Divisadero

by Michael Ondaatje

  The husband, smoking his pipe, would walk the perimeter of the walled garden and consider how well the pollarding of the trees had succeeded. He would eventually circle the house to where the door leading to the back pasture would be open, and through the opening see Anna hunched over the table writing, or reading some large book, never looking up, never conscious of him a few yards from her open doorway, and he’d shake his head and drift away. The woman was from America, his wife had told him. When she stood up she was as tall as he was, light-coloured hair to the neck. She looked strong and healthy. She had asked him in her New World French where the good places to walk were, and he had drawn a map with the best paths, routes that weaved through other properties and crossed the river. He reminded her to close all the gates. When the owner of the manoir came there, he’d always be driving off immediately— to pick up floc from an Armagnac distillery or on some other errand. But this guest was different. She had no desire to spend time in town. She was content here. She might spend half an hour talking when they came their one day a week, but then she would be back at the table, with her books. He knew she walked into the village now and then. As a postman he travelled all the time, it was in his blood. Staying in a house the whole day seemed unnatural. So when she asked him into the back room, and escorted him through the lean corridor of the house to the kitchen, where he saw the open door leading to the pasture, which was where he had stood watching her work the previous week, and where now she offered him a sheet of paper, he drew the map for her clearly and to scale—his job had taught him exact kilometre distances and property boundaries and stream beds. He drew the rectangle of the house and a quick oval for the herb bed, then re-created the world outside, ending with distant copses and deer forests, dismissing places she should avoid, those that tourists inhabited. In Anna’s terms the map was a ‘keeper,’ and she might one day frame it and hang it in her living room on Divisadero Street in San Francisco, a private core of a memory. In some part of her mind, she felt that if worse came to worst, she could always escape back here.

  Anna carried the map with her as she walked. Since the day she had met the four hunters, she wore jeans instead of a skirt and shaved ten minutes off the ninety-minute walk. But where she was now, alongside the gorse hedges, the path was uneven, broken with stones, and she needed to slow down. Juniper grabbed her feet as she left the path, throwing up its smell. Sunlight fell through the trees and as she paused to look up at the splintered beauty, she heard music.

  What she heard was a woman singing. If she had thought there were men there, she would not have walked towards the sound. But this was tempting. A woman’s voice, a tune that seemed to have no scaffolding, almost too casual to be good, although the voice was clear, waterlike. Anna stood where she was a moment longer. She saw a sparrow leaping from branch to branch, clumsily, hardly adept. She strolled towards the clearing, stopping once or twice, trying to interpret the tune.

  She came into the open field, where there was a woman, and also a man, sitting in a straight-backed chair, accompanying her on what looked to be a guitar. They didn’t see her at first, but they must have sensed something—a sudden quietness in the trees above her, perhaps—for the woman turned and, when she saw Anna, stopped singing and strode away, leaving the man alone in the open field.

  France had meant a quiet and anonymous time for Anna. Apart from the visits of Monsieur and Madame Q, she saw no one. And there was nothing in the house of the writer to remind her of North America. She was escaping the various aspects of her professional life—acquaintances, deadlines, requests for prefaces—all of which, if she were in her real world, would be essential duties. The only thing that had truly jostled her in the time she had spent so far in the Gers region of France was the group of men at the crossroads with their dogs, the men’s tongues lolling in parody and their fists twisting in the air as she walked away. She felt at ease in the modest house, her curiosity almost aimless, as if she were beginning a new life. She was enjoying the process of filling a notebook with fragments and even drawings, something quite apart from her research. If there was the sound of a bird through the open door by her table she would try to articulate it phonetically on the page. She did this whenever she heard one clearly enough. And when she leafed through her obsessive notes, Anna would find a series of chords of birdsong, or her drawing of a thistle, or of the Qs’ Renault.

  The man with the guitar had turned his head to look at her. Feeling she needed to make a gesture to avoid being rude, Anna moved forward to say something, and he watched the uneven grass she crossed as she approached him.

  Hello. I’m sorry.

  As if she had come here and interrupted him to tell him she was sorry!

  One thing, she felt completely safe. It was not the obvious fact that he was holding a guitar and not a weapon, it was his look, as though he had been just taken from refuge, and she was now insisting him back to earth. While she walked those last few yards towards him, she realized she must have also heard his playing when she entered the clearing, a subliminal hum and strum, a rhythm and a melody—which was why the woman had needed none in her song. The woman was accompanying him. So now it was as if everything she had heard was being replayed in her memory, recalled differently. He had been the one drawing her into the clearing.

  It was a tattered guitar. When she got close she could see his hands had been bitten by insects, were scarred. His clothes, which had looked formal from a distance, were unironed, muddy at the cuffs; the waistcoat had lost buttons. But it was the hands that were too lived in, overused.

  She looked in the direction the woman had gone, and saw a caravan in the shadows, within the trees.

