Poached Egg on Toast (12 page)

“So,” says Miss Ellis to Karla, when we tell her. “You’re travelling far as ever a puffin flew.”

“And I’m suffering,” says Karla. “My mother says I have butterflies and I’m really suffering.”

The evening we are to leave, there is elation in the air. I seem to be doing the same things over and over, checking and rechecking uselessly. Why can’t I just go? Pick up and leave—no luggage—but no, we have to prepare.

Karla studies me for a while and says, “You told
me
not to get too excited.”

We drive to the country station, fourteen miles from town, and leave the car in the station master’s care. We stand in the night and wait beside the tracks, peering back in at the station office—an old swivel chair, a goose-neck lamp, a rolltop desk, a wide, black iron safe. We listen for the long warning whistle. There is a full moon, and the air has a heavy sweetness about it, a promise of early flowers and still, hot nights. I think of the day before, when Karla and I were in the car coming home from shopping. There’d been a sudden heavy downpour, which stopped as quickly as it began. We drove through a double rainbow, through the arc of it, where two rainbows met and intersected. When we were through the arc, I pulled the car over and turned back to look. Karla whispered, “It must be magic. It has to be magic.”

The train shakes like an old black rattle through the night. We hear it before we see it and then, a conical white beam blinds us from high in the centre of the tracks. All other noise dims before the train. Karla gasps at its size as she is lifted aboard, and the porter shows us to our sleeping compartment.

All night, she tosses against me, waking and sleeping, wide-eyed at the whistle and the rumble beneath her head. Her excitement and happiness keep us both awake and finally we push up the blind and sit close, looking out as the ribbons of dark fall away from the track. The moon casts its glow on this Maritime landscape. Karla looks up at me, independent and fearless.

In the morning, we smell the sea. It is cooler here, a forlorn damp day. The gulls fly high, coasting on upper breezes. The short-tailed swallows are here, too, swooping and diving into the cliffs. Karla and I settle into our room and a half in the loft, and I hope for two productive and undisturbed weeks. We move in on a Thursday; classes will begin half days, Monday.

But I find that, whereas at home Karla attended school every day, here she is with me every moment. We walk and walk by the edge of the sea, waking in the early morning, out before breakfast. Sun rises like moon, cool and silver across a rippled sea. Light sifts over the sand and cliffs, colours changing moment by moment. Karla talks continuously; her chattering rivets my thoughts. Any inner peace I have is continually drained off. With Alan gone, having no one with whom to share the parental responsibility, my reserves are getting low. I hadn’t thought about my emotional energy in this way before and see now that I am close to having none at all. During class days, Karla will be looked after under arrangements with the centre. I find myself longing for the week to start, longing for the company of other adults.

Several students have arrived at the lodge, and we pass them, wandering along the beach. We share some sense of vigour; I see it on their faces and feel it in myself. I am glad to be here and although I think of Alan often, it is better to be away, for a time, from our home.

On Sunday afternoon, Karla and I, in our boots, wade along the edge of the waves and watch red jellyfish babies that have drifted into the Gulf. They turn on their sides, rolling in the shallow surf like rusty wayward wheels. We are delighted as we watch them sink, puff out to the surface fully billowed, turn and wheel gracefully away. They deflate and pull ahead in one perfect quiver, like strands of gossamer. It is such a wonder to watch that I am taken by surprise when a man’s voice says, “Simone. I knew it would be you. I knew when I saw the list that it couldn’t be anyone else.”

Karla and I are both astonished. It is Justin Kempe, an artist with whom I studied years ago in Montreal. Karla has never met him, and watches wide-eyed as we hug and laugh and both talk at once. The last time I saw Justin was at a show he gave in Toronto. It was the year Justin was married and the year before Karla was born. We had dinner together and he drove me to the airport where we waited several hours because of a delayed flight. Although we’ve sent notes back and forth from time to time, we haven’t kept in close touch. But I am happy to see him. We’ve been good friends in the past, and there is much to talk about and to share. Justin is also staying at the lodge and we make plans to sit at the same table in the dining room for the two weeks. He brings me up to date on the gossip and the activities of the city, which I have not missed until now.

