Communion

by Graeme Gibson

  “Well he should begin with a beer.”

  “For strength.”

  “He says he’ll do anything.” Langorous, they’re superbly flushed with drink, their bare arms and throats in sunlight; they confidently reach and drink, they cross their thighs and stretch. He can only grin foolishly and take a beer. They watch him drinking.

  “What do you do best?” She speaks to him from a chair beside the stove, he doesn’t know what to say. Her hair is short, curled about her ears and her smile is gently mocking. There are pearls around her neck, they rest on her small bosom and for some incredible reason he is able to say:

  “I don’t know.”

  “There must be something.” Although they’re observing him in such a way that he knows they must have some understanding amongst themselves, it’s almost a plot, certainly some prearranged agreement, and although the nature of his response is obviously very important, it will certainly determine how they are going to deal with him, despite all this they aren’t hostile, they aren’t baiting him, on the contrary, encouragement emanates from them like perspiration, like the odour of their bodies. It makes it possible for him to continue.

  “Well. There is one thing, I guess . . . ”

  “What is it?”

  “Well.” They wait patiently, he really must try, he doesn’t want to disappoint them. Sun shining on the brown bottles, the women, small green plants, the whole scene in sunlight, there is dust and smoke in the air; Urquhart reaches to the ashtray, her black hair covers her face, she isn’t wearing a brassiere, she taps her cigarette and straightens, she flounces her hair back from her face, he hears a bird outside, he knows what he will say: “When the time comes, when it’s absolutely essential, I can walk from here to there.” He raises his arm and points, he sees his hand in the room. “To the back door there.”

  It is Urquhart who says: “Not everybody knows that.” They prepare a chair for him between her and the woman with the pearls. He sits in it. His bottle is empty so they give him another. He notices that the blond girl, obviously the youngest of them, she isn’t much more than twenty, she only has one arm; the sleeve of her black sweater has been removed and the arm hole cleverly mended. She’s very pretty by the window, she smiles at him and the smile remains: she watches him drinking and talking.

  Later, when she is naked, her breasts marbled with miniature blue veins, he sees that the shoulder curves smoothly, uninterrupted into her side, there’s no sign she ever had an arm. He stands in front of her, he cups his hand where her arm should begin, her body is cool, her eyes are closed, she puts her hand on his and speaks his name.

  Urquhart has taken the necklace, they’re not pearls at all, they’re tropical seeds of some kind strung on elastic, she puts it over his head and bending her face close to his, her arms are around him, her hair, she grins wickedly . . . No she doesn’t, she rests her face wearily against his throat. He is standing by the sink. She returns to her chair. There is a silence and then she says: “I don’t know. I’m overwhelmed with a sense of exhaustion. It happens every time, I’m sitting with a man and I suddenly realize, there’s nothing here for me, he doesn’t know who he is, the poor bastard’s hardly alive . . . ” He goes to stand by the window. Shadows at the end of her garden, the sound of a train on the bridge. Everything is dirty, seedy from winter. His hands have no strength. Her voice is matter-of-fact: “Why am I always attracted to empty men?” They sway with her words like branches. “Impotent men, not necessarily sexually, it’s a question of manhood.” He turns from the window, raises his hand as if he has something to say and discovers that he doesn’t. He stops in mid-gesture. Immediately it’s clear that she’s seen him, she expects him to continue, she almost shouts: “It’s not me you know, it’s not us!” Her dark mouth remains slightly parted as she waits, he can see her teeth. It’s not that she’s angry, on the contrary; the one-armed girl is weeping without noise as she lights a cigarette. He understands, he wishes there was something he could say. He can’t think of anything. “What in hell’s happening to you guys?” A yellow cat appears in the window behind her; standing on its hind legs it scratches on the glass to get in.

