THE SIXTH DAY (OR THE FIFTH DAY OF PASSOVER)

LOVE, LIKE LIGHT, FILLS EVERYTHING

HARPO, 1933

Harpo patted Ayala’s head hard enough to mess up her hair, to take strand after strand out of that tight elastic. She laughed. So did Harpo. Because she looked like a scarecrow, and, of course, she wouldn’t know that until later. Sometimes it was the little things. He could be happy. He wouldn’t fail this family.

“How do you think love works?” said Ayala.

“Oh no,” said Harpo. Not this again. He rubbed her back. Loving wasn’t complicated, it really wasn’t. Love was like light. You flicked a switch and the room was lit. You loved someone and they were loved. But that did seem too simple. How did love get sent? How did light get sent, for that matter, now that she’d asked the question, and how come when you flicked the light switch the whole room lit and not just a small part and the rest incrementally? Incremental. Amazing. Two down, the Saturday that Frenchie was in the hospital. He and Groucho had been sitting in the waiting room and he’d figured he’d never use that word in his life. Harpo rubbed his eyes. Frenchie would never have worried about things like these. He never felt sorry for himself one minute of his life. Harpo would be like that. He’d figure this thing out and then move on to his own family, would be a family man just like his father. “Can you tell me things about Simon?”

“You know,” said Ayala, “sometimes I dream that my love is inside a balloon that’s attached to me by a cord. And when I complete some task, I get a pair of scissors and I cut it. Then the girls catch it after that and I can give them my love. And Sam. Simon too.”

“I’ve run out of places to look,” said Harpo. The letter had been burned, he’d bet on it. Little Blima had probably fed it into the fire, months before, or years. “I need help. Is Simon tall?” And his voice cracked. He made a lousy detective. “Does he have dark hair? Is he Jewish?” Oh God, please answer no. The Jews are having a rough go of it in some places, that’s what people were saying. “What’s his last name?”

“But it never works in the end,” said Ayala. “No matter how successful I am in the dream, I wake up and it’s all just the same. And I’m worried that it’s going to be too late. Soon I’ll lose my chance.”

Harpo lay down on his back. “Too late can happen,” he said.

“What?”

He rubbed his face. You never knew when too late would come. At least with Frenchie, they’d been expecting it, he was a while in the hospital, and the doctors had told them to say their goodbyes. When Minnie went it was sudden. There was no knowing that the dinner party at Zeppo’s would be the last time they’d talk to her, that when they hugged at the door, it would be the last hug ever, and after that, never again. Nothing more.

“Nightmares, at least, bring a measure of relief when they end,” Ayala was saying, “because they can be over. But this doesn’t end. I mean to say I love you, and I can’t. Even when I wake up.”

Harpo remembered that night with breathtaking clarity. He bent forward, put his head in his lap. That night, the last night of Minnie’s life, Frenchie had led her to the car and the boys had stayed for cards. An hour later, Frenchie was back again, pounding on the door. Minnie was in the car. Something was wrong. Something had happened. She couldn’t move or speak. Could he bring her back into the apartment to die with her family? Harpo didn’t remember getting her up into the bedroom, but he must have helped. He didn’t remember taking turns sitting with her in the dark bedroom, stroking her hand and waiting, but that’s what everyone said happened. He didn’t remember much of that night, just the end.

“I mean to say, ‘I love you,’” said Ayala, “and I say, ‘Do up your shoes, you look like a homeless person.’ I want to say, ‘You look beautiful,’ and instead I hear myself telling Blima that the hobos will see her untied shoes, think she’s one of them, and steal her away to live in trains and eat tin cans.”

“So stop,” said Harpo. “Just stop it. Life can be simple.” He closed his eyes and could feel the weight of Minnie in his arms as her laboured breathing had slowed and slowed then stopped. And he was back again, in the dark room in Zeppo’s apartment, holding on to his mother’s body, begging her not to go. He didn’t care about the hard times. He just loved her. That’s all there was to it. That’s all that was left.

Ayala stood up, turned and walked off the dock. And Harpo sat up and watched the water, and a long time later, he followed to the lodge.

Harpo felt numb as he installed himself in the office doorway, sitting against the wall, foot thrust out to hold the door open a crack. A long time later, Blima appeared. She lifted Harpo’s arm, and curled into his lap, hugging his arm around her. Harpo let the door shut. He closed his eyes. He didn’t need to look, to know what was happening now.

There was the crack that meant that Ayala had passed behind the registration desk.

And there was the soft hush, the drawer opening.

Abruptly, Blima squirmed out of his lap. By the time Harpo looked over, she was already gone, clear out of the room. The office door opened all the way. There was a whoosh of cold air, a breeze that lifted Harpo’s hair, and Harpo didn’t move, not even to take a breath. Ayala was standing in the doorway, towering over him. Her eyes were shining brightly, and there were tears on her flushed cheeks. Harpo’s head was blank. He saw falling snow. Every time he blinked, he saw mounds and mounds of it.

“Harpo.” Ayala’s voice was hard. “There’s a wire for you,” and she handed him a card.

Harpo didn’t know what else to do, so he turned it over in his hands. It was from the government, not the Canadians, the Americans. They requested his help in his upcoming tour of the Soviet Union. They wanted him to be a spy probably. Aleck had warned him this might happen.

And suddenly, Harpo had an idea of how he’d get Simon’s family out. He laboured to his feet, and left the room, measuring his steps so he wouldn’t show that he was afraid.