The Diviners (34 page)

“Okay,” Jules says steadily. “What else?”

“It was the coldest part of the winter,” Morag says, and now her own voice sounds oddly cold and meticulous, as though the memory of that chill had numbed her. “The air smelled of–of burnt wood. I remember thinking–crazy–but I thought Bois-Brûlés.”

“Shut up!” Jules cries out in some kind of pain which cannot be touched by her.

Silence.

“Go on,” he says finally.

Why does he have to inflict this upon himself? Why can't he let it go? Perhaps he has to know before he can let it go at all.

“I guess I vomited, as they brought the stretcher out. I realized then that the air didn't only smell of smoke and burnt wood. It smelled of–well, like roasted meat, and for a minute I wondered what it was, and then–”

Jules lies across the table once more. Then slowly he raises his head and looks at her.

“By Jesus, I hate you,” he says in a low voice like distant thunder. “I hate all of you. Every goddamn one.”

Morag gets up and puts on her coat. There is nothing more can be said. He watches her walk towards the door. Then speaks, the cry wrenched up out of him.

“No. Wait awhile, eh?”

They hold to one another again, and make love or whatever it is, throughout the deep and terrifying night.

 

In the morning, Morag wakens and at first does not know where she is. Then she realizes but can scarcely believe it. How could she stay away all night? Will Brooke have phoned the police? Will he imagine her as dead? How could she have done that to him?

“I should've phoned him, Jules. I should've–”

Jules rolls over in bed and stretches.

“Well, you didn't. So what now?”

“I have to go back and–”

“Stay?”

“No. But–”

“Tidy things up neat, eh?”

“Of course,” she says angrily, and he laughs.

“It won't work, Morag. If you're going, go. Don't talk. It won't do a thing.”

“Maybe not. But it's–”

“Your way.”

“Yes. My way.”

“Where'll you go then? Christie's?”

Morag begins trembling again. Dressed now, and standing beside the table, trembling as though with chill.

“Skinner–I can't.”

“Where, then?”

“Further west. To the Coast.”

“Chrissake, why?”

She doesn't know. Maybe it only ever occurs to prairie people, when they light out, to go yet further west. This is idiotic.

“I can't say. I don't know.”

“You got any money?”

“Some. From the novel. Not much, but enough to get there and get started on something. Any kind of job.”

Jules rises and gets dressed.

“You can come back for a while, till you get yourself together. If you want to.”

“Yes. I will, then. And–thanks. Jules, I won't–”

Hesitates.

“Won't what?” he says. “Wash my underpants? Iron my jazzy satin shirts?”

“No. I mean, yes–I'll do that if you want–it's all the same to me. I meant–I won't stay long.”

To let him know she understands the terms on which his offer is being made.

“Yeh, that's okay,” he says. “I know.”

Once out into the street and on the bus, the day strikes like lightning into Morag's brain, and she no longer understands what has been happening. At the door of the
apartment, she stops and steadies herself, leaning against her corridor wall. She does not recall ever feeling this frightened before. She takes out her key and opens the door.

Brooke has not gone to work. He is sitting in his study. His glasses are beside him on the desk, and both hands are upon his eyes. He swings around at her entry, and she sees that he has been crying.

Anything else. Rage. Fury. Contempt. Condemnation. Reproach. She was prepared for any or all. But not for this.

He stiffens, straightens, puts on his glasses.

“So you've come back,” Brooke says.

It is an attempt to regain the old manner, but it does not quite come off, because his voice is shaking. Appalled, Morag stands in the doorway.

“Brooke–I'm sorry.”

That's a bloody awful christly useless word. Proverbs of C. Logan.

“I should've phoned,” she goes on. “I should've–”

“Oh, don't worry,” Brooke says, and now he is gaining back the control he needs. “I didn't imagine you had thrown yourself under a bus. I knew where you were. Perhaps not exactly, but at least who you were with.”

Morag finds herself unable to explain or say anything. Everything was clear, earlier this morning. Now it is not.

“I suppose you went to bed with him,” Brooke says.

“Yes.”

Brooke looks at her for what seems hours and is in fact about three seconds. And she is, once again, totally unprepared for the cry which comes from his throat, an anguish she has never heard from him except in his crying of that one name in his sleep.

