Dancing Girls & Other Stories Read online

  Today I found a piece of cooked macaroni stuck in the drain. That is the doing of the woman with two voices. Perhaps she is a foreigner. Whatever she is, she is obviously not a neat person.

  Saturday

  Today she went to the store again, before lunch. I thought she could do without the scarf, as the sun was out. The streets are almost clear of snow now but there will doubtless be another storm before spring. As she walked I thought about the old man. Clearly something must be done soon. I cannot relay a message through the landlord: he is evidently untrustworthy. The refrigerator still has not been cleaned. If she begins to keep the butter in the refrigerator I know it will pick up the smell. The windowsill may be cool enough.

  She bought more milk and another package of wieners, and a tin of tunafish for variety (although the latter was quite expensive). She bought also a quarter of a pound of cheese and a package of brown rice. One must regulate one's vitamins. When the cheque comes she will be able to get some oranges. This time she went through a different check-out counter and there was no trouble.

  I thought that it would not do to talk to him in person. He would only take offence, or pretend that he did not know she was being awakened, or that no one had any right to question what he did in the bathroom. He will have some evasive answer and will continue to behave in the same way every morning. I kept thinking about the time: he is always so punctual. I wonder what would happen if his pattern were to be interrupted? Everyone else in the house seems to regard the half hour between nine and nine-thirty as his; at least, no one is ever in the bathroom just before nine. Certainly it would let him know that I know, and that it will be difficult for him to continue. He will not be allowed to drive her out.

  When she was going up the steps I thought I saw him looking out from behind the Venetian blind in the front window. Is he trying to keep track of her movements?

  This afternoon I decided that I had to know about the woman with two voices. She went into the bathroom about mid-afternoon, and there were loud splashing noises. I strained, trying to tell the separate voices apart, but they seemed to overlap. I told her that she had to wait behind the door and open it quickly as soon as she heard the key being turned in the bathroom lock. She managed to time it just right. I was able to confront the woman as she was coming out. I know now that there are two women. The one that whispers is an old lady, very thin, with small dark eyes that are like holes in her head. She was wrapped in a blanket and was being carried by the other woman; her legs and her crooked bare feet dangled from the blanket. When she saw me she nodded and grinned. The other woman is heavy set and muscular, with a round vacuous face. She stood in the doorway and stared until the old woman said something to her in a sharp whisper and prodded her with a twisted hand. Then she turned and carried the old woman down the hall, plodding on her thick feet, replying in a high whine that had no words in it all. The old woman's head looked over her shoulder, grinning, until they disappeared around the corner of the hall.

  I told her to close the door. She was upset so I let her lie down for a short rest. I will never allow her to live like that.

  After supper I thought about the old man again. I had her sit up later than usual so that I could listen for the clock of the church on the corner strike the hour. I set the alarm exactly.

  Sunday

  The alarm went off at twenty minutes to nine. I had allowed for the usual five to ten minutes that it takes to urge her out of bed. She put on the dressing gown and the slippers that I had her leave on the chair, ready, the night before, and shut the window and collected the things together: soap, toothbrush, bath towel, nail brush, Notebook, antiseptic bottle, room key, and the clock. At ten minutes to nine she went out of the room, locking the door, and went into the bathroom and turned the key carefully in the lock. She cleaned the bathtub and disinfected it and ran the bathwater till the tub was quite full. I thought how pleasant it was that the sound of running water drowned out all the noises from the rest of the house. It is a true luxury to make noises that the outside people have to listen to while being unable to hear any that they may make in return. I thought, this bathroom is mine now. It is my territory; I can go into it and out of it whenever I please. It is the only place where I am safe.

  She placed the clock and the Notebook on the floor and lay back in the warm water. I told her not to be disturbed.

  At nine o'clock exactly I heard his limping steps coming down the hall; she smiled. The footsteps paused outside the door, shuffled hesitantly, then began to pace back and forth. The clock ticked. I told her to make some splashing noises. At twenty minutes past nine the footsteps began to jig up and down impatiently outside. Then he knocked on the door. I told her not to say anything; she put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

  The knocking increased to a pounding. He was hammering on the door with both fists. "Let me in," he shouted, pleading. His voice was frantic. I pictured his thin legs in the striped pyjamas, and the bathrobe and the maroon slippers.

  At nine-thirty the pounding stopped. He made a choking noise, an inarticulate sound of rage and despair, and the footsteps limped away down the hall. Urgently, almost running. She smiled and swirled some of the water over her stomach. She keeps her figure remarkably well.

  The footsteps went down two or three stairs; then there was a crash and a thumping sound and a wail of pain that faded into silence. I could hear other doors being opened.

  She made a movement to get out of the bathtub but I told her to stay where she was. She lay in the bathtub, staring at her pink toes floating on the surface of the water, while I listened. I knew the bathroom door was securely locked.

  For the time being I have won.

  The Man from Mars

  A long time ago Christine was walking through the park. She was still wearing her tennis dress; she hadn't had time to shower and change, and her hair was held back with an elastic band. Her chunky reddish face, exposed with no softening fringe, looked like a Russian peasant's, but without the elastic band the hair got in her eyes. The afternoon was too hot for April; the indoor courts had been steaming, her skin felt poached.

