When Fox Is a Thousand Read online

  “Got some candles in here somewhere,” said Claude, getting up to rustle through the kitchen drawers. “I love power outages. They make life real again.”

  “I should go before it gets any worse.”

  “You don’t want to go out in that, do you? Look, here, candles!”

  She lit the way into the middle room, which doubled as a bedroom and a living room. The whole apartment was dark. Claude firmly skewered the candles onto a seven-headed candelabra. The room did not blaze but hung in a cozy darkness that made them feel glad to be inside. The futon lay flat open and was covered with a quilt. Tiny patchwork stars against a white background.

  “My grandmother made this,” said Claude. “She was a big fan of Little House on the Prairie.” But Artemis didn’t laugh, because the storm outside and the candlelight made the room ghostly and serious.

  “Tell me why you hate your brother.”

  “Have a drink first.” She got up again and came back with ice cubes in two heavy tumblers. Into these she poured a generous inch from a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers. Your brother?”

  “It’s a harsh story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  “I didn’t mean to pressure you.”

  “It’s not that I mind telling you, it’s just that, well, I’ll have to ask you to keep it a secret. And it will be a secret that weighs on you.”

  “I don’t know what to say.… Use your discretion, I guess.”

  Claude took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you because I trust you.” She put down her glass of scotch and placed her hands in her lap. “I used to love my brother. He’s two years older than me. He used to be my protector, when we were going through school. Kids couldn’t call me names or beat on me because my brother would shred them. He was solid, like a boxer. He was strong and his punches were accurate.

  “We used to kiss each other, starting when we were very small, like we were boyfriend and girlfriend. When I was five and he was seven, it was really cute, everybody thought so. They didn’t know we were still kissing when I was twelve and he was fourteen. Then one day he caught me making out with this girl in the cloakroom. I remember we were lying on this heap of coats and it was warm and we were engrossed. I don’t know how long he stood there watching. That night he had two friends sleeping over. They were restless and raucous all evening, talking about the different kinds of guns that can be legally obtained in Canada, and how to go about purchasing models that are not. In the middle of the night they came into my room. They held me down and stripped me. And then they each took a turn. There was blood all over the place. I sat up on the wall watching myself being pounded into nothing. You know that feeling? I was only thirteen. I couldn’t tell my mother because it would have broken her heart. He used to come in the night quite a bit after that, until he moved away for university. And he was growing. He grew bigger and bigger, like an ox. He’s the biggest man I know, and strong. For all I know, he is still growing.”

  “God, Claude, shit. Shit.”

  “I told you you might not want to know.”

  “No, I’m glad you told me.” She looked at Claude. Claude looked back, wide-eyed, a little sad, a little defiant. What happened next was something that often happens after open-hearted confessions. It started with warm breath that became a kiss, a kiss that became gentle hands, breasts and bellies, a rhythmic walking into the sounds of the night. The walking became something much more aggressive, something greedy. Fucking the way horses or other large creatures fuck, Claude’s many broad fingers inside Artemis’s hollow, sucking cunt and the wind outside wailing. There was something about the largeness of it that was gentle. Their bodies filled the room. And somewhere, at a low level like a sound so deep you can’t hear it, there was a violence that travelled from one to the other as surely as violence always passes between those who love each other.

  Dear Hsuan-Chi,

  We have the same hands. I wonder what you used to do with them, the fires you’ve lit, the vegetables you’ve peeled, the fabrics you’ve considered, the poems you’ve written. I wonder about other hands you’ve touched, some smooth as rose petals, others rough as pumice, and with what intentions. You wonder about someone’s life when they’ve occupied the same body as you, but a thousand years and many journeys lie between us, so nobody’s memory will serve either of us half as well as the dreams that come to me sometimes at night in the rain.

  There is this dream I have and it begins with another language flying into my mouth like a flock of familiar crows, wings black as my hair has remained even after all these years. They fly into my mouth screaming words in a language so close to me that its rhythm matches my heartbeat, their wings flapping as though to generate a monster wind that will send waves washing up from the shore to enfold entire cities, drowning them in blue. The language settles gently as a silk dress, quiet and warm as skin against skin and the mind in my belly understands and swallows, lam on a journey somewhere, swimming in warm salt water, perhaps with a few companions who understand when a stray crow occasionally flies from my mouth and my words make sense to them and I feel safe. Sometimes one of the companions is my mother and even the crows understand the words she speaks, smoother than their black wings and without the awkwardness of material substance.

  These are crows that understand things like time and immigration. I swim in the blood-warm ocean and they fly out of the past and sometimes the future, bringing twigs, scraps of fabric, strands of hair. They fly into my mouth, nest on my tongue, and tumble out again in the spring, unrolling tapestries of woven and embroidered stories, each silken petal and bird’s eye winking in colours bright as precious stones. It is these details that make me feel wanted, as though I belong somewhere.

  In dreams, this is how I know you. In the stories the crows build. When I wake the memory of that warmth remains, but the details go crashing into a bottomless ocean, and no details remain in my conscious mind. When I dream, I am all heart and belly.

