In Fond Remembrance of Me (14 page)

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Authors: Howard Norman

BOOK: In Fond Remembrance of Me
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The next day the raven said, “More animals are gone.”
The next day, Noah's daughter said to the raven, “Tell my father that I got married. Say that my brother got married, too. Say that my mother married a good hunter in this village.” The raven flew off with this news.
When the raven landed in the village again, Noah's daughter said, “What did my father say?”
“Good-bye,” the raven said. “Good-bye. Good-bye.”
Winter was long and there were many days nobody had food to eat. Then there would be luck in hunting and fishing. At such times food scraps were left near the ark. Finally, there came the ice-break-up. The ark was set free floating again. Noah's son and his wife, Noah's daughter and her husband, paddled out to the ark in kayaks. “Father, look—!” said the daughter—“look at my husband. Look at your son's wife. Look at us!”
Noah sent down a raven. The raven said, “Good-bye.”
Noah's daughter and her husband, and Noah's son and his wife paddled back to the village.
One day, a boy ran into the village shouting, “Hey—hey—hey—look!” Everyone went to look. They saw that the ark was low in the water. Then the ark sank. Soon Noah floated in holding onto some ark planks. When he washed up to shore, a few children grabbed the planks and ran off. Noah came into the village. The children set the planks on a drying rack.
“This is my wife,” Noah's son said. “This is my husband,”
Noah's daughter said. “This is now my husband,” Noah's wife said. “He's a good hunter.”
“Push me along in the southerly direction,” Noah said.
So some villagers did as Noah asked. They pushed him along. They gave him some food, too. They watched as Noah walked away. Other villagers paddled out onto the water to collect planks. They got quite a few.
THE AFTERLIFE
From my journal, November 8, 1977:
In the Halifax train station Helen wore blue jeans, a white blouse, a gray button-down sweater, white socks, black high-topped tennis shoes she had purchased this morning on Water Street. Helen is taking an evening train to Montreal and then will fly the next day to Amsterdam, London, then on to Tokyo; from there she'll travel to Kyoto to stay with her brother and sister-in-law.
Helen had gotten a haircut, taken a long bath in her room at the Lord Nelson Hotel, bought a few magazines for the train, had a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich for lunch at the hotel. I joined her and we talked and drank tea until around four-thirty, when we took a taxi to the train station. She had one suitcase, her trunk, her satchel full of notebooks, ledgers, diaries, and letters. I was to pack up and send her typewriter as soon as possible to Japan. She looked quite pale; sitting on one of the long polished wooden pews in the station, she noticed me noticing and pinched her cheeks. “Coquette,” she said.
“A word that hardly applies to you, Helen.”
“This is the last time we'll see each other. So, Howard Norman, good-bye. You don't have to wait. I don't mind sitting here alone.”
“I mind not spending more time with you, though.”
“Fine.”
“Good, let's just sit here, then.”
“Let's write letters. Write me a letter, I'll write you back.”
“Sounds good.”
“I need to be more precise about it, I think. How about a letter per week—no, that sounds too often, no matter what. How about a letter every two weeks? You have my brother's address, unless you've lost it?”
“I have it written down.”
“Why not let's choose the same two days each month to post a letter?”
“Fine.”
“The first and the twentieth.”
“Any reason for those?”
“It seems right. To me, they seem right.”
“Want to get something to drink?”
“No thank you. I'm not in the least bit thirsty.”
“Your train doesn't leave for over an hour. You've got your ticket. Let's just talk.”
“I want you to understand that I disapprove in advance, should you fail to send your twice-monthly letters. I've got the one big disappointment, of course. I don't want to suffer small ones, too.”
“I can understand that, sure.”
“The train's in-station, you know. I could board early. You could take in a movie.”
“If you want, Helen, I'll take the train with you to Montreal.”
“Completely uncalled for.”
“I haven't been on a train in a year or so.”
“I'm going to sit and read my books. I'm going to work on my notes. I've always found trains good to work on, you see. Unless, of course, one has the bad fortune of being seated next to a snotty, crying child whose parents don't care that—”
“What? That you're translating a story from Inuit into Japanese—a story about Noah's Ark! Imagine saying
that
to someone on a train. Someone who says, ‘What are you working on, there, if I may ask?'”
“Life can be quite odd, can't it?”
“You know what I noticed? I noticed that one thing you really loved—it always cracked you up—was the kinds of temper tantrums Noah had. In Mark's stories. You know, how he'd come all unhinged.”
“Come all unhinged—that's nice. I'm going to write that down.”
“Suit yourself.”
“No, you're right, I do love those moments. Noah unhinged.”
“I doubt the train's going to be very crowded.”
“I think you're right.”
“Helen, we're not talking out loud about what we're really thinking, are we? Or am I wrong about that?”
“This thing. My ‘condition,' you mean—well why talk about it, here and now? I will say this. Illness tends to turn you inward; it makes you eccentric in ways you never wanted. It's hard to explain.”
“Will you see your doctors in Japan again?”
“Of course—but the news won't change. I've had diagnoses in America, England, and Japan. Same news, same news, same news.”
“You'll be with your family. That's good.”
“Stop trying so goddamn hard. It's getting on my nerves.”
“I think I'm taking the train to Montreal.”
“You, Howard Norman, are not invited.”
“Can you sleep on airplanes, Helen?”
“On a long flight, yes.”
“Not me. I'd be awake staring at the seat in front of me. I'm a bad flier. I don't have a good time.”
“Too bad. That's really a shame.”
“Still, you know what? I'd go—I'd fly to Japan, you know, just to see where you live.”
“Write me a letter over there. We'll see what happens. The thing about flying is, you have to look down and think of painters like Cézanne. High over farmland, think of Cézanne and then you see things nicely. Then you're glad for the view.”
“I'd have to study up on Cézanne's paintings first.”
“Yes, go in that order.”
“Maybe later I'll fly to Japan.”
“I wouldn't be able to give you the Grand Tour, you know. I'd be able to give you some advice on where to travel in the country, though.”
“I guess we start with letters.”
“If you feel like walking around outside, go ahead. I'll wait here.”
“No, I'm fine.”
“Can you see if they sell tea?”
I bought a cup of tea and delivered it to Helen in a paper cup. Arrivals and departures were clicking in on the overhead panel. Montreal was now fourth down. The first three were local, that is, had destinations within Nova Scotia. When I next looked at Helen I saw that she had fallen asleep, the cup of tea still clutched in her hands, though precariously tilted. I managed without waking her to slip the cup from her hands and set it on the bench.
Over the next five or so minutes Helen leaned left in her sleep until finally she was lying down sideways; I woke her ten minutes before her train was called for boarding.
“Why'd you let me sleep?” she said, quite annoyed.
“I just watched it happen. You looked peaceful.”
“Dumb excuse, if you think about it.”
“Come on, it's Gate Two.”
“Wait, I've got something for you.” She opened her satchel and took out a manila envelope and handed it to me. “Please don't open this until—Let's be direct, all right. My brother, Artie, will let you know when. He'll telephone you.”
“Helen—”
“
In Fond Remembrance of Me
—that's what I've titled my little missive.”
“For safekeeping, that's for sure. Maybe I should buy an actual safe for it.”
“A desk drawer will suffice.”
“All right, then. It's Gate Two.”
We did not speak on our way down the stairs. Her trunk had been brought on directly from the luggage room, but I
carried her suitcase onto the train. Helen looked around and found a seat about halfway on the left side. I slid her suitcase onto the overhead rack. She put her satchel on the seat. There were only two other people in Helen's car, an elderly woman and a teenage boy. I could hear the low staticky buzz of his transistor radio. Then Helen changed her mind and said, “Would you carry my bag up front a little way?” She moved to near the front of the car. Now she seemed pleased. She set out her notebooks and magazines. We held hands, in the manner of two children about to skip rope, I mean, and almost immediately let go. She nodded sharply and sat down, but I stayed standing near her seat and looked out the window.
A conductor stepped into the car at the far end and said, “Tickets.” Helen turned to the window; possibly she saw my reflection in the glass, possibly not. “Don't forget me,” she said.
 
