In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [60]
He ran through the township of Bath with the white rectangle over his eyes, looking for a hardware store he could break into. He was an exotic creature who had to escape from his blue skin before daylight. But there was not one hardware or paint shop. He broke into a clothing store and in the darkness stripped and dressed in whatever would fit him from the racks. In the rooms above the store he could hear jazz on the radio, the music a compass for him. His hands felt a mirror but he would not turn on the light. He took gloves. He jumped onto a slow milk-train and climbed onto the roof. It was raining. He removed his belt, tied himself on safely, and slept.
In Trenton he untied himself and rolled off down the embankment just as the train began to move again. He was still blue, unable to see what he looked like. He undressed and laid his clothes out on the grass so he could see them in the daylight in a human shape. He knew nothing about the town of Trenton except that it was three hours from Toronto by train. He slept again. In the late afternoon, walking in the woods that skirted the industrial section, he saw REDICK’S SASH AND DOOR FACTORY. He groomed himself as well as he could and stepped out of the trees – a green sweater, black trousers, blue boots, and a blue head.
There was a kid sitting on a pile of lumber behind the store who saw him the moment he stepped into the clearing. The boy didn’t move at all, just regarded him as he walked, trying to look casual, the long twenty-five yards to the store. Caravaggio crouched in front of the boy.
– What’s your name?
– Alfred.
– Will you go in there, Al, and see if you can find me some turpentine?
– Are you from the movie company?
– The movie? He nodded.
The kid ran off and returned a few minutes later, still alone. That was good.
– Your dad own this place?
– No, I just like it here. All the doors propped outside, where they don’t belong – things where they shouldn’t be.
While the boy spoke Caravaggio tore off the tail of his shirt.
– There is another place in town where you can see outboard motors and car engines hanging off branches.
– Yeah? Al, can you help me get this off my face and hair?
– Sure.
They sat in the late afternoon sunlight by the doors, the boy dipping the shirt-tail into the tin and wiping the colour off Caravaggio’s face. The two of them talked quietly about the other place where the engines hung from the trees. When Caravaggio unbuttoned his shirt the boy saw the terrible scars across his neck and gasped. It looked to him as if some giant bird had left claw marks from trying to lift off the man’s head. Caravaggio told him to forget the movie, he was not an actor, he was from prison. “I’m Caravaggio – the painter,” he laughed. The boy promised never to say anything.
They decided that his hair should be cut off, so the boy went back into the store and came back giggling and shrugging with some rose shears. Soon Caravaggio looked almost bald, certainly unrecognizable. When the owner of Redick’s Door Factory was busy, Caravaggio used the bathroom, soaping and washing the turpentine off his face. He saw his neck for the first time in a mirror, scarred from the prison attack three months earlier.
In the yard the boy wrote out his name on a piece of paper. From his pocket he took out an old maple-syrup spile with the year 1882 on it, and he wrapped the paper around it. When the man came back, cleaned up, the boy handed it to him. The man said, “I don’t have anything to give you now.” The kid grinned, very happy. “I know,” he said. “Remember my name.”
He was running, his boots disappearing into grey bush. Away from Lake Ontario, travelling north where he knew he could find some unopened cottage to stay quietly for a few days. Landscape for Caravaggio was never calm. A tree bending with