“Close your eyes,” she ordered once we were standing on the porch. I guessed that she’d organized some kind of surprise for me, but pretended otherwise so as not to spoil her excitement. Then she opened the door, led me across the threshold, and I held my breath until a blaring, riotous cacophony hit me: “Surprise!”
I started to breathe more easily, which is no more than a figure of speech, really, as this sort of welcome made it impossible for me to breathe remotely easily, and those who’d gathered rushed toward me to slap me on the back and welcome me home. There was Robbins and, too, his inseparable sidekick, the young Jones; there was Artie, who’d reappeared I don’t know when, nor how, as well as a guy who looked incredibly like me and who was called Robert. And there was a Bill, who’d become a larger dog over the course of the year, as big as Jeff and just like Jeff, so that the only thing differentiating them were the scarves they wore, red for Jeff and green for Bill; and there was a small person too, an extremely small person whom I did not recognize.
“This is Robert,” said Anita, blushing as she held out the baby, who started to cry. “Robert Junior.”
I said I needed a chair, a log, or a rock, that I wasn’t sure I could keep standing up. Four chairs were immediately pushed toward me, but I hadn’t asked for that many so I chose to lie down instead of sitting. Five big human heads plus two dog heads simultaneously bent over me, depriving me of what little oxygen there was in the cottage, and suddenly I understood how babies must feel when a whole bunch of cooing ladies stand over their cribs. “Who’s Auntie’s little babba den?” Auntie’s, obviously, you silly cow, you just said so. This alone could explain the high rate of criminality in large families. Not that I’d read that anywhere, but I would write it. In the meantime, before I died of asphyxiation, I stood up, with enough of a start that the cuckold-horn bruise on my left side collided with the head of the fella who looked a lot like me and was supposedly called Robert. “Ouch!” we both swore at the same time, staring at the other as if each of us was aware of what the other didn’t know. This usurper would stick around a while; first of all, I had to deal with the baby. One problem at a time.
“And whose little Robert is that?” I said, pointing at the chubby baby drooling in Anita’s arms.
“Robert’s,” said Anita, blushing again as she turned to Robert, whose forehead was slowly being decorated with a bruise like the one inflicted on me by the four-hundred-million-year-old rock. I would have liked to ask who Robert, father of Robert, was, but didn’t dare — yet again I was too afraid of hearing the answer. In any case, Anita didn’t give me a chance. She pushed little Robert into my arms like any proud mama, where he gurgled babababa, zizizi, goo-goo, and the party started. Anita had inserted a Roger Whittaker CD into the player while I was away, and Robert half turned around muttering “Whittaker” in recognition, and fuck, I saw me as clearly as if I were looking at a mirror, and that overjoyed me. For the first time since my arrival I was happy not to be Robert, because, apparently, I wasn’t.
“Bababa,” I said to baby Robert before starting to whistle along with Anita and Whittaker to annoy big Robert. It worked, because he glared at me in a way that said a lot about the relative pleasure of his seeing me come back, and it was clear to me that he thought I was Winslow, which was unsurprising, because I wasn’t Robert.
For a moment, I’d wanted to keep to myself, but couldn’t, because here was Robbins bringing me a glass of alcohol-free punch. Given the circumstances I could have done with a little pick-me-up, but Anita had decided that since there would be both a baby and a convalescent at the party, there would be no alcohol. The new Anita was indeed a new woman, and I’d have bet all my money that nobody was allowed to smoke in the cottage either. Never mind, I wasn’t smoking anymore and knew where Robert kept his bourbon stash. Quite the hypocrite, he was heading that way and still casting shifty looks my way. As for me, I was half listening to Robbins describe how I’d fallen into a coma, and how Robert, by making his swan dive — “a fucking swan dive, Bob” — had prevented me from skewering myself on an old fence picket. I’d not impaled myself, but had landed head first on Robert’s big rock, which Anita subsequently had moved because it was dangerous for Junior.
“You moved my stone!” I shouted, and everybody seemed surprised that I considered the rock to be mine — except for Artie, well aware that people could grow attached to various objects and who came over to console me, which made me think about Ping, who’d probably ended his life in a quiche. “Poor Ping,” I murmured, and Artie answered, “Poor thing,” though he was thinking of the rock he would show me in a little while. I changed the subject and asked him how it was that he’d returned to Mirror Lake.
