Fever (6 page)

Oh, well, she thinks ruefully, what can you expect from a man you meet in the forest in the middle of the night. This thought delights her so much that she smiles with what appears to be an eagerness and warmth at the roomful of strangers.

Baker is sitting on the side of the bed holding a cigarette in one hand and an ashtray in the palm of the other. The smoke drifts past his bare arm to curl across Janet’s naked hip where she lies with the lower half of her body curled around him. It is cold in the room, but neither of them seem to feel it. She lifts herself and puts her arm across his thigh, her palm on his knee and then
runs her hand down the back of his calf following the contours of the muscle.

“I like your leg,” she says. Her hand reaches his ankle and she pushes it on to feel his long instep and even his toes. “I like your feet, too,” she says. He flicks the ashes from his cigarette into the ashtray which he moves away from her head. “I love men,” she says. “Despite my mother teaching me that I should hate them.” Baker laughs briefly, but doesn’t speak.

Janet sighs and lies back again, straightening her legs and not touching him. He glances at her, then goes back to staring at the wall across from him. She looks up at the ceiling.

“Did you ever see the movie, ‘Heartbreakers'?” she asks. Her voice is dreamy, far away, as though she has forgotten who it is she is talking to.

“No,” he says, still staring at the wall.

“It’s about these two men, good friends, and one of them’s a painter. Peter Coyote and Nick Mancuso, I think.” She pauses, takes a long strand of her dark hair, pulls it around in front of her eyes, then lets it go. “Peter Coyote plays a painter, I think, and he has this model. She’s a call girl …”

“I have to go right away,” he says.

“Just let me tell you this,” she answers. Her voice has returned to its normal tone and quickness. The air in the room, she notices, suddenly feels colder and more taut somehow. She thinks how if there were a fire here, it would pop and crackle now.

“All right.”

“One night the two friends go to her apartment for dinner, and something happens, you know how things happen …” She waits. He nods. “And they all go to bed together.” She lies back again, thinking about the blinking red light on his answering machine in the other room. “The call girl, his model, is in love with him, but he doesn’t love her. And she says to him …
something, um …” She looks at Baker’s smooth back curving up and away from the concave line of her abdomen and touches him with her fingertips, on his shoulder, then drops her hand. “She says, ‘You loved being inside me. You were so … hard.’ “ Baker turns his head to look down at her, his eyelids flicker, then he looks away again. “Then she says, ‘You’re a heartbreaker.’ ”

She touches him again. Her voice has trailed away and in the silence the furnace begins to hum down in the basement. She wonders what time it is—three, four o’clock? And when he leaves, she has to go, too, because it’s his place they’re making love in. He sets his ashtray down on the floor.

“Is that what you think I am?” he asks. “A heartbreaker?” But she doesn’t reply. Only looks at him.

I can’t look through the window behind my desk to those hills to the west without thinking of the dinosaur skeleton that I know lies buried, a few bones exposed by the icy spring runoff, at the bottom of a decaying coulee, its grave a secret all the incomprehensible length of sixty-five million years. To see it I have only to walk a half-mile out onto the prairie, up a sage and cactus strewn slope, around a thinly-grassed hill or two, retreating further and further from civilization into that gorge where only coyotes, deer and rabbits come, till I reach the place below an abandoned eagle’s nest where the pieces of bone protrude from the yellowish clay.

When I was an obscure, barely-published writer filled with dreams of glory, I had made a solitary pilgrimage around the prairie provinces to the few small towns and farms where writers of talent had once lived: to the homestead of the Icelandic poet, Stephan Stephansson in Alberta, to Margaret Laurence’s family home in Manitoba, and in Saskatchewan I had searched for what had been the farm where Sinclair Ross was raised.

For a month I spoke to almost no one; I remember the feel of the steering wheel under my palms, day after day, the green countryside
passing by the open car windows, the heat, the perpetual prairie wind, the undercurrent of loneliness that I could never quite shut off, and my determination that never wavered in spite of it. I felt propelled by some compulsion over which I had neither control nor desire for control. Was it only that I wanted to be close to the intimate, personal lives of writers who had achieved what I only aspired to? Not exactly that—I was searching for something I hadn’t been able to name even to myself. Although I don’t know why this happened, nor any reason for it, the truth is, I was in the grip of the conviction that I had been chosen for greatness.

In southern Saskatchewan I had found the village written about by an American writer who had lived there during his childhood. It was small, not more than seven hundred people lived there, but it was a pretty town, and the shallow river with its steep, grassy banks that wound its way through it, added to its charm. Rows of cottonwoods grew down the streets, probably planted by the first settlers at the beginning of the century, and they had grown so tall that their boughs met overhead to provide welcome shade in what I could see were summers so hot and dry they were barely endurable.

