Timothy Findley Foxes PRE-READING ‘As preparation for reading the story, 2) Research the use of masks in theatrical dramatic presentations. What purpose do masks serve? When are they worn? How are they physically handled by the wearer? What are some of the theatrical protocols regarding the use of masks? If possible, research some of the history behind the use of masks in theatre. What are some connotative meanings that accompany the word “mask"? ) Research the history of the use of animal totems in various cultures and religions, What isthe connection between animals and humans? ©) Explore your understanding ofthe imagery of the fox. Draw up a lst of words that come to mind when you think of “the fox” Can any kind ‘of suggestion or generalization be drawn? The face is only the thing to write id Barthes All the appropriate people had been forewarned: Morris Glendenning would be coming to the Royal Ontario Museum to do ome private research in the Far Eastern Department. He was not to be approached; he was not to be disturbed. a by the fact he was the worlds best-known c a man whose public stances and pronouncements had put hhim at centre stage as long ago as 1965. The thing was, Morris Glendenning could not bear to be seen. rndenning’ reclusiveness was I wendary, made doubly curious ymmunications ex- But, as with most eccentric beings, part of what was eccentric in him seemed determined to thwart whatever else was eccentric. In Morris Glendenning’s case, his passion for privacy was undone by of wool and, as well, to what some consi yy his need for warmth—which led to a passion for things made| | ‘iaotiy FINOLEY 89 ress in the whole community of North American Id-fashioned galoshes—the kind made of sailcloth ubber, sporting metal fasteners shaped like little ladders blue beret, pulled do s of his prominent eats, F was six feet, six ini is made, it seemed, al atively of bone kin was pale, translucent and shintr if he polished! it at night with a chamois cloth. Glendennin, coat was blue and had a military cut—naval, perhaps. It was pinched at the waist and almost reached his ankles. In magazine photographs—taken always on the ran—Morris Glendenning had the look of Gr heading for doorways and ducking into Mes, Elsion, in charge of secretatil work for the Par Eastern Department at the Royal Ontario Museum, had been told by her bess that Glendenning, would be turning up on the Friday Morning, last week in February. She was quite looking forward to Meeting the famous man. Dr. Dime, the curator, had instructed het ‘© olfer all available assistance without stint and without question On no account, she was told, was he to be approached by sta “Whatever help he requires, he will solicit: probably by note...” By Tithaftermoon, however, on the day of the visit, Mrs, Elston said doesn’ take much to guarantee the privacy of someone who oesn't even bother to show up.” At which point Myrna Stovich, her assistant, said: “but he is here, Mrs, Elston. Or—somcone is. His overcoat and galoshes are ‘tting right there..." An she pointed out a huddled, navy blue Shape on a chair and a pair of saileloth overshoes |atge brown puddle heaven’ sake,” said Mrs, Elston. “How cat that have Nappened when I've been sitting here all day?* You haven been sitting here all day,” said Myrna Stovich. *You ‘00k a coltee break and you went to lunch — —which he pulled d against the small he pulledTimoTHY FinpLey : 91 months later, in September. The work itsell—the massing of mate. rials, the culling of ideas—had been passing through an arid stage and it was only in the last few days that he'd begun to feel remotely Not that he hadn't traversed this particular desert rc Alter every piece of exploration—after every ion of his findings—af y attempt at articulating the theories rising from his findings, Morris Glendenning—not untike fery other kind of writer—found himself, as if by some siniste miracle of transportation, not at the edge but at the very centre © wasteland from which he could extract not a single living, thought. For sometimes for weeks—his mind had all the symptoms of dehydration and starvation: desiccated and paralyzed almost to the point of catatonia, Five days ag But, mi reviving—feeding again, but gently. And al sd Ro The phot japh had appeared in a magazin: ubtished by the Royal Ontario Museurn; and it showed a Jay theatre mask recently purchased and brought from the Orient ," the caption read. Bur it wasn't quite a fox. It was a human fox alarming in its subtle Reading about it, Morris Glendenning discovered or four oth of masks created for a seventeenth-century Japane which a fox becomes a ach of the masks, so the article informed, him, displayed a separate stage in the transformation of a quinte: Sential fox into a quintessential human Glendenning of his consciousness. Something had been recogniz, and he felt the reverberations rising like bubbles to the urface: signals, perhaps—or warnings le very well remembered reading David Garnetts horror st Lady Into Fox—that masterful, witty morality tale in which the hunting class” is put in its place when one of its wives by ks, the process had Bu in these Japanese Ld fox who took on human form, On the hand, this was mote or less