Chapter 1

The Journals

Adam rummaged through the desk drawers thinking his father might have put his draft essay in one by mistake. He liked to edit his work on paper, making notes and scrawling his changes on each page to use later when he would create the next version on the computer. It was the same way his father worked, filling each printed page with crosses and arrows, new phrases and paragraphs, and in Adam’s case not a few doodles from daydreaming pauses. The essay was one of many Adam had to write in his first year at university and as usual, he had left it to the last moment, relying too much on the skill he believed he had inherited, hoping to finish on time in a mad rush of inspiration. This was not the way his father worked.

He didn’t expect the essay would be in the filing cabinet next to the desk where his father kept his own drafts and manuscripts, but he looked there anyway. His father might have picked Adam’s up and put it away by mistake. He didn’t see it in the top drawer among his father’s most recent papers, making him think he might have to go through the whole cabinet searching everything, which he wasn’t going to do because it would be easier and faster now to edit it on the computer, remembering his changes as best he could. He looked in the second drawer to be sure and saw a pile of journals stacked there. His father always wrote in his journal, almost never missing a day, sitting in the evening at his desk to write down what Adam presumed to be ideas for his work. He had opened this drawer many times and had never seen these ones before.

Adam and his father trusted each other about their writing, never prying into each other’s work. There were no locked drawers. When he was little he would imitate his father by making lines of squiggles on blank paper before he knew words and began to learn how to string them together in a way that pleased him. His parents encouraged him and promised that they would never read anything of his without his permission so that he would be free to write even his most personal thoughts. They had always kept that promise, and although it was unsaid, he felt he had made the same promise to them. For some reason he thought these journals were very old, although their appearance gave no indication, being the same Moleskine types that his father used all the time. He knew that he shouldn’t, but he picked one out of the drawer to check. Sure enough, it was from 1970 from the date on the first page, forty years ago, when his father was twenty two, four years older than Adam was now. He was about to put it back, wondering why something so old was here now rather than in a box in the basement, when he remembered that his father had brought some up a few weeks ago and had been reading them. He hesitated with a journal in his hand and for the first time he broke his promise. He knew this was private, but he couldn’t help himself and began to read it, curious about so long ago, hungry for insight into how his father started as a writer, hoping to discover some of himself in it from when his father was close to his own age, yearning to find out that they were alike, that he had a chance of being as good as he thought his father was.

Recently a lot what he was thinking overwhelmed him, taking control and impelling him into actions that meant trouble for him and for others. He didn’t know why, because until the last year he had strange thoughts sometimes, but they never took control of him. He sat down on the floor next to the cabinet, crossed his legs with the journal in his lap and began to read, much as he had done for as long as he could remember in this room. He was in the library, not built as such, but made so by the floor to ceiling bookshelves his father had installed in what was before a ground floor guest bedroom. Books made up the walls everywhere, even above the door and inside the room’s closet, its door removed, the only exception being the window onto the back yard and the space left below it for the dark oak desk and next to that, the filing cabinet beside which Adam sat.

This was his familiar and comfortable spot, his place in the library from his first readings of picture books that he would take from the bottom shelf now almost touching his right hand. Some of them were still there because this section about an arm’s length wide and up to the ceiling belonged to him, like a similar section was for his sister in the opposite corner of the room. While the rest of the library was organized by subject and authors, these two sections were, as their father put it, life shelves for Adam and Allison. He wanted them to have more than height marks of their years on the frame of the kitchen door, so he set aside their own sections of the library to put and keep their favourite books as they grew up. The bottom shelf contained Adam’s favorites from when his father and mother would read to him. He would come into the library to sit as he was now and look at their pictures, remembering the stories until he began to read himself. In the shelves above, the titles ascended with his age, each containing those he liked most from the time he was tall enough to reach them.

His collection ended at about the height of his shoulder still less than half way up to the thirteen-foot ceiling of the old house. Above that were some of his father’s books, which would be moved to another place as he used more space. A few of his favorite books kept moving up the shelves along with his reach such as “The House at Pooh Corner” which he still took down and read because it tethered him to when he was little and made him feel happy and safe. If anyone asked, he said he admired its writing. It was here in his special spot that he held his father’s journal.