I remember I had no trouble finding the house. Knowledge of who its original owners were seemed to be part of the local folklore, and when I asked where it was, it was pointed out to me with a sort of casual pride that obviously didn’t extend itself to concern about the house’s preservation. It was in a sorry state of disrepair, but I could see that with its gables and its meticulously crafted wooden trim around the eaves, it had once been handsome. I remember that after I had seen its exterior—nobody answered when I knocked—I stopped to eat lunch in the town’s only café, and then I drove on into Alberta.

Not long after that journey my first novel won the top literary prize in the country, and I was abruptly thrust from my impatient obscurity into a measure of fame. Where I had been ignored, I was suddenly in demand, the object of endless interest, of affection and jealousy. I was invited to give readings, lectures and workshops all across the country. I attended meetings, conferences, and parties where I talked too much and drank too much and took full advantage of any woman who showed interest in me.

But as the year after the prize passed, it grew harder and harder to find time to write; I began to feel more and more uneasy. I was afraid I liked the attention too much—people who had never said hello before the prize now hanging on my every word, everyone suddenly having time for me—I was ashamed, and a hollow was growing inside me. I was afraid I might not write again.

Now, lying in the morning in my rumpled, seldom-occupied bed, aching with dissatisfaction and the desire to go back to what I had been before the prize, I thought of that small, decaying house in that distant village. I thought, if only I could live far away from all this, be solitary, and remote from this craziness I’m mired in.

Eventually it came to me: I would use the advances I had received from the publishers of my novel in Britain and the United States to buy that house, I would restore it and I would make it my home. There, maybe, in the surroundings of the famous writer’s childhood, where the great artist in him had surely been born, I would be able to finish my second novel. Maybe it would even be as good as everyone had said my first had been.

I got out of bed, I checked my calendar and then ignored it, I packed a suitcase, got into my car, and drove for five hours from
Saskatoon south to the village where the house was. During that long drive my certainty grew that I was doing the right thing—the volume of work the man had produced well into his old age, the way that it echoed again and again, explicitly, implicitly, of his boyhood in that village he had made miraculous, the startling clarity of his vision, as though his puzzling, half-deprived, half-blessed childhood in that place had perfected in him a vein of prophecy even the best of us in our smoother lives had missed.

When I reached the village, I didn’t pause on the short main street, but drove through puddles of melting ice down its length, made a turn, and pulled up in front of the writer’s house, finding it as easily as if I went there every day. I parked, got out, and I marched up the sidewalk, the front door looked as though it hadn’t been opened in years, to a door on the side, near the back of the house.

I knocked loudly, there was a thumping inside as though someone might have knocked over a chair or banged against a piece of furniture, and then the door opened.

“I want to buy your house,” I said to the big, bulky old man who stood in the doorway blinking into the sunshine of the bright, biting, early spring day. He studied me for a minute out of deep set, small eyes.

“You come inside,” he said, and stood back so I could pass into the house. I entered a small, cluttered room that smelled of bacon fat and grime.

“I pour you drink,” he said. “Sit,” indicating an old wooden chair with a burnt-wood design in the backrest. It was splattered with white paint, but the seat, where the paint hadn’t touched it, was worn to a pale gold satin. I sat in it at the table in front of a window, he reached into a cupboard and brought out a whiskey bottle and two small glasses. He filled the glasses with the thick, purple liquid from the bottle.

“Chokecherry wine,” he said. “You got to get berries when just right,” and he made a delicate, pinching gesture with his thick fingers. “My name Nick Esterhazy,” he said. “You?” I told him my name, and silently resolved to wait for him to mention again the selling of the house.

He began to talk about his life, some roundabout way, maybe, to lead up to naming a price. He was a bachelor, a big, powerful man in no way broken by his years of hard labour as a section hand with the C.P.R., in a country that still remained, for him, foreign. He paused now and then in his telling to peer out the window where it was possible to see part of the sidewalk and the street. He all but slavered at the sight of the teenage girls, their books in their arms, passing by from the nearby high school. He waved his still muscular arms, his small, deep blue eyes gleaming darkly.

“Forty years,” he whispered, leaning close to me so that I couldn’t look away. “Forty years section hand. Work! I tell you we work.” He held out his thick, gnarled hands as evidence. He made a fist, he bent his arm at the elbow and touched his bicep, looking meaningfully at me. He was about to go on, but someone knocked on the door. We had been so intent on each other that neither of us had noticed anyone passing the window. He rose hastily, his chair rocking noisily from his hand thrusting against its back as he stood, and opened the door.

A small, grey-bearded, slightly stooped old man peered up at Nick. He was dressed in a creased black suit that appeared to be made of a heavyweight cotton. The jacket had no collar and his plaid shirt was buttoned up tight against his wrinkled throat. He wore heavy black boots and a black hat too, and he was grinning, exposing a row of strong-looking, yellow teeth.

“So, Benjamin!” Nick boomed. “I not see you for long time! You sick?” I’m sure they heard him at the post office, two streets over.

“Want to buy chickens? I got good chickens,” the old man said. Without waiting for Nick’s answer, he turned to go back to the big van I could see idling at the curb, in front of my car. “I show you,” he called over his shoulder.