  The icy road against his face, he doesn’t know where he is at first, he can’t remember: he feels the coarse hair of its cold body in his arms, he’s deathly cold against the earth. He finds it almost impossible to move, he doesn’t know why he should try to get up. It isn’t painful. He’s been dreaming, there are voices, is he dreaming still? Lying on his side with the husky in his arms he can see the shell of a building beside the road, an abandoned schoolhouse, perhaps it’s a deconsecrated church: a wall has crumbled away, the roof has gone, the windows are empty. The easiest thing would be to sleep again, he doesn’t know why he struggles to get up, but he does, he wrestles free of its stiff body and the pain begins, he’s on all fours, his body’s possessed with systematic shudders that almost cast him to the ground. Felix on his knees, sobbing, he can hear his noise, he gathers himself, he rises to sway above the dog, the snow is black . . .

  By the ceiling a window, a small window with iron bars on the outside. The television is in the corner of the room. Blue light on his hands. No sound. Light on his trouser legs. He has eaten because it is evening, because it is almost night. Soon he’ll leave the room, he’ll walk to the stairs, he’ll mount them to the landing at the side door, and with only the slightest hesitation, he’ll step out into the alley.

  Very soon now. He drinks from a bottle, he smokes: blue light on his hands. What will they be doing tonight? What will he see them doing? He crosses the room because there are dark figures swooping back and forth across the screen, he turns up the sound; the crowd roars with excitement as the players dash from one end of the rink to the other. The Leafs and New York. He takes a mouthful of beer and settles into his chair. He knows each Toronto player by the way they move. At the end of the first period, Leafs leading, he goes to the refrigerator and opens two bottles of beer: returning with them to his chair he’s vaguely aware that he isn’t going out, it’s getting late, he’s certainly missing something, what are they doing? He flicks from channel to channel until he finds a baseball game, he doesn’t like baseball but it will do. He’ll go out later. After the hockey game. He’ll move with grace, his feet make no sound: swaying lights as he descends into the ravine, he avoids the road, he slides through underbrush, a path along the edge.

  He’s sitting by the telephone. He’s dialing her number: he doesn’t feel anything. He stops dialing her number. He goes to the baseball game and turns off the sound; he returns to the telephone, sometimes her husband answers and that’s good too, sometimes nobody answers. His hands are trembling, there is no strength. All sounds are separate and hugely magnified. Cars in the street, the noise of his body: although the clock is on the other wall, it sounds as if it’s pressed against his ear. Her phone begins to ring, it rings again, her voice, she answers his call, he starts to talk, she hears him, his tongue is swollen, his mouth is full of meat.

  The camera follows the players to their dugout until the commercial starts. He estimates that ten minutes have passed, he switches back to the hockey game: the players are returning to the ice. He takes a mouthful of cold beer and watches them skate gracefully about the rink, the referee blows his whistle and the second period begins. He settles expectantly into his chair. The room is dark except for shifting light from the game, blue light on his hands, on his legs as he drinks. Sometimes there are a lot of small figures scooting up the ice, then from another angle there are two or three, they fill the screen, they crash together against the boards, they either slide apart as if it didn’t happen, or they strike out automatically, they drop their sticks and gloves, they grapple together and fall again, the crowd roars and there’s a commercial. He drinks the last of his second beer as the period ends without a score. Several women appear on the screen, they’re rubbing themselves against a bum-faced man who’s extolli
ng a car; his voice is American: the women are rubbing themselves against the car now, they lie along the hood or lean against a fender with their mouths open greedily, they stare into the camera. He goes into the bathroom and masturbates. On the way back he gets two more beers from the refrigerator, he’s just in time for the final period.

