The Hidden Keys. Andre Alexis
get assaulted every day of the week?
– What do you want me to say? asked Tancred.
– Nothing! I don’t want to know anything. I was just wondering what did you and Willow talk about the other day?
– What is it, Errol? Do I look like a reporter?
– I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me, Tan. Maybe because we’ve never talked like this, man to man. I’ll be honest with you. Willow’s good for business. I’d hate to lose her and I like to keep an eye out for her.
They had reached Dufferin and King.
– I didn’t do anything for you, said Tancred. You don’t owe me anything.
– Well, I’m still grateful. Can I buy you lunch?
– No, said Tancred.
He crossed Dufferin, leaving Colby on his own.
The encounter with Colby made Tancred want to interfere in the man’s business, made him want to help Willow Azarian. For one thing, it was dangerous to let hustlers think they could intimidate you. Nothing good could come of it. But shortly after he spoke to Colby, he was encouraged to steal a number of Lamborghinis. And for a while, he was not often home.
Not that he stopped thinking about Willow or about Colby.
There was one stretch in particular: he’d driven one of the Lambos to Vancouver with Olivier and they’d taken the train back. It was the first time they’d spent so long together since they were children. Both of them missed Clémentine and their mood led to thoughtfulness. It was on the train ride home, for instance, that Ollie had confessed his enduring love for Eleanor Bronte, a classmate who’d died when they were in grade school. When Eleanor died, Ollie had ceased to believe in the importance of anything: money, fame, property. After Eleanor, nothing meant what it had meant while she was alive. So, the nine-year-old Ollie had become a nihilist. Not that he knew what nihilism was at the time. It was, rather, that a habit of mind, like a seed, took root in hospitable ground. He was a nihilist still. He was also good-humoured, good-natured and loyal. If you asked him why he was these things, given that he did not believe in anything, he’d answer that it was boring to be foul-tempered, unpleasant and disloyal. As he did not like to be bored, he was what he chose to be. Nothing had value beyond what he provisionally gave it, even life itself.
It was strange to think that the death of a nine-year-old girl had been so influential on his friend’s life. Stranger still to think that Eleanor’s death was at the heart of what Tancred found admirable in his friend. Though he did not believe in anything, Ollie chose to be who he was. He was loyalty and honour exemplified, and though Tancred could not follow his example – Ollie being eccentric – he’d have done anything for him.
As if he were having similar thoughts, Ollie had asked if he regretted being a thief.
– No, he’d answered.
But his own answer did not satisfy him and, his conscience very much on his mind, he spent hours talking to Ollie about why he stole. And what had it come down to? Why did he steal? It was a matter of talent. He was talented. Maybe, in the beginning, he’d wanted attention. Or maybe he’d wanted to rebel, resenting as he had his father’s refusal to acknowledge him. But those were all psychologists’ excuses, if they were excuses at all, and they were none of his business, because he could not see himself from that angle.
The difficult thing to express was the feeling of it. Though Ollie had helped him steal on a number of occasions, it was not the same. On his own, Ollie would never have stolen anything. He did not feel the exhilaration, the humiliation or even the wanting to be caught. Tancred did. He understood the emotions. But none of those feelings kept him at it. What did was the thrill of getting things right.
It all had to do, no doubt, with how he’d begun. At the age of eleven, Tancred had been taught to pick pockets by Malcolm Something-or-other, an Englishman, long gone but still the only one of his mother’s companions he’d ever liked. Malcolm had learned his trade when he was a boy in Northampton, and he’d made Tancred aware of things like tradition, telling him often about the ‘trade’ he was passing on.
– You’re not the first to do this, he’d say. Remember that.
Over the years it took him to master the art of stealing watches, wallets, passports and such, Tancred had found the idea of a ‘trade’ helpful. It gave him a sense of belonging. And as he moved on to breaking and entering and then to more targeted theft, the things that interested him most were rightness, doing work flawlessly, and tradition, doing work in the spirit Malcolm had passed on.
– If it’s a trade, Ollie asked, how will you know you’re good at it?
– When I’ve done it for as long as I want without being caught, he’d answered.
– Don’t tell me you don’t like the adrenalin, Tan.
Well, yes, that too.
As he thought about how calm he felt at the rush of adrenalin, Tancred abruptly recalled a photograph he’d found when he broke into the home of a man whose Lambo he’d stolen. The keys to the car had been left on a kitchen counter, right there for the taking. Beside the keys, a picture of a man and a woman. There was no way of knowing if it was their car he’d taken, but the memory reminded him of Errol Colby. He’d felt contempt for the way Colby treated the junkies who came to him, his victims. But how was he, a thief, any better? He simply refused to acknowledge those he stole from, as if he were playing a game to which everyone knew the rules.
– But everyone does know the rules, Ollie said. Nothing’s permanent. You can’t take anything with you. Why worry about cars?
Tancred had thought this way himself at one time. It now felt too convenient.
– Because they choose to worry about them, Ollie, he said.
– Too bad for them, said Ollie
as the train moved past brush and skinny trees like it had something urgent on its mind.
The next time Tancred spoke to Willow was the very evening he returned from B.C. He’d got a boneless chicken curry with a ‘buss-up shut’ from Ali’s and he was walking home along Cowan. The street was its usual self: scruffy and untrustworthy at Queen, gradually more genteel as one walked toward the lake.
As he went by Masaryk Park – a patch of grass that sometimes had outpatients and junkies for decoration – he saw Willow sitting on the steps of St. John’s Cathedral. She was sitting alone, staring straight ahead. She did not acknowledge him. So, he’d decided to leave her to her reverie when she called his name.
– I thought you’d forgotten about me, she said.
Before he could explain his absence, she began to tell him about Oshun.
It was a strange non sequitur, but Tancred had been moved. It was not only that Willow remembered the portrait of Oshun in his living room or that talk of the goddess brought memories of his mother – a Christian who’d delighted in stories of the goddess. It was that Willow seemed to know a good deal about Oshun: myths, folklore and all. He himself knew little. So, he’d sat with her and listened – the two of them on the steps of the church as the sun set. They even shared his buss-up shut, though Willow ate so little that, in the end, there was more than enough for another meal.
She did not mention inheritances or the screen her father had left her. So, it occurred to Tancred that she’d forgotten about them. And who knows, perhaps she had. It’s always difficult to say what’s on a junkie’s mind, aside from junk. Yet here was one whose mind he could admire. Willow was brilliant, despite her sickness, despite her self-destruction.
He wondered why she had surrendered comfort and security for heroin.
– Why’d you start using? he asked.
Meaning: why would someone like you – wealthy, favoured, cultured – choose to live in such a terrible