Blue Moon (39 page)

The writer in the
Times
had obviously chosen to tell Newman's story because of its newsworthy elements, particularly how Jews sometimes preyed upon other Jews. The tone of the entire piece also made it obvious that Newman had not sought to have his story made public: he had co-operated only when the writer had told him she would tell the story with or without his assistance. At the end of the article, she summarized his life after that fateful day. With his parents'
assistance, he had immigrated to England, completed his medical degree at Cambridge, qualified as a psychiatrist and later an analyst at the Maudsley in London and subsequently immigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he had arrived in 1958, three years before I met him. The journalist obviously hoping to end her story in a garish way—posed some provocative questions. “What if Tarnopolsky is captured and brought to justice?”

“He should be tried,” Newman responded quietly.

“Executed?”

“Hardly a solution to replace one brutality with another.”

“The horrible things that happened to you—the senseless, evil murders of your wife and child, all of this following in the wake of the Holocaust—doesn't this convince you that humankind is basically evil?”

I think his answer surprised her: “No. Not at all. There are many unfortunate, basically empty people who commit acts of unspeakable evil. There are an equally large number of people who spend their lives trying to undo such acts. I am also certain there are many people who spend their lives convinced they have committed evil acts whereas they have been merely caught up in the web of history. There are relatively few spiders; there are many harmless insects who get caught in their webs.”

I called in sick the next day, a Monday. Bill was surprised—I had never taken a day off before. My appointment with Dr. Newman was at four in the afternoon, and I had no idea what I was going to say to him. One part of me shied away from admitting to him I had seen the article; I was afraid he would be angry at me for invading his privacy. Yet, how could he find fault with me? The article was in the
Times
for anyone to see. Then, my thoughts veered in another direction. How trivial and silly my own sufferings seemed in comparison to his. What right did I have to ask him to fix my heart when his was so more badly broken than my own?

Usually, I conducted myself as an unduly compliant patient. I did not argue with my therapist, although I sometimes politely disagreed with him. I was certainly not an emotional analysand, one whose sessions were filled with tears and recriminations. When I reached his office that Monday afternoon, I was certain my self-control would
desert me. I even thought of returning home and waiting until Tuesday to see him.

I did not go away. When he answered the door, I noticed nothing different about him or the prints that lined the corridor. When I had settled myself on the couch, I made the dreaded admission. “I saw the piece in the
NewYork Times.”

“I didn't know if you read it.”

“Usually I don't. Ethel Wilson mentioned the article to me. She had been very touched by it.”

“What did you think of it?”

“It made me very sad. I was heart-broken for you, your wife and your child.”

“Two of my patients have been very angry with me about that piece. According to them, I am supposed to have no life outside this office.”

“Those people are worse off than me.”

“Perhaps. Why were you heart-broken?”

“Because no one should have to endure the suffering you have experienced. Because all your hopes were dashed. Because of the sadness of the entire human condition in which such things happen.”

“I have always known you capable of the gift of empathy. Now you have demonstrated that I was completely correct in my hypothesis.”

I changed the subject slightly. “I have also been shaken by something else, something more personal to me.”

“Yes?”

“My dreams about the events on the Mountain, about the strange house, about the children in that house. You actually lived what I imagined in those nightmares. When I first came here, you must have been unnerved by the conjunction of my dreams and your experience?”

“True. I was startled. On reflection, I put it all down to synchronicity. You were obviously meant to be my patient. I became convinced I might learn from you, the patient, about my own life. I also wondered if my own life experiences might make me a suitable guide to your inner world.” He paused. “There is another thing. Sometimes, you know, we psychiatrists don't like to admit to ourselves that our patients can transform our lives.”

When I left that afternoon, Dr. Newman had altered remarkably in appearance. He looked younger, leaner, more vulnerable. I even thought I saw the glint of a tear in his right eye.

