IT WAS EARLY IN SEPTEMBER WHEN HE RECEIVED A letter that he told no one about. He was surprised when it came and more surprised by what it said.
It was a letter from Clara Bell.
My dear Albert Raskin,
It has been a while since I have spoken to you, so I hope you and your friend Professor Sackville are well. I do hope so. People told me how you helped take care of children when you were a boy, and your father (I think of Byron as your father) was away, and would bring them in to the large cottage for treats. That was very kind and noble, and I wanted to tell you that one day. I was one of those children, and you played Scrabble with me. In fact you were the young boy who taught me how to play. I wanted to tell you that I remember your kindness to me when playing Scrabble. We both had to go to the reserve to go to church on those summer days, and one time both of us, sitting in the back seat of my dad’s car, passed a lane of houses with nothing. There was a horse caught up in the swamp and I remember you were overcome with grief,
I am appealing to you as that young boy. I am appealing to you to help Eva and Torrent. I am not appealing to you to confess to something you did as an immature young man, but to help Torrent, and in that way make recompense in this life. If that is done, I am sure Darren and I can come to some closure about the rest. I am begging you to help save my dear cousin in distress.
But if you do so, if you forgive the debt, it will not go easy on you—they will smear your name. If you stand with Torrent now it will be very harsh. If you refuse to sit with those protesting the two old men, harshness will follow disgrace. You know them and so do I. You know them as compatriots now. They all want his blood, and blood will flow, I am certain. I am just uncertain as to whose blood it will be. Yet Torrent is innocent and an innocent soul. I know in your heart that you know this is the right decision but it will not be easy. It will be the right decision not to march with them against your uncles too, but it will not seem so. Especially for you.
You will be shunned at the university as I am now shunned, and Darren is shunned. Many of the best professors, professors who were left out to dry, are shunned. Good men and women have to accept that. Still, it is the hardest and the noblest of ways. You have tenure—you can say tomorrow that you believe Torrent acted in good faith, that you will not march against him, and you believe that your uncles did write those letters of concern. Because my father swears they did. If you do this, and publicly do so in the press, it will be heroic. It will not be the false heroics that so many students parade now. It will be truly brave.
Darren and I will go on with our lives knowing the mistake of a young man was the mistake of a young man. A mistake that will be forgiven.
I am sorry that you are in this position, but the decision is yours. And time is now passing.
With kind regards to both you and Faye,
Clara
He hid the letter upstairs, in a box. In that box were many of the soldiers his dad had set up during his reconstruction of the Battle of Gettysburg.
“Honour follows virtue like a shadow.” The man who they had replaced, the Nova Scotian, had just published his verses and was up for a major award in Britain and the U.S. They had not even published his poems in their magazine here.
Everyone like Nancy and Kent and Bill was once again singing his praises and saying how wonderful he was.
“It’s too bad he couldn’t have stayed,” Nancy said with the false diplomacy university wives often had.
He telephoned Stroud and told him Eva would not be available. He told him he had just heard Darren would not press about that night any longer. He told him it was over. He told Shane he would not comply.
He was ready to hang up when Shane said: “Oh, but it’s not Darren I would tell. He already knows. It’s the university—it’s the papers. It won’t just be about Annie. It will be about Eva too.”
In the end he set the toy solders back in the chest and tore the letter up. What was to come he felt was cast in stone.
At the university in the early fall of that year, I learned that a strange event had happened. It was a week or two after our good Raskin had his conversation with Professor Howl. A week after Albert reminded Faye Sackville of her embarrassment on the stand.
Ms. Sackville went into Darren Howl’s office and simply began to take books off his shelf, while musing over the titles as she did, picking them up, holding them out to see the titles and then dropping them into a wastebasket she carried under her arm, then brushing her long, immaculate fingers on a white handkerchief as if the books themselves were too odious to touch.
It was considered by many of her more vocal students to be a sacred duty. To them she was a Mother Teresa. News of it went across the university like wildfire. It made the news and was the lead two nights running.
Raskin had handed Sackville a list of books he had seen on those shelves, and those books which had been banned from the curriculum over the last five or six years: Othello, Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness, Darkness at Noon and Blood Ties, along with the works of Flannery O’Connor, Ernest Hemingway and Philip Roth; and when she had taken them off his shelves, along with the book on the life of Beaverbrook and a book on Churchill (replaced by a book on Gandhi), believing she was correcting an injustice, she looked at her fingers, wiped them with the handkerchief once more and started to leave, just as Professor Howl came in.
