Daddy Lenin and Other Stories (2 page)

Some nights I turn on the
TV
at four in the morning when all the stations have signed off the air. I like how the television fizzles in my ears, how my brain drifts over with electric blue and grey snow, how the phantom sparkles of light are blips on a radar screen tracking spaceships from distant planets. Similar things are happening in my head right now, but they feel bad instead of good.

“Get that out of my face,” Conrad orders him.

The old man doesn’t budge. “I could feel John and Bobby giving off copper right through the television screen. Lee Harvey Oswald could feel it and Sirhan Sirhan could feel it. I think, as far as North America goes, we were the only three.”

Conrad squints suspiciously. “What kind of bullshit are you talking?”

“And you,” says the old man, voice rising, “you give off copper and so does your friend by the peanut bowl. Chemistry is destiny. Too much copper in the human system attracts the lightning bolt. Don’t blame me. I’m not responsible.”

There’s a long silence. Conrad’s heels jitter angrily up and down on the footrest.

“Do you understand?” the old man demands. “Am I making myself clear?”

The question is for Conrad, but I’m the one who answers. I feel the old man requires something quick. “Sure. Right. We get it.”

He sends me a thoughtful nod as he lays the gun down at his feet. A second later he’s rummaging in his pockets, tearing out handfuls of change, spilling it down on the coffee table like metal hail, talking fast. “Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Me, for one. I’m immune to the thunderbolt. I could walk clear through a mob of assassins with a pound of copper in my belly and no harm, no harm. Untouchable.” His fingers jerk through the coins, shoving the pennies to one side. Suddenly his neck goes rigid; a grey, furry tongue slowly, very slowly pushes out from between his lips. The old man picks up a penny and shows it to each of us in turn, like a magician getting ready to perform a trick. Presses the penny carefully down on his tongue like he’s sticking a stamp on an envelope. Squeezes his eyes tightly shut. Draws the penny slowly back into his mouth and swallows. We watch him standing there, swaying back and forth, a pulse beating in his eyelids.

Conrad has had enough of this. “Hey, you!” he shouts. “Hey, you, I’m talking to you!”

The old man’s eyes flutter open. It’s like watching a baby wake up.

“We don’t give a shit how many pennies you can swallow,” Conrad says. “We’re here about the album. The famous album.”

“Right, the album. Of course,” says the old man, springing to an ottoman, flipping up the lid.

“And another thing,” Conrad warns him, winking at me. “Don’t try and pass any golden oldies off on us. Troy here is a hippie. He’s got standards. You know what a hippie is?”

“Yeah,” says Finty, taking heart from Conrad. “You know what a hippie is?”

The old man drags a bulging photograph album out of the ottoman, drops it on the coffee table, sinks to his knees on the hardwood beside it. You’d think it was story time at Pooh Corner in the children’s room at the library the way he turns the pages for us.

The pictures are black and white, each one a snapshot of a road under construction. All of them taken just as the sun was rising or setting, the camera aimed straight down the highway to where it disappears into a haze of pale light riding the horizon. There are no people in any of the pictures, only occasional pieces of old-fashioned earth-moving equipment parked in the ditches, looking like they were abandoned when everybody fled from the aliens, from the plague, or whatever.

Conrad grunts, “What the hell is this?”

“An example of the law of diminishing returns,” the old man replies, dreamily turning the pages. “In a former life I was a highway builder. Unrecognized for my excellence.”

“How come there’s nobody in these pictures?” Conrad wants to know. “Pictures without people in them are a fucking waste of film.”

“Oh, but there is a person,” the old man corrects him. “Identify him. I think it’s evident who he is, although there has been argument. If you would confirm his identity, it would certainly be very much appreciated.”

Conrad and Finty peer down hard at the snapshots, as if there really might be a human being lurking in them. After about thirty seconds, Conrad gives up, irritably declares, “There’s nobody in any picture here.”

“He fades in and fades out. Sometimes he’s there and sometimes he’s not. But he’s very definitely there now. You’ll recognize him,” the old man assures us.

By now Conrad suspects the old man is pulling a fast one, some senior citizen variation on the Jimi Hendrix experience. “Oh yeah, I see him now. Jimi Hendrix peeking around that big machine in the ditch. That’s him, isn’t it, Finty? Old Jimi Jimbo.” He jabs Finty in the ribs with his elbow, hard enough to make him squeak.

