Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, July 17

A short report

3.08 a.m. Yesterday began with an early flurry of texts, a seismic register of the rumbling rumours that Covid booster shots had been released from whatever pen to which they are confined — or, perhaps, roam about, freely, like contented, advantaged hens — and had been apportioned to the Shopper’s Drug Mart a scant few blocks to the east. I called the Shoot Me Up Hotline without delay, also without much hope of success, but got through with no difficulty, was able to secure a spot on the roster, and as of 7 p.m. last night have had my immune system bolstered against whatever gain-of-function variant is now in vogue: the BA5, the MA6, the PhD7.4, I’ve stopped paying attention. Billy P was also among the elect, so we got to make a date night out of it, and, in addition to getting the jab — it was awfully generous of the technician to smile when I told her we didn’t need separate syringes, that we share one all the time — were also able to avail ourselves of the blood pressure testing machine AND take advantage of the sale on Sensodyne. Thus far in my life I’ve managed to avoid any heart medication but after so much excitement it’s possible I’ll have to lay in a supply of digitalis. I shouldn’t make light. A friend who fell ill while traveling has been laid up for three weeks, is only just now regaining ground, and, very recently, a young woman who cooked at my local felt unwell on Monday and was dead by Tuesday. True, there were comorbidities; even so, shocking. It’s not nothing, I know; for some, for whatever reason, it’s more of a something than for others. I’ve been lucky — wood, knock — to have so far been spared. The worst I’m likely to endure is an unpleasant post-vaccination side effect, that won’t, I pray, cause my arm to stiffen and enter a state of temporary paralysis while I’m plying a bulk bin with a 25-pound bag of lentils.

excellent results!

“Just a little mosquito bite.” That was the usual line the doctor, the nurse, whoever wielded the needle, used to trot out by way of reassurance back in the days of the Pediatric Administration. Perhaps they thought we were too young and unschooled to have heard of malaria. Mosquitoes were a feature and fixture of our summers on the prairies. At the lake they were especially bad; “the lake,” for us, was the Lake Winnipeg cottage community of Matlock, where my grandparents had their summer place. My older brother and I slept in a room with two beds that were placed at a 90 degree angle against a large storage unit, a sort of blanket box, made of knotty pine. I remember one night the air attacks were so intense — we would have been, perhaps, 5 and 6 years old — that we climbed into the box, made a game of it, pretended we were hiding from the Cossacks, or some damn thing, and that was where we were discovered in the morning, all entwined like babes in the woods. At least, this is what I remember, and I don’t think I’m making it up. None of the sprays or unguents were very effective, we were young and inviting smorgasbords there for the plundering, chemistry was no palliative. At night, on the porch, out came the DuDu coils — wait, have I got that right? Is that what they were called? Hang on, I’ll look it up. Yes. That seems to be it. This gizmo.

I don’t think they did much good, but it was trippy to watch the slow burn coil in on itself, a kind of mandala meditation.

There was also fascination to be found in the path of least resistance, in simply giving in, in letting the mosquito be the mosquito, to be its willing plasma bag, to watch it at its work, injection’s opposite, literally “just a little mosquito bite.” Miraculous, really, how they can insert into the flesh that insubstantial proboscis, how you can see the microfilament of blood move from your body into theirs. There was even dramatic tension, a little like blowing up a balloon past the point of no return, wondering if, as their cargo hold reached capacity they might take one sip too many and simply explode. I never saw that happen, I suspect they’re too evolved to let gluttony get the better of them. To watch them detach and heave away into the air, freighted with the fuel that gave you your own life, was its own satisfaction. And it presented a moral choice, for they were then at their most vulnerable, and easy to take down. It was a Solomon moment; the wall around my bed was splattered crimson here and there, a testament to how I’d decided.

Mosquitoes here, on the west coast, at least in this part of the west coast, are not exactly unknown, but are a relative rarity. So I was surprised the other night, when I’d taken myself out for a solitary dinner, and was seated at the bar, reading, who else, Mavis Gallant (MG) that I was joined by this uninvited, but not necessarily unwelcome, guest.

In order to take the photos, I had to reach over the book — In Transit, the very copy MG signed for Don Davis, who gave me the pen she used for the inscription, I wrote about this weeks ago — grab my phone, take the time to adjust the lens, then lean in, focus, and click. I would have supposed that any of these motions might have alerted the sucker to how it was observed, was therefore imperilled, but it seemed perfectly content just to rest there, atop page 206 — the story is “A Report,” — and enter posterity, if that’s what this is. More than content, really. Determined. Deliberate.

I pay sufficient attention to signs and symbols that I wondered if this might be some indication from the cosmos, a message from MG herself, via a winged emissary; if so, what was it? Was her intention affirming, benign? Hello, Bill, what do you have an itch to know? Or was it, as I’m more inclined to think, a scolding, or warning. You bug me. Enough with your vampirism. I may be dead, but I can bite.

“Fly away home,” I said, and nudged it along. It complied, but grudgingly, or so it seemed to me. A minor mystery. A small story. Inconclusive. That’s all it left behind. Which is true of most happenstance, I suppose. 4.29 a.m. My brain is foggy. This all feels limp, needless. Maybe it’s the antiviral, stirring things up, or tamping them down. Maybe it’s just the hour. Whatever. I leave you to arrive at your own moral of the tale. Sometimes a mosquito is just a mosquito. Thanks for reading. xo, B

P.S. I will add that I’ve been poking away at some writing about MG and Wagner; here, too, in the cartoon on the left, is a sign. MG, making her report.