"You are from Canada," he says, stating it rather than asking. He's about sixty, spare-faced and tall, with a high-bridged nose; he looks vaguely Arabian. His jaw is undershot, his bottom teeth close slightly over the top ones.
"How did you know?" says Rennie.
"We get mostly Canadians," he says. "The sweet Canadians."
Rennie can't tell whether or not this is meant as irony. "We're not all that sweet," she says.
"I trained in Ontario, my friend," he says. "I was once a veterinarian. My specialty was the diseases of sheep. So I am familiar with the sweet Canadians." He smiles, speaking precisely. "They are famous for their good will. When we had our hurricane, the sweet Canadians donated a thousand tins of ham, Maple Leaf Premium. It was for the refugees." He laughs, as if this is a joke, but Rennie doesn't get it. "The refugees never see this ham," he says, explaining patiently. "Most likely they never eat ham in their lives before. Well, they miss their chance." He laughs again. "The ham turn up, surprise, at the Independence Day banquet. To celebrate our freedom from Britain. For the leading citizens only. Many of us were very amused, my friend. There was a round of applause for the sweet Canadians."
Rennie doesn't know what to say to this. She feels he's making fun of her in some obscure way, but she isn't sure why. "Was it a bad hurricane?" she says. "Was anyone killed?"
He ignores this question entirely. "Why are you coming to St. Antoine?" he says, as if it's an odd thing to be doing.
"I'm writing a piece on it," she says. "A travel piece."
"Ah," he says. "To entice the sweet Canadians."
Rennie is becoming irritated with him. She looks at the pocket in the seatback in front of her, hoping there's something she can pretend to read, an airline magazine, barf-bag mags as they're known in the trade, but there's nothing in it but the card illustrating emergency procedures. On the 707 to Barbados she had a thriller she bought at the airport, but she finished it and left it on the plane. A mistake: now she's bookless.
"You must visit our Botanic Gardens," he says. "The British made very good ones, all over the world. For medicinal purposes, you understand. Ours is one of the oldest. It is still in good repair; they have only been gone a month. Now that we are free, we have to pull out the weeds ourselves. We have a small museum there, you must see that. Broken pots made by the Carib Indians and so forth. They did not make very accomplished pottery. We still have a few of them in our country, we have not fully modernized."
He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a bottle of aspirin. He taps two into his palm and offers the bottle to Rennie, as if offering a cigarette. Rennie doesn't have a headache, but feels she should take one anyway, it's the polite thing to do.
"There is a fort also," he says. "The British were proficient at that, too. Fort Industry. Under the British it was called Fort George, but our government is renaming everything." He signals the stewardess and asks for a glass of water.
"We just have ginger ale," she says.
"It will have to do," he says. His teeth clamp together in a bulldog grin. "In my country that is a very useful phrase."
The ginger ale comes and he swallows his aspirins, then offers the styrofoam cup to Rennie. "Thank you," says Rennie. "I'm saving mine for later." She holds the aspirin in her hand, wondering if she's just been rude, but if so he doesn't seem to notice.
"I have many statistics you might find useful," he says. "Those on unemployment, for instance. Or perhaps you would prefer the Botanic Gardens? I would be happy to escort you, I take an interest in plants."
Rennie decides not to ask him about restaurants and tennis courts. She thanks him and says she'll have a better idea of what she's looking for once she gets there.
"I think we are approaching," he says.
The plane dips. Rennie peers out the window, hoping to see something, but it's too dark. She glimpses an outline, a horizon, something jagged and blacker than the sky, but then the plane goes down at a forty-five degree angle and a moment later they hit the ground. She jolts forward against the seat belt as the plane brakes, much too fast.
"We have a very short runway here," he remarks. "Before I tendered my regrets to the present government I attempted to have something done about it. I was at that time the Minister for Tourism." He smiles his lopsided smile. "But the Prime Minister had other priorities."
The plane taxis to a stop and the aisle jams with people. "It's been nice meeting you," Rennie says as they stand up.
