Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab (17 page)
The longing to write was the only thing I was not having second thoughts about. I reminded myself that in one of the letters Sydney had left me he made special mention not of the furniture in his house, not of his paintings nor his boxes upon boxes of photographs and not of his trinkets, but of the notebooks he had used as diaries. He explicitly stated in the letter that I should do with them as I chose. Sydney knew I was a writer and he knew I was having difficulty writing. Surely, then, with this particular mention, with this bequest, there was more than a suggestion, there was an outright invitation—a request, even—that I use the material of his life to create my next work. Was this not so? And wasn’t his story integral to mine? Wasn’t his love of Zain and sorrow over the tragedy that befell her also my story now? Yes, back in Canada, Catherine would do whatever it was she usually did, and I, finally able to write, would bury myself in this new body of work.
But in short order my enthusiasm for reconnection dissipated. I imagined us in our little corners: I in mine, writing with measured contentment, but not knowing, and not needing to know, what she was doing in hers. When my book was finished, what would we do then? Catherine, the
woman I lived with, would read my book, and she would learn about her lover—about me—from the book he had written while they were living together in the same house. Where could we go from there?
Too soon, I was obliged to put aside the notebooks and attend to my new household reponsibilities. I kept the books locked in my suitcase, which in turn was locked and stored inside the closet in my bedroom. Such caution was necessary, I felt, because of Sydney’s alarming speculation about Zain’s death, but it was an inconvenience, too, as I thought of the notebooks often and was drawn to reading them—to indulging myself in Sydney’s words, which, naturally, were delivered to me in his voice—at all hours throughout those first days when nothing was as usual. They were my only constant. I began my days with them, and ended with them. In between, I took refuge and sought answers in them.
I began to feel unfairly put upon when my attention was needed, it seemed, for every little matter. Although the keys for the linen cupboard were in Rosita’s care—everything is stored in locked cupboards here—she wanted permission from me to remove guest towels and a tablecloth
that had never been used. I wondered why she wanted them at such a time, but felt that I—who had previously never been more than a visitor in this house—had no right to ask. Sankar wanted to know if he could drive the car since it was registered in Sydney’s name, and Lancelot needed me to make a decision about whether or not the landscaping firm that usually came on that particular day of the week ought to carry on as usual. I was to telephone the company and speak with the manager. I did so reluctantly; I was not settling easily into my new role.
All the while I ruminated on what I had learned about Sydney from reading the notebooks. I thought of Sid and India, and how Sid had so easily and lovingly done for my mother and me what she herself had been wanting from a partner. I know my mother would not have dreamed of reciprocating. But if she and Sid were so ill-suited to each other, why then had they remained together for so long?
At the next opportunity I retreated to my room to ponder this, and in the notebook came across an entry that made me realize there was more to Sydney’s stories than he’d related to me himself. I was moved by the nuances in the words he’d written, nuances he’d chosen to omit when he’d spoken to me. I got up to lock the bedroom door, sat on the edge of the bed and read.
Zain, what made you so brash and bold? Why did you have to challenge convention? You were always making people face the worst aspects of themselves.
I have often wondered if you introduced me to Eric on that fateful visit because in Trinidad I had no real ties, other than to my parents and my sister, and it was unlikely that I would share your secrets with anyone. Did you think my presence in Trinidad afforded you an excellent alibi, a way to spend time more easily with Eric? Angus wouldn’t have thought twice about us coming and going, and so, once you were with me, you could carry on seeing Eric with ease. Sometimes even now, so many years later, I feel betrayed by you, Zain. I haven’t written this down before now because the implication has been too difficult for me to face. To think that you consciously used me is to put a tarnish on this friendship that meant so much to me. Perhaps you felt that since I had a secret of my own, one that you kept for me, I would be fine with knowing about and keeping yours. There is a shade of bribery about this—on both sides, I suppose.
When you first told me you’d met someone, you were so coy about it that I thought for a moment you meant you’d met someone who would be a good match for me. This person, you carried on saying in your wistful voice, was “utterly amazing, just wonderful, really very special, unbelievably interesting, unusually smart.” I realized you were using the kind of superlatives one does when describing the object of one’s infatuation, and suddenly I knew that
you were talking about someone for yourself. You referred to your friend as “this person”—and for a confusing time I thought that you might be having an affair with a woman. I was almost blind with jealousy. Perversely, my jealousy was only heightened when you told me that “this person” was a man named Eric.