  The sun had brought the old men out from wherever they spent the winter: she had read a story recently about one who lived for three years in a manhole. They sat weedishly on the benches or lay on the grass with their heads on squares of used newspaper. As she passed, their wrinkled toadstool faces drifted towards her, drawn by the movement of her body, then floated away again, uninterested.

  The squirrels were out, too, foraging; two or three of them moved towards her in darts and pauses, eyes fixed on her expectantly, mouths with the ratlike receding chins open to show the yellowed front teeth. Christine walked faster, she had nothing to give them. People shouldn't feed them, she thought; it makes them anxious and they get mangy.

  Halfway across the park she stopped to take off her cardigan. As she bent over to pick up her tennis racquet again someone touched her on her freshly bared arm. Christine seldom screamed; she straightened up suddenly, gripping the handle of her racquet. It was not one of the old men, however: it was a dark-haired boy of twelve or so.

  "Excuse me," he said, "I search for Economics Building. Is it there?" He motioned towards the west.

  Christine looked at him more closely. She had been mistaken: he was not young, just short. He came a little above her shoulder, but then, she was above the average height; "statuesque," her mother called it when she was straining. He was also what was referred to in their family as "a person from another culture": Oriental without a doubt, though perhaps not Chinese. Christine judged he must be a foreign student and gave him her official welcoming smile. In high school she had been president of the United Nations Club; that year her school had been picked to represent the Egyptian delegation at the Mock Assembly. It had been an unpopular assignment - nobody wanted to be the Arabs - but she had seen it through. She had made rather a good speech about the Palestinian refugees.

  "Yes," she s
aid, "that's it over there. The one with the flat roof. Seek?"

  The man had been smiling nervously at her the whole time. He was wearing glasses with transparent plastic rims, through which his eyes bulged up at her as though through a goldfish bowl. He had not followed where she was pointing. Instead he thrust towards her a small pad of green paper and a ballpoint pen.

  "You make map," he said.

  Christine set down her tennis racquet and drew a careful map. "We are here," she said, pronouncing distinctly. "You go this way. The building is here." She indicated the route with a dotted line and an X. The man leaned close to her, watching the progress of the map attentively; he smelled of cooked cauliflower and an unfamiliar brand of hair grease. When she had finished Christine handed the paper and pen back to him with a terminal smile.

  "Wait," the man said. He tore the piece of paper with the map off the pad, folded it carefully and put it in his jacket pocket; the jacket sleeves came down over his wrists and had threads at the edges. He began to write something; she noticed with a slight feeling of revulsion that his nails and the ends of his fingers were so badly bitten they seemed almost deformed. Several of his fingers were blue from the leaky ballpoint.

  "Here is my name," he said, holding the pad out to her.

  Christine read an odd assemblage of Gs, Ys and Ns, neatly printed in block letters. "Thank you," she said.

  "You now write your name," he said, extending the pen.

  Christine hesitated. If this had been a person from her own culture she would have thought he was trying to pick her up. But then, people from her own culture never tried to pick her up; she was too big. The only one who had made the attempt was the Moroccan waiter at the beer parlour where they sometimes went after meetings, and he had been direct. He had just intercepted her on the way to the Ladies' Room and asked and she said no; that had been that. This man was not a waiter though, but a student; she didn't want to offend him. In his culture, whatever it was, this exchange of names on pieces of paper was probably a formal politeness, like saying thank you. She took the pen from him.

  "That is a very pleasant name," he said. He folded the paper and placed it in his jacket pocket with the map.

  Christine felt she had done her duty. "Well, goodbye," she said. "It was nice to have met you." She bent for her tennis racquet but he had already stooped and retrieved it and was holding it with both hands in front of him, like a captured banner.

  "I carry this for you."

  "Oh no, please. Don't bother, I am in a hurry," she said, articulating clearly. Deprived of her tennis racquet she felt weaponless. He started to saunter along the path; he was not nervous at all now, he seemed completely at ease.

  "Vous parlez francais?" he asked conversationally.

  "Oui, un petit peu," she said. "Not very well." How am I going to get my racquet away from him without being rude? she was wondering.

  "Mais vous avez un bel accent." His eyes goggled at her through the glasses: was he being flirtatious? She was well aware that her accent was wretched.

  "Look," she said, for the first time letting her impatience show, "I really have to go. Give me my racquet, please."

  He quickened his pace but gave no sign of returning the racquet. "Where you are going?"

  "Home," she said. "My house."

  "I go with you now," he said hopefully.

  "No," she said: she would have to be firm with him. She made a lunge and got a grip on her racquet; after a brief tug of war it came free.

  "Goodbye," she said, turning away from his puzzled face and setting off at what she hoped was a discouraging jog-trot. It was like walking away from a growling dog: you shouldn't let on you were frightened. Why should she be frightened anyway? He was only half her size and she had the tennis racquet, there was nothing he could do to her.

  Although she did not look back she could tell he was still following. Let there be a streetcar, she thought, and there was one, but it was far down the line, stuck behind a red light. He appeared at her side, breathing audibly, a moment after she reached the stop. She gazed ahead, rigid.

