Mink River: A Novel (11 page)

48.

Maple Head reaches into the oven and taps her loaves of bread with her knuckles and each makes the right hollow sound and she slides them out gently onto a rack to cool. Eats another salmonberry from the windowsill. She’s worried and not worried: her husband is liable to long winged arrows of thought as he says Blake says and often he loses himself utterly in some project to the point where he loses track of time altogether and she strolls down to the Department to find him late at night. Recently it’s been bicycles. His hair all askew and his eyes lit up and his face lit up. She brings bread and wine and they sit at his rickety work table. His eyes flashing in the cavernous dark central workspace of the building where the truck and tools are. She keeps candles and wine glasses on a shelf there for when this happens. May, I’ve had the most astonishing thoughts. He whirls a stool into place for her. Now, May, sit right here you lovely sinuous creature and listen to
this
. His big hands swirling in the air. If time is a progressive thing, May, proceeding relentlessly forward on its unique plane, though capable of being stopped briefly, or of being
perceived
as having stopped briefly, then a study of all machines that progress along whatever plane or planes, but which can be stopped briefly, or
perceived
as having stopped briefly, will be useful to our work. Clearly then an exploration of the simplest propulsive machines is in order. Remembering that nature yearns always for the simple. Now here is a bicycle. The bicycle, May, is a creation of wondrous simplicity and clean design. The taut wiring alone is fascinating but we can discuss that later. Let’s first consider the
premise
of a bicycle. Energy applied
here
is translated to a gear mechanism
here
and then to the chain
there
, and is then further translated to the rear wheel, which then creates an ordered propulsion of remarkable speed and grace, masterable even by a child such as our grandson who whizzes through town like an arrow with hair. Let’s think of the bicycle as a
narrative
. Energy translated into story. And
time
of course is also an energetic story. Ceaseless, relentless, progressive. Most analyses of time, May, fixate on basic engineering problems such as where does the propulsive energy come from, or what happens at the end of time? Both of which are riveting questions. But unanswerable in this plane or planes. Of far greater interest is the
conduct
of time, not its source or ultimate destination. Its
behavior
is what you want to enjoy. Consider the river where as lovers we were born dripping. The
behavior
of the river is more interesting than how it begins or ends. Indeed the behavior of the river
is
the river, isn’t it? Similarly love. In a sense we don’t actually really
have
a past or future as lovers. As a river in a real sense isn’t its birth or its destination. We have our behavior, our conduct. We have
stories
of how we as lovers were born by the river, yes, you running your fingers through your hair and me taking a step and what a step that was, and we have
dreams
of how we might be lovers in the future, but as boats joined on a river we really have just
now
, you smiling at me and your bread steaming and your wine glass glittering, and I am talking way too much again aren’t I?

49.

In the last few minutes before the old nun died in her bed on the top floor of the old hotel she thought of Moses and everything she loved about him—the way he craned his head to peer at her, the way he landed with a
plop
, the way he crouched like a small black feathered weightlifter before jumping into the air, the ornate cast of his mind, his affection for the psalms, his interest in all languages, the way he would give her the bigger piece of fish when they split a fish for dinner, the way he dusted tables and windows with his wings, the way he snorted nasally when he laughed, the time he drank a glass of wine and ended up on his back on the grass both of them giggling helplessly, the way he woke her with a kiss on the forehead, the way he hilariously tried to learn to use a fork, the way he held himself motionless and nervous when she trimmed his toenails, the way he wormed himself into blankets by the fireplace so that only his eyes and beak could be seen, the way he never ceased trying to catch insects on the wing on the theory that he was every bit as talented as any piss-ant nighthawk or swift or swallow, the way he attacked hawks furiously and called them dirty names in all his languages and crowed ribaldly about it afterwards with his friends, the way he befriended children gravely, the way he waited by the library door and hopped in hurriedly when someone came in or out until the librarian cut a little pet door for him, the way he painted himself white once for her birthday, the way he would shout
awake harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn!
to make her laugh when they were eating breakfast, the way he daintily collected berries in an old baseball cap, the way he posed as a stuffed crow when her mother superior made her annual site visit to her room in the old hotel, the way he tried to teach pigeons to speak before concluding that stones were smarter than pigeons, the way he studied fishing with herons and skimmers and ouzels and cormorants and grebes and pelicans, the way he flipped over and fell dramatically into the ocean pelican-like just to hear her peal of laughter whenever they walked the beach, the way he formally greeted all crows known or unknown to him with the words
peace be to you
, the way they both wept bitter tears in the kitchen when she told him one morning haltingly that she wanted him to leave, and would not tell him why, until his grave persistence finally got to her, and she told him that the doctor had told her that she was ill unto death, and she didn’t want him to see her shrivel, she wanted to remain always lively and vibrant and herself in his heart, and he must go, and never see her again, and that way they would always have each other, always have this bronze morning, the bronze triangles of toast between them, the bowl of bronze berries, her right hand on his left foot, his eyes closed, her body shivering, the burble of pigeons on the fire escape the only sound in the room.

