Small Ceremonies (11 page)

We serve ourselves and look about for our name cards on the little tables. I am by the window. There is heavy silver cutlery from Mrs. Eberhardt's side of the family, and a thick, luxurious linen napkin at each place. Furlong circulates between tables with red wine, filling each crystal glass a precise two-thirds full.

Everyone is talking. The room is filled with people eating and talking. Talk drifts from table to table, accumulating, rising, until it reaches the ceiling.

Roger is saying: “Of course Canadian culture has to be protected. For God's sake, you're dealing with a sensitive plant, almost a nursery plant. And don't tell me I'm being chauvinistic. I had a year at Harvard, remember. I tell you that if we don't give grants to our writers now and if we don't favor our own publishers now, we're lost, man, we're just lost.”

Valerie Hyde is saying: “Of course women have come a long way, but don't think for a minute that one or two women in Parliament are going to change a damn thing. Sex is built-in like bones and teeth, and, remember this, Barney, there's more to sex than cold semen running down your leg.”

Alfred Hyde is saying: “Tuesday night we had tickets to
The Messiah.
The tenor was excellent, the baritone was passable, but the contralto was questionable. The staging was commendable, but I seriously question the lighting technique.”

Ruthie is saying: “There's just no stability to anything. Did you stop to think of just where this salmon comes from? The fisherman who caught this fish is probably sitting down to pork and beans right now. And what happens when all the salmon is gone? And that just might be tomorrow. What do you say to that? There's just no stability.”

Hans Kroeger is saying: “Twenty per cent return on the investment. And that ain't hay. So don't give me any shit about bonds.”

A woman across the room is saying: “Take Bath Abbey for instance. Have you been to Bath Abbey? No? Well, take any abbey.”

Furlong is saying: “In my day we talked about making a contribution. To the country. But that sounds facile, doing something for one's country. Now don't you agree that one's first concern must be to know oneself? Isn't that what counts?”

Meredith says: “I don't know. I really don't. Like in
Graven Images,
first things come first. I've started in on it for the third time. Empathy. That's what it all comes down to. I mean, doesn't it? Maybe you're right, but making a contribution still counts. I mean, really, in the end, doesn't it? Fulfillment, well, fulfillment is sort of selfish if you know what I mean. I don't know.”

The blonde in green is saying, “Anyone from that socioeconomic background just never dreams of picking up a book. What I'm saying is this, intelligence is shaped in preadolescence. Not the scope of intelligence. Anyone can expand, but the direction. The direction is predetermined.”

A man is saying in a very low voice. “Okay, okay, you've had enough booze. Lay off.”

Barney Beck is saying: “Class. You're damned right I believe in class. Not because it's good, hell no, but because it's there. Just, for instance, take the way kids cool off in the summer. You've got the little proletarians splashing in the street hydrant, right? And your middle-class brats running through the lawn sprinklers. Because lawns mean middle class, right? Then your nouveaus. The plastic-lined swimming pool. Cabanas, filter systems, et cetera. Then the aristocrats. You don't see them, not actually, because they're at the shore. Wherever the hell the shore is.”

Mrs. Eberhardt is saying: “The important thing is to use real lemon and to add the oil one drop at a time, one drop at a time.”

And I, Judith Gill, am spinning: I feel my animal spirit unwind, my party self, that progressive personality that goes from social queries about theatre series to compulsive anecdote swapping. I press for equal time.
Stop,
I tell myself.
Let this topic pass without pulling out your hospital story, your vitamin B complex story, your tennis story, your Lester Pearson snippet. Adjust your eyes. Be tranquil. Stop.
I admonish myself, but it's useless. I feel my next story gathering in my throat, the words pulling together, waiting their chance. Here it is. I'm ready to leap in. “Speaking of bananas,” I say, and I'm off.

Martin, at the next table, is not talking. What is he doing? He is lifting a forkful of roast beef, and slowly, slowly, he is chewing it. What is he doing now?

