The Party Wall Page 3

  Madeleine came to understand that these passing travellers are all to some extent liars, runaways, and crazy, and that her house matters for them in ways that are beyond her. So she welcomes them without judging or questioning; she receives these characters as if they were living postcards sent by her son, who never writes.

  She is busy planting lettuce when Yun arrives after covering the last kilometre on foot; the Monte Carlo started to belch out smoke just past Bathurst. She is lugging her enormous suitcase, and the dust it churns up on the small road signals Yun’s presence from afar. Madeleine straightens up and shields her eyes against the sun with a soil-encrusted hand. The travellers always arrive on foot. She drops her tools and goes to meet the new visitor. As soon as they shake hands Madeleine senses that her guest is no exception to the rule: she has come with a mystery in tow. Without knowing why, Madeleine has a feeling this girl’s secret concerns her. Banishing the little voice in her throat that yearns to interrogate, she shows the young woman around her house.

  “Your place so beautiful! Édouard is lucky to have grown up here.”

  “I’m not sure he sees things that way. Anyway, he’s in no hurry to come back.”

  Madeleine instantly regrets saying this and bites her lip. Wide-eyed with astonishment, Yun stops midway up the stairs.

  “He hasn’t told you? He’ll be here in a few days!”

  “Here? In Grande-Anse?”

  Yun nods yes. A hum fills Madeleine’s chest. It’s been a year since she last saw her son. She clears her throat.

  “So, how is he?”

  “He’s in Montreal. There are a few small things he needs to do before heading out.”

  Yun puts her suitcase down at the foot of the guest bed and casts her gaze out the window. The enigma moves through the room, as dense and round as the full moon, which tugs at people’s hearts and, month after month, ordains the Earth’s moods.

  For her chore Yun chooses to remove the dead wood from the copse at the edge of the property. Whatever is too far gone to be of any use she burns; the rest she proposes to turn into firewood, which she will stack in the shed. This initiative delights Madeleine, who fetches the axe in the workshop, believing the girl already knows how to use to it. But from the very first blow she realizes this is a training project. Yun’s method is crude; it consists in lifting the axe as high as possible, swinging it down while bending forward with her eyes shut, and striking as hard as possible, usually off-target. After the blade lands a few centimetres from the girl’s foot, Madeleine feels compelled to wrest the implement from her hands to show her how it’s done.

  It takes Yun two days to master the technique but from then on each of her moves is perfect. Madeleine is mesmerized by the girl’s work, transfixed by the precise arc of the blade striking the log and splitting it into halves filled with signs, which she would like to read like the lines of a hand. At night, they settle in in front of the fire, toast marshmallows that they don’t eat, chat and absorb a smoky scent that they bring back to their sheets to keep themselves warm when, toward four in the morning, the mercury drops below ten degrees.

  Yun discovered North America at the age of six, when her parents left her little hometown in South Korea for Virginia. She grew up between soccer games and Kumon, “after-school school,” where the children were subjected to endless math exercises. Inspired by the Huckleberry Finn story, Yun dreamed of building a raft and sailing down the rivers of the South. But it had been decided she would pursue a science career, and even when she ran away on a makeshift boat she was brought back to her allotted path by her chemistry teacher, who happened to be fishing in a cove.

  So she reined in her rebellious urges and surrendered to her parents’ vision of her future. By the age of eighteen she had carved out an enviable place for herself among the top candidates for admission to Emory University in Atlanta. During the summer holidays after her freshman year, rather than rushing into one of the unpaid internships her fellow students were vying for, she gathered her meagre savings and purchased a spluttering scooter, which she bravely drove to Key West. She explored the back roads of Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama, where she was treated to canned beer, stalked on moonless nights, seated before platefuls of scrambled eggs and grits, called “squinty,” “slut,” and “communist,” and gallantly kissed on the hand. In September she returned to her residence with a sunburn of Biblical proportions and a lost cat under her arm. By Thanksgiving the creature had died of pneumonia, and her scooter did not make it through the winter. But the following summer Yun was back on the road again.