  This was the same clearing where Anna and her friend Branka had stood the second night after her arrival at Dému, more than a week before. The grass had felt like a flat receptacle then, a moon pasture. She was wearing a sleeveless dress, had just done a cartwheel and scooped up some golden broom, which had been colourless in that light. She’d had no awareness then that there was a caravan or any inhabitant in the vicinity, save for herself and Branka, who had driven her down from Paris. Branka, an architect, was staying for only a day. It was she who had helped Anna arrange the rental of the writer’s house, through a contact in her firm. They had walked back to the manoir, clambering over the low brush, finding gaps in the hedges that were clear in the moonlight.

  If Anna came any closer to the man with the guitar, she would be encroaching on his territory. If she remained more than four paces away, it would signal a fear, though there was none. He seemed a contained man, and he had one arm over his guitar as if it were a favourite hound.

  I interrupted you, I’m sorry. But it was beautiful.

  To be truthful, she hadn’t really felt that. It had been just strange music coming through the trees to where she had been standing. It was something unexpected. So perhaps beautiful. She had not quite lied. The musical chords had calmed everything; even the insects had paused their noisy needle and thread. She looked towards the quiet trees.

  I didn’t know you lived here. I was here once before, one night.

  The fingers of his right hand swept over the strings, six notes spreading towards her like a fan. He smiled briefly at her, then fell into a melody and seemed to be playing everything—bells, drums, a missing voice.

  This was a field, he told her sometime later, that he had sat in as a boy, playing alongside his mother’s singing. He would look not at the strings but at his mother’s face in order to catch her rapid swerves of melody; there would be no clue about her voice’s darting, except in her eyes—this starling, that wood thrush—and still he would be beside her, picking up notes as if counting kilometre stones as she flew down a road. As a boy he had always felt that his musical lessons were a net for holding everything around him—the insects in the field, the weather shifting in the trees—so that he could give it as a collected gift, like a hand cupped with cold water held up to a friend.

  When he finished
, he said, You did not sing. You did not join me.

  No. I’d have been the extra wheel.

  Music has many wheels, that’s what makes it joyous.

  The other singer …

  Anna did not know what to say, whether she should inquire. She comes from the village for lessons. Once a week I give lessons. You came from the house with the pigeonnier?

  She nodded.

  A bee landed on the neck of the man’s guitar, and he pursed his lips and blew it off. When it returned after a quick circuit in the air, he flicked it away with his middle finger, and it spun wounded into the grass.

  My name is Rafael, if you want to know.

  Ah yes, ah yes, I was told about you, by the owner of the manoir. He said you might be here. She glanced behind. I should go, I suppose.

  He said he would accompany her. But then he took no direct path towards the house. He guided her, stepping over bushes. They had to bend almost double to walk under the low branches of the trees. He ignored a clear path a few yards to their right, as if he had the mind of a cow, or a crow in mid-air, perceiving a more natural route. If anything, going this way, they took longer to reach the house. The comfort she had felt in that field was replaced by scratches, and some annoyance towards him.

  At the kitchen door she asked if he was thirsty and, under the gush of the tap, filled two cups and invited him to sit down at the table. It was covered with books and papers. His right arm pushed some of them aside to give himself more space, but he did not look at what they were. Instead his eyes searched around the room, the way a thief’s might. You did not invite strangers in for a drink like this, but Anna hadn’t spoken to anyone for days. He was looking at furniture and pictures, consuming them, the same way he had looked at her, with either curiosity or pleasure. That was how he now regarded the red enamel cup he was holding in his hands.

  My father was known by some as a thief, he said, as though he had read her mind about how he was looking around the room. But he never stole from houses he was invited into.

  That’s civilized, she managed to retort soon enough to seem at ease with this information.

  I think so too. Still, his craft taught him—and so he taught me—about the value of things I am unlikely to own. To me, for instance, what is most valuable in this room is this blue table. But I know it has no real value.

  Does he live around here, your father?

  He’s not from France. But after the war he didn’t go home, instead he met my mother. He was injured in the war. He later organized a small group who filched—is that the word?—from the houses they were not asked into. It had been difficult during the war, and I think he felt that everyone who had fought was owed more than they were given.

  So he was a ‘filcher.’ A quaint term. And what did you say your name was?

  Rafael.

  And your father?

  … never wished me to be a thief.

  And your mother? Was she a thief too? He was grinning at her. Did they meet during a robbery?

  Almost. It was in a jail. She had a part-time job at a police station. I believe he charmed her, even though he was older. May I have more water?

  Yes, of course. She moved to the sink with the red cup. I met some strange hunters here, in the forest, the other day, she said.

  There are terrible people, all over the place. Just like me.

  She laughed then.

  There’s a big garden here, isn’t there? I’d like to see it. I can cook you something.

  It’s out through that door. Pick anything …

  Anna stood in front of the flecked mirror, washing her face and arms, then rubbed her legs with a cold, wet washcloth. Later, when she walked into the garden, she saw him smoking a cigarette, looking over the rows of vegetables.

