Your Sad Eyes And Unforgettable Mouth Part 1

Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth.

by Edeet Ravel.

For Larissa kindest of souls, brilliant and wise

There is a name for us now: we can, if we wish, call ourselves the second generation. We have websites; books have been written about us. But back then we were alone with our parents, and they were alone with their survival. Limping and stunned, they returned from the n.a.z.i camps. How does one reconcile that world and this one? No one has the answer. It seems impossible, and yet they forged new lives; but even those who had not lost their minds had lost their orientation.

One way or another, we, their children, inherited fragments of their memories. We were the children who came to reclaim the world, proxies for ghosts. Hovering always between resistance and compliance, we did what we could.

s.h.i.+RI ARYEH.

Yes, it's been a boozy evening. Patrick's back in Montreal for his mother's funeral and I suggested we meet at a downtown bra.s.serie. He was already there when I arrived, but I didn't notice him at first; the place was crowded and dimly lit, and he was seated at the far end, facing away from the door, his hair thinner now. I almost settled down at the bar to wait for him, but then I spotted his wife, whom I recognized from a photo his mother had shown me-gla.s.ses, delicate features-and I made my way to their table. Patrick scowled slightly when he saw me, and introduced his wife in a distracted way, as if he'd only met her a few minutes ago. Her name is Adar and she works for an academic publisher, translating Hebrew and Spanish texts into English.

Adar wasn't very talkative, but she was watching us closely, and I felt she was trying to extract clues from what we said and how we said it. Clues about what? About Patrick, I think.

Patrick's profession intersects with mine: his work at the university library includes curating, and he's interested in art history-or art reception, as I prefer to call it. Instead of catching up, we clung to the present; we discussed doc.u.ment preservation, current trends in teaching or not teaching theory, climate change. The three of us were hemmed in on both sides by tinted mirrors that allowed us to see kinder versions of ourselves; as the evening progressed and the vodka flowed, the mirrors became increasingly co-operative.

I'm back at my Plateau triplex now. Holding on to the cold, wrought-iron railing, I negotiated the spiral staircase to my front door. The triangular steps are treacherous in winter, but we're all attached to this architectural quirk for which our neighbourhood is famous, are quite proud of it, in fact-even though keeping the stairs clear of ice and snow is an ongoing challenge.

It's late, but I'm not at all sleepy. I checked my email: no new messages. And then, in that post-alcoholic surrender to fate, I opened a blank page and stared at it, as if waiting for a sign from above-or below-to appear on the screen.

Does Adar know our story, I wonder. Has Patrick broken the pact, now that his mother has died? Or did he tell Adar when they first met, in spite of his admonition that Rosie and I never tell anyone, not even our lovers?

Our story-that's what I want to write about. A tale of love: my love for Rosie, Anthony's fleeting love for me, Patrick's love for no one. As I gazed at the mirrors in the bra.s.serie, it seemed to me that the people we weren't talking about were hovering there, behind our reflections, waiting to be acknowledged. Or was it seeing Patrick's casual cruelty towards Adar that sent me somersaulting back in time?

I may change my mind tomorrow and abandon this project. I may not have the stamina-which is a sly way of saying I'm half-afraid. I have the time, if I need it. It's Friday night, and since I'm only teaching two courses this semester, a four-day weekend looms ahead. The women whose ranks I swell at Sororite-our city's last surviving lesbian bar-will manage, somehow, without me. I'm being facetious, of course-though I don't know exactly how I feel about my dependence on that laid-back neverland, where we are indeed growing older, but in a cloistered haven of our own. Let all who are hungry ... Let all who are hungry ... Even if I do not find at Sororite whatever it is I hunger for, I do find distraction from hunger. Even if I do not find at Sororite whatever it is I hunger for, I do find distraction from hunger.

In any case, I will stay at home this weekend and embark on this phantom-laden voyage. I will try to write out, write down, an account of our star-crossed saga. I've even pulled out of a back drawer the diary I kept long ago, when I was a teenager.

This diary of a young girl not in hiding, not heroic, consists of twenty-three spiral Hilroy notebooks, 81/2 by 11 inches, sixty lined pages each, though I rarely stayed in the lines. The first notebooks have cheap, mud-brown covers, rough to the touch. Then Hilroy noticed that the times they were a-changin' and the covers were redesigned to attract flower children: three Canadian geese against a grey and orange sky; a skier, illuminated by a flash of blinding sun, spraying snow crystals as he swerves down a hill; six hikers resting on the ground, their legs raised on backpacks.

Everything is here, inside these pages: our s.h.i.+fting and shuffling, our small victories and elaborate blunders.

In I go.

1968.

I lived back then with my courageous mother and, luckily, my grandmother, in an upper duplex on Bedford Street, in the Cote des Neiges district. lived back then with my courageous mother and, luckily, my grandmother, in an upper duplex on Bedford Street, in the Cote des Neiges district.

A pretty name, Cote des Neiges, evoking images of snow angels and silver skates, but to Montrealers the words suggest an immigrant population, neighbourhoods running to various stages of seediness, small shops. Forty years ago, there were fewer seedy stretches, and Jews newly arrived from Europe or seeking escape from the noisy Plateau chose to settle on the more respectable streets: Kent, Linton, Bourret. We liked the worn-out witticism: G.o.d gave Moses Canada because he stuttered; he'd meant to say Canaan. All that has changed; these days, other immigrants live on Linton and Kent.

