The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels [44]
But then came the punishment of clay …
Because from the start you were fated to be mine
my solitude was a somber passage,
an impetus of inconsolable fever …’
A dog barked through the words of the poems.
‘… I learned
that nothing was mine: not the wheat, the star,
his voice, his body; not even my own.
That my body was a tree and that the owner of a tree
is not its shadow, but the wind …’
– It was in the bottom of the first-aid kit we saw in the market, said Avery, that banged-up tin box with a lid – perfect for keeping wingnuts and bolts – and still filled with eye-droppers and squeezed-up tubes of ointment, old packets of gauze dressings.
– Poetry in a first-aid tin? It's too perfect, you're making it up, said Jean.
– No, said Avery. And this was there too. He leaned over the edge of the bed and handed Jean a thin leather book – a diary. The book was curved slightly, as if the owner had carried it in a pocket.
– Ah, said Jean, afraid to look inside.
– Someone had only just started writing in it, said Avery. No date, no name. Will you read it to me?
Jean opened the journal; instantly, tears filled her eyes. The writing was very small, blue ink; she could not tell whether a man's hand or a woman's.
‘We tear open the oranges, the figs, all the fruit we can no longer bear to eat alone …
‘We've met in so many cities … the ports where sleep empties its cargoes into the bay, the night and day of love. We waste nothing in these meetings, not a breath to spare. A full hold in each direction – what each brings to the other, what we carry home. It will be a long time now until we see each other again. At night, feel my hands, feel my voice, carry me with you, in a muscle and in a word. And I will too, carry you …
‘In a forest of stars and boughs, here is your face. In the garden, in the shipwreck, in sacred stones, in figs and roses. Through long nights of walking, what does not sing for us? Through long nights of waking, what does not sing for us? …
‘Walking with your mouth inside my clothes, and all the possible days. The city in the rain: violinists wearing tuxedoes, the white stick of the blind pointing to the wet pavement, sheet-metal skows moving slowly across the river. The owned and the old, everything either lost or found. With you, here, lost and found …’
Jean closed the book. After a moment she said, I believe you could pluck the necessary book out of the air.
They lay next to each other, listening to the clang of the metalworkers.
– After the war, my mother and I moved back to London, said Avery. We had a tiny flat and our kitchen table – my father's huge wooden worktable where we ate all our meals – was in an alcove, surrounded by four walls of books. Without getting out of our chairs, we could simply reach behind us and, yes, pluck! the appropriate book off a shelf. That was my father's idea, so that there would always be active discussions at meals, and so that I or any guest could find a reference in a trice. My father loved to call out directions from his end of the table like a mad navigator on a small boat: ‘A bit more to the right, nine o'clock please, forty-five degrees left …’ Over the years, certain thick or oversized volumes became landmarks by which we steered: ‘The grey cover two inches to the right of The Child's New Illustrated Encyclopedia (“new” about forty years previous), below One Thousand and One Wonderful Things; about ten inches above Engines and Power …’ And when the book was retrieved successfully from the shelf, my father would let out a sigh, as if just the right unreachable itch had been scratched.
My father illustrated his explanations using objects on the table, becoming so absorbed that eventually any outsider risked impropriety and drifted away, leaving him in silent and solitary contemplation of a miniature Battersea Power Station with its four juice-glass smokestacks, or a liftlock that began with a slice of bread …
‘Every object,’ my father used to say, ‘is also a concept.’ If you place two or three or ten things next to each other that