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c o n t a c t y o u r t r a v e l c o n s u l t a n t , v i s i t w w w. f a i r m o n t . c o m o r c a l l F a i r m o n t a t 1 - 8 0 0 - 4 4 1 - 1 4 1 4
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By seeing beyond the dark and dull
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Using the soft local water, the ‘noble’
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The original Pilsner, its exquisite
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“Money changes all the iron rules into rubber bands.”
— Ryszard Kapuściński
9 Contributors
10 Letters
18 Sightings Generation www
20 Field Notes Guy Vanderhaeghe at cowboy camp in Saskatchewan,
biking through Xinjiang memories, uncovering Suriname’s hidden caves
fact
32 Extraction
All animals take from nature, the Canadian animal especially so
by Edward Burtynsky
36 Moneybags
The wealth divide is a canyon — will the rich cross it?
july/august 2007 by Bruce Livesey
volume 4 issue 6
44 3D Vision
Is Canada’s strategy in Afghanistan too complex to succeed?
by Taylor Owen and Patrick Travers
50 Charisma
Sex, play, and a fighting stance is what our leaders must provide
by Jeff Ryan
fiction
Beginning on 56 The Counterpart by Nadia Kalman
page 9: 64 Bob Dylan Goes Tubing by Marni Jackson
love songs, illustrated;
70 The Principles of Exile by Camilla Gibb
playlist by
Matthew McKinnon 77 Big Ticket a play by Jim Garrard
poetry
41 The Mall by Evelyn Lau
49 Big Paw by Priscila Uppal
Nevin Halıcı is one of Turkey’s most respected food writers and a leading authority on the country’s national cuisine.
(See “Sufi Gourmet,” p. 82.) Detail from a photograph by Lana Šlezić
6
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Contributors
volume 4 issue 6
edward burtynsky (Cover and “Extrac- nadia kalman (“The Counterpart,” p. 56)
tion,” p. 32) and his photographs of China’s was selected by Margaret Atwood as the
industrial revolution are the subject of the winner of last year’s Summer Literary Sem-
film Manufactured Landscapes. inars prize for fiction.
gabriel jones (“Moneybags”), a photog- jim garrard (“Big Ticket,” p. 77) is a play-
rapher, has exhibited in New York, Tou- wright, the founder of Theatre Passe
louse, Paris, Düsseldorf, London, and Muraille in Toronto, and the former direc-
Montreal. tor of the Toronto Arts Council.
evelyn lau (“The Mall,” p. 41) is the author lana šlezic (“Sufi Gourmet,” p. 82) is a
of Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, two short- documentary photographer based in Istan-
story collections, a book of essays, a novel, bul. Forsaken, her book on Afghan women,
and four volumes of poetry, most recently comes out this fall.
2005’s Treble.
randy boyagoda (“In Paris with Mavis
taylor owen (“3D Vision,” p. 44) is a Tru- Gallant, Writer,” p. 88) published his first
deau Scholar at the University of Oxford novel, Governor of the Northern Province,
and writes on security and foreign policy. in 2006.
9
t h e wa l r u s
It transfers control from the tip of your fingers to the tip of your tongue. It is bilingual Voice Recognition
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One wonders . . . Life of Great American Cities? And why then, he underestimates them. For ex-
These problems will be solved not would Mazer skip over that compel- ample, while he credits Jacobs’s re-
by importing business management ling book to devote so much ink to de- shaping of Toronto’s politics with the
models or by giving more credence riding a minor work like The Question stunning electoral victory of David
and discretion to line officers, but of Separatism? Miller in 2003, he overlooks her im-
rather by investing toothless civilian These books share a core vision that pact on what were, at the time, equally
oversight bodies with more author- was central to Jacobs’s work and the surprising victories by David Crombie,
ity — the type of authority that can driving force behind her activism. She John Sewell, and Barbara Hall. He also
probe secret church-basement meet- knew from relentless observation that minimizes the significance of the ex-
ings where some cops collude to cover vibrant, dense networks produce more pressway victories in New York and
things up. good ideas than the brightest individ- Toronto, which were critical to the
Myles Leslie ual, that chaotic and engaged inter- success of those cities and inspired
Toronto, Ontario action evolves those ideas better than the revitalization of inner cities across
most costly think tanks, and that diver- North America.
Jacobs’s Ladder sity really is our strength. That’s why Finally, and inexplicably, Mazer
It feels almost churlish to critique Alex she favoured the creativity of commu- questions Jacobs’s visionary status
Mazer’s article on Jane Jacobs (“City nities over the dictates of demagogues. on the basis of her active role in every-
Limits,” May), in which he asks wheth- And that’s why she so forcefully argued, day affairs. This is historically wrong;
er it is time to rethink our view of her before it was popular to believe it, that Jacobs’s impact was almost always
as a visionary. His dismissal of the vi- cities had taken hold as the most im- through ideas and rarely through di-
sionary status of Toronto’s secular saint portant socio-political unit despite the rect mobilization. More importantly, it
is so gentle that he seems almost sorry dominance of the nation-state. Her is philosophically indefensible. What
to be asking the question. But ask it he subsequent work enriches that legacy are visionaries for if not to guide real
does, and his answer is baffling. with increasingly complex views of the action? It is an affirmation of Jacobs’s
How can anyone attempt to dismiss forces that condition the dynamic inter- visionary status that the foundation
Jacobs as a one-book-wonder and for- play of communities, ideas, and initia- that took up her legacy chose to call
get Cities and the Wealth of Nations, a tive and the impact of those forces, for itself Ideas That Matter. Would that
reinvention of economics almost as good or ill, on the world. more of our thinkers assumed their
revolutionary, persuasive, and appeal- Mazer concedes that Jacobs’s vision ideas should.
ing as her masterwork, The Death and produced great achievements, but even Sean Meagher
Toronto, Ontario
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t h e wa l r u s
political momentum flagged, ideas fiz- Even if Alex Mazer can be forgiven for result was social cleansing.
zled, and our innovative policy-makers one or two appalling assertions (most Mazer’s missed opportunity is even
became voices in the wilderness, wait- notably, that Jacobs’s advocacy of lower- clearer in light of Michel Arseneault’s
ing patiently for the next green wave. level government was appropriate up Field Note about French architect Ro-
We forgot (and now claim we didn’t until the end of the Cold War, but that, land Castro ( “Suburban Renewal,”
know) the costs of the consumer life- post 9/11, it appears “naive and even ir- May). Among Castro’s considerations
style. Now, after fifteen years of inertia, responsible”), he has squandered the in rebuilding a notorious public hous-
the threat of global warming has para- opportunity to give a substantive cri- ing project in the Parisian suburbs are
chuted us once again into a “new” era tique of an icon who he quite rightly some of Jacobs’s most prominent “dos
of consciousness. complains seems immune. and don’ts” for urban renewal: yes to
Ontario’s new Places to Grow plan, The problem is that Mazer confines short block lengths and the preserva-
which recently won the American Plan- his criticisms to Jacobs’s four minor, tion of old buildings; no to mixed pri-
ning Association’s coveted Daniel Burn- non-urban works, tacitly endorsing her mary use and buildings abutting the
ham Award, rests on the foundation of most consequential ideas even as he sidewalk. Castro’s project is exactly
Jacobs’s vision — vibrant, self-sustain- claims to be reappraising her. In fact, the kind of thing Jacobs’s ideas should
ing communities connected by efficient there are plenty of reasons for doubting be evaluated against. She originally
transportation corridors and surround- the accuracy of Jacobs’s beliefs about claimed her observations were only
ed by green. And many of the solutions urban decline and renewal, most fa- applicable to a small number of “great
put forward by this May’s meeting of mously outlined in The Death and American cities,” but they’ve been em-
the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli- Life of Great American Cities. For ex- ployed (without her protest) far more
mate Change, a network of hundreds ample, many argue that her prescrip- widely than that, and the results need
of scientists and experts, can be found tions are in part responsible for the to be considered when assessing her
in Jacobs’s 1961 book, The Death and disappearance of affordable housing in legacy. A world, even a First World, of
Life of Great American Cities. Hopefully, Jacobs’s own Toronto neighbourhood Greenwich Villages is an impossibility,
one day soon, her vision of the future and, more generally, the suburbaniza- and Jacobs’s vision can only really be
will come to fruition. tion of poverty that Canadian cities appraised in the context of a world of
Sally M. Leppard have witnessed in recent decades. A banlieues and tract suburbs.
Founder and ceo generation of councillors and plan- Mazer calls Jacobs’s book The Ques-
Lura Consulting ners deployed her ideas in the name of tion of Separatism “a rather unusual
Toronto, Ontario neighbourhood preservation, and the product: a refutation of some of the
weaker arguments against secession.”
By this reckoning, Mazer’s essay is also
a rather unusual product — a timely cri-
tique of Jacobs, but one composed, un-
fortunately, of the weaker arguments.
David Wachsmuth
Toronto, Ontario
1.800.668.6600 www.metropolitan.com
Yet the existence of a McDonald’s in So it is in Rebecca Addelman’s “The widespread among Americans, of Can-
Toronto, for instance, is as emblem- Last Laugh” (May): “Canada is famous ada’s marginality.
atic of Canadian corporatism as it is for birthing satirists who have gone on Valentine A. Pakis
of American corporatism; the same to take down the American establish- Minneapolis, Minnesota
can be said of the existence of a Tim ment. How did we get to the point of
Hortons doughnut shop in a suburb needing Jon Stewart to make fun of our I Object!
of Chicago. politicians for us?” The underlying anx- Your coverage of International Con-
The sentiment is echoed in a May iety of this quotation is betrayed in the scientious Objectors Day in the May
letter by John MacLachlan Gray (in re- hyperbole of its first sentence. Where Outlooks betrays a fundamental mis-
sponse to Charles Foran’s “An Amer- is Canada famous for birthing satirists? understanding of conscientious ob-
ican Type of Sadness,” March): “The Can a satirist bring down an establish- jection. COs are not asking for their
fact is that in Canada, our discomfort ment? If so, can a satirist bring down an individual rights to “trump the collect-
with consumerism and its cultural by- establishment that is unaware of this ive resolution of state interests.” Rather,
products is accompanied by the know- satirist’s existence? The remark suggests they assert that the resolution cannot
ledge that these demons are not of our further that the US is forcing its come- be accomplished by war.
own creation or evocation — that they dy into Canadian living rooms. Howev- COs neither deny the existence of
grew out of a management vat in New er, Canadians do not “need” American conflict nor wish to accept subjuga-
York and Los Angeles.” How consum- comedians to mock Canadian politi- tion as a result of inaction. They be-
ers, in this case Canadian, are not some- cians — that American comedians do lieve we need to work toward a more
what responsible for the “creation or so is beside the point. What they need, robust peace, which addresses the root
evocation” of their own consumerism as the article points out, are fewer regu- of the conflict rather than tearing off
is beyond me, for consumer culture is lations on public speech. limbs and branches.
not created by producers alone, and Like Canadian culture, American In fact, COs are some of the most
even if that were so, Canada produces culture is not monolithic, though your committed patriots; they believe that
plenty to consume. The desire for cul- writers are apt to fashion it as such, establishing more stable international
tural independence from America is again, to give definition to their no- relationships will allow our countries
understandable, but the influence of tions of Canadian identity. This pre- to develop more freely.
American culture on Canada should occupation detracts, however slightly, Scott Kroeker
not be discussed in hegemonic terms, from the intellectual quality of your Winnipeg, Manitoba
however understated. magazine and supports the stereotype,
Pick Your Poison
I have just taken the opportunity to
read John Lorinc’s very thoughtful
article, “Driven to Distraction” (April).
I would have read it sooner, but I’ve
been preoccupied reading a rather long
book, talking to my delightful sister
on the telephone, and visiting friends
across town. They make a mean pasta
and serve wine. We always have a few
hearty laughs and part in good humour.
But I digress. (Life is full of these kinds
of distractions, too.)
Technology has succeeded where
centuries of work have failed in keep-
ing us chained to the workplace 24/7,
365 days of the year. Mobile devices like
the BlackBerry are contributing to the
work pandemic that is running rampant
in our society. The false sense of urgen-
cy — and self-importance — conveyed
by these devices is driving us nuts. We
must keep them in their place.
One of Lorinc’s most important find-
ings is that we need “more time and
fewer distractions, even if that means
less information.” If there’s one thing
“Hello Love” – Hank Snow (1973) that’s overhyped in the Information
&
minds to it, we can choose our distrac-
B A K E R Y
tions! Turn off, tune out, drop out.
Alan Gummo
St. Catharines, Ontario
S E N S E S
Dead Cred
Joshua Knelman’s Field Note “Better
•
Red, Then Dead” (April) is wonderful-
P E N T H O U S E
ly evocative of Biblical times, flutter-
ing kaffiyehs, and the sunset days of
the British Empire in the Middle East.
Knelman also correctly sketches out
the ecological tragedy of the Dead Sea,
3 - S T O R E Y
dropping fast as a result of managed
overextraction of water for human con-
sumption, agriculture, and industrial
F T,
prowess. However, the proposed so-
lution — diverting water from the Red
Sea via a canal system — is more prob- S Q
4 , 0 0 0
17
Sightings
generation www
he new world order, as described in with room for coffee klatches if not agreements when elected officials have
T dispatches from the culture front, books. Higher up, there are the schools gone awol — are without historical con-
reveals itself as follows: so long as of journalism that concurrently teach sciousness or any appreciation that a
it is delivered in digestible chunks, is “the story chase” and public relations — powerful metaphor can go horribly awry.
salacious, gossipy, and supported by that is, teach truth and falsity all at Post-9/11, the Americans tried “Might is
illustrative pictures, Internet users gen- once — but never mind, the myth is Right” in Afghanistan. Mountains were
erally don’t care where content comes preserved that the writer’s craft can be beheaded, civilians and goats killed, a
from. On terra firma — say, at the mag- gleaned without excessive reading, trav- few nasty brutes wasted or sent off to
azine rack — editorial copy is said to be el, and downtime with Zarathustra. Guantánamo Bay, and the rest of the
“stuff ” around which advertisements are Vanity press is thriving, and self- bad guys and hearty Pashtuns returned
wrapped: often a sad but true summa- publishing via the Internet is thought to to their caves. It did not go well, but
tion. Elsewhere, paragraphs sequential- be more honest, more, well, immediate if at first you don’t succeed . . . And so
ly organized into narratives are viewed than anything subjected to an editor’s we have Canada’s myopic charge, our
as “running text.” At book signings, scalpel and the rigours of fact check- own might is right (lower case and
folks with large handfuls will likely sell ing. And in this gaseous explosion of without quotation marks, given our
the autographed products on eBay: a words and pictures, obfuscation flour- relative strength), while the Ameri-
“You’re the best, Don DeLillo” might ishes. “Citizen journalists,” pencilled cans chase hope over experience in
fetch $15 above retail, I’m told, “From in as a check and balance on propa- nearby Iraq.
Paris with love, Mavis Gallant” in the ganda if not purple prose, instead fol- Only a deserted public square could
neighbourhood of twenty bonus bucks, low the rushing current from one topic allow such inanities to persist. Only an
and “My treasure, Fyodor Dostoevsky,” to another. Meanwhile, Mr. Harper’s ahistorical braggart could fail to recog-
a king’s ransom — if packaged with “whole of government” (wog) settles nize that many Afghan and Iraqi in-
a tomb raider. over the commons — wog in this in- surgents are locally born and have in
That rappers ( “Two trailer park girls stance meaning, “Any minister who their bones distrust and hatred of for-
go round the outside . . .” ) and teenagers steps out of line will be kneecapped eign infidels, especially those pummel-
( “my bad” ) are the new grammarians by Brutus.” ling rockets into villages. Only those in
is widely known, if not appreciated. But Clogging other arteries is the celeb- the generals’ hip pockets fail to appre-
flying under the radar of those who rity confessional, and even in polite com- ciate that it is diplomacy that ultimate-
track society’s descent into mediocrity is pany one is now expected to speak about ly wins the peace. But distracted we are,
the Ontario high school diploma, which oneself. MySpace versus YouTube is the clicking away, surfing the World Wide
requires exactly one history course. In new battleground, and to be fair there Web for information, porn, the odd reci-
four truncated months — quick-and-dirty is much hilarity in both. But with just- pe, while history marches on, “Might
semestered schools winning out over in-time-delivery and what-have-you- is Right” winning the day, if not a sin-
the full-year programs — the tortured done-for-me-lately being sovereign, gle war. www, the new messiah, is just
teenagers receive a glimpse of the cour- everything is of the moment, and the as likely to produce a collective aneur-
eur de bois passing through native noise is deafening. God has been pro- ysm as it is the sharing of best prac-
woods and a few good men dead on nounced dead, and since He could be tices on open-source networks. And
foreign battlefields, maybe a mad dash a genuine nuisance, that is fair enough; in this unmediated era, when decent
through nafta, knock off five or eight but if history and reflection follow in manners, a touch of modesty, child-
videos, write a paper, sit the exam, and His wake, the cacophony will escalate hood, subject-verb agreement, and the
then “Free at last! Free at last! Thank and the trouble will destroy. slow search for truth are dying on the
God almighty, we are free at last!” — the It is apparent that Harper, defence vine, it is difficult to discern anything
quote not Canadian but at least on point. minister Gordon O’Connor, and bully- of substance inside the walls of self-
What used to be called “libraries” are boy Rick Hillier — the chief of the de- referential noise. ;
morphing into “information centres” fence staff, who signs international — Ken Alexander, Editor
18
t h e wa l r u s
Outlok for On the ensuing trail ride, the grin tasy was fulfilled. At age fifty-five, bet-
JULY/AUGUST soon melted off my face as I wrestled ter late than never, I had become a high
Illustrated by to restrain my high-spirited steed. If it plains drifter.
Tamara Shopsin
bolts, I reminded myself, resist the urge — Guy Vanderhaeghe
}
to shriek. Better to die in silence than
July 2–13 in disgrace.
Miss Galaxy In the next few days, I found my-
Pageant self aching in places I didn’t know I
Nuku’alofa, Tonga
owned and walking like an animated
wishbone. Meanwhile, the actors were “i am strong
soldiering on, growing ever stiffer, sorer,
and more chafed. They were also learning
in my basically”
that horses, like thespians, sometimes A bike ride through the Chinese psyche
exhibit quirks, foibles, and temperament.
One morning at breakfast, I asked one xinjiang autonomous region — My
In Tonga, two
of the actors, who sat morosely stirring daughter Noey and I were tired, hun-
genders just aren’t
enough. The third,
his fruit cocktail, what was the matter. gry, and lost, travelling with an inad-
known as fakaleiti He blurted out, “My horse hates me. He equate map and a “guide” who spoke
(“like a lady”), knows I’m from Toronto and I’m wear- no English, had never been in the area
consists of cross- ing pantyhose.” before, and was notably displeased with
dressing males It was a charged, confessional mo- our agenda. We were riding mountain
who, tradition has ment. Only later did I learn that all the bikes along a rutted dirt track that ram-
it, were raised as other actors had also donned panty- bled across the broad steppe in Xinjiang,
girls by families hose. The wranglers had given them a a region in northwest China formerly
lacking female “tip.” Hosiery minimized saddle friction, known as the East Turkestan Republic.
children to take preventing flesh from getting rubbed to Before that, it was traditionally the home
care of domestic hamburger. They had descended on a of Turkic herders and horse warriors
chores like weav-
womenswear store to get outfitted. who had been both enemies and allies
ing, cooking, and
Too soon, I had to leave, despairing of Genghis Khan.
cleaning. Part
at having notched only a single ride. We pedalled into a small valley with
gender-studies
conference, part When I returned weeks later, all the ac- worn pasture, too many sheep, and dun-
glamour gala, tors from Vancouver and Toronto had coloured yurts that matched the parched
the Miss Galaxy developed a blasé competence around hills. After coasting down, we met a Kaz-
Pageant showcases horses and were now being glamorous- akh woman who was carrying water in
the femininity and ly referred to as “the posse.” As a West- pails swinging from a stick that was bal-
liminality of this erner, I seethed at the unfairness of it anced across her shoulders. She shyly
well-established all. But one afternoon, when an actor but graciously invited us to dinner, in
element of Tongan was somehow occupied and his horse accordance with the Central Asian no-
society. Though needed to be ridden to a location, I was mad’s custom that anyone who has al-
metre-tall hats called upon. “Guy, take Michael’s horse. ready raised their yurt must offer shelter
provide a good
Go with the posse.” to weary travellers. The men returned
dose of camp, the
Michael happens to be considerably from their herds and we all sat cross-
competition is
shorter than me, but there was no time legged on colourful carpets to eat mutton
a high-minded
affair: contestants to adjust the stirrup lengths. Off I went, and noodles, cooked over a cow-dung
model elegant an overweight, superannuated jockey, fire on an open hearth.
evening gowns and knees hovering near my armpits. At The next morning, we rode across roll-
judges interview the top of a hill, I halted to take in the ing grassland, grazed to stubble, under
them earnestly to scene. By squinting my eyes, I was able a sky too broad to hold thoughts inside.
decide which one to banish the craft-services vehicle and By late afternoon, we pedalled past ir-
to crown . . . King? other cinematic impedimenta below. In rigated fields and then rolled into a
Princess? Queen? the valley, teepees glistened in glaring city with glistening modern buildings
On this Polynesian sunshine. Raked by a breeze, a grove of and wide avenues, where well-dressed
island, the distinc- poplars flashed silver. Insects hummed businesspeople hurried along spacious,
tions blur in the
in the heat. The posse filed down the curving sidewalks past tidy gardens of
smoky haze of
slope, costumed and armed. I drank white, red, and yellow flowers.
roasting pig.
it all in. By marrying movie illusion The following day, Noey and I found
with psychological delusion, my fan- a small college perched on a third floor
22
Discover how many colours one
sea can hold
www.spain.info
OFICINA ESPAÑOLA DE TURISMO EN TORONTO • TOURIST OFFICE OF SPAIN • OFFICE DU TOURISME D'ESPAGNE
2 Bloor Street West, Suite 3402. TORONTO, Ontario, M4W 3E2
Tel.: 1- 416 - 961 31 31 Fax.: 1- 416 - 961 19 92 toronto@tourspain.toronto.on.ca www.tourspain.toronto.on.ca
t h e wa l r u s
July 13–22 above a fashionable boutique. We locat- fidence in his demeanour that belied
The 38th ed an English teacher, a pretty young our concerns.
International woman dressed in tight jeans and high- He asked his mother for permission
Physics Olympiad
heeled sandals that revealed glittering to join us, and she angrily replied, “How
Isfahan, Iran
purple toenail polish. are you ever going to find a suitable
I knew that the People’s Liberation wife if you are out riding with these two
Army (pla) had wrested this land from Americans?”
the indigenous Kazakh and Uighur Ignoring her, Wuming Shi showed
people, just as they had conquered Tibet, up at our hotel the next morning on his
Denying the and that they had imported agriculture twenty-dollar Chinese bicycle, with cot-
Holocaust is so last and urbanization into a land traditional- ton bedding tied askew behind the back
year — this year,
ly inhabited by nomads. But we had been seat. On the long climb out of town, he
Iran has moved
travelling without language, so the tra- pedalled beside me as I struggled to catch
on to denying
string theory. High
gedy remained strangely sterile, as if hu- my breath. When we reached the sum-
school students mans weren’t involved. mit, I asked him how he could ride so
from across the After formalities, I asked, “What is the strongly, on a junker bike and with no
globe will travel relationship between the Han Chinese physical conditioning.
to Isfahan this and the Kazakh people here in north- Wuming Shi smiled. “I have suffered
July for a week- west Xinjiang?” more than you have. I am strong in my
long competition “Yes.” She smiled. basically.”
to identify the “Did you understand my question?” Ten days later, we were studying my
world’s nerdiest “Yes.” Another coquettish smile. map and Wuming Shi pointed his fin-
teenager. The I reworded my inquiry, using sim- ger at a region marked with the label,
contest has two ple syntax. “Many irrigation ditches.”
parts, one devoted
“Oh. We are all very happy.” “My father dug those ditches with a
to theoretical
We chatted congenially in this man- shovel.”
problems and
ner until Noey and I thanked the woman Then he began to cry. After a few mo-
a second to
experimental and retired to go shopping. When we ments he continued, “You are a writer.
questions, with stepped off the escalator in a large de- Sometimes you ask too many questions.
a day of rest partment store, two Filipino women ap- Remember, this is China. There are many
in between for proached and suggested mysteriously stories about the Han Chinese, the Kaz-
competitors to that we might want to talk with a local akhs, and the Uighurs. Some of these
hang out and resident — someone I will call Wuming stories may be true, while some may
talk about their Shi — who spoke excellent English. not. It is very hard to know. But I will
crushes with this As we sipped tea in a posh hotel, Wu- tell you the story of my father. I know
year’s guest of ming Shi explained that he couldn’t an- this is true.
honour, Stephen swer my questions in a public place, and “My father was born in 1930. When
Hawking. Last
invited us to his house. That evening, the Revolution started, he joined Chiang
year, sixteen-year-
we discussed Hemingway, the Bible, Kai-shek’s army, but his unit was defeat-
old Jonathan
and Joseph Conrad, but Wuming Shi ed by the Communists. They sent him
Pradana Mailoa
of Indonesia won deflected all inquiries about politics, so- to school and he joined the pla, who
the title of best cial interactions, or history. Three days fought against the independence move-
physics student later, defeated in our quest for informa- ment in East Turkestan. After the victory,
for correctly tion, Noey and I decided to continue the soldiers were ordered to colonize the
answering a ques- our bike ride across the steppe. conquered land, which later became the
tion about neutron- Wuming Shi asked if he could join region known as Xinjiang. There were
inferometers us. He was a retired bank clerk, fifty- no Chinese women, so the government
and the effect of four years old and frail looking, with dispatched agents to central China to
gravitational pull a thin face, chipped front teeth, large find wives for the soldier-settlers. The
on de Broglie eyeglasses, and a warm smile. He had Chinese built farms and cities, because
waves. At press
been married twice and had three chil- the Kazakh people were nomads.
time, no one from
dren, but had never camped out, been “My father dug irrigation trenches and
the United States
on a long-distance bike ride, or exer- raised fruit trees. He and my mother
had signed up.
cised in any meaningful way. Noey and were happy, and we always had enough
I were worried that he would become a to eat. But my father was of Yi national-
liability on the arduous ride ahead, but ity, not Han Chinese, so when the Cul-
there was a quiet peacefulness and con- tural Revolution commenced in 1966,
24
What Books can’t tell you
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t h e wa l r u s
August 9–10 neighbours accused my father of speak- shriek two-syllable greetings, and the
Fourth ing against the government.” electric hum of cicadas rises on the late-
International Wuming Shi continued quickly, in afternoon air along with the sour stink
Course on
cropped sentences, without description of wild boar. Soon the trail is blocked by
Improving the
Quality of Service or elaboration. a series of massive boulders. We have
in Security “Under torture, my father confessed arrived at the sanctuary of Werehpai.
