The Old World and Other Stories Read online

  Prince passed the first trees and moved along a narrow but clear path. We were trotting. Every so often an evergreen branch brushed my shoulder. The trees blotted out much of the light, and the air was heavy with pollen or wood particles or something. The path began to rise until we were on a ridge with the forest falling away on either side and I could appreciate how beautiful it was. With the reins in my hands I sat more upright. It occurred to me that if I pulled on the reins I might be able to get Prince to stop.

  I didn’t pull on the reins.

  Ahead was a bed of pine needles dappled with light. A fox turned its narrow head to us and passed into the trees. “You’re something else, Prince,” I whispered, and he raised his head as if acknowledging the compliment. I realized that I wasn’t scared anymore.

  The trees thinned and we emerged onto a path that ran along a field of sunflowers on heavy stalks. We moved alongside their intoxicating colour for a good mile before Prince turned down a slope. Below us was a verdant hollow with a river running along its bottom. As we moved down, the trees looked different, almost tropical, with vines winding up the trunks and dangling trumpet-shaped flowers. Before some of the blooms hovered tiny, iridescent things with blurred wings. Hummingbirds.

  Prince stepped almost delicately as the ground became steep and studded with mica-inflected rocks. As he worked his way down to the riverbank, I could see that the water wasn’t tranquil but swift-moving. He walked along onto the wet mud.

  “Now, boy,” I said, patting his neck, “we really don’t need to —”

  But he waded in. When my own legs began to submerge I felt an icy shock. Still Prince kept going, and we kept sinking, and I could only hope that the water wouldn’t rise any higher under the horse’s head.

  The bottom dropped out.

  We both went under and came up again, sputtering. I held onto Prince’s mane as he paddled furiously. The current pulled us along; it was far too strong for the horse to break through. I wasn’t sure if I had a better chance holding on or swimming on my own but it seemed as if we were in this together. I choked on mouthfuls of water. I would drown and never see Maureen or anyone I knew again. On and on the river took us until we were both limp with exhaustion. I could barely hold on while Prince’s legs hardly moved. His head turned to the side and I saw his eye roll upwards.

  But just then the current relaxed. The river was entering a large lake. Prince’s hooves touched bottom and he stumbled onto the stony beach. For the first time the horse stood still.

  “We made it, ol’ boy.”

  Prince let me rub the side of his face. He walked onto the grass and let his head drop so that he could crop a mouthful. I let him eat. Looking ahead, I saw a green plain and mountains rising in the distance. The mountains were very old, their shapes softened by time, and all green but for one bare knob. The sun was already getting low and at some point we would have to stop and sleep, but not yet. I did think for a moment of Maureen, but I knew that Prince and I would keep moving toward the mountains.

  MRS. ORGANDY, NAKED

  Mrs. Organdy appeared on our doorstep less than an hour after the moving van had gone, holding a baked lasagna in a glass dish and a small gathering of flowers from her garden. My mother, who had been anxious about making new acquaintances, was delighted. She insisted on introducing me and my two little sisters.

  Mrs. Organdy, it turned out, was the school secretary. When school started I would see her at least once a week when I signed out to go to the doctor for my allergy injections. Maybe it was because she didn’t have to keep a bunch of kids in line all day, but Mrs. Organdy was always way more cheerful than our teachers. The first time I came into the office to sign out, she asked me if the needle hurt and told me how she’d once been treated for a drooping eye. She asked me if I could tell which one it was. (I could, but I pretended otherwise.)

  Mrs. Organdy wasn’t the acknowledged favourite in the school; that was the kindergarten teacher, who was beautiful and sang with a trill and who, after Christmas, didn’t return because she had gotten married. Most of the girls and even some of the boys in her class cried when they heard. But still, everybody liked Mrs. Organdy. She wasn’t just nice, she was interesting; even adults thought so. Mrs. Organdy went to unusual places for her holidays, such as Venezuela and Portugal. She was known to speak French. She was a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club and always chose an alternative selection.

  Of course I saw her more than once a week, because Mrs. Organdy lived at 1220 Norfolk Street and we lived at 1218. She had a very pretty flower garden in the front yard and a small pond in the back where goldfish lived all year round, even when it iced over, and she was often on her knees working in the beds or sitting on a folding chair by the pond, reading. Mrs. Organdy didn’t have children. She also didn’t seem to have a Mr. Organdy, at least not one that anyone saw. I didn’t think he was dead because people would have said so, and I often speculated on his whereabouts. Fighting in Korea? Saving lives as a doctor in Africa? In prison for robbing a bank? All seemed possible for someone who had married Mrs. Organdy.

  Our house had three bedrooms on the second floor and my younger sisters, who were only a year apart, shared the back one. I was ten years old and also a boy so I got the small, middle bedroom to myself. The window faced Mrs. Organdy’s house. I often lay on the bed and listened to my transistor radio, or sprawled on the rag rug and read comic books, or — more reluctantly — sat at my desk doing homework. It was while I was doing my math homework, about three months after we moved in, that I first saw Mrs. Organdy naked.

