CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I gave Arthur a copy of Lady Oracle, inscribed in the front, For Arthur, With All My Love, XXXX, Joan.. But he didn’t say one word about it, and I was afraid to ask him what he thought. His manner became distant, and he began to spend a lot of time at the university, or so he said. I would catch him giving me hurt looks when he thought I wasn’t watching. I couldn’t figure it out. I’d been expecting him to tell me the book was bourgeois or tasteless or obscure or a piece of mystification, but instead he was acting as though I’d committed some unpardonable but unmentionable sin.

I complained to Sam, who was in the habit now of dropping over for a beer or two in the afternoons. He knew I knew about Marlene, so he could complain to me.

“I’m in deep shit,” he said. “Marlene’s got me by the balls, and she’s twisting. She wants to tell Don. She thinks we should be open and honest. That’s okay in theory, but … she wants to move in with me, kids and all. It’d drive me crazy. Also,” he said, with a return to sanctimoniousness, “think what it would do to Resurgence, it’d fall apart.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “I have a problem.”

“You have a problem?” Sam said. “But you never have problems.”

“This time I do,” I said. “It’s about Arthur and my book. I mean, he hasn’t even told me it’s bad,” I said. “It’s not like him at all. He’s acting as though it just doesn’t exist, but at the same time he’s hurt by it. Is it really that terrible?”

“I’m not a metaphor man, myself,” Sam said, “but I thought it was a pretty good book. I thought there was a lot of truth in it. You got the whole marriage thing, right on. It isn’t how Arthur would’ve struck me, but another guy can never see that side, right?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “You think that book is about Arthur?”

“So does Arthur,” Sam said. “That’s why he’s hurt. Isn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“Who’s the other fellow then?” Sam wanted to know. “If he finds out it’s someone else, he’s going to be even more pissed off, you know.”

“Sam, it isn’t about anyone. I don’t have any secret lover, I really don’t. It’s all sort of, well, imaginary.”

“You’re in deep shit,” Sam said. “He’s never going to believe that.”

This was what I feared. “Maybe you could have a talk with him.”

“I’ll try,” said Sam, “but I don’t think it’ll work. What am I supposed to tell him?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Sam must have said something though, because Arthur’s attitude modified a little. He continued to look at me as though I’d betrayed him to the Nazis, but he was going to be a good sport and not mention it. The only thing he said was, “When you write your next book, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me see it first.”

“I’m not going to write any more books,” I said. I was hard at work on Love, My Ransom, but he didn’t have to know about that.

I had other things to worry about. Sturgess’ battle plan was now in full swing, and my first television show was coming up. After that, Morton and Sturgess were throwing a party for me. I was very nervous. I put on a lot of Arrid Extra-Dry and a long red gown, and tried to remember what Aunt Lou’s etiquette booklet had said about sweaty palms. Talcum powder, I thought. I sprinkled some on my hands and set off in a taxi for the television station. Just be yourself, Sturgess had told me.

The interviewer was a man, a young man, very intense. He joked with the technicians while they put the noose around my neck; a microphone, they said. I swallowed several times. I felt like Mr. Peanut, big and cumbersome. The strong lights went on and the intense young man turned towards me.

“Welcome to Afternoon Hot Spot. Today we have with us Joan Foster, author, I guess that’s authorm, of the runaway bestseller Lady Oracle. Tell me, Mrs. Foster – or do you prefer to be called Ms. Foster?”

I was taking a drink of water, and I set it down so quickly I spilled it. We both pretended the water was not running across the table and into the interviewer’s shoes. “Whichever you like,” I said.

“Oh, then you’re not in Women’s Lib.”

“Well, no,” I said. “I mean, I agree with some of their ideas, but.…”

“Mrs. Foster, would you say you are a happily married woman?”

“Oh. yes” I said. “I’ve been married for years.”

“Well, that’s strange. Because I’ve read your book, and to me it seemed very angry. It seemed like a very angry book. If I were your husband, I’m not sure I’d like it. What do you think about that?”

“It’s not about my marriage,” I said earnestly. The young man smirked.

“Oh, it’s not,” he said. “Then perhaps you’ll tell us what inspired you to write it.”