My relationship with Dr. Newman changed after that session. Although he had been previously disinclined to offer me advice directly, he leapt with great alacrity on any pieces of instruction offered to me by Mrs. Wilson, “She is a great writer, one of the finest Canada has produced. If she thinks you have the makings of a writer, why should you continue to contradict her?”

In the last decade of her life, Ethel's health deteriorated rapidly. Every time I visited her, she was a shadow of the self at the previous encounter. She had retreated into herself so successfully that her delicate spirit was trapped in a hard shale of rock. She found it difficult to talk, a slur now invading her speech. She began to call me “Maggie” as if confusing fiction with fact. I never bothered to correct her. Sometimes, I simply held her hand. Her eyes would attempt to bring me into focus, but that was an increasingly difficult task for her.

Encouraged by Dr. Newman and the presence of Mrs. Wilson, I began the book that became
Celia.
Years later, journalists researching the beginnings of my writing life, would endlessly repeat the story of the various sightings of the lady seated in the big bay window, a large grey cat at the opposite end of the table from her, writing into her scribblers long into the night. At the time, I did not realize I had become such a source of fascination, especially to young people visiting Vancouver.

Almost a year to the day after my fateful encounter with Dr. Newman, I received the phone call that further altered my life. I had just returned from Duthie's, so it was early evening, about six-thirty. The voice on the other end of the line—resolutely English—asserted itself through a mass of crackling sounds.

“Miss Delamere? Is that Miss Delamere?”

“Yes. Speaking.”

“This is Judith Smith at Penguin in London. I hope I'm calling at a reasonable time for you? It's the middle of the night here—I have stayed up in order to reach you.”

“Yes. Your timing is perfect. I've just had your aerogramme acknowledging receipt of my manuscript—it arrived yesterday.”

“Good, good. I'm delighted. I've just finished the book. I admire it ever so much.” The last sentence was uttered in a gushy, totally un-English way of speaking. Then, the speaker seemed to catch herself. “I would like to make a publishing offer on the book. I assume I should negotiate with you? You don't mention the existence of an agent.”

“No. I don't have an agent. To be honest, I didn't have any great expectations of getting the book published without a long struggle. It's the first extended piece of fiction I've ever written. You're my first reader.”

“Perhaps I'm you're ideal reader?” She laughed, a bit breathlessly. “I'm saying that because I hope to convince you to sell me the book.”

“I don't think I'll need much persuasion.”

And that turned out to be correct. Judith has been my editor and publisher since that day in 1973, over twenty-five years ago.

A year later, in 1974, just after
Celia
was published, I concluded my analysis. Dr. Newman made the usual joke about having assisted in curing me of everything except life itself. Earlier, at the beginning of our final meeting, I presented him with a bouquet of blue roses, the most perfect specimens I could find in all of Vancouver.

“Blue roses?” He seemed startled more by the colour than the gift itself.

“They are called 'Blue Moons,' so rare is the colour in the rose family, as in
once in a blue moon.
Sports of nature, you might say.”

“I know the first idiom but not the second. What is a 'sport of nature'?

“A plant or an animal which exhibits an abnormal variant from its parents. A spontaneous mutation.”

“Interesting. The roses are very beautiful, but they have thorns.”

Realizing that his unconsciousness may have gotten the better of him, he added: “I did not mean to be so insensitive, to imply that you are giving me a beautiful gift that might harm me. Rather, I should have simply thanked you.” At that point, he cleared his throat: “I think you are like these roses. You have a genuine, radiant and rare beauty residing in your psyche. There is also a deep pain within you—the thorns of shame and guilt. The trick is to join the two forces together creatively. Perhaps your writing will do that for you?”

I remained in Vancouver until Ethel died at the end of 1980. In the last four years of her life, her bad health had almost completely removed her from existence. I prayed she spent that dream life reunited with Wallace. A few days after she passed away, Casper died quietly in his sleep.