  Who were those hunters? Are they from the village?

  I cannot help you there. We keep to ourselves.

  I suppose, then, you wouldn’t tell me even if you knew… . I was scared, to tell the truth.

  As she spoke, he pulled a piece of green cloth from one of his inside jacket pockets. Tie this around your arm when you go walking, you’ll be safe.

  She took the cloth into her hands.

  Your father, was he English? You speak very—

  My father could speak it well.

  Does he come here?

  Not for some time.

  Well, if he ever does, I’ll be sure to invite him in.

  Rafael crouched and began to snap off beans, passing them back to her, dropping them into the green cloth she held open.

  Do you have a little beef?

  I’ll take these in, she said, and cut a few strips of meat for us.

  He strolled into the house a few minutes later and unpacked rosemary and four figs from his pocket. He began working on a salad, slicing slivers of garlic into it.

  So, how did you escape the life of crime—and your charming father?

  Anna was talking with him as if he were an old friend from childhood who had changed shape into this thickset man. His musical fingers were now dicing tomatoes. The eyes that had darted around the room were now gazing easily at her. He seemed not at all awkward or tense about being in the house. His behaviour around her seemed effortless. So that when she went to bed with him for the first time, some days after this lunch, his hesitancy was a surprise. He did not pull away, but scarcely leaned forward. What had been familiar across the kitchen table was now shyness and perhaps incapacity, as though in the past he had been burned by something. They did nothing but hold each other. He would for now be content with her breath against his shoulder, the mole on her upper arm. He would fall asleep thinking of this small dark dot.

  He was certainly not vain, freely admitting his thick girth, his imperfect health. After they had eventually made love satisfactorily (as far as she could assume for both of them), he stood and tested his calves in a naked leap, then strolled to the window, opened it and smoked a cigarette there, gazing out, not caring how he looked in that sunlit posture. He would mention later that he was unconcerned with his ‘silhouette.’ Anna had met no one like him. There appeared to be no darkness in him. Though he would tell her of an earlier relationship that had silenced him completely, and how he had almost not emerged from that. He was in fact coming out of that privacy for the first time with her. All over the world there must be people like us, Anna had said then, wounded in some way by falling in love—seemingly the most natural of acts.

  He told her there was a song he no longer performed that had to do with all of that. It was about a woman who had risen from their bed in the middle of the night and left him. He would hear evidence of her in villages in the north, but she would be gone by the time the rumour of her presence reached him. A song of endless searching, sung by this man who until then had seldom revealed himself. His tough fingers would tug the heart out of his guitar. He’d sing this song to those who had grown up with his music over the years, who were familiar with his skill at avoiding the limelight. He knew his reputation for shyness and guile, but now he conceded his scarred self to his friends. ‘If any of you on your journeys see her—shout to me, whistle …’ he sang, and it became a habit for audiences to shout and whistle in response to those lines. There was nowhere for him to hide in such a song that had all of its doors and windows open, so that he could walk out of it artlessly, the antiphonal responses blending with him as though he were no longer on the stage.

  In the days before Anna slept with him, he had expected no gesture of interest from her. Their lunches had seemed innocent of courtship. And their first afternoon in the upstairs room of the house had been similarly genial, neither of them loved the other yet, so there was nothing fatal or fateful about it when they woke in each other’s arms, facing each other, a breath away. In that small space between them was the smell of cilantro. He had a passion for it, and had crushed it into their salad a few hours earlier. His pockets always held a few herbs, basil or mint, so he could rip off a heel of bread and create a meal
wherever he was.

  When Anna had gone upstairs to wash that first day, he had stayed outside for a while, half dreaming among the green rows of the garden, then walked into a deep hollow in the earth, a mare that had a century earlier held water for cattle. He stood there blackened by the shadow of the great oak that rose above him, and soon he was stretched out on the grass, so that when Anna looked from the window he seemed to have disappeared.

  Her early impression of Rafael was that he saw nothing around him as fully owned—his fingers removed leaves from a plant with the same ease as when, three days later, he wrapped his dark fingers around her wrist, barely grazing the skin so her pulse continued to pause and lift in his loose grip. She looked down at a scar across his knuckles, kept looking down, giving no gesture in response to this act of his, the captive pulse no doubt beating faster. She was thinking of the chords of music that had emerged from hands as scarred as these. She did not rest her face into his chest, into the cache of basil within the shirt pocket, until he let go of her. Come with me, she said then. Watch your step. They went up the stone stairs wide enough for three horses, along the corridor, into her small room, where she bent down to turn on the electric heater and waited for the appearance of its three red bars.

  She laughed when he rather formally closed the door behind them. He shrugged.

  Is that what you call a ‘Gallic gesture’?

  Garlic? He was perplexed.

  Gallic! You know that turn of phrase?

  ‘A turn of phrase’? Another shrug. We are in the smallest little room in a very big house, he said. Is there a reason?

  You don’t like it?

  No, he said, we should take up the smallest possible space. But not too little space.