Michael Rode His Dream Aboard

 
His English teacher, the final year of high school, encouraged him to write poetry, "Learn to express yourself. You'll find it's a good outlet for your emotions. Poetry is the only completely honest medium", Mr. Stevenson said.

Michael read Eliot, Pound, Frost and Wilde but he felt dissatisfied. Accidentally, he discovered the biography of Sir Richard Burton, felt a current of recognition, and went on to read Burton's translation of Sheikh Nefzawi's "The Perfumed Garden". His head reeled. And he unburdened himself.

In the school library, writing. The poem held everything he dreamed of, and it was honest. His name scribbled on the top.

Was it accidental that he left it there or had he forgotten? Did he really think someone might come across it, be struck by its tender pathos, the passion, the genius of it?

The school office was nicely appointed; the only part of the building that didn't resemble a jail, a barracks.

"We won't tolerate this kind of ... obscenity!" Mr. Pearce spat out the distasteful word, jowls trembling in outrage.

Michael almost panicked. They threatened to throw him out of school. It was two months before final exams. He was humble, explained it to Mr. Pearce as a temporary lapse. He was not himself. He didn't really think that way - maybe it was something he'd read somewhere. And no, it wasn't true that he'd written it for Gayle Pointer. He didn't know who'd picked it up, given it to her.

"You're on borrowed time, Brack, remember that! Henceforth, your behaviour will be the model of circumspection."

"Yes sir."

***********************************************************

His father looking at him with that grim expression. Michael forced himself to pick up his fork, lift a piece of potato, open his mouth to receive it, chew.

"I'm talking to you!"
"Yes sir, I can hear you."
"Where did you pick up that kind of thing - not here! Not from us!"
"No sir."

His father, shoving back his chair, rising. "I won't sit here with him ... none of us have to, Rachel! From now on see he eats before we do."

Michael rummaged about in the accumulated debris of the night table in his parents' room until he found what he was looking for, knew they were there. He punctured them, every one, then carefully rolled them. They looked innocent, untouched.

**************************************************************

"I'm sorry Mrs. Brack", the doctor had said when he was a year old, in the grip of a prolonged high fever. "Even if he pulls out of this you can't expect him to live long."

Later it was, "Even so, he'll be a vegetable. He'll never be able to communicate, to talk. I've heard of other cases like this one. He'll be a vegetable for however long he survives."

It was relatively easy to abort a foetus, withhold medical support from a newborn. Harder to do anything about low expectations for an infant. He was already an established fact, an entity to deal with.

He walked, he talked. Animated, like a hopeful robot, waiting for some response.

"Jesus Rachel! Can't he even act like a normal kid? What's he keep staring at me for, with those goggle eyes?"

*******************************************************

When he was nine, he had an Abyssinian Guinea Pig, kept it in a cardboard box with rumpled newspapers. Freddie. It dug into, under the newspapers, made itself a private little cave. The animal knew him, recognized his step, his voice, squeaked for attention when it heard him.

Michael fed it lettuce and apples. The animal dogged his footsteps, a bundle of brindle fur. Soft and warm, he let it snuggle under his shirt, next to his skin. It loved him, liked him for being warm, for caring for it.

Once, his hands stopped in their caressing motions over its back. Stopped and went back to check, again and again. The hump grew day by day and then there were other, smaller humps.

Freddie wound down, his squeals were faint and instead of following Michael, he sat there, squatted on the floor, still.

Michael buried it in the backyard, under his mother's rosebed. The roses grew bigger and brighter than ever that year. He hated the smell of them. They smelled corrupt.

************************************************************

At the university cafeteria, him sitting alone at a table for four. Seeing someone whom he recognized from one of his language classes come in. Michael rose, waved for attention, indicated the empty chairs beside him.

The searching face stopped, glanced at him, an annoyed expression fleeting across the face, then continued its search.

It wasn't just him, that he'd contaminate anyone. It was just society. Space was precious. No one wanted anyone else to intrude on their privacy. No one looked for unwanted intimacy, even the superficial kind his invitation represented.

It wasn't just him.

*********************************************************

Factory smoke hanging thick and pungent over Cornwall. Himself wandering along the bank of the St.Lawrence, watching ships pass. Seagulls swooping, riding the crest of the wind, shrilling.

There were Greek immigrants there, industrial workers. In his grade five class, one who took him home. A big warm family who saw nothing different about Michael. They fed him lamb and rice parcels rolled into grape leaves, taught him Greek words.

The shawled grandmother, brooding and immobile, dreaming of a lost blue sky, the balmy Aegean, olive trees as gnarled as she was, but productive in their venerability.

Michael discovered a facility for languages. And when he spoke the foreign words, remembering them from visit to visit, expanding a lean vocabulary, his tongue no longer faltered and tripped, extending the words impossibly.

*****************************************************

The first individualist who insisted on worshipping Aten when everyone else was dedicated to Amon-ra and the lesser gods. The narrow, aquiline face. Narrow shoulders and pendulous belly. But refusing to be idealized. No shapely waist and wide shoulders to depict him. Nothing but the reality would do.

Michael felt an affinity to the antique figure, a recognition of self. The face, proud and noble. No one could tell that that face, his frailty, his misshapen figure was not beautiful.

Of course, after his death, the jealous priests exhorted restless hordes to erase all evidence of his greatness, to chisel his name out of posterity.

The Brotherhood of Man is the safety of the masses, the sameness of physiognomy and predictable aspiration. There have been, and are, a handful of others and they suffer, Michael consoled himself.

*******************************************************

Studying at the university library late at night. The place almost deserted, huge and hollow sounding. He could hear his breathing almost, his heart beating like strange music filling the empty spaces of the chamber, bouncing off the books.

Michael let his mouth fondle the Chaucerian Middle-English, felt his fluid tongue quiver with the beauty of the sounds playing in his head.

The sound of something rasping. Over at the card catalogue, a lone figure pulling out a drawer, lifting it out, taking it over to a table, laying it down and bending over to riffle through the cards. A woman, small and dark, her backside rounded, pointing at him.

A warm flush suffused him and he felt himself, tumescent.

What would happen? If he silently approached, placed his hands on her hips and drew her toward him. He could feel her against him, the softness and warmth of her. He could lay his face against her hair and the freshly washed fragrance of it would cradle him ... but she turns around, angry and frightened, lifts her hand, palm open, to slap him. Calls him 'creep!'

He retreats, stumbling in his confusion, apologizing, his voice tripping over the words, agonizing.

But she's gone, doesn't hear his explanations. She's gone to the other end of the library and he watches, frozen, as she talks excitedly to a security guard. Sees as the guard turns to stare at the end of her wildly pointing finger, Michael standing there, exposed.

It hasn't happened, none of it. Michael is still sitting at the library table, still tracing the words with trembling finger on the book, and the girl has found what she was looking for, shoves the file drawer back in the cabinet. Her heels click businesslike and impatient on the floor, echoing through the silent chamber as she walks off.

******************************************************

"I'm the first one in my family to break away from the duenna-mold. I'm the oldest. It'll be easier for my sisters."

"But there's something nice about that, too. It means they care about you, doesn't it?"

"Yes, they do. But you've got to understand, it's all done to protect the girl's reputation. If they suspect she's done something wrong, she isn't worth anything on the marriage market."

"Oh."

He likes her, her casual acceptance of him. Her fragile height, and her black cap of hair. Her defiance of old-world custom while still maintaining about herself an old-fashioned rectitude. Ramona.

"Tell me something else, Michael - it's fascinating."
"Okay well ... marmalade! Know where that comes from?"
"No."

"When Elizabeth had Mary in the Tower, one of the warders felt sorry for Mary. He cooked up some slivered oranges and sugar and took them to her, saying 'for poor Mary-my-Lady'".

Michael reads to Ramona from his original Beowulfian text, his voice a Teutonic sing-song, masculine and controlled. the Old English mellifluous and soaring. He feels himself transported, exhilarated, as much by the perfection of his sly transpositions - Essex to Kent to the more common Wessex dialect - as by the rapt expression of respect on her face.

Next time, he promises, he'll render the original texts of Averroes, Avicenna and Halevi. She hangs on his words, sees him as he is meant to be seen, as he sees himself.

Of course she can't understand what the rare words mean, but she understands well enough what they are meant to convey. They are a consecration, a sacrament. Michael's love song to her.

At a Byward Market store, he found a shawm. Oh, not the real thing, but a folk instrument, made in mainland China. Only a few dollars, and he was delighted to have it. Taught himself, slowly and painstakingly, the fingering. Learned to soak the reed beforehand, and to blow up his cheeks to force wind through the narrow aperture.

The sound was harsh, demanding, like a wounded bird. It was perfect. He could play medieval music on it. He could read his Middle English and then play the appropriate music; recreate for himself a more admirable time in history.

He haunted the Medieval and Renaissance sections of Treble Clef, waiting for any new materials that came in. He learned the musical conventions of the time both by reading its literature and by listening to the recordings of early music groups.

He'd try, when he saw someone else looking for such esoteric music, to break ice.

"Let me know, will you, if you come across something by Musica Antiqua of Amsterdam?"
"I'm looking for the Academy of Ancient Music of London, myself."
"Play anything?"
"Yes, rauschpfiffe and recorder. You?'
"Ah ... shawm, and I'm looking for a krumhorn."
"Hey, great! You play with anyone?"

But he'd always spoil things, somehow. His enthusiasm, perhaps, and the accompanying physical signs. His bobbing head that withdrew into his neck sitting on his hunched shoulders; the twitching left eye, made him resemble a nervous turtle. If they were too well-bred to laugh outright, they'd walk away coldly.

In his desperation to redeem himself, he'd spout gratuitous information after them. That the sackbutt was the forerunner of the trombone, and the curtal was the forerunner of the bassoon, the shawm that of the rauschpfiffe. No one really cared. No one came back, impressed.

