Kiss of the Fur Queen Page 12

  The ghost-pale, muscle-bound young woman in jeans and white blouse began wading her way through the bobbing columns as the creaky old woman at the piano continued ad infinitum with the flabbiest waltz Gabriel had ever heard. As she progressed, Miss Churley paused to adjust a little arm here or a little leg there, here a waist, there a neck, fully confident that such touches would result in a splendid harvest of Manitoban Pavlovas. The closer she got, the higher Gabriel raised his ribcage; it felt right, somehow, to strike such a pose when danger approached.

  “Too tense, Mr. Okimasis, way too tense. Relax, this is not kung fu.” She nudged his right foot in and turned his palm over: “And your palm is down, not up. You can do your praying to the Gitche manitou when class is over.” With a vise-like grip, she grabbed his hips and turned them out. “Pooh!” she gasped, as if she had just been hit by a soundless blast of gas, “tight as a bedspring.” She jiggled his arms, and slapped his thighs around like a Swedish masseuse.

  Gabriel took a deep breath and willed himself into a state of rubber-like pliancy. His left hand poised on the barre, his right floated up, his neck grew, his hips no longer bedsprings. The pink little girls were now mere plumage on the wings of some fabulous subarctic creature. Still caged in Studio B of the School of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, he was free of gravity, trying out this newfound language that spoke to him in a way nothing else had ever done.

  “And back to first and three and plié …”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Now a gavotte performed sedately; offer her your hand with conscious pride; take an attitude not too stately, still sufficiently dignified,” quavered an oily, undisciplined male voice over a squabble of strings, woodwinds, and one untuned piano.

  Oh, well, Jeremiah thought as he sat grappling with the tired instrument in the school gymnasium, at least I got the job. For despite the cacophony and the amateurishness of his fellow musicians, he was thrilled to be playing in a real live musical. And it may only have been the Anderson High School production of The Gondoliers, but to Jeremiah, it was as good as Broadway. If only Uncle Kookoos could see him now. He capped off the second verse of the gavotte with a robust little thump and plunged into the chorus.

  The cadaverous Mr. Long rammed his claw-like left hand into the score before him and flung the page back with such passion that the paper almost ripped. His right hand beating four-four time as if the Vienna Philharmonic were at his feet, Mr. Long thrust his left so high that Jeremiah thought he might well snap his back brace, summoning into the unruly fray his even more unruly flute section. The hefty twins in honey-blond milkmaid braids and ruffle-sleeved Bavarian beerhall dirndls puffed their cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie and pursed their lips like wursts; the resultant sound could have passed for an air-raid siren.

  In a plot that was a virtual quagmire of misinformation, there were two facts of indisputable and universal clarity: first, the pianist in the orchestra was as Indian as Sitting Bull and, second, one of the gondoliers-cum-princes, as identical as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, was white as nougat, the other brown as cocoa.

  Gabriel Okimasis beamed like a torch. He was walking on air, his toes were tingling, his heart atwitter, for never had he expected to be a star in a real live show with lights and tights and wigs and music and choreography. Instinctively, he knew that he was doing something revolutionary, perhaps historical, definitely head turning. For murmurs had coursed like electric charges through the audience when he had made his first appearance on stage. Jeremiah would later inform him Amanda Clear Sky had clapped her hand to her mouth, suppressing a minor heart attack.

  It had all happened so fast that Gabriel’s head was still a whorl, a snow dome turned upside-down inside his head. His dream had been to become a member of the chorus, a lowly Venetian gondolier. He had had four months of elementary dance training. His voice, if not that of a Cree Caruso, had been found capable of holding a simple tune, in the tenor range. As this was Anderson High, not La Scala, Gabriel was a gondolier.

  Then the stunning, self-obsessed Alex Brisbane had fallen victim to bronchitis, plunging Mr. Long into a tailspin of panic. For he now had to reassign the principal role of gon-dolier-cum-prince Giuseppe Palmieri on one week’s notice. Mr. Long’s emotional contortions had been prolonged and tortured. But Gabriel Okimasis had been most crafty in his manoeuvres.

