Accusation (34 page)

He was bearded, but his hair was buzzed short, and he looked younger, his youth visible in his lithe slimness. He was juggling on a street, dirt under his feet, a low cement wall behind him. Children in unwashed clothes sat agog on the wall, and Ethiopian men and women formed a loose, inquisitive semicircle in the background. Not juggling balls or pins but green apples: he plucked an apple, took a bite, tossed the apple with a flourish back into the air. He’d said despair had driven him to juggle in the street, and defiance, but there was also a lightness in him and some of the bravura charm that Sara had seen herself in the Highway 401 service centre. So vital. Who was filming him? Someone had shared this experience with him, white, brown, Ethiopian or other, a witness whose presence he had never mentioned.

Raymond lit two metal juggling torches, and at the gusts of flame, adults in the audience shrank back and children clapped their palms across their mouths. He tipped back his head, breathed over the torch held in front of his mouth until flames jutted from it. Then he righted his head, as if the flames were nothing, and beckoned his audience closer, his whole body rippling, alive to the risk of the moment, ferociously alive.

A different shot: children stood in rows, or attempts at rows, on a patch of ground enclosed by rugged shrubs and held water bottles and detergent bottles that looked to be filled with dirt, perhaps to give them weight. In front of the children, Raymond held two juggling pins, one in each hand, and demonstrated the motion of tossing the first pin from one hand to the other, the second pin in reverse. There was sound, but it was impossible to hear much beyond the chatter of voices. In the back row stood two tall boys, and one of them was Kebede, a younger, curly-haired Kebede, and the other was perhaps Dawit. With severe attention, Kebede watched Raymond and tossed his plastic bottles from one hand to the other. And so Kebede had been with the circus from when it began.

The second-last tape brought Juliet and the circus to Shashemene: they’d travelled south to Sodo, and were returning from the south, packed into three white minivans. At the end of an afternoon, in a smallish stadium, the sinuous musicians swayed to one side of the mat-covered playing area, amplifiers stacked on either side of the stage, and Raymond darted here and there as the costumed performers, wireless microphones fixed to the edges of their mouths, spoke and sang and bounded across the mats in front of wooden stands full of people: black heads, glimpses of white veils, children.

In the brighter light of morning, on a stadium field now empty of performing gear, Raymond, Kebede, and a couple of others gave a juggling lesson to a group of local boys, teenagers, even a few adult men, using balls and dirt-filled plastic water bottles. The camera swooped in close to their eager faces, arms, torsos, before pulling back. Two balls in the air, now three. On another part of the field, Gelila and Senayit, the singer, worked with a group of girls, leading them in an arm-swinging, energetic dance. There were no obvious signs of reluctance and resistance from the older performers.

Out on the field, just the two of them, Gelila and Raymond were engaged in conversation, Raymond’s head inclined as if listening, while Gelila, with a toss of her braids and her expressive hands, seemed intent on holding his attention.

In baseball cap and sunglasses, Raymond loomed before the camera, peered into the lens, and said giddily, Soon there’ll be circuses everywhere, everyone wants to learn how to do this. Circus has such power. I had no idea it had such power.

At a restaurant table, the brim of his ball cap swivelled to the back of his head, Raymond sat beside Tamrat, and a couple of the musicians, and Justin, Juliet’s assistant, beer bottles scattered between them, while at the next table, Gelila, Senayit, Kebede, and a couple of other teenagers swabbed up curry with scraps of injera and murmured among themselves, Kebede in a ball cap like Raymond Renaud’s but with brim to the front. Across from the boys, Senayit whispered to Gelila and they both giggled. Tamrat looked less disturbed than when Sara had seen him in life yet watchful, as if he were keeping an eye on Raymond, the animated centre of the group. Raymond glanced at his watch, rose to his feet, and said to the teenagers, It’s late. You need to go to bed. Scurrying them off with one hand. Now they breathed reluctance, even resentment as they pushed back their chairs. Raymond left the frame, returned with a fresh bottle of beer, a jut to his hip as he walked, dropped into his chair, loose-limbed, even drunk. A wildness about him. He turned to the camera. It’s crazy. This whole thing, it’s so crazy. How do we make it work? We have no money. I’m serious. We have no fucking money. How am I to hold it all together? We’re running on air.

