In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [79]
– Yes, that’s true.
– Aren’t you ashamed of that?
– You watch, in fifty years they’re going to come here and gape at the herringbone and the copper roofs. We need excess, something to live up to. I fought tooth and nail for that herringbone.
– You fought. You fought. Think about those who built the intake tunnels. Do you know how many of us died in there?
– There was no record kept.
– Turn off the light.
– What?
– Turn your light off.
Harris pulled the beaded cord on the gooseneck lamp. So the room was dark.
Patrick moved in shadow now, the blasting-box still under his right arm. He needed to stretch, to walk. He had been drowning in Harris’ eyes and sleepy hand-movements, felt hypnotized by that calm voice, the solitary focus of the lamp. Without light he felt more awake, discerning shapes, the smell of a bed somewhere in the room. Harris spoke out of the darkness.
– You don’t understand power. You don’t like power, you don’t respect it, you don’t want it to exist but you move around it all the time. You’re like a messenger. Think about it, Patrick.… No answer. I’ll keep talking. But turn the light on before you decide to plunge that thing. Allow me that.
– I will. Just keep talking, Harris.
– What you are looking for is a villain.
Harris knew he had to survive until early morning. Then a column of sunlight would fall directly onto his large desk, the pad of grid paper, his fountain pen. His gun was by the bed. He had to survive till the first hint of morning colour came through the oculus above him, eight feet in diameter, made up of eight half-moons of glass. He leaned forward.
– One night, I had a dream. I got off the bus at College – it was when we were moving College Street so it would hook up to Carlton – and I came to this area I had never been to. I saw fountains where there used to be an intersection. What was strange was that I knew my way around. I knew that soon I should turn and see a garden and more fountains. When I woke from the dream the sense of familiarity kept tugging me all day. In my dream the next night I was walking in a mysterious park off Spadina Avenue. The following day I was lunching with the architect John Lyle. I told him of these landscapes and he began to laugh. “These are real,” he said. “Where?” I asked. “In Toronto.” It turned out I was dreaming about projects for the city that had been rejected over the years. Wonderful things that were said to be too vulgar or expensive, too this too that. And I was walking through these places, beside the traffic circle at Yonge and Bloor, down the proposed Federal Avenue to Union Station. Lyle was right. These were all real places. They could have existed. I mean the Bloor Street Viaduct and this building here are just a hint of what could have been done here.
You must realize you are like these places, Patrick. You’re as much of the fabric as the aldermen and the millionaires. But you’re among the dwarfs of enterprise who never get accepted or acknowledged. Mongrel company. You’re a lost heir. So you stay in the woods. You reject power. And this is how the bland fools – the politicians and press and mayors and their advisers – become the spokesmen for the age. You must realize the trick is to be as serious when you are old as when you are young.
– Did you know a woman named Alice Gull?
– No … should I?
– Yes.
– Is she dead?
– Why do you say that?
– You said did.
– Yes.
Patrick turned the light on and saw Harris’ eyes looking directly into his.
– Have you decided?
– Not yet.
He switched off the light. Again they disappeared from each other.
– Alice Gull, Harris said very slowly, was killed by an anarchist.
– No.
– She was the actress. Is that correct?
In the darkness Patrick heard Harris sip his brandy and return the glass to the table. Patrick sat on the floor, his one good arm resting on the blasting-box.
– I think I saw her once, Harris said.
– She used to perform here. There used to be meetings in your unfinished waterworks. That’s where I met her, after many years.
– What meetings?