The Man Game (77 page)

The lovemaking approached a state of harmonious labour. Like the waterwheel, the couple moved in a perfect, constantly wet rhythm. He babbled on like the proverbial brook. She was swept up in it all.

So my father says, he looks me up and down one more time and says, When's dinner? he said. I had no answer. Is there a word for that, when you have no answer at the time and all the best retorts later on?

I'll remember in a minute.

Well, there I was with nothing to say. He growled at me, or what I thought was a growl which then became a hacking, webby cough. As he caught his breath, I could see his frustration again.

He said: Well, I shall not wait around here. You'll find me seated at the table, he said. Tell your Chinaboys I'm ready for my soup and bread.

Oh, that's fine, I thought to myself. As I watched him stand and right himself, I thought, He still looks imposing as all hell. For an old guy. Old as a damn cedar. I felt a strange sensation which I mistook for nausea. It came on with great urgency. It was a giddying in my spirits. At the very moment, I wondered for my safety. It was an involuntary fear with digestive reactions I felt. In a kind a brief fantasy, I feared I was aboot to regurgitate
yellow foam. But yes, it was something like a giddying. My spirit was giddy. I know that now.

Whatever caused this giddying? Molly asked, kissing him frantically and huffing each word on her breath.

I don't know if seeing my father stand up was it. Yes, because it was also the fact that I was seated. I became infused with the memory a the night we met.

The night we met, she growled, clawing, biting, licking, and slapping him with her hair.

At the music hall, yes. I was filled with a great swelling yellow glow. Big bright and anxious happiness. Like none other I ever experienced outside the music hall. It was a delirium, sensual in the worst way, but without a thing wrong with me. In this case memory was my pathogen.

Yes, and, and, and …

He rubbed his hand across her neck, collarbone, and squeezed her bosoms together, and said: Ever present in my mind was a vaudeville routine. Looking at Father, I recalled at that very moment an old vaudeville routine. When Father bunched up his slacks so he could bend down to retrieve his cane, I saw my opportunity and kicked him.

Oh, yes.

Yes, and oh, he fell straight on his face and his arms splayed out in both directions, heels in the air. And let out a squeal the likes a which I'd not heard from this man
ev
er.

Oh my, oh my oh my.

My belly was sore. That's when I realized, my limbs and organs. My father's eyes were wet and his body shook as he came to my side and we embraced. I told him he was welcome to stay in our house. He thanked me and we shook hands. He quickly left the room as both he and I were aboot to explode in tears. Oh, Molly, Sammy said and wept, it's taken me this long to see I've been such a burden on you. I am a different man today than I was before I saw the man game.

Oh, dear Chinooky, say it every day, she said, pulling his face to her to meet him at eye level and kiss the inside of his mouth. Say it every day.

I'm a different man.

Say it every day.

She rested her hands on his and he caressed the palms and followed the veins from her wrist up the graceful bend of her arm, marvelling with a new touch the wonders of her skin. Like a dog shaking the last water off his body, the last of Sammy's nerves tingled awake. He blurted out an involuntary yowl. Symbiosis. At climax, he lost all sensation above his neck. His face went totally numb. He went blind, as if he'd just walked into a cloud. His blind eyes glazed open, stopped moving, streaming with tears. He lost his hearing next. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear, and he couldn't feel his mouth hang open. He kept going in her. His big numb head slapped back and forth at the top of his neck as he pumped towards it. Drool fell from his lips splattering all over her back and rosy buttocks. He didn't know. He couldn't help the drool and he couldn't hear her giggle. Numb in the head. It lasted only a moment.

Western clouds at the horizon opened briefly, allowing the sun one last dusky look at Vancouver before it melted into the waters of the Georgia Strait. Above the yolky orange at the horizon, the sky turned a milky lavender. With the sun gone, the beaches, mountains, and trees all turned a denser shade of blue. The mountains wore a heavy aura against the burning-out sky. At dusk the forests came alive with nocturnals, and any man worth his stink could feel the animals begin to roam. Hear the bears yawn. The wolves sniffing on the cliffs. Raccoons in search of loot. A man could feel the animal eyes on him with their nocturnal hunger everywhere.

RH had heard head nor tail from the snakehead since the riots. By calling in the Victoria po-lice to beat some sense into the men, the story got play in newspapers across Canada and the States—savages in the West. Since then, there had been no word from San Francisco. No threats. Not another
visit. Strange. Then one fine spring evening, RH Alexander received a knock on his door.

Who could that be at this hour? said his wife.

RH put down his pipe and strode to the door of the library, then promptly decided to sit down again and wait. His wife watched him.

Who do you think it is? she said.

How the hell should I know?

At last, a manservant asked to enter the library, and then announced that Molly Erwagen was here to see them.

The Alexanders looked at each other. Well, then, said RH, let her in.

Molly came into the library and greeted them both with a kiss. RH's cheek tickled with the opposite sting to a bug bite. She took a seat with them in the well-furnished den and supped quietly on her tea, using those very same purple cumin lips. RH became hypersensitive to how Molly suffused the room with a dazzling perfume of local berries, cosmopolitan spice, and rare pheromones. Youth in its elastic ripeness. She feigned interest in the weather when Mrs. Alexander brought up the subject of rain. RH's heart sank when she responded identically to the subject of horse races. Throughout the small talk, Mr. Alexander watched his wife's eyes recede further into deep craters of skin, the effect of skepticism on her flesh. In all, RH was disgusted to see a resemblance between his wife's face and a leather wallet spilling out with receipts. Any moment now she might burst out with an indiscretion. Remarkable virility for such an old hag, RH had to admit with some pride, considering they were such finely matched old lovers.

