A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [28]
Mother is as bright and flighty as she ever was, though. More so, really, since he’s not here – not that she’d ever see or acknowledge that. No one could say mortality had very noticeably laid claws on her, not yet. Except when she’s ill, of course. The breathing is so erratic. And that worrying purple that tinges her mouth like potassium permanganate. I think I ought to tell Doctor Raven those new pills aren’t doing her as much good as we’d hoped. I must remember to do that today, and also without letting her know. No use in upsetting her. That will be something for me to do this afternoon. Straight after lunch I’ll pop into Doctor Raven’s office. He’ll say –
“Hello, Rachel.”
Has someone spoken to me? A man’s voice, familiar. Who is it?
“It is Rachel, isn’t it?” he says, stopping, smiling enquiringly.
He is about the same height as myself. Not thickly built, really, but with the solidity of heavy bones. Straight hair, black. Eyes rather Slavic, slightly slanted, seemingly only friendly now, but I remember the mockery in them from years ago.
“Nick Kazlik. You haven’t been back in Manawaka for a long time.”
“No, that’s right, I haven’t.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Teaching,” he says, “in a High School.”
“In the city?”
“Yes,” he says, with a quirk of a smile.
I oughtn’t to have said the city. As though I believed it were the only one anywhere. Why didn’t I say Winnipeg?
“What’re you doing back here?” I have to rush to fill the empty spaces with words, and then I realize there is only one thing he could be doing here.
“I came back to be with my parents for the summer. They’re getting on.”
“Yes, of course. I – well, of course.”
“What are you doing here, Rachel?”
“I – oh, I live here.”
What a moronic thing to say. As though that explained my presence.
“Oh? You’re married, then?”
“No. No – I’m living with my – I keep house for my mother since my father – he’s dead, you know. And I teach, of course.”
Of course. As though he would be bound to know. Why should Teresa Kazlik write to him of me? I never had anything to do with him. He’s a year older than I am, I think. And anyway, I just didn’t. Mother used to say, “Don’t play with those Galician youngsters.” How odd that seems now. They weren’t Galicians – they were Ukrainian, but that didn’t trouble my mother. She said Galician or Bohunk. So did I, I suppose. She needn’t have worried. They were rawboned kids whose scorn was almost tangible. They would never have wanted to play with us. I knew that Nick went to university, but I never knew him there, either.
“I mean –” but I’m fumbling this amendment, “I’m a teacher – also.”
“Are you? Whereabouts?”
“Grade Two.” I find I’m laughing – tittering, maybe – yes, for Christ’s sake, that. “I wouldn’t want to cope with High School.”
“Trample their egos firmly,” Nick says. “It’s the only way.”
“Oh – I wouldn’t have thought so –”
He laughs. “No?”
Why didn’t I see he didn’t mean it, before? I don’t know why I take people’s words at their surface value. Mine can’t be taken so. But I do. And then they think – What naïveté – who could believe it? Is he thinking that?
“Been here long, Rachel?” he asks.
There is something almost gentle in his voice, and suddenly I long to say, Yes, forever, but also to deny everything and to say Only a year – before that, I was in Samarkand and Tokyo.
“A while. My father died –”
“Yes. You said.”
Yes, I did say, didn’t I? So why again? What can he be thinking? Never mind. Whatever he thinks, it’s not even approaching the truth. Who does he think he is? High School or not. Nestor Kazlik’s son. The milkman’s son.
It can’t be myself thinking like that. I don’t believe that way at all. It’s as though I’ve thought in Mother’s voice. Nick graduated from university. I didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Nick is saying, still speaking about my father, whom momentarily I had forgotten.
“Well – it was some time ago.” So no condolence