Stones (8 page)

A priest. So apt a designation, it could only be amusing. Though amusing, of course, in a sinister way.

Morris felt like a marauding and possibly destructive child bent on mischief. A vandal, perhaps. Most certainly, he knew he was trespassing here, the victim of an irresistible impulse:
put it on
…

He had spent over three hours standing there, touching—lifting—contemplating the masks. Around him, resting on shelves and laid out, numbered in other sterile trays was the department’s whole collection of Japanese theatre masks. Each mask was hidden: slung in a silk and sometimes quite elaborate bag, the drawstrings tied in neat, fastidious bows.

Heads
, he thought.
The victims of some revolution
.

The truth was—he dared not open the bags to look.

Some of the bags were darkly stained. And, even though he fully recognized the stains were merely of time and of mildew, he could not bring himself to touch them.

Put it on. Don’t be afraid
.

Go on
.

He held the mask up gently before his face. He could smell its…what? Its mustiness? Or was it muskiness?

He closed his eyes and fitted the moulded inner surface over the contours of his bones.

He waited fully fifteen seconds before he dared to open his eyes.

The masks below him, sitting on their tray, were smiling. Had they smiled before?

He waited, knowing he must not give up until the whole sensation of the mask had been experienced—no matter how long it took.

He thought he heard a noise somewhere out in the corridor. The voice of someone calling.

He held his breath, in order to hear.

Nothing.

And then, as he began to breathe again, he felt the vibrations of a sound between his face and the mask. Another voice. But whose?

He was a long way off inside himself and standing in another light. A pattern of leaves threw shadows over what he saw: perhaps the verge of a clearing somewhere
.

Creatures—not human—moved before him
.

Foxes
.

How elegant they were. How delicate: precise and knowing
.

Why was he so unconcerned and unafraid?

He began to receive the scent of earth as he had never smelled the earth before: a safe, green, sun-warmed scent
.

He looked at his hands. He held them out as far as he could. Human hands—in white gloves. Whose were they?

He tried to speak, but could not
.

What emerged, instead of speech, was an inarticulate and strangled sound he had never heard before
.

Down below him, where the earth replaced the floor, one of the foxes came and sat at his feet and stared up into his face. It seemed, almost, to know who he was
.

Never in all of Morris’s life had he been so close to anything wild. He was mesmerized
.

Other foxes came, as if to greet him, and they leaned so close against his legs that he could feel their bones against his shins
.

The fox that had been the first to come and sit before him narrowed its gaze. It stared so intently, Morris felt that something must be going to happen
.

Say something to us, the fox appeared to be saying. Tell us something. Speak to us
…

Yes—but how?

Morris was bereft of words. But the impulse to speak was overwhelming. He could feel the sound of something rising through his bowels—and the force of the sound was so alarming that Morris pulled the mask away from his face and thrust it from him—down into the tray from which he had lifted it. When?

How much time had passed. An hour? A day? How far away had he been? Who was he, now? Or what?

He looked—afraid—at the backs of his hands, but they were covered still with the gloves
.

The creatures in the tray appeared to stir
.

Morris closed his eyes against the notion he was not alone. He did not want to see the floor—for fear the floor was still the sun-warmed ground it had been a moment before
.

And yet
…

He wanted them back. Their breath and their eyes already haunted him. He waited for their voices—but no voices came
.

Morris removed the white cotton gloves. He took a long, deep breath and let it very slowly out between his teeth
.

His fingers dipped towards the tray and even before they reached the mask, he smiled—because he could feel the head rising up as sure and real as the sun itself And when the mask he had chosen was in place, he paused only for seconds before he dared to breathe again; one deep breath, and he found his voice—which was not his human voice but another voice from another time
.

Now—at last—he was not alone
.

Just before five that afternoon, Mrs Elston was putting the cover on her IBM Selectric and preparing to leave, when she became aware all at once of someone standing behind her.

