Red Girl Rat Boy (12 page)

The empty hall: unbearable.

A friend of mine, a commissioner of oaths, had found a spacious office in Gastown, above a typewriter shop, and suggested we share.

In 1990, a thousand affidavits later, Claudia and I retired from witnessing how rough human existence is, how knotty, contaminated.

Gladly, the computer store beneath expanded into our space. Such limited powers each of us has. Now Claudia and other friends and I sit around our dinner tables, shocked at how little time remains. Some men, lovers, husbands, are already gone. Fewer places are set. The past looks impenetrable, like islands as a kayak moves away; individual landforms coalesce into one dark shape, no visible channels in.

Why did so many contacts not turn into comrades?

Cowardice.

Fear of democratic centralism:
Join that group, Carry this line.

Dues. Some people won’t spend even on what’s important to them.

Me? I couldn’t accept
The end justifies the means
and
By any means necessary
, i.e. violence. All the Romanovs needn’t have died. Nor the Kronstadt sailors. To give only two examples. No doubt the comrade assigned long ago to
have a serious political talk with Cathy
(repeatedly I had to claim my full name) made her report. Written off as a liberal, I thought as I pleased while newly alive in anti-war pickets, marches, vigils, tribunals organized by Trotskyists alone or with other groups on hard-won bases of unity sometimes narrow, sometimes broad.

Ten years ago, as the US did its filthy work in Iraq and the ground war began, Vancouver’s February streets filled again, differently:
Operation Desert Storm.

Amid thronging youth walked relicts like me,
surviving from a previous age or in changed circumstances after the disappearance of related forms, species, structures
. Bald Richard, wheeling his bicycle along the route from the Main Street train station to the once-Courthouse, told me of his volunteer work repairing bikes in the Downtown East Side. As the bullhorns assembled, I turned to say, “Shall we get out of here?” But he’d already taken a pass on the orations.

A puzzle, that 1991 meeting with Richard. He didn’t seem an apparition from a distant past. I already knew (how?) that he’d worked at a credit union. At some point after the far left imploded in the late 70s and before the Gulf invasion, he and I must have met. I don’t remember.

Later in the 90s he turned up at the local farmers’ market, smiling as he bent to show customers his loaves of rye and seedy bread. Occasionally I buy from Richard. Bought. We’d chat, as friendly relicts do. Homeward with organic this and that along the flowering streets, I’d speculate. Which causes most harm—cruelty, thoughtlessness, meaning well?

To accommodate Raoul, the French Trotskyist, an entire month of forums had been rescheduled. He—a short, plain man, the first disappointment—came to the hall with Pete and Sally the evening before his talk.

Just then comrades and contacts were doing a mailing about the Caravan to Ottawa planned by Vancouver’s women’s liberation: a cross-country drive to the capital, en route gathering supporters to demand changes in the abortion laws. A Great Trek, as in the 30s. Something big could happen. Everyone sensed that. Mass action, even. We folded leaflets, stuffed envelopes.

The task brought me as close to the sisterhood as I ever got. Yes, I’d attended some meetings of independent WL groups. The girls­—no, young women—were friendly, but because of work I couldn’t stay up late on weeknights, nor could I sit on the floor as they did for hours, talking. Already it wasn’t easy to kneel for a full morning’s paddle in a canoe. Also my hair was permed. I wore heels and suits and a girdle and a sturdy bra. A living fossil. Now I’ll admit that their sexual exuberance intimidated me. Nothing to be done about that, then or now.

After introducing Raoul, Pete and Sally left for an external meeting. She walked out first, looking back as if puzzled he wasn’t at her side. Only when she reached the street door did he follow.

The Frenchman helped us, efficiently, and in spite of his exoticism the atmosphere soon normalized. He learned some names (not mine), asked about local women’s politics and anti-war, but the conversation jolted. His English was far from fluent. We had to rephrase, oversimplify. I hoped he planned to read his speech.

Our work done, Raoul yawned, smiled. “I’d so much wish to ski while at Vancouver!“

Silence.
Ski! How bourgeois!
Not among French revolutionaries, evidently.

Pete and Sally never even headed out to camp, paddle, hike. Never drove to Seattle for a weekend. Rarely saw a movie. However, some of my friends skied. I went cross-country myself occasionally, though I’ve always loved liquid water best.

My voice sounded. “Rowena might drive you up to Cypress.”

By coincidence she arrived in the hall soon after, long coat swaying, hair shining. Now, in the photo heading Rowena’s theatre column and in her spreads on glamorous Down syndrome and lupus fundraisers, her hair’s still black. She’s only mid-fifties, though. Dye won’t yet cause that awful stiffness characteristic of hollow white hairs.

“Of course!” Lightly, smiling.

After this foray I was breathless.

The next night, Raoul stood before an overflow audience. He glanced at Rowena. To me she was in profile, eyes unseen, but I’d have bet a month’s income on the quality of her gaze. Sally introduced the speaker. His smiling thanks, so patronizing: handsome male to plain female. Anger ran me up and down. Already fired with joy at what I’d instigated, I sensed a sudden all-over heat and for a while heard nothing.

When sound began again, the atmosphere had gone wrong. Everyone lay open to the delights of political seduction, but that Frenchman, so expert and experienced, just hadn’t the tongue. We weren’t inside French anti-war. We were nowhere special. Fidgets, coughs. Flirtatiously, Raoul glanced at Sally for help. Once, twice, she supplied an English word or phrases. Then quit. Stared.

Before the reception began, Sally left the building.

That storefront.

For years, I walked blocks out of my way. Since the comrades vacated it’s beckoned passersby to a hair salon, commercial real estate, now a travel agency. Some arcane evangelical sect uses the main hall and kitchen. Even now, nostalgia’s poison streaks the air. I dip and dodge. Often those who appear aren’t the
hardened bureaucratic layer
but the dead, or crazy Nora, or Richard, tossed aside.

