Homesick Page 20

  He was speaking over her head to Daniel. “Dancing is like swinging an axe. The man’s the axe and the music is what swings him. Once you accept that and stop fighting it – battle’s over. All you got to do is enjoy being swung.”

  Daniel nodded solemnly.

  “Another pointer. You steer your partner as much with your hands as your feet. Always give her a little warning as to where you’re headed. Just the least pressure on the small of her back means come this way – relax it a little means go that way. But light, Daniel, light. No pulling and shoving. Easy so they don’t realize they’re being steered. There’s the trick to it.”

  Having delivered his advice the old man fell quiet. Father and daughter revolved about the room. How gentle it all was. Dusk stood at the windows and shadowed the room. When the waltz finished, Vera stepped back and curtsied ironically. Daniel, imitating the actions of his grandfather earlier, noisily clapped his hands and then threw the light switch.

  13

  Every year it happened. With the arrival of November, Vera felt her mood going sour.

  It had taken her a long time to realize that it wasn’t just the dreary, zinc-coloured skies, the listless spatters of rain, the necessity of switching on the kitchen light at four o’clock in the afternoon that was to blame for turning her temper sharp, dark, short, like the days themselves. It wasn’t weather that was at the root of her irritability and heaviness of spirit.

  She knew it wasn’t fair to anyone around her, but she couldn’t help herself. Maybe what she had was catching. Her father had gingerly risked a comment just the other day.

  “You and Daniel make quite a matched pair, one as glum and cranky as the other. You two eating something I’m not?”

  The old man was right about the boy and her worries over Daniel had done nothing to improve her disposition. Two months into the school year and there were still no signs that her son had made any friends. Vera had hoped that the much anticipated Hallowe’en Dance might mark some kind of breakthrough, but the way Daniel moped around the house the next day, she had gathered the occasion had not been a success. But being Daniel, he had not given much up under cross-examination.

  “So did you have a nice time last night?”

  A non-committal shrug of the shoulders.

  “You were home early enough.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “But you had fun?”

  “Sure.”

  He hadn’t had fun and Vera knew it. If Daniel had had fun he wouldn’t be spending all his time with an old man, watching TV.

  There was no getting around it, this was a miserable time of year. Miserable because Vera could not forget that November was the month she had set her sights on Stanley, made up her mind to have him. Miserable because, year after year, she went through it, sad and filled with longing. Longing for that room Stanley had led her to, up that steep, narrow flight of stairs the night that Thomas had smashed Stanley’s window. She missed that room dreadfully, ached for it in the cold of November. She could still see it as clearly as if it were yesterday. Books stacked along three walls, still more piled on windowsills and chairs, heaped on tables. To take a seat on the chesterfield it had been necessary to disturb two dictionaries, one English, one German. In the few feet of available wall space not crammed with books, up near the ceiling, Stanley had thumbtacked portraits of important men and women. Some Vera had recognized: the Roosevelts, Franklin and Eleanor; Charlie Chaplin, Einstein. Others she had been unfamiliar with. Mixed in with the portraits were reproductions of paintings. One took Vera’s fancy because it reminded her of Saskatchewan. A flock of coal-black crows floating in the sky above a yellow field of grain.

  It made her sorrowful and lonesome to think of that long-ago night, Stanley busying himself with coffee in the kitchen and she moving excitedly about the living room, stopping every now and then to pick up and examine a book, to read a title or an author’s name on a spine. Gorky, Arrowsmith, Saroyan, An Outline of History, Odets. Vera had felt buoyant, intoxicated. Maybe it had been the music on the phonograph, exuberant music composed of strange clashing, jangling sounds. It had made her disdain the very thought of sleep.

