But she forgot all this and hurried home, hurrying her steps, wanting to justify her skipping the zoology seminar by making Henry a very good meal, and having drinks and making love after the drinks. She thought of a surprise for him. She would cook him a Jewish meal, a Jewish meal from Poland, where her father’s father’s father came from. “I’d better stop in the Kensington Market,” she told herself — meaning the Jewish Market. She never called the Jewish Market the Jewish Market, because she was Jewish. And Henry noticed this, and he noticed too, that when Jews were present, people who were not Jews always said, “the Kensington Market.” The Kensington-Jewish Market in recent years had become an exciting, exotic place to shop, filled with the faces and languages and abuses and customs of people from all over the world: with certain foodstuffs from the West Indies, like salt fish, ackee, avocado pears, tamarind, and even Barbadian “heavy-sweets,” a homemade bread with coconut and currants and spice and egg and vanilla baked in it. But it was a white woman who sold “heavy-sweets” in the market.
Agatha headed for the Kensington Market. She bought the ingredients for the Polish-Jewish meal and headed for Henry’s room, which she was now in the habit of calling home. At this moment, Henry was on a streetcar going along College Street towards Yonge. He had not yet made up his mind where he was going. He was trying to get the disappointment of Boysie’s refusal, or rather the disappointment surrounding the suggestion, and Boysie’s behaviour in the Paramount, out of his system. He had spent five dollars on Boysie, and he had got nothing for it. He was getting married shortly. He hadn’t set the date yet, because he saw no signs and no hope of having enough money for his part of the reception expenses. And he wanted a new suit for his wedding. He hadn’t yet bought Agatha a wedding present. He couldn’t rely on Agatha’s friends. He hadn’t met Agatha’s parents. He wanted to be able to pay at least the bus fare or the train fare (he hadn’t even considered planes) to the honeymoon spot — probably Niagara Falls. He had been accusing himself recently, saying, “But I am too damn old to go on a honeymoon, anyhow! I won’t know what to do with such a young woman. Why we don’t save the goddamn money and buy furnitures with it?”
He caught himself from these thoughts when the streetcar reached Church Street. He ran up the corridor to the conductor, and asked for a transfer ticket; and he jumped on the Church Street bus going south. He wanted to change again to the Dundas streetcar, but he remembered that the same transfer wouldn’t take him in the same direction from which he had come. He would have to pay another fare. The bus rambled along Church. He saw some old men and old women loitering from their age and their leisure on benches in front of a large church. It could have been a cathedral. A man was sleeping with a copy of the Telegram over his face. The sun was not shining. There was a vacant lot between two buildings in which were about a dozen secondhand Citroens. He always liked these French cars. (“Two great things the French invented, Boysie, boy. Frenchleathers and the Citroen!”)
Looking now on the other side of Church Street, the east side, Henry noticed the pawnbrokers’ shops. Jewellery, cameras, guitars, rings, watches … “Watches? Watches! Jesus Christ, why didn’ I think of this before?” He got off the bus and entered a pawnshop. Before he went in, he looked right and left to see whether any of his Paramount friends were among the loiterers on the benches nearby. He laid his gold pocket watch, with its heavy gold-painted chain, noisily on the glass-topped counter.
A man came smiling. “What can we do for you, sir? Nice day, isn’t it?”
When Henry went out through the door, into the autumn freshness of the street and the late afternoon, he had thirty dollars in his pocket, apart from the five left over from Agatha’s gift. He was without his heavy golden pocket watch. He was also without his ring, his mother’s wedding ring, which she had given him more years ago than he wanted to remember now. And he was without a silver dollar, made in 18-some-thing. He had further plans. He walked along Church Street, and found his way on Jarvis Street, at the Crippled Civilians bargain store. Here, they sold everything: including junk. Henry was braver here, because there were more people buying cheaply. He selected a black suit of a worsted material and a lighter weight suit that was fawn-coloured. He paid six dollars for them. He even got the waistcoats with the suits. His next stop was at the Invisible Mending & Alteration Tailoring While-U-Wait shop, at the corner of College and Beverley streets. He knew the old European man with the rimless glasses and the weak eyes which were producing almost as invisible light and eyesight as was his mending.
“Look, Vladdy, I got me these two three-piece suits a long time. They’re damn good suits, Vladdy …” (Old Vladdy was nodding his head and saying, “Yah-yah! Yah-yah!”) “… and I feel it would be a sin … man, they’re too good to throw out, so I want you to make them into younger suits for me, man. Eh? Take this padding outta the shoulders, and make the jackets more shorter than they is now, at present. Make them like the ones you see the Eyetalians up by Spadina wear.”
Old Vladdy was still saying, “Yah-yah! Yah-yah! I do good job for you. I do even better job than last job, no? And you
