The Man Game (13 page)

Molly didn't twit a smile. She just stood there, stilled, as if only a framed photograph of herself remained beside him, her green stare reaching beyond the image into what can only be called the future.

FIGURE 3.1
The Pisk

Calabi's commentary: The lunging right hook transformed into a fey waltz and a tossing finish; the original move, as eloquent as a continuous stroke a the sword across the torso.

FOUR

There are three types of the genus vagrant, the hobo, the tramp and the bum. The hobo works and wanders, the tramp dreams and wanders, and the bum drinks and wanders.

–
BEN REITMAN

A few days after the fight, Molly learned in her naturally assiduous and charming way that Toronto knew how to get in contact with these notorious exile lumberjacks she'd seen in the Sunnyside, Litz and Pisk. It was the crack of dawn. He was on his way out the door to harvest chanterelles for their morning eggs. Oh, yes, I know their names, she said. She stood close enough for him to smell her bedsheets. Toronto confessed that he often received letters from Pisk to secretly add to the mail delivery when he rode in to the main post office in New Westminster. Molly needed Toronto to do her this, as she put it,
very unique favour
. This stays between us, she told him. I want to meet with those two loggers. A location, anywhere, their preference, somewhere private, concealed, not easily accessible. There I shall make them a gainful business proposition.

That evening, when the sun was gone and the mice awoke and Toronto retired to his chores, Sammy, unaware of his wife's request, made his own confession: he was deeply, terribly frightened by what he'd seen that afternoon at the Sunnyside. I'm no longer sure we're safe out here, he said.

Could happen anywhere. We're safe as kittens.

You always know exactly how to ease my mind.

We could provide Toronto with a rifle …

Yes, I thought a that, too, said Sammy.

Hm, I see, she said, reading his expression. You're worried he'll use it to end his life.

Mmm, said Sammy. Yes, no, see … I …

You mustn't worry yourself, she said. I saw towns in this condition all across Europe. My parents, they had a strategy for places like Vancouver. Keep moving. Never stop in a place like Vancouver. Keep moving. Make Vancouver laugh and cry then go. Never stay. Never stay in a town long enough to get caught against a wall, in a valley, or on a busy street. My choice is different. I can't follow them. I choose to stay. Molly paused, straightened up. She'd been doing hamstring stretches on the floor the whole time they'd been talking. My imagination, she continued, all I can think aboot is that afternoon at the Sunnyside. Sammy, I love the Canadian spirit. I want to be a Canadian, Sammy. I want to look Canadian, I want the philosophy, the suspicions, the credibility, the voice. I want the Canadian life. I don't want to be a minstrel, a travelling amusement, a heathen performer tattooed with Europe's borders. I want to be Canadian.

One a those men could be dead today if things had gone conventionally, said Sammy.

But it ends up not to be so in Canada. In Europe, a slanderous argument always ended in death. I was
most
interested in how that one man Pisk handled his opponent, very Canadian.

The one who undressed.

Yes.

The one who showed it all.

Not for the sake a lewdity, jealous man. For the sake a civilization. Come now, she said, standing up and suppressing a hiccup by pressing the palm of her hand to her chest, let's call Toronto to help us up to bed.

Change the subject, said Sammy. Well, speaking a bed, I plead with you for a night without waking me up for your midnight snack.

I'm seventeen, a growing girl. I can't help it, I get hungry.

Why that means
I
must eat, I can't figure.

Come now. It seems everyone else wants to be dressed in ee-na around here. I'll start a fire in our room while Toronto gets you ready.

I think I'll stay up tonight instead and read from the journals a Sancho Panza.

Chi
nook
, Molly cried, and tugged on Sammy's whiskers. If you don't come to bed I can't fall asleep. I don't want to be alone after all we talked aboot just now.

That bald bearded logger really did get under your skin, I see.

Foolish husband. I meant
Eu
rope. I meant that I can't think aboot Europe anymore, not without such
sor
row. If I'm to be a good wife, I can't stew in my sorrows. Not running away, instead going to bed. Please, come.

They went to bed together, as they did every night; Toronto, once the couple were settled, listening to them from his room on the main floor as he said his evening prayers with not even a candle lit to flicker against the walls. Molly, like a wick that burned inside a man, kept the Erwagen house awake when the rest of Vancouver was dreaming hard.

In the following days she seemed patient enough to spend her afternoons tending to her husband, shopping for perishables and winter supplies, and practising ballet in the living room. On her walks in the morning with Toronto to buy a box of Calabi&Yaus she never said a word, spoke only of the striking, mortal beauty of autumn in Vancouver. Look around us, our world is in a cold sweat, she said.

