Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje [60]
That night, lying flat on her back, Claire heard someone moving in the dark around her bed. She could hear breathing close by. She feared it might be the men who had beaten him, who had just come into the house. There was a leap, and Dorn’s dog, who had been deciding from which side to enter the bed, burrowed next to her under the covers, its claws towards her. For a while it was still, and then, wanting more space, it pressed the claws gently, then more firmly, like tuning forks into her back.
By eight the next morning, Ruth had left for work. Dorn spread a large piece of velour over the sofa and with Claire’s help began stitching costumes for the medieval feast that was an annual local event. It was to be held that night in the historic Miners Foundry, now a community centre, where everyone would be arriving in royal, peasant, or troubadour costumes. Dorn interrupted his brutal sewing by flinging a giant flank of meat, gar-licked and herbed, on the barbecue. He insisted that Claire and Coop participate in the ceremonies. It was just a local crowd. He broke into his favourite songs all afternoon while they worked on capes and hoods. ‘In Delaware when I was younger …’ He sang verse after verse of that song, and made up a few others. ‘Now, that’s a great song. Great song!’ Ruth and their daughter returned home at five, and soon they were all transformed into fourteenth-century European villagers, Dorn’s nonremovable beads and shells the only hints of the contemporary. Coop and Dorn carried the giant platter of meat, and Ruth brought a bowl of edamame beans. But the narrow streets of Nevada City were full of war protesters amid the music of mandolins and flutes. Twelve years after the American bombing of the Gulf in 1991, America was poised to attack Iraq again, and Pacifica and NPR stations had been updating information all day. So Claire found herself alongside medieval monks carrying antiwar placards to the event.
Dorn pulled his squirming daughter out for the first dance of the evening, and fifteen minutes later dragged Claire out too, crushing her to his doublet. She leaned against this Delaware-born (as in the song) anarchic hippie conspiracy-theorist, now a comfortably successful poker player living like a gentleman farmer in this town in the foothills.
The night ended with Dorn’s breaking the time capsule of the Middle Ages by persuading the high school band to play ‘Fire on the Mountain.’ But much had happened before that. During the dinner, a five-year-old sat beside Coop at one of the decorated trestle tables. There was almost no conversation between them, because the boy was listening intently to a transistor radio. Finally he switched it off and turned to Coop and told him the Americans were bombing Baghdad. Coop was startled. The child was speaking about it casually, and insisted on giving him details, until Coop said, ‘Tell that man over there,’ pointing to Dorn, who was with a chiropractor, submitting himself to a complex arm hold. So the boy went over and waited until Dorn was released, then tugged at his arm. The two adults bent down, and the boy said something they could not catch because of the noise around them. Dorn lifted the boy into his arms. ‘What’s up, Finnegan?’ Coop heard him say. And the boy told him.
Dorn put the boy down and stood there a moment. Then he walked over to his wife