Breavman walked, almost marched, between the black-filled cabins. He was exhilarated to be the only free agent in this frozen world. Wanda was asleep, her hair colourless. Martin was asleep, his jaws relaxed, at home in his terror. Anne was asleep, a dancer out of training. Krantz was asleep. Certainly he knew how Krantz slept, how his lips budged forward each time he exhaled his jagged snore.
He dissolved the walls in his mind as he walked between them, and he took an inventory of each form’s isolation. This night’s sleep was strangely graceless. He noted the greedy expression a sleeper wears, that of a solitary eater at a banquet. In sleep every man is an only child. They turned, they shifted, drew up a limb, uncocked an elbow, turned again, shifted again, a series of prize crabs, each on his private white beach.
All their ambition, energy, speed, individuality was swaddled in excelsior, like rows of Christmas ornaments out of season. Each form, so intent on power, was locked in a nursery struggle far away. And it seemed that the night, so sharp and still, the physical world, would wait motionless until they all came back.
You’ve lost, Breavman addressed them out loud. It’s a hypnotists’ tournament, this little life of ours, and I’m the winner.
He decided to share the prize with Krantz.
The screen in the window above Krantz’s bed had a bulge in it. When Breavman tapped it from the outside it created a miniature thunder.
His face did not appear. Breavman tapped again. Krantz’s disembodied voice began in a monotone.
“You are stepping on the flowers, Breavman. If you look down, you will discover that you are in a flower-bed. Why are you standing on the flowers, Breavman?”
“Krantz, listen to this: The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
“That’s very good, Breavman. Good night.”
“The last superiority of the refuge is a sleeping sense of the insomniac world.”
“Oh, excellent.”
“The refuge world of the superiority is a last sense of the sleeping insomniac.”
“Umm. Yes.”
There was a creaking of springs and Krantz blinked out of the window.
“Hello, Breavman.”
“You can go back to sleep now, Krantz. I just wanted to wake you up.”
“Well, you might as well rouse the camp. Rouse the camp, Breavman! It’s the night.”
“For what?”
“A Children’s Crusade. We’ll march on Montreal.”
“So there’s a reason for all this discipline. Forgive me, Krantz, I should have known.”
They planned the assault on Montreal and the ensuing martyrdom with sinister enthusiasm. After four minutes of talk Breavman broke into the fantasy.
“Is this for my benefit, Krantz? Some sort of charitable therapy?”
“God damn you, Breavman!”
The bed creaked again and in a few seconds Krantz was outside, wearing a bathrobe and a towel around his neck.
“Let’s walk, Breavman.”
“You were humouring me, Krantz.”
“I don’t know how you can be so perceptive in one instant and so miserably blind in another. I admit it. I was asleep and I felt like telling you to fuck off. Besides, Anne was in bed with me.”
“I’m sorry, I — ”
“No, I want to talk to you, now. I’ve been trying to get to talk to you for weeks.”
“What?”
“You’ve made yourself completely unavailable, Breavman. To me, to everyone.…”
They stood beside the canoe racks, talking, listening to the water. The sand was damp and it was really too cold to be there but neither wished to cripple the communication that had begun, and which both knew was fragile.
The mist along the shore began to weave itself thick out of snaky wisps, and the edge of the sky brightened into a royal blue.
They told each other about their girls, a little solemnly, carefully omitting any sexual information.
13
He watched Martin clean his nose, his great Caesarian nose that should have sponsored historic campaigns but only counted grass and pine needles.
Every morning Martin got up half an hour early to fulfil the ritual.
Toothpicks, cotton-wool, vaseline, mirrors.
Breavman asked him why.
“I like to have a clean nose.”
Martin asked Breavman to mail a letter to his brother. Mrs. Stark had given instructions that they be intercepted and destroyed. Breavman read them and they brought him closer to the boy’s anguish.
Dear Bully fat Bully you dirty
I got your last thirty-four letters and saw in a second the millions of lies. I hope you starve and your boner breaks in half with lots of screams and lets the beetles out after what you told her about me. Why don’t you fill your mouth with towels and razor-blades. Mummy is not a stupid skull she sneaked a look in the flashlight and read the poison shit you wrote me under the blankets.
love your brother,
MARTIN STARK
14
Day off. Despite the hot drive in the bus he was exhilarated to be back in Montreal. But who were the bastards responsible for tearing down the best parts of the city?
He visited his mother, was unable to make her understand he’d been away. Same horror as always.
He walked along Sherbrooke Street. The women of Montreal were beautiful. Launched from tiny ankles, their legs shot up like guided missiles into atmospheres of private height.
He formed wild theories out of pleats and creases.
Wrists, white and fast as falling stars, plunged him into arm-holes. Tonight they would have to comb his eyeballs out of all their hair.
He planted hundreds of hands in bosoms, like hidden money. Therefore he called on Tamara.
“Come in, old chappie, old.”
Smell of turpentine. Another batch of agonized self-portraits. “Tamara, you’re the only woman I can talk to. For the past two weeks I’ve gone to sleep with your mouth in my hand.”
“How’s camp? How’s Krantz?”
“Flourishing. But he’ll never make a Compassionate P.”
“You smell delicious. And you’re so brown. Yummy.”
“Let’s be immoderate.”
“Good idea in any given situation.”
“Let’s praise each other’s genitalia. Don’t you hate that word?”
“For women. It’s good for men. Sounds loopy —
