The next day at Union I looked for Sporty to give him my good news but he was nowhere in sight. I wanted to tell him that my form too had led to success and maybe mention that I forgave his scamming because all he desired was a place of his own; I wanted to say that he should add another number to his figure about the universe balancing out itself. For the next two weeks, I searched up and down for him. One evening I spotted a boy crouched over a comic. He had really spiky hair like the Sham-Wow fella on television and the way he was turning the pages carefully made me feel that he was a comic book collector or something. When I sat next to him, he held the book tightly as if I might pull it away. Still I asked him, “Is the comic interesting?”
“It’s a graphic novel,” he told me stiffly. “Comics are for kids.”
“What’s the difference?”
He wasn’t being helpful but I asked him, “Where did you get it?”
“At an antique shop on Queen Street West.” He stated the directions quickly as if he hoped I might leave him alone and go there. And that was exactly what I did. It was close to six when I got there and a stocky man who looked as if he might have been drawn by Jack Kirby was straightening some lamps on a table. The back of the store was packed with old furniture—the kind that people in Mayaro would never give away or sell but keep until they fell apart—and there were rusty tools strung on nails on the wall. At one end of the shop were crates stuffed with books and in one of these I found a pile of comics. Most were familiar, old Marvel and Charlton and even a couple Turok Son of Stone but there were also thick glossy comics which I guessed were graphic novels. I pulled out a Rawhide Kid and began reading.
“The library is at Bloor.”
It was the Jack Kirby man. He had a mean swollen forehead that made him look a little dangerous. “How much is this?”
“Two for a dollar.”
“So cheap?”
“Okay, one for a dollar?”
I had no intention of buying the comic so I told him, “It’s a first edition. Worth at least twenty-five. These old Tarzan and Submariner are just as expensive.”
He began tapping some sort of old compass against his palm and by the tenth or so tap, he had offered me a job. Seriously. This is how it went.
First, he introduced himself as Billy Bilkim Barbarossa then he asked me, “What is your name, boy?”
Because he looked like a Mexican bandit, I told him, “Roti Ramirez.”
He scratched his beard and I saw a big mole peeping out. He noticed my gaze and hurriedly packed down and smoothened over the hair. “I have never heard of such a name.”
“I was born in Trinidad,” I told him. “The capital is Port of Spain and the main town is San Fernando. I lived close to Rio Claro.”
I tried to think of other Spanish names but he cut me off, “I am not interested in all that. What is your education?”
“I just signed up to finish my high school. The course is at the Centennial College campus.” I felt important just to be saying this.
“When do you start?”
“In two months. It’s a preparatory—”
“Then you work two months here. Only two.” He held up two stubby fingers. “I don’t want any big-head college boy here. Now, tell me if you know how to sell.”
“Comics?”
“Look, you better get out of my store.” He pointed to the door. “Is that all that you can see here?” The gesture changed into a wave at the junk lined up against the walls. “You think it’s just junk?” I shook my head. “Nearly every item you see here is attached to a story. And not happy stories either. Death. Divorce. Bankruptcy. Sickness.” He removed a rusty hatchet from a coat hanger and I backed away a bit. “Betrayal.”
“Everyone is walking around with a broken heart,” I told him in the saddest voice I could afford.
“And never forget it,” he said, as if it was he rather than Canella who had come up with the idea. “Come back tomorrow.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. It had taken me weeks before I got the job at the gas station but in less than half an hour, I landed work in a store with comic books and mostly useless items. This was so much better than pumping gas in the cold and gazing at impatient drivers as I cleaned their windscreens and asked about oil changes. And best of all, Barbarossa’s antique shop didn’t look too different from Uncle Boysie’s Everything and Anything place. The universe was really balancing itself. However, the next day Barbarossa seemed surprised to see me in his shop and for a minute I thought he was about to ask me to leave. Worse, I tried to recall the name I had given him but came up blank.
“So, Mr. Roti Ramirez, are you ready to sell today?” Without another word, he walked to a back office and I followed him. His legs didn’t match his muscular body and because they were so short, he waddled like the Penguin. Maybe he suffered from big stones that we called godi in Trinidad. He hefted a portable heater from his chair and sat. “Rule number one is no haggling. Some of these people come here and believe they can get anything for a dime. Rule number two is you must never mention anything about garage sales or the Salvation Army or pawnshops. Tell them that we bought everything at auction sales. Do you know why?”
“Death and divorce.”
“Correct. And rule number three”—he peeped through the door and lowered his voice—“is that you must never chat with Che.”
