wisdom

“I want it dark and dreary,”
he told me
and
I believed him.

There was a weariness in his eyes
that spoke of torment that tarried
for torture’s sake,
and
it unnerved methis weary man.

There is nothing
like a black countenance
to denounce the peaceful presence
a man
otherwise would have.
A lined face, with brow
desisting from its eternal furrow
and
a neck strung tight
and
proper for primmest pose,
can sunder
even a dew-brushed April morning,
his sultry gaze of remorse
withering the buds
even as they attempt
to open up and weep.

I realized then
that it was
best
not to
linger long with mirrors.

Ladders and Steps

I never really liked the man.

I don’t think I ever really knew him but I don’t mind. He was a good man, I suppose. The truth was that he was only good when it served a purpose but he had many purposes, so he seemed often a good man.

His root fear of his being, which is the same as my root fear, is failure through obscurity. He likes and has come to need a kind of daily chaos in his life which allows him to forget his fear. It makes him focus instead on action and so he continuously creates action, until it is chaos, and because he has created this chaos he feels power for controlling it and this sense of power defeats his fear until tomorrow, when he must create more. He is also the kind of man who equates this continuous chaos as a kind of journey for peace. I do not agree with this philosophy, but it is better, I think, then a lot of men do with fear.

One day I found him on the steps of a theatre. He was dressed very nicely, his hair was neatly combed and gelled. He seemed perhaps a little thinner around his neck.

He spoke to me without asking, “I’m done for, you know. I’ve lost everything.”

Everything he had lost was already gone – debt, and his attempts to buy his way out had not worked. I don’t know where he is today.

I feel little satisfaction in seeing a man climb a ladder you see is rotten at the top. A rung underfoot snapped, he fell, and now we all get to climb a little higher.

The ladder is rigged, and built downwards from those up top. It’s built so that they stay there; it is a form of defense, not openness. We, those who take its hold, should know this but if we do we step upwards anyway and little changes when one of us falls except a slight shift in the large bulk of human mass, gradually turning over like the skin of an ancient creature shaking off some rain.

And so we exist. We shift and wonder why the rain is wondrous.

The Lewd Witch

I was six years old when I was told this ghost story about the witch, Ann. Ann. The Devil’s Misfit, according to my father;  the Lewd Witch, my uncle called her. I always laughed when they referred to her like that. It played so well into the tale they had concocted about her, this woman named Ann.

Evil, lewd, disgraceful Ann.

When my father had told me about her it was a windy night in autumn. I sat before him on the floor beside the hearth. My eyes were wide as he gestured. He gestured madly. He first raised his voice like growling thunder then he lowered it to a conspirator’s murmur which was somehow worse. I have transcripted my father’s story here and it is written how I remember it and as he told it, though by now he is long dead:

She came out from the east by night. It was never in daytime. Whether she couln’t bear the sunlight no one was sure; maybe she simply found the night most fitting for her deeds, for dark they were my boy, dark they were. And filthy. There’s no other word for it. Filthy. And you would never have known she was there until she was on you, digging her long and grimy and chipped and ragged fingernails down your neck and down between your shoulder blades, your spine! And you’d be lucky if those nails found only flesh boy. Oh yes. Only flesh. Only flesh and muscle. It was said that she could reach out and clutch your very heart if you didn’t turn quick enough away. You ran. That’s what you did from a creature like her boy, you ran. Your heart she’d use for some spell or other. She’d stew it with the intestines of horses and the hooves of pigs so she could pass the rest of the nights with the other loathsome things she kept in her company and the other witches that were as filthy as she was.

They called her Ann. Why Ann? No one remembers by now. Those who might are down in St. Mary’s Bedlam if not already dead. I heard Ann went for those first, the ones who gave her her name. I think she thought it too plain but that matters not. What matters is that she came here one night boy, right here. She did!

She came right up to that window there, and peered in… Peering, peering, creeping. She was some witch alright, standing there, on a dark night like this one with the wind wisping the shadowed shades of her long and straightened hair and the light from the hearth’s fire glinting sickly off her shining, showing, always showing teeth which the fire turned from pearly white to yellow. Her eyes were dark. Save for a speck of gold within each reflecting the inside light, her eyes were dark. She never blinked once, I tell you. Not once. Then when I looked away to see where your mum be the witch was gone. I had looked back to the window and she wasn’t there. I heard a knocking at the door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Devil’s tail boy! She was knocking at the door! And what would you do about it, eh? How would you face this devil’s misfit who wanted to enter through your front door? Would you dare open it?