****************************************************

"Michael, everyone has headaches!"
"Not like this, mother, surely not like this? I didn't always have them."
"There's always something the matter with you! If it isn't your back, your feet, your eyes, it's something else!"
"I can't help it, it's not my fault."
"Not my fault either, but it's time you learned to put up with your ... uneven health. And for god's sake, don't complain when your father's around, you know how mad he gets."

At last the headaches went. After suffering them eight long years and no one believing him. The Ottawa ophthalmologist discovered what was wrong, told him that what the other eye doctors had been doing was treating each eye individually, forgetting that they had to mesh for clear vision and the new lenses would correct the right eye that always seemed to be looking straight down at the ground.

With the new lenses, he had to learn distances and perspective all over again. Peoples' noses now leaped out at him, the ground was further away than it had always been. The result was that he seemed more awkward than ever during the period of adjustment. It was like discovering a new dimension and he thought he knew how the 14th-Century Florentine artists must have been stimulated, delighted and frustrated by their attempts to come to grips with the new reality.

Temporarily, he became again a figure of mild ridicule as he stumbled, learning to re-align images.

****************************************************

Mr. Seguin has worked for the Merchant Marine Branch of the Records Division of Transport Canada in Ottawa for thirty years. He's an ugly, fat little man, with an engaging manner, and he knows how to handle people. Mr. Seguin has recognized in Michael someone with whom he can discuss opera.

Every holiday Mr. Seguin and his son go to Rome or New York for the opera season and Mr. Seguin goes backstage to personally greet, like old friends, international opera stars with whom he has become acquainted over the years.

"Don't tell me, let me guess", Mr. Seguin says, sniffing the air, eyes shut, "that's a Cape Breton ... not a Lunenburg odour."

How does he do it? He's usually right, although one fish smell seems the same as another to Michael. The men step off the elevator, clothes reeking of their livelihood, to renew their merchant-marine licenses. They're sometimes pugnacious, shy, or resentful, and Mr. Seguin jokes with them, putting them at their ease in the cold atmosphere of the government office.

"You're doing fine, just fine Michael", Mr. Seguin encourages him. "There's a CR-3 in your future."

Michael nods his appreciation, doesn't tell Mr. Seguin that it isn't this kind of security he's looking for, but his Aten.

**********************************************************

The Maggiores are a big family, close-knit and volatile, Ramona tells him, warning him.

When Michael comes by to share their Christmas dinner by invitation, he's introduced and later can't remember - Vittorio, Vincente, Aldo, Mario, Anna, Rosa, Clarissa, Maria - which names belong to which faces. Ramona smiles empathy.

They're voluble and excitable, a throng of flailing arms and legs - rising voices - rushing over to hug each newcomer. And they're also sympatico and courtly in a now-forgotten way.

Dinner is seven courses of fish. Dinner takes four hours as each dish is savoured, wine is had with each, then a half-hour interval, while everyone talks, and the next course is served.

Michael ate the eel boiled in the eelskin, thought it was bland. And one other fish, whatever it was, a herring of some sort, that he couldn't eat for the bones. All the other courses were a blur of tastes and exhortations - "take - take!"

After, when everyone rose from the table, he made his way to the opposite end, where Ramona sat with all the other women.

"No", she whispered urgently, colouring. "You've got to stay with the men."

He experienced some difficulty following the Sicilian dialect. They spoke so rapidly - of soccer, cars and politics.

*******************************************************

"Isn't it hard?" Ramona asks him, "working all week and then coming out to evening classes?"
"Need is the mother of necessity", he quips, feeling strangely naked.
"I mean, what's the point if you've got a job anyway?"
"I've got a goal."
"What?"
"I want to teach speech therapy."
"Why? Why that?"
"Because ... because they said I'd never speak. Because everyone laughed at me when I stuttered and fumbled my speech."
"Michael ... you don't, anymore!"
"No, I don't. And it's because ..." He broke into a melange of tongues. Meaningless to her, the kaleidoscope of languages. She could see that he was teasing her, speaking musically, lightly, humorously.

"I've almost got my B.A. I need my M.A. and then I'm set", he tells her. She nods. She has an immense respect for his determination. His facility impresses her.

********************************************************

Michael's had two wisdom teeth surgically removed. They were impacted. Although they hadn't bothered him yet, his dentist said they should come out before they caused serious trouble.

He's in his new quarters. The room's larger than his old one, the bathroom not as far down the hall. Nice, except that the refrigerator doesn't work properly and isn't big enough to accommodate everyone on the floor.

He's sorry he left his old place with such bad feelings on both sides. But he hadn't made as much noise with his music as they said he had. Not nearly as much as the kids playing their damn rock.

His closest neighbour, the man next door, is from Nigeria, black as the Queen of Sheba. His name is Abo, and he grins whenever he sees Michael, and ducks his head from that great height, in acknowledgment.

Abo is always carrying books and keeps his portion of the refrigerator stocked with exotic-looking foods. Since the fridge doesn't work well, they quickly go bad and stink up all the other food, but Michael doesn't want to say anything. He likes the white-on-black greetings.

Once, Michael saw Abo hurrying along Market Street holding a live fowl under his arm, and wondered what the black man was intending to do with it.

Now, he feels feverish, and turns in his bed, annoyed that he doesn't feel like studying. She'd said ....

*********************************************************

"I told them I'd be studying late at the university, she says, bringing the fragrance of an afternoon snowstorm with her, lightening his room.

"How do you feel?"
"Dreadful", he groans.
"Poor boy."
"Absolutely awful."
"Oh, Michael!"

How could she like him? Want to be with him? She's touchy about her height, thinks she's a dwarf, but she's perfect.

"Ramona ..."
"Michael?"
"Ramona, have you ever heard of Nefertiti?"
"The Egyptian queen?"
"Yes."
"That's all I know, that she was an Egyptian queen", she says, sliding out of her skirt, her slip, raising her sweater over her head.

Early Harvest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun edges through
clouds gleaming like
a silver dollar
as we dip our paddles
fluming runnels in the lake
rippling pearl sounds
and all around the water
reflects dark clouds.

There looses a crow's
dark taunt and a pair
rise like sooty rags
off the tops of the pines
circling this lake.

The lake silvers
in our wake on this
wind-blathering day
shoving our backs
so the canoe darts
sleek as an otter
to a rock-littered inlet

where we beach. As
we poke slanted branches
the soil yields garlic
and the air blossoms
with its garish fragrance.
Wild strawberries hide

their insufficiency under
weeds as we greedily pick
for late afternoon jam.
Gulls screech, riding crests
and updrafts as whitecaps
scatter the lake.

The clean feather-edge
of swallows slice
the storm-filled air
picking off insects
that skim our
unresisting skin.

 

Moving With The Times

 

When Dr. Trumble came over they said it was killer gas. He'd heard about it, but never come across it before. The dome, the dome they said, caused it. Not enough ventilation. Nitrous oxides, they said. Never heard of that before. Never heard of anything like that happening before. Hadn't wanted that goddamn dome in the first place.

He felt himself hot all over. Again. Hot, then cold. Like what shock was supposed to be. Those tranquilizers were useless.

And by God, he couldn't sit there anymore. He looked again at his wife. Oblivious to his presence. She didn't need him. There was nothing he could do for her anyway, now.

He wandered aimlessly, tracing, re-tracing his steps; a courtly dance around the farmyard. Quiet now, the poultry in their roosts for the night. The occasional sound from a bird in the trees. The last swallow had long since swooped in under the barn eaves; the pigeons in the loft long since settled.

Getting dark early. Shortening the working day. Farmers don't like short work days. The way things were going here, it soon wouldn't matter. Dark or not. No farms left.

When he'd been a young man, just taken over the farm from his father, everyone called him 'Big John'. He was still tall, his shoulders wide, but hiding their width now, the blades contracted. His hair still thick, a shock of unruly grey.

He ambled down the worn path, past the barn in the direction of the river. The river swollen now, the old bridge long washed out in the last big storm. At the other end of the farm the smaller bridge was still up. Odd how the waters had taken the larger structure and spared the flimsier one. A moral there?

He wondered if it was true, that when death is near, a lifetime is recalled. Relived in the space left between recalling and the last breath. Death had ignored him, flimsy as his life had become and taken instead healthy specimens.

What could he have done to alter the final outcome? They say, people who say they know, that one thing naturally falls on another. That if you disturb one iota of how things are meant to be, the future, then everything else changes. The direction of life.

Rubbish.

But he hadn't meant to have Clara. What if it had been Harriett, what then?

Clara. she used to complain to her dad, old Martin, about how this nervy kid, John Markham, pulled her hair at school. He hadn't done it because he was interested in her, but because he disliked her. He thought he was annoying her. The thought made him feel good. She, it later transpired, felt it was his way of expressing his interest.

When they were older he ignored her totally. So she began running after him. Run after him even when it was obvious to everyone it was Harriet he wanted. He used to go by the Olsen place as often as he could, running errands for his mother. Harriet with her long blond hair, soft as fleece. Her wide smile, the crooked front teeth that made him catch his breath. Something about her. Harriet long gone. Not dead, but living somewhere out West.

No one was surprised of course when little Emily was born a scant five months after their wedding. Not much of a scandal then, anyhow. It happened, happened to most of the young people. Only thing was, it was love or at least a mutual dependence that brought most of them together to begin with.

With him, it had been raw need. His flesh searing him with the savagery of his need. And she was there. Always hanging around. Pretty, yes. And smart too. but a biting tongue and her eyes were cunning, not soft, the way he thought a woman's eyes should be.

Only women were popularly supposed to be endowed with intuition. To hear his mother talk, anyway. But he'd always had a nagging thought of his mistake in succumbing to her. And the years had been scarred by her nagging tongue.

But, he thought, sitting stiffly beside the river; the water taking on a dark blue cast, rippling darkly, nudging the banked sides with gentle slapping slurps of sound soothing his aching head; they'd had Emily, and then the boys.