You told me how you had met, and since then I have so often imagined the meeting that I feel as if I might have been there in the grocery store, watching you: You are awaiting your turn in line, browsing through a magazine, and the man behind you draws close and begins to comment on the photos of the celebrities in the magazine. I can see from the way you turn and look at him that you think him rather bold to be peering at and commenting on your reading material. But on the surface you are perfectly nonchalant, and chat back as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You walk out of the grocery without a glance backwards; but you wait for the man outside in the parking lot, and he walks towards you as if this meeting has been planned. He is tall and lean, not a spare ounce of fat on him, but muscled, and his skin is a reddish bronze. You can see that he spends most of his time in the sun. He puts his bag of groceries into your cart and pushes it towards your car. Somehow he already knows which one it is. He takes the keys
from you and opens your trunk, lifts your grocery bags in, shuts the trunk and hands back the keys. You say, So, I have to tip you, I suppose. I only have a dollar bill on me. I don’t suppose you take credit cards? And he says, What about lunch, then? You follow in your car as he drives his own to the restaurant at the yacht club. There, he tells you that he is in the boat repair and maintenance business. After lunch, you follow him to his office in a trailer on the yacht club grounds.
Zain, how is it that we were in touch for a year, by letters and by phone, and yet in that time you never told me that you were seeing this man? You had been seeing Eric for more than a year by the time I learned about him.
It is impossible for me to forget that dreadful lunch the three of us had at the yacht club. For the second time, you used me to meet Eric—at least, this is how it feels to me. The staff at the restaurant knew Eric and they paid him a great deal of friendly attention, and he revelled in it. He also knew several of the customers, engaging in small exchanges with them while he sat at our table.
The conversation between us plagues me still. Eric leaned in and remarked that he’d heard I worked out routinely. I said, Yes, as does Zain. He said, “Yes, like Zain. But you have a lot more muscle than she does. Women here work out not
to gain muscle, but to lose fat.” He reached out and wrapped his hand around one of my biceps, and squeezed it. He said, with a grin, “So, what’s this all about? What do you expect to achieve?”
I felt as if I had been punched in my stomach by this question, but I smiled, shrugged and said nothing. I saw you turn and look at Eric warningly, but he didn’t look back at you. He lifted his empty beer glass to the waiter as he said to me, “Well, I’m listening. Tell me about yourself.”
“What can I tell you?” I responded, my guard up.
He said that he knew some things about me, that he had always wondered about people like me. You started, and said, “Eric, what’s going on with you? Come on, you’re going to embarrass her.” But he brushed you off, saying that it wasn’t often one had the chance to find out real answers to real questions such as these. “If you’re really okay with yourself as you are,” he said to me, “then you shouldn’t be afraid to answer some questions.”
I said nothing. He said, “So, what is it that women might see in someone like you?”
You snapped then, telling Eric that he had crossed the line, but I said, “No, it’s okay. He can ask what he wants.” I turned to him. “You first,” I said. “What do they see in someone like you?”
Your eyes lit up. “Yes,” you said, “tell us: what do women see in you?”
He said, “Well, first of all, I am a man.” He paused. “And you, Zain—you above all know what that means. Am I not a man!”
You became still. I was speechless; blood had rushed to my head. But Eric was not finished. He addressed me again. “I was wondering. Were you molested as a child?”
I didn’t answer, and he said, “I mean, is that why you want to be a man? I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, you see. I mean, what has caused you to be the way you are? I’m just wondering.” His calm quiet voice and smile could not mask his hostility.
And then, Zain, you began to laugh. You shook your head and laughed. I shrank in my seat, and rather suddenly your laughter ceased, and you became serious. You pushed your chair back and rose. You snatched up your bag and turned to me. “Let’s go. I’ve had enough of this; this is ridiculous. What on earth was I thinking?”
I followed you out while Eric remained sitting at the table.
I could sense then that you had seen something new in him. He had embarrassed himself, yes; but worse, his ignorance meant that I had felt shamed by him in front of you. You told me later that he called you up and pleaded that he had meant no harm by his questions. He was just playing, teasing.