Aye, but I had to didn’t I?

Yes I did. I needed to get in the way for your mum and for her to carry you if you suddenly needed to run… And I knew very damn well that’s what it could come down to alright. So I went and I opened the door.

“Yes,” I said to the lady who came out only at night.

The wind seemed to have stopped. She stared at me. The hideousness of her body was filthily plain to see. She wore naught but underclothes in the chill air. She wore gloves too, which was strange. As black as the rest of her rags the gloves stretched up to her elbows like the legs of a spider. Never trust a woman willing to shed clothing for skin boy, never trust em. I suppose it’ll be your skin their wearing next for clothes. Why else wear the gloves eh? Skinning’s a messy business, that’s why. So never trust em boy. Never. Deep down their kind are all just filthy and deceased, spineless  little –

[At this I interjected and asked my father what happened with the woman at the door]

Aye. She was there. But I was standing in front of her and between her and the door and I wasn’t worth my table’s salt if I didn’t have some protection should she suddenly use force. I had my knife, see, poking from my back. I kept my hands on my hips, like, so it was within easy reach.

“What d’you want?” I asked her.

“Your boy,” she answered. “He’s mine.”.

“You won’t be gettin him,” I said. “You best be off to some other poor friend. Be off!”

Oh, but then her eyes turned from fire to ice and boy that’s a terrible thing to see in any woman but especially dangerous in a witch. She hissed at me suddenly. She bared her teeth like a common beast’s. She coiled her shoulders up like a lunging cat and lifted her twisted hands as if strike out for a heart. She lunged!

[“No!” I remember yelling at my father, thinking for a second he was surely about to spring at me… Only I didn’t believe that it was he who was there but the witch, and I believed in her because through the story I felt terror and through my terror she took form. My father would then step back, collected and calm as if nothing at all extraordinary had happened in his story, and continue:]

Yes my boy. She lunged. I grasped my knife but there was nothing I could do to get it out to fend her, she was quick. She pushed me back, through the door, and there she suddenly stopped. She couldn’t cross the threshold of the door. Then without a hesitation I took my blade out and thrust it fully into the witch’s heart, and she straightened from her lunge and she fell down, down, dead at my feet. I prayed for her soul and rejoiced  that it would reside now in Hell and never worry us again.

Son why couldn’t she gain entry into this home? Well, I suspect it was her very nature that forbade her. She who was unjust and worthless and vain could not enter this house where virtue and faith and love resided. Do you see that my boy? Do you see? It was not the blade that saved me and your mum and you that night from the witch who came knocking on this front door, but our faith! It is more powerful than any force on earth, you know. ‘Specially that of the Devil’s.

So that’s it my son. That is the end of the tale. And be warned: I did not tell you this for sport. There is a lesson here and one that you should always, always abide by. Otherwise you will turn into something like her…something like that evil misfit Ann. And a terrible shame that would be my son, a terrible shame. So promise me you will stay pious and promise me to stay righteous and of good faith. Promise me boy. Promise me.

And I promised.

That story had kept me wary of all manner of doors and windows for many wakeful nights after its initial telling. That night I had made my promise to my father but later on I forgot the finer points of the story and I didn’t bother with them as my life carried its course and the years passed and eventually I all but forgot the promises and lessons and the Lewd Witch. That is until years later, when I saw her with my own eyes.

She was on a tattered poster, glued inside an old unnamed building not in service since the early sixties. Beneath her image was painted on the wood a list of rules:

  1. Pasties and full pants are to be worn. Pasties are to be other than flesh coloured and securely attached. If you should lose a pastie, cover yourself appropriately and go off stage and the orchestra will cut your act. All panties will be other than flesh coloured and have a two inch strip of heavier material up the middle of the back.

  2. Once you start to remove your clothing, you cannot touch your body with your hands.

  3. You cannot communicate with the audience: i.e talking, noises, give away items to patrons.

  4. Do not touch curtains, walls or proscenium.

  5. You are not permitted to lie down on stage or run-way

  6. You are not permitted to bump a prop.

  7. You are not permitted to make any body movements that in the eyes of the public would simulate an act of sexual intercourse.