  I have waited for you for a long time. I had never expected to feel sorrow, not like this, welling up like desire or an unexpected premonition of one’s own death. I have waited. I knew for a long time that it would be you and not anybody else. I don’t know how I knew. Nobody told me, and, in fact, I had seen you before on only three occasions, from which I built my expectations.

  You must have been about eight years old the first time. Your hair was cut into a bob with wide bangs. It had snowed that winter, and on that particular day the whole countryside was covered in a cool white blanket like the shed down of a bloodless angel. Very few human figures dotted the landscape and smoke poured furiously from the chimneys of houses that could afford wood. But you were outdoors. I saw you as I cut through the trees in the woods behind your house, the weight of your small body pushing a huge ball across the yard as you forged horses out of snow. You wore a thick padded cotton jacket and mittens, but your head was bare and your bright cheeks stood out against the darkness of your hair. I could hear you chatting to your horses as you built them, oblivious to the cold and the way the goddess of snow whirled about you with a threatening kind of love, her gauzy sleeves trailing. I remember hunger gnawing somewhere between my heart and my stomach as I stood watching you, but I was unwilling to move, mesmerized by the cavalry of white horses that grew beneath your small hands.

  Eventually, the sky descended and the snow moved through shades of blue and crimson and mauve, descending into a crisp, chilly black. You and your horses melted into the darkness and I padded quietly away, somewhat irked at myself for having used up my share of daylight without obtaining dinner.

  You had already begun to smell of cinnamon, calling to mind the moon’s fabled grove of that spice, the second time I saw you, perhaps a year after you became a nun. The temple had hired a troupe of acrobats. You and the guests sat watching, charmed by the flexibility, balance, and daring of the young women in bright satin suits. Nimble as citizens from the country of monkeys, they stacke
d themselves into a crooked tower, with chairs and bodies jutting out at the most terrifyingly irregular angles. Near the top, a young woman, hanging perilously to one side by an arm and a leg, caught your eye. You watched her, oblivious to the other performers, so that she moved through the air and hung there all on her own like an angel without wings. In the gentle evening breeze, blue satin nudged her legs.

  A metal sound from the kitchen warned me I’d best be on my way, but just as I was leaving, I saw you lean towards a friend’s ear and whisper something about that particular acrobat.

  Two weeks before your death, I stumbled across you sleeping at the base of the cassia tree at the foot of a hill. The night was dark and an odd combination of smells floated on the air – the scent of your blood racing though your body, and someone else’s soaked into the earth. Near that tree, the air always smells of cinnamon, but on this night it reeked of the spice. The air was so thick with it, it wrapped around me like a second fur.

  The odour made the new moon night even darker than usual so 1 had to hover over you, sniffing, trying to determine what had happened from the other smells in the air. Men, cotton, garlic, steel, breath.… I hovered like a small guardian angel until a thin yellow light hissed up from the ground, telling me that somewhere beyond the forest morning was coming. Then I could see you had a black eye. Your clothes were torn and there were bruises all over your body, but especially on your elbows and knees. Your ribcage heaved unevenly up and down, as though your lungs were fighting back the sweet odours of the forest that must be replacing all the oxygen in your blood.

  I wondered then if you had done something wrong. The smell of another woman’s spilled blood soared high on the cool morning air and somewhere far away there were birds.

  On that day I was sure you would be coming to me soon. Still, I wasn’t curious about your life, nor whether you might have to go through something dreadful on your journey towards me.

  As I look at you now, I remember my sister telling me how there had been many men at your house in the past week. She had also said it was easier than usual to steal this week because the townspeople were distracted, excited about an execution. All I knew was that you were coming.

  I realize this is the first time I’ve seen you this still. From a distance you seemed beautiful, your skin smooth and perfect. Now I can make out a few acne scars to the side of your nose and on your forehead, and how the mole beneath your eye which seemed elegant from a distance is not perfectly round. Your hair, although abundant and black as the sea at night, is brittle and smells unwashed.

  I look at you for a long time in the blue light, trying to imagine you whole, your spine long and supple. The bruises I had noticed two weeks ago are somewhat faded, but there are fresh ones, and I can’t ignore the fact that there is dried blood flaking like iron rust off your neck and chest and face. Having been buried for several days, you have the sweet aroma of earth and germination about you, but you still reek of the stale, sour smells of sweat, urine, blood, and dying. It might be a hard smell to stay with if I hadn’t been looking forward to this for such a long time. Still, your crumpled body is not much more than a smelly clot of earth. There is something as banal as leftover rice and wilted vegetables about this. I try to stop up the gaps where disappointment seeps into my soul like dirty floodwater.

  As I watch you, I notice the odour of cinnamon has intensified to the brink of solidity. It makes me a little dizzy, and then altogether queasy, as though I had eaten rotten meat. Your body seems to be spinning away from me and I am gripped by the terror of losing you. You are growing smaller and smaller, diminishing to a tiny ship on the horizon. I try to steady myself for a moment. I reach out to touch you, to place my hand on your chest. 1 reach out and my fingers wrap around your heart beating madly like a small bird caught in the trap of your ribcage. Beating. Your heart is beating. I am aware that somewhere far away, my own body is falling into a black bowl spattered with stars like the intelligent eyes of animals, but that falling is happening so far away and your heart is beating, pounding against my palm, harder and faster, an overripe papaya, its heady aroma almost overwhelming. Your heart beats even faster, grows larger still, until I am engulfed in its pulse, life flooding the night and spilling right over onto the edge of morning. Sunlight rushes up like the tide to meet it, pouring cool yellow and blue over the mountainside. Sleep finds me quietly, slipping underneath the commotion like smoke beneath a closed door.

