Blue Moon (42 page)

This woman is also a forty-something South African. She is altogether more polite, but she is anxious, her nerves made worse by
the weather. A major storm is approaching fast from Buffalo. We must be on our way immediately. I agree. When we reach the parking lot, the sun has deserted the day; we have gone abruptly into nighttime. We have been at the Sheraton in the downtown core. “We'll be on the highway in less than five minutes,” Amanda assures me.

We set out and are proceeding to the entry to the highway when Amanda's cell phone rings. It's her nanny. One of her children—her youngest, a boy—has had an accident and is desperate to see her. She explains she cannot make it home for at least a few hours because she has to drive Ms. Delamere back to Toronto.

“Nonsense, you must attend to your son,” I tell her. “I have no real urgency to be back home at a certain time.”

She thanks me for my understanding and then explains we will have to change direction and go up the brow of the Mountain. “The weather's always worse up there than here, but we'll be fine,” she assures me.

The snow has now picked up and is blowing fiercely causing white-outs. A few times, Amanda has to swerve to avoid a car coming into our lane from the opposite direction. Soon, we are at the top of the Mountain.

I remember March 6, 1946, over fifty years ago. There was snow on the ground although I did not drive through a storm. The moon and stars were also absent on that night. Amanda and I have now reached the exact spot on the Brow where I was to meet the Oldsmobile. This evening there is a car pulled to the opposite side of the road, its headlights beaming. So are its emergency lights. There is a small drive-in at the side of the road, Amanda tells me. “I'll see if I can help those people. Get close enough to see the license plate number.” She says all this while pulling the car over. I ask: “Isn't it dangerous for you to get out of the car in a driving storm like this? You could get killed.” Her anxieties having vanished, she assures me that is not the case. “I'll be fine. Just wait for me.”

So there I sit as the past hurls itself down on me. I cannot see a thing. I am completely abandoned. What if Amanda doesn't return? My imagination leaps over all its usual boundaries. What if Mr. Romanelli is in that car? What if the corpse of John Dick is on the back seat? My heart races uncontrollably. After what seems an eternity, the door opens and Amanda seats herself and resumes
control of the car. “They didn't have a cell phone. I've made a call. Help is on the way.” We resume our journey. Her house is a further twenty minutes away, the little boy who fell cut himself badly but does not require stitches, the weather calms down, and at ten o'clock we leave for Toronto. I reach home at half past eleven.

I cannot settle. Some nights gentle ghosts of time passed inhabit my bedroom even before I go to sleep. That wonderful wild woman Emma Skeffington. Sweet, affectionate delicately blond Rosie. Mother St. John, the most erudite and feeling of Bluestockings. Dear Janet White and her relentless dedication to research. On other evenings, the guests are unwelcome. My sullen Mother attempts to instill herself; sometimes, she is accompanied by Detective Wood or Judge Barlow. On occasion, Father sits in my bedside chair. A malicious grin crosses his face; I break into a cold sweat. John Dick only visits me in dreams. I worry about Heather; I long to touch the dead babies. Tonight, as I look around my bedroom, I am absolutely alone. Total darkness.

I can never escape the facts of my early life. Truth is my persistent enemy: I can no longer write as I have become so dominated by the past. No truth liberates me. Sometimes, I think my writing has been some sort of huge defence mechanism against the past, a self-constructed barrier insulating me from my own reality. Now I no longer have the luxury of that escape.

Even more so than before, I am a well-known figure at the Carlton and Cumberland Cinemas and at the various reps, although I don't think any of the attendants at any of those places know my name. I am familiar to them because they see me on a regular basis. I am what is known as an art-house junkie.

I hardly ever attend any of the big American films. Ever since prostitution was glamourized in
American Gigolo
and
Pretty Woman,
I have no interest in the confections of Hollywood. I admire those films with an edge of menace, even though I found David Lynch's
Blue Velvet
frightening, especially those scenes when the protagonist is hidden in the closet watching the sado-masochist activities of Dennis Hopper. The best film I have seen in recent years is the Australian Proof, about the blind
photographer. What a perfect metaphor for the contemporary artist: Without benefit of sight, lie presents the world with perfectly realized renditions of the human condition. I know all about that kind of art.

