“What’s that?” she asked.
“A faithful Indian turned to stone by a spirit as reward for his virtue.”
The Champagne was long gone. It was perhaps now two in the morning. Lillian tried to tickle some more life out of me but her ministrations failed. Nitrates could help, chemicals from the dispensary or extracts by Chinese apothecaries: ground bear testes, rhinoceros horn, goat glands. My body betraying me. The humiliation forced a curt, cruel word to slip out and Lilyan flashed on me.
“Listen, you. I liked your look from the get-go and was feeling blue and lonesome and thought you might be good company. Now you hand me this guff after all I’ve done tonight. I’m not some floozy you can pay to go away, you know.”
“I know. I’m sorry, it’s just that...”
“What?”
She waited for my response.
“Christ, nothing.”
“All right. I understand. It’s not easy for a man.”
“Please stop.”
“What is it? Is it me?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Because if there’s anything you want me to do to help I will.”
“You’ve done enough already. It’s my fault. I’ve had a tough day, that’s all.”
“Doing what?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
She left the bed, grabbed her shift and started to dress. I lay where I was, silent, biting my fool’s tongue. She put on enough for propriety’s sake and gave me a dead glance, then opened the door and exited without a word, stage right, down curtain, no applause. I got up and threw my cigaret in the toilet, closed the light and beat the pillows into a different shape. The sheets still held her scent. I went and opened the windows wide into the cold October air and stood naked and alone in the blackness of the night.
TUESDAY
THE NEXT MORNING I checked out of the Occidental and into the Wayside, nearer the station. There’d been something not altogether canny about the manner in which Lilyan Tashman had inveigled me into sharing her company. She had finagled herself quickly and efficiently up to my room, too sudden a seduction. My erotic appeal was not that strong, and yet she’d ended up leaving in what seemed a genuine huff. Was it really genuine? The woman was a professional, it would be wise to remember. Everything she’d told me might be a pack of lies. Since then, however, no danger had befallen me, none I knew of. By cultivating the notion that I was being singularly targeted I aggravated what the psycho-analysts would term a complex: paranoid persecution. Its symptoms were characterized by an unreasoning suspicion with regards to the malevolent motivation of others. Considering the circumstances, this conviction didn’t seem entirely unhealthy. At the very least I was wanted by the police for robbing the kino, never mind my participation as accessory to other crimes. I knew a medicine I might take to palliate my fears: the analgesic morphine. I hankered after it with sharp pangs of need and hunger.
It was past time to purchase a proper suit and hat so I walked to the Old Town and found a three-piece worsted at the Hudson’s Bay Company in addition to a box of cartridges for my revolver. If inclined I might purchase pemmican, snowshoes, a muskrat skin. I wore my new habille out of the store and had Jack’s duds sent to the Mount Royal Hotel. It was now noon and I felt a respectable member of society once more so I grabbed a newspaper and hunted up a cup of java.
In the broadsheet I read nothing but breathless copy on the queen of Rumania in Philadelphia. Turning my mind to the current situation aggravated doubts. There was more to Jack’s scheming, larger plots, entangling deceptions. He was using me for some reason, as a penance or salve to his conscience, while at the same time manipulating me. If this criminal course continued, it’d behoove me to ferret out any potential dangers. That raised the question of where to begin my investigation. As it happened, and as always, idle speculation led me to preoccupation with Laura, her elegance, presence, her charm. My love curdling to sweet hatred.
Turning back to the Gazette, I sought anything further on the movie house robbery, but the story’d fallen out of the ’paper, its column inches now occupied by advertisements for cold creams and Hallowe’en stout ale.
I lit a cigaret and again attempted to puzzle out Jack’s actions, but with such scant information it was too much to ask of my brain. Coffee rolled in my stomach so I got up and left a few pennies on the table by way of a gratuity, starting to feel ill and jazzed. While walking St. Catherine west one of Robert Service’s poems rhymed in my head, perhaps prompted by the rhythm of my paces. Fugitive pensées straying, my parasite flicking its tail. Kill it with a dose of hard brandy, bite at a thumbnail and notice your trembling fingers. My hands were clean as I moved lightly over the sidewalk, stepping nimbly between pedestrians slowing to gawk at displays in store windows. I went into Morgan’s and bought a snappy new brim, fifteen dollars for grey felt. Put Jack’s in a box. Across the street in the square the Salvation Army murdered a hymn.
At the Mount Royal, Mr. Standfast was not in. I left Jack’s topper at the desk and at last placed his alias, from the novel by John Buchan. Lingering awhile I thumbed through an antique, greasy copy of the Canadian Illustrated News. Later, something in the newspaper raised my ire. From the desk I cadged pen and paper and wrote:
TO THE EDITOR, The Gazette
Sir,
It has been said that an Irishman’s only political plank is the shillelagh; nevertheless, an item in today’s edition prompts a response. The Native Sons of Canada have yet again put forward a motion to adopt a new flag. The Red Ensign, it seems, is no longer good enough. Very well. This being the case, here is, and with all apologies to Dean Swift, my own modest proposal for Canada’s banner. Simply, it should be a revised coat of arms, viz,
The shield: a potato on a bed of rice, symbolizing the country’s two founding races, Irish and Chinese, supported by one pig sinister, for Ottawa, and one dexter beaver biting off its testicles, for the taxpayer.
The wreath: celluloid poppy flowers, symbolizing industry. The crest will be a carrion crow atop a battle bowler, our blazon resting on a field of green, for the almighty Yankee dollar.
The motto: Proximus sum egomet mihi.
Once unfurled, this new Canadian standard will surely fly forth proudly and lead forward this great Commonwealth we call Empire!
Yr. humble servant, &c.,
Mr. Charles Uxbridge Farley, Esq.
Montreal, Canada
I licked an envelope and sealed the little humdinger. Instead of a stamp I put down the Gazette office as a return address. It’d take time to get there, but I’d saved a penny.
When I left the hotel I dropped my epistle into a blue Royal Mail postbox, its coat of arms—a lion and chained unicorn—the English again, sticking it to their defeated subjects with every common appurtenance of authority, this year in the reign of George V. The King’s name prompted the memory of hearing his high, quavering voice coming out the funnel of a phonograph player somewhere by Phoenix Park. I’d been let out of hospital at last, recovered from the ’flu, taking in the city’s sights: the post office still a ruin from the Easter Uprising, Parnell festooned with ivy, Nelson’s Column. A crowd stood near the Castle and listened to their sovereign, the first time his voice had ever sounded in public. Beside me a drunk punter blew a raspberry in derision and staggered off. The drunk was followed away by a sober man in an overcoat, Holy Ireland an island of informers, spies, Black and Tans, Republicans, myself in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and eighteen.