He holds out his hand for her to shake. Rennie transfers the aspirin. "I hope you will have a pleasant stay, my friend. If you need assistance, do not hesitate to call on me. Everyone knows where I can be found. My name is Minnow, Dr. Minnow, like the fish. My enemies make jokes about that! A small fish in a small puddle, they say. It is a corruption of the French, Minot was the original, it was one of the many things they left behind them. The family were all pirates."
"Really?" Rennie says. "That's wild."
"Wild?" says Dr. Minnow.
"Fascinating," says Rennie.
Dr. Minnow smiles. "They were common once," he says. "Some of them were quite respectable; they intermarried with the British and so forth. You have a husband?"
"Pardon?" says Rennie. The question has caught her by surprise: nobody she knows asks it any more.
"A man," he says. "Here we do not bother so much with the formalities."
Rennie wonders if this is a sexual feeler. She hesitates. "Not with me," she says.
"Perhaps he will join you later?" Dr. Minnow says. He looks down at her anxiously, and Rennie sees that this isn't an advance, it's concern. She smiles at him, hoisting her camera bag.
"I'll be fine," she says. Which is not what she believes.
When Rennie floated up through the anaesthetic she did not feel anything at first. She opened her eyes and saw light green, then closed them again. She did not want to look down, see how much of herself was missing. She lay with her eyes closed, realizing that she was awake and would rather not be. She also realized, though she had not admitted it before, that she had expected to die during the operation. She'd heard stories about people going into shock or being allergic to the anaesthetic. It was not out of the question.
Her left arm was numb. She tried to move it and couldn't. Instead she moved her right hand, and not until then did she understand that someone was holding it. She turned her head, forced her eyes to open, and saw, a long distance away, as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope, the image of a man, a head surrounded by darkness, glassy and clear. Daniel.
It's all right, he said. It was malignant but I think we got it all.
He was telling her that he had saved her life, for the time being anyway, and now he was dragging her back into it, this life that he had saved. By the hand. Malignant, Rennie thought.
Now what, she said. Her mouth felt thick and swollen. She looked at his arm, which was bare from the elbow down and was lying beside hers on the white sheet; hair licked along the skin like dark flames. His fingers were around her wrist. She did not see hands but an odd growth, like a plant or something with tentacles, detachable. The hand moved: he was patting her.
Now you go to sleep, he said. I'll be back.
Rennie looked again and his hand attached itself to his arm, which was part of him. He wasn't very far away. She fell in love with him because he was the first thing she saw after her life had been saved. This was the only explanation she could think of. She wished, later, when she was no longer feeling dizzy but was sitting up, trying to ignore the little sucking tubes that were coming out of her and the constant ache, that it had been a potted begonia or a stuffed rabbit, some safe bedside object. Jake sent her roses but by then it was too late.
I imprinted on him, she thought; like a duckling, like a baby chick. She knew about imprinting; once, when she was hard up for cash, she'd done a profile for Owl Magazine of a man who believed geese should be used as a safe and loyal substitute for watchdogs. It was best to be t
here yourself when the goslings came out of the eggs, he said. Then they'd follow you to the ends of the earth. Rennie had smirked because the man seemed to think that being followed to the ends of the earth by a flock of adoring geese was both desirable and romantic, but she'd written it all down in his own words.
Now she was behaving like a goose, and the whole thing put her in a foul temper. It was inappropriate to have fallen in love with Daniel, who had no distinguishing features that Rennie could see. She hardly even knew what he looked like, since, during the examinations before the operation, she hadn't bothered to look at him. One did not look at doctors; doctors were functionaries, they were what your mother once hoped you would marry, they were fifties, they were passe. It wasn't only inappropriate, it was ridiculous. It was expected. Falling in love with your doctor was something middle-aged married women did, women in the soaps, women in nurse novels and in sex-and-scalpel epics with titles like Surgery and nurses with big tits and doctors who looked like Dr. Kildare on the covers. It was the sort of thing Toronto Life did stories about, soft-core gossip masquerading as hard-nosed research and expose. Rennie could not stand being guilty of such a banality.
