The Photograph in Rigolo's Pub

I'M MAKING A NOTE here, Marlais, to not forget to tell you about a photograph in Rigolo's Pub.

Living on the little savings I had from wages paid by my uncle, which Cornelia had kept in her combination-lock safe at the bakery, and rent from my Robie Street house, I'd looked for employment all winter of 1948 -49. During that time I twice changed rooms in the Evangeline Hotel, each time downward in rent a few dollars a week. The Evangeline was quiet, and the manager, desk clerks and bellmen were friendly and pretty much left me alone. But the cleaning ladies, Mrs. Tompkins and Mrs. Delft, seemed to run the place. For instance, they kept no formal schedule, and my being blunt with them, that I didn't like sitting in the lobby at all hours, waiting for them to attend to my room, hardly put me better in their favor.

I applied for all sorts of work, and finally, in late June of 1949, I was hired on as a "detritus gaffer," as it was officially categorized on the payroll of Harbor Associates, which was the principal custodian of Halifax Harbor and subcontracted out specialty jobs such as detritus gaffing. I was now part of a crew made up of two women, Evie Michaels and Hermione Rexroth, and three men other than me, Tom Blackwell, Sam Kitchen and Sebastian Firth. We cleaned up around Queen's Wharf and Smith Wharf, along all the beachfronts on both the Halifax and Dartmouth sides, the whole coastline all the way out to Pennant Point. Our main task was to maneuver around in lifeboat-sized outboards, or lean from tugboat railings, gaffing in flotsam and jetsam in order to keep the lanes clear for the Halifax-Dartmouth commuter ferries, fishing trawlers and behemoth freighters. And Marlais, you can hardly believe everything that finds its way into the harbor, and I mean everything, from picture frames to lampshades to shoes. One time a crate full of brooms, another time a shipment of exotic potted plants.

We were required to itemize everything we hauled in. But the time Evie Michaels and I gathered up a set of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica—individual volumes bobbing out there under the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge—Evie said, "Say, Wyatt, you know what? My family doesn't own a complete set like this. So if you don't mind, I'm not going to write these up. I'd like to dry them out and hope they're still readable. My kids could really use them for homework."

All manner of death and near death, too. For instance, we often found waterlogged gulls, and we had a sea duck choked on a plastic necklace, a goner. Then there was a pet dachshund in a wooden crate with breathing holes. When we approached, we heard the dog barking and whimpering, so we knew it was okay. Sorry to say, we've had one suicide, too, floating face-down near the mouth of the harbor. Fishing line had twisted his fishing pole around his leg like a splint. That sight was hard to take. Again that day Evie had partnered with me. We held the poor fellow against the hull of our boat with gaffing hooks, used the walkie-talkie, and waited there until the harbor police took over. We knew it was a suicide because next morning the article in the Mail said he—his name was Russell Leminster—had left a note to that effect. "Who knows," Evie said, "what goes through someone's mind, eh? Maybe he felt a sense of order was important, so he went fishing first. Then came the next thing."

We each were issued a one-piece dark blue uniform with an accordion waist. Also dark blue caps with Harbor Assoc. stitched in cursive across the front. We were given galoshes, a rain slicker, thick sweater, insulated vest, five pairs of woolen socks and two pairs of waterproof gloves, and if you lost an item of clothing, Harbor Associates replaced it but docked the price from your next paycheck, no exceptions. I admit that sometimes I wore one of the pairs of socks or galoshes or a sweater outside of work, as part of my day-to-day wardrobe.

I don't know why I just used the past-tense "wore" when I should've used "wear," because I'm about to enter my eighteenth year as a detritus gaffer. In fact, along with Hermione and Tom, I'm a senior gaffer and have received an increase in salary—beginning at $18 per week—every year, plus there's the Christmas bonus. Philosophically speaking, in 1949 when I first landed the gaffing job, I remember feeling that I'd come up in the world from being in Rockhead Prison, but I'd come down in the world from building sleds and toboggans.

Considering what I do for a living, I realize it's a pretty awful pun to say that motion pictures are the one thing that buoys up my spirits. Nonetheless it's true. I trust that your mother told you that for fifteen years now, I've put $20 a month into a Halifax bank account under your name. But aside from that, motion pictures are my one sizable expense. With rare exceptions, I take supper at home, and I'm provided breakfast and lunch by Harbor Associates, except on Saturday and Sunday, but I seldom work weekends anyway.

