The Favourite Game & Beautiful Losers Read online

  So they wore light clothing. He had a pair of green shorts which she loved for their thinness. She had a yellow dress which he preferred. This situation gave birth to Lisa’s great lyric exclamation:

  “You wear your green silk pants tomorrow; I’ll wear my yellow dress, so it’ll be better.”

  Deprivation is the mother of poetry.

  He was about to send for a volume advertised in a confession magazine which promised to arrive in a plain, brown wrapper, when, in one of the periodic searches through the maid’s drawers, he found the viewer.

  It was made in France and contained a two-foot strip of film. You held it to the light and turned the little round knob and you saw everything.

  Let us praise this film, which has disappeared with the maid into the Canadian wilderness.

  It was titled in English, with beguiling simplicity, “Thirty Ways to Screw.” The scenes were nothing like the pornographic movies Breavman later witnessed and attacked, of naked, jumpy men and women acting out the contrived, sordid plots.

  The actors were handsome humans, happy in their film career. They were not the scrawny, guilty, desperately gay cast-offs who perform for gentlemen’s smokers. There were no lecherous smiles for the camera, no winking and lip-licking, no abuse of the female organ with cigarettes and beer bottles, no ingenious unnatural arrangement of bodies.

  Each frame glowed with tenderness and passionate delight.

  This tiny strip of celluloid shown widely in Canadian theatres might revitalize the tedious marriages which are reported to abound in our country.

  Where are you, working girl with supreme device? The National Film Board hath need of you. Are you growing old in Winnipeg?

  The film ended with a demonstration of the grand, democratic, universal practice of physical love. There were Indian couples represented, Chinese, Negro, Arabian, all without their national costumes on.

  Come back, maid, strike a blow for World Federalism.

  They pointed the viewer to the window and solemnly traded it back and forth.

  They knew it would be like this.

  The window gave over the slope of Murray Park, across the commercial city, down to the Saint Lawrence, American mountains in the distance. When it wasn’t his turn Breavman took in the prospect. Why was anybody working?

  They were two children hugging in a window, breathless with wisdom.

  They could not rush to it then and there. They weren’t safe from intrusion. Not only that, children have a highly developed sense of ritual and formality. This was important. They had to decide whether they were in love. Because if there was one thing the pictures showed, you had to be in love. They thought they were but they would give themselves a week just to make sure.

  They hugged again in what they thought would be among their last fully clothed embraces.

  How can Breavman have regrets? It was Nature herself who intervened.

  Three days before Thursday, maid’s day off, they met in their special place, the bench beside the pond in the park. Lisa was shy but determined to be straight and honest, as was her nature.

  “I can’t do it with you.”

  “Aren’t your parents going away?”

  “It’s not that. Last night I got the Curse.”

  She touched his hand with pride.

  “Oh.”

  “Know what I mean?”

  “Sure.”

  He hadn’t the remotest idea.

  “But it would still be O.K., wouldn’t it?”

  “But now I can have babies. Mummy told me about everything last night. She had it all ready for me, too, napkins, a belt of my own, everything.”

  “No guff?”

  What was she talking about? The Curse sounded like a celestial intrusion on his pleasure.

  “She told me about all the stuff, just like the camera.”

  “Did you tell her about the camera?”

  Nothing, the world, nobody could be trusted.

  “She promised not to tell anyone.”

  “It was a secret.”

  “Don’t be sad. We had a long talk. I told her about us, too. You see, I’ve got to act like a lady now. Girls have to act older than boys.”

  “Who’s sad?”

  She leaned back in the bench and took his hand.

  “But aren’t you happy for me?” she laughed, “that I got the Curse? I have it right now!”

  18

  Soon she was deep in the rites of young womanhood. She came back from camp half a head taller than Breavman, with breasts that disturbed even bulky sweaters.

  “Hiya, Lisa.”

  “Hello, Lawrence.”

  She was meeting her mother downtown, she was flying to New York for clothes. She was dressed with that kind of austerity which can make any thirteen-year-old a poignant beauty. None of the uglifying extravagance to which Westmount Jews and Gentiles are currently devoted.

  Good-bye.

  He watched her grow away from him, not with sadness but with wonder. At fifteen she was a grand lady who wore traces of lipstick and was allowed an occasional cigarette.

  He sat in their old window and saw the older boys call for her in their fathers’ cars. He marvelled that he had ever kissed the mouth that now mastered cigarettes. Seeing her ushered into these long cars by young men with white scarves, seeing her sitting like a duchess in a carriage while they closed the door and walked briskly in front of the machine and climbed importantly into the driver’s seat, he had to convince himself that he had ever had a part in that beauty and grace.

  Hey, you forgot one of your little fragrances on my thumb.

  19

  Fur gloves in the sun-room.

  Certain years the sun-room, which was no more than an enclosed balcony attached to the back of the house, was used to store some of the winter clothes.

  Breavman, Krantz and Philip came into this room for no particular reason. They looked out of the windows at the park and the tennis players.

  There was the regular sound of balls hit back and forth and the hysterical sound of a house fly battering a window pane.

