Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (36 page)

F
OR THE LAST YEAR
M
ARKUS HAD KNOWN WHERE
D
ORAN
lived, in a small house in a hardscrabble part of lower Saint John.

Markus had brought a book from his own bookshelf down to Saint John for Doran to read. He had searched for the book for a long while, and discovered it at the very end of the third row on one of his bookshelves just before leaving for the hospital.

And so in November 2006 he brought the little odd book down to give to Doran, along with Brice’s envelope, of course.

But after he had arrived in Saint John, Markus discovered something else about Doran: he had a disabled daughter and lived with her alone. His wife had left him and the child some years ago, though she would come back to visit with great excitement and concern every year or so.

Each day Doran worked at a call centre. Then he would go home at night by bus from Union Street, through the gloom of the city, and pick his child up from a caregiver on Manawagonish Road.

Years ago, Little Joe and Sky had spent all day making a blueberry pie for Max Doran, the man who had come to help them, they believed. Little Joe was the taster and walked about the kitchen wearing big yellow oven mitts. It was Sky’s first pie. Then they left it at Doran’s door.

If this envelope was opened, thought Markus, what would become of Doran now?

But if Markus did not open this letter—minding that the letter actually said something—what would that mean for Amos, or more
importantly, for Roger? Could Markus change that—could he even attempt to?

And Brice Peel: What would become of that thin, harmless man with the stooped gait who worked in a pet store in Saint John, in one of those terrible malls, endless in Canada, that have no light or mercy or freedom from anything? Brice with his beloved rabbits and hares? These were the things—the rabbits and hares—that had cured his seizures. Would opening this letter bring attention to him as a person who had said nothing, who had helped hide a crime? Even his age at that time would be no guarantee of immunity from blame. Would this letter he wanted opened only when he was dead put him into the glare again? Yes, it would. And would that bring the seizures back?

Markus took time to find Brice. And when he found him, he saw that Brice was obsequious and adrift—a vagabond who showered kids with stories about the rabbits and turtles in his care, and had hauled his sleeves down over wrists that he had cut, the stitches leaving a grey, obtrusive gash.

More than anything, watching Brice, Markus wondered what would be the use.

Brice had used an envelope with the address of the pet store on it. It was not the brightest thing to do, but it was in some way comforting to Markus to know Brice was still that gullible—which probably meant he never in his life intended harm to anyone at all. His attempted suicide had not worked, and he had asked George for the letter back. But George could neither send it back nor destroy it.

Markus bought a birdcage from Brice, but Brice did not know who he was.

It was as if in the struggle for Markus’s own life, the places where the answers would be given about his past life would soon be made available.

For he was now being told what to do by everyone.

Don’t smoke; don’t drink; eat vegetables.

But just when they thought he was in his bed for the night—just when Sam said she would drive down in the morning and be with him—Markus disappeared.

He went to the oldest part of the west side of Saint John, through small, broken-up streets, past little shabby houses, carrying a birdcage, and with two budgies in his pockets.

Doran was surprised to see him—or maybe not.

“I have a present for your daughter,” Markus said, “budgie birds—”

He thought: “What a thing to bring after twenty-one years. Yes, he just might take me to be completely insane.”

But he stood at the door with the cage and the birds in his hand, and Number One hopped back and forth and Number Two sat silent. Doran after all these years was hard to recognize, and he didn’t recognize Markus instantly either. Then he said: “Oh, my God—good to see you!”

It was as if the gulf of years had suddenly been closed, like the closing of a time warp in some exaggerated story of the universe.

Max Doran, too, was very ill, with his heart. His little girl did not know. But Markus did. He smiled at the man, and stepped in with his little birds.

When he went in, a little girl looked at him. There was a smell of enclosed space, and the rooms were very small—smaller than any Markus had grown up in. There were a few mementoes on the wall. There was a bundle of laundry in the hall, an old vacuum cleaner. Doran had been cleaning the house.

