The Cat's Table - Michael Ondaatje [79]
“Let me dress it.”
And I imagined him opening up my blouse to look for the blood in its thin pulsing gush on my white belly. I rose slowly and walked out of his studio. I stood in the half-lit hallway. I was sweating. I looked down and pulled the thing out, and as I did the automatically timed light went out around me, and I was even more alone in the darkness. I stood there for an extra minute, expecting something. But he never came out.
For some weeks there had been preparations at the Villa Ortensia for a solstice celebration. Guests from neighbouring cities were expected, as well as artists, critics, family members, the burghers of Florence, and all of us who worked in the archives or in the gardens. It was the annual gesture toward the community by him and his wife. It marked the end of the season. During the hot summer months that followed the event, the family would return to America or go travelling again, foraging its way through Russian duchies. Summer heat was not a comfort, even in the high stone rooms of this villa, even in its shadowed gardens.
The event would take place in two days, and I was lying on my bed wondering whether I would turn up or not. Would I hurt him or myself more by going or not going? I had “dressed” my wound—such a genteel term—over a small cold-water sink. It was neither a competent nor a wise act and the scar would stay with me forever. Lovers who knew me afterwards would pause at it and pretend it was either beautiful or not important. And then they would show me theirs—none of them as dramatic as mine.
I walked away, out of that dark hallway of his, onto the via Panicale, and went in search of a chemist. I remember finding one and describing the wound as “a deep cut.”
“How serious?” he asked.
“Deep,” I said. “It was an accident.”
He gave me something in the sulphur family, as well as bandages and presses and a liquid antiseptic, something on a par with what had been used in the Crimean War, I suspect, not much better than that. I did not tell him it was for me, although I must have appeared pale, and was probably weaving. I felt uncertain of everything. All that I had was my competent Italian, so I focussed on that. And he kept on talking, perhaps wanting to be certain I was all right. I looked down at one point and there was thick blood on my skirt.
I had a long walk home. I stayed in bed most of that evening and the night that followed. I had not applied any of the medicine. I just dropped the packages on the floor. I simply lay on the bed, wanting to think about everything in the dark. What I had just lived through. If there would be a future for me. He was not a part of the argument. This is when I became myself, I suppose.
I could barely move the next day. But I forced myself to get up and stand by the sink that had a long narrow mirror beside it. I pulled apart the blouse and skirt that had become attached to my body, until the wound was revealed. I coated on the unguent the chemist had given me, and then went back to bed, leaving my skin open to the air. I had many dreams. And there were loud discussions with myself. I got up and looked in the mirror in the afternoon light. The bleeding had stopped. I would be all right. I would not die self-condemned. And I would go to the solstice celebration that was a day away. I would not go. I would go.
I arrived late, missing the welcoming speeches intentionally. I was walking slowly, the pain tearing at my side with each step. Still I listened and followed the sound of the chamber music. They were on the petite stage of the Teatrino, the “little theatre” beyond the second terrace. I had always loved this site, a place where audiences and performers met on an equal footing. A pianist