But there she was, waiting for Daniel to appear (out of nowhere, she never knew when he would be coming, when she was having a sponge bath or struggling to the toilet, leaning on the large wattled nurse), hooked like a junkie on those pats of the hand and Rotarian words of cheer and collective first-person plurals ("We're coming along nicely"), and in a feeble rage because of it. Shit. He wasn't even that handsome, now that she had a good look: his proportions were wrong, he was too tall for his shoulders, his hair was too short, his arms were too long, he gangled. She sniffled with anger into the wad of Kleenex the nurse held out to her.
A good cry will do you good, said the nurse. But you're lucky, they say there's none anywhere else, some of them are full of it, they cut it out and it just pops up somewhere else. Rennie thought of toasters.
Daniel brought her a pamphlet called Mastectomy: Answers to Down-To-Earth Questions. Down to earth. Who wrote these things? Nobody in her position would want to think very hard about down or earth. Are there any restrictions on sexual activity? she read. The pamphlet suggested that she ask her doctor. She considered doing this.
But she didn't. Instead she asked him, How much of me did you cut off? Because she was in love with him and he hadn't noticed, her tone of voice was not all it should have been. But he didn't seem to mind.
About a quarter, he said gently.
You make it sound like a pie, said Rennie.
Daniel smiled, indulging her, waiting her out.
I guess I should be relieved, said Rennie. That you didn't hack off the whole thing.
We don't do that any more unless there's massive involvement, said Daniel.
Massive involvement, said Rennie. It's never been my thing.
He follows up, said the nurse. A lot of them, they just do their number and that's that. He likes to know how things work out, in their life and all. He takes a personal interest. He says a lot of it has to do with their attitude, you know?
Jake brought champagne and pate and kissed her on the mouth. He sat beside her bed and tried not to look at her wrapped chest and the tubes. He spread pate on crackers, which he'd also brought, and fed them to her. He wanted to be thanked.
You're a godsend, she said. The food here is unbelievable. Green Jello salad and a choice of peas or peas. She was happy to see him but she was distracted. She didn't want Daniel to walk in, trailing interns, while Jake was still there.
Jake was restless. He was healthy and healthy people are embarrassed by sickness, she could remember that. She was convinced also that she smelled peculiar, that there was a faint odour of decay seeping through the binding: like an off cheese. She wanted him to go quickly and he wanted to go.
We'll get back to normal, she told herself, though she could not remember any longer what normal had been like. She asked the nurse to adjust her bed so she could lie back.
That's a fine young man, the nurse said. Jake was a fine young man. He was all in place, a good dancer who hardly ever bothered to dance.
Rennie climbs down the steps of the plane and the heat slips over her face like thick brown velvet. The terminal is a low shed with a single turret. It looks grey under the weak lights of the runway, but as Rennie walks toward it she sees that it's really yellow. Over the doorway there's a bronze plaque thanking the Canadian government for donating it. It's odd to see the Canadian government being thanked for anything.
The immigration officer is wearing a dark-green uniform, like a soldier's, and there are two actual soldiers leaning against the wall beside him, in crisp blue shirts with short sleeves. Rennie assumes they're soldiers, since they have shoulder holsters with what look like real guns in them. They're young, with skinny innocent bodies. One of them is flicking his swagger-stick against his pantleg, the other has a small radio which he's holding against his ear.
Rennie realizes she's still clutching the aspirin in her left hand. She wonders what to do with it; somehow she can't just throw it away. She opens her purse to put it with her other aspirins, and the soldier with the swagger stick saunters towards her.
Rennie feels a chill sweep down her. She's about to be singled out: perhaps he thinks the bottle she's holding contains some kind of illegal drug.
"It's aspirin," she says, but all he wants is to sell her a ticket to the St. Antoine Police Benefit Dance, Semi-formal, Proceeds For Sports Funds. So they're only police, not soldiers. Rennie makes this out by reading the ticket, since she hasn't understood a word he's said.
