To Die in Spring. Sylvia Maultash Warsh
she knew was unsatisfactory, but it was all she could muster. Speed was a problem for her lately; she could do nothing quickly. Often she felt submerged in water, her body struggling just to move normally. Aunt Sally had insisted at the Shiva that what she remembered most when Uncle died was the fatigue, the dense weariness that grief deposited in the bones. Don’t overdo it, Rebecca directed her solid leather-bound feet. We just want to get in shape, we don’t want to win any races.
She paced herself along Baldwin Street where narrow brick houses watched behind lawns of yellow inchoate grass that would turn green inside of a month. She approached the spectacle of Spadina Avenue. Three lanes of traffic rushed on either side of the streetcar tracks that ran along the centre of the grand avenue, ready to trip the unwary pedestrian. A deathtrap for anyone dependent on a white cane. Apparently a physician named Baldwin who practiced architecture on the side had designed the street in the early 1800s with the Champs Elysées in mind. By the time Jewish merchants opened their produce stalls along the street near the end of that century, Spadina was no longer glamorous. Now modern wholesalers with their overcrowded dry goods, hardware, and poultry shops made the street garish. But because of its elaborate width, it was difficult, from one side of Spadina, to see what was on the other. A lot, thought Rebecca, like looking across to the opposite bank of a respectable river. Across the expanse she picked out the store where David had bought his art supplies. Chinese restaurants had opened on either side.
When David was alive, she had struggled with her weight — a lifetime ago when she was ten or fifteen pounds more than she liked. But her atrophied appetite satisfied her in a morbid way though she denied she was punishing herself. She hadn’t given David diabetes. She just hadn’t been paying enough attention to realize he was hiding his symptoms. As a physician she knew it was common to deny one’s illness in the hope it will disappear. He had concealed the constant peeing, the thirst, from her. He constantly sucked on breath mints to mask the sweet ketonic breath. He didn’t want to worry her. For awhile he’d fooled his mother, poor Sarah, who had survived the Holocaust but lost her only child.
Near the end, when he was in hospital, Rebecca left him alone with his mother and took the elevator down to the main floor. Sarah had no other relatives — all were lost in the camps. Though she never talked about it, and though her auburn hair and quick smile belied it, her loss defined her to Rebecca, who now found it hard to be with the two of them — one dying and the other a reminder of death. It was August and the evening air wafted so softly against her skin refreshing her, filling her with guilt. She was alive! She stood in the shadows too numb to move while traffic floated by. Voices murmured off to one side. She absently noted two interns in white coats sitting on the cement stairs leading up to the hospital. “Fellow at rounds this morning, only thirty-five. First thing he knew anything was wrong was when he went to check his eyes for blurred vision. Diabetic retinopathy. Blind now. Pyelonephritis. That’s not the way I want to go! Crazy thing is, his wife’s a doctor....”
She had never forgotten that conversation; never come to terms with the guilt. She knew she’d failed in her primary role. Not only had she missed the symptoms that would’ve been obvious if a patient had presented with them. That was bad enough. But the changes in his painting. How could she have ignored the reaching for the light? In a year, the subdued and muted palette that had always defined his work became transformed. His canvases deepened into cadmium reds and phthalo blues that should’ve set off alarm bells in her head. The dimmer his world became, the more radiant his colours. Finally they became brilliant streaks of pigment without shape. Was there anything more ironic than an artist going blind?
Near the end he would try to engage her in discussions about God. Try to get her position, as a woman of science. She mouthed the platitudes for his sake, but in reality reserved judgment. This was her deal with the Almighty: if he let David live, she would embrace Him wholeheartedly. In her prayers she stressed that David was the kindest, most unselfish person she knew and that thirty-five was too young for a good person to die.
She had never thought much about God before, attended High Holiday services because her parents bought tickets at a Reform synagogue. After David died, she began to ruminate on the kind of God who had seen fit to take away the best man she knew. God didn’t seem to care who He made suffer, it didn’t matter if one was pure of heart. The universe was a chaotic place without justice or reason.
Though she had watched patients die over the years, she had never felt that profound hopelessness till death touched her personally. It wasn’t a transitory depression; it was a change in her world view. God had died, or He had lost interest in the welfare of the world. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Afterwards she had hit well below her target weight. Though she was average height, her bones were large; her back was wide, her wrists and ankles were not delicate and though the flesh had dissolved on her, she felt the solidity of her frame would see her through. She only wished she could do something about her energy level. The bustle of life here made her feel peripheral, restless.
She turned left at Dundas, mortified that walking three blocks at moderate speed was giving her a stitch in her side. Two streets away the white concrete facade of the Art Gallery of Ontario, spread over an entire city block, sat coolly on its wide steps. She moved amid the supper crowds in Chinatown in the firm knowledge that once she got to Beverley Street all would be quiet. It never ceased to surprise her: in the centre of the triangle comprised loosely of the Art Gallery, Kensington Market, and the University of Toronto, Beverley Street was as quiet as a suburb. It was like the eye of a storm; in the centre of things without all the detractions that the centre of things implied. Traffic was bad along Dundas where Chinatown and the Art Gallery tolerantly merged, and the market was a maze of one-way streets, but the heart of Beverley Street lay warm and beating quietly after a hundred years of affluence. She’d come upon a book that traced the history of old houses in the neighbourhood and had found a surprising number of Victorian styles: Georgian, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, and Richardsonian Romanesque. Some had been renovated into offices like hers, some into rooming-houses.
Her shins began to hurt as she passed the wrought iron fence of the Italian consulate filling the extensive corner of Dundas and Beverley. She was in pathetic shape. She couldn’t go any faster, no matter how hard she pushed herself.
The consulate occupied a regal tawny structure built a century earlier. What was it called? Chudleigh, whatever that meant; her book had not said. But it represented what Rebecca wanted. She had picked Beverley Street for its other-century, traditional demeanour, its Victorian mansions still sturdy in a new age. She was looking for something solid, something that stood the test of time, something that would still be there when she looked up. Buildings that stood by serenely while the world changed were a good bet. Sure they had been renovated. That was their secret; from the inside out, the old had been made new again. Otherwise they would not have survived. That was the secret, Rebecca thought. Use the old structure for a base and add what is necessary. Change and survive. She had started from the bottom when she bought her formidable leather shoes. Iris was right. She would have to work her way up.
She was nearly home-free, her heart full in her throat, pulsing. How had she deteriorated into this shape? She blew out, then sucked in, refusing to let herself gasp. She stood on the steps of the medical building, catching her breath. Across the street Beverley Mansions caught the warm glow of the early evening sun. She heard sharp distant noises, like drawers opening and cutlery being laid down. People were coming home from work and preparing dinner. Normal people. Would she ever be normal again?
chapter four
Nesha
Friday, March 30, 1979
Nesha made the mistake of examining the photo under a magnifying glass. If it had been the original newsprint he might have been able to see something among the million grey dots. But the photocopy revealed no secrets in its pools of black and white, only bald statements he didn’t know how to interpret. Yet interpret he must. He would keep trying till something spoke to him. He would be methodical as always; it was the only way he knew.
He stepped up to the living-room window that overlooked San Francisco Bay and held the photo up to the light. Starting