Surfacing Read Free Page A

and they saw where theywere, just as the current caught them. They were going backwards, the howling was the village dogs. If the canoe had tipped over we would have been killed, but they were calm, they didn’t act like danger; what stayed in my head was only the mist whiteness, the hush of moving water and the rocking motion, total safety.
    Anna was right, I had a good childhood; it was in the middle of the war, flecked grey newsreels I never saw, bombs and concentration camps, the leaders roaring at the crowds from inside their uniforms, pain and useless death, flags rippling in time to the anthems. But I didn’t know about that till later, when my brother found out and told me. At the time it felt like peace.
    Now I’m in the village, walking through it, waiting for the nostalgia to hit, for the cluster of nondescript buildings to be irradiated with inner light like a plug-in crêche, as it has been so often in memory; but nothing happens. It hasn’t gotten any bigger, these days the children probably move to the city. The same two-storey frame houses with nasturtiums on the windowsills and squared roof-corners, motley lines of washing trailing from them like the tails of kites; though some of the houses are slicker and have changed colour. The white doll-house-sized church above on the rock hillside is neglected, peeling paint and a broken window, the old priest must be gone. What I mean is dead.
    Down by the shore, a lot of boats are tied up at the government dock but not many cars parked: more boats than cars, a bad season. I try to decide which of the cars is my father’s but as I scan them I realize I no longer know what kind of car he would be driving.
    I reach the turnoff to Paul’s, a rough dirt path rutted by tires, crossing the railroad tracks and continuing through a swamp field, logs laid side by side over the soggy parts. A few black flies catch up with me, it’s July, past the breeding time, but as usual there are some left.
    The road goes up and I climb it, along the backs of the housesPaul built for his son and his son-in-law and his other son, his clan. Paul’s is the original, yellow with maroon trim, squat farmhouse pattern; though this isn’t farming country, it’s mostly rock and where there’s any soil it’s thin and sandy. The closest Paul ever got to farming was to have a cow, killed by the milkbottle. The shed where it and the horses used to live is now a garage.
    In the clearing behind the house two 1950s cars are resting, a pink one and a red one, raised on wooden blocks, no wheels; scattered around them are the rusting remains of older cars: like my father, Paul saves everything useful. The house has added a pointed structure like a church spire, made of former car parts welded together; on top of it is a T.V. antenna and on top of that a lightning rod.
    Paul is at home, he’s in the vegetable garden at the side of the house. He straightens up to watch me, his face leathery and retained as ever, like a closed suitcase; I don’t think he knows who I am.
    “Bonjour monsieur,” I say when I’m at the fence. He takes a step towards me, still guarding, and I say “Don’t you remember me,” and smile. Again the strangling feeling, paralysis of the throat; but Paul speaks English, he’s been outside. “It was very kind of you to write.”
    “Ah,” he says, not recognizing me but deducing who I must be, “Bonjour,” and then he smiles too. He clasps his hands in front of him like a priest or a porcelain mandarin; he doesn’t say anything else. We stand there on either side of the fence, our faces petrified in well-intentioned curves, mouths wreathed in parentheses, until I say “Has he come back yet?”
    At this his chin plummets, his head teeters on his neck. “Ah. No.” He gazes sideways, accusingly, down at a potato plant near his left foot. Then his head jerks up again and he says gaily, “Not yet, ay? But maybe soon. Your fadder, he knows the bush.”
    Madame has