  My first urge when I wake on the cold lumpy ground is to return to the warm earth, disappearing down an old fox hole dug by my grandmother. I place my hand on my chest to feel my heart, which is still beating. But the hand is a human hand. The earth feels unpleasantly cold against my back. How could the earth feel unpleasant? I touch my face, the irregular mole. A human face. Your face. My knees and elbows ache.

  On the third floor in the cold, musty stacks of the university library, in a well-thumbed volume, Artemis found her name. She had planned this search, hoping it might give her a clue to the temperament and motivations of the woman who had abandoned her twenty years ago and recently changed her mind. The virgin huntress – did she want me to be lonely, or was it self-sufficiency she hoped to invoke with this stilted, archaic name that no one uses anymore? No one except immigrants who don’t know better, she thought.

  In her mind’s eye she saw a crib in a small room, with streaks of light coming through the slats of a Venetian blind. Over the crib leaned a thin young woman with a pale face, tired eyes, and long black hair. The woman paused over the crib, then turned and left the room, closing the door softly beind her.

  Eden’s studio sat at the halfway point between the library and the bus stop. Light poured cheerfully from the windows. As she approached, her first thought was to surprise him. Her feet were cold and all her clothes were damp with the constant moisture in the air, at this turning point of the seasons. She would welcome the warmth of the studio. But as she grasped the cool steel knob of the door, she felt reluctant to turn it. She told herself it was respect for his privacy that was making her pause, but she knew this wasn’t quite true. Pondering her reluctance, she didn’t notice Ming striding towards the studio from the opposite direction, dressed in leather from top to toe, with a black cap perched at a jaunty angle on her head. A cigarette with a long cylinder of ashes that refused to fall hung from her lower lip. Smoke wafted from her nostrils.

  “Ming! What are you doing here?”

  “Going to see Eden. He’s supposed to do a shoot with me.”

  “I wanted to ask you … about what happened at the baths last time.”

  “What of it?”

  “What’s the story with Diane?”

  “Don’t let it bother you.”

  “But it does. It does bother me.”

  Ming shrugged. “What books have you got?”

  “I was looking up the origins of my name.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Curiosity. Is Diane telling stories about me to lots of people or just you?”

  “I don’t know why I should say anything about it to you.”

  “So she is telling tales.”

  “I wish you two wouldn’t force me to take sides.”

  Inside the building someone clattered down the stairs. Eden opened the door. A large lock of hair swung into his eyes as he stuck his head out. He pushed it back casually. “Ming! I thought I heard your voice! And here’s Artemis too. I never see you. Want to come up and help with a shoot?”

  “I think I’d better get going.”

  “It’s my birthday on Friday. There’ll be a party at the house, and you’re invited.”

  “I hope so. I’m still sleeping there, in case you’d forgotten.”

  Artemis started house hunting in earnest. On Friday, she came across the first real possibility – the bottom floor of an old house on East Fourth Avenue. The outside was dirty cheap grey stucco. A flight of stairs led to the front door of both the upper and lower apartments. The apartment wa
s wide and spacious, although a little dark. The ceilings were low, and a tattered grey carpet clung to the floor.

  “It’s hardwood underneath,” said Marlina. “You could easily remove it.” She beamed encouragingly at her prospective new tenant. Artemis smiled down at her, taking her in. Marlina was tiny. It must be hard to get people to take you seriously when you are that small, Artemis thought, having had some experience with that herself. But the acid-washed jeans, frilly white shirt, and denim vest with large denim flowers flopping over the front panels didn’t help. “Any repairs you want, within reason, my father-in-law will take care of them,” said Marlina. Her voice was her saving grace, firm, friendly, and business-like.

  The apartment smelled of stale marijuana and cheap incense. But the only other possibility was a basement suite Artemis had seen two days before, owned by an ex-military official who wanted to teach her chi gung. She had looked at other apartments, including one in the same building she had lived in with Diane, but the new manager of that building didn’t offer her the suite. Artemis didn’t complain, but the woman volunteered, “I don’t call it discrimination. I just call it selection. I have a responsibility to my existing tenants to ensure that I let good people in.”

  So she told Marlina she would think about it and hurried up the street to buy a gift for Eden’s birthday party that evening.

  Eden was drunk and high on cocaine and giggling like a new bride. He was whirling around the house with a girl called Manon. They disappeared into the bathroom to do more lines. When they came out, Artemis hugged him, said happy birthday, and went into the kitchen to fix herself a drink.

  Diane stood in the corner by the photo of the lost elephant, in deep conversation with a slender black man. Artemis caught her eye, but Diane scowled. When Artemis looked again, she was gone.