I read them only later that evening when I got into bed, the tiredness back: I had spent the whole afternoon at the studio, rearranging the furniture, canvases, and painting supplies, and all I’d wanted to do was to plunk my head onto the pillow and sleep, nothing more, but then I remembered the poster, got up and looked for it in the pocket of the jacket that was hanging in the closet by the entryway, climbed back into bed, switched on the bedside-table lamp, and began to read. Daniel Atijas, it said, is a writer from Belgrade; he has published four novels and two collections of short stories; his work has been translated into a dozen languages; he will be speaking on history and literature in the Balkans; date, time, place. Then I fell asleep. It was two days later that I came away from a conversation with people I knew in the administration with, in my hands, a full file of material on Daniel Atijas: his complete biography, reviews of his books that had been translated into English and French, the transcript of a BBC interview, stories published in American literary magazines, two essays (one, “A Vanishing World”; the other, “Writers and the Collapse of Yugoslavia”), news items on his appearances at various literary gatherings, the schedule for his stay in Banff. In short, I was ready to welcome him, and while I was waiting for his talk to begin, I studied the flakes of dandruff on the shoulders of the president of the Banff Centre. When Daniel Atijas entered the room, I didn’t recognize him, so while he was taking his place at the podium by the microphone, I turned, thinking I would catch sight of the Daniel Atijas I was expecting to see as he approached through the rows of seats. Afterward I attributed this misapprehension to my nerves, which kept me from observing clearly, and immediately after that I explained it away as his nerves, which made the lines of his face harsher, and I had to remind myself that photographs always deceive, because no matter how unskillful the people who take them, the pictures always capture what the photographers mean to see through the camera lens.
This was June 10. We met on June 11 in the dining hall during lunchtime. Though everything up to that point may have been deliberate, this really was a chance encounter. I was sitting alone at a large round table, poking at noodles I had chosen for no obvious reason, when Daniel Atijas stopped by and asked if there was a free place for him to sit. He was holding a tray with a bowl of soup and a salad. Nobody here but me, I said, and even I am not here at times. Daniel Atijas smiled fleetingly, as if uncomfortable at intruding on my solitude. He struck me as the type who was more concerned about others than himself, but I didn’t say so. I waited for him to sit, and then I introduced myself, courteously, slowly, though I still couldn’t believe he was sitting across from me, and said, no secret, that I had been at his talk and that I had enjoyed his evenhanded presentation, particularly, I remarked, when he spoke of the interaction, or rather clash, between urban and rural writing in contemporary Serbian literature. Daniel Atijas nodded and started to eat his soup. I couldn’t, I said, help but notice that a similar relationship, at times even to the point of intolerance, existed in western Canada — in other words, here, I said, where the rural experience still defines its spirit, though, I said, nine-tenths of the population are living in greater or smaller urban areas.
Cities are like women, I said then, but Daniel Atijas only sipped his soup and glanced from time to time out the window. Once he reached for the salad I had almost given up, but I mustered the strength to continue, which did not happen once he’d left, for despite my desire to get up right then and there and follow him out, I could not quiet the trembling of my thighs, and sank back into the chair. The noodles still lay on the plate, the fork groaned under caked ketchup, the spoon was flat on its back, iceberg-like the napkin rose toward my lips. Everything was the same, yet it was all different. The next few days, I carefully studied the schedule for Daniel Atijas’s stay at the Centre; I amassed more information, followed his movements, always from afar, kept an eye in the dining room on what he ate and with whom he sat, eavesdropped on conversations two or three times. I felt like a spider spinning its web, not the web of children’s stories, of course, which invariably symbolizes something evil, not at all — in fact, spiders are always welcome at my studio in Saskatoon; as far as I’m concerned the spider is a marvelous architect, an artist of space. Were I a spider, my web would have been an artwork in progress — in rapid progress, no doubt, for, judging by his schedule, I saw that Daniel Atijas was going to spend a total of thirteen days in Banff: he had arrived on June 9 and was leaving on June 22. No time to lose, I told my face in the mirror as I shaved the next morning. If I am not mistaken, that was a Sunday, June 14. I was one of the first down for breakfast; Daniel Atijas was one of the last to arrive. Hidden behind a newspaper spread wide, I watched him serve himself scrambled eggs and orange juice.
He sat at a table at the other end of the dining hall, where two Japanese women were already seated. They soon struck up a lively conversation, which infuriated me, though I don’t anger easily, but after four cups of coffee I was having difficulty sitting still. Several times my feet seemed to be walking away from the table all by themselves. I was beginning to start in again on articles I had already read when Daniel Atijas finally stood. The Japanese women rose and bowed at the same time, and then, releasing me from the horror of the thought that they might all be leaving together, the women sat down. Daniel Atijas walked through the dining hall and up the stairs. I put the newspaper down and went after him. At the exit, however, I lost sight of him, and just as I was about to break into a run, someone grabbed me by the shoulder: Mark Robinson, a poet from Regina. If I had had it in me, I would have decked him then and there — I had never liked his poems anyway — but he was a whole head taller than I, with a broader girth, so I had to allow him to draw me close, press his cheek to mine, and thump me on the back. I, meanwhile, peered over his shoulder in hopes of catching sight of at least a patch of Daniel Atijas’s jacket. I regained my composure much later — drinking coffee again in the same building but now at the little restaurant off to the side — when Mark mentioned a party that evening at the home of the director of the Literary Arts Programs, to which all the writers had been invited, he claimed, and I believed him immediately, who were resident just then at the Centre. Thrills shivered through me. Sometimes, I thought, losing sight is better than seeing.
And besides, I was acquainted with the director of the Literary Arts Programs, and his wife, what’s more, was from Saskatoon, so I was always welcome to show up at the front door and knock, even though I am not a writer and hadn’t been invited. All the while I strained to keep all this from showing on my face, but eyes, as they say, are the mirror of the soul, and Mark, whether I liked his poems or not, was a poet nevertheless, and he suddenly looked hard at me and grumbled: You are on to something, admit it. At first I dug hurriedly through my mind for what I could admit — that the Banff Centre president had dandruff? — then I realized the cloaked meaning of his words, and I said there were plenty of hot-looking babes at the Centre this year, no kidding. Sure thing, said Mark, sure thing. I had no idea, in fact, of who was there, because when I hadn’t been following Daniel Atijas or inquiring about him, I had been spending every free moment in my studio working at drawing a face that I had been forever seeking. Not just the features, but its shape and the interrelation of the parts, especially where they defied an anticipated symmetry. I shook off Mark Robinson, but before I did, I had to promise that we’d spend an evening getting drunk together — like old times, said Mark — meaning that we’d reminisce about the years we had spent at the University of Saskatchewan at Saskatoon. I went off to my studio, where I stayed until evening, not even taking a break for lunch, obsessed first by new attempts at capturing the shape of the face and then by sketches for my painting A Rainy Day on the Prairie. More precisely, I struggled first with the shape of the face and then with the shape of rain.