In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [0]
POETRY
The Dainty Monsters
The Man with 7 Toes
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
Rat Jelly
Elimination Dance
There’s a Trick with a Knife
I’m Learning to Do
Secular Love
The Cinnamon Peeler
PROSE
Coming through Slaughter
Running in the Family
In the Skin of a Lion
The English Patient
First Vintage International Edition, January 1997
Copyright © 1987 by Michael Ondaatje
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto, in 1987. First published in the United States in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
New York, in 1987.
Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Chappell & Co., Inc., for permission to reprint an excerpt from the song lyrics “I Can’t Get Started” by I. Gershwin and V. Duke. Copyright 1935 by Chappell & Co., Inc. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission. The lines from The Epic of Gilgamesh are from the N.K. Sandars translation (Penguin, 1960). Two sentences on the photograph of Lewis Hine are by Judith Mara Gutman from her essay “Lewis Hine and the American Social Conscience” (1969). Two sentences have been used from the journals of Anne Wilkinson. Lines from Martha Ostenso’s Wild Goose are from the 1925 McClelland and Stewart edition.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Ondaatje, Michael [date]
In the skin of a lion.
I. Title.
PR9199.3.0515 1987
813′.54 87-45340
eISBN: 978-0-307-77663-1
Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/
Author photograph © Dominic Sansoni
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
This book is in memory of Michel Lambeth,
Sharon Stevenson, and Bill and Michal Acres
And for Linda, and Sarah Sheard and David Young
I’d like to express my gratitude to The John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation who gave me a grant
during the writing of this book. Also to the Ontario
Arts Council, the El Basha Restaurant, the
Multicultural History Society of Ontario, and
Glendon College, York University.
I would also like to thank Andrea Kristof Margo Teasdale,
George and Ruth Grant, Donya Peroff, Rick Haldenby,
Paul Thompson, and Lillian Petroff. Also Ian Redforth
for his work on Finnish lumber-camp workers.
A special thank you to Ellen Seligman.
* * *
This is a work of fiction and certain liberties have
at times been taken with some dates and locales.
The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion.
THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Never again will a single story be told
as though it were the only one.
JOHN BERGER
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
BOOK ONE
Little Seeds
The Bridge
The Searcher
BOOK TWO
Palace of Purification
Remorse
BOOK THREE
Caravaggio
Maritime Theatre
Books by Michael Ondaatje
This is a story a young girl gathers in a car during the early hours of the morning. She listens and asks questions as the vehicle travels through darkness. Outside, the countryside is unbetrayed. The man who is driving could say, “In that field is a castle,” and it would be possible for her to believe him.
She listens to the man as he picks up and brings together various corners of the story, attempting to carry it all in his arms. And he is tired, sometimes as elliptical as his concentration on the road, at times overexcited—“Do you see?” He turns to her in the faint light of the speedometer.
Driving the four hours to Marmora under six stars and a moon.
She stays awake to keep him company.
1
LITTLE SEEDS
IF HE IS AWAKE early enough the boy sees the men walk past the farmhouse down First Lake Road. Then he stands at the bedroom window and