Requiem

door open so that he could come and go as he pleased. He liked to sleep in the cage at night when we travelled, as long as the door was open and he knew he could get out. At home, he had a small mattress in his basket. It was only after Lena was admitted to hospital that he began to shred his bedding. But that came later.

Good things, I remind myself. Only good things.

The river was full and peaceful in the late glow of sun. A family arrived at the second cabin next door, a couple in their thirties with an eight-year-old daughter named Florence, who had brought along a friend, Lise. The two young girls tossed their brown hair, jumped from stone to stone in the shallow river, raced in and out of long shadows thrown by the trees. They befriended Basil and tagged after him, and collected acorns, and hooted when he held the squirrels at bay. They broke off layers of shale along the river’s edge. They skipped flat stones in the water and glanced back every now and then for approval, waving to their parents and to Lena and me.

Lena settled into a canvas lawn chair, her head bowed over her book. A dragonfly dipped, rose, dipped again. With its miraculous double set of wings, it hovered above her shoulder on a current of air. Aware of me watching, she looked up, her fingers holding her place in the book.

“This man can write,” she said. “Really write. Look at his face on the cover.” She held out Trevor’s book for inspection. “This is the way I want to look when I’m—well, whatever he was when the book was published. Sixty, maybe. I have a little over a decade to work on the lines of my face.”

In the evening, our neighbours created a rock circle close to the water’s edge, lit a bonfire and invited us to join them. We talked and laughed; there was nothing noisy, nothing brash. We wrapped ourselves in sweaters and listened to crickets and the murmur of flowing water.

Lena said she was tired, and we went to bed early and lay side by side in the dark, my left arm around her as always, her head against my shoulder. The curtains were closed but we could hear night sounds through the screens: far-off calls across the river; a distant, eruptive laugh; the sizzle of the fire being doused by water before our neighbours retired. There was a cassette player on the bedside table; I put in a tape and Benny’s clarinet began, the volume low.

“You’d think the scale was oiled,” Lena said. “The way he glides up and down it.”

That was the night I told her about First Father’s readings of the fates.

“What!” she said. “All these years we’ve been married and you’ve never told me any of this? I could have died and never known.”

“You never asked,” I said.

She couldn’t stop laughing. The mattress shook, the bed shook. I smiled to myself in the dark.

“Did your father always start with Hiroshi’s fate—I mean, Henry’s?”

“First Father?”

“You know who I mean.”

“Hiroshi was number-one son. Stronger, according to his fate. He was skilled; he was given responsibilities as a child. I was less important, being number two. Also, I was shorter, smaller, scrawnier—then.”

“But more important than Keiko, Kay.”

“She was a girl. That’s how it was,” I said.

“Thank God that’s changed.”

“Not entirely. Not in some families. And not only Japanese families, I might add.”

“I’m a woman—must you be reminded?”

“Not at all. Never, in fact.”

“Henry, born in the year of the monkey, was told that he wasn’t supposed to marry a tiger—and he did?”

“He did. You know that he was divorced early in his marriage. She ate him right up.”

“Oh, come on, don’t blame the woman.”

“I didn’t take sides, I assure you. I hardly knew her.”

“But you? Stubborn, yes. Protective, yes. Chasing away ghosts? I’m glad of that. But you don’t weep over nonsensical things.”

“How would you know? Maybe I do.”

This really set her off.

“Do you lock yourself in the bathroom?” she said, between gasps. She pulled away and propped herself on an elbow. “Do you sit on the edge of the tub and weep on the other side of the bathroom door?”

“Go ahead, have your laugh.”

“I am,” she said.

“I see that.”

“But what if the three of you slid into your fates because you knew in advance what they were supposed to be? Think of Kay, all that ambition, all the hard work. And what about the fortune? What about that? Where’s my share? I’m part of your fate.”

“First Father was wrong about that—the fortune part.”

And this set her off even more.

She sobered then, and lay back down and said, “Maybe he was right. Maybe this is it. The fortune. What we have now.”

I pulled her close.

“I mean, think of how you could use the fates,” she said. “It’s what everyone needs—a fate that allows us to chase away our ghosts.”

And then she did one of those rapid switches in conversation, the ones for which I could never prepare.

“But it’s hard to picture you weeping over nonsensical things,” she said. “You’ve always made a supreme effort to hold everything inside. Including, I might add, any accrued anger.”

“Apparently I haven’t held in everything. Not if the fates are correct.”

“Do you know how many times you’ve held my hand in public?”

“You’ve chronicled?” I went still, wondering. I was always uneasy when any sort of effort to probe moved in close.

“I’m trained at chronicling,” she said. “It’s what I do. You know that. I can give a full account. And I don’t have to keep a list; it happened only once. How could I not remember? We were missing life in Montreal and had gone back for a visit. We’d been married five years. We didn’t tell my family we were there, and we sneaked into the city and out again. We wanted to be tourists. It was windy, colder than we’d expected. We were walking down the hill on rue Guy, and you were about to step off the curb when you looked over and saw that I was freezing. You took off your scarf and wrapped it around my neck. Then you tucked my hand in yours and held it the rest of the way back to the hotel. It was the only time you made a public gesture of love.”

“I’m subtle,” I said. “Maybe you missed something. Handholding? How am I to know what you keep track of?”

She shifted and pressed her body into mine. I relaxed again.

“Well,” she said, “there was one other occasion. This time we were staying with my parents; we were visiting for a weekend. We were sitting in their living room—on the couch. It was late Sunday morning and we had made love earlier, upstairs, before they’d come home from church. Bells were ringing at the end of the street. I remember melody, something carillon-like. We were downstairs in the living room when my parents came home. You lifted my hand and held it against your knee. I felt it was an emotional breakthrough.

One of the closest moments between us—because there was someone else present. God, this is really pathetic, isn’t it.”

I didn’t reply.

“Anyway,” she said, “hand-holding in front of my parents doesn’t count. We were in their house, not out in public.”

Lena always got the last word; I didn’t dispute it. It was the way we were together. I suppose I even relied on her for that. Benny was playing “Ballad in Blue,” and I pulled her over, on top, and we made slow, careful love. And slept late the next morning, waking only when we heard Basil push at the screen door of the porch to let himself out.

Lena got up then, and pulled on her clothes and went outside, barefoot. I lay there for a few moments, thinking about the night before. Anger, public gestures of love. There was so much that was private between us. Unexpressed? In language, maybe.