In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [40]
So Patrick moved in this darkness, the eye of the flashlight swallowing the colours, the room turning under his gaze like a jewel. What had been theatrical seemed locked within metamorphosis. He wanted to put his hand up and unbutton a blouse, remove a shoe. He moved quickly towards a figure but it was only a queen draped over a chair, sitting the way a queen would sit. He heard the cheers from the hall once more.
Patrick switched off the light and stood there. His eyes remembering scarlet, the puff of a blue sleeve, the flat brown feet pathetic as a peacock’s under such grand costuming. A broken ochre hand. A splash. He turned to face the sound.
He moved forward, one hand in front of him to hold away the costumed bodies, lifting his feet up high so he would not trip in the darkness. He thought, I am moving like a puppet. He touched an arm in the darkness not fully realizing it was human. A hand came from somewhere and held his wrist. “Hello, Patrick.” He turned on the flashlight. She was waiting for the light, like a good actress, ready to be revealed.
“No one is allowed here while I wash. I knew it had to be you.…” She was wearing a singlet and had been washing herself from a bowl, her hands now squeezing out a cloth in the basin and wiping her face, streaks of flesh across the paint. One line of colour remained that seemed to show her frowning. Behind her a puppet slowly pivoted. He could smell the candle she must have blown out as soon as she heard him enter. “You can help with the paint on my neck.”
Patrick did not speak. The light moved down her arm to the bowl, illuminated her hand which wet the cloth, squeezed it, and moved forward to give it to him. She saw his right hand reach to take it from her. His hand began to wipe her neck. He removed the brown paint, turned her around and slowly wiped the vermilion frown-mark by her mouth, the light close on her face.
He rinsed out the cloth again and holding her forehead steady wiped the targets off her eyes, cloth over one finger for precision, the blue left iris wavering at the closeness … so that it was not Alice Gull but something more intimate – an eye muscle having to trust a fingertip to remove that quarter-inch of bright yellow around her sight.
They were now many hours into the night. In her room on Verral Avenue. He had just seen the sleeping child.
– I wasn’t married, she said. Her father is dead. He was like a comitidjiis. A chetnik. Do you know what that means?
He shook his head continuing to look out the window into the rain. He felt there was space in her small rooms only when he looked out.
– Open it, Patrick. If it’s raining the cat will want to come in. They are national guerrillas. Political activists. Freedom-fighters in Bulgaria and Turkey and Serbia. They were tortured, then some of them came here. They have a very high level of justice.
She smiled, then continued.
– They are very difficult to live with.
– I think I have a passive sense of justice.
– I’ve noticed. Like water, you can be easily harnessed, Patrick. That’s dangerous.
– I don’t think so. I don’t believe the language of politics, but I’ll protect the friends I have. It’s all I can handle.
She sat on the mattress looking up at him, the cat purring in her lap as she dried it with