House of Spells (12 page)
To free myself, I leaned forward to rest my fingertips on the sill. The varnish gripped my fingertips when I touched it, like frost on a metal door handle.
I went over to Mr. Giacomo’s table, and I laid out before him the book page from my pocket and the Japanese bowl. He stared at them, and then at me.
I should say how I got that bowl.
I’d heard that work had stopped on the Burton house, and I went there that afternoon to see Mrs. Giacomo. I’d been wondering how she was. I’d brought a book with me that I wanted to show her. It’s called
A Catalogue of Unrecovered Items, Volume Four:
Pottery and Clay Figurines
, a train book that Michael Guzzo had bought in the Grizzly Bookstore. It was published by the Allied Powers after the war. In the introduction it says that the catalogued items, some of them identified by insurance photographs, were never recovered during the occupation of Japan, and the purpose of the catalogue, in several volumes, was to pass on the work of recovery to future generations.
The kitchen was still filled with unpacked boxes, the green cushion from the sofa in the downstairs hallway was still on her bed. I could hear the garden hose dripping in the kitchen sink. I ran my hand along the plaster walls, smooth as a yew wood drying board. They gave off a soft glow and they smelled like chalk. There were footprints up and down the hallway in the plaster dust, some of them my own. The propane heaters stood collected at the doorway. The camp stove still had a pot on it, a thin skin of dust on the bottom of the pot. The two clay bowls that Mr. Giacomo wanted to drink from in celebration were still on the counter. I leafed through the book, found the photo I was looking for. Those bowls were from the Tokugawa period, just as Mr. Giacomo had said, the potter’s mark incised in the base. His wealth hadn’t come from logging in the Nachako country. His wealth had come from artifacts he’d stolen at the end of the war. He had worked as a translator on Shido Island and used his knowledge to profit from the war.
I hated him then. I hated his lies, the sham way he’d gone about making a place for himself in our life. I hated him and Mrs. Giacomo, too, for the way they were trying to wall Rose in with their grief.
I pocketed one of those bowls. I stayed for an hour or so, lit candles that sputtered and crackled. I looked through Mrs. Giacomo’s dresser drawers for her clothes and I looked under the foyer bench for any sign of recently worn shoes. I found out later she had left, maybe soon after the birth, moved back to their house on 4th Street, where she stayed alone in her room.
Now I placed the bowl very tenderly, gently before him, quietly, like in the stillness when the hawk comes. I smoothed out the page with the photograph on it as though it were a precious sheet, pure washi. I felt that something inside me was just about to break.
I didn’t want him to have the whole book, just that page. Maybe he had other things that were in that book. But I only knew about the bowls, so that was all I could accuse him of.
The crinkles at his eyes deepened and paled, but he smiled.
“So you know,” he said, and I nodded.
“They had lost the war,” he smiled, “the ones we interrogated. The crown prince, the naval officers. We only took from them what they’d already stolen during their retreat.”
He paused, and a shadow drew into his eyes.
“That happened so long ago,” he said, a softness in his voice. “It’s not something I think about often.”
I started yelling at him then. I told him not to waste his confident smile on me. It might look like he was trying to help Rose, but he was just hemming her in with his deceit. And nothing he had to offer was worth one touch of her freckled hands, one moment of her dancer’s grace.
Just then Rose came out of the kitchen. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing!” and he quickly balled up the sheet and pocketed it, put the bowl on a glass shelf behind the bar, by the upturned wineglasses.
That was the last time I spoke to Mr. Giacomo.
I left, didn’t stay for the parish supper. I was shaking, exhausted, and yet I felt a kind of joy. I walked down our main street towards the tracks, hating his complacent smile, hating the fact that he didn’t seem to care about what I felt. He was going to have his family his own way, at whatever the cost. But I wasn’t going to let him.
What if Michael Guzzo found out that he was a father? With all the loss that he’d had in his life, maybe this was one loss he wouldn’t allow to happen, pushed out of the life of his son. Maybe it would be important for him to say to the Giacomos, Enough, this you can’t take from me.