“Why, Morag? Are you so determined to destroy me?”

This is all the more terrible because she knows the pain is real and yet there is something melodramatic, to her ears, in what he is saying.

“Brooke–listen. I don't want to damage you. I honestly don't think I do, but I can't be sure. I don't suppose you want to damage me, either.”

“Have I ever?” he says. “Have I ever wanted to damage you? Never. Never. Never.”

Add two more
nevers
and it might be Lear at the death of Cordelia. Bitch, to think this way, now. Yes. But.

“Brooke. I can't explain. I get mixed up when I try, and then I feel I must be entirely in the wrong. But all I know is–I have to go. I can't stay.”

“I could understand it better if you could just give me one reason for what you've done.”

“What do you mean, exactly, what I've done?”

“How do you think I feel, Morag, knowing you've been with another man?”

She is shocked and awed by his pain. At the same time, she sees for the first time that he has believed he owns her.

“Brooke, I'm sorry. Not for what happened last night. I'm sorry that neither of us were different. But Brooke–you've put yourself inside women other than me.”

“Not since we married,” Brooke says, “unless you want to drag up that one time when we were in Nova Scotia, that girl on old Kenton's trawler, his niece or something. But once she'd hauled me into her bunk, I couldn't.”

Morag stares at him. Then laughs. He looks at her as though she has suddenly become demented.

“I never knew,” Morag says. “I didn't go along on that jaunt, as you recall. You mean to say it doesn't count cause you didn't come?”

He takes a step towards her, and for an instant she is afraid again. Then he stops himself.

“You
are
a bitch, aren't you?” he says.

She feels exhaustion as never before. Words have lost meaning.

“Brooke. I'm withdrawing the money I earned from the novel, then you can have the account changed from a joint one to yours. I'm going to Vancouver. I'll do anything you want to do about a divorce, whatever it is that people have to do. And I'm sorry. But I just have to take off by myself.”

“I suppose your boyfriend isn't reliable enough to provide a living?”

“He is not my–as you repulsively put it–boyfriend.”

“No? What then?”

“It doesn't matter. Brooke–I don't know what to say, except that it was fine with us for quite a while. I owe you a lot, and I know it. And–”

And nothing. Quit talking. Babble babble. He wants to quit talking, too. He looks at her from his solitary confinement, but says nothing. Then he turns away. Sits down at his desk and begins marking essays.

Morag packs one suitcase and goes.

 

Jules is reclining on the bed with a bottle of beer.

“Hi,” he says. “Was it bad?”

“Yes. Pretty bad.”

“Want a beer? It's all we have. Nothing stronger, I'm sorry to say.”

She takes the bottle he offers her, and sits on the bed beside him, shivering.

“Don't think about it,” Jules says. “Look, I didn't say before, but you don't want to get pregnant, do you? Because–”

“Would you mind very much if I didn't do anything to try not to?”

Jules looks at her, then laughs.

“Jesus. You're a crazy woman. Do you have to ask permission? I don't mind, no. Only–”

“It's all right. I wouldn't claim support or anything.”

“Well, you probably wouldn't stand much of a chance of getting it, from me,” Jules says. “It's all I can do to keep myself going, right now. You still plan on going to Vancouver?”

“Yes. If I can just get myself pulled together first–”

“Stay as long as you need to. But not too long, or it'll turn out bad. As I ought to know. Funny thing, Morag. I was gonna sing some of the songs to you. But I got a feeling I won't, not now. Maybe sometime. But this doesn't feel like the time.”

“Why not?” she asks.

“I don't guess you'd hear them, really,” Jules says.

Morag stays with him for just over three weeks. They speak little, and make love not at nights when he comes home late, but in the mornings, late mornings, when he wakens. He comes home bleak, usually. He hates most of the places where he sings. Only in one, a small coffeebar which pays hardly anything, does the young audience actually listen. The others are all of the cheap nightclub or roadhouse variety, middle-aged middle-class men out with hired women, painting, as they imagine, the town red, and deaf-drunk. He hates giving his songs there, but it is better than not singing at all. Days, when he and Billy Joe practise and work out new arrangements, they do so in Billy's room, one floor down. Morag hears the faint twanging of the two guitars and Jules' rough-true voice but she cannot make out the words. Sometimes she wants to go down and listen, but she senses that Jules is right. This isn't the time.
She wouldn't really hear. She is overtaken by profound lethargy, some days, and sleeps as much as fourteen hours. Other days, she rushes around the city, making her preparations for departure.

