Heroes (29 page)

He walked to where Spadina Road met Bloor and set down his baggage on the pavement to try and warm his freezing fingers inside his pant pockets. Gloves for his hands, a place to put down his stuff, a warm bed for his head for the night: As suspected all along, the philosophers had been lying —
these
were the Big Questions.

Anti-intellectual thought thunk, who, then, but Smith, Bayle's thesis advisor, striding down Bloor Street with Italian-leather-gloved hands dug deep in the caverns of his enormous black overcoat with matching black felt beret tilted at just the right angle — the beret and tilt were legit; Smith and his wife cathedral and castle-hopped on the continent every summer and sabbatical they could. Without missing a beat:

“Okay, here's the deal, Bayle,” Smith said. “I'll promise not to harangue you and demand an explanation for your presenting yourself
on the night before the most important day in a young scholar's life
because, obviously, no explanation could possibly suffice. Let us just hope that you've been holed up somewhere studying very hard for your defence. That would at least explain your looking like hell even more than you usually do. And tell me that you
did
give the medieval period a good going-over as I asked you to. Believe me, I sympathize entirely with your indifference toward all things Catholic, but you know as well as I do that Professor Allen is
somehow going to manage to bring something up about the Middle Ages simply because the old goat doesn't know much about anything else. And how about if we just pretend that the revised copies of your thesis that you were going to have delivered to me two weeks ago got lost in the mail, all right? Thankfully, as I have tried to impart to you for more than a year now, there was nothing that needed revision anyway, so I took the liberty of having my own copy duplicated and distributed to the other members of your committee. Where are your gloves and hat, Bayle?”

“All the stuff in my apartment, it's... I mean, all my ....”

“All your clothes are in lock-up somewhere because you've been evicted, correct? I thought it might be something like that when I stopped by your flat and the woman who answered your door claimed to never have heard of you. Not that you won't get them back, I'm sure, but except for your books and personal items, I can't say it's that much of a loss, really. You're going to have to buy a new suit for your interview with Hunter next week in Waterloo, anyway. Besides, you've only been evicted. There are worse crimes.”

Yeah, Bayle thought. Like embezzlement, entrapment .... Then thought: Hunter?

“I never called Hunter,” Bayle said. “I mean, I called him, but we never actually set up an appointment. I mean, I tried, but —”

“But you were understandably far too occupied chronicling the fascinating exploits of your hockey team to actually do anything more than leave a single message on his answering machine. I know. But luckily for us he had to be suddenly hospitalized a couple of weeks ago to correct an irregular heartbeat and, until recently, was entirely out of commission. When he started feeling better and began answering his phone again I told him you were simply too considerate to bother him with your merely professional concerns during his convalescence and it turns out he found your placing of his undisturbed return to health over improving your job prospects admirable in a young whippersnapper
like yourself. Anyway, you
do
have an interview, he's even
more
interested in meeting you now, you
will
be wearing a new suit purchased with, I'm sure, substantial monies received from whoring around for your girlfriend's magazine, and you
will
get the job. Your letters of recommendation have been sent ahead and, as I said, I've read through your entire manuscript again. It's brilliant, Peter. You've captured the very soul of Empiricus. Even if the old boy would deny having one, of course.”

“Jane's not my girlfriend anymore,” Bayle said.

Smith took off his beret and ran a gloved hand over his balding, slightly sweating head. Bare hands still stuck in his pockets, Bayle began to slightly stutter-step in place, trying to keep warm.

“Where have you been staying then?” Smith asked. “I assume you've been back for some time now.”

“I've ... been around,” Bayle said. It began to snow.

Smith put his beret back on, suitably adjusted it, and picked up Bayle's bag and laptop. He talked as he walked, Bayle keeping up alongside.