“Wrong. The person in question is definitely in the middle of the road. Walking towards us. Look again.”

This only pisses Conrad off. “Right. I ain’t stupid. Don’t try and pull this crap on me.”

“Please describe him,” the old man says calmly, patiently.

“Here’s a description for you. An empty road. Get a pair of fucking glasses, you blind old prick.”

“So that’s your line.” The old man’s voice has started to tremble; it sounds a little like Finty’s when he talks about his sister in the wheelchair, only genuine. “Just a road. Just
a road, the boy says.” He stabs his finger down on the photograph so hard it crinkles, turns to Finty. “You, young man. Describe him.”

“Huh?” Finty glances over to Conrad for help.

“Knock, knock. Who’s there?” The old man’s finger taps the photograph urgently, bounces with blinding speed. “Who’s there? Who’s there? Knock, knock.
Knock, knock!
”

Conrad juts his jaw at Finty, a warning. “Don’t you say nothing. Don’t you give him nothing.”

The old man slaps his knee, face alive with joy. “Not thinking, were you?” he shouts. “Telling him not to give me anything, why that’s an admission there’s something to give away. What a slip! Cat out of the bag!”

He snatches up the album, shoves it into my hands. Tiny points of sweat break out on his forehead. Somehow I think of them as icy. They put me in mind of liquefying Freon, or whatever gas they pump into refrigerators to keep them cold. The chemical smell is industrial-strength. It’s coming from him.

“The truth now,” he whispers to me. “Tell me what you see.”

I feel Conrad staring at me, hear him say, “Nothing there, Troy. Nothing.”

I gaze down at an empty road, scraped raw by grader blades, patches of earth seeping a greasy dampness. A burr of murky light bristles on the horizon.

“Just a road,” I say. My own voice sounds weird to me, like it’s coming from a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“But roads don’t just happen,” coaxes the old man gently.

“No.”

“So tell me, who else is in the photograph?”

It’s no different from staring into the blank television screen. The snow shifting, forming faces of famous people locked in the circuitry from old programs. The hiss of static turning into favourite songs, guitar chords whining and dying.

“He’s playing head games with us, Troy,” Conrad warns. “Fuck him. Fucking lunatic. Fucking crazy old coot.”

The old man leans in very close to me; I feel his alpaca sweater brushing the hairs on my bare arm. It’s like static electricity. “Tell the truth,” he murmurs. “Who do you see?”

I hold my breath, and then I say it. “You.”

“Yes,” says the old man. When he does, I sense Conrad rising to his feet, sense his shadow staggering between the two of us.

“And my head. What do you see above my head?”

“Enough of this shit, Troy,” Conrad says.

I look at the picture, the old man’s shaky finger guiding me to the pale grey froth on the horizon. He rests it there, the phantom light crowning his nail.

“Light.”

“The aura.”

“The aura,” I repeat numbly after him.

Conrad boots the album out of my hand, sends it flying across the room, pages flapping. The old man and I dare not lift our heads. We just sit there, listening to the ragged sound of Conrad’s breathing. It goes on a long time before he says, “You think I don’t know what you’re up to, Troy? Just don’t try to fuck with my head. Just don’t.”

The old man and I sit with bowed heads, listening to Conrad and Finty pass through the house, their voices getting
louder, more confident the closer they get to the back door. Then it slams, and the old man’s head jerks up as if it were attached to the door by a wire. Conrad and Finty hoot outside. I listen to their voices fade away, and then I realize the old man is talking to me.

“I knew you were the one to tell me the truth. I knew it at the back door when I saw all that generous light coming …” He pauses, touches my head. “Coming from here.”

And I’m up and running through the house, colliding with a lamp, moving so fast the sound of breaking glass seems to have nothing to do with me. Out the screen door, hurdling my stolen bike, clearing the broken spokes, the twisted wheel rims that Finty and Conrad have stomped. I’m running, my scalp prickling with tiny flames, I feel them, the flames creeping down the nape of my neck, licking at my collar, breathing hotly into my ears.

And Jimi, two months from being dead, is out there in front of me, stage lights snared in his hair, a burning, beckoning bush. And a young road builder is standing on a blank, unfinished road, his head blooming pale grey fire.