Tell us, please, said Mrs. Alexander, what's brought you here today?

Our dear Sammy has regained the use a his legs.

You jest, why that's simply m
ar
vello
us
, cried RH.

I'm simply astonished, said Mrs. Alexander. A blessing. A miracle.

Why isn't the chap here right now so I may congratulate him in person? Tell me more. When?

Yes, this morning. Shortly after his reunion with his father, you'll be pleased to know. We picked up Sammy's father from the train station aboot nine this morning, and before noon Sammy was moving again. His hands, his legs. Everything. And he feels everything again, too.

Is that so, said Mrs. Alexander.

Yes, and so while he has the use a his limbs once again, his strength has greatly deteriorated.

Understandably. He'll regain it all, I'm sure. Well, I'll be.

He stayed at home to spend time with his father and asked that I come straight away to tell you while he rests. I'm sure he'll visit very soon.

It's wonderful news, said Mrs. Alexander, rocking in her seat on her big haunches. We simply must have you both over for a dinner as soon as possible. See? See, my dear? she said, addressing her husband. A whole new summer is here, she said. This is such good news. And we
do
need good news.

Yes, said RH, I know this city has its share a bumps, eh, but to know that your husband is back on his feet, well, that signals a boon. Mark my words. A boon.

Strangely, I have another reason to come visit you today, said Molly.

Oh, and what's that? I hope it's as good as the news aboot your husband?

To be perfectly honest, I don't know if it is or not. You see, when we arrived home from the train station, Sammy's father asked for some time to speak with his son in private, and I went to the kitchen. In the kitchen, I received a knock at the back door, and I opened it to find a young Indian boy. The Indian was doing the same thing our ward Toronto has done between here and New Westminster. He was delivering to me a telegram from the CPR station down the road. But when I took the telegram, the boy ran off before I had a chance to even look at it. The telegram was accidentally delivered to our address, Molly said. Naturally I didn't read it when I saw it was for you, Mr. Alexander. I quickly put it away until I had time to visit.

How long ago did you receive it? Alexander asked.

Just as I said, this morning. Molly produced the telegram, which she had folded in half and slipped into the cuff of her long-sleeved tunic.

Is that where you kept it? said RH. Marvellous. Here, let me read it.

The telegram from San Francisco said:
A WISE GENERAL FORAGES ON ENEMY STOP ONE CARTLOAD ENEMY PROVISIONS EQUAL TWENTY YOUR OWN STOP CONTINUE BUSINESS WITH ME STOP CONTINUE MAN GAME STOP RECEIVE STRONGER MEN STOP

RH looked up from the telegram paper, a bit knocked out. His confused look, normally kept locked and hidden, was completely unveiled for Molly. It felt to him as if someone had just pulled the skin right off his skull. He was flabbergasted. He didn't know whether to be relieved or furious or frightened. RH was a strategist, indeed, but his plans never accounted for the strategies of his opponents, and inevitably he was carried along by the tide while thinking he controlled the current. His wife went a bit chalky to see her husband's expression. Knowing there was one or two things in RH's life that might cause such a face (the snakehead; the man game), she quickly looked at Molly, who was watching RH carefully but without any hint of the burning sense of victory that would belie ill intention.

Whatever is it? said his wife, to clear the silence.

It's from S
a
n Franc
is
c
o
, said RH, meaning to be euphemistic. As he said it, he grasped the sequence of the message.

From San Fran—, his wife paused, her voice gave out and she fell into a coughing fit. With Molly watching, she tried to take a sip of milk but most of it sputtered down her chin. Everyone was standing now. Mrs. Alexander was coughing badly. Her hands were flapping and Molly and RH went searching for a napkin or saucer for her to vomit into. Almost purple in the face with her wet and frightened eyes pushing out of their lids and her hands clawing the air trying to pull in more oxygen for her wheezing lungs, she still said, in the most horribly constricted, crocodilian voice: I'm fine, need a moment … Mrs. Alexander finally excused
herself from the library and, wheezing out of the room, sought help elsewhere. Outside, with the assistance of medicines provided by her Chinamanservants, she finally got in one great big gasp of air. They heard it in the library and looked at each other with relief. And then they heard a second deep breath. The coughing eventually subsided as well, but Mrs. Alexander didn't return to the library again.

Is everything all right? Molly asked.

RH looked at her without the faintest idea.

In the weeks after Father Erwagen arrived, Vancouver experienced an abundant thaw so that by Dominion Day, July 1, 1887, the annual eustasy that swelled the sea and soaked the land had filled the bogs and marshes and made the rivers run hard, everything that was once encased in ice spilling out everywhere in all directions. The parade down Hastings featured many local as well as imported traditions, all of them equally festive and exciting. Wild colours and feminine scent temporarily decorated the streets. Morning glory and daisies splashed their beauty over wreaths of magnificent size. Leafy vines wrapped and trussed up every light post and looped over the arch to Chinatown. Such aromatic decorations were not the work of lumberjacks or stevedores. A society group of wives from Vancouver and New Westminster, presided over by Mrs. Alexander, had been formed to encourage sobriety, diplomacy, virginity until marriage, and prayer, and they were awarded a float in the parade to help spread the message of abstinence and thanatos. Quilting, knitting, and home decor were three fundamentals the ladies preached. Called the Ladies Temperance League, their spring project was to beautify Vancouver's streets in time for the celebration. Everyone agreed they'd done an outstanding job. People waved at them and the ladies waved back.