The Dutch Wife (20 page)

THE TRAIN CARRYING THOMAS
and Rowland Vanderlinden arrived at Union Station in Toronto at ten o’clock on a chilly December morning. Mr. Jeggard, in a heavy winter coat with a fur collar, met them in the Great Hall.

“Welcome back,” he said, shaking Thomas’s hand but looking, as usual, somewhere past his shoulder. “I’m glad everything went as planned.”

Thomas introduced him to Rowland.

“So you’re the man who tracked me down?” Rowland said. “Well done!” He glanced slyly at Thomas to let him know how delighted he was at the idea that a man who couldn’t look you in the eye should excel in the business of finding people.

Jeggard raised his hands to fend off any praise for himself. “It’s teamwork,” he said, looking around for their luggage, wanting to be on his way. It wasn’t in his nature to indulge in superfluous conversation. “I have a taxi waiting to take you both to Camberloo,” he said. “It’s already paid for.” He led them through the heavy doors of the station out into the chilly morning.

Rowland, who had seemed to Thomas more and more energetic the farther they travelled from Vatua, gasped at this sudden exposure to the cold air. His already yellowish skin looked transparent and he shivered in spite of the woollen coat Thomas had bought him in Vancouver. He stopped a moment, looking around to check that he really was back. He breathed through clenched teeth. “I’d forgotten how cold it can be,” he said to Thomas. “I can feel the little hairs in my nose freeze up.”

Thomas too felt bludgeoned by the sub-zero weather.

They followed Jeggard down the stairs of the station to the sidewalk and passed a group of children dressed in the black coats and berets of the Mercy Orphanage singing merry songs, accompanied by the silent trombones of their breath.

Jeggard helped Rowland into the waiting taxi. “Telephone if you require our services further,” he said quietly to Thomas.

“Thank you,” said Thomas.

“Then,” said Jeggard, “I bid you both farewell.”

Thomas got into the taxi while Jeggard walked off along Front Street in the direction of his office.

THE TAXI HEADED SOUTHWEST,
passing along the shoreline of Lake Ontario. The lake steamed like hot springs in the frigid morning air.

Rowland was alert, watching everything. “It’s changed so much,” he said. “The Toronto I knew is hidden by highrises. I always enjoyed thinking nothing would have changed here, that only I myself had changed.”

Thick snow began to fall when they were several miles out of the city. In the middle of a farmer’s field by the side of the road was a huge, bare tree with black fruit in it—crows, perched on the snow-covered limbs.

“They look like vultures,” Rowland said. “In Manu, when you see vultures in a tree, you must always try and slip past without disturbing them. It’s bad luck if they fly away.” At that very moment, the crows scattered and disappeared into the thickening snow. “Ah, well,” said Rowland, “one person’s bad luck is often the best thing possible for someone else.”

IT WAS QUITE LATE,
around four in the afternoon, when they neared Camberloo. The snow was thicker. Spruce trees by the side of the road were stooping under the weight of it. On the outskirts of the town, street lights were stabbing holes in the murk.

“We won’t be long now,” said Thomas.

They soon reached King Street, where the store windows were specially illuminated for the season. Rowland drew Thomas’s attention to one of them, where the taxi stopped at a traffic light. In the window was an ingenious display of a street scene covered in cotton-wool snow, with a toy taxi paused outside a tiny store. “Just like us,” Rowland said.

Thomas was thinking about what that might mean when he noticed some passers-by who had also stopped at the traffic lights. Their faces were shadowed under their winter hoods, and for a moment Thomas could almost have believed their eye sockets were empty. He was surprised at the grisliness of the image. Travelling seemed to have warped his imagination in some way. He’d be glad to be home.

Just ahead, he could see the Walnut Hotel, its windows all lit up. It took up the entire corner of King and Queen, like a great ship anchored in an icy sea. The taxi dropped them off outside the foyer and immediately headed back to Toronto.

A ROOM HAD BEEN BOOKED
for Rowland in the Walnut for the length of his stay. When he was comfortably settled in, Thomas excused himself. “I’ll phone later and let you know the arrangements,” he said.

“Are you going to your mother’s?” Rowland said. “Shall I come with you?”

“No,” said Thomas. “You’d better rest. You’ll be seeing her tomorrow.”

