In the middle of the forest the leopard topples the human victim, who falls more slowly than the Tower of Pisa. He’ll never reach the ground while you watch him, or even if you turn away. He is comfortable in his imbalance. The intricate leaves and limbs nourish the figures, not malignly or benignly, but naturally, as blossoms or fruits. But because the function is natural does not diminish its mystery. How have the animal flesh and the vegetable flesh become connected?
In another place the roots sponsor a wedding-couple or a family portrait. You are the photographer but you can never emerge from under the black hood or squeeze the rubber bulb or lose the image on the frosted glass. There is violence and immobility: the humans are involved, at home in each. It is not their forest, their clothes are city clothes, but the forest would be barren without them.
Wherever the violence or stillness happens, it is the centre of the picture, no matter how tiny or hidden. Cover it with your thumb and all the foliage dies.
2
In his first year of college, at a drinking place called the Shrine, Breavman rose up with this toast:
“Jewish girls are not any more passionate than Gentile girls of any given economic area. Jewish girls have very bad legs. Of course, this is a generalization. In fact, the new American Jewess is being bred with long, beautiful legs.
“Negro girls are as screwed up as anyone else. They are no better than white girls, except, of course, the Anglo-Saxon girls from Upper Westmount, but even drugged sheep are better than they are. Their tongues are not rougher, nor is there any special quality in the lubricated areas. The second-to-best blow job in the world is a Negro girl I happen to know. She has a forty-seven-thousand-dollar mouth.
“The best blow job in the world (technically) is a French-Canadian whore by the name of Yvette. Her telephone number is Chateau 2033. She has a ninety-thousand-dollar mouth.”
He raised high his cloudy glass.
“I am happy to give her the publicity here.”
He sat down among the cheers of his comrades, suddenly tired of his voice. He had been expected for dinner but he hadn’t phoned his mother. Obediently the new shot of Pernod turned white.
Krantz leaned over and whispered, “That was quite a speech for a sixteen-year-old virgin cherry to deliver upon us.”
“Why didn’t you pull me down?”
“They loved it.”
“Why didn’t you stop me?”
“Go stop you, Breavman.”
“Let’s get out of here, Krantz.”
“Can you walk, Breavman?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Let’s go.”
They supported each other through their favourite streets and alleys. They kept dropping their books and clip boards. They screamed hysterically at taxis that cruised too close. They tore up an economics text-book and burnt it as a sacrifice on the steps of a Sherbrooke Street bank. They prostrated themselves on the pavement. Krantz stood up first.
“Why aren’t you praying, Krantz?”
“Car coming.”
“Scream at it.”
“Police car.”
They ran down a narrow alley. A delicious smell stopped them, bestowed by the kitchen-ventilating fan of an expensive restaurant. They relieved themselves among the garbage cans.
“Breavman, you won’t believe what I almost peed on.”
“A corpse? A blonde wig? A full meeting of the Elders of Zion? An abandoned satchel of limp a-holes!”
“Shh. C’mere. Carefully.”
Krantz lit a match and the brass eyes of a bull-frog gleamed from the debris. All three of them jumped at the same time. Krantz carried it in a knotted handkerchief.
“Must have escaped from a garlic sauce.”
“Let’s go back and liberate them all. Let the streets swarm with free frogs. Hey, Krantz, I’ve got my dissecting kit!”
They decided on a solemn ceremony at the foot of the War Memorial.
Breavman spread loose-leaf sheets on his Zoology text. He grasped the frog by the green hind legs. Krantz intervened, “You know, this is going to ruin the night. It’s been a very fine night but this is going to ruin it.”
“You’re right, Krantz.”
They stood there in silence. The night was immense. The headlights streamed along Dorchester Street. They wished they weren’t there, they wished they were at a party with a thousand people. The frog was as tempting to gut as an old alarm clock.
“Should I proceed, Krantz?”
“Proceed.”
“We’re in charge of torture tonight. The regular torturers are relieved.”
Breavman swung the head smartly against the inscribed stone. The smack of living tissue was louder than all the traffic.
“At least that stuns it.”
He laid the frog on the white sheets and secured it to the book with pins through its extremities. He pierced the light-coloured abdomen with the scalpel. He withdrew the scissors from his kit and made a long vertical incision in first the upper and then the lower layer of skin.
“We could stop now, Krantz. We could get thread and repair the thing.”
“We could.” Krantz said dreamily.
Breavman pinned back the stretchy skin. They pressed in over the deep insides, smelling each other’s alcoholic breath.
“This is the heart.”
He lifted the organ with the small edge of the scalpel.
“So that’s the heart.”
The milky-grey sack heaved up and down and they stared in wonder. The legs of the frog were like a lady’s.
“I suppose I should get on with it.”
He removed the organs one by one, the lungs, the kidneys. A pebble and an undigested beetle were discovered in the stomach. He exposed the muscles in the delicate thighs.
Both of them, the operator and the spectator, hovered in a trance. And finally he removed the heart, which already looked weary and ancient, the colour of old man’s saliva, first heart of the world.
“If you put it in salt water it’ll keep on beating for a while.”
Krantz woke up.
“Will it? Let’s do it. Hurry!”
Breavman tossed his text-book together with the emptied frog in a wire trash-basket as he ran. He cupped the heart in his hand, afraid of squeezing. The restaurant was only a minute away.
Don’t die.
“Hurry! For Christ’s sake!”
Everything had a second chance if they
