The Search for Joyful (31 page)

A letter came.

I recognized the handwriting, and something inside me shriveled.

Crazy Dancer.

Crazy Dancer had written me this letter. I looked at the post-mark. It was yesterday.

My fingers went at the envelope like a ravening thing, fumbling in their haste. I could only get it open by tearing jaggedly. I didn't read it. I picked out the important words:
Meet me . . . two o'clock in the afternoon . . . Canadian Pacific station.

After taking in the gigantic fact that he was alive and had written this, I read it. Slowly, word for word.

I was in such a turmoil I couldn't think. An initial rush of joy was extinguished by an avalanche of emotion. Chaotic, undecipherable. My God, what had I done? Marry in haste, Egg would say, repent at leisure. Mama Kathy said a year was a decent interval, a year to mourn the dead.

A year for the dead to rise up again.

It had been wartime. Things happen fast in war. Life, death, it was all on a different scale, a different timetable. You acted or the moment slipped away.

He was alive! Dear, dear, wonderful Crazy Dancer. The first spasm of joy should have been what filled my heart. Instead it was twisted with fear. I thought of Erich, who had wanted to open his veins with my surgical scissors. Green blood, I thought hysterically.

Half formulated recriminations attacked me from all sides. They pounded my head. Was I married to two men? Had I destroyed all three of us?

I had not consciously gone there, but I was standing in front of the chapel. I didn't go in. I was damned, cursed. There must be some evil in me that had brought this about. Why hadn't my wolf guardian protected me? Perhaps he was angry with me for leaving my Indian self behind. My only possible justification was that it had all come about through love. At that moment Elk Girl's dream warning returned to me. She had said I could wound Crazy Dancer, and when I denied it, tossed back cryptically, “You're marrying him, aren't you?” Friendly fire, she called it.

My soul hid from black dancing eyes, and from gray thoughtful ones. What had I done?

 
I SCRIBBLED A note to Erich. I told him I had a headache. I did. Instead of turning in, I walked. My thoughts kept pace with me. The only explanation that fit, he must have been a prisoner. But the telegram—lost at sea. And the newspaper—TROOPSHIP SUNK WITH ALL HANDS.

I don't know where I walked. Mont-Royal loomed above me. Buildings seemed to lean in on me. It was hard to breathe. Thoughts I didn't want to remember seared themselves into my head.

At some hour I threw myself into bed. Tomorrow when I saw him—what? At two o'clock in the afternoon he would know I hadn't waited for him.

I avoided Erich all morning. I knew his routine, so it was easy to do. At twenty of I left for the station, that great hub of the CP Railroad. Wealth from furs and mines had built a nineteenth-century palace. The railroad tied the land together and made it a country. Who had told me that? Of course, it was Erich. In a few moments I'd be trying to explain about Erich.

I could see the tracks now. The train would be coming into view, blue and silver. Knots of people craned for a sight of it. Baggage carts rolled past, porters directing them. The air vibrated. The crowd strained forward. The juggernaut appeared, snorting as its tail followed. I pressed myself against a marble pillar. I heard a mother trying to explain to a son why there was no third rail. “It's a diesel.” But he felt cheated of the third rail, the deadly one. They spoke in French, “
Mort.
” I saw him. There he was! Crazy Dancer! I wanted to run up to him, kiss him, hug him, laugh with him. I clung to the pillar, hardly able to keep upright.

He stood still and looked around. He's looking for me. I'm right here, Crazy Dancer. But I didn't move.

There were so many people. I saw him look through them, past them. Streams of passengers that the train disgorged funneled to either side of him. Then he saw me. An electric charge passed between us.

He covered the space in a second. The next I was in his arms, being held and holding. He murmured my Indian name over and over, “Oh-Be-Joyful's Daughter.”

I couldn't say anything. He put me at arm's length and looked long and lovingly into my face.

I had to speak. I had to tell him. “I thought you were dead.”

“But they didn't know my name, remember? None of their death devices could be marked for me.”

“There was no word. You didn't write.”

