J -...·,:;. __,. '., -'<-,"._'\; . ......t,"" / :,:.. ,,::.::. ::i:~;~:~~ ~-. 1,: ,· J · ,._,-:;·'(~ 4-,'-: >-\ ;~: fll',.l ' --~ ~_f-.. • , ... ... ~. •.,• ,. ~~ ·.:_,: ,. . '· .., -~··:.··. .• ,:·;__§ 'f;;,:.j{ ".; , ~:}} ..,;~..:~ ::;~:.~ ,; .~ r:~~: • ... t,,.~q.· -.,. ·-· .;.' .,. .. ,.. -·,. -·.--~,. ..,,..,': ... ... ;. rA1'-~;, . ~ -• ~;.~ _,~ • I • ........ ~-~ . .• . '~-::!.~ • ,i,t .v:~ I ' ._-:,-r. ''-. :,.,,,.., ...~-.. ·•~'\· ,..,, . '.:S . r·...._·,~ I.PAGE B.RUDDICK P.ARDERSON F.R.SCOTT • MONTREAL OCTOBER 1943 -----------------------------------------·-·----- *** DA.1.\JNY -NOVA iSCOTIA *** We had known Danny for several weeks before we visitod his house-Danny, the cement man, tireless in his efforts to deride the Baptists. Then one rainy evening, vvhen the thunderclouds hung 1·ow amongst the apples and the dirt roads were impassable, we decided not to try and make it across the mountain. 1i'1e would si:;op at Centreville and throw ourselves upon Danny's hospitality. He was , as we well. knew, one of the most generous of men. And there his houso V1Jas, hid i n its shrubberies and foreign looking and entirely made of cement, flat-roofed, with a loggia at one side. And Danny welcomed us in to ·what he always called 'a little inconsequential chatter', though on this occasion it meant bed and boo.rd as well . It was a strange house for a working man. The livingroom was long and brightly lit by fluorescent tubes in the ceiling. ifue floor was a mosaic, a design made up of hundreds of bits of broken china imbedded in concrete. There was a central fireplace built in a pillar which supported the slightly domed ceiling. There was a spiral stnircase. Hooked rugs hung on the vvalls and every shelf contained some bit of human or animal statuary. Copies of Danny's two favorite periodicals lay around--the 'Science Digest' and 'Soviet Russia Today'. And our attention was drawn to a frieze rvnning along the tops of the walls; a pattern of leaves and something· else which turned out,on closer inspection, to be miniature harrrrncrs and sickles, ingeniously hidden where the police or the local Baptists would never expect. to find them. Everything from the sculpture to the window-seat and the spiral staircsse was made of cement. Upstairs thcro was a cement bathroom and an enormous cement bath. But years before, as Danny told us, there had beon no bathroom and no upstairs. Instend there he.d beon a tent. For Danny and Ethel, his wifo, had slept in a tent on tho roof for sovoral years after completing the e;round floor of their house. iJfuon Ethel , a bro-wn-faccd Noman with tho look of a hare went into the kitchen to pre11c:;_rc suppor, Danny got hold of his flashlight and motioned us out into tho rain. He was a smo.11 gnome-liko man, with a wisp of hair and a bnld head and a pair of bright blue eyes and a stubborn chin; sixty-s0ven years old, but still strong and vigorous. A great chewer of tobacco o.nd spruce gum, and a drinker of homo-brewed cidor end beer liko all these pooplo. A great lover of things ' au naturol', as he put it; things raw and fresh and undressedup, and people tho sc..mc w2,y too, o.s though ho knew how to share the informality and the candor of nature. I remember th2t he once s::iid, raising his hand end pointing directly at me with clean mo.gnificent ~osture: 'I don't wnnt to look up, and I don't want to look down. I wsnt · to look straight 8.'~rosst' And o.nother time we were discussing ono of my poems, n poem into which I hnd tried to cram nll sorts of feelings and nssociations experienced during a ton mile walk I had tnken to the bl0nk extremity of Cape Split. I he.d tried to show how thero was, in tho deep woods through which we had uncertainly scrambled, a fooling of be PAGE TWO inf". lost and hiddon, of beinc; ct the mercy-of; qf being weak and per:plexed- nnd that ther0 was a sort of pleasure in this, a certain perverse pleasure in being weak and irresponsible~ And how afterwards, coming out on the echoing turf and into the wind.,. the feeling changed completely into a wholeness, a vulnerability, as though one had accoptod one's fate••• Danny was dead against such complexj.tiese vihere's nothing to Capo Split.but a lot of rock and a tide race--a forty foot tide boiling in there, t he said, 'and that's snough. ·rhat 's enough for any 1Joem. ' No1,v he took: us out. rain or no rain and he chuckled as his flashlight split the darkness -~ Fo:· a second the light flecked tho bushes and then, across tho lavm a naked lady appeared., breasts modestly grasped, thrusting her gener ous buttocks towa!'ds USo v.lul concrete, ' he explained. 