The rooms of our Home Sweet Home were arranged in a claustrophobic ring around a central foyer. The living room faced the street, my bedroom came next, then the kitchen-with a door leading to the back balcony. A bathroom and my mother's bedroom, which she shared with my grandmother, completed the asymmetrical circle. The hapless architect had left the foyer for last, and it was oddly shaped, a by-product of the five unevenly s.p.a.ced rooms.

But the floor plan was the least of it-the entire building was doomed by its white-tile facade, low ceilings, plywood doors. These paltry efforts aroused my sympathy: I felt sorry for the aluminum windows, the stippled taupe-and-white linoleum in the kitchen, the unloved and unlovable wall-to-wall carpets. They were doing their best.

Here, then, on a rainy Sat.u.r.day in April-April 15, 1968, to be exact-I, Maya Levitsky, daughter of Fanya and the late Josef Levitsky, could be found soaking in a scrubbed and sterilized lavender-blue bathtub, after a windy, drizzly journey to the At.w.a.ter Library and back. I was in love with the At.w.a.ter Library, in love with the majestic reading room, polished pine tables, vaulted ceilings, enormous arched windows, and the skylight of diamond panes surrounded by garlands in low relief-yes, garlands! Someone had gone to all that trouble, just for a ceiling. And of course the books, shelves and shelves of art books, shelves and shelves of novels. That's what I did on weekends: I read at the library, and when I grew tired of reading I leafed through folio-sized reproductions of famous paintings. The art prints held as much intrigue and drama as the novels: Venus and Cupid in erotic embrace, angels and weeping mothers, village squares, sunsets and nightmares, a lone woman in a red hat waiting for a train ...

I sat up in the bath and submerged my legs, then slid back down as my knees went up. Maya, the human accordion. I never did mind my overly long, overly freckled body, and I felt protected by my Pre-Raphaelite red hair. Right now, though, with my head immersed up to my ears, I felt like Millais's floating Ophelia. That very morning I'd read the story behind the Ophelia painting: Millais's docile model, Elizabeth Siddal, had posed in a tub in the dead of winter and, not wanting to interrupt the artist at work, said nothing when the lamps heating the tub went out. As a result she contracted pneumonia, and her father sued. All in all, I preferred Waterhouse's Ophelias, eager and sensual in white-and-gold and blue-and-gold. Waterhouse, like us, craved an alteration of the sad plot, wanted to keep Ophelia alive and well.

Here I am, then, in the water, in the house, neither posing nor drowning, twelve years old and already nearly six feet tall. How did I come by my height? Both my mother and Bubby Miriam, who was my father's mother, barely reached my shoulder, and according to them, my father was also on the short side. Someone in the lost and distant past must have been tall-an aunt, a second cousin. I imagined my giant ancestor, swinging in a rocking chair somewhere in Eastern Europe, knitting herself a shawl for the winter. On and on it trailed, past her knees and along the floor.

At school they called me Beanstalk. We owned a hand-me-down copy of Jack and the Beanstalk Jack and the Beanstalk, donated by one of my mother's card-playing friends. I'd read the story to Bubby a hundred times; she never tired of it, and neither did I. Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman Fee fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman, I said in a deep, hollow voice, and we both laughed like goofs. It was never entirely clear whether my bubby understood English, but there were ill.u.s.trations to help us out.

The beanstalk in the story grew and grew, exactly like me-like a Cossack-my mother liked to say. She touched me as if I were an amulet, kissed my arm because she couldn't reach my face unless I hunched down. I didn't hunch down-not for her. I bent down for Bubby but not for Fanya. Yield to my poor mother's unfeasible demands, her gluey woes, and you could end up like Elizabeth Siddal-or Ophelia.

So there I was, with or without Cossack blood, steeping in a bubble bath. When the water began to cool, I used my toes to rotate the faucet with the faded red dot. Through the thin walls I could hear Bubby clattering in the kitchen. That was the only sort of noise my grandmother ever made: she wore cloth slippers over her b.u.mpy bunions, and she usually crept soundlessly through the carpeted rooms, but when she baked, a tin-pan racket filled the apartment.

It was quiet, apart from that. My mother was out; she worked on Sat.u.r.days and sometimes on the way home she stopped at Steinberg's to buy groceries. In the Fanya-free stillness-even the furniture seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when my mother was away-I contemplated my body. I approved of it, on the whole. Like the apartment, it was doing its best, though in addition to being excessively long, it was angular, disproportionate, my shoulders too broad, the rest of me bony. I'd found a replica of my naked body at the library, in a painting by the fifteenth-century illuminator Belbello da Pavia. Belbello-what a divine name!-left us an Adam and Eve who look as if they've run into each other accidentally at the pizzeria (the cute red-and-green building on the left) and are trying to decide between the all-dressed and the double cheese. Adam's body resembled mine; maybe Belbello couldn't find a male model. Or maybe I had a man's body. All in all, I was lucky that my nickname at school was Beanstalk and not Frankenstein.

