Coming Through Slaughter - Michael Ondaatje [8]
Yeah? When did you last see Bolden?
Like someone removing a poker that’s been up your arse all your life. It’s fantastic. Then you can start eating again—is that a nectarine? I’ll have a nectarine.
What was he doing when you last saw him?
He was on a boat.
Shit man, Bolden hated boats.
Listen, he was on a boat.
While Webb is talking to Crawley, this is what Bolden sees:
The woman is cutting carrots. Each carrot is split into 6 or 7 pieces. The knife slides through and hits the wood table that they will eat off later. He is watching the coincidence of her fingers and the carrots. It began with the colour of the fingers and then the slight veins on the carrot magnified themselves to his eyes. In this area of sight the fingers have separated themselves from her body and move in a unity of their own that stops at the sleeve and bangle. As with all skills he watches for it to fail. If she thinks what she is doing she will lose control. He knows that the only way to catch a fly for instance is to move the hand without the brain telling it to move fast, interfering. The silver knife curves calm and fast against carrots and fingers. Onto the cuts in the table’s brown flesh.
‘The only thing I can tell you Webb is about the last time I saw him. Last fall. He had never been on a boat before. Though god knows he’s lived against the river all his life. But he was never on it. Anyway, the two of us and a couple of others went up to Shell Beach. We were supposed to play for three nights there. Usually we didn’t play together but we liked each other’s way and got on. There was very little money in the Shell Beach thing and each of the band was billeted with organisers. Bolden was to stay with a couple called the Brewitts—a pianist and his wife. You may have heard of him, Jaelin Brewitt, he used to be popular about five years ago …’
Spanish Fort, Shell Beach, Lake Pontchartrain, Milneburg, Algiers, Gretna.
— All considered New Orleans suburbs.
[Milenburg Joys!]
Bolden lost himself then. Jaelin’s wife, Robin, was very much part of the Shell Beach music world too, small enough in itself, but they got good musicians in and often. When he saw her he nearly fainted. After a party he went home with the Brewitts and pretended he was hungry so they wouldn’t go to bed. Bolden was never much of an eater but he lied that he hadn’t eaten for two days and so they sat there for three hours and he forced himself to eat and eat, taking twenty minutes with an egg squashed in a bowl and a drink in the hand. They sat till all tiredness was gone, the three of them, and about five in the morning they stood and groaned and went to bed. Then Bolden did a merciless thing. For the first time he used his cornet as jewelry. After the couple had closed their door, he slipped in a mouthpiece, and walked out the kitchen door which led to an open porch. Cold outside. He wore just his dark trousers and a collarless white shirt. With every sweet stylised gesture that he knew no one could see he aimed for the gentlest music he knew. So softly it was a siren twenty blocks away. He played till his body was frozen and all that was alive and warm were the few inches from where his stomach forced the air up through his chest and head into the instrument. Music for the three of them, the other two in bed, not saying a word.
Next morning Crawley was on the beach while Bolden got into the boat, a day cruiser, bobbing on the crowded Sunday water. He began to yell something at Crawley. Crawley called back. Bolden a hundred feet out with the Brewitts. They were shouting back and forth in musical terms. Crawley knew he was saying goodbye to his friend. He was saying goodbye to his friend.
‘That was it … I went back into town later that afternoon, he didn’t show for the last two performances and didn’t show at the train. I went over to the Brewitts the next day and Robin said he wasn’t there. No one has seen or heard of him playing anywhere