  Daring to anticipate such a possible development, he had not only increased his dance classes to daily sessions, not only taken on weekly singing lessons, not only committed to memory the roles of both Marco and Giuseppe Palmieri, he had even rustled up lessons in basic Italian from a woman on Corydon Avenue named Annabella Bombolini. And all accomplished with utmost secrecy. Even Mr. Whiting at the education office of the Department of Indian Affairs, from whom Gabriel had had to wheedle tuition fees for these lessons, had promised to tell no one but a certain anonymous superior in far-off Ottawa from whom he needed approval for such unusual expenditures. The final step had been to convince Mr. Long, in the privacy of his classroom, at twilight, that he, Gabriel Okimasis, youngest son of a caribou hunter from the distant north, was capable of being as Italian as Giuseppe Palmieri. For this crucial encounter, Gabriel, who knew he could be as prince-like as a maharaja, had displayed his looks to best advantage. Mr. Long had relented.

  Word had leaked out that the casting was, for want of sensitive nomenclature, nontraditional, which had proved great box office. For here it was, opening night, and not an unsold ticket remained for any of the five performances. Ticket buyers had found the Indian pianist curious, even thought-provoking, but an Indian-Italian gondolier, a Cree-Spanish prince, whichever the case may turn out to be, they had never imagined.

  Gabriel preened his feathers and shimmered. For, at this moment, he was the king of Barataria, the king of Spain, the king of Manitoba, the champion of the world.

  Gliding up to the lip of the stage, Gabriel bowed, bobbed his head to the side, and winked at his brother. Jeremiah caught the wink and, by way of a love-bedazzled smile, threw it back. The withered Duchess of Plaza Toro yanked Gabriel’s arm and they twirled upstage, back to the front steps of the cardboard Baratarian palazzo that leaned as dangerously as the fabled Tower of Pisa.

  The orchestra landed with a screech on the final chord of the dance, the duchess and her gondolier-cum-prince swished up to a semi-dignified finish, and the Duke of Plaza Toro, clapping delicately, squawked, “Bravo!”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “So where did you pick up them fancy steps?” Hoping idle banter might quell the turmoil of his post-performance adrenaline, Jeremiah tossed out a question that seemed innocent enough.

  Gabriel, however, wasn’t ready to share his little secret.

  He deflected the query by making a ghost-like face in the mirror. Then he burst out laughing, and began scraping his face, the cold cream and make-up clinging to the tissue paper like jam and peanut butter.

  “There,” he said, “the mask is off.” He looked past the tremulous corneas into the depths of his pupils and there perceived, already, the other Gabriel eyeing him, beckoning, enticing.

  Jeremiah stood behind his brother, tugging at the knot of the second necktie he had ever worn. One mirrored face appeared above the other.

  “So.” Jeremiah decided that teasing this Manitoban gondolier-cum-prince might take some of his edge off. “You’re not gonna tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Where you learned to dance like that?”

  “Here … here and there.” With concentrated fury, Gabriel worked a puff of cotton around the lobe of his ear. “Mr. Long was helpful.”

  Jeremiah sank a comb thoughtfully into his hair. Why should a simple question cause such a flutter in Gabriel’s answer? What was that flicker he just saw skittering across his eyes?

  “Coming to the party, Gabriel?” Barry Sexton, the blue-eyed, blond Baratarian Grand Inquisitor, was the host of the opening-night festivities.

  “Neee, nimantoom!” Gabriel snuck the Cree out like a sin
. “We’re actually being asked to one of their homes. Or did I hear wrong?”

  “Tapwee,” confided Jeremiah.

  “What was that, Gabriel?” Duncan Riley scrunched his freckled nose from a neighbouring mirror.

  “Nothing,” Gabriel snapped back into English. “I was just … talking to myself.”

  “He said he was coming,” Jeremiah offered as graceless ruse. “And so am I.”

  “All right!” crowed Barry Sexton, the remainder of his exclamation swept away by the tidal wave of chatter. In the mirror, the brothers’ mouths smiled but their eyes welled up with an inexpressible loneliness.

  Gabriel brushed it off by shimmying into his shirt and starting on his socks.

  “Maw neetha niweetootan,” he said, his face hidden over his knees.

  “You’re not going?” So taken aback was Jeremiah that answering in Cree was the last thing on his mind. His English rang out like a white boy’s.

  “No.”

