Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

Peterborough, and hadn’t noticed the loss until his advisor drew him aside a week later and offered to lend him the money for one. That had been during finals week, too.

After that he had taken to jotting reminders on his hand. His left hand at the moment read: GLOVES! BREAKFAST! DIEFENBAKER/RECIPROCITY! He stared at the message. Did he somehow owe a breakfast to John G. Diefenbaker? Surely not. He hazarded another guess. Gloves-in his coat pocket. Breakfast-a French roll to be eaten on the way to the university. And Diefenbaker/Reciprocity must refer to the article he had just spent an hour reading, of which he remembered nothing. He reluctantly admitted to himself that he knew the rest of the course material like the back of his hand-which was to say, that it made very little sense to him at the moment. He was blanking out again from the pressure.

Obtaining a master’s in history was more difficult than his family cared to believe, although they were grudgingly impressed that someone who had to keep a copy of his own address-twenty-four Wessex Drive, he thought hastily (just checking)-could memorize so many less familiar names and dates. Usually such facts and figures danced about in his head-what was the importance of a fly swatter in the diplomatic history of the French Third Republic? (he never forgot that)-but during exam week, his mine of information became a barren tunnel salted with surface trivia.

Milton sighed. Trying to figure out what caused his anxiety was a bit like trying to figure out what caused the German inflation of 1923. Eventually you sit down, and sigh, and admit that everything caused the German inflation of 1923.

Perhaps a study break would help to clear his mind. He considered dropping in for a chat with what’s-his-name, the New Yorker across the hall-but that might turn into an all-night debate, which it often did. The New Yorker, Gerald-what was his last name? Ford? Probably; it sounded familiar. Anyway, Gerald was specializing in international diplomacy. “You’re studying Canadian domestic politics?” he had demanded when they first met. Milton had acknowledged that this was so, and the Yank had grinned facetiously. “Isn’t that a bit like raising dairy cows for foxhunting? I mean, the potential seems hardly worth the effort. All you guys do diplomatically is referee. Now my country…” Milton shook his head. He wasn’t up to debating tonight. Better reread that piece on the Liberal Party of Canada. He groped for the book.

“I am here to demand that you change your vote on the Western Grain Stabilization Act,” said a stern voice from behind him.

For a stricken moment, Milton thought that he had warped out in the middle of Professor Paulsen’s exam, only to find himself unprepared, but no, this was definitely his room. Cautiously, he turned around and saw that it was only Mackenzie King, who had been dead since 1950 and could hardly be appearing as a guest lecturer at York. He smiled with relief. It was only a hallucination. He’d been expecting them, anyway.

“Don’t sit there smirking at me!” snapped the apparition. “I tell you, the Western Grain Stabilization Act simply will not do!”

“Oughtn’t you to be weighted down with a chain forged of old ballot boxes or something?” asked Milton mildly.

“Nonsense! You’re confusing me with a U.S. president! Several, in fact.”

“Very possibly. At any rate, you’re confusing me with someone else as well. I can’t vote in parliament. I’m a graduate student.”

The late prime minister pointed to Milton’s coffee mug. “M.P.-there it is, sir, plain as day!”

“My initials,” said Milton diffidently.

There was a short silence. “Oh.” Another pause. “Isn’t this twenty-four Sussex Drive?”

Milton consulted his wrist. “Twenty-four Wessex Drive,” he announced.

“Oh. I haven’t got the hang of this yet. It was easier when I was on your side. Just sit at the table and stay alert: one rap for yes, two for no. Now I’m expected to navigate. Higher plane indeed! Oh well, sorry to have disturbed you. Carry on!”

The figure walked into the wall and began to fade from sight, its features mingling with the roses on the wallpaper. Milton cleared his throat. “Actually, though, there isn’t anything wrong with voting for the Western Grain Stabilization Act…”

The figure ceased to blend. It seemed to seep outward from the wall again, taking on a distinct, even portly form, which began to walk back toward him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with voting for the Western Grain Stabilization Act.’ It will stabilize the whole economy of the region without costing the taxpayers anything. Because, you see, you have to consider the multiplier effect, which in the case of a farmer is a factor of three; therefore-”

“No! No! Don’t give me twaddle about multiplier effects. Have you talked to the farmers? Have you asked them what they want? You have to approach this in a spirit of compromise, to-I thought you said you weren’t in politics.”

Milton drew himself up. “I’m a graduate student in Canadian history. Naturally I follow politics,” he said, warming to the topic.

The apparition smiled complacently. “Quite an opportunity for you-talking to me!”

“Uh… well…” Milton hedged.

“Politics. I can certainly set you straight about that.”

“Er-the fact is-”

“Have you read my book? Industry and Humanity?”

“I find it most helpful at times,” said Milton carefully.

“Should think you would.” The late prime minister nodded.

Milton forbore to mention that he found Industry and Humanity most helpful when his worries about course work had reached such a pitch that he was unable to sleep, and found himself speculating on whether there was an alternate universe in which he had returned a copy of Ursula Le Guin’s Malafrena to the university library. About the time his musings turned dark and he began to wonder whether one could be digested by one’s bed, he would flip on the light with shaking hands and lose himself in the soothing monotony of William Lyon Mackenzie King’s prose style. This treatment never failed to work: soon he would awake to the clanging of his alarm clock, the book still in his hands. As an alternative to sleeping tablets, Mackenzie King was without equal. As a political mentor-Milton Palmerston, contemporary Liberal, questioned his value.

“… probably know more about politics than anyone else alive,” the apparition was saying.

Milton blinked at this. “But you’re not alive,” he pointed out.

“Do you think the voters would hold it against me?”

Milton considered the members of parliament presently in office. “Probably not,” he conceded. “Er-you weren’t thinking of standing for North Waterloo again, were you?”

“What? After I got the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act passed and the ingrates voted me out in 1911? I should hope not! I was thinking of my other old job-prime minister, you know.”

Milton nodded, wondering if perhaps reading Mackenzie King had not, after all, been safer than tranquilizers. It seemed to produce its own hallucinations.

“I suppose they still need me,” mused the late prime minister. “How are things going with labor? And the French-are we getting along better internally now? I suppose I’m sorely missed among the Liberals?”

Milton’s instincts toward courtesy to deceased heads of state battled with his pedantic desire to make political pronouncements. God knows he didn’t have much of a chance to do either, but the urge to make political pronouncements proved stronger. With the dim suspicion that he might be following in Cassandra’s dainty footsteps, Milton spoke.

“The fact is, sir, you’re not considered sound. The modern Liberal consensus is that while we respect your-er- place in history and all that-well-as my professor put it last term: ‘You can follow Mackenzie King just so far.’ ”

Having delivered this pronouncement, he looked up to see the apparition rapidly fading in and out-the spectral equivalent, he supposed, of taking deep breaths. After a few moments, the oscillation subsided, and a very substantial-looking statesman fixed him with a most uncompromising glare. “Indeed!” The apparition began to pace about the room, in the exact spot where Milton’s mound of notes and reference books had been erected; he did not trip on them however, but merely walked through them, as if they, not he, were ethereal. Milton’s eyes strayed to the note posted on his wall: EXAM TOMORROW! He really must study, and since the exam did not cover the