Blind Assassin (69 page)

Since Laura is no longer who you thought she was, you’re no longer who you think you are, either. That can be a shock, but it can also be a relief. For instance, you’re no relation at all to, Winifred, and none to Richard. There’s not a speck of Griffen in you at all: your hands are clean on that score. Your real grandfather was Alex Thomas, and as to who his own father was, well, the sky’s the limit. Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, saint, a score of countries of origin, a dozen cancelled maps, a hundred levelled villages—take your pick. Your legacy from him is the realm of infinite speculation. You’re free to reinvent yourself at will.

She has a single photograph of him, a black-and-white print. She preserves it carefully, because it’s almost all she has left of him. The photo is of the two of them together, her and this man, on a picnic.Picnic is written on the back—not his name or hers, justpicnic. She knows the names, she doesn’t need to write them down.

They’re sitting under a tree; it must have been an apple tree. She has a wide skirt tucked around her knees. It was a hot day. Holding her hand over the picture, she can still feel the heat coming up from it.

He’s wearing a light-coloured hat, partially shading his face. She’s turned half towards him, smiling in a way she can’t remember smiling at anyone since. She seems very young in the picture. He’s smiling too, but he’s holding up his hand between himself and the camera, as if to fend it off. As if to fend her off, in the future, looking back at them. As if to protect her. Between his fingers is the stub of a cigarette.

She retrieves the photograph when she’s alone, and lies it flat on the table and stares down into it. She examines every detail: his smoky fingers, the bleached folds of their clothing, the unripe apples hanging in the tree, the dying grass in the foreground. Her smiling face.

The photo has been cut; a third of it has been cut off. In the lower left corner there’s a hand, scissored off at the wrist, resting on the grass. It’s the hand of the other one, the one who is always in the picture whether seen or not. The hand that will set things down.

How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what wasgoing to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you’d be doomed. You’d be as ruined as God. You’d be a stone. You’d never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You’d never love anyone, ever again. You’d never dare to.

Drowned now—the tree as well, the sky, the wind, the clouds. All she has left is the picture. Also the story of it.

The picture is of happiness, the story not. Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there’s no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

Iris Chase Griffen, A Memorable Lady

BY MYRA STURGESS

Mrs. Iris Chase Griffen passed away suddenly last Wednesday at the age of 83, at her home here in Port Ticonderoga. “She left us very peacefully, while sitting in her back garden,” stated long-time family friend Mrs. Myra Sturgess. “It was not unexpected as she was suffering from a heart condition. She was quite the personality and a landmark of history, and wonderful for her age. We will all miss her and she will certainly be long remembered.”

Mrs. Griffen was the sister of noted local authoress Laura Chase. In addition she was the daughter of Captain Norval Chase who will be long remembered by this town, and granddaughter of Benjamin Chase, founder of Chase Industries which put up the Button Factory and others. As well, she was the wife of the late Richard E. Griffen, the prominent industrialist and political figure, and the sister-in-law of Winifred Griffen Prior, the Toronto philanthropist who died last year leaving a generous legacy to our high school. She is survived by her granddaughter Sabrina Griffen, who has just returned from abroad and is expected to visit this town shortly to see to her grandmother’s affairs. I am sure she will be given a warm greeting and any help or aid we all can proffer.

By Mrs. Griffen’s wish the funeral service will be private, with interment of the ashes at the Chase family monument in Mount Hope Cemetery. However a Memorial Service will be held in the chapel of the Jordan Funeral Home this coming Tuesday at 3.00 p.m., in acknowledgment of the many contributions made by the Chase family over the years, with refreshments served afterwards at the home of Myra and Walter Sturgess, all welcome.

Today it’s raining, a warm spring rain. The air is opalescent with it. The sound of the rapids pours up and over the cliff—pours like a wind, but unmoving, like wave marks left on sand.

I’m sitting at the wooden table on my back porch, in the shelter of the overhang, gazing out over the long straggling garden. It’s almost dusk. The wild phlox is in bloom, or I believe it must be phlox; I can’t see it clearly. Something blue, that glimmers down there at the end of the garden, the phosphorescence of snow in shadow. In the flower beds the shoots jostle upwards, crayon-shaped, purple, aqua, red. The scent of moist dirt and fresh growth washes in over me, watery, slippery, with an acid taste to it like the bark of a tree. It smells like youth; it smells like heartbreak.

