The Incident Report Page 5

  The tip of Janko’s tongue appeared and wet his lower lip. It was a form of hesitation.

  “And you, where do you work?” I asked.

  “I drive a taxi.”

  He was holding the same rather battered book as the last time I’d seen him—a square brown book, missing its jacket.

  “What are you reading?”

  “Kekec.”

  “Kekec?”

  “It is a Slovenian novel for children.”

  “Is it good?”

  “It is wonderful.”

  “What is it about?”

  “A story of a little boy, Kekec, who is very brave and has many adventures. He must confront evil and overcome it.”

  If somebody had asked me, I would have said that a young man with a gentle expression and missing a finger, sitting in a park, reading a children’s novel, resting before his next shift driving a taxi, was as good a person to fall in love with as anyone, but that I was not interested in more suffering. If somebody had asked I would have told them all sorts of lies, the same lies I was in the habit of telling myself.

  Above us, a breeze caused the leaves of the trees to tremble. I listened to them trembling.

  There are moments when time dilates like the pupil of an eye, to let everything in. I sat beside Janko and I was seven years old and heard the click of my friend’s red plastic purse closing shut, on the day she climbed out her kitchen window, having stolen as many sugar cubes as she could cram into her red purse, and I, feeling both scornful and envious of her daring, stood in the driveway and watched her jump.

  I sat beside Janko while the leaves trembled, and I was five years old and clutching my fork incorrectly. I preferred my fork to resemble a spear, and suddenly I’d been discovered, incapable of correctly holding a fork, and I did not want to confess my deep shame.

  INCIDENT REPORT 46

  The time was 10:45 AM. A female patron pulled an envelope from her purse.

  “My son,” she explained, “is coming home for a visit.”

  She unfolded a letter and slid it across the desk for me to read. The buttons of her coat were done up in the proper order. The soft, pale fabric of her coat revealed no stains. Her hair, the colour of dead grass but of a much softer texture, she’d combed, twisted up and fixed in place by means of a large and elegant silver clip at the back of her head. The skin on the back of her hands was no more wrinkled than was to be expected.

  I did not understand until I had read the letter why her smile had an apologetic quality.

  The letter was neatly typed, no doubt by her son’s secretary. The letterhead mentioned Foreign Affairs, some department of, followed by a Washington address.

  “He works in Washington,” she explained, observing the movement of my eyes from left to right, down the page.

  He had sent his mother a list of tasks she was to complete before his arrival home. These were numbered; and the one which concerned the library was number nine: “Please go,” he wrote, “to the Allan Gardens Library, and ask for a roll of their toilet paper. It is rough and stronger than any other I’ve been able to find. I prefer it to any other. Please thank them.”

  I looked up from his list, half expecting her expression to have intensified, her apologetic smile to have been replaced by a hardened defensiveness, or a deeply embarrassed confusion. She appeared unperturbed. It was I who felt troubled, as if I had a grown son who was shouting out orders and commands while sitting on a public toilet, the door of his stall thrown open.

  “If you’ll kindly wait a moment, please,” I said, by way of excusing myself from the circulation desk, and I went down into the basement where we store our rolls of toilet paper in neat rows on a shelf in a cupboard. I returned with two rolls, which I slid to her across the desk. She thanked me, just as her son had asked her to do, and walked out of the library with great dignity, with the gentle expression of somebody advancing through a dream.

  INCIDENT REPORT 47

  A female patron in her late twenties, head down and deep in conversation with herself or with someone invisible to the rest of us, entered the library at 1:45 this afternoon. My concern was for the infant strapped to her. I watched from a distance and wondered what might be the consequences, for a baby, of being carried about in a snuggly by a mother not in her right mind—a young woman pacing, talking under her breath, her thick socks falling and her hair a tangled nest.

  I approached, and the young woman retreated. I turned a corner; she turned her back. In this way we wound a path of quiet pursuit and escape, in and out between the bookshelves. Not until closing time was I able to catch my first glimpse of the infant’s face. There was no infant. Only crumpled clothes stuffed in a snuggly.

  INCIDENT REPORT 48

  At 8:30 PM on Saturday, June 27, I entered Janko’s apartment for the first time. A loaf of bread sat on the kitchen counter, and beside the bread a knife. A slice had been cut from the loaf, but there were no crumbs in sight. The crumbs had been swept away. There were none—not in the sink, or on the counter.

  A window overlooked an alley, and I stared out through it, wanting to be outside, not inside an apartment that was unfamiliar, and where I was about to change the course of my life. I stared out the window. The sill was strewn with breadcrumbs. He’d put the crumbs out for the birds to eat. I smiled.

  I had no cause to be in Janko’s kitchen. I’d arrived there by leaving his other room, where he painted, ate, read, slept and did whatever else he did. In that room—the room where he slept, I couldn’t stand still. In his kitchen I couldn’t stand still. I reentered the room where he slept, and I forced myself to remain there.

  A map of Slovenia was pinned to the wall. An old chest of drawers stood to one side. These were the objects that kept him company. Tubes of paint lined up on the chest; inside each tube a colour, compressed, held in by a little black cap; brushes, palate knifes, a rag—all these lay neatly arranged, exposed.