Buenos Aires to crimes against the government. He Before taking us any further, our Trio
was imprisoned and held in chains. Then Indian guide recounts the story of how
he escaped and hid in a haystack. Still he found this place.
in chains, he returned home to see my “I was chasing a herd of boar when
mother. Just to look at her face. Of course, my hunting dog disappeared,” Kamania
he was captured, tortured, and impris- tells us in Sranan Tongo, Suriname’s
oned again. matter-of-fact lingua franca. “I looked
“My fellow Latin Wuming Shi sobbed uncontrollably. for him all day but couldn’t find him,
American rent-a- “My father was never a bad man. The so I returned to camp. My wife was very
cops: The people men who accused him just wanted to upset. Our dog is a good dog. I went to
fear for their make him look dirty so they would look sleep angry and very sad.”
homes and their clean.” That night, Kamania dreamt of a voice.
lives. In these He took a raggedy breath and con- The voice described a secret pathway
times of great tinued: “When my father was in prison, through the forest and told him to fol-
wealth for the we were always hungry, and in the win- low it. “You will not find your dog,” said
few and poverty ter, frost coated the inside of our house. the voice. “Instead, you will find pictures
for the many,
After the Cultural Revolution my father of your ancestors carved in stone.”
violent crime is
came home. But he was never the same “I woke before the sun and followed
ever rising. And
this is wonderful
man again.” the same route I’d learned in the dream,”
news for private Wuming Shi composed himself and Kamania continues. “I secretly expected
security firms! smiled. His face, which had been pale at to find my dog, but by noon I had found
Our industry is the beginning of the journey, was now nothing, so I sat down to eat my lunch.
growing by tanned, offset by a purple bruise above I was lost. I did not know where I was.
10 percent a year — his left eye, where he had crashed on Then, on the surface of a stone at my
so fast, in fact, that a rocky downhill. “I have never told feet, I saw a face staring up at me.”
our performance this to anyone before. I tell it to you be- Kamania looked up and realized he
has suffered and cause we are bicycling together. We are was sitting in front of a towering com-
we’re getting friends.” plex of granite boulders overgrown with
some tough press. Then he pointed his finger at me moss and vines. He had never seen this
Human rights
and admonished, “You have travelled place before. “The face told me to explore
groups and the
in China for a month and you have seen the stones,” he says.
UN are saying
we’re taking
some things. You have heard this story. Among the boulders, Kamania found
over from public Maybe you think that now you under- a labyrinth of seven interconnected caves.
police — in Chile, stand China. You will write that you The walls of each room were covered
we outnumber understand China. But you don’t know with rough petroglyphs, haunting imag-
them two to anything. You don’t understand any- es of faces and rainforest animals carved
one. They also thing about China.” into the rock. In one room he found an
say that we fuel — Jon Turk altar stone, its flat surface thick with the
the illegal arms bones of boar, armadillo, and monkey —
trade and engage once home to his ancestors, this room
in extrajudicial was now a jaguar’s lair. The sloped floors
killings. This is were carpeted with shards of pottery, and
precisely why
the sound of them splintering beneath
we must come to
together: to share
dreaming a new his feet frightened him.
best practices myth Kamania left quickly. He paddled
for these special downriver to Kwamalasamutu and alert-
A lost jungle cave reveals a secret
services, and ed the village chief to what he’d found.
to drink to our Soon, government officials and local
wisdom.” sipaliwini basin — We leave our boats archaeologists were informed, and the
on the river and trudge into the Surinam- site was declared a sanctuary. An archae-
ese jungle without speaking. Piha birds ologist from the Smithsonian came to
26
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t h e wa l r u s
August 11 conduct a preliminary dig. Conservation Trio legend says that Werehpai was August 15
Dia da Pendura International, already active in the rain- a young woman from the Akijo tribe, a 30th Anniversary of
Brazil forests of Suriname, quickly began explor- group that lived for thousands of years the Wow! Signal
Sent from outer space
ing the ecotourism potential of the site. in the remote jungles of the Upper Ama-
to Delaware, Ohio
Our expedition is part of that mission. zon Basin. The Akijo were an advanced
After uttering a short prayer, Kamania people — they knew how to paint, to
leads us into the caves. The air becomes draw, and to weave — but they were also
dank and cold, almost subterranean. The a warring one, renowned for their vio-
Law students floors are slippery with tropical lichens lence and cannibalism.
throughout Brazil and dotted with ceramic fragments. One day, Werehpai was given two
leave their res- We make our way into the first house children, kidnapped from a neighbour-
taurant cheques and begin to see the carvings: stick-figure ing tribe, to raise as her own. When they Dear Dr. Jerry
“hanging” (na bodies with oval heads, their mouths reached adolescence, the girl was re- Ehman of Earth,
pendura) every wide open in fear or anger; giant spi- moved from Werehpai’s care and sub-
year on this, the ders and coiled serpents, threatening jected to a horrific Akijo ritual: she was I left you a message
date Portuguese to strike; hybrid beings, half man and tattooed from head to toe and then kept thirty years ago
emperor Dom
half butterfly, loosing arrows from the alive as her limbs and torso were shorn and still haven’t
Pedro I founded
roof. And everywhere, images of men apart and devoured by her tribespeople. heard back. Did
the country’s law I say too much?
with ornate headdresses, suggestive of Terrified and heartbroken, Werehpai
schools in 1827. Not enough? The
The custom began Amerindian royalty, and women in sim- helped the girl’s brother, Aturai, escape
intensity variation
when eateries near ple pigtails. into the jungle. In time, Aturai returned I used — 6equj5 —
the institutions The carvings come alive in the skit- with an army of men, bent on revenge. did that click? I
offered these tering light of our headlamps and cam- A vicious battle ensued. The jungle spir- thought we had a
important clients eras. In every room, I get the disturbing its, who could always be trusted to side connection. You
a free meal in impression that a hundred eyes are fol- with the righteous, joined with Aturai. even doodled
honour of the lowing me as I move through the shad- When the jungles fell silent, he had pre- “Wow!” on
date. When the ows. No human has lived here for at vailed — the Akijo had been destroyed. the computer
invitations least a millennium, but the caves still The Trio believe the petroglyphs at printout beside
started to peter feel eerily inhabited. Werehpai are their ancestors’ visual re- my message. At
out, students
Carbon dating of charcoal remains cord of that battle — the graphic novel the Big Ear Radio
established a
has determined that Werehpai is at least of a story that has been passed down Observatory. . . the
not-so-legal seti project . . .
5,000 years old, a prehistoric apartment orally for countless generations. Soon
precedent: remember, Jerry?
lunch, pro bono. complex that once served as a tempor- after the discovery of the caves became
Maybe I was too
Offending scholars ary village site for nomadic hunters public, the Trio held a feast to bless forward, what with
gather at the and, later, small tribes of agricultural- the sanctuary. They offered tributes to the strong narrow-
restaurant of ist Amerindians. Kamania’s discovery their forebears, the small tribes of Amer- band frequency.
their choice, eat is easily the most significant archeologic- indians whose prehistoric spirits still But it’s so hard to
and drink their al find in Surinamese history, and the haunt the caves. meet a nice earth-
fill, loudly and petroglyphs are one of the most remark- But the feast also honoured Kamania ling. I know you
tipsily thank their able deposits of Stone Age artwork in and the dream that led him to the caves. like to take things
hosts, then walk South America. But to date, fewer than His tale has quickly become legend here slow (and that’s cool
out solemnly a hundred modern people have set foot and now affords him a measure of sha- with me), but I’m
without paying.
among the houses of Werehpai. manic celebrity among his people. It confused. Is there
They do leave
The passageways between the rooms proves that even today, in parts of the someone else? A
the customary quasar? Please call.
are narrow and dark, and we often have world where good storytelling is still
10 percent tip,
however — August
to crawl blindly on hands and knees. the most respected form of informa-
Still waiting,
11 is also Waiter’s But Kamania rushes us through the tion technology, new myths are continu- Lonely Sentient
Day. maze, clearly uncomfortable with our ally being lived, spoken, and dreamt. Space Being
popping flashes. He is very proud of We hike back to the Sipaliwini along
this place but intensely protective of it. the tangled pathway of Kamania’s dream
“Snel, snel,” he says, urging us to move route. As we climb into the boat, I ask
faster. him if he ever found his dog. “No,” he
In an hour we emerge from the sev- says with a smile. “The dog found me.”
enth house. As our eyes adjust to the A week after Kamania stumbled upon
muted light of the jungle, Kamania ex- Werehpai, his hunting dog reappeared
plains the sanctuary’s significance to at his door.
his people, and how it got its name. — Andrew Westoll
28
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The amazement starts before you even step inside.
Fact &
Fiction
fact
C a n a d a and the A g e o f E x t r a c t i o n
Rich vs. Poor: The Storm Awaits
T o u g h Ta l k on A f g h a n i s t a n
Political Charisma: Where Did It Go?
pp. 32~54
fiction
illustrations: vänskap 31
j uly /au g u s t 2 0 0 7
detail
E x t r ac t i o N
Canada started as a rough-and-tumble company, but
is the march of progress now killing the country?
Our greatest experiment — civilization itself — will succeed only much more attractive. It was a guess.
if it can live on nature’s terms, not man’s. To do this we must In the 1970s, while working as an underground gold
adopt principles in which the short term is trumped by the miner near Red Lake in northern Ontario, I visited many
long; in which caution prevails over ingenuity; in which the ab- large, open-pit mines. The size of these holes was strik-
surd myth of endless growth is replaced by respect for natural ing, and I began to think about how to express monumen-
limits; in which progress is steered by precautionary wisdom. tal scale in photographic terms. Canada itself, of course,
— Ronald Wright is monumental, a vast expanse of land and water with
few people, and I wondered about the relationship be-
ast year, I was in northern Portugal, near the Spanish tween scarred earth and human need. In many respects,
ages of humankind, from stone to bronze, iron, and on- By virtue of this country’s seemingly limitless space,
ward, a never-ending forward thrust. Rock and metals are and more particularly by virtue of our specific history,
alive and well, I discovered — these ages existing on a scale Canadians have developed a fairly unique relationship to
so immense that even 100 years ago it would have been the environment and to the geological time consequence.
impossible to imagine their scope. Relatively inexpensive For 200 years, much of Canada was actually a corpora-
energy — due, in large measure, to improved efficiencies tion, the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose chief purpose
in the oil-and-gas sector — and the more than doubling was to extract. First came pelts, then trees, and then with
of the human population over the past sixty years, have Confederation the railroad, our first great nation-build-
inexorably altered our present age. But though history ing project, and the extraction of minerals on a signifi-
may get buried under the march of progress, if one looks cant scale. We may think otherwise — especially in the
in the right places it is never extinguished. There are lo- increasingly urban metropoles that are now redefining
cations that put older ages in sharp relief, just beneath the nation — but Canada’s natural resource wealth has
the surface. always been for sale, for the taking, and we have all bene-
fited enormously from this. It’s on us, as athletes say be-
e have always taken from nature. This is normal, part fore a big game or after a big loss.
W of the human condition and, indeed, a fact of life
for all life forms. What is different today is the
The current crisis crept up on us partly because govern-
ment structures — the ministries of the environ-
speed and scale of human taking, and that the ment and natural resources, for instance — were
earth has never experienced this kind of cumu- from the beginning subservient to the all-import-
lative impact. We don’t see it as extraordinary ant role our governments and corporations
because it evolved incrementally, but the result played in opening up the land and water to the
is monumental. If my images appear surreal at ages of extraction and progress. It turns out that
times, it must be remembered that they depict Canadians are thought of as nature-loving not
our extractive world as it is. The trick — now, as on that because of specific actions taken, but because we have
initial exploration — is to provide photographic images more wilderness than anyone else. The postcard images
that leave meaning open, an ambiguity necessary to gain are fabulous, but the question now is: “What will we do
access to sites, engender discussion, and steer clear of po- with this natural bounty?”
lemics and clichés. I realize that in some respects my photographs are
Thirty years after chasing down my subject, I sense that shocking, that to some they represent answers rather than
we are entering a new age. Never before has an entire gen- questions. This is not my intention. I’m still in that old
eration been told in such convincing terms that the val- Volvo, and my work is still an exploration. But the photo-
ues and ambitions we assumed to be good and true, and graphs are real, and it is worth asking, I believe, what we
that we fought long and hard to establish, are, in fact, kill- should do with them.
ing us. Few voices in government or business have accept- Consider a different picture. Consider that the oil al-
able or timely solutions to reverse the deadly march of ready extracted from the Alberta tar sands represents a
progress. By slowing the machinery of industry, govern- tiny percentage of the region’s estimated reserves; that
ments risk creating massive unemployment, we are told, this area is already one of the largest surface-mining op-
and I can accept this. But still, the evidence of human- erations in the world; that it includes one of the largest
kind’s carbon footprint is growing daily. The biosphere toxic lakes ever created. Already the region looks like a
is at a breaking point, and it will lash back in ways more vast dystopia, out of sight for most of us — but for how
deadly than the social and economic threats — crime and long can the secret hold? British Columbia novelist Wil-
revolution, an even larger divide between rich and poor, liam Gibson has written: “It is becoming unprecedentedly
etc. — that critics say will result from scaling back. We difficult for anyone, anyone at all, to keep a secret. In the
are being tested. age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and
Around the world, Canadians are regarded as nature- link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if
loving people, but given our mad rush for oil in the West not sooner. This is something I would bring to the atten-
(and East), the clear-cutting of old-growth forests, and the tion of every diplomat, politician and corporate leader:
collapse of our fisheries, it is an outdated, even curious the future, eventually, will find you out.” Picture the age
designation. Our boreal forests are as vital to ecological of evidence extraction.
diversity and carbon capture as the Amazon basin — two Canadians have a choice: to elect leaders who have a
great lungs, without which we would fry to a crisp — but vision of how to make sustainable development real or
while much has been written and said about the Brazil- to carry on with our business and history as usual. What
ians hacking away at their precious resource, little is said, we have going for us is general well-being, a decent heart,
or written, or even known about our own. With what is and educated people sitting on a very large chest of gold.
going on in the forests of northern Alberta, we may be on If resources are what we have, and sustainable develop-
the cusp of destroying an irreplaceable contiguous ecosys- ment is what we want, then why not get on with a new age:
tem. Tree planting is fine, but saplings take years to grow extracting what we need without destroying the places
into effective carbon sinks. we take it from.v
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so ciety
mone ybag s
• • • • • • • •
by Bruce Livesey
photography by Gabriel Jones
here are few things more boring Pellegrino evening bags (whose handles self put it. The world’s richest man, Bill
36
t h e wa l r u s
spread in Israel, a Gulfstream V jet, show that wages for the working major- just over $500,000 ($1.5 million in to-
and, the pièce de résistance, a 100,000- ity have either flattened out or declined day’s dollars). In 2005, the 100 high-
square-foot oceanfront mansion in the for more than two decades. est-paid Canadian ceos took home an
Hamptons — a twenty-nine bedroom While most Canadians consider average annual salary of $9 million.
mini-Versailles on sixty-four acres with themselves part of a broad middle class, Whereas executive pay was once almost
beach and garden pavilions, basket- that designation has shifted significant- entirely made up of salaries and bonus-
ball, squash, and tennis courts, and ly. In the post-World War II era and es, the use of stock options as induce-
a theatre. through the 1970s, an ever-increasing ments took hold when corporations
Not to be outdone by US billion- number of Canadian families — sup- started wooing a small class of super-
aires, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud ported largely by the salary of a single star ceos. As a result, in both Canada
of Saudi Arabia, the world’s thirteenth wage-earner — improved their stan- and the US, executive compensation
richest man, owns a 317-room, 400,000- dards of living and socked money away. has gone through the roof. Between
square-foot palace in Riyadh. Costing Today, incomes are growing much more 1998 and 2000, Michael Eisner, then at
$130 million to build, it has eight eleva- slowly if at all, and Canadians are bor- the helm of Walt Disney, cashed in over
tors and more than 500 television sets, rowing more and more. As in the US, $680 million ( US) in stock options. Last
and the grounds, in this desert king- much of Canada’s “middle class” is ac- March, the co-ceos of Canada’s Power
dom, feature a soccer field. tually two or three paycheques away Corp., André and Paul Desmarais Jr.,
Canada has twenty-three billion- from going broke, and many are wonder- earned a combined $35 million by exer-
aires, with David Thomson, control- ing what separates them from the priv- cising some of their stock options. Says
ling $22 billion (US), leading the pack. ileged few. David Green, a professor of economics
And many of our hyper-rich also enjoy In the 1970s, American ceos made at the University of British Columbia,
their toys. David Ho, the Vancouver- roughly thirty times what average work- “The right wing managed to win the ar-
based ceo of the now-defunct Harmony ers hauled in; today, they make 300 gument that what is good for the rich is
Airways, reportedly owns a golf course, times the average wage. The chairman good for all of us.”
a thirty-eight-foot Miami Vice-style ciga- of Wal-Mart, America’s largest corpor- But is it? In North America, the wealth
rette racing boat, a custom-made Ferrari ation, earns $23 million (US) annually; divide has become a canyon, and crit-
Testarossa, and a 13,000-square-foot the company’s non-supervisory staff ics believe that the concentration of so
mansion. He also owns two homes take home $18,000 (US). Thirty years much money pooled in the hands of
in Hawaii, one of which is valued at ago, Jack Armstrong of Imperial Oil a tiny elite is corrupting our institu-
over $20 million. Heather Reisman was Canada’s highest-paid ceo. He made tions and dissipating economic vitality.
and Gerald Schwartz of Indigo and
Onex fame, own homes in Nantucket
and Palm Beach, a yacht and a plane,
and live in a huge Toronto spread.
They safari with Hollywood royalty
like Michael Douglas and Catherine
Zeta-Jones.
“By the time Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker were in power, they had an agenda. It was class
warfare from above, and people at the bottom didn’t know what hit them.”
Both national governments are becom- state benefits for the rich like protect- Commerce, the memo claimed that big
ing less relevant in the face of emergent ive tariffs, free land for railways, and business had “shown little stomach for
plutocracies not necessarily loyal to anti-strike measures. The codependent a hard-nosed contest with their critics”
local economies — perhaps one reason relationship that developed between and that in terms of framing govern-
North America’s manufacturing base the state and the super-wealthy is per- ment policy, “the American business
is in such sad shape. Nor does either haps best exemplified by the Panic of executive is truly the ‘forgotten man.’ ”
national government seem interested 1893, when a deep depression led to a With the US mired in Vietnam and
in solving the myriad economic, health, run on the gold supply. President Gro- anti-war demonstrations becoming
environmental, educational, and so- ver Cleveland asked financier J. P. Mor- more vociferous, Powell Jr. attacked
cial problems that cash-strapped local gan to create a syndicate to campus liberals, Ralph Na-
governments cannot address. Prince- supply the US Treasury with der and his acolytes, and the
ton economist and New York Times gold. Morgan did, and the na- press. While the stage was
columnist Paul Krugman has argued tional bank was rescued from set for a firm business rebut-
that the growing gap between rich and insolvency. “That episode illus- tal, economic preoccupations
poor in countries like Canada and the trated the bankers were more took a back seat to Watergate
US has a haunting parallel with coun- powerful than the government,” and the US’s failure in Vietnam.
tries across Latin America, where for says Alan Lessoff, a professor Dispiriting years followed but,
decades dramatic wealth inequality so of history at Illinois State University by the late 1970s, with Jimmy Carter
fractured societies that revolution from and an expert on the Gilded Age. in the White House and corporate
below was a constant threat. It still is. Special interests have always exer- profits declining, some precipitously,
“This, ultimately, is the most pressing cised undue influence on society, but the counter-revolution that Powell Jr.
issue we face as a society today,” Krug- after the shocks of two world wars and had attempted to spark gained renewed
man wrote. the Depression, most North Ameri- vigour.
cans experienced an unparalleled rise Powell Jr.’s manifesto spelled out
he original Gilded Age extended from in wages and living standards between an array of tactics that big business
T the end of the US Civil War to the
early years of the twentieth century,
the late 1940s and roughly 1980. By the could employ to challenge critics on
mid-1970s, one-quarter of the US work- campus, in the media and courts, and
an era when industrialization took root force and over one-third of Canadian in the political arena. Most notable in
and a small cabal took control of criti- workers were unionized, and working this percolating ideological war was the
cal sectors of the economy. Given the people were consistently winning sig- formative role of conservative think
failure of the political classes to pre- nificant wage concessions. Fordism — tanks. The Heritage Foundation, fund-
vent the war between the states and the notion that increasing wage rates ed initially by Joseph Coors, beat the
the bankrupt economy that followed, for workers meant more consumers drum for economic deregulation, a
in some respects the emerging domi- with more money to spend — prevailed theme also central to the American
nance of private capital was a necessary in heavy industry. “It was an unpreced- Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute,
evil. While committed first and fore- ented period in the history of capital- and the Hudson Institute, among others.
most to empire building, robber barons ism, where for a variety of reasons Such groups began producing reports —
such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew working people were able to advance customarily distilled into press releases
Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan also invest- their demands,” recalls Jim Stanford, and disseminated to major media out-
ed massively in infrastructure, helping an economist with the Canadian Auto lets — as well as training young ideo-
to build the nation through roads and Workers union. logues to staff key government and
railroads, universities, libraries, hospi- But not all was quiet in corporate congressional posts. If the initial im-
tals, etc. Such men amassed vast for- America. In 1971, just prior to being petus was to promote Ronald Reagan’s
tunes, some of which they spent on appointed by Richard Nixon to the US “trickle down” economic theories, “ex-
elegant manors and castles staffed with Supreme Court, Lewis F. Powell Jr. — a pert analysts” from conservative think
armies of servants in New York City prominent corporate lawyer who sat tanks were soon dominating the televi-
and Newport, Rhode Island. Canada’s on the boards of more than fifteen cor- sion talk show circuit, radio programs,
own Gilded Age arrived later on, but porations — wrote a memorandum and print journalism, and they were
its legacy can still be seen in Mont- claiming that “the American economic weighing in on practically every con-
real’s Golden Square Mile, a neighbour- system is under broad attack” and that ceivable subject.
hood of giant and regal homes that hug businesspeople must “confront this This business counterattack was
Mount Royal. problem as a primary responsibility highly organized, says Doug Henwood,
Extraordinary wealth in the US led of corporate management.” Circulated publisher of the New York-based Left
to political power and highly useful to members of the US Chamber of Business Observer, which covers Wall
Street. “By the time Ronald Reagan and in large and visible wealth disparities.
