No Safeguards (28 page)

T
HE FOOD DELIVERYMAN
is buzzing. Paul goes to the door and pays him.

“Come eat, Jay. I ordered for you too. Our last meal together in this apartment. It seems epochs ago since we moved here. So much has happened since.” He purses his lips and avoids my eyes.

We sit at the table, the Styrofoam containers spread out in front of us, paper napkins serving as trivets.

“Oh,” Paul says, “this is what you've been eagerly waiting for: the last revelation.” He stands, pulls a sheaf of papers from his seat pocket, and puts it on the table in front of me. “Eat first. You won't want this soup to get cold.” He'd ordered cowheel soup along with jerk chicken and rice-and-red-beans from a Caribbean restaurant. I had taken him and Jonathan there for lunch one Saturday, and Paul fell in love with the food. We eat in silence.

I get up, take the sheaf of papers, go to my bedroom, and sit on the edge of the bed. Now that the drapes are down the sunlight hits me full blast. I go to the armchair, move it out of the sun, sit in it, and begin to read.

Okay. Here's the lowdown on what happened. You know I needed my pot. At the very least a couple joints each day. Well there was this guy — clean-cut, sort of friendly — who used to supply me in Antigua. A fellow in his early thirties, short — about my height —olive complexion, bright, brown eyes. Rarely looked me in the eye when he spoke. He didn't live in Antigua. In fact, I don't know where he lived, most likely in one of the upland villages surrounding Antigua. He'd come in on a Saturday. He had a large clientele. A student at the school had put me on to him. He met us at different hours, each person in a different place. My meeting place was the Central Park on a Saturday.

I used to wait for him around 11 am at a park bench on the southern side. He'd come and sit beside me. We'd pretend a casual conversation. After a while I'd pass him the payment for my week's supply. He'd walk to a coffee shop across the street, presumably to count it. Then he'd come back with a paper bag, take a candy out of it and pass the candy to me; next he'd take one out for himself and put it in his mouth, and pass the paper bag to me. He'd wait around for a minute, then leave. I would leave a few minutes after.

But for two weeks he didn't come. I panicked because I needed the pot to control my asthma, or thought I did. The third week someone else came and sat beside me and asked me how much I needed. I told him a gram. He handed it to me and stretched his hand for the money. As soon as I gave it to him, he flashed me his police badge. Seconds later an older cop, holding a camcorder, came. They handcuffed me and took me to the police station.

I'll cut a long story short by saying that after threats, etc., we settled for a bribe of $1,000: nothing less. They insisted. I paid them $500 that Saturday and said I would let you send me the money to pay them the remaining $500 on Monday. They asked for my passport then. I said it was locked in the school's vault and the school was closed until Monday. They stared at me sceptically and I held my gaze.

They said that at 5 pm Monday they'd come where I lived to collect the remaining $500, and if I reneged, they'd re-arrest me. There was no point, the older cop said, in my trying to leave Guatemala before paying them because they'd already put the information into the computer, and it would show up if I attempted to pass through Guatemalan emigration before they erased it. Every phone call I make would be monitored (all overseas calls have been, he said, since 9-11). From my ID cards they already knew everything about me in Canada “even your address and telephone number.” Letters addressed to me would be intercepted. I wouldn't be able to hide because my picture with the caption “fugitive” would be posted everywhere and printed in the newspapers. He asked me if I understood. I nodded. He said I had two hours in which to contact you — he lifted two fingers to emphasize it — before the system began monitoring me. Then he made me sign a blank report, and winked at me. If I had been thinking straight I would have left the country in those two hours.

My passport was not in the school's vault. I went back to the family I boarded with, packed as much as I could in a backpack, left everything else, and boarded the next bus for Quetzaltenango. You know the rest of the story.

For five hundred dollars! This defies logic. For five hundred dollars you put us through 14 months of hell! Angry, I go to the living room to confront him. A lot of this is poppycock. Why couldn't he write us using a false name? That canard about telephones being tapped and letters intercepted. Not credible. Paul's too intelligent not to have seen through that.

I meet him lying on his back on the sofa, both arms propping up the section of
La Presse
he's pretending to read. “Paul, assuming that what's written here is true, the police gave you two hours to contact me. We have an answering machine. Why didn't you?”

