Requiem (34 page)

I find a door off the kitchen and steps going down. Small house, small basement. The ceiling is low. But there’s a workshop down here, and a workbench with a vise at one end, a chunk of wood clamped in its jaws. Tools are laid out neatly, the way I lay out my own brushes. A tall homemade stool has been pushed close to the bench.

Above the bench, at eye level, something hangs on the wall. Something vaguely, faintly recognizable. A piece of cardboard, boxboard, a faded pencil drawing nailed to the wall, the nail hammered through its top edge to hold it in place.

Two horses, or attempts at horses, one large, one small, the head of the smaller horse tucked under the neck of the larger. An alert eye, an animal ready to bolt. The head and nose of the smaller horse resemble the beak of a grotesque giant goose. A child’s drawing.

I don’t bother to open the pullout. I lie on it in the living room and pile on the blankets. Basil, the hound who knows the scent of grief when it’s all around him, drags his mat over and settles at the end of the couch. I reach out a hand and rub the coarse coat of his back, the soft and silky part of his ears. The warmth of him. The life of him. He groans, and rolls over heavily, an animal who no longer wants the burden of memory.

L
ena woke and saw me standing beside her, looking down. She was lying on her back on the floor, on a small pink mat laid on top of our own carpet. Miss Carrie had seen her drive in, rolled up the mat and wheeled it over on her walker, insisting that Lena borrow it; it was her remedy for almost every ailment. A pillow supported Lena’s neck; a thin blanket was pulled up to her chin.

“You’re home,” she said. “Come and tell me about the fates. I was thinking about them. I want to hear them again.”

“I thought you were at the university all day.”

“No classes Friday afternoons, remember? I had a bit of a headache, a bit of dizziness, and decided to come home early. I’m glad it’s the end of the week. Who invented the week, anyway? Why does time have to be divided into days, weeks, months, the school year? Anyway, I’m home. And this mat is so comfortable, I don’t ever want to get up.”

It was November and I’d been to the National Gallery, and had stopped to see Nathan on the way back.
Figure out a title
, he said.
If we’re planning to do a show, you have to come up with a title
.

There was a book on the floor beside Lena. On top, a large bookmark with a message—BAN LAND MINES: NO PRODUCTION, NO EXPORT, NO USE, NO STOCKPILES. One of Lena’s causes. She was frequently recruited by others at the university who looked to her for support.

“Tell me about the fates,” she said again.

She looked tired, despite having had a nap. Tired, unfocused, something else I couldn’t put a name to.

I sat down on the carpet beside her.

“First Father,” I began, “took the red book down from the shelf. He read back to front, top to bottom. He always started with Hiroshi …”

“Hir-o-shi,” she said, interrupting. She slowed the syllables and stared at the ceiling, as if seeking approval for her pronunciation. Then she added, “Henry.”

“Because he was number-one son.”

“Skip to your fate,” she said. “Never mind the others. Yours is the one that makes me laugh.”

I leaned back against the chesterfield and thought,
Laugh? When did laughter ever exist?

“First Father said, ‘Bin, you are youngest, number-two son, born in the year of the tiger. A tiger may be stubborn, but can chase away ghosts and protect.’“

“Tell me the end part,” she said, knowing already.

“‘But because your time of birth was at the cusp of the year of the rabbit … ‘“

“You are destined to be melancholy, and you will weep over nonsensical things.” She recited the rest, smiling. I ventured a hand over the familiar bones of her wrist and felt the pulse of my wife. It was rapid, too rapid, as if she’d been running in her sleep.

“Who were you
not
supposed to marry?” she said.

“First Father didn’t tell me that part. He probably didn’t think my marriage fate would be important.”

“But it is important. You chose me. Tiger chose dog.”

“Other way around. Dog chose tiger.”

“Is that the way it happened? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” I said. And wondered who had chosen whom. At the time it hadn’t seemed like choice. More like inevitability. It had seemed right. Was right. A good match. She was smiling again. I looked past her and through the living-room window. A child of the sky had taken a thick marker and looped a line of gloom around the base of each cloud.

