Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You (28 page)

“Asking you were you a Leo, that was just for something to say. What I wanted to ask you was different but I didn't know how to put it. As soon as I saw you I knew I'd seen you before.”

“Oh, I don't think so. I don't think you have.”

“I believe that we lead more than one life.”

Diverse experiences, many lives in one, is that what he means? Perhaps he is about to justify unfaithfulness to his wife, if he has a wife.

“I believe it. I have been born before and I have died before. It's true.”

You see?
I say to Hugh, already starting a story for him, about this man, in my mind.
They always find me
.

“Did you ever hear of the Rosicrucians?”

“Are they the ones who advertise about the mastery of life?”

Irony may be wasted but he can detect flippancy. The boring reproachfulness of the convert hardens his tone.

“Six years ago I saw one of those ads. I was in a bad way. My marriage had broke up. I was drinking more than
was good for me. But that wasn't all the trouble. You know? That wasn't the real trouble. I just used to sit and think, why am I here anyway. Like religion—I'd given all that up. I couldn't tell if there was such a thing as a soul. But if not, what the hell? You know what I mean?

“Then I wrote in and got some of their literature and started going to their meetings. First time I went, I was scared it was going to be a bunch of nuts. I didn't know what to expect, you know? What a shock I got when I saw the kind of people there. Influential people. Wealthy people. Professional people. All cultured and educated top-drawer people. This is not crackpot stuff. It is known, scientifically proven.”

I don't dispute.

“One hundred and forty-four years. That is the span from the start of one life to the next. So if you or I dies at, say, seventy, that's what—seventy-four years, seventy-four years to the start of the next life when our soul is born again.”

“Do you remember?”

“From the one life to the next, you mean? Well, you know yourself, the ordinary person doesn't remember a thing. But once your mind is opened up, once you know what is going on, why, then you start to remember. Only one life I myself know about for sure. In Spain and in Mexico. I was one of the conquistadors. You know the conquistadors?”

“Yes.”

“A funny thing. I always knew I could ride horseback. I never did, you know, city kid, we never had any money. Never was on a horse. Just the same I knew. Then at a meeting couple of years ago, Rosicrucian conference in the Hotel Vancouver, a fellow came up to me, older man, he was from California, and he says,
You were there. You were one of them
, he says. I didn't know what he was talking
about.
In Spain
, he says.
We were together
. He said I was one of the ones that went out to Mexico and he was one of the ones that stayed behind. He knew my face. And you want to know the strangest thing of all? Just as he was bending over to speak to me, I had got the impression that he was wearing a hat. Which he wasn't. You know the plumed kind of hat. And I got the impression his hair was dark and long, instead of gray and short. All before he ever said a word of this to me. Isn't that a remarkable thing?”

Yes. A remarkable thing. But I have heard things before. I have heard from people who regularly see astral bodies floating around just under the ceiling, people who rule all their days by astrology, who have changed their names and moved to new addresses so that the numerical values of the new letters will bless them. These are the ideas people live with in this world. And I can see why.

“What do you want to bet you were there too?”

“In Spain?”

“In Spain. I thought as soon as I saw you. You were a Spanish lady. You probably stayed behind, too. That explains what I see. When I look at you—and I don't mean any offense, you're a very attractive woman—I see you younger than you are now. That is probably because when I left you behind in Spain you were only twenty, twenty-one years old. And I never saw you again in that life. You don't mind me saying that?”

“No. No, it's very pleasant, really, to be seen like that.”

“I always knew, you know, there has to be something more to life. I'm not a materialistic person. Not by nature. That's why I'm not much of a success. I'm a real estate salesman. But I guess I don't give it the attention you've got to give it, if you want to be a success. It doesn't matter. I've got nobody but myself.”

Me too. I've got nobody but myself. And can't think what to do. I can't think what to do with this man except to make him into a story for Hugh, a curiosity, a joke for
Hugh. Hugh wants life seen that way, he cherishes a dry tone. Bare feelings he must pass over, like bare flesh.

“Do you love me, do you love Margaret, do you love us both?”

“I don't know.”

He was reading a magazine. He reads whenever I speak to him. He said those words in a bored, exhausted, barely audible voice. Blood from a stone.

“Will I divorce you, do you want to marry her?”

“I don't know,”

Margaret approached on the subject managed to turn the conversation to some ceramic mugs she had just bought us, as a present, and to hope that I would not throw them out, in my rage, because she, Margaret, would find them useful should she ever move in. Hugh smiled to hear that, he was grateful. If we make jokes we can all survive. I wonder.

The happiest moment in our marriage I have no trouble deciding on. It was in Northern Michigan, on a trip when the children were small. A shoddy carnival, under gray skies. They rode on a miniature train. We wandered off together and stopped in front of a cage with a chicken in it. A sign said that this chicken could play the piano. I said that I wanted to hear it play the piano, and Hugh dropped a dime. What happened was that when the dime dropped, a trap door opened, a kernel of corn descended on the keys of the toy piano, and the chicken, pecking at the corn, produced a tinny note. I was shocked and called it a fraud; for some reason I had believed the sign, I had believed that the chicken would actually
play the piano
. But it was Hugh's act, his dropping the dime, such uncharacteristic frivolity, that seemed so amazing, an avowal of love, more than anything he did or said at any other time, any high point of need or satisfaction. That act was like something startling and temporary—a very small bird, say, with rare colors—sitting close by, in a corner of your vision, that you dare not look at
openly. In that moment our kindness to each other was quite unclouded, not tactical, our struggles seemed unreal. A gate had opened, very likely. But we did not get past.

The unhappiest moment I could never tell you. All our fights blend into each other and are in fact re-enactments of the same fight, in which we punish each other—I with words, Hugh with silence—for being each other. We never needed any more than that.