The last tape — someone walked along the hall outside Sara’s suite, it was late, a swish of footsteps. At dusk, from the window of a car, the gate to Raymond Renaud’s house drew close, and the watchman, the same cautious man who had been at the gate when she had pulled up with Alazar, swung the gate’s metal bars open. There was no sign of the little brown dog in the yard, only three boys and Raymond kicking a soccer ball. Two wooden chairs marked goal posts, and skinny Moses, arms wide over his head, danced between them as beautiful Yitbarek did a jig and waved for the ball, the game breaking apart when the vehicle entered and the boys and Raymond turned to greet it.

Everyone followed the smallest of the boys — Bereket? — as he carried the soccer ball into the house, a jostle of heads and backs making their way down a hall that led into a kitchen.

The kitchen: Bereket tossed the ball onto the floor, and in the dimmer light, a new version of the game started up, the ball kicked beneath the table, boys’ arms flailing to a chorus of shouts and huffs, Justin as well as Raymond joining in. It wasn’t clear why Juliet was shooting this, the light so dim as to make the tape unusable. Perhaps Juliet didn’t know this yet. Or something about the rocky, handheld graininess and spirited bedlam of the swooping, blurry figures appealed to her. On the monitor in the edit suite, everything clamoured to be read as a clue to what was really going on: the eager boys, the photographs of the circus stuck to the fridge, jars lined up at the back of the counter, dirty glasses by the sink, the direction of Raymond’s gaze, his gestures.

The boys set the table, Raymond directing them from the stove, beneath an overhead light. Forks and knives, please. The boys themselves now quieted and dutiful. Juliet, who had grown up with a brother and a slew of uncles, likely found nothing unusual about being the only woman in the room. In the frame, she struck a match against the side of a matchbox and leaned toward the centre of the table to light three candles in a soapstone candelabra, as Justin, holding the fridge door open, asked how many bottles of beer he should take out. It seemed the camera had been mounted on a tripod in the corner of the room and left to run.

A new shot: the boys had disappeared from the table, the candles burned to knuckles, the table a glowing disarray of dishes, glasses, bottles, a pot with a wooden spoon sticking from it, and Raymond flattened his hand upon the wooden surface and said, Anyone can learn to juggle. Anyone. I swear it. I’ll teach you. Tomorrow.

We’re leaving tomorrow, Juliet said, her face flushed.

A boy appeared in the doorway beyond the table, not Yitbarek or Moses, but the one whom Sara thought was called Bereket. In shorts, without a T-shirt, he came forward and climbed without hesitation into Raymond’s lap, Raymond helping him settle, hand to the boy’s bare waist as the boy wriggled himself into a comfortable position, Raymond’s hand smoothing then coming to resting on the boy’s bare thigh. The boy picked up a pen from the table, Juliet’s face half-visible, watching him, everyone still happy in the glow of the candlelight, and the boy began to draw on a crumpled piece of paper, his body pressed against Raymond’s, Raymond’s arm around him, drawing him close, hand still resting on the boy’s thigh.

Sara stopped the tape: the boy, in Raymond’s embrace, bent over his drawing, Raymond’s stilled expression, Justin’s arms passing a pile of dirty plates to Juliet. When Sara restarted the tape, Raymond turned to Juliet, and said, Will you turn that damn thing off.

You said there was nothing, nothing that made you uncomfortable.

Nothing at the time.

Sara had written to Juliet as soon as she got home after watching the final tape, could have called her, decided she’d rather talk to her in person, unease walking through her sinews and along her bones. Raymond’s face: what had she seen in it? His hand on the boy’s bare waist. His leg. His hand left there. He’d pulled the boy close. Asked Juliet almost violently to turn the camera off.

I’ve watched all the tapes. Can we meet for a drink? she’d asked Juliet in an email, and in less than a day Juliet had written back to say yes.

When Sara swung through the door of the Parkdale bar, Juliet was already seated in one of the wooden booths, tending a glass of white wine, her pink wool coat folded on the bench beside her. She looked older somehow, and chastened. She’d lost a kind of hopefulness. She waved, in her black cardigan, her throat wrapped in a chiffon scarf.

As soon as Sara pulled off her gloves and leaned over to kiss her, Juliet did say, I’m sorry I never phoned you back when you called to tell me about Raymond Renaud’s suicide. Her gaze broke away. I was upset.

She didn’t say: I didn’t mean to imply you’re in any way responsible for his suicide even if you feel you are.

