Hunger's Brides (198 page)

Sweetest bliss of decision…. Savour the insightful moment, this last night of eyesight in gaza—so SEE! See the quartered moon drawn free of the sea, see the rent cloudbellies gleam—watch abalone figurines prance to the shore on slippers of pearl—to carry her on in the glow in the sand on the rocks in the sea. Carry her on to the altar of dawn.

So she can never write this death. So she does not have to go on.

No no friendly friends she is touched by you just enough just now. Come back at noon she'll see you then, to look deep in your eyes and find fellow feeling there. Stop. Hands off here let her show something new this is something else she can do—make angels in the sand for you.

This is her miracle.

Stand in a circle now holding hands bulging pants watch her skinny-dip backstroke in the cool coral sand. Arms and legs flailing out little wings and angel skirts.

One private-eyed tar with blackjack boots / with a lazy kiss of a pointy toe flicks a nudge of sand up between her thighs. A moment of pause, of tarry cogitation then all join in the tarpit fun / hysterical highkick—heap her high with sand only feet no hands all play bury your fallen comrade till she goes blind in a sandstorm of contempt.

Hear a bell's musical tinkle …
oigan compañeros
, watch this—this will put out her fire, eh?—hear the chorus of laughs, buckling chimes, answering….

Hombres páranse. Ahorita mismo
.

The laughter stops, the chiming stops the fountain plash—all stops.

Sit up and see, blink the sand from her eyes. Who is this now-and-ever more surprises, is her work never done will the end never come?

A tiny white vision walks to the fire, always room for one more, have you come for her? She must remember to remember this, write it in braille tomorrow at noon. On he comes tiny Maya man all in white wading through bloodsmoke trailing sparks—a comet train of glowing cotton that stops. Stands stonestill. Eyegouges of fireshadow, impassive
Maya face a soft brass mask. Its high broad brow
frowns the whole fuck carousel down
.

Their Maya sergeant surges out of hiding in the trees, the strain of shame in his face an urgency.

Good evening,
caballeros
. I am sorry to interrupt.
Compadre
, Sergeant, I wonder if you would shut the music off. The boy soldiers stand round all wound up all unbuckled—balled fists / fists in the balls—needing so bad for something good to kill. The little vision waits till the sergeant is done then the two Mayas speak—cascade of soft glots glissades / high clicks and glides.

Next Captain Slowdance strides back to stand TALL—spread-legged tripod—surveyor's hands parallaxed at his back.

Sergeant Dzul!—who is this person?

He is respected, Captain.
Un poeta, un maestro, un curandero
. With many friends in our region.

Just tell me what he said.

That you and your men are far away from your loved ones. He said this is not what we do with women here. Or in the villages where the mothers and sisters of these young men here still live. He asked that I explain how it is with us.

Ah…. Well, my Maya healer friend … it is good you are so widely known.
Y gracias por su comprehensión
. But understand also that it is not always healthy to attract so much notice. Too many friends might turn your head. Completely.

Thank you, Captain Hooflick. I will take to heart your advice. Now, with your leave, she will be coming with me. Beulah, I have your things. Pick your dress up. Now, there, that's good. Put it on.

S
UNDAY
        

[Sunday, March 19, 1995]

C
ATHERINE IS FEELING
much better. The sky is a soft, dove-grey. The temperature has dropped to minus twenty-five. There is a heavy snow warning for late evening. Make ready.

They have put away a hearty breakfast. Their faces are brave. They are eager to leave the house, together, for a few hours. They bundle Catherine up in layer upon layer of wool, the outermost a robin's-egg blue. Casually, on the way out, Madeleine asks him to switch off the answering machine. The car is warm after a night in the garage. At a careful speed they make their curving way down one icy freeway named after a vanished Indian tribe, and up one named after another. The two meet at a river whose ancient name has been displaced. Between upthrust crusts of ice, the river glimmers a deep, mint green as they drive over the bridge.

Madeleine's parents live at the top of Coach Hill in an exclusive condominium complex designed and built by her father. Though there are still only a couple of inches of snow on the ground, Jack Cole is out snow-blowing the driveway as the black Saab pulls up. A small, solid man hunched over a thin plume of snow, puffs of steam issuing from between his lips. His glasses are opaque with frost. He is barehanded and coatless. White hair pinches out from under a blue and white woollen toque. He offers a stiff, ruddy smile of welcome. To smile can be painful at minus twenty-five. With great reluctance he'd traded his shovel in for the snow-blower, but only after the second heart attack.

He and Madeleine's father started off tolerating one another but have wound up almost friends. The proximity of a final heart failure brought out a mellow sweetness in the man, a childlike pleasure in simple things that Donald began noticing after Catherine was born. Sunday drives up to Coach Hill have become a regular event.

The house is furnished in quiet luxury. The roast goose is a triumph, the Oregon Pinot a revelation, the brandy
a folle blanche
Armagnac. The afternoon turns out to be just the tonic they all need. Catherine, scaling furniture and grandparents like the baby primate she is, appears almost completely recovered. She basks in the sunny
certainty of unclouded, unconditional love from every quarter, in every lap. After dinner, while the men sit hunched over snifters, the women load the dishwasher and tidy up. It is quietly agreed that Catherine will stay up on the hill for a few days, with Madeleine coming up for dinner each evening.

As they reach the bridge on the way home, the car skews slightly on a patch of ice. He slows.

“Mom's worried.”

“She said that?”

“She was hoping we had put all this behind us when Catherine was born.”

