The Moslem Wife and Other Stories Read online

  I don’t know what became of them, or what they were like when their thirtieth year came. I left Madrid. I wrote, for a time, but they never answered. Eventually they were caught, for me, not by time but by the freezing of memory. And when I looked in the diary I had kept during that period, all I could find was descriptions of the weather.

  1960

  My Heart Is Broken

  “WHEN THAT Jean Harlow died,” Mrs. Thompson said to Jeannie, “I was on the 83 streetcar with a big, heavy paper parcel in my arms. I hadn’t been married for very long, and when I used to visit my mother she’d give me a lot of canned stuff and preserves. I was standing up in the streetcar because nobody’d given me a seat. All the men were unemployed in those days, and they just sat down wherever they happened to be. You wouldn’t remember what Montreal was like then. You weren’t even on earth. To resume what I was saying to you, one of these men sitting down had an American paper – the Daily News, I guess it was – and I was sort of leaning over him, and I saw in big print ‘JEAN HARLOW DEAD.’ You can believe me or not, just as you want to, but that was the most terrible shock I ever had in my life. I never got over it.”

  Jeannie had nothing to say to that. She lay flat on her back across the bed, with her head toward Mrs. Thompson and her heels just touching the crate that did as a bedside table. Balanced on her flat stomach was an open bottle of coral-pink Cutex nail polish. She held her hands up over her head and with some difficulty applied the brush to the nails of her right hand. Her legs were brown and thin. She wore nothing but shorts and one of her husband’s shirts. Her feet were bare.

  Mrs. Thompson was the wife of the paymaster in a road-construction camp in northern Quebec. Jeannie’s husband was an engineer working on the same project. The road was being pushed through country where nothing had existed until now except rocks and lakes and muskeg. The camp was established between a wild lake and the line of raw dirt that was the road. There were no towns between the camp and the railway spur, sixty miles distant.

  Mrs. Thompson, a good deal older than Jeannie, had become her best friend. She was a nice, plain, fat, consoling sort of person, with varicosed legs, shoes unlaced and slit for comfort, blue flannel dressing gown worn at all hours, pudding-bowl haircut, and coarse gray hair. She might have been Jeannie’s own mother, or her Auntie Pearl. She rocked her fat self in the rocking chair and went on with what she had to say: “What I was starting off to tell you is you remind me of her, of Jean Harlow. You’ve got the same teeny mouth, Jeannie, and I think your hair was a whole lot prettier before you started fooling around with it. That peroxide’s no good. It splits the ends. I know you’re going to tell me it isn’t peroxide but something more modern, but the result is the same.”

  Vern’s shirt was spotted with coral-pink that had dropped off the brush. Vern wouldn’t mind; at least, he wouldn’t say that he minded. If he hadn’t objected to anything Jeannie did until now, he wouldn’t start off by complaining about a shirt. The campsite outside the uncurtained window was silent and dark. The waning moon would not appear until dawn. A passage of thought made Mrs. Thompson say, “Winter soon.”

  Jeannie moved sharply and caught the bottle of polish before it spilled. Mrs. Thompson was crazy; it wasn’t even September.

  “Pretty soon,” Mrs. Thompson admitted. “Pretty soon. That’s a long season up here, but I’m one person doesn’t complain. I’ve been up here or around here every winter of my married life, except for that one winter Pops was occupying Germany.”

  “I’ve been up here seventy-two days,” said Jeannie, in her soft voice. “Tomorrow makes seventy-three.”

  “Is that right?” said Mrs. Thompson, jerking the rocker forward, suddenly snappish. “Is that a fact? Well, who asked you to come up here? Who asked you to come and start counting days like you was in some kind of jail? When you got married to Vern, you must of known where he’d be taking you. He told you, didn’t he, that he liked road jobs, construction jobs, and that? Did he tell you, or didn’t he?”

  “Oh, he told me,” said Jeannie.

  “You know what, Jeannie?” said Mrs. Thompson. “If you’d of just listened to me, none of this would have happened. I told you that first day, the day you arrived here in your high-heeled shoes, I said, ‘I know this cabin doesn’t look much, but all the married men have the same sort of place.’ You remember I said that? I said, ‘You just get some curtains up and some carpets down and it’ll be home.’ I took you over and showed you my place, and you said you’d never seen anything so lovely.”

