Ithaca (17 page)

“As long as people tell stories and people consume stories there will be a role for all of us,” Zach says quietly. “I think it was Forster who said that we would only need to worry when human beings no longer had any need for stories and had begun to regard themselves in ways that were new and quite inconceivable from our present vantage point. It was true when he said it, it is true now, and I hope for everyone’s sake it will be true for some time to come.”

T
here are as many theories about how to deal with jet lag as the Inuit supposedly have names for snow and Zach knows all of them, and believes not a single one. He doesn’t know if it is worse outward bound or returning home, melatonin has never worked for him, sleeping at the same time you would at home in whichever new time zone you are in doesn’t help in the least – all he knows is that it is one of the things that irks him most about long-distance travel. Morosely he watches the brightening horizon from his hotel room, the CN Tower like a weirdly shaped pipette presiding over the downtown high-rises, and thinks about his meeting in the evening with Seppi’s translator. When he had called Caryn Bianchi from London to set up the appointment she seemed pleasant enough, which was a relief, but she was noncommittal about what she might have for him when he explained the purpose of the visit.

He still believes he is wasting his time but Gabrijela
thought differently and so here he is, the excitement of the visit to Delhi already receding. What if anything might Caryn have in her possession? He racks his brain to think if Seppi had ever mentioned to him that he wrote short stories, but he doesn’t think so; perhaps an unpublished first novel, surely every novelist has one of those, or maybe an unfinished draft of something that he had been working on at the time of his death. Zach has gone over all the possibilities a hundred times, a thousand, and he knows nothing, will know nothing until he meets Caryn.

Perhaps he will have a marlin moment. When he had spoken to Julia from Delhi, intending to quarrel with her over the blandness of her e-mail, she had disarmed him by hoping he would have a “marlin moment” in Toronto, her way of describing a welcome surprise that came out of nowhere, which had its origins in the only other real holiday besides Bhutan that they had taken together. Over his usual reluctance she had booked a trip to Cuba. Their first week on the island, which they had spent at a beach resort, had been awful. He wasn’t a beach person and the combination of salt, sand, mugginess, mosquitoes, and unattractive bodies in string bikinis and Speedos had driven him crazy. His constant complaining had upset Julia, but fortunately before they had begun flinging mojitos at each other they had moved on to Havana, which Zach had loved – the ruined old city, its walls washed with the colours of the summer sky, the music and dance that greeted them at every turn, the ghosts of its past, and the astonishing beauty of its young: the men with the liquid grace of boxers or matadors
and the women with eyes of mystery and fire. The enthusiasm and zest with which the Cubans went about their daily lives, especially when they had to make do with so little and deal constantly with the heavy hand of the state, had at first intrigued him and then caught him up in its optimism and energy. He had stopped grumbling and their last few days in Castro’s socialist paradise had drifted by in a haze of cigar smoke, Cuba libres, mojitos, snatches of “Chan Chan” sung and played with various degrees of competence and enthusiasm, and dancing in a variety of styles, with the only constant being the hip-swinging sexuality that the locals managed to infuse into every performance whether staged or impromptu. The day before they were due to return they had hired a boat and decided to try their luck at deep sea fishing, which neither of them had ever attempted before.

Ernest Hemingway had been a boyhood hero of Zach’s, especially during his shikari phase, but when his tastes grew more literary he had abandoned the maestro of two-fisted prose for authors who better fit his idea of the literary writer. However, just before they had taken off for Cuba he had suddenly been seized with a huge desire to reread Hemingway, and had bought himself a copy of
The Old Man and the Sea
. When he finished the book he understood the writer’s literary genius for the first time: the ability to bring a character alive with a phrase or two, the sentences of burnished steel, the extraordinary insight and, most of all, the power of his storytelling. An unexpected by-product of this new appreciation of the American novelist was a desire to experience for himself the thrill of bagging a great game fish; as a boy
he’d tried to emulate him with a gun, now he would give it a go with a rod and a line.

