"No," I said, "he was gone when I got here; but he left me a note, more or less."
"Ah," he said, glancing nervously over my shoulder into the forest. It was clear he didn't believe me.
For lunch we had Paul's cauliflower and some tins, corn and fried ham. During the canned pears David said "Who were those two old guys?" He must have seen them from the window.
"It was a man who wanted to buy the place," I said.
"I bet he was a Yank," David said, "I can spot them in a crowded room."
"Yes," I said, "but he was from a wildlife association, that's who he was buying it for."
"Bullshit," David said, "he was a front man for the C.I.A."
I laughed. "No," I said; I showed him the Teenie Town card.
But David was serious. "You haven't seen them in operation the way I have," he said darkly, invoking his New York past.
"What would they want up here?" I said.
"A snooping base," he said, "bird-watchers, binoculars, it all fits. They know this is the kind of place that will be strategically important during the war."
"What war?" I asked, and Anna said "Here we go."
"It's obvious. They're running out of water, clean water, they're dirtying up all of theirs, right? Which is what we have a lot of, this country is almost all water if you look at a map. So in a while, I give it ten years, they'll be up against the wall. They'll try to swing a deal with the government, get us to give them the water cheap or for nothing in exchange for more soapflakes or something, and the government will give in, they'll be a bunch of puppets as usual. But by that time the Nationalist Movement will be strong enough so they'll force the government to back down; riots or kidnappings or something. Then the Yank pigs will send in the Marines, they'll have to; people in New York and Chicago will be dropping like flies, industry will be stalled, there'll be a black market in water, they'll be shipping it in tankers from Alaska. They'll come in through Quebec, it will have separated by then; the Pepsis will even help them, they'll be having a good old laugh. They'll hit the big cities and knock out communications and take over, maybe shoot a few kids, and the Movement guerrillas will go into the bush and start blowing up the water pipelines the Yanks will be building in places like this, to get the water down there."
He seemed very positive about it, as if it had happened already. I thought about the survival manuals: if the Movement guerillas were anything like David and Joe they would never make it through the winters. They couldn't get help from the cities, they would be too far, and the people there would be apathetic, they wouldn't mind another change of flag. If they tried at the outlying farms the farmers would take after them with shotguns. The Americans wouldn't even have to defoliate the trees, the guerillas would die of starvation and exposure anyway.
"Where will you get food?" I said.
"What do you mean 'you'?" he said. "I'm just speculating."
I thought of how it would appear in the history books when it was over: a paragraph with dates and a short summary of what happened. That's how it was in high school, they taught it neutrally, a long list of wars and treaties and alliances, people taking and losing power over other people; but nobody would ever go into the motives, why they wanted it, whether it was good or bad. They used long words like "demarcation" and "sovereignty," they wouldn't say what they meant and you couldn't ask: in high school the right thing was to stare fixedly at the teacher as though at a movie screen, and it was worse for a girl to ask questions than for a boy. If a boy asked a question the other boys would make derisive sucking noises with their mouths, but if a girl asked one the other girls would say "Think you're so great" in the washroom afterwards. In the margins around the Treaty of Versailles I drew ornaments, plants with scrolled branches, hearts and stars instead of flowers. I got so I could draw invisibly, my fingers scarcely moving.
The generals and the historic moments looked better framed. If you put your eye down close to the photograph they disintegrated into grey dots.
Anna was squeezed in beside David on the bench, playing with one of his hands while he talked. "Did I ever tell you that you have Murderer's Thumb?" she said.
"Don't interrupt," he said, but when she made a whimpering face he said "Yep, you did, almost every day," and patted her arm.
"It's spread flat at the end," she said, explaining to us.
"I hope you didn't sell out," David said to me. I shook my head. "Good girl," he said, "your heart's in the right place. And the rest of her too," he said to Joe, "I like it round and firm and fully packed. Anna, you're eating too much."
