BOOKS BY LEONARD COHEN

FICTION

The Favourite Game (1963)

Beautiful Losers (1966)

POETRY

Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956)

The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)

Flowers for Hitler (1964)

Parasites of Heaven (1966)

Selected Poems, 1956-1968 (1968)

The Energy of Slaves (1972)

Death of a Lady’s Man (1978)

Book of Mercy (1984)

Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993)

Book of Longing (2006)

ALBUMS

Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

Songs From a Room (1969)

Songs of Love and Hate (1971)

Live Songs (1972)

New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1973)

The Best of Leonard Cohen (1975)

Death of a Ladies’ Man (1977)

Recent Songs (1979)

Various Positions (1984)

I’m Your Man (1988)

The Future (1992)

Cohen Live (1994)

More Best of Leonard Cohen (1997)

Field Commander Cohen (2001)

Ten New Songs (2001)

The Essential Leonard Cohen (2002)

Dear Heather (2004)

Copyright © 1963 by Leonard Cohen

First published in England by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1963 Trade paperback edition first published 2000

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher - or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency - is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Cohen, Leonard, 1934- The favourite game / Leonard Cohen.

First published: England, 1963.

eISBN: 978-1-55199-501-4

I. Title.

PS8505.022F3 2003 C813’.54 C2003-905906-5

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

Acknowledgements: the Canada Council and the hospitality at 19B

SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

Series logo design: Brian Bean

EMBLEM EDITIONS

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

75 Sherbourne Street

Toronto, Ontario

M5A 2P9

www.mcclelland.com/emblem

v3.1

To my mother

As the mist leaves no scar

On the dark green hill,

So my body leaves no scar

On you, nor ever will.

When wind and hawl encounter,

What remains to keep?

So you and I encounter

Then turn, then fall to sleep.

As many nights endure

Without a moon or star,

So will we endure

When one is gone and far.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Book I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Book II

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Book III

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Book IV

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Credits

About the Author

Book I

1

Breavman knows a girl named Shell whose ears were pierced so she could wear the long filigree earrings. The punctures festered and now she has a tiny scar in each earlobe. He discovered them behind her hair.

A bullet broke into the flesh of his father’s arm as he rose out of a trench. It comforts a man with coronary thrombosis to bear a wound taken in combat.

On the right temple Breavman has a scar which Krantz bestowed with a shovel. Trouble over a snowman. Krantz wanted to use clinkers as eyes. Breavman was and still is against the use of foreign materials in the decoration of snowmen. No woollen mufflers, hats, spectacles. In the same vein he does not approve of inserting carrots in the mouths of carved pumpkins or pinning on cucumber ears.

His mother regarded her whole body as a scar grown over some earlier perfection which she sought in mirrors and windows and hub-caps.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.

2

Breavman’s young mother hunted wrinkles with two hands and a magnifying mirror.

When she found one she consulted a fortress of oils and creams arrayed on a glass tray and she sighed. Without faith the wrinkle was anointed.

“This isn’t my face, not my real face.”

“Where is your real face, Mother?”

“Look at me. Is this what I look like?”

“Where is it, where’s your real face?”

“I don’t know, in Russia, when I was a girl.”

He pulled the huge atlas out of the shelf and fell with it. He sifted pages like a goldminer until he found it, the whole of Russia, pale and vast. He kneeled over the distances until his eyes blurred and he made the lakes and rivers and names become an incredible face, dim and beautiful and easily lost.

The maid had to drag him to supper. A lady’s face floated over the silver and the food.

3

His father lived mostly in bed or a tent in the hospital. When he was up and walking he lied.

He took his cane without the silver band and led his son over Mount Royal. Here was the ancient crater. Two iron and stone cannon rested in the gentle grassy scoop which was once a pit of boiling lava. Breavman wanted to dwell on the violence.

“We’ll come back here when I’m better.”

One lie.

Breavman learned to pat the noses of horses tethered beside the Chalet, how to offer them sugar cubes from a flat palm.

“One day we’ll go riding.”

“But you can hardly breathe.”

His father collapsed that evening over his map of flags on which he plotted the war, fumbling for the capsules to break and inhale.

4

Here is a movie filled with the bodies of his

Вы читаете The Favourite Game
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату
×