“What can I say? My brain was addled. It's as simple as that. Couldn't think clearly. The whole thing sucked. I think it was my desire to win, to beat the bastards at their own game. They thought they were in for duck soup, cauldrons of it.” He breathes deeply, looks up at me guiltily, and then lowers his eyes. “And I didn't want Ma to judge me. She already saw me as some sort of criminal. What would she have thought if the report came to her that I was arrested on drug charges in Guatemala? Put yourself in my shoes — my phoning, her picking up the receiver; my saying: ‘Ma, I've been busted for marijuana and I need 500 US dollars to bribe my way out of trouble and $500 more to replace what I've already paid'; her giving me an earful, her turning the guilt churn as fast as it would go, not to mention vilifying me with Madam J and all those muttonheads in her church.”

I want to say, Paul, I don't know how you ever got to believe the things you do about Ma. “So you had to keep this from me until now? It's another one of your power games, isn't it?”

“No. It's not. I wanted you to see first that I'd changed, that I'm no longer the scoundrel — isn't that how you and Ma saw me? — that left here in March 2005.”

“Sometimes, I wonder if you're as intelligent as your school performance made you out to be. There are areas in which you're completely daft. You left here a pothead.”

“
Don't call me that!
” His eyes are squeezed tight, and his cheeks retracted in explosive anger. He snorts to relieve the tension. “See? That's what I mean.” He tosses the newspaper onto the floor and sits up with a sprint.

“Let's get this straight. You had to have your pot every day: morning and evening — and I'm sure midday too — and you
object
to being called
a pothead
?”

“
Yes
. It's a putdown the way you say it. See? That's why I'd have preferred to rot in jail than have you and Ma sit in judgement over me.”

“Jail? Paul, you said, ‘
preferred to rot in jail!
' Quite frankly, parts of your story aren't credible. Any blithering idiot could have seen through what you claim that cop said about intercepting your letters and phone calls.”

“Yes!” He strikes the sofa angrily with both hands. “I've left out parts. Now, seeing your reaction, I'm glad I did. I'll never tell you.”

I stare at him hard.

Paul turns his head away.

“As you wish. I hope the RCMP or CSIS never shows up at your door or mine. Does the Canadian High Commission know about your being arrested for drug possession?”

“I don't know. If those cops recorded it, the answer is yes. It's international protocol. Every time foreign nationals contravene the laws of the country they are visiting, the diplomatic services of the visitor's country must be notified. Is that all?”

I could tell you, that not knowing your whereabouts exhausted me to the point where I abandoned my studies, but what purpose would it serve? And for all I know, you might find pleasure in the anxiety and trouble you'd put us through. For a few seconds I resent him; then I recall the inquisitive 6-7 year old busybody at Cousin Alice's, and I'm flooded with the conflicting emotions of care and resentment I had back then.
Drop it, Jay. Let him be. Let the past stay in the past.
“You are right, Paul. We are as we are, and nobody should judge us because nobody can truly know who we are. But I want you to set aside your silly views of Ma. Earning a living prevented her from giving you the attention you got from Grama, Aunt Mercy, and even Lucy. It wasn't her fault. And I don't care if you think I sound like an uncle.”

Paul stands and comes to where I'm leaning against the dining table. “You're angry with me. I've been waiting for you to curse me out. You've always choked back your anger.” He puts both hands on my shoulders and looks up into my eyes. “I caused you to give up your doctoral studies, right?”

I look away, then turn to face him, and force a smile. “It's okay, Paul. Don't worry about it.”

Paul pulls me closer and begins to cry.

“It's all right, Paul. It's all right. You've come a long way. I'm no longer worried about you.”

He swallows, says nothing for a while. “Glad to hear it. I could have told you long ago not to worry so much. Greedy, ugly caterpillars become beautiful butterflies.”

“I know now that you won't throw away your life. That's worth more than a PhD. Besides, I can return to it in the future.”