I washed and Anna dried, as usual. Suddenly Anna said "David is a schmuck. He's one of the schmuckiest people I know."
I looked around at her: her voice was like fingernails, I'd never heard her talk that way about David.
"Why?" I said. "What's wrong?" He hadn't said anything at lunch that could have upset her.
"I guess you think he's hot for you." Her mouth stretched down tight with the lips inside, a toad's.
"No," I said, bewildered, "why would I think that?"
"Those things he says, you know, like about your ass and being fully packed," she said impatiently.
"I thought he was teasing." I had thought that too, it was just a habit like picking your nose, only verbal.
"Teasing, shit. He was doing it to me. He always does stuff like that to other women in front of me, he'd screw them with me in the room if he could. Instead he screws them somewhere else and tells me about it afterwards."
"Oh," I said. I hadn't deduced that. "Why? I mean, why does he tell you?"
Anna brooded, her dishtowel slack. "He says it's being honest. What a turd. When I get mad he says I'm jealous and possessive and I shouldn't get uptight, he says jealousy is bourgeois, it's a leftover from the property ethic, he thinks we should all be swingers and share it around. But I say there are these basic emotions, if you feel something you should let it out, right?" It was an article of faith, she glared at me, challenging me to affirm or deny; I wasn't certain so I didn't say anything. "He pretends he doesn't feel those things, he's so cool," she said, "but really it's just to show me he can do it and get away with it, I can't stop him; all that theorizing about it is coverup bullshit garbage." She raised her head, smiling, friendly again. "I thought I should warn you so you'd know if he grabs you or anything it won't have much to do with you, it's all about me really."
"Thank you," I said. I was sorry she'd told me; I still wanted to believe that what they called a good marriage had remained possible, for someone. But it was kind of her, thoughtful; I knew in her place I wouldn't have done it, I would have let her take care of herself, My Brother's Keeper always reminded me of zoos and insane asylums.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The slop pail was full; I carried it to the garden to pour the dirty water into the trench. Joe was lying by himself on the dock, face down; when I came to rinse the pail he didn't move. Anna passed me on the steps, wearing her orange bikini, oiled for her sun ritual.
In the cabin I set the pail under the counter. David was pondering his chin bristles in the mirror; he slid his arm half around me and said in a guttural voice, "Come wiz me to zee outhouse."
"Not right now," I said, "I have to do some work."
He mimed regret. "Ah well," he said, "some other time."
I took out my samsonite case and sat down at the table. He leaned over my shoulder. "Where's old Joe?"
"Down on the dock," I said.
"He seems out of sorts," David said, "maybe he has worms; when you get back to the city you should take him to the vet." And a moment later, "How come you never laugh at my jokes?"
He hung around while I set out the brushes and paper. Finally he said, "Well, Nature calls," and soft-shoed out the door like the end of a vaudeville act.
I swivelled the caps back onto the paint tubes, I had no intention of working: now they were all out of the way I would search for the will, the deed, the property title. Paul had been certain he
was dead, that made me doubt my theory. Perhaps the C.I.A. had done away with him to get the land, Mr. Malmstrom was not quite plausible; but that was preposterous, I couldn't start suspecting people for no reason.
I rummaged in the cavity under the wall bench, went through the shelves, groped under the beds where the tents were stored. He might have filed the papers in a safety-deposit box, earlier, in a city bank, I'd never find them. Or he might have burned them. At any rate they weren't here.
Unless they were in among the pages of a book: I checked Goldsmith and Burns, holding them by the spines and shaking, then I thought of his lunatic drawings, the only clue I had that he might not be dead. I'd never gone through all of them. In a way that would be the logical hiding place; he'd always been logical, and madness is only an amplification of what you already are.