“Oh,” she said—recovering as best she could. “We thought you were not here, Professor Glendenning.” She smiled—but he did not reply.

His enormous height was bending to the task of pulling on his galoshes. “Shall we be seeing you tomorrow?” Mrs Elston asked. With his back to her, he shook his head. “Monday, perhaps?”

But he was buckling his galoshes; silent.

He drew his many scarves about him, buttoned his greatcoat, took up his leather bag and started away.

“Professor Glendenning…It was such a great pleasure…”

But Mrs Elston could not reach him. He was gone and the door swung to and fro.

Mrs Elston sniffed the air.

“Myrna?” she said. “Do you smell something?”

Myrna Stovich needed no prompting.

“Sure,” she said. “Dog.”

“But there can’t be a dog!” said Mrs Elston.

“Yeah, well,” said Myrna. “We also thought there wasn’t no Professor Glendenning, didn’t we.”

“True,” Mrs Elston laughed. “You’re quite right, my dear. But…goodness! What a day!” she said. “And now we have to go out into all that snow.”

“Yeah,” said Myrna Stovich. “Sure. But I like the snow.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Elston, and she sighed. “I like it, too, I guess.” And then she gave a smile. “I suppose I have to, don’t I—seeing it’s what we’ve got.”

THE SKY

All this began—as most unpleasant things do—on a Monday morning.

Morrison had joined the others out in the open under the sky on the platform of the Rosedale subway station. This was his favourite moment of the day: the last whole view he had of trees and clouds before he was plunged, along with everyone else, into the city’s underground depths and the shadows of its looming towers. How fortunate—how right it was—that those who had created the Rosedale subway station had set its platforms squarely beneath the open sky.

Morrison was just in the act of folding his
Globe and Mail
beneath his arm when something fell at his feet that hadn’t fallen from his pocket. Looking down, he saw what he took to be a piece of glass—not the cleanest piece of glass in the world, but a rather murky looking piece of glass—and old.

Thinking it was best not to leave such things about for dogs to sit on and children to pick up, Morrison gave the thing a shove with his toe, nudging it towards the edge of the platform. In his mind’s eye, he already saw it lying safely amongst the cinders where the only person it could possibly harm would be some man in workman’s boots, a peaked cap and one of those orange fluorescent aprons that gave him the authority to be down there between the rails.

Before what Morrison had foreseen could unfold, however, he noted the piece of glass was melting and was not a piece of glass at all. It was a piece of ice. Morrison smiled as he took this in.
I’m just a fool
, he thought. Then he remembered it was May 15th and the sky—so clearly visible—was warm and blue and its only clouds were pale as bits of cotton wool.

Not that dirty pieces of ice the size and shape of cigarette lighters ought to be falling out of the sky at all. But if they were going to fall, they ought to fall in winter.

Except: there it was, you see. Not an icicle; an independent piece of ice. In May.

It had fallen straight down onto the platform right at his feet. He could not pretend it wasn’t there. He could not pretend his toe had not been sullied by it. Perhaps if he had pointed it out to someone else…A person should always have a witness. But the thing had melted and a small grey pool of acid-coloured water, dripping onto the cinders, was all the evidence he had.

What if Morrison had imagined it all? Who would be his witness now?

He stood back under the narrow overhang, opened his
Globe and Mail
to the editorial page and tried to concentrate on an irate letter in response to last week’s editorial justifying the high cost of living in Markham, Ontario. The train, it seemed, was late; the better to test his patience. He tried to forget the sky and what had fallen. His wife had always wanted them to go and live in Markham, but Morrison had always said they could not afford the luxury of living exclusively with millionaires. Here, in this letter, he had found an ally. Down at his feet, he had found an enemy.

Morrison’s wife was having an affair. At first, he had not been certain who the recipient of her illicit affections was—though, over time, he narrowed the field to three. Two of these were business associates and the third was his older brother, David. The fact that David might be courting his wife did not surprise him. It merely alarmed him. Lying along the edge of any sexual relationship between consenting in-laws, there was something illicit Morrison had spied—the pale and sickly fingerprint of incest.