One might know that she had not read one of these books, not even Huckleberry Finn. That is, it was the dangerous age of arresting books rather than people. She was hoping, of course, in a mild and even mischievous way, that people would follow. In fact, if you made a list of your favourite twenty-five books, it might just be possible that Ms. Faye Sackville would not have read one of them.
It was said, and it was probably true, that Darren chased her about the room with his wheelchair trying to corner her, and she dodged one way and the other with little squeaks coming from her, little footsy sidesteps, explanation being these books were banned, and like pistols they shouldn’t be made available in any way to children. These books were repulsive, she explained.
This was a woman, after years in the convent, now bulging with fire and fury. And somewhat cute dancing slippers with little silver buckles, that she wore in the office.
Tracy McCaustere, a young woman, was interviewed for the student paper, calm and almost serene, with the brushcut and the pierced nose.
“I can see both sides,” she said. She was too diplomatic to say more. That would come with time.
But Tracy did assure us that the banning of books had its origin not in censorship but in freedom. It was a new freedom, unchaining the cerebellum it was called. Using positive models to be a new source of a new provocative enlightenment.
Unchaining the Cerebellum was an essay explaining all of this, published in our Saint Michael’s University paper.
Tracy was applauded, just as she had manoeuvred herself into so being. She had mainly set her sights on being an advocate and white female champion of First Nations concerns. She knew there were many of those and she was determined to be the most effective.
Sackville also commented on the banning of books: “I am after a more vibrant understanding of our obligation,” she said, “not to break our trust with parents who send their children to us. Oh, this male autonomy has got to stop—I think there is a song about it somewhere. Where every man is a king. Well, every man is not a king, even those who subject others to their lordly presence, like certain professors I won’t mention—one who took me to court, who I won’t mention.”
She was, as our student paper said, a former nun, a woman studying both Islam and Buddhism, a woman of qualifications.
But give her her due, she never read the press about herself, good or bad. And when some of the students said they must make a reverential button to pin on their blouses for her, she cited much more work must be done, and declined.
She made sure she spoke this in front of Albert, who was standing beside her, with his brown corduroy jacket supporting just such a button about himself.
Eva went home from work on September 15 and looked out over the fields. Here was where her husband planted the rows of potatoes, beets and turnips. Here is where he hayed, and reroofed the shed; here is where he made the chair for Polly. But she had run pell-mell to the land of professors. And why had she done so? The feeling of having committed a grave error, an offence against who she was supposed to be, had finally come over her. That is, books and learning and understanding had to, in some sense, come at first from inside oneself. And she had been led along only by her desire to be rid of this.
She wandered about her house, the house he had built for her, and thought of her betrayal. Was there any way to cure it? Her own misery came in knowing her collusion, knowing the bases on which it happened were self-propelled, clandestine and dreamlike but developed within her own soul, not his—not Mr. Raskin’s. She had all the time in the world to say no as she knew where they were headed. She knew from the moment she turned and walked to the sink after bandaging his arm that his feeling for her was not to help, or not only to help, and that his feeling even was by then by her reciprocated, and waiting for a time to ripen, though she denied it. In fact in her heart she did not care about university. She only cared about seeming to care.
When he was taking action against her husband, she felt the nuance of his blame was not directed at her, and she might escape if she was silent, if she gave her own husband less support. And so she was silent, as he went out working day and night to try and save them. All of this added to the eventual shame she was bearing, without knowing the exactness of it all.
The problem was, her shame was not factored into the equation until the price for this equation became due. Shame then became due as a penalty, a deepening wound. She tried to go forward but walked in mire, and she wanted to die. She wanted to die because of what he, Raskin, actually had thought of her when he smiled and told her how much he cared. But she knew she could have simply said no.
Worse, that first morning she went along the shore road to visit him, the country-and-western song “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away” was on the radio. And no one could encapsulate the world both of guilt and desire more than a country-and-western song. And yet within it all, within the very expressiveness of his face, all things had been revealed even before he began to strip her naked, if she only wanted to see. They had been revealed totally as far back as the day she had bandaged his arm. The bright shiny moment was one of falseness. Both of them knew this.
