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  STONES

  Timothy Findley

  First published by

  Penguin Books

  1988

  Against a vivid terrain of images, Findley continues his exploration of the many divisive and destructive acts played out on the personal battlegrounds on which we live our daily lives.

  From the realities of contemporary relationships to a fantastic vision of urban life; from social comment to the deeply personal—Stones is a powerful collection of stories from one of Canada’s best-loved writers.

  “Break out the champagne: there is a new book by Timothy Findley.”

  —Neil Bissoondath, The Globe and Mail

  “Stones is a masterful performance by Timothy Findley and sheds bright, perfect light on a part of that strange, strange thing called the human condition.”

  —The Gazette (Montreal)

  “[Findley] has an extraordinary gift for inventing small significant incidents, for entering into other people’s personalities and plights and allowing us to see what is both crazy and recognizable about humanity.”

  —The Toronto Star

  “Ever elegant, ever precise…Findley remains a magical writer…magical in the best and truest sense of the word.”

  —The Edmonton Journal

  “Stories as elegant and polished as cut glass.”

  —MacLean’s

  “A classic of its kind…Every one of the stories in Stones sends us scurrying for superlatives.”

  —The Ottawa Citizen

  “A succession of perfect moments that add up to a brilliant whole .”

  —The London Free Press

  “What the stories in this new collection reinforce is the striking depth of Findley’s writing…”

  —Calgary Herald

  “What lives and breathes within the heart of these lines is a passionate portrayal of humanity, and that involves a kind of genius. That’s what you find in Stones.”

  —The Windsor Star

  “One of Findley’s most disturbing and at the same time, finest works.”

  —Books in Canada

  “Findley achieves brilliance…Stones is a must for one’s library.”

  —Times Colonist (Victoria)

  “Stones is, in a word, wonderful. As a reader you finish [it] unwillingly. You want more.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “You will not encounter characters like these anywhere else…Their obsessions and loves…spring from the author’s unique perception of the human race: a synthesis of horror and beauty that has the reader going back a few lines and thinking, How did he do that?”

  —The Gazette (Montreal)

  STONES

  Timothy Findley was born in Toronto and now lives in the country nearby. His novel, The Wars, was a winner of the Governor-General’s Award and established him as one of Canada’s leading writers. Famous Last Words, his best-selling novel of gripping international intrigue, was published in 1981, and in 1983 Penguin reissued The Last of the Crazy People, his haunting first novel. In 1984 Findley’s first short story collection, Dinner Along the Amazon, was published, as was Not Wanted on the Voyage. In 1986 his second novel, The Butterfly Plague, was reissued in a revised edition and his mystery, The Telling of Lies, appeared. Findley was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1986.

  For

  Michael

  and in memory of

  Sal

  We are tomorrow’s past.

  Mary Webb

  “Bragg and Minna” first published in the Malahat Review, Fall 1987;

  “Foxes” first published in Rotunda, Summer 1987;

  “The Name’s the Same” first published in Grain, Spring 1987;

  “Almeyer’s Mother” first published in Saturday Night, June, 1988.

  Extracts of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”

  by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

  Courtesy of Elton John/Bernie Taupin, and Dick James Music Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  “Resume” by Dorothy Parker

  From The Portable Dorothy Parker

  Copyright 1926, renewed (c) 1954 by Dorothy Parker

  Reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin Inc.,

  and

  From Dorothy Parker

  Reprinted by permission of Gerald Duckworth

  CONTENTS

  Bragg and Minna

  A Gift of Mercy

  Foxes

  The Sky

  Dreams

  The Name’s the Same

  Real Life Writes Real Bad

  Almeyer’s Mother

  Stones

  BRAGG AND MINNA

  For Charlotte Engel

  This is what Minna had written before she died:

  Bragg always said we shouldn’t have the baby and everything was done a man can do to prevent it. Still, I wanted her and she was born and now I realize I’ve given birth to all of Bragg’s worst fears.

  Bragg could see himself walking with the others up the hill—whatever the hill was called—the hill that led to Ku-Ring-Gai. He could see the three men walking upwards and the other two, the man and the woman, waiting on the level where the car was parked. He could see all this with perfect recall—staring down from the Plexiglas window, riding in the 747 high above the Pacific Ocean. All he had to do in order to regain the scene on the hill—or any scene—was turn the memory projector on in his mind and run the film: three men walking up the hill to Ku-Ring-Gai—himself; his lover, Col; and Nob, the sad, mad poet from Sydney who was their guide that afternoon.

  The day he was scanning—which was yesterday—had been humid, hot and dusty and the air had been thick with the sound of feeding insects. For whatever reason, the insects themselves could not be seen and Bragg—so appallingly tense to begin with—had begun to extract from their invisibility the sort of menace endured by the blind. He kept on trying to brush the sound of them away from his eyes and he dared not speak for fear he would swallow something deadly.

