In Canada (II of VIII)

“You’ll be here for the eggs?” It was an old woman, grey hair, pink face.

“Yes”, I said. “Eggs”.

“You’ll be from the new houses”, she said.

“Yes”, I said, “that’s right.”

There was a pause. She examined my face. I had to suppress a giggle: it seemed a peculiar process to go through to purchase eggs. I’d seen hand written sign down at the bottom of their drive, then followed a track up tot the farmhouse. The yard was strangely silent and I’d felt this sense of awkwardness as I knocked on the wooden door.

“Well”, she said, suddenly exasperated, “What are you doing standing there. Come in.”

I followed her into a kitchen, a dog looked up for it s basket, came over to greet me- limping on here legs only, then returned to its wicker bed.

“Wait there”, said the woman, I noticed that she too was limping. She looked back for an instant, “how many do you want?”

“How many what?” I thought, puzzled- she sensed that and, surely believing me a idiot, said loudly, “eggs, how many eggs?” She spoke the word “eggs” with a plaintive drawl.

“Oh, just a dozen,” I answered.

“You’re not from here?”

“No,” I said.

“No-one is,” she replied, passing me the eggs in a carrier bag. “Still,” she continued with a laugh, “the more they come, the more eggs I sell.”

*

Coming back down the hill the orderliness of the houses in the surrounding countryside became starkly obvious and it took me a moment to pick out my own rented place from the other identical houses.

Reaching the smooth tarmac of my street, I saw my nieghbour from across the road who was just entering his, identical dwelling opposite mine. I gave him a wave.

“Got any beer there?” He shouted.

“Eggs,” I replied, though I don’t think he heard: he disappeared inside.

I went inside too. I put the eggs in the fridge then sat down. Very quiet.

I tried to watch TV and could for a while, then I worked on an article. A couple of hours passed. Then I got bored and took to staring out the window.

There was a van parked in the street. Usually that was prohibited. Or was it just rare? It was so hard to figure out what was prohibited and what was just uncommon. Canadians were guarded, they had many rules, but they did not mention them. They did not mention them, I thought, because they did not want to appear intolerant.

Anyway, I saw the van there, and though it was late afternoon. I went out to look more closely. It was that sort of place; there were so few irregularities that even a parked van raised suspicions.

I approached the van. The window of the van would down slowly, then a face poked out, a face with a cigarette protruding from it.

It was the guy from across the road. I hadn’t recognized the van.

“Hey, you got a light?”

It was the man from across the road.

“I don’t have a light,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

Wife kicked me out,” he said in a matter of fact way.

“Really, that’s terrible.”

“She doesn’t like it when I drink,” he said, matter-of-factly

“Oh,” I said.

“You not from here?”

“No,” I said.

“No one’s from here,” he said. “You got some beer in this afternoon?”

“They were eggs,” I said.

“Man, I’d die for an omelette. “

I laughed.

“I still got some beer,” he said. “I keep a store here so the wife can’t find it, and he pointed under the seat.”

“You’re very wise,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, “ ‘t’s called learning from experience.”

He gave a big sigh. “So I got the beer, you got the eggs, your place for dinner??”

I’d made my first Canadian friend. His name was Joe.

In Canada I (No. I of VIII)

Sarah asked me where I was living and I mentioned that I was renting a house out in V, a suburb some 20 miles from Toronto, She would drive out to get me, to take me to the lake, she said.

She came, exactly on time.

Sarah was the friend of a friend from Brazil, Joeli. Sarah wore sunglasses so I could not see her eyes. She wore a polo-neck, then a v-neck sweater over it. She wore jeans and boots, her manner was brisk, she spoke quickly. She was the manager in an office, but she did not describe what she did. I think she had located her work in one mental compartment, which was distinct and unconnected to others in her mind. I knew that I had nothing to say to her. I knew that instinctively, and it made me feel ashamed, as if her kindness was being rejected unfairly, and that emotionally I was unable to fulfill my part of a contract, the role of the grateful guest...

Sarah was just one person, but she made up a huge proportion of the sample of people I had met there, so making me momentarily unsure that I would have much in common with the people of Canada at all.

She drove efficiently. Her sunglasses made her haughty, they were expensive glasses and one of the lenses had a logo in the corner. There flashed the image in my mind’s eye of my Brazillian friend, and the woman here, and the images did not correspond. Sarah had asked about Joeli politely but it was the civility of a government employee, I could not mistake it for friendliness, and I wondered what duty she might be fulfilling to Joelli. We got to the lake, and parked, and she puit the glasses on the dashboard, but she did not look at me directly and I saw her eyes seemed tired.

We walked along the lake. It dawned on me that I was being taken to participate in a sort of new arrivals ceremony, that Sarah was fulfilling a sort of civic duty, and I wondered if she was returning a duty that Joelli had performed for her: part of a giant international exchange programme, where people took foreign visitors to see certain sites as a sort of initiation ceremony, and in return were taken to sites themselves when they went abroad. Walking there, I could truly say I was in Canada, much as when, staring at a concrete Christ on Corcovada one might truly say one had arrived in Brazil.

Canada was very big- the lake was very big, and Canada was surely full of unspoilt nature, much like the landscape surrounding the lake. And, as we walked I reflected that it would be like this, everything would have this mood, Canada. Such days often carry the air of premonition.

*

When we got to the car the windscreen had been broken. There seemed something excessive about that, as if mere theft was not sufficient- there had to be damage too. But Sarah said that that was probably a drug addict who did not know how to steal simply. They just broke the windscreen and took whatever they could - Sarah's sunglasses were gone from the dashboard.