The Lava in My Bones (30 page)

The next time Sam visits the postal clerk, she drums her hands on the counter.

The following day she pokes one finger into her cup of yogurt.

The third time there is mail. Sam runs up to his room and tears it open to see his sister's handwriting. He reads:

“Everyone in town hates me. My honey flows but the bees no longer come to see me. Is it my fault that my body is this way? If only you could help me …”

He reads more of this letter than the others. He feels exhausted for the rest of the day.

Sam tells the doctors, “I have no idea what's happening to my sister now. She wears me down like water over rock. She has the same clutching fingers as my mother, but she doesn't try to penetrate my inner organs in the same way. The ocean stretches east from Labrador; to the west, a wall of stone barricades Cartwright from the rest of North America. I long to free Sue, but too many years have passed. I hate being powerless and think I could help her if she'd help herself. I don't know the solution. If you have an idea, tell me.”

Rivers of tears run down Cher's cheeks and blotch her makeup. “That poor girl,” she blubbers. “That poor sweet thing.”

Sonny reaches over, pats her hand. “There, there,” he says. “There, there.”

That night Sam dreams of fog creeping over wind-scarred cliffs and leaping swordfish shaking their tails at the pinnacle of arcs so high the fish appear to be flying.

One day Sam tells Sonny and Cher, “The day before I left Labrador, my mother was at her most difficult. The Bhopal disaster in India was still recent news, and when my father said that could happen here, she replied, ‘No, it couldn't. We're a Christian nation. They're suffering because they're not with God.' When she went to buy groceries, I snatched her silver crucifix from the living room mantel and buried it in the back yard, beside the tree where the neighbourhood dogs piss. That evening, in tears, she phoned the police and said that the two town hippies had stolen her treasure. She glanced at me nervously but refused to believe I could do this. I still picture that silver Christ bathed in dog piss and feel guilty. I should've left her a note explaining why I was leaving.”

“You shouldn't feel guilt,” Sonny explains. “Urine, in fact, prevents precious metals from oxidizing. I have a silver copy of Rodin's
The Thinker
and polish it daily with my urine and want to use Cher's, but she won't give me any.”

“We don't know each other that well, Sonny,” says Cher. “These things take time.”

The next day when Sam asks for mail, the clerk brushes her teeth.

The following day, she puts anti-wax drops in her ears and runs an electric razor over her armpits.

The third time, she does nothing. “There is no mail,” she blurts. “That's all there is to it.”

The next weeks are long and agonizing. Sonny and Cher become so taken with each other that they stop visiting Sam. He looks out at the lawn that's now half-green, half-white like the flag of a newly created country.

He wanders the hallways, watches janitors slosh grey water over tiles, sees cooks throw Oxo cubes into steaming sauces, and studies the laundry woman beating her hairbrush against a mustard stain on a duvet.

Finally the mail clerk gets sick and has to take time off. When she's in, she spends her time in the washroom spitting phlegm or coughing up hairballs. Sam eyes the curtains that lead to the forbidden bowels of the post office. There, secret documents are stored. Somewhere beneath that wall of velour is the mailroom loading dock, the conduit to the outside world. He longs to run through the curtain, but if he's caught, Sonny and Cher will lose faith in him, and he'll be locked in his room forever. Everyone but Franz has sent Sam a letter. Outside his window, birds keep flying in rising arcs. The suspense becomes too great.

On March 2, the clerk is in the washroom having one of her hairball days. When she hacks, it sounds like two sticks being
struck together; to Sam, each cough has a veiled message: “Go.” “Run.” “See.”

He takes a deep breath, dashes into the fur-soft slit in the curtains, and suddenly is in a lit-up room crowded with rows of slotted boxes. Pillars sport alphabet letters. One aisle is ABCDEFGHIJKL; the other, ZYXWVUTSRQPONM. He rushes into the labyrinth, stops before M, shoves his hand into a box, and pulls out some envelopes. He shuffles through Manning, Mappens, then finally reaches Masonty.

He sees the Swiss postmark. He nearly faints. Then, as he clutches the envelope, his penis tents his trousers. Through the curtain slit, he glimpses the back of the mail clerk. She's furiously stamping squares of paper. Sam crouches hiding behind a box and tears open the envelope. As he reads the twenty-page-long manuscript, a thousand disconnected thoughts roar though his mind at once.