  "You are my friend," he said tentatively.

  Christine relented: he hadn't been trying to pick her up after all, he was a stranger, he just wanted to meet some of the local people; in his place she would have wanted the same thing.

  "Yes," she said, doling him out a smile.

  "That is good," he said. "My country is very far."

  Christine couldn't think of an apt reply. "That's interesting," she said. "Tres interessant." The streetcar was coming at last; she opened her purse and got out a ticket.

  "I go with you now," he said. His hand clamped on her arm above the elbow.

  "You ... stay ... here," Christine said, resisting the impulse to shout but pausing between each word as though for a deaf person. She detached his hand - his hold was quite feeble and could not compete with her tennis biceps - and leapt off the curb and up the streetcar steps, hearing with relief the doors grind shut behind her. Inside the car and a block away she permitted herself a glance out a side window. He was standing where she had left him; he seemed to be writing something on his little pad of paper.

  When she reached home she had only time for a snack, and even then she was almost late for the Debating Society. The topic was, "Resolved: That War Is Obsolete." Her team took the affirmative and won.

  Christine came out of her last examination feeling depressed. It was not the exam that depressed her but the fact that it was the last one: it meant the end of the school year. She dropped into the coffee shop as usual, then went home early because there didn't seem to be anything else to do.

  "Is that you, dear?" her mother called from the livingroom. She must have heard the front door close. Christine went in and flopped on the sofa, disturbing the neat pattern of cushions.

  "How was your exam, dear?" her mother asked.

  "Fine," said Christine flatly. It had been fine; she had passed. She was not a brilliant student, she knew that, but she was conscientious. Her professors always wrote things like "A serious attempt" and "Well thought out but perhaps lacking in elan" on her term papers; they gave her BS, the occasional B+. She was taking Political Science and Economics, and hoped for a job with the Government after she graduated; with her father's connections she had a good chance.

  "That's nice."

  Christine felt, resentfully, that her mother had only a hazy idea of what an exam was. She was arranging gladioli in a vase; she had rubber gloves on to protect her hands as she always did when engaged in what she called "housework." As far as Christine could tell her housework consisted of arranging flowers in vases: daffodils and tulips and hyacinths through gladioli, irises and roses, all the way to asters and mums. Sometimes she cooked, elegantly and with chafing-dishes, but she thought of it as a hobby. The girl did everything else. Christine thought it faintly sinful to have a girl. The only ones available now were either foreign or pregnant; their expressions usually suggested they were being taken advantage of somehow. But her mother asked what they would do otherwise; they'd either have to go into a Home or stay in their own countries, and Christine had to agree this was probably true. It was hard, anyway, to argue with her mother. She was so delicate, so preserved-looking, a harsh breath would scratch the finish.

  "An interesting young man phoned today," her mother said. She had finished the gladioli and was taking off her rubber gloves. "He asked to speak with you and when I said you weren't in we had quite a little chat. You didn't tell me about him, dear." She put on the glasses which she wore on a decorative chain around her neck, a signal that she was in her modern, intelligent mood rather than her old-fashioned whimsical one.

  "Did he leave his name?" Christine asked. She knew a lot of young men but they didn't often call her; they conducted their business with her in the coffee shop or after meetings.

  "He's a person from another culture. He said he would call back later."

  Christine had to think a moment. She was vaguely
acquainted with several people from other cultures, Britain mostly; they belonged to the Debating Society.

  "He's studying Philosophy in Montreal," her mother prompted. "He sounded French."

  Christine began to remember the man in the park. "I don't think he's French, exactly," she said.

  Her mother had taken off her glasses again and was poking absent-mindedly at a bent gladiolus. "Well, he sounded French." She meditated, flowery sceptre in hand. "I think it would be nice if you had him to tea."

  Christine's mother did her best. She had two other daughters, both of whom took after her. They were beautiful; one was well married already and the other would clearly have no trouble. Her friends consoled her about Christine by saying, "She's not fat, she's just big-boned, it's the father's side," and "Christine is so healthy." Her other daughters had never gotten involved in activities when they were at school, but since Christine could not possibly ever be beautiful even if she took off weight, it was just as well she was so athletic and political, it was a good thing she had interests. Christine's mother tried to encourage her interests whenever possible. Christine could tell when she was making an extra effort, there was a reproachful edge to her voice.

  She knew her mother expected enthusiasm but she could not supply it. "I don't know, I'll have to see," she said dubiously.

  "You look tired, darling," said her mother. "Perhaps you'd like a glass of milk."

  Christine was in the bathtub when the phone rang. She was not prone to fantasy but when she was in the bathtub she often pretended she was a dolphin, a game left over from one of the girls who used to bathe her when she was small. Her mother was being bell-voiced and gracious in the hall; then there was a tap at the door.

  "It's that nice young French student, Christine," her mother said.

  "Tell him I'm in the bathtub," Christine said, louder than necessary. "He isn't French."

  She could hear her mother frowning. "That wouldn't be very polite, Christine. I don't think he'd understand."