In the morning, as I dress, I watch the surf rising under a gentle wind. I am in harmony here; everywhere I look, a rugged kind of beauty hovers on the rim of land and sea. Karla, too, is content. She begins her own classes today and will meet other children in the Daycare Room that is provided in the same building. We have a short walk along the beach to the centre each day.

Again, I work. Having painted under my own discipline for the last several years, I find that the classes demand more than I thought I could produce. There is a sense of extreme weariness at the end of each day, but the fatigue is combined with a sense of elation, exchange, of growth. I see things in my work that were not apparent to me when I was painting in isolation. Justin and I spend hours discussing technique and the work each of us is trying to do.

Sometimes, in the evenings, I sit in the big armchair by my easel and watch and listen to the sea. Karla sleeps in her own narrow bed under the sloping ceiling. There are times when I must be alone—when I feel so bombarded by the activities of the day that I cannot read or talk or meet with any of the others in the lodge. Sometimes Justin comes in and we have a glass of wine, talking softly so we won’t wake Karla. And when I think of Alan now, it is like thinking of a stranger: remote, foreign, unknown.

During the second week I wake one morning to know, at the instant of waking, that the north wind has come. The surf is high, the roar continuous. Throughout the day, I feel as if voices are shouting in my head, as if a new source of energy has been created. Karla and I wrap ourselves in thick sweaters and run outside, pushed and pulled by the wind.

Later, we walk with Justin on the beach; a light rain softly pelts the hoods of our jackets. Karla begins to behave petulantly. Justin tries to tease her out of her mood, but she becomes angry and shouts at him, “You’re not my father!” The three of us return under a gloomy sky.

At night, Karla wakes, crying. She calls to me and sits close, sobbing out her dream. She is looking for me, but I have hidden. She looks in the room, at the centre, in the lodge, in Justin’s room. Do I not love her? Then she sees that I have climbed into one of my paintings and am disguised. I wear large earrings and a funny hat. At first she is afraid that I do not love her, but then she thinks, “Yes, she loves me, but she doesn’t want me to follow her.”

I comfort Karla and she goes back to sleep, confused by her dependencies and longings—for love, for order. And how long since I have been loved, as a woman? It has been more than half a year since I have wakened each morning with the same sure knowledge: that every day of my life, I am loved. Is it so necessary, then? Will it be possible to renew my friendship with Alan when we come together again?

When I sleep, I, too, dream. Karla and I and Justin are on the beach. The sand is warm and soft and deep. We begin to dig a huge hole in which we can move about freely. The sand we remove from the hole is heaped up on the sides. Justin and I lean back against the edge while Karla plays. But then Kristina, my sister, is there—an accusing presence—and I see, clearly, that she has misunderstood my motives.

At the end of the week, I leave Karla in the care of the Daycare instructor, and Justin and I spend our last free day at the sea together. We share a deep close feeling. I rebound from his every thought, his every move. Our silences fit, perfectly. Could I realign myself in a total way again? But it is impossible, really. We have both experienced the joy, the vulnerability that go with the full, the total commitment. Yet there is something between us that is in such absolute harmony, we draw closer and closer. The confusion and the elation of love are there, without the selfcriticism for the behaviour. But no, we are both uncertain.

In the morning, Justin takes Karla and me to the station. And when the train comes, he holds me against him, and all of the moments we have desired together culminate under a clear sky, in a bitter sea-wind.

The train pulls away. Many things have changed; many things remain the same.

Miss Ellis is delighted to have us back. She sits before the fire in our living room, still knitting her scarlet shrug. She listens as Karla tells of all the things she has learned at the sea and all the new things she can do.

Miss Ellis replies, “Oh, I was versatile, too, when I was young. But when you live as long as I have, you begin to shed your accomplishments. One by one, they fall away. But there are things you don’t forget, Karla—things you live with that you never do forget.” She smiles and looks down at her knitting.

Just before the end of summer, the ringing of the phone wakes me from an early morning dream. There is a hush. I hear Alan’s voice. He is in London, on his way home. He will be here in two days. There is little to say. Silently, I replace the receiver.

