Waiting for Qua to Leave

[Leafstorm]

One morning I went downtown to meet a friend for a performance of a post-absurdist musical travesty. I became concerned when I noticed there was no one in the lobby of the theatre, even though it was five minutes to curtain.

A black-haired, black-lipped teenager dressed in black and wearing black plastic sunglasses with green lenses, entered the lobby from stage right and, after asking me to sit on the floor with her, sold me a ticket and a cup of black tea. She also handed me a small plastic bag of tiny fish vertebrae.

“What’s this for?” I asked. She grunted and looked at me as if I was from another planet.

“Hello?” she said with undisguised disdain. “The exploding Nativity scene?”

We stood up and she exited stage left. I followed her through a moldy curtain and entered the theatre, expecting to find a small room with a stage and chairs. Instead, I had walked into a northwestern rain forest. The air was cool and damp, and I was surrounded by dripping evergreens and huge ferns. Scrub jays and crows squawked noisily. A woodpecker hammered on the trunk of a gigantic Douglas fir tree, like a stage hand making some last minute preparations to the set.

I thought about returning to the lobby, to find out if I had the wrong address and to ask for my money back. I decided to go for a walk in the forest instead, because the scenery was so pleasant and realistic.

I walked on a dirt path for about ten minutes, munching on salmonberries that I picked along the way. At one point I saw a mule deer wearing an earring, sitting at a café table, sipping a latté, playing a game of backgammon with a giant blue salamander. The salamander had a flaming phoenix tattooed on his bicep. But this was not the show I’d come to see, nor were either of them the friend I’d planned to meet, and so I kept walking.

By and by I came to a clearing where golden sunlight streamed down to the forest floor. A single, scrawny willow tree grew in the center of the clearing. Standing next to the tree was a bent, gray-haired Frenchman. I knew he was French because he wore a soiled, black beret, his face was covered with gray stubble, he supported himself with a wooden cane, he squeezed a skinny loaf of French bread under one arm, he was dressed entirely in black, his breath was rhonchus, and his overall appearance was one of decrepit proximity to death.

I greeted the old man, introduced myself, and waited for him to reciprocate in the European manner.

“Je suis Qua,” he said after a moment. He stared at me with rheumy eyes the color of dead tree moss. He took a small bite from his loaf of bread and continued to stare at me while he chewed.

“Enchanté,” I replied. “Je suis Lemal. By the way, has anyone passed by here recently? Anyone to see a play called – ”

“No one!” he interrupted.

“Ah, I see.”

In the silence that followed I heard my stomach rumble.

“Excuse me,” I said to the old man, “but I’m feeling a little hungry. Would you mind if I had a small piece of your bread?”

“No!” he replied brusquely. “This is a prop. I am an actor. I am to perform in a play. The other actors . . .” he waved the loaf vaguely, “they were to meet me. ‘By the tree,’ they said. But . . .” His pale lips trembled. “There are so many trees, so goddamn many trees, those bastards! Les bâtards! They were all supposed to meet me – Puncher and Wattman, Miranda, Testew, Fartow and Belcher, Possy of Essay, Feckman and Peckham, and that fils de pute Cunard!”

The old man bit furiously into his bread, and a tear fell from one of his eyes onto the loaf.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe there was a misunderstanding. Though it is possible, I suppose, that they’re all playing a joke on you. Or maybe, like me, you came to the wrong address. We all make mistakes. Even Cunard, perhaps.”

“Pffuck Cunard!” shouted the old man with a spray of chewed bread.

“How long have you been waiting?” I ask, trying to diffuse his anger.

“Thirty-three years,” he replied. He took another vicious bite out of his loaf. “J'en ai rien à foutre.”

“It’s amazing that your bread has stayed fresh so long. It certainly does look delicious!” My stomach growled aggressively.

“Déface!” he snarled, backing away from me. “Cunard sent you, eh? Well, when Monsieur Cunard comes I’ll beat him with this loaf! And then you! Baise toi!”

He took another bite out of his loaf, then removed his beret, peered into it, smelled it, and placed it back on his head. I, out of empathy for the raving man, sat on a tree stump at the edge of the clearing, removed a shoe, smelled it, and shook out nothing.

Since the stump made a fairly comfortable seat, and since the clearing resembled a stage, the willow a prop or an anorexic actress, the sunlight a spotlight, and since I’d paid for a ticket and the old man confessed to be an actor, I decided to sip my cold black tea and watch Qua as if he were the show I’d come to see.

The play progressed inevitably, each new scene beginning with a bite of the loaf, each act ending with Qua swearing at Cunard and then removing, peering at, smelling, and replacing the beret on his head. I responded on cue by silently removing a shoe, smelling it, and shaking nothing out of it.

But soon I grew bored with the lack of music and dancing – it was a musical travesty I’d come for, after all. And so, in the tradition of melodrama audience participation, I opened my plastic bag of fish vertebrae and began throwing them at Qua. The little white bones hit him on his frail arms and legs, and occasionally on his ear or his nose, which caused him to emit little yelps and curses in French.

“Sing, pig!” I shouted at him, growing into the role. “Dance, you scum!” But it was no use. No matter how hard I threw the fish vertebrae, Qua would not dance. He simply turned his back to me and hugged his loaf so tight that his fingers broke through the crust and penetrated the soft bread inside.

When I had used up all of my vertebrae I grew bored again. But for some reason couldn’t bring myself to leave. I felt compelled to stay, as I was now curious to see how the play would end. Also, I was thinking that it would be impolite for me, the audience, to walk out before the play had finished, and before Qua had taken his bows and left the stage. So I remained seated and watched. “Poor Qua,” I thought. “Poor Qua.”

A scrub jay laughed somewhere in the forest, the woodpecker continued to work on the unfinished set, a tiny bubble formed on the lower lip of the giant blue salamander as he gently touched the hoof of the mule deer, Qua continued to eat his bread, scene after monotonous scene, act after somber act, without music, without dialogue, without Cunard . . . so calm . . . unfinished . . .