called to account for a dead, mostly white upper class.

At home Bumi moved his alarm clock to the corner of his room opposite his bed and had Bang tuck him in so tightly that getting up to check the alarm would be a monumental struggle. Bang served with the Indonesian military for twelve years before he defected, and was left with an infallible internal alarm clock. As a result of the tight tucking in, Bumi lay motionless all night, convinced that the alarm would fail him and he would be fired and his family killed because of his failure to repay his debt. These were the things Dr. Cherian couldn't understand. Some of the consequences Bumi feared were very real.

An angry-faced sketch of him stared down from the ceiling. He stared into his own eyes. He struggled to find something to believe in that might make him less angry.

On Dr. Cherian's advice, Bumi implored Bang to wake him up should his alarm fail, even though it never had. Bang was also enlisted to take Bumi on morning strolls, during which Bumi was forced to step on cracks while telling Bang about his earliest memories of obsessive-compulsive behaviours.

Bang was a quiet sturdy man, and one of the best unpaid listeners Bumi had ever met. With each crack-bound step Bang would pose gentle questions, which whether by design or fluke distracted Bumi from his thirty-three recitations. Bumi had become adept at reciting names or phrases while carrying on a conversation, but Bang's curious questions probed a deeper part of his brain and being and gave him the rare task of expressing long-withheld feelings.

In the seven years Bang and the other Indonesian illegals had known Bumi, he had told them almost nothing about himself. Their curiosity had mounted and multiplied during those years. Bang was finally able to gain some understanding of their strange compatriot, who was so intelligent yet so absent of mind.

By the end of a walk on a cobblestone path Bumi had racked up so many penalties that he could not even calculate how many recitations he owed the universe.

One of the results of all this forced denial was that Bumi's already limited allocation of sleeping hours depleted until he became unfocused, erratic and confused. It was then that his ongoing chess matches with Lady Juanita became livelier. He found himself better able to comprehend the theories of the heavy-metal refugee chess-master. He reciprocated Lady Juanita's theories with questions and critique, and their matches became considerably longer. They established a routine in which they played every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning before Bumi's shift. Their matches stretched from days into weeks. Bumi drew no closer to victory. He merely delayed defeat further each time with the discussion of sweet ideas.

It had been many years since Bumi had encountered new ideas. His peers at the restaurant provided information from home but instead of analyzing events in detail they quickly decided new developments were either good or bad. In Lady Juanita's world, everything was bad, devious and evil. There was no good news, only an ingenious ability to twist all information into a complex set of theories explaining why life is shit.

Bumi was thrilled by this unrestricted negativity. Lady Juanita's theories were the work of a miss-wired mind and twisted life experience, so although they bore no resemblance to reality as Bumi understood it, he was pleased to have found someone who shared his utter disdain for what God had created. The exchange of ideas, no matter how fantastical, reminded Bumi of the times when he was closest to happiness: back in the Warung Bali with his fellow coffee shop revolutionaries. He wasn't happy stewing in the impure stench of Lady Juanita, but he was at least able to enjoy the nostalgia of happiness.

BUMI INVITED ME TO THE PARK WITH HIM SO I COULD MEET HIS
new friend. I had reached such stiffness and frustration with my work that I was willing to seize any opportunity to call in sick on a Monday, before I got stuck crunching numbers from some government report. My late report after the Christmas holidays turned out to be the first of several. I was getting lazy. I didn't keep an eye open for new funding opportunities anymore. I didn't double check that staff's long-distance phone calls were legit. I was going through the motions.

I arrived early to meet Bumi that morning in Art Eggleton Park. I wasn't accustomed to the early hour and I hadn't realized that I would beat the crush. Even public transit could travel quickly when unimpeded by millions of bodies demanding simultaneous movement.

I forgot my sketch pad, so I watched the few other early-bird faces: a bleary-eyed young woman, a big blond guy in a cheap suit, a lazy-eyed old guy shouting occasional profanities to someone named Mary, who, if she was on the bus, ignored him like everyone else. I concluded as I stepped out before Art Eggleton that the initial post-blackout magic had worn off, not for me but for Toronto. The giant shopping complexes were fully lit and the eyes were turned inward, away from the advertising and “Diversity Our Strength” signs. Each of three million souls passed time alone working their way through whatever mazes life threw them into. The energy of my momentous quest for human contact had not dissipated but rather been refocused on one particularly fascinating human. He was the first challenge worth the effort.

Fuck the health centre. Fuck my sister, and my parents too. And Sarah's family too.

Bumi had real problems, and I would help… or fail. The exciting part was that, unlike with applying for a grant, the prospect of failure with Bumi scared me. If life was a game, as Sarah claimed in some of her lighter moments, then Bumi's was one worth playing, maybe more so than my own struggle with a mundane mortality. The stakes in the game of Bumi's life were so much higher, so the game seemed worthier of my capabilities.

Bumi showed up on time and led me down a paved pathway. Lady Juanita was ahead of us with her face and arms stretched to the rising sun. She looked like a well-tanned Jesus, only with more scars and less facial hair. Bumi was right about the smell. I offered my hand when Bumi introduced us but Lady Juanita refused it. “First you must beat me in chess,” she said in a slight Latino accent.

Lady Juanita already had two chessboards set up: a hand-carved one and a set of cheap plastic pieces on a stone tabletop with squares painted on by the city. She played us both at once and beat me in less than thirty moves and forty-five minutes. All the while she chatted about coups, counter-coups, militias, intelligentsias, spies and corruption. “Marx said that capitalism is a natural precursor to socialism,” she told us. “And the ultimate is communism. So capitalism fucks us first. Then socialism fucks everybody equally through centralized state control.”

