The Retreat
Praise for
David Bergen
“David Bergen is a master of taut, spare prose that’s both erotic and hypnotic.”
– Miriam Toews
“Bergen’s storytelling style is spare, yet it’s unrelenting in its depiction of the big and small mistakes made and repeated as one generation inevitably lets down the one that follows.”
–
National Post
“The writing of David Bergen … sometimes gets compared to that of Cormac McCarthy; taut, psychological fiction.”
–
Winnipeg Free Press
“With his thoughtful dialogue, Bergen makes his characters’ heartache seep off the page.”
–
Time
“Bergen is a gifted writer….”
–
Toronto Sun
“His spare and suggestive style draws comparisons to Raymond Carver…. His haunting, very human characters will live with you for a long time.”
–
NOW
magazine
“Bergen’s characters move and breathe, demonstrating the delicate balance between hope and despair, salvation and damnation.”
–
Toronto Star
“Bergen’s novels are marvels of spare prose and weighty emotion.”
– Saturday Night
Books by David Bergen
Sitting Opposite My Brother
A Year of Lesser
See the Child
The Case of Lena S.
The Time in Between
The Retreat
Copyright © 2008 by David Bergen
Cloth edition published 2008
Emblem edition published 2009
Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Emblem and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bergen, David, 1957-
The retreat / David Bergen.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-265-5
1. Ojibwa Indians – Ontario – Kenora Region – Fiction.
2. Kenora Region (Ont.)–Fiction. I. Title.
PS8553.E665R48 2009 C813′.54 C2008-907510-2
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
v3.1
To Mary
Contents
Cover
Other Books by this Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I: The Island
Chapter 1
II: The Retreat
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
III: The Clearing
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Acknowledgements
About the Author
I
The Island
I
n early summer of 1973 he left his grandmother’s house and moved his belongings off the reserve to a small cabin near Bare Point where his existence was rigorous in its simplicity. The unpainted rooms, the coop that held the chickens, the furniture of castoffs from the dump, the evenings around the small table upon which several candles burned. He had just turned eighteen, had dropped out of high school the previous spring, and he liked the freedom of his sparse solitary life. He worked at the local golf course and in the evenings drove to town where he met Alice Hart, the daughter of a local businessman who owned the town lumberyard. At the Paramount on Second Street, beneath the marquee, Alice leaned against the wall and waited. She sucked mints and when she kissed him her mouth held the scent of his grandmother’s peppermint tea. Her tongue was quick. She told him to grow a moustache and what he produced was an uneven failure. Because her father had forbidden her to spend time with him, they usually drove the back roads outside Kenora, heading north and then circling back to his cabin where they played cards and drank and undressed each other and Alice promised him eternal love. “Ray,” she said. Her fingers were slight and
the part in her hair revealed a white scalp. Her ears turned bright red after sex.
He had an eighteen-foot aluminum Lund with a twenty-horse Johnson and one evening at dusk Raymond took Alice out onto the lake and they watched a thunderstorm approach from the west. The lightning was high and moved sideways across the sky and it was as if someone were striking matches and failing to light them. Alice wore an orange lifejacket. She was drinking beer and sitting looking back at Raymond and he saw his future and it did not include her. She smiled. Raised her beer and drank. The sky lit up behind her head.
Earl Hart, one of the constables on the town police force and an uncle to Alice, paid Raymond a visit at the golf course on a Tuesday night, just at closing. He was parked beside Raymond’s pickup, and as Raymond approached, Hart rolled down his window and said, “Mr. Seymour.” Raymond nodded and opened the passenger side door to his pickup. He threw in his jacket and lunch bucket and then shut the door and looked at Hart, who said he should get in the cruiser.
“I’d like a word.”
Raymond looked out over the roof of the cruiser to the clubhouse. He put his hands in his pockets and then walked around to the passenger door and got in.
“You golf?” Hart asked.
Raymond said that he didn’t. He just looked after the course, cut the greens and the fairways. He did play basketball though, he said. Point guard. He offered the faintest grin.
“Yeah? You good?”
Raymond shrugged. He said it wasn’t up to him to know that. His coach, Roger, would be able to say.
“So, you’re modest.”
“Might be,” Raymond said.
“You’re not sure.”
“I guess not.”