I tried to match his whisper, “Che Guevara?”
He rolled his eyes as if the question had been asked too frequently. The act was unseemly in such a brawny man and I tried not to smile. “His real name is Cherry Xalvat and he is a charlatan of the highest order. Avoid him like the plague.”
All day I kept an eye out for someone whose name was either Che or Cherry. I imagined a fat-cheek assassin wearing a beret but there were just three customers: an old woman with a blue purse, blue hair and thick blue veins on her neck; a turtleneck-sweater young man who seemed vexed to see me following him; and a tall Creole lady who just gazed around, jangled her bracelets, and said, “Hmm.” At the end of the day Barbarossa asked me what I had sold and when I said nothing he clasped his hands and rested them on his belly. It was the gesture of a man about to utter something but he kept silent. After about three minutes, I left and when I glanced through the glass door, I saw him in the same pose.
Each evening he asked the same question and most times my response was the same but soon I was able to tell him that I had sold a vase or a candleholder or some outdated cookbook. In two weeks or so, I was able to distinguish the idlers and browsers from the genuine shoppers who did not walk around the store gazing at everything but hovered around a particular item. Sometimes they got distracted by some other bit of junk but they always returned to their cherished scrap. I learned to give them space rather than frightening or pressuring them with questions. I soon forgot about Che because there were so many interesting customers here. A few resembled the coffee shop old-timers, but there were a couple of women with sort of frozen expressions who looked as if they were searching for something valuable that their grandparents might have sold by mistake, and some pretty girls who came in packs and giggled as they fingered rings and necklaces. Once I heard a group talking about “a skank” who went around “banging” everybody and “getting laid” each Friday as a rule. These were strange words but I guessed what they were talking about and after they had left, I felt that their expressions seemed more harmless than our Mayaro swearword versions. It made the act itself seem innocent and ordinary. Maybe Barbarossa didn’t share this view because he came up and said, “No staring at nipples. The strip joint is on Yonge Street.” I was still thinking of the girls when a man wearing shorts came in with a crate of books. He explained in a throat-clearing accent that the books had been bought from Belgium and held them up one by one. The language was strange but there were pictures of castles and flowers and cyclists on the covers. The last book was a Smurfs comic. When I told him that no one would want to buy books written in a foreign language he seemed quite upset and I felt sorry he had taken the time to bring all the books here. Maybe he had cycled too because his legs were quite muscular. He walked out dejectedly, leaving the box behind, and I saw Barbarossa smiling from the back office. A couple days later, a man with a wicked beard, just like Matapal the fisherman from Mayaro, came into the shop. He removed a banjo from its case, stroked the arm, closed his eyes and stamped his foot a couple times. Barbarossa was not so happy that time and he said I must tell these customers that some music shop was three blocks east.
One evening just before closing time I saw a thin oldish man digging into the case filled with old glasses and shades. I went to replace the jewellery in a nearby box that had been messed up by a group of schoolgirls.
“Can you tell me the cost of this?” His voice sounded fluttery as if there was a butterfly exercising in his throat. And when I turned to him I saw that he had hooked up a round glasses over an aviator shades. With his hat tipped to one side, and his perfectly straight goatee, he looked quite mad.
“The glasses is ten dollars and the shades is fifteen. Genuine aviator.”
“Oh, I meant these.” He removed the glasses and the shades and I saw a small wire rimmed spectacles barely covering his eyes.
“Ten. Just like the other.”
“Oh,” he said in his fluttery voice and I immediately put him down as interesting but useless. He blew on the spectacles, wiped it with his thumb, peered through in the direction of Barbarossa’s office, wiped it some more and gave it to me. “It’s not suitable, in any case. What I really need is a monocle. I have a glass eye.”
“It looks real.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. Do you think I might have it for five?”
“Sorry, sir. It’s already discounted.” Barbarossa had taught me to say this whenever someone wanted to haggle. He had also told me of sleepers which were valuable items sold cheaply by people who didn’t realize their rareness. At the time, I thought of terrorists, and sentinels awakening from some deep sleep.
The man took out a kerchief and wiped what may have been the glass eye. “My wife also has a glass eye. My son who I have never seen was born with one too.” He straightened his hat and walked away in an upright stride for an old man. As soon as he left, Barbarossa came out of his office. “What did he want?”
“A rimless spectacles. He said he had a glass eye. His wife too.”
Barbarossa pointed to his crotch. “His wife glass eye is down here. Peeping out like a Cyclops.” I was shocked. I had never heard Barbarossa say anything rude before. “Be careful of him. Remember that.”
