Fog, a Novel Read online

  With the plane crash story, a seed had been sown. A plant would grow. Perhaps an unknown fruit or flower would result.

  Of course, small planes do come down once in a while. But my new acquaintance felt, although she could not prove it, that the crash was an act of sabotage, a murder plot. She felt she knew too much. Her brown eyes looked far away and her casual intensity gripped me. It was while struggling with this incident that the unexpected and startling began to unfold.

  My grandfather, whom I informed about the plane crash situation and who was prone to drawing outsized conclusions from small observations, and Mrs. Meeropol, a lonely woman with a proclivity towards reminiscing, were both convinced that I was now well on my way to solving the roots of iniquity, alienability, and the specific impunity enjoyed by a certain crust of society from criminal prosecution.

  He lit his pipe, wagged his finger and said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” A quote memorized from Arthur Conan Doyle. Puffs of scented clouds rose above my grandfather’s satisfied smile. I knew then that without a visit to the scene of the crime, the wisdom of my grandfather would remain just what it was.

  I read as voraciously as I could, from my teenage years. Egged on by RK, of course. He finished a book and handed it to me. Short stories; Marquez, Camus, Tagore, Joyce, Dickens, Wilde, Manto, Twain, even some Sartre and contemporary whodunits, as well. In no order and with no plan. Then I started reading the Russian greats. Some Pushkin, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Gorky. I never tried to find literary merit, only the unfolding of a story. Documenting a time and class belittlement in that period. Suffering, exile, escapade and perpetuating memory, just documenting. Bewildered often, by intrigue and desperate lives unfolding. I did not quite understand that there could be a philosophy behind every story, every act of intrigue or jealousy, that there was an urge to address not just unfairness and evil, but the logic behind evil. Then I read Gogol and the Diary of a Madman. It was transformative. You can go mad, suffering mentally and not doing anything or at least you will be certified as such, if you only absorb and do not wring out the sponge in your head and let every drop of filth and accumulated bilious scum that the sponge picks up; and there is rancid oil and water, fungus and particles of dirt, miscible or not, drop on the floor. Then what do you do? Mop it and move on? Do you go home, lie down and die?

  Trois-Pistoles

  Nothing happens here. Absolutely nothing. Puffs of hot condensed air mixed with steam spurt from the side vents of brick houses like smoke signals and dissipate before they reach the rooftops. The skies are bloodless. The woeful horn of a ferry cuts through the air as the bow slices through the waves every hour of every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., struggling from Rivière-du-Loup to Saint-Siméon. Subdued exchanges in the village mimic the chatter of burbling streams running behind the cottages. Tawny-faced farmers, of mixed Indigenous and European heritage, retired and relaxed, slow down to greet each other. Their lower jaws jut out, accompanied by the clicking sounds of unhinged dentures moulded with imprecise impressions.

  Twice a day the steady hum of a prop plane is heard somewhere in the southwest skies. Delivering bargain mail-order shopping inducements or parsimonious gifts from relatives who left town long ago. On the ground, mischievous white-tailed deer appear around backyards sneering at dazed out-of-season hunters. Through the kitchen windows, large antlered moose appear; the hunter munches quickly on chips, wipes the beer foam from his moustache, swears incoherently under his poo-breath, and rushes out. They all look like Maxim Gorkys around here.

  People in Trois-Pistoles like getting mail, be it the cards from Acadian cousins who have moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana to revive le français québécois, or the Valentine greetings from an Irish Catholic nun to her housebound lesbian sister.

  Emil Leblanc’s calf muscles tighten and relax as he strides past each home. He wears his regulation dark blue uniform, navy blue mailbag slung across his shoulder, and he carries a pile of letters, envelopes, and flyers between his fingers. As he sorts he hums, then takes a shortcut across the gravel path to the mailbox next door. Further down the street an old man with a leather apron around his waist steps out of a crawl space, pulls up his overalls, and climbs the stairs to the house. A band of children rush at each other in a grassy plot behind a raised mound and then wave at Emil who waves back, as he always does.

  The small Piper airplane takes a large parabolic curve high over the northern edge of the city. Linda St-Onge sits in the front row. She took philosophy in college and taught geometry in high school before committing to painting. On her canvases geometric shapes, tall structures, and cityscapes soar upwards before being interrupted abruptly with rain showers, snowstorms, and terrifying storm clouds. Obelisks rise and spear the sky and lightning strikes back in reprisal. Whatever rises up assertively receives an unambiguous response from the angry skies. And debris falls.

  The Rivière-du-Loup ground control tells the pilot to circle for a few more minutes. Normally the plane would have been instructed to come in directly from the south and land, but another small plane, late to leave for its destination, is now taking off.

  Linda looks out through the window and can see the tiresome green farmland below, the undecided sunlight reflecting off the blue-green river. She has taken this flight at least a dozen times. She applies some lipstick to her faintly quivering lips and then folds her purse. Red on pale.

  She is not going to make it easy for them. She is not the one who engaged in subterfuge and cruel secrets. She has done nothing wrong.

