Tin insists on driving: being in a car with Jorrie at the wheel is too much like Russian roulette for him. Sometimes she’s fine, but last week she ran over a raccoon. She claimed it was dead already, though Tin doubts that. “It shouldn’t have been out anyway,” she said, “in all that weather.”
They proceed cautiously through the icy streets in Tin’s carefully preserved 1995 Peugeot, tires squeaking on the snow. The accumulation from the day before still hasn’t been cleared away, though at least it was only a blizzard, not an ice storm like the one that hit over Christmas. Three days in the Cabbagetown house without heat or light had been trying, since Jorrie viewed the storm as a personal insult and complained about its unfairness. How could the weather be doing this to her?
There’s a parking lot north of King – Tin has taken care to identify it online, since the last thing he needs is Jorrie issuing false directions – but it’s a surprisingly tight squeeze: several cars behind them are turned away. Tin extracts Jorrie from the front seat and steadies her as she slides on the ice. Why didn’t he nix those spike-heeled boots? She could have a serious fall and fracture something – a hip, a leg – and if that happens she’ll be propped up in bed for months while he carries trays and empties bedpans. Grasping her firmly by the arm, he propels her along King Street, then south on Trinity.
“Look at all the people,” she says. “Who the hell are they?” It’s true, there’s quite a crowd heading to the Enoch Turner Schoolhouse. Many of them are what you’d expect – the geezer generation, like Tin and Jorrie – but oddly enough there are quite a few young ones. Could it be that Gavin Putnam is now a youth cult? What an unpleasant notion, thinks Tin.
Jorrie presses closer to his side, her head swivelling like a periscope. “I don’t see her,” she whispers. “She’s not here!”
“She won’t come,” says Tin. “She’s afraid you’ll call her What’s-her-name.” Jorrie laughs, but not very heartily. She doesn’t have a plan, thinks Tin: she’s charging in blindly the way she always does. It’s a good thing he’s here with her.
Inside, the room is crowded and overly warm, though it does have a gracious atmosphere reminiscent of a bygone era. There’s a subdued gabble, as of distant waterfowl. Tin helps Jorrie out of her coat, struggles out of his own, and settles back for the duration.
Jorrie elbows him, emits a sizzling whisper: “That must be the widow, in the blue. Crap, she looks about twelve. Gav was such a perv.” Tin tries to see but fails to spot the likely candidate. How can she tell, from the back?
Now there’s a hush: a master of ceremonies has taken the podium – a younger man in a turtleneck and a tweed jacket, a professorial getup – and is welcoming them all to this commemoration of the life and work of one of our most celebrated and best-loved and, if he can put it this way, most essential poets.
Speak for yourself, thinks Tin: not essential to me. He tunes out the audio and turns his mind to the honing of a phrase or two from Martial. He doesn’t publish his efforts any more because why bother to try, but the impromptu translation process is a private mental exercise that passes the time agreeably on occasions when the time has to be passed.
Unlike you, who court our view,
They shun an audience, those whores;
They fuck in secret behind closed doors.
In curtained, sealed chambers;
Even the dirtiest, cheapest ones
Sneak off to ply their trade behind the tombs.
Act more modestly, like them!
Lesbia, you think I’m being mean?
Shag your head off! Only – don’t be seen!
Too much like Mother Goose, the rhyme, the rhythm? Then, perhaps, even more succinctly:
Why not emulate the strumpet?
Bump it, pump it, multi-hump it,
Lesbia! Just don’t blow your trumpet!
No, that won’t do: it’s sillier than Martial at his silliest, and with too much detail sacrificed. The tombs in the original deserve to be preserved: there’s much to be said for a graveyard assignation. He’ll have another run at it later. Maybe he should take a crack at the one about the cherry versus the prune …
Jorrie elbows him sharply. “You’re falling asleep!” she hisses. Tin comes to with a start. Hastily he consults the pamphlet that outlines the order of events, with Gavin’s photo glowering magisterially from its black border. Where are they in the timeline? Have the grandchildren sung? Apparently so: not even some lugubrious hymn, but, oh horrors – “My Way.” Whoever proposed that should be flogged, but luckily Tin himself was zoned out during it.
The grown-up son is now reading, not from the Bible, but from the oeuvre of the deceased troubadour himself: a late poem about leaves in a pool.
Maria skims the dying leaves.
Are they souls? Is one of them my soul?
Is she the Angel of Death, with her dark hair,
with her darkness, come to gather me in?