Markus had brought the girl a milkshake and the budgies. Her name was Heidi. When he entered the house, she was sitting in the middle of the hallway in her wheelchair, watching him intently. She wheeled forward slightly, then stopped, her little face one of mysterious charm. Then came forward again. Markus saw that, to her, her wheelchair seemed as natural as his walk did to him. She knew who he was—her daddy had spoken of him, as being from that reserve up north and having become famous. Markus followed her to her room, and he put the cage up and placed some bird food in the dish.

There were pictures in the room of the girl and her daddy at the Atlantic Exhibition. Doran was holding her up on the merry-go-round. They were both waving at the camera. Yes, Markus told her, he knew her dad.

Heidi’s favourite hockey player was Sydney Crosby. She had his picture in a scrapbook. She showed Markus her goldfish and guppies and let him feed them as well. The water was cloudy. But Markus told her that he knew someone who knew all about fish and turtles and birds and filters for tanks and had healed pigeons when he was young. “Do you want him to come here and help you set up the tanks, and teach you about the budgies?”

“Yes—sure!” the girl said with an open gaze.

Doran listened to this at the door to Heidi’s room, and watched Markus without comment. In the long corridor were the photos he had taken that long-ago day—the eagle, the two Parrish girls hugging, Little Joe making a face at the camera, the stop sign at the end of the road.

Doran had lost weight. Gone was the straw hat. Like Markus, he still smoked. Those little cigarillos that he’d always liked. He offered Markus one.

“Well, it can’t hurt,” Markus said.

“You’ve become famous—travelling with the Governor General, Prince Edward and all of that. I keep up with you.” Doran smiled. “I keep up with Gordon Young, too—a real journalist. That story with the navy he did—nothing in Canada better last year—and now reporting from Afghanistan!”

Quien es?
Markus thought. Doran could have been as great a journalist as any. “Mary Cyr is on her third husband,” he commented. “I think one—that cabinet minister—used to beat her up.”

“Yes, I know too many ghosts,” Doran said.

Then Markus began to talk of things seemingly inconsequential. Of the little adobe village in Chile, of raw blubber he had eaten at a ceremony in the North, of the site of Custer’s last stand. He stayed for a long time, talking of this and that. He learned that Doran was on three
kinds of medication, that he was worried about the child. “We should quit smoking, you and I,” Markus said.

“Sure, if I take my meds and do my exercise, I will be okay.” Doran smiled. “But then, what cures a broken heart?”

Suddenly Markus wasn’t even sure why he had come, or why he was saying what he was. Doran tried to play host, offered him an Alpine, and tried to remember pleasant things about everyone, even about Joel and Andy. Sometimes he breathed heavily for no reason.

Doran asked about everyone, and hoped everyone was fine. But he knew the whole time that this visit had to do with the favour he’d promised Markus the night long ago when Markus had delivered him across the river. If he was here to collect, whatever he might want, Max was hoping to oblige him.

Yet Markus hesitated, because he knew that if Doran opened this envelope and then wrote a book—and told the truth—he would be sued and held in contempt by others. But, he decided, that was the chance he would have to take. So after a length of time, Markus decided to talk about what Doran might or might not want to acknowledge. It was a strange topic: the condition of their souls.

“What? The condition of our souls?” Max Doran said. “What do you mean?”

Yes, thought Markus, you go into a man’s house you have not seen in twenty-one years, carrying budgie birds, and suddenly begin to talk about the condition of the soul, when both of you look like you should be in hospital beds. He would take you for a lay preacher, a Pentecostal enabler, gone insane.

“Do you write anymore?” Markus asked. “What if I have come to collect the favour you promised at the river’s edge and ask you to write something fully and completely? Make you a great writer once again—”

“Oh no,” Doran said, “I just work at a call centre. I have a little girl to take care of—so here I am.” He smiled. “I can’t afford to write—who would take care of Heidi?” he asked, almost incredulous at the suggestion. But then he said, “I still have a book in me—if I could get
it out. But it always seems to falter somehow.” He smiled wistfully, perhaps having said it in so many places and so many times, he did not believe it anymore himself. Perhaps he said it not to comfort himself but in some way to comfort Markus, just as he had comforted his little girl with the idea that he would someday write the book he spoke about (and had even, haltingly, started).