“I wrote. . . . You never got a letter?”

I shook my head. “The ship you were on, the troopship, sank with all hands. That's what they said: with all hands.”

“I was never on it. There was an officer waiting for me. They assigned me to a special engineer detail.”

“You were never on the troopship?”

“Not that one. The ship I was on was a floating repair shop. They put me to work fixing defective torpedoes. We were attacked off the coast of France, rammed by a U-boat. The ship broke up. You can live six hours in the waters of the North Atlantic, did you know that? Anyway, I was picked up by the Resistance, and hidden in a farmhouse. I wrote you all this.”

“Crazy Dancer, I'm so happy, so grateful that you're alive. But I'm married.”

“Of course you're married. That's one of the first things we'll do, have the wedding in the church; our mothers will sit in the first pew and cry. It will be beautiful.”

“You don't understand,” I said.

“I do. I understand how bad you felt to think I was dead. But I'll make it up to you, beginning now. Let's get out of here, go someplace where we can be alone.”

“Crazy Dancer, you didn't hear me. I'm married.”

The dancing lights went out of his eyes. They returned a blank stare. “Go on,” he said.

“I thought you were dead.”

“You said that.”

“I thought you were dead,” I said again.

“Oh-Be-Joyful's Daughter, tell me what you have done.”

“I married someone, a patient. See?” I held up my hand with the onyx ring.

“Black,” he said. “A black wedding.” Then, “But you were married to me.”

“You were listed as dead. Your mother brought me the telegram.”

“And your heart said nothing? Your heart didn't tell you it was a lie?”

“I didn't know. I had no way of knowing. And there was no word from you.”

There was a pause that couldn't be filled.

“You might have waited,” he said simply.

Yes. I might have waited.

I felt his hand over mine, firm, dark, sinewy. “Never mind,” he said. “It's done. Over with. We'll forget it.”

I looked at him, bewildered. “What do you mean, forget it?”

“You made a mistake. I can understand it . . . you thought I was dead.” The life that had been extinguished lit his eyes once more. “I forgive you.” With that he gathered me into a strong embrace.

I managed to get my hand against his shoulder and shove with all my might. Crazy Dancer looked puzzled.

“I'm married. Can't you understand? I'm married.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “To me.”

“Not to you. To someone else.”

“But you can't. It's impossible. You're already married to me.”

“I know we considered ourselves married. We were married, according to Iroquois tradition. But it's a marriage not recognized by Canadian law.”

“What has Canadian law to do with you and me?”

“It sanctioned my present marriage. I'm someone you don't know anymore. I'm Mrs. Erich von Kerll.”

“Von Kerll? German?”

“Austrian.”

“What's the difference? He's still an enemy.”

We stared at each other bleakly.

“I see how it is,” he said in a low, toneless voice. “You love this other man.”

“He's a very fine man, Crazy Dancer.”

“He's a fool,” he spat out, “if he loves you.”

“Please don't hate me.”

“Hate you? I want you to listen to me. I want you to come with me now. Now is the moment you leave your Austrian and come with the one who you married first and who loved you first. We will leave here and walk into the life we had.”

“Crazy Dancer, Erich is a cripple. He only has one leg.”

“That makes a difference? Then I'll cut off mine, both of mine. Come with me.” With one light step he moved away from me. I stood rooted where I was.

He held out his hand. Mine was a heavy lump at my side. Another sudden movement and he was very close, but not touching. He spoke with controlled fury. “You called a Witigo to eat up your life. All that's left is lies, and faithlessness, and no love, no love at all. Throw out your guardian, he will not guard you any longer.”

“If you are going to curse me, Crazy Dancer, don't hide behind guardians and Witigos. Do it yourself.”

“Then I do, for throwing me away like a fish you don't want. For going against the promise of a life together, a promise made before my mother and my friends, a promise you tore in shreds and threw in my face.”

“I have said all this to myself, Crazy Dancer. But when you think of me, besides everything you said, I want you to remember one other thing . . . I will be grateful all my life that you came back.”