I leaned forward, pulled out the plug for a few seconds, then replaced it and added more hot water. My baths were typically drawn-out affairs, especially in winter. Not that the apartment was cold-heating was included in the rent, and my mother and Bubby preferred a tropical climate. But we were mostly house-bound from December to March, and baths provided a diversion. My mind wandered as I sank under mounds of bubble bath. I loved the foam-the snow-white dips and towers, the weightless solidity, the soft, soapy sound of tiny bubbles popping in unison.

Bubby continued clanging in the kitchen. She would have been baking her intricate European pastries: little rolls and squares and triangles filled with cinnamon, jam, chocolate cream. The door to the bathroom was unlocked, in case my mother came home while I was still in the bath. Closed doors made her frantic; she'd fling them open like a blast of wind in Kansas. My mother's free access to the bathroom, regardless of circ.u.mstances, resulted in a rather lax-one could even say bohemian-att.i.tude to nudity in the all-female Levitsky household.

The Levitsky household: Bubby Miriam, Fanya, Maya. Three mad women. Mad, mad, mad.

Take my mother's bedroom. Had I lived in a sane house with sane people in it, my mother's bed would have stood at one end of the room, Bubby's at the other. But along with many other phobias-some of which were probably unique to her-Mere Levitsky was averse to alterations in the placement of furniture. The result was a Mondrianesque composition, with Bubby's narrow bed extending at a right angle from halfway along the footboard of my mother's double bed. The reason for this peculiar set-up was my mother's refusal, when Bubby joined us, to move her bed from the centre of the room to the wall; the only other option was the L-shaped arrangement, though why the new bed was pushed right up against my mother's footboard, I couldn't say. Bubby didn't mind, as far as I could tell.

But Bubby was also strange. Here's how my bubby washed herself: she carried an empty pail to the bathtub and filled it with hot, soapy water, then removed her clothes, climbed into the bath, and scrubbed herself with a sponge. Her body was thin and misshapen, because of there there. That is, misshapen because her back was broken there there, and thin because that was the way she was. When she'd finished was.h.i.+ng, she rubbed herself dry with a facecloth and called to my mother to help her out.

Then there was the fully mobilized laundry campaign. Bubby was in charge of laundry, and no one was allowed to interfere. She took care of the entire journey, from hamper to was.h.i.+ng machine to clothesline or rack, back to laundry basket, and finally to the ironing board. She didn't mind about other things, she was compliant and oblivious in every other way, but if my mother or I tried to reclaim a single item of clothing while it was en route, Bubby would wrest it from our hands.

As for my mother-I wouldn't know where to start. There was no beginning with Fanya Levitsky, and no end. No middle either, come to think of it. Her brain was jumbled and jammed, and everything was bouncing around in there, like the bobbing needle of her sewing machine. Hard to believe, in view of her general state of emotional strain, but my mother was a dressmaker, with a particular fondness for lace collars, tinted gla.s.s b.u.t.tons, velvet ribbons, flounces and filigree. Her feet swelled out of high-heeled shoes, her elbows were dimpled, her neck was powdered, her hair had been sprayed into layers of stiff waves, as if in imitation of a wig.

But despite the trouble she went to, despite the perfume and mascara and white nylon slips, at the drop of a hat she would fall apart, all wails and weeping, railing and ranting-not at me, that would be unthinkable, but at department stores and pickle manufacturers, can openers and leaky faucets. As for the relentless unveiling of shreds and sc.r.a.ps from there there, I'd stopped listening when I was six years old. Body parts, kapos, electric fences, attack dogs-what could it all mean? I preferred to focus on B Is for Betsy B Is for Betsy; I was trying to read all the Betsy books, if I could find them. There were five libraries that carried children's books in English, and my mother and I travelled across the city in search of Betsy's Busy Summer, Betsy's Winterhouse, Betsy's Little Star Betsy's Busy Summer, Betsy's Winterhouse, Betsy's Little Star.

So much for Bubby and my mother. That left me. Actually, I wasn't sure whether I was mad or not. I was merely play-acting, which meant I was deflecting, not absorbing, the lunacy-or did it? At mealtimes, for example: though I piled food on my plate, I never managed to sample all the dishes spread out before me. One day I forgot the green beans, glistening under clumps of margarine; another day I neglected the kasha and bowties, flavoured with tiny black tendrils of fried onion. My omissions did not go unnoticed by my mother, who wrung her hands and tried to guess the food's fatal flaw. Exasperated, I'd plunge my face into the spurned bowl and, imitating a predatory animal, gobbling and snorting and growling, I'd scoop up the beans or kasha with my teeth.

My mother, half-laughing, half-whimpering, brought both hands to her cheeks and rolled her head-ai ai ai mamaleh even a crumb of bread we would look for in the mud- Not that she sat with us-she was too busy running back and forth between table and stove, checking pots, adjusting the heat, fretting over culinary setbacks. As for eating, she squeezed it in before and after the meal, tasting bits of food straight from the pot or nibbling leftovers.

