As the summer progresses, we fall into a daily routine that makes life tolerable if not exactly pleasant.
Maria, a small, fifty-something-year-old woman who wears her greying black hair in a military-style bun, smells of onions, and has a personality on par with curdled milk, comes in five mornings a week to handle the cleaning essentials. On our first meeting, she stood hunched in the kitchen, scrubbing furiously, in the middle of bleaching counters that, as far as I could tell, were already porcelain white. She cast a cursory glance over her shoulder at me, shrugged dismissively, and muttered in a thick Hungarian accent, “Not another one.”
Archibald’s schedule is straightforward on the face of it. He begins his morning with a half-hour of meditation. He claims to be a Buddhist, although I have my doubts. As far as I know, Buddhists rarely drink or gamble. I also often hear loud snores coming from his room in the far corner of the apartment, signalling that his “meditation” has turned into an extended morning nap. This is followed by physio exercises for his hip.
Reggie, his physiotherapist, is a handsome Jamaican man with smooth dark skin, a bright smile, and long, flowing braids. He maintains an easy, jovial air that seems untouched by Archibald’s frequent mood swings. At 6'4", he is also much bigger and stronger than Archibald, which I think keeps the geezer in line if only by physical intimidation. During his hour of physio, Archibald’s moaning, cursing, and braying can be heard throughout the apartment. Reggie appears unaffected. He leaves the apartment with a pleasant “Goodbye, Meggie.”
If it’s Maria’s day off, I prepare a simple meal. Eggs or toast and jam, and he skims the Arts and Current Affairs sections of the newspaper. The worst behind him, Archibald moves on to gardening, his favourite pastime, and, in the afternoons, on his best days, he works in his office on his next book, a collection of poems.
“I am an extremely slow writer,” he often remarks, “but that is what makes me outstanding. I ponder each word, taste its meaning. The flavour has to be — just so. Don’t let anyone ever rush you at any artistic endeavour. Art has its own clock.”
My role falls somewhere between that of personal assistant and health attendant. Thanks to my year of nursing school, I have basic first aid training. I give him his medication, help with his daily routine, set up his social calendar, which is surprisingly active, run his errands, and keep up with his correspondence. He has a decent following of admirers, most of them young to middle-aged gay men and middle-aged women, from what I can deduce.
If his writing is going well, he immerses himself for four or five hours in his office with its smooth mahogany desk from Nepal and snacks on tea and cinnamon toast later in the afternoon. If it’s less successful, he emerges to kick back a few tropical drinks of his own devising. By devising, I mean he concocts a drink I have never heard of and sends me back to make it again over and over until I get it right. “Less lemon, more sugar, you tart,” or “Let me introduce you to Tabasco. It is the reason a Caesar has any flavour,” or, after spitting out his drink and coughing dramatically, “Why don’t I just drink straight from the Tabasco bottle?”
He then plays cards or chess on a hand-carved ivory chess board, a gift from a “Spanish lover,” with whatever willing victim he can scrounge up. It’s often me, if I am unlucky enough to be at home. He never seems to tire of beating me. In fact, he is one of the most patient winners I have ever come across.
Although I often doubt their authenticity, I have to admit that Archibald has a gift for stories. “The secret to a good story, you must remember, is that it always has a beginning, middle, and end. People often forget one or the other in their hurry to finish.” He likes to recount, unsolicited, the most personal details of his life, which often revolve around his extensive sexual history. For instance, he treated me to the story of his first homosexual experience in “the bonnet” of a fire truck one day over lunch, but just as I became inquisitive, he abruptly changed the subject. He has an annoying habit of answering my questions vaguely or ignoring them altogether.
I find myself intrigued about his life history, despite myself. He speaks with a light English accent that I can’t quite place, having been to England only once when I was three. He was born in north London, he says, and grew up in pre-World War II Britain. At Oxford, he was a talented but lazy literature scholar. Inspired by the great thespian, Laurence Olivier, he dropped out to become an actor, but after a series of disappointing bit parts in London theatre, he gave up. He managed to avoid being drafted into the army due to his “unnatural proclivities” and then fell into gambling. He shared a cheap flat in the backwater streets of Chelsea where he found his debt growing like an “inflamed ulcer.” After being beaten within an inch of his life by two to six hired thugs (the number changes), he decided he had a choice: earn money honestly and pay off his debts or get the hell out of town. He chose the latter. After a lucrative night of craps (the gambling kind), he managed to scrape together enough money to secure his passage to Canada.