Rowland nodded. He looked around the room, a large, high-ceilinged room with soft lighting and a huge bed. “I’ll read my notes for a while. I wonder what kind of dreams I’ll have here,” he said. “On Vatua, they say your dreams depend on where you are.” He went to the window, pulled the curtains open and stood looking at the world below.

“Call room service for some food,” Thomas said as he left.

From the lobby, he phoned for a taxi and soon one appeared, slithering to a halt at the entrance, its exhaust billowing back over it like a cat’s tail. As he climbed in, he looked up at the second floor. Rowland was standing with his arms outstretched on the window frame. He might have been a giant insect, or a man crucified.

The city roads were a helter-skelter along which the taxi slewed and skidded its way. Unlike the driver who’d brought them silently from Toronto, this man began to talk immediately.

“You’ve got to be a real driver in this kind of weather,” he said, nodding his round, bald head in agreement with himself.

“Is that so?” said Thomas, but not encouragingly, for he was tired.

“In last month’s blizzard,” the driver said, “a truck driver mixed up a railway crossing with the Victoria Street intersection.”

“Blizzard?” Thomas said.

“You must have been out of town,” the driver said. “We had an early blizzard three weeks ago. The snow didn’t last.”

Thomas calculated that he himself was probably cursing stifling heat at that very time.

“So this truck driver,” the taxi driver said, “he made a left turn onto the tracks and drove along them for a hundred yards before he got stuck. He realized then he was on the railway line and got out to go for help. But while he was gone the six o’clock express came along and smashed into his truck, shunted it along the tracks for a mile and piled it into the overpass.”

“Hmm!” said Thomas, for want of anything better to say.

“That’s what I mean about this kind of weather,” the taxi driver said. “Roads mixed up with railway tracks. Trucks mixed up with trains. You’re not sure if it’s solid road under you or not.” He nodded his head. “Yep! Everybody loves the snow. It looks great—but it’s dangerous.”

“Like a lot of things,” Thomas said.

– 3 –

HE LEFT HIS BAG
in the hall of his mother’s house and went straight into the library. Rachel was sitting in the floral armchair by the fire, a black-and-white cat on her lap, a ginger cat on the back of the chair. The eyes of the cats glared in the reflected light of the fire.

Seated at a table near the bookcases was a darker presence—Doctor Webber.

Thomas immediately went to Rachel. He was shocked at how much she had changed in the few weeks he’d been away. Behind the wire-rimmed glasses the eyes were as sharp as ever, but the flesh of her face was transparent, the little blue veins like live things that were coming ever nearer to the surface. Her hair, in a coil on her head, seemed even whiter than before. As Thomas bent to kiss her on the forehead, the two cats growled at him.

“Penny, Daisy, be quiet!” She tried to sound angry, but Thomas couldn’t help noticing how much weaker her voice had become—it lacked substance, like a collapsing balloon. He went over and shook hands with Doctor Webber.

“I’m glad you’re back,” said Webber. He too looked more wizened than when Thomas had last seen him, though his lips glistened red in the reading light by the bookcases. His eyes were anxious.

AFTER THOMAS HAD EATEN
some sandwiches and settled down with a glass of wine, Rachel and Webber began quizzing him about Rowland. Rachel was particularly interested in what he had to say about the two women on the island. She made him describe them in detail, and when he had done so as well as he could, she was silent, stroking the cat in her lap.

After a while she asked: “Does he seem happy?”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “Maybe. It’s hard to say what’s going on in someone else’s mind.” He’d often wondered about the sulky women and how they had made those unearthly noises when Rowland left. Perhaps they really loved him.

Doctor Webber had been listening. “He’s had an odd kind of a life,” he said, as though it was beyond his understanding. “But I suppose it’s what he wanted.”

“Was he surprised to see you?” said Rachel. “Did he wonder why I wanted to see him?”

“Yes,” said Thomas.

“And?” she said. “What did you tell him?”

Thomas thought for a moment. “Let me see. I told him you wanted to know about the man who showed up at the door and called himself Rowland.”

She was all concentration. “What did he say?”

“Nothing much,” Thomas said. “He said he knew who it was.”

“And?” she said, urging him on.

“That’s it,” Thomas said. “We didn’t talk about it after that.”

