What I Want to Tell Goes Like This Page 7

  “Go to Russia,” said Peter Vasilevich. “Go with Trotsky.”

  Goodwin put down his tea.

  “They are godless,” said Goodwin.

  “So are you.”

  Goodwin lifted his cloth to his mouth. It was damp and stained with flecks of black.

  “I can help you,” Peter Vasilevich said again. “Soon you will have to make a decision and the rest of your life depends on it. History depends on it.”

  Goodwin coughed. The dust deep in his lungs was ancient and furious. It scratched at him. His whole body seized and convulsed. His face turned red. When it was over he drew the cloth from his mouth and folded it, put it back in the pocket of his vest. Then he smiled. “History depends on what happened,” he said.

  “You do not believe that,” said Peter Vasilevich.

  “Maybe I do” Goodwin said.

  “You do not,” said Vasilevich. “History is the dead future and future is undetermined in the minds of men. There is nothing inevitable about the future except that it is coming.”

  “There are some things.”

  “We will struggle. That is inevitable, yes. We will fail to be as God. That too is inevitable.”

  “We will die,” Goodwin said.

  “We will die, yes. But only our bodies.”

  “There are only our bodies.”

  “And our names and what our names can help people do.”

  The Russian’s irises were blue now and they almost appeared to swirl around his pupil like weather.

  “I know people who can help,” said Peter Vasilevich. “They can take you across the sea. You can go to Vladivostok and by train to Moscow. They can help you escape. Vladimir Ilyich has been to Petrograd. Soon the Czar will be dead. Trotsky will be the leader. Your people have won.”

  “They are your people,” Goodwin said.

  “No people of mine, Comrade Goodwin.”

  Then the peacock’s tail fanned and Goodwin and Vasilevich turned to look. It sounded like delicate swords being drawn. All the eyes of its feathers were open in the sunlight.

  “Why help me?”

  “Why not?”

  Goodwin’s tea was cold and there was no more bread. Anna appeared for a moment on the porch and Goodwin thought perhaps she was bringing something else for them to eat but she was empty-handed. Her face was in the shade. A slash of sunlight cut her in two. Goodwin tried to see if she was beautiful. Her eyes were small and her cheekbones high. He tried to imagine her on the esplanade in Odessa about to return to Moscow or St. Petersburg with a small satchel and two trunks of dresses and shoes. He tried to imagine her with a lover. It didn’t work. Her face belonged there on the esplanade, between the hands of a sad and heartsick man from another city. But her hips and her hands were wide and strong and ready for the struggle and servitude they were born into. She saw him watching her and the spell was broken. She turned and went back into the house.

  “Let me tell you about Russia,” said Peter Vasilevich. “In Russia I was banished by my own people, my own community who conspired to have me removed. They had their reasons. Still, they could not break my people.

  “For sixteen years I toiled, ate and slept in the slums of Siberia. We burnt our weapons and refused to fight in the wars of the Czar. And for this I was forced to walk thousands of miles across the Steppes to my new home in the taiga and swamps. We lived in katorga with the Poles and used an axe and carpentered and built roads through the uninhabited places so businessmen could move their goods across Siberia and Russia could join Europe in industry. Often I asked for a trial and I was refused. I was never condemned by a judge—only the police and those who were jealous of me or wished to own things and be sick without God.

  “After a year or sometimes less, we were marched to new worksites. When a man grew tired and weak and slowed the march, he was beaten. Five, six, seven times—I lost count—a man grew bold with panic and fear and tried to run. Always he was shot. I remember watching a man running away across the plain. He was far off and I began to hope he would escape. I believed there was a possibility. He had timed everything perfectly. Even the air seemed to be thinner where he was as if he were passing beyond our existence into freedom. And then suddenly he crumpled and fell to the earth. I did not even hear the shot.”

  Goodwin watched the storm circling in Vasilevich’s eye. What was it in the deep blackness of those pupils? Vasilevich had chosen him. He would not get to know why.

