Vol. 4, Number 2	Summer 2001 issue

 

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In Catherine Bush’s The Rules of Engagement, life is mysterious. There are international intrigues and there are unexpected love affairs. There are people names Arcadia and Lux. In this world, two uncommonly confident young men can fight a duel over a woman in present-day Montreal and then go on with their lives.

This duel fought by Evan and Neil, competing for the love of the young Arcadia Hearne forms the anachronistic core of Bush’s tale of love and war. Evan is the steady boyfriend, Neil the one who has exposed Evan’s shortcomings. And it is Neil who ends up shot in the groin. But no one gets the girl: Arcadia runs. She hops a flight to London, and doesn’t return for over ten years. After a decade in relatively happy exile, however, the pangs of the unresolved hit Arcadia hard. What has become of the other players in the dramatic duel? The moment of the gunshot, with all of the mystery that remained in the silence that followed, has continued to haunt Arcadia, and has left her troubled by obsessions with risk, danger, violence, and the mechanics of war.

            Bush has rewritten an old-fashioned fable of heroism, and set it in a modern world. In this transformation, she has removed much of the straightforward grandeur and meaning of such tales. The whole thing has gotten much more complicated, and much uglier. The bones have been revealed. Grandiose actions appear ridiculous and superficial instead of romantic. Bush questions whether such a grave risk means anything today or if it ever did. Doesn’t the duel stand in for jealousy, really, and not for love? Arcadia herself doubts that the duel was even fought for her.

In the present, in London, Arcadia works for The Centre for Contemporary War Studies. She has a degree in the field: War Studies, “not Defense Studies or Conflict Studies or Peace and Conflict Studies.” And as the book progresses, we see the many ways in which her work affects and is affected by her own experience with battle, however small. She thinks day in and day out about the causes of war, the role of allegiance and intervention, the element of self-interest in any act of generosity. We read her thoughts about Rwanda, Bosnia, Chechnya, Liberia. We see that consideration of war does not involve righteousness, or valor, or bravery, but tactics, and theoretical motivations, and sanctioned behavior.

From Arcadia’s concern with present global conflict emerges the second plot line of the novel. When Lux, Arcardia’s sister, asks her to deliver a package on behalf of an American relief organization, Arcadia becomes involved with a Bosnian female singer, Basra Alale. Basra has escaped to London – a refugee – and Arcadia agrees to meet her. When she arrives at the café, she meets an Iranian man, Amir Barmour, as well, who seems mysteriously entangled with Basra’s predicament. But Arcadia does not inquire further; she leaves the package - $5000 American dollars – and is on her way. When Arcadia runs into Amir a couple of weeks later, catches him off guard and concludes the awkward encounter by inviting him to lunch. A romance ensues, however predictably, haunted by lingering suspiciousness and mystery.

In fact, very little in this book is without a hint of mystery. There is a pervasive sense of something running below the surface, some undercurrent, and although this pulls a reader along – as we wait for answers, for a revelation – at some point we cannot help but wonder why Arcadia doesn’t just ask somebody what the heck is going on. There is very little that happens to her that, if I were the participant, I would not immediately call into question. Amir, it turns out, is forging passports. This is why he was at the café with Basra, why Arcadia must bring the money, and why he conducts everything with secrecy and the shady behavior.

It is hard to say whether all of this intrigue amounts to much. Bush writes well, line for line, giving Arcardia, who narrates the book, an eerie and compelling tone. She lets us into a strange and exciting world, drafting a clear plan of Arcadia’s London, convincingly exploring her character’s fascination with war and violence throughout. The ways in which Arcadia is haunted – her memory running in circles, blending with invention and speculation – feel real and even plausible. And the intricacies of plot do come together in the end, however tenuously. But there are just too many signposts, too many moments when it seems anyone in her right mind would stop dead in her tracks.

But this is just a book and imagination may always out do the material world. Maybe Bush attempts to recapture the literary sentiments of a time when realism did not carry so much weight. Maybe indulging in these implausible situations and exaggerations is simply part of the joy of story telling and of story reading. Perhaps Bush seeks to remind us that intrigue and intellect can go hand in hand, and to show that, like Arcadia, every reader or individual can believe whatever she want. And not only in fairy tales, but even in a world obsessed with fact.