  Soon he’ll leave the room, he’ll walk to the stairs, he’ll mount them to the landing at the side door, and with only the slightest hesitation, he’ll step out into the alley; it’s always the same, sneaking out the side door into the alley, it must be dark, he’s wearing running shoes and goes directly to the park, into the ravine, he walks in the bushes beside the road because sometimes there are others, a car perhaps, but not tonight. He doesn’t stop under the railway bridge or even pause at the top of the hill, he hardly notices the foul stream, he goes directly to the catalpa and climbs the fence. He’s done this before. Listening at the back door, there’s a light in the hall, but they are sleeping, he’s sure of that: listening carefully, entering, he’s done it many times. Trembling violently he closes the door, he walks through the kitchen and along the hall to their bedroom, his sneakers make tiny kissing noises on the hardwood. Everything is clean, the rooms are clean, they smell of furniture polish, soap, perfumes and powders, wax, it is dark, but there are flowers by the piano. The bedroom door is open. He waits with his shadow on the wall; he must be certain they’re asleep. He can hear them. The house creaks meaninglessly. He doesn’t know how long he stands listening to them through the open door, it doesn’t matter. One of them, it’s her, she’s lying naked in her bed, she rolls over, she sighs, he recognizes the sound, he leans against the doorframe. The smell of her body, her breath faintly stale with cigarettes. His gigantic shadow precedes him into the room, he makes no sound, it’s as if he isn’t there: ecstatic because they don’t know he’s standing at the foot of their bed, he stares at them, they don’t know he’s staring down at them like this. From the corner of his eye he sees himself in the mirror on the open cupboard door. Curtains sway in the moving air. She’s lying on her side, her face pressed against his shoulder. The noise of a machine cleaning the street; the sound of its revolving brushes as he comes to stand by her head. Then just the sound of an engine as it turns the corner. Bending he places his lips gently at the corner of her mouth. He feels her sleeping breath, her mouth is dry. He draws back from her as she stirs, he mustn’t move, he hardly breathes as she shifts onto her back: sighing again, she moistens her lips with her tongue, he wonders if she’s dreaming. Muscles contract in her face, he’d like to know what she’s dreaming, does she dream of the bearded man sleeping on his belly beside her? Does she dream of her lover? She’s smiling in her sleep, her eyes are in shadow, perhaps they’re open! perhaps she’s looking at him, she’s smiling at him, her arms emerge from beneath the covers to enfold him, she draws him to her, her mouth opens against his, she arches her long body, his hands are in her black hair, he holds her delicate skull in his hands. No, it doesn’t happen like that. She’d be afraid, if she opened her eyes and saw Fripp leaning over her like this she’d cry out, she’d be terrified. It’s not possible that she’d reach with her white arms and draw him to her body. Anyway the man would hear them, he’d waken without them realizing it and although there’s a chance that their lust would excite him, that he’d encourage them with sly caresses, obscene exhortations, perhaps he’d even join them, but that’s unlikely, there’d undoubtedly be a scene, maybe a violent one. He watches her sleeping face, her body beneath the sheet. Her black hair is on the pillow and on her shoulder. He’s seen her breasts, the black brassiere, they’re bigger than he thought, he reaches to touch her, he doesn’t touch her. He’s crouching beside their bed, he doesn’t know what to do.

  “Memories are like bad dreams.” Ritson’s voice, it doesn’t sound like a voice, he hears it in the dark. “They torment me so. That’s why I live in a cellar, it must be: I am lonely, but I am away from it all. That must be the reason. I have had to get used to it, it has not come easily. How could it? It is not man’s nature to live like an animal.” Perhaps he has said this before. If only he could get up, he doesn’t want to wet himself. Did he get up yesterday? it seems to him that he did, but it’s possible that he has deteriorated to such an extent, and in such a way, that he hasn’t noticed; and it’s the not noticing, after all, that’s the measure of real and significant deterioration, perhaps it has gone so far that he didn’t get up yesterday, that he won’t be able to get up today. “A basement is not an ideal place to die.” That voice again, his voice. At the same time he doesn’t appear to smell of stale urine, that would suggest he’d been on his feet yesterday. But not necessarily. It could just as easily mean that he’s subsided to the point where he doesn’t have to pee every day, that the pressure he now experiences is a reservoir of urine that’s been collecting for several days. The body’s organs do decay in this way, its processes do break down, there’s no question of that. It isn’t surprising. There was a time when he was able to pee as many as fifteen times in a single day, the urine rushed from him in torrents. But that’s history too, and there’s no reason to hope that it will be possible every day, any more than it was possible, say eighteen months ago, to believe he could then continue to pee more than seven times a week.

  If he allows himself, he’ll pursue this sort of speculation forever, he’ll exhaust every combination of possibilities, and even though it’s challenging for the mind, even though it could prove to be more or less diverting, it has nothing to do with him lying here, on his back, his body undeniably weaker than he has ever known it to be. A cellar is not an ideal place to die. He rolls onto his side, drawing his knees up to his chest, levering with his arms, he flops onto his belly, he struggles to raise his trunk from the mattress, to rise onto all fours, his arms are too weak, he collapses, his face bangs rudely against the cellar floor. It’s probably like this every day, soon the strength will return, he lies motionless with one arm beneath him, his face is pressed against the cement.

