He shook his head and laughed again without humour, out of amazement, perhaps. ‘Far as I knew. Of course she wasn’t speaking to me either. When she stepped up to the priest Belle
wore one rosee pearl in each ear, a perfect match they were. Your grandmother got them in Kuwait and had kept them all that time.’ He looked very thoughtful then. ‘She sold everything she could make a gain on. They were freshwater pearls from the bottom of the sea. It’s a magical thing, that. We also took our pension pearls and made a necklace so close to the earrings you’d have sworn they came out of sister shells. They got married and that was that. Hamilton Drew took it all. He took my daughter. He took the pearls. He took –’
He stopped.
‘What did he take?’
The old man thought about it for a while.
‘He took my name, that’s what he took. He took my good name and used it for his own ends.’ He brooded and when he spoke again he was back on the Romans.
‘You know Seneca had to chastise Roman women for wearing so many pearls. You can read about it, go look it up. Emperor Caligula’s widow wore pearls in rows and lines all around her head, her bodice, her sleeves and her hem. She wore them hanging from her ears, around her neck, on her wrists, and on her fingers. When she went out into the streets people had to look away so as not to be blinded. And it became the fashion. Ladies began to wear them on their feet, on their shoe buckles, in the thongs between their toes and between their legs too, no doubt.
‘Do you know why Rome invaded Britain? Your teachers probably told you something about Gauls and Caesar. But that’s all hooey. The real reason was the Romans wanted British pearls. They were freshwater pearls, found in lakes and streams, small and of poor colour, some said. But the Romans were desperate. The rage for pearls consumed them. Finally they had to pass laws, prohibiting persons of lower rank and unmarried women from wearing them. This greatly increased the number of marriages, as you can imagine.
‘But you see – and here’s the rub, my dears – pearls have always been connected with wars and theft and ugliness. It’s just the
opposite of all that purity. Conquered people had to pay a tribute in pearls, just as they did in women, and in slaves. There was once a battle lost by an emperor called Pezores. I don’t remember what country was his. But he wore an unrivalled pearl in his right ear. Just as he was about to be killed by his enemies, Pezores tore this pearl from his ear and threw it ahead of him into the pit. Emperor Anastasius, the victor, was furious. He promised five hundred gold pieces to anyone who would comb the pit, full of dead men and dead horses. And hundreds did, pawing through that gore. But no one found the pearl. It was lost for ever, with the dead.’
Here James Lowinger shook his head. Vera knew they were talking about her mother again. And Keiko screwed the lid of the thermos back on, and put the tiny china cup back in the cloth bag that she hung around her waist, and they stood up and turned back along the beach.
It was as if he had run into a wall.
What was the wall? Vera wondered. It was the wall of death, perhaps. Belle had gone into it. Her grandmother, the Captain’s wife, must have gone into it, and now he himself was looking at it.
On Sundays when it rained, Keiko kept James at home. He coughed now, and when he coughed his whole body was wracked. Vera went out alone. She walked in the grey drizzle and thought about pearls, and slaves, and women. A fresh pearl white and perfect was beautiful. It had a value beyond price. But a marred pearl was worthless. A woman about to be married was ‘bored’ by a man; an eel could prise open the oyster shell and feed on the animal inside, swallowing the pearl as well.
James Lowinger could talk about pearls in literature, he could talk about pearls in history, pearls of the conquered and the conquerors. But any story hung subject to cancellation, as he rambled. Her grandfather said he did not want to tell. But he did want to tell. It was as if he had come home to tell her something. But the story began long ago; he could not tell it all at once.
‘You know I don’t want my stories falling on the wrong ears,’ he said, teasing.
‘Who do you mean?’
He put his finger alongside his nose. ‘You know who I mean.’
‘You don’t mean Keiko?’
Of course he didn’t. He held out his hand to her; his face was lit with the pleasure he felt in her nearness.
‘You mean Miss Hinchcliffe?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Vera. She is no more than a functionary.’
‘You mean my father then.’
‘Oh, interesting suggestion. My son-in law,’ he said. ‘My
erstwhile
son-in-law.’ James Lowinger took full responsibility for the error in judgement that had put Hamilton into the family: this weak link was his, not his beloved Belle’s and certainly not Vera’s. ‘What an unnatural cruelty! Do I still have a son-in-law when I have no daughter?’