"I don't have the right kind of money," she says.
"We take anything you got," he says, grinning at her, and this time she understands him. She gives him two dollars, then adds a third; possibly it's the price of admission. He thanks her and strolls back to the other one, and they laugh together. They haven't bothered with anyone else in the line.
In front of Rennie there's a tiny woman, not five feet tall. She's wearing a fake-fur shortie coat and a black wool jockey cap tilted at a rakish angle. She turns around now and looks up at Rennie.
"That a bad man," she says. "Don't you have nothin' to do with that one." She holds out to Rennie a large plastic bag full of cheese puffs. From under the brim of her jockey cap her eyes peer up out of her dark wrinkled face, she must be at least seventy but it's hard to tell. The eyes are bright, candid, sly, the eyes of a wary child.
"This my grandson," she says. She opens the coat to reveal an orange T-shirt. PRINCE OF PEACE, it says in large red letters.
Rennie has never seen a religious maniac up close before. When she was at university an economics student was rumoured to have run through his dormitory one night, claiming to have given birth to the Virgin Mary, but that was put down to pre-exam tension.
Rennie smiles, as naturally as possible. If this woman thinks she's Ste. Anne or whoever, it would be best not to upset her, not in the immigration line at any rate. Rennie accepts some cheese puffs.
"It my grandson, all right," says the woman. She knows she's been doubted.
Then it's her turn, and Rennie hears her say to the immigration officer in a shrill, jocular voice, "You give me trouble, my grandson blaze your arse good for you." This seems to have the desired effect, for the man stamps her passport immediately and she goes through.
When he comes to Rennie he feels he has to be extra severe. He flips through her passport, frowning over the visas. He wears thick bifocals, and he pushes them further down on his nose and holds the passport away from him, as if it smells funny.
"Renata Wilford? That you?"
"Yes," Rennie says.
"It don't look like you."
"It's a bad picture," Rennie says. She knows she's lost weight.
"Let her in, man," one of the policemen calls, but the immigration clerk ignores him. He scowls at her, then at the picture. "What the purpose of your visit?"
"Pardon?" R
ennie says. She has to strain to understand the accent. She looks around for Dr. Minnow, but he's nowhere in sight.
"What you doin' here?" He glares at her, his eyes enlarged by the lenses.
"I'm a writer," Rennie says. "A journalist. I write for magazines. I'm doing a travel piece."
The man glances over at the two policemen. "What you goin' to write about here?" he says.
Rennie smiles. "Oh, the usual," she says. "You know, restaurants, sight-seeing, that sort of thing."
The man snorts. "Sight-seein'," he says. "No pretty lights here." He stamps her passport and motions her through.
"Write it good," he says to her as she goes past. Rennie thinks he's teasing, as such a man at Heathrow or Toronto or New York would be. They would say, "Write it good, honey." Or love, or sweetheart. They would grin. But when she turns to give the required smile he's staring straight ahead, through the plateglass window to the tarmac, where the plane has already turned in the darkness and is taxiing again for take-off between the rows of white and blue lights.
Rennie changes some money, then waits while a tired uniformed woman pokes through her purse and her bags. Rennie says she has nothing to declare. The woman scrawls a chalk mark on each of her bags, and Rennie walks through a doorway into the main room. The first thing she sees is a large sign that says, THE BIONIC COCK: IT GIVES YOU SPURS. There's a picture of a rooster; it turns out to be an advertisement for rum.
There's a crowd outside the door, taxi drivers, and Rennie goes with the first one who touches her arm. Ordinarily she would talk with him, find things out: beaches, restaurants, shops. But it's too hot. She sinks into the marshmallow-soft upholstery of the car, some derelict from the fifties, while the driver goes far too fast through the winding narrow streets, honking at every bend. The car is on the wrong side of the road, and it takes Rennie a moment to remember that this is in fact the British side.