HE HEARS HIS WIFE AND GUESTS LAUGHING.
The clink of a glass. Wine spilling into a glass. Laughter. Voices. He listens only to the music; he drowns their voices and turns his eyes to the woman sitting across from him. She stares back at him with the gaze of one waiting to be recognized.
ON THE SECOND FLOOR, ABOVE THE CAFÃ
, there was a flat. Henry had intended to keep it vacant, but it was now occupied by a woman who had passed through his door the night of a storm enquiring about the empty place she had seen from a room across the street. It had appeared to him that she may well have spent every moment in that evening's downpour and when he'd eyed the bag on the floor behind her, he looked to the ceiling. “It's a small room with a bathroom. It was my father's room once. The mattress is long so it should be okay for you.” She followed his eyes to the ceiling, shrugged her shoulders and said it sounded fine. Henry removed the key from his key ring and introduced himself.
She kept her hands in her pockets, smiled and said her name. “L.”
Henry led L to the back where a door opened on to a staircase. There was another entrance he told her, at the side of the building, up the iron stairwell. He brought her up the stairs, slid the key in the lock and led her inside. “As you can see the fridge is in the closet. The door was removed a long time ago to make room for it. The bathroom is on the right.”
He wasn't sure what to tell her. Prints of old paintings. An empty wicker basket. Old grains in old glass jars. The room was as it was. The kitchen was too small for the two of them. He pointed to an open cupboard and some plates and told her if there was anything she needed she was welcome to it downstairs.
L ran her fingers along the wall. The colour was deep, the walls textured. She placed her bag on a wooden bench extending from the wall beneath the window. She looked in the small mirror above the armoire. Ropes of wet mascara anchored to her cheeks, pulling her eyelids closed. The room was wider, the ceilings higher than she imagined from the dark tenement across the street where she'd stood not long ago. She unrolled the blinds, walked slowly to the bathroom, and tested the light.
“It's broken,” Henry said, “but there's a large candle, which should be fine.” White tiles, a white toilet and a white porcelain sink. “That's the bath. It takes a long time to fill but it's a good size.” He squeezed into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, reassuring her that the plumbing was at least intact. L smiled faintly, indicating to Henry with a nod of her own that she approved of the flat and his generosity, and that she would like to stay. She did not say for how long, but considering the days spent among strangers, Henry was glad to see this new face, glad that he had been of some use. She towelled off the remains of her make-up, thanked Henry and closed the door for three days.
When he returned to the ground floor, he could hear the floor creak as she walked slowly around the upstairs flat. He imagined a heavy cat acquainting itself with every corner of its new surroundings. But the creaking did not last long. Directly above him is where her bed lay, and that is where the footsteps stopped.
FOR THREE DAYS IT RAINED BOTH OUTSIDE AND IN.
His neglect to repair the iron pipes caused the bad weather to make its way inside. For those who complained Henry offered only the fact that pipes do not stand a chance against a force that crumbles mountains and this way, at least, the plants stayed watered. He kept plants in many corners and laid others strategically beneath the places where water fell through the widening cracks overhead, and were it not for the neglected pipes, he would have only the withered remains of dead plants to keep him company. If customers leaned back in their chairs sighing, pointing out the droplets of water slowly filling their cups, or shook a wet newspaper, he would gently lift their table, slide it to a drier place and set a small potted plant there instead. Then he would place a complimentary glass of wine or scotch or port on the customer's table and thank them for suggesting a new place for the plants. It was an inconvenience, and it suited people just fine.
When she appeared on the third morning, L's stride was slow but rid of the weight with which she had arrived. Her black hair, wet and knotted on her arrival, was now straight, tied back around her shoulders.
“I thought you might be hibernating,” said Henry. “Take some coffee. It'll warm you up.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Can I have something to eat also? I have money upstairs.”
“No need,” Henry waved his hand and reached for a cup. “Covered in the rent.”
As Henry warmed bread in a small oven and prepared a dish with butter, cured meat and cheese, the old man at the far end of the counter shook his head and waved the newspaper at Henry. “Those pigs are only out to handcuff the city, crippling the economy to get what they want.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Henry, slowly passing a knife through the meat.