Markus wished the case he had spent so many years on could be over. And but for the idea of—well, it was strange one, but for the idea of
sin
, it would be over. This is what Markus said now.

For if something else had happened than what people think had happened, Markus said, then the case was not yet solved. The Bigot of the Bartibog did not really ever exist, just like old Mallory or those monsters of our youth on long walks home, and we must say he did not exist, for the memory not only of Roger but of gentle Hector Penniac and Little Joe. Other bigots might exist, and they are the ones who must be held accountable and come out from the shade of our youth to stand in the light and be recognized for who they are.

Doran simply said: “I’m getting a cold—I get one every fall.”

“I know,” Markus said, “but maybe you would like to do a real book—a book that you could really write. What do they call it—a blockbuster!”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, Markus trying to think of something else to say and rubbing his face. He lit a cigarette. “I probably have cancer,” he said, “so I shouldn’t be smoking—find it hard to quit. So you with your heart and me with my lungs should quit together.”

Doran looked at him, startled. Markus winked. Then he took a book from his big pocket and put it on the table, his large hand almost covering the soft cover.

It was the Oxford University Press’s 1985 edition of Joseph Conrad’s
The Shadow Line
. Markus had sometimes thought about the fact that perhaps it was being printed at the time the struggle over Roger Savage was happening on the river. But what he said to Doran was that it was a novel about the sea in the nineteenth century. “Have you read Conrad?” he asked.

“Too gloomy.”

“Well, let me say something about
The Shadow Line.”

He spoke about this book for a while, for about a half-hour. He had read it in his youth just after Amos died. And it was about youth who are for the first time confronted with the harsh reality of the world—events that will turn idealism around, like a becalmed ship. It is a very funny book too, in an absurdist way, Markus said, and he trusted people more who understood that, and thought less of people who did not. He paused for a while, not knowing what else to say.

Then he said, “This is what happened—in our case. The contest was not between Roger Savage and us. That was the secondary show, the secondary battle. The primary war was between you and you, or me and me, or my grandfather and my grandfather. Isaac against Isaac. Joel against Joel.” He was almost whispering now. “That is a strange thing. It was
The Shadow Line
—and suddenly truth became untruth, and we encountered sin. If we even believe in sin.”

“Believe in what?”

“In sin—believe in sin. Do you believe in sin?”

“I—I—don’t know. I suppose I have to in some way.”

“Oh, well—I do, too,” Markus said. “Now more than ever.”

He continued: “Joel Ginnish is dead. He was killed in 1997. Amos is dead. Mrs. Francis is dead. Andy, my friend who killed my old dog, is dead.” Then he whispered, choking up: “If we waited until everyone died, would that be better?”

Doran shrugged. “I do not know, Markus,” he said quietly. But he was saying “I do not know” because he had been running from wanting to know for many years.

“It is up to you,” Markus said, “to find out. I can give you the start of the book, but you have to collaborate with someone, and you have to say, even to your daughter—even to her—that you made a mistake and that may have caused a life to be taken, and that is a terrible duty for us to get right. Me and you, we have to get it right—to get rid of the sin. We will be partners, okay?” He smiled. His lips trembled slightly,
and his voice faltered. “White man and red—partners, okay?” Then he took the envelope, placed it down beside the Conrad book. He took out a pen and his little notebook.

“I am going to give you his address. He won’t know you are going to phone him or want to see him—if you do—if you decide to do so. He won’t want to talk to you, maybe. But I’m going to leave it up to you and him. Then you have to decide to finish the story the way it should have been done years ago. I am putting my confidence in you that you will decide to finish this story now—for me and for you. To keep the promise you made to me years ago.”

He put the piece of paper in Doran’s hand. “Not in spite of your child but for her sake—and not in spite of my reserve but for its sake. It will be very hard on you if you do this. I of course will need the envelope back, no matter what you decide.”