Bodily Harm (19 page)

“Lifestyles?” says Dr. Minnow. He’s puzzled.

“You know, what people wear, what they eat, where they go for their vacations, what they’ve got in their livingrooms, things like that,” says Rennie, as lightly as she can.

Dr. Minnow considers this for a moment. Then he gives her an
angelic smile. “You might say that I also am concerned with lifestyles,” he says. “It is our duty, to be concerned with lifestyles. What the people eat, what they wear, this is what I want you to write about.”

He’s got her. “Well, I’ll think about it,” she says limply.

“Good,” says Dr. Minnow, beaming. “This is all I wish.” He picks up his chopsticks again and scrapes the rest of the squid into his bowl. “Now I will give you a good piece of advice. You should be careful of the American.”

“What American?” says Rennie.

“The man,” says Dr. Minnow. “He is a salesman.”

He must mean Paul. “What does he sell?” says Rennie, amused. This is the first she’s heard of it.

“My friend,” says Dr. Minnow. “You are so very sweet.”

There’s a small stationery shop across the street from the hotel, and Rennie goes into it. She passes over the historical romances, imported from England, and buys a local paper,
The Queenstown Times
, which is what she’s come to the shop for. Guilt impels her: she owes at least this much to Dr. Minnow.

Though it’s becoming clear to her that she has no intention of doing what he wants her to do. Even if she wanted to, she could hardly run all over the place, talking to men in the street; they don’t understand the convention, they’d think she was trying to pick them up. She can’t do proper research, there are no books in the library here; there’s no library. She’s a hypocrite, but what else is new? It’s a Griswold solution: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I’m dying, she should have told him. Don’t count on me.

She orders tea and biscuits and takes the paper into the leatherette lounge. What she really wants is to lie down and sleep, and if she goes back to her room she knows she will. She’s trying to resist that; it would be so easy here to do nothing but eat and sleep.

The Englishwoman brings the tea tray herself and slams it down in front of Rennie. “I don’t know where
they’ve
gone to,” she says.

Rennie expects her to go away, but instead she hovers. “There’s no water,” she says. “They should have it fixed in a few hours.” Still she lingers.

“May I offer you some advice?” she says at last. “Don’t have anything to do with that man.”

“What man?” says Rennie. The Englishwoman’s voice suggests some violation of sexual morality, and Rennie wonders what she’s done to deserve this.

“That man,” says the Englishwoman. “Calls himself a doctor.”

“He just wanted to show me the Botanic Gardens,” says Rennie, conscious of a slight lie. She waits for the woman to tell her that Dr. Minnow is really a notorious sexual molester, but instead she says, “The trees have signs on them. You can read them yourself, if that’s what you want.”

“What’s the matter with him?” says Rennie. Now she expects racial prejudice.

“He stirs people up for nothing,” says the Englishwoman.

This time the biscuits are white and sprinkled with sand. The tea is lukewarm. Rennie fishes the teabag out by its string. She doesn’t want to leave it on her saucer, it’s too much like a dead mouse, so after some thought she conceals it in the earth around the mottled plant.

The editorial is about the election. Dr. Minnow, it seems, is almost as bad as Castro, and Prince Macpherson is worse. If anyone
at all votes for either of them, they are likely to combine forces and form a coalition, and that will be the end of the democratic traditions that St. Antoine has cherished and protected for so long, says the editor.

On the front page there’s a story about the new sugar factory Prime Minister Ellis is planning, and an article about road repairs. There’s a picture of Ellis, the same picture that’s everywhere on the posters. The Canadian High Commissioner has recently paid a visit from his base in Barbados, and a reception was given for him at Government House. Canada is sponsoring a diver training program for lobster fishermen on Ste. Agathe, where most of the fishermen live. The inhabitants of Songeville will be pleased to learn that the United States has contributed an extra five hundred thousand dollars to the hurricane relief fund, which will be used to repair roofs and fix the schoolhouse. Those still living in temporary camps and in churches will soon be able to return to their homes.

The Englishwoman comes back in, white-faced, tight-lipped, dragging an aluminum step ladder which screeches on the wooden floor. “If you want it done, do it yourself,” she announces to Rennie. She sets the ladder up, climbs it, and starts taking down the tinsel festoons, her solid white-marbled calves two feet from Rennie’s head. There’s a strong smell of women’s washrooms: tepid flesh, face powder, ammonia. Rennie tries to read a story about the sudden increase in petty thievery, but the Englishwoman is making her feel lazy and selfish. In a minute she’ll offer to help and then she’ll be stuck, catching those fuzzy fake poinsettias as the Englishwoman tosses them down and putting them away in that tatty cardboard box. She folds up her newspaper and retreats to her room, carrying her cup of cold tea.

“WHAT TO DO IF THE THIEF VISITS YOU,”
she reads. “1. Have a flashlight by your bed. 2. Have a large can of Baygon or other
insect spray. 3. Shine the flashlight into his face. 4. Spray the Baygon into his face. 5. Go to the police, make a statement.” Rennie wonders what the thief is supposed to do while you’re spraying the Baygon into his face, but doesn’t pursue this further. Like everything else she’s been reading, the instructions are both transparent and impenetrable.

