I feel sad for the store. There are so many wonderful things we experience for only a fleeting moment in time. It is a beautiful and terrifying truth that all things must pass. Even the grocery stores you go to every day, even your favourite movie theatres. The models of cars change. Your favourite candies disappear from shelves. Buildings you once lived in are torn down. Neon signs that once filled the city skyline, and that you considered as permanent as the constellations, these too shall pass.

  There are so many different-coloured tiles on the walls and floors at Acadie métro. It is like I am inside a patchwork circus tent. It thus seems like an appropriate place to sit for a moment and consider Bella’s sudden passing, since she was so fond of circuses in her life.

  I see someone has left a newspaper on the bench where I sit. At the top of the page is a photograph of Bella with a caption that reads: Famed Montrealer Bela Belizima Has Died. Bella is more famous than ever. Dying on the night of an opening, so that your obituary is next to glowing reviews, is a fine way to be remembered.

  I had such complicated feelings when my grandmother died a few years back. It did not come as a surprise to me. She was in terrible health and never exercised. Indeed, her favourite activity was to smoke cigarettes while complaining about girlfriends who had betrayed her in the early 1960s. I had spent my whole life living with her. I couldn’t help but feel her death was a sort of liberation for both her and me.

  Now I am in mourning for all the time Bella and I did not get to spend together. I just met her, after all. I was expecting to have her odd, funny, and problematic presence for a good while.

  I look over at Yelena, who is pacing back and forth on the red tiled floor with her phone to her ear. Yelena is talking to her mother, who is in Poland at the moment. She puts her forehead against the wall, as what she hears seems to displease her greatly. When she walks back over to me, she tells me her mother, who is Bella’s only daughter, is not coming to Montreal for the funeral.

  “My mother despises her parents for being artists,” Yelena explains. “She says she was neglected her whole childhood because her mother only ever wanted to play the clarinet. And her father never loved her the way he loved his donkey. But mostly she is outraged about not being in the will. If Bella had left her anything at all, she would immediately be on the first plane over here.”

  “Did she leave all her money to you?” I ask.

  “No, not at all. She thought I would gamble it away. Not that she was opposed to gambling, per se. She’s the one who taught me how to play poker when I was thirteen. But she thought I was unlucky.”

  “So who did she leave all her money to?”

  “A donkey sanctuary.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes. She loved donkeys. My grandfather’s donkey Blue was the love of her life.”

  Yelena starts laughing at the absurdity of it.

  “I think when Blue died,” she continues, “their relationship could not withstand the loss. Every time she looked at her husband, she thought of Blue and got too sad. That’s why she moved to Canada. She gave my grandfather two million dollars after the divorce and he invested it in a donkey sanctuary.”

  “And it is still up and running?”

  “Oh yes. It’s my grandfather’s biggest success. Children come from all over to stroke the donkeys’ manes. It’s supposed to be good for developing their characters. So they don’t grow up to be serial killers. My grandfather still lives there. He reads French poetry to the donkeys all day long. You can go visit it. It’s just outside of Paris.”

  I close my eyes and imagine myself encircled by a troop of donkeys. They stare at me with eyes so sad there is no need for them to have tears. There is a beautiful aspect to grief. It is a testimony to how moving life is. The poets have spent all of human history looking for images to describe this deep sorrow. For me, grief will always be a thing with donkey eyes.

  “She did leave something for you,” Yelena says, interrupting my pensées. “Or rather, she wanted to give it to you as a present before she died.”

  Yelena begins rummaging through her bag. I notice heaps of jewellery and silver utensils. “I picked up some personal items from her house,” Yelena explains. Finally, she pulls out a square package wrapped in pretty pink paper and hands it to me. I tear off the paper and see there is a framed drawing of a young woman smiling with her eyes closed. Her feet are up off the ground, and she is floating, the music transporting her up to heaven. The drawing is done in pastel and is rather simple, but somehow that makes it even more lovely.

