It hadn’t occurred to Breavman that he could intrude into the action.
“Hey you!”
The old man looked up suddenly.
“Oui! Toi!”
The old man stopped short. He looked down at his cat. His hands vibrated in indecision. He fled down the street coughing and empty-handed.
Tamara gurgled. “I’m going to be sick.” She broke for the sink and vomited.
Breavman helped her to the bed.
“Anchovies,” she said.
“You’re shivering. I’ll close the window.”
“Just lie beside me.”
Her body was limp as though it had succumbed to some defeat. It frightened him.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have frightened him off,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“He was probably starving.”
“He was going to eat it?”
“Well, we protected our fragile tastes.”
She held him tightly. It was not the kind of embrace he wanted. There was nothing of flesh in it, only hurt.
“We didn’t sleep very much. Try to sleep now.”
“Will you sleep too?”
“Yes. We’re both tired.”
The morning world had been removed from them, the jagged sounds of traffic were beyond the closed window, distant as history. They were two people in a room and there was nothing to watch.
With his hand he soothed her hair and closed her eyelids. He remembered the miniature work of the wind unfastening and floating wisps of hair. A week is a long time.
Her lips trembled.
“Lawrence?”
I know what you’re going to say and I know what I’m going to say and I know what you’re going to say….
“Don’t be mad.”
“No.”
“I love you,” she said simply.
I’ll wait here.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Will you kiss me?”
He kissed her mouth lightly.
“Are you angry with me?”
“What do you mean?” he lied.
“For what I said. I know it hurts you in some way.”
“No, Tamara, it makes me feel close to you.”
“I’m happy I told you.”
She adjusted her position and moved closer to him, not for sensation but for warmth and protection. He held her tightly, not as mistress, but bereaved child. The room was hot. Sweat on his palms.
Now she was asleep. He made sure she was asleep. Carefully he disengaged himself from her hold. If only she weren’t so beautiful in sleep. How could he run from that body?
He dressed like a thief.
A round sun burned above the sooty buildings. All the parked cars had driven away. A few old men, brooms in hand, stood blinking among the garbage cans. One of them tried to balance the cat’s carcass on a broom handle because he didn’t want to touch it.
Run, Westmount, run.
He needed to put distance between himself and the hot room where he couldn’t make things happen. Why did she have to speak? Couldn’t she have left it alone? The smell of her flesh was trapped in his clothes.
Her body was with him and he let a vision of it argue against his flight.
I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling up the street. Wide as a snowfall, heavy as huge falling Zeppelins, her damp thighs are settling on the sharp roofs and wooden balconies. Weather-vanes press the shape of roosters and sail-boats into the skin. The faces of famous statues are preserved like intaglios….
Then he was thinking of a special pair of thighs in a special room. Commitment was oppressive but the thought of flesh-loneliness was worse.
Tamara was awake when he opened the door. He undressed in a hurry and renewed what he had nearly lost.
“Aren’t you glad you came back?”
For three years Tamara was his mistress, until he was twenty.
10
In the third year of college Breavman left his house. He and Krantz took a couple of rooms downtown on Stanley Street.
When Breavman informed his mother that he intended to spend several nights a week downtown she seemed to accept the fact calmly.
“You can use a toaster, can’t you. We have an extra toaster.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“And cutlery, you’ll need cutlery.”
“Not really, we’re not going to do any serious cooking….”
“You’ll need plenty of cutlery, Lawrence.”
She went from drawer to drawer in the kitchen selecting items and heaping them on the table before him.
“Mother, I don’t need an egg-beater.”
“How do you know?”
She emptied a drawer of silver fish forks on the table. She struggled with the string drawer but she couldn’t get it out. “Mother, this is ridiculous.”
“Take everything.”
He followed her into the living-room. Now she was above him, tottering in a soft chair, trying to keep her balance, while at the same time unhooking some heavy embroidered curtains.
“What are you doing?”
“What do I need in an empty house? Take everything!”
She kicked the fallen curtains towards him and tripped in the folds. Breavman ran to help her. She seemed so heavy.
“Get away, what do I need, take everything!”
“Stop this, Mother, please.”
On the way up the stairs she tore a Persian miniature mounted on velvet from its hook and thrust it at him.
“You have walls down there, don’t you?”
“Please go to bed, Mother.”
She began to empty the linen closet, heaving piles of sheets and blankets at his feet. Standing on tip-toe she tugged at a stack of tablecloths. One unfolded as she pulled and fell about her like a ghost’s costume. She thrashed inside it. He tried to help her but she fought him from under the linen.
He stepped back and watched her struggle, a numbness invading his whole body.
When she had freed herself she carefully spread the tablecloth on the floor and crawled from corner to corner folding it. Her hair was disarrayed and she couldn’t catch her breath.
He followed each of her movements with intense dual concentration. He folded it ten times in his mind before she kneeled in triumph beside the immaculate white rectangle.
11
The house had been built at the beginning of the century. There were still some coloured panes in the window. The city had installed modern fluorescent street-lamps on Stanley, which cast a ghostly yellow light. Shining through the blue and green Victorian glass the result was intense artificial moonlight and the flesh of any woman looked fresh and out-of-doors.
His guitar was always handy. The