  “I meant it,” said Jeannie. “Your cabin is just lovely. I don’t know why, but I never managed to make this place look like yours.”

  Mrs. Thompson said, “That’s plain enough.” She looked at the cold grease spattered behind the stove, and the rag of towel over by the sink. “It’s partly the experience,” she said kindly. She and her husband knew exactly what to take with them when they went on a job, they had been doing it for so many years. They brought boxes for artificial flowers, a brass door knocker, a portable bar decorated with sea shells, a cardboard fireplace that looked real, and an electric fire that sent waves of light rippling over the ceiling and walls. A concealed gramophone played the records they loved and cherished – the good old tunes. They had comic records that dated back to the year 1, and sad soprano records about shipwrecks and broken promises and babies’ graves. The first time Jeannie heard one of the funny records, she was scared to death. She was paying a formal call, sitting straight in her chair, with her skirt pulled around her knees. Vern and Pops Thompson were talking about the Army.

  “I wish to God I was back,” said old Pops.

  “Don’t I?” said Vern. He was fifteen years older than Jeannie and had been through a lot.

  At first there were only scratching and whispering noises, and then a mosquito orchestra started to play, and a dwarf’s voice came into the room. “Little Johnnie Green, little Sallie Brown,” squealed the dwarf, higher and faster than any human ever could. “Spooning in the park with the grass all around.”

  “Where is he?” Jeannie cried, while the Thompsons screamed with laughter and Vern smiled. The dwarf sang on: “And each little bird in the treetop high/Sang ‘Oh you kid!’ and winked his eye.”

  It was a record that had belonged to Pops Thompson’s mother. He had been laughing at it all his life. The Thompsons loved living up north and didn’t miss cities or company. Their cabin smelled of cocoa and toast. Over their beds were oval photographs of each other as children, and they had some Teddy bears and about a dozen dolls.

  Jeannie capped the bottle of polish, taking care not to press it against her wet nails. She sat up with a single movement and set the bottle down on the bedside crate. Then she turned to face Mrs. Thompson. She sat cross-legged, with her hands outspread before her. Her face was serene.

  “Not an ounce of fat on you,” said Mrs. Thompson. “You know something? I’m sorry you’re going. I really am. Tomorrow you’ll be gone. You know that, don’t you? You’ve been counting days, but you won’t have to any more. I guess Vern’ll take you back to Montreal. What do you think?”

  Jeannie dropped her gaze, and began smoothing wrinkles on the bedspread. She muttered something Mrs. Thompson could not understand.

  “Tomorrow you’ll be gone,” Mrs. Thompson continued. “I know it for a fact. Vern is at this moment getting his pay, and borrowing a jeep from Mr. Sherman, and a Polack driver to take you to the train. He sure is loyal to you. You know what I heard Mr. Sherman say? He said to Vern, ‘If you want to send her off, Vern, you can always stay,’ and Vern said, ‘I can’t very well do that, Mr. Sherman.’ And Mr. Sherman said, ‘This is the second time you’ve had to leave a job on account of her, isn’t it?,’ and then Mr. Sherman said, ‘In my opinion, no man by his own self can rape a girl, so there were either two men or else she’s invented the whole story.’ Then he said, ‘Vern, you’re either a saint or a damn fool.’ That was all I heard. I came straight over here, Jeannie, beca
use I thought you might be needing me.” Mrs. Thompson waited to hear she was needed. She stopped rocking and sat with her feet flat and wide apart. She struck her knees with her open palms and cried, “I told you to keep away from the men. I told you it would make trouble, all that being cute and dancing around. I said to you, I remember saying it, I said nothing makes trouble faster in a place like this than a grown woman behaving like a little girl. Don’t you remember?”

  “I only went out for a walk,” said Jeannie. “Nobody’ll believe me, but that’s all. I went down the road for a walk.”

  “In high heels?” said Mrs. Thompson. “With a purse on your arm, and a hat on your head? You don’t go taking a walk in the bush that way. There’s no place to walk to. Where’d you think you were going? I could smell Evening in Paris a quarter mile away.”

  “There’s no place to go,” said Jeannie, “but what else is there to do? I just felt like dressing up and going out.”