"Daddy, Daddy! make them stop, Daddy!" Emily upset the first time she'd seen the field cleared to the stand in the middle, heard the terrified squeals of gophers, rabbits, caught.

"Emily, that's life on a farm", he'd said, cradling the damp child in his arms. "They get into the grain. The groundhog holes cripple the cattle, the horses."

She'd tried to understand, lifted her sweet face to his, kissed him wetly.

The next year she'd beaten the stalks, refusing to let them move in with the binder until she was sure all the animals had escaped.

It was all Tim Barker could do, to keep the others from going after the little buggers, they were so used to it. Harvest-time sport. They wouldn't though, with her standing there. Amazon queen. Determined to save the animals. The pests.

Now Emily older than her own mother had been back then. Living with her husband, her boys, in Toronto. When they come in the summer, in the fall, to visit, they're city boys. Don't know any better than to walk behind the binder, spitting out sheaves of wheat, oats, unshirted. Then complain about getting scratched. Hands stung raw from the binder twine, stooking the sheaves. Chests all scratched and red. Then pitching hay the same way. Chaff sticking all over them, and they'd be scratching in a frenzy. Never learn, city kids. But game. Don't complain all that much. And laugh a lot.

Excited, he liked that. Excited about being in the country.

"A dark brown animal, not too big, Gran'pa. Sleek, dripping wet!"
"That'd be a muskrat, Brian."
"Yeah? Hey! A muskrat?"

"Yep. They live in a burrow or a mess of sticks in the bank of a river. You be quiet, lay there on your stomach by the bank, you'll see him dive in the water, swim around. Busy little creatures."

"Hey, cool"

"Turtles too. And snakes ... garter, for the most part." Saying that quickly, because of the reaction. Agitated. He wanting to impress the boys. Have them like the farm. Want to have them come back.

"Snakes, ugh!" Coldly, revulsed. "I like the muskrat better."

Clara muttering at him. Nattering at them to keep their city clothes neat and clean. To stay off the field. Hell, they learned quick enough to sidestep cowpies. Even learned to get up early and gather eggs for their grandmother. Not that she wanted them to. She thought they should act the little gentlemen. Country farmers. Her ideal was to sit around in nice clothes, hire people to do the work.

Tried to persuade him too, years ago. Wanted a place like the Mortons, two farms over. Registered Holsteins. An electrical set-up. That house they had really got her going. She hated theirs. Said it was clumsy. She hated the wood trim, the second-story doors leading outside, leading nowhere. He'd offered to build her a balcony so she could use the doors. She'd snarled, said he didn't understand. True, he hadn't. It was nice, all that stuff she liked. Nice, but you had to have the money.

"We could get a loan!"
"I won't borrow what I don't need! Time enough when I really need the money!"
"God! You're stubborn. With that attitude we'll never get ahead!"

"We're doing fine." His voice calm. Deliberately calm. Hers high-pitched, hysterical. His quiet replies infuriated her. He knew it.

"You're doing just what your father before you did. He learned it from his father. It's called marginal farming!" She spat the words out like a curse.

"Nope, it isn't. We're getting on well."

She snorting. Incoherent with frustration.
"We've got money to spare. Some, anyway, Clara. What is it you're lacking?

No use of course. It was city life she lacked. Second best would be the genteel kind of farming operation she envied. Which he wouldn't be part of. Even if he could. He wouldn't give up the feel of the earth crumbling under his fingers. Why had she pursued him if she'd wanted the city anyhow? A question she never addressed a reply to. But that was all long gone, past. Just that everything was coming back now. Bile in his throat.

For his thirteenth birthday Little John wanted a .22 rifle. Got it for him. Taught him the safety and use of the thing though he'd never had any use for guns himself. Had enough trouble with the nuisance of hunters in the fall.

Lost a good cow once, mistaken for God-knew-what. Found her in the hardwood bush. Stinking, bloated, rump cut through. The hunter, he'd supposed, had wanted something for his trouble.

Hunting on his land. Once, he'd thrown a couple of hunters off and they'd left, mad. But he'd known they would double back and come in again the other side of his bush. A seasonal nuisance. Posting signs was no help. They were there, at it again. Just yesterday heard the crack of a rifle. Trying maybe, for the ducks. Good thing his Pekins stayed around home.

But there was Little John with that rifle. Excited and full of plans for getting rid of all the gophers and a fox that had been into the chickens.

Turned out his first bag had been a robin. The bird just sitting on a fence and Johnny trained the sight on it.

Probably didn't think he'd hit it. Just fooling around. When he'd come out of the drive-shed, there he was. Sitting vacant-eyed, looking down at the pathetic shape in his lap. Just looking at it, fascinated with the power he'd wielded. The gun, discarded, thrown on the dirt and left there. Later, he'd picked it up himself, taken it back up to the house, cleaned and oiled it, put it away. Johnny wouldn't even look at it.

"How about I take it, Dad?"
"Soon enough, Robert. You're too young yet."
"Next year?"
"We'll see, Son. Now, how about you go down and mix up the mash for the pigs, eh?"
"Next year, Dad! Next year I'll get the gun and I'm gonna be a great shot! I'll practise on tin cans, eh Dad?"

Tin cans, sure. And groundhogs. A porcupine once. Then later, graduated to game birds. Johnny was the only one who refused to eat them. Emily, by then older, was more practical and she displayed a gourmand's tastes; enjoyed the quail, the partridge.

Even when the kitchen was all fixed up. Professionally. She wouldn't let him do it. Oak cupboards. The old ones ripped out. A double sink. New tile floor. New stove and refrigerator. He still disliked them. But even then she wasn't happy. The idea struck her to spend winter in Toronto, when the kids were older. Said the schools in the area weren't good enough for her kids.

They were his kids too. But he let them go. Robert and Emily adjusted well, even though Emily and Clara always argued. Johnny left one day, hitchhiked back to the farm.

"You need me here, Dad!" Face concentrated in its earnestness, trying to persuade him. He hadn't needed persuading.

"I'll do the cooking, okay, Dad?"

Caught him out, the kid had. Betty Swimmings, he'd hired her on to look after the house, do the cooking for him and Tim Barker. Tim had taken one of the boys' rooms, Betty the other. He'd had to let her go. Felt guilty anyway, about Tim and him taking turns, visiting that bedroom. After all. The room belonged to one of his boys. It seemed somehow wrong.

So Johnny cooked for them. At first nothing but fried chips and pork. But he learned well, and quickly. Turned out a better cook than his mother. Except for the bread. Bread and pastries, he couldn't manage them. But that was all right.

They made out fine, the three of them. It was easier than when he'd been a kid. Everything done by hand, then.

Everything done the hard way. The worst thing was shovelling manure out of the barn, sweat runnelling down his face, his clothing reeking. He and his brother riding the big Clydesdale bareback. Old Emma. Her habit of backfiring.

He fingered the scar running a patch of white skin through his left cheek. He and Gary fighting. Himself getting the better of it until Gary got mean, swung a pitchfork. Hot, searing, the flash of pain lightning across his cheek.

Once, he reflected, he'd known the name of every farmer in the area. Half of them had sold out now. Parcelled off the land. Country houses on decent acreage springing up over the countryside. Fewer fields being tilled every year. And the Conservation Authority buying up land. Developing it for the Province. Recreational facilities taking the place of good farmland. A damn sorry sight. Clara thought they had an offer he couldn't refuse, had nagged him the past month on it.

"You're crazy! You goddamn idiot!"
"It's my land."
"We could have the money! Live in the city!"
"You do live in the city, half the year. What more do you want?"
"You're getting old. Your heart's bad. How long do you think you're going to keep the farm?"
"Until Johnny's ready to take it."
"He won't!"
"Sure he will. He just has to make up his mind."
"Open your eyes, for godsake! None of the young people are staying anymore. Where's the money, the future, in it?

Money was always the big thing with her. Not just to have enough to keep going, be comfortable. Money though, to spend, bank.

For a while he'd tried. thought of developing some of the wooded land behind the back pasturage himself, right in a stand of cedar. Himself and a friend, working spare hours constructing tight little cabins. To rent out to city people. Right beside the turn in the river, where the land was prettiest. Good fishing too. Speckled trout. Cedar shingles. Plenty of white paint and green trim. They weren't fancy, but nice, nice and solid. Advertising had brought a few families out. But after the first few years he'd found them a damn nuisance, decided to stop renting.

Strange how buildings just sort of melted back into the landscape when they weren't used. The kids used them for a while, to play in. Then the birds took over, and the insects, and he didn't see any point using a lot of time and labour, not to mention materials, to keep them in shape. The underbrush drew right up to them, the trees overgrowing the cottages and now, if you didn't know just where to look for them, you could walk right by. Like the places in South America that he'd read about in National Geographic. Abandoned cities built of stone by ancient civilizations. The jungle growing right over everything. Tree roots standing straight in the middle of a building.

God, it was a wonderful farm, his. Three hundred and fifty acres. A fine hard-wood bush, rolling fields. Sturdy old buildings and an arm of the Little Humber intersecting the farm. What more could any man ask?

A crow flew overhead harshly cawing, bringing him closer to the present. He pushed himself up off the bank. Then walked slowly back up the hill, his rolling farmland gentling the landscape in deep shadows.

He stopped at the railroad tracks, smelled the creosote on the ties. Some of them just recently replaced by work crews. Used to worry about the kids, with that train coming through regularly twice a day, every day. Never had enough pennies around to satisfy them, either. Those elongated pennies made them the most popular kids in the school. Giving them out to all their friends. They'd pick them up still hot, vie to see whose were flattest.