At this point I told the truth. I shouldn’t have done it, but once I’d started I couldn’t stop. “Well, I was trying some experiments with Automatic Writing,” I said. “You know, you sit in front of a mirror, with a paper and pencil and a lighted candle, and then.… Well, these words would sort of be given to me. I mean, I’d find them written down, without having done it myself, if you know what I mean. So after that … well, that’s how it happened.” I felt like a total idiot. I wanted another drink of water, but there wasn’t any, I’d spilled it all.

The interviewer was at a loss. He gave me a look that clearly said, You’re putting me on. “You mean these poems were dictated to you by a spirit hand,” he said jocularly.

“Yes,” I said. “Something like that. You might try it yourself, when you get home.”

“Well,” said the interviewer. “Thank you very much for being with us this afternoon. That was the lovely Joan Foster, or should I say Mrs. Foster – oh, she’ll get me for that one! – Ms. Joan Foster, authoress of Lady Oracle. And this is Barry Finkle, signing off for Afternoon Hot Spot.”

At the party, Sturgess took my elbow and steered me around the room as if I were a supermarket pushcart.

“I’m sorry about the interview,” I told him. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“What do you mean?” he crowed. “It was sensational! How’d you think it up? You sure put him in his place!”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said. No use to tell him that what I’d said was true.

There were a lot of people at the party, and I was bad at remembering names. I made a mental note not to drink too much. I’d made a fool of myself once that day, I felt. I had to keep calm.

When Sturgess finally let go of my elbow, I backed up against the wall. I was hiding from a newspaper columnist who’d seen the television program and wanted to have a conversation about psychic phenomena. I felt like crying. What was the use of being Princess-for-a-day if you still felt like a toad? Acted like one, too. Arthur would be humiliated. What I’d said, coast to coast, was way off the party line. Not that he had a party. This was a party, some party. I finished my double Scotch and went for another.

When I was getting my drink at the bar, a man came up beside me.

“Are you Lady Oracle?” he said.

“It’s the name of my book,” I said.

“Terrific title,” he said. “Terrible book. It’s a leftover from the nineteenth century. I think it’s a combination of Rod McKuen and Kahlil Gibran.”

“That’s what my publisher thought, too,” I said.

“I guess you’re a publishing success,” he said. “What’s it like to be a successful bad writer?”

I was beginning to feel angry. “Why don’t you publish and find out?” I said.

“Hey,” he said, grinning, “temper. You’ve got fantastic hair, anyway. Don’t ever cut it off.”

This time I looked at him. He too had red hair, and he had an elegant moustache and beard, the moustache waxed and curled upward at the ends, the beard pointed. He was wearing a long black cloak and spats, and carrying a gold-headed cane, a pair of white gloves, and a top hat embroidered with porcupine quills.

“I like your hat,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. “I got a girl to do it for me. A girl I knew. She did some gloves to match, but I kept getting stuck on things – people in breadlines, dead dogs, nylon stockings, stuff like that. This is my dress uniform. Why don’t you come home with me?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” I said. “Thank you anyway.”

He didn’t seem disappointed. “Well, at least you can come to my show,” he said. He handed me an invitation, slightly smudged. “The opening’s tonight. It’s just a couple of blocks from here; that’s how come I crashed this party, I got tired of my own.”

“All right,” I said. There didn’t seem any harm in it, I thought. Secretly I was flattered: it was a long time since anyone had propositioned me. Also I found him attractive. Him or the cape, I wasn’t sure which. And I wanted to get away from the columnist.

The opening was at a minor art gallery, The Takeoff, and the show itself was called SQUAWSHT. “It’s a pun, like,” he told me as we walked across to Yonge Street. “Squaw and squashed, get it?”

“I think so,” I said. I was studying the invitation, in the light from a store window. “The Royal Porcupine,” it said. “Master of the CON-CREATE POEM.” There was a picture of him in full dress, flanked by a shot of a dead porcupine, taken from underneath so its long front teeth were showing.

“What’s your real name?” I said.

“That is my real name,” he said, a little offended. “I’m having it changed legally.”

“Oh,” I said. “What made you happen to pick that particular one?”

“Well, I’m a Royalist,” he said. “I really dig the Queen. I felt I should have a name that would reflect that. It’s like the Royal Mail or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Also I thought it would be memorable.”

“What about the porcupine?”