Julia hadn’t been too interested in the idea but had given in with good grace when she had seen how keen Zach was; it helped that they hadn’t fought once in all the time they had hung out in Havana. On the morning of the fishing expedition they were both seriously hungover, and the prospect of spending five or six hours on a small boat in deep water hadn’t been appealing. They had almost decided to cancel when Zach, summoning up his last reserves of enthusiasm, had managed to get both of them into a taxi in time to catch the boat they had booked the previous day.

Propitiously enough the marina they set out from, into waters that seemed to have been plucked from the heart of a sapphire, was called the Marina Ernest Hemingway, but that seemed to be the only bit of luck they were going to have that day, for three hours later they hadn’t caught a single fish. Indeed the only sign of marine life they had seen was a barracuda swimming at great speed away from the four lines that trailed in the water behind the boat. It was hurricane season and though the island itself had been untouched, a vicious tropical storm offshore had left the ocean roily, and as the boat rose and fell on the choppy water their outlook towards their little expedition worsened. They felt too ill and too tired to quarrel about it, however, so had just sat quietly looking out at the distant shoreline of Havana and hoping their stomachs would not revolt. Just then one of the fishing lines on the port side had begun to flow out with great vehemence, and all their misgivings were shoved aside; the
captain throttled back the engine, the first mate led Julia (who demurred but Zach had insisted) to the fighting chair in the stern, the rod was locked into place, the first mate gave her some tips on how to play a big game fish, when to let the line out and when to reel it in, and battle was joined.

Sleepless in his Toronto hotel room, he can see the events of that morning as clearly as if they were unfolding before him right now – Julia tiny against the vastness of the ocean but determined, gripping the rod tightly and grimly following the shouted commands of the first mate, while unseen below the blue water her quarry fought to escape. A little while later it was over. They saw the fish for the first time, about twenty metres astern, long and lean and astoundingly beautiful, its skin the colour of crushed emerald. All the fight had gone out of it. The first mate had sprung into action as Julia hauled the fish up to the boat; it was dispatched swiftly and stored away. “Mahi mahi. Good eating,” the first mate had said, a smile lifting his grizzled mustache. Zach had hugged Julia, he was delighted for her. For her part she seemed a little shaken; the thrill of the battle had been exhilarating but the death of the mahi mahi had disturbed her, he could see that. But he was excited now by the prospect of landing his own fish. The adrenalin pumping through his veins, he had scanned the heaving water alertly, almost as if he expected squadrons of tuna and sharks and sailfish and marlin to spring forth and impale themselves on the wicked hooks that bobbed in the wake of the boat.

Two hours later, with the sun directly overhead and their time up, their splendidly named captain, Alejandro Cordero
Garcia, had come down the stairway from the upper deck and told him he was turning for home. Grumpily, Zach had agreed. The boat had described a wide circle in the water and begun to slam through the surging seas in the direction of the marina. Julia was dozing fitfully by now but Zach had remained awake, looking out through a cloudy porthole. In Hemingway’s great novel, the old fisherman had dreamed about lions in Africa, but Zach could think only of schools of marlin cavorting in the depths, laughing through their pointy noses at his fantasy of hooking one of them. Tiny flying fish skimmed above the surface of the water. Showoffs, he had thought, why couldn’t they swim through the water like regular fish! The first mate had been sympathetic; it was rare to get a marlin, he said, none of the boats in the marina had caught one for days, and he knew of groups who had spent weeks on the water only to come up empty-handed.

Zach’s despondency had grown as the shoreline had become more distinct. He had been hoping against hope that a fish would strike but knew that it would be unrealistic to hope anymore, best to roll up his fantasy and stow it away. He had uncapped a bottle of the local version of Coke, taken a long swig of the sickly sweet drink. He should get seriously drunk tonight, if he was hungover on the flight home he would just have to deal with it, no matter how unpleasant it might be.