  When Stanley came in carrying the coffee pot, Vera had asked him about the books. The question had no sooner left her mouth than she was afraid he might consider it rude. It was obvious that he didn’t. He had seemed delighted to talk about such things. Stanley had said that it was from his father he had inherited a passion for music, for reading, for collecting books. “In the old country my father was a tailor,” he had explained to Vera, “and tailors and cobblers had a reputation for learning. Their work was quiet work and in the large shops they sometimes pooled their money and hired a poor student to read to them while they sewed, or they took turns reading to one another. That was how my father came to know the Torah practically by heart. Not only the Torah, but also George Sand, Hugo, Dickens, and many of the Russians, writers who were popular with the socialists in the shops. ‘Toireh iz di besteh S’choireh,’ he used to say to me. It’s Yiddish and it means that learning is the best commodity. I suppose I took him at his word,” Stanley had said, looking around him.

  Vera had not been sure what Torah or Yiddish were. All she knew was that they were Jewish. She didn’t ask for fear of appearing stupid and ignorant.

  The two of them talked late into the night or, more correctly, early into the morning, drinking lots of coffee sparingly anointed with whisky. Stanley seemed to naïvely regard himself as something of a devil for offering a lady whisky, and measured hers by the thimbleful. Vera liked him for that. She liked him for being softly spoken and for carefully and deliberately forming his sentences before delivering them. His thinking through them showed on his face. She liked him for the encouraging way he had of listening to what she said; a way which never suggested that this was a trade-off, part of a bargain which contracted that she was obliged to listen to him. She actually saw him brighten when she told him she was from Saskatchewan. “Tommy Douglas!” he exclaimed, as if the one name couldn’t be said without the other. He questioned her about the CCF and she found herself acting as if she and her family had always been supporters, even though she knew very well that her father was a Gardiner Liberal. She did this because Stanley told her he was a socialist. “Eugene Debs,” he said, pointing proudly to one of the photographs on his wall.

  Vera did not ask him who Eugene Debs was. She believed she could guess what general category he fit into.

  Vera found herself telling Stanley about her work at the theatre, spicing her story with anecdotes about Mr. Buckle. She liked Stanley Miller for the ironic laughter that greeted her tales about the manager. She filled him in on her woeful experiences with Thomas. She liked him for not laughing at these. Several times she interrupted herself, saying, “But you must be tired…” He always dismissed the suggestion. “Remember, I’m the all-night reader. The regular night owl.”

  Vera noted how thin he was. That he smoked too much. That he drank too much coffee. That he was at least forty-five, maybe older.

  Some time after four o’clock, Stanley ran out of coffee and they switched to tea. He brewed it in a thing he called a samovar, the way his parents had. Both of them were dead. He had no brothers or sisters.

  Stanley demonstrated how his father had drunk his tea, sipping it through a sugar cube clenched in his front teeth. He urged Vera to try. She was game. It wasn’t the whisky either, she hadn’t had enough.

  Even though she kept consulting her watch and saying she must go, she didn’t. It was nearly eight o’clock in the morning before she left; Stanley had to open his doors in an hour. Then came the only awkwardness of the entire night, when they shook hands and said goodbye, Vera hesitating, waiting so that he would have the opportunity to suggest they meet again. He didn’t.

  But Vera had no intention of letting it fizzle out and end so lamely. She reasoned that an old bachelor like Stanley probably lacked confidence with women, that’s why he hadn’t dar
ed to ask her for a date. A little nudging might be required, to show him he was on safe ground. And the smashed window provided an excuse, a plausible reason, for her to make amends for bringing this misfortune down on his head.

  During the course of the evening, Vera had asked Stanley who his favourite writer was. When he had told her it was someone whose name sounded like Mountain to Vera, she had nodded her head and done her best to appear knowledgeable. Setting out two days later to buy a thank-you present for Stanley, she went in search of a book by that particular author.

  “Mountain?” the lady who clerked in the snooty bookstore with all the tall bookcases had said. There were four female clerks in the store and Vera could scarcely differentiate one from the other. They all appeared to have been stamped out by the same cookie cutter. Tightly waved grey hair, tweed skirts, sweaters, brown oxfords, and glasses which hung on thin chains, dangling against insignificant bosoms, were common to all four. “Mountain?” said the woman again, eyeing Vera up and down as if to suggest she had her nerve, wasting a person’s time. “And what does Mr. Mountain write?”