  The paintings he’d turned so that they faced the wall.

  A narrow sofa with arms resembling wings. Propped up at one end—phone books in place of its broken leg—it sagged as if it had suffered a stroke.

  Hooks in the bare wall, where some of the paintings had hung until he’d taken them down.

  While I surveyed his room, he went into the kitchen and brought back a plate of dates and dried apricots.

  “You didn’t tell me you were a painter.”

  “I didn’t want to frighten you.”

  I laughed.

  “I don’t want to frighten you,” he said.

  “Are your paintings frightening?”

  “Not anymore. Not for me. Not these.”

  “Will you show me?”

  He turned one, so it faced the room—a gouged surface, painted black, a darkness pierced here and there by brilliant glimpses of colour.

  “You’re not frightened?”

  I laughed.

  “Good. I don’t want to frighten you.”

  “May I see another?”

  He turned two more around. The colours broke through the black, and shone. They were thick dabs, but they shone and seemed to arrive from far away. The paths gouged in the blackness branched out in all directions.

  “How did you do it?”

  “First I burned the wood, the surface, all of it, to clear my mind.”

  “The way they burn a field?”

  “Yes. Then I dug into the wood. Then I painted.”

  “We’re deep in a forest and lost. We’ve been walking for days, scraping our shins on twigs and thorns, looking for the crumbs we dropped so we could find our way. A colour has appeared, just ahead. It has no shape and no name.”

  “Is that how my painting makes you feel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I show you more?”

  “Please.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Will you have one?”

  “Yes, I will have one.”

  “Then I’ll have one too.”
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  “Ginger tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Please sit.”

  INCIDENT REPORT 49

  The female patron, given to conversing with herself, whose wild hair and fallen socks contribute to her air of disarray, entered the library briskly, at 1:55 this afternoon. She was no longer wearing the snuggly. She now carried an enormous teddy bear, of the sort sometimes given as a prize at a fair. The huge bear, tipped on its side, was jammed under her left arm. She walked up to the Reference Desk without hesitation or deviation, and asked if I could provide her with the mailing address of the famous actor Robert Redford.

  “I know a lot of the women he’s seeing,” she explained. “And they’re not very nice. I want to warn him. If he keeps seeing them he’ll get himself hurt. They’re cruel.”

  INCIDENT REPORT 50

  The time was 4:15 and we, Nila and I, in accordance with the schedule, were enjoying our “dinner” break. She’d plopped herself down on the staff room’s aging sofa, while I, perched on the chair across from her, was eating a carrot.

  “The way my mother made cheese was simple,” she explained. “You take two cups of yogurt, or more if you have it, add salt, not the really ground-up sort, but, you know, rock salt, dump the lot into a man’s handkerchief, a clean one obviously, tie a knot and hang it from the kitchen tap. You leave it there overnight. All the water drips out, goes down the drain. In the morning, you open the handkerchief, and voilà, fantastic cheese! If Nila can do it, so can you. You should make some. Spread it on a slice of bread. Fantastic. Speaking of fantastic, any more word from Prince Charming? You know, that creepy Rigoletto guy?”

  INCIDENT REPORT 51

  I arrived at Janko’s apartment. Once inside his apartment, I had no more need of my clothes, and I removed them. I stood in front of Janko. I did not know what else to do. I hoped, and waited, for him to show me how to experience pleasure. But he failed to bring me pleasure. It was my failure also. In our failure we lay together on the narrow sofa.

  INCIDENT REPORT 52

  Again I arrived at Janko’s apartment. I undressed him, beginning with the buckle of his belt. Janko bent over me, and he ate until no more of me remained. All that remained of me was warmth.

  INCIDENT REPORT 53

  Through the heating vent in the staff room floor came piano music. Somebody had just been let in to the little practice room directly below, off adult nonfiction. Enclosed, they were playing vigorously, repeatedly, the Duke’s song from Rigoletto, “la donna è mobile . . .” I set down my teacup and descended the stairs two at a time.

  The blue binder, in which we inscribe all Piano Room Reservations, lay where it belonged, in the drawer of the circulation desk. I’d half expected to find it missing. I flipped it open. A child’s card had been slipped into the appropriate, transparent pocket at the front of the binder, and the name Nancy Liu pencilled into the present time slot.

  As I walked to the piano room my breathing quickened. My determined efforts to calm myself came to nothing. I knocked on the door of the small room. I opened the door. Both Nancy Liu and her mother turned to stare inquiringly at me.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” I apologized. “You play very well,” I told the girl.

  She looked about ten years old, slim and sober with a pretty mouth and chin. Her smooth hair was pulled back tight and, by means of two pink plastic clips, held in two crisp ponytails. The sheet music for the Duke’s song leaned against the piano. I was about to close the door, but stopped.

  “Do you often play opera music?” I asked.

  Nancy Liu stared at me in silence. Her mother laughed.

  “We found the music on top of the piano,” she explained. “My daughter wanted to try it.”

