wild swans

flo said to watch out for white slavers. she said this was how they operated: an old woman, amotherly or grandmotherly sort, made friends while riding beside you on a bus or train. sheoffered you candy, which was drugged. pretty soon you began to droop and mumble, were in nocondition to speak for yourself. oh, help, the woman said, my daughter (granddaughter) is sick,please somebody help me get her off so that she can recover in the fresh air. up stepped a politegentleman, pretending to be a stranger, offering assistance. together, at the next stop, they hustledyou off the train or bus, and that was the last the ordinary world ever saw of you. they kept you aprisoner in the white slave place (to which you had been transported drugged and bound so youwouldn’t even know where you were), until such time as you were thoroughly degraded and indespair, your insides torn up by drunken men and invested with vile disease, your mind destroyedby drugs, your hair and teeth fallen out. it took about three years, for you to get to this state. youwouldn’t want to go home, then, maybe couldn’t remember home, or find your way if you did. sothey let you out on the streets.

flo took ten dollars and put it in a little cloth bag which she sewed to the strap of rose’s slip.

another thing likely to happen was that rose would get her purse stolen.

watch out, flo said as well, for people dressed up as ministers. they were the worst. thatdisguise was commonly adopted by white slavers, as well as those after your money.

rose said she didn’t see how she could tell which ones were disguised.

flo had worked in toronto once. she had worked as a waitress in a coffee shop in unionstation. that was how she knew all she knew. she never saw sunlight, in those days, except on herdays off. but she saw plenty else. she saw a man cut another man’s stomach with a knife, just pullout his shirt and do a tidy cut, as if it was a water-melon not a stomach. the stomach’s owner justsat looking down surprised, with no time to protest. flo implied that that was nothing, in toronto.

she saw two bad women (that was what flo called whores, running the two words together, likebadminton) get into a fight, and a man laughed at them, other men stopped and laughed and eggedthem on, and they had their fists full of each other’s hair. at last the police came and took themaway, still howling and yelping.

she saw a child die of a fit, too. its face was black as ink.

“well i’m not scared,” said rose provokingly. “there’s the police, anyway.”

“oh, them! they’d be the first ones to diddle you!”

she did not believe anything flo said on the subject of sex.

consider the undertaker.

a little bald man, very neatly dressed, would come into the store sometimes and speak to flowith a placating expression.

“i only wanted a bag of candy. and maybe a few packages of gum. and one or two chocolatebars. could you go to the trouble of wrapping them?”

flo in her mock-deferential tone would assure him that she could. she wrapped them in heavy-duty white paper, so they were something like presents. he took his time with the selection,humming and chatting, then dawdled for a while. he might ask how flo was feeling. and howrose was, if she was there.

“you look pale. young girls need fresh air.” to flo he would say, “you work too hard. you’veworked hard all your life.”

“no rest for the wicked,” flo would say agreeably.

when he went out she hurried to the window. there it was—the old black hearse with its purplecurtains.

“he’ll be after them today!” flo would say as the hearse rolled away at a gentle pace, almost afuneral pace. the little man had been an undertaker, but he was retired now. the hearse wasretired too.

his sons had taken over the undertaking and bought a new one. he drove the old hearse all overthe country, looking for women. so flo said. rose could not believe it. flo said he gave them thegum and the candy. rose said he probably ate them himself. flo said he had been seen, he hadbeen heard. in mild weather he drove with the windows down, singing, to himself or to somebodyout of sight in the back.

her brow is like the snowdrift

her throat is like the swan

flo imitated him singing. gently overtaking some woman walking on a back road, or resting ata country crossroads. all compliments and courtesy and chocolate bars, offering a ride. of courseevery woman who reported being asked said she had turned him down. he never pesteredanybody, drove politely on. he called in at houses, and if the husband was home he seemed to likejust as well as anything to sit and chat. wives said that was all he ever did anyway but flo did notbelieve it.

“some women are taken in,” she said. “a number.” she liked to speculate on what the hearsewas like inside. plush. plush on the walls and the roof and the floor. soft purple, the color of thecurtains, the color of dark lilacs.

all nonsense, rose thought. who could believe it, of a man that age?

rose was going to toronto on the train for the first time by herself. she had been oncebefore, but that was with flo, long before her father died. they took along their own sandwichesand bought milk from the vendor on the train. it was sour. sour chocolate milk. rose kept takingtiny sips, unwilling to admit that something so much desired could fail her. flo sniffed it, thenhunted up and down the train until she found the old man in his red jacket, with no teeth and thetray hanging around his neck. she invited him to sample the chocolate milk. she invited peoplenearby to smell it. he let her have some ginger ale for nothing. it was slightly warm.