  A parabola is formed by the intersection of a uniform symmetric cone by a flat plane at an angle. The points of intersection are critical. Fragility and resentment can cut it open and lay it bare.

  It is 11:30 in the morning when Emil Leblanc hears the parabola being sliced out of the cone in the sky. It is like a crack followed by a thunderclap and then a ringing boom. He looks up and can’t see anything. The sky is clear. He can only hear the sound reverberating in his ears. “What the hell was that?”

  He turns a full three hundred and sixty degrees. The children in the distance have stopped playing and are also looking up. The Gorky with the leather apron steps out of his door to scan the skies. Another Gorky steps onto his patio and looks up. But there is nothing to be seen.

  The children begin again to chase each other in disharmonious circles.

  Far away down in the valley the river loops back upon itself, glittering in the sunlight. The sound, however, continues to play on his mind. Something has gone awry. A sunny day has been pierced and drenched in red blood cells. He carries on delivering the mail but keeps looking up. Somewhere in the distance, debris has started to descend, unseen. Fragments. Shattered pieces of life and love. Jealousy, carnal minutiae, torn knee joints and horn-rimmed spectacles with eyelids thermally attached along with engine parts, titanium shields, and annealed aluminum alloy shimmer in the convective current under the bright sunlight. Over a surprisingly wide swath of country they spread, tumbling down in a non-aerodynamic descent, slowly flipping over and over.

  In the afternoon, as he passes by the church, the toothless Gorky carpenter repairing the wooden frames of the stained-glass windows asks, “Hey! Emil! Tabarnac! As-tu entendu? The plane crash? No?” Emil looks up again. His shoulders droop. Of course, the plane from Montreal.

  Chapter Three

  Diamond Dust

  I had been keeping a daily journal. A simple project about the neighbourhood peppered with sufficient inaccuracies and digressions to ultimately morph into a work of fiction. Both tulips and weeds grew out of the ground at the turn of a losing battle for real summer. I shared segments with the totally charismatic Mrs. Meeropol, her son—my unfaltering high school and neighbourhood friend Nat, and, at times, my unfathomable grandfather RK. While RK nodded, his eyebrows flaring, Mrs. Meeropol wrung her fingers with expectation, interrupting me
with related stories she thought I ought to know. Nat was curious but mostly distracted. Sadly. I confess that nothing remotely fascinating happened in my life or in my diary until this woman sauntered in and uncovered the plane crash story to me. She ran a rake through my indifferent soil. Sun and rain did what they do and leaves and petals opened, vermin crawled, worms multiplied, bushes bloomed, diseases festered, and acid fell from the skies. My diary grew, stalled, wilted, changed direction, and then slowly evolved into an uninterruptable storm, a tsunami that transformed my life. My friendship with Nat was integral to my neighbourhood notes.

  My part-time job as a desk clerk at a courier company was inadequate to pay my bills or my frequent sojourns to watering holes on that stretch. Nat and I had established key observation posts in several of these, from where we would scan and sneer at total unknowns or cajole the regulars. He held court. I marvelled at his ability to practice a kind of brinkmanship, taking things to an edge in terms of provocations and then settling down to making new friends or forever dismissing the rest as “bozos.” And then there was the flashy sexuality. Real and imaginary carnal forays in dim apartments, knees pushing against groins, wharfs sliding into lakes, and teeth biting into tanned shoulders. All this was duly entered in the journal. He did things, I recorded them. I did not do much, on my own. Just a little perhaps. I imagined a lot. Let’s put it that way. Now, what chance made me meet Myra, this bushy eye-browed woman, who casually informed me about the unsolved plane crash and disappeared for long periods? I would say that she found me, like when you are in a séance and you call up a medium. I became the medium.

  I found a second part-time job that required I watch television in the evenings. They had given me a device with an encoder to record which channels I visited and for how long. I didn’t have to punch any buttons; I was simply required to wear it on my belt. I hadn’t told the company during the interview that I only owned a small Zenith that barely managed occasional grey and grainy images, so I made the investment and bought a new second-hand TV. Then, while single-handedly trying to carry it to my apartment, I threw out my back.

  The pain started slowly but by the next morning I was barely able to roll out of bed. I spent two days either lying down or on hands and knees crawling between microwave and bed, heating up a magic beanbag for the small of my back. It would relieve the pain for about ten minutes before the excruciating contraction returned. Like a hydraulic tong, it forced me to arch my torso and scream my surrender. I spent a full hour in the bathtub and foolishly thought that the contraction had left. It snapped back as soon as I tried to towel.

  So, on the third day, despite a deep suspicion of chiropractors, I took the advice of Nat and visited a practice close to my apartment. With hands on hips and knees bent I hobbled across Boulevard St-Laurent. My boss at work had understood my absence because she suffered from bouts of spondylitis. She made a remark, too coyly for my liking, about what exactly I had been doing, Que faisiez-vous, jeune homme? Peut-être je ne veux pas savoir!

  There was a painting of New York City in winter, done in oil, hanging in the lobby just outside the door to the doctor’s examination room. I was immediately taken in. The snow drifted down in a remarkably separate dimension. I looked at it and felt I could catch the flakes if I put out my hand. Some artists dab paint on the canvas to signify falling snow. Doesn’t work for me. This artist had somehow imparted a subdued and effective sparkle above a dark, bustling street. I wanted to sit down and stare at it. But of course, I couldn’t sit and this was not a museum.