From my first day back in Halifax, I wondered if Cornelia Tell would ever take up her own invitation to go to the pictures with me. And for four years, though I hadn't seen her, we stayed in touch. Letters and the occasional telephone conversation. My letters were all written on hotel stationery. She did visit Halifax a number of times, but did not telephone. Her choice, and her own business. But she'd always write and tell me which movie she'd seen, and then I'd go see it, too. Then I'd write her a letter and ask her what she thought of The Return of Monte Cristo or A Notorious Gentleman or Holiday in Mexico, which starred Walter Pidgeon and had Xavier Cugat and his orchestra in it. Or The Strange Woman, with my favorite actress of all time, Hedy Lamarr, who I thought was the second most beautiful woman in the world next to Tilda. All of those movies played at the Casino Theatre. I'd ask Cornelia's opinion of Nobody Lives Forever and The Show-Off. And I remember a sign out front of the Capital Theatre for Undercurrent, starring Robert Taylor and Katharine Hepburn (who grated on my nerves), that read NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN. The Shocking Miss Pilgrim with Betty Grable, Notorious with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, No Leave, No Love with Van Johnson. Believe me, Marlais, when I say that Cornelia Tell was generous with opinions about movies, pages and pages worth, on everything from A to Z.

Cornelia never once apologized for not contacting me on her visits to Halifax, and I thought, Well, when she's ready she will contact me, that's just the way she is. Finally, on the evening of January 8, 1953, she telephoned my room at my most recent hotel—the Glendale, on Hollis Street—and said, "I was thinking how about tomorrow, since it's a Friday and I could get weekend rates?" And so I met her at the Halifax bus station, her bus roughly ten minutes late.

I carried her small suitcase to the Dresden Arms Hotel, at 103 Dresden Street, where I'd arranged a room for her. We had supper at Halloran's restaurant on Sackville Street, and she caught me up on this and that news from Middle Economy. For whatever reason, Marlais, she did not mention you or Tilda at dinner. From ice water to dessert, it was as if we'd read each other's minds, that certain subjects should wait until later in the evening, when we could sit for tea back at her hotel. Toward the end of our meal, she reached into her handbag and took out a piece of paper on which she'd written the schedule of pictures then playing in town.

"Now, my preference would be 49th Parallel, a war movie," she said. "It originally came out in 1941 in the U.S., but for some reason it's only just got to Nova Scotia. Movies keep the war with us, huh?"

"I've never heard of it," I said.

"Let me warn you in advance—it's got a German U-boat in it."

"I've seen a lot of war pictures, Cornelia."

"I just don't want you to be put off this one and want to walk out. I go to enough movies alone. So I don't want to start out not alone and then suddenly it's the opposite, you know?"

"I wouldn't think of doing that."

49th Parallel was playing at the Casino Theatre, seven blocks from Halloran's, and had showings seven days a week starting at 1 P.M., including one at midnight. We arrived a few minutes early for the 7:15, and when I paid for the tickets, Cornelia said, "Why, thank you, Wyatt. I'd bat my eyes at you if I was thirty years younger." At the concession stand we each purchased a box of buttered popcorn, and Cornelia a box of bonbons, too. The usher escorted us until Cornelia said, "I'll sit right here, on the aisle." I sat next to her. The theater was quite crowded.

There was a Movietone newsreel to start things. This was followed by two Looney Tunes cartoons. One was a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd called What's Opera, Doc? in which Elmer sings in Wagnerian tones, "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"

Then 49th Parallel came on screen. Look, it wasn't a great movie by any means, though it had a lot of witty repartee and such, and parts were truly laughable, like how the crew of the German U-boat— U-37— all spoke British English. I suppose they couldn't get authentic German actors for those roles, and why offer good money to the devil? But they might at least have required that the actors they did hire try their best to sound German. Maybe they thought even fake German accents were too painful to bear in 1941. Who knows?

Basically, what happens is, U-37 has wandered up the St. Lawrence River, gets thrown so far off course that it's finally stranded in Hudson's Bay—icebergs all around—where it's sighted, strafed and bombarded by Canadian planes, and finally sunk. Some of the crew is killed, but the captain and others manage to escape and hide out in isolated villages, on the lam, and from there the story contains all sorts of adventures. In the end, good triumphs over evil.