Past the tracks, and there was his barn. Huge. Old, even when his Granddad worked the farm. Stone foundation banked on one side. On the other the large drive shed. To the left the hen house, where during the day his chickens wandered aimlessly about, scratching the dirt. Banties too. He'd thought once to breed them for show. Never had the time, but they were nice little things, brightened the yard. His layers, Rhode Island Reds and Longhorns; Barred Rock Capons for meat. Remembered how, as a kid, he'd arm himself with a stick when he carried the empty baskets down in the mornings.

Wicked, his mother called it, when she found out. "Johnny" her voice echoed, "don't you know, you fool child, hens won't lay if you abuse them!"

"What about me?" he whined. "They peck hard, Ma!" Snuffling. "They don't like me, is all!"

Off in the distance he could see his cattle. Dark smudges on a shadowy background. Smaller herd than he used to keep. Mixed breeds. Steers.

There was a sharp nip in the air. Clouds scuttled the sky; stars not yet pricking the sky. The deciduous trees now past their colour. Most of the leaves gone.

Not just the leaves gone, though, Purpose too, was gone. What comes of changing things without knowing what you're doing. Progress. Hand in hand with ignorance. Fool around long enough, upset the balance, things go wrong. Johnny himself, he was the one that thought the big silo should be covered.

"A dome, Dad, that's what we need!"
"Never needed one before. Why now?"
"Gotta move with the times, Dad. You've always complained about the corn getting drenched. This'll solve the problem."
"I don't know. It's expensive too, eh?"

Couldn't refuse that boy anything. Boy! A man, thirty-two. So they'd contracted to get that metal dome top put on. Looked good, a shining gunmetal blue. Sileage, Johnny said, would be high and dry.

Blowing the sileage in the big one, the one with the dome, just as usual. A little later than usual getting the corn in. They'd had a lot of rain. Couldn't get the tractor out to the fields. Thought maybe they'd lose half the corn to rot. But then the weather turned and there they were, filling the silo. Robert coming out to help, taking time off from his job.

Robert gone up the ladder, into the silo. Levelling the sileage at the forty-foot height. Tim Barker, on top the ladder, directing the flow from the chute. First indication something was wrong, when Tim shouted something down at them, the wind taking the words away, scattering them so they only heard - "Robert ... down ..."

Then, nothing. He and Johnny were at the diesel tractor. It had slowed down, the fan stopped venting. Fooled around with it, discovered it was out of fuel. Careless. Still didn't realize there was anything wrong. Wondered suddenly about the quiet, up there.

Johnny climbing the ladder. Yelling something from up top, then going over into the silo. Then nothing. Himself left there, shouting. Couldn't manage the ladder himself, anymore. Yelled for Blair Barker, working over in the barn. He wouldn't go up.

"You bastard! You little bastard! Your father's up there, too! If I could myself, I wouldn't ask you!"

And then, soon after, Clara's eyes like lethal weapons. At first. Later, hollow. Empty.

They sat unspeaking in the parlour, three covered mounds keeping company with them in its immaculate, company-ready state. No one could ever say Clara wasn't house proud. Clever with her hands. Fingers always flying, crocheting those little doily things that covered the surface of every piece of furniture in the room.

It seemed the thing to do somehow, sit there. He'd realized in an abstract way that they were both not quite there, but they'd turned away offers from the Coopers next door to stay with them. Clara had refused to let Millie Cooper comfort her, had pushed the other woman's intent, her encircling compassionate arms away with a flare of passion that had taken the other by surprise. Embarrassed him; the woman meant well.

She sat for once, aphasic. This one time not embroidering his air with mean observations. With her translation of his attempts to foil her wants. How long, he'd wondered, would the catatonia last?

He looked straight at her, observed her sunken flesh, the melting curves that had once enraptured him long vanished into hidden pockets of bone and gristle, evaporating it seemed, in direct proportion to the growth of her spite. And it surprised him somewhat to look this way directly at her. To see how heavily the years sat on her. He wondered when he'd last really looked, for it had long become habit to slide his eyes past her, to fix them on a spot directly above and beyond her own, the void distancing him from her presence, giving him the illusion that she was a nightmare he had to endure, would soon wake from.

A miserable way to live a long life, he now thought sadly. Sad because, instead of the implacable rage he expected to find on her face, there was instead a vulnerable puzzlement and her weakness in their lifelong battle sent a stab of regret through him.

Fault, if it could be designated fairly, he finally admitted, probably existed on both sides.

And he recalled the unexpected heat of her passion, taking him aback at first, rendering him impotent for fear of not living up to her expectations. Then delighting him as he wallowed in it. But that was before their marriage. When she continued to meet his passion with her own after their marriage, even after the kids were born, even while during the day she battled him, he found it repugnant, began to withdraw precipitously, imperative shrivelled in distaste at the thought of her. Gradually a pattern emerged of his own hasty entrance and quick exit. And he knew she was frustrated, took his pleasure in that. Now how long had it been since they'd shared a bed? He'd fought her on a battlefield of lust and won each battle. And the war raged on and this was the culmination; a stalemate of bitterness. And now this emptiness depriving them both of the compassion they needed, to give each other succour in this time of direst need.

"Clara?" he ventured, leaned forward, shifted, lay his hand on the plaided material of her dress. No response. Nothing flickered in those eyes that blazed so readily. It was the sedation. The doctor had tried to get her upstairs, put her to bed, but she'd resisted, insisted on sitting there. He'd finally shooed them all out, said he'd stay with her, was fine himself.

Last week, wasn't it? she'd laughed at him, said contemptuously - what had brought it on he couldn't remember - "he's just going along with you for the time being. It's temporary. He won't spend his life on the farm, like you think."

"Who?" Momentarily confused. wondering later why he'd let himself fall into her trap, given her the satisfaction. "Who, Robert?"

"John!" she said triumphantly. "You know you haven't got Robert anyway. John, that's who!" She brushed aside his snort of derision at her conviction, went on: "You've burdened them both with a lifetime of guilt; sensitive to your enthusiasms, your crazy determination to keep the farm when it's not worth the dirt you stand on. With your dependence on them. And they're afraid to tell you they won't stay, aren't even interested. Afraid to hurt you. Though God knows, I don't know why!"

He'd waved aside her words, irked. Made to leave the kitchen but her words followed him out to the summer kitchen, out the shed door, down the path. "You think Kathleen'll be willing to be a farm wife? Soon as the wedding's over he'll bow out. He's just staying around long enough to try to get you on your feet. Introduce you to modern farming techniques. Once he pays off that new silo installation ... "

Expecting her voice to fade, but she'd followed him, stood in the doorway, shouting at him descending the hill to the barn. "You'll never live to see him take over the farm! Might as well sell it to Tim Barker like he's been asking you. It's his sons who're farmers. Not yours!"

All in the past. Yesterday and yesterday and yesterday. He'd been ready to give up the farm. Same age as his father before him, when he took over. Ready to sign the farm over to Johnny.

Nothing now. Clara sitting up there, alone. With her sons. His sons, too. With the past and all the mistakes they both had made.

Now it was time, almost time. He re-traced his steps, shuffling leaves, their acrid odour bringing back other autumns, his own boyhood. What a pity, what a waste. But still, it was time for him to retire. Nothing would change that, now.

It was the first time since the tracks were laid, since the run began, that No.5251 stopped in its evening run inside the confines of the Markham farm. It had taken about a quarter of a mile for the engineer to finally effect a shuddering, anguished stop at 7:10, right on the dot.

 

 

Past Patterns

In the hazy twilight
of a yawning future
one contemplates
the past
mines memories
for precious elements
of events
to prove that
something significant
did occur.  We turn
these shadowy relics
of coddled treasures
.... carefully
to catch the gleam
of emotion
dimly recalled;
the recollection
poignant and somehow
magnifying whatever the eye
of the mind rests upon
giving it significance
beyond time's
expiration
as we expose
first this
..... then
another facet to the
light of need
proving once again
that patterns
illuminating
.... the past
colour the present.

 

Enter Ye

 

Be Not Afraid

Step you forward, Stranger. Why look you so, upon me? Ah yes, curiosity is a strange, unquenchable thirst, is it not? Doubtless you've heard ... strange stories. Approach: Have no fear I will do you naught. There: Look you to your fullest .... Ah, you do not shrink back. Be at your ease, Stranger. I see many questions hovering on the lips of your curiosity, still unsatisfied. You have but to ask, it shall be my pleasure to deliver you of the pricklesome burden, this quest which has taken you to these far corners. Exactly ... seat yourself. Be comforted in my presence. ...And, you are named? Aenid? Know then, Aenid, you who have come so far, that I do herewith grant to you the freedom to ask what you will. such a journey as yours should have its reward.

I am She, Rheeta. There is none other of that name extant. The name is the Sign; she who bears it bears also the burden of the Sisterhood. Although my time will come as surely as it has done my predecessors, there will always be another and yet, another, Rheeta. This, that you see engraved, etched and lovingly portrayed upon my countenance is the past. Upon my visage is the past always present. The shades of carmine are the hues of carnage. That which was once visited upon this Sisterhood.

Your own face, lovely Aenid, wrinkles in dismay. I speak in riddles, you say. Such has always been the wont of the Motherhood of which I am the Superior. This archaic tongue is our sacred language. I shall, however, forsake it for the sake of your complete understanding. For it is meet that you do understand, you whose presence has a meaning and an urgency beyond your ken. Do you hark unto me, Aenid....

This is now, on the surface at any rate, a peaceful country. Did you see unrest or indication of any kind of material want on your way here? No, you would not. Did you stop at one of our ale-houses ringing the common? Ah, you did. Well, these are our meeting places; where the men of the Keep and the women of the Sisterhood mingle. In public those, our ale-houses, are the sole places which permit social interchange.

It is there, in these places which serve both our people, that the two solitudes meet, become personally aware of one another on more than an abstract level of the separation imposed upon us by sad history ... and where, if like minds meet, representations can be made toward future joinings. I still speak in riddles? Why is there that separation? And what do I mean by 'joinings'? Yes, of course, it is history, background which is needed to introduce you to our culture.