“i let him know,” flo said looking around after he had left. “you have to let them know.”

a woman agreed with her but most people looked out the window. rose drank the warm gingerale. either that, or the scene with the vendor, or the conversation flo and the agreeing woman nowgot into about where they came from, why they were going to toronto, and rose’s morningconstipation which was why she was lacking color, or the small amount of chocolate milk she hadgot inside her, caused her to throw up in the train toilet. all day long she was afraid people intoronto could smell vomit on her coat.

this time flo started the trip off by saying, “keep an eye on her, she’s never been away fromhome before!” to the conductor, then looking around and laughing, to show that was jokinglymeant. then she had to get off. it seemed the conductor had no more need for jokes than rose had,and no intention of keeping an eye on anybody. he never spoke to rose except to ask for herticket. she had a window seat, and was soon extraordinarily happy. she felt flo receding, westhanratty flying away from her, her own wearying self discarded as easily as everything else. sheloved the towns less and less known. a woman was standing at her back door in her nightgown,not caring if everybody on the train saw her. they were traveling south, out of the snow belt, intoan earlier spring, a tenderer sort of landscape. people could grow peach trees in their backyards.

rose collected in her mind the things she had to look for in toronto. first, things for flo.

special stockings for her varicose veins. a special kind of cement for sticking handles on pots.

and a full set of dominoes.

for herself rose wanted to buy hair-remover to put on her arms and legs, and if possible anarrangement of inflatable cushions, supposed to reduce your hips and thighs. she thought theyprobably had hair-remover in the drugstore in hanratty, but the woman in there was a friend offlo’s and told everything. she told flo who bought hair dye and slimming medicine and frenchsafes. as for the cushion business, you could send away for it but there was sure to be a commentat the post office, and flo knew people there as well. she also hoped to buy some bangles, and anangora sweater. she had great hopes of silver bangles and powder-blue angora. she thought theycould transform her, make her calm and slender and take the fizz out of her hair, dry herunderarms and turn her complexion to pearl.

the money for these things, as well as the money for the trip, came from a prize rose had won,for writing an essay called “art and science in the world of tomorrow.” to her surprise, floasked if she could read it, and while she was reading it, she remarked that they must have thoughtthey had to give rose the prize for swallowing the dictionary. then she said shyly, “it’s veryinteresting.”

she would have to spend the night at cela mckinney’s. cela mckinney was her father’scousin. she had married a hotel manager and thought she had gone up in the world. but the hotelmanager came home one day and sat down on the dining room floor between two chairs and said,“i am never going to leave this house again.” nothing unusual had happened, he had just decidednot to go out of the house again, and he didn’t, until he died. that had made cela mckinney oddand nervous. she locked her doors at eight o’clock. she was also very stingy. supper was usuallyoatmeal porridge, with raisins. her house was dark and narrow and smelled like a bank.

the train was filling up. at brantford a man asked if she would mind if he sat down beside her.

“it’s cooler out than you’d think,” he said. he offered her part of his newspaper. she said nothanks.

then lest he think her rude she said it really was cooler. she went on looking out the window atthe spring morning. there was no snow left, down here. the trees and bushes seemed to have apaler bark than they did at home. even the sunlight looked different. it was as different from home,here, as the coast of the mediterranean would be, or the valleys of california.

“filthy windows, you’d think they’d take more care,” the man said. “do you travel much bytrain?”

she said no.

water was lying in the fields. he nodded at it and said there was a lot this year.

“heavy snows.”

she noticed his saying snows, a poetic-sounding word. anyone at home would have said snow.

“i had an unusual experience the other day. i was driving out in the country. in fact i was on myway to see one of my parishioners, a lady with a heart condition—”

she looked quickly at his collar. he was wearing an ordinary shirt and tie and a dark blue suit.

“oh, yes,” he said. “i’m a united church minister. but i don’t always wear my uniform. i wearit for preaching in. i’m off duty today.”

“well as i said i was driving through the country and i saw some canada geese down on apond, and i took another look, and there were some swans down with them. a whole great flock ofswans. what a lovely sight they were. they would be on their spring migration, i expect, headingup north. what a spectacle. i never saw anything like it.”

rose was unable to think appreciatively of the wild swans because she was afraid he was goingto lead the conversation from them to nature in general and then to god, the way a minister wouldfeel obliged to do. but he did not, he stopped with the swans.