They stop at a traffic light, the only car on the road. Although it is not quite eight o'clock, it has been dark for two hours. At the spring equinox the sun sets in Calgary at about six-thirty, preceded, on days like this, by a long grey dusk. It is snowing more heavily now. Huge, wasp-paper flakes rare in weather so cold. A dry, fey beauty falls … flakes dropping out of darkness into the headlights. Flights of crystalline craft angle and bank to touch down on slant, molecular gear. All come to rest in a glinting, silica sea…. His wintry world has never been so lovely and precious to him.

“Did she ask what it was about?”

“She asked if she could help.”

“Tell her not to worry.”

And for the rest of the ride home they do seem not to worry. In the dashlight glow he sees her reach over, feels her hand, palm down, wedge itself snugly under his leg and against the leather seat. Over the years, how many miles have the two of them driven like this? He turns on the radio. Something by Haydn is ending.

He eases through the intersection and up the freeway home. The car gains speed through what seems an inexhaustible migration of moths on diamond wings, papery multitudes smashed without violence in the headlights.

Another traffic light. The freeway ahead curves up and away in a soft, orange strand of sodium lamps. As the car gains speed he feels through the steering wheel the shift in surfaces—slippage, stutter and grip—ice, packed snow, asphalt. In a news bulletin a provincial politician addresses the people of the empty ranchlands. His is the furry-tongued voice of repentant adolescence, austerity, alcoholism. He's had
a belt or two again this night. It is the speech of a lackey, a quisling groomed for this common touch of his, for wrecking the common good. Man of the people, bred to turn on his own—a jowly, gimlet-eyed, half-pint cannibal in a Zellers suit. Another populist who despises democracy, fronting another government that hates government, a common-sense revolution backed by creationists.

At the wheel the driver has worked himself into a complacent pique. Forces are set to extinguish the world he has known. An extinction all the more devastating to remember for this day of reprieve. But his belly is full and the brandy flickers in him with a soft, certain glow. They drive through the enveloping night in a well-built foreign car.

He glances over at Madeleine. It is a long time since he has bothered himself about any of this, but he has been learning the price of turning one's back on the past … he knows this is why he hates this politician.

He thinks ahead to their destination, now five minutes away. Feels a flush of anticipation thickening in his groin. With Catherine out of harm's way, they will be more relaxed. They will fight back, push back the gloom invading the house. He will take down a fresh bottle of port from the wine rack in the dining room, throw a quick glo-log on the hearth, fill one goblet brimful with thick, dark grape. He will feel her lips, still chapped with cold, nuzzling his throat, release a warm slippery dram from his lips into hers. As husband and wife sink into firelight her slate-blue eyes will widen—once again the madcap tomboy playing Indian with the older boys. He will hear the sweet laughter he has heard so many times at the top of their toboggan ride—ohh, no-o-two drawn-out tones of complicity; they gather speed—precious peals of throaty laughter, so-o-o unlady-like. Then the long, smooth glide … his silence, her murmurings for each dip and rise. Like closed captions for the hard of touch. Never words, just her soft hum of ecstasy. She has given so much, these ten years. How much has been returned?

Where is she, is she laughing now?—he strains to hear her laughter as he writes….

He has just seen how close he's come to falling in love with his wife.

The black car pulls up the driveway and stops at the garage door. He switches off the headlights. They sit for a moment longer, reluctant to break the spell. He rolls down his window. Snow continues
to fall past the blue-green light at the street corner. A sovereign weightlessness falls from nowhere to nowhere, under a law more like whimsy than gravity. He angles his head out the window and looks up to catch a flake on his tongue. Overhead, a vast hopper of flakes tips through the dark in a soft hurtling of owls….

He rolls the window up.

As he switches the car off, the announcer is introducing Bach, a fugue in D minor.

He starts to open the door and looks at her. She has not moved, has been watching him. He pauses expectantly.“Have we brought this on ourselves?” she asks.

“
No
. Don't say that.”

“Something we did to each other years ago? Something still in this house?”

“Madeleine … let's go in—come on.”

She looks just past him out the car window, begins again. “I shoplifted some clothes when I was thirteen. A white camisole and a pair of blue jeans. I had the money. For weeks I wore them everywhere, they became my favourite things. One night I lost my mind for five minutes and told Mom. The next day she made me take them back. I'd worn them already a hundred times. Can't I just pay for them? No. We're going to give them back together. She told me to wash them but I couldn't. I ran the washer and dryer empty. I remember inhaling the scent from the paper bag they were folded up in before we got out of the car.

“Then I gave them back, Don. I feel like that now, you know?”

He reaches over to take her hand. “We'll get through this.”

“Maybe I didn't earn it, maybe I haven't paid enough …”

In her face it is clear how badly she needs to believe whatever he will tell her next. He walks around the car to her door. Opens it. Takes her by the hand. She follows him up the front steps, not letting go. He leads her through the living room of the life they have built. He feels there isn't much time. It is true. He does not take the time to light the fire, does not even turn on a light. A thin bluish glow falls between the drapes. He does not go to the wine rack, does not open port. He leads her to the couch, leaves her boots and long suede coat on, flakes dwindling to mist. He fumbles at her fly, pulls her jeans down to her ankles and kneels her on the couch. Their need is great,
they have so little time, just enough light. There is no laughter tonight. He bends her like a bow. The melodic line he now plucks from her is of a woman toiling over a long, broken slope.

In the darkness, his own silence is intact.

Later, when much has changed, he will tell himself she was right, that there was something in the house, let in long before, a cruel spirit to be propitiated that cared nothing for reprieves. But at the time, for the briefest instant, his shame is intense. He burns with a black self-loathing. The moment passes.