My Fourth Day in Canada

The first three were special too. I flew into Montreal on a plump British Airways plane -- my first crossing of the Atlantic -- and fancied that I could sense the different "feel" of a non-European continent while still in the air. What vexed me enormously was the impossibility of seeing what it all looked like from up there: I was squeezed in between about 5 people on each side and hopelessly far from any window. The captain announced the commencement of the landing at Montreal's Trudeau airport, I could feel the beginning of the drop in altitude, while the lucky ones in window seats glued their noses to the panes, craned their necks, and opened their eyes wide (or so it seemed to me) at the sight of what later I learned was the broad, lazy rolling of the St-Lawrence river, with white fumes of a big city billowing up here and there. Then things went fast: my friend met me, hosted me for the next three days, making my transition smoother (it's a fine line between exhilaration and alienation when you are in a new place, and the presence of friendly guides can make all the difference), and I felt instantly this was a place I could live in comfortably.The only thing was: I wasn't staying in Montreal. It was really just a stopover on my way to Halifax, in Nova Scotia, on the very eastern edge of the Canadian part of the continent.

That fourth day, though -- the day I travelled from Montreal to Halifax by train, with all my luggage (good for one year, as I believed at the time) and hopes and dreams -- was more than special. It was extreme, eccentric, and unreal, all at the same time. After the seemingly interminable 20-hour train ride through hundreds and hundreds of miles of thin and scraggly pine trees, we finally stopped at the Halifax train station because the train tracks reached the brink of the ocean and there was nowhere further to go. ("Where have I come?" I remember thinking, somewhat bemused; thinking, "I've really gone far this time."). At the station, as agreed months before via email, a senior graduate student from Dalhousie University's English Department -- where I was about to start a master's programme -- was supposed to meet me and help me get to the student residence. Kathy Mac was a short bouncy person, slightly cross-eyed, with straight bangs on a low forehead and a lovely jovial personality. She offered me a wide welcome, and loaded me and my bags into an SUV-type of a car, where the fresh, salty scent of the outside air was replaced by the stale smell of wet dog fur. "It smells of dogs in here," she said apologetically, not for a moment losing her smile. "I'm a hunderfräulein," she added, by way of explanation. "A what?" I asked politely, my flimsy knowledge of linguistics providing only a vague idea of what that word could mean (dog + girl?). "I take care of dogs!" she said in her bubbly way, "I take them for walks, I watch them, I help train them -- in return for board and food. And not just for anyone," she gave me a small side glance of triumph. "For Elisabeth Mann - the youngest daughter of Thomas Mann!"

Of course I knew who Thomas Mann was, although by that point I hadn't actually read any of his books (two flitting memories I didn't mention to Kathy: one, of my aunt's collection of Mann's major novels, in grayish plastic covers, in her Belgrade apartment where during one summer visit I briefly contemplated reading Buddenbrooks but the comfortable laziness of motionless hot days got the better of that idea; and the other, of Dirk Bogarde in the movie adaptation of Death in Venice; funny, when I saw the film, I found Bogarde handsome). But I knew nothing about Mann's personal life, and had no idea he had a daughter who was alive and living in Halifax. Kathy explained Elisabeth Mann used to work at Dalhousie's Ocean Institute, and now lived just outside of the city -- in a small place called Sambro Head -- where she wrote and trained dogs as a hobby.

In a state of a permanent low-excitement buzz -- no doubt, the consequence of the last few days' fireworks of novelty in my life -- I was trying to listen to her carefully, and at the same time pay attention to the streets and houses we were passing by, eager to form the first idea of the city I was going to live in for a year (seven, but I had no way of knowing that then). Trees everywhere and a sunny August afternoon gave me a little boost of hope that I would like Halifax, but this was cut short when we reached the student residence. Part of King's College, a serious-looking gray stone formal building affiliated with Dalhousie University, the dorm was impersonal, prison-like, oppressive. My narrow room was the size of a pantry, with a small bed and a wooden plank along the wall which served as a desk -- both looking sad and naked. One inadequate window. Suddenly the late afternoon inched into an early evening, and everything grew darker. A lump forming in my throat (globus hystericus), I was trying not to think of Cambridge, where two years before I spent a year, which had clearly influenced my expectations. Neatly trimmed lawns (where we played lacrosse and ate strawberries), a pond in the recesses of the wild-flowers garden (where once I let a friend down by refusing to swim in March), big airy rooms with tall windows looking onto an alley of chestnut trees (where occasionally a car would drive up to make deliveries), a concert piano in the common room, next door to the dining-room (where we were served by the personnel wearing white gloves). I hated myself for remembering but couldn't stop remembering in the gathering shadows of the evening in my tiny room. (On some deeper, unarticulated levels of my mind, the memory branched into a light feeling of shame, for being somewhat of a snob at that moment, feeling disappointed by something given to me gratuitously -- I was on a scholarship). I kept reminding myself that I was only going to be there for a week, and then move to a smaller and hopefully more personalized residence house -- but who could tell what that would look like. I suddenly also realized I knew no one here -- not a single person -- other than Kathy whom I'd just met.