He sees that Franz is a flawed vessel, yet opposites are interwoven in all organisms. The carbon necessary for diamonds comes from both organic and inorganic sources and Franz contains both. Sam is perplexed by Franz becoming Veronika, loves him deeply when rescuing the toad, feels vengeance when the ice cream splatters in his hair, and experiences a sense of synchronicity when Franz has his revelation by the lake. Amazingly the entire cycle of Franz's present life, all his transformations, agonies, and massive adaptations, were set in motion by Sam! Yes, Sam and his staring, glowering, hypnotic eyes! He'd reoriented Franz's life. Or so it seemed. And he wasn't even trying. He'd been in his Toronto apartment, then in this hospital, the whole
time. While astonished, he recognizes that he expected this all along. What would happen if he were there with Franz now? How much more good he could do! Sam's power seems, to him, astronomical. He can smell Franz's cinnamon skin-scent on the letter. He remembers Franz's diamond and realizes that the final geological force that will push it to the surface is himself. From the start, he'd been that Earth-balancing energy.

Franz's diamond hasn't quite formed; falling in love with his own body before the Matterhorn lake is ridiculous (and Sam's so glad Franz asked him to laugh). The Matterhorn is merely a way station, and Franz still hasn't found the key to himself. Clearly he has experienced the eruption of kimberlite or lamproite, an inferior volcanic rock that presages the surfacing of diamonds. The gushing forth of garish lamproite indicates that diamonds are on their way soon, but first Franz must abandon everything about himself, his body included. Who can help him on his path? How will he reach a transformation point? And why can't one person be interchangeable with another? Why must Franz's penis be so exciting? Why not his elbow or chin? Shouldn't body parts mix and match? The fairy tale about the people who freely detach and re-attach appendages still inspires Sam. He remembers the character who interchanged his earlobes and testicles so he could acutely hear his ejaculations and enjoy a tightening at the side of his head whenever the weather got cold.

Finally Sam reads: “Sam,
mein Liebling,
come to Zurich. Put my body under a microscope …” Then he hears it—the fire roaring at the Earth's centre. The ground begins to shake; plaster flecks fall from the post office walls. All of Franz's resistances to
Sam have evaporated. Now he wants him without reservation.

Sam longs to knock over every wooden box in that room and dance about the scattered envelopes, waving Franz's letter like a flag of victory. But if the clerk sees him, she'll telephone Sonny and that will be the end of everything. He's gotten past the troll at the gate. Now he must find the exit to the outside world. Sam will return to Switzerland. But this time, not only for himself. He will be the geological force that makes continental plates collide and drives the Earth's inner riches up through its crust. Sam shoves the sheet into his underpants, scrambles along an aisle and, at the end of a row of boxes, charges into a dark hallway. His feet clang on the steel floor and he stops running. Did the troll hear? He listens to a distant
clat-clat-clat
as she stamps letters on her wooden desk.

He sees, at the end of the long tunnel, the loading dock that opens onto the parking lot. He dashes through the passageway, arrives at the end, and stands wobbling in the square opening that divides the hospital from the outside world. A wind smelling of rust, oil, and wet hay pushes the hair off his forehead and flutters the edges of his hospital gown. Below stretches a cement plain covered in criss-crossing yellow lines dotted with cars, their windows blackened. The parking lot is bordered by fences with raised floodlights pointing down like rifles. Beyond is the wonderfully disorganized world he's long feared and never truly been part of. Why were there no security guards here? One large window on the ground floor is lit and he hears a thudding bass beat and someone singing, “We won't find out until we grow …” He clenches his fists so tightly that, in the half-light, they look like
rocks stuck to the ends of his forearms. If anyone tries to prevent his escape, they'll get a stone blow to the temples or balls or both.

Sam leaps from the loading dock, and his feet strike the pavement with such force he's surprised the hospital doesn't collapse behind him like a house of cards. Head lowered, he runs along the outer fence, the music growing louder in his ears. “Babe, I got you, babe.” Opposite the lit window, he sees Sonny and Cher singing on a stage before a swaying crowd holding hands above heads. So that's it! Everyone, including the security guards, has been drawn to the concert. What a lucky break. Thank God for Sonny and Cher!

He runs onto the muddy lawn he's studied for so long and looks back at the wall of square windows. His curtains are closed but the lights are on; he sees the shadow of a slim figure waving—the orderly wishing him good luck.

“Thank you,” Sam whispers. “From now on I'll know friends always come disguised as strangers.”

The last sound he hears from the hospital is a thudding bass beat and Cher's voice singing, “I—got—yo-u-u—b-a-a-b-e!” Sam charges across a deserted road and plunges into the darkness of a barley field.