  She was the receptionist who sat behind a semi-circular counter and chatted away on the phone with a thousand you-know-what-I-means interspersed with emphatic sighs of frustration and disgust. Her tinny voice scratched my eardrums like nails on a blackboard and her mispronounced consonants irritated me. She finally hung up and asked if I would like to sit, seeing as my appointment wasn’t for another fifteen minutes. I promptly advised her that the only reason I was there was because I couldn’t sit without being in great pain.

  “Oh!” She replied nonchalantly and carried on chewing her gum, adding a slapping sound to the previous swishing sound. I stared at her over the top of my glasses. She put her head down. I looked away and tried to focus on the painting. This happened again, before she said, “I see that you like something about that painting.”

  “Uh-huh, I do.” I looked at her face more carefully. Very pleasant, actually.

  Sensing my approval, she jutted her chin out in a playful way. “Well, there’s a long history to that painting and the doctor might tell you if you ask him.” She smiled before going back to slapping gum.

  Dr. Roberge opened his door at exactly the appointed time and waved me in. A tall man with large hands, he wore a striped t-shirt and loose slacks. His sneakers had Nike bottoms on designer leather uppers. They made no noise. He had one eyebrow raised and took a quick look at the receptionist. She put her head down. I was irritated by the fact that there had been no previous patient and he could easily have taken me earlier. He did not ask any questions, as he had clearly leafed through what I had filled out. It was lying on his desk. He had me take off my shirt and asked me to lie down on my stomach and then measured my back with his fingers. He made strange flicks with his fingers at the end of certain manoeuvres. I didn’t know what he was doing, but he was definitely into his technique. After about ten minutes, he asked me to lie on my back and then he positioned himself behind me. He started stretching my neck very slowly. It felt good. I felt the relief I had come for. The tension was dissolving.

  When he finished I simply walked outside to make the payment with the money earned from my new job, noting that so far, I had worked for free, given the cost of the TV and the visit to the chiropractor. The receptionist asked if I had mentioned the painting.

  “No, I didn’t, but if you know about it why don’t you tell me?” I said it aggressively, although that didn’t seem to register on her. She casually licked the pen and thought it over.

  “You’re the only one who has really looked at the painting in my two years here. I’m off in five minutes. You can meet me at the corner café, if you want, and I’ll tell you.”

  I liked the painting. It was a work of art. It should have been in a private home or a museum. In this lobby on an unlit wall seemed the wrong place for it. And besides, this was definitely shaping up to be a potential diary entry. “Okay! I’ll see you in five minutes.”

  I hobbled across the street and sat down at the café next to the large windows. I ordered a cappuccino and sipped it very slowly. Five minutes passed and she had not appeared. Five minutes turned to twenty and she still hadn’t turned up. At this point I felt like I wanted to yell at her: she had stood me up. I slowly crossed the street and climbed the stairs painfully to the doctor’s office. The door was ajar.

  As soon as I re-entered the lobby I knew something was wrong. I heard her whimpering from inside the doctor’s room, “I didn’t mean to! I didn’t mean to!” And to my amazement, I noticed the painting was gone from the wall.

  I made a coughing sound and heard the shuffle of feet behind the doctor’s door. He eased himself out and then closed the door behind him before demanding, “Yes?”

  “Sorry to bother you . . . I was supposed to meet your receptionist for coffee downstairs.” Awkwardness shrinks my newly stretched spinal column.

  “She’s gone for the day.” He said briskly.

  I walked away. I simply went down the stairs and walked home, knowing she was still in there with him. But it troubled me. Why had he not acknowledged her presence? Why had the painting disappeared? And why had I been treated like riff-raff?

  I entered my apartment, found my encoder, and turned on the TV. The device started to change lights and flicker. I pulled out my diary and began to record the event, with appropriate embellishments. I was pretty sure I’d run into her again, so I noted that, too. This was to be a turning poi
nt.

  Then about three months later, when the snow had melted, I was back from my day job at the courier company and enjoying a large sticky Danish at the same café when she walked in. The gum-slapping garrulousness was gone. Her hair was loose and in disarray, no longer tied in the tight bun I remembered. She looked haggard.

  She saw me and her hand quickly went to her face but it was too late, our eyes had met. I waved to her. She peered at me carefully, as if trying to recognize who I might be. She followed that with a startled look and then, smiling, walked over to my table and said, “Hi! How are ya?” I realized then how good an act she can put on. “How’s your back?”

  “Recovered. Nice of you to remember.”

  I didn’t tell her that she might be considered gorgeous, despite the tornado-hit looks. Instead I said, “I’ve never been back to the doctor.”

  “Good for you. I quit right after.”

  “Are you working somewhere else?”

  “Sort of.”

  I asked if I could offer her a coffee and went up to the counter to do so. Awkwardness put aside. When I returned, I noticed her stockings had a long run shaped like Italy working its way down the inside of her leg.