He is the one person I would not mind seeing suffer. I would not mind seeing him drawn out, beads of pain on his face, so that I could say,
Now you know, don't you, now you see
. Yes. In his extremest pain I would show him my little, satisfied, withdrawing smile. I would show it.

“When I came to understand about this it was like I had been given a fresh start.”

People believe in fresh starts, nowadays. Right up to the end of their lives. It has to be allowed. To start again with a new person, your old selves known only to yourself; nobody can stop anyone from doing that. Generous people throw the doors open and provide blessings. Why not? It will happen anyway.

The train is beyond Revelstoke, in the gradually diminishing mountains. The coffee car is empty and has been empty for some time, except for me and the Rosicrucian. The waiters have cleaned up.

“I must go back.”

He does not try to stop me.

“It's been a great pleasure talking to you and I hope you don't think I'm crazy.”

“No. No, I don't.”

He takes several pamphlets from his inside pocket. “You might want to look at these if you find the time.”

I thank him.

He rises, he even bows to me slightly, with a Spanish dignity.

I walked into the Vancouver station alone, carrying my suitcase. The Rosicrucian has disappeared somewhere, he has vanished as if I had invented him. Perhaps he did not come as far as Vancouver, perhaps he got off at one of the Fraser Valley towns, in the chilly early morning.

Nobody to meet me, nobody knew I was coming. Part of the interior of the station appears to be boarded up, closed off. Even now, one of the two times in the day when there is sure to be some activity in it, this place looks cavernous, deserted.

Twenty-one years ago Hugh met me here, at this time in the morning. A noisy crowded place then. I had come west to marry him. He was carrying flowers which he dropped when he saw me. Less self-possessed in those days, though not more communicative. Red-faced, comically severe-looking, full of emotion which he bore staunchly, like a private affliction. When I touched him, he would never loosen. I could feel the stiff cords in his neck. He would shut his eyes and proceed, by himself. He may have foreseen things; the embroidered dresses, the enthusiasms, the infidelities. And I was not often ready to be kind. Annoyed to see the flowers drop, wishing to be greeted in other than comic-book style, dismayed to face his innocence which seemed even greater than my own, I did not mind letting him see a corner of my dissatisfaction. There are layers on layers in this marriage, mistakes in timing, wrongs on wrongs, nobody could get to the bottom of it.

But we went straight to each other; we grabbed hold and hung on. We crushed the retrieved unappreciated flowers, we clung like people surfacing, miraculously rescued. And not for the last time. That could happen again; it could happen again and again. And it would always be the same mistake.

Aooh
.

A cry fills the railway station, a real cry, coming from outside myself. I can see that other people have stopped, have heard it too. The cry is like that of an invader, full of
terrible grievances. People look towards the open doors, toward Hastings Street, as if they expect vengeance to come rushing in on them. But now it can be seen that the cry comes from one old man, from an old man who has been sitting with other old men on a bench at one end of the station. There used to be several benches; now there is just one, with old men sitting on it, no more noticed than old newspapers. The old man has risen to his feet to let out this cry, which is more a cry of rage, of conscious rage and terrorization, than a cry of pain. As the cry fades out he half turns, staggers, tries to hang onto the air with fully raised arms and open fingers, falls, and lies on the floor, twitching. The other old men sitting on the bench do not bend over to help him. Not one of them has risen, in fact they hardly look at him, but continue reading the papers or staring at their feet. The twitching stops.

He is dead, I know it. A man in a dark suit, some manager or official, comes out to inspect him. Some people continue with their baggage as if not a thing has happened. They do not look in that direction. Others like me approach the place where the old man is lying, and then stop; approach and stop, as if he were giving out some dangerous kind of ray.

“Must've been his heart.”

“Stroke.”

“Is he gone?”

“Sure. See the guy putting his coat.”

The official stands now in his shirt sleeves. His jacket will have to go to the cleaners. I turn away with difficulty, I walk toward the station entrance. It seems as if I should not leave, as if the cry of the man dying, now dead, is still demanding something of me, but I cannot think what it is. By that cry Hugh, and Margaret, and the Rosicrucian, and I, everybody alive, is pushed back. What we say and feel no longer rings true, it is slightly beside the point. As if we were all wound up a long time ago and were spinning out of control,
whirring, making noises, but at a touch could stop, and see each other for the first time, harmless and still. This is a message; I really believe it is; but I don't see how I can deliver it.

Winter Wind
 

From my grandmother's bedroom window you could look across the CPR tracks to a wide stretch of the Wawanash river, meandering in reeds. All frozen now, all ice and untracked snow. Even on stormy days the clouds might break before supper time, and then there was a fierce red sunset. Like Siberia, my grandmother said, offended, you would think we were living on the edge of the wilderness. It was all farms, of course, and tame bush, no wilderness at all, but winter buried the fence posts.

The storm started before noon, when we were in Chemistry, and we watched its progress hopefully, looking forward to something disruptive, to blocked roads and short supplies, and bedding down in school corridors. I imagined myself liberated by a crisis-charged atmosphere, aided by a power failure and candlelight and stirring songs offered against the roar of the wind, blanketed down with Mr. Harmer, a junior teacher whose eye I often tried to catch in Assembly, comforted by his embrace at first merely warming and comradely, which might yet turn, in all the darkness and confusion—candle by this time blown out—to something more urgent and personal. Things did not get that far. But we were dismissed early, the school buses set out with their lights on in the middle of the afternoon. Usually I took the Whitechurch bus to the first corner west of town, and walked from there, three-quarters of a mile or so, to our house at the edge of the bush. This night, as two or
three times a winter, I went to stay at my grandmother's house, in town.