Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

All three girls grabbed each other, ready to scream. But the shed was vacant save for a few crumpled paint cans, a sack of cement and an ancient pair of grey-striped overalls.

“Nice joke, Chloe,” said Yvette, narrowing her eyes.

Chloe looked closer. “It was here. Yvette, it was here.”

Ama grew anxious. But all of a sudden and quite unexpectedly, Yvette turned and hugged her sister. Ama stood apart. No one dared again dispute the cat’s existence.

Despite the loosened tie and new lease on life, Samuel found himself incapable of that pride so attractive in a man on the verge of success. This came as a strange realization, for owning a house and a business had always been the great grail of his life. Now that he’d so easily achieved what he’d most wanted, he could not enjoy it, and only agonized over its possible loss. Nostalgia seized him; he’d spend cold nights at the belching fireplace, gazing at the ash and thinking of Calgary. He was like a man who blinds himself to hear better, and finds he cannot navigate by sound alone. It was ridiculous, and at the heart of it, Samuel blamed his corrupted sense of time for his troubles. In Gold Coast, when business was slow, a complaint held the same weight as a comment against the weather. Goods would wait, and people would come, and if there was a lapse in coordination, then God had ordained it. No cause for worry, business was a tide with both its highs and its lows, and only a fool didn’t know that one followed the other. Everything had its season. Life in the tropics could not be wrestled into a schedule, and the people could live no other way. They did not rush to meetings in fear of being late, for without them, the meeting would not begin. They did not fear missing the bus, for without enough people, the bus would wait hours. Which made sense: without people, a meeting becomes an empty room; a bus becomes a metal husk without a destination. The Sabbath was made for the sake of man, not man for the sake of the Sabbath; thus the son of man is lord even of the Sabbath.

Here, time was immovable. Absolute. It ran on regardless of man or season, a tyrant who sees the face of a friend in the crowd and still issues the order to fire. It put Samuel on edge, left him constantly chasing the clock. It was this sense of time that Samuel struggled with, a web of scheduling that made him unable to enjoy his shop. For, in all truth, things were going wonderfully. He was making a fine living off his handiwork, and within a few slim weeks he’d established a solid client base by reputation alone. He was the man of miraculous hands who had the grace not to charge too much. An electronics prodigy. One man went so far as to jest that his son, in traction at the Edmonton General, would be dancing in a week at a touch from Samuel’s hands. Samuel developed a virtuoso’s assuredness in his work, even while doubting his choice to abandon his government job.

He was really like two men at this point, for no single life seemed right for him. He felt himself to be much more than what others gave him credit for, than what he gave himself credit for, than what life was letting him be. There was such feeling in him, in all of us, he thought, and what kind of God would tempt us with such potential and not give us the chance to fulfil it. He grew sick with this thought, sick on this success that he couldn’t make matter to him, and he was so worried that one morning he woke spitting blood. “Stomach troubles,” the doctor had admonished him on a sly visit to Edmonton, “You should quit your job and get an easier one.” And Samuel had nodded, taken the prescription back to Aster and never said a word to his wife.

Ray dropped by the shop the week after Samuel visited his farm. He kept his truck idling outside, which hurt Samuel’s feelings; Ray meant to use it to quicken his escape if the conversation turned sour.

“My own John Ware,” said Ray. “How are you liking the cat?”

“Oh, he is a tiger, that one. Always trying to run away. Certainly the girls keep an eye on him, but one cannot always hold their eye on a cat.”

Ray chuckled. “Old Oliver’s got some kick in him yet.”

The only kind of kick Samuel wished on Oliver was the kind that would send him miles from the Tyne house. He remembered the old cat’s eyes. “Amen,” he said. “Amen.”

Ray explained he’d dropped by to ask Samuel and Maud to dinner to commemorate the four-week anniversary of the shop. “It’s really just an excuse for a piss up,” Ray laughed. “Got some home-grown pork for you.”

The slaughter of the calf was ever-present in Samuel’s mind, especially in those ponderous hours of repair. And though his beliefs (which he’d let lapse anyway) didn’t forbid it, he’d always felt pork to be a disgrace to one’s body. Swine were the filthiest of animals, and Samuel wondered what their worth would be if people hadn’t claimed them as food. Samuel looked apprehensively at Ray, exhaling a perfect, girlish giggle. Ray frowned.

“Coming or not, Tyne?”

And whether it was because he felt he had embarrassed his friend by laughing, or whether deep inside him he wanted to settle his mixed feelings about Ray, Samuel agreed to go. The time was set for seven that evening, and after he’d called to let Maud know, Samuel sat down to his work with a sense of foreboding.

Maud was equally nervous as they parked in the Franks’ driveway. It surprised Samuel; Maud behaved as though they were to dine with high-ranking officials. She fussed over Samuel’s clothes, and asked with aggressive melancholy if she’d chosen the wrong clothes herself. Samuel snapped. “Eh , what, are your eyes broken?” He gestured at the Frank house. “Is it Buckingham Palace you see here, eh? Have we come to the high courts of Haile Selassie? Get a hold of yourself.”

“Talk to me like that again and you’ll see what I get a hold of,” said Maud. Her look of anger, which she could hold longer than any woman Samuel had known in his life, silenced him. He often thought to himself, as he did now, that this look was her sole talent in life. The thought gave him both a vicious pleasure and a flare of guilt. They’d almost reached the door when Samuel saw the blinds crawling closed. Eudora must have been watching.

A cold greeting awaited them. It was clear from Eudora’s face that she assumed Samuel’s gesturing had been to punctuate some slur on her house. She took the Tynes’ coats with apparent displeasure, indulging a childish anger, though Samuel couldn’t help but feel guilty. But Maud understood; for Eudora Frank, a woman was her home. And Eudora’s home was her creation, her only child, her thirty years’ labour.

Ray rose through a doorway that led to the cellar-turned-den. All of his bristling distaste from that afternoon had left his features. He was in a jovial mood, even making faces behind Eudora’s back when she set down their drinks. Eudora looked ill at ease in a gingham dress stressed at the seams, and Samuel was mildly alarmed at Ray’s smirks and grimaces because he couldn’t fathom that Ray actually meant to make fun of his own wife’s weight. He diverted his eyes to the painting above Ray’s head, which depicted a man on a dromedary scaling a sand dune. What an extraordinary animal, thought Samuel, and he could not resist picturing himself upon the splendid beast, a poncho blighting the cold, a thin cigarette pinched in his stern mouth. Samuel caught himself. He turned his attention back to the conversation, for one who dreams while awake is either prophet or madman. And there was nothing oracular about Samuel. Maud gave her husband a mystified look.

Ever fickle, Eudora’s anger had lapsed. She fidgeted with new energy, and as she waited to respond to Maud, her hands moved like sparrows in her lap. This distracted Samuel, who marvelled that even when silent Eudora drew attention to herself. In fact, he thought, glancing around the room, the furniture itself seemed subordinate to her, anticipating her commands. The beige loveseat with buttons like sagging nipples seemed especially aghast, sighing under Eudora’s weight. Beside it, a lamp cocked its prune shade at her face and listened with exaggerated respect. Samuel smiled.