  “At each place we built new villages. We had to build our own shelters and grow our own food. Nothing was provided. Some exiles trapped animals but we do not believe in eating flesh. I was hungry for sixteen years. Ravenous. Often I thought my body had begun to eat itself. We were not permitted to leave the boundaries of the village. In Irkutsk some exiles demanded an extension of the boundaries. It was a matter, they said, of survival. They wanted to hunt and trap. They were taken into a mine and shot.”

  Peter Vasilevich stopped talking then. There was sweat on his face. Goodwin had seen men shot in mines. He’d seen mines flooded with water to put out the fires and he’d seen the charred bodies.

  “This is where you want me to go?” Goodwin said.

  “Yes,” said Peter Vasilevich. “Soon it will be a new country. It is your only hope. If you go you will live a while longer and then your people in the mills and the mines will have you and your name for as long as it takes. You will be part of the new world. When they bring you home it will be a new home.”

  They were silent then on the porch of the red brick house. Out in the fields the tractors still worked and did not tire. Whatever was out there, invisible and blue, had come closer. In France it was night and men were asleep in trenches and the canisters of nerve gas were being set in place. Soon the wind would turn and the spectre of death would float over the fields and choke the earth and the men. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian Railway moved lumber and ore and weary soldiers across the Steppes but for Nicholas the Second the war was already over. Even the sons of nobility had turned against him. All over in the last decade, the world had become smaller and people were growing anxious in their lives. They felt things closing in and something inside them pushed back in panic. There were more dreams of flying in 1917 than any year previous. There were more dreams of explosions.

  “Okay,” said Goodwin. “I will go.”

  Peter Vasilevich nodded. His mind had gone far away. He was riding a roan along the shore of the Caspian Sea. He had never ridden a horse. His son was with him, arms wrapped around his chest. He knew no one in the ancient village he was approaching. When he got off the horse he was on the porch with Goodwin.

  “Good,” he said. “I will write my people. You will hear from us soon.”

  They would never meet again.

  Later, Vereshchagin drove Goodwin to the train that would take him east to Trail for the last time. They did not speak. Within a month Goodwin would be on the run. The sun had moved lower in the sky. Vereshchagin’s face and neck were red and Goodwin could smell the warm odour of his sweat. Vereshchagin would not forget anything about the red-haired Englishman who would be shot the following summer in the mountains of Vancouver Island. Not his rotten breath. Not his watery eyes. He would recall Goodwin most vividly—for a reason he could not name—on the clear afternoon in autumn 1925 when Peter Vasilevich was blown up crossing the Kettle River in a train car Vereshchagin had refused to board earlier that morning.

  IN RUSSIA

  THE BABY GOT ROSEOLA and no one slept. When the baby cried, Iris’s milk let down. She got up nearly every hour to nurse the infant back to sleep. Jack got up once to let out the dog, who was spooked by all the crying and came to the foot of his bed whining. He got up a second time to stand in the doorway of the nursery and watch Iris curled up in the crib with the baby. She was that small, Iris. He got up a third time out of solidarity. If Iris couldn’t sleep why should he? Maybe he could help. Maybe there was something he could do. But there wasn’t. He couldn’t help.

&n
bsp; “Get some rest,” Iris had whispered. “At least one of us should be rested.”

  He tried to sleep.

  Iris came back to bed smelling of milk. Two wet spots over her tits.

  It was early morning. Still dark out. They were lying on their backs, eyes open.

  “Roseola is a pretty word,” Jack said.

  The rash had decorated the baby in tiny transient red spots. A kind of tribal art, Jack thought. Ritualistic, maybe. Religious. It moved across the baby’s body. It was almost lovely.

  “Nausea is a pretty word,” Iris said.

  The high cloud had come in that afternoon and by midnight the air had warmed and the black January sky opened up with rain. Iris and Jack listened to it batter the rooftop. It sounded like ten thousand tiny horses at full gallop across a plain.

