“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.
Book IV
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 heart, for me it’s the end of the story, what I did for everyone, and now I have to be with the crazy people, lying like a dog, the whole world outside, the whole world, I wouldn’t let a dog lie this way, I should be in a hospital, is this a hospital? do they know about my feet, that I can’t walk? but my son is too busy, oh he’s a great man, too busy for his mother, a poet for the world, for the world …!”
Here she began to shout. Nobody looked in.
“… but for his mother he’s too busy, for his shiksa he’s got plenty of time, for her he doesn’t count minutes, after what they did to our people, I had to hide in the cellar on Easter, they chased us, what I went through, and to see a son, to see my son, a traitor to his people, I have to forget about everything, I have no son.…”
She continued for an hour, staring at the ceiling as she ranted. When it was nine o’clock he said, “I’m not supposed to stay any longer, Mother.”
She stopped suddenly and blinked.
“Lawrence?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Are you taking care of yourself?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Are you eating enough?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“What did you eat today?”
He mumbled a few words. He tried to make up a menu she’d approve. He could hardly speak, not that she could hear.
“… never took a cent, it was everything for my son, fifteen years with a sick man, did I ask for diamonds like other women.…”
He left her talking.
There was a therapeutic dance going on outside. Nurses held by frightened patients. Recorded pop music, romantic fantasies even more ludicrous in this setting.
When the swallows come back to Capistrano
Behind the circle of soft light in which they moved rose the dark slope of Mount Royal. Below them flashed the whole commercial city.
He watched the dancers and, as we do when confronted with the helpless, he heaped on them all the chaotic love he couldn’t put anywhere else. They lived in terror.
He wished that one of the immaculate white women would walk him down the hill.
3
He saw Tamara almost every night of the two weeks he was in the city.
She had abandoned her psychiatrist and espoused Art, which was less demanding and cheaper.
“Let’s not learn a single new thing about one another, Tamara.”
“Is that laziness or friendship?”
“It’s love!”
He staged a theatrical swoon.
She lived in a curious little room on Fort Street, a street of dolls’ houses. There was a marble fireplace with carved torches and hearts, above it a narrow mirror surrounded by slender wood pillars and entablatures, a kind of brown Acropolis.
“That mirror’s doing nobody any good up there.”
They pried it out and arranged it beside the couch.
The room had been partitioned flimsily by an economical landlady. Tamara’s third, because of the high ceiling, seemed to be standing on one end. She liked it because it felt so temporary.
Tamara was a painter now, who did only self-portraits. There were canvases everywhere. The sole background for all the portraits was this room she lived in. There was paint under her fingernails.
“Why do you only do yourself?”
“Can you think of anyone more beautiful, charming, intelligent, sensitive, et cetera?”
“You’re getting fat, Tamara.”
“So I can paint my childhood.”
Her hair was the same black, and she hadn’t cut it.
They founded the Compassionate Philistines one night, and limited the membership to two. It was devoted to the adoration of the vulgar. They celebrated the fins of the new Cadillac, defended Hollywood and the Hit Parade, wall-to-wall carpets, Polynesian restaurants, affirmed their allegiance to the Affluent Society.
Wallpaper roses were peeling from the grapevine moulding. The single piece of furniture was a small Salvation Army couch, over-stuffed and severely wounded. She supported herself as an artist’s model and ate only bananas, the theory of the week.
The night before he left she had a surprise for him and all loyal Compassionate Philistines. She removed her bandanna. She had dyed her hair blonde in accordance with the aims of the organization.
Good-bye, old