  Breavman’s father was dead, Krantz’s was away most of the time, but Philip’s was strict. He did not let Philip wear his hair with a big pompadour in front. He had to slick it down to his scalp with some nineteenth-century hair tonic.

  That historic afternoon Philip looked around and what did he spy but a pair of fur gloves.

  He pulled on one of them, sat himself down on a pile of blankets.

  Breavman and Krantz, who were perceptive children, understood that the fur glove was not an integral part of the practice.

  They all agreed it smelt like Javel water. Philip washed it down the sink.

  “Catholics think it’s a sin,” he instructed.

  20

  Breavman and Shell were beside the lake. The evening mist was piling up along the opposite shore like dunes of sand. They lay in a double sleeping bag beside the fire, which was built of driftwood they had gathered that afternoon. He wanted to tell her everything.

  “I still do.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I read that Rousseau did right to the end of his life. I guess a certain kind of creative person is like that. He works all day to discipline his imagination so it’s there he’s most at home. No real corporeal woman can give him the pleasure of his own creations. Shell, don’t let me scare you with what I’m saying.”

  “But doesn’t it separate us completely?”

  They held hands tightly and watched the stars in the dark part of the sky; where the moon was bright they were obliterated. She told him she loved him.

  A loon went insane in the middle of the lake.

  21

  After that distinguished summer of yellow dresses and green pants Lisa and Breavman rarely met. But once, during the following winter, they wrestled in the snow.

  That episode has a circumference for Breavman, a kind of black-edged picture frame separating it from what he remembers of her.
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  It was after Hebrew school. They found themselves starting home together. They cut up through the park. There was almost a full moon and it silvered the snow.

  The light seemed to come from under the snow. When they broke the crust with their boots the powdered snow beneath was brighter.

  They tried to walk on the crust without breaking it. Both carried their Hebrew books, particular sections of the Torah which they were studying at the time.

  Competition in crust-walking led to other trials: snowballing, tests of balance on the icy parts, pushing, and finally personal combat which began jovially but ended in serious struggle.

  This was on the slope of the hill, near a line of poplar trees. Breavman recalls it as like a Brueghel: two small bulky-coated figures entwined, their limited battle viewed through icy branches.

  At a certain point Breavman discovered he wasn’t going to win. He strained to topple her, he could not. He felt himself slipping. They were still holding their Hebrew books. He dropped his in a last-ditch effort at an offensive but it failed and he went down.

  The snow was not cold. Lisa stood above him in strange female triumph. He ate some snow.

  “And you have to kiss the Sidur.”

  It was mandatory to kiss a holy book which had fallen to the ground.

  “Like hell I do!”

  He crawled to his books, gathered them contemptuously and stood up.

  What Breavman remembers most clearly of that struggle is the cold moonlight and the crisp trees, and the humiliation of a defeat which was not only bitter but unnatural.

  22

  He read everything he could on hypnosis. He hid the books behind a curtain and studied by flashlight.

  Here was the real world.

  There was a long section, “How to Hypnotize Animals.” Terri -fying illustration of glassy-eyed roosters.

  Breavman pictured himself a militant Saint Francis, commanding the world by means of his loyal herds and flocks. Apes as obedient satraps. Clouds of pigeons ready to commit suicide against enemy planes. Hyena bodyguards. Massed triumphal choruses of nightingales.

  Tovarich, named before the Stalin-Hitler pact, slept on the porch in the afternoon sun. Breavman squatted and swung the pendulum he had made out of a drilled silver dollar. The dog opened its eyes, sniffed to assure itself it was not food, returned to sleep.

  But was it natural sleep?

  The neighbours had a cartoon of a Dachshund named Cognac. Breavman looked for a slave in the gold eyes.

  It worked!

  Or was it just the lazy, humid afternoon?

  He had to climb a fence to get at Lisa’s Fox Terrier which he fixed in a sitting position inches from a bowl of Pard.

  You will be highly favoured, dog of Lisa.

  After his fifth success the exhilaration of his dark power carried him along the boulevard, running blindly and laughing.

  A whole street of dogs frozen! The city lay before him. He would have an agent in every house. All he had to do was whistle.

  Maybe Krantz deserved a province.

  Whistle, that’s all. But there was no point in threatening a vision with such a crude test. He shoved his hands down his pockets and floated home on the secret of his revolution.

  23

  In those dark ages, early adolescence, he was almost a head shorter than most of his friends.

  But it was his friends who were humiliated when he had to stand on a stool to see over the pulpit when he sang his bar mitzvah. It didn’t matter to him how he faced the congregation: his great-grandfather had built the synagogue.

  Short boys were supposed to take out shorter girls. That was the rule. He knew the tall uneasy girls he wanted could easily be calmed by stories and talk.

  His friends insisted that his size was a terrible affliction and they convinced him. They convinced him with inches of flesh and bone.

  He didn’t know their mystery of how bodies were increased, how air and food worked for them. How did they cajole the universe? Why was the sky holding out on him?