It was a long story, he said. After he’d dropped Picard off at Three Jacks Bar, he’d decided to leave the shady underworld and travel the country. He’d driven across twelve states in my car and — needing to survive, after all — holding up a bank or an embassy here and there. To pass the time, he’d started an onion collection. You wouldn’t believe it, but there’s actually an incredibly variety of onions. He’d found red ones, yellow ones, white ones, pointy ones, ones that don’t make you cry, he’d show me them soon, he said, along with the rock, and then, blinking his eyes, he took a little yellow onion that looked just like Ping out of his pocket. “To welcome you,” he said with a squirm, and I wanted to kiss him again, the big idiot. I made do with saying thank you, and telling him that I’d name him Ping Two, in memory of Ping, and asked again why he was at Mirror Lake. It was simple: after a few months he’d had enough of the vagabond life, and he’d wanted to come back to see the only place where people cared about him at all. While I was in the hospital, he’d moved into my cottage, which is to say Winslow’s cottage, this with the blessing of Robert, whom he considered to be no less than his adoptive father. But I needn’t worry, he said, he was going to move into one of the hunting camps scattered around the mountains as soon as possible, which I guessed meant as soon as he’d murdered its owner.
Things were off to a good start. Artie must have been wanted by the police in at least twelve states and I would have him as a roommate unless I lent him a hand and helped slay the lucky owner of one of the hunting camps, whom I’d have the supreme pleasure of meeting before eliminating him when autumn came. And what about Robbins in all this? Why hadn’t Robbins arrested him? That was another long story. Artie had once saved Robbins’s life during a bank robbery in which, for once, he’d played no part. He’d been window-shopping on a street in Augusta when a big guy in a mask came tearing out of a bank. Immediately afterwards, Robbins appeared at the corner of the street, the big guy turned around, pulled out his gun, and Artie threw himself upon him just as he pulled the trigger, changing the bullet’s trajectory. The result? A pigeon had copped it, the big guy became a little guy, and Robbins was still alive. Artie was sad about the pigeon, but Robbins saw things differently and decided to close his eyes to Artie’s little habit of larceny. Which wasn’t difficult, Artie chuckled, given that Robbins was as usual wearing dark glasses.
It wasn’t the first time this joke had an airing, but still he found it so funny he couldn’t stop slapping his thighs, the damn fool, yapping like a happy seal, zouak, zouak, and waking up little Robert who’d fallen asleep so as not to have to listen to our nonsense. A self-defence mechanism, I told myself — and no surprise, because the child was probably mine. I was contemplating his chubby little cheeks and giving in to the wave of tenderness washing over me when Anita arrived, whispering “How is he, little Bamboo, how is he, howdidodido?” Hearing his better half call their son Bamboo, Robert gritted his teeth and smiled tersely as he crushed an imaginary insect — an ant, I reckon, or maybe a stink bug — with his heel. All credit to him, it was that or be impaled. Strangely, I was starting to feel good in Winslow’s skin.
The problem was that there were two of us in that skin and, baggy as it was, I felt a little hemmed in. To be honest,
I needed some air, so I said that I was going out, the day was too beautiful to be stuck inside. I’d have liked to be alone with Jeff, to be able to take stock of things, but everyone followed me, bringing along the bowl of revolting punch, the canapés, the dog’s frisbee, little Robert’s walker, his teddy bear, his Bambi, his Bamboo, his bottle, his diaper bag, his hood, his sunscreen, his swimming pool, his electric train, and I asked Anita why she wasn’t bringing his snowsuit too. She didn’t appreciate my humour, but nevertheless went off to find a small woollen blanket while Robbins and Robert lit up a smoke. I’d not been mistaken, motherhood had transformed Anita and, my own self-defence mechanism, I started smoking again. I needed to have a word with myself.
As we waited, Artie pulled at my sleeve to show me the hole left by the four-hundred-million-year-old rock, which they’d covered with gravel, but was this deep, Artie showed by opening his arms wide. A fucking big stone. “I know,” I said, showing him the bump on my left side, and it was only at that moment that I realized how dogged the bruise was. Surely after three hundred and forty-two days it should have disappeared?