It was only when I was on the subway that it hit me the glass-eye man might be Che. From then I kept a special lookout for him. It was another two weeks before he returned. He picked up a picture frame and when I went over, he told me, “This is an enchanting picture.” I gazed at the empty frame and he continued, “There is a time of the day … just before sunset, when you can clearly see the residue of the plucked out picture hovering like an indecisive ghost.” He held up the frame. “The light must be just right.”
I decided to match him. “Every fish scale has a picture.”
The frame shook in his hands. “I must remember that. How much?”
“The frame? It’s five dollars.”
“It’s a pity. I have a picture of my wife the exact size. Would you accept three?”
I was tempted but remembered all of Barbarossa’s warnings. “It’s genuine mahogany.”
He replaced the frame, straightened it and walked away slowly. Immediately Barbarossa came out of his office. “What did he want?”
“The frame for a picture of his wife.”
“Why doesn’t he hang the picture there?” He pointed to his crotch.
“Was that Mr. Cherry Xalvat?” For the first time I realized the name sounded like a planet from some other dimension.
“No, it’s Don Cherry.” There are some people for whom sarcasm can’t work. It makes them sound just mean. My father was one. Barbarossa was another. Nevertheless, Barbarossa’s reluctance to talk of Che made me more curious of this strange man. He came every week, usually on a Thursday and though he never bought anything, he mentioned his wife every time. The horn would remind her of the one she had as a girl that made her voice sound like “freshly squeezed pomegranate juice” and the bell resembled the funnel with which “she summoned the llamas from the mountains.”
I stopped reporting these conversations to Barbarossa because I knew where he would point. So I didn’t tell him that Che began mentioning some mountain quite regularly or when he told me, “The mountain is calling me, boy.”
One Thursday I asked him, “So why don’t you return then?”
“But would it still be there?”
“It’s hard for a mountain to disappear.”
“That’s remarkably optimistic.” He replaced the brass bird. “I may have believed that once.”
When he left I wondered at the relationship with Che and my boss. Why did Barbarossa hate or distrust him so much? Were they long-lost brothers taking different paths like in my mother’s Bollywood movies, or did Che steal away Barbarossa’s wife? During each of his visit, I tried to pry out some information while he was haggling over some item for his wife but he now seemed more interested in his mountain. I tried to fit him as a jazz man who had to run away after the flood in New Orleans but his fingers seemed too stiff to play a guitar. I also dismissed the thought he might be a retired hitman or a fired lawyer. Besides, he came from some mountain place.
When I was seven or eight, I had gone with my mother and Uncle Boysie to the Port of Spain wharf. My father was somehow connected with that trip because I recall on the way back my uncle talking about how he had “expected exactly that.” Maybe my father was supposed to send down some stuff, or come himself on one of the big boats butting the jetty; and when my mother got silent, I wondered whether she, too, was staring at the mountains that seemed so far and near at the same time. There were fluffy baskets of clouds over the highest parts and ravines so steep they seemed to be hacked with a luchette. Mr. Chotolal my history teacher had told us that the British people built tunnels there to surprise the French and Spanish ships coming from the other side of the mountain. After one of the classes, Pantamoolie whispered that these tunnels were clogged up with treasure hidden by Bluebeard.
Maybe Che’s mountain was frosty like Dr. Bat’s, with snow kangaroos and ice catfishes. I was thinking of this when one of Barbarossa’s few preferred customers walked out of the office. He was talking to my boss in maybe a French accent about his favourite topic: how Toronto was losing its soul and getting uglier by the day. Usually both of them stood to gaze at one of the paintings of old cottages or lonely lighthouses cramped in a corner. That day after the usual Toronto talk the French fella bit into a nectarine, sniffed a little, wiped his nose with his coat sleeve and said, “Boring place.” He said something about jazz festivals in Montreal before he caught me listening. “Where are you from, boy?” he asked.
I didn’t like his tone and in any case, I couldn’t remember the name of the town I had given Barbarossa so I said, “Regent Park.”
“Isn’t this city a wearisome place, boy?”
“I met a chimera in the library.” I could have mentioned the molemen and Sporty and Mothski and even Barbarossa himself but my boss began to laugh. It was not a jolly laughter but the kind people use to cover up some mistake. Like a musical cough. The French fella joined in too and he pushed down his glasses and wiped his eyes. Soon after the other fella had left Barbarossa’s amusement disappeared and he asked me, “Where do you get foolish ideas from?” Maybe from my comics, I thought, or growing up in Mayaro with people talking all the time about souyoucants and lagahoos. “This is an antique shop, not comedy club. Yuk Yuks is down the street.”