  He began to think of himself as The Tiny Conspirator, The Cunning Dwarf.

  He worked frantically on a pair of shoes. He had ripped off the heels of an old pair and tried to hammer them on to his own. The rubber didn’t hold the nails very well. He’d have to be careful.

  This was in the deep basement of his house, traditional workshop of bomb-throwers and confusers of society.

  There he stood, an inch taller, feeling a mixture of shame and craftiness. Nothing like brains, eh? He waltzed round the concrete floor and fell on his face.

  He had completely forgotten the desperation of a few minutes before. It came back to him as he sat painfully on the floor, looking up at a naked bulb. The detached heel which had tripped him crouched like a rodent a couple of feet away, nails protruding like sharpened fangs.

  The party was fifteen minutes away. And Muffin went around with an older, therefore taller, group.

  Rumour had it that Muffin stuffed her bra with Kleenex. He decided to apply the technique. Carefully he laid a Kleenex platform into each shoe. It raised his heels almost to the rims of the leather. He let his trousers ride low.

  A few spins around the concrete and he satisfied himself that he could manoeuvre. Panic eased. Science triumphed again.

  Fluorescent lights hid in a false moulding lit the ceiling. There was the usual mirrored bar with miniature bottles and glass knick-knacks. An upholstered seat lined one wall, on which was painted a pastel mural of drinkers of different nationalities. The Breavmans did not approve of finished basements.

  He danced well for one half hour and then his feet began to ache. The Kleenex had become misshapen under his arches. After two more jitterbug records he could hardly walk. He went into the bathroom and tried to straighten the Kleenex but it was compressed into a hard ball. He thought of removing it altogether but he imagined the surprised and horrified look of the company at his shrunken stature.

  He slipped his foot half-way into the shoe, placed the ball between his heel and the inside sole, stepped in hard, and tied the lace. The pain spiked up through his ankles.

  The Bunny Hop nearly put him away. In the middle of that line, squashed between the girl whose waist he was holding and the girl who was holding his waist, the music loud and repetitive, everyone chanting one, two, one-two-three, his feet getting out of control because of the pain, he thought: this must be what Hell is like, an eternal Bunny Hop with sore feet, which you can never drop out of.

  She with her false tits, me with my false feet, oh you evil Kleenex Company!

  One of the fluorescent lights was flickering. There was disease in the walls. Maybe everyone there, every single person in the bobbing line was wearing a Kleenex prop. Maybe some had Kleenex noses and Kleenex ears and Kleenex hands. Depression seized him.

  Now it was his favourite song. He wanted to dance close to Muffin, close his eyes against her hair which had just been washed.

  … the girl I call my own

  will wear cotton and laces and smell of cologne.

  But he could barely stand up. He had to keep shifting his weight from foot to foot to dole out the pain in equal shares. Often these shifts did not correspond to the rhythm of the music and imparted to his already imperfect dancing an extra jerky quality. As his hobbling became more pronounced he was obliged to hold Muffin tighter and tighter to keep his balance.

  “Not here,” she whispered in his ear. “My parents won’t be home till late.”

  Not even this pleasant invitation could assuage his discomfort. He clung to her and manoeuvred into a crowded part of the floor where he could justifiably limit his movements.

  “Oh, Larry!”

  “Fast worker!”

  Even by the sophisticated standards of this older group he was dancing adventurously close. He accepted the cavalier role his pain cast, and bit her ear, having heard that ears were bitten.

  “Let’s get rid of the lights,” he snarled to all men of daring.
r />   They started from the party, and the walk was a forced march of Bataan proportions. By walking very close he made his lameness into a display of affection. On the hills the Kleenex slipped back under his arches.

  A fog-horn from the city’s river reached Westmount, and the sound shivered him.

  “I’ve got to tell you something, Muffin. Then you’ve got to tell me something.”

  Muffin didn’t want to sit on the grass because of her dress, but maybe he was going to ask her to go steady. She’d refuse, but what a beautiful party that would make it. The confession he was about to offer shortened his breath, and he confused his fear with love.

  He tugged off his shoes, scooped out the balls of Kleenex and laid them like a secret in her lap.

  Muffin’s nightmare had just begun.

  “Now you take yours out.”

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded in a voice which surprised her because it sounded so much like her mother’s.

  Breavman pointed to her heart.

  “Don’t be ashamed. You take yours out.”

  He reached for her top button and received his balls of Kleenex in the face.

  “Get away!”

  Breavman decided to let her run. Her house wasn’t that far away. He wiggled his toes and rubbed his soles. He wasn’t condemned to a Bunny Hop after all, not with those people. He pitched the Kleenex into the gutter and trotted home, shoes in hand.

  He detoured to the park and raced over the damp ground until the view stopped him. He set down his shoes like neat lieutenants beside his feet.

  He looked in awe at the expanse of night-green foliage, the austere lights of the city, the dull gleam of the St. Lawrence.

  A city was a great achievement, bridges were fine things to build. But the street, harbours, spikes of stone were ultimately lost in the wider cradle of mountain and sky.