You come from Beyond, there where, as the Lore tells us, the cataclysms that shook this portion of the world had little effect. Your world, and your people, were thought millennia ago to have evolved later and separately from this place. And so, the level of your civilization was held back; you were thought by the ancients to be what they termed a 'stone-age culture'; that is, without advanced technical support-systems. These words, you must understand, are as a litany. I do know what they mean, but I cannot envisage exactly what advanced technology was, so long ago - other than what the Lore vaguely permits us to know. Some things - many things - are known only to the priestly caste. It is they who interpret the Lore and it is they who decide how much we should know and what to withhold from us.

Suffice it to say that when our segment of this world went into swift - and many thought - irremediable decline, yours was miraculously unscathed ... and so you continued in your own leisurely fashion to evolve. We have actually very little curiosity of the places which exist beyond our borders. We pay obeisance - as we must - to the priesthood for they are the Keepers of the Lore ... and we assist the Keep to pay tribute to the Overlords for they are the Keepers of the Peace. Both, the Lore and peace, are essential to our continued existence. We have been threatened in the past, on many occasions, by the attempted incursions of outside aliens.

The attempted invasions have been sparked both by a lust for our women whose beauty and industry is well known and for the plentiful gems which the men of the Keep mine and use as barter and Tribute. These gems cannot be found elsewhere. It has been said variously that these lands were once rained upon by a burst of heavenly bodies colliding, showering our mountains and plains with the bounty which has since named this place Feldspar ... and it has also been rumoured that the gems occurred through some strange alchemy of destruction brought about by the awesome weaponry which once great powers used in their ways, one against the another.

It is true that we are the remnants of a once-powerful and proud nation. The Lore tells us that great multitudes lived in these lands once; their numbers were legion and they had evolved a way of living that was much unlike ours. In many ways it is even now difficult for us to live together in harmony. So that I can almost imagine how difficult it must have been for so many people as were reputed to have lived then, to agree with one another and respect each other.

And as the Lore would have it, there came a time when agreement and respect evaporated and in their place reigned fear and hatred and an unreasoning wish for revenge - for what, I cannot say. And thus was unleashed a horror that rid the earth of its inhabitants. Yes, I know it had little effect in your places, but ours were affected. Even now, in the marshes beyond the forests fencing in this land no one wishes to go. A strange phosphorescence glimmers over the waters; they assume strange shapes and we hear eerie sounds as of the weeping of multitudes.

That is the history, such as it is. What we discovered also is that the men and women could not live happily together. For some reason, after the coming-together again of those who survived, there was much bitterness. The men accused the women of goading them to war and the women accused the men of deserting them for the glories of war. This, at any rate, is what the Lore tells us.

Over a period of time, a rift ensued and a sharp division of labours came about and with it, a drifting apart of men and women. So that, eventually, we became as you see us now ... the central place and the outlying settlements. The central place is the Keep, inhabited by the Thane and his men. The settlements consist of Sisterhood villages. Over the fields are the mountains and plains which yield our famed gems. The mining and other aligned industry is the men's province. Spinning, weaving, animal husbandry and farming belong to the women. As does the care of the creches, the instruction-houses. Indeed, that separation of duties, the Lore informs, is no innovation; it has been so, from time immemorial - we have only taken it a step further with our imposition of the physical separation of male and female.

We have our problems but for the most part, the arrangement is a congenial one.

We have a Council of Elders in our Sisterhood, commonly termed the Motherhood. These are comprised of women who have seen much and their counsel has stood us well in times of need. I am the titular head of the Motherhood. I stand alone, however, in never having mothered children. I am the recognized Mother of all, nonetheless. In my place, when my time comes, will be another, groomed from childhood to take her part in our history. We are one, the succession of Rheetas and as such, faceless.  This is the reason why that portion of the Lore which tells of man's brutality to women which comes about through close daily living together, is etched on my face in this vermilion dye.

It was done, that scarring, when I was past childhood and I remember nothing of the ritual. I did not go through childhood with this face, but wore a common and quite unremarkable countenance so that I could mingle with the other children and not be kept apart. In this way could I know my people and share their thoughts. Were I to have been known as one set apart, those thoughts and the freedom which comes from consorting with one's peers, would have been withheld from me.

It was with the ascension of my role, my place as Mother Superior, that that other face was removed and my identity revealed. All my predecessors, as I myself will be, were ceremoniously plowed back into the earth from whence they came; to enrich the soil and ensure the bounty of future harvests. It is our way, one which has a long and honourable tradition.

We seek to please that Ultimate Superior, whom we all faithfully serve.

 

 

Imagine If You Will

Imagine, if you will, long-limbed
women with one bared breast
riding bare-backed wild horses
(yet not as wild as the women)
lusting for battle, riding the wind
taming the wind with the speed of

a raptor, loosing their arrows,
closing in for the kill.
Myrina, Mitylene, Antiope and Hippolyte
warrior queens worshipping Artemis;
huntress, goddess. Their veins

pounding excitement for close
combat and ritualizing girlrearing
to cultivate athletics, the hunt and
scorn of man, the effete sex. Rites

of death; only a man-killer became
a vessel of new life; a tradeoff
death earning life. Imagine, why
not? Remember, in every myth
resides reality. Troy was a fable

until Schliemann's dream of discovery.
Those fabulous females were the
scourge of their time, the wonder
of an age. Even in their killing

a terrible beauty; pinning a man's
feet to the soil with unerring arrows
his hand to his shield
so the Amazon could swoop down in
triumph, a beautiful avenger, to

sever his head and hold it aloft.
Peerless in beauty, innocent in
their savagery. True, no concrete
evidence exists, only tradition in oral
tales and the writings of Diodorus

and Quintus Smyranaeus. But look,
in future ages what will prove our
existence on the forlorn landscape
of a nuclear-blasted plane?
Remember; our time will also pass.

 

Sleep-Walking

This stiff-upper-lip voice
floating at me
through my radio
this upper-class British voice
that I alternately envy and deride
describing new research
into the incidence of
sleep-walking
and one of the symptoms
one of the ways you can tell
is by the victim's (?) GLAZED EYES.
Is that how?
Could be my life is one
whole sleep-walking experience.
And he goes on to say
it's a fallacy; they don't die of shock
if precipitately
brought out of their sleep-walking, and
goes on to give an example of some woman
who had an 'unfortunate'
tendency to sleep-walk
in the wee hours of the morning
- naked - and that's
how her husband invariably discovered her
walking the streets, naked.
"It distressed her husband enormously"
the voice said. Well yes, it would.
But women are like that
always dreaming of
walking the streets
through few of us do it
naked
and fewer yet
die of mortification when
precipitately brought to reality. 

The Covenant

The old man sat in the centre of the tent, glowering. His striped robe lay carelessly on his shoulders, the waist-belt untied, his bare legs ropey with lean muscles, dark with hair not yet turned as white as his flowing beard. He hooded his eyes and brooded, watching the three women, his wives, as they bustled about the tent nervously. He followed the movements of the youngest one, Rebeka, as she fluttered around, re-arranging his bed, the coverings, drawing the old matted straw out, piling it in a heap under the watchful eye of her mentor Hagar, who knew just how Ab-ram liked his bed. Not too stuffed so he found it difficult to rise from its depth in the mornings and not too brittle so that pieces chafed his skin through the loosely-woven fabric that covered it. As though sensing his mood their voices, often raised in light banter, were hushed and only simple directions, often-repeated reminders, punctuated the uneasy silence.

Rebeka, he thought, had been a poor choice. He should never have listened to his brother. A closer alliance between the two houses yes, but not through Rebeka. There was that about her that invited men's glances. Lithe and handsomely dark, the flowing robe that covered her could not hide the suggestion of lush flesh which lay beneath; she moved too sensuously, her eyes, dark and large, promised that which she could not give. Little wonder, then, that I-sak walked so often by the women's tent. Not to see Sarai, his mother, but to furtively watch Rebeka. How far had it gone? Ab-ram wondered and flushed with a new wave of anger.

His eyes glazed over and he momentarily forgot the women, recalling yesterday's confrontation with the tribal men. E-nor and his brother Mar-duk, he was certain, were the instigators of the growling protest which, left unchecked, threatened to become a revolt. They had always agitated for the keeping of swine. They had shorter memories and less respect for tradition than he. They scorned the ancient malediction visited upon their great forbear, that "Thy sons' sons will consort with swine!", the meaning of which could not be lost on those wishing to perpetuate their line. Sheep were their mainstay and so it would remain.

He had promised them a sign, some significant indication that the new God that spoke to him in his trances would undertake to be their sole totem. And now he wondered, could he induce the God to do this thing? To protect and enrich them, bring them to a state of comfort, a belief in His ineffability?

A spasm of pain washed over him as his stomach rebelled from the morning meal, and he passed wind.

A titter from the women brought him back to the present and he glared at them. "Go! Be you gone with your women's airs and your nattering patter!", he ordered, raising himself and towering over them.

Rebeka looked worriedly at Sarai who motioned the other two to leave. They quickly gathered up the discarded straw and in their haste tripped over their robes, leaving a litter trail behind them. Ab-ram kicked angrily at the strawbits, raising a fine layer of dust. "And you?" he said to Sarai.

"Soon enough", she replied calmly, rising to stand before him, her wizened face still carrying traces of her fabled beauty, questioning his anger. He sighed, lifted his hand to her shoulder and pulling her close, rested her head on his chest.

As always her touch, her steadfastness soothed him; her calm manner instilled him with confidence. The past intruded; even when he ordered his sister to become his wife, his wife to be transformed to his sister, she had remained by his side. Fear of the hegemon called Faro caused him to disown the flesh that had cleaved to his, yet she had never rebuked him. She had followed him from Chaldean Ur acknowledging him her master in all things. Now, these late years should have brought them surcease of discontent, of troubling decisions.