II

1.

Michael the policeman and his wife Sara are in the kitchen finishing the dishes after putting their two daughters to bed. Michael is washing and Sara is drying. Michael is humming Puccini’s song
Recondita armonia
in which a painter compares the lovely features of the woman in his painting to the lovely features of his lover. Sara wants to tell him about the baby the size of his thumb who just fell asleep inside her but just as she dries her hands and screws up her courage to say

Michael,

he turns and with his hands all wet takes her gently by the waist and whirls her across the kitchen singing
ma nel ritrar costei il mio solo pensier, Sara tu sei!
and she can’t help laughing, her arms and the towel caught in his embrace, and the moment is lost again.

Sing it in English, she says, her heart all confused and happy.

I have vowed my love to you, Sara, to you!
he sings, and he leans in to kiss her but she ducks her head into his chest so his lips arrive in her hair.

Michael,
she says into his shirt,

but just as she says his name he says tenderly,
E tanto ell’era infervorata nella sua preghiera ch’io ne pinsi, non visto, il bel sembiante,
she was so lost to all around her that she never saw me all the time I was painting her lovely features, that’s what Mario the painter says about Tosca right in the beginning, Sara.

Does he love her? says Sara into his shirt.

O yes, head over heels, but she’s a difficult woman.

And she loves him?

She adores him but she can’t figure him out easily.

I know the feeling, Mario.

O, I am easily figured out, Tosca.
Tu sei!

And this time she leans her face back to accept his kiss and they kiss gently, she floating in his long arms, the towel floating in the soapy water, the girl floating inside Sara.

2.

In bed that night Sara is restless and affectionate and as a gift to Michael she asks him to tell her about Puccini and he rises to the question like a fish to a fly.

O a riveting fellow altogether, cruel and generous, petulant and sweet, a fool and a genius, says Michael, his hands carving the air like swifts and swallows. He had seven sisters and their names are a poem in Italian: Otilia, Tomaide, Temi, Maria, Iginia, Ramelde, and Macrina. You wonder what effect seven sisters must have on a boy. His dad died when he was only five years old and his poor mom was left with all those young children and she was only thirty or so. What a woman. Albina was her name. If we ever have another girl we could name her Albina and then she’d have some of the muscle of Puccini’s mama, don’t you think? Because names matter. They do have power and magic somehow, don’t you think? Let’s have another baby so we can name her Albina. Anyway Puccini was a rotten student, he kept getting expelled from school, he ran around crazy in the hills. He had energy coming out his ears and he couldn’t sit still for ten seconds straight. His mom made him take music lessons and he was terrible. There was a music contest when he was seventeen and he finished dead last. Last! Puccini! But he chased after songs even though it seemed crazy and his mom kept telling him that he would be an unbelievably great musician. Finally he wrote a symphony and then an opera, and so his career was started, but his mom died a week after his opera was performed in Milan. She was only fifty years old or so. The last time she saw Giacomo she gave him the ring from her finger.
There’s
a scene from an opera, eh? What a woman.

Sara?

But Sara is asleep, her hands still, her bookmark propped precariously between her chin and her breasts, her reading glasses awry, her right knee thrown over Michael’s left thigh. He props himself on one elbow and watches her: the sweet country of her face, her lace eyelashes, her lean high cheekbones, her breasts rising and falling under her slip, the circle on her right shoulder where she was vaccinated for polio as a girl, the burst of freckles in the russet sky of her back, the taut leap of her neck, the tiny hidden hollow at the base of her throat. Sometimes when they are making love he slides his tongue along her collarbone and into that tiny hollow which sometimes gives her a wet electric shiver in her belly but sometimes makes her twist away from his tickling tongue and neither of them knows what will happen when he does it sometimes she grabs his hair and arches wildly under him but sometimes she wrenches away trying with all her might to escape.

3.

Worried Man kneeling on the deck of the Department of Public Works in the black night after No Horses sprinted madly down the hill between the twin lines of black trees with Moses a black arrow above her discovers when he tries to rise that his knees have locked and he has to laugh. What a piece of work am I all rags and splinters. He uses his long arms as levers and hoists himself up along the railing and pauses there for a moment stretching his legs and sending his mind out over the railing into the velvet night feeling for the chattering cables of pain from his daughter and his grandson.

He finds Nora and he feels gently along the spine of her electric pain. A shadow of what it was, that’s good, but her fear is so strong he can taste ashes in his mouth. O Nora. He feels anxiously for Daniel and there tearing through the dark air is the ragged burning screaming pain of the boy, o poor child poor child he’ll have to get to the clinic I’ll get the truck must tell May poor poor Daniel.

He feels a dozen other pains yammering and chattering at him in the moist ancient air, they are almost musical tones in his head: the shrill faint note of Mrs. L’s arthritic wrists, like a flute high and away; the deep thrumming tone of Anna Christie singing and rocking by the creek; the jangled halting basso of the man who beats his son, rage and guilt and fear and exhaustion all twisted together in that poor man. Poor man poor man.