Bubby was also hard to pin down: you had only to glance away for a few seconds and every last morsel on her plate would be gone. She ate each of my mother's offerings separately: first the rice, then the tiny pieces of chicken my mother had chopped up for her, then the Canadian Living Canadian Living quiche. (Every Sunday my mother meticulously copied out what she called Canadian recipes from her magazines, unless they involved alien ingredients such as asparagus or zucchini.) When Bubby was done, she quickly removed her plate, hobbling to the sink and depositing it there. Then she returned to the table and watched me with fixed absorption, as if witnessing a complex operation-someone a.s.sembling a clock or repairing a radio. quiche. (Every Sunday my mother meticulously copied out what she called Canadian recipes from her magazines, unless they involved alien ingredients such as asparagus or zucchini.) When Bubby was done, she quickly removed her plate, hobbling to the sink and depositing it there. Then she returned to the table and watched me with fixed absorption, as if witnessing a complex operation-someone a.s.sembling a clock or repairing a radio.

I wanted to help out with the meal, if only to diffuse my mother's attentions, but she wouldn't hear of it. Bad enough I didn't have a father, cousins, uncles, aunts, more grandparents; bad enough that we were poor-at least I would have an easy life. An easy life meant, apparently, being waited on. It seemed to me back then, and still seems to me now, that my mother often imagined that her own sufferings had transferred themselves to my life, and that she had to find a way to compensate me for our shared misfortunes. And then there was her needy surplus of love, love that had nowhere else to go. I was the love sponge. It was good and not good.

In short, I definitely didn't belong to one of the families featured in our English reader: the children raking autumn leaves before dressing up as pumpkins for Halloween, the mothers in tidy brown hats and skirts, the fathers a little remote but always jovial and reliable as they sat at the wheel of their black cars.

But Bubby Miriam had sailed into our lives like a lifeboat. She found us, with the help of the Jewish Agency, when I was six. The war had dispersed families; no one knew who was alive. The lists of missing people were too long to be ordered, and locating lost relatives was frequently a matter of chance-a familiar candlestick, for example, glimpsed in a shop window.

We spent several weeks preparing for the miraculous incarnation of my father's mother. When she first heard the news, my mother seemed to fall into a semi-trance, and for once she sat with me at the kitchen table as I ate, hands folded in front of her, staring at the ceramic frogs that clung with outstretched legs to the sides of the napkin holder. At regular intervals she chanted living living living living living living, and I joined in, for in spite of the dramatics I understood that this development was auspicious. I was acquiring a grandmother.

Practical matters soon roused my mother from her daze. My bubby was in Chicago; she had to cross the border; there were doc.u.ments to be signed. Anything could go wrong along the way, my mother warned me. But she went ahead and bought a bed and a feather pillow from a friend whose husband had made a fortune on the stock market and who was redecorating her entire house, actually hiring an interior designer-such things they have here- When the big day arrived, my mother, who had been cooking and baking for days, set all the cakes and buns on the table and plumped the pillow of the new bed half a dozen times. At the prescribed hour, she took my hand as if we were the ones setting out on a journey, and as we stood waiting in the cubist foyer of our flat, she drew me close to her and made tiny, mewling sounds, like someone encountering calamity and trying, not entirely successfully, to remain silent.

The doorbell rang and my mother swung her free arm in imitation of an airplane about to land. The runway was her chest.

-come in come in- She opened the door and there they were: the man from the agency and, standing beside him, my grandmother. "Well, Mrs. Levitsky." The man smiled weakly. "Here she is-your mother-in-law, Miriam Levitsky." He turned to me: "Your bubby." Shyly, he lowered his eyes and dug his hands into his pockets. He must have expected a tearful embrace. Instead, my mother stared at my grandmother for a few seconds, then began to wail-Yossi my Yossi-but my grandmother was apparently hard of hearing. She lifted her suitcase, shuffled past my mother, and shut herself inside the bedroom.

My mother offered the agency man a gla.s.s of tea, and without waiting for an answer she scuttled off to plug in the electric kettle. The man sat down uneasily on the living-room sofa. He wore a dark suit and a striped tie. The tie looked borrowed, somehow, and seemed to be on the verge of strangling him, and his trousers had inexplicable vertical creases running down the front. I wondered whether I'd want him for a father and decided I wouldn't. You could tell he was unlucky. His own relatives, I a.s.sumed, were still missing.

My grandmother emerged from the bedroom wearing a flowered dress with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. Her white hair was held neatly in back with a s.h.i.+ny metal clasp. She beckoned to me with her arm and handed me a piece of chocolate wrapped in foil.

"Is she staying?" I asked hopefully.

"Yes," the agency man replied quickly, glancing at the door. Twenty minutes with my mother and he's pining for freedom.

As soon as he'd left, my grandmother walked slowly to the kitchen, opened the back door, and gazed out at the yard below. She nodded in approval, and my mother and I dragged three kitchen chairs to the balcony. We called it a balcony, but it was really a landing from which a flight of stairs spiralled down to the lawn. The stairs were made of wood, and when my mother and I went down to the yard to pick daisies the boards sagged under our weight with disquieting creaks, and we gripped the railings with both hands.

