Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul by David Adams Richards

Author:David Adams Richards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307376060
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2011-05-09T18:30:00+00:00

Then, a week later, after a call from Mr. Cyr, Mary was allowed to cross the barricade and place her little twenty-one-foot sailboat—which she almost never sailed—into the sea.

And after that phone call, Doran, who hadn’t been allowed stories for a week because Isaac had told the band not to speak to him, and whose managing editor was worried lest he lose out on this whole summer, was fortunate enough to begin to file his reports from behind the native blockade and thus capture the attention of radio and television, who were being kept away by the warriors. So for a brief time he became indispensable to each and every other reporter, for they all had to rely upon him. He became the conscience of Canada—or so said Mary Cyr.

“Am I indispensable?” he asked.

“Yes, and I made you so,” she said.

Doran went behind the barricade, with his special dispensation, and was filled with determination to tell the exact truth. Which is what he told Mary he was after, and to which Mary replied: “Ah yes, the truth. How vital that is. And so we have made you vital too,” and she patted his cheek with a slim hand that smelled of soft fabric.

Still, the story that Doran was indispensable to tell was not really his idea anymore. In fact, the story was basically Isaac Snow’s. And Isaac had played his cards right by sending Max away and then bringing him back. That made Max reliant upon him. Since Isaac was the only source, and since Max was the only link between Isaac and the outside world, Max slowly but surely became the voice of Isaac. And since Isaac wanted one slant on his voice and another on Roger’s, the story was told that way too. Everyone was now singing Max’s praises. And he told this to Mary Cyr, saying in a vulnerable moment, “Yes—they will probably even want to give me some award.”

“Yes, an award—maybe even a humanitarian one,” Mary said. “I discovered that Canada is like that at certain times.”

And although he believed Mary Cyr was waiting on his reports and longed for information because she cared deeply for him (because she told him she did), in truth she cared for the story only insofar as people would like her better if she had more information. And though Doran was clumsy, inept and shy with women, Mary Cyr was not at all clumsy or inept with men. Neither here, nor in Spain, nor in Amsterdam, nor in Australia in 1983.

Doran bought her a present—a little pendant—and wrapped it, and wrote on the card, “Love.” Then, tearing this up, he wrote on the second card, “With affection,” and tore that one up as well. Then he decided not to give her a card when he gave her the present. He handed this present awkwardly to her one late afternoon. After an hour, he said, “Are you going to open it?”

“Oh—it’s for me?”

She opened the box, removed the white cotton, and the poor pendant fell to the floor.

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