“So which is best?” Bumi asked.

“They are all equally shit,” she said.

“But there are other ways,” I said.

I regretted my feeble contribution. Bumi had better informed himself about political systems in childhood than I had in my whole life, and Lady Juanita had earned her chops as a true experience junkie. There was nothing of substance a newspaper-educated ignoramus like myself could contribute.

“There may be variations,” Bumi said, “but capitalism and communism are the two common extremes we're all bound to. Is that not so?” He moved his knight and Lady Juanita took his bishop.

I recommended a few writers I remembered from undergrad, who wrote about social systems and seemed quite brilliant, like Vandana Shiva. I caught Bumi's forlorn pupils gaze up at me, though his forehead still pointed toward the chessboard. “Oh, right, sorry,” I said.

“Maybe if the medicine works,” he said.

Lady Juanita began a lecture about how the pharmaceutical industry manufactures a need for drugs. Bumi exchanged pawns with Lady Juanita.

“Bumi,” I said. “When I first met you, on the bus, you had that book with you.
The Fugitive
. You kept looking at it.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Why? If you can't read?”

“You can't read?” Lady Juanita said. She slapped a hand to her forehead. Bumi explained to her that he used to read, but he got stuck on words. The explanation seemed to alleviate her concern.

To me Bumi said, “When I was young Pak Syam lent me that book. The same morning I finished it the news say that two boys were caught with the same author's writings. They put them in jail. I give it back to Pak Syam and he burned it. He say it was bad luck to keep.

“When I come to Canada my landlord have a copy of that same book. She give it to me. I carry it because I can. I cannot read it anymore, but I can hold it open on the bus and no one can stop me. No one want to stop me.” He paused before adding, “I guess I am the fugitive now.”

I CALLED MY SISTER AGAIN TWO WEEKS AFTER OUR FIRST
conversation — to the minute. Same groggy response.

“So what are you up to these days?” I asked.

“Teaching. Hanging out with my girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” The gender, for some reason, didn't surprise me in the least. What was harder to comprehend was Michelle in a relationship at all. She was too high maintenance, too weird, too psychotic.

“Yeah, a girlfriend,” she said. “Toni. She's an amazing woman. She's a teacher too.” Toni taught
ESL
and made short anti-racist videos in her spare time. She sold the videos to school boards and scout groups. She hoped to make a feature-length documentary about institutional exclusion of people of colour in western North America. I wondered how my sister could end up with a woman like that. She told me that she too had a side gig: one-on-one language tutoring with the children of rich immigrants.

I boasted about Sarah and my job and Michelle said she'd heard it all from our mother already. I wondered aloud why the maternal grapevine was growing only one way. I had heard nary a sound byte on Michelle in five years except that she taught English.

“Mother and I have grown quite close over the years,” Michelle explained.

Another unfathomable development. I asked her to explain the phenomenon of becoming closer to someone after moving further away.

Michelle said nothing. There was a dead silence for an excruciating ninety seconds. I watched the big hand slide toward
11
:
30
and knew I should stop billing my non-profit employer for long distance silence, but I needed to win this listening contest.

I lost, changed the subject, told her about my art classes and how much better my sketches were.

“Nice, Brother,” she said.

Having gained my elder's approval I excused myself, said I had a client and hung up.

AS MY ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES GREW, MY LIST OF ACTUAL
clients shrank, and with my productivity waning I handed the remaining few to colleagues. Perhaps they would have better luck with a woman who couldn't find work after surviving cancer, a mother of six fighting infanticide fantasies and a sixteen-year-old kid with a collection of illegal handguns. I knew that one of the few things my clients had in common was a need for consistency, but I also knew that consistently rescheduling their appointments and letting my mind wander while they told me their troubles was not helping them. My colleagues were more qualified and better counsellors.

To keep my head above an ever-growing stack of paperwork I needed to accept myself as an administrator. Maybe I could start something on the side, a money-maker. So far my $
413
, tens of cups of coffee and uncounted admission ticket investment in Bumi had yielded no tangible return.

I held on to one official client, Abdul the neuroscience researcher. He was the only one making any progress. Lily had hooked him up with a volunteer job in a University of Toronto (U of T) lab, something to do with cadavers. Lily had connections everywhere.

When I told Abdul about the volunteer job he actually smiled. He took my hand and held it for a long time and just smiled. “I am very pleased,” he said.

I warned him it was full-time with no financial compensation and he said he didn't mind because he wasn't allowed to work until his refugee hearing. The U of T lab tech and I wrote him glowing letters of recommendation for the hearing.

I arrived late for my Tuesday afternoon appointment with Abdul because I had been in the washroom for over an hour trying to figure out what was preventing me from confronting my sister about
OCD
.

Abdul was back to being distraught. “I'm fired,” he said. He held his head in his hands and talked into the boardroom table. In his letter of recommendation I had made special note of his dedication to his profession and his hours of toil for no pay. I talked of his persistence against all odds. He didn't want to tell me too much about what had happened in Sri Lanka, only that he had taken an unpopular stance at work and refused to budge for ethical reasons. Sri Lanka may disapprove, but I urged the refugee committee to consider such a commitment to one's beliefs a great asset to Canada.

What I did not mention was that Abdul could be pushy, cantankerous and stubborn. I had tried to coach him for his unpaid job. I explained to him the need to adjust to a new workplace culture and new approach to work. He nodded and said, “I'm a very hard worker,” which was an obvious understatement because Abdul's only commitments were to neuroscience and God, in that order. He had no family in Toronto other than a cousin, who let him stay on his couch.