After painting steadily for a year, I am nearly ready for my own exhibition. Canvases are stacked in the hall and three deep against the walls of the spare room. Alan will be home in two days. Once more our lives will turn about. After living apart, we will have to learn to live together again. How Alan has changed, I will never ask. Much will be different; much will be the same.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs behind the half-closed door, listening to the others. She would not be seen until she stepped into the dining room. Her place seemed to have become, by habit, the table at the rear of the café and from here she watched the changing light outside in the street. This night the sky was coal blue; even the walls of the Golden Lion across the street had a bluish tinge. Perhaps snow would fall; it was chilly enough. The Germans, as she expected, were dressed in thick cardigans. The two old women wore high crocheted collars bunched around their necks. She looked about as she sat down. Heads bobbed politely. In three months, the term would be over; in two months, she would advise the university that she would be flying home.
Ruth Stephens
, she would write,
wishes to return at this time to her Canadian post in the Department of English. A replacement for the overseas branch will be needed in the fall
.

Would her replacement take the room over the butcher shop? Through the café, across the passsage, up the stairs? The owners, the Muellers, owned both butcher shop and café. The director’s office had sent her there; whether or not the room had been inspected, she did not know. But if she had never before known the smell of flesh, she knew it now. How it assailed, first and always, the front of the nostrils, surprising, making her suck in a breath before she could stop herself. And the reminders of clot, bone, haunch, thigh—being hung, dripped, sawed, hacked. Cold cuts for breakfast every morning. Her stomach reeled as she came down the stairs each day, groping for Frau Mueller’s strong coffee, aiming to smother the pervasion of
Fleisch
.

She tilted her chair towards the front of the café so that she would not have to watch Herr Mueller’s elderly parents,
Oma
and
Opa
, at the next table. If cold cuts were served for breakfast, they were also served at the evening meal. Midday it was always the pig, the calf. It was too much to think about, all that flesh hauled in from refrigerated storage at the back of the shop.
Oma
and
Opa
were digging into their
Schmalz
, their broad knives bringing up thick portions of seasoned lard from the blue-grey pottery. Now they would be spreading it on their
Brot
. They would be sipping at their wine and spreading
Schmalz
on their
Brot
.

An airmail letter is propped against the tray of cold cuts on the table. It must have arrived in the afternoon mail. Frau Mueller grins as she sets a bowl of soup before Ruth. She disapproves of Ruth excluding
Schmalz
from her diet, but she also willingly serves the soup.

“Von Ihrem Mann?”

She is pointing to the letter. Ruth’s head creates an ambiguous movement, which might mean affirmation or negation. Frau Mueller may think what she likes about the letter, the husband, the man. There
had
been a man, a husband,
ein Mann
. Sometimes Ruth would like to sit opposite Frau Mueller in the quiet hours between meals when the café is empty, and deliver herself of every intimate detail of the husband, the letter, the marriage, the man. Her limited German does not permit this. It is something the landlady, however, would like to know. Because she cannot know, she creates her own stories about Ruth—
Frau Doktor Stephens, Frau Professor Stephens
. She tells these stories to her life-long friend, Frau Mohn, who comes to the café every day during the quiet hours—the way Ruth would if she could sit with Frau Mueller and speak fluent German. Frau Mohn has a daughter, Trudi, who has had brain damage since birth. Trudi must be pushed in a special chair, and she sits, wheeled up to the table, while her mother and Frau Mueller are talking. There are days when she seems to listen, even to understand. The two old friends glance at her from time to time, saying, “Look at that. Just look at that. You’d think she knows exactly what we are saying.” When attention is drawn to Trudi, she begins to make loud agitated noises and pulls at her dress and her body, as if trying to pluck something from herself. Often, she is quieted by
Orna
, who, from the butcher shop, brings a thick piece of smoked sausage which Trudi sucks and drools on. In the shopping basket that accompanies her everywhere, Frau Mohn carries several absorbent bibs large enough to fit a thirty-four-year-old, and these she changes from time to time, gently and considerately. Both Frau Mueller and Frau Mohn love Trudi deeply; she is a special child, sent to them to share through blood and friendship. What they have learned is this: one does not get through life without suffering in one way or another. Trudi is part of their suffering and their love.