  “Do you know how many times we’ve been invited anywhere?” The clatter in the room conveniently covered their clipped exchange. Or so they hoped.

  “He’s not coming?” Gabriel heard someone behind him exclaim with mock surprise, then, “Aw, ain’t that too bad.”

  “Why aren’t you coming?”

  “Going —” Gabriel could hide his irritation no longer. “Doing. Something else.” There. That sounded less abrasive. He must not do anything that might jeopardize his mission.

  “You’re missing out on a good time, Gabriel,” Barry Sexton cried out.

  Gabriel slipped on his coat, strode down the hall. Like a drug his body needed if it was to live another hour, the night pulled at him.

  “So you’re not gonna tell me where you’re going.” Jeremiah was pursuing him.

  Gabriel continued walking, zipping his coat, his face expressionless. “I’m going out to meet a friend.”

  “What friend? Why don’t you bring him to the party?” Jeremiah almost had to run to keep pace. Gabriel rammed his tuque on his head. “I really resent you making a fool of me like you just did, Gabriel. In front of that big-eared fag, Duncan Riley? I mean, come on,”

  “I can go out and meet whoever I choose and it will be none of your goddamn business.” The words took even Gabriel by surprise.

  In the classroom, the cast began to pound on desks and sing Marco Palmieri’s love ballad. “Take a pair of sparkling eyes, hidden ever and anon …”

  Jeremiah grabbed Gabriel’s arm and pulled him to a stop. “Why do you have to be so goddamned secretive? Gabriel, for God’s sake, I’m your brother, you can tell me any —”

  “Exactly. You’re my brother, not my mother.”

  Glaring at each other was like glaring into a mirror, their eyes, their rage, identical. For siblings battling each other, wrestling with the darkness that had come scratching at their door, the sound from the room beyond suddenly resembled wordless chanting underpinned by bass drums, as in a ritual for warriors of some long-lost tribe.

  “Fine,” Jeremiah resigned himself, “just. Just. Go.”

  Suddenly, Gabriel wanted to wrap his arms around his brother. But right now, he had to leave.

  “Go,” Jeremiah whispered, and walked away.

  When Jeremiah opened his locker door, a page of lime-green paper fluttered down, landing at his feet. A photocopied picture stared out at him — two luxuriant sprays of feathers radiated sun-like from the man’s back, one above the other, a rooster’s crown of something brush-like sprouted from his head, his wrists were bound in bracelets, his legs and feet in buckskin leggings and moccasins, all replete with floral-patterned beadwork. Bent at the waist, the man could have been searching for some small object in the grass, except that one hand held aloft, as if to recognize some luminous presence towering above him, a large bird’s wing, a hawk’s, perhaps an eagle’s.

  Jeremiah recoiled. There was something so … pagan about the image, primitive — the word made his eyes sting — Satanic.

  Frightened by his reaction, he concentrated on the print: “Pow Wow, The Winnipeg Indian Friendship Centre, 371 Ballantyne Avenue, Saturday, May 16, 1970.” He skimmed to the handwriting at the bottom: “Show up. I dare you,” its signature elegant, “A. Clear Sky, Ojibway.”

  “Nervy broad.” He crumpled the paper and flung it aside just as twenty-one pale-skinned high school boys roared out of their makeshift dressing room and went howling down the hallway. “Take a pair of sparkling eyes …”

  He dropped his Gondoliers score into the locker, grabbed his coat, and skipped off to join the marching throng. He even sang, though quietly, “Hidden ever and anon, in a merciful eclipse …”

  PART FOUR

  Molto agitato

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Baby, baby, whoa, whoa, whoa …” Gabriel could hear the siren screaming for him, “Oh you can do-oh-anything, oh-anything you want with me tonigh-igh-ight …” drums, guitars, and horns driving her rhythm-and-blues contralto. It took only seconds for Gabriel’s toes, knees, and hips to surrender to the rhythm. The church and country music he had grown up with, the smattering of white-boy pop from Brother Stumbo’s radio, seemed prissy by comparison now. This music meant business.

  But would they let him in? He passed for eighteen, but this wasn’t some two-bit blood-and-beer-soaked dive on North Main Street whose hold on life was precarious at best. This was the Rose, a downtown establishment, so Gabriel had heard, of “pedigree.” Though he had also heard in the hallways and showers of Anderson High, including from Jeremiah: “Wanna blow job? Go check out them faggots at the Rose.” Such yearning as had simmered just beneath the convulsive, near-hysteric hatred had only fuelled Gabriel’s hunger.

