In those dark ages, early adolescence, he was almost a head shorter than most of his friends.
But it was his friends who were humiliated when he had to stand on a stool to see over the pulpit when he sang his bar mitzvah. It didn’t matter to him how he faced the congregation: his greatgrandfather had built the synagogue.
Short boys were supposed to take out shorter girls. That was the rule. He knew the tall uneasy girls he wanted could easily be calmed by stories and talk.
His friends insisted that his size was a terrible affliction and they convinced him. They convinced him with inches of flesh and bone.
He didn’t know their mystery of how bodies were increased, how air and food worked for them. How did they cajole the universe? Why was the sky holding out on him?
He began to think of himself as The Tiny Conspirator, The Cunning Dwarf.
He worked frantically on a pair of shoes. He had ripped off the heels of an old pair and tried to hammer them on to his own. The rubber didn’t hold the nails very well. He’d have to be careful.
This was in the deep basement of his house, traditional workshop of bomb-throwers and confusers of society.
There he stood, an inch taller, feeling a mixture of shame and craftiness. Nothing like brains, eh? He waltzed round the concrete floor and fell on his face.
He had completely forgotten the desperation of a few minutes before. It came back to him as he sat painfully on the floor, looking up at a naked bulb. The detached heel which had tripped him crouched like a rodent a couple of feet away, nails protruding like sharpened fangs.
The party was fifteen minutes away. And Muffin went around with an older, therefore taller, group.
Rumour had it that Muffin stuffed her bra with Kleenex. He decided to apply the technique. Carefully he laid a Kleenex platform into each shoe. It raised his heels almost to the rims of the leather. He let his trousers ride low.
A few spins around the concrete and he satisfied himself that he could manoeuvre. Panic eased. Science triumphed again.
Fluorescent lights hid in a false moulding lit the ceiling. There was the usual mirrored bar with miniature bottles and glass knick-knacks. An upholstered seat lined one wall, on which was painted a pastel mural of drinkers of different nationalities. The Breavmans did not approve of finished basements.
He danced well for one half hour and then his feet began to ache. The Kleenex had become misshapen under his arches. After two more jitterbug records he could hardly walk. He went into the bathroom and tried to straighten the Kleenex but it was compressed into a hard ball. He thought of removing it altogether but he imagined the surprised and horrified look of the company at his shrunken stature.
He slipped his foot half-way into the shoe, placed the ball between his heel and the inside sole, stepped in hard, and tied the lace. The pain spiked up through his ankles.
The Bunny Hop nearly put him away. In the middle of that line, squashed between the girl whose waist he was holding and the girl who was holding his waist, the music loud and repetitive, everyone chanting one, two, one-two-three, his feet getting out of control because of the pain, he thought: this must be what Hell is like, an eternal Bunny Hop with sore feet, which you can never drop out of.
She with her false tits, me with my false feet, oh you evil Kleenex Company!
One of the fluorescent lights was flickering. There was disease in the walls. Maybe everyone there, every single person in the bobbing line was wearing a Kleenex prop. Maybe some had Kleenex noses and Kleenex ears and Kleenex hands. Depression seized him.
Now it was his favourite song. He wanted to dance close to Muffin, close his eyes against her hair which had just been washed.
But he could barely stand up. He had to keep shifting his weight from foot to foot to dole out the pain in equal shares. Often these shifts did not correspond to the rhythm of the music and imparted to his already imperfect dancing an extra jerky quality. As his hobbling became more pronounced he was obliged to hold Muffin tighter and tighter to keep his balance.
“Not here,” she whispered in his ear. “My parents won’t be home till late.”
Not even this pleasant invitation could assuage his discomfort. He clung to her and manoeuvred into a crowded part of the floor where he could justifiably limit his movements.
“Oh, Larry!”
“Fast worker!”
Even by the sophisticated standards of this older group he was dancing adventurously close. He accepted the cavalier role his pain cast, and bit her ear, having heard that ears were bitten.
“Let’s get rid of the lights,” he snarled to all men of daring.
They started from the party, and the walk was a forced march of Bataan proportions. By walking very close he made his lameness into a display of affection. On the hills the Kleenex slipped back under his arches.
A fog-horn from the city’s river reached Westmount, and the sound shivered him.
“I’ve got to tell you something, Muffin. Then you’ve got to tell me something.”
Muffin didn’t want to sit on the grass because of her dress, but maybe he was going to ask her to go steady. She’d refuse, but what a beautiful party that would make it. The confession he was about to offer shortened his breath, and he confused his fear with love.
He tugged off his shoes, scooped out the balls of Kleenex and laid them like a secret in her lap.
Muffin’s nightmare had just begun.
“Now you take yours out.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded in a voice which surprised her because it sounded so much like her mother’s.
Breavman pointed to her heart.
“Don’t be ashamed. You take yours out.”
He reached for her top button and received his balls of Kleenex in the face.
“Get away!”
Breavman decided to let her run. Her house wasn’t that far away. He wiggled his toes and rubbed his soles. He wasn’t condemned to a Bunny Hop after all, not with those people. He pitched the Kleenex into the gutter and trotted home, shoes in hand.
He detoured to the park and raced over the damp ground until the view stopped him. He set down his shoes like neat lieutenants beside his feet.
He looked in awe at the expanse of night-green foliage, the austere lights of the city, the dull gleam of the St. Lawrence.
A city was a great achievement, bridges were fine things to build. But the street, harbours, spikes of stone were ultimately lost in the wider cradle of mountain and sky.
It ran a chill through his spine to be involved in the mysterious mechanism of city and black hills.
Father, I’m ignorant.
He would master the rules and techniques of the city, why the one-way streets were chosen, how the stock-market worked, what notaries did.
It wasn’t a hellish Bunny Hop if you knew the true names of things. He would study leaves and bark, and visit stone quarries as his father had done.
Good-bye, world of Kleenex.
He gathered his shoes, walked into the bushes, climbed the fence which separated his house from the park.
Black lines, like an ink drawing of a storm, plunged out of the sky to help him over, he could have sworn. The house he entered was important as a museum.