Like I said, I wasn't much taken by 49th Parallel. I do remember the first ten or so minutes quite vividly, however. U-37 torpedoes a passenger ship in the St. Lawrence. It takes survivors on deck, the Nazi captain questions a few, and then they are set free, sent off in life rafts. U-37 slices down into the water and disappears, and soon a rescue plane is seen approaching. Happy result—for those Canadians, anyway. Right then and there I realized that this incident depicted on screen would have had to take place before 1940, or maybe in 1940, because not long after that, U-boats didn't pick up survivors. I'd learned that from a newspaper article on the wall of my uncle's shed.

In the audience during 49th Parallel there'd been the occasional hissing and booing. And I heard Cornelia laugh and weep and say "Bastards" a few times. On the walk back to her hotel, I discovered she'd already put things into balance. "Well, I won't see that one again," she said. "But I got something from it."

It was only a movie story, so not entirely dedicated to the claims of fact, Marlais—I know that. And there was one particular line of dialogue that was definitely false to history, and to prove it you just have to look at a framed photograph behind the bar at Rigolo's Pub right here in Halifax.

See, when 49th Parallel begins, the camera zooms in on a map of Canada, and then the St. Lawrence River looms large, and then we see U-37 cut the surface, sinister as all hell. While it cruises along, the captain tries to work up historical gloating and excitement—of a Nazi sort—in his crew. "You'll be the first of the German forces to set foot on Canadian soil. The first of thousands."

Yet if you study the black-and-white photograph in Rigolo's, you'll see three men in their early twenties standing at the bar having a grand old time, all happy-go-lucky and clinking mugs. They have fishermen's caps on. They are wearing thick fishermen's sweaters and looking directly into the camera. What's more, someone—the photographer, maybe, or the pub owner—has circled the face of the man in the absolute bull's-eye center of the photograph, his big round face, dimples, strong chin and eyes heavy-lidded from drink.

A line runs in ink from the circle down to the lower right hand corner of the photograph, where these words are written: Nazi U-boat navigator Wernor Timm, U-69, the Laughing Cow, October 12, 1939. You'll remember, Marlais, the Laughing Cow had sunk the ferry Caribou, on which Constance had been a passenger.

I learned from the newspapers that before the successful crackdown on U-boats—before thick-link fences were submerged in the harbor—the German crews used to anchor offshore (some people said near Peggy's Cove) and make their way into Halifax. They went to pubs, movies and restaurants, telling everyone they were Swedes off a Swedish freighter, or Norwegians, or some such lie.

As it happened, this Wernor Timm had stepped out some nights with a Haligonian named Wilma Raymond. People had seen them together, but nobody would ever have known Timm's true identity except for the fact that on their last night together, Timm got drunk and told Wilma everything. He even proposed marriage! She refused him, and as she later said, "He stumbled out of my apartment and just disappeared into the streets."

Wilma Raymond was the niece of the bartender at Rigolo's Pub. She was horrified to discover the photograph her uncle had put up behind the bar. There was Wernor Timm, big as life! She was so ashamed of having consorted with a German U-boat officer it took her another few days to work up the courage to tell her uncle what she knew. Of course by that time the Laughing Cow was long gone.

Once he knew the facts, Wilma's uncle wrote Timm's name and rank on the photograph. Soon word got out that a U-boat navigator had come and gone undetected, and this sent a current of anxiety through the city. The photograph was reproduced on the front page of the Mail. Pub owners now asked for identification before serving customers, except for those they were already familiar with. The newspaper said that Wilma Raymond left Halifax "to visit relatives in Saskatchewan." I bet she did.

Well, if only the poster slogan "Loose lips sink ships" would have worked in reverse, and the Laughing Cow had been ambushed at Peggy's Cove because of what Wernor Timm had revealed to Wilma Raymond, it would not have been in commission three years later, to sink the Caribou, and my aunt Constance might still be alive. Those were my thoughts after reading the whole account.

Anyway, there it was, a photograph proving the German military was on Canadian soil in 1939. I was in Rigolo's Pub just last week and saw the photograph again. It's by now an historical document of sorts, you might say.