If only their son, the image of his mother in her young days, were not the tribulation he was, a weight would be lifted. But Sarai would hear no ill word of the boy, and he would not make her unhappy.

"Is there something?", she asked, drawing back, her dark eyes searching as no one else could, within his. He looked away uneasily, fearful that she could read his thoughts as she sometimes seemed to do.

"No thing is wrong", he said finally. "Other than I must persuade the others that our way is the way and the others are false."

She nodded. "What will you do?"

"Wait for the voice again. It no longer visits my dreams, so it is to the man-thing that I must turn for advice."

An obvious revulsion washed over her face. "That abomination!" She spat three times to ward off evil - not believing in its efficacy entirely, yet not wishing to leave herself vulnerable to unknown malicious powers. "Wait", she said. "Yesterday I found a ring of the mystic growth under a large Terebinth. I dried them and ground them and will bring them to you in a fermentation."

He agreed not to consult his oracle, the newborn manbaby Rebeka had borne, her first. As was customary, its head had been taken, anointed, and left in sacred oil to speak when advice was needed of it. The women always complained, but no leader of men could be without the Teraphim. Every few years a new one was needed as the old one gradually disintegrated, becoming one with the holy oil.

*****************************************************************

As the day wore on, the heat became more intense and activity ceased. Men, women and children made for the still, yet cooler air of the tents. The fragrance of myrtle rose on the sultry air. Children's chattering voices were stilled in afternoon sleep. Ab-ram, alone in his great tent since the morning, still sat and thought about the problem facing him. Nothing had been resolved and he was tired of trying to summon the wisdom of the years reputed to be his, to his aid. He rose and painfully slid his feet into the thongs of worn leather sandals, then awkwardly bent and fastened them, his fingers stiff with disuse. But he was unwilling to summon one of the women to help. He was wearing now a chiton of dazzling whiteness, the linen fine and kind to his tired flesh.

Walking out of the tent, he stood for a moment in the furnace of the still air, momentarily blinded by the fierce intensity of the sun sitting high now in that great bowl of the sky, and merciless. It had been a long time since he had been foolish enough to expose himself at this time of day, but he had been overcome with a sudden compulsion to walk through a nearby olive grove. He flung the cowl over his head and strode laboriously over the dun, cracked earth, a lizard scuttling out of his path, frightened from its shelter under a nearby rock.

Lifting his eyes past the great cypresses throwing their meagre high-noon shade over the line of tents, his eyes followed the long swoops of two vultures over the nearby hills. The hills appeared verdant and sheltered from that distance. He wondered about the sheep; whether a lamb had strayed.

Arrived finally at the grove, he cast about for a likely resting place, selected a gnarled old specimen, its leaves defiantly glowing the splendour of its life's aspiration despite the rotten state of its trunk, bleeding sap, inviting invasion from hordes of insects, and under it he slid to the ground. His back resting on the trunk, Ab-ram thrust his legs before him and watched a retinue of termites busy with the work of moving a dead unfeathered fledgling inexorably closer to their nest. He felt revolted at the dry shrivelled thing that had once held life, teeming now with the large insects determined to use it in the perpetuation of their own cycle. "And so it is with me", he sighed. "No sooner than I relinquish my authority will my enemies feast with Termagant on my rotting carcase."

The question was, how to persuade his people of the rightness of his vision? How describe to them the fleeting image come to him of the dark unknowable that was the Divine Spirit? Elohu, the Spirit of the One, the Only. That something, some gesture, some consecration would be necessary to bind him and his people to the Great Power, that Seminal Being, was obvious. Some sign was paramount to his being finally able to convince his reluctant followers - but what could that sign be?

The intense dry and burning heat seemed somehow magnified in the grove. Surely, it would have been better to have remained in his tent. Somehow, though, he felt, there was a possibility of communion out here, with the Divine Spirit. Not here perhaps, but on higher ground where such a one might reside, closer to the heavens. The hills? He raised his eyes and looked to the hills. For sacrifice, what? His bell-wether, a faultless and spot-free white specimen? Even so, not enough.

Ab-ram's eyes narrowed, his head seemed to be bursting with the fierceness of his concentration. Suddenly the answer was simple. Solving both his problems, temporal and spiritual. Ah, but was the intent without blemish? Who, he convinced himself, would ever know? His heart thudded, then skipped like a wild bird attempting to escape confinement.

******************************************************************

I-sak walked behind his father, an early morning mist dissipating before them as they approached the well-worn pathway leading to the nearest and highest of the two hills. Mountains, they called them, but they were merely tall mounds on the arid landscape.

"My brother was aggrieved that he was pressed into service. He mislikes tending the sheep", I-sak observed mischievously, glad to place his brother Ish-mael in a poor light; flattered that their father had this time chosen him, the younger son, to assist on this solemn occasion. Ab-ram nodded, noting the slur, but choosing this time to ignore it.

The trail wound tortuously around the hill. I-sak footsure, the shepherd, and Ab-ram, long unaccustomed to the demand, stumbling on the gravelly pathway, stopping now and again to draw breath, his chest fiery with the effort. Strapped to the sides of the ass were the necessary paraphernalia - two flasks, gurgling their contents, a large flat stone, some ground mandrake, a flat bread and cheese for their mid-day meal. Last, wound in linen, a ceremonial knife of obsidian blackness and a sprig of hyssop plucked from the foot of the mountain.

"But my father", I-sak had earlier observed, "the sacrifice? Where is it?"

"The Great Spirit will provide", Ab-ram had replied, not elaborating, his face an enigmatic mask.

"But my father ..." I-sak had begun his objection again - surely it was best to arrive prepared rather than trust to chance? But a curt "be silent!" cut him off.

They climbed the slope slower now, near the summit where the cedars were no longer symmetrical in shape but grew deformed yet defiant on the inhospitable mantle of rock barely sifted with soil.

Ab-ram drew laboured breaths, the sound stentorian, rasping his throat.

A harsh sound above them, familiar yet still startling, tore through their separate thoughts. Both raised their heads, stopping for a moment, glad of the rest, to look upon the rusty black form of a great rook, its harsh beak giving voice to a warning of trespass. The bird rose into the air, rising toward the pitiless sun. They watched as it became a mote above them, then noticed that a curtain of clouds, dark and menacing, drifted toward them, and around it, billowing grey clouds. It was as though the bird had changed, become dark water vapour and still stood over them, transformed, watching, jealous of its territory. But rains, seldom as they blessed the land at this time of year, were welcome and surely the glaring sun would soon be obscured by the scudding clouds and give them relief from the oppressive heat.

***************************************************************

They were shortly at the summit and tethered the ass to a gnarled cypress where it could feed upon the sparseness of grass. Ab-ram directed his son to remove the stone and place it on the ground. The sun was hidden now and its fingers of fire no longer touched them. Still, breathing was difficult. Silently they both slaked their thirst with wine. That same wine into which Sarai had sprinkled her dried morels. Already, I-sak's head was light and he walked with a delicate precision, obeying his father in the placement of the ritual objects; the euphoria granting him a girlish grace.

When the hyssop had been placed just so on the flat stone, and the obsidian blade sprinkled with oil so it glimmered as with a life of its own, reflecting the dark clouds above, Ab-ram urged more wine on his son, then sat and watched drugged sleep overtake the youth. In repose I-sak's face became the youthful trusting Sarai's and Ab-ram's heart was wrenched with misgiving.

A light breeze made itself evident, rustling the leaves of the sycamore, bringing relief to the two figures, one unaware, the other too painfully aware. Ab-ram looked to the sky and saw it was now completely veiled with clouds and oddly, the black cloud sat over them still, a dark squatting thing, unmoving. He sighed, then moved his son with the great effort that was required, on his back over the stone, and raised I-sak's chiton to his chest, revealing his naked form.

Ab-ram sat back on his haunches and took into his hand the ceremonial knife, rubbed his thumb carefully along its cruel edge. Great Spirit, he implored, let this be the end of your promises, let this mark the start of your commitment to us, to my people. No other sign can I think of that will indicate to you, oh Unseen One, my abandonment of the hegemony of other gods, my belief in only You, You who will make this existence finally explicable.

As though in reply, thunder rumbled above him, and he believed.

In a lesser hallucinatory fog than his son, Ab-ram believed that the voice that visited his dreams, his drug-induced trances, would utter finally the words to seal commitment. Even through his euphoria, a thought given to his sly triumph - ah, even the gods, even the greatest of them were amenable to flattery, could not delve into the true intent of homage; this sacrifice. This thought he banished from his mind, angry at its independent impudence; unworthy of the sacred moment.

Ab-ram raised his arm and began to plunge, but some thing stayed his intent. Through the pulsing thunder he could hear a voice. Clearly, he could hear a voice! Could he not?

"ABRAHAM! HEAR ME! I AM THAT WHICH IS! YWHWH IS MY NAME. DO THOU, ABRAHAM, AS DO THE EGYPTOS AND OFFER HENCEFORTH EVERLASTING PERPETUITY'S FLESHLY COVERING. SO IT SHALL BE A BOND BETWEEN ME AND THINE TRIBE."

Perplexed, thwarted, but awed and frightened by the lush richness, the awe-inspiring command of the voice, the mystery of its emanation resounding through his head, he could not but obey.

Reluctantly, confused and inwardly seething with impotent rage, he nonetheless obediently sliced his son's foreskin, then poured holy oil over his son's body to purify it, and consecrate the offering.

 

That Sporting Life

 

She knew how to drive, but chose not to. That hardly diminished her value and her abilities in his estimation. That was fine with him. He didn’t at all mind timing his day to suit the hours she chose. They hadn’t any children, had no intention of ever starting a family. They were just fine, the two of them, able to spontaneously do as they wished, enjoy all the recreational and travel pursuits that appealed to them.