 
 
BAD TEMPER
 
In church I heard about Noah's Ark. In the place it was built there were bad people. God caused a flood, and Noah—this man named Noah—was sent floating away on the boat with his family. They traveled around, and what happened was, they got lost.
They drifted into Hudson Bay, is what happened. They arrived at the beginning of winter, is what happened. And—oh, oh, oh—this Noah had a very bad temper. One day, just when the ark was caught in the ice for the rest of the winter, some villagers went out to talk to Noah. They found out his name and found out that the big
wooden boat was called “ark.” “Come on, come on,” a man said to this Noah, “come on, come to our village with your family.”
“No, you'll kill us,” Noah said.
“Why?”
“To get the animals I have on my ark,” Noah said.
“If you give us some, we won't have to kill you to get them.”
“Let's go into the village,” Noah's wife said.
“No,” said Noah.
“We work hard to get animals to eat—we could go out on the ice—hunting is dangerous—we get out there—we fall through the ice—and here you only have to turn around and there's big animals to eat—why don't you?”
“My family eats other things—we don't eat these animals,” Noah said.
“That is stupid—oh, hey, what about if we help you? We'll show you how to hunt seals. We'll show you how to fish through the ice.”
“No, we'll stay on the ark,” said Noah.
Villagers gave Noah's wife, son, and daughter some winter bundling. In their bundling, they went with the villagers out on the ice. Noah wasn't happy about this. He got into a bad temper. He fell to the deck, wailed, and spit—a bad temper.
Out on the ice, Noah's wife, son, and daughter were taught. They caught some seals. They pulled in some fish. They cleaned them. Seeing this, Noah ran out on the ice. He crammed his hand down a breathing-hole and a seal bit him—it bit his thumb.
“Look at those teeth marks on your thumb,” a man said. “Noah, you have angered the seals. Now they'll go away. Let's go to another place to hunt them.”
Noah went back to the ark. His family went with the villagers.
They were gone many days. When they got back, Noah's son said, “Good hunters taught us well. We caught many seals and fish.”
“Look at both your thumbs,” Noah's wife said.
“Yes, while you were away out on the ice, I stuck my hands in breathing-holes. Seals bit them.”
“Your husband is the only one we've ever known to show his bad temper in this manner,” a man said. “Look at his thumbs—look at them!”
With that, Noah's thumbs fell off. They were plucked up by gulls. Noah fell to the deck of the ark. He wept. He spit. His family stayed, then, on the ark—all the rest of the winter. Noah was instructed not to cram hands into seal breathing-holes—he tried a few times when he got angry, but his family caught him at it and dragged him back to the ark. They looked at his hands for teeth marks of seals.
This happened a long time ago, but it happened as I tell it. When the ice-break-up arrived, Noah and his family floated away on the ark. But ice had cracked the bottom of the ark. The ark leaked in water and it sank. Some village men paddled kayaks out—the ark was gone and they couldn't find Noah, Noah's wife, Noah's son, or Noah's daughter.
“Maybe they reached shore somehow,” a man said. “Maybe they reached a village to the south, somehow,” another said. “Maybe they are drying their clothes out somewhere,” another said.
“Maybe,” another said.

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