She skips the column entitled “Spiritual Perspectives,” toys with the idea of doing the crossword puzzle but discards it; the answers are on page 10 and she knows she’ll cheat. The Housewives’ Corner has nothing in it but a recipe for corn fritters. The Problem Corner is by Madame Marvellous.

Rennie closes her eyes and pulls the sheet up over her head. She doesn’t have the strength to untangle the mosquito netting.

Oh please
.

Rennie lies in bed and thinks about Daniel. Which is hopeless, but wasn’t it always? The sooner she stops the better. Still, she keeps on.

It would be easier if Daniel were a pig, a prick, stupid or pompous or even fat; especially fat. Fat would be a big advantage. Unfortunately Daniel is thin. Also he loves Rennie, or so he said, which is no help at all. (Though what did it amount to? Not much, as far as Rennie could see. She isn’t even sure what it meant, this love of his, or what he thought it meant; which may not be the same thing.)

Rennie once spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Daniel meant. Which was difficult, because he wasn’t like any of the people she knew. The people she knew spoke of themselves as bottoming out and going through changes and getting it together. The first time she’d used these phrases with Daniel, she’d had to translate. Daniel had never bottomed out, as far as she could tell, and apparently he’d never felt the need to get it together. He didn’t think of himself as having gone through changes. In fact he didn’t seem to think of himself much in any way at all. This was the difference between Daniel and the people she knew: Daniel didn’t think of himself.

This sometimes made it hard for Rennie to talk to him, since when she asked him questions about himself he didn’t know the answers. Instead he acted as if he’d never even heard the questions. Where have you been for the past twenty years? she wanted to ask him. Etobicoke? It was more like Don Mills, but Daniel didn’t seem
to care where he lived. He didn’t care what he ate, he didn’t care what he wore: his clothes looked as if they’d been picked out by his wife, which they probably had been. He was a specialist, he’d been immersed, he knew only one thing.

He thought Rennie knew things he didn’t know but ought to; he thought she lived in the real world. It pleased him to believe this, and Rennie wanted him to be pleased, she liked to amuse him, though she was afraid that sooner or later he would decide that the things she knew weren’t really worth knowing. Meanwhile he was like a Patagonian in Woolworth’s, he was enthralled by trivia. Maybe he’s having a mid-life crisis, thought Rennie. He was about that age. Maybe he’s slumming.

Sometimes they had lunch together, but not very often because most of Daniel’s life was spoken for. At lunch Rennie did tricks, which was easy enough with Daniel: he could still be surprised by things that no longer surprised anyone else. She deduced the customers from their clothes, she did them over for him in front of his very eyes. This one, she said. A receptionist at, let’s see, Bloor and Yonge, but she’d like you to think she’s more. Overdid it on the eyeshadow. The man with her though, he’s a lawyer. At the next table, middle management, probably in a bank. I’d redo the cuffs on the pants, the lawyer’s, not the other one. On the other one, I’d redo the hair.

I don’t see anything wrong with his hair, said Daniel.

You don’t understand, Rennie said. People love being redone. I mean, you don’t think you’re finished, do you? Don’t you want to change and grow? Don’t you think there’s more? Don’t you want me to redo you? It was one of Rennie’s jokes that the perfect magazine title would be “Sexual Makeovers.” People thought of their lives as examinations they could fail or pass, you got points for the right answers. Tell them what was wrong, preferably with them,
then suggest how to improve it. It gave them hope: Daniel should approve of that.

How would you redo me? said Daniel, laughing.

If I could get my hands on you? said Rennie. I wouldn’t, you’re perfect the way you are. See how good I’d be for your ego, if you had one?

Daniel said that he did have one, that he was quite selfish in fact, but Rennie didn’t believe him. He didn’t have time for an ego. During lunch he looked at his watch a lot, furtively but still a lot. “Romance Makes a Comeback,” thought Rennie. She kept hoping she’d see enough of him so she’d begin to find him boring; talking with Daniel was a good deal like waltzing with a wall, even she knew that. But this failed to happen, partly because there wasn’t a whole lot of him to see. When he wasn’t at the hospital he had family obligations, as he put it. He had a wife, he had children, he had parents. Rennie had trouble picturing any of them, except the parents, whom she saw as replicas of American Gothic; only Finnish, which was what they were. They didn’t have a lot of money and they were very proud of Daniel, who wasn’t any more Finnish than she was except for the cheekbones. Sundays the parents got him; Saturdays were for the kids, evenings for the wife. Daniel was a dutiful husband, a dutiful parent, a dutiful son, and Rennie, who felt she had given up being dutiful some time ago, found it hard not to sneer and hard not to despise herself for wanting to.

She wasn’t jealous of his wife, though. Only of his other patients. Maybe I’m not the only one, thought Rennie. Maybe there’s a whole lineup of them, dozens and dozens of women, each with a bite taken out of them, one breast or the other. He’s saved all our lives, he has lunch with us all in turn, he tells us all he loves us. He thinks it’s his duty, it gives us something to hold onto. Anyway he gets off on it,
it’s like a harem. As for us, we can’t help it, he’s the only man in the world who knows the truth, he’s looked into each one of us and seen death. He knows we’ve been resurrected, he knows we’re not all that well glued together, any minute we’ll vaporize. These bodies are only provisional.