Yesterday, when I got back to the fire tower from my days
off, I brought along the ticket I’d bought to Guatemala City.
I knew that Michael Guzzo was somewhere in Guatemala.
The photo that he’d shown me was of a sacred lake in the
district of Quetzaltenango, in the western highlands of that
country. I’d decided to go find him.
As soon as I got in the door I saw that the cabin was
not as I’d left it: my bed had been pushed to the north wall,
the chrome-legged chairs had been moved from the east to the
west window, my basil plants shuffled along the banister, the
cutlery switched in the hutch, the stacked dishes pushed back
on the counter. Nothing was where it was and I felt terrified,
as if this place were not mine, as if I’d lost my life.
One book was missing from my collection on the east sill,
the Catalogue of Unrecovered Items.
Just at dawn, the sound of dripping water. Everywhere
I could hear melting snow. Today the cabin is to be boarded
up for the winter, plywood nailed over glass, the doors locked.
Through the window by my bed, I see snow water flowing
over frost on a rock outcrop that looks like strands of a girl’s
hair. Lightning storms that used to sweep through this valley
go on the other side of the foothills. Now I see smoke from
campfires on Olebar Lake.
Below, in the village, people are turning on their breakfast
lights.
The logging fires are still smouldering on the Palliser
Ridge, a white, drifting smoke that reminds me of washi paper.
When I applied for this job, the Forestry Service questioned
my young age, my ability to be alone. That age and
loneliness go together is not questioned.
When I was younger, I was more sure of myself, and
now I feel porous, less contained, like a sheet of my father’s
washi. I go out of here in dreams and when I nod off
I sometimes can’t tell the difference between dream and
memory and when I awake I look on myself as a stranger.
There is a squirrel sleeping in the wall; during the day
it raids the bird feeders.
The pines below the ridge are singing. I can smell the
resin in the swaying trunks. Last night’s stars have a
scoured midwinter sharpness. Outside the west window,
one last star shows its grape petal rays.
There really are so many ways to be a little more gentle
in this world.
EXCERPTS FROM THIS NOVEL HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN
Writing Beyond History
(MONTREAL: CUSMANO COMMUNICATIONS, 2006) AND AS A CHAPBOOK ENTITLED
Mio Zio
(TORONTO: FLAT SINGLES PRESS, 1999) .
FOR THEIR ENDURING SUPPORT AND FRIENDSHIP, MANY THANKS TO ANNA, DEANE, REBEKAH, LAURIE, DREW, CHERYL, DAVE, CHRISTIE AND FLOYD. THANKS ALSO TO MARILYN BOWERING, STEVEN GALLOWAY, EDNA ALFORD, MARY WOOD, AND ESPECIALLY TO PAUL MATWYCHUK, ANDREW WILMOT AND NATALIE OLSEN AT NEWEST PRESS.
THE AUTHOR EXPRESSES HIS DEEPEST GRATITUDE TO TOM WHARTON, EDITOR AT NEWEST, FOR HIS CAREFUL READING OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT AND FOR HIS ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORT OF
The Wheel Keeper
PROJECT.
THANKS ALSO TO VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY AND TO THE BANFF CENTRE’S WRITING STUDIO FOR THE TIME AND PLACE TO COMPLETE AN EARLY DRAFT OF THE MANUSCRIPT.
ROBERT PEPPER-SMITH LIVES ON A FARM IN THE CINNABAR VALLEY WITH HIS LOVE ANNA AND TEACHES PHILOSOPHY AT VANCOUVER ISLAND UNIVERSITY. HE IS AT WORK ON THE THIRD NOVEL IN THE WHEEL KEEPER SERIES, TENTATIVELY ENTITLED
Lake of Memory.
THIS BOOK WAS TYPESET IN CENTAUR, RELEASED BY MONOTYPE.
THE ENDSHEETS ARE PRINTED ON DOMTAR COLORS 20-LB CHAMOIS.
THE TEXT PAPER IS 55-LB ROLLAND ENVIRO 100 NATURAL.