He is listening.

 

 

It was on the first day
of the new year that I discovered the reason for Martin's secret cache of wool; the explanation was delivered so offhandedly and with such an aura of innocence that I furiously cursed my suspicions. What on earth had I expected – that Martin had slipped over the edge into lunacy? That, saddened and trapped at forty-one, he might be having a breakdown? Did I think he nursed a secret vice: knitting instead of tippling? Or perhaps that he had acquired a mistress, a great luscious handicraft addict whose fetish it was to crochet while she was being made love to? Crazy, crazy. I was the one who was crazy.

On New Year's Day Martin sat talking to his mother and father who had come from Montreal for the weekend. His father is a professor too, himself the son of a professor; he teaches history at McGill. Gill of McGill, he likes to introduce himself to strangers. He is a spare, speckled man, happiest wearing the loose oatmeal cardigans his wife knits for him and soft old jackets, frayed at the pockets and elbows. His habitual stance is kindly (a Franciscan kindness) and speculative; he is what is known in the world as a good man, possessing all the qualities of a Christian with the exception of faith.

The relationship between Martin and his father is such as might exist between exceedingly fond colleagues. Like brothers they flank Martin's mother, Lala to us, a small woman who except for an unmanageable nest of sparrow-brown, Gibson-girlish hair is attractive and bright, known to her friends in Montreal as a Doer. Her private and particular species of femininity demands gruff male attendance, and she is sitting now in our family room between “her two men,” although that is a phrase which she herself would consider too cloying to use.

We have had a late breakfast, coffee and an almond ring brought by Lala from her local ethnic bakery in Montreal. The sun is pouring in through the streaky windows making us all feel drowsy and dull. Richard and Meredith, both of them blotchy with sleep, sprawl in front of the television watching the Rose Bowl Parade. There are newspapers everywhere, on the floor and on the chairs, thick holiday editions. And cups and saucers litter the coffee table. Lala leans back on the sofa, lazily puffing a duMaurier.

Grandpa Gill asks Martin how his course load is going and whether he is doing a paper at the moment. Lala leans bird-like toward them, eager to hear what Martin has to say. I too am roused from torpor. We all wait.

Martin tells his father about the paper that has been turned down. “I'll show it to you if you like,” he says. “Apparently it just didn't measure up in terms of originality. One of the referees, anonymous of course, penciled ‘derivative' all over it.”

“That was bad luck,” Grandpa Gill nods.

“What a shame, Martin,” Lala adds.

I marvel for the thousandth time at the constancy and perfect accord with which they underscore their son's ability.

“To be honest,” Martin continues, “it was pretty dull. But I'm working on something else now which might be a little different.”

“Yes?” his mother sings through her smoke.

“Well,” Martin says, addressing his father automatically, “I think I can say that I actually got this idea from you.”

“Really?” Grandpa Gill smiles.

“Remember that chart you showed me. In your office last fall? A colored diagram with the structure of world power charted in different colors?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. The Reynolds Diagram. Very useful.”

“Well, after I saw that I got to thinking that it might be a good idea to use a diagram approach to themes in epic poetry. To
Paradise
Lost
specifically.”

“But how would you go about it?” his mother presses him.

“I thought it might be possible to make a graphic of it,” Martin says, “Like the Reynolds Diagram, only using wool instead of paint since the themes are so mixed. In places it's necessary to interweave the colors. Sometimes, as you can appreciate, there are as many as four or five themes woven together.”

His father nods and asks, “And how have you gone about it?”

“I thought about it for a long time,” Martin says.

Where was I while he thought so long and hard?

“Finally I decided on a large rectangle of loose burlap for each of the twelve books. That way the final presentation could be hung together. For “comparison purposes.”

“I don't get it, Martin,” I say, speaking for the first time.