  When Édouard met her she was on her third trip, determined this time to tour the Americas and not go back to school. Her training in chemistry had not yielded anything even remotely comparable to the bliss she felt while knocking around, so, drawing on all the wisdom of her twenty-one years, she concluded that if a career didn’t afford her as much happiness as travelling it wasn’t worth pursuing.

  Night after night Madeleine follows the narrative of her adventures and smiles. Yun expresses herself with the objectivity and precision of someone trained in the sciences, but also with such gentleness that the listener feels she is sharing in a conversation rather than listening to a traveller’s monologue. On their fourth night sitting by the campfire, Madeleine finally clears her throat and responds.

  “You know, I have the feeling my son must be very fond of you.”

  The next day, Édouard’s silhouette emerges from the dust on the gravel road.

  Sitting on the veranda petting Shabby in a desultory way, Madeleine spots in the distance the peculiar, backlighted form of the constantly entwined bodies of her son and Yun. True to his habit, Édouard barely said hello to his mother when he arrived. This time, however, instead of raiding the refrigerator, he locked himself in his bedroom with his new girlfriend for two whole days. Watching the two of them, Madeleine suspects they share the secret that Yun brought with her, but she hasn’t found a way of learning more about it from her son, who replies only in monosyllables. The willow sways in the rising wind and sends a message in a strange language, a message that Madeleine grasps but is unable to articulate. “If only I could be alone with him just for a minute,” she says under her breath. The answer comes of its own accord: “What difference would that make?”

  The afternoon sun moves in with the authority of a landlord. Madeleine’s car plunges inland, where the properties appear sturdier and tidier than the jumbled dunes along the shore. When she reaches Paul’s place, she finds him hammer in hand, in the middle of building a new beehive for his steadily growing colony.

  “How are the bees?”

  “Bursting with inspiration! Here, take a look at their latest masterpiece…”

  Untroubled by the comings and goings of the stinging insects, he approaches one of the older hives and pulls out of its entrails a frame overflowing with heavy, coppery syrup. Whenever she visits, Madeleine admires the ease with which Paul moves through this miniature city, and at the same time she wonders if it isn’t precisely his ability to so easily dominate this structured universe that pleases him. Here, Paul is great and all-powerful. And he takes what he wants.

  He lifts the frame of honey to Madeleine’s mouth, and she eats out of his hand like a trained animal. Paul kisses her; his beard chafes.

  “Your son is back?” he asks, getting back to his work.

  “Yes.”

  “Apparently there’s a girl with him. They were seen on the beach.”

  “They’re on the point of total fusion.”

  “So they’re in love?”

  “I don’t know,” Madeleine answers thoughtfully.

  It seems to her that her son’s adventures never follow this sort of arc. As far as she can tell, his love affairs are mainly about sex.

  The bees trace complex diagrams in the air; Paul puts away his tools haphazardly, as if they have become useless
junk now their job is done. He turns toward her again.

  “You’re looking out of sorts.”

  “Me? No, everything’s fine.”

  “Mommy doesn’t like to share her little boy?” he teases.

  Madeleine’s face grows hot and crimson. Inwardly, she responds in the most scathing terms: “Mommy doesn’t have a little boy to share anymore. He hasn’t been hers for a very long time.” But she clenches her jaws and waits for her flushed cheeks to cool down. Paul is one of those people who always think they know more about others than they do themselves. It makes him obnoxious but she wants him, which is no doubt why she continues to see him. And the annoyance he elicits heightens her desire for him. With her husband it was the opposite. Everything was a matter of tenderness and patience. And she marvelled at the fact Micha managed to draw all that gentleness out of her grouchy soul. Even after the desire had flown away, it was the kindness that won out and made her open her arms.

  Paul keeps looking at her gleefully, like a mischievous uncle having fun making the little girls blush. He proffers a sticky jar.

  “Here, take this back to him—to your son. If he’s anything like his mother he’s got a huge sweet tooth. Anyway, it’s good for lovers.”

  Madeleine accepts the glistening honeypot. Paul points to the house with his chin.

