Dialogue: Dreaming of a white Christmas? You have to be joking

By JOE BENNETT

"Regina," said the woman at the party.

"Regina," I said. "Regina, I've been there," and before she could say another word I had her cornered by the fridge and was treating her to an unstoppable surge of memory.

Christmas Eve, December 1982 or '83, and it was minus 40 on the Canadian prairies. Minus 40 Fahrenheit and minus 40 Celsius are the same temperature. That temperature excited me.

You had to breathe through your mouth. If you shut your eyes for a few seconds, they froze shut. If you grabbed metal, you left skin behind. People plugged their cars in to heaters at night.

I was in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I had stopped there for the name. No country does names like Canada - Medicine Hat, Yellow Knife, Pickle Crow, Skunk - but two days of Moose Jaw and I was bored. Minus 40 limits activities. I couldn't skate, I knew no one in Moose Jaw, no one wanted to know me and I had spent so much time in the folk museum that I knew both exhibits by heart.

I had borrowed a parka to cross the country in. It was thick, heavy and trimmed with wolverine fur. Underneath it I wore only thermal underwear and a pair of woollen socks to the knee.

On Christmas Eve morning I pulled the wolverine tight like an eskimo's hood, walked out onto the highway to Regina and stuck a gloved thumb in the air. After 20 minutes the flesh of my cheeks had been burned by the cold. I walked back into town and bought a ticket for the train.

The waiting room echoed. Its cavernous vastness had been built for the days when the railways were the thin veins of the country. But for the man in the ticket office I was alone. Huge furnaces heated the place. The train was late.

"She's fruz up in the Hat," said the man in the ticket office.

"The Hat?" I said.

"Medicine Hat," he said.

I read half a book of Rumpole stories. The train, said the man, was still in the Hat and still fruz up. I finished Rumpole. At midnight the man suggested that I sleep. He would wake me when the train came. Before I lay down, I pinned a sock to the end of my wooden bench.

At three o'clock on Christmas morning the ticket man shook my shoulder. The train wasn't coming. They were sending a bus. It would arrive in 10 minutes. I thanked him and took down the sock. It was empty.

I photographed myself in an automatic booth. The photos slid out just as the bus arrived and I climbed on board shaking them dry. I still have them. I had pushed the wolverine fur back around my neck. I look rough, tired, lonely and young.

Regina was less cold than Moose Jaw, but the streets were Christmas Day empty. A hotel advertised a Christmas lunch of goose. "A goose to a table," it said.

I asked at reception if I could eat and a sweet girl sold me a fixed-price ticket which I then handed to the maitre d'. He took my pack and my parka. I walked into the dining room in my boots, socks and thermals. The room was half full. The men wore bow ties, the women ball dresses. The men and women stared at me. Hunger fought embarrassment and won.

I sat at a corner table set, like all the others, for eight. A band of minstrels serenaded each table in turn. The diners would smile fixedly through the tune, then at its end the lead minstrel would shuffle forward, pocket a discreet tip, bow and retreat and the fixed smiles would dissolve from the diners' faces.

The minstrels did not approach my table. Nor did anyone else. The tables around me filled with suavely dressed people but I sat with seven empty place-settings like the churl at a medieval feast.

A flock of roast geese came in on platters. People exclaimed with wonder.

One woman clapped her bird. I got my goose last. It was many hours since I'd eaten. I tried to carve but it proved easier to tear at the goose with my fingers.

I ate almost all of it, but left the vegetables. I wanted to toss the bones over my shoulder. I don't think anyone would have stopped me.

"And that's all I know of Regina," I said to the woman who was looking faintly amused. "What did you make of the place?"

"I've never been there," she said.

"But I heard you mention it."

"No, dear," she said, "almost but not quite."

"Oh," I said, "sorry," and then I thought a bit, and then I said "oh" again and left the party.