  “Oh, thank you,” I say. “This is beautiful. I will put it on the wall of my apartment.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Yelena says. “That’s an original Chagall. He made it for Bella years ago, in the 1980s, before his death. You can sell it for a small fortune.”

  “Marc Chagall!” I exclaim.

  “No one knows about the drawing.” Yelena shrugs. “Say you found it at the St-Michel Flea Market.”

  29

  Champ-de-Mars

  I AM SITTING STARING at the Chagall drawing my great-aunt left me before her death, when I hear Yelena come out of the bathroom. I wonder whether she intends to always live with me and never return to her apartment. Honestly, I don’t mind. Even though the apartment is tiny, I am enjoying having company. Especially after living alone for four years.

  “Are you going to sit and stare at that drawing all day?” Yelena asks.

  “I can’t help it,” I answer, without turning around. “It seems like the girl in the drawing is moving. It’s like she is continuing to rise up. Each time I look at her, she seems to have moved ever so slightly, like a kite in the wind.”

  “That drawing was in Bella’s hallway for forty years,” Yelena says. “If the girl was going to fly off the paper, she would have done it already.”

  I turn and see Yelena is wearing the expensive blue suit that Bella bought for me. Bella had wanted me to look fancy when I went to the casino. Yelena, slouched in a chair, looks like she is on the cover of a 1970s rock album.

  “Boris called me,” she says. “He said he wants to forgive my debt. That he doesn’t want to gamble.”

  “Who is Boris? The handsome gangster?”

  “The handsome gangster! Are you mad? He asked, in return, that I not haunt him or put a curse on him.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful, isn’t it?” I say, relieved. “What’s the problem? We can all get on with our lives now.”

  “It is a problem because I want to gamble. I am going to gamble the house. Because I have a good feeling about it, and I intend to make a fortune.”

  “But Bella’s house doesn’t belong to you or her anymore. You didn’t inherit it. It belongs to the Donkey Conservatory in France. What if you lose? You can’t give him the house.”

  “He doesn’t know that, does he?”

  Yelena stands up, and I can see from the look on her face nothing will talk her out of gambling today. Who knows when she became an adrenalin addict. Maybe it was her parents sending her away that did it. Maybe plunging herself into danger and the unknown is all she knows of love.

  She looks in the mirror, applies a slash of red lipstick, and then encircles her eyes with liquid liner. She blinks and leans back to admire herself. I personally think she has the look of a wicked cat now.

  “Is that my suit you are wearing?” I ask.

  “It is and it isn’t. I went and got myself the same suit. I thought we could both arrive in the same outfit. It will drive him crazy. He will think we are clones.”

  “Maybe I got a drop of water on me, and you sprung out of me like a gremlin.”

  Yelena laughs for a full five minutes, until I begin to worry about her sanity.

  I wonder whether she is in mourning for Bella. Maybe this is how she expresses her grief. I notice she hasn’t slept much since her grandmother died. Even though she hasn’t exhibited any of the typical symptoms of grief, that doesn’t mean she isn’t feeling sad.

  I woke up in the middle of the night and saw her pacing on the balcony. She was waving her hands around, deep in an imaginary conversation. Perhaps she was having one last argument with her grandmother. She was always very critical with Bella, but sometimes that is just how it is in life. We are hardest on who we love the most.

  That is why, finally, I decide to get dressed up in my suit. Yelena is grieving, and I feel she must need some company. And how could I let her skip off to her own doom all alone?

  Commuters on the métro keep turning to look at Yelena and me. If one wanted a key to telling us apart, they had only to look at our shoes. Yelena is wearing a black pair of Chanel boots with square toes and gold buckles. I have on a pair of rather scuffed no-name sneakers.

  The other way you would be able to tell us apart might be possible if you were in possession of a stethoscope. Because one of us would have a normal heartbeat, whereas mine would be beating at an alarming rate. Also, Yelena is wearing a peculiar frown on her face. It’s a lovely sort of frown. Even though we have the same face, I’m not sure I could pull it off. It must be something she learned as a child in Odesa.

