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out rooms, boarders were not easy to find. Nevertheless, my mother turned down a woman just arrived from Port Arthur on the grounds that we already had a woman boarder and they were far more demanding than men. Three weeks went by before a man offered to take it, but my mother said that he was too feeble and that, if he died in bed, who would pay for the funeral?
    At last came a third. His name was Sigismond Eisler. Totally bald but virile-looking and with the bushy eyebrows of a moving-pictures comedian. Full lips, a barrel chest, bowlegged. An unattractive man, but with a certain tenderness in his eyes — this is what Bella saw. His possessions were held in two suitcases tied with rope, which he carried uncomplainingly from the market to the house and up the stairs. He looked into the room for significantly longer than was needed to take it in.
    â€œI am a good cook,” Bella said.
    â€œIt is reminding me a little of my boyhood room. Yes, I will take it with gratitude.”
    He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes a moment, as if a terrible image had come to him. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but she said, “You can pay rent today?”
    â€œI have a wife and child.”
    â€œHere? The room is too small.”
    â€œIn Germany. She refused to leave. We did not have the same political ideas. They will come for me if I stay. I was a coward to leave, perhaps.”
    She had never heard a man say such a thing about himself. But there is a kind of man who needs to prostrate himself even before strangers, eternally hoping for forgiveness. She watched him take out his shabby wallet and count out the money. She took the bills from his thick fingers and slipped them into the pocket of her apron.
    â€œDinner is in an hour,” she said.
    Of course, I did not see all this myself — there is much that I did not see directly. But just as it is possible to guess that a man is thinking of an ace or a heart, or that a woman in the audience wishing to volunteer will be pliant or troublesome, so it is possible to know what is said and done, what is desired and feared.
    I did, however, see my mother ladle the pasta al forno from the ceramic dish onto the new boarder’s plate. Miss Kussman passed it to him, not hiding her resentment at having been displaced one seat at the table. I watched the new boarder take up a forkful and put it experimentally into his mouth. His eyes bulged as he opened his mouth and fanned with his hand.
    â€œIt . . . is . . . hot!”
    â€œFood should be hot. You like it?”
    â€œIt is very good.”
    My father snorted and, ignoring the knife, tore off the end of the bread. Miss Kussman said, “And what sort of work did you do back in Germany, if I may ask?” She herself worked in the Neilson’s factory and sometimes brought me broken chocolate bars in a paper bag that I now shared with Corinne. She had a prominent Adam’s apple that reminded me of Olive Oyl.
    â€œI was working in the office of an architect. Making models. Flats for working people. Common spaces. Gardens and meeting rooms. But then there was no work.”
    â€œAnd there’s no work here,” my father said.
    â€œYes, you are an expert on that,” my mother said.
    Miss Kussman asked, “And what are you doing now?”
    â€œOh, anything to keep body and soul together.” He was digging into his food now, hardly able to eat fast enough. “Mr. Kleeman,” he said. “You are not related to the Kleeman Writing Instrument Company? I see their advertisements everywhere. I even have one, you see?”
    My mother laughed. She laughed again, flinging back her head, and the boarder looked up at her as if she might be a little mad.

“When I grow up, I’m going to move to New York. Going to be a singer. A big star.”
    We were walking down Yonge Street on Saturday night, past Muirhead’s Cafeteria, Scholes