“Don't be blind, Henry,” the old man rasped. “You know what's going on. A transit strike. Again. Again! There's no point having a public transit system if the public can't even use it! And now look at this. Nurses are talking about a strike too.”
Henry took the bread from the oven and placed it on the plate in front of L. “What do you think?” She turned her eyes to Henry. “The transit workers went on strike yesterday.”
She was silent. Henry assumed it had probably been some time since anyone asked her what she was thinking. So he asked again.
“Well,” she said, after a pause. “I suppose if they are fighting for something they feel they deserve, I see no harm in that.”
“Vraie communiste,” uttered the old man.
“I'm not communiste,” she said. “I'm not anything.”
WHEN IT WAS QUIET, HENRY WOULD LEAN ON HIS ELBOW,
sip on something warm, run wide fingers through thinning hair and watch old cartoons on the old television. A small block of grainy black and white images. A way to pass the time on days that never ended. Another place to be. Some place animated.
Occasionally he would hear the echo of the iron staircase in the alley as footsteps ascended to the upstairs flat. Other times, he'd hear sounds from the flat above. Rapping against a wall, misplaced thumps, running water. And when he heard those sounds, he turned up the volume on the television or record player. The pipes that ran along the café ceiling rattled when the upstairs toilet flushed, a sound usually followed by the low iron echo of the outside stairs.
At times, late at night, when Henry decided to keep the place open on account of nice weather, lingering customers or a desire not to return home, L would come down for a drink. Always alone. He never knew what she was going to talk about but he enjoyed this uncertainty. Sometimes they would watch strangers pass by the window and guess who they were and where they were going. Another artist on their way to the square, or a Spanish spy carrying secret documents. “No,” she would insist, “the Spanish talk too much to be able to keep secrets. If those are secrets, then he is going to the square to show everyone.”
One of L's favourite games was to turn down the volume on the old television and speak for the characters on the screen. One afternoon, while the rich autumn hues dominated the streets outside, the Prime Minister was delivering an emotional speech. His arms waved; he pointed his finger; raised his voice. Whether he was going on about the recent unrest with labour unions and their demands or about any tally of daily disturbances that required his specific attention was unclear. L turned down the volume and was narrating the speech. Henry watched as this infamous politician now pounded his fist, waved his arm, vowing never again to dress in women's clothing and never again to spend their tax dollars on lipstick and hand cream. Henry judged by her pauses, her upward glances and her arched eyebrows that she expected him to play with her, to fill in the voices of the police chiefs, pundits and angry demonstrators. When he tried, fumbling with the words and timing, she'd continue, assuming the voice of the next person on the screen. “See you next time around. Back to you, Henry,” she would say as reporters stood on screen, concluding their coverage of this event or that event, but he could think of nothing to say, no clever way to continue the game. He would wedge his upper lip beneath the lower, and arch his own eyebrows while L's lips parted into a smile.
Henry looked to the ceiling. Above him he could see the dining room table in his house, spinning behind the circular fan above his head, his wife's colleagues gathered around the table, breaking bread, talking about this event or that event, pouring wine amongst themselves and laughing.
He could see himself sitting quietly at the table. His eyes met his own, in a body near to hers.
HE SITS IN THE CHAIR AND LISTENS
to the long passage of a bow across a viola string, and wonders how it took such little time to arrive at the point in his life where he spent more time within the confines of his mind than in the company of others. Within the confines of a physical world, which enclosed on him with the ferocity of a hunter, music is his only faithful companion. He imagines what it must be like to be deaf and the thought terrifies him. The idea of being incapable of these moments where nothing matters but sound and instrumentation delivers him to such unbearable darkness and loneliness. To go without sight was something he did almost voluntarily now, an act which no longer required closing his eyes. Henry could focus on a single image, the rim of a glass, the contents of a bottle, the black centre of an iris or the wrinkles accumulated over time in the flesh around the eyes. And from the bank of these accumulated images, he could construct what he wished and he allowed the music to bend his loneliness into shapes, at times orchestrating each movement and at other times allowing them to orchestrate him.