“a very fine sight. you would have enjoyed them.”

he was between fifty and sixty years old, rose thought. he was short, and energetic-looking,with a square ruddy face and bright waves of gray hair combed straight up from his forehead.

when she realized he was not going to mention god she felt she ought to show her gratitude.

she said they must have been lovely.

“it wasn’t even a regular pond, it was just some water lying in a field. it was just by luck thewater was lying there and i had to drive by there. and they came down and i came driving by atthe right time. just by luck. they come in at the east end of lake erie, i think. but i never waslucky enough to see them before.”

she turned by degrees to the window, and he returned to his paper. she remained slightlysmiling, so as not to seem rude, not to seem to be rejecting conversation altogether. the morningreally was cool, and she had taken down her coat off the hook where she put it when she first goton the train, she had spread it over herself, like a lap robe. she had set her purse on the floor whenthe minister sat down, to give him room. he took the sections of the paper apart, shaking andrustling them in a leisurely, rather showy, way. he seemed to her the sort of person who doeseverything in a showy way. a ministerial way. he brushed aside the sections he didn’t want at themoment. a corner of newspaper touched her leg, just at the edge of her coat.

she thought for some time that it was the paper. then she said to herself, what if it is a hand?

that was the kind of thing she could imagine. she would sometimes look at men’s hands, at thefuzz on their forearms, their concentrating profiles. she would think about everything they coulddo. even the stupid ones. for instance the driver-salesman who brought the bread to flo’s store.

the ripeness and confidence of manner, the settled mixture of ease and alertness, with which hehandled the bread truck. a fold of mature belly over the belt did not displease her. another timeshe had her eye on the french teacher at school. not a frenchman at all, really, his name wasmclaren, but rose thought teaching french had rubbed off on him, made him look like one.

quick and sallow; sharp shoulders; hooked nose and sad eyes. she saw him lapping and coilinghis way through slow pleasures, a perfect autocrat of indulgences. she had a considerable longingto be somebody’s object. pounded, pleasured, reduced, exhausted.

but what if it was a hand? what if it really was a hand? she shifted slightly, moved as much asshe could towards the window. her imagination seemed to have created this reality, a reality shewas not prepared for at all. she found it alarming. she was concentrating on that leg, that bit ofskin with the stocking over it. she could not bring herself to look. was there a pressure, or wasthere not? she shifted again. her legs had been, and remained, tightly closed. it was. it was a hand.

it was a hand’s pressure.

please don’t. that was what she tried to say. she shaped the words in her mind, tried them out,then couldn’t get them past her lips. why was that? the embarrassment, was it, the fear thatpeople might hear? people were all around them, the seats were full.

it was not only that.

she did manage to look at him, not raising her head but turning it cautiously. he had tilted hisseat back and closed his eyes. there was his dark blue suit sleeve, disappearing under thenewspaper. he had arranged the paper so that it overlapped rose’s coat. his hand was underneath,simply resting, as if flung out in sleep.

now, rose could have shifted the newspaper and removed her coat. if he was not asleep, hewould have been obliged to draw back his hand. if he was asleep, if he did not draw it back, shecould have whispered, excuse me, and set his hand firmly on his own knee. this solution, soobvious and foolproof, did not occur to her. and she would have to wonder, why not? theminister’s hand was not, or not yet, at all welcome to her. it made her feel uncomfortable,resentful, slightly disgusted, trapped and wary. but she could not take charge of it, to reject it. shecould not insist that it was there, when he seemed to be insisting that it was not. how could shedeclare him responsible, when he lay there so harmless and trusting, resting himself before hisbusy day, with such a pleased and healthy face? a man older than her father would be, if he wereliving, a man used to deference, an appreciator of nature, delighter in wild swans. if she did sayplease don’t she was sure he would ignore her, as if overlooking some silliness or impoliteness onher part. she knew that as soon as she said it she would hope he had not heard.

but there was more to it than that. curiosity. more constant, more imperious, than any lust. alust in itself, that will make you draw back and wait, wait too long, risk almost anything, just tosee what will happen. to see what will happen.

the hand began, over the next several miles, the most delicate, the most timid, pressures andinvestigations. not asleep. or if he was, his hand wasn’t. she did feel disgust. she felt a faint,wandering nausea. she thought of flesh: lumps of flesh, pink snouts, fat tongues, blunt fingers, allon their way trotting and creeping and lolling and rubbing, looking for their comfort. she thoughtof cats in heat rubbing themselves along the top of board fences, yowling with their miserablecomplaint. it was pitiful, infantile, this itching and shoving and squeezing. spongy tissues,inflamed membranes, tormented nerve-ends, shameful smells; humiliation.