That night when I returned to our apartment, I heard my father grumbling, “This place sucking me out.” It was the first time he had spoken to me since I told him I had signed up for the preparatory course at the Centennial campus in Progress. All he had said then was “Very nice,” and I couldn’t figure if it was a sign of approval or his usual mockery.
I noticed his toes twitching which meant he was thinking. A few minutes later, he asked once more if Uncle Boysie had written to me about the house in Mayaro. When I said no he got his cigarettes and walked slowly to the balcony. I don’t know why I felt sorry for him at that point—maybe it was because he didn’t criticize me as usual but just stared at the mostly blank screen during his smoking intervals. Something was eating him up and I wished I knew what it was. Maybe he had looked at all the Mythbusters and MacGyver reruns and now had nothing to occupy or distract him.
The next day at work a little lady with an up and down accent told me, “Sometimes these keepsakes we carry around become heavier with each passing day. If we are not careful, we can grow stooped from their weight. We need to unload them.” She said it with a smile and as she had a stoop herself I watched carefully when she was leaving but her back did not magically get straighter. There were many people like her who needed a few minutes to talk of their old countries before they parted with their junk.
I wondered if my father had some keepsake that was dragging him down. The following morning as I was leaving for work I asked him, “You have any junk you would like to get rid of?”
He watched me for a good minute, the loose skin beneath his eyes tightening until his features settled into the grim Lee Van Cleef look. I felt he was assessing me while thinking of what to say. “What you talking about?”
“I working in a junk shop. Just temporary.”
“See if you could find a clock.”
For some reason that put me in a good mood. Apart from the forty dollars on my first week in his apartment, this was the first item he had asked me for. Maybe it would even remind him of the Timex watch he had sent down for me so many years ago. Over the next few days, I rummaged through the new items but there were no clocks. Could be people just threw them away. On Thursday, Che told me, “In every antique shop there is a little secret wrapped into a bigger one. My wife would love this Russian doll.”
I had recently suspected that Che was pulling my leg, nevertheless I told him, “I am searching for an old clock.”
“Remarkable.”
I waited for him to mention something of his wife or his mountain but when he remained quiet, I added, “For my father.”
“As I expected. Would you be interested in an exchange?”
It was a good thing that I changed my mind and said to bring whatever he had, because the following Thursday I got my clock and finally found out about Che’s mountain. Actually, it was a big pocket watch with the face mounted on two brass dolphins. The chain was so rusty that I was surprised to see the second hand actually moving. When I tried to take it from him he loosened his grasp from the chain one clasp at a time as if we were about to play tug of war. I made a sudden pull and I heard a rackling sound like a loose spring. “How much do you want for it?” He gazed around the shop taking his time. I tried to hurry him before Barbarossa emerged from his office. “A glasses or a picture frame?”
“Have you ever wondered why a clock can only go forward and backward? Never sideways.”
“If it did then time will stand still.”
“Brilliant.”
I didn’t tell him that any comic reader could figure this out, as he seemed so impressed. “Or maybe we might move in another dimension.”
Perhaps I had gone too far because he now seemed bothered. Eventually he told me, “I feel I have been there once.” He grasped the handle of a dagger which was sheathed in a leather sack. “I will take this.” He tried to fit the sack behind his belt, gave up and thrust it into his pocket. “Yes, yes. I have been there.”
“The mountain is the other dimension?” I pushed the pocket watch into my pocket and took out five dollars.
“Brilliant,” he said again and I felt he was just mamaguying me because he got a good deal. “It is impossible to properly describe the ridges and breaks and gullies in the mountain, my boy. It was so quiet that sometimes I could hear the clouds moving. Brushing the peaks. Sometimes in the night, I would hear the chatter of tiny animals engaged in a suicide pact.” He took a deep breath and I wondered whether he was imitating some habit of his time there. “I cannot adequately describe the people I grew to know so well. I used to pretend they were cloud people but as I became more familiar with them, I discovered a sad truth. A sad truth.” I saw him glancing over my shoulder and when I turned, I saw Barbarossa glaring at us. For a minute or so both men appeared like two old boxers sizing up each other, then Che left. Immediately Barbarossa came over.
“What did he want?”