  “You could have cleaned up your home a bit,” said Mrs. Thompson. “There was always that to do. Just look at that sink. That basket of ironing’s been under the bed since July. I know it gets boring around here, but you had the best of it. You had the summer. In winter it gets dark around three o’clock. Then the wives have a right to go crazy. I knew one used to sleep the clock around. When her Nembutal ran out, she took about a hundred aspirin. I knew another learned to distill her own liquor, just to kill time. Sometimes the men get so’s they don’t like the life, and that’s death for the wives. But here you had a nice summer, and Vern liked the life.”

  “He likes it better than anything,” said Jeannie. “He liked the Army, but this was his favorite life after that.”

  “There,” said Mrs. Thompson. “You had every reason to be happy. What’d you do if he sent you off alone, now, like Mr. Sherman advised? You’d be alone and you’d have to work. Women don’t know when they’re well off. Here you’ve got a good, sensible husband working for you and you don’t appreciate it. You have to go and do a terrible thing.”

  “I only went for a walk,” said Jeannie. “That’s all I did.”

  “It’s possible,” said Mrs. Thompson, “but it’s a terrible thing. It’s about the worst thing that’s ever happened around here. I don’t know why you let it happen. A woman can always defend what’s precious, even if she’s attacked. I hope you remembered to think about bacteria.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean Javel, or something.”

  Jeannie looked uncomprehending and then shook her head.

  “I wonder what it must be like,” said Mrs. Thompson after a time, looking at the dark window. “I mean, think of Berlin and them Russians and all. Think of some disgusting fellow you don’t know. Never said hello to, even. Some girls ask for it, though. You can’t always blame the man. The man loses his job, his wife if he’s got one, everything, all because of a silly girl.”

  Jeannie frowned, absently. She pressed her nails together, testing the polish. She licked her lips and said, “I was more beaten up, Mrs. Thompson. It wasn’t exactly what you think. It was only afterwards I thought to myself, Why, I was raped and everything.”

  Mrs. Thompson gasped, hearing the word from Jeannie. She said, “Have you got any marks?”

  “On my arms. That’s why I’m wearing this shirt. The first thing I did was change my clothes.”

  Mrs. Thompson thought this over, and went on to another thing: “Do you ever think about your mother?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you pray? If this goes on at nineteen –”

  “I’m twenty.”

  “– what’ll you be by the time you’re thirty? You’ve already got a terrible, terrible memory to haunt you all your life.”

  “I already can’t remember it,” said Jeannie. “Afterwards I started walking back to camp, but I was walking the wrong way. I met Mr. Sherman. The back of his car was full of coffee, flour, all that. I guess he’d been picking up supplies. He said, ‘Well, get in.’ He didn’t ask any questions at first. I couldn’t talk anyway.”

  “Shock,” said Mrs. Thompson wisely.

  “You know, I’d have to see it happening to know what happened. All I remember is that first we were only talking …”

  “You and Mr. Sherman?”

  “No, no, before. When I was taking my walk.”

  “Don’t say who it was,” said Mrs. Thompson. “We don’t any of us need to know.”

  “We were just talking, and he got sore all of a sudden and grabbed my arm.”

  “Don’t say the name!” Mrs. Thompson cried.

  “Like when I was little, there was this Lana Turner movie. She had two twins. She was just there and then a nurse brought her in the two twins. I hadn’t been married or anything, and I didn’t know anything, and I used to think if I just kept on seeing the movie I’d know how she got the two twins, you know, and I went, oh, I must have seen it six times, the movie, but in the end I never knew any more. They just brought her the two twins.”

  Mrs. Thompson sat quite still, trying to make sense of this. “Taking advantage of a woman is a criminal offense,” she observed. “I heard Mr. Sherman say another thing, Jeannie. He said, ‘If your wife wants to press a charge and talk to some lawyer, let me tell you,’ he said, ‘you’ll never work again anywhere,’ he said. Vern said, ‘I know that, Mr. Sherman.’ And Mr. Sherman said, ‘Let me tell you, if any reporters or any investigators start coming around here, they’ll get their … they’ll never …’ Oh, he was mad. And Vern said, ‘I came over to tell you I was quitting, Mr. Sherman.’ ” Mrs. Thompson had been acting this with spirit, using a quiet voice when she spoke for Vern and a blustering tone for Mr. Sherman. In her own voice, she said, “If you’re wondering how I came to hear all this, I was strolling by Mr. Sherman’s office window – his bungalow, that is. I had Maureen out in her pram.” Maureen was the Thompsons’ youngest doll.