Some days he mentioned the book again. Some days he said he had already got it half written. But he certainly would not finish. The problem was, he said –
‘I know, Grandfather. It puts you into an impossible struggle between truth and loyalty. You told me.’
‘Good girl, you remember.’
When James was ill Keiko nursed him and Vera went to school in a rage and fought with her friends and went after school to Homer Street, even though he was not there, to stare at the
ukiyo-e.
A silent Miss Hinchcliffe sat over her typewriter.
‘Where is Mr McBean?’ Vera asked her.
‘There is no Mr McBean.’
Vera did not believe this.
‘But his name is on the door,’ she said stubbornly. ‘See? Lowinger and McBean.’
Miss Hinchcliffe smiled in a pinched way. ‘I know it seems that way.’
‘Is he in the Far East, the way my father is?’
‘I told you there is no one called Mr McBean.’
‘Wherever he is, it is time for him to come back,’ said Vera.
‘Aren’t you going to go for coffee?’ Hinchcliffe would say.
‘Not by myself,’
One day when James was ill in bed, Kemp came down from the office above and took Vera to the coffee shop with him. When they burst in through the door shaking rain from their umbrellas, Roberta looked up with hope that the Captain would be with them. Malcolm the mailman was there, at the end of his rounds. The hatter was telling stories about the sailors and how one would come ashore and buy a smart hat, a Borsalino, say. Then he’d go on a big tear and lose it. The hatter could go around the bars and pick up lost hats in the morning if he felt like it. And the next day, before his leave was up, the sailor would come back and buy the same one again.
They murmured appreciatively at this homely story and then it was silent in the triangular café with its three booths.
Roberta said, ‘How is he?’
And Vera burst into tears.
The men sat embarrassed while Roberta took Vera in her arms and patted her on the back.
‘What are we going to do with her?’ she said to the others.
James Lowinger lay in his bed. His veins stood out under the skin on his head. Vera had not imagined that a head could get thinner, but his had. His flesh was clinging to his skull. He lay with his eyes shut but his voice did not change and he could still laugh so that it sounded even more as if his voice were gurgling down a drain. Day by day he grew lighter, his face more luminous. It was as if he were getting younger, on a cosmic timescale that had nothing to do with the days and the months and the years they were living through.
He spoke to Vera in a valedictory way.
‘A longing, almost like lust, to tell the tale as we have lived it, grows stronger the older we are. God knows that man’s lust is a subject of which I have some experience. I mean only the lust for objects. I say “only”, as if this were more manageable,
more civilised than sexual lust: it is not, only an expression that has a more public acceptance.
‘I have no greed for gems or gold, which may strike you as odd. Indifference is rare in my trade and the one aspect of my personality to which my survival can be attributed. My lust inclines to the private and the physical, far healthier if you ask me. And for much of my life I was unsatisfied. It made me a good observer of others mind you. That is the story – how their lust entwined with mine.’
There were good days and bad days. Keiko heard news in Japantown that made her cry, and she wrote letters home, letters to which she got no replies. She found one man in Japantown who was from Kobe, and every few days she went to hear his news. But the letters he received were vague, and in contradiction to the news she heard in Vancouver. In Japan the people said the war in China was going well. Papers came to call up men and boys, and this was an honour, to serve the Emperor. Here, the papers said the Japanese were going to lose the war in China, and that the soldiers themselves were poor and hungry, and the people in Japan were even hungrier.
One day, while visiting her friend in the tailor’s shop, Keiko heard about the drowning of a fisherman. Although he was no one Keiko knew, and from a village many miles from her own, she was struck with dire premonitions and went home silent. While she was washing the dishes after dinner she told Vera about the sea near her home.
‘It can be dangerous if you don’t know. Every child is made to swim. The father throws –’ here she demonstrated with her hands cupped at the level of her knees, as if she were pushing a large bag of laundry over a wall ‘– throws the child over the boat into the sea. And watches. The child will go down and breathe in the water. The child will nearly drown –’ she mimed choking, dying, ‘then the father will dive in and bring the child back. But as soon as the child has’ – she acted out spitting out the water ‘– the father again –’ she made the scooping motion with her arms ‘– into the sea. Second time, the child knows how
to swim. Anyone who learn to swim that way – while going down to drown – is safe for ever.’