  I nodded.

  “Your daughter plays extremely well,” I said, and closed the door.

  INCIDENT REPORT 54

  This evening, half an hour before closing time, urged to do so by my fellow workers, I evacuated the children’s area. Caution, I agreed, was the better course. The roof was being repaired and loud thumpings could be heard. The light fixtures had started shaking.

  Two men playing chess refused to relocate. I repeated my request, emphasizing that their safety was possibly at risk. Several huge thuds on the roof above us convinced one of the players. He got up and left the area.

  The remaining player studied the chessboard for several moments, seeming to consider his next move, then became agitated and swore. I stood at a respectful distance, as recommended in the Manual for Encounters with Difficult Patrons. I waited. Overhead, the vigorous banging and whacking continued.

  The remaining player cursed all the more passionately, his vehemence growing, as he stared at the abandoned game spread out on the board in front of him.

  “I’m going to have to start swinging soon,” he threatened, and successfully got up from his chair.

  I asked him to leave the library without further delay. He did so, but turned at the door to promise he would be back the following morning.

  I do not know if it was necessary to have evacuated the children’s area. But a decision was taken, and such is the nature of life.

  INCIDENT REPORT 55

  Again I arrived at Janko’s apartment. His skin, and under his skin. What his left toe knew. The smell of him. The orbital smell of him. That our knees spoke willingly. Inexplicably, the taste of raspberries filled my mouth.

  INCIDENT REPORT 56

  A patron reported that a man was lying on the floor in adult nonfiction. The time was 6:00 PM. I approached the man. Though able to respond slowly, he was incapable of getting up from the floor. He smelled of alcohol, appeared beaten and bruised and wore a hospital bracelet. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics recognized him as “Stanley.” The man insisted he was not “Stanley,” and declared that “Stanley” does “nasty things” in public. The paramedics helped the man to his feet and escorted him out of the library.

  INCIDENT REPORT 57

  She was of a suitable height for a girl her age, or so it seemed to me, though admittedly I could not quite tell how old she was. Her hair was without character. Her weight befitted her height.

  I explained to her that to read the full article she would have to pay, that this was not the fault of the Public Libraries of Toronto, but of the on-line version of the newspaper, the Sarnia Observer, if in fact fault was involved, which I didn’t believe it was. We are all subject to economic necessity.

  Since I could not turn my computer’s monitor far enough around to enable her to read the free extract, I read it for her, aloud. For the duration of a moment, she sat and thought.

  “What does it say again?” she asked

  I read for a second time: “Runaway Teens Excited Over Toronto Find Disillusionment. Mother, Dawn Mason, is terrified for the safety of her 15-year-old daughter, Natalie Ford, who escaped from a group home in Sarnia last Tuesday and is believed to have headed for Toronto.”

  “Is there a photo?”

  “No. I’m afraid not.”

  “Aw,” she exclaimed. “But that’s what I wanted. All I really wanted was to see the photo.”

  “There isn’t one. Shall I print out the extract anyway?”

  “What will I have to pay?”

  “Twenty cents.”

  “Sure.”

  When the paper lay on the desk in front of her she pointed at the girl’s name.

  “Natalie Ford—that’s me.” She indicated the woman’s name. “Dawn Mason—that’s my mother. She wrote this article.” She pointed to the title. “What does this mean?”

  It meant, I explained, that teenagers come to Toronto expecting something great and are disappointed.

  “That’s true. It was kinda like that for me. Tough at the start, not what I’d sorta imagined. Yeah, that’s how it was for me, when I was young.”

  She stared at the page a while longer.

  “They’re just teasing me,” she concluded. “It’s much longer. It says 507
words. They want me to pay.”

  “If I click on the shopping cart icon, we can find out how much they want. Shall I?”

  “Sure. I mean, yes, please.”

  I clicked, and the price revealed itself: five dollars.

  “Oh, I can pay that. It’s worth it, don’t you think?”

  “I think so. For the full article, yes.”

  “I’d need a credit card.”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “I have one. But not on me.”

  “Does your mother know where you are now?”

  “Oh yeah. That’s old history. I’m a mother now. I have my own children. I’m twenty-two.”

  INCIDENT REPORT 58

  When my mother was my present age, thirty-five, her constant worry was my father. At that time, I was ten years old, my brother seven and my sister five. My father, in that year, celebrated his fortieth birthday. We ate cake and ice cream.

  My father did not read the books he collected. Whereas many men drink, he eased his anguish by purchasing books. He imagined that his collection might one day acquire an immense value. Not that he planned to sell his books. It would be enough to have the world confirm that he had recognized their true worth, that he had found and rescued them from possible destruction and that he was their keeper.

  Musty volumes stood in piles on the stairs going up to our second floor; they formed a low wall leading to the washroom. Neither the shelves in my parents’ bedroom nor those in the living room could contain all my father’s books. His collection filled the garage. The car remained parked in the driveway, in every season, no matter the weather. My mother prohibited him from bringing home more books. He hid them under his coat or he waited until she was out of the house.