'All concrete and wire. ' 'A1:1azi2Jg ! ~ ~ ,,A...n.d the rain has turned her grey.' 'Sho'.11 dry out~' said Danny. And then, considering--'She's not quite natural, is she? rl1hero' s something a bit wrong somewhere. Me.ybe I didn't make her plump enough~ 1 He moved. on, :playing tho flashlight before him. I could see the rain glistening on his hoad3 His shoulders stooped when he walked, but it was a stoop full of powerr 'Look at him" Isn't he a fine fellow?' There ·\,vas love in his voice. He talked of the new apparition in a manner much less detached than that he had used· for the lady. Antlers rose from the bushes, a glassy blood-rod eye stared at us, something shadowy and massive was powerfully ana. arrestingly there., A bull moose down to the last detail-painted, concrete, enormous~ j A fine fellow, ' 'Yes,. nust hav0 taken a lot of worke' ~o, I dunno .. 1 Danny scratched his head. 'Maybe two weeks, maybe a monthi, Built him up in sections. Looks real natural, ·don't he?' And then the light sought out another figure, this time a doe. The house was surrounded·by animals., Danny had a real passion for them, a hunter's and farmer's passion, not a sentimentalists. He did very nice little oil sketches of landscapes but of these he thought little, t~acking them up unframed on the walls of his cottage on the Fundy shore. It was his paintings and figures of anj_m.als that he co:i.1sid0red his bost work .. He loved what was big end fecund: blood stock--cows with bulging udders, , bulls that really looked the part. 1/\Jhat he missed in the naked lo.dyJ ho found i.n cows and other animals. He had the appetite of an agriculture.l Reubons ~ l{,:., was a great hunter. Once, j_n our short but 1i vely acquaintanceship, he broke the game laws. The incident ic worth recalling~ for it showed his generosity, his contempt for convention and his sense of humor.. It took place at his country cottage. He was great friends there with a family of poor whites who lived in a ·nearby shack on the North Mountain(> More particularly, he was an a.dmirer of May, the vast indomitable mother of the family. May with her huge body encased in man's breeches~ her roi..:nd face surmounted by a dark bang of hair and her hip pocket bulging with a medicine bottle of home brew, appealed to his sense of form. She was also indisputably working,--class ~ She was, furthermore, sufficiently RabelR.is ian for his salty taste in humor. Ethel disapproved of the relationship. 'Go on, Danny,'she would say. 'VVny you alvre.ys talkin' about May. I don't figure what you see in her.' ' M2Ly is a remarkable woman,' he would reply. 'There's plenty of her and it's all 'au naturel.' PAGE 'IHREE He used to take trips up to the wretched poverty stricken shack, carrying chives from his garden ore present of eggs or some other food he bnd bought in town. He knew that May's family faced a winter of potatoes and salted herring. And as tho hunting season grew near, he became restive. 'By the time it comes,' he told me, 'all the deer will be down·in the valley where the capitalist Baptists can shoot 'em. You bet your life, when the season comes there won't be no deer around this side of the mountain.' Then one day he had a gun nnd Levi• May's husband, had another and they were off, in ruminative rengy fnshion, into the woods. No one heard a shot. But when Danny returned there was a twinkle in his eye and a smell of smoke about his barrel. That night they went off to where they had hidden the deer and cut it up. Dnnny kept a haunch, the rest went where it was most needed. 'They haven t seen good meat at May's in many a week,' he said. The climax came when D2nny invited the summer tenants of his cottages in to Sunday dinner. They consisted of a honeymoon couple {a rural schoolteacher and his wife) and ourselves. Danny was not too sure of the couple. 'They're hungry all right after all that love making,' he said, 'But maybe they're a bit on the respectable side. 'rhey' 11 eat it, but who knows if they mightn't talk about it. Breaking the law, thnt's a sin in the eyes of the Baptists.' So we called the venison lamb. All through dinner it was 'H2.ve another bit of lamb' or 'This lamb sure tastes mighty good' or 'Well, if there's one thing I like, it's a nice piece of roast lamb.' And Dnnny, in grent form, was winking and twinkling at the head of the table. 