There was exactly room for the three of us on the landing. I sat in the middle, between my mother and my new grandmother, sucking on the chocolate so it would last a long time. In the yard, a neighbour's beagle was digging and running and wagging his tail, and we all laughed. My mother began reminiscing-the sun the sun was s.h.i.+ning on the dead bodies- My grandmother took my hand, squeezed it, and winked at me. I looked up at her and, with what seemed like an almost supernatural feat of translation, I gathered that it was possible to ignore my mother. I smiled at my bubby, and she smiled back. We continued to hold hands, complicit in our dismissal of my mother's extraterrestrial commentary.

Ai, ai, as my mother would say, was it any wonder I had no friends? Not real friends-not friends you met outside of school. Fanya would never let me visit just anyone; she'd insist on coming with me, inspecting the premises, meeting the parents. And what would they make of her garbled snippets of horror-history, her prophetic alarms?

Surprisingly, I wasn't one of the outcasts either. I was invited to birthday parties, I sat with the popular girls at lunchtime. One boy, Neil Charles, slipped me a folded note when the teacher's back was turned: I like you I like you. A quiet boy with a poetic face and dramatic ears. I smiled at him, but he flushed and looked away quickly. Too complicated for me.

The bubbles in my bath had gone flat. I ran my fingers through the white islands and watched them separate like amoebas in science films. Alas, my love, you do me wrong Alas, my love, you do me wrong, I sang, to cast me off discourteously to cast me off discourteously. I was imitating Jane Hathaway, the yodelling secretary on The Beverly Hillbillies The Beverly Hillbillies. I hated that sitcom, really hated it. In its various manifestations, life in Canada proved daily that my mother's overwrought, splintered world was not real. But here was a TV show that echoed her distortions. I was baffled. Who were these people? What exactly was funny about them? The laughter was canned, I knew, but everyone at school seemed to agree with the studio's cues. My cla.s.smates recapped each scene at recess with shrieks of delight.

Only Jane struck me as comical, and I half-watched the show in hope of seeing her. I was exactly like her: tall, hopelessly wayward, blissfully hopeful, and possibly the only competent person in my immediate surroundings.

I began feeling hungry, and I was wondering whether the pleasure of stuffing myself would be worth the trouble of getting out of the bath when the front door flew open. Huffing and puffing, eulogizing and exclaiming, my mother entered the house, safely delivered from her pilgrimage to Steinberg's.

-Maya Maya my mamaleh- Her coat was wet and she rushed to the bathroom to hang it over the tub. And there I was, soaking in the bath, ruining her plans. She didn't mind-she didn't mind anything I did. I was the daughter who could do no wrong, the daughter who would show the way. That was one of my several roles in the family circle: New World liaison. Pointing at a word in one of her magazines, my mother would ask me what it meant. I deciphered advertis.e.m.e.nt slogans, television dialogue, comments overheard on the street. If necessary, we consulted our bible, Webster's New English Dictionary Webster's New English Dictionary, paperback edition. Sometimes I had to explain the explanation.

Bubby came to my mother's rescue with a hanger, took the coat and toddled off. I drew the shower curtain, leaving only my head exposed to my mother's scrutiny. I noticed that she was waving a long skirt of pink reward stamps in one hand and her even longer grocery receipt in the other. The groceries themselves would arrive later; my job would then be to tick off each item on the receipt as my mother darted from brown-paper shopping bag to cupboard, breathless with suspense. Never once, in all the years, had anything gone astray, but my mother enjoyed the ritual and so did I. Stocking up. The cupboards refilled with the things we liked.

-mamaleh look look what I found- Crammed between sink and wall, tucked into a satin yellow dress she'd made for herself, trailing clouds of Ben Hur perfume, she brandished the supermarket receipt. She often copied down notices from the bulletin board at Steinberg's: a bride needed a seamstress to alter a wedding dress; a McGill student was offering violin lessons; someone was selling a ten-piece camera set. My mother would painstakingly transcribe the entire text onto the back of her receipt so she could consult me when she came home. I reached out to see what she'd dug up this time, but she jumped away, clutching the precious scroll to her satiny bosom-no no if it gets wet and smudges- Instead, she knelt by the tub and held it up for me to see: This summer, send your children to Camp Bakunin, where the campers make the rules, improve their minds, and learn humanitarian values. Ages 1014. Reduced rates for the proletariat.

My mother's neat handwriting always impressed me. I would have expected a congested scrawl, but even her shopping lists were written in elegant script. b.u.t.ter b.u.t.ter was a tiny drawing; was a tiny drawing; pineapple in a can pineapple in a can looked like a garden. She'd been taught penmans.h.i.+p, she explained, when she was a schoolgirl. She wasn't "from some shtetl"-her parents were educated, they went to the theatre, they read Homer on Sunday afternoons. Though I blocked out most of my mother's torrential reminiscences, I was familiar with a few manageable strands: her father had been a respected photographer and amateur astronomer; famous people had come to the house to have their portraits taken by her father and their clothes sewn by her mother; professors and artists had joined them for dinner. Over prolonged meals of borscht and baked fish they discussed every topic under the sun. Palestine, yes or no? Seances, real or sham? Pavlov, good or bad? looked like a garden. She'd been taught penmans.h.i.+p, she explained, when she was a schoolgirl. She wasn't "from some shtetl"-her parents were educated, they went to the theatre, they read Homer on Sunday afternoons. Though I blocked out most of my mother's torrential reminiscences, I was familiar with a few manageable strands: her father had been a respected photographer and amateur astronomer; famous people had come to the house to have their portraits taken by her father and their clothes sewn by her mother; professors and artists had joined them for dinner. Over prolonged meals of borscht and baked fish they discussed every topic under the sun. Palestine, yes or no? Seances, real or sham? Pavlov, good or bad?