He didn’t mean to read much, but once he started he couldn’t stop, the journals swallowing him up in time. Two hours passed. Adam didn’t notice the library door opening. His father saw Adam sitting on the floor, staring down at one of the journals in his lap crying, some of his tears making droplet blue splotches on the journal page. Somehow, he knew his son would read his journals eventually, he almost hoped he would. He wondered if he had forgotten to take them back to the basement on purpose. He cleared his throat and Adam, startled, looked up to his father’s face, in it saw not the anger he expected but concern and sadness. His father spoke, not loud, not angry, not an expected rebuke, but a quiet matter of fact statement.” I guess we need to have a long talk son.”

“I’m so sorry Dad, I didn’t mean to.” Adam said.

“I know son, but you did. It is all right though, perhaps a good thing. Let’s talk about it.”

“No you don’t understand… Well, yes you do, about the journals I mean. But I didn’t mean to.”

This was incoherent to his father. Adam now began to cry more as he closed the journal and hugged it to his chest. His father now concerned sat down beside him pulling his head onto his shoulder. Adam laid it there and put his arms around his father like he was a little boy again.

1970

Jamey

Jamey Stinton walked along Huron Street to his Monday morning class. It was one of many old residential streets surrounding the University of Toronto campus, lined with red brick Victorian houses mixed with some from the 1920’s and 30’s. The snow was gone but this last week of March showed no signs of spring other than a promising warm breeze, the grey trees, grey sky and the  end of winter drabness relieved here and there by bright red, blue or yellow front doors. Jamey’s thoughts tumbled one over the other as usual: the studying to get done, especially what he had put off for the courses he didn’t like, lunch as usual with his friends at Hart House, maybe finding something to do in the afternoon rather than going to class, a brief self-recrimination for not being a diligent student, a fantasy about losing his virginity, something he didn’t do much himself to accomplish. He was bright enough that he could do well at the courses he enjoyed and too easily succeed without doing much work in the others that bored him. He had crammed linear algebra for two weeks before the examination, the only two weeks he had paid any attention to it and got an A+. He dismissed the result as another instance of the shallow demands of the university, ignoring the fact that he had never really learned anything that would keep, the crammed knowledge disappearing from his brain in about the same time as it took to stuff it quickly in.

Jamey saw himself as ordinary and in many ways he was, never standing out as a student because of his inconsistent academic achievements, typical of others, enjoying in his own way the social life of the campus, affable but shy and more comfortable on the edge than in the middle of things. He was a slender five foot ten inches and when escaping in his thoughts, which were far more active than anything he did physically, he would sometimes slouch slightly until he self-consciously caught himself and straightened up. Independent and leery of conformity, he had taken a year off between high school and university, being determined to get a job for a few months and use the earnings to go to Europe on his own. He worked as an office clerk, discovering in it an unexpected camaraderie with his fellow workers, all much older than him, and a compelling curiosity about the mechanisms of business, which resolved his confusion about what to do after his planned return. He enrolled in Commerce and Finance before he left.

On his way along the street, Jamey stopped in front of Saint Thomas church, looking at the modest red brick building tucked between the houses not much taller than them, its door and steps close to the sidewalk. It was Arts and Crafts architecture according to Jamey’s friend Carl, who sometimes joined the Hart House lunch group. He had told him about it in a casual conversation they were having about religion. He said that it was Anglo Catholic, the highest kind of Anglican, adding with a smirk “It’s more Catholic than the Catholics”. Apparently, the first congregation had had hopes for a magnificent structure to follow but it had never happened. Perhaps they longed for the grandeur of a cathedral Jamey thought, as he drifted into a daydream about his time in Europe. He had stood in old cathedrals in awe of their soaring stone, vaulted ceilings, ascending ancient walls, luminescent stained glass and long, lit and shadowed approaches to alters. Sound and light were different in those places, which he liked best when he was almost alone. He would listen to the few other people’s voices as they returned from the far away-up distance, even whispers caught and sent back down to him as if somewhere up there God heard and repeated everything on earth, or finding a beam of light to shine on himself, watch it diminish or move slightly and splendidly away as the sun outside changed its illumination. He remembered how he would feel a yearning to be more completely a part of the astounding beauty and however tiny he was in these huge spaces, it was not threatening like the ordinary world outside could be. He envied those who participated in what he imagined to be magnificent rituals there in the past.