1 1his all happened in Nova Scotia. Danny is inseparable from his background. Everything he did.and said is seen against two landscapes, the green country east of Cape Split, the rocky coastline west of it. · His country refuses to be left out. There was so much geography, for one thing, and so much weather for enother. To the east lay tho green end of the Annapolis Valley, the apple orchards meeting the sea in a maze of dykelnnd and red mud, The rivers were all red there and the grass on the dykes grew long and vivid. The great tide left immensities of shore and far out across them one could see the plovers--clouds and fountains of birds. There w2.s, at first sight, something phencr~nal nbout tho]j. Tilting, they all caught the sun together with the undersides of their wings. They might have been bits of very bright pnper scattered in some paper chase at the edge of the tide. r.fu.o spa~kle rose and dipped, scattered and plunged and wheeled--and disappeared. Thor<3 wes nothing 2ftGr all. It had been a mirage of flying fish, a ballot of fish-scnles caught up from the sea• .And then, much farther awe.y, tilting, turning, s1Ninging into the sun, the plovers once more broke into light. But tho country that we.s red ond bright-green and pastoral east of Cape Split was rocky and pine-clad west of it, "livhere the long ridge of the North Mountain divided the valley from the sea. The rivers were now mountain streams that cut their ¼BY through narrow gulleys known locally as vaults. The fishing villages w3re huddled in the shelter of coves. The beaches were shingle and rocks. What was warm and expansive in the great rich valley wns sturdy and desolate here. There wero piles of bone-white driftwood and many twisted wharves. Danny was n connecting link between these two passages of country, for he lived in the one and had built several cottages on a lonely stretch of the PAGE FOUR Oth~rs. WG hired osorely bruised people come From the chequered hnlls of creed and greed, From the work-a-dny r o.nks and the looted farm, To the healing peace of historic ground Where the old may see visions and youth may dream. Visions of ghost ships come floating down From n mighty past that is dend nnd gone, Drenms of a future when ships come in Aµd white sails furl nfter stormy sens. 1 'The old may see visions.' He saw them. He sew them in the dragon shapes and plumed serpents of our immense bonfires, he snw them in the onward sweep of science, a new antiseptic here, a new serum or blood-transfusion technique or method of mining conl there, he saw them in Soviet Russia. At sixtysev0n, he was still seeing visions and seeing red. Hsdn' t he constnicted a concrete house and surrounded it with concrete animals'? Hadn't he spent hours imagining a moose of incredible size, of abnormal ferocity--a sup0r and soviet moose? Another would have spoken of memories. He had them too, He t Rcked them up on the wall of his house. He h2d seen the Louvre and the Rock of Gibraltnr at sunset and the tulip fields. But he was a man who had stayed young. He wasn't aggressively so, not with that thin lined face and the wisp of hair thnt stuck up on his otherwise bald head. He was impish, sardonic, racy, ecc PAGE SEVEN eritric, opinionated end sometimes pigheaded. He hadn't given anything up. He made enough to live on as proprietor of his practically one-man business but that was e..11. Ex:ploi t c,tion just wnsn' t in him. And he ho.d his vision. I will conclude with n vision of a different sort. It was on the lnst afternoon of our stcy in Novn Scotia, a wnrm clGar dny. We sat with Danny on a little crestthnt overlooked o wido sto.gnnnt creek. We had never bathed there, preferring the open sea. Ths wnter lmoked soft, sleek and much too gr0en. There were reeds and there was mud. Here May was taking a bathe, May irrrrnense in a green bathingdress, sitting in a large half waterlcgged dory with her brood around her--giving a gold-toothed grin. She looked indomitable and serene while her children--long haired dark brown creatures, swam and splashed and her husband, Levi, waded about--a skinny white figure with his old pipe gripped ' firmly in his teeth~ Then she took to the water too, not as a swimmer will, cleaving it as something to negotiate nnd dominate--not with that clenn separation, the neatness and essential separateness of the swimmer. She entered it and took root in it like a pl~nt. She responded to it with a sort of vegetable laziness. Her broad face, her bangs and the bandana around her head appeared in the center of green ripplings of suit Qnd water. 