She did not bother James with her worries. He was very busy in his half-conscious world. At times he needed her care, calling out weakly, but good-naturedly, for tea. Sometimes he was sick on himself, and she came with a basin and towels to clean him. But he was often asleep. In his sleep he expended a great deal of energy. He thrashed and sometimes spoke, and even laughed, or scoffed, at imaginary companions in his dreams.
‘He simply must eat more,’ said the doctor.
‘He eat what he want,’ said Keiko.
But to Vera she explained. ‘He is fighting demons. Meeting old friends. It is very much work. That’s why he is so thin. He dreams away his food.’ She backed away from the bedside when the doctor came to look at James but she did not take her eyes off him.
The doctor did not push further. ‘He is old,’ he said. ‘He has come home to die, like an animal does.’
Keiko bowed and did not contradict the doctor. But when she and Vera were alone she spoke. ‘An animal does not come home to die,’ said Keiko. ‘An animal crawls away by himself. He come home for other thing.’
‘What other thing?’ Vera hung by her grandfather’s bedside and when he spoke she listened. Open, his eyes burned red at the rims and bright blue in the centre; his collarbones under the pyjama top stood up higher. Often she watched him sleep. Even then his eyes were busy under the lids.
‘Are you going to the office today?’ Vera asked, tearful, at the bedroom door.
‘I don’t think so, my dear. You’ll have to go for me.’
She went, crying.
As James Lowinger lay dying, he knew he’d been wrong about what was important. He’d been wrong about pearls, and even wrong about the stories. They were in the past. Soon he too would be in the past, and join his stories there. They were on record and
official; in them he was clearly in command. They were of the mind and, in the life of his body, they were utterly worthless.
He sank into his body.
He sang, he wrestled, he suckled, he grappled and he danced with the love of his life in those last few hours. He lived to the full reach of his senses without fear or guilt, because what was to be regretted, now? He knew that Keiko came and went from the room with her basin and her cool cloth; he knew that she knelt beside him. He supposed, even, that she understood he had descended into a realm of pure delight, or rather that the world had risen away from him. He no longer felt the pain of Belle’s death, a pain he had tried hard to hide. He was loosed to his own flesh and every bliss it had to offer. That day, he lived one night, over and over. When it finally eased away he was ready, this time, to let go.
When Vera came home he was gone.
Keiko was quietly washing his body.
‘He works so hard,’ she said, ‘to die. He –’ and she acted out the thrashings and groans that had mysteriously accompanied his last hours. ‘And he –’ she closed her eyes and allowed a wide smile to cover her face.
Vera slapped her across the cheek.
Keiko stood with the red marks of Vera’s fingers spreading sideways over her cheekbone, and a well of deeper crimson, rage perhaps, climbing from her chest to suffuse her face. She said nothing. Vera burst into tears and ran from the room.
* * *
What can happen after a girl has fallen in love with her grandfather and with the storied life of her grandfather and his father too? Only one thing. The grandfather can die.
And that is what he did.
He died.
Not very original of him.
He couldn’t be blamed; he was old. All Vera knew was that here was the same thing all over again. Her mother, her grandfather. Her loved one, the one who took care of her, suddenly gone from his frame, leaving behind the waxy white flesh.
How did he die? She can’t tell you. She forgot about his warnings, his readiness for it. It seemed to her that at one moment he was there, entertaining the regulars in the coffee shop, and the next – when he had tricked her, by asking her to go on without him, leaving him with Keiko – he let go of his life.
It was as if Vera had just come through a sickness herself; she had been asleep and now she was awake.
The neighbours came out of their houses to help. He had to have a Christian burial, they said to each other. There was just Keiko and Vera, and Keiko had no idea what to do. Besides, none of the officials they dealt with would give her any standing, would allow her to be in charge. It had to be Vera. But Vera was fifteen. They spoke of the embalming, the funeral home, the grave site, and the cost of it all. Hinchcliffe took the bills out of Vera’s hands.