I saw his fingers dangling over his crotch ready to point so I kept quiet about the clock exchange. I told him, “He bought a dagger.” I held out the five-dollar bill and Barbarossa hesitated before he took it. There was a strange expression on his face, shock mixed with suspicion. I wondered if he had seen the transaction. For the remainder of that day he was in a bad mood, walking around the shop and peeping outside.
That night I waited impatiently by the kitchen table for my father’s arrival. I gazed at the pocket watch before me; the dolphins seeming to be stranded in the tablecloth’s wavy brown patterns. My father got home a little after eight-thirty and seemed surprised to see me in the kitchen this early. I had rushed home, bypassing Union. “I got something for you.”
“A letter?” He spoke quickly.
“No. A pocket watch.”
“Oh.” He followed my gaze and scooped up the watch. I saw him looking at the dolphins. He placed the watch against his ear and walked to the television. I wished he might have told me that it was a strange watch or it was exactly what he wanted; nevertheless, every now and again, he shook the watch as if testing. During an advertisement he cleared his throat as if he was about to say something and I felt a bit embarrassed for no reason. Finally, he went into his bedroom. That entire week I pretended that each night he was examining the watch and coming up with ways to improve its design. When next Che came into the shop, he immediately asked about the watch and I put my finger against my lip for I didn’t want Barbarossa to know of the transaction. I tried to change the topic. “What sad truth?” He seemed confused. “That you discovered in the mountain. And the cloud people.”
I wanted him to reveal they were a secret tribe hidden away like Black Bolt’s Inhumans but he said, “Ah yes. It was in Chile.” He drew his coat around him as if it was suddenly cold. “They had been chased away from their land by my family who were ranchers.” He paused a bit before he launched into the most amazing story. There in the mountain, he fell in love with one of these displaced women and soon he joined a ragtag group of guerrillas fighting against the rich ranchers, his family included. One night a daring plan was hatched: a selected group would journey to the capital, mix with the crowd and kill the president during one of his “bogus lectures delivered from the palace’s balcony.” According to Che, the assassination failed because the police had been tipped off, and only two of the group escaped. Deep in the jungle there was a showdown between the two survivors. “It slowly dawned on me that the man next to me, a brute of a peasant, coarse in every possible way, was actually an informant who had sold us out. Each night I slept with a dagger next to me. One morning it was gone and so was the traitor.”
“What happened then?” I asked impatiently as he seemed lost in his thoughts.
He bowed like an actor in one of those carriage-and-sword movies. “Here I am before you.”
“And the woman?”
“I never saw her again.”
“Is that who you wanted the Russian doll for?”
“You might say that, yes. You might say that.” Again, he sounded like an old-time actor.
“And the traitor?”
He took a deep breath. “It’s of no consequence. We must forget the old battles. If we don’t then we—”
“Grow stooped from their weight?”
“Remarkable. Remarkable.” And with that, he left. This was a long conversation and during the day, I noticed Barbarossa watching me, his tiny eyes dull beneath his swollen forehead.
During the following weeks, it seemed that Che’s relating his story had somehow cleared his mind and put him in a good mood, for now instead of constantly talking of his wife he frequently hummed a Spanish song, “Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera.” His fluttery voice made the song seem sadder than the versions I had heard often on the Trinidad radio stations. Once while Barbarossa was staring out suspiciously from his office Che closed his eyes and sang, louder than ever: Yo soy un hombre sincere/De donde crece la palma/Y antes de morirme quiero/Echar mis versos del alma. I asked him its meaning and he told me, “I am an honest man/From where the palm tree grows/And before dying I want/To share the verses of my soul.”
He had a good singing voice and I couldn’t understand why Barbarossa was so annoyed afterwards. “This is not Massey Hall. Please explain that to—”
“Che?”
He walked away, grumbling.
I couldn’t picture palm trees growing on a mountain but I felt it was a beautiful song with a catchy rhythm. Sometimes I found myself humming a line at work and Barbarossa would come up to me immediately as if he had super-hearing.
During my last week at the shop, I asked Che if he was going to return to his mountain any time. I told him that I too was leaving this place soon. He shook my hand and bowed like these Mexican actors on television. Then in the same dramatic way, he pointed to his chest and said, “My mountain, it is here. In the morning, I smell the grassdews and in the night, I hear the clouds brushing the trees. But when I die my body must be carried to the highest peak to be laid next to my wife’s grave.” He said something in Spanish and when I asked its meaning he said, “My grave must be caressed by the purest fog. No snow shall fall on its dirt.”
“How will your body get there? So high up?”
“By mule.” He pointed to Barbarossa’s office.