Living in Toronto in the late 1950s, at that point in his late thirties, he found himself centre stage in the bohemian art community. He churned out articles for various magazines to scrape by and partied with artists at night. While visiting Vancouver, a few years later, he met an attractive art student and took her home on a bet. He was forced to marry her when she became “overwhelmed with child.”
“Although I wasn’t the marrying type, it was the expected thing to do back then, and I always exceed expectations,” he remarked.
And despite his preference for men, they remained married for over twenty years. On the subject of his wife, he remains tight-lipped, withholding concrete information despite my curiosity. “She made fantastic soup, and she left me alone for a long while.” He carried out affairs with men over the course of his marriage “because what can be more exciting than a secret liaison?” But the marriage eventually ended in, I assume, a mutually agreeable divorce.
His first book, an erotic thriller called Red Lizard Inn, was about a man who hires a hit man to murder his wife and then falls in love with the hit man. Despite its initially lukewarm critical response, he followed it up with three more moderately successful mystery novels. Red Lizard Inn became a cult hit in the seventies when it was turned into an off-off-Broadway play, making Archibald something of a celebrity. He took up residence in New York for a handful of years where he wrote the play, Burnt Iris, Burnt Life, which chronicled the demise of a modern-day marriage. When it didn’t receive the recognition he had hoped for, he abandoned his theatrical hopes again and travelled extensively through Europe and Asia. He found himself in Myanmar (then Burma), where he joined a Buddhist monastery for a time, until he had an epiphany that “the West was the new East,” or something like that. Reading between the lines, though, it sounded like austere monastic life did not agree with him. “Those cold stone floors gave me hemorrhoids … and the snakes.” He shuddered. “Only a cruel God could make such a venomous creature so silent.” He packed up and settled down in West Vancouver, which was just about as far west as you could get, in Canada at least.
His apartment, like him, is an eclectic if unusual study of conflicting styles, which somehow create a pleasant fusion. It is open and airy with hardwood floors and large windows and an enormous balcony with a small, enclosed hothouse on one end. Much of the interior furniture was picked up on his travels in India and Asia. An overstuffed Roman-style couch sits on top of a Persian rug; the end tables are teak, carved in the shape of elephants. Jasmine incense burns continually throughout the room, giving it an exotic spicy scent.
Although the rooms are large, they are brimming with knick-knacks. Several Buddhas sit regally in front of the fireplace, watching silently. He has an entire cabinet in the dining room dedicated to Hindu love statues. His office is the only sparsely furnished room in the house. A desk sits up against a large window, and the other wall is occupied by a large bookcase, and there is always a vase of red roses on the desk to inspire him as he writes. But this room is off limits to visitors and even me, unless he asks for me specifically.
Archibald hosts weekly “tea parties” during which any number of people stop by. The Deliah twins are regulars, as are a few other neighbours in the building. Sometimes an author friend or two shows up. There is also usually Leo, a historical biographer, good-natured, plump and balding with greyish skin, shrouded in the smell of pipe tobacco and B.O. A party typically begins with tea and ends with something stronger and a gang of five or six people gathered around Archibald’s small piano singing show tunes late into the evening.
But often disagreements arise, usually inflamed if not outright instigated by Archibald when he turns sour and abusive. The evening often climaxes with a guest rushing from the apartment in tears, usually as the result of a personal verbal assault by Archibald. But by next week, the scene is always completely forgotten. He presents a gift to the injured party and welcomes him or her back with his sweetest ministrations, and it’s as though the incident has been wiped clean from the victim’s memory. I often wonder what draws people back after Archibald has publicly humiliated them. I have concluded that their lives are hopelessly boring and Archibald, even in a bad mood, is more entertaining than whatever tiresome drivel their televisions can offer. It strikes me that Archibald is a combination of magnetic game-show host and aging egotistical soap star; you never know if you are going to win big, lose the farm, or simply be relegated to the sidelines to watch the show. I know where I prefer to be.