His mind coming back to where he stood, Jamey remembered Carl’s description of St Thomas. Maybe Carl’s smirk came from his cynical view of all religions, or maybe something else because his eyes had twinkled like he was in on a secret joke. It didn’t matter, Michael, being not much of a believer now and later to be no believer at all, thought he might try it out sometime, not from religious conviction, but perhaps to recapture his feelings from those cathedrals, hardly from this structure which was nothing in comparison, but maybe by what went on inside. Easter was approaching and the sign in front of the church announced Easter Vigil for next Saturday night at 10:00 pm. “What is an Easter Vigil?” he wondered as he turned and continued his walk to class.

His usual day began each morning when he left the house in the west end where he lived with his mother, walked fifteen minutes to Islington station at the end of the of the Bloor Street subway line, sat for the twenty minute ride to the St George station and walked to the Sydney Smith building in which he took most of his classes, taking the same journey in reverse that evening and by that removed himself from the roommates, parties, pranks, sex and other social activities of the students who lived on campus.. His one constant social ritual was lunch at Hart House’s great hall, sometimes brought, sometimes bought. A group of friends met there regularly most of them in the same courses as him. He was not close to any of them and never saw them except for these lunches and in class, this being the same for all of them as far as he knew. They were all in their final fourth year. A starting class of two hundred had winnowed down to forty, a decrease caused mainly by students switching to other programs or switching out of university altogether. It was a time of marches, sit-ins and protests against the corporate and government establishment. Commerce and Finance students were not exactly part of the campus mainstream of social rebellion. Jamey and the others were working to get good jobs and careers in some form of business. Some came from families whose fathers already owned a business and saw their sons’ futures in carrying it on. Other’s fathers were senior executives. A few like Jamey had no such background and had enrolled because there were lots of opportunities for graduates, they wanted to know how business worked and graduate with a degree that would put them ahead. It was a man’s world even though two women were in the graduating class. Lunch conversation was usually about sex, politics, sports, campus events, music and occasionally religion or philosophy, seldom about business and hardly ever deep, nothing like that of stereotypical existential angst of young men in university contemplating their futures. If talk veered into dangerous territory it didn’t last long as everyone helped pull the topic back to practical agreeable affairs, usually led by the one who instigated the offence and realized his mistake. It was pleasant and nothing more for Jamey, agreeable and meaningless, but still his single locus of campus friendship. Otherwise university was his solitary experience.

David

David Collins stood at the back of the St Thomas church and scanned the pews for a good place to sit, ideally close to the front and on the aisle because he knew what was going to happen and wanted a good view. It was Saturday night, an hour before the Easter Vigil and the front rows were already filled by those who came early to get the best seats. He chose a pew half way down the aisle on the right where only one person was sitting. Taking the aisle space, he noticed the other boy about his own age toward the middle of the pew, studying the order of service leaflet, concentrating on it in a way that made David believe he was new to the church and the service. David saw him look up periodically and gazed around the church, in concentration, his black eyebrows coming together slightly. He appeared to be trying to make sense of what he saw. David leaned toward him.

“Are you new here?” he asked quietly.

“Yes I am.” the stranger replied.

“You might want to sit closer to the aisle, so you can see the procession better.”

“Procession?”

“Oh yes. They’ll be coming down the aisle from the back of the church.”

“Thank you, I’ve never been at a service like this before and I’m not sure what to do.” Jamey said with a polite smile.

He hesitated and then slid along to the space next to David, who took in more of him, his slight but not skinny build, his blonde hair, cut long over his ears to just above his shoulders his height about the same as David and interestingly his refined hands, not delicate, but slim and smooth. He caught himself paying too much attention and spoke up instead.