[Federal Reserve chairman] Paul Vol- When everyone is poor they are all in
cker were in power, they had an agen- it together; when everyone is needy
da. It was class warfare from above, and save for a privileged few, the elites
people at the bottom didn’t know what become a target. Enlightened self-in-
hit them.” terest should drive those at the top to
Canada came a little later to this distribute wealth evenly and to “lift all
game, but ultimately the Fraser and boats,” but ceo compensation today
C. D. Howe institutes and the Canad- is not necessarily tied to shareholder
ian Council of Chief Executives came gains or profit growth (and in many
to play a similar role: all call for cap- quarters shareholders are indeed feel-
ital to be freed from constraints im- ing hosed down, to paraphrase Con-
posed by governments, all promote rad Black).
free trade, are generally critical of con- Between 1990 and 2001, as measured
sumer protection laws and the welfare by Standard & Poor’s 500 index, share
state, and make regular appearances in prices increased by an exceptional 300
the media. percent, corporate profit growth was a
In the early 1980s, Volcker drove solid 116 percent, and ceo pay skyrock-
Give your daughter the up interest rates in order to offset in- eted by 535 percent. Suggesting that
opportunity to try anything flation, plunging the North American superb corporate stewardship is not
in school and you give her the economy into its deepest recession always the principal reason for extra-
power to do anything in life. since the Great Depression. By the ordinary pay packages, last year for-
time the Reagan administration broke mer Loblaw president John Lederer
the 1981 air traffic controllers’ strike by was paid $22 million as he was ushered
The Bishop Strachan School replacing unionized workers with scab out the door. This spring, the company
www.bss.on.ca • (416) 483-4325
labour, Fordism had effectively been announced its first annual loss in nine-
defeated. Unions were on the defen- teen years.
298 Lonsdale Road, Toronto
sive and corporations were extracting And then there is the case of John
wage concessions. Roth, former ceo of Nortel Networks.
With increased globalization and When Roth took over in 1997, Nortel
freer trade, North American workers was already a high-tech powerhouse.
TORONTO FRENCH SCHOOL were soon forced to compete for jobs Roth then spent $32 billion on largely
Bilingual with low-wage workers in the develop- useless Internet start-ups that generat-
ing world. The era of the closed union ed few sales. By the summer of 2000,
Co-educational
shop was over, and organized labour with the Internet bubble about to burst,
International Baccalaureate wilted as a force for equalization in the company’s stock peaked at $124.50.
Campuses in Toronto North American society. Today, the Within weeks, Roth cashed in his stock
& Mississauga portion of the private sector workforce options, and by year’s end he had pock-
www.tfs.ca that is unionized is 7.4 percent in the eted $135 million.
US and 17 percent in Canada. Explains While Roth and PR flaks continued
the caw’s Stanford, “Working people to issue rosy projection statements, the
have lost power, not maintained their company was in fact hemorrhaging
share of the pie, and seen a decline in money. In 2001, as the crisis mounted,
their living standards.” Roth quit, retiring to his estate in Cal-
Exacerbating the wealth divide was edon, Ontario. Nortel spiralled into near-
the emergence of large institutional insolvency, its stock bottoming out at
shareholders, including mutual and 67 cents per share. More than 60,000 of
pension-plan funds, with get-rich-quick its 100,000 employees were given pink
mindsets. This pressured corporations slips, and shareholders’ retirement
to increase profit margins regardless of portfolios were wiped out. “It seems
the consequences. Across a number of inherently unfair when you see a guy
industries, the security of workers and like Roth living high off the hog and
the middle class began to slip. then the new version [of Nortel] trying
to get it together and coughing up all of
he reasons for the slippage are com- this money to settle lawsuits,” says Joel
If education means
the world to you.
T plex, but the result could be grow- Rochon, a Toronto lawyer whose firm
ing disorder. Social unrest tends to be launched one of the class-action share-
rooted less in general poverty than holder lawsuits against the company.
40
j uly /au g u s t 2 0 0 7
41
t h e wa l r u s
dollars put back into society than to foundations? And what happens to basic
have the rich choose to do it,” says democratic institutions when a select
high-society chronicler Rosemary Sex- few exercise so much control? According
ton. Rockefeller and Carnegie gave to Toronto socialite and fundraiser Cath-
away hundreds of millions (billions erine Nugent, wealthy people “like to
in today’s dollars) to build museums, see bricks and mortar to put their
libraries, universities, and hospitals, or names on, as opposed to research . . . re-
to be disbursed by foundations. In 2004, search is like fixing pipes under the
the last year for which there are com- house, you can’t really see it.” Her
plete records in Canada, there were point is borne out by the Million Dol-
2,400 active grant-making foundations lar List, maintained by the Center
that donated more than $1.2 billion and on Philanthropy at Indiana Univer-
had over $14 billion in assets, combined. sity. On the allocation of foundation
Both numbers are consider- grants and gifts of more than
ably higher today, and in re- $1 million in the fourth quar-
cent years Canadian business ter of 2006, a scant 2 percent
leaders have given enormous went specifically to human
sums to the arts, higher edu- services.
cation, and health care. In the While he is a staunch sup-
US, there are currently more porter of philanthropy, Sing-
than 70,000 foundations with er expresses concern that “a
roughly $550 billion in assets. US foun- few wealthy individuals” can effect-
dations donated over $40 billion in ively decide whether “billions go to
2006. Most famously, Bill Gates and research vaccines or viruses that kill
his wife Melinda, co-founders of the millions in the developing world.” He
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, argues that it would be “better that a
have given nearly $30 billion (US) to re- democratic process determines where
duce the spread of disease, poverty, the funds go.” But that “democratic
and premature death in the develop- process” is called the tax regime, and
ing world, alongside anti-poverty initia- one sure reason for foundations is the
tives in the US. Warren Buffett pledged quid pro quo of control over where the
$31 billion to the Gates Foundation grants go in exchange for providing the
as well. money in the first place.
Sounding a critical note in the New
York Times Magazine, bioethics profes- t would be churlish to criticize ma-
sor Peter Singer, of the Center for Hu-
man Values at Princeton University,
I jor grants to the arts, for instance,
which are increasingly reliant on pri-
wrote: “When wealthy people give vate philanthropy. However, so are
away money, we can always say that many other sectors of the economy,
41#692-3#"6 they are doing it to ease their con- and affordable housing projects, for
:!1,,;6+,"6<"&%#"/ sciences or generate favorable publi- one, are generally not the kind of
:2--#"6<,"=/1,* city.” Some have speculated that Bill bricks-and-mortar projects that Nu-
Gates, for one, is partly trying to up- gent describes as appealing to the foun-
!"#$%&'%(%!"#$%)*+%)**,
grade his image after being pummelled dation sector. It might be fine for Ruth
!"#$%&'(%)*& in antitrust suits brought against Micro- Lilly, heir to the Lilly pharmaceutical
,-.%"'&/0". D*:&B"2*+%$>$ soft a few years ago. Others, like the fortune, to give $200 million (US) to
12*3-&45&6-%#"'#57"% (*'"&E*##*
82$#5&9-.&!2*54:-' E*#0-24&F#2*:>52 Los Angeles Times, have pointed out Poetry magazine, but the homeless in
;%-<57&=$>>-' G7*A5&F5'*"2
?'425-&@5A. B-2%0-&F32.H$#0 that some of the Gates Foundation’s the Rust Belt might have liked to have
?7*%+-*2&B-#@5"4 B*2*-:&I"5J%
9"0'&B5+#-7C K$.&6-'4520-5>05 investments run counter to its stated seen that lucre come their way. Ulti-
>(!;2)&(.6!!"#$%&"'&("')!*#+*"'! mandate. mately, there are genuine questions to
?&%16 !"#$%&"'(#)"* %#)*"+$,&(*- ./(0"&$1233(#
"! "!
To be sure, foundations are tax ha- be asked about whether society as a
#$%&$&'!()*+),& 66@ABCBDECBBFF6#G%06H@@I vens that allow wealthy individuals to whole can afford to be subjected to the
$(%$($/0/&;#&=$J12-3#"0!$
shelter money and, if so desired, create whims of a tiny elite; about whether
honourable family legacies. But gifts foundation support for arts and cul-
are gifts, and given the growing import- ture, or for higher education, health
!"#$%&'#$()*#"+,"-&(.$"%/012-3#"0!$
ance of the philanthropic sector, the care, or for myriad other critical ar-
4,",(%,567(%$"&,568$($)$66666666666666666666666 more important questions are: What eas, takes the state off the hook; and
types of initiatives get support from finally, about what happens to the los-
—The New York Times
home.” How will our moneyed class-
es respond?
foreign affairs
3d
v i s i on
Can Canada reconcile its defence, diplomacy,
and development objectives in Afghanistan?
A
hundred and twenty years before accidentally struck a house during a heaviest fighting is) in 2009, all national
Canada’s involvement in Afghan- firefight between nato troops and the parties save the New Democrats agree
istan, a British prime minister Taliban. President Hamid Karzai has that the humanitarian costs of with-
identified the issue at the heart of cur- summed up Afghanistan’s vulnerable drawing completely from the coun-
rent attempts to defeat the Taliban and position, stating, “We can’t prevent the try outweigh the many challenges of
reconstruct the country. In the midst of terrorists from coming from Pakistan, staying. Indeed, successive Canadian
the “Great Game” between the British and we can’t prevent the coalition from governments have ultimately justified
Empire and Tsarist Russia over influ- bombing the terrorists, and our child- the mission in similar terms. Unlike
ence in Central Asia, William Gladstone ren are dying because of this.” Gladstone, we are trying to help the Af-
urged his fellow citizens to “remember Karzai’s comment encapsulates the ghans build a viable and independent
that the sanctity of life in the hill vil- challenge Canada now faces in Afghan- state. With the official debate over Can-
lages of Afghanistan, among the winter istan. We must win local support for ada’s presence resolved for the time be-
snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Al- reconstruction efforts while also mak- ing, the question remains: how do we
mighty God, as can be your own.” ing war. These two tasks are not easily go about building peace while we’re
Preserving the sanctity of life, how- reconciled. As Afghan legislator Shu- still at war?
ever, is difficult when the enemy strikes kria Barakzai has warned, killing civil-
unexpectedly, blends into the local pop- ians will undermine nato’s mission in t the outset of our involvement in
ulace, and enjoys growing support. Last Afghanistan (to say nothing of harsh
October, for example, some twenty Af- treatment of detainees).
A Afghanistan, shortly after 9/11, a
senior official from a Canadian aid or-
ghan civilians were killed during two Although this poses a dilemma, it’s ganization had a call put out to the De-
separate nato attacks. First, a 2 a.m. no reason to leave — a point on which partment of National Defence to find
helicopter strike on Taliban fighters a near consensus has emerged. While out if we were at war. With strict rules
destroyed several huts in the village the Liberal Party supports moving for- about neutrality in place, his agency
of Ashogoh. The same day, a rocket ces out of Kandahar province (where the wanted to determine what its involve-
According to the Senlis Council, the total defence expenditure for all parties has outpaced
development funding more than tenfold, and the ratio is similar for Canadian spending.
ment would be. An officer put the agen- dahar on January 15, 2006, it was a strik- killed in a clearly marked truck; a Tal-
cy on hold, only to return and say that ing blow to Canada’s strategy in Afghan- iban spokesperson stated that aid or-
he’d have to get back to them. istan. In many ways, Berry personified ganizations thought to be working for
In part, this confusion reflects the 3D. Working alongside development American interests were legitimate tar-
changing nature of international con- specialists and protected by the mili- gets. On July 28, after twenty-four years
flict. Canada’s long-held (and somewhat tary, he was part of the effort to rebuild of active involvement in Afghanistan,
mythical) view of peacekeeping does the country. Since Berry’s death, non- msf announced that it would be pull-
not apply when the peace must be built military personnel have largely been ing out.
before it can be kept. The use of a neu- confined to secure bases in Kandahar. The issue of civilian protection is
tral blue helmet force to separate two His replacement, Gavin Buchan, would central to the 3D challenge. We may
warring armies simply doesn’t work in like to “go out every day and talk to need to rethink a wide spectrum of
countries like Somalia, the Democrat- people on the street . . . but we’re not tactics, from how we treat detainees to
ic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Si- there yet and we’re not going to be the nature of our military engagement.
erra Leone, and Afghanistan, where there in the foreseeable future.” If Bu- Air strikes, for example, can be an ef-
fighting over territory is often only chan and other diplomats are unable fective means of fighting the Taliban in
one part of a loosely defined and high- to do their jobs, and if development hostile terrain with limited risk to our
ly complex struggle between organized workers are similarly constrained, how soldiers, but they also increase the like-
crime rings, warlords, and, increasing- can Canada claim to be implement- lihood that innocent civilians will be
ly, insurgents. In such cases, poverty ing 3D? killed, turning local populations against
and instability lead to a vicious cycle This question is behind much of the Canadian troops.
of underdevelopment and violence. criticism of our mission in Afghani- The riots that have repeatedly bro-
It takes more than soldiers to address stan. Analysts have noted that funding ken out across the country protesting
the problem. has been heavily weighted to- accidental deaths have borne this out.
Recognizing this, Canada ward the military, at both the As Brigadier Richard Nugee, the chief
has shifted to a robust form of national and international spokesperson for the UN-authorized,
peace-building that brings de- levels. According to a 2006 re- nato-led International Security Assist-
fence into closer contact with port by the Senlis Council, the ance Force (isaf) has said, “The single
diplomatic and development total defence expenditure for thing that we have done wrong and we
activities. Paul Martin intro- all parties in Afghanistan has are striving extremely hard to improve
duced this approach first in outpaced development fund- on is killing innocent civilians.” Is this
speeches, then in his 2005 internation- ing more than tenfold, and the ratio a fair appraisal of the costs, though? Put
al policy statement, under the name is similar for Canadian spending, al- another way: if we knew terrorists were
“3D.” The Conservative government though exact figures are hard to come meeting at a home in Vancouver, Toron-
has since replaced this with the term by. On these grounds, it is difficult to to, or Montreal, would we authorize air
“whole-of-government,” but the under- dispute former foreign affairs minister strikes? Within a 3D approach, the cal-
lying philosophy remains the same. The Lloyd Axworthy’s claim that the mis- culus for acceptable human casualties
Department of National Defence (dnd), sion “has become one big ‘D.’ ” must be re-evaluated.
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Non-governmental organizations John Watson, president of care Can-
Canada (dfait), and the Canadian Inter- have also been vocal in their disap- ada, a leading international relief and
national Development Agency (cida) proval of military encroachment into development organization, believes
must now work together to execute a the field of humanitarian assistance. For we’re not appropriately balancing mili-
common strategy. example, plainclothed US special forces tary benefits against the wider costs. He
Reconciling military, diplomatic, have been known to use the kind of places some of the blame on the mili-
and humanitarian objectives may be a white trucks that are ubiquitous in the tary itself, which, he argues, is slow-
more effective way of stabilizing failed development community. There was ly co-opting development assistance
and fragile states, but it also creates in- also the US administration’s decision under the rubric of defence. He points
evitable trade-offs and requires a high to drop food-ration packages roughly out that many of the concepts now
degree of collaboration. 3D is simply the same size and colour of unexplod- associated with 3D peace-building —
easier on paper than it is in practice. ed cluster bombs from military planes. such as civil-military cooperation, prov-
The confusion over the role of humani- incial reconstruction teams, and “three-
hen diplomat Glyn Berry, whose tarian workers that resulted from these block war” — originated in military
W job was to facilitate relationships
between a wide range of Afghan groups,
and similar incidents severely jeopard- discourse, prescribe a lead role for the
ized their security. On June 2, 2004, five military, and value development and
was killed by a suicide bomber in Kan- Médecins Sans Frontières workers were diplomacy only insofar as they are use-
ful for the advancement of military you can’t build schools in a war zone. The initial Canadian team in Kabul
objectives. It’s humanitarianism as a Others suggest that the suffering that was acclaimed for their collaborative
campaign for hearts and minds rather persists in the absence of humanitarian work. They benefited from their small
than as a moral responsibility. assistance is increasing support for the size and the presence of an active am-
It will not always be possible to simul-
Taliban, making the military fight more bassador; personal connections and
taneously achieve all our goals, and some difficult. dnd, in conjunction with the joint experience in the field allowed
Prime Minister’s Office, has taken the them to overcome bureaucratic cultures.
policies will inevitably contradict others.
Indeed, Canadian involvement in Af- lead on strategic decision-making in But with increased deployment to Kan-
ghanistan has been many things to many conflicts, which makes sense if secur- dahar, the advantage of scale was lost.
people. What began as an exercise in ity is viewed as a prerequisite for hu- As the Taliban grew in strength, new
national security and a response to manitarian action. security restrictions emerged, and the
global terrorism has gradually shifted But the reality is that the three Ds military took the lead.
toward humanitarian assistance and are fundamentally interconnected, and In Ottawa, the level of coordination
reconstruction. From a broader diplo- the only way this tenuous balance can between cida, dnd, and dfait has seen
matic perspective, it has also served to be managed is through collaboration — some improvement. While the Prime
fulfill our commitment to nato and the cornerstone of 3D peace building. Minister’s Office and dnd continue to
provide an opportunity to repair rela- If a particular military strategy has drive much of our Afghanistan policy,
tions with the United States, strained humanitarian implications, all rele- the three Ds are more sensitive to each
by our refusals to commit troops to the vant stakeholders need to be aware other’s actions than ever before. How-
Iraq war and participate in ballistic mis-of them from the outset. This requires ever, more integration is necessary. Ste-
sile defence. Serving multiple interests a level of public communication that phen Harper recently appointed an
is justifiable, even desirable. The real doesn’t currently exist. dnd, cida, and associate deputy minister within dfait
problem is that while 3D calls for the dfait have different mandates, operat- to facilitate coordination, but it remains
integration of defence, diplomacy, and ing procedures, and cultures, as well as to be seen if the position, which lacks the
development, it does not lay out how different perspectives on Canada’s in- authority exercised by the Prime Min-
they should be integrated. ternational policy and their respective ister’s Office or the Privy Council Of-
roles. As an old adage about the UN fice, will have any real influence over the
he relationship between war and de- reminds us, everybody is in favour powerfully independent and resource-
T velopment in Afghanistan is some- of coordination, but no one likes to rich cida and dnd.
thing of a Catch-22. Many argue that be coordinated. The United Kingdom, an early adopt-
er of 3D, has gone a step further by tying
funding to collaboration. Instead of ask-
ing their development, defence, and
diplomatic ministries to work together,
Britain has made funding conditional on
it through a joint-funding model called
“conflict prevention pools.” Staffed by
officials from across the bureaucracy,
the pools bid alongside parent depart-
ments for resources. This brings pol-
icy analysts together permanently and
establishes incentives for truly collab-
orative decision making. This may not
be the right solution for Canada, but
something similar may prove necessary
if the departments continue to compete
for influence and retain vestiges of their
traditional roles.
Of course, if 3D rests on the assump-
tion that only a comprehensive approach
to the problems plaguing Afghanistan
will be successful, then our partners
must also coordinate. But we are oper-
ating as part of a thirty-seven-member
coalition, isaf, in which national con-
tingents often have different mandates,
priorities, and tactics. In September
“You Belong to Me” – Jo Stafford (1952) 2006, for example, the UK negotiat-
WIN
$6,000 first prize
$4,000 second prize
courtesy of the Canada Council for the Arts.
CBC will offer visibility to the winners and their
winning works, which will also be published
in Air Canada’s enRoute magazine.
Contest deadline:
November 1st, 2007
For contest details, go to
www.cbc.ca/literaryawards
or call 1-877-888-6788
49
t h e wa l r u s
politics
charisma
Do we want our political leaders to be sexy and playful,
or are we content with being bored?
by Jeff Ryan
photography by Stacy Arezou Mehrfar
t’s a rally-the-troops gathering at the one thing, but live rock ’n’ roll reaches no one needs — a certain style of shoe,
50
t h e wa l r u s
knew more about the science of charis- for what it excludes. Intellectual pro- you are lucky, a multi-lane highway),
ma — okay, the social science of charis- bity is absent, as is a linebacker’s build and there are few needs more profound
ma — it wouldn’t be Michael Ignatieff or or an Alexander Haig “I’m in control than the need to be desired. Clinton’s
Frank McKenna or even Bob Rae they’d here” disposition. Instead, charisma amateurish flings might not match up
be pining for. It would be Bill Clinton. If comes from within, an intuitive, spon- with Barbra Streisand’s public display
Avuncular Bill were leader of the Liberal taneous projection that connects with of affection for Trudeau, but both men
Party of Canada, on campaign stops he’d regular men and women. Events like exuded sexual mojo, and Canadian
be blowing hot jazz out of a cool saxo- Martin’s “concert” or Stockwell Day ar- women murmured “Lucky Margaret”
phone, and Stephen Harper, Jack Lay- riving on a Jet Ski wearing a wetsuit to as the prime ministerial couple were
ton, Gilles Duceppe, and Elizabeth May speak with reporters, were orchestrat- popping out young ones and “Lucky
would be quaking in their slickless boots. ed playfulness, goofy failures in stage others” after they split up. Merging sex-
It wouldn’t matter much what Clinton management. They were also desper- ual mystique and playfulness, when a
said — he is a master at saying every- ate, the opposite of playful. And, as reporter asked Trudeau if he was going
thing and nothing — women would still Pierre Trudeau, the charismatic gold to give up his Mercedes, the prime min-
want to sleep with him and men would standard in Canadian politics, said: ister replied, “Do you mean the girl or
“feel his pain.” never trust anyone who wants to lead the car?” “The car,” the reporter said.
too desperately. Trudeau might have To which Trudeau quipped, “I won’t
rvine Schiffer, author of the under- loved being the top gun, but he hid give up either.”
I appreciated 1973 book Charisma: A
Psychoanalytic Look at Mass Society, iden-
it masterfully.
While most consider sex and poli-
Stephen Harper reading bedtime
stories to comedian Rick Mercer was a
tified eight charismatic attributes, a tics to be like oil and water, they are ac- clever political stroke. The moment de-
combination of which successful lead- tually more like chocolate cake and ice picted a leader who could be a prank-
ers possess, or come close to possessing. cream — made for each other. Wheth- ster comfortable in his own skin. But
They are: sexual mystique, playfulness er Clinton’s “sins” in the Oval Office or neither Harper nor Dion would ever al-
(or hoax), a call from above, a fighting Trudeau marrying outside his station lude to any form of sexual indiscretion.
stance, a desirable social station, an in- (and age bracket) or his private pecca- Physically, they carry themselves as the
novative lifestyle, a touch of foreignness, dilloes, a leader that displays a certain Queen and Prince Philip of sexual pol-
and, unpredictably, a clear deficiency, sexual adventurism and recklessness itics, and emotionally they project an
often a physical imperfection. goes a long way toward registering char- image of well-adjusted maturity, too
Like most lists, it is as interesting ismatically. Sex is a two-way street (or, if adroit to engage in sexual frivolity that
would endanger the ship of state. These
are stolid, solid men but, one suspects,
not much fun in the sack.
Jack Layton, who is known to wear
leather on occasion, has a bit of the
menace about him, but one senses that
the national arena has made him less
playful, less adventuresome. With a
party platform that is essentially one-
note, Gilles Duceppe has the greatest
opportunity for exhibiting a little sex-
ual recklessness, but, like Harper, his
hair is always perfectly coiffed. Greens
might have more fun, but Elizabeth
May doesn’t really register on the sex
meter. If not sex, then what of play
or hoax?