He runs his fingers along the rim of his glass and there is a hollow sound. He knows if someone were to do the same to him, to run their fingers along the edges of his body with a warm finger, he would probably scream. He is aware of the presence of others at the table. It is confirmed in the way they touch each other. Fingers along a wrist. A hand on a shoulder. Each one's presence confirmed by the touch of another. No one to confirm he is actually there. At the table they speak of a popular work of art. They speak of the colours and the contours using words he doesn't always understand. But these are words he never felt the need to use. For Henry, the language of visual art was silent and for him to be in a place without language meant being in a place of divinity, if only temporarily. For Henry, the dialogue between the artist and the audience was the arrival at the moment where language no longer mattered. Some things were best understood by leaving them in silence, not skewed and contorted in the coil of a lexicon.
The woman who had arrived late sits at the end of the table, across from Henry. With her finger she traces the tiled surface on the place mat in front of her over and over. She drags her nail along the white borders of each tiny square. It's the most prominent shape in her life. For her, it's a shape that doesn't exist in the natural world. In the city, it is inescapable.
She looks around the room. Her eyes drag along the borders, along the perfect corners where flecks of dust and dirt accumulate. Up to the window and its perfect corners, her eyes pass along the white mortar enclosing each rectangular brick of the neighbouring building, the windowsills, the square rooms and their walls, framed paintings, the edges of books. Everywhere the same shape. The same pattern. She considers the nightmarish possibilities in this arrangement and she considers that her mind may well be something not her own, considers the possibility that the patterns of her thoughts follow a trajectory constructed entirely outside of herself, and considers the inescapability of the borders that surround her.
She moves her eyes to the fan overhead. She watches its circular motion, perches her eyes upon the blades and watches as each line in the room fuses into a single orb. Over the tiles on the place mat in front of her, she drags her nail in the same circular motion, undoing the pattern. Scratching her own mark on the table.
INSIDE, NOISE BEGAN TO DROWN OUT THE MUSIC
. Lachaise stared out the window, sitting quietly while Laplante leafed through his collection of pages. The constant metallic hum of small motors vibrated in the canals of Henry's ears, while in a corner where sunlight never passed, a man in chequered pants turned the pages of a newspaper while another sat organizing photographs, writing occasionally on the white underside of pictures of buildings that reached far into the sky. Cool air passed against their faces as the door opened and the stranger walked inside. He greeted Henry with a nod.
“Did I forget my things here the other night?”
“Did you lose something?”
“Important papers. They were here with me the other day.”
“All the books are over there,” said Henry, pointing to a small shelf at the back of the room. The stranger hurried towards it and sifted through the shelves.
“These are just books,” he said impatiently.
“I thought that's what you were looking for.”
“These were notes. You're sure you haven't seen them?”
“I only saw themâ”
“When?”
“When you were here.”
“Not after that?”
“Not after that,” repeated Henry.
The stranger ran his hands over his eyes. “I'm not staying far from here. Maybe if I search again...”
“Very well,” said Henry. “Good luck.”
The door closed behind the stranger as he left.
Between her fingers, L tore a piece of paper into a long narrow strip and held an end in each hand. With a slow turn of the wrist the paper curled as she joined the ends together. She held the shape between her thumb and forefinger. She ran a single finger along the shape, along the top and bottom and between the two loops. Henry turned to L. She was holding the strip above her nose and stared at him through the paper bifocals with a faint smile as he shrugged. It was no longer just paper to her. It was something else. Something different. Two eyes behind paper frames whispering something to Henry as he looked at her.
He'd learned through repeatedly failed attempts in his life not to cut through these kinds of precious, silent moments and was used to being asked to remain silent. So he remained silent, and for the rest of the afternoon as he continued with his tasks, he waited for L to speak.
But she didn't. Instead they made their way comfortably through the silence together.