“Do you remember,” she said, switching topics, “when we drove to the cabin on the Gatineau River? An hour’s drive from here.” She spoke as if it had been years ago instead of only a few weeks. “We took the cooler with us—the one with the green lid. I packed the oilcloth with the red-and-white squares, hoping there’d be a picnic table at the place.”

I continued where she left off.

“Another couple arrived, and stayed at the only other cabin. They were accompanied by two young girls: their daughter, Florence, and her friend Lise. There was a softness to the distant hills on the other side of the river. That was the view we saw from shore. The visual suggestion was one of a series of far-off valleys, each folded to the next, the muted wrappings of red and gold.”

“Say that again, will you?”

“Which part?”

“The visual suggestion. I want to hear you say it.”

A moment preserved.

We were both silent, and then she said, “That was the night you told me about the fates.”

“I remember how you laughed.”

“I’d never heard any of that before. You’d been holding on to secrets. What else haven’t you told me?”

“If I’d known the fates would amuse you so much, I’d have told you earlier.”

“I’m glad nobody ever tried to predict my fate,” she said. “I’d have been menaced. I
am
menaced. My head feels as if there are lines criss-crossing inside my skull. Slicing up my brain. Sorry,” she said. “Sorry for that unnecessary dark moment.”

Basil chose this moment to do a circuit through the room, dragging his mattress in his teeth. The past few days, he’d begun to lift the mattress out of his basket and drag it around, ensuring that he’d be seen.

Lena called him over for a pat.

“Come here, you outrage,” she said, and he dropped the mattress in the doorway between living and dining rooms. He took up position beside her. She tried to reach for him, but her arm wouldn’t move.

“What’s wrong, Lena? Have you seen the doctor?” Something inside me had gone still.

“I called,” she said. “I have an appointment first thing Monday, before classes.”

But the words came out slurred, and she closed her eyes and I saw what was happening, and I ran to the phone.

Emergency response was fast. Miss Carrie stood at the top of her veranda step when she saw the flashing lights, but I had no chance to speak to her. Other neighbours had come outside and were standing on the sidewalk as Lena was carried out of the house on a stretcher.

I was told which hospital she was being taken to, and followed in my car. My heart was racing; my throat was dry. I hadn’t stopped to phone Greg, or leave him a message. Everything that was happening—Lena’s faltering attempts to speak, Basil’s frantic barking, the solemn faces of neighbours as I pulled away from the house, the streets through which I drove, which suddenly seemed hostile and unfamiliar—everything was telescoped, as if each part of the emergency had conspired to occupy less space and less time than real space and real time. The ambulance left me far behind and Lena was already in Emergency by the time I parked my car and ran to the entrance.

It took me a few minutes to find her, to find out which curtain she was behind, and another few minutes before I was permitted behind the curtain with her. The doctors on duty were blunt. From the Emergency Room, I phoned Greg and told him to come home at once.

A bleak smile from her hospital bed. A grim one from me, in response. Bleak information delivered and received. She moved her left hand, gestured towards her body beneath the covers. There was an IV hooked up to her arm.

“Look at me. I’m pulled down in a heap. Like one of your fractured and broken smalls.”

But I wasn’t protecting her now. I hadn’t kept her safe.

She had difficulty speaking. “I have so much to give up,” she said. Tears running now, unchecked. “You and Greg.”

“He’s on his way,” I said. “He’s coming. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“He’ll carry on doing what he’s already begun,” she said. “He loves his life.”

I leaned my forehead into the sheets, felt the ridge at the edge of the mattress. Closed my eyes. I wanted to banish the encompassing gloom.

“Don’t give up hope, Lena. Please don’t,” I said.

I felt her drifting.

She brought herself back. But her look was so distant, any bit of hope I’d had now drained away.

Her condition changed quickly. There was no time to think of what more to say or not say.
A word once uttered is beyond the reach of four galloping horses
, Okuma-san had always told me. But I had no words to utter that could save her.

In the morning, I went home to feed Basil, to change clothes, to speak with Miss Carrie and to pick up Greg at the airport. Lena was now in Intensive Care. Miss Carrie immediately took a taxi to the hospital and said she would stay on the unit until Greg and I arrived. At home, Basil had taken up position at the top of the stairs, his head over the top step. He was keeping watch over the front door below, and he was upset. He hadn’t kept his pack together. His disintegrating pack. I knew how that felt.

