Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje [28]
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The black dog I picked up a few miles south of your place has snuggled against me. No woman for over a month has been as close to my body as he is tonight. I got up to make a drink and returned to find him sitting on the sofa where my warmth had been. Dogs on your furniture, Webb. He is quite dirty and I’ll bathe him tomorrow. Just dusty for the most part but there are pointed knots of mud under the belly—probably collected by going through wet evening grass. He is not used to living in houses I can tell, although he immediately climbs onto furniture. He is not used to softness and every few hours throughout the night he moves from chair to sofa and finally finds the floor to be the answer. I came back into the room and he looked up expecting me to reclaim my place. I’ve snuggled against his warmth. Have just bent over and notice his claws are torn.
The heat has fallen back into the lake and left air empty. You can smell trees across the bay. I notice tonight someone has moved in over there. One square of light came on at twilight and changed the gentle shape of the tree line, making the horizon invisible. Was annoyed till I admitted to myself I had been lonely and this comforted me. The rest of the world is in that cabin room behind the light. Everyone I know lives there and when the light is on it means they are there. Before, every animal noise made me suspect people were arriving. Rain would sound like tires on the gravel. I would run out my heart furious and thumping only to be surrounded by a sudden downpour. I would stand shaking, getting completely wet for over a minute. Then come in, strip all my clothes off and crouch in front of the fire.
Webb I’m tired of the bitching tonight. The loneliness. I really wanted to talk about my friends. Nora and Pickett and me. Robin and Jaelin and me. I saw an awful thing among us. And that was passion could twist around and choose someone else just like that. That in one minute I knew Nora loved me and then, whatever I did from a certain day on, her eyes were hunting Pickett’s mouth and silence. There was nothing I could do. Pickett could just stand there and he had her heart balanced on his tongue. And then with Robin and me—Jaelin stood there far more intelligent and sensitive and loving and pained and it did nothing to her, she had swerved to me like a mad compass, aimed east east east, ignoring everything else. I knew I was hurting him and I screwed her and at times humiliated her in front of him, everything. We had no order among ourselves. I wouldn’t let myself control the world of my music because I had no power over anything else that went on around me, in or around my body. My wife loved Pickett, I think. I loved Robin Brewitt, I think. We were all exhausted.
From the very first night I was lost from Robin.
The cold in my head and the cough woke me. Walking round your house making hot water grapefruit and Raleigh Rye drinks. That was the first night that was four weeks ago. And now too my starving avoiding food. Drunk and hungry in the middle of the night in this place crowded with your furniture and my muttering voice. Robin lost. Who slid out of my heart. Who has become anonymous as cloud. I wake up with erections in memory of Robin. Every morning. Till she has begun to blur into Nora and everybody else.
What do you want to know about me Webb? I’m alone. I desire every woman I remember. Everything is clear here and still I feel my brain has walked away and is