Читать книгу The Hidden Keys - Andre Alexis - Страница 10

There were a number of things Tancred found disconcerting about Errol ‘Nigger’ Colby. To begin with, there was his nickname. It was unpleasant for Tancred to hear, as he sat in the Green Dolphin,

– How you doin’, Nigger?

or

– What’s up, Nigger?

Adding to the strangeness was that, although Errol Colby was albino (white hair, white skin), he was of Jamaican descent. He was ‘black under the white,’ as he himself liked to say, so that calling him ‘Nigger’ seemed both offensive and considerate. Colby himself took pride in his nickname. He was more ashamed of being albino than he was of being black. In any case, Tancred refused to call the man Nigger, calling him instead Errol, his given name.

Colby was a drug dealer who seemed not to mind if people knew he dealt. He wasn’t casual about dealing, exactly, but at times it was as if he took pride in his accomplishment. You could see it in the way he treated the junkies who came to him. He was like a vampire who had affection for his prey. Tancred had heard him speaking to junkies pale as death warmed over as if he were their therapist, warning them about the effects of junk, advising them to return to their homes and loved ones.

Tancred assumed most of them took Colby’s advice for yet more humiliation, because his kindly advice in no way stopped Colby from being the usual monster: condescending, gouging, arrogant, refusing to give up a fleck of H or crack without being paid.

It was cruel to lecture junkies before exploiting them. It seemed to Tancred like cleaning the rust off pinching handcuffs while making sure their locks were still good.

Then there was Colby’s friend, Sigismund Luxemberg, whom everyone knew as ‘Freud.’ Luxemberg was another man fond of his own nickname. He hated to be called Sigismund, feeling that it made him sound foreign when he was, in fact, proud of his birthplace: Alexandra Park – the same projects Tancred grew up in, though Freud was of the next generation. He was twenty-two, six foot three, built like a bull, but he had a severely clubbed foot for which he wore a special black shoe, and walked with a limp. Tancred, who liked most people, could not stand Freud. Besides being sullen and prone to violence, Freud always made Tancred feel as if they had – he and Freud – unfinished business from their childhood, though Tancred scarcely remembered the young Freud, remembering, rather, Mrs. Luxemberg, her voice calling ‘Siggy’ home after school, her German accent.

For these reasons and perhaps deeper ones as well, Tancred was not pleased to find Colby waiting for him as he left his apartment. It was an afternoon, a day or two after Willow had asked him to steal her siblings’ mementos. As usual, Colby was wearing the fedora and sunglasses he wore year-round to protect himself from the sun.

– Tancred Palmieri! he said.

– It’s not nice to stalk people, said Tancred.

– I hear you, man. But I wanted to thank you.

Colby, in his early twenties, was a head shorter than Tancred. He was broad-shouldered with the build of a swimmer, his white eyelashes long. You could tell he was black, but his features were all slightly clouded by whiteness.

– You heading to Dufferin? he asked. I’ll walk with you. I want to thank you for buying coffee for Willow. Freud and I try to keep an eye out for her, but Willow’s a little difficult, eh?

Tancred said

– It sounds like you want to talk business, Errol, but we don’t have business together.

– But we’ve got things in common, Tan. That’s kind of like business. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to worry about Willow. I heard you bought her breakfast the other day and I thought, ‘That’s generous.’ But then I thought maybe you think she’s your responsibility and I want you to know that’s not true. We do a pretty good job taking care of her. How do you think a woman that dresses like Willow and wanders around high doesn’t get assaulted every day of the week?

– What do you want me to say? asked Tancred.

– Nothing! I don’t want to know anything. I was just wondering what did you and Willow talk about the other day?

– What is it, Errol? Do I look like a reporter?

– I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me, Tan. Maybe because we’ve never talked like this, man to man. I’ll be honest with you. Willow’s good for business. I’d hate to lose her and I like to keep an eye out for her.

They had reached Dufferin and King.

– I didn’t do anything for you, said Tancred. You don’t owe me anything.

– Well, I’m still grateful. Can I buy you lunch?

– No, said Tancred.

He crossed Dufferin, leaving Colby on his own.

The encounter with Colby made Tancred want to interfere in the man’s business, made him want to help Willow Azarian. For one thing, it was dangerous to let hustlers think they could intimidate you. Nothing good could come of it. But shortly after he spoke to Colby, he was encouraged to steal a number of Lamborghinis. And for a while, he was not often home.

Not that he stopped thinking about Willow or about Colby.

There was one stretch in particular: he’d driven one of the Lambos to Vancouver with Olivier and they’d taken the train back. It was the first time they’d spent so long together since they were children. Both of them missed Clémentine and their mood led to thoughtfulness. It was on the train ride home, for instance, that Ollie had confessed his enduring love for Eleanor Bronte, a classmate who’d died when they were in grade school. When Eleanor died, Ollie had ceased to believe in the importance of anything: money, fame, property. After Eleanor, nothing meant what it had meant while she was alive. So, the nine-year-old Ollie had become a nihilist. Not that he knew what nihilism was at the time. It was, rather, that a habit of mind, like a seed, took root in hospitable ground. He was a nihilist still. He was also good-humoured, good-natured and loyal. If you asked him why he was these things, given that he did not believe in anything, he’d answer that it was boring to be foul-tempered, unpleasant and disloyal. As he did not like to be bored, he was what he chose to be. Nothing had value beyond what he provisionally gave it, even life itself.

