Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje [75]
Roman carried him to the cart and placed him along the back bench so his head was resting once more on his mother’s lap. She held a cheesecloth over his face to keep the dust away. The other two rode in front. Lucien’s mother had brought the rifle, and it was there on the front seat between the couple.
After they had gone a few hundred metres, the dog appeared again, keeping its distance, following them. It was clear that the creature still intended to attack them. It ran beside the cart, snapping its jaws at the horse’s hooves. They could see the blood, wet at its feet. Shoot him, the mother said, and Roman passed the reins to his wife, aimed and fired the rifle into the dust near the charging dog. The creature calmed suddenly and sat down as the cart raced on towards Marseillan, separating them from the animal. The young wife kept looking back, if not at Lucien, then at the dog in the growing distance. She had always wanted a dog in her life and had tried persuading her husband. Now she would never have one. She reached back and took Lucien’s hand for a moment.
The doctor at the hospital, Monsieur Porcelain, was nervous and also certain of his authority. There was, he said, the possibility of infection spreading to the undamaged eye. He was determined to save some sight at least, and he convinced the youth’s mother that the left eye be removed and that the socket, or ‘cave,’ that remained be cleansed thoroughly. This way no infection would reach the right eye, in its frail state. Lucien was not part of this decision, and for years he would remain bitter towards those who had defaced him.
By the time he came home, he could see faintly, just colours and shapes surrounding him. But that would improve. However, he was told he could not read for a year, and strangely, it was advised that during this period of time he must not cry. He was almost eighteen when this was demanded of him. It seemed that a cold anger was the only emotion allowed in response to the accident. He continued to blame the three who had taken him to the hospital in Marseillan. He blamed Roman for not killing the dog, so that it had disappeared before being tested for disease. He blamed Le Haricot for using a possibly impure saline solution on his eyes. Most of all, he blamed his mother for permitting the removal of his eye. He was behaving as if he were five years younger, and they found it difficult to make him respond in any way to them. He preferred to be alone in his room. In his anger he refused a false eye. As an adult he rarely spoke of the period when he could or should have been only weeping.
A month after the catastrophe some books he had ordered from Toulouse arrived in the mail. He had thrown them into a corner and walked back into his room. If there had been a fire nearby he would have burned them. His mother let them remain where they were until the girl came by for one of her lessons. Lucien was sitting on the porch when she approached him and announced the credits on the title page and began to read. ‘Chapter One—The Three Presents of D’Artagnan the Elder. On the first morning of the month of April, 1625
Everything froze within him. He refused to step out to meet her words. She was awkward with her accent, full of hesitations. He was aware this was equally or even more humiliating for her, this pretending to be worldly, this pretence that the Parisian prose style reflected her natural tongue. It was all that stopped the insult on his lips. But he could not give in to her. Tomorrow he would simply not come outside. The reversal of roles was embarrassing, galling. This neighbour’s servant wife, who had been coaxed out of the quicksand