“I'll lend you my running outfit — it's freshly laundered, not to worry — and after a thorough hosing down in the shower and maybe if you're your usual charming self, Myra will put out an extra plate on the table and throw your clothes in the washer. About that sad excuse for a jacket there's not much that can be done between now and ten o'clock tomorrow morning so I'll have to lend you one of mine. We would appear to be about the same size. After dinner you can use my office to get some final studying done. There's a fold-out couch in there. I'll set the alarm for eight. The room is booked for ten but we should be ready to go fifteen minutes before then.”

Inside the Spadina subway station Smith dropped a transit token in the cash box and walked through the silver turnstile, lifting Bayle's gear over top. Bayle on the other side picked through a palmful of American nickels, dimes, and
pennies, not coming up with the necessary fare no matter how hard he tried.

Smith leaned over and dropped another token in the box. “Send me a nice tie when you get settled in Waterloo,” he said, leaving Bayle to carrying his own luggage.

“Thanks,” Bayle said.

“And please, please, at least skim through Part Two, Volume Two, of Copleston's A
History of Philosophy.
There are eleven chapters in there on Aquinas and I just know Allen will figure out a way to work him in somehow. It never ceases to amaze me how otherwise intelligent people can always find a way to put Christ's nose into all sorts of places He most certainly doesn't belong.”

M
YRA,
S
MITH'S
wife, an architect and accomplished amateur cellist, was kind, intelligent, and charming. Their two children, Brad and Zelda, ages 11 and 13, polite and bright. The large house in Rosedale, while stylishly turn-of-the-century and exhibiting the family's bookish, cultured interests, never approached the pretentious. Bayle sat at the kitchen table in clean grey sweatpants, a jazz piano solo softly tinkling from unseen speakers, a savoury wash of basil, garlic, and romano warmth rising from his plate of steaming handmade linguini gently massaging his face. Like the grade-schooler who is astounded to spot his teacher at the grocery store or shopping mall, part of Bayle felt certain that
the ball-busting academic he'd known at the university for the last several years simply couldn't be the same man sitting across the table from him patiently discussing the origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict with his daughter and joking with his son about the ineptitude of the Maple Leafs' present goaltending situation.

Smith poured his wife another glass of Casillero del Diablo. “Speaking of hockey, I bet you didn't know we've got a veritable expert staying with us tonight, Brad,” he said to his son.

“Yes,” Myra said, silently thanking her husband for his attention with a soft smile, “what exactly were you doing down in the U.S., Peter? I know where you were and that it had something to do with hockey, but Tom was a little sketchy on the details.”

Bayle looked up from his plate of pasta, jarred from the simple joy of just being clean and warm and full of good food and a little buzzed on the red wine. He cleared his throat. “Basically I just spent a little time down there with a minor-league hockey team called the Warriors for a piece of journalism on the how and why of the spread of hockey in the lower States.”

Smith's son set down his water glass, Bayle's stock suddenly rising from merely-aspiring-another-version-of-his-dad to a guy who got to hang out with a hockey team.

“And what kind of hows and whys did you come up with?” Myra said.

Bayle picked up the half-full bottle of wine and asked if anybody wanted a refill.

“No,” Smith said, taking the bottle out of his hand and setting it back down on the table. “And neither do you. Not if you don't want the Middle Ages to actually seem that long ago tomorrow morning at ten.”

Bayle slowly nodded his head in agreement but still eyed the bottle of Chilean red. Looked up to see the whole family, forks in neutral, waiting upon his answer. He could barely remember the question.

“I'm sorry, Myra,” he said. “It's been a long day. What was that again?”

“The hows and whys, Bayle,” Smith said. “The hows and whys of your trip.”

“Right. The hows and whys of my trip. Well, after a lot of careful consideration, after a lot of research and investigation, I came to the conclusion that ... the whys most definitely outnumber the hows. Outnumber them big time. Outnumber them big time every time.”

Myra smiled politely, drank her wine. Smith and his daughter returned to their pasta. Only Brad hung on a little longer before he eventually gave up, too. Without looking up from his meal, “The Middle Ages, Bayle,” Smith said. “And don't forget about Aquinas.”

Bayle thanked everyone for a wonderful meal and retired to the study.