Finally, Morrison concluded David was indeed the culprit but—
oh
, he thought,
what difference does it make? There’s nothing I can do about what is. And trying to interfere will only make them more determined
…

Morrison’s lack of surprise and outrage had its foundation in a long and painful awareness of his brother’s utter lack of ethics. Their parents had divorced so long ago that Morrison could not recall or name the year. He had gone to live with his mother; David had gone to live with their father. And their father’s house was besieged by women. Morrison senior had been a prince of finance and a child of Adonis. The siege of women won the day—and the house, its doors all standing open, fell and was occupied by a long succession of temporary brides, some of whom, as David grew to manhood, strayed in his direction.

David Morrison had made a point, in all his consequent intrigues, of seeking involvement only with the wives of friends. And now his brother’s wife, Cynthia. Morrison’s theory about this bedding procedure was that Brother David was a lazy man who preferred the easy pickings of his immediate circle to the stress and effort of the open market-place. This was the consequence, surely, of having played in his father’s harem. Out in the open market, the women were unknown quantities whose foibles, habits and weaknesses David would have to explore at the expense of his own time and money, whereas the foibles, habits and peccadilloes of the wives of friends, associates (and fathers) came to him free of charge. They fell into his lap like gifts as he lunched and worked and drank with their husbands. The simple questions:
How is Sally? How is Jane?
could produce such lucrative answers as:
a little bored these days, I’m afraid, and wondering what to do with her time
…David would know what to do with her time. Bored wives were best; women on the verge of separation were next to best, but women on the verge of divorce were traps to be avoided at all costs. Next thing a person knew, such women expected you to marry them. This was not what David had in mind at all.

Now that David had focused on Cynthia, Morrison found himself perversely accommodating. He would announce all his business trips in David’s presence, letting his brother know that he would
be away in Montreal for two days next week—Wednesday and Thursday
. Also, he would pointedly leave the room whenever Cynthia was on the telephone. Even if she was only talking to her sister—Morrison, believing it was David on the line, would stand up and walk ostentatiously away. Not so he wouldn’t hear, but only so David and Cynthia could enjoy their privacy.

Perhaps this apparent lack of gumption on Morrison’s part was the legacy of having fallen into his mother’s purview after his parents’ divorce. Whereas David had enjoyed the playing fields of their father’s Forest Hill Playboy Mansion, Morrison had been ensconced as the wailing wall of their mother’s Riverdale Leper Colony. She must have spent an hour a day, at least, with her forehead resting on his shoulder—finishing box after box of Kleenex like a tissueholic. She wept as easily as other people speak their names—and as often as the rest of us say I. She was devoted to her tears, and the reason lay in her equal devotion to all lost causes. Mrs Morrison, senior, laid out her marriage like a corpse and the wake went on until the day she died. Only then was Morrison freed from the domination of defeat—but, clearly, his freedom came too late.
Que será, será
became his unproclaimed motto and, under its aegis, he was satisfied to stand aside as David made his move on Cynthia.

The affair had become an open secret—and everywhere that Morrison went, even onto the platform of the Rosedale subway station, he was certain people were watching him—perfect strangers turning to other perfect strangers and saying
there’s that fellow Morrison—the one whose wife is sleeping with his brother
.
The Globe and Mail
—held face-high—provided the perfect hiding place. Except for things that fell from the sky.

Morrison and Cynthia had met over music. The fact is, they had met
because
of music—but Cynthia’s way of saying things was smudged with the vernacular of her youth.
We met over music
was always said as if she was chewing gum between each word. She was also prone to saying she was
into Beethoven
—a phrase that bothered Morrison a lot, especially when Cynthia said it at dinner parties. People might accept a certain amount of slang at lunch and cocktail parties, but dinner parties should not be soiled with it. That was Morrison’s view, at any rate.