Josh Walters and I continued to see one another and enjoy each other’s company. We stuck to cafés, but what went on in the bathrooms of those cafés was memorable. Memorable. Joshua taught me any number of positions, the most apparently awkward of which were not the least arousing. True, I could have noticed certain things…For example the way he’d sometimes jerk my arms behind my back when he was about to climax, brutally handcuffing my wrists with his own hands. I didn’t find that significant until much later. But I took pleasure in our conversations and actually started feeling something like love for this man.
It’s almost impossible, murmurs Subra, not to love someone who has told you about the pain of his childhood.
The following year Dr Walters got a divorce and, to celebrate, invited all his friends and acquaintances to a party on the roof of his building. My mother refused to attend — she was friends with Joshua’s ex-wife, and found the idea in poor taste. So my father and I went to the party together. My therapy with the good doctor now being officially and successfully terminated, Simon must have figured it wouldn’t do any harm for me to go along. Is that logical? I’m not quite sure. Maybe he wanted me there so as not to arouse Lisa’s suspicions? I’m trying to understand.
Josh was already half-soused when he welcomed us at the door. Seeing the Canon hanging around my neck, he burst out laughing: ‘Hey, that’s a terrific idea, young lady. You could make a fortune specialising in divorce photos. I mean, why does everybody take wedding photos? Weddings are banal. All weddings are alike, whereas every divorce is unique, unforgettable…and so much more dramatic! Let me do your Divorce Album! Marital quarrels with flying crockery! Tug-of-wars over children, books, furniture, household appliances! Gloomy hours spent in judges’ waiting rooms! Astronomical checks for legal advice…’
Simon and I laughed until we wept.
Up on the roof, the party was going full blast — Brazilian music, eighty people intent on having a good time, barrels of sangria, the late-June sky an abstract painting of pink and purple swirls. And when Simon saw his colleague clap his hand onto his daughter’s ass as they glued their bodies together to dance the samba, he held his tongue, and when I saw my father do the same with a girl I’d never seen before, I held mine. Blonde and buxom, the girl was wearing stiletto sandals and a fuchsia miniskirt; each of her fingernails was painted a different colour and her hands moved incessantly over my father’s back, now on his shirt, now under it. All that. All that, that night. An unending flow of sangria and saliva and sap. My excitement at being suddenly acknowledged by my father as an adult. My discomfort at seeing him blithely betraying my mother before my very eyes.
‘The human species still has a long way to go,’ he said to me gravely in the car, as we headed back towards Westmount at four a.m. ‘Possessiveness and jealousy are really nothing but vestiges of our ancient past. They date back to the Neolithic, when men first co-opted women’s fertility and invented the nuclear family to keep track of lineage and property rights. Jealousy serves no purpose at all in our day and age. Between women’s lib, the high divorce rate and contraception…Speaking of which, I hope you’re taking precautions?’ ‘Yes, Daddy.’ ‘Good. That’s good.’ ‘What’s her name?’ ‘Sylvie.’ ‘Is she Québecoise?’ ‘Yes, but perfectly bilingual. She works as a secretary at the university and takes night classes in theatre. She’s an amazing person.’ ‘I see.’ ‘Let’s leave it at that, okay? You agree we should leave it at that?’ ‘Yes, Daddy.’
To Lisa, Sylvie was neither more nor less than a vague colleague of her husband’s who occasionally phoned him at home to discuss administrative issues. It was both thrilling and guilt-inducing to share this secret with my father — concealing from my mother, by tacit agreement, such a crucial part of our lives. A bit like mutual blackmail—I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine—each of us holding the card which, slapped down, could ruin the other’s game in an instant. The incredible thing was how easy we found it to be duplicitous, week after week and month after month for nearly a year. I even made friends with Sylvie. We compared our methods of contraception. I was on the Pill, and Sylvie, to make sure she didn’t give me a half-brother or — sister, used a diaphragm. How did we convince ourselves that the situation could lead to anything but disaster?
What’s going on? Subra asks. Why are all these old stories coming back to haunt you this morning?
Rena has no idea. Photography’s not allowed in the museum, so her Canon is of no avail. She’s at the mercy of every memory her brain chooses to dredge up. No matter what work of art she chooses to look at, the floodgates open and it seems that nothing can shut them again.
She moves on to the next room.
La Scultura
Here, aptly enough, are the different art forms as sculpted by Andrea Pisano. Chiselled in small marble panels: La Musica, La Pittura, La Scultura. The latter brings her up short.
Burned into her retina: the primal scene, the primordial scene, the primitive scene.
The marble sculptor holds the marble body. The living sculptor holds the marble body. The living sculptor holds the living body. Furious, the sculptor strikes the marble body. Pygmalion dances with Galatea. I dance with your friend. Donatello kisses Mary Magdalene. You kiss my friend. Mary Magdalene weeps at Jesus’s feet. Camille Claudel weeps at Rodin’s feet. Rodin sculpts Camille Claudel. Your friend kisses me. Your friend strikes the marble body. I weep at your friend’s feet. Furious, you strike your friend.
I was sixteen now, and Sylvie must have been pushing twenty. Simon Greenblatt — who, though he hadn’t yet completed his thesis, had managed to publish a couple of valid articles on the medical uses of LSD — and Joshua Walters, who now ran the psychiatric ward of his hospital, had been invited to London for a conference on Mind and Brain. It so happened the dates of the conference coincided with my Easter holiday.
Why didn’t I go with them? ‘It would be a great chance for our Rena to discover Europe!’ Simon exclaimed. And Lisa walked right into his trap. I don’t really know how to explain my mother’s blindness except by saying that she was preoccupied with her work, her struggle, the daunting problems of all the Québecoises who filed into her office seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, knocked up, drugged, infected with syphilis, abused by family members or raped by strangers. Simon told his wife only as much of the truth as he figured she could digest: the conference organisers had reserved two hotel rooms for him and Joshua, each of which contained a double and a single bed; they could easily share one of the rooms and leave me the other one; the only remaining expense would be my plane ticket — it was well worth it! Absent-mindedly, Lisa must have given her consent. She must have smiled, written out a cheque for the plane ticket, and trotted off to plead at court.
Sylvie met up with us at Mirabel Airport. The money for her ticket had been forked out by Joshua (a detail we all, for some reason, found hilarious). Standing together at a counter in the airport bar, we raised our glasses in a toast — my, weren’t we clever!
While the men attended and delivered lectures, Sylvie and I spent two euphoric days criss-crossing the city of London in search of bargains. And at night…Well, under cover of night-time, many things come to pass that no one can judge or comprehend…I have no idea what went on between Simon and Sylvie in Room 418, nor do I recall the exact progression of events between Joshua and myself in Room 416; it must have been fairly swift, though, because by the morning of the third day I found myself strapped to the bed with ropes brought especially from Montreal — naked, naturally, spread-eagled and blindfolded — while, standing behind me, also naked, Joshua whipped me with his belt. I knew quite well why the good doctor was treating me like this, knew it was nothing personal — he’d told me all about his childhood…