“Don’t worry it’s pretty straightforward. Just watch and do what everyone else does.”

“OK”

” I’m David by the way.”

David looked at the other boy waiting for him to speak. Nothing. David raised his eyebrows and opened his eyes wide while grinning expectantly.

That did it.

“Oh!  Oh, I’m Jamey.”

Jamey returned to reading the leaflet repeatedly, distracting himself from his discomfort with the strange surroundings, not meaning to be rude to David, but unable to think of anything else to say and worried if he did say something it would be stupid. David thought Jamey was shy, so he too sat silently as the pews quickly filled up with the congregation, some occasionally whispering to each other, creating a mood of anticipation of something significant about to begin. During his silent wait David stole a few sideways glances at Jamey until he became self conscious and spoke.

“Are you a student?”

“Yes”

That wasn’t a lot. He tried again.

“What are you taking?”

“Commerce and Finance, fourth year.”

“Really!”

It came out the wrong way, David worried. It may have sounded like disdain and that’s not what he intended at all, even though his views about business students were prejudiced a bit on the “money seeking, self centered, socially unconscious” side.

“Yes. Really” Jamey replied a little curtly.

“Um, it’s just that I don’t expect business students to have long hair like yours or to be coming to Easter Vigils.”

“I don’t know about Easter Vigils, but I guess you’re sort of right about the hair.”

“I’m English and Philosophy, about the furthest thing from business you could imagine.”

“Yeah and short hair. I wouldn’t have guessed.” Jamey said smiling.

“Touché. We do have this in common.” David said moving his hand in a short sweep of the church.

“Yeh” said Jamey looking around again.

In this short conversation Jamey never looked directly at David confirming in David’s mind that he was shy.

When the time for the service to begin was a minute or two away David reached into the book rack on the back of the pew in front and took out a slim candle. Jamey had noticed the candles before and seeing everyone else do the same followed David’s lead, taking one out for himself. A moment later the church lights slowly dimmed until it was completely dark, the people becoming black shadows to each other. Everyone stood and faced the back of the church. Jamey was not expecting this and felt he was in the midst of mysterious connection to the cathedrals;  in this darkness he could be anywhere. He saw a small light glowing around some people at the back and then a large candle being lit. Then he heard “May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”

Holding the thick flaming candle, about a yard long the priest in vestments began to walk down the aisle, followed by a procession of men young and old in red robes and white surplices. The procession paused and the persons in the pews closest to the candle lit their own tapers, holding them for others next to them and in the rows in front and back until a whole section of the congregation at the back was holding their lit candles. It was beautiful to Jamey, floating tiny dots of flame glimmering light up into the faces of the people, barely illuminating them, solemn, reverent and peaceful.

The procession continued and paused once more beside David who lit his candle and turned to Jamey, offering the flame. As he did he broke the quiet of his face with a kind smile brightened and shadowed by the small glow. Jamey in that instant looked directly into his eyes, a startling blue that shawn even in the dim light. David kept looking and Jamey embarrassed, quickly lowered his eyes onto his candle, turning and lighting the one held by the person next to him while David did the same to light those in the row behind and in front of him. Now another section of the church was burning its small flames and the effect grew upon Jamey who was becoming awestruck. The procession stopped a third time toward the front of the church and the lighting of candles repeated. It was magnificent, the robed procession passing, headed by two other priests in addition to the one holding the large candle, each in slightly shimmering vestments subtly reflecting the effects of the candlelight out into the dark.

“If anything is designed to captivate the souls of the faithful this has to be it.” Jamey whispered to himself, but David overheard.

“You’ve got that right.” David whispered who in the near dark could not see Jamey freeze, embarrassed to be heard.

By the altar the priest placed the candle in a tall carved oak stand at which point the other members of the congregation extinguished their candles. The lights came up slowly as the procession of red robes filled the choir stalls on either side of the sanctuary and with the organ booming they began  “Hail the Gladdening Light”. The choir included young boys whose descant voices soared like nothing Jamey had heard before, children for whatever reason having been excluded from the church choirs of his youth, when church attendance was a drab boring obligation to his mother.

