Frances Itani - Requiem

“Dark chocolate? What kind of sausage?” said Lena.

“Quiet, please. People on deck were drinking beer. Small children carrying Fanta and fizzy cola ran up and down steps between decks. The boat slugged forward, but there was no breeze. And unlike the tour boat on which the young man was now captive, the passing barge traffic was remarkably swift. Colours streamed from multinational flags, towels billowed on clotheslines, bicycles leaned against shacks on broad decks. The barges sat just inches above water level, so low did their heavy loads nose through the waves.

“Across the deck from the young man was a middle-aged couple, sitting on a bench. The man was thick everywhere, squat build, large neck, rough skin. He wore short brown trousers hemmed above the knee and a pair of braces over his shirt. His wife was short, but even larger than he. Layer after layer of her body bulged from beneath a sleeveless cotton dress. She wore stockings of a bluish-white colour, as if to help remedy the swollen veins in her legs. She wiped her forehead and tried to ease herself by moving closer to her husband. At the same time, she leaned back against him. Then she slowly lifted herself sideways until she had pushed him against the inner wall of the deck. Squeezing the last bit of air from him, she turned her back, fell like a sudden blow upon him and stretched her swollen legs lengthwise along the bench.

“Jammed as he was into the corner, only bits of the man could now be seen. But he did not, as expected, push her off. Instead, he began to bounce one knee. His wife bounced and rolled with his inner tune, her eyes closed, perspiration streaming down her face. Her hand rested just below her husband’s trousers, keeping time on his bare thigh. It was a moment of such intimacy that the young man, in agony, turned away. At that moment, he would have given anything to experience the kind of intimacy he was witnessing. And then he thought, What nonsense . But he did not forget the couple or the intimate moment between them.”

“A revealing story,” Lena said. “In more ways than one. A story of longing, definitely.”

“But the young man was observant, you have to give him that.”

“Indeed. The scene was painted quite clearly.”

Observant but lonely, I was thinking, but I didn’t say that aloud. The young man was always—more or less—alone.

“And this present moment,” said Lena, “the one in which the young man finds himself in the midst of deep forest, is also a moment of intimacy. Too bad we don’t have curtains on the car windows. What if someone drives up?”

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’s so late, no one is going to drive in at this time of night. Anyway, it’s pitch black and we’ll be awake before dawn. How soundly do you think we’ll be able to sleep like this?”

We were asleep almost before I finished the sentence.

When we woke, it was hours past dawn and sun was shining through the car windows on one side. Lena raised her head and looked out and ducked back down again.

“My God,” she said. “We’re surrounded. There are half a dozen cars and camper trailers. Did you hear anyone drive in? There must have been others on the highway who couldn’t find a place to sleep. I didn’t hear a thing all night.”

But we could hear people now. The sound of many voices as families prepared breakfast at picnic tables around the edges of the parking lot. There was no way we could get dressed without being seen.

I volunteered to be the one to unzip the side of the sleeping bag, to try to gather up the clothes at our feet. I stayed low, pitched the clothes to Lena and climbed back under, and we began to dress while lying on our backs inside the sleeping bag. Not easy, I remember. And we were laughing again. The whole scene was comic because our car was parked in the middle of the lot and people were coming and going, back and forth to trailers and cars. “Who cares?” I said to Lena, through snorts of laughter. “Who bloody cares?” But every time someone walked past, we froze and pretended to be asleep.

There must have been five or six vehicles, and neither of us had heard so much as a wheel turn in the night.

When we were dressed, which took more than a few awkward manoeuvres, we looked at each other and nodded. Ready . We climbed out on opposite sides of the rear of the car and got back in at the front. People at the picnic tables looked over and waved. The two of us drove off.

I know the exact place we parked. Same site, same lot. I call for Basil and get him into the car, but only after offering a treat as persuasion. We are back on the highway in minutes, and I drive for more than an hour until we’re at the outskirts of a small town. By the time I see a sign for a Pancake House, it’s mid-morning, late, and I’m not certain I’ll be served. The need for coffee is greater than the need for food, and I can probably get at least that much, so I pull in. I give Basil a drink of water and leave him in the car with the window partly down, in a parking spot that can be seen from inside the restaurant.

The place is more bar than restaurant—a sports bar or maybe a hybrid, bar and restaurant combined. There are no customers in the room. A TV on a high shelf in one corner is on but soundless. Two men are wrestling in outlandish costumes, golden cocks strutting across the screen.

A tall woman with a weary-looking face is wiping glasses and she points to a table close to where she’s working. Efficiency itself, she’s fast, moving from one table to another, setting places, giving surfaces a swipe of her damp cloth, creating order from salt and pepper shakers, containers of ketchup and syrup. If I were to sketch her, I’d call the drawing Taut motion . She wears a black pinstriped blouse and black slacks. The blouse shines like satin. Her face is thin, her long legs thin, her hip bones prominent, no extra flesh. Everything about her brings to mind the words gaunt and defeated . It’s easy to see that her life, thus far, has not been easy.

But she is all kindness, as it turns out. And she gives the impression of intuiting some need, not in her but in me—a need that is blatant and personal. She brings coffee before I ask, offers the news that two moose, a cow and a calf, have been strutting through town since early morning, and that the police are in a tizzy. They’ve called for the local conservation officer. She hands me a menu, goes to the bar, swishes her cloth over the counter and returns to take my order. When I ask for an egg sunnyside, she says she can do egg. When I ask for toast, she can do toast. The kitchen never closes. She’ll throw in back bacon as there is extra today. I can have waffles, too, if I want them. Her body leans forward and pulls back. She leaves comfort behind and disappears behind the bar and through the kitchen door. And yet, she looks so troubled herself.

When she brings my breakfast, it’s a plate heaped high with food. In the centre, a double yolk in a single egg. The two yolks are unbroken, even with the cooking.

“Our lucky day, yours and mine,” she says. She tilts her chin, points to the double yolk and tries to explain. “It’s good luck. You know—double yolk.” And then she looks at me more closely and says, “Hey, hey. It’s only an egg. You okay?” She gives me a firm pat on the shoulder before she turns and goes back to cleaning up.

I stare at my plate through blurred vision and curse the fates again. And I think of Otto at the funeral, reaching over to pat at my sleeve.

There was no time to sit around and mope after our first night in the tents. Distances were marked, sticks were pounded to the earth. A month earlier, while in detention in Vancouver, Father had arranged to cash in his only insurance policy—worth one hundred and twenty-five dollars. He was also to receive, some time in the future, a small share of money from the Fishermen’s Cooperative, which he had helped to set up and which had collapsed in late 1941, even though it had been incorporated only two weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Like everyone in our Fraser River camp, we would have to pay for our own internment—until the money ran out and Father found a way of earning more.