“Huh. He guesses he’s not sure. Jesus Christ.” He shifted and tapped the steering wheel with a thick finger. “And about golf, you know nothing. Funny. That’d be like me cleaning someone’s gun so’s they could use it, but me never having fired one.” He patted the gun at his right hip. “Don’t you think that’s odd?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he said that he used to golf, but he was a poor player, especially the long distances. “Give me a hundred yards and I’m fine. But off the tee I land out of bounds. Terrible thing to hit out of bounds, don’t you think? Lose a stroke, lose the ball, lose your pride. Big losses all around.” He chuckled, but it wasn’t truly a laugh, more the simulacrum of a laugh, as if he had spent much time as an unhappy man learning how to imitate happiness.
He said, “Alice Hart, my niece. She’s seventeen. You know her.”
Raymond said that he did.
“My brother, Alice’s father, he wanted to talk to you, but I suggested he let me handle it. You see, my brother is impulsive. He gets protective of Alice. She’s his only daughter. You know? Anyway, Alice is impulsive like her father, nut doesn’t fall far from the tree, and the simple fact is Alice isn’t going to see you any more. It’s finished. No more evenings and
whatnot with Alice. As far as you’re concerned, she doesn’t exist. As far as she’s concerned, you don’t exist. Raymond Seymour no longer exists. Got it?”
There were falcons nesting in the spruce trees just next to the clubhouse. They lifted and settled and one circled high in the air, a black dot barely visible against the darkening sky. A mother bear with her cubs had been spotted the day before, ranging the bush between the fifth and sixth fairway. A family of deer came and went on the ninth green; every morning he found their fine hoofprints on the soft green. This was the order of the world. No one had asked Raymond Seymour to chase these animals from their place. Raymond asked Hart if Alice agreed. Did she know that he no longer existed?
Hart shifted and with his right hand cupped his crotch as if to signal the utter insolence of the question. He was a short man with a large stomach and his hand disappeared under his stomach and then reappeared. He said that Alice had no say in the matter. The girl was naive. “She will not be bait for a boy like you.” He lifted a hand and pointed a short finger into the air. “You’re an Indian. Stick with what you know. Rumour has it you’re smart. Prove it.” He waved his hand in dismissal and said, “Go.”
Raymond climbed from the car and stood and watched Hart drive away. Darkness had fallen. The tail lights of the cruiser blinked and then disappeared. Raymond drove into town and bought a Coke at the Shell station and then parked near the Paramount. He went inside and asked for a ticket for the late show of
Live and Let Die.
The girl at the wicket said it had started an hour ago. He could just go in. He bought
popcorn and went inside and sat near the back. The theatre was half full. A collection of couples, a few solitary heads outlined by the screen. He put his feet up against the seat in front of him and watched James Bond save the world. Later, he stood on the sidewalk beneath the marquee and waited for Alice to appear. He imagined that she would walk up in sandals and jeans and a flower-print sleeveless top and say his name and take his hand. She’d be wearing hoop earrings. He would take her to the Kenricia. They would eat steak. Then they’d go back to his house and drink a nightcap and crawl into bed and in the morning they’d sit across from each other and eat toast.
Instead, Raymond drove up the 71 to his turnoff and then down the gravel road to his cabin where he lit candles and sat at his only table and ate ravioli from a tin can. Then he fed the chickens and he sat on the swing that he had rigged from the front seat of a Studebaker. Four chains and a steel frame. A mosquito landed on his forearm. He killed it. Lit a cigarette.
In the morning, he washed and dressed for Mrs. Kennedy. Clean jeans, a button-down shirt. Nine holes at nine a.m. every Wednesday, Raymond as her caddy, though he knew little about golf and no other golfers used caddies. Still, the management wanted Lisa Kennedy happy, and she was happiest with Raymond at her side. She golfed alone. This morning she wore a pink pleated skirt that fell to her knees and a white short-sleeved blouse. A white sweater with the arms tied around her waist. Raymond carried her clubs and her coffee. She drove off the first tee neatly, though not getting much distance. They walked side by side, the bag of clubs banging
against Raymond’s left leg. The morning sun had burned the dew off the grass. Mrs. Kennedy held out her hand for the coffee and Raymond passed it to her. She drank and walked and said that she was flying down to Texas the next day to meet a man who wanted to marry her. “He made his money in oil,” she said. “You have to wonder about a man who gets rich from pumping black stuff from the ground.” She asked for a three iron. Raymond slipped it from the bag and put it into her hand. She set up and took a practice swing, then turned to Raymond and asked if he planned on getting married some day. Raymond grinned and shrugged. “Don’t do it for money,” she said. “You’ll be unhappy. A couple can be happier if there aren’t the distractions of riches. Making it. Spending it. Keeping it.” She stopped talking, looked down at the ball, and swung.