The other night on
Showcase
I finally steeled myself to watch the documentary on FriedrichTarnopolsky. Even before he was captured in Buenos Aires in 1997, the filmmaker had begun interviewing the victims, as he called them, the people whose lives had been irrevocably damaged by Tarnopolsky's kidnapping-murders. When the film was released in 1998, the controversy as to whether he should be executed or not had become rampant. In the film, Tarnopolsky looks a frail, bewildered old man. For the past twenty-five years, he had worked as a janitor in a government building in Brasilia. A minor but nevertheless highly regarded government employee. Always on time. Always meticulous in performing any task assigned to him. One could say he had—without benefit of prison—thoroughly reformed himself. Appearance and reality only became completely out of joint when his small apartment was searched and the children's pornography and snuff videos were discovered. At that point in his life, he had—as his lawyers pointed out—become merely a consumer of such material, certainly not someone who manufactured it.

The filmmaker interviewed Dr. Newman before and after the capture of Tarnopolsky. His opinions remained unchanged. Unlike all the other survivors, he did not wish Tarnopolsky destroyed and did not label him a monster. “Mr. Tarnopolsky suffers from a serious mental illness and should be treated accordingly. The task of society is to destroy the spiritual and cultural environment that freely allows behaviour like Mr. Tarnopolsky's unimpeded development. The real criminal is society—not some poor unfortunate like the man who killed my wife and child.”

In a few days, I shall see Ernst for the first time in almost twenty years. What does he really think of his old patient? A genuine success story? Or the best example in his long career of the patient as sham?

Despite all the years I spent in treatment with Ernst, I have never been able to shake loose the conviction that a horrible deformity—the
Tarnopolsky side—dwells within me. In effect, Ernst told me I was a fool to believe such things. Now, in my eightieth year, I see an increasingly frail old woman and wonder if I am more sinned against than sinning? Some days I cling to that illusion. On others, I see only the monster.

Aweek after Elizabeth died, her editor Judith Smith phoned me from London. Until the news broke, Smith had no definite ideas about Elizabeth's past life, although she had long suspected—because of information supplied in the novels—that her friend had some first-hand knowledge of prisons.

“I wondered if a parent, a relative or a close friend had been incarcerated and if Elizabeth had visited that person in prison.” Although the two became close, she knew that her favourite author expected her not to pry into her past: “I could talk with Elizabeth about many things, but I instinctively knew her past was forbidden territory. She simply told me what she told everyone else: she had
cared for ancient parents in Ontario, moved, when they died, to British Columbia in her late thirties, and began writing fiction when working at Duthie's. She never referred to her parents in conversation and obviously did not wish to be drawn into any discussion of them. I respected those limits. She was a very good friend, knew my own personal situation well and always made inquiries about the various problems—personal and professional—I told her about. Knowing she did not wish me to reciprocate, I accepted the situation as it unfolded.

“In retrospect, there was one extremely awkward matter that now explains itself. In 1996, I persuaded Elizabeth, who was staying with me in London, to accompany me to the Frankfurt Book Fair, the idea being that my house might be able to further increase her foreign sales—already excellent—if Elizabeth would assist us by putting in an appearance and talking up her books to various European publishers. Reluctantly, she agreed, and we held a big, extremely successful party for her. “Everything went very well until Anne Perry dropped in. The circumstances of her early life—the murder in New Zealand and all that—were already old-hat by then. In any event, Anne walked in, kissed me and I then introduced her to Elizabeth, who looked like she had seen a ghost. Her face blanched and she inhaled deeply. Unusual for her, she seemed lost for words, but she offered her hand to Anne, who took it, said a few words and then excused herself. Elizabeth was not exactly rude, but Anne must have assumed that she disapproved of her. I never discussed this small event with Elizabeth but, in retrospect, I now see that she was confronting an alter-ego, someone whose dangerous secret had become public property.”