And then, gloriously, his marlin moment was upon him. The aft starboard line had begun to chatter out into the water. Instantly the engine note changed as the captain began to slow the boat down, bring it around, to impede the
headlong flight of the fish. Zach had been tied into the fighting chair, the rod had been slotted in, and he had been told how to play the marlin (for the captain and his assistant were certain that that was what was on the end of his line): pull back the rod and reel in the slack whenever he could, pay out the line whenever it made a run for it, keep the line taut at all times but not so taut that it could break. Half an hour later his arms were aching from the strain of hanging on, his T-shirt and red baseball cap with the iconic image of Che were sodden with sweat, and they still hadn’t caught a glimpse of the fish. The line was far astern, his quarry had shown no signs of tiring, and he had begun to wonder if he had it in him to land his trophy. The first mate had offered to spell him but he had refused. This was his fish, he would either bring it in himself or it would get away, it was unthinkable that there could be another option.

And then, without warning, the marlin had smoked out of the water like an express train. Up, up, up, it had flown, its tremendous blue-black body arched like some godling’s bow against the sky, the coastline, and the wave-tossed sea. It was a sight he would never forget, his marlin moment, that instant in which enchantment had burst upon him when he had least expected it.

No question that he needs something like that now, he thinks, but he is not at all hopeful. Best to temper his and Gabrijela’s expectations; Caryn is not a magician, she cannot be expected to conjure up something for them just because they are desperate. He decides to go for a walk, there is no point being cooped up in his room alone with
his unproductive thoughts. When he emerges from the air-conditioned lobby of the hotel onto the street he is surprised by how hot and humid it is, it could be Madras in the late spring. He wanders around aimlessly for a bit, then gets bored and ducks into a Second Cup coffee shop and gets himself a latte, flips through a day-old newspaper, then, still restless, decides to return to the hotel and catch the morning news on TV.

Showered and shaved he is about to leave the room for a meeting with Michael Levine, the city’s top literary agent, and one of the few people in the publishing community who isn’t already on vacation, when the phone rings. It’s Sally, the freelance publicist whom they have used for all the Seppi events in this country; she is calling to remind him about lunch with the editor of one of the city’s trade journals. Zach groans inwardly; he had forgotten he had agreed to the meeting. Chronically media-shy, the last thing he wants to do is be interviewed by the editor of
Bibliomania
, but Sally has been a rock throughout the Seppi years and she has made it clear in her gentle way that she is calling in a favour. She gives him the name of the restaurant, makes sure he writes it down, then rings off.

Several blocks away, Simon Prescott, the editor Zach is so reluctant to meet, gets on the streetcar he takes to work every day. Simon is a modest man, even his fantasies are homely. This past month he has dreamed off and on of being
the driver of the streetcar; he thinks it would be cool to put on the uniform the Toronto Transit Commission provides, wedge himself into the driver’s seat of the vehicle, and let her rip at forty kilometres an hour. He has never possessed a driver’s licence, so he understands this fantasy is beyond his reach but it is pleasant to dream about sliding along the rails at a sedate pace.

This morning, however, as the streetcar rolls towards the tiny office of
Bibliomania
in Queen West he does not think about his fantasy, because he is excited by the prospect of conducting what could well be his biggest interview of the year. As editor-in-chief of
Bibliomania
, the country’s sixth most important magazine about books, Simon has long accepted that Canada’s leading publishers and writers will routinely rebuff him. In his first year as editor-in-chief, a position he had ascended to as the longest-serving member of the magazine’s staff of four, after his predecessor who had joined as an intern seven months earlier had resigned, he had tried hard to improve the quality of the magazine’s stories but had given up in the face of the indifference of the industry he was covering to his magazine’s place in the general scheme of things. Matters weren’t helped by the modest budget that the magazine was expected to survive on, despite the stream of applications made to the Canada Council begging for it to be increased. However, his survival as editor-in-chief was testament to the fact that he did possess certain qualities that made him perfect for the job from the point of view of the owners of
Bibliomania
. Among these were the ability to live on a salary slightly above minimum wage with no benefits, the knack of
persuading publicists to keep sending him free copies of books that had just been published, arranging interviews with authors no one else wanted to cover, and getting college students and other would-be writers to write book reviews. Once or twice a year Simon got lucky and landed a story that was big by
Bibliomania’s
standards, usually an interview with a prominent visiting author, jet-lagged and bullied by his publisher into repeating the story of his genius yet another time.