Jamey followed everything in the leaflet which called it the liturgy of the word., It included readings from the bible, interspersed with  psalms sung in Anglican chant ending with the Gloria in Exclesis Deo and more readings, followed by the renewal of baptismal vows, not his of course,  and then the liturgy of the Holy Eucharist. It was then that an altar server brought out an incense burner suspended on chains, small curls of smoke rising from its crucible. The priest took it and swung it back and forth two or three times at different stages of  the Eucharist, spreading a faint haze around him and sending backwards through the church a pungent and pleasant perfume that completed Jamey’s sensory envelopment adding its alluring scent to the sights and sounds of the service, drawing him into its reverence and dramatic beauty, which he now followed along effortlessly, kneeling and standing with the others without any trace of self consciousness. He was tempted but did not take communion.

The service ended with a benediction and procession of the priest altar servers and choir down the aisle, led by an altar server swinging the now billowing incense burner. The organ’s sound seemed to fill the walls themselves while a smoky mist settled across the congregation who stood and turned toward the exiting procession. When the last of the red robed celebrants had disappeared, the music stopped and it was over. Jamey left in silence. Speaking was a sure way to break the spell and he wanted to hold onto it. He saw David saying hello to a couple of people outside the church and thought about speaking to him. It was now past midnight, so he decided instead that he needed to get the last subway train home. David was  intending to speak to Jamey next, wanting to get to know him better, only to see him already off up the street. He hardly knew Jamey but there was something about him he liked even though he was a business student, or perhaps it was because he was and didn’t seem to quite fit. Maybe he would see him again he thought as he walked home to his flat nearby.

David lived a few blocks away on Madison Avenue which was lined with old mansions, once the homes of affluent families that now served a variety of purposes associated with campus life: fraternity houses, drop in centres, faculty annexes, rooming houses and apartments. He turned towards one of rose stone dirty with age, its walkway leading up to a pillared porch on the left, beside which was a wide arched window and then a round corner tower that went up beyond the third storey roof, curved glass windows wrapping half around it on each floor. He unlocked the old oak front door, went in and up the stairs to the second floor. There were three apartments there, one at the back of the house overlooking the small yard and a laneway,  one in the middle with windows on to the alleyway beside the house, and in the front  his, which included the curved inside of the tower corner. He was about to unlock the door when it swung back already open.

“Shit Dannie, you left the door unlocked again” he said to himself entering what he knew would be the empty apartment.  It was one room stretching on the right of the entrance to the front of the house, a bathroom and a closet on the left.  It contained a desk, two wooden chairs, an old leather couch, and a bed. David had bought the furniture at the Goodwill store and constructed shelves from bricks and planks, which was already beginning to bend with the weight of books that overflowed into three crooked stacks heaped beside it. The kitchen was against the wall next to the door, no more than a counter with a sink, below two overhead cupboards next to a small stove and small refrigerator. He liked his place. He thought the tower window and the thirteen-foot-high ceilings were the best part.

He soon saw an empty mug and sodden tea bag on the counter, the usual evidence that Dannie had come and gone again. David met her in a class they attended together two years ago, had developed a warm friendship with her and eventually given her a key to his place that she used to study or crash. Her freewheeling ways  appealed to him even though  occasionally her  carelessness was irritating. But she was still a good friend willing to listen to him about  his ideas, even when he thought that maybe he was boring her, happy to sit in silence while they both studied or read favourite books. This didn’t happen often now, her presence being more a trace outlined by a few unwashed dishes, water on the bathroom floor or a new book lying open on the bed. Washing Dannie’s mug and throwing out the sodden tea bag, David for a moment thought he would skip writing in his journal that night because it was now about 1:00 in the morning. Yet he worried that if he didn’t he would perhaps forget his impressions and not capture what he felt if he waited until morning. He poured himself a glass of cheap red wine from the bottle he bought each week, sat at his desk and pulled his Moleskine journal toward him, taking out his favorite fountain pen, preferring it to the ball points he used for taking notes in class. He began to write.