  “It sounds like horses,” Jack said. “Ten thousand tiny horses.”

  “I guess this will be a test,” Iris said. She could hear Jack breathing beside her. She couldn’t look at him. She wanted to sleep but the wind was coming sideways on the house. The rain could be wicking in below the door. She wanted to get up and see if the floor was still dry. If the repair had held. “Did you check the door?” she said.

  “I let the dog out the back,” he said.

  “I’m going to get up and check.” She was on her elbow already, about to get out of bed.

  “No,” he said. “Don’t.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do now. We’ll check it in the morning. I’ll check it.”

  Jack was right but Iris didn’t want him to be. She wanted to act. She wanted to be able to fix it now. She couldn’t abide the thought of letting the problem persist. She was so tired she was nauseous. She reached down and touched herself. It helped her relax. It felt good. She was getting wetter. She felt like crying.

  “I want to write a story called ‘Deal,’” Jack said. “Or ‘Good Deal.’ I don’t know what it’s about yet. I just like the title.”

  Iris rolled away from him onto her side. He hated that she turned away from him.

  “Like ‘A good deal worse,’” he said.

  “I don’t want another baby,” she said.

  They hadn’t talked about another baby. But they hadn’t taken precautions against it either. Jack didn’t know what she meant. She sounded like she wanted to cry.

  She was crying. Jack could feel her body shudder beside him. He wanted to touch her but he didn’t. He was angry. He hated that she turned away from him. He knew it wasn’t fair. But that’s how he felt. He felt angry. He wanted her to be ready. He wanted to be ready. Not for a baby maybe. Not ready for that. Not yet.

  “In the cards,” he whispered to himself. “Not in the cards.”

  “What?” she said. She wondered if he ever stopped thinking of stories, of how to tell stories. She felt as though Jack were removed from every moment, standing to the side, narrating. She had nothing left to give.

  A candle had been burning earlier and the bedroom still smelled of lilac and orange. He was holding on to the anger. The anger that he couldn’t say how he felt without hurting her. How it would hurt him to hurt her. He didn’t want to feel bad himself. Suffuse, he thought. Infuse. Refuse. Then he put his hand on her back.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She caught her breath. “What is?” she asked. “What’s okay? Okay what?”

  Jack didn’t say anything but he didn’t take his hand away. He wasn’t at a loss for words. But lately he’d had trouble saying what he wanted to say. He could say other things. She didn’t want to know, he thought. Not really. He had a pulsating rush in his ears. She didn’t want to hear it. What he had to say. A rushing pulse. He couldn’t describe it. It sounded like stormwater through a culvert.

  He’d said that to a doctor once. “Sometimes, at night, I have a pulsating rush in my ears,” he’d said. “I can’t describe it. It sounds like stormwater through a culvert.”

  “Is it a deep rolling noise?” the doctor asked.

  “No,” Jack said. “It pulses. It’s irregular.”

  “High-pitched?” the doctor asked. “A high-pitched ringing?”

  “No,” Jack said. “It’s like a torrent of water being turned on and off randomly. It’s like a big wave of grimy water chasing me through a tunnel.”

  The doctor said it was normal. “It’s normal,” the doctor had said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Jack turned towards Iris and pulled himself closer to her. Lined his hips up with hers. He needed to get some sleep. She needed to get some sleep. They needed to relax.

  “Okay,” he whispered. Then, a couple seconds later, “Let’s have sex.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said again. “Can I hold you then? For a bit?”

  “No.”

  He started to turn away.

  “Okay,” she said. She wanted to relax. She wanted him to relax. “Yes.”

  He put his arm back over her shoulder. He was warm and she was cold. He folded his legs so they fit in the acute angle at the back of her knees. Pressed his chest against her back. Kissed her on the neck. Her ass was in his lap. When he held her tighter he took her breast in his hand. His hand was trembling.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. She half-turned her head so she could see him.

  “Yeah,” he said. He let go of her and rolled onto his back.