  8. You cannot run any article of clothing between your legs.

  9. After the first performance Friday, you must return to the mezzanine where your act will be analyzed by management. When your act has been reviewed and deletions are made from your routine, you will do your act as approved by the management for the balance of the engagement

Ann. Ann Perri. Perri is my surname. And the woman on this old poster would be no older than my parents. Staring at her picture I saw that her face shared the same features as me and my father.

Could it be?

Could it be that the Lewd Witch, the Devil’s Misfit Ann, was not a witch at all but my father’s disgraced sister, welcomed back into her family’s home with a knife and with a prayer that night, now so long ago?

 

*Image from  http://silenttoronto.com/?p=2068, who had in turn printed the image with permission from The Toronto Star, dated April 29, 1962. **The list of “requirements of vaudeville acts”: Fulford, Robert. “Crisis at the Victory Burlesk,” pp.255-258, The Underside of Toronto,  McLelland & Stewart, 1970

Shelter-belt

“What was that?” asked Tim. He straightened from his struggle with his root that refused to break against the iron of his hoe.

“Nothing,”  replied Sam, his eyes were already downcast.

Tim sniggered, now looking back to the root.

“Sounds like you were reciting poetry there, little brother,” he said.

“Was not,” Sam said. The spade in his hand struck the earth with inspiration. “Besides I don’t know no poetry to be recitin.”

Tim shook his head. Tim had found a cracked book with a green cover that had had a suspicious air to it. Tim had found the book with the green cover where the dirty magazines should have been. For this Tim had great reason to fear. Fear perhaps great enough to go to father. Father would surely help direct the boy’s interests. Father would make sure the family name was upheld. Father would make sure that both of his sons turned out right. Poetry didn’t give a man pleasure. Words couldn’t give a man pleasure because words couldn’t touch a man,  a woman could. And anyone who liked poetry more than women was a queer. In fact in Tim’s sixteen years of life experience he’d surmised that if anyone liked anything more than women he was a queer. It was as simple as that. Father had told him as much. It was as simple as that. The day of Tim’s sixteenth birthday father had given him money and had told him to go out and spend it on a fine whore. Tim didn’t find a fine whore but he found one and with the money left over he had bought his brother candy.

“You know,” Tim said now. “You could try being a little more… A little like father, you know.”

Sam stopped with his spade at mid-strike and his elbow out and high. “What do you mean ‘a little like dad’?”

“Or Uncle Johnny,” said Tim. “Or someone like them, you know?” Tim thought, God he can be so sensitive on things like this. Doesn’t he know that he needs to become a man? Doesn’t he know that our father would’ve beat him silly if it had been him and not me who had found that book with the green cover? God, come the right time dad won’t waste money on Sam’s whore. He’ll just beat Sam until Sam sees right.

Sam was saying, “Uncle Johnny’s a drunk. He’s always drinking hard liquor. ”

“What’s wrong with hard liquor? If you can’t drink hard liquor drink beer.”

“Uncle Johnny can hardly speak with that swollen tongue of his and always his favourite stories involve either a woman hitting him while walking away or him hitting  a woman who hasn’t walked away fast enough.”

“At least he likes women!” burst Tim. He winced.

Sam swung his spade into the ground. “You don’t need to worry about that,” he said.

The shelter-belt they had been instructed to start this morning had made fine progress. Now that it was early evening a straight or somewhat straight line of shallow holes were ripe for new trees. The dirt piles beside each hole had long shadows which looked like fingers. They stretched along the lawn and the shadows of the brothers stretched along the lawn.

“Then why do you have the book with the green cover under your bed?” asked Tim.

“I like girls as much as the next man.”

“But men don’t read that stuff.”

“Who doesn’t read what stuff?”

“Men don’t. They don’t read that stuff like poems.”

“Sure they do. Some do.”

“Some do but mostly only certain ones do. Father doesn’t like them.”

“Dad doesn’t like a lot of people and he doesn’t know anything. Neither do you.”

“I might!” said Tim. Somehow his hands were empty and one fist was raised.

Just then, from the front yard their mother’s voice.

“Boys! Supper.”

“Coming!” Tim yelled back. He took up his hoe and Sam straightened with his spade. They began walking back to the house.

“You know,” Tim said, abruptly and with despair,

“Sometimes I feel like the world is closing in so much and is so small I could suffocate in it.”

“You know,” Sam said,  “Sometimes I feel like the world is expanding so much and is so big I could fall into it.”

At supper the boys told their father this and over the table he shook his head.

“You boys still think it’s the world that changes?” he asked.