  “I’m not sure,” Vera had replied tentatively, beginning to feel more and more wasteful of time and patience. “All I know is that it isn’t novels.”

  “Not very helpful, I’m afraid,” said the woman, “seeing as there are so many authors who don’t write novels. Really, I’m sure we don’t have it. I’m quite familiar with all our stock and for the life of me I don’t recollect any Mountain.”

  Vera, however, was stubborn. When she wanted something, she wanted it. Besides, she didn’t have much time; she was expected at the theatre where she had a matinee to work. “You have to have it!” she blurted out. “He’s a famous writer!”

  She had been too loud. Several patrons had turned from the study of their books to see what the commotion was about. “I’m sure I don’t know what to suggest, miss,” said the clerk coldly, “except that you search our shelves. All our books are arranged alphabetically by author within categories. Just possibly you may find what you are looking for.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Vera. “I’ll just do that little thing, if it doesn’t inconvenience.”

  After forty-five minutes of hunting Vera thought she might have found what she was looking for in the section labelled Philosophy. The name wasn’t Mountain but it was close. Vera opened the book. The frontispiece was an etching of a grave, sombre man bristling with a huge ruffed collar. He looked exactly like someone who might interest Stanley Miller.

  Vera decided to take a chance and buy the book, gamble that she had guessed right, even though the price was steep. She held it up to her nose and smelled it. Real leather. The price alone proved it.

  Vera couldn’t help registering the superior smile of the old dragon who had first helped or hadn’t helped her when she rang up the sale. The smirking continued while she wrapped the book in brown paper and tied it in strong cord. Passing it across the counter to Vera, she said, “Just so you know, dear. It isn’t Mountain. It’s Montaigne. In case you’re ever looking again. Saying the name correctly will save you time.”

  At that moment it didn’t matter to Vera that the old piece of starch and her biddy friends would be laughing and shaking their heads over her mistake all day long. What mattered was that as soon as she heard the name pronounced she knew she had the right one. That’s what Stanley had said the other night. Montaigne, not Mountain.

  She couldn’t wait to see his face. Although the doors of the theatre would soon be opening to the public, Vera flew off in the opposite direction, coat open and billowing behind her as she ran down the sidewalk on her long, strong, young legs.

  Stanley was alone in an empty store. He looked different dressed in a navy blue double-breasted suit. Vera judged it could do with a dry-cleaning.

  “What’s this?” he said, when she thrust her package into his hands.

  “Open it,” she said eagerly. “It’s a little something to make up for the other night.”

  It took him forever to pick apart the knot. When the book was finally unwrapped he turned it over, examining it carefully.

  Vera could not stand his silence. “Do you have it?” she inquired, doing her best not to sound overly anxious.

  “Not this. Not the Florio translation.”

  “Then it’s all right?”

  “It’s beautiful,” he declared. “A beautiful book.” Then he did exactly as she had done earlier, held the book up to his nose and sniffed the binding. Regretfully, he laid it back down on the counter. “But I can’t accept it,” he said.

  Vera was hurt. “Why? Why can’t you?”

  “It’s much too expensive a present. Especially for a working girl to give.”

  “Nowhere near as expensive as a window,” she said pointing to the sheet of plywood now nailed into the window-frame. “And I can’t help feeling responsible.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense. In any case, insurance pays for the window.”

  “I want you to have it,” Vera said. “To show my appreciation for your kindness.”

  “No, I couldn’t,” he said, picking up the book and holding it out to her. “You know you can’t afford it. Return it and get your money back.”

  Vera refused to touch the book. Like a stubborn child she actually hid her hands behind her back and violently shook her head no when Stanley leaned across the counter and tried to prevail upon her to take it back. “Don’t be foolish! Take it!”

  “I won’t. If you don’t want it – why, throw it in the garbage.”

  He only relented when he realized she was becoming angry with him.

  “Well, all right,” he said at last, reluctantly. “Thank you.” But couldn’t stop himself adding, “You shouldn’t have.”