  Until then the light had always been off in the room across from my window. But on that day it flicked on and Mrs. Organdy began to go in and out of the room, bringing in various art supplies — a three-legged easel, a stool, a pile of canvases, a wooden box of paints. She wasn’t completely naked — she had a small blue scarf, or bandana, around her neck, something she occasionally wore at school. Of course it was the first time that I’d seen a woman’s body and I was quite surprised by certain details. Without clothes her manner of walking, feet slightly turned out, became more pronounced.

  From then on I often saw Mrs. Organdy in that room, standing before the easel with a pallet in one hand and a brush in the other. Always she wore only some little accent, a French-style beret perched at an angle on her head, a tiger-striped blanket over her shoulders. She would paint for an hour or so, frowning most of the time, and every so often a different-sized canvas would take the place of the one that had been there before. Sometimes she got paint on her thigh or arm, and once a drip of orange landed on her breast. The canvas was angled away so I had to imagine what she was painting. It occurred to me that because I could see her she ought to be able to see me, but I never saw her look my way. Even so, I made a point of closing the curtain when it came time to put on my pajamas.

  Something told me not to tell my parents that Mrs. Organdy liked to paint in the nude. I thought they might find it wrong and go knock on her door and say, “I’m sure you don’t realize but . . .” I couldn’t see why a nice person like Mrs. Organdy needed to be embarrassed like that. Also, how could I then go into the office every week and ask her to sign me out?

  And so I continued to do my homework at my desk, and Mrs. Organdy continued to paint. School finished at the end of June and Mrs. Organdy went away for the entire summer to France. I also went away, but just for two weeks to summer camp, which I didn’t like much. I preferred just hanging around doing nothing special. Then September came and Mrs. Organdy appeared in her garden, and my mother went out to ask her what it was like in France. School started and I continued the routine of signing out for my weekly injections, even though my allergies hadn’t improved.

  But Mrs. Organdy didn’t appear nude again. Not long after she returned from her trip she moved the easel, the stool, the canvases, and the box of paints out of the room. The thought that she was giving up her painting upse
t me until I realized she was probably just shifting to the other extra bedroom, the one facing her back yard, which, like my sisters’, got more light. I was sorry but had to admit that it became easier to get my homework done.

  One day after school, Mrs. Organdy knocked on our door. She told my mother (I was listening from the top of the stairs) that she was having a “little exhibition” of paintings at the recreation centre. There was going to be an opening party on Saturday afternoon, and she gave my mother an invitation she’d produced on the school Gestetner machine. My mother, who said she’d never been to an art opening, was quite excited and said we had to go.

  I panicked. “We can’t go,” I insisted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I want to go to the movies.”

  “That’s not very nice, is it? I’m sure we can go to the movies another time.”

  “All right,” said my father. “We’ll go to the art show. But remember, she’s just an amateur painter.”

  I think he said this just to annoy her. But I cringed at the thought of my parents seeing Mrs. Organdy’s paintings. They were sure to be nudes and, who knows, they might even show her close up.

  On Saturday I pretended to be sick but my mother felt my head and told me to get dressed. We dropped my sisters off at a birthday party and then drove to the recreation centre. The building smelled of chlorine from the indoor pool. There were hand-drawn signs taped to the concrete-block walls showing the way to the exhibit in the general purpose room. A lot of people were already there, standing around and holding plastic cups of Coca-Cola. Some people were looking at the paintings but a lot more were just talking to each other. I recognized the school principal and a couple of teachers but nobody else. I was the only kid.

  I hung back while my parents went over to congratulate Mrs. Organdy. When they were caught up in the crowd I began to walk around the walls of the large rectangular room. At first I didn’t look at the paintings but just kept walking slowly around, until finally I couldn’t wait any longer and lifted my gaze.

  I saw a painting of a giant chicken standing beside the Eiffel Tower.

  A horse standing in a field of gigantic sunflowers.

  A baby carriage next to a monstrous watermelon.

  I was looking at the moon inside a teacup when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “So,” Mrs. Organdy said, smiling. “What do you think?”

  “They’re . . . they’re the best paintings I’ve ever seen.”

  I meant it. It didn’t matter that I’d never been to an art gallery before — I was sure that I would like Mrs. Organdy’s paintings more than any others. She gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You’re an artist’s dream,” she said. And then my parents came over.

  Of course my father didn’t want to buy one, but my mother insisted. She chose the moon in the teacup. At home she propped it on a bookcase where it remained for several months. But then things began to get piled in front of it, not just books but also a vase someone had given my parents and a lopsided ceramic tree made by one of my sisters. When the painting had just about disappeared I slipped it out from behind the mess of things and took it to my room where I propped it on my dresser.

  Shortly after that, Mrs. Organdy got a job in a different school, and in the summer she went away again, only this time she didn’t come back. A “For Sale” sign appeared on the lawn and one weekend in late August I watched a new family move in. They were, my mother said as she prepared brownies, the mirror opposite of us — two small boys and one older girl.

  I took my hockey cards onto the porch so that I could watch the truck being unloaded. Looking up, I saw the girl, who paused to scowl at me before tromping into the house. She sure looked mad at having to move. I thought she might murder her whole family. Sorting my cards, I wondered where Mrs. Organdy had gone. Morocco, I thought, or maybe back to France. Places where she would be sure to fit in.

