Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Now, when he’d finally discovered the work that would validate and immortalize him, they wanted to take it from him. He wouldn’t let that happen. He could not return to his passive life in Calgary, an insensate wandering more like taking up space than existing. To give all that was sacred in him to the dogs, to cast his pearls before swine; he couldn’t compel himself to do it.

So he unlocked his study, waved off his wife’s pleas and made his way through Aster as though he were appropriate and even valued. Blind to all that wasn’t work, the gossip, the stares, even the slurs, made a dim impression on him. The closest he came to noticing his mistreatment was when he went to Hayes’ Drugs to buy his stomach medication.

The drugstore had that wonderful antiseptic smell Samuel associated with good health. Doctors’ offices, banks and libraries also had this smell. He walked to the tall counter, greeting Hayes’ son with a smile.

Hayes Jr. studied Samuel from behind the englassed counter. “We don’t carry your medication any more.”

Samuel raised his brows. “I bought some here only last week. It is Napro—”

“I don’t care if you bought it here in the last two minutes.” Hayes grew grim about the mouth. “I’m telling you we don’t stock it any more.”

“You must be mistaken.” Samuel giggled. “Perhaps it has simply been misshelved. I have been buying it here for months now.” He turned to see a line of people growing behind him. All wore that same expression, a grimness about their mouths, impassive.

“And,” said Hayes Jr., “if you got any other prescriptions, you can take those to the city, too.”

Samuel understood. He left the store.

Beyond that incident he saw nothing. Only on the day of Ray’s deadline (on which nothing happened) did Samuel begin to see the shadow on the edge of his life. Everywhere he went, he was conscious of being watched, but would look up to confront nothing. This had continued for a week, this peripheral haunting, when at last he saw the cause of it. Porter lingered in the shadows across from his store, vanishing by the time Samuel had reached his feet to go and confront him. Porter hid in the foliage on Samuel’s walks home, in the alley where Samuel tossed bad circuit boards, in the few loyal cafés that still served him. Taunting, leering, escaping confrontation. Had Samuel been less anesthetized by work he might have done something. Instead, he grew used to the apparition, barely raising his eyes.

One day his largest investor called him in for a meeting. Samuel walked to the man’s office, dignified by a smart bowler and funereal suit, and was given a minute of Mr. Herbert Elliot’s time.

Elliot, an aristocratic man, offered Samuel a Scotch before speaking. Samuel accepted. Sinking into the plush chair, he was unsure of how to begin and was glad when Elliot spoke first.

“I’ve got four and a half minutes, so I’ll be brief,” he said. Dwarfed by his sizeable desk, Elliot made up for his small stature with a grand, stentorian voice. “I realize there are times in men’s lives where stress, and perhaps lack of money, incite them to terrible deeds. That standards of morality become dubious. But for you to have accepted money for what you know is a farce …”

Samuel was stirred into an awareness of his surroundings. “A farce?”

“I have spoken with people. People who, because of my rigid code of ethics, I have not the power, nor the right to name. Some people have no personal standards, but me, I was always taught to uphold a code of morality in keeping with my background.” He sighed, wrinkling his huge brow. “In short, information’s not sacred any more, my boy. Your project isn’t visionary — it’s a practical joke. And you had me.”

His severe look, the tenor of his voice, the words he used, all of it reminded Samuel of Dombey and Son from the government office.

Elliot became sympathetic. “I will not specify a repayment schedule — you have only your conscience for that. Besides, I know that somewhere in you is a man of integrity. I felt that, and my instincts are rarely wrong. So take your time, Samuel. But a warning — Wainright’s not as fair.”

Samuel had a terrible thirst. The glass in his hands was empty. Thanking Elliot for his time, he left the room consumed with the need to drink. The streets glistened from a recent cleaning. Samuel strode to the first convenience store, but was turned away even as he pleaded to pay five dollars for a bottle of pop. The next stores and bars also rejected him. He remembered the tap in his shop, three streets away.

The whole town seemed to grow silent. Passersby pretended not to watch him, but they couldn’t quell the urge to stop in the streets, whole groups of people slowing as at the gravity of an accident. Samuel felt with each step he was entering a dream.

Someone had crushed the windows of Tyne Electronics, a fringe of glass like brittle ice framing the storm inside. A single window stood untouched, GO HOME FIRESTARTER sludged in paint against the pane. The vandals had urinated everywhere, so that the nauseating ammonia was potent even before Samuel entered. He gagged. His expensive European tools were broken and strewn among piles of mud. His ceiling had been blackened by an unsuccessful fire, his entire set of computer prototypes smashed. Graffiti ruined the walls, slurs of FIRESTARTER, ARSONIST. His workbench had been axed. His prototype diagrams and signed contracts were shred or burned to ash. A swarm of flies clotted the air. And in all this, Samuel salvaged the only thing he could find that had survived: the box of watches and candles he’d bought from Porter before he’d known who he was.

Gripping the wet box under his arm, he held back his vomit. But his reaction was only physical; at first sight of the destruction he’d felt such anguish that he’d had to toughen immediately or go wild with grief. He emerged calmly into the street while people pitied him or harassed him or simply looked askance. Not until he’d reached his own street did a terrible emotion well in him again, and he spat into the dust and cursed. Maud found him in the foyer, smelling like a toilet, and dragged him to the bath.

He lay in shock, unable or unwilling to tell her what was wrong. It wasn’t until the RCMP came to the door that she learned what had happened.

Seeing the immaculate pants, the tall black boots, and the moustaches that gave their faces a severe, parochial look, Maud was beset with panic. She wiped her hands on her apron, trying to smile.

The policemen stood on the porch, chatting easily between themselves until they saw her.

“We’re looking for Samuel Kwabena Tyne. Is he home?”

Maud’s smile trembled. “Well, yes, yes. But he’s really sick right now. Really, really sick. In fact, he’s in a dead sleep right now.” Her nerves made her run off at the mouth. “I was out shopping, and I came home to find him in an utter shock, just sitting there, staring at nothing. He smelled like a toilet, you know, like he’d …” She stammered.

A look passed between the policemen.

“We need to speak with him in regards to a property on Glover Street.”

Maud clasped her hands. “Why, what’s wrong with it?”

“You his wife?”

She nodded. They told her about the damage, asking her if she knew anything about it. At her negative response, they nodded. “Sheer vandalism. What is happening to this town?”

Maud went to see the damage herself. Grim, she assessed the frantic insects, the pungent smell, the slogans confirming the mess as a gesture of justice. A neighbour had done this, this act more lacking in humanity than anything she’d faced these forty-three years. Kneeling, she retrieved a few tools from the debris and, finding them broken, threw them down again. She tried to drive the mud out with a shovel, but the handle buckled in half where it had been burnt, cutting her hand. Glass, urine, an earnest finality to it all weakened her will to clean. Exhausted and disillusioned, she rose to her feet and walked the mile home with a pronounced dignity.