“I’ve always figured the beaver was wrong, as a national symbol,” he said. “I mean, the beaver. A dull animal and too nineteenth-century; all that industry. And you know what they used to be hunted for? The skin was for hats, and then they cut the nuts off for perfume. I mean, what a fate. The porcupine though, it does what it likes, it’s covered with prickles so nobody messes with it. Also it has strange tastes, I mean beavers chew trees, porcupines chew toilet seats.”

“I thought they were easy to kill,” I said. “You hit them with a stick.”

“Propaganda,” he said.

As we arrived, a number of people were leaving; outside, the SPCA was picketing with signs that read SAVE OUR ANIMALS. The show itself consisted of several freezers with glass tops and fronts, like the display cases for ice cream and frozen juice in supermarkets. Inside these freezers there were a number of dead animals, all of which had apparently been run over by cars. They were quick-frozen in exactly the poses they’d been discovered in, and attached to the side of each one, in the position usually reserved for the name of the painting, the size and the materials – Composition #72, 5′ × 9′, acrylic and nylon tubing – there was a little card with the species of the animal, the location where it had been found, and a description of its injuries: RACCOON AND YOUNG, DON MILLS AND 401, BROKEN SPINE, INTERNAL HEMORRHAGE, for instance; OR DOMESTIC PUSSYCAT, RUSSELL HILL ROAD, CRUSHED PELVIS. There were a skunk, several dogs, a fawn and a porcupine, as well as the usual cats, groundhogs and squirrels. There was even a snake, mangled almost beyond recognition.

“What do you think of it?” asked the Royal Porcupine when we’d made the rounds.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know.… I guess I don’t know much about art.”

“It’s not art, it’s poetry,” the Royal Porcupine said, slightly offended. “Con-create poetry, I’m the man who put the creativity back in concrete.”

“I don’t know much about that either.”

“That’s obvious from the stuff you write,” he said. “I could write that stuff with my toes. The only reason you’re so famous is your stuff is obsolete, man, they buy it because they haven’t caught up with the present yet. Rearview mirror, like McLuhan says. The new poetry is the poetry of things. Like, this has never been done before,” said the Royal Porcupine, looking morosely over towards the front door of the gallery, where another bunch of queasy first-nighters was making a green-faced exit. “Do you realize that?”

“Have you sold anything?” I asked brightly.

“No,” he said, “but I will. I should take this show to the States, people up here are so cautious, they’re unwilling to take a chance. That’s how come Alexander Graham Bell had to go south.”

“That’s what my husband says,” I offered.

The Royal Porcupine looked at me with new interest. “You’re married,” he said. “I didn’t know that. You’ve got the sexiest elbows I’ve ever seen. I’m thinking of doing a show on elbows, it’s a very unappreciated part of the body.”

“Where would you get them?” I asked.

“Around,” he said. He took me by the elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”

As we went past the group of SPCA picketers outside the front door, he muttered, “They missed the point. I don’t squash them, I just recycle them, what’s wrong with that?”

“Where are we going?” I asked the Royal Porcupine, who still had hold of my elbow.

“My place,” he said.

“I’m hungry,” I said evasively.

So we went to Mr. Zums on Bloor Street, where I had a Zumburger with the works and the Royal Porcupine had a chocolate milk shake. I paid – he didn’t have any money – and we debated the pros and cons of going back to his place.

“I want to make love to your elbow,” he said. “With fringe benefits.”

“But I’m married,” I said, chewing thoughtfully on my Zumburger. I was resisting temptation, and it was a temptation. Arthur had frozen me out; as far as he was concerned I might as well have been a turnip. I’d been finding myself attracted to the most inappropriate men lately: CBC news commentators, bus conductors, typewriter repairmen. In my fantasies I wasn’t even bothering with the sets and costumes, I was going straight to the heavy breathing. Things must have been bad.

“That’s okay,” said the Royal Porcupine, “I prefer married women.”

“My husband might not prefer it,” I said.

“He doesn’t have to know, does he?”

“He’d know. He has intuition.” This wasn’t true; what was really worrying me was: even if Arthur did know, would he care? And what if he didn’t care, what then? “He’d think you’re decadent, he’d think you were bad for my ideology.”

“He can have your ideology, I’ll take the rest, fair enough? Come on, let me sweep you off your feet. You’re the type, I can tell.”

I finished my Zumburger. “It’s impossible,” I said.