So he was the conduit for her dissatisfaction, and now the cosignatory of her unhappiness for her own misdeed. She knew this now, and she wanted to correct it. She wanted to scrub the world clean and be clean and clear of all she thought she had needed from him.
The talk of her freedom was so appealing a year ago, just when their liaison was ratcheting up, that she had thought of leaving her child. She thought she would be complimented by him, she would do something he had called “revolutionary.”
She had begun to think that the one right a woman must exercise was to leave her child behind. But what was more painful—unknown to anyone but her, not the pills she gave the child to go to sleep so she could have meetings with him who did not care for her or her child (always telling herself he did and that they would all be together); but that once coming back—hurrying back late, almost dark, in the cold with the stars flickering above her—she saw little Polly wandering toward Arron Brook, trying to find her mommy, and she thought: What if she falls in—what if? There will be no more little Polly and he will marry me fer sure! We would be so happy together and he is so kind.
She stood as if transfixed as the child called “Mommy,” getting closer to the edge of the falls—
The child held the small doll she had loved, called Mo Mo, in her hand. The night was brimming with the stars from other worlds, and yet in those stars the very notion of what was good or what was evil was ever present, through the clear blackness that now surrounded the earth.
And suddenly, a feeling like a gust of wind came into her soul, and she rushed forward and picked the child up in her arms, bawling like a child over what had flickered in her mind. For it had only been one second. But that second could never be erased.
She was not vain about her looks, but she knew she was extremely desirable, and not only Raskin but a dozen other men, at least a dozen, and not only Sackville but certain other women (yes, she knew this too) seemed captivated by it. Seemed, as Sackville seemed, to want her to disrobe.
In fact perhaps this proved beauty like hers was cruel. That is, perhaps it wasn’t even their fault.
If I had not been a desirable woman, the loan would not have been given. He did this to sleep with me. It came to her suddenly, and with such force she had to sit down in the chair. But still she realized she was pleased she had been desirable to him. So now she would do what he wanted because she detested, and wanted to devalue, herself as a human being. This would be the way out—and lessening herself seemed almost sacrosanct.
In fact what did it matter if she was a human being? For Sackville, that woman she once admired who took her for drives—once all the way to Point aux Carr for a picnic, and pleaded with her to let her brush her hair—no longer thought she was.
She held the note from the bank in her hand, the number she was to phone, from his lawyer, the idea of payment to be worked out with his lawyer. Albert could clear it all—he had that much power over them, if she did what he asked.
And as she was sitting there, her father came in, his motions like that of a nervous, despicable little animal, shrugging and smoking and asking if she hadn’t twenty dollars to spare.
That was September 15, a Saturday. On the news she heard Princess Diana had a baby boy, and mother and child were doing well.
Shamefully she had taken the contract to Clara, who had looked over it for two days. This was just before Clara wrote the appeal to Albert.
“I am not a fan of his lawyer—he should have made some token gesture to allow you to know what you were signing. We might be able to use that as a wedge, and you did not have a lawyer present. But, as stated, his lawyer also acted on your behalf, and you signed to allow him to.”
“Is there any hope?”
“Sure. We can fight to the end. And we will.”
She went to a book on the shelf, and bringing it forward—it was beginning to rain hard against the stone outside, and against the lawn and into the cement birdbath—she opened it to a page. The page showed a print from 1867, which showed a painting from an age before. The print had been done in celebration of the forming of the Dominion of Canada, and showed various ancient families who arrived on our shores. And in this print, at one corner, the painting of a boy now hanging at the end of some dark hallway in Montreal, a boy from an ancient family who had made their escape.
“That is Albert’s ancestor,” Clara said. “It is strange how I came across this quite by accident when all of this trouble seemed to explode. And now I know like a revolution it will be almost impossible to stop.”
“It is my fault,” she said.
Clara looked at her. She was not given to lying. “Ah, sweetie, yes of course. But maybe somewhat less than you think.”
And then Clara said: “A revolution large or small always ends in outrage, torture and blood.”
Torry had gone to church. He was rarely a churchgoer; still it was the third time that month. He had no hope unless he did so. He prayed so his house would be saved.
And so she was alone, on September 16. She telephoned Clara but there was no answer. No doubt she had gone to church as well.
She said to Polly, “Here, darling, take this medicine and you can have some ice cream.”