standard procedure when it came ‘0 balancing the myths and customs of the Orient against the am "dl customs of the West, Almost inevitably, the icons and symbo hi92 FOKES Orient, black in the West for mourning; respect for, not the arrogi- tion of nature; death, not bist 0 immortality Whose fate, Glendenning had written in the margis next t provocative photograph, is being fulfilled within cis mask? The fox Or the man’s Clipping the whole page ou of the m a file marked Personae, and five minutes later, he retrieved it up in the snow-white light from the windows and stared rized. The question became an 0 oking into the tered face of the mask he imagin ayers of e human face. Not to the bone, but to the being, The blooming of this image took its time, It occurred to hitm slowly that under the weight of all his personal masks, there was a being he had never seen. Not a creature hid design—but something buried alive that wanted to live and that had a right to life Foxes into huma aid out loud as he watched the ph graph, Thet Standing in the bathroom, later that alternoon, something sent a shud: der through his shoulders and down his back when, in the very instant of switching on the light, he caught the image of his unmasked self in ne mirtor. And he noted, in that prodding, everobservant part of hi brain—where even the death of his wife had been observed with the keenest objec that what had been unmasked had not been human, What he had seen—and all he had seen—was a pair of pale gold ceyes that stared from a surround of darkness he could not identify Half an hour later, Mortis picked up the telephone and plac to the Curator of the Far Eastern Collection at the Royal Museum, who happened to be his old acquaintance, Harry Dime \What privileges could Harry Dime afford him? Could he inspect the Japanese masks alo Privately, Harry Dime would later conclude he should have said no, For all his own awareness of intellectual curiosity, he had no sense at all of the dangerous threshold at which Glendenning stood. Dime had forgotten that, when he returned with these tr sures from another time, he brought them with all their magicTimoray Fimouey : 93 Not with ancient spells, of course, since all such things are .¢ who nse—but the magic they released in others: in 1 beheld them without the impediment of superstition (On the snowy Frida whether to walk or to chance the subway. Chancing the subway nigh recognition, and given the loss of time that recognition inevitably produced, he decided to wallk. Walking, he was ¢ one would see him—tet alone recognize him, How many eyes, he had said to Nota, his wife, meet yours on a crowded avenue Bloor Street on a Friday is always massed with shoppers, mnost of 1, like to give the appearance of worldl difference. I could go in and buy fT wanted to, they seemed to be telling themselves, Bu hat today, on Monday. Maybe Tuesday... Their impassivity was almost ind it troubled Morris Glendenning The street, for all its people and all its motor traffic, was sile ow, Morris coul ee his own and everyone else’ breath. if he paused, he could count the breaths and he could lake the pulse of where he stood—e: —all the heart beats ing, ng—all the secret thythms of all the people visible in the frosted air. Even the 1 taflie gave the appearance of be fe; aS much an appearan; of life as the people Im behind ¢ with their wisps and plumes of vapours. windows of these vehicles, the faces peering out of he silence were reflected in the clouds of glass that fronted Harry Rosen's; Cartier; Bemelmans; Eddie BauerS. Holt Renfrew ... moon phases; passing on Bloor Str Morris Glendenning could feel the subway tumbling beneath Was there, alive and at work, whose underground voice made no More sound tha -s make in dreams, Morris paused at the cor- Fer of Bellair Street and watched a man he had intimately known 'n boyhood wander past him with his eyes averted. Later on, both of ther tem swould say: 1 sav od so-and-so out on Bloor Street, today. He oked appalling: deadHere, Morris thought, was a kind of debilitating apariness—an apartness that once had been entirely foreign to all these people the ones who were perfect strangers and the ones who were inti imate friends. We nceded each other: That was -d cach oth We needed each other. Mortis clenche his lips had been moving over the words, We've always shared Now he the stop at Avenue Road, where he pproaching the final stretch of Bloor Street befor would wait for the light t change, the way he had waited there for over for 8 Beyond the veils of snow he c | see the vaguest hint of neo! red in the air above him: Park Plaza Hotel—though all he could see was part of the z and part of the final a. A small crowd of people formed near the curb and Morris hats, A dozen fur hats and fifteen heads Not one person was looking Glendenning, counting. Why wi another? When had they all becom: Mortis stniled, Rhetorical questions formed the backbone of his profession, but he delighted in providing stupid, banal and irrta ing answers, It was a form of private e ble indiff: they walked, he observed—the speed with which they walked—their gait, as they made their way along the , Mortis thought—gazing at them through the 1g snow—with