“Have it your way,” he said, “you win one, you lose one. You’re missing something though.”

“I don’t have the energy,” I said.

He said he’d walk me home, and we set off along Bloor, heading west toward the street of old three-story red-brick houses, with porches and gables, where Arthur and I were living at that time, temporarily as ever. The Royal Porcupine seemed to have forgotten about his proposition already. He was worrying about the success of his show. “The last one I did, there was only one review. The old fart said it was an unsuccessful attempt to be disgusting. You can’t even shock the bourgeoisie any more; you could put on a show of amputated orphans’ feet and someone would ask you to sign them.”

We passed the Museum and the Varsity Stadium and continued west, through a region of tiny, grubby old stores which were turning into boutiques, past a wholesale truss concern. On Brunswick we turned north, but after several houses the Royal Porcupine stopped and shouted. He’d found a dead dog, quite a large one; it looked like a husky.

“Help me get it into the bag,” he said, for he’d taken a green plastic garbage bag out from under his cloak. He jotted down the location in a notebook he carried for the purpose. Then he lifted the hind end and I slid the garbage bag over it. The bag wasn’t big enough and the dog’s head stuck out the top, its tongue lolling.

“Well, goodnight,” I said, “it was nice meeting you.”

“Just a minute,” he said, “I can’t get this thing back by myself.”

“I’m not going to carry it,” I said. The blood was still wet.

“Then take my cane.”

He hoisted the dog and concealed it under his cloak. We smuggled it into a taxi, for which I ended up paying, and went to the Royal Porcupine’s lair. It was in a downtown warehouse that had been converted into artists’ studios. “I’m the only one who lives here though,” he said. “I can’t afford not to. The others have real houses.”

We went up the heavy industrial elevator to the third floor. The Royal Porcupine didn’t have very much furniture, but he did have a large freezer, and he took the dog over to it immediately and lowered it in. Then he tied the limbs so the corpse would freeze in the position in which we’d found it.

While he was doing this, I explored. Most of the space was empty. In one corner was his bed, a mattress on the floor, no sheets; on top of it were several mangy sheep-skin rugs, and over it hung a tattered red velvet canopy with tassels. He had a card table and two card chairs; on both the table and the chairs there were used plates and cups. On one wall was a blow-up of himself, in costume, holding a dead mouse by the tail. Beside it was a formal portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip, with decorations and tiaras, in a heavy gilt frame like the kind in the principal’s office at high school. Against the other wall stood a kitchen counter, with none of the plumbing installed. It held a collection of stuffed animals. Some were toys, teddy bears and tigers and bunnies. Some were real animals, expertly finished and mounted, birds mostly: a loon, an owl, a bluejay. Then there were a few chipmunks and squirrels, not done well at all. The stitches were visible, they had no bead eyes, and they were long and fat, like liver-wursts, their legs sticking straight out.

“I tried taxidermy first,” said the Royal Porcupine, “but I wasn’t any good at it. Freezing’s a lot better, that way they don’t get moths.”

He had taken off his cloak, and as I turned I saw that he was now taking off his shirt as well. The dog blood left red stains as he unbuttoned; his chest emerged, covered with auburn hair.

His green eyes lit up like a lynx’s, and he walked towards me, growling softly. The backs of my knees were weak with lust, and I felt a curious tingling sensation in my elbows.

“Well, I guess I’d better be going now,” I said. He said nothing. “How do you work the elevator?”

“For Christ’s sake,” I said a minute later, “wash your hands!”

“I’ve always wanted to know what it was like to fuck a cult figure,” the Royal Porcupine said reflectively. He was lying on his mattress, watching me as I scrubbed the dog blood off my belly with a corner of his shirt, dipped in the toilet. He didn’t have a sink.

“Well,” I said a little sharply, “what’s it like?”

“You have a nice ass,” he said. “But it’s not that different from anyone else’s ass.”

“What were you expecting?” I said. Three buttocks. Nine tits. I felt like a moron for wanting to get the dog blood off, I felt I was violating one of his rituals, I was letting him down. I hadn’t risen to the occasion, and already I was feeling guilty about Arthur.

“It’s not what there is,” he said, “it’s what you do with it.”

He didn’t say whether what I did with it would pass his standards or not, and at that moment I didn’t care. I just wanted to go home.