-see what it says here you you make the rules if only Yossi- Yossi, my father, had died before I was born-before he even knew I was an upcoming human. My mother invoked his name at random, as far as I could tell.

As for making the rules, we both knew what that was about. I was terrified of sports, terrified of flying objects, high jumping, and above all the evil vaulting horse! Every Wednesday my mother wrote a note for the gym teacher-a grumpy, tyrannical man who with his impregnable torso and belligerent beard resembled Popeye's nemesis, Bluto-and asked that I be excused from gym cla.s.s. I was "in a certain time of month," "suffering from a terrible cold," "dizzy," "faint," or (my favourite) "low with iron." The gym teacher had stopped reading these notes; he'd toss the envelopes I handed him on the windowsill and, giving me a dirty look, motion me to sit on the bench. From the sanctuary of the corner bench I watched the girls in my cla.s.s running and jumping in their blue shorts. I enjoyed myself, though I never stopped wondering: how was it humanly possible to enjoy volleyball?

My aversion to sports was an insurmountable obstacle when it came to any summer camp project. What if they wanted me to swim? This was before the days of science camps, art camps, music camps; the barbaric a.s.sumption back then seemed to be that all children were athletic. I felt fortunate that at least my mother never forced me to do anything. In some instances-for example, if on a rainy day I refused to bundle up like Nanook of the North-she begged and wept, but she never coerced. Every trait or resource a person might need in order to rule by decree, Fanya lacked.

"I need a towel, mother dear," I said. "I'm getting prune fingers."

With a flurry of signals my mother indicated to Bubby that I needed two clean towels-one for my long hair and one for the rest of me. Bath towels were used only once in our home; Bubby snared them before they had a chance to dry and sent them off on the laundry tour.

At least my hair was no longer tangled when I came out of the bath. Earlier that year, my mother had come across an ad for conditioner in one of her magazines: n.o.body knows like a hairdresser what a ground-breaking new product like this can do. Watch your husband's eyes when he greets you that night! n.o.body knows like a hairdresser what a ground-breaking new product like this can do. Watch your husband's eyes when he greets you that night! My mother rushed out to buy the ground-breaking product, and our post-toilette scenes were instantly transformed. I no longer had to sit on a chair for an hour, reading Gogol while my mother grappled tearfully with knots and bird nests. Now the brush slid effortlessly through my wet hair- My mother rushed out to buy the ground-breaking product, and our post-toilette scenes were instantly transformed. I no longer had to sit on a chair for an hour, reading Gogol while my mother grappled tearfully with knots and bird nests. Now the brush slid effortlessly through my wet hair-see see how this works it's mindboggling- "Mindboggling?" I was amused. But looking back, I'm impressed; impressed that my mother, for whom language was a fraught enterprise, was determined to take on English. She'd more or less discarded her other languages, now that we were Canadian, and she spoke English even to Bubby.

Swaddled in towels, I took the grocery receipt from my mother and shut myself in my room. The only mother-proof door in the house was the one leading to my bedroom. When I was much younger, my mother would run to my bed every second or third night. Crying and quaking and muttering what sounded like voodoo incantations, she'd take me in her arms, her bouncy body heaving under her nightgown. I can't say why I wasn't frightened, or how I knew her distress had nothing to do with me-a child's unerring intuition, I suppose; or maybe I didn't find these nighttime episodes all that different from the usual wringing of hands that went on during the day. But I didn't like being jolted from sleep, and one night, shortly after my eighth birthday, I came up with the idea of pus.h.i.+ng my desk against the door.

My mother, as usual, took a catastrophic view-what if there was a fire and she couldn't wake me? She shared her apprehensions with her card-playing friends, who were more than happy to be of service: "Make an appointment with Dr. Fine. He gives out sleeping pills like n.o.body's business." My mother was not one to spurn a helping hand-yes yes I will do- Sedation, in the form of Seconal, put an end to Fanya's nocturnal peregrinations, but I liked the new system, and whenever I wanted privacy I pushed my desk against my bedroom door. My mother soon developed a wors.h.i.+pper's awe of the barrier, and the desk became superfluous. All I had to do now was shut the door and my mother walked quietly away. Oh, ma mere, ma mere ma mere, ma mere.

Like a midwife of home decor, my mother had plunged me, by way of matching bedspread and curtain, into a rayon explosion of purple and blue chrysanthemums. She'd become enamoured of the set while browsing through an Eaton's catalogue and had saved up for it. I was happy because she was happy; that's the way it is with children. If the chrysanthemums made her heart swell with pride, I had to admire them for their uplifting properties.

But the notice in my hand was pulling, like the Pied Piper, in another direction. I stared at the invitation-or invocation, as it seemed to be. My mother had not caught on, I thought with a rush of excitement; she had definitely not caught on. Camp Bakunin must be a hippie camp.