He looks faintly exasperated. “All I did was to take a color for each theme: For instance, red for God's omnipotence, blue for man's disobedience, green for arrogance, and, let's see, yellow for pride and so on. But you can see,” he says, turning again to his father, “that one theme will predominate for a time. And then subside and merge into one of the others.”

“And how do you know just where in the text you are?” Grandpa Gill asks.

“I wondered about that,” Martin says.

Where was I, his wife, when he wondered about that?

“And I decided to mark off the lines along the side. I've got them printed in heavy ink. The secretary helped ink them in.”

She did, did she?

“I think that sounds most innovative,” his mother says nodding vigorously and butting out her cigarette.

“Is it nearly finished?” his father asks.

“Almost. I hope to present it in March.”

“Present it where?” I ask, trying to control the quaver in my voice.

“The Renaissance Society. It's meeting in Toronto this year. I've already sent in an abstract.”

“I'm anxious to see it,” Lala says. “Is it here at home?”

“No. I've been putting it together at the university. But next time you come down I'll show it off to you. It should be all done by then.”

“But Martin,” I say, “you've never mentioned any of this to me.”

“Didn't I?” He gazes at me. “I thought I did.”

I give him a very long and level look before replying, “You never said a single word about it to me.”

“Well, now that I have told you, what do you think?”

“Do you really want to know?”

All three of them turn to me in alarm. “Of course,” Martin says.

Wildly I reach out for the right word – “I think it's, well, I think it's absurd.”

“Why?” Martin asks.

“Yes, why, Judith?” his father asks.

I am confused. And unwilling to hurt Martin and certainly not wanting to upset his parents whom I like. But the project seems to me to be spun out of lunacy.

I try to explain. “Look,” I say, “I can't exactly put it into words, but it sounds a bit desperate. Do you know what I mean?”

“No,” Martin says, more shortly than usual.

“What I mean is, literature is literature. Poetry is poetry. It's made out of words. You don't work poems in wool.”

“What you're saying is that it's disrespectful to the tradition.”

“No, that's not really it. I don't care about the tradition. It's just that you might look foolish, Martin. And desperate. Don't you see, it's gimmicky, and you've never been one for gimmicks.”

“For Christ's sake, Judith, don't make too much of it. It's just a teaching aid.”

The children have turned from the television now and are watching us. Grandpa Gill and Lala, almost imperceptibly, shrink away from us.

“Martin, you've always been so sensible. Can't you see that this is just, well, just a little undignified. I mean, I just feel it's beneath you somehow.”

“I don't see what's so undignified about trying something new for a change. Christ, Judith. You're the one who thinks the seventeenth century is such a bore. Literature can be damn dull. And especially Milton.”

“I agree. I agree.”

“What I'm doing is making a pictorial presentation of themes which will give a quick comprehensive vision of the total design. It's quite simple and straightforward.”

“Couldn't you just do a paper on it?”

“No. No, I could not.”

“Why not?”

“How can you put a design image into prose?”

“What about that paper they turned down. Couldn't you do that one over for them?”

“No.”

“So instead you've dreamed up this lunatic scheme.”

“Judith, we're talking in circles. I don't think it's all that idiotic. What do you think, Dad?”

Grandpa Gill regards me. Clearly he does not want to join in the foray, but he is being pressed. He speaks cautiously: “I think I partially understand what Judith is worried about. The publish-or-perish syndrome does occasionally have the effect of forcing academics to make asses of themselves. But, on the other hand, cross-disciplinary approaches seem to be well thought of at the moment. A graphic demonstration of a literary work, with the design features stressed, might make quite an interesting presentation if –"

I interrupt, out of exasperation, for I know he can go on in this vein for hours. “Look, Martin there's another thing. And I hate to say this because it sounds so narrow-minded and conventional, but I, well, the truth is – I can't bear to think of you sitting there in your office weaving away. I mean – do you know what I mean? – do you – don't you think it's just a little bit – you know –?”

“Effeminate?” he supplies the word.