Kathy saw all this on my face but made no comment as she was helping me pile up my bags on the side of the bed since there was no real storage room. When we were done, she said, "Listen, it's getting late and you don't know the town -- why don't you come to Sambro Head and have dinner with Elisabeth and me? I'll drive you back afterwards." I was indeed looking for straws, and clutched at this one thankfully.

The ride along the ocean was enchanting. The sky was gradually assuming a deep indigo-blue colour, with pearl-like stars lighting up here and there; the coast-line was craggy, with numerous little bays and coves, whose shapes and lines I made out in the darkness of the air which was met by a different, moving darkness of the water. Never by the ocean before, I sensed its vastness and dormant power; much bulkier and more somber than the shimmering turquoise or azure Adriatic Sea of my childhood summers.

Elisabeth Mann's house was right on the ocean: a typical Maritime, non-brick house, perched on some vast rocks protruding into the water. I don't remember the initial introductions when we entered the house; I do remember that she wasn't much of a talker and that, despite the fact that she was only 20 when she left Germany with her family and had been living for decades in North America, she still had vestiges of the German accent in her English. I also remember her boyish hair-cut. They showed me around the house, whose centerpiece was her study: a room with a full row of floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the ocean, where Elisabeth could sit and contemplate marine life that she was so passionate about. But the highlight of that evening, of course, was the spectacle they mounted in my honour, just before dinner.

"And now," said Elisabeth, pointing to the two young English Setters that had been following us through the house, their long ears flapping left and right, "they will perform for you.""Oh, thank you," I said, grateful but at the same time befuddled, "and what is it that they are going to do?" "They will play the piano, of course!" Of course, I thought, but didn't say; who hasn't heard of dog pianists, anyway? The two long-limbed puppies must have gotten wind of what was coming from our looks and our tone of voice so they suddenly became even friskier, as if they couldn't wait to show off their skills, and something of their unbounded excitement spread and enveloped our whole group with a puff of magic that followed us as we descended the stairs. I imagined the distant blare of jovial trumpets and the multicolored rain of improvised confetti and immediately the evening took on a distinct carnivalesque flare.

In a small room on the ground floor, Elisabeth uncovered a keyboard lying low on the ground, with unusually broad keys -- it was made specially for this purpose, I was told. The two puppies took their positions side by side in front of the "piano" and grew almost solemn, waiting for the signal to start. They kept glancing at the bowl, covered with plastic wrap, which Elisabeth held in her hand, but knew they'd have to work hard to get their reward. And so it began, this concert. She sang a note and held it, looking at the dogs with a smile on her face and in her eyes, slightly bent towards them. The puppy on the left looked anxiously at the board, then tentatively touched a white key with a clumsy paw, making only a faint sound; Elisabeth shook her head, still holding the note. Then the puppy seemed to have a sudden rush of illumination and pressed another key with more certainty, getting it right this time. She praised him loudly -- he a bundle of eagerness and energy, hardly keeping his place -- then peeled the plastic off the bowl and gave him a hefty chunk of blood-red raw meat which he devoured in a gulp. This went on for a while, first with one then with the other puppy, and whenever they got it right, they got squares of meat, while Kathy and I applauded and cheered. There was no actual melody they produced -- or none, at least, that I could recognize. But it didn't seem to matter: something was clearly (?) accomplished, something worthy and momentous, at least as far as Elisabeth and the dogs were concerned. When I gave up trying to mentally piece together the isolated and chopped up notes which the black and white paws were producing (with a regular spattering of falsch ones in between), I took it all in with amusement: here I was, sitting down in Elisabeth Mann's house, listening to the doggy concerto on the brink of the Atlantic Ocean, in what felt like another life, galaxies away from Belgrade and the daily preoccupations of a country going to the dogs (no pun intended), where I was only 4 days before.

The concert didn't last long -- the puppies were making more and more falsch notes (perhaps they had had enough of their treats and ceased to be as attentive) -- so we covered the doggy piano and went to the dining-table to have dinner. The mood was sparkly and slightly comic in the wake of the canine spectacle; the dogs, in fact, continued to entertain us -- while we ate and chatted, they were busy chasing their shadows on the wall, eternally enthusiastic.

Later in the car while Kathy was driving me back, I didn't find any traces of the despondency I had felt a few hours before, despite the fact that she would be delivering me into the same prison-like room at the dorm. The world had opened up in the meantime and displayed an unsuspected compartment (with a hunderfräulein, an old lady, and two dogs in it), and it somehow shifted everything else. In the pleasant silence of the ride back, I reviewed the events of the day -- my fourth in Canada -- and figured that it made for a promising start.

E. M.