The other phone call I received was from the very distraught Japanese-Canadian writer, Kenji Ozu, a protege of Elizabeth's. He felt the “whole situation has been blown out of proportion. What's the big deal? She wrote under an assumed name—she had every reason in the world to conceal her true identity. It's not anyone else's business.” I explained that she was a convicted felon. Perhaps understandably, everyone wanted to know the full story.

“She was like a mother to me.”

“You had no clue as to her real identity?”

“None whatsoever. In retrospect, I found her very stiff when we first met. Even before that, her two letters to me were curt. Polite but very distanced. 'Don't intrude,' they whispered. I was a polite young Japanese man, a person of the old school. I decided to stay away from her. Then, I thought of the books and knew there was a very feeling heart behind them. So I persisted. I guess I was more than a little bolshy.

“Even after she agreed to see me, I found her behaviour strange. She didn't make small talk. Not the slightest attempt to talk about anything but books. Even there, she confined her remarks to technique. Told me clearly, plainly and precisely what was wrong. Did not mince her words. An hour into the conversation, I began to think, 'This woman is very shy. She's even a bit unsure of herself. Her starchiness comes from insecurity. She's laying down the law, but she doesn't like to judge my work. She's really uncomfortable in the position I've placed her in.'

“Now that I'm older, I realize how calculating I was that afternoon. I decided to take my best shot at getting her to open up. I started to talk about the internment camp, the setting of the novel she had just read. At first, she didn't respond. Then, she began to wring her hands, then I noticed that the edges of her eyes had become bright red. She started to ask me about being in what she called prison.

“'Must have been awful for a young boy to grow up that way? Confined in that way. All your natural curiosity about the world stifled.'

“I assured her that had been the case. But then I mentioned how wonderful my parents had been. How they had endured a great deal of privation but assured me things would get better.

“'Yes, that must have made it easier to bear. Not having to endure your lot alone/

“At that point, she told me that she had another appointment later that day. When I got up to leave, I took her hand and gave her a small kiss on the cheek. She smiled and walked me to the door. Ten days later, she phoned to invite me to dinner. We became close friends.

“We cared very deeply for each other. I never knew Evelyn Dick; I only knew Elizabeth Delamere.”

On the small table next to Elizabeth's body in her suite at the Hotel Vancouver was the piece of paper which I had retrieved. She must have woken from the dream, scribbled on the paper and then gone back to bed, whereupon she died in her sleep.

Tonight the drive up the Mountain is accomplished with greater ease than usual. The way even seems a tiny bit brighter. There is a full moon. When I stop the Packard, the car awaiting me whisks away. For some reason, this does not bother me. As soon as I enter the woods, the smell of the pine tar is unusually sharp and dense, almost medicinal. I walk through it, bathing in its caressing touches. My body feels radiant, aching joyously from this soothing cleansing. My walk is a pleasant one, although my heart is racing uncontrollably.

The small white house stands majestically against the green pines. I imagine myself a young girl who has come across a small enchanted castle. I laugh at myself. This is more a cottage than a castle. You are not a child lost in the wood who has found help, I remind myself. You are not Little Red Riding Hood come to visit Grandmother only to discover that the evil wolf has eaten her. But I do feel awfully young, even vulnerable. But, I am absolutely certain, I have nothing to fear. Everything will be fine. There is a small brook running around the house, and I bend down to splash some water in my face. Then, I gather a mouthful of the water in my hands and drink it. The sparkling water refreshes me. I had not noticed before how parched I was.

As I make my way to the door, I see it is open. I knock but no one answers. I push it in a bit, still awaiting some response. When no one comes, I walk in. The interior is one enormous room painted a pale but true green. Each of the sides has many windows, perhaps seven or eight. Straight ahead is one enormous window reaching from floor to ceiling. From that opening I see a range of Alpine mountains separated from each other by streams of coursing water.