But you have to look closely, quite closely, to notice who's standing at the far right end of the bar—Hans Mohring. Hans is deep in conversation with a man and a woman, probably students. It would've been his first semester at Dalhousie. Hans is holding a cigarette, and the woman has a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

After the movie, Cornelia and I sat in the small cafe-restaurant in the Dresden Arms Hotel and had tea, and she ate her last three bonbons from the cinema. "I've brought recent photographs Tilda sent of Marlais," she said. She pushed a manila envelope across the table. I slid the photographs out and there you were, Marlais! All of age seven, sitting at an outdoor table with five other children. There was a birthday cake on the table, and the birthday girl was blowing out the candles. You sat at the right side of the table, all dressed up, with your hair frizzed out like your mother's and a big smile and soulful expression on your face, like you were having a deep thought. The party looked like loads of fun.

In the second photograph you were standing alone with the sea in the background. On your right wrist you wore a bracelet made of paper angels. Maybe each of the girls invited to the party got one.

"You should go to Denmark, Wyatt," Cornelia said. "Why haven't you?"

"I can't afford the travel, but I put money away for Marlais every month. She has her own bank account in Halifax waiting for her. The money's there whenever she needs it, even if she needs it wired to Copenhagen. Tilda knows this."

"Generous, Wyatt, but not as important as visiting."

"It's how life's turned out."

"And you didn't help it turn out the way it did, right?"

"Okay, I have your opinion now, Cornelia. Maybe you'd care to tell me what Tilda includes in her letters to you, generally speaking."

"This and that. Mostly news of Marlais, her school, her friends, what it's like to live with the Mohrings, what it's been like in Denmark after the war, this and that. She writes well, Tilda does, and always has."

"Tilda and I don't exchange letters. She's never sent me one and I've never sent her one."

"If everyone keeps waiting for the other, no letters will ever arrive, eh?"

"That's proven true so far."

"It's very stupid of you both. In fact, it's the goddamned stupidest, most selfish thing I've ever heard two people with a daughter doing."

We sat for a moment looking out onto the street, and then I said, "Are Marlais and Tilda happy, do you think?"

"Let me put it this way," Cornelia said. "In her letters she refers to intimate things but doesn't describe things intimately. Something like that. As for happy? It sure sounds as if Marlais is having everything good offered by a Danish childhood, which isn't a Nova Scotia childhood, but who knows, maybe it's second best in the world. That's not too shabby. And if Marlais is having a wonderful childhood, then it only stands to reason Tilda is happy about that, right?"

"Something else, Cornelia. I haven't written one single letter to my uncle, either. I haven't been to visit him. And the truth? I don't want to visit him."

"I've been only twice. And my visits were three years apart. But do you know what Donald's doing in Dorchester Prison? They've got a wood shop there. And he's making sleds. I don't think toboggans, but definitely sleds, because he gave me one. I brought it back on the bus. It's upstairs from the bakery, on the floor of what formerly was Tilda and Hans's kitchen. Donald asked that I ship it on to Marlais. He seemed to have no sane idea what he was asking—no idea how much Tilda would despise getting that sled from him."

"I'm sure Reverend Witt—is he still reverend?"

"Till he drops dead at the pulpit."

"I'm sure he can find someone who'd like that sled. He doesn't have to say who built it."

"Good idea. I'll suggest it first thing when I get home."

We talked and talked, and I happened to mention the photograph in Rigolo's Pub, and right away Cornelia said she wanted to see it. "I've never stepped inside a pub in Halifax, not once," she said.

We walked to Rigolo's and stood at the bar where we had a clear view of the photograph. I ordered a beer and Cornelia a cognac, which she said she didn't really care for, but thought since she was in a pub she should order something exotic. However, she was so taken aback by the photograph, so disturbed by it, she not only gulped down the first cognac but had a second straightaway.

"Wyatt, I wonder if anyone but you and me recognize Hans Mohring in that photograph," she said. "I mean, knows his actual name. Hundreds must've at least looked at it, eh? Of course, those German sailors are front and center, so who'd really notice which people are in the background. But what's strange is that, as I'm standing here staring at it, I see different Germans. There's the ones who did harm and Hans who didn't. And I imagine all of them are at the bottom of the sea now."

"You know, Cornelia, I read in the Mail that the Laughing Cow was sunk off the coast of France in 1944."

"I heard they built a memorial statue in Port aux Basques and survivors of the Caribou meet there every year for a reunion."

