In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [45]
If only it were possible that in the instance something was written down – idea or emotion or musical phrase – it became known to others of the era. The rejected Carmen of 1875 turning so many into lovers of opera. And Verdi in the pouring rain believing he was being turned into a frog – even this emotion realized by his contemporaries.
Patrick listens now as Alice reads to him from the letters of Joseph Conrad – an extract which she has copied. She has already asked him who he likes to read and he has mentioned Conrad. “Yes, but,” she says rising as the child cries, “have you read his letters?” In the other room she comforts the girl Hana out of a nightmare.
“Wait,” she continues, “I’ve got something to show you.” Very excited now, as if she fears he will get up and leave before she can present this gift. She too likes Conrad. She likes his theatrical style. There are some novelists whose work actors love but who could not write a simple scene for the stage. They write the scenes actors dream, and Conrad was that for Alice.
– Listen: “An idle and selfish class loves to see mischief being made, even if it is made at its own expense.”
– Ha, he laughs.
– He’s complaining about Tory views on Spanish liberal insurgents of the 1830s, based in London. “Of course I do not defend political crimes. It is repulsive to me by tradition, by sentiment, and even by reflection. But some of these men struggled for an idea, openly, in the light of day, and sacrificed to it all that to most men makes life worth living. Moreover a sweeping assertion is always wrong, since men are infinitely varied; and harsh words are useless because they cannot combat ideas. And the ideas (that live) should be combatted, not the men who die.”
It was a letter Conrad had written to a newspaper. So Patrick listened to his contemporary.
– How can I convert you? she would ask in the darkness of the bedroom.
– The trouble with ideology, Alice, is that it hates the private. You must make it human.
– These are my favourite lines. I’ll whisper them. “I have taught you that the sky in all its zones is mortal.… Let me now re-emphasize the extreme looseness of the structure of all objects.”
In the darkness he can see just the faint aura of her hair.
– Say it again.
* * *
On Saturday afternoons the dye washers and cutters, men from the killing beds, the sausage makers, the electrocuters – all of them from this abattoir and tannery on Cypress Street – were free. After bathing under the pipes they walked up Bathurst Street to Queen, the thirty or so of them knowing little more than each other’s false names or true countries. Hey Italy! They were in pairs or trios, each in their own language as the dyers had been in their own colours. After a beer they would continue up Bathurst to the Oak Leaf Steam Baths. Paying their quarters they were each handed a towel, a sheet, a padlock, and a canvas bag. They stripped, packed their clothes and salaries into the bag, locked it, and strung the keys around their necks. There was a sense of relaxation among all of them. Hey Canada! A wave to Patrick. It was Saturday.
In the whitewashed rooms they sat naked within the steam, brushing a scab, considering a scar on the shoulder. Someone he had never spoken to caught his eye and both of them were so tired they could not turn away their gaze, just watched the other bluntly. He knew nothing about the men around him except how they moved and laughed – on this side of language. He himself had kept his true name and voice from the bosses at the leather yard, never spoke to them or answered them. A chain was pulled that forced wet steam into the room so that their bodies were separated by whiteness coming up through the gridded floors, tattoos and hard muscles fading into unborn photographs. They shifted, stood up, someone began to sing.