  “Are you coming in? Your sugar craving needs to be satisfied, too.”

  He takes her hand and they walk toward the house, which from afar looks as vacant as the new hive.

  The rays of sunlight fall on the museum parking lot like pillars. Madeleine eats her snack while enjoying these first sensations of springtime warmth. An elderly group is waiting in the hall, and the thrumming of their mobility scooters can be heard outside. Just as Madeleine gets up to throw away her apple core, a huge, lumbering automobile pulls up alongside her with Yun aboard. She’s come to say goodbye before heading off on a trip to Cape Breton.

  “It seems I’ve got some distant relations out there.”

  “And you trust this car to get you there?”

  “No way! I’m going to sing Patsy Cline to it the whole time. It’s the only thing that stops it from acting up, apparently.”

  “Well, good luck! I hope you come back to see us again some day.”

  “Oh, I’m coming back very soon! I’ll be gone for barely a week, just long enough to let Édouard touch down. He needs to get his bearings, you understand…”

  Madeleine nods affirmatively, though she doesn’t grasp the meaning of that puzzling statement, any more than she does the mutual allegiance that seems to exist between her son and this young woman too studious to be a true bohemian and too unpredictable to put down roots. But she feels a mute gratitude toward Yun. The two women kiss each other on the cheek, and Madeleine waves as if to encourage the Monte Carlo’s grinding motor. The noise emanating from the colossal machine does nothing to reassure her, but Yun is unperturbed as she steers her white monster down the road. She drives off in a din of metal and country music, which is soon covered over by the roar of the ocean. Madeleine goes back to her mobile visitors, who are turning in circles like seagulls over an island.

  It feels as though something is rumbling beneath her feet, as though the willow’s roots are stirring beneath the house. Madeleine shudders. It’s only the wind or perhaps the spring tides making their presence felt. Some waves remind her of sumo wrestlers before a fight, lifting their massive legs high in the air and then pounding the floor to make the ground tremble and chase away evil spirits. This is probably why Madeleine has always longed to be near the sea. Those repeated blows on the shoreline driving the demons away. It was the same for Micha. They had this in common: the need to feel the ocean’s proximity, to feel in each of their cells the water’s to-and-fro and the texture of salt. Micha had a legion of monsters to keep at bay.

  The door slams. Shabby scampers in followed by Édouard looking exhausted after a hike.

  “All hell’s about to break loose!”

  “What?”

  “The storm! Didn’t you hear the thunder?”

  “Oh, yes. But I thought it was the sea.”

  “You always think it’s the sea.”

  Édouard leans over the sink to wash his face, his long braid blending with the water flowing between his fingers. The chicken soup is still simmering on the stove. He serves himself a bowlful. Madeleine sits down at the table facing him and watches him eat. Her mind travels light-years back, and she finds herself stunned at the sight of those hands so tiny a short while ago clasping her finger, that mouth just moments before awkwardly suckling a single food, those limbs fashioned inside her now so large, magnified by time, out of her reach for good. She grabs a dishrag and wrings it underneath the table to push away the too-close image of the child who once was hers. The soup gradually disappears, then Édouard stretches a tired arm out toward Paul’s honeypot and plunges his index finger into it like a gold prospector. The storm is still rumbling on the horizon like a guest dithering on the doorstep.

  “Mother, I’m sick. I need a kidney.”

  Madeleine is struck dumb, with the dishrag hanging from her fingertips. Édouard starts weeping over the honeypot.

  “I’m sorry, Ma. There’s no one else I can ask.”

  Madeleine steps toward him and, without giving it any thought, takes him in her arms. Édouard’s body feels so big, so tangled, so hard to comprehend. It seems to her everything is coated with honey, that her hands are sticking to her son’s skin, attaching themselves to it in a complicated, sweet and salty embrace, a bungled knot.

  The storm gathers strength, flattening the dahlias and bellflowers and whatever still strives to remain upright. As Madeleine watches the spectacle, she recalls how during her pregnancy she slept curled up, so distraught because of a previous miscarriage that even at night she sought to shield her child against the unseen blows that make babies disappear before their mothers can see their faces.