  We get off at Champ-de-Mars métro. The tiles on the floor are all white, with the exception of a few here and there that are black. It makes the floor look like a Lotto 6/49 card, with squares scribbled in with pencil. When we get to the top of the stairs, I am looking forward to seeing the great stained-glass windows by Marcelle Ferron. It will be as though we are at the end of the rainbow. Perhaps there will be a pot of gold for me! But when we get to the landing, the entire station is surrounded by construction and the light can no longer shine through. I wonder if this portends some misfortune.

  As we get to the top of the hill, there is a large crow sitting on top of the lamppost. It has some sort of stick in its mouth; it opens its beak and the stick falls to the ground. “Karl,” he seems to call me, as he would an old work friend. “Karl. Karl. Karl.”

  I pick up the stick and realize it is a pencil. Most peculiar! Could it be that the universe is giving me signs?

  Because it is such a big bet, the gambling is going to take place at Boris’s home in Old Montreal. He lives in a row of very opulent old buildings on rue Notre-Dame. “Wow,” I say, as we stand looking at them.

  We enter the building and I stand over to the side of the door as Yelena knocks on it. The door opens, and I hear Boris’s voice greet Yelena.

  “Hello, Yelena. I was sorry to hear about your grandmother. It was only a few days ago I saw her onstage.”

  “And did she seem in perfect health?”

  “No, I would not say that. She looked at death’s door. I’m surprised she was still alive. But these old ladies stay alive out of spite. Just to make sure they make everyone’s life hell. They don’t die until they have spent every penny of your inheritance on an old-age home.”

  I utter a little cry of shock. How can I not, as he is being so insulting towards my great-aunt? It is then that Boris steps out and sees me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had a twin?” he asks Yelena.

  “I don’t,” Yelena says. “I was standing in front of a Xerox machine and it got struck by lightning. Another of me was just standing there.”

  “Is it really a time for jokes?” he asks.

  “You are right,” Yelena says. “Sorry. I got lost in a hall of mirrors. One of my reflections got out while I was trapped inside.”

  “All these years I thought I was dealing with one person, and I was talking to two. This is why I rarely do business with women. There’s something always slippery about women. You are liars. You are traitors. You are witches. You are irrational. Come inside.”

  I am wondering now how I ever found this man attractive. His obvious disdain for women has changed the way I view him. He looks the opposite of handsome to me now.

  We walk into an enormous apartment where everything is sparkling new, from the countertops to the light fixtures. I see a large roulette table has been set up in the centre of the room. There are around five or six other men, wandering around impatiently with drinks in their hands. There is one woman with a perfect blonde ponytail and dressed in a white collared shirt. She is clearly the croupier.

  The croupier opens her arms and gestures with her white-gloved hands towards the roulette wheel. Everyone gathers around it. All Yelena and I have to do is guess whether the ball will land on red or black.

  I recall the crow I witnessed on the way here. And are not crows some of the most famous of all omens in history? I feel certain the ball is going to fall into a black slot.

  “Black,” I say to Yelena.

  “Are you absolutely certain?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I respond.

  “Well then, I’ll put it on red.”

  I am surprised, but the decision has been made. And before I can utter another word, the croupier leans in and spins the wheel. I remember watching Sesame Street as a child. There would be a white ball that danced on the words. That’s what the little bouncing ball now reminds me of.

  Even though Yelena is trying to make us lose, I can’t help but try to find a way to spare us from fate. I close my eyes and try to picture red things. I think of roses for sale in plastic mop buckets, bags of jelly beans, children’s drawings of hearts. I think of blood and crayons and war. I think of lipstick and lipstick traces on Kleenex.