After the Frenchman limped to his conclusion, in the loud hall I glimpsed Rowena as I drained my Gallo red. Serpent to vermin, she neared Raoul. He hadn’t noticed her yet, didn’t see me. I was getting my coat when Pete passed me. Such a vulnerable look. Then Duncan took him by the arm. To shove the old boy aside, cross the hall, pull his love Rowena close. . . No. For the organizer of revolution, impossible.

Serve him right.
That breathlessness again, born of making something bleed and writhe. Something to itself huge: a worm a bug a belief a love.

Not just a middle-aged single self-employed notary who’d sensed her body’s first helpless waver towards menopause, I walked home. Red glowed on the beach, illicit bonfires. Beyond lay the night-filled park, where thousands of trees grow unrestrained except by storms or fire. Unseen, mountains tower behind. From first light they dominate. As for the land, if you’re even a little way out from shore its curves and wrinkles flatten, disappear.

With old eyes it’s hard to be sure what’s still there, what never was.

As I opened my apartment door, Sally lunged at me.

“How dare you do that to Pete? Hurt him so?”

I nearly fell over her suitcase.

“What gives
you
the right to sic that woman on to Raoul?”

She varied her queries, making each
s
a hiss. Response wasn’t permitted.

“You’re as bad as her.” Sally grabbed her case.

“Where will you go?”

“Nowhere you know about.”

Slam.

I still get the radical press, such as it is, and read recently of Raoul’s demise at sixty-eight. He’d stuck with the Fourth International in that distant Centre far more central than Toronto, New York even. Imperial.

As for Sally, her photo often appears in press coverage of public sector unions. On TV through the 90s she critiqued NAFTA. Clear, capable. Her term as union president ends soon. In retirement she’ll learn how fast work drops away, abandons us.

I was her Samaritan. She could fuck nearby because I, unreal, couldn’t notice. Also I had no one to tell. The beach-towels we hung up? Fiction. By acting as I did, I’d come off the page.

Thirty years ago Sally left me alone to contemplate her love and scorn. She headed down the street, thence rapidly to Fredericton. Later, Halifax. Thus she missed Friday supper the week following Raoul’s talk.

Pete was absent too, at a film about British colonialism in Africa. Did that start his trajectory from revolution? Today he’s an aid consultant in Ottawa.

As I cleared dirty plates and brought clean ones, the cracked timbre of Duncan’s voice went on and on about Spain. Rowena listened.

“Could you draw it? I’d love to see what you did!”

Duncan pushed his coffee away, got out a pencil. Though his eyes watered, his hand sketching the battle-scene moved confidently.

“We were here.” He put
x x x
near his coffee cup, then not far off some clusters of o o o o o o. “They were there. 1938.”

“You were in charge?” That admiring gaze.

“Yes.” The pencil fell. “So many died.” He stared at his marks.

Richard spooned up his raspberry Jello.

That night Helen spoke on postal mechanization.

Every danger that plain Cassandra foresaw, every lost deskilled devalued job, was realized in two decades. Once, mail sorters scanned handwritten envelopes by the thousand, tossed them at high pigeonholes so fast the air blurred white. Encyclopedic urban knowledge, emptied out of human brains.

Next afternoon the Caravan departed.

Before the Courthouse another small group, all women this time, excited, nervy, smoking, flaring into laughter. The shouting cars, bright with painted slogans, headed off to Ottawa and history. That autumn the War Measures Act would refill the plaza, chop off yet another past and force everyone to breathe differently.

Later in the 70s I found an apartment nearer the park. I watch tides, try to remember.

In September 2001, why on earth would Rowena see herself as a tree?
Catherines
abound; to her my name will signal nothing. Nor does my tiny hate, except it’s the same as the huge ones. We’re all relicts now.

If I could go back thirty years to that hall, would I recognize anyone?

That question went to bed with me yesterday after hours of televised filthy clouds, rage, wreckage, wild faces, distorted or disassembled bodies, hours of phone calls repeating many words.

When I woke in a later darkness, my head said
Grenada. Richard.

In 1983 the US used the pretext of Maurice Bishop’s assassination to invade the island, with
Operation Urgent Fury
the attack’s codename. During a quickly organized protest at the American consulate, some placards riffed on that,
Operation Urgent Withdrawal, Urgent End Imperialist Attack.
Richard and I had both made signs reading
US Out of Grenada Now.

It was good to see him. His red hair was already greying, thinner. I asked how he liked working at VanCity.

“I’ve always wanted to be part of a community. How are you, Catherine?”

He knew my name.

“Do you miss the old days, Richard? The movement?”

The demo was only sporadic chanting in front of American plate glass coated to exclude the world’s eyes, so we talked. We remembered Josie, Bruce. We noted Pete’s job in Kenya, Sally’s steady rise in her union. I wouldn’t have mentioned Rowena.

“Aren’t her columns fun?” That curly smile. “Good for her, too, letting people know about these causes.”

Grenada: eighteen years ago. Under what beach-towel did I conceal Richard’s forgiveness?

To sleep again this morning, impossible. The vile screen required witness.

This afternoon my condolence card waited in my mailbox, with Scotch tape over the flap, Rowena’s address inked out, mine inserted. That meadow is broader than in memory, the sky more spacious, soaring even. No fiery planes. Past tall rushes, a little stream winds who knows where. One old tree leans to the other as Richard did to her, loving, eager to hear.

I put no return address on the envelope. Rowena’s dug it, me, up somewhere. She’s remembered, even if she didn’t scribble
Fuck you
Cathy
or
Go to hell.

Ha!

Got to her though, didn’t I?

Made her mad.