Working at a bank, but pursuing a university degree, attending after-hour classes several times a week kept her busy enough. Her studies took up enough of her time. And he was inordinately proud of her, of her determination to gain her degree. He encouraged her, spoke boastfully to any of his colleagues who knew her about how well she was doing. His intelligent capabilities quite rivalled his. They were quite the pair.

The days she attended after-hour classes he tended to while away the working hours by actually postponing attending to his work. Instead, he embarked on a circuit of rounds, dropping off to see various of his colleagues on other floors, other sections, intent on maintaining his workplace social network. And just to exercise his sheer love of banter, of departmental gossip, of discussions with respect to new opportunities. He loved to network, to socialize, to gather new people into his sphere of acquaintance. And you never knew who might turn out to be useful or influential at any time.

Late in the afternoon he would drift back to his desk, begin to attend to his own work. After the building had emptied almost at an eye-blink rate - everyone but him anxious to leave, get home to their families, look to their leisure pursuits - he was still there, working industriously away, clearing up his files. He worked overtime. And all that overtime added up, for him. The additional time-and-a-half, even though he knew perfectly well it was generally frowned upon, became addictive. Even if his superior had to defend his inflated pay in response to the deputy minister’s pointed observations. The department had been asked to cut its operating budget especially with respect to overtime.

But he knew he was a valuable asset to his section. He knew he would be protected. Austerity needn’t affect him. (He had received a bit of a scare when his superior’s secretary who had access to her boss’s email account, had emailed a chastising warning about all the overtime he was accumulating, saying he wouldn’t be able to cover for him indefinitely, and recommending that he cease and desist. He’d noted, belatedly, that those whom he himself supervised had gathered around his cubicle, and, noting his expressing on reading the email had burst out laughing. Which was when it was revealed to him that this had been a bit of a practical joke.)

He laughed with them. It was no secret, and he had never attempted particularly to hide what he was doing. And no one in a supervisory role over him seemed to be sufficiently concerned to discuss it with him, so he felt more than justified in continuing his little practise. He would leave the building just as the evening cleaning staff arrived. Responding to his own clockwork, picking his wife up at the corner entrance of the university quadrangle beside the business administration building.

It wasn’t all work for them, by no means. They were both avid sports buffs. For him, more than for her. His was a fascination with extreme sports, actually. He loved motorcycles, and drove one. A sidecar for her. They both enjoyed mountain biking. And they became bored with the mountain biking trails set aside for bikers, separate from those meant for hikers, and couldn’t care less when irate hikers, sometimes with startled and wildly barking companion animals, would berate them as they sped past after having come up unexpectedly, silently behind the hikers, on trails they knew held signage warning bikers to avoid. Trouble was, those just happened to be the trails that were most spectacularly exciting to someone on a bike. And the park wardens did little to patrol the area and to apprehend those that flouted the rules.

He enjoyed and relished the rush he felt hearing the (patent-protected) roar of his Harley-Davidson, which his wife had affectionately named ‘the beast’. They rarely missed an opportunity to enjoy Motorcycle Week by ripping down the interstate highways to Laconia in New Hampshire, where the adventure-gregarious couple loved to mingle with the motorcycle crowd. Meeting up with enthusiasts from all over North America, and as far as Venezuela (where the Venezuelan bikers complained about non-government-subsidized gas pumps) and they got to see exotic, unorthodox, anti-establishment, but happily civil, counterparts in an atmosphere of friendly rivalry.

They, unlike many that arrived in their thousands, thundering down the highways in scattered groups, rain or shine, were properly suited up with leathers and impact-saving helmets, in a state that had no highway safety laws insisting on such, and where buckling up 'because it’s the law', was meant for minors only; the state whose motor-vehicle license plate logo “live free or die” more than adequately expressed their mass credo. Fact was, there wasn't a year that went by that some poor dude driving along the White Mountain highways didn't get to meet his maker when he lost control of his bike on rain-soaked roads, waterplaining beyond control.

And sail-boarding, they both loved that. Loved the choppy water on a windy lake. To get out there, regardless of the weather, and challenge nature with their skills in handling their sailboards. Manoeuvring them close to upset for that extra heart-thumping excitement of danger, and then skilfully turning them around just when it seemed a collision would be inevitable. But area lakes were tame. And they loved to go out to Cape Hatteras several times a year - spring and fall - to challenge nature at her most merciless. Extreme weather warnings, approaching storms did nothing to cool their - particularly his - ardour for meeting the danger that nature meted out to the unwary and the inexperienced. He needed that challenge. To feel fully alive, to feel his veins bursting with the effort of controlling his sailboard in the face of huge, tossing, frothing waves hitting the far shores, and the puny board and sail, and the human intent on controlling both. His wildly beating heart, even the headache that would overtake him as he challenged weather and lake conditions exhilarated him beyond belief. Later, he would be flooded with a great wash of supreme satisfaction, of accomplishment, of pride in his own arrogance that he had faced the worst that nature could throw around and had handily survived.

He brought back lots of videos to show to his colleagues at work. He felt challenged to do that too, in light of the fact that another of his colleagues boasted about his mountain climbing prowess, and always brought in too many photos and videos of clambering well above the tree line in some pretty inaccessible places, where mountain peaks marched in lock-step one against the other, accessed by his determined colleague. Who faced off some fairly intimidating weather conditions in ascending some of those peaks, but nothing really in comparison, he felt, to what he managed to do, in the open, raging waters tossed around on his sailboard and coming out the other end of peril through sheer, heady adventure.

In some ways he was a traditionalist, however. He owned an SUV, the biggest, most expensive that General Motors produced. And prided himself on servicing it himself. Light mechanical maintenance (despite the cautions in the warranty). He didn’t sweat the small stuff, like changing oil, that kind of thing. He’d always done it, always would. Just as he looked after ‘the beast‘ pretty much on his own.

He’d been thinking about getting a sport car, too. Plenty of room in that double garage. Sitting beside the new house they recently bought. The houses spaced fairly far apart, in a part of the far-flung reaches of the city newly amalgamated to include the suburbs and beyond. Beyond was where they bought their new home. Situated on their own one-and-a-half acres. The house, built of solid brick, with a turret no less, and a grand, sweeping staircase. Built 40 years ago, on a prestigious piece of real estate, named Forest Pine Heights. The house had needed some refurbishing, and they’d get around to it all, eventually. It had been a steal, actually. They’d been hunting around for a while, were glad to sell their much smaller tract house in a near suburb, to take possession of this beauty.

One thing she did that he didn’t, was run. In the evenings, when they got home from work, she’d go out for a short run in the neighbourhood. One good way of getting to know your way around. She became a familiar sight, pumping her arms and legs, running without stop for an hour, before slumping back home again. On the week-ends, after a leisurely late breakfast, she’d go out for an hour’s run. He’d be busy puttering around with something, usually in the garage.

On this occasion he was changing the oil in the SUV.

When she returned from her run, she wondered why he hadn’t yet finished, wasn’t in the house. So she looked into the garage, and there he was, still in there.

The big vehicle had slid off the ramps he had run the two front wheels up on. Something he had done countless times before. Not just with this vehicle, but all the predecessor-vehicles they'd owned over the years. He knew what he was doing, he always felt confident that he was functionally capable and careful. And he was, most certainly.

It was just that times time something went awry. Unexpectedly. He had no time to react. The vehicle had somehow managed to slide off the ramps. The SUV slammed backward. And it had backed him into the closed garage door. Seeing him crushed, half-slumped, the vehicle pinning him, she slowly, casually turned back into the house and numbly dialled 911.
It seemed to her as though she was a disaffected onlooker to some peculiar event, as though she was watching a film, something on television. Everything looked strange. She felt dazed, recognized nothing familiar, even though this was her own house, and that was her husband out there in the garage of the new house they were so proud of.

His colleagues were shocked to hear on the local news that evening that someone they were so familiar with had made the news. His tragic death left his widow with a large house to rattle around in. She would have to become accustomed to driving herself around.

And people reading about the misadventure in the next day’s newspaper silently told themselves - those who still did their own oil-changes - that it might be a good idea to consider having it done at the dealer’s or the corner garage.

 

Little Black Sprite

 

 

We cannot begin to know
nor to understand what haunts
this small black presence so familiar
yet so distanced from us by
biology, but linked to us
through long years of shared love.

She has become other than
what she once was, but then don't
we all, as we inevitably age well
past adulthood and into agedness?
Patterns once recognizable and
reliable have suddenly muted.

Gradually, and for prolonged periods
some presaging element we cannot
know overcomes her. She stands
motionless, head alert to some sound
we cannot detect, as though being
called somewhere we cannot go.

Obedient to this mysterious malady
that has expunged her memory she startles
and removes herself from our company.
Restlessly pacing from room to room
refusing to be placated and comforted
she remains aloof and we distracted.

Forgotten, it appears, routine and
etiquette, as she becomes submerged in
some mysterious alteration we can only
hazard as emerging dementia and we
are silent also, but in grief, believing
her to be preparing to leave us.

She is, after all, fully seventeen years.
A dishevelled-looking miniature
poodle mix whose years with us
illuminated the potential for shared joy;
humankind and domesticated animal.
We are not prepared for her to take
her leave of us, and emphatically tell

her so. It seems that our message
may have been heeded. She now seeks
comfort in our presence, finding solace
and companionship with us once again.
Recalling the imperatives that were
observed, and according to her sterling
physical health, banished the

dank evil spirits brooding at the
entry-way of her mind, her character.
She is slowly shedding the symptoms
of disorder, once more assuming her
vital role as care-taker of our sunny moods. 

 

Lovers

People never seemed to notice the blemish that appeared high on her forehead, startling on her porcelain-smooth complexion. Even people who had known her for many years, in fact, were unaware of that scar. It helped immeasurably, needless to say, that she wore her hair with a side part, so that her long, straight hair hung looped over that side of her forehead. And it suited her, it certainly did. It enhanced the sultriness of her dark hair expressed against the fairness of her skin, her large hazel eyes with their oddly asymmetrical appeal, her large, expressive mouth. The shape of her face was different too, somewhat reminiscent of the rare result of a kind of oval perfection resulting from a cross-fertilization of South Asian- and Western-generated genes. Although this wasn’t really the case with her; she was pure Anglo, her forebears sturdily British Isles-originated.