  And then I open my eyes to see the white marble still jumping around the roulette wheel. All it has to do is land in a red slot, and we will be in the clear. But it does not, does it? It lands inside a black slot and the two of us are ruined.

  “Hand over the deed,” Boris says. He pulls out a gun and points it directly at Yelena’s face.

  I turn and see there is such a look of joy on Yelena’s face. I have never seen her look so happy.

  30

  Côte-Vertu

  BORIS IS POINTING a gun at Yelena’s smirking face. It is so surreal, it makes me sick to my stomach. I stand up and expect someone to stop me, but all the men in the room seem focused on Boris and Yelena for the moment. I use the opportunity to slip away, backing up slowly and then darting out the front door. I feel terrible leaving Yelena behind, but what else can I do? Everything in my body says: run, run, run! I am surprised my feet can make it down the stairs. My situation seems so much like a dream that I half expect the stairs to be useless. But my feet take me down them.

  As soon as I am back at home, I lock the door behind me, but I don’t feel safe in my apartment. Yelena might be dead! And the gangsters will be coming for me next. If my doorbell were to ring at this moment, my heart would surely stop. I have to leave, although I have no idea where to go. I have lived in this building my whole life.

  I drag a beat-up white suitcase out of my closet. I use it to keep winter tuques and scarves in, as it never occurred to me that I would need it for travelling. I unzip it and turn it upside down, dumping mittens and scarves with all the colours of the rainbow on the floor. I look around the apartment for what I will need. I quickly take some practical clothing from my dresser and toss them in the suitcase. Then I put my notebooks in, as I cannot leave them behind. I take a sweater out in order to make room for more notebooks. I remember the fake passport with Yelena’s photo on it. This will work for me, if I need to leave the country. If I leave the country! I put it in the suitcase.

  I have a sudden intuition I will never return to this apartment. I see the cricket sitting in his jar. I can’t just leave my minuscule roommate to fend for himself. The landlord will mistake this humble violinist for a common cockroach and step on him. I take the jar with me as I leave, although I’m not at all sure what I will do with it.

  Sometimes in life, in the most extraordinary of circumstances, we find ourselves focusing on small, minuscule problems.

  I feel I should be bringing the cricket to the Insectarium, or giving him to some biologists. A cricket that can play an old Eastern European folk song would be of utmost fascination to them. And yet, it seems to me the cricket’s singing ability is not something that could be understood by the scientific community. It might be better left to the poets.

  When I get to the lobby, I go outside for a minute. There is a small patch of grass around a tree. I let the cricket out. For him, this small plot will be a happy planet. He will govern it like the Little Prince did his.

  I use the tunnels of the Underground City to get from my building to the métro. At Bonaventure station, I catch the train that is arriving, irrespective of its direction. It is heading west and north in the direction of Côte-Vertu. I need to figure out where I am actually going. The windows of the métro plunge into darkness each time we go into the tunnels. And then when we pull into a station, the windows light back up, as though they are television sets that have just been turned on. How lovely each scene is to me. All the Montrealers in their eclectic fashion standing in front of the various beautiful tiled walls.

  I don’t get off until I am at the very last stop. I climb up the stairs towards the exit, having really no idea where I am going. There is an installation there I want to see. It is an artwork with a group of small métro commuters pinned to a mirror, just like the butterflies at the Insectarium. Each of the people is looking at their reflection in the mirror. It seems each of these commuters is encountering their double, another possible self that they could be. In life we can’t spend all our time just imagining another self; we have to have the courage to become our wild, irreverent double.

  As I am reflecting on the nature of doubles, I receive a text from Yelena: Where are you?

  I text back: Are you safe??? I’m at Côte-Vertu métro.

  She texts: Wait there for Vladimir.

  I stand outside the métro and it isn’t long before I see Vladimir’s ridiculous gold car approaching. I open the passenger seat and climb in with my suitcase. Vladimir is wearing a rainbow-coloured polo shirt over his wide belly, and the steering wheel is sitting on his lap.

 

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