Billy Joe brings Jules home one night, Jules unable to walk, Billy dragging him. Billy Joe is short and gentle-featured, but must be tough-muscled to haul along Jules, who is about twice his size and weight.

“What went wrong?” Morag asks.

“He was singin', there,” Billy Joe says, “that one song about his grandfather, old Jules. At first they just didn't listen. Then they laughed, some. Then they started yellin' that they wanted him to sing stuff like ‘Roll out the barrel.' So he gets mad and leaves and goes drinkin'. I had to leave the guitars there. Knew he'd end up smashing 'em. I guess maybe I better stay up here tonight, Morag. When he wakes up, he's gonna be crazy. He won't really be awake and he'll still be drunk.”

When Jules seemingly wakes, after a few hours of restless imitation sleep, he is a man fighting everything he has ever found necessary to fight. A sleepwalker, a sleep-fighter. He is in the valley again, and Lazarus is there, fighting and not fighting. And the fire. And the long long beaches where the fireshot forever kills the same men, over and over. And the satin shirts of now.

“Take off this shit shirt, willya? Look, lemme tear it off, yeh? Like this this this. Know how she died? She was roasted like beef. She smelled like the roast beef they got there, on the Sundays–Jesus Jesus Jesus–”

“What do we do with him?” Morag says, scared, to Billy Joe, who is at this moment wrestling with Jules, wrestling with steadiness and apparently no fear. Doesn't Billy Joe feel fear? Maybe. Maybe he knows something beyond fear.

“Shut up and stay outa the way,” Billy Joe says.

And finally Jules subsides into unconsciousness again.

In the morning, Jules is unspeaking, hungover. Finally, after potions of tea, he clears his throat. Billy has gone back downstairs.

“Hey. Morag. Was I bad?”

“Yeh. Not so good. Billy stayed. He was good with you.”

“He's my friend. He should be good with me. He oughta know how, after this time.”

“Your friends should have to wrestle with you?”

“Sometimes. You don't think I've ever wrestled with him?”

“I guess so. I'm off today, Jules. Not because of last night. Just because I'm ready to go, now.”

“Yeh? God, I feel awful. Want me to come with you to the station?”

“Oh for christ's sake, in the shape you're in? Go back to bed. I can manage. I'm travelling light. I'll write to you.”

“Well, I probably won't to you.”

“No, you were never much of a letter writer. Jules–thanks.”

“For nothing.”

“So long, then.”

“So long, Morag. Look after yourself.”

 

She has five hundred dollars and a one-way ticket to Vancouver.

Clunk-a-clunk-clunk. Clunk-a-clunk-clunk.
The train wheels. Once again, going into the Everywhere, where anything may happen. She no longer believes in the Everything out there. But part of her still believes.

Morag goes into the train john. Vomits. Cleans up tidily after herself. When upset or too tense, her digestion is the first
thing to go. Her stomach, obviously, not her heart, is the dwellingplace of her emotions. How humiliating. Unless, of course, she is pregnant, which is hardly likely after a couple of weeks. What if she is, though? How could she have been so unbalanced as actually to try to be? How would she earn a living? She hadn't thought of that at the time, but does so, now. Fear. Panic. Where is Brooke?

Brooke's pain. His damage towards her. Hers towards him. Their voices a million miles apart. Their first coming together, and how good it had been.

The train clonks on and on. Through the prairies. She looks out at the flat lands, which from the train window could not ever tell you anything about what they are. The grain elevators, like stark strange towers. The small bluffs of scrub oak and poplar. In Ontario,
bluff
means something else–a ravine, a small precipice? She's never really understood that other meaning; her own is so clear. A gathering of trees, not the great hardwoods of Down East, or forests of the North, but thin tough-fibred trees that could survive on open grassland, that could live against the wind and the winter here. That was a kind of tree worth having; that was a determined kind of tree, all right.