When Sara returned from the bar with a half-pint of lager, Juliet began to talk with some intensity about Max’s upcoming solo show of photographs. They’re beautiful. I didn’t understand the project in the beginning. I couldn’t see what made them his photographs since he’s taking them from web-cams, but the surveillance cameras are recording the images even when no one is looking, and the images vanish unless he sees them and saves them. He blows them up and makes you look at them. They’re usually landscapes because that’s what he’s interested in. There aren’t usually people in them or you can’t really see the people, so like intersections, streets, the view from an icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean, which is totally haunting. They’re impersonal until he makes them personal. Anyway, I’ll invite you to the opening and you can see for yourself.

The last tape, Sara said. Thanks by the way for dropping them off at my place. The scene in his kitchen, after dinner, when he’s sitting with the boy in his lap, why didn’t you mention it to me at any point these last months? When I asked — you said there was nothing that made you uncomfortable.

Nothing at the time.

So what did you feel when you saw him and the boy like that?

At the time I thought — how can I even say this now? It felt familial. And he said something like that, something about how he felt parental, and he was surprised by it. Juliet stared into the bowl of her wineglass.

What happened after he asked you to turn the camera off? He sounds almost angry. You turned it off.

No, Justin turned it off. We all got up. I don’t know. Bereket went to bed. The rest of us cleaned the table and washed dishes.

Did he seem agitated or like he wished you hadn’t seen that?

I just thought he was tired of being filmed all the time.

Did you not want me talking to Justin about this?

I don’t know. Now he’s travelling.

Where did the boys sleep?

In their own bedroom. There was one bed they all slept in. It isn’t proof of anything.

I agree. It isn’t.

I know it doesn’t look good. But I didn’t want to prejudice you. I didn’t want you prejudging him. I wanted you to go and see what you found. I thought if there was anything to find you’d find it. And you did, I guess. And then I didn’t want to make that kind of film. You weren’t the only one to say I should do it. But I didn’t want to tell that kind of story and I really didn’t want to tell it about Africa.

That kind of story.

I should have seen something. Something, something was going on in front of me. I should have picked up on it. He shouldn’t have been doing that. I don’t know how far it went, but even what I saw is wrong and I should have said something.

Of course, Sara thought, Juliet hadn’t wanted to show her the tape, given how she was inculpated as witness to whatever it was.

I don’t understand why you didn’t try to get hold of the teenagers afterward. Even now. You know them a little. Why not ask them —

Because what’s the point? Whatever happened, it’s in the past. He’s dead. I know when you first told me about the circus, you didn’t mean it to be like this. At least whatever he was doing, he isn’t doing it any longer.

When did you start to doubt me?

What are you talking about?

Was it before the trial or after? Because you did start to doubt me. Lose trust in me. In Montreal. Maybe you didn’t want to, but you did.

Colour was rising in Juliet’s flustered face. I don’t understand what this has to do with the circus. Why bring it up now? Are you talking about what happened at the trial?

She didn’t say: You’re wrong. I never doubted you.

How was it possible to speak of such a matter without sounding as if she were blaming Juliet or accusing her of something? This was a problem. Naturally Juliet became defensive. Yet something had shifted in Juliet all those years ago and continued to lurk between them, not spoken of, yet subtly distorting and disturbing all this time. Juliet had tried, especially in the weeks and months right after the trial, to cover it up with frantic efforts at friendliness, appeasements of dinner and gifts, until Sara had bolted, first to the McKibbens’ house, then overseas. Once they had both, independently, moved to Toronto, Juliet had kept trying to make amends, or that’s what it had felt like.

Had Juliet’s doubt begun in the weeks before the trial when they had sat in her bedroom or at the kitchen table, and Juliet had listened to Sara go over and over her version of what had happened at the Y and after, in preparation for speaking on the stand. Juliet had gone to meet Paul Kastner, Sara’s lawyer, at his request, to rehearse her own small court appearance. Sara had told him, she may be nervous. This had been her own source of unease: that Juliet was too nervous to make a good witness. Since Sara was banned from setting foot there, her membership revoked, Juliet had visited the women’s change room at the downtown Y and made note of its details for her. Juliet had done so much. They had gone together to a Reitman’s on Sainte-Catherine and Juliet had helped Sara choose an outfit to wear in the courtroom — demure grey suit and neutral pantyhose — and plain black pumps from Aldo. A costume, nothing like the sweaters and jeans and leggings and secondhand dresses and grimy black boots and ratty old sheepskin coat that Sara ordinarily wore.