People liked her. They liked her natural easiness, her lack of social pretension. With her wide circle of friends, everyone invited her out to spend time with them, for social occasions and just plain get-togethers, one on one, or with some of the crowd that made up their social compact. She was generous with her attention, fixing her gaze directly at the person to whom she was speaking. Age had not diminished one iota her grace, nor her calm, warm presence. What people appreciated most about her was her seemingly casual disregard of others’ fascination with her physical presence. She was just simply unaffected and well-balanced.

Her on-again, off-again acting career superimposed on her more lucrative and certainly more frequent modelling gigs and television-ad appearances had people turning in the streets, not quite certain what was so familiar about that passing face; her ubiquitous appearances on the public stage, as it were, gifting her also with a eerily-familiar, quasi-celebrity appearance, one she dreaded and did her best to offset. She remained, whatever else she did to shield herself from public scrutiny born of curiosity, a fragile creature of uncertain emotional stability. The quiet panic attacks she experienced followed by black moods when she cloistered herself in her apartment until they eventually passed, were her little secret, not to be divulged to anyone.

And when they’d finally met again, there was no mistaking, even after all those past years, that his appeal for her had resisted the years. When she saw him as she entered the large reception room full of familiar and some unfamiliar faces, she quickly averted her eyes when she realized he was looking directly at her, as though anticipating her arrival. Because she looked elsewhere in that split second she did not witness the dark look that engulfed his face, obviously shocked to see her there. Why that should be was peculiar, since despite his long absence from the country he had been eager enough to link back up with people he had once known and shared certain social pleasures with. Those people, in fact, who had formed a firm compact of friends during their university years.

Little surprise, then, he thought to himself immediately after, that she would also be there. He hadn’t thought to ask… Now that he saw her, he cudgelled himself mentally for his lack of caution. Resigned himself to coming face to face with her. He would never forget the way she had once made him crawl in his fever for her. The heat of their shared passion had seared him, left him unable to form a trusting relationship with any other woman. It pained him to think of all of that. The lack of intimate companionship throughout all those years of living abroad. He had even, at times, encouraged people to believe that he was gay. He could do that, with no blow-back, in the more relaxed social atmosphere that prevailed there.

When their host made a great show about finally bringing them face to face, somehow it seemed to them both that the tumult in the room became hushed, as though all eyes had swivelled toward them, to observe their re-introduction to one another. That isn’t quite what happened, people were more discreet than that, those who knew their history -- and most of them avoided looking directly at them -- continued with their spirited conversations, on this, their regular annual get-together.

Most of them represented the original crowd of university students who had formed a fairly close bond. Year to year, the changes in marital status, re-marriage or alteration in ‘companions’ expressed a changing repertoire of the presence of others swelling their ranks. They’d all, over the past several decades, experienced their full measure of life’s opportunities and disappointments. Most of them had prospered, and their languid self-assurance spoke volumes about their place in the larger society.

He wasn’t the only one who had found the satisfaction of living abroad to their liking; only the one who’d chosen to be longer in deciding to return to the country of his birth. He tired, eventually, of being an expatriate, even though he enjoyed all the benefits of a foreigner perfectly adapted to his adopted country which had rewarded him handsomely with a prestigious position in an international bank. His old friends, acquaintances and intimates were eager to re-connect, pump him for not only personal information, but financial insider-stuff as well. And he was glad to accommodate with respect to the latter, rigidly withdrawn in responding to the former.

When they came face to face each made a distinct effort to appear cool, detached, in perfect control. There was no particular warmth expressed, as he held out his arms to take her hands in his, and press them. She leaned forward toward him, her face grazing his, as they shared a perfunctory shadow-kiss. He had murmured something as his face passed hers, but she hadn’t caught what he had said, if indeed he’d said anything. He still held her hands, seemed to not realize that, then looking from her face down to his extended hands encapsulating hers, loosened his grip, allowing her to reclaim what was hers.

"It's wonderful to see you", he said truthfully, hoping that he sounded casual enough.

"Great to see you too again", she responded carefully, well enough aware of that dreadful flutter in her chest.

"Sorry to hear about your failed marriage. You see, I have kept myself informed. I know you were married for almost twenty years. I know you've got two grown kids."

"That's all right" she said. " We had a good marriage, for as long as it lasted. We've remained friends. That's what's important."

"Yes, of course", he said quietly.

Two decades hadn’t, after all, made that much of a difference. He was still captivated by her presence, the ethereal beauty of her appearance gripping him as though he were in the presence of an other-worldly figure. One he’d wanted to possess, make his own. But she had been so profligate with her favours, so generous in her liking for so many other people, her attention to him was diluted to a degree he could never accept. It had grated on him, torn tiny ragged holes in his self-esteem, that while professing to love him, she would still insist it was her right -- not a privilege that he could bestow upon her -- to see whom she wished when the mood took her. He was driven mad with jealousy.

It wasn’t that their entire relationship was like that. They'd shared long periods when she seemed resigned to surrender her autonomy -- that’s what she called it -- to 'assuage his possessive constraints' upon her. She would do this, exhausted from those short, sharp and nasty periods when his barking orders so completely enervated her normally ebullient personality, to bring a halt, however temporary, to their terminally dystopian existence.

When that happened, when she studied furiously, made no effort to see those of her friends he mistrusted, when she spent all of her time with him, they really did revel in the sublime comfort of mutual devotion, and really incredible sex. It was soothing to her soul, priceless beyond endurance, she thought, their relationship. And she was right; it was beyond endurance, since with the lapse of several months she began feeling restless, began to rage that she was being kept a prisoner, that he must regard her as a helpless dependent he forever hovered over, unwilling to trust her, to give her a little freedom of self-agency in her movement and relationships.

They had originally met at one of their shared classes, one he dropped after the first semester. They both lived in residence, but since they and a number of other students weren’t comfortable there, they had decided between them to rent a downtown house close to campus, and equitably share rent, an affordable luxury which gave them plenty of room and removed them from the closer confines and the kind of raucous environment that they weren’t interested in sharing.

Living together in close proximity brought all of the seven who ended up renting together even closer as a group of intimates. But it was the chemical reaction between they two that stood out, that everyone recognized and made amused allusions to, thrilling them both that others too had understood their need for each other’s intimate proximity.

It wasn’t long before they took on another house-mate, since they found themselves with a spare bedroom when they moved into the room he had originally had to himself. From there, it wasn’t long in the following year before they moved out to a place of their own, when they both earned a bit of a salary, she waiting at a nearby restaurant, he doing remedial math for high school kids.

They were doing all right. They both agreed that this was so. But he somehow continued to become irked with her. With her still-casual clinging to the notion that she was a free agent, despite their fixed status as a couple. It hardly seemed to matter how often she told him she loved him, he was never satisfied and he was never convinced. Any deviation, however minor from routine would perturb him. If she arrived home late from her part-time employment or university, he would interrogate her. And she would become furious with him, berate him, warn him that she would take only so much, and no more. That he was not entitled, no one was, to treat another human being as a possession, a thing that could be controlled. He was breaking her spirit, sucking the life out of her, and she could not, despite her love for him, accept that.

Each time, witnessing her white-hot anger and her anguish, he would repent, apologize, say he hardly knew what had come over him. He knew better, he said, it was unfair, he just couldn’t control himself. But he would, he promised, he would.

“I couldn’t bear to lose you” he pleaded with her when she had first intimated that she would be prepared to break their relationship rather than continue to submit to his jealousy.

“You’re working toward that eventuality”, she responded grimly, in no mood at that juncture to help him to smooth things over.

“I know you’re angry with me. I know that. I’m kind of angry with myself. I know I’ve promised enough times that I would restrain these impulses” he said, his face a grey, worried colour.

“You’re right there, on all counts. You’ve promised time and again that you wouldn’t keep jumping on me, accusing me, giving me ultimatums. I’m not prepared to continue to overlook your failures to control yourself. You must know that now.”

“I do, yes I do. I know I’ve been unfair. I can’t for the life of me understand what comes over me. It’s not something I want to do. It’s as though I’m being controlled by some malign force.”

“You’re right again, Jeff. It is a malevolent thing, to continually insist on controlling someone else’s personality. That’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to drain me of those characteristics that express my unique character and replace them with those you find acceptable.”

“I’m not! Really I’m not. You’ve got to believe I love you, I don’t really want to change anything about you.”

“I’d like to believe it. How can I? How can I keep making excuses for you because I want to believe the things you say when you try to disown what you do to me?”

He stood there, mouth agape, not knowing this time how to respond, what to say. And then succumbing - despite desperately attempting to stifle the heat that suffused him -- to that same chasm of vibrating, headache-inducing rage that initiated their interminable arguments revolving about her independence. Only this time the heat escalated to a kind of rage he’d never before experienced.

He found himself suddenly mentally detached, and physically manipulated. He felt, in fact, like a puppet that someone was experimenting with. With invisible strings manipulating his limbs. An artful ventriloquist was bellowing disgustingly hateful invective. Even as he felt helplessly detached, the thought flashed into his mind that what he was screaming at her would never be forgiven, never forgotten. He wanted to swallow his tongue, torque his body into helpless convulsions, so she might have pity on him and forgive him.

Instead, while still lashing her with those bellicose threats that poisoned the very air that surrounded them, he advanced toward her, and flung his open hand against her head, and she reeled backward, but caught herself from falling. Her shocked, frightened face, focused disbelievingly on his blistering anger seemed to motivate him further.

His second, backhand slam at her face succeeded in throwing her to the floor, body twisted sideways, face downturned, where her forehead hit the metal table lamp that her falling, twisted body had brought down.