Trudeau, again, set the bar high with
stunts such as his famous pirouette, his
slide down the banister at the Château
Laurier, or his backflips into swimming
pools. He could pull off gratuitous play
with insouciant arrogance, and he did it
on his own terms, spontaneously, but
with, no doubt, studied panache (an
exception to many rules, he was). But
under “the charisma of hoax,” Schiffer
“Romantic Rights” – Death From Above 1979 (2004) writes, “Every great politician is to some
When Mulroney appeared too cocksure in Gucci loafers and began to strut, he forgot that
people appreciate humility, not vanity. Canadians skewered him.
degree an actor . . . our political figures essence Martin’s asymmetric federal- bined with environmental taxes (as dis-
on the national and global stages are ism on steroids — says, “I am not scary, incentives for carrying on with business
thespians of the first order.” Or at least not a libertarian, not in favour of a flat as usual), would represent a Great Society
they should be. Unlike Trudeau, today’s tax, not a social conservative, not even program. This is Dion’s call from above,
leaders stand outside of hoax or gleeful a fiscal conservative.” Defined nega- and he cannot be shy about it. He must
mucking about. They prefer the safer tively and designed to assuage, it is not say: “I don’t care if I get arrested for
practice of play by association, of sur- a fighting stance at all. chaining myself to a tree or for creating
rounding themselves with people or For his part, Dion appears to be for a roadblock at the gateway to Alberta’s
things that exude a desirable image: everything. He went along with the tar sands. I don’t care what you think,
Harper with Mercer or in the Toronto soothing balm of the Quebecois as a there is a clear and present danger and
Maple Leafs’ locker room; Martin with nation, and then, begging at the high I’m going to save the environment from
U2’s Bono, again and again; Layton car- altar of environmentalism, eschewed the bad guys.”
rying the Barenaked Ladies’ bags. Ours partisan politics and embraced the Harper’s fighting stance is offshore —
might be a cautious age, but what a Green Party, cooking up a deal not to against the Chinese (sort of ) and against
bore! What risk aversion. No hoax, no run a Liberal candidate against Elizabeth the Taliban in Afghanistan. But if more
glory. With prepared spontaneity, the May in Nova Scotia. Well, a fighting body bags come home from that tor-
payback is minimal. stance means fighting, even rid battlefield, expect Defence
And so, there you have it: federal when the field is crowded. More- Minister Gordon O’Connor to
politics as a sexless, less-than-playful over, the narcissism of minor be sacrificed (see former Envi-
spectator sport. Is it any wonder that difference usually means hat- ronment Minister Rona Am-
the commons are tuning out? The ing most profoundly he or she brose), and for there to be a
search for charisma must troll in dif- who is closest to you. For many, sudden change of heart and dir-
ferent fields. the Dion-May pact — she won’t ection. For the time being, Harp-
field a Green candidate against er will “support our troops,” but
public service. When Mulroney ap- that people want to be led. They crave
peared too cocksure in Gucci loafers a role, a way in, and an imperfection
and began to strut, he forgot that people allows them to complete their polit-
appreciate humility, not vanity. Can- ical representatives. Everyone rallied
adians skewered him (Kim Campbell around the hurt Chrétien when the
bearing the brunt of it). A strutter leaves Conser vative Party released ads dur-
us with nothing to do but watch and ing the 1993 election campaign that at-
become annoyed. tempted to caricature him by poking
Related to rising above lowly status fun at his facial paralysis. ( That little
or descending from high privilege are support fell to Dion after the Conser-
traits suggestive of an innovative life- vatives’ “This is unfair” attack ad aired
style, something different from the pro- this past winter is due to the clever strat-
saic toil of shuttling the little ones to egy of using Michael Ignatieff as the an-
hockey, lacrosse, or ballet. Harper shak- tagonist.) Lucien Bouchard garnered
ing hands with his son was a public rela- enormous sympathy when his leg was
tions nightmare, but he’s a quick study amputated. Trudeau’s marital difficul-
and today he can be as friendly with his ties reached into homes across the na-
direct issue as he is with Rick Mercer. tion. And Clinton’s clumsy adulterous
Dion’s dog Kyoto is cute; now the Lib- liaisons made him profoundly human,
eral leader needs a televised recording lost and in need of help.
of himself accepting policy advice from One of the great difficulties with our
the old mutt. ( The image of the relation- current crop of leaders is that they do
ship between Mackenzie King and his not appear deficient in any particular
dog Pat was an endearing and enduring way. They are not battle-scarred heroes
one.) One can imagine Elizabeth May rising above a certain disadvantage or
promoting the composting toilet, and beating a stigma to the ground. Dion
that’s fine, but in downtown Vancouver struggles with English, but there is no
and Halifax people might also like to see one with Churchill’s lisp or Moshe Day-
her enjoying a fine bottle of claret. Lay- an’s eye patch — clear markers of disad-
ton’s got good, solid, athletic legs, and vantage. Our leaders strike us as healthy,
bicycle trips allow him to show them well-adjusted, and of average height, safe,
off much better than attempts to repli- and strangely immunized to the hor-
cate iconic canoeing pictures. Duceppe rors and accidents that afflict the rest
is Duceppe, plus ça change. of us. They appear, in short, profession-
A touch of foreignness is thought to al (and without particular flaw) in an
be a boon, but given the furor over Dion arena that ought not be governed by
holding onto his French citizenship — professionals.
so much for globalization and multi- The big question for Canadians is,
culturalism — one cannot be sure. Col- do we want charismatic leaders? Maybe
lectively, our leaders seem, well, less we don’t. Maybe we think that char-
than foreign, unless you count Duceppe, isma, like intellectualism, is suspicious.
which would be giving in to his separa- Maybe we want our political represent-
tist cant. atives to be predictable — good stew-
ards of the economy and not much else.
ne thing is certain: a clear deficien- Maybe the Ralph Klein/Pierre Trudeau/
O cy, even a physical imperfection,
is of paramount importance for char-
Sir John A. Macdonald model is just
too wacky. But if it’s stewardship over
ismatic leaders, as it is for celebrities. leadership that is desired, how are Can-
The problem with David Beckham is adians going to solve the riddles of
that he’s a perfect specimen, skilled and planetary heat and aboriginal exclu-
beautiful. On the charisma radar, he sion, our northern vision gap, staying
registers zero, great to look at but vapid. mum about American exceptionalism?
The former pope had charisma, and be- These are not normal times, the chal-
came more endearing, if odder, with lenges are exceptional, and solutions
age. The Queen (or at least Helen Mir- must come with a punch, must elevate
ren) has it in her way, and Chrétien had the masses, must shake us from the tor-
it without question.
In the political arena, it is not just
por of average life. Come on brothers
and sisters. Bring it on!
54
t h e wa l r u s
A
leksey Alexandrovich Smoletkin — the former Gorky
fiction Professor of Arts and Letters at Leningrad State, the
father of a twelve-year-old daughter in ribbons and
brown uniform in Moscow, the destroyer of a beautiful old
56
j uly /au g u s t 2 0 0 7
He needed no mirror, no hand feeling the flatness, the No force had been involved in the taking of his nose. The
simian holes through which he now breathed, for confirma- flesh where it had been was childishly smooth, small-pored,
tion. He knew in the way he’d known his wife would leave and pale. He stroked it with a hairy finger and found it no
him for the idiot Cossack Malkov, with his yearly trips to more or less sensitive than the skin on his cheek. His brain,
Lenin’s tomb “to feel the history in my gizzard,” before his that tired telephone operator, had unplugged from emotion
wife had even met that blathering Slavophile. He knew in and intellect both, willing only to connect him to his sen-
the way he’d known he wouldn’t get tenure at Thomas Paine ses. As when he made love (in English), or occupied him-
University, though he hadn’t guessed at the reason — accord- self with sex (in Russian), he breathed heavily through his
ing to the dean, his criticisms of students’ work was hurting great stomach.
their self-esteem. He knew but he didn’t want to know, so he Abruptly, he hit the mirror with the flat of his hand and
looked for a mirror, prepared to shake off this strange idea the telephone operator came to life. What had he done last
as he had shaken off so many others. night? What had they — he and Tatiana — done? Standing
in his loose briefs, scratching at the hair around his belly-
Petra Mzyrk, a German-born artist, and Jean-François Moriceau, of France, button, Aleksey could remember no injury, no pain, and of
have shown their collaborative work, much of it based on James Bond themes, course it would not have healed so quickly. Two empty bot-
around the world. Illustration provided by Air de Paris, Paris
tles of Polish vodka stood on a wobbly pile of dishes and
57
t h e wa l r u s
paper towels, idiot twin brothers, still around the morning had been first his American colleague and counterpart, then
after, panting to tell stories about how much he’d had. Chekh- his sponsor at Paine, and was now simply his landlord, was
ov and all those country doctors had used vodka to dull the pulling out of the driveway in his vintage Corvette.
pain of operations. Todd was a man not easily satisfied. It wasn’t enough for
There was a method by which he could discover what him to be a professor of nineteenth-century American liter-
happened. A list must be written, or perhaps a chart on ature. Todd was also a painter! A skier! A sailor! The lover of
his computer. Best not to get over-ambitious; best to open an athletic little lady from the registrar’s office!
one of the fourteen legal pads with which he’d absconded And six years ago, Todd had been the only member of that
from Paine. American delegatory cabal who had done more than stare,
1. Translations. Before Tatiana came over, Aleksey had as if through a glass, brightly, at the sorry smoking Russians
been doing another translation for the Russian publishing from Leningrad State University. This was the man who, in a
house Uyutniy Dom, or Cozy House, not that either he or moment when the escorts weren’t watching, had pulled out a
Tatiana had any qualms about interrupting his work. Here dictionary and fiercely pointed to the words, ya pomogu tebe,
in the United States, Aleksey himself was translating Gone I’ll help you. Todd had gotten him out, had rented him the
with the Tesseract, which featured the adventures of a time- garage, had gotten him his first, and Aleksey was beginning
travelling Southern heroine with “a husband in one century to fear his last, professorial job in the US.
and a lover in another,” a convenient arrangement. The hus- Soon, too soon, after their customary fifteen minutes,
band was a civil-rights lawyer; the lover, a Con- Tatiana would come a-knocking on his door and
federate soldier; Aleksey, the unfortunate conduit he would have to say, “Who’s there? ” but know-
through which “Oh, my sweet baby” became, in its ing all the time that here she was, the woman who
nearest Russian approximation, “My darling crumb expected a real man, a full man, hairy and beard-
(moya dorogaya kroshka).” ed and bellied, and who would find instead a noz-
2. Tatiana — over — 8 prompto. Todd Elkin had entity, a nostrato.
an evening seminar: Edgar Allan Poe and the Ab- What to do? He rushed on wobbly legs around
surdity of Fear. Tatiana came to his room wearing the apartment, furiously straightening it up, sweep-
a red skirt and wooden beaded necklace that left ing vodka and glasses and shirt into his kitchen cab-
bruises on his chest when they embraced. She had inets. When had his nose gone? When? When?
brought over some new drawings she’d done of herself nude, A knock on the door. “It’s not a good time . . .”
slightly shapelier than she was in actual life, her legs splayed “Guess who!”
hither and thither. “I’m very sick, I might infect you . . .”
“This is the last time you’ll have to do this,” Tatiana had “What? ” She opened the door and came in. Aleksey spun
said, throwing the pages of Gone with the Tesseract on the around so that his back was facing her. “What’s the matter
floor. “After tomorrow, you’ll be a powerful biznessman.” with you? ” she said. He grabbed a page from his desk and
By this, she meant he’d be a real estate agent like herself. That covered his face in it.
way, they could see each other during the day, with less of “I don’t know, maybe you do,” he said. It was the page, he
the sneaky-sneaky. And they’d have money, and would go to couldn’t help noticing, on which the Confederate soldier ex-
conferences together, and swim naked in the hotel pools. Sex plains his reasons for going into battle. “I like to keep what’s
in the water, Tatiana had said, was like sex on cocaine. Alek- mine,” the soldier says. Aleksey said, “Did you perhaps take
sey had never tried either one — what a linty, boiled-chicken something from the apartment? ”
life he’d had until now, never even invited to a single one of “Take something? Are you drunk? ”
the famous geology department orgies back in Leningrad! “Part of my face. I’m just asking, did you perhaps cut off
3. Tatiana = barber. In preparation for his real estate inter- part of my face and take it with you? Perhaps by accident? ”
view, Tatiana had shaved Aleksey’s beard and cut some of Aleksey turned slowly around, the page still over the bot-
the shagginess out of his head, leaving a bowl-like arrange- tom half of his face.
ment of waves that reminded him of a children’s puppet, “What’s happened to you? Are you playing bandit now? ”
meant to represent Anna Karenina’s husband, that he’d Tatiana was impatient. She’d been quick to immigrate from
watched with his daughter and wife in Leningrad. Byelorussia, quick to change from engineer to real estate
4. Salad and napoleon; vodka commences. Tatiana was try- agent, quick to marry Professor Todd, and would be quick
ing to lose weight. to drop the noseless mutant he’d become.
5. Making love. Satisfactory for Tatiana; less so for Aleksey, “Just a little accident, baby,” he said in Russian. “Noth-
who was worried about his interview. ing terrible.”
6. Sleep. “Show me!” She pulled the paper out of his hands and
Had Tatiana cut off his nose? threw it on the floor. She stared at his face and crossed her-
But to what end? To what end? self — nipple, nipple, belly button. She hadn’t taken it, he
knew that instantly. How could he have been so crazy as to
e pulled back the window curtain, almost expecting the suspect her?
H sky to be red, the street to be dust — a nuclear holocaust
took his nose! But everything was as usual. Todd Elkin, who
“See, but it’s fine, I’m not bleeding . . .”
“But how did it happen? ”
“Well,” Aleksey said, nodding, “something will resolve be anyone there anyway.”
itself.” When she dropped him off at the copy shop, he tried to
“But the interview!” kiss her, and she tried to kiss him, but somehow it didn’t
Aleksey was finding some bravery, bravery he’d last had work out. He ended up licking her chin, then, giving a brave
in St. Petersburg when, drunk, he’d challenged his wife’s smile, got out of the car and walked rapidly, head down,
Slavophile to a duel, “if you like the old ways so much!” Now, into the store.
he said, “It’ll be fine, I’m not interviewing for the job of a As if to taunt him, the clerk had a huge Stalinist mous-
fashion model,” and pranced for a few steps. tache of sufficient length to hide anything that might need
“Now you’re a homosexual, too, as well as a Gogol char- hiding. His large, bald head moved in rhythm to a song about
acter? ” people who liked to rock all night. “I’m picking up, please,
“No.” He sighed. under Smoletkin? ” Aleksey said. The clerk gave him his
“If only we’d thought to let you keep that moustache,” she copies, told him the price, and took his money, all without
said darkly. “It could have hidden everything. All right, let’s ceasing the motion of his neck or looking at Aleksey. Back
just think about this together for a minute.” in St. Petersburg, the same kind of young man would have
“But that’s not even what’s important!” he cried, trying yelled out in surprise, apologized, told him about his friend
for some romantic-lead insouciance. “I mean, do you still who lost a leg in a construction accident, pulled a bottle from
love me, for example? ” under the counter, and a flotilla of interesting questions and
She put a hand on his cheek. “Of course it doesn’t matter confessions would have wafted in on the waves of vodka.
to me. What we have is deeper than that, isn’t it? It’s spiritual, Eventually Aleksey would know about the clerk’s sinus prob-
isn’t it? Even though you don’t believe in God, it still is.” She lems — his slobbering slut of an ex-wife, and his desire to
sighed and sat abruptly on a kitchen stool, propping her head someday become a medical type of person or otherwise
in her hands with their hot-pink nails. “All right. Well.” help those in Aleksey’s situation, perhaps by taking them to
“Yes? ” he said. houses of prostitution. The thought of this entire wretched
“First of all, your interview isn’t until five. That gives us a scene made Aleksey ask himself, did his nostalgia now ex-
lot of time, doesn’t it? And also —” tend to nosy drunks? Nostalgia, that sodden field — had he
“Also? ” fallen that far?
“Also, maybe — maybe your nose is there, but it just got He walked home, noting the cleanliness of the sidewalk
crushed,” she said. “You do like to sleep on your stomach, and the disrepair of his shoes. People seemed to be giving
you know it’s very unhealthy, I keep telling you, and still him a wide berth, he gathered, based on the glimpses he
you flop down onto it like a walrus. Maybe if we just — ” She caught of their feet. Aleksey had an excellent sense of direc-
reached up and tried to take hold of the flat skin in the cen- tion, but eventually he had to raise his eyes to make sure he
tre of his face. was going the right way. And it was then, as he confirmed
“Oy,” he said, trying to twist away. that Whiting Lane was exactly where he’d expected it to be,
“That’s good, create some pressure for it. Now — we’ll just that he collided with a man in a dark coat and yarmulke, with
hold it for a minute — okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.” Aleksey’s very nose right in the centre of his surprised face.
She released him. “Yes, it does look better.” She took a com-
pact from her bag and held the mirror up to him. In the mir-
ror, he saw his face, the red imprints of Tatiana’s nails making
a circle like a bull’s eye in the middle.
“I don’t see a change,” he said, turning away. “But maybe,
Tatianachka, you’re right, I shouldn’t go to the interview? ”
“No, you can’t let something like this keep you from a
meeting with your future. Don’t be such a fatalist.”
She began speaking in English, something she always did
when it was time to be business-like. “I must meet a client in
North Hills. So you go, pick up resumé — and call me.”
“Okay, that is cheering. I now have wonderful privilege to
walk outside, alone, and have the little children crying and
the big children throwing the rocks at me,” he said.
“I’ll drive you there. You only have to walk back, okay, my
big theatre queen? ”
“Please forgive me,” Aleksey said, transfixed. smoothly like a boxing glove, touched his face with white-
“Excuse me,” the man said, and walked off in the direction nailed fingers.
of the park. Aleksey pivoted like a music-box doll and fol- “I’ve seen better,” she said in her rough voice. “Then
lowed the man, ever ready to conceal himself behind a tele- again, I’ve seen worse. Much worse, let me tell you.” She and
phone pole or a parked car, but in fact the man never turned Tatiana shared a conspiratorial smile. “Let me take a look at
around. He strode through the park and to — why hadn’t the nose again.” Holding the dead creature to Aleksey’s face,
Aleksey guessed it? — the town synagogue. Had his nose now she said, “It’s proportional to his head, I’ll give you that.”
found its rightful home on a rabbi? Aleksey stood on a pile “So when will be the operation? ” Tatiana asked.
of snow in the empty park square, watching the black coat “Here’s the thing: no qualified plastic surgeon would be will-
mount the steps, open the door, and disappear into the warm ing to do an operation like this. Right now, everything is func-
yellow light of the synagogue’s interior. tional and you can breathe normally. If I try to mess around
Aleksey stood there, his feet burning with cold in the dirty with that nose, we don’t really know what could happen.”
snow, watching his own breath dissipate, trying not to re- “But, we must try,” Tatiana said.
member that it was coming from two holes the size of pen- “No, no. ‘First, do no harm.’ Surgery might rupture his
cil erasers embedded in his face. paranasal sinuses, not to mention his tear ducts, his naso-
pharynx. You don’t want to be responsible for that, do you?
ack at the Elkin house, Tatiana met him at the door with I can’t do it, and any other surgeon would tell you the same
B a look of cracked merriment on her face. “Todd’s here
for lunch,” she sang out, “guess what he has? ” She dragged
thing.” She was using the nose to gesture as she made her
point; then, finished, she handed it to Tatiana, who dropped
him into the kitchen, where Todd sat smiling up from a ham- it into her purse without any attempt to wrap it.
and-cheese sandwich.
“Hey, buddy,” Todd said. “Sorry about your accident.” riving home, Tatiana was silent. She turned the radio
“But show him,” Tatiana said, still tugging on Aleksey’s
arm.
D to a dance station that played a song about two hearts.
There was a word between “two” and “hearts” that Aleksey
Todd took out what looked like a collection of tissues. could not make out. To take his mind off his nose, bump-
“The strangest thing,” he said, “I found it on top of my com- ing against keys and jagged coins in Tatiana’s purse, Aleksey
puter, right next to my trekking compass.” Here, tried to sing along: “Two, uh, hearts, two hearts
he began to lift something pink out of the tis- that beat as one . . .” Tatiana gave him a look and he
sues. Like Venus rising from foam, Aleksey’s nose stopped. He remembered singing his daughter to
emerged, naked and proud, profuse and purple- sleep in Leningrad. His deep bass was not ideally
veined. “Maybe it’s a prosthetic or something? suited to lullabies, but Natalia loved hearing him,
Anyway, when Tatiana told me about you, I said, especially when he sang a song he’d learned from
‘You never know. I’ve always been a very lucky a movie about a mixed-race baby, who miracu-
guy.’ Maybe this is just the thing to help you.” lously escaped from lynch-happy America and
“Thank you,” Aleksey said, reaching for it and cradling it was brought to the ussr to be raised by a circus:
in the palm of his hand. It was cold and when he stroked it “The bears and elephants are sleeping,
with one finger, felt waxier than he’d remembered. The men and women are sleeping,
“And then I said,” Tatiana put in, “ ‘Remember that plas- At night, everyone should sleep,
tic surgeon who did — do — my eyes in one hour only and But not if they are at work!”
I look so different and good when she is finished? ’ ” His wife would come in while he was singing and ca-
“So we called and made an appointment. You and Tatiana ress the five hairs on Natalia’s head (she’d heard that scalp
are off to see her right now. Don’t even take your coat off.” massages make babies’ hair grow in faster). Aleksey’s voice
“Come, come,” Tatiana said, pulling Aleksey out the back would swell, filling both rooms up to the chandeliers, be-
door while blowing Todd a kiss. cause look at what he had! A wife, a child, a piano, two rooms,
A capricious yet oddly self-righteous driver at the best of and that was just the start. Soon there’d be more children,
times, Tatiana now steered the car with an Ophelia-like rap- more rooms, a piano in each room! A piano in the commu-
ture, careening down streets and speeding through red lights, nal bathroom for the neighbours to share!
saying, “Isn’t it wonderful how we can get things back? ” Back at the house, Tatiana pulled herself together a bit to
So, Aleksey thought, she has been lying to me about lov- help Aleksey with the suit she’d bought him. “It’s a suit like
ing me the same whether I had a nose or not. Obviously, this Richard Gere was wearing in Pretty Woman. You even look
woman is as shallow as I thought she was when we first met. like him a little bit.”
But this thought did not make him feel any less unhappy, be- “Oh, really? ” he said, making a foolhardy attempt to flirt
cause he read in the blurred building awnings, and heard in as he put on the pinstriped jacket.
the horns and shouts aimed at their car, the clear message “His face is also a little bit flat, but who notices that? ”
that his nose was dead and so was Tatiana’s love for him. “Are you my pretty woman? ” Aleksey touched her breast
Tatiana bumped into a parking spot and they took the with a sleeve-covered hand.
elevator upstairs to the plastic surgeon’s office. The plas- “Sure, okay.” She turned away and went to Todd’s clos-
tic surgeon, a dark, tiny young woman, her face shining et for a tie.
“O kay,” Tatiana said, pulling up to the Century First of- to face with the shiny bump on its end, from which several
fice. “Neither one of us expected it to be this hard. hairs were growing. At least, he thought, the nose would not
But” — brightening — “maybe this is a handicapped disabil- notice his deformity, for it — he? — did not seem to have any
ity situation, and they have to hire you because you are de- eyes. “So,” Aleksey said, “we know each other, perhaps? ”
formed? What do you think? Maybe I should bring it up, “I don’t think so,” the nose said. “Were you at Who’s Who
even, to Mr. Gess? ” LM: Aruba? ”
“Tatianachka, if you love me even a bit, you will not do “No, but I have once travelled to Cuba,” Aleksey said.
that,” Aleksey said. The whole drive over, he’d been looking “Yeah, I didn’t think so. Hardly any of the new guys go,
at himself in the passenger-side mirror, trying to find some can’t afford it, most of the time. You know what LM stands
angle of his head to lessen the effect of that which was gone. for? ”
Now, he swatted the mirror away and scratched his right leg Large Medals? Large Metals? Forget the large — that’s
in its unfamiliar navy-and-pink pinstripe. Sovetskiy thinking. Here they know there’s more to life than
They walked in together. Mr. Gess was waiting for them large. Likes Meetings? Meeting people is important in this
behind the glass door, half hidden by some advertisements field. “No, I am not familiar.”
for condominiums, wearing a pin-striped suit much like “Luxury Markets. The only kind I sell to.”
Aleksey’s. The similarity did not end there. Mr. Gess was, in “Yes, very good,” Aleksey said, trying to sound like he
fact, Aleksey’s very own nose, writ very large. Aleksey stead- wore silk underwear and took saunas at his dacha.
ied himself against the door frame as Tatiana sauntered in “Some great scuba diving there. You scuba dive? ”
and kissed the nose, just to the left of a slight discoloration “No, unfortunately.” In his nervousness, Aleksey was for-
from an old sunburn on its bridge. getting the noseness of the nose. In its fine suit — of a better
“And this is my famous friend Aleksey, very good with fabric than his own, and with a more delicate pinstripe, and
the conversation, especially with people from the univer- beautiful shoes, now crossed at an angle from his desk, the
sity,” she said. “He will be big asset.” Aleksey turned to her, nose looked like a better kind of human being, a human be-
horrified by her normalcy, but she was already going, jaunt- ing with fewer distracting features, a human being more solid
ily waving at the two of them. and more ready to fight, no soft spots on him. There is no
“So,” his nose said, “Let’s go to my office and we’ll see Achilles heel on a nose, Aleksey thought dizzily.
what we can do.” “Yeah, I was wondering,” the nose said. “I noticed, in your
“I have myself some ideas. For what we can do,” Alek- resumé, you don’t have any hobbies. Where’s your hobbies
sey said with morose significance, then instantly regretted section? ”
it. Already he was making a bad impression! He promised “My what? ”
himself to smile every time he said anything — besides eradi- “See here . . .” The nose pushed a paper at him, “On this re-
cating the bad impression, it would give his voice extra rich- sumé, the hobbies are golf and, and — what’s the rest? ”
ness, according to Tatiana. Aleksey read, “body building, and of course Monopoly.”