Then came the day when Toronto had news from the woodsmen Litz and Pisk. He and Molly spent that morning at Calabi & Yau's in conversation with the bakers. Toronto liked to make his choice for the morning and be gone. Unless he had extra silver and planned to stay for coffee, he was usually in and out the door in less than a half minute. Molly was different. When they went together they stayed for an hour.
She liked to discuss things with the bakers, and her questions were motivated by such a naturally curious intuition that the bakers felt they had no choice but to answer her as candidly as possible. Like everyone who first encountered the pastry, Molly wanted to know how they made it.

Can't tell you that, said Calabi, shaking his head. Calabi was a middle-aged man with thinning black hair, two moustaches, one at each corner of his mouth, and broad shoulders.

Yau was a thin leathery man like the tongue of a boot, with his skin cracked and creased from working for so long in front of the scorching heat of the Dutch oven.

Molly smelled of pomegranates, wet aloe, and her skin was as fragile and perfect as a fresh eggshell.

They talked around the subject of the pastries, already breaking Molly's own rule and talking about Europe a little, the countries and cities they were all familiar with. The bakers recognized the streets she named in Constantinople, Berlin, and Paris, mapping her memories out in the white flour on the table. She seemed overjoyed to learn they had once visited a music hall in the Jewish district of Bingen am Rhein where her parents performed. This amused them. Something sad about the memory of those years, too, made them all grow quiet for a moment.

They assumed she would use this contemplative pause to persist in asking about the pastries. The bakers maintained looks of cautious expectation. She never asked.

Of the two bakers, Calabi was the first to realize that Molly cultivated an aura around a secret of her own. He looked at the table where Molly had used her finger to make a street map of Bingen am Rhein in the flour. Suddenly Calabi scooped another handful of flour from a sack and tossed it across the table. Then another. The streets all vanished. In the flour Calabi began to draw out his own picture, a rough diagram of intersecting ellipsoids and snake shapes in wrapped helices.

Imagine here is dough sweet pastry, Calabi said, drawing, and here is flaky somewhat savoury pastry, yes. Two are entwined like coiling smoke, see?

Mmm, yes, lovely, said Molly.

On an average day the bakers could sell twenty dozen. Cross a doughnut with a light Danish, in thin layers of immaculately folded phyllo and various doughs and pastries. Able to fit in the palm of one's hand and as light as a tennis ball, the obvious mystery was how they got it to stay together—it looked as if the helix or loops never quite touched, and the pastry stuck together by some force beyond perception.

Two farmers' children came in the doors and interrupted their conversation. Calabi wiped his hands on his apron and went to the front of the store to serve the children, who left their vegetable wagon at the door.

I start with cheese parts and eat all them and save sweet and blackberry for last, the little boy told Calabi.

Is that you plan? he asked the child, while he tonged their regular order onto wax paper.

Me, too, said his sister. I like to put a whole one in and feel the cream splode out my mouth.

Me, too, said the boy.

Sure, said Calabi, and slid four across the counter to the kids. That'll be fifteen cents.

You must be so happy to know how much the town appreciates your work, said Molly.

I am so lonely, said Calabi.

Hm, said Molly. And you, Yau? Is work enough, or do you feel lonely, too?

Yau took a wad of dough off a tray and punched it around and slapped it down on the table. Me, not so much, no. Do it, he said to Calabi with contempt in his voice. Marry and have child we can teach to make Calabi&Yaus.

After saying their goodbyes, Molly walked happily out the door of the bakery and onto Powell Street. Toronto followed along. That was the first time he'd seen either of the bakers say
anything about how their pastries were made. As to how Molly was able to coax out such precious information, Toronto could only assume from his own feelings that the bakers wanted to share with her some level of intimacy; they wanted her approval, but they also wanted to be understood. Molly, if no one else, could understand. And as long as Molly was around, the bakers were a little less alone in the new world.

She and Toronto walked a little farther, then stopped at a log by the side of the road next to an open stable full of restless, steaming geldings, children lined up nearby for the chilly morning chore of filling up at the water pump. Sitting on a cushion of vermilion moss draped over the log, Molly stared at her pastry.

You think you understand how they make one, she said, and then you turn the Calabi&Yau even a bit and suddenly everything looks different. What a delicious puzzle.

He smiled and laughed nervously, and with a sticky mouth, said: Oh, I meet Pisk and Litz in Chinatown last night.

Yes, and?

Molly listened intently as he explained the directions in great detail. He gradually outlined a careful path for her to take through some of the denser, more chaotic forests to the south of Vancouver. The more he explained the more he began to smile again, as only now was he becoming aware of how totally absurd the directions were. Litz and Pisk wanted her going sideways, north, south, and backwards, and he told her so. Nevertheless, she asked him to carry on. She needed no explanation for why the directions were so circuitous. She wanted only to know when.

MUGGER ON THE LOOSE On streets of Vancouver; TWO BATHERS ROBBED Under a tree; CITY OFFERS PLENTY REWARD To the man who restores justice. POLICE OUTRAGED At implication.