In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [54]
He had lived in this country all of his life. But it was only now that he learned of the union battles up north where Cato was murdered some time in the winter of 1921, and found under the ice of a shallow creek near Onion Lake a week after he had written his last letter. The facts of the story had surrounded Hana since birth, it was a part of her. And all of his life Patrick had been oblivious to it, a searcher gazing into the darkness of his own country, a blind man dressing the heroine.
Every Sunday they still congregated at the waterworks. They walked over grills under which foam rushed, they opened doorways to waterfalls. The building, now three-quarters finished, spread ceremonial over the rise just south of Queen Street, looking onto the lake. Because of its structure the main pumping station could be filled with lamps and no light would be betrayed to the outside world. The sound of pumps churning drowned out the noise of their meetings.
On Sundays, as darkness fell, the various groups walked up to the building from the lakeshore where they would not be seen. There was food, entertainment, political speeches. A man who mimicked the King of England stepped forward with a monologue summarizing the news of the past week. Numerous communities and nationalities spoke and performed in their own languages. When they finished, the halls were cleaned up, the floors swept.
Patrick and Alice walked home along Queen Street. The girl was asleep in Patrick’s arms, so at some point, tired from her weight, they would sit on a bench and lay Hana out, her head on Alice’s lap. He loved this part of the city, the evening streets an extension of his limbs.
– I want to look after Hana.
– You already do.
– More formally. If that will help.
– She knows you love her.
A July night. On what summer night was it that she spoke of Clara and how she missed her? All these incidents and emotions to cover and the story like a tired child tugging us on, not letting us converse with ease, sleeping on our shoulder so it is difficult to embrace the person we love. He loved Alice. He leaned against her and he could feel her hair still wet from the sweat of the performance.
– You will catch a cold.
– Ah yes.
* * *
Now he aches for her smallness, her intricacy – he needs a second glance whenever he thinks of her. In the middle of a field she removes her blouse. Sightings of her breasts. Trompe l’oeil. An artist has picked up a pencil and made a fine crosshatched shadow and so they come into existence. He sits and watches her sniffing the wind across a field. The woman he looked through when in love with Clara. Clara’s eclipse. The phrase like a flower or event named during the last century.
During Cato’s funeral, while Alice held the infant Hana, there was an eclipse. The mourners stood still while the Finnish Brass Band played Chopin’s “Funeral March” into the oncoming darkness and throughout the seventeen minutes of total eclipse. The music a lifeline from one moment of light to another.
Now he aches for her, for those days that belonged to the moon. They would sit side by side in a Chinese restaurant, empty but for the two of them. Wanting to face each other but wanting to hold each other and having to decide on one pleasure. The intricate choices of desire.
I don’t think I’m big enough to put someone in a position where they will hurt another. That’s what you said, Alice, that made me love you most. Made me trust you. No one else would have worried about that, could have said it and made me believe it, that first night in your room. Every bird and insect froze into the element of air at that moment when the sentence slid up, palpable out of your mouth. You unaware you were expressing a tenderness, thinking you were being critical of yourself.
And another gesture of yours at a dance. I was dancing with someone else and could see you, dying to dance, and stepping up to a man and delicately tapping him on his shoulder, a shy yet determined