The nose sat behind a desk and gestured Aleksey into a “You see how adding a section like that, something a little
slightly lower chair than its own, so that Aleksey was face fun, you can show the world you’re not just a professor from
a very messed up place — you know, I read the news. You put
in a hobbies section, I say, ‘Hey, this guy isn’t so boring, I can
work with this guy, maybe teach him some street smarts.”
Here the nose made some karate chopping movements with
the attenuated, doll-like arms that protruded from either side
of its bridge. It must, Aleksey realized, have gotten its suit
specially tailored. “So hit me with some hobbies.”
“I like reading and also I like many winter sports, for exam-
ple, skiing and also I like the Monopoly . . . ” At least, he had
seen a Monopoly game in Tatiana and Todd’s garage.
“Look, Al, I’ll give you the real deal here. Half of all agents
are gone in two years. Why? ”
“Why? ”
“ ’Cause they don’t know thing one about commitment.
This business owns you for the first two years. Owns. You.
And if you can’t handle that, if you want to be all” — here the
nose affected a high, sexually indeterminate voice — “ ‘Oh,
what about my books’ or ‘What about my family?,’ well then,
Al, you might as well just walk out that door.”
“All right,” Aleksey said. “I understand.”
The nose leaned back in its chair. “You got any questions
“I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need to Get By” for me? ”
– Method Man and Mary J. Blige (1995) Aleksey, of course, did have questions: how much money
could he expect to make? How many hours would he have voice came from inside the house, “He is nothing, Toddzik!
to work? Would the nose ever come back and sit on his If you’d just come home more often . . .”
face, or was it finding the real estate business too lucrative? Todd slammed his trunk closed. Aleksey realized that he
But Tatiana had told him not to ask the first two questions — wasn’t dressed, just wearing a ski jacket over some plaid pa-
they made it sound like he cared too much about those jamas and sneakers. “Remember, I didn’t have to tell you,”
things, whereas you were supposed to care about this real Tatiana called out.
estate agency because it was the best. Pay and hours be “Get inside,” Todd said, in a voice Aleksey had never heard
damned — you’d work there for free, gladly! That was how him use before but had heard in some films he’d seen short-
you got a job in America. As for the last question, well, you ly after immigrating — the voice of Chuck Norris, enraged to
didn’t need a Tatiana yelling at you to know it was wrong. have found himself tiny, betrayed, and pajama-clad on this
It implied that he thought he was in charge of the nose and freezing night.
reflected badly on his ability to respect his superiors. Sub- The door slammed.
servience, subservience, subservience — that lesson Alek- Todd looked up at the second floor, and, seeing Aleksey
sey had learned for himself in Russia. there, shouted, “Fucker! Loser! Jerkwad!” He paused briefly
He took his leave of the nose. But not without peeking to gather some snow into snowballs, and then began throw-
back through the window at its tottering, almost hen-like ing them at Aleksey’s window. With each toss, he called
progress between the empty desks. him by a different name. “Broomhead! Fuckwit! Deserter!
Greenhorn!” After a few minutes, he began pausing to sim-
azed, Aleksey wandered back in the direction of the ply glare. Aleksey thought perhaps he was running out of
D house, no longer caring whether anyone saw him. And
in fact, it seemed that people did not see anything amiss.
names, but then another barrage came: “Carpetbagger!
Homo! Pissant! Letch!” At “Letch,” a snowball broke through
In Leningrad, not even one second would have elapsed be- the glass and Aleksey jumped back, snow scattering every-
fore some babushka demanded to know what had happened where. Encouraged, Todd and the names and the snowballs
to his face — was it hooligans? — and suggested a cucumber went on and on; it was as if Todd was marshalling all the
poultice. But here, people expected to see a nose on every memories of his American life — of playgrounds, of sports
face and that was what they saw. fields, of bars, of, indeed, his academic specialty, nineteenth-
But this thought, though probably true, didn’t really make century American literature. He threw the snowballs with
its way through the pillow that seemed to be lining Alek- a good strong pitcher’s arm. “Whelp! Squatter! Square!
sey’s mind. It was a goose-down pillow, the same one he’d Retard!” Finally, he got in his car, accidentally turning on
had from birth to emigration, with a few feather stems pok- the interior light as well as the headlights, opened his win-
ing through the thin cloth. He was sitting on a suitcase, wait- dow, shouted, “Chump!” and rolled away, silhouetted by
ing for them to call his train. the glow.
He was watching his daughter read a gigantic book, only Aleksey stumbled back a few more paces, breathing hard,
her legs visible, until she peeked around the side of the cover and flipped the light switch. His reflection in what remained
and said, “How do you do? ” in a voice she considered at once of the window looked surprisingly normal — if only everyone
extremely grown-up and hilarious. else could see that reflection instead of his real self ! After
He was in the corridor waiting to take his last Moscow a few seconds, hope formed, and to extinguish it, Aleksey
State entrance exam, an interview, sweating even down to walked to the bathroom and stared hard into the mirror.
his ankles, horrified upon realizing he’d forgotten all but And saw his prodigal nose, right where it was supposed to
one of the lines in Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman, the one be, just as if nothing had happened. His vein was there, his
about walking hand in hand into the grave. hairs were there, and when it had all come back, he did not
What kind of place was this, really? You woke up one know. He did not know, nor did he want to know. He wanted
morning, just like any other day, except “yo” — as they said to sit on his floor. He wanted to have a drink and think about
here — an essential organ was missing, and that very after- the future that he suddenly saw before him, just past the tip
noon, that very organ was interviewing you for a job. of his newly restored nose.
He was unable to think more on this and went to bed as Tatiana would come up the stairs. He would sell houses
soon as he got to the Elkins’. and — why not? — make a million dollars. He and Tatiana
In the middle of the night, he awoke from a dream in would marry. They would have a baby, and the baby would
which his nose had formed a motorcycle gang and was chas- know neither Barkov nor babka, would wonder neither
ing him down the highway. Wiping sweat from his forehead, What Must Be Done? (Chto Delat? ) nor Whose Fault? (Kto
Aleksey stood up, let the sheet fall from him, and shivered. Vinovat? ). More power to the baby! All power to the baby!
He went to the window. The street lights made the snow blue, He heard Tatiana’s shoes on the stairs and their clip-clop
and it reminded him of snow in Leningrad, in the almost un- sound told him that he would forget that the past day had
inhabitable winters, when residents asked each other just ever happened. Aren’t immigrants like horses? Don’t we
how crazy Peter the Great had been, “to even have had the need our blinders to move? What’s a professorship, what’s
thought of building here!” a piano, what’s a daughter, compared to our desire to just get
The front door light came on and Todd stepped outside, out? In fact, let’s not discuss these barely remembered losses
carrying a duffle bag that was larger than he was. Tatiana’s any more. It doesn’t do any of us good. V
62
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t h e wa l r u s
fiction
Bob D ylan
G oes Tubing
by Marni Jackson
illustration by Thomas Libetti
O
ne morning we came back from town to find a strange “Sure thing,” the floater said. I got a towel from the pump
car parked under the white pines beside our cottage. shed and went down to the dock. Bob Dylan — no question
An old Citroën, the kind where the chassis goes up now, it was him — rolled off the mattress, careful to keep the
and down hydraulically. Yellow. Nobody we knew drove brim of his hat dry. He slung the mattress up on the diving
a Citroën. Our son Ryan ran down the long switchback of raft and did a credible breaststroke to the end of the dock,
wooden steps that lead to the lake. where he held on to the edge with thin white fingers.
“There’s somebody out on the lake,” he yelled, “on the “No ladder?” He asked.
air mattress.” The nails on the baby finger on each hand were extra long,
Paul shaded his eyes. A pale, small, but visibly adult fig- and filed square.
ure, with a Tilley hat tied under his chin was paddling to- “Let me give you a hand.”
ward our dock. I leaned over, careful to keep my scoop-neck shirt from
“I need the binocs,” Paul said, and went and retrieved gaping, and Dylan grabbed hold of me like a big ropey eight-
them from the cottage. He studied the figure for a long mo- year-old. He was pale as a grub, with a dot of chin hair and
ment. that riverboat-gambler moustache he started wearing around
“This is really weird,” he said, “but whoever that is looks Love and Theft. But his blue eyes were still strong and clear,
exactly like Bob Dylan.” He passed the binoculars to me. and met mine. He whisked the water off his arms with
And it did look like him — a little guy with a pencil mous- his hands.
tache, wearing Ryan’s flippers, on our air mattress. “Water’s real nice, once you get in.”
“See? Only older.” Dylan was wearing a pair of old-fashioned wool swim-
“Well, he is older.” ming trunks with a narrow white belt. Wet, they revealed a
The figure paddled closer. Paul waved and called out. springy crescent of cock underneath. His skin was so white
“Hi. We’re back from town.” it looked translucent, but he had good biceps — from play-
I waved too. It could, remotely, be some friend of a friend, ing guitar, probably. His forearms had energy, and drew
dropping by on his way up to another cottage. Our place had your eye.
no phone, no email, and cell connection was dodgy because He wrapped himself in my blue towel.
of the granite cliffs. Sometimes people we scarcely knew just “Want to see the boathouse?” asked Ryan. He led Dylan
turned up. “Yeah, I’m back too,” the Dylan-person called. inside where he showed him our old green waterlogged
Then he started singing in a slightly hokey, Nashville Skyline Chestnut canoe slung up in the rafters and the aluminum
voice, “Back here on Kashagawigamog.” boat we used for fishing. Ryan was nine and didn’t care or
That is, in fact, the name of a lake in North Ontario, but know who this skinny visitor was.
not ours. Ours is Sturgeon Lake. “The canoe leaks,” Ryan said, “but we can go tubing. My
“What do we do now?” Paul asked. friend Trevor has a Chris-Craft with a Merc 120.”
“I don’t know. Offer him a drink?” “Sounds good,” Dylan said, using his hand to close one
He cupped his hands. “Come on up and join us, if you’re nostril as he blew out the other one to clear his sinuses. Then
heading in.” we all climbed the eighty-seven wooden trestle-ties up to the
64
j uly /au g u s t 2 0 0 7
65
t h e wa l r u s
cottage, where Paul was waiting for us with the map spread lake were coming by to go tubing soon, and did Bob want to
out on the kitchen table. go? We explained tubing to Dylan — being dragged around
“Okay, now, Bob, you’re here,” Paul said, pointing to Stur- the lake behind a power boat, while clinging to a large in-
geon Lake, a liver-shaped body of water northeast of Hunts- flated rubber donut with handles. Like tobogganing fast,
ville, “and Kashagawigamog is quite a ways over there.” Kash over water.
was closer to Bancroft. “Guess I kinda overshot it,” Dylan “Sure, I’ll give it a shot,” Dylan said. They headed down
mumbled. “Nice ride up, though.” to the water, where Ryan got him a life preserver. Dylan
I was staring into the fridge without being able to see any- tried to light a cigarette, hunching over his lighter, but it
thing. “Can I offer you something, Bob? Orange juice? A nice was too breezy. The big Chris-Craft chugged up to the dock.
Stoli with some lemonade? We have cold beer, of course. We watched the two of them climb in and roar off, as Dylan’s
Canadian beer.” hat flipped straight up in the wind. He looked happy.
“Sure, that all sounds good. ‘Give it to me in a cup,’ he “What do we do when he gets tired of tubing?” Paul said.
sang, ‘and let the queen dance with the jack.’ ” He was study- “Let’s worry about that later.” I hung the towels out on the
ing the map, circling some of the names that tickled him. line, lay down on our bed, and fell asleep. I wasn’t used to
“Arnprior,” he murmured with a faint lift of the moustache. drinking before lunch.
“Madoc. Irondale.”
After some dithering, I mixed him a Red Needle — tequila, usk was coming on. We had cocktails and listened to
slice of lemon, and cranberry juice with lots of ice — and D Lucinda Williams singing “Six Blocks Away.” I twirled
opened a couple of Coronas for us. Dylan downed his drink the ice in my empty glass. Dylan stood at the big front win-
and fingered peanuts from a dish. “Madawaska,” he said, dow scowling at the horizon, which was bloody. His mood
then underlined the name with a felt pen. Meanwhile Paul had changed.
was standing in front of our CD collection, sweating over “Look at the sun,” he snarled, “goin’ down over the sea.”
what to play for Bob Dylan. He spider-walked one hand down the windowpane.
“Sally, where’s that klezmer collection . . .” “The sky is erupting now / and I must take my leave.” He
“No,” I cried, leaping over to the CD player. “Play . . . play went into the guest bedroom. We heard him rummaging
the remastered Etta James. Or that Robert Johnson one, did around in the dresser drawer and then he emerged, wear-
we bring that?” ing a pair of Ryan’s flannel pajamas with a horse-and-buggy
Dylan looked up from the map. “Got any old Valdy?” motif. He had a harmonica in one hand and a toothbrush in
“Valdy.” Paul swivelled on his heels to me with panic- the other. It looked like mine.
stricken eyes. “Now let me have a look.” “Okay if I drink the water?”
Valdy is a West Coast Canadian folksinger who had enjoyed “Go ahead, we just had it tested.”
a little plateau of fame in the 1970s. While Paul inverted his At the kitchen sink he put his harmonica in a glass of wat-
head to read the labels on the lowest shelf of CDs, Dylan er to soak, like a pair of dentures. For several minutes he
wandered into the kitchen, looked in the fridge, and turned scoured his teeth over the kitchen sink, brushing and spit-
on the radio. The cbc news was just wrapping up. ting methodically. Then he flossed, making the floss pock in
“Good old Jim Curran,” said Dylan, putting chunks of
brie on a row of Ritz crackers. “Talkin’ traffic.” He turned
the volume up.
“Really?” Paul said. “You listen to cbc?”
“Oh yeah. The boys on the bus listen to npr and cbc all
the time. It’s good for moving through the land.” Dylan took
his plate of crackers over to the couch and sat down.
“I wrote a pretty good song about Gzowski a few years
back.”
“You’re kidding,” Paul said.
“About this guy in a little green studio, smokin’ and talkin’
to people all over the country until one day the government
burns down the radio station with him in it. Yeah, the band
all likes the cbc. We get sick of watchin’ TV on the bus.”
“Huh,” Paul said. He was staring at Glenn Gould, Goldberg
Variations. Too manic for this time of day.
“I was gonna record it, but the record people said this guy
was too obscure. Hurricane Carter, people have heard of,
they said, but they don’t know Peter Gzowski.”
“Well, they would if you sang about it,” I pointed out.
What about Hattie Carroll and William Zanzinger?
“Old Petey boy,” Dylan mused, “in that little green room.” “Prisoner of Love (Slip Away riddim)”
Ryan came in and said that Trevor and Angus down the – Dave Barker and the Upsetters (1969)
“Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle,” Dylan sang, zipping his candlestick around the board, an unlit
cigarette hanging off his lip. We let him smoke inside, but he didn’t push it.
a rhythm. Then he rinsed. between the three bedrooms that didn’t go all the way up.
“Think I’ll sleep down by the water tonight,” he said, be- With Dylan next door, Paul and I had to make love like hos-
fore he grabbed his pack of American Spirits and banged out tages, scarcely moving. I developed a taste for it that way. One
the screen door, with a striped Hudson’s Bay blanket slung night, not long after his arrival, we had flipped our covers
over one shoulder. He headed down the path, toes gripping down to get at each other more quietly when we heard Dylan
his flip-flops. on the other side of the wall, talking in his sleep.
I stood at the window. Wrapped in the blanket, Dylan “Someone’s got it in for me,” he said, clearly and loudly.
settled on our yellow plastic chaise at the end of “They’re planting stories in the press.”
the dock. I could see him through the birches, in “Just let me check on him,” I whispered to Paul.
the early lavender darkness. He took out a ciga- I slipped into his room and there he was, an aging
rette, lit it, broke up several more and threw the poet in horse-and-buggy pajamas, his white feet
crumbs of tobacco to the minnows that dimpled uncovered. Now he was mumbling. I put my hand
the surface of the water. Further out on the lake, on his brow and he settled down. I tucked him in.
a pair of loons, long, black and plump, left a pla- He looked so young asleep.
cid W behind them. This was the time of evening The next morning he emerged with a rumpled
when the fish fed, and unseen bugs made circles on the wat- face, unsmiling. I microwaved his oatmeal.
er that looked as if a light rain was falling. “Bad night?”
Then it was finally dark. I left the window and Paul lit a “Bad dreams. Joanie dreams. She won’t let go.” He spread
fire in the woodstove. In his room, Ryan had fallen asleep a good half-inch of cold butter on his bun. I was buying two
over a Spider-Man comic book. I turned off his light. a day at this point.
A little later, I went down to give Dylan a flashlight and “Did you hear the loons?”
some bug repellent. He was fooling around with the har- “Yeah. Same first notes as “Wichita Lineman.”
monica. It was cloudy out, and the lake looked too rough for tubing.
“If you hear rustling in the woods, it’s just raccoons. But Paul was playing Monopoly with Ryan, and crowing about
they won’t bother you on the dock.” having eight hotels. Dylan sat down beside them.
“Frogs are jumpin’, toads are croakin’ / seems like every- “Want to play?” Ryan asked Dylan, giving him a silver
thing is broken,” he half sang in his cigarette-frayed voice. candlestick from the Clue game as his marker. Dylan sat at
“Goodnight, Bob. Sleep tight.” the board, eating his oatmeal and shaking the dice. I heard
“Hey Sal, you too.” him thump his marker smartly as he moved around the board.
We watched the moonless night sky for a moment. The I decided it was a good day to make a lamb stew that could
stars were all out, coming at us in smithereens. Coldness slow cook in the oven. In no time, Dylan had snagged three
radiated off of the lake. A shooting star fell down through railroads, as well as Park Place and Pennsylvania Avenue.
the blackness, like a magnet slipping. “Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle,” Dylan sang, zipping his candle-
stick around the board, an unlit cigarette hanging off his lip.
nd so, without a word of explanation, Bob Dylan became We let him smoke inside, but he didn’t push it.
A a guest at our cottage. A week passed, then another. “Hurry up and roll,” Ryan said morosely. Paul gazed out
Every morning he got up first — we would hear him plunge the window at the choppy grey lake. He disliked board games.
off the dock, thrash out to the raft, and then swim back again. He was looking a little fed up. Sooner or later, I realized, we
He got into the local Chelsea buns. “Like the hotel?” he asked were going to have to do something about Bob Dylan.
when I gave him his first one. Most afternoons he went tub- “I think we should put the chairs in the boathouse,” I said,
ing with Ryan and the boys. looking pointedly at Paul. “The wind’s coming up.”
“It’s not too different from being on the road with the “I’m sure he’ll leave soon,” I told him when we were down
band, just more fun,” he explained. by the lake, out of earshot. “He just needs to rest.”
Sometimes Paul and I would stand on the dock with the “But what if he doesn’t? What if he ends up living with us,
binoculars, and watch him bump over the waves behind or coming back down to the city with us?”
Trevor’s boat, thinking “Bob Dylan is tubing on our lake.” “Sooner or later somebody’s going to come looking for
It was pretty unreal. But Canadian summers are so short that him. He’s world-famous, for God’s sake. He’s supposed to
everything about them feels a bit like a dream. You expect to be on tour.”
wake up any minute. Our friends would always swear up and “Plus,” Paul said, “the guy eats like a horse, in case you
down they’d visit, but they never made it. I understood; the haven’t noticed. When you factor in gas for the outboard,
city is jealous and won’t let people go. We were only renting and all those cartons of American Spirit I bring back from
the cabin, and we didn’t socialize too much. So it was just the town, it starts to add up.”
four of us that August — me, Ryan, Paul, and Dylan. “He’s rich. Money probably never crosses his mind.”
The cottage was small and old-fashioned, with partitions “Well, it should. It crosses mine.”
His beard didn’t scratch too much when we kissed. I froze, listening for Paul’s near-snore.
“You are a jewel,” Dylan breathed into my ear. “A precious shining jewel.”
“Give him a bit more time, honey. It’s good for Ryan, he’s I was settled with a duvet on the sofa bed one night, as a
teaching him chords on the guitar. We could have nipped it cool current of air from the lake flowed stealthily over me.
in the bud on the first day, but at this point it’d be rude to I could feel the presence of the lake, like a sleeping dog. The
kick him out.” call of the loons was preternaturally clear and loud, notes
“And I don’t appreciate the way he goes around making fun breathed into a bamboo instrument. Sometimes the laugh-
of Dwight Yoakam when he can see he’s in our CD wallet.” ter of a party would carry over from the other side of the
“That’s just him.” lake, but that night it was perfectly quiet. I listened to the
“Why are you defending him? You let him get away with sounds of breathing — Paul, even and deep. Ryan, turn-
murder playing Scrabble — you didn’t even challenge zydeko. ing often and rustling his plastic. Nothing from Dylan’s
Zydeko? You wouldn’t take that shit from me.” room. Then I heard someone get up and use the bathroom.
“I’m not defending him, I just think he likes it here. It’s “Ryan?” “No.” “Oh, Bob, sorry.” Dylan, wrapped in the blan-
good for him. And I like it when he sings for us.” ket, came into the porch. His feet were long and
“Right. When he can remember the words.” narrow and white. I could smell tobacco and the
If you asked Bob directly, he wouldn’t sing. strange lanolin cream he used on his hands and
But if you set up a good situation, he would sidle nails. Bag balm, he called it, something farmers
over to Ryan’s cheap acoustic guitar and ease into used on cracked cow udders.
a song. One chilly night — August was almost “Quarter moon, Sal,” he whispered. Through
over — we made a bonfire outside. Dylan wrapped the trees, I could see the bone-coloured crescent.
himself in the Bay blanket and sang “Farewell, An- I thumped the edge of the sofa. “Sit here.”
gelina,” followed by “Tangled Up in Blue.” He played with Shivering, Dylan tried to keep his blanket from slipping
his head bowed, picking with one hand propped up on his off while he lit a cigarette.
right baby finger. His voice was hard-edged and lovely, like “Mind?”
an old sharpened knife. He made up a song for Ryan, called “Be my guest.”
“The Man in the Loon.” It was about a boy who fell into the He sat down on the sofa.
lake and was raised by a pair of loons, so he grew up think- “Can’t sleep?” he asked.
ing he was a bird. “It’s cooler on the porch.”
“Slept in a rowboat / swam through the reeds,” he sang, “Yeah, the air is sweet.”
“livin’ in the river / where the crawfish feeds.” The smell of his cigarette was rough and pleasant — some-
After that he did that Beach Boys song, “In My Room,” times tobacco smelled so good. I brought my knees up, un-
changing the chorus to “In My Loon.” Ryan played along covering my feet. He took them in his cool hands and
on his little synthesizer keyboard. “Play ‘Surfer Girl’ now,” absentmindedly stroked them, as if they were a cat that
I pleaded. But Dylan put the guitar aside, threw his cigarette had found its way onto his lap.
into the woods, and went off to bed like a tiny king, his quilt “I can only really sleep on the bus,” he said. “It never feels
sweeping up the pine needles behind him. right if I’m not moving.”
That night in bed, Paul turned to me. His hands felt so alive on my skin. A kind of swarming in-
“Were there any messages when you went to town? telligence came off them. He put out his cigarette in a saucer
Doesn’t he have a manager or something?” on the windowsill. A loon breathed its shaky note. Dylan’s
A mosquito hovered. I let it land on my arm, waited, then hands stroked further up my leg, like a masseur, following
smacked it. “Nope. We’re it, I guess.” the line of the calf muscle.
“Anyone else would at least buy the odd bottle of wine,” “Swimmer’s legs,” he said.
Paul said, rolling away. “Talk about out of touch.” “Not any more.”
“The man is lost,” I said, “that’s all.” “I like to watch you move around this place.”
He shivered.
or some reason, Ryan got the best bed in the cottage. It “Here,” I said, lifting up the duvet. “Get warm.” He slipped
F was a new firm mattress, wrapped in a zippered plastic like quicksilver out of his blanket and under mine. He was
bag that rustled noisily whenever he flipped about in his smooth as the handle of a knife, slim as a boy, cool as china.
sleep. Our bed was bigger, but old and it sagged. Since Paul His beard didn’t scratch too much when we kissed. I froze,
was six foot two, his weight in the middle left me feeling as if listening for Paul’s near-snore, which rasped on, and Ryan’s
I was clinging to the crest of the mattress all night long. The rustling plastic. “You are a jewel,” Dylan breathed into my
room had just enough space for the bed and a dresser with ear. “A precious shining jewel.”
one stuck drawer. On hot nights, I would often move to the
screened-in porch to sleep on the sofa bed. I liked feeling the he skies were turning a harder, more brilliant blue, and
cushions up against my back, and my feet solid against the
tufted upholstered arms.
T the lake water now appeared more solid and navy blue.