all that was starting. his hand, that she wouldn’t ever have wanted to hold, that she wouldn’thave squeezed back, his stubborn patient hand was able, after all, to get the ferns to rustle and thestreams to flow, to waken a sly luxuriance.

nevertheless, she would rather not. she would still rather not. please remove this, she said outthe window. stop it, please, she said to the stumps and barns. the hand moved up her leg past thetop of her stocking to her bare skin, had moved higher, under her suspender, reached herunderpants and the lower part of her belly. her legs were still crossed, pinched together. while herlegs stayed crossed she could lay claim to innocence, she had not admitted anything. she couldstill believe that she would stop this in a minute. nothing was going to happen, nothing more. herlegs were never going to open.

but they were. they were. as the train crossed the niagara escarpment above dundas, as theylooked down at the preglacial valley, the silver-wooded rubble of little hills, as they came slidingdown to the shores of lake ontario, she would make this slow, and silent, and definite,declaration, perhaps disappointing as much as satisfying the hand’s owner. he would not lift hiseyelids, his face would not alter, his fingers would not hesitate, but would go powerfully anddiscreetly to work. invasion, and welcome, and sunlight flashing far and wide on the lake water;miles of bare orchards stirring round burlington.

this was disgrace, this was beggary. but what harm in that, we say to ourselves at suchmoments, what harm in anything, the worse the better, as we ride the cold wave of greed, ofgreedy assent. a stranger’s hand, or root vegetables or humble kitchen tools that people tell jokesabout; the world is tumbling with innocent-seeming objects ready to declare themselves, slipperyand obliging. she was careful of her breathing. she could not believe this. victim and accompliceshe was borne past glassco’s jams and marmalades, past the big pulsating pipes of oil refineries.

they glided into suburbs where bedsheets, and towels used to wipe up intimate stains flappedleeringly on the clotheslines, where even the children seemed to be frolicking lewdly in theschoolyards, and the very truckdrivers stopped at the railway crossings must be thrusting theirthumbs gleefully into curled hands. such cunning antics now, such popular visions. the gates andtowers of the exhibition grounds came to view, the painted domes and pillars floated marvelouslyagainst her eyelids’ rosy sky. then flew apart in celebration. you could have had such a flock ofbirds, wild swans, even, wakened under one big dome together, exploding from it, taking to thesky.

she bit the edge of her tongue. very soon the conductor passed through the train, to stir thetravelers, warn them back to life.

in the darkness under the station the united church minister, refreshed, opened his eyes and gothis paper folded together, then asked if she would like some help with her coat. his gallantry wasself-satisfied, dismissive. no, said rose, with a sore tongue. he hurried out of the train ahead ofher. she did not see him in the station. she never saw him again in her life. but he remained oncall, so to speak, for years and years, ready to slip into place at a critical moment, without evenany regard, later on, for husband or lovers. what recommended him? she could never understandit. his simplicity, his arrogance, his perversely appealing lack of handsomeness, even of ordinarygrown-up masculinity? when he stood up she saw that he was shorter even than she had thought,that his face was pink and shiny, that there was something crude and pushy and childish abouthim.

was he a minister, really, or was that only what he said? flo had mentioned people who werenot ministers, dressed up as if they were. not real ministers dressed as if they were not. or,stranger still, men who were not real ministers pretending to be real but dressed as if they werenot. but that she had come as close as she had, to what could happen, was an unwelcome thing.

rose walked through union station feeling the little bag with the ten dollars rubbing at her, knewshe would feel it all day long, rubbing its reminder against her skin.

she couldn’t stop getting flo’s messages, even with that. she remembered, because she was inunion station, that there was a girl named mavis working here, in the gift shop, when flo wasworking in the coffee shop. mavis had warts on her eyelids that looked like they were going toturn into sties but they didn’t, they went away. maybe she had them removed, flo didn’t ask. shewas very good-looking, without them. there was a movie star in those days she looked a lot like.

the movie star’s name was frances farmer.

frances farmer. rose had never heard of her.

that was the name. and mavis went and bought herself a big hat that dipped over one eye and adress entirely made of lace. she went off for the weekend to georgian bay, to a resort up there.

she booked herself in under the name of florence farmer. to give everybody the idea she wasreally the other one, frances farmer, but calling herself florence because she was on holidays anddidn’t want to be recognized. she had a little cigarette holder that was black and mother-of-pearl.

she could have been arrested, flo said. for the nerve.

rose almost went over to the gift shop, to see if mavis was still there and if she couldrecognize her. she thought it would be an especially fine thing, to manage a transformation likethat. to dare it; to get away with it, to enter on preposterous adventures in your own, but newlynamed, skin.