While I was collecting the few items I needed to take back to the hospital, Basil began to drag his mattress again. It seemed that no matter which direction I looked, he was crossing a room or passing through a doorway, the mattress in his teeth.

Before I left for the airport, I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment and looked at a framed photo of Lena on the dresser. I stared, but what I was seeing was fragmentation. Because of the lighting at the time the photo had been taken, only half of her face was visible, the left. It was obvious that she was ready to explode in laughter. How could I tell, from her left eye, from the shadow of her lip, from the vertical line of her nose to her darkened chin?

I could. I just could. I removed the photo from the frame and stored it. The Lena I had left at the hospital had no laughter, no smile. And I wanted her refocused; I wanted to make her whole.

When Greg and I returned from hospital that night, after Lena had become unconscious and had not reawakened, after she had died of a massive stroke, we saw the lights on at Miss Carrie’s and we went there first, to tell her. The three of us stood inside Miss Carrie’s front entrance, next to the hellhole, and held one another, and wept for what we could scarcely believe, wept for what each of us had so suddenly lost.

Greg and I let ourselves into our own home. When we turned on the lights, we saw that Basil had methodically ripped every bit of his mattress to shreds. Pieces of white wadding were scattered in every room over the entire main floor.

K
eep river as your focus
, Lena always told me.

And there it is. The deep canyon, the great Fraser River on my left, teeming with its own life, cutting its way through mountain, rock, soil, eroding as it flows.

I’ve decided to take a long route from Kamloops, and I approach from the south. The highway has been narrow and winding, hugging the side of the mountain for miles. Warnings of rock slides have been posted along the way, and I grip the wheel and glance up, wondering if I’d be able to shoot ahead, even if I had warning. It’s easy to imagine tons of loose boulders up there, hanging by threads.

I have been listening to what Okuma-san described as the last masterpiece written by Beethoven, the last string quartet, op. 135, the one Beethoven finished the year before he died. I chose its fourth movement to be performed at Okuma-san’s funeral, and now, it is perfect for this day, the notes floating to the highest peaks. I left this valley fifty-one years ago on a bus with Okuma-san, and now, I listen to the music he loved. There is a delicacy to this quartet, a reminder of contrasts, of opposites, the more so while I’m surrounded by the majesty of the mountains. Everything comes together. Perhaps everything Beethoven knew. Maybe he had some grand vision of humanity.
Muss es sein?
he asked. Must it be? And he answered his own question.
Es muss sein
. It must be.

IN THE LATE SUMMER
of 1967, I was about to move to London, England, on a scholarship. I had finished a degree in fine arts several years earlier and had been living in a small apartment in downtown Montreal. I was painting, and sharing the apartment with an artist named Peter. We had become friends, and we both had part-time jobs. I worked at an antiquarian bookstore west of Atwater during the day, and attended classes at the Museum of Fine Arts in the evenings. Peter worked for a private gallery on Sherbrooke Street and attended the same classes. Each of us had submitted a painting to the jury for the museum’s spring exhibition, and we were ecstatic to learn that our work had been selected. It was the final exhibition of that type, and it was my first painting to be accepted for a large exhibit. It was also the year of Expo 67, when the world came to Montreal. Every chance I had, I took the Metro to the Expo site and visited the gallery, the outdoor works by Giacometti and Henry Moore, the photography exhibit, the many splendid pavilions. Everything seemed possible that year.

In August, I travelled by train to Ottawa to spend a week with Okuma-san before departing for London. He had made a life for himself in Ottawa. It was a quiet place, and it suited him. Although he had retired from teaching two years earlier, he had remained active in the music world. He had bought a piano and he played for himself, but not publicly. The pain in his left hand had worsened over the years and he suffered from arthritis. But he listened to music constantly and he had become known as a Beethoven expert. He gave talks and lectures and wrote program notes and published a number of important papers. I had met most of his friends. They attended concerts together and performed, and some were members of the church Okuma-san attended in the west end of the city.