Cornelia had three more cognacs. She kept looking at the photograph, trying to keep it in focus. Finally, she said, "Wyatt, I can't be in here one more minute." She was so wobbly we had to take a taxi, even just the short distance to her hotel.

At about eight o'clock the next morning, my telephone rang. When I picked up, Cornelia said, "Me and my headache will meet you downstairs at my hotel for breakfast. How about fifteen minutes?"

It was raining. I threw on a sweater and slacks, put on my raincoat, took my umbrella and hurried over to the Dresden Arms. I found Cornelia at a window-side table. "I ordered scones and coffee," she said. "As for the scones, I'm not optimistic."

"You get breakfast free in this hotel. Don't forget that."

"Believe me, If I don't forget one thing all day, it'll be that."

The waitress brought us each a blueberry scone. The scones had been heated and pats of butter came along on the plates. Cornelia said, "Well, mine looks like a scone."

I took a bite and said, "It's the one hundred fifty-fifth best one I've ever had, Cornelia."

"The first one hundred fifty-four being mine."

"Your arithmetic is correct."

She ate her scone, drank some coffee and said, "You know why I like this scone? Mainly because I didn't have to make it. In fact, you just saw me eat the very first scone I've eaten outside of Middle Economy, which includes ones my grandmother and mother made, and mine. There it is, then. I've still never been to Paris. I've still never been to London. And here I'm of a certain advanced age, and this was my first scone ever in Halifax."

It was Saturday. I walked Cornelia to the 11:05 bus out of the city, the same run on which Tilda had first made the acquaintance of Hans Mohring.

Speaking of birthday parties again, that same evening I'd been invited to a party for Evie Michaels's daughter Ellen's fifth birthday. The party was held at six P.M. at the Michaelses' house on St. Harris Street, not far from Halifax North Common. Evie's husband, William—he's a custodian at Halifax General Hospital—was there, and ten other girls, all Ellen's kindergarten classmates. The girls had gotten gussied up, and Evie had made paper corsages to pin to their dresses. She served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches followed by a chocolate birthday cake and vanilla ice cream. A balloon floated above each girl's chair, tied to it with string. They all had a great rollicking time. Evie had invited the gaffing crew, and all of us showed up. Ellen got a ton of presents, and each time she opened a box, she tied the ribbon in her hair, so by the end she had them streaming out like fireworks. William had borrowed a camera and took a lot of photographs, mostly of the children, naturally, but a few of the grownups, too. At one point Ellen Michaels got so excited that she stuck her fingers right into her slice of birthday cake and then rubbed frosting all over her face and let their mutt Handy lick it off, and nobody cared. After the cake, Evie set out two metal tubs and the children bobbed for apples. Rules are rules, and they had to clasp their hands behind their backs, so of course got their faces soaked. Evie dried them off with a bath towel. When the children went into the parlor to listen to a fright show on the radio—there were two fright shows on Saturday evenings—the gaffing crew got into the spirit of things. One by one, we bobbed for apples. Evie Michaels said, "Look at this! Us expert gaffers of Halifax Harbor and not one apple's been lifted out of the water!"

The children had all left by eight o'clock. Ellen went to bed by nine, and then Evie got inspired to make a big pot of spaghetti. We could see that she seemed quite happy to provide this meal. It was just spaghetti, butter and sprigs of parsley, and two bottles of red wine, but enough to go around. At the table Sebastian Firth said, "Evie, that was thoughtful of you and Bill to put warm water in those tubs. You don't want children bobbing for apples in freezing water, no sir. That's one childhood memory I have. For some reason, whenever me and my friends bobbed for apples, my mother always put cold water in the tub."

"I suppose she couldn't think of everything," Evie said.

Those apples floated in the tubs until after our late supper. Finally, Evie smoothed out the napkins from the party, lined them up on the dining room table and set the apples on them to dry.

I was the last guest to leave. When I put on my coat, Evie said, "Hey, Wyatt, come look at this." She led me into the parlor. It had bookshelves all around.

She pointed out the set of encyclopedias. "It took a full week, but William and I dried them out individually by the woodstove. A lot of pages stuck together, and you can see that some bindings warped, but my children use them every week for homework. Neighbor kids, too. It's known up and down the block we've got a complete set."

"The effort was worth it, Evie," I said.

"Thank you," she said. "Say, Wyatt, why not take two or three apples back to your hotel?"