There's a long pause. Paul ends it, speaking slowly. “I spent a night in jail. That's what I left out. I only agreed to the bribe on the Sunday morning. The younger cop came back to ask me if I'd changed my mind and I told him yes. Bedbugs, fleas, and mosquitoes bit me all night. Four of us were in a cell that's a third the size of my bedroom . . . The morning before I boarded the plane, they beat me up. They slammed me against the wall and slapped me several times. Three of them held me down while one held a cushion over my mouth and nose until I started choking. I hadn't planned a story for them about why I'd overstayed my time and didn't know about the ads — they knew about them, and wanted answers, and I didn't have any. I was waiting for them to tell me about the arrest. They didn't and I would have been a fool to tell them. They made me give them all the money I had on me; said they'd keep me in custody if I didn't. $90 that Carlos' mother had lent me. It pissed them off that I didn't have more. That US$8-story I gave you the evening I came back was pure fiction. Luckily, I had a toonie in a pocket of my carry-on, or I'd have had trouble calling you from the airport.”

We remain silently embracing each other for several seconds.

“Thanks,” Paul says, wiping his eyes with his shirt sleeve. He steps back to look me in the eyes. “You will never think of me again as Loki. You're going to be proud of me the way I'm already proud of you. That's a promise I will keep. And I will hound you until you finish your PhD.”

***

It's an hour before the movers come. Paul and I are sitting in silence at opposite sides of the table. I look into the living room, at the cardboard boxes piled almost to the ceiling, at the naked walls. Anna, Paul, and I came here on January 1, 2000. She left first. Tomorrow Paul will make his second trip to Mexico, and, if all works out as planned, will return with Carlos.

I go in search of a notebook, return, sit at the table, and write, crossing words out and replacing them with other words.
Our lives here, what have they been? What exactly have they been? I should ask Paul. No, it's too soon. When he's my age perhaps. Somewhere, I heard or read that the magic in promised lands ends once they've been reached, that promised lands should never be reached. For then tents won't do, and there are fields to till, shrines to erect, heresies to root out, wounds to inflict and heal . . . And honey and milk come from bees, cows, and camels that must be cared for. The real deal. And the dwellers come to see that they'd been gulled. While in St. Vincent, Ma saw Canada as a promised land; and, in Grama's eyes, Canada was a promised land for Paul and me. And in the opinion of those who decide which are the best countries to live in, Canada is as close to the promised land as we'll ever get to on earth. Jonathan probably does not know it, but it's what he seeks in wanting to wed his life to mine. In the end Ma upgraded to an after-death one, and sang about getting there:

To shady green pastures so rich and so sweet,

God leads his dear children along;

Where the cool flow of water bathes the weary ones' feet,

God leads his dear children along.

Some through the water and some through the flood;

Some through the fire but all through the blood;

Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song

In the night season and all the day long.

Who would want to sully such belief? She had “a home in that rock. / Don't you see?”

And so it has come to this: adulthood, every child's promised land. One phase of life dies to clear space for another; one crop ploughed under to produce another. We wean ourselves from tutelage so adult life can flower. Does adult life flower? (In our more despondent moods we think we're mere flotsam and jetsam in time's sea; now I'm less sure of Paul's labyrinth.) The agency we gain from leaving our parents' and teachers' leashes is quickly lost as employers, spouses, and children leash us anew. I never knew why I found Wordsworth's “Immortality Ode” deeply moving when I first read it in CEGEP. “ . . . Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, / And custom lie upon thee like a weight, / Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life: . . . shades of the prison house.” ( Not that my childhood resembled Wordsworth's.)

Some of the friendships we've made live on in memory, some in occasional contacts: in person, by e-mail, by phone, social media; but the bonds that hold them get brittle, and the activities that nurture them wither — like petals ceding to seed, children to parents, students to workers, social activists to corporate directors. And quickly our faces show the hieroglyphs of life's turmoil; our shoulders stoop and our backs bend under the burden of responsibility — for ourselves, our spouses, our children, and society's misfits. For a while we may cling to the detritus of tutelage, remain perilously poised in a neither nor; but we give in — must give in. For it is expensive to preserve what's already dead; and those who do so do so alone; and in the end they too give in, from wisdom or from weariness. Perhaps this is what Wordsworth meant by “the sad still music of humanity”; or Thoreau: “most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”