I turned away.

I half expected that with a glissade and a tour jeté he would land beside me. And if he did, I didn't know that I would have the strength a second time to walk away. Not like an unwanted fish. How could he think I would throw him away like that? A Witigo. Oh, dear God, I almost laughed. I knew from Elk Girl that a Witigo was a monstrous, hair-covered creature, who ate its young and lived below in an ice cave and had an ice heart. That's what he thought I had, an ice heart.

I didn't know where I was. I walked, taking streets at random. I sat in a little park. I sat there all day. I didn't think about Crazy Dancer and I didn't think about Erich. I watched a lady feeding pigeons, and children taking turns on a slide and rope swinging in tight circles. They called to each other in the quick voice pattern that is Canadian French. It was good to hear children play. I was glad for Anne Morning Light that her son was back. Would she also want a Witigo to attack my life?

I'd forced him to call the Witigo. I'd answered him in ways he couldn't strike back at or deny. “I'm married.” I'd said it again and again. I used facts as my excuse, facts as my weapon. Fact: a husband. Fact: a ring. Fact: a legal marriage. Crazy Dancer used a different language. He spoke of love.

I watched the shadows of leaves as they danced on the walkway. I saw something surprising—a chameleon. Chameleons were not indigenous creatures in this climate, but they sold them at La Ronde. They came with a little gold chain and pin, to fasten to your collar. This small lizard had escaped the amusement park and lived here. As a result of his adventures he had only half a tail. Immediately I identified with him. I too had lost part of myself.

I went back to my room in the nurses' annex.

“Where on earth have you been?” Erich greeted me.

F
ifteen

WE FOUND A small apartment. It was old French architecture and charming. Mme. Gosselin closed off three rooms of her home, and we rented them. There were no interior stairs, you had to go outside to get from one story to another. Erich had trouble at first, but by the third day had mastered the stairs. The largest room had been a library. There was a fireplace, and we curled up evenings in a Mackinaw blanket, the Hudson Bay kind with stripes of black and red, green and yellow. I didn't tell him about Crazy Dancer being alive, or that I'd seen him. I blocked it from my mind.

The bedroom was small. Once the double bed was in, there was no room for anything else. Erich was practicing his drafting skills and had a large drawing pad on the floor. It took up the entire space. He was able, with the aid of his crutch, to swing off the bed over the sketched plans to the bathroom, but I had to stand on the bed and jump.

I kept having flashbacks. Peering into fog, holding my end of a stretcher, not knowing where I was. . . . This kind of thing used to happen a good deal in the wards, it occurred in men who had seen combat. But it didn't have to be the war. In fact, it usually wasn't. Out of nowhere I'd hear his voice—“
I'll teach you to be an Indian.
” I knew it was battle fatigue, but having a name for it didn't make it go away. Even when I was at work—cranking up a bed, assisting Dr. Bennett, or checking a chart—“
Watch it!” and the three-wheeler turned over and spilled us into the bank. “The center of gravity is too high.
”

The announcement of our marriage didn't bring things tumbling down around our ears as we feared. It was taken philosophically, and we were even congratulated. Erich was being considered for a position with an architectural firm, and had been in for a second interview, which we took to be a favorable sign. We were already putting by for our surprise visit to Mama Kathy. I wasn't very original: I kept the money in the sugar bowl. We figured in about three weeks we could buy the tickets. Erich was very good about saving. He'd heard how fine the Montreal Symphony was. Desiré Dufauw directed, and Erich very much wanted to go, but deferred it for the sake of our trip.

“You'll love Mama Kathy. She spent her honeymoon traveling by dogsled.”

I revived my cooking skills. For years I'd eaten in the hospital cafeteria. But no more. Between dispensing medication, changing dressings, and starting an intravenous feeding . . . I planned menus. Tonight I would prepare saschlik, a Polish dish Mama Kathy learned from a trapper's wife: lamb and tomatoes—
Or that first moment when he framed my face in his hands and looked at me with trust and love
—garnished with onion and apple and poured over a steaming potato.