The currents that were travelling from south of the border were made to order for me: this was who I was. At school, I had a reputation for irreverence, though my objection was not to our teachers but to the rules and the way authority figures clung to them. I'd been the first in my school to pin a Make Love Not War Make Love Not War b.u.t.ton onto my lapel. I was told (more rules) to remove the b.u.t.ton; instead, I kept it hidden like a secret banner under my sweater. Not that I followed the news, or knew exactly what was going on in Vietnam, but political awareness had strayed into the sphere of popular culture and permeated everything. b.u.t.ton onto my lapel. I was told (more rules) to remove the b.u.t.ton; instead, I kept it hidden like a secret banner under my sweater. Not that I followed the news, or knew exactly what was going on in Vietnam, but political awareness had strayed into the sphere of popular culture and permeated everything.

Outside of school, my education was being furthered by Esther, the young, dreamy librarian at the At.w.a.ter Library. She smiled even when no one was looking, and her two bulky, straw-coloured braids hinted at counterculture allegiances. Under her guidance, I'd read The Grapes of Wrath The Grapes of Wrath and and Cry, the Beloved Country Cry, the Beloved Country. Injustice in those books was abstract, inspirational. A more tangible rebellion was moving our way, even though we weren't the ones sending soldiers to kill and be killed in Vietnam; we were the ones helping them defect. On the radio, Peter, Paul, and Mary sang about a draft dodger fasting in jail, dying.

I lay down on my bed and stretched my toes. I was too long for my bed-like Dr. Seuss's Ned, who had to poke his feet out of two holes in his footboard or else push his head through a hole in the headboard. If I went to Camp Bakunin, I'd sleep in a bunk bed, a bunk bed in a cabin filled with girls. I'd been out of the city only once in my life, on a field trip: in fifth grade we were taken to see the Plains of Abraham. The park was pretty, but I remained detached; it was all too nebulous, too structured. A few hours away from the cla.s.sroom, then back to Coronation Elementary School on rickety yellow buses. And why were our teachers so cheerful about hundreds of luckless men stabbed, shot, and clubbed to death? It would have been more appro-priate, I felt, to gather solemnly and sing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

This would be different: this would be the real thing. When I was small, I would hide behind the sheer, floor-length curtains in our living room and pretend that Harry Belafonte was coming to take me to Kingston Town. Our life there would be one endless street party; skinny women in crimson dresses would ask me to hold their matching crimson purses as they danced. Or else it was Tintin who would arrive at my door with his little fox terrier in his arms. He'd tell me I was urgently needed in Turkey; I'd have only minutes to pack while a uniformed chauffeur waited by the limousine. My hair was nearly the same colour as Tintin's optimistic little tuft and would look as picturesque against the blue sea, the deep blue sky.

As if to dispel any lingering doubts, "Strawberry Fields" came on the radio. Oh, lovely Beatles! John also wanted to take us with him on his languorous, psychedelic voyage. I rose from my bed, opened the door to my room, and announced, "Okay, Mrs. L, I'll go."

My decision set in motion nine weeks of shopping and packing, warning and lament. I didn't mind; my mother's focus on the great event coincided with my own impatience. I daydreamed more than usual at school; I drew log cabins and pine forests in the margins of my notebooks. The school year dragged on, until one fine morning our teacher, a tough little mouse of a woman, marched into the cla.s.sroom with a stack of report cards, handed them out, and sent us home.

The next day my mother packed the last three items on her list: toothbrush, hairbrush, a tin of Bubby's pastries. The Camp Bakunin pickup spot was a side street in the St. Henri district, just south of downtown; from there a bus would take us to the campgrounds. I kissed Bubby goodbye and extracted from my mother a promise to translate my letters home into Yiddish. Bubby was happy for me, and she waved from the window as we set off.

Lugging our new four-piece green nylon luggage set, my mother and I boarded a city bus. My mother grabbed the sideways seats up front, retrieved the address from her purse, and hara.s.sed the driver with continual reminders to let us off at the right stop. He finally turned around and asked her to be quiet. Fanya wasn't offended-such little lambs these Canadians-but she mistrusted people in charge, even if they were little lambs. When we reached our stop, the driver suggested we leave by the back door, and as we struggled with our suitcases my mother called out for all the world to hear-wait wait mister don't close don't close- Sweaty and out of breath, we made our way towards the meeting place. There were large sections of Montreal I'd never seen, and I was enchanted by the little clapboard houses, with their skewed stairs and toy shutters, all happily sinking into decline. This was exactly what I wanted for myself, I thought. I wanted to live here, or at least know someone who did. The shutters and doors were cobalt blue, cherry red, sun yellow, or had been left to weather, and the layers of peeling paint had faded into a montage of floating colours.

The counsellors were late, and we all stood in awkward silence with our awkward parents. We were an odd lot. A heavily built boy whose eyes were nearly invisible behind the thick lenses of his gla.s.ses was singing "Yesterday" to an imaginary audience. He spread his arms in that old-fas.h.i.+oned Paul Anka way, a showy display of humble magnanimity. His friend, who seemed to be his mirror opposite-skinny, with a sharp, clever face-urged him on with a peculiar mixture of mockery and affection. A wisp of a girl dressed in black sat on the sidewalk reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Her twin sister straddled their navy aluminum trunk with a bemused expression on her face; for some reason, she was wearing a tiara and a superhero cape. Across the street from us, a frail boy held his mother's hand and muttered advertis.e.m.e.nt slogans to himself: Try it, and see for yourself. A few extra pennies, a lot more value Try it, and see for yourself. A few extra pennies, a lot more value.