I’ve swathed myself in a shawl: the evening is warm for the season, but I don’t feel it as warmth, only as an absence of cold. I view the world clearly from here—herebeing the landscape glimpsed from the top of a wave, just before the next one drives you under: how blue the sky, how green the sea, how final the prospect.

Beside my elbow is the stack of paper I’ve been adding to so laboriously, month after month. When I’m done—when I’ve written the final page—I’ll pull myself up out of this chair and make my way to the kitchen, and scrabble around for an elastic band or a piece of string or an old ribbon. I’ll tie the papers up, then lift the lid of my steamer trunk and slide this bundle in on top of everything else. There it will stay until you come back from your travels, if you ever do come back. The lawyer has the key, and his orders.

I must admit I have a daydream about you.

One evening there will be a knock at the door and it will be you. You’ll be dressed in black, you’ll be toting one of those little rucksacks they all have now instead of handbags. It will be raining, as it is this evening, but you won’t have an umbrella, you’d scorn umbrellas; the young like their heads to be whipped about by the elements, they find it bracing. You’ll stand on the porch, in a haze of damp light; your glossy dark hair will be sodden, your black outfit will be soaked, the drops of rain will glitter on your face and clothes like sequins.

You’ll knock. I’ll hear you, I’ll shuffle down the hallway, I’ll open the door. My heart will jump and flutter; I’ll peer at you, then recognize you: my cherished, my last remaining wish. I’ll think to myself that I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful, but I won’t say so; I wouldn’t want you to think I’ve gone scatty. Then I’ll welcome you, I’ll hold out my arms to you, I’ll kiss you on the cheek, sparsely, because it would be unseemly to let myself go. I’ll cry a few tears, but only a few, because the eyes of the elderly are arid.

I’ll invite you in. You’ll enter. I wouldn’t recommend it to a young girl, crossing the threshold of a place like mine, with a person like me inside it—an old woman, an older woman, living alone in a fossilized cottage, with hair like burning spiderwebs and a weedy garden full of God knows what. There’s a whiff of brimstone about such creatures: you may even be a little frightened of me. But you’ll also be a little reckless, like all the women in our family, and so you will come in anyway.Grandmother, you will say; and through that one word I will no longer be disowned.

I’ll sit you down at my table, among the wooden spoons and the twig wreaths, and the candle which is never lit. You’ll be shivering, I’ll give you a towel, I’ll wrap you in a blanket, I’ll make you some cocoa.

Then I’ll tell you a story. I’ll tell you this story: the story of how you came to be here, sitting in my kitchen, listening to the story I’ve been telling you. If by some miracle that were to happen, there would be no need for this jumbled mound of paper.

What is it that I’ll want from you? Not love: that would be too much to ask. Not forgiveness, which isn’t yours to bestow. Only a listener, perhaps; only someone who will see me. Don’t prettify me though, whatever else you do: I have no wish to be a decorated skull.

But I leave myself in your hands. What choice do I have? By the time you read this last page, that—if anywhere—is the only place I will be.

I would like to express my gratitude to the following: my invaluable assistant, Sarah Cooper; my other researchers, A. S. Hall and Sarah Webster; Professor Tim Stanley; Sharon Maxwell, archivist, Cunard Line Ltd., St. James Library, London; Dorothy Duncan, executive director, Ontario Historical Society; Hudson’s Bay/Simpsons Archives, Winnipeg; Fiona Lucas, Spadina House, Heritage Toronto; Fred Kerner; Terrance Cox; Katherine Ashenburg; Jonathan F. Vance; Mary Sims; Joan Gale; Don Hutchison; Ron Bernstein; Lorna Toolis and her staff at the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, and to Janet Inksetter of Annex Books. Also to early readers Eleanor Cook, Ramsay Cook, Xandra Bingley, Jess A. Gibson, and Rosalie Abella. Also to my agents, Phoebe Larmore, Vivienne Schuster, and Diana Mackay; and to my editors, Ellen Seligman, Heather Sangster, Nan A. Talese, and Liz Calder. Also to Arthur Gelgoot, Michael Bradley, Bob Clark, Gene Goldberg, and Rose Tornato. And to Graeme Gibson and my family, as always.