  “Memories are like bad dreams.” Ritson’s voice, it doesn’t sound like a voice, he hears it in the dark. “They torment me so. That’s why I live in a cellar, it must be: I am lonely.” There’s a woman, a fine-looking woman, wide-hipped and full-breasted: she’s shrouding the furniture, her arms are naked, she shakes white sheets, they billow over the stuffed chairs, they settle noiselessly on the sofa. A purposeful young woman, she doesn’t look more than thirty-five; he isn’t confident that he knows who she is. Who is she? Bending she adjusts the sheets, she tucks them under the legs of the furniture. She brushes hair from her brow and sighs. He doesn’t understand why she’s doing this, why doesn’t she acknowledge him? it’s as if he isn’t in the room. She pulls the blinds down, one by one, she draws the curtains and then, still without looking in his direction, she goes into the other room, he can hear her, he finds himself in the doorway. Because in this room, too, the blinds are down, because the curtains are drawn, he cannot see her. Where is she? alone into the room he knows she will not see him. He hears an unrecognizable sound from the corner of the room, a slight repetitive sound, he opens the cupboard, she’s in the cupboard, her feet no longer touch the floor: her face, although contorted, is brutally serene; her tongue is swollen, it lolls from between her teeth, he sees that she’s bitten it, there’s blood in her mouth, it’s boiling onto her chin: bulging from their sockets, her eyes stare hugely over his shoulder into the room. The noise is caused by her fist; compusively, as if counting time, she’s tapping the cupboard wall with her fist. He’s appalled by the calm in that body beneath her blackening face; all the energy of death is in her face as her body rotates imperceptibly.

  Manoeuvring onto his back, he opens his eyes. On his back in the dark, it’s like sleep, the empty house above him, so many rooms, he remembers the woman, she must have done that before she left. Or has he always been alone? He remembers many women, and children, some of them had children in their arms, they prep
ared meals of soup and sandwiches for children coming home from school. It doesn’t matter. He must get up, the pressure on his bladder insists, he closes his eyes, he opens them again. Children skating on a river, their red toques brilliant in the sun. Their voices come to him in the wind.

  Leaving by the side door, into the alley, it’s dark, he’s wearing running shoes and goes directly to the park, then left into the ravine, he moves with empty grace, through the underbrush, a path beside the road because sometimes there are others, there are cars without lights, there are figures, shadows in the corner of his eye.

  And tonight there is a car, he knows where to look, he sees it, heart’s rhythm and muscles tightening, his mouth parting, he pauses: leaves shiver about him, a light evening breeze on his face. He stares at the motionless hulk of the car. He can almost smell it. Circling up the side of the ravine so they won’t see him; he wonders if they’re screwing. He hopes so. Pausing to stare down at them he thinks of hurling a brick or something, bouncing it off the roof. He stands grinning in the dark. There’s no sound from the car. The wind has gone, he hears traffic somewhere above him; he’d never do a thing like that, he knows it’d scare the shit out of them, they’d probably never make it again. He stands without moving: there are animals, he hears them in the dead leaves, the night sky is full of bats and owls. He no longer cares why they have no place to go, why they have to come here, inviting almost certain detection by the police who patrol the ravine with search-lights on their yellow cars. It doesn’t matter, it’s true the car is there, it might as well be empty. He doesn’t understand how he could have been tempted to crawl closer to the glinting metal body, the brush of bodies perhaps? He knows how pathetic that is. They groan, breathing and sighing, the noise of their bodies, he sees them, they don’t know he’s here, so close to them, teeth bared, eyes white, he reaches, fingers extended, staring he reaches into the car, he sees her legs convulse like arms. What does he want from them, any of them? He doesn’t know who they are. He doesn’t feel anything. They’re there, he’s seen the glow from at least two cigarettes and smoke drifting from the driver’s open window. He can’t make any sense of it, he can’t even remember why he’s standing above them in the dark, deathly still, as if remembering something he’s never experienced.