“Make damn sure they got both leg!” Nick bellowed. I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not. “I don’t want no more busted chicken!” The old man hurried down the narrow sidewalk, flapping one hand behind him as if to say, don’t be silly. Nick stood in the open door, his body blocking out all but a halo of light above his shoulders and around his head. The old man passed the window again. When he stopped, I could hear him panting.

When their transaction was finished, I watched Benjamin go back down the sidewalk and climb awkwardly into the van. As soon as he had shut the door it pulled away.

“Damn Hutterites,” Nick muttered, but without rancour. He took the two dripping, plastic-wrapped chickens into his bedroom, and I could hear the opening and closing of a fridge door. He had closed off all the rooms except the kitchen and the adjoining room which appeared to be his bedroom. He came back into the kitchen wiping his hands on his pants.

“What’s the matter with them?” I asked. He shrugged.

“Always selling,” he said vaguely. “You want to buy my house?” My heart gave a leap against my ribs and sweat broke out on the back of my neck. I took a drink to cover my nervousness.

“I’d like to talk to you about it,” I said, setting down my glass.

“Have more,” he roared, and filled my glass again. His mood changed abruptly and he sighed heavily, the lines around his mouth turning down. “I want to die in Old Country,” he said. “Have brothers, sisters there. I go home.” He looked sadly at the wall behind me where a small window between the cupboards gave a cramped view of the hills on the western edge of town. “I die with my people.”

I doubted his honesty, he doubted mine, but we managed to strike a deal in a fairly short time. I knew I was being reckless, but I didn’t care. I was desperate to have the house, to live in it, as if some hidden part of myself that my conscious self didn’t have access to, had taken over my will.

I declined his offer to stay the night with him, I had no idea where he thought I might sleep, and went to the hotel. The next day I drove him to the neighbouring larger town where there was a lawyer, we drew up the papers, I wrote a cheque, and the house was mine.

Nick asked for a month to sell his furniture, which I had said I didn’t want, and to make his arrangements. I hoped privately that a month would be enough time. I didn’t like his size with its hint of brutality, his abrupt swings of mood, and his way of narrowing his little eyes at me as if assessing the depth of my depravity.

There was running water in the house, but no bathroom. Nick had used an outhouse during the summer and a chamber pot in winter, so before I left the town that day, I made arrangements with a carpenter recommended to me by the café-owner, in whose café I had eaten my meals, to begin converting an upstairs bedroom into a bathroom. As I drove back to the city I was filled with an elation that I hadn’t felt since I’d received the phone call about the prize, a deep satisfaction that things were going as they should, that puzzled me and disturbed me a little, at the same time as I enjoyed it.

“Don’t bother to visit,” I warned all my acquaintances. “It’s too far away, and anyway, I’m going there to write. I
vant to be alone.”

“No danger,” Will, my closest and oldest friend said. “You’ll be back by fall, if you last that long. Anyway, Cheryl and I will be in the East till late June or July.” His manner was joking, but I
detected an undertone that bordered on cheerful contempt. I didn’t reply, a little surprised, faintly hurt.

I went back to packing my books and clothes and dishes, to sending out change of address notices, arranging to have my few pieces of furniture moved, and to paying a few farewell visits. I debated, then decided not to call my ex-fiancée, Louise. My frequent, prolonged absences during the past year, and what I swore to her was only her overactive imagination had broken our relationship. Anyway, I knew she was involved with a recently-divorced English professor. No doubt she’d hear about my move through the grapevine, the same way I’d heard about her new relationship.

At the end of the month I drove through a greening countryside back to the village, climbing slowly over many miles to that high plateau, and at last descending into the deep valley with the town spread out below me where my house waited for me. It was a soft spring twilight as I descended that long hill, the few lights in the town winking orange, and I had the sensation of sinking into some warm, dusky dreamworld. At the bottom of the hill passing the newly sprouting hayfields on the outskirts, I was seized by a wave of loneliness, so powerful that for a minute I thought I would have to pull over. I slowed, and as the outlines of the first houses grew sharper under the streetlights, the sensation diminished, grew less keen, till only a faint memory of it lingered.

Nick was gone, leaving me, for some unaccountable reason, with the beautiful old chair I had sat on during my first visit, a few other broken remnants of furniture, and a twenty-year accumulation of dirt. I hoped that the other old man, the writer, was still present somewhere in those dusty vacant rooms with their fading, stained wallpaper and their worn, linoleum-covered
floors. Although what I meant when I thought that, I didn’t try to articulate.

While I scrubbed the floors and carted out and burned old rags and ancient, mouldy Eaton’s catalogues I found lying in the back of closets and in the crumbling cellar, I thought of the writer, that serious, book-ridden child, a misfit in a community of work-obsessed, silent people. I found myself looking for his ghost in the bedrooms with their slanted ceilings, and in the decaying front porch where he had sat with his mother on summer evenings, and listening in the night for a hint of his child’s voice echoing through the long years.