  You spend your life fearing the worst. First, you’re afraid of crib death and all the congenital diseases that can show up after birth. You wave your arms, snap your fingers to make sure his eyes can see, his ears can hear. You wait for the first steps, the first words. At every new stage you eliminate a set of handicaps you don’t want to contemplate but that stay planted in your mind like stings.

  He grows and you avert your eyes when the TV shows bald children asking for their last wish to be fulfilled. He learns to ride a bicycle, to climb trees, and you pray he won’t fall. He dives into the waves and you keep your eyes glued to the big bubbles in his wake. He goes to play far from the house and you hope he’ll remember not to speak to strangers, to never get into a van with tinted windows. Adolescence comes and you’re afraid the lectures on drugs were inadequate; you’d like to secretly follow him to make sure he doesn’t touch a drop of alcohol before getting behind the wheel, that he always carries condoms, that he doesn’t dive off a high cliff to impress the girls. Then he becomes a man, and you’re left with no choice. You have to let go. And now it happens. I shouldn’t have let my guard down.

  Madeleine interrupts her monologue on hearing her son step out of the shower. He slowly comes downstairs and settles in by the fire, which is sucking the dampness out of the air. He looks calmer, but a furrow has appeared on his forehead. It will never go away again. Years later a woman covered with the same sheet as him will run her finger over the little gap and say, “What about this one?” He will answer: “I don’t recall anymore. It appeared in my late twenties.” Madeleine pictures this with a desperate wishfulness. She too approaches the fireplace now, rests one foot on the hearthstone, and lets the heat climb up her leg. Outside, peals of distant thunder are still audible. The storm is heading toward Labrador.

  “Explain to me what’s going on.”

  Édouard clutches the corner of a cushion and squeezes it in his fist.

  “There wa
s an infection: fever, tiredness—the usual. I figured it was the flu. I let it drag on, didn’t want to go to the hospital. It’s expensive down there. Then I saw blood in my urine. I thought I’d caught—you know—one of those diseases.”

  Now Madeleine nods her head.

  “It wasn’t that. It kept getting worse. My stomach hurt, I lost weight. I was worn out. So I came back. Enough time had gone by for the bacteria to almost completely eat up my kidneys. They put me on dialysis right away. I went back today. That’s what the hike was really about. I have to go there three times a week now. They told me my only way out is a transplant.”

  Madeleine puts a finger in her mouth and bites down. A small detonation goes off in the fireplace. She has always wondered why wood goes through this sort of blast as it burns. Exploding knots, perhaps. She thinks of the hard kernel in Édouard’s abdomen. She’d like to blow it up, too. An anatomical big bang. Poof.

  As the sun moves past the zenith, a hazy shape comes into view at the far end of the road and very quickly grows larger. Rubbing her eyes, bloodshot from lack of sleep, at first Madeleine believes she is seeing a car, possibly Yun already returning from her trip. But the spot is too small, too light. Too red. Soon the slender outline of a bicycle appears and, perched on it, a stooped creature, bending over as though adapting to a frame that is too small, pedals that are too high, handlebars that are too narrow. A few moments later, an extraordinarily tall woman alights and greets Madeleine with a benevolent smile. Her hair is the red of clay cliffs; the blue of her gaze is barely visible through her nearly closed eyelids, which leave just a slit for her eyes fringed with starbursts of deep creases. The face of someone who has spent her life squinting into the sun.

  “I’m Joanna,” the woman declares with a thick accent. “You put people up?”

  Madeleine contemplates the weary amazon’s body. She must be over six foot three. She wears a man’s shirt that flaps in the wind. Her fingers, partly sheathed in cycling gloves, seem as long as pencils. Her bike is full of nicks half-hidden by stickers from various countries. As she deciphers a Wall Drug logo that masks some Zapatista graffiti, Madeleine searches for the right words to explain to this woman who looks like she’s just circumnavigated the globe that this is not the best time for her to take in visitors.