  “Wayne” had told him that he did look “more mature” than fifteen, had assured him that he wouldn’t have a problem. Where was Wayne, anyhow? To hell with him. Gabriel summoned the wile that had become a way of life and pushed the door open.

  Instantly, he felt the change that took hold of the room. Even blind men would have sensed it. Chatter stopped, laughter went unfinished; cigarettes hung in midair, beer bottles went undrunk, whisky tumblers untouched. Even the music seemed to have been cut in half, the singer now wailing, a cappella, an ornate, soulful blue cadenza.

  Like a surplice of fine linen, a hundred eyes enveloped Gabriel. A thrill shot up his spine until he was confident his hair ends were on fire, crackling, emitting sparks.

  As through the glow of stained-glass windows, the bronze Cree angel fluttered, the whirr of his downy wings like rustling taffeta, sending out redolence of campfire smoke, pine needles, of reindeer moss after rain. Only when he came to roost on a stool at the far end of the bar did life in the room trickle back to normal, clink by clink, laugh by laugh, word by word.

  The bartender had missed the entrance and Gabriel had time to disguise himself. He scrunched his forehead, deliberately softened his gaze, as if a woebegone expression would add the requisite three years to his age.

  Beyond the bottles that lined the mirrors, young and old were scattered at bar stools and tables, engaged in raucous, laugh-cluttered conversation, or sat solitary, lost in fantasy. Women too, though those few could have passed for men. Clandestine, enticing impurity that outcasts, freaks of nature, and mortal sinners seek out as refuge from tormentors. Half of Gabriel had an urge to run, to Barry Sexton’s party and Jeremiah, the other half to dive in and wallow shamelessly.

  “Got ID?” a mellow voice addressed him. The bartender, a slight man with a thick moustache, had materialized as if by condensation. Gabriel had no idea what to say, his nerves were a tangled knot. “No ID. No service.” The man’s face hung impenetrable. “Sorry,” and awaited Gabriel’s departure.

  “Aw, let him stay.” The whisky-sodden cowboy two stools away lurched to uncertain life, when, as if on cue, Wayne with the laughing eyes and the black-tufted hair sidled up to the barman.

  “It’s okay, Jack, he’s with me.” And before twelve words had crossed the bar, a fu
ll brown bottle sat foaming at Gabriel’s elbow.

  The conversation — with Wayne, with the glowing cowboy, with sundry others who drifted up and drifted off — meandered around Gabriel’s sultry beauty, desirability. And as it roamed, so did Gabriel’s focus, drawn to the small dance floor just beyond Wayne’s left shoulder.

  One meal from emaciation, a tall figure reeled about like a devotee in the throes of charismatic entrancement. Two features about this person struck Gabriel as most arresting, and most disturbing: he was the only other Indian in the room, and he was neither male nor female. Or perhaps both. The creature was blessed or cursed, one of God’s more vicious jokes, the soul of a woman trapped in the body of a man. He willed the creature away; he-she should leave, disappear, disintegrate.

  Instead, his eyes remained hostage as, inch by inch, the dancer extracted a threadbare white feather boa from a sleeve, as if for Gabriel’s exclusive view. What did he have in mind? A striptease? A disappearing act? Suicide by hanging? Perhaps. For the man-woman was wrapping the wispy garment around his-her neck, but then stopped to wave and twirl its ends flamboyantly about, as though baptizing Gabriel with sprays of holy water, a sorceress, a priestess, clandestinely reviving a sacrament from some dangerous religion. Would God, in all his wisdom and power, not have good reason for peopling his Earth with such bold freakishness?

  Gabriel found himself in a wood-panelled living room. Somehow, time had passed through him. A dozen other men were present, that much he remembered. Coats, shirts, jeans, underwear, socks lay scattered on the floor, over chair backs, across coffee tables. Everywhere he looked, naked limb met naked limb met naked limb, an unceasing domino effect of human flesh, smell, fluid. Whisky, beer, wine swirled, splashed like blood, smoke from marijuana rose like incense.