  Jeannie might not have been listening. She started to tell something else: “You know, where we were before, on Vern’s last job, we weren’t in a camp. He was away a lot, and he left me in Amos, in a hotel. I liked it. Amos isn’t all that big, but it’s better than here. There was this German in the hotel. He was selling cars. He’d drive me around if I wanted to go to a movie or anything. Vern didn’t like him, so we left. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

  “So he’s given up two jobs,” said Mrs. Thompson. “One because he couldn’t leave you alone, and now this one. Two jobs, and you haven’t been married five months. Why should another man be thrown out of work? We don’t need to know a thing. I’ll be sorry if it was Jimmy Quinn,” she went on, slowly. “I like that boy. Don’t say the name, dear. There’s Evans. Susini. Palmer. But it might have been anybody, because you had them all on the boil. So it might have been Jimmy Quinn – let’s say – and it could have been anyone else, too. Well, now let’s hope they can get their minds back on the job.”

  “I thought they all liked me,” said Jeannie sadly. “I get along with people. Vern never fights with me.”

  “Vern never fights with anyone. But he ought to have thrashed you.”

  “If he … you know. I won’t say the name. If he’d liked me, I wouldn’t have minded. If he’d been friendly. I really mean that. I wouldn’t have gone wandering up the road, making all this fuss.”

  “Jeannie,” said Mrs. Thompson, “you don’t even know what you’re saying.”

  “He could at least have liked me,” said Jeannie. “He wasn’t even friendly. It’s the first time in my life somebody hasn’t liked me. My heart is broken, Mrs. Thompson. My heart is just broken.”

  She has to cry, Mrs. Thompson thought. She has to have it out. She rocked slowly, tapping her foot, trying to remember how she’d felt about things when she was twenty, wondering if her heart had ever been broken, too.

  1961

  The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street

  NOW THAT they are out of world affairs and back where they started, Peter Frazier’s wife says, �
�Everybody else did well in the international thing except us.”

  “You have to be crooked,” he tells her.

  “Or smart. Pity we weren’t.”

  It is Sunday morning. They sit in the kitchen, drinking their coffee, slowly, remembering the past. They say the names of people as if they were magic. Peter thinks, Agnes Brusen, but there are hundreds of other names. As a private married joke, Peter and Sheilah wear the silk dressing gowns they bought in Hong Kong. Each thinks the other a peacock, rather splendid, but they pretend the dressing gowns are silly and worn in fun.

  Peter and Sheilah and their two daughters, Sandra and Jennifer, are visiting Peter’s unmarried sister, Lucille. They have been Lucille’s guests seventeen weeks, ever since they returned to Toronto from the Far East. Their big old steamer trunk blocks a corner of the kitchen, making a problem of the refrigerator door; but even Lucille says the trunk may as well stay where it is, for the present. The Fraziers’ future is so unsettled; everything is still in the air.

  Lucille has given her bedroom to her two nieces, and sleeps on a camp cot in the hall. The parents have the living-room divan. They have no privileges here; they sleep after Lucille has seen the last television show that interests her. In the hall closet their clothes are crushed by winter overcoats. They know they are being judged for the first time. Sandra and Jennifer are waiting for Sheilah and Peter to decide. They are waiting to learn where these exotic parents will fly to next. What sort of climate will Sheilah consider? What job will Peter consent to accept? When the parents are ready, the children will make a decision of their own. It is just possible that Sandra and Jennifer will choose to stay with their aunt.

  The peacock parents are watched by wrens. Lucille and her nieces are much the same – sandy-colored, proudly plain. Neither of the girls has the father’s insouciance or the mother’s appearance – her height, her carriage, her thick hair, and sky-blue eyes. The children are more cautious than their parents; more Canadian. When they saw their aunt’s apartment they had been away from Canada nine years, ever since they were two and four; and Jennifer, the elder, said, “Well, now we’re home.” Her voice is nasal and flat. Where did she learn that voice? And why should this be home? Peter’s answer to anything about his mystifying children is, “It must be in the blood.”