The water was almost too cold for swimming. The mist that
rose from the surface of the lake each morning took longer few days later, when we were packing up the cottage,
each day to lift. The top leaves of a few maples were red. A we took the boat over to Arnie’s marina to go into stor-
Our porch encounter was never repeated, nor mentioned. age. Arnie winched the boat up the rails and out of the
Paul suspected nothing, and he even began to warm to Dylan water.
when the two of them started playing his old vinyl Johnny “Before I forget, there’s a letter here for you,” he said as
Cash albums. Paul found a Valdy record, Smorgas Bard, at a we were paying up in his office full of life jackets and fish-
garage sale in town and gave it to Dylan. So they made their ing nets. He handed us an enveloped addressed to Ryan, care
connection. As for me, on the rainy afternoons when Ryan of Warners’ Marina, Sturgeon Lake. He finally got that right.
lay on the couch reading old National Geographics with his It was written on motel stationery from a Best Western in
headphones on, and the two men were listening to Johnny Boise, Idaho.
Cash sing “Girl from the North Country,” I couldn’t have Ryan, Didn’t want to wake you up, but thanks for all the rides,
been happier. All my men at peace, under one roof. man — and the chorus is just the same, A, D, E, only barre chords
Then one Sunday morning, early, I heard the Citroën sound better. Tube on, Bobby
turn over, stealthily, and catch. I heard the car revving in re- The owners of our cottage, Sheila and Tony, lived in a big-
verse, as it slowly backed down our gravel road, swishing ger place on the next lake over. When we got back from the
past the tall poplars. marina, they were waiting for us, sitting round the seldom-
“He’s gone,” I whispered to Paul. used picnic table over the septic tank, where the grass was
“Probably just went to town for smokes.” long and green.
“It’s Sunday. Nothing’s open this early.” “Tim’s firm has transferred him to Toronto,” Tony began,
We got up, expecting a note, or possibly a cheque, but “which we’re happy about, of course.”
there was no sign of anything. I went into his room; the bed Tim was their married son and it turned out that his fam-
was neatly made. Ryan’s sock monkey with the Xs for eyes ily wanted to take over the cottage next summer. They felt
leaned against the pillow. In the kitchen I noticed that the badly, but they really had no choice.
latest box from the bakery was gone. “I can still go to camp, though?” Ryan asked.
“He fucking took my bun,” said Paul. He went to check I felt I ought to tell them something about our guest, but I
the row of albums, “and Smorgas Bard too.” didn’t know what to say. Watch out for Bob Dylan?
When Ryan woke up, we told him Bob had to leave
early, to catch a plane, to go back on tour. He was disap- o that’s what happens when you rent. You have to be
pointed because they were right in the middle of learning
“You Never Can Tell” by Chuck Berry.
Sprepared to move on. But we would find a new lake; the
north was littered with lakes. Or try Quebec, where prices
“He’s on the road most of the year,” I reminded him. “Next were lower.
time he comes through town, I’m sure he’ll look us up.” One thing bothered me when we got back to the city,
“A hundred bucks we never hear from him again,” said though. Somehow, in all the packing and unpacking, I had
Paul. lost Dylan’s note to Ryan. Our time with him had become
But I am a romantic. I didn’t need to see him again. a family secret — something that might or might not have
taken place. Like the dream of summer when you try to think
of it in winter. The tube was stowed in the garage, and the
gyres of autumn began to turn and mesh.
In January, Dylan’s new album, Madawaska, came out.
When I heard the title, my heart raced. Paul downloaded it as
soon as it showed up online, and the two of us sat at the com-
puter, scanning the song titles. None rang a bell. Maybe I was
afraid of, or hoping for, something called “Precious Jewel,”
or “Swimmer’s Legs.” The music was traditional bluegrass,
with fiddles, and Emmylou Harris singing ethereal harmony
with Dylan on the title tune: “And all along the Madawaska /
I’ve been thinking of the night / When the moon rose up
in splendour / And your step was young and light.” A plain
song, like “Red River Valley.” Paul played it twice, and nei-
ther of us spoke. Maybe that was it, my sign. Another song,
fast and driving, was an incredible story about a stable full
of famous race horses that burns to the ground.
Later, in the middle of the night, I got up and played
“Madawaska” again, with the headphones on. There was
another line in it, about night air cool as water. My guess
would be that it was Sturgeon Lake air. I went ahead with
“I’ve Got You Under My Skin” that in my mind. Everyone craves evidence, after all, evi-
– Frank Sinatra (1956) dence that a time was real, even for five minutes. O
70
jjuly/august
uly /au g u s t 2007
2007
his assassination for the better part of a decade. The British edition was published first. We could never
The fatwa was finally lifted last year and Sarkis’s new book have anticipated the reaction. Radical Muslim clerics im-
is about to be launched in Paris. My father, his French pub- mediately denounced the book as a defamation of Islam,
lisher, has been talking of little else for months, even losing and others raised enough money to offer a million-dollar re-
interest in the Swiss copy editor with the shiny black bob ward for Sarkis’s head. Our edition quickly followed, as did
and pert breasts. deals for publication in twenty-seven other countries. Sud-
Ours is a small publishing house established by my grand- denly, and unexpectedly, Continent Editions had a bestseller,
father from money inherited from his father, an engineer and David Sarkis was a star.
who built railway lines in Africa. My father, attempting to My father thrived on this recognition, a reward that
shake off the colonial residue when he took over as publisher seemed worth the threat of the black Mercedes with tinted
in 1969, dropped the word “Dark” and relaunched the house windows that started following him home from work, worth
as simply Continent Editions. He did not make any signifi- the inconvenience of having to change his route every day,
cant money, and did not expect to when he signed on a rela- worth the expense of hiring a driver, worth the seriousness of
tively unknown Lebanese-American author named David the bodyguard the government assigned to protect us, worth
Sarkis who had penned a startling novella about a Muslim the threat to himself, to my mother, and to me. Until he re-
cleric’s sexual awakening. ceived the letter threatening to kidnap me, at which point my
71
t h e wa l r u s
mother, for all she shared in the excitement, for all it seemed and rocks and sky and the occasional three-legged dog out
to have reinvigorated their marriage, said: enough. there. There was nowhere for me to run except back to Trudy’s
My father’s solution was to stop the driver outside a travel house, where I slept in a shared room wallpapered with palm
agency after picking me up from school the following day, trees on white sandy beaches.
and ask the agent to book me a ticket to the furthest place Trudy was the sister of someone who worked in publish-
possible. At fourteen, I was sent off to Australia — and not ing in Sydney and she was a nurse, although there was no
to Sydney or Melbourne, but to the remote and desolate hospital in the town. Her husband, Mathias, was only home
interior — without a return date. on weekends because he spent the week prospecting for oil
in the desert. I was never sure whether either of them actual-
he squat, veiled woman behind the counter has her eye on ly knew why I was there, but I was quite sure that even if I’d
T me as I scan the shelves, as if I’m about to make off with had the language to explain it, they would not have been par-
something. I’m taking it all in: the sweaty smell of cumin, the ticularly interested.
sizzle of frying falafel patties, the sour smell of vinegar eman- Mathias would sit across from me at the linoleum table in
ating from the vats of Greek olives. A boy who must be her the kitchen drinking beer on Friday nights and talk to Trudy’s
son — taller than her and pockmarked by acne — asks me if back while she stood at the counter chopping carrots. I could
he can help me find something, while she slips behind a cur- tell he was talking about me long before I spoke English.
tain. I tell him I have come for cheese. He says they have no “You should ask for more money, Trude,” he would say. “You
cheese and I ask him: “Not even halloumi?” see how much he eats?”
“Halloumi, we have,” he says. One of my first thoughts in English was a resolution to
“And isn’t halloumi cheese?” eat less.
“Yes,” he says. “How much do you want?”
The boy’s mother reemerges, realizing that I am harm- y mother has always thought Sarkis very handsome.
less, just a man who doesn’t know exactly what he wants. M Perhaps a wanted man is always handsome. He is rather
She says something to her son in Arabic and he translates: portly and olive-skinned, with a thick black moustache and
“What are you using it for?” beard, and eyebrows that nearly meet in the mid-
“I don’t know exactly,” I admit. “My mother, dle. His beard allegedly conceals a scar on his chin,
she’s making Lebanese food,” adding, “for a Leba- the legacy of his having been knifed by a Mossad
nese man.” agent after seducing the man’s daughter — a story
The squat woman winks at me, evidently under- that is legendary and, most likely, apocryphal, but
standing. She pulls a plastic bag off a roll and now immortalized as the plot of his new novel.
plunges her hand into a white, plastic bucket be- I only came to read his work years later. It was
hind her. She captures a big piece of halloumi his short stories that moved me, particularly the
floating in the water and deftly inverts the bag. one about a man in prison who helps a despon-
“He’s just a friend of the family,” I explain, “not a friend dent spider mend its broken web by offering the spider his
exactly, a writer, a famous writer, we published his book, per- eyelashes one by one. That story was an enormous comfort
haps you know him? David Sarkis?” to me. I was that web — that thin, near-transparent, hidden
The squat woman squints, opens the plastic bag, spits thing, torn in a corner. I was that spider, trapped in a prison
onto the halloumi, twists and ties the neck of the bag, and without walls or cellmates.
thrusts it into my hand. Trudy and Mathias had a daughter named Tammy, about
I am left standing there holding this clear plastic bag at my age, as well as a son, Tommy, who was still wearing dia-
arm’s length as if it contains a dead goldfish. I hand over all pers even though he was nearly eight. Tommy stayed at the
the money in my pocket to the boy. Perhaps he shares the house of the lady next door while Tammy and I were at
same view of Sarkis as his mother; he makes no effort to school and Trudy was at work.
hand me any change. And I make no effort to ask for it. Tammy found the fact that I didn’t speak English inordin-
ately funny and took to calling me Frog Legs, a nickname she
was not happy about being forced to leave Paris, particu- soon shared with the entire grade. By the time I was stam-
I larly when I had just been introduced to the world under- mering just enough English to survive, I had suffered the
neath Isabel’s school uniform. I understood the principle be- humiliation of being made to crouch and croak and eat flies
hind having to leave, though I had trouble comprehending by older children in the schoolyard. They would stand in a
how it was that a fourteen-year-old boy from Paris should be circle, a circle of identical faces, lightly bronzed and wild-
sent away because of the publication of a book he had never eyed and framed with blond hair, shouting orders, kicking
read by a Lebanese-American man he had never met. It made up the dirt.
me feel the world was very small and perhaps it is for just As much as I longed to be able to explain my presence to
that reason that my parents had to send me away. them, the English I was acquiring was not so much for conver-
And big it became: endless. The dusty town in the mid- sation as self-defence. I quietly stocked my arsenal and waited
dle of a continent on the other side of the world gave way for the inevitable. I had fast become attuned to the cues, the
to dusty desert on all sides. The schoolyard had no fences — subtle shifts in classroom weather, the tension rising like a ci-
what would have been the point? There was nothing but sand cada’s crescendo in the heat. The day that a group of students
For the first time, I felt as if there was someone other than Sarkis, author of a short story about
a spider, who understood me. I would marry Marta if she weren’t a lesbian.
standing in a bristling cluster during lunch break ignored I cannot remember the last time she was in the kitchen,
me when I tripped over my shoelace, I knew my time was with the exception of the one time Marta came to visit. My
up. The cabbage I’d eaten started to pickle in my stomach. mother was convinced Marta was my girlfriend, my first
“Hey, wait up,” Tammy yelled, as I pushed my way down since Isabel, and so, despite my repeated protestations, she
the hallway and out through the swinging door. I turned baked a cake in honour of her arrival.
around and saw her smirking through the glass, while be- Marta praised its delicacy, its subtle anise flavour.
hind me a group of boys assembled. “I’ll give you the recipe,” my mother said. “It’s Emmanuel’s
I stood in the middle of their shrinking circle, my knees favourite.”
about to buckle. And then I timidly raised my gun. Marta kicked me under the table.
Something dribbled rather than shot out of my mouth. Later, undressing in my room, Marta commented on the
“What’d you say?” shouted one of the more thick-necked transparency of my poor mother’s attempts to engage her.
of the bunch. The guest room was conveniently unavailable, my mother
“Can’t hear you mate,” another said, pushing me up claimed, due to mould growing under the wallpaper because
against the school’s grey wall. of the heavy spring rains. It was embarrassing enough that I
My chest inflated with the stink of his armpits and the still lived with my parents, but now Marta could see the pa-
desert dust and I bellowed, “Fuck you, you shitty buggers!” thetic evidence of the only victories in my life — chess tro-
The bully backed up and I wiped my mouth of the spit phies and assorted certificates of merit for things like poetry
caused by all those hard consonants. Then the wall of boys recitation — that covered my boy-bedroom wall.
crumbled. In strode Mr. Henry, the grade eight math teacher. I resisted the urge to look while she undressed, but I could
He grabbed the back of my neck and squeezed. “Profanity, smell the lavender talc of her skin when she removed her
my little Frenchman, might be the way you communicate au blouse and pulled her nightdress over her head.
Paris, but here it is completely unacceptable.” My mother strains the soaking lentils over the sink. I sauté
I ended up on a bench outside the principal’s office. There the onions and garlic and a small green chilli in a pot, and
was one other boy there — the only aboriginal boy in the when they begin to brown, I tip in the soft lentils and stir.
school. “Marta wishes she could be here,” I say as casually as
I tried to make conversation. “Have you ever been on a possible.
school trip?” I asked. My mother stops humming.
The boy looked at me with raised eyebrows and said “She just couldn’t believe Sarkis was coming.”
nothing. My mother sniffs her hands and grimaces.
“Last year my class took a trip to the Dordogne. To see the I met Marta by chance a few years ago. She was accom-
cave paintings,” I said, thinking he might know something panying her father, Sarkis’s German publisher, to the Frank-
about cave paintings. furt Book Fair, and when we were introduced, I was struck
The boy turned his full attention back to the scab on by her peculiar-sounding French. While I had been in Aus-
his knee. tralia, Marta had been in a small town in Canada, though I
“Hey,” I said then, lowering my voice, “tell me, what’s go- did not know that at the time, did not know there were chil-
ing to happen?” dren of Sarkis’s publishers scattered about the world, living
“Whippin’,” he said, popping the scab, by then wedged in its most remote and lonely places. Over a drink, Marta
under his fingernail, into his mouth. told me about her two years of exile in a small fishing vil-
lage in New Brunswick.
y mother is making fish, a whole white fish from her fa- The connection between us was immediate. For the first
M vourite fishmonger. She’s patting its silver back dry with
a paper towel while she peruses a slim, photocopied booklet
time, I felt as if there was someone other than Sarkis, author
of a short story about a spider, who understood me. I would
called “Cooking with the First Lady of Egypt.” There is a very marry Marta if she weren’t a lesbian.
badly reproduced photograph of President Gamal Abdel My mother no longer approves of Marta and would not
Nasser standing fuzzy and askew on the cover, followed by have invited her to join us for dinner. It is not that Marta is a
an introduction written in broken English about socialist lesbian; it is that she has asked me if I will be a sperm donor,
revolution, collective harvesting, and traditional cuisine. or rather, it is that I am considering it. My mother should
I am chopping onions and garlic while my mother stands be happy — this way I might actually stand a chance of be-
beside me, sprinkling earthy green olive oil onto the fish. She ing a father.
is humming “Les enfants qui s’aiment.” She massages the oil
into the skin and sprinkles it with cumin and salt and pep- here were two boys at our school who really were not
per. She lines the cavity with slices of lemon and threads of
saffron. The fish looks proud in its dressing and my mother
T boys, but men. Perhaps they were as old as twenty. One
had failed repeatedly because his brain had been damaged
looks even more proud in her apron. from sniffing glue, and the other, so they said, had missed
73
t h e wa l r u s
two years of school while in juvie. When the aboriginal boy and he had come to stay over the Christmas holidays.
left, they turned their full attention to Frog Legs. I had a sudden flashback to my Christmas in the outback.
The one who had been in prison whacked me in the back Mathias had grilled sausages on the barbie, fatty squat things
of the knees with a stick. Once I was down, the one who slathered in tomato sauce that he poked aggressively with a
sniffed glue shoved my face into the dirt and dragged my fork until they looked as if they had been shot twenty times
cheek over a rock. with an air rifle. There were a lot of people getting loud on a
Trudy applied antiseptic to my face that night and told me lot of beer and Tammy mimicking fellatio at me with a sweat-
she didn’t need any more problems. Mathias smirked, then ing sausage behind her father’s back. I’d hated myself for get-
offered to teach me how to use my fists, which I declined. ting hard and going to relieve myself in the toilet.
“Pussy,” I heard him say. “It was partly that I felt sorry for him,” Marta said. “That
I wasn’t even sure how to reach my parents then. The gov- is, until he was lying on top of me.”
ernment had them in protection, moving them from flat to He came into her room, which was just a converted closet,
flat. So I sat on my bed and scratched at the ringed bark of drunk on homemade booze. He crawled into her bed, lifted
the palm trees on the wall and decided that I would eat even her nightgown, and without a word, pushed himself into her.
less in the hope of becoming invisible. When she cried out, he cupped his palm over her mouth, and
When I returned home after eighteen months, my mother quickly finished. He left her as silently as he’d come into her
said I looked very handsome — I’d lost all my baby fat. She room but the next day, over breakfast, he looked at her with
couldn’t see what else I’d lost. Perhaps I would have told her something like love in his eyes and she excused herself to go
if I’d had the words. Strangely, the words only seemed to and vomit up her oatmeal. She chewed parsley every mor-
come with Marta, beginning that very first night in Frank- ning for the next month. The woman she lived with kept a
furt when she spoke her funny French to me. bag full of it in the freezer.
The dispatcher comes back on the line. “He dropped him
A t half past seven the table is set. My mother fills a large off at his hotel, sir,” he says. “At about eight o’clock.”
jug with water and ice and adds a slice of lemon. She “But he was due here then,” I stammer. “Was the driver
toasts Lebanese flatbread. She changes her skirt twice; her not instructed to bring him here?”
blouse twice. She dusts her eyelids with blue powder. She “Apparently he said he was rather tired.”
sits down with my father in the library, then immediately I thank him, and put the phone down gently.
stands up again. She paces around the apartment. She heats “So?” my mother asks, suddenly standing in the doorway
the oven, stirs the lentils, and turns down the heat. with her hands on her hips.
At nine o’clock she finally speaks. “René? Where on earth “Well, it seems there was some emergency and he had to
do you think he is?” return to New York.” I shake my head and shrug. “The driv-
My father puts down his newspaper and peers over his er took him to the airport.”
glasses. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon.” “My god,” is all she says, expressionless. Then: “René?
“But really, René, he’s already over an hour late.” René?” and the clack of her heels against the parquet down
“What’s one more hour when we’ve been waiting ten the hall to the library.
years?”
“It’s a burnt dinner, that’s what it is.”
“I told you we should have had it catered.”
“That’s not the point,” she says, pushing a stray hair out
of her eyes.
“Emmanuel?” she says, turning to me. “Ring the car ser-
vice will you? Find out where he is.”
I return to the kitchen, turn off the oven, and call the
dispatcher. He puts me on hold while he radios the driver.
Madonna sings “Like a Virgin” in my ear and I smell the skin
of the fish turning black.
Marta kissed me once. It was a couple of years ago. She
was quite drunk when she suddenly tipped her barstool for-
ward and leaned into my mouth, saying she just wanted to
know what it felt like.
So what did it feel like, I wanted to know.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Confirmation.”
I must have looked hurt. “Oh, Manny,” she said, stroking
my cheek. “It’s me, not you.”
As if to reassure me, she told me the story of losing her vir-
ginity. The man was a widower, though he wasn’t that old: his
wife had died of botulism from a crab cake the year before. He
was a cousin of the woman Marta lived with in New Brunswick “Dance Me to the End of Love” – Leonard Cohen (1984)
We spend every evening twisting on the same stools in the same bar, inventing the rest of
our lives. She knows the Australian desert chapter so well it is as if it happened to her.
erhaps the world is at its most awful when you are four- the door, I reached out and fumbled with the front of her
P teen years old and effectively orphaned, sacrificed for the
sake of some higher principle that you have trouble enough
blouse — I grabbed her breast, in lieu of speaking.
“What is wrong with you? ” she screamed. “Get your
understanding even when it doesn’t translate into having hands off me!”
your face mashed into the dirt by five bullies high on glue. And I remember thinking: but I thought this was what
I remember two of them standing on my shoulders while you wanted.
Tammy tugged down my trousers and laughed at the sight of “You poor, poor darling,” Marta had said, her knees knock-
me. “Look at his sagging grundies! He’s got no bum! ing against mine. She reached out and touched my
Oh my god, he’s got no bum!” she kept shrieking. cheek, then leaned in and kissed me again, lemon-
“What about a clacker?” one of them said. flavoured, on the mouth. She took my hand and
“Yeah, see if you can find his clacker, Tammy. raised it to her breast.
Give it a burl. Or maybe he shits out his mouth.” “Marta, don’t,” I said, grabbing her forearms and
Two of them wrenched my legs apart and pinned pushing her back. “It doesn’t work that way.”
them down. They took turns jabbing at me with a She bit her lip as she smiled and said: “Well, ac-
stick. I was already thousands of miles away from home; the tually, Manny? I have an ulterior motive.”
only place left was beyond Earth, freed from gravity. I have always assumed it was just that Sarkis didn’t know
It was Tammy who went deep. about the legions of children who were torn up by the roots
It was Trudy who saw the blood on the sheets the follow- and forced to live out a year, if not an eternity, in unearthed
ing morning and said: “I told you I don’t want any trouble. desperation. I have always assumed that until tonight. But
I have enough problems as it is.” now the lentils are burnt. As is the fish. And my mother is
It was Tommy who cried. in a collapse of tears.
It was Mathias who said: “I don’t think he can stay here “How could he not call us?” she says, flipping the lid of
anymore.” the garbage can. “How could someone not call us? I cooked
It was my mother who commented that I looked good, I’d all this food.”
lost weight, become a man. The fish slides off the plate. She tips over the pot of len-
She had me sit for a photograph shortly after arriving tils. My mother’s mascara travels the rivulets of her face.
home. And my mother chooses to display this photo above She says she’s going to bed.
all others on the piano next to Sarkis — me looking like some My father has fallen asleep in his chair in the library.
thin, undomesticated shaft of wheat; Sarkis looking like a In the silence of the kitchen I pour myself a brandy, lean back
shining, plump stuffed olive. against the kitchen counter, and pick up the phone.
Marta does not bother with hello. “So? Is he still there?”
arta and I make a ritual out of the Frankfurt Book Fair. “He didn’t show up, Marta.”
M We spend every evening twisting on the same stools in
the same bar, inventing the rest of our lives. She knows the
“What?” I can hear her whole body subsiding, can picture
the dramatic slump of her shoulders.
Australian desert chapter so well it is as if it happened to her “I know. Apparently he decided he was tired and went
in New Brunswick. She knows everything I know about the back to his hotel.”
two women I have craved in adulthood, including the sad “I cannot believe it,” she says.
fact that I have never found the courage to do anything more “He didn’t even call.”
than pay for their coffee. She knows me so well she will never “How difficult is it to call? How hard is it to say thank you?
approach me unexpectedly from behind, never touch my Or sorry, for that matter.”
back, or make reference to my appearance. I am silent. I never expected thank you. Or sorry. If I ex-
It was only last year that I told her about Isabel. When I re- pected anything, I suppose it was more like an eyelash, a
turned from Australia, Isabel, unexpectedly, had been there; tiny renewable piece of self, given freely to another; a simple
she said she had been waiting all year. And this should have gesture that can facilitate the fragile restoration of a web.
meant something — I had never been terribly popular and “At a minimum,” says Marta, emphasizing each syllable.
here was one of the prettiest girls in the entire school reserv- Or the critical piece that allows for the creation of an entire-
ing herself for me. It should have meant even more than that: ly new web, one in which the donor is inextricably a part.
someone had missed me, felt my absence, kept a place. But “I thought I might come for a visit,” I say.
I just couldn’t respond. I didn’t feel anything. Isabel started “Really? Wonderful.”
weeping and I sat there stunned, in the wake of her naked
declaration, unable to reach out or say anything.
Isabel refused to speak to me for the rest of the year. —
“A serious visit. Perhaps for a month.”
Kiss me again, Marta, I will say to her. Kiss me again.
Finally, desperately, at the beginning of the summer holi- To listen to a podcast featuring Camilla Gibb at the 2007 Congress
days, I found myself at the door to her flat. When she opened of the Humanities and Social Sciences, visit walrusmagazine.com.
drama
big
t i c k e t
by Jim Garrard
the characters
77
t h e wa l r u s
Annie explores the interior of the cage. Dave watches. annie (as if to a dog): C’mon. C’mon. Be a good boy.
