The Cooperman Variations by Howard Engel

Author:Howard Engel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)

THIRTEEN

The road I followed from the parking lot was less than a road but more than a path. You could call it a lane. The trees arching down around me from above were very lane-like, and the twin ruts that made their parallel way through the bush were rather road-like, but the bumps, roots and outcroppings of rocky Precambrian Shield made it hard to imagine anything not on tank tracks making its way up and down this stretch of whatever it was. The birds didn’t seem to mind it. Animals kept me company, just beyond my actually seeing them. I could hear them all right, off in the bracken or among the trees, and the sounds were scaled small enough so that only once or twice did I think I might be in trouble from a man-eating chipmunk or a rogue rabbit.

The trail led through a grove of dense white pine. It must have been second growth, but it looked substantial, even commercial. My path ended, to my complete surprise, at the back end of a beautiful, dark blue, antique Bentley. I nearly fell down and worshipped. It was sheltered under a rustic lean-to with a covering that was half canvas and half blue plastic. I would have been less surprised to have found a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. But, on reflection, I thought I am less than a few hundred metres, as the trout swims, from Millionaires’ Row. I shouldn’t be surprised at anything seen in these latitudes.

The cottage, painted a forest green, lay just beyond the lean-to. Like Vanessa’s, it was screened in along three sides, which tended to show the varmints out there who was boss. The key I’d taken from Vanessa’s kitchen turned smoothly in the Yale lock, and I found myself in a brand new way to define what a Muskoka cottage ought to be. There were only four rooms, two of them bedrooms. The kitchen, a dark, gloomy hole, had been added as an afterthought, but it had made up for that in being used to capacity. There were signs of years of cooking at high temperatures. Under the counter I found gadgets for storing pot lids and drying tea-towels. Out a rear door, I found large cooking pans that had been placed outside possibly for the wildlife. I could imagine that a family of raccoons licked many a platter clean of congealed or carbonized fat and grease.

The biggest room was a comfortable one, filled with wicker easy chairs, couches and low rattan tables. The small shelf of books was dedicated to old law reports and to ancient novels of the Book of the Month Club, featuring Forever Amber, Leave Her to Heaven and The Sun Is My Undoing. A couple of philosophical volumes such as Meetings with Remarkable Men, by G.I. Gurdjieff. There were a few others, more modest in size, written in Hindi or Urdu, featuring blue-faced ladies serving platters of sweetmeats to lounging young men wearing robes of office or of pleasure.

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