A Jest of God - Margaret Laurence [38]
Only Nick’s face is clear. Prominent cheekbones, slightly slanted eyes, his black straight hair. Before, it seemed a known face because I knew the feeling of it, the male smell of his skin, the faint roughness along his jaw. Now it seems a hidden Caucasian face, one of the hawkish and long-ago riders of the Steppes.
I’m dramatizing. To make all this seem mysterious or significant, instead of what it is, which is embarrassing, myself standing gawkily here with no words, no charms of either kind, neither any depth nor any lightness.
He sits down on the grass, and because I don’t know what else to do, I sit down beside him, arranging my cotton dress with a primness I despise and yet can’t avoid. Then I see he hasn’t noticed anything. His mind is on something else. He laughs, a dismissing laugh, shrugging.
“Pointless to come here,” he says. “I don’t know why I wanted to see it, this particular place. There’s nothing for me here now. I knew it, of course, but that never stops anyone. These treks back – they make me sick, to tell you the truth. I always swore I’d never do it.”
“Why not? What’s the harm? Isn’t it natural to want to see some place you’ve been fond of?”
“I don’t have a clue what’s natural and what’s unnatural,” he says cheerfully. “I wasn’t fond of it. It was neutral territory, that’s all, and if any of the other kids ever came around, Steve and I used to scare them off. We had slingshots, and we were both pretty good, Steve especially. We never had a twenty-two. That used to burn me up. The old man wouldn’t let us have one. He always had this belief that all weapons were illegal, really, and he visualized one of us being toted off to jail for life for the possession of arms. Know what I mean? He knew this wasn’t so, but he could never believe it. I don’t know what he thought we’d do with a twenty-two – start a revolution, maybe.”
“What did you mean – a neutral place?”
“Oh, just that it wasn’t the town,” Nick says offhandedly, “and it wasn’t the farm, and it wasn’t used for anything, in those days, not even for pasture. Apart from the few kids who made the mistake of encroaching, I never saw anybody here except sometimes hoboes, and we didn’t mind them. They didn’t have much place anywhere, either.”
All this sounds so strange to me that I can hardly believe it. But when I turn to him, and look, he looks away.
“Rachel,” he says, as though trying out my name to see how it will sound. “Rachel Cameron. You must think I’m nuts. We’ll change the subject. I got off on this track the last time I saw you, too. I certainly didn’t mean to. Hardly a soul I used to know is left here now – you know? They’ve moved, and different people have come, and – anyway, that’s no excuse for shooting off my mouth to you. At one time I would’ve dropped dead rather than talk like this. At least I’ve changed some, thank Christ. Mellowed, as I like to think, although this may be some vast conceit.”
Neutral territory – that was what he needed then. Some place that was neither one side nor the other.
“Nick – I never knew you’d felt like that, in those days. I always thought –”
“Go on. What did you think? This interests me.”
“I envied you, I guess. I don’t mean you, especially. People like you.”
“People like me?” He is grinning now, and I sense that he means to hurt. “There isn’t anybody like me, darling. What you’re trying to say is you envied Ukrainians. What I would like to know is why.”
“Because – I don’t know – in comparison with the kids at my –”
“At your