  My mother came out holding the dish of brownies covered in aluminum foil. “What a nice day,” she said. “Do you want to come next door and give these brownies with me?”

  I thought of the furious girl stomping into the house. “Okay,” I said, getting up.

  My mother ran her fingers through my hair to brush back my bangs. I brushed them forward again as we went down the porch steps.

  BAD WORDS

  As always, I write you on the birthday of our daughter. Anisa is five years old. And as always, I send you a photograph that we had taken at the studio. You don’t ask for this letter, or this photograph, I know, and you never reply. Will you answer this time? I won’t hold my breath. But, still, I send it.

  Anisa is, if anything, more talkative than ever. In fact, she only stops when she’s asleep or crying. She is a running stream of commentary: what she’s doing, what she’s thinking, what she wants or doesn’t want. Even what the objects around her — chair, book, stuffed animal — are thinking. If she scribbles a picture she’ll ask me to admire it, and then she kisses the paper before putting it in her folder. She’s an animist, our daughter — she believes that everything has a soul. You must be nice to your pillow, your hairbrush. And if you aren’t nice, if you become angry and throw the hairbrush across the room, you must later pick it up and stroke it and apologize so that you will be forgiven because of course you are a good person at heart.

  Isn’t everybody a good person at heart? She asked me that just the other day, God knows where the phrase came from. She picks things up from everywhere. Swear words, too, which of course interest her intensely. What makes a word bad? Why is it forbidden? Where does its dark power come from? If you say it, does the word give you its power or does it hurt you? Does it make a difference if you say the word for no reason or when you’re feeling as though you have a lightning storm inside? Just try to explain these sorts of things, day in and day out.

  But of course, you don’t have to. I wonder if you ever say to someone: “I have a daughter. Her name is Anisa and she lives on the other side of the world.” Maybe it gets you sympathy, makes you seem sensitive. Or perhaps you like to think of her when you’re alone, having a drink or two, letting your sentimental side come out. I hope it’s not to feel sorry for us, because we certainly don’t need you. It suddenly occurs to me that you might read this letter as some sort of plea for help. Well, just don’t.

  I’ve told you in the past that Anisa is unusually bright, but she has also become unusually wilful. Of course all children have tantrums, misbehave, push against the tyranny of the parent who they need and love and therefore must sometimes despise. It is often a fight to get her to do anything — to take a bath, button a jacket, settle down for sleep. When she goes to a friend’s house, she never wants to leave, even if the other parents insist it’s time. “I’m staying, I’m staying!” she shouts. She will lie on the floor and kick her feet or tear her own clothes or knock over glasses and dishes. More than once I’ve had to carry her out kicking and screaming, and believe me she isn’t afraid to hurt me if she can. Often as not I’m covered in scratches and bruises. Not long ago I scooped her up, head down, hoping to break the mood and make her laugh, and she kicked me in the eye. I had to wear a patch for three weeks. Of course she felt awful and made me tell her several times a day that I forgave her, that I knew she wasn’t really trying to hurt me.

  She looks nice in the photograph, doesn’t she? Her hair is combed, her face is washed. She sits calmly, her ankles crossed, her hand on the cast-iron dog (belonging to the photographer). But I can’t tell you how much effort went into catching this one image. How she ran from me laughing, pulled off her sandals, ran back to the waiting room, then over to the window to watch a brass band, which gave her the idea of marching across the room and making noises through her lips. How this game became serious to her, as if she weren’t keeping away from me for fun but because I would do something terrible to her if I caught her, how she became frantic as she hid behind the photographer’s legs. How di
d I finally get her to co-operate? Bribery. A promise of a trip to her favourite candy store. I even gave her money — it’s there, crumpled in the hand in her lap. If you look closely you can see that she isn’t calm at all; she’s alert, expectant, about to jump up again. All this to take a photograph for someone who’s never asked for one.

  I know all this must sound as if I’m complaining and feeling sorry for myself. But that isn’t it at all — I’d never write you for that reason. The simple truth is that I’m thankful for Anisa every day. Because above all she’s a loving child. She gives me kisses at unexpected times or climbs up when I’m reading on the sofa to lie next to me, warm as a hot water bottle. She tells me stories about talking trees and dragons and bad boys who have to be tricked. She makes up jokes with punchlines that sometimes make no sense and sometimes are unbelievably clever. She astonishes me every day with her bright thoughts and her quixotic compassion. She wants to give our money to a legless man begging on the sidewalk or comes up with a scheme for taking in all the stray cats. She asks me about my childhood and listens with deep intensity. She asks me about the world.

  She also asks me about you. And I tell her, of course I do. I tell her everything good, everything to make her feel strength in who she is. But the photograph — that’s for you. Because you don’t know how much you’ve lost, how much less your life is than it could have been. I send it so that you’ll at least have something to last another year.

  TELL ME A SECRET

  It’s beautiful.

  Can you please get off your back?

  I’ve never seen a more beautiful tree. Come down and look with me.