the kind of apathy acquired by those whom something—bitterne has taught that nothing waits for those who hurry home. It the me to him slowly, standing 0 Avenue Road and Bloor, that, when he nized, it was not their recognition of him that mattered: but le on the suby d wisd n and fame—might recognize them and tell them who they were, I know yot re: that’s what they yearned for him to say. I nothere is a labyrinth of halls andl passage ways that leads, through various degrees of | shards and corners of time—numbered, catalogued, guessed at | Morris Glenidenning stood in one of these 1ooms—perspiring, i | 0 happened—holding in his fingers, his finger din whi | cotton gloves—the very mask he had encountered fits in its photo The door behind him was clos The room—effectively~—was sound-proofed by its very depth in ne cellars and its distance fromthe active centte of the building, A dread, white light was all he had to see by: “daylight” shining from computered bulbs, mask’ companions—three in number—were set out, sterile a sterile tray: the fox on its way (0 becoming a mar He thought of s How small, he thought, the face is, Looking down at the others, beyond the mask he held, he counted over the variations and depres of change—the fox in his hands at one extreme and the trio of variations, lying, o» thei tray, bur Reoning feature by feature into a close proximity of Oriental human uty. The widely tilted, ov of the fox bee: venly ntered, almond eyes of a man, Of @ priest, so the collection’: catalogue had told him. A priest. So apt a designation, it could only be amusing, Tho Morris felt like a marauding a y destructive child bent on mischief. A vandal, perhaps. Most certainl new bi espassing here, the victim of an inesistible impulse: put i Te rent over three hours standing there, touching—lif i 8 re 'ng—contemplating the masks. Around him, resting on shelves and laid out, numbered in other sterile trays’ was the departments hole collection of Japanese thea masks. Each mask was hidden: Shung in a silk and sometimes quite elaborate bag, the drawstrings ed in eat, fastidious bows.The truth was—he dared not opi ntly before He held the mask up g ould smell iv He what? Its n Dr was it muskiness? He closed his eyes and fitied thi contours of his bones. E d fully fifteen secon The masks below him, Had they smiled before? en the bags to look ined. And, even though he fully his face efore he dared to open his eyes, tion of the mask had been experienced—no matier how long it took fe thought he heard a noise som te held his breath, in order to hi Nothing, And then, as he began to breath Another voice. But whose? 2 clearing somewhere. ot human—moved bef How elegant they were. How delica He bega arth before He looked at his hands, He held i nask. ‘and stan another light. A 1¢ 0 unconcerned and unafraid? to receive the scent of earth as he had never smelled the em out as far as he could, HumanULEEULULLLLLL Ge TumoTAY FINDLEY #97 d of speech, was an inarticulate and strangled | } know | | Never in all of Morr ng wild, He aned so close against d been the first to come and sit before him narrowed 7 going to Morris was bereft of words, But the impulse to speak was overwhelming He cou eel the sound of something rising through his bowels—and thi force of the sound was so alarming that Morris pulled the mask away From his face and thrust it fram him—down into the tray from which he had lifted it, When? sd. An hour? A day? How far away had he He looked. raid—at the be f his hands, but they were covered wa (0 see ar the floor was still s removed the white cotton gloves. He took a long, deep breath let it very slowly out between his teeth His fingers dipped towards the tray and even before they reached the ‘mask, he smiled—because he could feel the head rising up as sure and ‘eal as the sun itsef. And when the mask he had chosen was in place, he Paused only for seconds before he dared to breathe again; one deep =98 FOKES fow—at last—he was not alon: ast before five that afternoon, Mrs. Elston was putting the cover or her IBM Selectric and preparing to leave, when she became aware at once of someone standing behii Oh,” she said—recovering as best she could. “We thought you were not here, Professor Glendenning His enormous height was bending to the task of pulling on hi galoshes. Shall we be seeing you tomorrow?” Mrs. Elston asked With his back to her, he shook his head. ‘Monday, perhay But he was buckling his galoshes; silent | He drew his many scarves about him, buttoned his greatcoat took up his leathe Pr But Mrs. Elston could not reach him, He was gone and the door ‘or Glendenning ... It was such a great pleasure swung to and fro, Mrs, Elston sniffed the atr “Myrna?” she said. "Do you smell something? Myrna “Sure,” she said. “Dog wich needed no prompting | But there can't be a dog!” said Mrs, Elston | "Yeah, well,” said » Professor Glendenning, didn't we. True,” Mrs, Elston laughed. “You're quite right, my dear, But goodness! What a day!” she said. “And now we have to go out into all that snow.” "Yeah," said Myrna Stovich, “Sure. But I like the snow.” “Yes, And then she gave a smile. “I suppose I have to, don't said Mrs. Elston, and she sighed. “I like it, too, 1 guess.