Katherine Govier - Three Views of Crystal Water

Vera had never seen Mr McBean; his only appearance was in the firm’s name. He might be fictitious, a title only, like the ‘Captain’ in James Lowinger. Her grandfather was no sailor, but a trader in gems, pearls in particular. He and his father before him travelled all over the world, hiring luggers and diving men to search for pearls. But the pearls were gone now. The company had bales of fabric and crates of dishes packed in wooden cases, goods , as they were called.

There were a few steps up from the street. There was a door with a top half of frosted glass. She opened this door and right in front of her, so she couldn’t slip past unseen, was a little office with shipping schedules pasted all over the walls, presided over by Miss Hinchcliffe. Hinchcliffe was at all times erect and mannerly, as if her respectability were at issue. Why she was not Mrs Hinchcliffe, Vera did not know. She was certainly old enough to be married, and there was an inviting vigour in her form that was more like the sexy women than the missionaries. Still, she imagined that no man was polite enough to meet Hinchcliffe’s high standards.

‘Hang up your coat! Wipe your shoes! Put that wet umbrella in the hall!’ were her usual first words, followed by, ‘So, we are to be favoured with your presence again today are we?’

‘Hello, Miss Hinchcliffe.’

There were maps on one wall and a black telephone and metal filing cabinets. ‘Captain’ Lowinger’s office was beyond, in a room with a window of pleated glass through which Miss Hinchcliffe could keep an eye on his shadowy form. When Vera opened the door she would see him seated, smiling, behind a perfectly clear desk. There were no piles of paper and no calendars with dates circled, no complex timetables. His wooden desk had a green leather top and he had a lamp with an emerald shade. To one side was a set of brass scales that was used to weigh pearls, and the corn tongs to pick up the gems. There was nothing else except, in the corner on the floor, a typewriter. She could only assume that in this office, unhampered by physical records, Captain Lowinger conjured magical fundamentals that were then subject to mental administration.

The action was all on the walls, which were decorated with woodcut prints on rough yellowed paper. The pictures were of tall women with fleshy faces and chopsticks in their hair. There was a Japanese name for them: ukiyo-e . But Captain James called them his Beauties. His Beauties stood around like a picket fence, to keep out the world. Each one existed on a blank background as if she were completely alone in the world. She might have been a model on a ramp. Each one had a slouch, an over-the-shoulder glance, and dainty hands and feet which appeared as afterthoughts from under great swirls of decorated fabric. Each sumptuous kimono was patterned with mountains and rocky streams, shells and flowers and leaves. Each Beauty’s body cut a figure like one of those giant letters on the first page of an old book, a decorated L or S or F. They were a veritable alphabet of women.

But they were unreadable. They had their backs to the room, and their eyes cast down, thoughts lost in the folds of their wraps. Everything about them was secretive, held in, padded, even their faces, which appeared to have no bones. They were white and soft and disturbed only by the thinnest fine painted lines to suggest eyebrows, nose, cheeks. Only the lips, red and rounded, were defined. But they were closed.

Her grandfather was not always alone amongst his Beauties. When Vera arrived, he might be talking to an urgent man in a blue serge cap who he called Skipper. Or he might be listening to a visitor who took pulls on a pungent-smelling pipe, sending clouds of smoke into the room, behind which the Beauties faded perceptibly. This visitor might be telling a tale, complete with grand gestures and occasional whispers, and sidelong glances through the door to where Miss Hinchcliffe would type with renewed energy. On these occasions Vera would go back to the warehouse and walk up and down the rows of bales of fabric, feeling them with her fingers. Or she’d peer into the fragile crates filled with dry grass and wonder if there were pearls inside. She might look at the life-sized kimono doll and take all her clothing apart. There were little spikes that went into her hair, and tight wrappings around her middle. Her feet had one split instead of toes, dividing the white cotton foot in two, so that it was like a dainty hoof. They’d been specially designed to fit into the thongs of the platform slippers she stood in.

If his visitor were a persistent one, Vera repaired to the big cutting table meant for fabric with its low-hanging light in a metal shade. She was allowed to open certain wooden boxes and take out the prints one by one and look at them.

She stared and stared at the ukiyo-e . The people were so very, very strange. Most of them looked like women, but only a few of them were, according to Vera’s grandfather. Everyone wore a robe, often with a skirt too. The ones with swords were men. The ones with make-up and hair piled in knots and smirky smiles, who looked very much like women, were also men: they were actors who played women’s parts. It was hard to find the real women. But Vera grew skilled at it. They were softer, and smaller, and less obvious about it.

They were usually shown among other women, fixing hair or serving tea. It was peaceful as they went about their lives inside squared timbered rooms. Sometimes they travelled with their companions, poled along in a banana-shaped boat by a man in a loincloth. If the weather was good and the current was with them, the boatman leaned on his pole, lazily. They glided through such scenery! Mountains and hillsides were cut by a slanted path, where trees attended in stylish attitudes, with clumps of branch here and there like soft clouds.

But there were days when rain came down aslant like a torrent of nails. There was snow too. The women were never dressed for it. For one thing they had bare feet, with a thong between their first and second toes, and square sandals like little benches, to prop the foot up high off the ground. The snow fell heavily, loading their pretty, papery umbrellas with inches of white. It covered the slated tile roofs and stayed in a thick layer on the branches and even stopped, mid-fall, in the air, a white dot carved in the print and coloured in. The snowfall was a kind of burial, but the figures were bright and graceful, as if for them to withstand this final curtain was effortless.

The snow in the pictures was so sad, cold and exquisite. The difficulties were borne lightly, gaily, as if everyone knew it would melt tomorrow. As if everyone knew that the tea house was around the next bend. The cherry blossoms would soon be out. The people would be flying their kites, which they did all together, an entire street of people. Or standing on a shore with a picnic basket looking expectantly to a nearby island.

There was snow sometimes in Vancouver, but it rarely stayed more than overnight. Vera’s mother had had the same delighted attitude to snow, an attitude that was also a denial. She could just as easily have said, ‘Let’s go for a walk with our bare-toed shoes and our thin umbrellas and the little white split-toed socks!’ That would have been on her gay days. Other days she was a sleepwalker.

And the pasty faces, the swollen cheeks, the lost features of these women were her mother’s.

But this was a thought Vera did not like to have, and she pushed it away.

The devils – or men – in the ukiyo-e world simpered and hunched their shoulders and curled their toes. Their eyes were black marbles in wild open Os. They had huge dog faces with curled-back snarling lips and mad, crossed eyes, and eyebrows that make an angry V in the middle of their foreheads. Their hair was tied up in knots on the top of their head, and they often had a rope over one shoulder. One had a blue bow at his waist, the tassels dancing at his knees. His five fat fingers spread out in astonishment as he looked down and off to the right: something was there. He too had bare feet and carried two curved swords.