Five years before, in 1975, I had given up my job at Duthie's to write full-time. I did not move to another home in Vancouver, although by 1980 I had published four novels, two of which had been optioned to Hollywood. Since many of the reviewers of my books had pointed out that my female characters were rendered in a series of finely crafted closeups worthy of a Josef von Sternberg or a George Cukor, I supposed it might be a fairly natural process for those books to be turned into films. Once or twice I have asked myself: did I become a writer because the kind of movies I loved as a young woman have completely disappeared?

On the West Coast I was in danger of becoming a celebrity, and I decided that my anonymity might be best preserved in a large, impersonal city like Toronto. So in January 1981 I moved here. When I boarded the plane on the twelfth of January, I wondered how really different I was as my sixty-first year approached from the relatively young woman who had settled on the coast twenty years before. Had the leopard lost any of her spots?

When I returned to Ontario from the West, I was on the verge of becoming rich. I purchased this two-bedroom condominium, immediately outfitting one of the bedrooms as a study. I also acquired two Hockneys and four Hodgkins in one fell swoop at Waddington's inYorkville. Within a month, I had settled into my new nest and established the pattern that had—until five years ago—prevailed for the past twenty years. I lived in Toronto from January through to the end of May. During that time, I wrote, usually six hours a day.

Every other spring, I flew over to England with the manuscript of a new novel, stayed with Judith Smith who promptly read and edited
it, and then I travelled, sometimes with Judith, sometimes alone. In alternate years, I took long trips to exotic places. I have visited every nook and cranny in central Europe and have gone much further afield: Morocco, Tangier, India, Japan, China.

I am usually away from Toronto for four or five months at a time. In the autumn, I am back in Toronto for about a month and then head south to the Caribbean until the end of December. I have only a handful of friends in Toronto, most of them young writers I have befriended. Kenji Ozu attributes his remarkable success to my assistance; he would have done quite well with or without me.

I want to avoid Toronto in winter, but that was the only time of year—in the past—I could be productive as a writer. Strange, but I could only draw something from myself when the landscape around me was in mourning, awaiting the rebirth of spring. Or perhaps the books were like lovely little lambs born every April and May? My cycle of creativity obviously craved winter's desolation, so dependent was it on bleakness to have any hope of saying something about redemption. I was like the Snow Queen imprisoned in her ivory tower, hoping the words I spun would release me from confinement.

Unlike the poor Lady of Shalott who only saw the world reflected in mirrors, no Lancelot made his way into my heart and forced me out of my tower. For years, I knew too much reality would kill me—as it did her. Yet, despite my best efforts, I can no longer write. That comfort has been withdrawn. I wish I knew why Elizabeth Delamere has not published a novel in four years.

I can no longer concentrate on my new book, my so-called autobiography. I am reduced to cutting out newspaper clippings and making diary entries. In my early days as a novelist, I could reread those entries and somehow transform them. Now they are obdurate to any attempt on my part to wave my magic wand in their direction. Circe doesn't live here any more. I am left with pure dross. No silk purses. Only sows' ears.

Hamilton Spectator, March 19, 1987

BINBROOK—An elderly couple found dead in their Glanbrook home last night are believed to have been asphyxiated from a coal burning stove.

People have identified the deceased couple as Ethela McLean, 73, and Lino Bartollotti, 75. Police believe they have been dead for two or three days.

Mr. Bartollotti, clad only in underwear, was found slumped
around the coal stove which police believe contributed to the apparent asphyxiation. Mrs. McLean was clothed in a light dress and sweater. She lay face-down in a small pool of blood which he thought appeared to come from an injury due to a fall. Doug Turner, a neighbour, called police at six p.m. yesterday when he noticed the couple's mail had not been picked up for two days.

Their deaths have fuelled persistent speculation and rumours in the Binbrook area that the dead woman was actually Evelyn Dick, whose murder trial 40 years ago attracted international attention. Hamilton police say they are sceptical about these claims but confirmed they have sent the woman's fingerprints to Ottawa to compare them with Mrs. Dick's prints. Mr. Turner said he was convinced that the woman, five foot six inches tall, weighing about 130 pounds, who he had seen only on a few occasions during the last twenty years, was in fact Evelyn Dick.