“Excuse me, Artie, I have to speak to Robert,” I said, heading toward him as quickly as my condition allowed, to ask him to explain this phenomenon to me, because I was sure he must have thought about it too. Not complicated, he said, I’d fallen out of bed the first time I’d woken up, a week ago, an incident that had immediately put me back into a coma. It was a little brief as explanations go, but I’d have to make do. “Such is life,” Robert added with a supercilious smile, and I understood why Robbins had never liked me. When I put on those superior airs I really wanted to hit myself.
“Such is life,” I mumbled and, putting on my sweetest Winslow face, asked Robert if he might like to swap his bourbon-spiked punch with me, which he did, though he grimaced. The first sip went down badly, the second did its best, and the third made sure I thought it was divine. For the couple of minutes of my savouring my elixir, everybody was silent because nobody had any idea what to say. Robert asked what the coma had been like. “Black,” I said. “Or white, depending on whether you prefer black or white. If you prefer white, then it was black; if you prefer black, then it was white. Not nice. An absence. A void. I must have been dreaming, I suppose, of being cold, being hungry, and in pain, but I can’t remember anything. Nothing, Robert, a black hole, a white abyss, it all depends.”
We observed a few more seconds of silence, because what I’d just said was profound, and I followed up by conceding that my last memory, excluding that of the visit of my family the day before, had been of the four-hundred-million-year-old rock.
“You have a family, Bob?” Robert asked, and I could see he was about to deny there ever had been a visit, just as Kathy Bates had done, so I changed topics and pursued the subject of the rock. Unsure of where to move it, they’d taken it to the other side of the lake and put it at the bottom of my porch. “A souvenir,” Robert said, and I couldn’t figure out if he was mocking me or serious. What does it matter, I was too exhausted to dwell on it, everything in its own time. Instead I caught up on Ping’s news, better off sorting that out right away. Apparently he hadn’t ended up in a quiche as I’d anticipated, but as onion rings. The onion Pings were Anita’s idea, and I hoped he’d found it funny. “Poor Ping,” I murmured, Artie rushing over to console me just as Anita arrived carrying a cake and singing “Mon cher Bobby, c’est à ton tour,” Quebec’s kitschiest birthday song, and you could see from Robert’s eyes that he wished he’d never taught it to her.
I pretended to be pleased and served a slice of cake to whoever wanted one, even though it wasn’t my birthday. Afterwards, as people around me started to yawn, I announced I was heading back inside, and faithful Jeff followed me because he was the only one who knew who I was. There was no question of my deceiving him, this dog, because I loved him unconditionally, so I pretended instead that it would make me feel much better if I had two dogs with me on my first night back at Mirror Lake. This was the only way of bringing Jeff along without making a scene, and Robert agreed to it, even though I was positive he knew I was about to swap the dogs’ scarves, giving Jeff the green one and Bill the red. But before Artie, Jeff, Bill, and I were able to get into the boat, Anita held out little Robert for me to kiss, and I whispered in his ear that he should not turn out like his father, without knowing if I was alluding to myself or the other guy. No matter, the baby understood. First of all, he burst out laughing, gagaga, and then, after examining me assiduously, he started to wail and Anita grabbed him out of my arms. The child was so like me.
Still lost in thought, the notion of what we might have done with the kid brought a tender smile to my lips. Artie gave me a little nudge with his oar, and I got into Winslow’s green boat beside him, followed by Bill and Jeff, who were both excited about going out on the water. Artie didn’t want me to row, so I sat in the back with Jeff and let my fingers trail in the cool water, trying not to think about what was happening to me, all this stuff that didn’t make sense. I focused on the tips of my fingers, on the little wakes they were opening up in the lake and the fish who must see these little bits of pink flesh and wonder if they’re edible. And then I told myself that if I were Winslow, then I’d go fishing the next day.
