He exorcized the glory demons. The pages were jammed into an antique drawer that Shell respected. It was a Pandora’s box of visas and airline-ticket folders that would spirit him away if she opened it. Then he would climb back into the warm bed, their bodies sweetened by the threat.
God, she was beautiful. Why shouldn’t he stay with her? Why shouldn’t he be a citizen with a woman and a job? Why shouldn’t he join the world? The beauty he had planned as a repose between solitudes now led him to demand old questions of loneliness.
What did he betray if he remained with her? He didn’t dare recite the half-baked claims. And now he could taste the guilt that would nourish him if he left her. But he didn’t want to leave for good. He needed to be by himself, so he could miss her, to get perspective.
He shoved an air-mail letter into the stuffed drawer.
He watched her sleeping, sheet clutched in her hand like an amulet, hair sprung over the pillow in Hokusai waves. Certainly he would be willing to murder for that suspended body. It was the only allegiance. Then why turn from it?
His mind leaped beyond parting to regret. He was writing to her from a great distance, from some desperate flesh-covered desk in the future.
My darling Shell, there is someone lost in me whom I drowned stupidly in risky games a while ago – I would like to bring him to you, he’d jump into your daydreams without asking and take care of your flesh like a drunk scholar, with laughing and precious secret footnotes. But as I say, he is drowned, or crumpled in cowardly sleep, heavily medicated, dreamless, his ears jammed with seaweed or cotton – I don’t even know the location of the body, except that sometimes he stirs like a starving foetus in my heart when I remember you dressing or at work in the kitchen. That’s all I can write. I would have liked to bring him to you – not this page, not this regret.
He looked up from his lined book. He imagined Shell’s silhouette and his own. Valentine sweethearts of his parents’ time. A card on his collector’s shelf. Could he embalm her for easy reference?
She changed her position, drawing the white sheet tight along the side of her body, so that her waist and thigh seemed to emerge out of rough marble. He had no comparisons. It wasn’t just that the forms were perfect, or that he knew them so well. It was not a sleeping beauty, everybody’s princess. It was Shell. It was a certain particular woman who had an address and the features of her family. She was not a kaleidoscope to be adjusted for different visions. All her expressions represented feelings. When she laughed it was because. When she took his hand in the middle of the night it was because. She was the reason. Shell, the Shell he knew, was the owner of the body. It answered her, was her. It didn’t serve him from a pedestal. He had collided with a particular person. Beautiful or not, or ruined with vitriol tomorrow, it didn’t matter. Shell was the one he loved.
When the room was half filled with sunlight Shell opened her eyes.
“Hello,” said Breavman.
“Hello. You haven’t been to sleep at all?”
“No.”
“Come now.”
She sat up and straightened the bedclothes and pulled a corner down to invite him in. He sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to know what was the matter.
“Shell, I think I should go to Montreal for a little …”
“You’re leaving?”
He felt her stiffen.
“I’ll be back. Krantz is coming back – he wrote and offered me this job at a camp….”
“I knew you were leaving. For the past few weeks I could just tell.”
“This is just for the summer….”
“How long?”
“The summer.”
“How many months?”
Before he could answer she brought her fingertips to her mouth with a little hurt sound.
“What is it?” asked Breavman.
“I sound like Gordon did.”
He took her in his arms to tell her this wasn’t the same thing at all. She recalled him to their promise to be surgical.
“That’s nonsense, you know it is. C’mon, let’s create a great breakfast.”
He stayed that day and the next, but the third day he left.
“Really, Shell, it’s just the summer.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“I wish you’d be more miserable.”
She smiled.
1
Concerning the bodies Breavman lost. No detective will find them. He lost them in the condition of their highest beauty. They are:
a rat
a frog
a girl sleeping
a man on the mountain
the moon
You and I have our bodies, mutilated as they might be by time and memory. Breavman lost them in fire where they persist whole and perfect. This kind of permanence is no comfort to anyone. After many burnings they became faint constellations which controlled him as they turned in his own sky.
It might be said they were eaten by the Mosaic bush each of us grows in our heart but few of us cares to ignite.
2
He stood on the lawn of the Allan Memorial, looking down at Montreal.
Loonies have the best view in town.
Here and there were clusters of people gathered on the expensive grass around wood furniture. It could have been a country club. The nurses gave it away. White and perfect, there was one on the circumference of every group, not quite joining the conversation, but in quiet control, like a moon.
“Good evening, Mr. Breavman,” said the floor nurse. “Your mother will be glad to see you.”
Was that reproach in her smile?
He opened the door. The room was cool and dark. As soon as his mother saw him it began. He sat down. He didn’t bother saying hello this time.
“… I want you to have the house, Lawrence, it’s for you so you’ll have a place for your head, you’ve got to protect yourself, they’ll take everything away, they have no