I lifted down the stack of drawings and began to look. The paper was thin and soft, like rice paper. First the hands and antlered figures, always with numbers scrawled in the corner, then a larger sheet, a half-moon with four sticks coming out of it, bulbed at the ends. I righted the page, judging by the numbers, and it became a boat with people, the knobs were their heads. It was reassuring to find I could interpret it, it made sense.
But the next one was nothing I could recognize. The body was long, a snake or a fish; it had four limbs or arms and a tail and on the head were two branched horns. Lengthwise it was like an animal, an alligator; upright it was more human, but only in the positions of the arms and the front-facing eyes.
Total derangement. I wondered when it had started; it must have been the snow and the loneliness, he'd pushed himself too far, it gets in through your eyes, the thin black cold of mid-winter night, the white days dense with sunlight, outer space melting and freezing again into different shapes, your mind starts doing the same thing. The drawing was something he saw, a hallucination; or it might have been himself, what he thought he was turning into.
I uncovered the next page. But it wasn't a drawing, it was a typed letter, I skimmed it quickly. Addressed to my father.
Dear Sir:
Many thanks for forwarding the photographs and tracings and the corresponding map. The material is most valuable and I shall include some of it in my forthcoming work on the subject, with your permission and giving due credit. Details of any subsequent discoveries you may make would be most welcome.
I include a copy of one of my recent studies which you may find of interest.
Yours sincerely.
The letter had an illegible signature and a university crest. Paper-clipped to it were half a dozen xeroxed sheets: Rock Paintings of the Central Shield, by Dr. Robin M. Grove. The first few pages were maps and graphs and statistics; I skimmed them quickly. At the end of the article there were three short paragraphs, subtitled Aesthetic Qualities and Possible Significance.
The subject matter falls into the following categories: Hands, Abstract Symbols, Humans, Animals and Mythological Creatures. In treatment they are reminiscent, with their elongated limbs and extreme distortion, of the drawings of children. The static rigidity is in marked contrast to the rock paintings of other cultures, most notably the European cave paintings.
From the above features we may deduce that the creators of the paintings were interested exclusively in symbolic content, at the expense of expressiveness and form. However we can only indulge in conjecture as to the nature of this content, since no historical records exist. Informants questioned have supplied conflicting traditions. Some state that the sites of the paintings are the abodes of powerful or protective spirits, which may explain the custom, persisting in remote areas, of leaving offerings of clothing and small bundles of "prayer" sticks. One gives more credence to the theory that the paintings are associated with the practice of fasting to produce significant or predictive dreams.
Doubtful also is the technique employed. The paintings seem to have been executed either with the fingers or with a crude brush of some sort. The predominant colour is red, with minor occurrences of white and yellow; this may be due either to the fact that red among the Indians is a sacred colour or to the relative availability of iron oxides. The bonding agent is being investigated; it may prove to be bears' fat or birds' eggs, or perhaps blood or spittle.
The academic prose breathed reason; my hypotheses crumbled like sand. This was the solution, the explanation: he never failed to explain.
His drawings were not originals then, only copies. He must have been doing them as a sort of retirement hobby, he was an incurable amateur and enthusiast: if he'd become hooked on these rock paintings he would have combed the area for them, collecting them with his camera, pestering the experts by letter whenever he found one; an old man's delusion of usefulness.
I pressed my fingers into my eyes, hard, to make the pool of blackness ringed with violent colour. Release, red spreading back in, abrupt as pain. The secret had come clear, it had never been a secret, I'd made it one, that was easier. My eyes came open, I began to arrange.
I thought, I suppose I knew it from the beginning, I shouldn't have tried to find out, it's killed him. I had the proof now, indisputable, of sanity and therefore of death. Relief, grief, I must have felt one or the other. A blank, a disappointment: crazy people can come back, from wherever they go to take refuge, but dead people can't, they are prohibited. I tried to recall him, picture his face, the way he'd been when he was alive, I found I couldn't; all I could see was the cards he used to hold up, testing us: 3x9 =? He was as absent now as a number, a zero, the question mark in place of the missing answer. Unknown quantity. His way. Everything had to be measured.