She shook her head at that. “You mean,” she said, “you didn’t ask him who it was? Or anything about him? Oh, Thomas, Thomas. Have you no curiosity?”

Thomas was thinking she was the last person to accuse him of that—she, who had lived for years with the man without even allowing him to tell her his real name. But he didn’t quibble with her. “Anyway, Rowland can’t stay too long,” he said. “Two or three days at most. He’s meeting his publisher in Toronto about a book on his work. Then he has to get back to his family.”

“Make arrangements for him to come tomorrow after lunch,” she said. Then she sat back, the most faded of the flowers in the armchair. “I’ll go up to bed now. I’ll need my strength.”

Doctor Webber helped her out of the chair and upstairs. She climbed very slowly, both feet resting on each stair. The two cats led the way, glaring back at Thomas, the intruder.

DOCTOR WEBBER CAME BACK
down after a few minutes. “I gave her one of her pills. She needs to sleep,” he said.

Thomas was alarmed. “How is she?” he said.

“She’s been quite ill,” said Webber. “She wasn’t too well even before you left. She didn’t want you to know.” He licked his red lips, making Thomas think of one of those medieval saints who would drink a daily glass of pus from the sores of lepers.

“Is she . . . dying?” Thomas asked finally. She had seemed to him somehow shrunken, as though in preparation for the final shrinkage.

“She’s the type of woman who’ll die only when she’s finished everything she needs to do,” Webber said. “You know your mother.” He slowly blew out smoke, showing the purple-veined insides of his lips.

Thomas was thinking:
No, I don’t really know her
. At times her mind to him was like a fish—whenever he tried to catch it, it slipped out of his grasp.

They sat for a while in the armchairs by the fire, sipping brandy, just as they had in the days before Thomas left on his journey.

Webber puffed at a cigar, pursing his lips, savouring the taste of it. “What about that island woman of his?” he said. “I had a feeling you weren’t telling us everything.”

Thomas told him about that night-time visitation to his bedroom in Rowland’s bungalow and the roles of the two women, who certainly looked like the Consort and her daughter.

Webber listened intently. Once or twice his shoulders shook as he listened, as though he might be laughing. “What a fool the man is,” he said. He meant Rowland. “To have given up a woman like your mother for a life like that. It’s impossible to understand.” He said this in the way of a man speaking about the woman he loves.

– 4 –

THOMAS TOOK A TAXI
to his home, an apartment in a low brownstone building on Belview. He made a quick inspection tour; his plants looked well—they had been looked after by the superintendent. He ran his fingers along the books neatly ordered on the shelves; he glanced into the bedroom, tidy and black and white. He poured himself a brandy and sipped it slowly, looking out the window at the winter scene of skeletal trees and street lights illuminating the slanting snow. It would all have been very comforting if he hadn’t just discovered how sick his mother was. He finished the brandy and phoned Rowland.

“I must have nodded off,” Rowland said sleepily.

Thomas told him the arrangements for the next day, then remembered Rowland’s earlier comment. So before hanging up, he said: “By the way, were you dreaming when I woke you?”

“As a matter of fact, I was,” said Rowland. “I’d put my feet on the rug—it was a silky black rug. But it turned out not to be a rug at all. It was some kind of oil, and I started sinking into it slowly till it covered my mouth and nose and I woke up choking just as the phone rang.”

“How unpleasant,” said Thomas.

“Yes, indeed,” Rowland said. “I hope you’ll have more pleasant dreams.”

“I never dream,” said Thomas.

“Oh, yes, you told me that,” said Rowland. “An old Shaman of the Himpolos of Middle Vatua said we do nothing else—that life’s a dream. And that what we think of as our dreams are actually the only times we’re awake. We get a glimpse of how mad the world is and go back to sleep right away.”

NOT LONG AFTER,
Thomas, exhausted, went to bed. But he couldn’t sleep, unused, after travelling so long, to a bed that was immobile. He remembered the ships he’d sailed on, and the islands, and the trains. He must have fallen asleep at last, for all at once it was dawn. But the dim morning light wasn’t accompanied by the shrieks of strange birds, the heralds of stifling heat and stinging insects and rapacious life and violent death. This dawn light was the cold light of the north and the morning was silent, except for the discreet tapping of snow on the windowpanes.