She had dressed the little girl in her blue dress with all the buttons. By the time they got to button thirty the child was asleep. She laid her on the bed and put her doll Mo Mo, with the big floppy blue eyes, beside her.
Then she dressed, the way she was told to dress by him. Without knowing its implication she wore the watch on her wrist.
Then she walked down to the cottage. Albert let her in. But he told her first to come around the back. He told her he was sorry. He told her he would do everything he could to protect her. She said nothing.
He told her to take the cocaine. She didn’t want to, but no, he said, it is the best thing to take. And so she did.
Shane was already there. She could smell his body, as she had the night she was a girl of sixteen.
“Hi,” he said. He was nervous, already drunk. “Remember me?”
She had taken pills too. Her eyes closed and opened slowly.
“I want a drink,” she said.
“Oh—oh, of course,” Albert said.
He went to the kitchen and poured a gin and tonic. He set it on the table, and then running his hands down his cotton pants, he left the room.
“Come here. Don’t be shy,” Shane said. “It’s just me, silly. You remember me. I offered you a watch and you didn’t even take it. But now, you are wearing it—yes.” He stumbled, and looked at her almost terrified, and then took her arm in his hand and looked at the watch.
“Ahh,” he said, as if still frightened, of some omen he did not understand.
He scratched the top of his head, and he lighted another cigarette. Now he was frightened of something beyond him—and he led her to the room. The same room she had first gone into with him, when it was raining. On that day she had entered a new world, a new portico. She just didn’t know then what world it was to become.
She stared at the ceiling, and did not move. He took her clothes off, and even before he took her blouse off she was saying: “Please hurry up.”
Shane could not get it up and he got angry and hit her, and then he could.
Raskin, who had gone into the upstairs sunroom, came back and stood at the door, and told Shane to stop. But it was now too late. Raskin held the knife the Nova Scotian had taken off him years before. Yet seeing the mole on Shane’s left shoulder made him hesitate and he could not thrust it. That tiny mole, that sign of humanity, saved Shane’s life.
“Stop trembling,” Stroud kept saying.
Then after, after it was over, after he came inside her, Shane fled, he ran, he ran like a bad little animal out into the day and disappeared.
She refused to look at either of them.
Raskin looked at her. Her nose was bloody, her left eye black, the inside of her left thigh had blood smeared on it and her right breast had been bitten.
He was crying. He held the knife limply in his left hand.
“Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“Go from me now—be gone, invalid. Be gone always from me. Don’t you dare cross my path again.”
Her voice horrified him, chilled him to the soul, and he too ran away.
Then there were a variety of ways to do it. First she took a knife from the barn. But she didn’t have the nerve to cut herself deep enough. So she decided to jump into Arron and down she went. She went down to Arron on that Sunday morning, and she could hear the church bells when she did. And then Torry would be home, and find the little girl sleeping—and she would be gone. And then, yes, after she was gone, dead as a nit, all would be fine. And no one would torment Torry again, because she had tormented him. She remembered now his sad face, his sad lonely face, and she walked down over the bank, toward Arron Brook, toward its incessant eddies and whirlpools in the morning sunlight.
No, she wouldn’t undress, that was not what she would do. Too much had happened to her to ever want to be naked again. She loathed her nakedness like Eve after she had taken the apple.
She would simply wade into the water and yes, with rocks in her pockets. For that’s what she had heard a great woman writer did, rocks in her pockets.
She picked up rocks, and broke a nail doing it. She put them into her dress pocket, and down the bib she wore over her blouse. Yes, no problem to drown now. Mr. Raskin wouldn’t plague her anymore.
And here she sunk. She slipped the bounds of earth, as she remembered someone told her about flying. She too would fly away. Then suddenly she wanted to live—suddenly she held her breath and struggled, suddenly she felt herself fall into Glidden’s Pool—that is, she had not sunk but was carried downstream almost two hundred yards, and she went over a falls, a falls of thirty-nine feet, and that is how all the rocks fell from her bib and her pocket except two—and she looked down below her, and saw her little feet—one sneaker had fallen away and was floating down and then up past her, to the top with all the bubbles, and so was she—she came up out of the water and found herself next to the shore.
It was at that moment she decided her destiny was going to be very different. And then when she lay on the shore, looking at the heavens, she smelled smoke.