  In the course of the next couple of weeks Vera wondered if Stanley wasn’t right – she shouldn’t have. After all, the gift certainly hadn’t encouraged boldness on his part; he gave no indication that he was summoning up the courage to ask her out. It was true that he didn’t have her address, or her telephone number, but every day a little after noon Vera walked past his store on her way to work. He might have just once come out and spoken to her instead of waving to her from behind his new window like a coward.

  The whole futile performance made Vera furious, livid. Maybe she ought to have taken back the Montaigne and shown him. But then, what would have been the point? Pride would never have allowed her to return it to the bookstore where she had been treated rudely and snubbed. Of course, she reminded herself, if she had taken the book she wouldn’t have had to go out and find her own second-hand copy of Montaigne, a book she assiduously read each morning in the hope that it would provide some clue to understanding Stanley Miller.

  If there was a clue, she hadn’t discovered it. Montaigne was mostly common sense and Stanley Miller mostly wasn’t. Because if he had an ounce of common sense he would have recognized long ago what a good thing was sidling up to his door and purring to be let in.

  It never occurred to Vera that Stanley Miller might think himself too old for her, far too ancient for such a young girl. Or that he was concerned that he was a Jew and she was a Gentile. Vera never gave a second thought to Stanley’s being a Jew. In church and Sunday School Jews had been spoken of frequently and approvingly, in fact the Bible was nothing but one long story about Jews. Outside of church, when they were discussed at all, the picture was slightly different. Jews, apparently, were smarter than ordinary folk and many were prone to sharp business practices. “To jew someone” was a commonly used expression in Connaught, like “drunk as an Indian” or “don’t get your Irish up,” but the use was more habit than conscious, directed malice. Since she had no objections to intelligence, rather admired and hankered after it, in fact, and since neither Stanley Miller nor his business looked prosperous enough to sustain a plausible charge of sharp practice, she wasn’t going to be scared off by an old characterization. Besides, the war had proved what sort of people had a prejudice against Jews
, pigs like Adolf Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering. Vera believed you could judge someone by his enemies as much as his friends.

  Only after they were married had Vera learned that her blindness to Stanley’s Jewishness had left him confused. Did she or didn’t she know? Was it possible that she hadn’t picked up on his allusions to Torah, his Yiddish proverbs? In the months following the wedding, they had laughed together about how he had done everything short of pinning the yellow Star of David on his lapel and gone around proclaiming himself one of the Chosen People. Yet not a word, not a hint that she grasped what he was. Could she be really that much in the dark? Who could tell with these small-town shiksas, these country pumpkins, what they did and didn’t catch? As he had been careful to explain later to Vera, all his life he had been a socialist, a passionate believer in the undifferentiated brotherhood of man. He had lived for the day when words like Gentile and Jew would lose their meaning in the word Man. As far as he was concerned, the word Jew only mattered when it mattered to someone else. After their first meeting, he asked himself, Was that the case with Vera Monkman? Without knowing the answer he was already half in love. Why else did he position himself in the window every noon when she passed on her way to work, if it wasn’t to see and be seen, to wave and be waved to? Why else did he disregard the well-meaning advice an uncle had given him when he was fourteen and beginning to show interest in girls? “Don’t have anything to do with shiksas,” he had been warned. “Your first fight – she’ll call you a dirty Jew.”

  One shiksa, however, hadn’t been prepared to throw in the towel on the fight just yet. If Montaigne wasn’t the way to a man’s heart perhaps music was. Vera hadn’t forgotten the classical records that had provided background music to their conversation the night they had passed talking in his apartment. It was only natural then that a poster on a notice board outside an Anglican church she passed one day should stop her dead in her tracks with its announcement of a recital of organ music. Before either pride or circumspection could make themselves felt, Vera had purchased two tickets in the church office. Offering one of these to Stanley she told a lie which involved a girlfriend unexpectedly called away by an illness in the family. Immediately Vera had thought of Stanley. Would he like her friend’s ticket?