That is what real men do, he told you—they tease and heckle each other. I should have been able to take it. He said that he couldn’t understand how a woman who was a lesbian could be “just friends” with another who was not; it was nearly impossible, he said, for a straight man and a straight woman to be nothing more than good friends.
I looked up from the notebook at this, thinking of my own struggle to understand who Sydney had once been, and who he had become.
When had I first become aware of the variety of identities Sydney had embraced during his existence? It might well have been during those evenings when he and I had sat out on the veranda, or during those afternoons in the garden by the wall. Perhaps I had begun to expect, and even look forward to, hearing about these variances when I sat beside him on his bed in his room, as a son might well have done, and listened while, propped against pillows, he regaled me. Was it in the dining room, eating Rosita’s dinner: curried duck,
channa
, and
dhalpuri roti
—the heat of the slight pepper in the curry causing me, to Rosita’s and Sydney’s amusement, to sweat profusely and drink copious amounts of soothing coconut water? Was it when Sydney remarked how unusually hot it was that day and Rosita muttered from the kitchen—reminding me for the umpteenth time that she listened to everything and missed nothing—that this was earthquake weather? Sydney lowered his voice
and confided to me that people here always said that, but of course, there was no such thing as earthquake weather; earthquakes occurred miles beneath the surface of the earth and had no regard for what was happening—heat spells, extreme cold, endless rain, or dry weather—on the surface of the earth. What interested him, he piped up opportunistically, were changes of seismic proportions that took place—or, despite conditions being ripe for such changes, that did not take place—in the minds, hearts and bodies of people, not beneath the surface of the earth. And this was enough of a preamble for Sydney to launch for the next hour or so into the story of his walk to the Irene Samuel centre.
Or was it a different occasion—during my third visit when I took him for a drive to the Queen’s Park Savannah? I had not yet received any hint from him that he understood the hurt he had caused me. We sat on one of the park benches drinking coconut water we’d bought from one of the nearby vendors, and Sydney said, out of the blue, “There used to be, Jonathan, two or three snowfalls every year that brought the city of Toronto to a standstill—hardly ever for more than a few days, but the city was always ill-prepared. Is it still like this, Jonathan?” he asked. He remarked that side streets had always been low on the priority list of those to be ploughed. I wouldn’t be surprised, he said, if it is still like that. You know, I have been noticing how the sea—and he pointed across the city, in the direction of the Gulf—seems to have risen more each year even as it has become hotter and drier in the dry season. Yet there is much more rain
nowadays in the wet season. This may well be the beginning of another ice age, you know, Jonathan, he said, for it has been scientifically noted that ice ages have always followed not cold weather, as is usually assumed, but abundant rainfall. It is the rain that comes first. Then the cold.
I tossed off an answer, almost dismissing this topic, saying lightly that I didn’t doubt it at all. The weather had indeed been rather strange in Canada these last few years—it could be cold or even hail in June, and there were now unseasonably high temperatures at the height of the winter season.
Sydney did not respond right away. He was pensive for so long, in fact, that I assumed this topic of conversation had been exhausted. But just as I was about to suggest we move along, he turned to me rather suddenly and asked, as if it were the most important question of the moment, Have the Toronto winters become colder, or have they become milder, Jonathan? Has there been a change? He paused again—waiting for my response, I thought at first. But he was clearly uninterested in any rejoinder from me, for I had barely begun to talk, excited at the prospect of sharing some details about my own life—in particular, to elaborate on how the winters had indeed become so tedious that there were years when, at the first hint of cold, I took off to the south of Spain, where I met artists and writers and beautiful interesting women, and where I spent time thinking and writing and did not book a flight back to Toronto until after the famous groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and the less-famous one closer to home, Wiarton Willie,
had made their prognostications; a digression which, I was hoping, would allow me to interject some lightness into our morning by imagining a similar annual Trinidadian celebration, held perhaps at a beach, with grand marshals in skimpy sequined and feathered costumes and food and music and speeches, where everyone would observe the behaviour of a crab emerging out of its crab hole, noting whether it came right out and took off down the beach in its sideways canter, or peeped out and retreated, thereby foretelling the timing of the rainy season—when he took advantage of my pause to jump back in and tell me about the particular morning that had been forever seared into his memory.