She’s trying to be seductive. He unlocks the gate and goes in. It’s awkward for him.
annie: So what’s all this going to cost me? There’s not much room inside.
dave: If I don’t have to break nothin’, five hundred bucks. annie: Let me help you out of those dirty, dirty clothes.
annie: That’s pretty reasonable. dave: You don’t waste any time, do you?
dave: This kind of thing’s just a sideline for me. Helps She removes his leather jacket, unbuttons his shirt,
me relax. Besides, a pretty woman like you shouldn’t pulls off his boots, takes off his pants. This takes
have to put up with assholes. a while.
annie: That’s very sweet of you to say, Dave. Lock the She steps outside the cage and piles his clothing on a
door. chair. She pushes the door of the cage shut and locks it,
removes Dave’s keys, leaving him locked inside in his
dave: What for? underwear. She opens a plastic bottle of water.
annie: Lock me in. Just for a minute. I want to know annie: How you feeling now? Kinda creepy don’t you
what it feels like to be incarcerated. think?
dave: You’re the customer. dave: I don’t really go for this kind of shit.
He locks her inside. annie: How you feeling though? Kinda sexy?
annie: Hmmn. This is pretty exciting. dave: I’ll feel a whole lot sexier when you unlock that
door and get your pretty little ass back in here.
dave: How so?
annie: You’re so pathetic.
annie: It’s scary really. You hear the lock click and you
feel so helpless. You ever bring women here? dave: I’m what?
dave: I brought you, didn’t I?
annie: I mean for pleasure. You ever lock any women
up in here?
dave: We had a woman one time left her kid in her
car at rush hour in a tow-away zone with the engine
running. Cops took the kid. We took the car. She came
down here and bit my dispatcher on the elbow. We
locked her up pretty good.
annie: You ever bring any women in here, after hours?
Women that don’t really want to be here? You know,
like with you and the cops? After hours? Any cozy
stuff like that?
dave: You ask a lot of questions. What are you—a
detective?
Annie laughs. So does Dave.
annie: Although there’s not a lot of room in here. For
stuff.
The atmosphere thickens a little.
annie: Of course, it doesn’t have to take a lot of room. “Peach Trees” – Rufus Wainwright (2004)
annie: Pathetic. Look at you. Big tough guy in his annie: You were both so rude. You laughed and drove
underwear. I wonder what your cop buddies are going away and left me standing on the sidewalk.
to think about that.
dave: You’ll go to jail!
dave: Okay, so I’m pathetic. I’m at your mercy. I get it.
Now let me out of here. annie: I don’t care.
annie: That’ll be the frosty Friday. dave: I will kill you. I’m not kidding.
dave: Look. This isn’t all that funny. annie: So you keep saying, Dave, but I . . . don’t . . .
care. The only thing I do care about is making you
annie: Get used to it. You’re gonna be in there for suffer. Not just for me, but for all the other thousands
quite a long time. of people you leech off. I’m going to make you an
example. So all the other bottom-feeders in your
dave: Don’t be stupid. What about your husband? business get to see what happens when good people
annie: I don’t have a husband. get pushed too far.
dave: Then what’s this all about? What did I do? dave: Look. Annie. You’re upset. I can see that. Maybe
I made a mistake. But I do think you’re overreacting
annie: You towed my fucking car away, Dave. That’s a bit. I was just doing my job. It’s against the law
the problem. to park in prohibited areas. You’re not being
reasonable.
She throws the rest of her water in his face. Dave is
shocked into silence. It takes him a moment to respond. She comes closer.
dave: You . . . lying . . . little . . . pig. annie: How about I park something in one of your
prohibited areas?
Like a gorilla, he shakes the cage violently. He gives up
and presses his face hard against the fencing. dave: What makes you so sure you’ve got the right guy?
dave (roaring): You do all this because you think I annie: I saw you with my own eyes. Plus. . .
towed your fucking car away?
She yanks a notebook from her purse.
annie: I know you did. I know it was you. I saw you. It
wasn’t the first time. annie (reading): “David Mason Markus.” Is that not
you? “Proprietor, Dave’s Towing and Auto Pound.”
dave: If you value your life — at all — you better let me Is that not you? “acsm 833.” Is that not the licence
out of this cage right now. number on your truck? “Cindy.” Is that not the
name you’ve got painted right underneath your hood
annie: I’ve had about a thousand parking tickets, Dave. ornament? “Moose.” Is that not what your friends and
Almost none of them made any sense to me. Five times former fellow inmates call you? “Six feet, two inches.
I had my car towed away. Three of those times this Two hundred and ten pounds, brown hair, brown eyes.
disgusting place is where I had to come to get it back. Birthmark, left elbow. Fire-breathing dragon tattoo,
dave: Look. This is sick. Give me my clothes back and right bicep.” Is that not you? “Three months less a day
let me out of this fucking cage. in the Brampton Correctional Facility for assaulting
your high school teacher.” Do you not recognize that
annie: Last time I was towed it was you. I was parked person . . . Moose?
outside a hospital — getting a biopsy for Christ’s sake!
I was five minutes late getting back and you had me He slumps down, head in hands.
hooked up already. You and your wormy little prick dave: Okay, it was me. I apologize. Now why don’t you
partner parking cop were standing there waiting for just forget about all that shit and get back in here so I
the meter to expire. I begged you, I begged you both, can take you some places you’ve never been before.
to please let me have my car back. No, you said; it was
too late. annie: What kind of places? What do you mean by
that? What kind of places have I never been before?
dave: Unlock the door, bitch, or die.
dave: I think you know.
annie: You’re a vampire. You, the cops, the parking
cops, the politicians — all the people in this annie: No, I don’t know. What kind of places would
racket — you’re all vampires. you take me to where I’ve never been before — exactly?
Are we talking tongue here?
Dave shakes the fence violently. Annie holds back
a sob. dave: I’m thinking about forgetting about all this
bullshit and you and me just get it on. You’ll like it.
annie: My little boy’s birthday cake was in that car! I It’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what this is really
missed his party! My little boy had his birthday party all about?
with no cake. Do you know what that means? Weren’t
you ever a little boy? What in hell happened to you? annie: I honestly can’t believe what kind of pathetic
weasel you are.
dave: This is forcible confinement, lady. It’s the same
as kidnapping. You’ll go to jail. dave: You’re getting off on this.
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t h e wa l r u s
annie: In what way are you defective? How is it that annie: It took me two hours the first time to track
you can’t even begin to understand the nature of the down my car. Apparently it’s nobody’s job to tell
evil you inflict on the world? You’re an ape. You’re people where their cars have gone. Then I had to
less than an ape. I don’t want to live in a world with make my way down to this wasteland, where there
people like you in it. aren’t even any sidewalks, let alone any public
transportation. I mean, what kind of sadistic bastard
dave: Okay, okay, I get it. You’re not that kind of chick. makes these arrangements? Pay you. Pay the cops.
annie: None of us is that kind of chick, Dave. Get leered at by louts. Get grunted at by some greasy,
fat, unpleasant excuse for a woman you pay to
dave: You think I’m a bad person. stand behind that counter and treat people like shit.
That’s your real business, isn’t it Dave? You get rich
annie: Of course I do! You descend on people at humiliating people at their own expense. Well, we’ll
random. Like Robin Hood in reverse. You take from just see about that.
the innocent and give to the government. Do you have
any idea how much harm the government can do with She splashes a little gasoline on the floor around the
that much money? cage. Dave is agitated.
Pause. dave: Now look, let’s not get too carried away here.
You’re putting our lives at risk here. You don’t really
dave: You’re not being very fair. You don’t know me. want to do that.
I breathe. I eat. I sleep. Just like you. I have a kid. I
have a dog. I like to watch TV. I go for walks in the annie: Oh, but I do.
woods. Where in fuck do you get off calling me stupid,
criticizing my life? You don’t even know who I am. Pause. Annie fiddles with the office phone, switching
on the speaker phone. Brief, loud dial tone. She
annie: Do all your trucks have names? activates the yard intercom. Her voice booms
outside in the yard.
dave: Most of them.
annie: Moooooooooooose! Mooooose Markus is an
annie: Who’s Cindy? Anybody? asshole. Moose Markus is a total asshole. (She laughs
dave: I knew her in high school. and switches off the intercom.) This is fun. You want to
call somebody? On the phone?
annie: Was she your first?
dave: Like who?
dave: I never got into her pants, if that’s what you
mean. She was kind of like a Salvation Army chick — annie: Anybody you want. Maybe get a buddy to come
hot, like, but not hot for me. I liked her but I don’t down and help you out. Call the police if you feel like it.
think she really knew that. I was pretty shy back then.
dave: You serious?
annie: Do you think about her?
annie: Sure I am.
dave: I do sometimes.
dave: I can’t reach the phone.
annie: And you named a truck after her?
Annie activates the speaker phone again. Loud dial tone.
dave: Yeah.
annie: Gimme a number. I’ll dial it for you.
annie: Do you have any idea how idiotic that seems
dave: 972-9476?
to me?
She dials. Several rings. Voice of Billy over the speaker
She goes out. Dogs bark. Truck door slams shut.
phone.
She returns, lugging a can of gas.
billy: Hello.
annie: This is gasoline. Right? She holds up a lighter.
This is a lighter. Right? Lights it. You’re locked up. You dave (shouting across the room): Billy, it’s Dave. I’m in
can’t get out. And you deserve to die. Right? a bit of a jam, down at the yard. I was wondering if you
could come down and help me straighten things out.
dave: Look, Annie, I don’t deserve to die. There are all
kinds of people worse than me out there. billy: What kind of a jam?
annie: Hah! dave: It’s kind of hard to explain. There’s a woman
here. She’s not too happy. She’s talking about torching
dave: Really. Really, I don’t. I don’t go looking for
the place.
trouble. I’ve got troubles of my own. You ask me to do
a job for you; I agree to help you out. And this is how billy: Give her a good smack in the head.
you thank me. But that’s okay. Probably we’re never
going to see eye-to-eye on this, Annie. I mean maybe Annie fiddles with the surveillance monitor. Turns it on.
in your case we made a mistake. Christ, nobody’s dave: It’s not that simple, Billy. She’s kinda got the
perfect. Why don’t we just agree to disagree? Why jump on me.
don’t I just write you a nice little cheque to cover your
expenses and we’ll let it go at that, no hard feelings. Gate and yard outside appear on monitor.
80
B i g Ti c k e t
Annie switches to the inside camera. She looks at annie: You think he might kill me.
herself and Dave on the monitor. Waves her arms to
check that she’s seeing herself live. dave: Maybe worse.
billy: You sound like you’re down a well. annie: How’s he gonna get in?
dave: I’m in the cooler, Billy. She’s got me locked in dave: Sledgehammer would be my guess. You better
the cooler. She’s got a can of gasoline. fuck off out of here before he arrives.
annie: He’s not kidding, Billy. Come on down and annie: How’s he going to get past the cops?
have a look for yourself. Maybe bring a little barbecue dave: What cops?
sauce.
annie: If you weren’t so stupid you could have got
dave: She’s nuts, Billy. yourself out of this with just a spanking . . . . Excuse
billy: Has she got a gun? me just a moment. Psycho Girl will . . . be . . . right . . .
back.
dave: I don’t think so. Just a goddamn can of gas.
She’s a psycho. She goes outside with the gas can. The guard dogs bark
up a storm. After a minute, she returns, with the nearly
billy: How’d she get you into the cooler? empty can.
dave: Billy, for fuck’s sake! It’s a long story. Just come dave: What?
on down here with a couple of the guys and talk some
annie: Looks like Cindy’s really got the hots for you
sense into this woman. Before it’s too late.
now. Finally. In fact, she’s burning up, hotter than
billy: I don’t know, man, we got the game on. she’s ever, ever been before, hotter than a firecracker.
annie: He’s pissing his pants, Billy. You better get dave: What do you mean?
down here. Bring a couple of the guys. And a camera.
annie: Cindy’s on fire for you!
billy: Hey, lady, be cool okay? Okay, we’ll be there in
dave: What do you mean? What’d you do?
about fifteen minutes. Get this all sorted out.
annie: All I did was light the match. You supplied the
Dial tone. Annie disconnects. Pause.
motivation.
annie: You called me a psycho.
dave: For what?
dave: You don’t want to be here when Billy gets here. annie: I set fire to your truck.
You think I’m a rough customer. Wait ’til you meet
Billy. dave: I don’t think so. Even you’re not that nuts.
annie: What’s Billy gonna do? If he’s anything like annie: Just look. Look. See for yourself.
you he’s probably a pussy too.
Flicker of flames seen through window. She goes close
dave: He’s a killer. to him.
annie: Look me right in the eye. Your . . . truck . . . is . . .
on . . . fire. I . . . set . . . fire . . . to . . . your . . . truck.
He listens, cranes his neck to see out the window.
The flames flicker brighter. Crackling can be heard.
dave: You crazy bitch, it’s true! My truck! Christ
Almighty Jesus! My truck! (He shakes the fence
violently.) Let me out. I got to put the fire out, I got to
stop it. Let me out. Jesus!
Annie doesn’t move or speak. Dave starts to cry a little.
dave: Please, Annie, I got to get out there. I’m sorry for
any bad things I may have done to you. Please. Please.
I live in that truck. That truck is my life.
Sirens in the distance, approaching.
annie: Funny, isn’t it, when the shoe is on the other
foot?
illustration: e. f. richardson 81
j uly /au g u s t 2 0 0 7
food
S ufi
G our met
Turkey’s most respected food writer unites cuisine and poetry
by Marcello Di Cintio
photography by Lana Šlezić
evlana, the thirteenth-century lies shrouded in green cloth embroi- instead of the headscarves most wom-
M mystic and poet, never knew dered with gold tulips. There is a green en in Konya wear, and it makes her look
the taste of a tomato. I know turban on the head of the stone — typical regal. She is royalty, in a way. Nevin is
this because Nevin Halıcı told me, and for the graves of Mevlevi Sufis. Nevin one of Turkey’s most respected food
these are the sorts of things she knows. tells me that women suffering from writers and a leading authority on trad-
She also told me that the sweetest fevers come to pray here sometimes. itional Turkish cuisine. She consults
peaches in Turkey grow in Bursa and They hope that “he who plays with fire” with chefs at some of the country’s top
that the honey from Kars is particularly can coax their own fire away. Most vis- restaurants and hotels, holds a Ph.D.
fine. She told me that mothers in Afyon itors, though, come for the salt. There in food sciences, and has authored
used to lull their babies to sleep with is a tray of white salt in the corner of ten books.
poppy seed paste, that Turks in Konya the mausoleum. The juxtaposition of I first learned of Nevin, and of Ateş-
were drinking coffee three centuries be- the salt and the great chef is a holy one, baz Veli, when I came across Nevin’s
fore it arrived in Istanbul, and that the and pilgrims believe that taking a pinch most recent cookbook, Sufi Cuisine. In
best yufka bread is so thin you can read from here to their own kitchens will it, Nevin recounts the history of Mev-
a newspaper through it. ensure good health and enhance their lana, known better in the West as Rumi,
“Mevlana also never ate peppers,” own cooking. introduces readers to Ateş-baz, and ex-
Nevin says from the backseat of her I spoon some of the salt into a bag plains the kitchen rituals of the Mevlevi
brother’s car. “Tomatoes and peppers and tuck it into my pocket, then join dervishes. Most of the book, though,
were not popular in Anatolia at that Nevin outside the tomb. She is speak- is made up of recipes for dishes men-
time.” Nevin’s brother pilots the car ing with the woman who lives in the tioned in Mevlana’s poetry: stewed
into Meram, a suburb of Konya, in cen- adjoining house and who is Ateş-baz’s quince, sour spinach, sweet buttery
tral Turkey. We follow a dirt road along- caretaker. Nevin asks if she can unlock soup. The result is a remarkable work
side a field until we reach the tomb of the tomb’s lower chamber so we can see that is at once a cookbook, a book of an-
Ateş-baz Veli, a Sufi saint and Mevla- the actual ground under which the Sufi cient verse, and a treatise on the spiri-
na’s beloved chef. chef is buried, but the woman shakes tual importance of food and eating.
Nevin eases herself out of the car, her head. “She is old,” Nevin explains, Food was one of Mevlana’s favourite
smoothes down her jacket with her “and she can’t find the key.” sources for metaphors. He wrote that his
palms, and asks for my camera. “I will On the way back to the centre of life could be summed up in the words
take a picture of you beside the famous town, Nevin says, “Konya has produced “I was raw, I was cooked, I was burned.”
chef,” she says. I smile, but Nevin has two famous chefs. The first is Ateş-baz. The references to food and drink that
trouble with my digital camera, leaning Do you know the other? ” fill his poetry are allusions to higher,
too far back to see the viewscreen, the I look back at her. She is smiling. “Is more philosophical ideals. Those who
same way my mother does. it you? ” I ask. have not yet turned toward God are
We climb the stone steps of the mau- Nevin tilts her head back to laugh, unripe fruit. A man aroused by faith
soleum. “The bricks are the colour of and sunlight flashes from a chip in her is a chickpea dancing in a boiling pot
fire,” Nevin says. “ ‘Ateş-baz Veli’ means bifocals. “You are correct! It makes me or a fish flipping in a pan. God’s grace
‘he who plays with fire.’ ” I follow her happy that you say that!” is sweet almond helva. For Mevlana, for
inside the chamber, where a gravestone Nevin wears a tight, neat turban the dervishes that follow his path and,
83
t h e wa l r u s
indeed, for Nevin, the language of food up at them. The boys relayed her in-
is the language of faith. structions to the kitchen, brought a lit-
tle more of whatever Nevin asked for,
and cleared away the plates and silver-
Eventually your beloved becomes your
ware between each course. I was relieved
bread and your water, your lighting can-
when one of the servers came to take
dle and your beauty, your meze and
away our helva — I had eaten far too
your wine.
much — but then the man returned bear-
ing a bowl of tart tomato soup with
told the maitre’d at Kösk Konya Mut- dried okra. “Something sour should
I fagı I was there to meet Nevin Halıcı.
He led me to a second-floor dining room
always follow something sweet,” Nev-
in explained. “It helps get you ready for
with a wood-planked roof and tables the next menu.”
laid out with gold linen. Nevin was Apparently we were not done. Once
waiting for me with her brother and we finished the soup, our waiter set
two sisters. She stood to shake my hand down a platter of grape leaves stuffed
and invited me to sit. “I will put you with minced meat and rice. Called sarma,
on a program to learn about the food they were much shorter than the stuff-
of Konya. Tonight we will have Konya ed grape leaves I’d had elsewhere. Nevin
‘home food,’ ” she said, and signalled for told me of an archaic belief that a woman
the waiter that we were ready to eat. who makes her sarma too long is not
The meal began with a typical Turkish virtuous. “If a woman makes her sarma
salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, and on- longer than the tip of her finger, her hus-
ions alongside paper-thin yufka bread. band can send her back to her father’s
Then came a bowl of mantı, a sort of house.” Then we had a second dessert
Turkish ravioli made of pasta so deli- of flaky Konya-style baklava. The arriv-
cate it could hardly contain the lumps al of Turkish coffee signalled that the
of ground meat. This was sprinkled meal was finally, mercifully, finished.
with dried mint and drizzled with yo- The sequence of courses — savoury
gourt and burnt butter. I told Nevin it dishes followed by something sweet,
was the best mantı I’d ever had. She nod- something sour, then another series of
ded. “That is because a woman cooked savouries — was a typical Konya ban-
it. Women cook from their heart.” quet menu. The whole process could
A dish of sweet white onions stewed
in pomegranate syrup came next, then
a bowl of creamy yogourt. Grilled lamb
be repeated up to six times. I assumed
that such banquets were reserved only
for grand occasions such as weddings,
cubes on puréed eggplant, tomato, and but Nevin shook her head. “Just receiv-
76 Madrona Dr. green pepper followed. By the time ing a guest is special occasion enough.
Galiano Island dessert came, a helva made with fresh “There is another tradition. A host
British Columbia cream, I could hardly eat anymore. Nevin must give her guest a gift at the end of
Canada V0N 1P0
(250) 539-3340 pushed the plate of helva toward me. a meal. It is for ‘tooth rent.’ I borrowed
“You are young,” she said. “You can eat.” your teeth to eat this meal so I must
ltrent@uniserve.com Because I am Canadian, Nevin told pay rent.” She pulled a carved wooden
me about her childhood dream of visit- spoon from her purse and handed it to
ing Niagara Falls, but mostly we talked me. “In Ottoman times, they used to put
about food. She told me about her fa- a golden chickpea in the pilaf. You only
vourite restaurants in Istanbul, like Hacı get a spoon.” She laughed. Only my
Abdullah, whose chefs have a hundred offer to pay for the meal chased away
Ottoman-era recipes in their arsenal. her smile. She would not accept a dime.
When I showed her a picture of my wife,
she said, “You are lucky to have such
Enough, be silent, words cannot take the
a beautiful wife. You should wake up
place of opinions, as pomegranates and
each morning and make her breakfast.”
apples cannot take the place of plums.
For Nevin, cooking is the essential ex-
pression of love.
Nevin had the army of blue-shirted iltered sunlight drifts through the
young waiters at her command; they
sprang to our table whenever she glanced
F skylights of the covered market.
Below, women lift white grapes from
84
Food
wooden crates, crouch over plastic tubs the European health officials would
of tiny cucumbers, and scoop crimson think of my licked-finger sampling at
tomato paste into clear plastic bags. the cheese shop.
Strings of dried eggplants and red pep-
pers hang over shop doorways, ready
Almond helva fashioned from His wal-
to be rehydrated and stuffed with rice
nuts, His almonds, His sugar, does not
and mince. Garlands of tiny dried okra
only sweeten my palate, but floods my
seem suited to drape on a Christmas
vision with light.
tree. Lemon slices and slender green
chilies decorate vats of wrinkled black
olives. There are mounds of green and
black figs. Fruit vendors split open yel-
low-skinned plums to show the pink
A fterwards, Nevin and I make our
way to Cemo Restaurant for etliek-
mek, another Konya specialty. Inside,
flesh inside. a trio of chefs stand guard in front of a
Nevin’s brother dropped us at the wood-burning oven. Their oddly femi-
Kadınlar Pazarı, formerly the Ladies’ nine red-and-pink aprons seem at odds
Market, where Konya women used to with their identical moustaches. Nev-
sell the produce from their home gar- in waves at them — she knows them
dens. Larger producers dominate the all — and they nod respectfully back at
market these days, and the vendors are her. The proprietor rushes over to greet
mostly men. Still, this is Nevin’s favour- Nevin and leads us to a table. Nevin in-
ite place to shop in Konya. She is a ce- sists I take a chair facing the oven and
lebrity here. The merchants fall over places an order. I stretch my neck to
themselves to offer us tart pickles and watch as the bakers roll out lengths
slices of dried beef pastırma. They wave of dough, spread them with toppings,
at her to come and try their cheese. One then slide them into the oven next to a
man gives us a handful of peanuts as if heap of roasting green chilies.
we’d never seen such things before. Our first dish arrives in minutes: a
I follow Nevin to her favourite cheese slab of thin and crispy bread dough,
vendor. The shopkeeper invites me to shining with melted butter, and longer
dip my bare fingers into a ceramic vat of than my arm. It is covered with sea-
soft cheese. I scoop out a tiny smear on soned minced lamb and a smear of to-
my fingernail, but the man is not sat- matoes. The waiter brings us a plate of
isfied until I sink two fingers into the fresh parsley, sliced tomatoes, lemon
cheese down to my second knuckle, wedges, onions dusted with sumac, and
and lift a great glob into my mouth. some of those scorched chilies. Nev-
Next, at his urging, I dip my fingers into in shows me how to roll the fresh top-
a vat of whipped butter, then break pings into the steaming dough, squirt
off a chunk of crumbly cheese that is with lemon, and eat with my hands.
furry with black-blue mould. I spot My fingertips become black from the
tulum, my favourite Turkish cheese, charred dough and greasy from the
still robed in the goat skins in which butter.
it cures. The hairy masses sit in glass- A waiter drops another arm’s length
fronted cases under anemic fluorescent of freshly baked bread; this one is cov-
light, like freakish exhibits in a side- ered with cheese. We are barely through
show museum. it when a third arrives with just minced
In a nearby shop, a display case meat. Then a fourth with larger cubes
holds a heap of severed sheep heads, of chewy, aromatic lamb.
still bloody, destined for soup caul- The waiter calls this last dish mevla-
drons. Nevin pauses and points at the na pide, and Nevin wags her finger at
gory pile. “All of this would be gone if him. “It is not mevlana pide. There is
we joined Europe,” she sighs, speaking no such thing. It is called Konya böregi.”
of the strict regulations that will come The server nods an apology and backs
into force if Turkey ever completes its away from the table. Nevin tells me she
marathon to European Union member- abhors how Mevlana’s name is exploit-
ship. “It is not fair. They eat haggis in ed to appeal to the tourists who come
Britain. Why can’t we eat these?” She to Konya to visit his tomb. “There is
shakes her head, and I wonder what a foundation in Konya that wants to
85
t h e wa l r u s
change this. It is not good that his name vishes engage in the centuries-old whirl-
is on everything. Travel agencies. Car ing ritual for which they are famous,
repair shops. Beauty salons. It shows they begin by placing their right big
no respect.” toe over their left. This is a reminder
I hold up the last piece of Konya bö- of Ateş-baz Veli and that odd day in
ONLINE regi. “But wasn’t this Mevlana’s favour- the kitchen.
ite food?” I joke. I obeyed Nevin’s instructions and
Now I get the finger wag. “No. His made my way to Mevlana’s tomb. The
favourite food was helva. Almond hel- shrine is part of a grand museum com-
! va.” Nevin grins. It makes her happy plex built out of a thirteenth-century
NEWS that she knows such things. dervish lodge, or tariqat. I paid my ad-
THE WALRUS LED Having tried all the variations of mission fee, plucked plastic shower
THE FIELD WITH etliekmek on Cemo’s menu, it is time caps from a bin in front of the entrance
51 NATIONAL MAGAZINE to go. The gluttony has rendered me to the shrine, stretched them over my
nearly immobile, but I lug myself out shoes, and entered the complex where
AWARD NOMINATIONS of my chair and follow Nevin into the the great poet tries to rest amid the
INCLUDING parking lot. “The day after tomorrow camera flashes. Mevlana’s gravestone
MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR. you will come to my house for break- is enormous and topped with two green
fast,” she says. (I love how invitations in turbans. Pillars rise above him to sup-
FOR THE FULL LIST OF the Middle East are so often expressed port a dome made of carved and paint-
AWARDS WON, VISIT as prophesies.) “I will prepare for you ed wood. Every surface of the shrine is
dishes from all seven regions of Tur- softly lit and adorned with verses of his
walrusmagazine.com/
key. But tomorrow you will go out on poetry written in gold.
awards your own. You will find firin kebab. It I spent only a moment there among
is another specialty of Konya. Be sure the throngs — the schoolchildren, the
to eat with your hands; you will fly. quietly praying Turks, and the Western
! And, of course, you will go to Mevla- New Agers who’ve adopted Mevlevi
WALRUSPRIME na’s tomb.” Sufism as the next fashionable mysti-
VIEW THE LATEST cism — before leaving the shrine for
another sort of pilgrimage. I found the
WALRUS CONTENT That unparalleled beauty has taken pos-
ancient dervish kitchen in a different
AND AWARD-WINNING session of my heart’s kitchen with all
part of the museum. For Mevlevi Sufis,
its title deeds; and is smashing my pots,
ARCHIVED ARTICLES. the kitchen was a sacred place and
pans, plates, platters to pieces.
FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY! heart of the tariqat. Here, everyday
labours were elevated to a sort of medi-
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Aş te -baz Veli was embarrassed that
he’d burned his toe. It wasn’t the
burn itself that bothered him. After all,
tation. The operation of the kitchen was
divided into eighteen precise duties,
which were assigned to individual aco-
you could expect a chef, especially “one lytes. The Master of the Cupboard was
who plays with fire,” to earn the occa- in charge of cleaning the cupboards and
sional blister. And it wasn’t the unlike- maintaining the utensils within. This
! ly location of the burn that fazed him. was his only job. The Coffee Grinder
MEDIACENTRE It was the fact that his burned toe was only ground coffee. The Purchaser of
PODCASTS evidence of a brief lapse of faith. Provisions did the daily shopping. He
GALLERIES Earlier that day, Ateş-baz complained hung a symbolic set of tongs, called
to Mevlana, his friend and master, that pazarci tongs, from his belt. The tongs
THE WALRUS BLOG there was no wood left to fuel the stove. identified him as a Mevlevi Sufi to the
AND MORE Mevlana told the chef to place his feet market vendors and they would, in
walrusmagazine.com/ below the stove. When Ateş-baz did theory, sell him goods at a lower price.
mediacentre this, a flame burst from his toes and Everyone laboured under the super-
set the pot boiling, but because he had vision of the Chief of the Kitchen and
doubts about this strange miracle, his Master of Ceremonies, the spiritual de-
left big toe burned. Mevlana heard scendant of Ateş-baz Veli.
YOUR MAGAZINE. about Ateş-baz’s injury and scolded Aspirants to the Mevlevi order would
ONLINE. his apparent lack of conviction. Ateş- begin their Sufi training in a small al-
baz tried to hide his scorched left digit cove, called a saka postu, on the left side
WALRUSMAGAZINE.COM
by covering it with his right foot. of the kitchen’s entrance. They would
Since that day, when Mevlevi der- sit there for three days in silence and
86
Food
observe the work of the dervishes. ( The a half-dozen kinds of cheese, sausages, parents and older brother ate food from
saka postu in the museum’s kitchen is fresh herbs, and a dish of mountain the tariqat. “Because my mother ate, it
still intact and occupied by a kneeling butter. “It is a little salty,” she says of came to me, and that is why I am so
mannequin.) After his three days of ob- the butter. “Have it with my rose-petal good now,” Nevin says, laughing.
servation, the dervish-to-be had to run jam. It is Mevlana’s rose-petal jam.” We finish our coffee, licking away
errands for eighteen days before begin- After breakfast, we relax in her living the fine grounds that stain our lips, and
ning his formal apprenticeship under room with tiny cups of Turkish coffee. drive back out to Meram and Ateş-baz
the Keeper of the Cauldron, the kitch- I mention that I visited Mevlana’s tomb Veli’s mausoleum. She enters the cham-
en’s second-in-command. This period yesterday, and Nevin tells me that be- ber to say a prayer, just as she did a few
of repetitive labour and intense scru- fore the tariqats closed in the 1920s, the days before. She tells me that she visits
tiny would last 1,001 days. If an aspi- dervishes used to give out food to the Ateş-baz all the time. I ask her what the
rant survived the ordeal and showed community. “It wasn’t just for the poor. place means to her. She glances up at
the sort of patience and endurance re- It was for everybody. People would come the red stones. “I feel so much I cannot
quired of a Mevlevi dervish, he would to take it because it came from a special say.” Tears rise in her eyes. “I feel he
then become a member of the order. place. Mothers thought the food would gives his hand to me.” A
I thought of Ateş-baz Veli’s toe as I give their children intelligence because —
stood in the doorway of his kitchen. I it came from Mevlana.” The practice Visit walrusmagazine.com/more to get
didn’t know for certain whether this ended before Nevin was born, but her a few of Nevin Halıcı’s recipes.
was the original kitchen where Ateş -
baz worked, or whether the stone stove
in the corner was once lit with the great
chef ’s flaming feet, but I decided to be-
lieve that it was. That is the pilgrim’s
prerogative.
!2D2E2F2
tates a wooden spoon in a pan with flour
and butter. “You stir until it becomes
pink,” she says. “Then you add the eggs.”
She tips in a bowl of eggs with bril-
liant yellow yolks and stirs until they
set. “Now we can have our breakfast.”
Nevin, who is wearing a dressing gown
and furry white moccasins, brings the
mirtoga into the dining room. The table
has already been set with dishes from
all around Turkey. There are olives from
Antaky, shining with pomegranate syr-
up. Hazelnuts from the Black Sea and
poppy seed paste from the Aegean. The
mirtoga is a common breakfast dish in
eastern Turkey, Nevin says, and she
!"#$$%&'"()$*+,-."-/$*."((0$
urges me to drizzle my portion with
$11123''2(/2.-$4$56789$6:;<6;=>?$=@:$A(/'B-0#$C(-B?$!(,(/+(
Toros mountain honey. There are also
87
t h e wa l r u s
88
july/august 2007
literature
by Randy Boyagoda
photography by John Reeves
“M ’ excuser, monsieur. Je cherche The Parisian bookseller’s response n the Canadian context, at first glance
des livres par Mavis Gallant.
Où peux-je les trouver? ”
was a familiar one. People don’t read
Mavis Gallant so much as know they
I it’s not the difficulty of reading Gal-
lant so much as the difficulty of locat-
I asked the bookseller my question ought to. In preparing for the interview, ing her that has denied her a native
and then braced for his answer. This I canvassed well-read friends, academ- audience commensurate with her inter-
was an upmarket bookstore in Mont- ic colleagues, editors, and fellow writ- national standing. In fact, we’ve devised
parnasse, after all, and I was fumbling ers about their responses to her work. a deviously effective storyline to make
at the counter with Ontario schoolboy Her name elicited high regard in both sense of this writer, a storyline that gives
French. If my prior encounters in Paris Canadian and American settings. But Gallant her due and also gives us a rea-
were a reliable guide, my effort would across the board, there was compara- son to avoid reading her.
be met with a practised combination of tively little in the way of particulars. “I Born in Montreal in 1922, Gallant
annoyance, pity, amusement, and with- love ‘The Ice Wagon Going Down the had a peripatetic childhood, marked
ering contempt. But this time proved dif- Street.’ It was in an anthology. I really by time in both Canada and the United
ferent. The bookseller ignored how rudely should read more of her stuff.” “I enjoy States. As a young woman, she gave up
I had chewed through his native tongue. her stories. They used to come in the a career in journalism with the Mont-
“Pardon. Je sais que nous devons avoir New Yorker all the time, years ago. But real Standard and moved to Europe in
ses livres, mais nous ne les avons pas,” he I never knew what to make of them by 1950, submitting three short stories to
said in a sheepish, apologetic way, as if the end.” “Gallant? Oh yes, she’s one of the New Yorker with the idea that if she
he were acknowledging a failure of lit- those writer’s writers . . .” were to find success with this first set
erary responsibility. He knew he ought The last of these responses is perhaps of submissions, she’d commit to writ-
to have Mavis Gallant’s books on offer, the most telling in terms of Gallant’s ing for good. She met with immediate
but he didn’t. I would expect an exchange standing in the contemporary literary success, and through her recurrent ap-
like this in a Canadian bookstore, but it world. At a November 2006 event held in pearances in the New Yorker and from
was surprising here, in Paris, in Gallant’s her honour in New York, Russell Banks, the short story collections that were
own neighbourhood, in a city she’s been Michael Ondaatje, and Jhumpa Lahiri thereby assembled, Gallant developed
living in for some five decades. I was lined up to offer high-minded appreci- an impressive position in international
about to meet her at a restaurant across ations. Their speeches were uniformly circles. She was, however, little known
the street and had ducked into the book- glowing, but gave off a proprietary ad- or read in her native Canada before
store, curious to see where, not if, Gal- miration — fellow members of the guild the late 1970s, when Macmillan of Can-
lant was placed on the shelves. She had paying respects to one of their betters. A ada and then McClelland and Stewart
chosen the restaurant and agreed to a writer’s writer — the phrase implies that started publishing her work. She won a
conversation on a Sunday afternoon only someone intimate with the art can Governor General’s Award in 1981, and
this past October through a correspon- discern the full extent of the brilliance at thereafter received a series of awards
dence that had stretched over a year. play. With a readership perhaps better and honorary doctorates. Her early story
Though eighty-four, frail by her own understood in terms of quality rather collections were reissued with admiring
admission, and exhausted from par- than quantity, one wonders if the ef- introductions and afterwords by Ondaat-
ticipating in two recently filmed docu- fect of Gallant winning so much esoter- je, Banks, and Mordecai Richler.
mentaries about her life and work, she ic praise has been, in part, to close her And yet, Gallant has never enjoyed
eventually agreed to my request. writing off from a wider readership. a standing in Canada comparable with
89
t h e wa l r u s
the writer who shares her native ori- to the theme. She recalled a 2002 trip to
gins, chosen genre, and international Montreal — “her native city” as she said
renown — Alice Munro. The reason is with fondness. But this was a trip made
ostensibly geographic: Munro’s life and in ambivalence because her physical
work represent an emphatic and sym- mobility was limited; she went with the
pathetic commitment to verifiably Can- knowledge that she’d “never see the
adian concerns and settings, whereas city again.” Gallant didn’t linger in the
Gallant comes across, in personality and elegiac for very long when discussing
sensibility, as detached. As such, she her time in Montreal, or on any other
can only command so much attention matter. That’s because her personal
from a literary culture obsessed with feelings and geographies aren’t nearly
national textures, which often frame as important to her as her vocation.
the reading of native writers as a good Asked about how she’d like to be read
citizen’s patriotic duty. and remembered, she answered, “Gal-
Leaving aside the politics of who and lant, writer.” We could describe her
why Canada reads, Gallant can be a very with any number of adjectives — the
difficult writer to encounter. There are Paris-based-expatriate-Quebecer-anglo-
demanding moments in Munro’s fic- phone - Canadian - Protestant - female -
tion, to be sure, but these are mostly short - story-writer Mavis Gallant. But
borne of the intensities of emotion and doing so ignores Gallant’s primary am-
epiphanic insights that come of her bition, and the degree to which she has
genius for detailing the complex inner achieved it, in becoming simply, formid-
lives of ordinary people. Ultimately, ably, a writer.
though, Munro’s are comforting fic- In a preface to her 1996 collected
tions: the governing sensibility of her works, currently out of print in North
short stories is wise, melancholic, and America, Gallant describes literature’s
compassionate. Gallant, on the other purpose as evoking “a climate of the
hand, forces us to confront sterility, dis- mind.” Like much (and there’s not much)
placement, and alienation in her stor- of what Gallant has said when asked
ies, often without a final resolution of to comment on what she does, the de-
the human difficulties therein revealed. scription is terse and opaque. But then,
She brings a cold voice and a hard eye her stories speak for themselves, doing
to bear on the world, and has created exactly what they’re supposed to with-
a body of work that reads as a basic out need of authorial clarifications and
rejection of the Canadian literary com- embellishments. Consider, for instance,
mitment to imagining the humble vir- this passage from “Between Zero and
tues and humbling vices of modest One” (1975), one of Gallant’s Linnet Muir
local lives. series of stories on a young woman’s
time in a bygone Montreal:
july 13th - 15th 2007 There was also a joint past that lay all I remember a day of dark spring snow-
around us in heaps of charred stone. The storms, ourselves reflected on the black
www.mypubliclibrary.ca/participants.htm
streets still smelled of terror and ashes, windows, the pools of warm light here
particularly after rain. Every stone held and there, the green-shaded lamps, the
down a ghost or a frozen life, or a dread- dramatic hiss and gurgle of the radi-
ful secret. — “An Alien Flower” (1972) ators that always sounded like the back-
ground to some emotional outburst,
the sudden slackening at the end of
uring our conversation, at a grand
D old restaurant where Paris families
were stretching their languorous Sun-
the afternoon when every molecule
of oxygen in the room had turned in-
to poison.
day brunches into afternoon coffees, it
was clear that Gallant had little interest The intensity and beauty of this pas-
in addressing her relationship to Can- sage come not just from its choice and
ada and Canadian writing. She treated expression of detail, but from the even-
my questions on this subject like house- ness of tone Gallant achieves while
flies and was palpably interested in building to its startling last word, which
moving on to other things. There was gathers unto itself the unsettling impli-
only one moment where she warmed cations of the preceding parts of the
90
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91
t h e wa l r u s
strange sighting on a bus in Madrid. But then she opened up to the question
“The other was a woman in slacks, in about the magazine where her writing
1952.” Here she leaned in a little, to under- has appeared almost exclusively for
score the comparative absurdity of this her entire career. “When I placed my
finding. “The people in the bus got up first story, it was still Harold Ross, the
and came over to my side and were founder. I never met him, he died a year
talking about the mujer in pantalones. later. And then came [William] Shawn,
Well, in Quebec, if it had been a mujer and then came [Robert] Gottlieb, then
in shorts, there would have been a cop came . . . Lady Godiva, who came and
called, right away. But that’s so long ago.” went.” She laughed, enjoying this par-
Gallant enjoyed clarifying her point ticular description of the controversial
about religion in France, where the editorship of Tina Brown. She spoke
Church “is smaller now” and the second well of the current editor, David Rem-
religion is Islam. “It’s Catholic, Muslim, nick: “A very good journalist. The mag-
Jewish,” she said, then broke into a high- azine shows that, it’s journalism with a
pitched voice while making a falling slot for fiction.”
gesture with her hands, “and way down Describing the latest formulation of
What to read next
there, a few Protestants, poor little things, the New Yorker this way brought Gal-
Participating booksellers at an endangered species.” While the lant nearer to an understandable lament.
www.booksforeverybody.com Church may be in decline in France, The magazine used to feature two stories
its presence is inherently part of the per issue, she explained. She said this
life of the nation: “But it’s a culture,” wistfully, but my attempt at a sympa-
Gallant explained, “that’s it.” She made thetic response put a stop to that. Her
several points in this concise, emphat- voice cooled once more and then be-
ic way. There was much matter behind came emphatic. “There’s no point —
any one instance, but there’s no time when it’s changed, it’s changed. And
for clarification; she assumes you’re apart from deploring it, you think, ‘Well
with her and moves on. maybe I’m immune to change,’ and
“One of the things I’ve always no- I don’t want to become that way, but
ticed in France: that they use Christian after all I’m eighty-four. I have to keep
and Catholic to mean the same thing. I that in mind.” She served notice that
remember a woman once saying to me, she’s “not like that about other things,”
‘Although I am a Christian, I have noth- then abandoned the whole matter. “I
ing against Jews or Protestants.’ ” The think I should just shut up.”
genial satire on display here gave way
to a sharper sort of humour on other
Don’t forget me, Grippes silently prayed,
topics. She was (correctly, it turns out)
standing at the periodicals table in La
dubious about the odds of Ségolène
Hune, the Left Bank bookstore, looking
Royal becoming France’s first woman
for his own name in those quarterlies
president, because while “women have
no one ever took home. Don’t praise me.
rights in France, still the men have an
Praise is weak stuff. Praise me after I’m
attitude” — one that she demonstrated,
dead. — “Grippes and Poche” (1982)
wordlessly, by pulling her face into a
Gaullic male grimace at the notion of a
woman assuming the country’s highest arsh here, as she was elsewhere on
office. As for the 1968 Generation, now
the establishment in France, she was
H other matters, Gallant was liveliest
when she interrupted herself with an
particularly lethal in her assessment excited “Oh!” in the midst of answer-
of the Socialists: “These are people who ing a formal question. In one instance,
have ideas but have never had to wait when discussing the status of Arab in-
for a bus.” She was equally efficient tellectuals within the ranks of Paris’s
with writers whom she holds in low chattering classes, she recalled a story
regard. “He’s basically bourgeois,” she that she much preferred to tell. She
said, dismissing the controversial Mi- described a Christmastime ride taken
chel Houellebecq. with a Muslim cab driver, when return-
When queried about her feelings to- ing home after a late evening with friends.
ward the New Yorker, she was initially After Gallant passed on to the driver a
even shorter. “I pass,” she said coolly. gift of chocolates she’d received, the
92
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93
Perhaps growing anxious at the
thought of discussing her work, she
“If God intended reasonable offered a casual but conclusive self-
reproach, “I’m a traitor to my own
men and women to worship Him cause,” which brought the conversa-
tion to its close. Of the few answers
without embarrassment, why did Gallant did give about her writing,
the most revealing had to do with
how she balanced the relationship be-
He create Christopher Hitchens? tween depth and concision, so crucial
to the short story form. I asked her how
It was a fatal miscalculation . . . she knew when to take and when to
give back.
This is a profoundly clever book, addressing “It comes on its own.”
There’s word of Gallant publishing
the most pressing social issue of our time, by the journals she’s kept for years. Bio-
one of the finest writers in the land.” graphies and critical studies of all sorts
will inevitably be written, but one should
—Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation be skeptical of how far into, or beyond,
these five words such material will go
toward making sense of why and how
Gallant has accomplished as much as
# 1
NATIONAL
she has. Writers of the highest order
cannot explain themselves or be ex-
plained to a standard matching their
greatness, because in a very real way
BESTSELLER
there’s nothing to explain, including
why they left one place to live in an-
other or what they make of the place
they left. Their work, if successfully
brought off, is a testament unto itself.
Everything else, Gallant’s example sug-
gests, should be silence; otherwise the
work is overshadowed by the obvious
and the incidental. Our discomfort
before such reticence may be a sign of
our insecurity before a writer whose
greatness stands independent of a na-
tional culture, a minority position, or
a regional tradition. This is someone
confident enough of her craft to be
known, simply, as Gallant, writer.
After the bill was settled, with a doub-
ly amused Gallant negotiating between
a fumbling young waiter and me with
my credit card and my poor French, I
walked her to a cab stand. We strolled
up Montparnasse to a busy corner just
coming under its first shadows. She con-
sidered an invitation to dinner while
[\[]^_`ab\]c[d^`d[
—art can change the world—
183 Queen Street East
Tel. 416-823-4039
Toronto, M5A 1S2, Canada
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Brainteasers
by Fraser Simpson
11 12
BIG!
20 Lets out arsenic-laced wine 20 Heather goes after boy serving soup (7)
sediment (6) 21 Egrets on different hormone (8)
22 Democrat with ultimatum (6) 22 Swapping two characters in deed and
24 Shrinking body of water Mr. Gore’s offering an unpromising future (4-3)
found in vicinity (4,3) 23 Like bishops embracing a
26 Announced Greek goddess led around headwaiter (6,1)
daughter (8) 25 Technology hater identified turning in
27 Promotes Rugrats outside minstrel’s instrument (7) For more information on re t a i l
university (5) 27 Liston hacked up something in advertising with The Walrus, email
29 Mad bee caught by bug killer (5) throat (6) a d v e r t i s e @walrusmagazine.com
or call 416- 971-5004 x22 3.
31 Crimson bishop drooled nastily (5-3) 28 Just know one karate instructor (6)
32 Found out bar tried to find salt (10) 30 Attend strike (4)
96
T h i n k Ta n k
A Summer Place 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
by Craig Kasper
13 14 15 16
across
17 18 19
1 Casa ____ (Toronto landmark)
5 ____ II (razor brand)
9 Commedia dell’____ 20 21 22
13 Many residents of 16-Across
15 Favourite bar of bubbly people? 23 24 25 26
16 Site of Al Jazeera’s headquarters
17 Tendon 27 28 29 30 31
18 2000 summer blockbuster filmed
primarily in southern Ontario 32 33 34
19 They may be after the big bucks
20 Niche market’s supplier, often 35 36 37 38
23 “Thrilla in Manila” fighter
24 Whammy 39 40
25 Bricks unit
26 hbo competitor, in TV listings 41 42 43 44 45 46 47
27 Breathers
30 Tim Horton’s purchase
48 49 50 51 52
32 Two-time World Series winner with
the Blue Jays
34 Top quality 53 54 55 56
35 It allows airline passengers to
breathe easy 57 58 59
39 Holds up
40 Disgraced televangelist Robert 60 61 62
41 Shoe part
44 City founded by Jesuits in 1554 63 64 65
48 Paean
49 Keanu’s role in a movie trilogy
51 Fruit-flavoured dairy-beverage brand
52 With “The,” a Prairie capital’s nickname 35 Prepare for digesting?
53 Leaf-eating pest 36 Like some disputed ballots in 2000
57 Not fooled by 37 Hunch
58 Gartner of the fifth estate 38 More drenched
59 Keep away from 39 Filled with hilarity
60 Internet surfer, e.g. 42 Cover letter abbr.
61 Actor Bana of Munich 43 Bird with a showy mate
62 Repetitive drills 45 Pulling an all-nighter, say
63 Examined, as by a doctor 46 Summit participant
64 Michelangelo’s David, for one 47 Shrek’s Princess Fiona, notably
65 ____ libre (poetry style) 50 City on Ishikari Bay Western Canada’s Luxury
54 Having divided loyalties Diesel Motorcoach Specialists
down
1 Indian Ocean boatsman 55 Title woman in a Barenaked Exclusive Dealer for MONACO and BEAVER
2 Camden Yards ballplayer Ladies song 1-800-665-7100 • guaranteerv.ca
3 Insect with religiosa in its 56 Ukrainian city near the Polish border
species name
4 Become an accessory For answers to current and past
5 Like Status Indians, for example crossword puzzles, please visit
6 Do-____ walrusmagazine.com/thinktank.
7 Fail to be
8 Birth control option pattern as bugaboo.
9 Puts two and two together? 6. empress has the same letter-substitution
10 Supports from the bleachers
11 Cologne’s river
e x e m p t s
p y r a m i d
12 Softball, in an interview i n c l u d e
14 Language of Kenya’s national anthem 5. p o a c h e r
21 Board, as an airplane 4. Insert plan to make plane, plant, and plank.
22 Palindromic Burmese prime minister 3. song and verse
28 Brewski from south of the border 2. fish out of water
and 60 seconds = 1 minute.
29 Exotic wraps change the units, because 60 minutes = 1 hour
31 Animals 1. A hours and B minutes. You only need to
33 Baton-passing event brainteasers answers
97
Parallel Universe by Graham Roumieu
Santa unleashes his elves over the summer in a desperate bid to retain
Christmas’s status as the most wonderful time of the year.
98
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