Kalila (22 page)

The man and woman step onto the road, wait for a car to cross, then start in silence up the street. Piano notes dapple the air. Such intense sunlight. Light cuts through everything. The soft growl of a dog. Abandoned chairs against a patio. The woman's heart is strained. She is so tired now. The road is empty, the only moving objects this April afternoon, a man, a woman, one neighbour, two cats skulking through the hedge, spring buds.

They cross Capri, head north and west, the line of houses breaks away and becomes parkland, the earth's heat rises; overhead, rocking blue sky. They pass a park, mount the street, Nose Hill brown hay above them. When they reach John Laurie Boulevard, the man takes the bag, her hand, as they wait in the churn of cars, straight-backed against the wind, the honk of horns, the dust.

A space opens in traffic, and they run, stop on the boulevard, shirts twirling, they blow across, buried in windy clothes.

And now they start the long climb up Nose Hill.

 

I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. As a lily among thorns is my love amongst the daughters
.

 

There is a lovely winding path that leads off the paved thoroughfare onto Nose Hill. You can catch it at the Brisbois turnoff. Just beyond a twist of bush and briar, the path breaks into three. It heads west toward Shaganappi, straight up, or east toward the Winter Club. The east path winds upward behind a half-kilometre row of poplars, hides the climber behind a rise of hill so there is country on all sides.

The man and woman take the east path, dissolve into greenery. Restless wind, ripping landscape, wild grasses, breezy sunlight. They move, two figures, over a burned-out patch of hill until they reach the summit. Wild roses thorn ravines. Their fragrance on the wind. The shimmer of quivering reeds. One crocus under snow.

I am my beloved's; her desire is toward me
.

Light falls. It bends and scales, colours collide, as swirled by sunlit gusts, she lifts her hands.

Releases to the wind.

 

On a wind and light-filled Monday morning Jasmine Forester, the lady of the heart, presents herself at the door in a pale lavender suit with matching scarf and earrings. Here, she informs the woman, to retrieve the heart monitor.

The lady of the heart steps into the baby's bedroom. Machines still chug. No one has entered this room. No one has shut down life support. The constant curve of time.

The door sighs open.

She pulls the plug.

Absolute zero.

Outside, a swallow sings.

I'm sorry your daughter is dead, Jasmine Forester says from the safety of the doorstep. Her words scatter down the stairs in tumbling particles of light. How was anyone to know the child was so ill?

The clicks of her high-heeled shoes tapdance the afternoon away.

 

The woman climbs Nose Hill. Voices. A chorus. Listen. Listen. Who knows what this earth holds. How many ashes have caught the wind as loved ones swallowed light and let them go.

The sage and silence of this place.

It's springtime. The first rains wash old dust. The earth in song.

Where does a child end, where does the earth begin?

 

The man drives to school through stars and sunsets, through the twist and turn of seasons. Enters his small, new-smelling apartment, leaving lights off as he goes.

Home alone nights in this strange space he feels the habit of the woman's hands. An arch of foot. Hollow of underarm. Hears her voice saying crazy, indignant words, he hears her laughing stories; her voice stays with him evenings as if she's at the kitchen door.

She might have been a forest ranger, she said those first days after.

Putting away the milk, She'd have liked archeology. Scratching scar into possibility until he could have choked. And when he wouldn't answer: Say it. Say her name.

With time, people slip into their names. The child's left open. No time to enter it. No time to be it. How could he explain his need to have the silence cradle her.

How could he explain what's buried must stay buried.

How could he explain there's no such thing as time.

He read and reads.

The man's son doesn't ask about a baby born in this western city, in another life. And the man doesn't speak of her. The boy visits in the summers. He is almost seven now. The man drives the boy to baseball games, to ice cream shops; they fly a kite; they walk along the river and the man explains light waves.

He keeps the baby separate, hinged in windy landscape. Skin starred by moonlight. Scars criss-crossing her heels.

 

Dust, seasons, scars and weather, pages turn, the city grows. The woman's sisters send her to Banff for a massage. Take a day away. Go for a drive. Her thirty-seventh birthday. Her husband gone eight years. Summer ending. The woman drives toward granite mountains, toward a late August afternoon. The car speeds into sunlight, into wind, then rain. The sun comes out again, illuminates wet pavement. The woman slides toward mountains on the lull of summer tires.

Banff is busy with seduced tourists, grabbing elusive summer heat. The woman winds her way past in her small Toyota, over the bridge to a distant part of town. A wrinkled Hungarian woman opens the door to a private dwelling. The woman steps inside.

A high cot waits in the tiny living room. The woman disrobes, climbs naked onto the narrow table, skin cool, then wanting, beneath a yellowed sheet.

The old one has efficient hands. Forceful, they stroke the woman's wrists, forearms, her feet, move into curve and swell, their rhythm steady, strong. The woman closes her eyes.

Who's Rose?

The woman jolts on her narrow bed. Why — Rose? — well, she's my sister.

The old one works the woman's temples, jaw bone, rhymes her hands across the woman's freckled shoulders. She has a zippy personality, your sister?

Rose? The woman struggles to sit up; the old one's firm hands hold her down.

Tell her not to drive through any yellow lights.

The woman's language scatters like wingtips of startled birds. A strong pull down and down and down — buttocks, thighs, circling behind her knees, her calves, her skin tingling the length of its desire.

The room fills with the scent of buttercup and wild rose. The woman on her back. Like a mother kneading bread dough, the Hungarian works the woman's bones. A stillness from some other place. Lost words. Light passing on the ceiling. The old one's hands. Nearby the river flows. A droning bee travels the window. Cars shift out on the road. Fused light the colour of summer grain.

Who's this? The old hands arrest on the woman's breastbone. A child. She's dead. She's here.

 

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved that you tell her I am sick with love
.