  “No you’re not,” she said.

  Iris turned over. She looked at him. He looked straight up into the darkness. The beard gave him that strong jawline he’d never had. Even in the dark she could see that. They’d been sleeping together for nearly fifteen years. Nearly half their lives. Things hadn’t always been like this. How long had things been like this?

  Iris could picture Jack two days earlier holding the front door as she unscrewed the hinges. How he danced the door out of the frame and into the garage. It almost made her laugh.

  “Like the Russian ringmaster and the dancing bear,” he’d said, “without the mauling.”

  He used to make her laugh all the time.

  It was funny once.

  It wasn’t funny anymore.

  “Who else have you held like that?” she wanted to say.

  Then she said it: “Who else have you held like that?”

  But Jack didn’t answer. That was the thing with him these days. He always seemed to have something to say except when Iris wanted him to have something to say. To have an answer. To answer.

  There had been another woman. Recently. She knew that. Someone he met at work. Someone she’d never met. He’d told her a few weeks earlier. He told her when he met the woman. He told her when it became something else. He’d said it out loud.

  “I went to see Andy,” he’d said.

  He’d said, “Yes, I slept with her.”

  He’d said, “No, I don’t love her.”

  Then he’d said, “It’s not that simple.”

  He hadn’t lied. He hadn’t tried to. But he hadn’t said enough either.

  She could feel him trembling beside her in bed. Her feet and hands were still cold from being up with the baby. The rain stampeded the bedroom window.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t check?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “It will be okay. Or it won’t. There’s nothing we can do right now.”

  The night before the baby got sick Iris had gone to lock the front door on her way to bed when she felt the warped hardwood around the threshold beneath her bare feet. She got down on her hands and knees and touched the floor with her fingers. The wood had swollen and warped and buckled and when Jack pulled it up the next morning there was water between the wood and the plastic membrane over the subfloor.

  The door needed to be reframed and resealed, Jack decided. The hardwood matched and cut and knit to fit with the grain of the undamaged wood. This is what he told Iris. “The door needs to be reframed,” he’d said. “The floor can be matched and knit in.”

  “Okay,” she said.


  “I can do this,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” She wanted to believe him. But she wanted the problem fixed more.

  “I want to try,” he said.

  “Okay,” she’d agreed. “Try.”

  Lying in bed now, Iris could still feel the damp breeze that blew through the cavity of the doorway that day. It had been in the house until nightfall. She could feel the shiver. It was still in her bones.

  “In Russia,” Jack said after he’d danced the door against the garage wall, “back in the day that’s how they’d evict you.”

  “What is?” Iris laughed. “A dancing bear?”

  She imagined a Russian man in a fur coat leading a bear up to the house. The bear stood there and then the two danced, the man and the bear. The occupants dashed out the back door laughing.

  “They’d take your door,” Jack said. He was being serious. “The landlord would come and take your door away. You’d leave. Or you’d freeze.”

  Iris had the baby on her back in a carrier. Sometimes it was the only way the child would sleep. The only way Iris could get anything done.

  “You’ll get this door up before dark?”

  “I will,” he’d said.

  And he did.

  He’d worked all day. Made several trips to the hardware store. Looked things up online. Measured. Cut. Hammered. Measured again. Cut again. And so on. By five o’clock that evening the door was back in its frame and closed tighter than ever.

  “Thank you,” she said and turned up the heat she’d had off all day. The gas fireplace flickered to life. The dog went and lay in front of it. Iris had the baby in her arms. Her feet were so cold she could hardly feel them.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “I’ll do the floor when we can get the wood. Later in the week. Next weekend. Something like that.”

  They stood there looking at each other.

  “But the door works,” he said. “It’ll keep us dry. Warm.”

  “Okay,” she’d said.

  “Try it,” he said.

  So she did. Jack held the baby and Iris went to the door and opened it. The dampness jumped on her. The sky was so black. She closed the door. “Good,” she said.