And here I am, running through the late-afternoon stillness of an empty suburban street, sucked down it faster than my legs can carry me, this hollow, throaty roar of fire in my head, that tiny point on the horizon drawing me to where the sun is either coming up or going down. Which, I have no idea.

CHARLEY BREWSTER’S HANDS
hadn’t given him a moment’s grief for nearly forty years, had behaved themselves, and then, after the young couple moved into the apartment next door, they began to torment him relentlessly.

His first encounter with his new neighbours occurred during a pillow-ripper of a blizzard, the air thick with fluffy flakes that stuck to everything they touched, tarring and feathering Brewster from head to toe as he trudged home. In a brief pause in the wind, the heavy snowfall thinned, and he caught a glimpse of a moving van parked in front of The Marlborough. A comically mismatched pair, one resembling an elf in a ski jacket, the other a gorilla in a parka, was struggling to wrestle some large, unwieldy article into the lobby of the building. A strong gust set the snow seething again and the duo vanished, swallowed up in a white whirlwind. Brewster lowered his head into his collar and plodded on.

When he reached his building, he saw the movers were a
young couple unloading a U-Haul. A waif-like bit of a girl, grimly latched on to one end of a mattress, threw him a despairing, hopeless look, enormous brown eyes swimming with tears. Her partner, furiously shoving and jerking the other end of the mattress, had his back to him, and all he could make out of the man was a grotesquely swollen torso and a massive column of neck that tapered into a shaved head shaped like the nose cone of a missile.

Bodybuilder
, Brewster thought. Then added
and prick
to his snap assessment when a ferocious, eggplant-purple face swung round on him, shot him a hostile glare before swivelling back to the wife, girlfriend, whoever she might be. “How many times do I have to say it?” the man hissed at her. “
Back straight, lift with your goddamn legs!
”

She strained unsuccessfully. Brewster asked if he could lend a hand. The man muttered something that he didn’t catch, but the tone made his meaning clear.
Piss off. Mind your own business
.

With a shrug, Brewster sidled past the two, took the elevator, his toe tapping the floor with annoyance. He had no doubt about where those two were headed, the suite adjacent to his, a one-bedroom that had been standing empty ever since old Mrs. Carpenter had keeled over mixing pancakes on a cold, bright Sunday morning six weeks before. The gossipy super had reported that he had found her with a wooden spoon clenched in her hand, her face freckled with dried batter.

Brewster suddenly found himself deeply regretting the old lady’s demise.

He let himself into his apartment, stowed his dripping boots and coat, poured a Scotch, and wandered over to the
balcony doors. Across the river, the lights of the Arts Tower burned wistfully in the midst of the falling snow, feeble sparks nestled in a bed of white ash.

He was doing his best not to let the young fellow’s rudeness get to him, doing his best not to obsess on what sharp-tongued comebacks he might have unleashed. He recognized his tendency to brood and was trying to keep things in perspective by reminding himself how little a sullen neighbour really counted when weighed against all the advantages living in The Marlborough offered.

One, his apartment was within easy walking distance of campus, a big bonus since he didn’t own a car. Two, its rents were high enough to keep out university students and their party-hearty habits, but not so pricey as to be beyond the means of someone who, after thirty years, was still stuck at the rank of assistant professor. Three, the majority of the residents were sedate retirees who lent the building an atmosphere that Brewster appreciated, gave it the air of a waiting room in a sleepy train station in some black and white movie of the 1940s, a place where people spoke in polite, hushed voices, where everyone minded his own business as they patiently awaited their moment of departure.

There had been a time when he had avoided acknowledging that, above all, it was the sleepy train station ambience that had decided him The Marlborough was the place to hang his hat. What he told people was that he believed that living downtown near restaurants, galleries, delis, and cinemas would keep a man in late middle age a little fresher, extend his shelf life. But the truth was he seldom stuck his nose into any of these places. Most of his
evenings were lullingly the same. He had a few drinks, ate a microwave dinner off his coffee table, marked papers, fiddled with the next day’s lectures, then watched sports on
TV
or listlessly skimmed a novel. The only books he cracked nowadays were ones he had read before. Knowing what was going to happen, how things were going to grope their way to their inevitable end, gave him a gratifying sense of omniscience.