It was late afternoon and Henry stood in the middle of the floor, sweeping where a line of faded paint marked the border with the sun. In summer, in the evenings, when the sun passed above the buildings across the street, light would inch further and further inside before reaching a line over which he now stood, then gradually it would recede, as the sun again lowered beneath the horizon. In summer, when it was quiet, Henry would sometimes stand like a soldier guarding this border. Though he knew he never stood a chance in a fight should a fighter confront him, he knew he could at least beat away sunlight by holding his position at the faded line on the floor, by stomping his foot, raising a fist and warning the sun that it had gone far enough. He'd been caught one day uttering threats to the sun as Lachaise arrived unannounced.
“Who are you talking to?” Lachaise had asked.
The day had been dragging and Henry was bored. “God,” he told Lachaise. “If the sun passes over this line, there's going to be hell to pay.”
Henry walked behind the counter, grabbed a broom and returned to the line and stood steadfast behind it. Periodically he made a sweeping motion towards the door, brushing at the encroaching patch of sunlight. Henry winked at Lachaise and with a swift nod, assured him that occasionally God had to be fought off like a swooping bat.
On those unusually hot days Henry gave Lachaise lots of water and welcomed him with a smile and a respectful nod, while in the darkest corner the old man would continue to drink and smoke until the sun passed and shadows again dominated the interior. The old man always tried to be discreet about the wine he snuck into his cup until his discretion and sobriety faded into the evening. Henry would let the old man rest with his head buried in folded arms on a table until more customers arrived and he would wake him and usher him outside. But at other times when strangers poked their heads inside or pressed their faces against the window, Henry would stand over the motionless old man, methodically cleaning his largest knife while smiling at those who looked in. And after those outside had continued along their route, Henry would reach inside the old man's coat and pour himself a glass of wineâa tax for his forgiving nature and a taste of what led the old man into the darknessâand then gently return the bottle to his pocket.
Henry found the summers excruciating and he held nothing against those who passed through his door with damp backs and glistening faces. He never spoke to them but would greet them with a long nod, a slow backward tilt of the head which communicated nothing but the fact that it was goddamn hot and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Understanding this nod, those like Lachaise, who liked most of all to sit outside at night with his eyes to the stars, would speak of little else.
“It's goddamn hot and there is nothing either of us can do about it.”
“True, true,” Henry would say.
“Can't you open a window or keep the door open?”
Henry shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Lets the cool air out.”
“But there is no cool air in here!”
“Because people keep opening the door.”
Lachaise had no time for this kind of banter. He would take his drink from Henry and sit down. Lachaise, like any individual, sweat in summers and focused during those hot days and nights on the act of sitting still. Even his thoughts, which on most days nagged him, slowed to a tone of complacent acceptance. Like anyone, he marked his days on a calendar of thirteen equal months of four weeks and seven days and aligned each month with each of the thirteen constellations. His study of the solar system had turned on its head many things he once believed to be true and affirmed many things he suspected to be untrue. He knew for certain one thing: the boundaries of the universe, and the source of which accounted for his existence, drifted from him at a speed greater than he was capable of moving. In an ever-expanding universe the answer drifted further and further while hurling him around the sun at a rate of a hundred thousand kilometres per hour with a simultaneous equatorial rotation rate of more than one and a half thousand kilometres per hour. At this speed things were not easy to grasp and he did not hold this cosmic inconvenience in high regard. There was nothing he could do about this but remind himself that he knew very little and his existence prior to this revelation was based on the premise that he knew quite a lot. It wasn't sad for him that he had grown into a salesman with dwindling faith in his product, because he still had faith in the intricate workings of the universe and the mysteries it supplied and these provided him what he felt had so long been missing in his life: the empirical evidence of God. And one with a refined sense of humour and decorated sense of irony at that. Lachaise's scientific curiosity had revealed to him that, contrary to, and specifically because of, scientific fact, the place he lived, was in fact the centre of the universe. According to Lachaise, if an ever expanding universe had no centre, each place, including the planet he inhabited, was therefore its centre. It was a cold hard fact which alienated Lachaise from his contemporaries but it worried him very little. Especially when it was this goddamn hot outside.