  Everything had gone awry…

  (Now, that’s a nice old-fashioned phrase, my dear; he thought—in Minna’s voice:

  There I was, so hot and dry

  and everything had gone awry…)

  Still, it was true. All or any hope that some happy trace of Minna would emerge from his search had faded completely. What he had wanted was a sign—a signal that he could lay her ghost to rest at Ku-Ring-Gai without a sense of despair. But no such signs or signals had been forthcoming. On the other hand, his search for Minna memori had not been without its clues that she had definitely passed that way before him. The signs of her passage had been unmistakable: the red wine spilled on all the rugs, the dirty jokes repeated with all their Minna-twists-and-turns, the dark brown trail of cigarette butts and burns as plain as the bread crumbs scattered by Hansel and Gretel when they entered the deadly wood. So Bragg could say: “I certainly know she’s been here”—but all he got in reply was a nod without elaboration. The trouble was that everyone Bragg had interviewed had wanted to protect him from the truth—they didn’t want to be the first to spill the beans: as if he didn’t know the beans were in the pot.

  All this, of course, was part of the usual Minna Joyce conspiracy; the network of spies and allies set up everywhere she went. Long ago Bragg had said that if Minna had chosen to go down into the Antarctic, she could have established a successful branch of the Minna Joyce conspiracy amongst the King penguins. Such was the power of her belief in who she was and in everything she did, no matter the consequence.

  Damn the consequence! That was her motto. And damn the mayhem she brought wherever she went and damn the anguish she left behind whenever she went away.

  So, now he was carrying Minna’s ashes up the hill to Ku-Ring-Gai…

  He was watching Nob, “the sa
d, mad poet from Sydney” (that was a quote from one of Minna’s letters), struggling up the path before him, bleeding his gin-soaked perspiration into his dark green shirt. He wondered what it was that Stanley Nob—so undeniably sad, but maybe not so mad—had known about Minna? What had they shared that Nob was refusing to share with Bragg? Had they slept so happily together…? Did he sleep with everyone he met, the way that Minna had? Bragg could so easily make the picture of it: Nob was so damned good looking…Bragg had wanted him himself. But the picture of himself with Nob was not the picture Bragg was making climbing up the hill.

  The picture he was making had to do with desperation: maybe the very picture of desperation itself. It was of Nob and Minna sweating—bathed in their mutual sorrow—struggling the way she had struggled with him, with Bragg, against his refusal to give her a child: struggling in behalf of her own determination that he would. Come on and fuck, you bastard! she had told him—yelling at him. Don’t you understand? If we don’t fuck, we die.

  If we don’t fuck, we die.

  Another nice old-fashioned phrase, my dear.

  Had she known, even then, that she was dying—or was it just the babble of someone driving someone else to climax?

  On the hill, Bragg shut his eyes because he didn’t want to look any more at Nob’s sweating back. It told him the one sure thing he didn’t want to know: that Minna had escaped him utterly.

  On the plane—which was taking them to San Francisco—there was a washed-out, brazen girl who looked like Janis Joplin. She was wandering up and down the aisles, claiming she was alone but treating all the passengers as if they were her relatives and friends. Bragg could see she was almost totally gone on something—more than likely cocaine—and she kept augmenting whatever it was with swigs of whisky from a so-called can of beer.

  Bragg had seen her fill the beer can earlier from a bottle of Chivas Regal she kept amongst some clothing in her bag. The bag was one of those shapeless, woven things they sell in every market-place from Marrakesh to Lima—its colours bleached and blotched from infusions of too much sun and too much dye. When the girl sat down beside him, shaking out her brown frizzy hair, Bragg could smell a whole biography of odours rising from the lumpy shape in her lap: of suntan lotion, hash oil, bourbon and expensive perfume. He noticed the girl held onto the bag as if it were alive and he also noticed that her fingernails were chewed.

  “Hey,” she said—lifting her black-rimmed Foster Grants high enough for Bragg to see her eyes—“am I sitting here?” She squinted at him, smiling and ingratiating—wincing at the light. Her eyes were like two cracked marbles that might have been green.

  “You may be sitting here now,” Bragg said, “but not when my friend comes back.”

  “Oh,” the girl said. “You’re not alone. Dammit.” She seemed to be genuinely disappointed.

  “That’s right,” Bragg told her. “My friend has gone to the washroom.”

  “You mean he’s gone to the head,” she said. “On a plane they call it the head. The same as on a ship.”

  “I always call it the wash room.”

  “Oh, the wash room,” the girl said—making fun of him. “Oh, the wash room!” she said. “I have to go to the wash room!” She laughed and took another swig from her beer can.

  Bragg looked away from her and sat still. He hoped that Col would come back soon and make the girl move on. It wasn’t just that she was becoming obnoxious. Bragg could deal with that; he’d certainly had the requisite training. But the girl was beginning to remind him of Minna—the husky voice that wandered up and down the scale—the smell of her perfume, which he knew by now was Opium—and the stench of alcohol. It was unbearable.

  Then the girl said: “You know what, mister? You look awful sad. Like someone died.” Bragg didn’t utter.

  “Me, I’m not allowed to look sad,” the girl informed him, trying not to smile. “I’m not allowed to look sad, cause I’m going home now, to be married. In San Francisco.” She was silent for a moment and Bragg turned to look at her and then she said: “Is this a smoking section we’re sitting in?”