It was strange to think that the death of a nine-year-old girl had been so influential on his friend’s life. Stranger still to think that Eleanor’s death was at the heart of what Tancred found admirable in his friend. Though he did not believe in anything, Ollie chose to be who he was. He was loyalty and honour exemplified, and though Tancred could not follow his example – Ollie being eccentric – he’d have done anything for him.

As if he were having similar thoughts, Ollie had asked if he regretted being a thief.

– No, he’d answered.

But his own answer did not satisfy him and, his conscience very much on his mind, he spent hours talking to Ollie about why he stole. And what had it come down to? Why did he steal? It was a matter of talent. He was talented. Maybe, in the beginning, he’d wanted attention. Or maybe he’d wanted to rebel, resenting as he had his father’s refusal to acknowledge him. But those were all psychologists’ excuses, if they were excuses at all, and they were none of his business, because he could not see himself from that angle.

The difficult thing to express was the feeling of it. Though Ollie had helped him steal on a number of occasions, it was not the same. On his own, Ollie would never have stolen anything. He did not feel the exhilaration, the humiliation or even the wanting to be caught. Tancred did. He understood the emotions. But none of those feelings kept him at it. What did was the thrill of getting things right.

It all had to do, no doubt, with how he’d begun. At the age of eleven, Tancred had been taught to pick pockets by Malcolm Something-or-other, an Englishman, long gone but still the only one of his mother’s companions he’d ever liked. Malcolm had learned his trade when he was a boy in Northampton, and he’d made Tancred aware of things like tradition, telling him often about the ‘trade’ he was passing on.

– You’re not the first to do this, he’d say. Remember that.

Over the years it took him to master the art of stealing watches, wallets, passports and such, Tancred had found the idea of a ‘trade’ helpful. It gave him a sense of belonging. And as he moved on to breaking and entering and then to more targeted theft, the things that interested him most were rightness, doing work flawlessly, and tradition, doing work in the spirit Malcolm had passed on.

– If it’s a trade, Ollie asked, how will you know you’re good at it?

– When I’ve done it for as long as I want without being caught, he’d answered.

– Don’t tell me you don’t like the adrenalin, Tan.

Well, yes, that too.

As he thought about how calm he felt at the rush of adrenalin, Tancred abruptly recalled a photograph he’d found when he broke into the home of a man whose Lambo he’d stolen. The keys to the car had been left on a kitchen counter, right there for the taking. Beside the keys, a picture of a man and a woman. There was no way of knowing if it was their car he’d taken, but the memory reminded him of Errol Colby. He’d felt contempt for the way Colby treated the junkies who came to him, his victims. But how was he, a thief, any better? He simply refused to acknowledge those he stole from, as if he were playing a game to which everyone knew the rules.

– But everyone does know the rules, Ollie said. Nothing’s permanent. You can’t take anything with you. Why worry about cars?

Tancred had thought this way himself at one time. It now felt too convenient.

– Because they choose to worry about them, Ollie, he said.

– Too bad for them, said Ollie

as the train moved past brush and skinny trees like it had something urgent on its mind.

The next time Tancred spoke to Willow was the very evening he returned from B.C. He’d got a boneless chicken curry with a ‘buss-up shut’ from Ali’s and he was walking home along Cowan. The street was its usual self: scruffy and untrustworthy at Queen, gradually more genteel as one walked toward the lake.

As he went by Masaryk Park – a patch of grass that sometimes had outpatients and junkies for decoration – he saw Willow sitting on the steps of St. John’s Cathedral. She was sitting alone, staring straight ahead. She did not acknowledge him. So, he’d decided to leave her to her reverie when she called his name.

– I thought you’d forgotten about me, she said.

Before he could explain his absence, she began to tell him about Oshun.

It was a strange non sequitur, but Tancred had been moved. It was not only that Willow remembered the portrait of Oshun in his living room or that talk of the goddess brought memories of his mother – a Christian who’d delighted in stories of the goddess. It was that Willow seemed to know a good deal about Oshun: myths, folklore and all. He himself knew little. So, he’d sat with her and listened – the two of them on the steps of the church as the sun set. They even shared his buss-up shut, though Willow ate so little that, in the end, there was more than enough for another meal.

She did not mention inheritances or the screen her father had left her. So, it occurred to Tancred that she’d forgotten about them. And who knows, perhaps she had. It’s always difficult to say what’s on a junkie’s mind, aside from junk. Yet here was one whose mind he could admire. Willow was brilliant, despite her sickness, despite her self-destruction.

He wondered why she had surrendered comfort and security for heroin.

– Why’d you start using? he asked.

Meaning: why would someone like you – wealthy, favoured, cultured – choose to live in such a terrible corner of hell? The answer was, naturally, complicated, but not so complicated that he could not understand.