Lachaise took a handkerchief from his pocket, folded it in four, and wiped the sweat from his forehead. To him, the square was the most natural shape. A divine shape reflected in every aspect of natural life. There were the earth's four natural elements; the four seasons; the four weeks in each of his thirteen months; the four points of a compass; the four corners of the planetary calendar: the spring and autumn equinoxes, and the solstices of winter and summer and the four years which passed before the earth's orbit played its trick on the street outside. For Lachaise, there were four sides to every story. Naturally, for his friend Laplante, there were no sides to any story, only lies.
As Henry moved to the back to collect empty glasses, Lachaise eyed a cup on the countertop as it started to rattle. Slowly, it rose above the saucer upon which it had been placed. This kind of reversal of universal laws hardly struck Lachaise as unusual. Travelling through the universe at such astronomical speeds, things were bound to become dislodged or lose their place. Lachaise lifted his hand to catch the cup as it flew past him, but he was not as lucky with the saucer, which flew by him and shattered against the wall.
Henry passed the broom across the floor.
“What are you thinking about?” asked L.
“Summer,” said Henry.
Henry smiled and placed the broom back in the corner as the bell above the door rang the entrance of the stranger.
“This is insane. I've searched everywhere and I can't find them. They have to be here.”
“Maybe someone accidentallyâ”
“The bums here don't read. No one ste-â¦No one robs notes and papers. They've got to be here.”
L held the torn white edges of her napkin between her fingers. They sat like snowflakes on the table.
“I'm sure it will turn up,” Henry said.
The man focused his gaze on L for a few moments, struggled with his speech. There was a way the man looked at L, the way he examined her face and a way her face averted his gaze that made Henry think the two might know each other. But she held her eyes to the table. “I'd hate to think they were sto- sto-,” his stutter intensified with his frustration. “-Th -th -that a theft had occurred. It wou- it wou- not surprise me. Considering some of those in this neighbourhood and the things they do to get by.”
And then he left.
“Do you know him?” asked Henry.
“No,” said L.
“He seemed to know you.”
“He's just someone who lost something.”
“But there was something in the way he looked at youâyou seemed familiar to him.”
L paused. “Would you like me to pack, Henry?”
“Why would I want you to do that?”
“I'm afraid he may have made you believe bad things about me.”
Henry squeezed a wet cloth in his hands and walked to the other end of the counter. He was accustomed to this system of silent exchange, this doublespeak where meaning lay hidden between the words, so he did his best to sell her the idea of staying without revealing how desperately he wanted her to do so. She was free to go, of course, he told her, but rents in the area weren't cheap, and since he never had any intention of renting the flat prior to her arrival, he saw no reason to raise the rent in the future. Besides, he shyly added, there were no other flats in the city that he knew of where food and drinks were included in the rent.
“Except inns,” she said.
“Then consider this place an inn.”
“Then my stay will be temporary, and I'll eventually have to move, and you'll have to find someone else to take my place. But I don't know when that will be just yet, so for the time being, you're stuck with me.”
“I guess I can find a way to put up with you a little longer.”
L squinted at Henry, pursed her lips. She knew he was being facetious but she couldn't let his comment go without at least appearing angered by it. Henry tried to fight back a smile as he squinted back, his face mirroring hers.
On the wall next to where she sat the mortar between the bricks was rough and coloured by the residue of time. The place was old. She narrowed her eyes to see how the lines connected and what images they created. She asked Henry what he could see and he told her: they were just bricks. She asked what he could see between them and he told her: just lines. She ran her fingers along the wall passing her fingers along the coarse surface between each brick. He asked her what she felt and she told him.
“Nothing.”
As Henry turned to greet a customer, L scratched gently along the mortar between the bricks. Slowly and effortlessly, she slid her fingers deep past the surface, feeling the grainy underside of the bricks against her fingertips. And here, inside the wall, she buried the lie she told Henry about the stranger. She knew the stranger better than she knew any man. He was the reason she was there, and she the reason he was searching. Only, he hadn't recognized her. Not like this.