  He held up his cigarette so the Janis Joplin girl could see it burning. Now she’s going to ask me for one; he thought—and then she’ll come back and back and back and ask me over and over for more cigarettes—all the way to San Francisco. That’s how she’ll trap me. That’s how she’ll bond me to her: just the way Minna did. And next thing I know, I’ll be lifting her luggage off the carousel—arranging for her cab and making sure she gets to her hotel.

  “You got a cigarette?” she asked.

  “No,” said Bragg. “I haven’t. I’m smoking my very last one.”

  “Oh,” the girl said, and she laughed out loud. “You expecting a firing squad or something?” She got up slowly then and went away from him down the aisle.

  There was a great solid plain of clouds below them now above the sea, and Bragg could not imagine where they were. The Janis Joplin girl had wandered off in search of another vacant seat—and Bragg had watched her pausing here and there to stare down into someone’s face and asking them: “should I be sitting here?”—then moving on. Squinting, he could turn her all too easily into Minna and he could all too easily imagine Minna doing the same thing, rearranging the passengers to suit herself—except that Minna would have phrased her injunction differently. Minna would have said: “I can’t imagine how this has happened…” smiling, charming, poised for the punch line: “but you’re sitting in my seat…” blowing smoke in her victim’s face—“and you’ll have to move your ass.”

  Or, if she was working in her lady-mode: “I wonder if you’d mind…?” And then: “of course, I can have you forcibly removed…”

  And she would have had the baby with her; carrying the child for all the world to see on her hip. Minna with Stella, running all the way to Australia, just to escape from Bragg and die in peace.

  Or, so he believed.

  Colin Marsh and Stuart Bragg had met in Toronto before Bragg’s marriage to Minna went on the rocks. But Colin had nothing to do with driving them apart; that was all internal, deep inside the marriage itself and, indeed, so deep that even Bragg and Minna, with all the help of all the psychoanalysts in all the world would not have known where to look for the fissures. Some people seek each other out—Col remembered being told—in order to complete a circle. But what we have not been told is that, sometimes the circle being completed is a kind of death trap. We have not been told some people seek each other out in order to be destroyed.

  Now, when Col came back they ordered drinks but were otherwise silent. Col was good at feeling out a silence. He could tell, before he put his hands out, where the snakes were going to be.

  We are told, Col thought, as he looked at his friend beside him, an awful pack of lies about love. Some big cheese in everyone’s life is always handing down some line about people being made for each other, as if the violins would always play: as if Anne Murray would always sing at all the anniversaries. The truth was, no one sang. The only example Col had ever had of anyone getting all the way through to the end intact had been his parents—and they had so many secrets from one another, it had only been their lies that kept them together.

  Col looked away and began to scan the covers of the books being read around him. He wondered if any of the books were Bragg’s—or Minna’s. It was always the strangest feeling when that happened; when he saw, with a start, the cover of one of Bragg’s or Minna’s books. Strangers, it seemed, were invading his private world—the world at home where the books were written and Bragg leaned over his pages, looking like a giant bug—a beetle by lamplight.

  Bragg’s room was upstairs—his cabinet, as he liked to call it—though it hadn’t any door, but only a curtain. Col used to go up late at night to see if Bragg was ready to go to bed—but the back beneath the lamplight and the cigarette smoke that curled up past the green glass shade were all the signal he needed to go away. Col slept halfway down the hall in a room between Bragg’
s cabinet and Minna’s bedroom. Bragg slept sometimes with one and sometimes the other. Sometimes, he slept in the sunroom—bunched on the wicker couch with Ben, his dog. This was in the house on Collier Street—not the one they lived in now, on Binscarth up in north Rosedale. Minna had refused to live in Rosedale. “Them as live in Rosedale,” Minna had said to Col, in her tea-time imitation of Eliza Doolittle, “are them as keep their shit in jars.”

  My dear.

  Col smiled even now, as he thought of Minna’s hatred for what she called ladyhood. She saw it as the enemy of everything she wanted women to be. It had almost destroyed her—or so she claimed—brought up the way she was, with “a silver spoon in every orifice…” Not that getting rid of them was easy. Minna’s life, until she met Bragg and married him, had been a life of inherited privilege mixed with deliberate squalor. She’d gone to live in Parkdale, “my dear—with all its resident rubbies and gentle crazies, dressed in all weathers in their summer coats and woollen mittens and all their hair cut straight across in bangs and all with their tam-o’-shanters pulled down over their ears and their eyes as crafty and innocent all at once as the eyes of bears…” She used to talk like that to Col, when they sat together over her bottles of Cotes-du-Rhone in the kitchen late at night. And she would wave her cigarette as she talked, weaving her images out of smoke, and her voice was hoarse, and Col had definitely fallen in love with her, though not the way Bragg had fallen in love—not fiercely, as if to be in love was to call up all your anger—but in love the way all men were in love with the made-up women in their minds: those women who never get a chance to come down into the streets and walk around real because once they were real, like Minna, they threw you off balance and blew you away A boy like Col could be in love with such a woman because he never had to contend with her needs. He only had to watch and listen and pay attention and pour the wine. And Col could do this by the hour.