I was staring down at the drawings, they were framed by my two arms lain parallel on the table. I began to notice them again. There was a gap, something not accounted for, something left over.
I spread the first six pages out on the table and studied them, using what they called my intelligence, it shortcircuits those other things. The notes and numbers were apparently a location code, it was like a puzzle he'd left for me to solve, an arithmetic problem; he taught us arithmetic, our mother taught us to read and write. Geometry, the first thing I learned was how to draw flowers with compasses, they were like acid patterns. Once they thought you could see God that way but all I saw was landscapes and geometrical shapes; which would be the same thing if you believed God was a mountain or a circle. He said Jesus was a historical figure and God was a superstition, and a superstition was a thing that didn't exist. If you tell your children God doesn't exist they will be forced to believe you are the god, but what happens when they find out you are human after all, you have to grow old and die? Resurrection is like plants, Jesus Christ is risen today they sang at Sunday School, celebrating the daffodils; but people are not onions, as he so reasonably pointed out, they stay under.
The numbers were a system, a game; I would play it with him, it would make him seem less dead. I lined up the pages and compared the notes, carefully as a jeweller.
On one of the drawings, another antlered figure, I finally spotted the key: a name I recognized, White Birch Lake where we went bass fishing, it was connected to the main lake by a portage. I went into David's and Anna's room where the map of the district was tacked to the wall. Marked on a point of land was a tiny red x and a number, identical with the number on the drawing. The printed name was different, Lac des Verges Blanches, the government had been translating all the English names into French ones, though the Indian names remained the same. Scattered here and there were other xs, like a treasure map.
I wanted to go there and verify, match the drawing with reality; that way I'd be sure I'd followed the rules and done it right. I could disguise it as a fishing trip, David hadn't caught anything since his first attempt, though he'd been trying. We'd have time to go there and get back with two days to spare.
I heard Anna's voice approaching, singing, the words trailing off as her breath gave out climbing the steps. I went back to the main room.
"Hi," she said, "do I look burnt
?"
She was pink now, parboiled, white showing around the orange edges of her suit, neck dividing body colour from applied face colour. "A little," I said.
"Listen," she said, her voice shifting into concern, "what's wrong with Joe? I was down on the dock with him and he didn't say one word."
"He doesn't talk much," I said.
"I know, but this was different. He was just lying there." She was pushing, demanding answers.
"He thinks we should get married," I said.
Her eyebrows lifted like antennae. "Really? Joe? That's not ..."
"I don't want to."
"Oh," she said, "then that's awful. You must feel awful." She'd found out; now she was rubbing after-sun lotion on her shoulders. "Mind?" she said, handing me the plastic tube.
I didn't feel awful; I realized I didn't feel much of anything, I hadn't for a long time. Perhaps I'd been like that all my life, just as some babies are born deaf or without a sense of touch; but if that was true I wouldn't have noticed the absence. At some point my neck must have closed over, pond freezing or a wound, shutting me into my head; since then everything had been glancing off me, it was like being in a vase, or the village where I could see them but not hear them because I couldn't understand what was being said. Bottles distort for the observer too: frogs in the jam jar stretched wide, to them watching I must have appeared grotesque.
"Thanks," Anna said, "I hope I won't peel. I think you should go talk to him, or something."
"I have," I said; but her eyes were accusing, I hadn't done enough, conciliation, expiation. I went obediently towards the door.
"Maybe you can work it out," she called after me.
Joe was still on the dock but he was sitting on the edge now with his feet in the water, I crouched down beside him. His toes had dark hairs on the tops, spaced like the needles on a balsam twig.
"What is it?" I said. "Are you sick?"
"You know fucking well," he said after a minute.
"Let's go back to the city," I said, "the way it was before." I took hold of his hand so I could feel the calloused palm, thickened by the wheel, concrete.