Page 48 [48]
OCR
CANADIAN LANDSCAPES/ PAYSAGES CANADIENS “VANDALS” (1994) “Vandals” is one of Munro’s darkest narratives. The story is set in two timelines: past and present. In the past, Liza is a maternal orphan, who wanders with her little brother onto Ladner’s estate next door, an open-air botanical and zoological garden of his own making. Ladner, a British veteran of World War II, immigrates to Canada for undisclosed reasons and starts a new life as a taxidermist there. Bea, a local dignitary’s daughter, who finds fitting in her small town difficult, joins Ladner on the estate and, although she feels some tension, she stays with him: she learns “to live surrounded by implacability, by ready doses of indifference which at times might seem like scorn. So she explained her condition, during the first half-year” (269). In this taxidermist Garden of Eden, the couple and the kids live a seemingly carefree life filled with instruction about nature. In the present, the elderly Ladner is in hospital, Bea takes care of him and phones the now grown-up Liza asking her to check on the house in the winter storm. Liza returns to the place she spent her childhood at and, much to her husband’s surprise, vandalizes the house in her care. The reader gains an insight into the secret motivating the trashing through Bea’s and Liza’s memories. Ladner had sexually abused Liza and her now dead little brother, something that Bea, despite all the clues, does not realize, as in the past so in the present. Bea’s intentional blindness also prevents her from realizing how much Ladner despises her. But Liza is not ready to face the truth of her abuse, either. As a born-again Christian, she has begun a new life and now she is compulsively clinging to her own new rules. Her vandalization of the house is a real surprise to her husband as well, familiar with her new converted self only. However, sensing that a secret lurks in the shadows of her actions, he quietly assists her. What makes the story rare even in Munro’s oeuvre is the fact that there are two protagonists with two stories that overlap. In one, Bea is an Eve to Ladner as Adam: significantly, in one scene she looks for morels but only finds rotten apples. She chooses to ignore Ladner’s hostility and the child Liza and Ken’s telltale behavior over the years. In the present time of the story, she escapes into solitary drinking and reminiscing about life with Ladner. She has been tempted by Liza to face the truth about Ladner. In the past, the child Liza asks her to act as their protector by giving her a gift, which Bea misinterprets; in the present, she is unwilling to visit the vandalized house — Liza’s message that Bea misinterprets again — or communicate with Liza; instead, while drinking, she imagines writing letters to Liza about her dreams. In the other storyline, Liza is an Eve to Ladner as Adam, and Bea tempts her to face the truth of her past by asking her to go back to Ladner’s garden, the place of her abuse. However, rather than acknowledging that their secret life together was marked by him abusing her, she chooses to direct her rage at the world of his own making. + 46 +