Until then I’d pretty well been on top of things, but this last reflection was triggering. The stream of objections I’d been suppressing rose up inside me in a great wave of nausea and suddenly I stood up and yelled that I wasn’t Bob Winslow. Zlow, zlow, zlow, answered the mountains, Artie made a hard turn to stop us from tipping, and three pairs of large round eyes, belonging, respectively, to Artie, Bill, and Jeff, turned my way as if I were a raving lunatic. But I wasn’t mad; if anyone had lost it in this godforsaken hole it wasn’t me. “Do you understand that, Artie? They’re a bunch of sickos, a gang of crazy people,” and I started in on my stupid theory about nightmare and reality. I explained to Artie that since we were in a nightmare, he wasn’t real and shouldn’t be afraid of falling into the water. If he drowned, it wouldn’t actually be him drowning, only the image I had of him, after which we’d all be teleported into a different nightmare where, with a bit of luck, he’d have turned into Jeff and I’d have become Anita.
I blabbered on till we reached the other side, overwhelming poor Artie with a flood of words as vindictive as they were despairing. But he just kept staring at me with his big mute carp’s eyes, behind which I did sometimes see a flame of compassion flickering. Neither did he say anything when we reached land, climbing out of the boat and entering the cottage and leaving me to finish my tantrum on my own. I was so wound up that I must have fulminated for a good half-hour, striding up and down the beach and kicking any of the rocks that had the misfortune to be in my way — until one of them, in its shape, colour, texture, and, let’s say, its obdurate appearance, brought the four-hundred-million-year-old rock that had been responsible for what had happened to me to mind. Without taking into account the absurdity of my response, I approached it with the intention of telling it my deepest thoughts, but, when I saw it sleeping so peacefully in the shade of the cottage, I quite literally collapsed. I fell to the ground and cried for a good long time — it settles the mind — and then tried to take a calm, methodical look at the whole situation.
“A man falls into a coma,” I said to Jeff and Bill, who had been keeping their distance until then. “A man falls into a coma, and when he wakes up, he’s no longer himself. Who am I?”
No reply.
“A man falls into a coma. When he wakes up, he has a son — whose father he isn’t. What happened?”
Silence around me.
“A man falls into a coma. When he wakes up, the person he thought he was is sleeping with the mistress of the neighbour of the man he has become. Who is John Doe?”
I carried on like this for a while, and with each question the mystery thickened. Either I had gone mad, or I had always been mad but wasn’t any longer,
or I was still in a coma, that or I was the victim of a grand and devilish machination, as previously I’d believed during that blessed time in which I’d howl at the slightest peccadillo. But none of these hypotheses moved me a single step forward. In the circumstances I might as well have gone to bed, what with night falling and things always looking better in the morning. At least that’s what Hortèse said if a question stumped her. She’d wait for night to fall and send the question to bed with the person who’d asked it.
So downhearted was I that I didn’t even want to gaze at the stars, as beautiful as always, not even to lose myself in contemplating Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, constellations I called “the widow” and “the orphan” because you could look for a big bear all you wanted and he wasn’t there. But ruminating over the mysteries of the universe when I had no idea who I was didn’t appeal to me. I called the dogs, who were chasing a firefly. “Hurry up, guys,” I yelled, and went inside.
Before my coma I would have been hung up on the firefly, I would have wondered why the insects’ tiny phosphorescent behinds have not been glittering much at all in the undergrowth of the American east these last few years, and would have blamed humans — their pesticides, their baffling desire to light up the night by installing streetlamps and floodlights everywhere, as if light is better than darkness — but I was too tired, too sore, too depressed, so I let the firefly fly away, despite the fact that it might have been the last firefly of all time, the last survivor of a time in which its ancestors gaily frolicked, and I closed the door on the night.
In the cottage, the first thing I noticed was Victor Morgan’s novel, which must have been sitting on the coffee table in the living room for a year, waiting to reveal to me what my fate would be. As for Artie, he was in his bedroom, from which I could hear the muffled sound of the television. I opened the door to apologize, I owed him that at least, but he pretended not to hear. He was good at that kind of game. He carried on watching his cartoons without reacting, even though the coyote had just flattened itself at the bottom of the cliff where Road Runner had led it. I knew that normally he would have found that funny, but he was hurt, I could see that, and wasn’t laughing. He was stewing in his wounded pride and wanted me to know it. I apologized again, but Artie wasn’t in a forgiving mood and so I wished him goodnight and, on the off chance he might react, thanked him for the onion.
Mirror Lake Page 23