My mother was no less conspicuous. When the bus arrived, she changed her mind and clung to my s.h.i.+rt, begging me not to go. It was too late. I hopped onto the bus and blew kisses through the open window as she wiped her eyes.

Our counsellors stood at the front of the bus and introduced themselves. Just as I'd thought, they were hippies. You could tell by their long hair and extravagant hats, their bead necklaces and leather wristbands. Olga had drawn sunflowers under her round, earnest eyes; Bruno was nervous but kind; Sheldon had Arlo Guthrie hair and a Bob Dylan smile. Jean-Marc, bearded and headbanded, was the oldest (forty-two) and in charge-if anyone could be said to be in charge. Until recently he'd been Jonathan Markowitz, but he'd taken up the Quebecois cause and had changed his name in an act of solidarity. Two more counsellors, Anthony and Mimi, had stayed behind to prepare snacks and keep an eye on things.

I fell in love instantly; I think we all did. As soon as the introductions were over, Sheldon led us in song: Oh when the saints! Go marching in! Oh when the saints go marching in! Oh Lord, I want to be in that number. Yes, when the saints go marching in. Oh when the saints! Go marching in! Oh when the saints go marching in! Oh Lord, I want to be in that number. Yes, when the saints go marching in.

By the time the bus pulled up in front of the camp, I was sure the saints had already marched in and transported me to heaven on earth. No one on the planet could possibly want to be anywhere but here. We climbed down and hauled our luggage towards the grounds.

Camp Bakunin had taken over an abandoned campsite; a carved wooden arc supported by two posts welcomed us to Cedar Hills. The name rang a bell-girls from my school must have spent their summers here. But Cedar Hills had either folded or moved to another location. In its current state, the place had a museum look: pilgrim efforts in the wilderness. Since the plumbing was no longer functional, the cook would be bringing canisters of drinking water in from town. As for the call of nature-this, our counsellors a.s.sured us, was a precious opportunity for breaking down bourgeois barriers as we all tramped together into the forest, comrades in our common pursuit of bodily relief.

Though Camp Bakunin had permission to use the grounds, we felt like conquerors revelling in the spoils of victory. The size of the camp contributed to the fantasy-Cedar Hills had been built to accommodate at least two hundred campers; we were a group of forty-seven, with twenty cabins and log houses at our disposal. During the first few days we came across a.s.sorted odds and ends: a Mickey Mouse watch in the art room, a lone sandal buried in the sand, a baby-blue disc on which tiny white contraceptive pills were arranged in a circle. These paleological remnants made me think of a world swept away by glaciers or drought; maybe we weren't conquerors after all, but time travellers.

We were free to move into any bunk house we liked. The Thus Spoke Zarathustra Thus Spoke Zarathustra girl wandered off to the edges of camp and appropriated an isolated cabin for herself, the boys split up into two groups, and the remaining girls, including me, chose to congregate in the bunk house closest to the kitchen. We dumped our belongings on the saggy mattresses and made our way to a snack stand set up on the lawn. Leaning against the back of a chair was a large poster on which our counsellors had written: girl wandered off to the edges of camp and appropriated an isolated cabin for herself, the boys split up into two groups, and the remaining girls, including me, chose to congregate in the bunk house closest to the kitchen. We dumped our belongings on the saggy mattresses and made our way to a snack stand set up on the lawn. Leaning against the back of a chair was a large poster on which our counsellors had written: Welcome Campers! When we can no longer dream, we die.-Emma Goldman Welcome Campers! When we can no longer dream, we die.-Emma Goldman. Next to the poster, like ministering angels at the gates of paradise, Anthony and Mimi presided over the milk and cookies.

Time for a break. I feel almost limp with fatigue, as if I've been climbing mountains. A long soak in the bath should help. A long soak with sweet-smelling, skin-soothing elixirs, followed by a steeping of my senses in forgetfulness, i.e., sleep.

I'll be back. The past, it turns out, exerts a supernal force of its own, compels me to continue.

The late November sun is bravely casting its pallid light. I've made myself a pot of spaghetti and answered two emails from students-hi miss, i can't finish the paper by tuesday on account of a microeconomics exam / Hi miss, I really truly don't feel very well ... I gave them both a five-day extension. I gave them both a five-day extension.

I was about to carry on with my story when the doorbell rang. I knew it was Mr. Jamal, my tenant, from his ringing style: a brief, timid buzz followed almost immediately by a longer one, in case the first didn't go through. Mr. Jamal and his family live on the ground floor. I keep the middle flat of the triplex empty, for in my circles there are always transient women, drifting between affairs or countries, looking for a place to stay. My motive is not entirely altruistic-I don't want anyone directly below me, running the was.h.i.+ng machine when I want to sleep, sleeping when I want to listen to Franck's Sonata for violin and piano.