'My! She's a wonderful woman,' said Danny, the appraiser of curves. But we had packing to do and we stole away. We have, in fact, been stealing c.way from th8,t wonderful scene ever since, PATRICK ANDERSON ENELiIES Bvcnuse TTe hat~ you We are bound to you. w~ struggle to got at you, We aro absorbed by your r:iover::.onts, Ws copy your plans, w~ report ev~ry word you say. Though wo try to kill you In destroying you ~o mate ~ith you. Tho aftermath is our joint child. F.R.SCOTT P.K.PAGE LOVE POEM For we can live noi1, love , a million in us breathe, make 1noves across a stove, qualify death in lands our OTTll and theirs with simple hands as these, r.ri th 7,alk as like as hers and ',vord.s as lik0 as his. They, in us, free our love, mako archrJays of our mouths, peel off tha patont gloves and atrophy our 11:yths. As ten, as t!enty, noTT we broak from single thought and rid of being t~o receivo them and TTalk out. OFFICIGS Oh believe me, I hav0 1-:nor.n officos- younG and old in thon both- G.orning and 0voninc;; felt the air sta.n1p faces into a ::_:ould; office workers at desks saying go to a ty-pe~?riter and stop to a cabinet; taking scrupulous care over calendars ,SO da~rs are e-tched in the outward leaning oy0s uhile bosses, behind glass liko jo~els, are flashing their light and co.ri1ing suddenly near. In offices drawers contain colourod paper for copies, staples, string, hand lotion and various porsonal things like love letters. In ~ashrooms girls arc pretty ~ith thoir mouths, drawing thorn fancy; light tho sugar -r;hito tubo of smoke and novor once question tho futur.o, look ahoad beyond payday or ask tho 'if' that makos them an[sular. In elevators, coming and going, they are glib tongued and perky as birds with the elevator men. There are sone beautiful and coloured always, like singing, 'i7ho nev0r bocoE1e the permanent colloction and so1:.10, ~ho, if you speak to thee of something di ffer0nt, a future more lil:o lifo, thoy bocoi:10 sharp, give you their uhittlod faco and turn a~ay liko offondod starlings fron a wind. pago nine SU,1NIE.R RESOR'r They lie on boaches and are proud to t~n, cli:.1b banks in s~arch of f low·ers for their hair, change colours liko charJel0ons and s~ec indolent and sooehou flat and sad. Search out the trees for love, tho beach unbrellas, the bar, tho dining root1; flash as they ualk, are oval-aouthod and careful as they talk; send picture post-cards to their offices brittle nith ink and soft with daily phrases. Find Sunday ompty without churchos, loll not yo-t urn1ou.i'J.d in dock chair and by pool; canri.ot do nothing noat ly, t:thi lo in lap, poriscopo ready, scan tho scone for lovo. Undor tho noar loaves and tho sailing water 2yos hoist flags, and handkerchiefs, botwoon tho breasts, alive; fluttor like pallid bats at tho least oddy. Droad tho return v;hich r:..agnifios tho -r;;-ant-TTind in high places soaring round tho hoart carriod liko a star fish in a pail through dw.1os and fi0lds and lonoly mountain paths • .But n0i~1ory v1hi ch is thinner than tho sons0s is only a r.'"avo in grass uhich tho kiss erases, and lovo onco found, their notabolisn cho.ngos: tho kiss is 1:vorn lik0 a badge upon tho nouth-pinnod thoro in darkness, or:1phasizod in daylight. Nor; all tho 1scene is flying. Before tho face people and tr&cs arc swift. Tho enornous pool bri::1s liko a crying oyo. The irtll-:iediato flesh is real and night no curtain. Thero, togothor, tho swift oxchange of· badgos accolGratos to a personal prize g1v1ng ;,1hile pulse and loaf rustle and gron climactic. NON-EbSENTIAL. o F.R.SCOTr • To r;rito divino laws On tables of stone Requires a Mosos Rather than a God. page ten FEVEn ••• BRUCZ RUDDICK Hey--in sy deliriun Isa~ fat bodies rocked on laded feet and brown heads grinning fror.1 the withered vines; fishes in cutlery; and the streets of Europe sour with ueather sweet with peace; and hollot-7 dogs scooting flat-eared domi the roads; the children, plunp, astrid0 giraffes and casual does. And every day the laughing poor and I scooped di:10s and nuggets from thG city dunp, Spent fron the poppy turaul t I lay, rubbed ny ooard and spat the scales of fever fron ny teeth and tongue while starched girls bathed me and gave me love. Like diamond the door-knob shone and boys below sang boastfully and bore their splintery arms to skirmish in the lanes. Sounds from harbour and slum like gulls, ca~e welcome to the hard white room. Trauma on corner and the rioting cell furnished the wards of pain and fear scurried to the beds of age• The city's bricks sucked up the autlUllll sun, Outside--end0mic yet-the sure hand training sights to still the life before the silvered eye-Tho loaded frieght-cars couple, roll, sh'ips horI,1 th0ir brawn and faultless planes are hurrying to tho anxious cast. Oh toll mo, when will lovo construct onginos and systems stout as thoso? PREVIEW welcomes outside contributors but is sorry to bo financially unable to pay for contributions. Subscriptions to PREVIEW aro ono dollar a year, to bo sont to Mr. Bruco Ruddick, 1455 Drummond Street, Montreal, Q,u0b0c.