Where Smith sure had a lot of books. Yes, sir (insert here long, slow whistle of appreciation at sheer enormity of number of editions), a whole lot of books.

And after scanning the spines on several of them and even taking a couple off the shelves to peruse the back — and after losing a best-four-out-of-seven of tic-tac-toe to himself scribbled on the front page of his thesis — Bayle spent the rest of the evening actually absorbed in one of the volumes until Smith knocked on the door of the study at eleven-thirty to say goodnight and deliver Bayle's washed-and-dried clothes. Bayle attempted to slide Smith's 1959 undergraduate yearbook from the University of Western Ontario down between the armrest and seat cushions of the couch

“Well, how's it going?” Smith said. He laid Bayle's clean clothes and a fresh towel for the morning over the end of the couch Bayle wasn't sitting on.

“Good,” Bayle said. “Good.”

Smith frowned. He walked around to the other end and pulled out the book. He held up the slim blue volume with one hand and, mute with amazement, could only point to it with the other.

“I didn't know you were studying to be a priest,” Bayle said.

“No, and now that you do, you're just that much closer to acing your defence tomorrow, aren't you? I mean, really, Bayle ....” Smith dropped the yearbook on the floor and sat down at the wooden swivel chair at his desk with his back to Bayle, elbows on the desk top, chin in his hands. Bayle picked up the book and set it down on the couch beside him.

“You know,” Smith said, still not facing him, “the only way I can get my mind around you sometimes is by thinking that you're either the coolest, most cocksure sonofabitch I've ever met who just might be Empiricus incarnate, or you really just don't care.” He swivelled around in his chair and looked at Bayle. Bayle was looking at the yearbook.

“Why did you want to be a priest and why did you decide not to?”

“Did you hear what I just said, Bayle?”

“I heard you. Did you hear me? You go first.”

Smith considered this for a moment. Rolled his eyes.

“I came from a little town in northeastern Ontario, right along on the Quebec border, where you were either Catholic or you were Indian. We weren't Indian so I was Catholic. Simple as that. My father, besides being an usher and serving on every church council he could and being the one who woke me up every morning at a quarter-to-six to go to mass, was the editor of the little newspaper we had there, so he made sure I got a decent enough education, that I didn't end up like the other guys who usually ended up working in the mines or joining the army. He sent me off to study philosophy and theology at Western when I was 17 so I could become a priest and get him just that much closer to God. That's my theory, anyway. But in second year I took one of my electives in analytic philosophy because the title of the course sounded impressive and worlds collided. Over the next couple of years I still took a bunch of theology courses and even got one of my majors in it so the old man would continue to foot my tuition and board, but after that one class I knew I wanted to do philosophy and that the study of theology was basically much ado about nothing.”

Smith leaned back in his chair, gave a little that's-all-there-is-to-tell shrug and half-smile.

“That's it?” Bayle said.

“That's it.”

“Losing your faith: it was just that simple?”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Smith said.

Bayle put the yearbook on his lap; flipped until he came to a picture of Smith in a group shot of the International Student Christian Fellowship, UWO chapter. He put his finger on the picture and shoved the book at Smith.

“The yearbook and that picture are both from first year,” Smith said. “Before my Age of Enlightenment.”

“But it's
you
, right?”

“Of course, it's me. What's your point?”

Bayle closed the yearbook. Leaned back against the couch and closed his eyes.

“So what's your story, Bayle?”

Bayle didn't answer.

“Well?” Smith said.

Eyes open, “Biggest day of a young scholar's life tomorrow, right?” Bayle said. “And I guess that Aquinas isn't going to read itself.”

B
OY-MAN IN
a bubble.

Boy-man: Bayle.

Bubble: lip-blown (but by imbibing, not the usual way, by blowing); moderately impenetratable; and, if a constant source of eighty-proof bubble-juice continues to go down the gullet, enough of not others and other things outside the bubble to make moment to moment kind of all right. Or at least slightly more so than it might be if non-bubbled otherwise.