Felix Culpa
Page 5
Running with bent back and with hands near the ground, like a beast and yet not of beast shape.
21
Night was like felt.
Cluster of dirt streets.
Lurid drinks and cheap cigarettes.
Shops where tattoos are drawn on sailors’ skin.
Artist arranging needles and inks and pierced patterns on his bench.
Ear-piercers, bump-readers.
Old men in their turbans and white shorts.
Bent over cards.
Face in the light of the naphtha flares.
Shabby looking hotel called the Hotel Indio.
Inscription on a large stone in the wall.
Red-painted letters.
Consultations a l’intérieur pour tarot, boules de cristal.
Madame Ruth.
Corridor lit by a greenish glow.
Odours of incense and hot wax.
La bohème.
Heavy coloured stones in her ears and heavy rings on her fingers.
Flowing gypsy dress.
You’ve come.
Been expecting you.
Voice had a muffled sound as if something was throbbing deep under it.
Eyes were brown, sensitive and shrewd.
Knew he was in pain.
Su mano.
Don’t be afraid.
Gave her his hand and she took it and turned it palm up and held it in hers and studied it.
Know what’s in your mind.
Monsieur Felix.
Traced his palm with the tip of her finger.
Man with a secret hidden in him.
Put out her arms as if after a retreating figure.
Face of one lost in reverie.
Heard a light sigh.
Ain’t gonna see him no more in this world.
Spell was snapt.
Tell me what you want.
Following a will o’ the wisp.
Kicked himself loose of the earth.
Vain to follow for I shall learn no more of him nor of his deeds.
Human’s not a rabbit or a lynx.
Man couldn’t find a trail.
Need a little help.
Eyes sparked greenly in the lamplight.
Things separate from their story have no meaning.
Truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it.
Shadow knowledge that sometimes comes long before knowledge itself.
Tell me what to do, he said. I’ll do anything you say.
Took his hand, drawing him to her side.
Traced the line where it circled under the base of his thumb.
Wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took.
Paths that are seldom trodden.
Footsteps of those who used to cross them.
Should manifest itself.
You mean like I’ll get a sign tell me which way to go?
God alone tells futures.
People knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them.
Come to know it all in god’s good time.
Submit to chance.
Eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows.
Hand touching her thigh as though she carried a knife in her garter belt.
22
Late afternoon.
Waters of the canal.
Reddish-coloured barge.
Light was burning in the cabin.
Called captain as he climbed the ladder.
Boatman poked his hairy head out of the window.
Glazed bleary eyes.
Kin come in.
Breakfast with the captain.
Eight in the morning or two in the afternoon meant nothing.
Hadn’t had anything to eat since the afternoon of the previous day.
Take a look around the barge.
Had to stoop.
Forgive me, he said, but the ceiling is too low.
Odour of mildew, urine and rotten wood.
Two of the windows had been broken out; they were papered with cardboard and stuffed with rags.
Floor lay a grey-green mould.
Have some grub.
Pot of coffee.
Two dry rolls.
Pray take the basket chair.
Coffee seemed to revive him.
Face was ageing, saggy, full of the disgust of life and the thickening effects of liquor, but it had a hard cheerfulness that I liked and the eyes were as bright as drops of dew.
Twenty years on this boat.
Old life lay behind in the mists.
Boy like a stray dog or cat that attaches itself to you, you don’t know quite how it happens.
Found him sleeping under the tarp one rainy morning.
Living like a mouse.
Told me he had been in prison.
No one has the right to pass judgement.
Ever go on your knees and pray for deliverance for all your sins and scoundrel’s acts?
Not got any of the mean ways of a bum.
More like a child than a man.
Animal that attempts to make itself as small as possible.
Talked little, ate little.
Get his bearings from signs known only to him.
Crows close their eyes do you know what they see?
Birds and beasts do not tell tales.
Though he liked to listen.
Told him about the waters and ways I’ve travelled.
Trails of men who had gone before.
Interested in roots.
Country you can’t dig six feet without uncovering skulls and leg bones.
Men of another time living in the caves.
Pipe had gone out.
Filled it from a pouch, tamped it down and struck a match.
Glowed brightly for a moment.
Go off for a night or two but always came back.
One fine day he disappeared and this time it was for good.
On your own so be it. If that’s the way you want it.
Who wants to be fenced in if you don’t have to?
Better than being walled in by a house, better than breathing in spoiled air and feeling caged like a varmint.
Shrugged and raised his glass.
Contemplating the water.
So does life swing like a river cuts its banks.
Sat side by side.
Under the moon drinking wine.
Prow of the boat.
Watched the shadows of things emerge.
Journey I have thought of many times.
Gone north in my youth I might have got to be a mountain man.
Lakes and runnin’ water and grass to the stirrups.
Voice quavering in the cold.
Night deepened and began to ebb.
Faint glimmering of the coming day in the sky.
Stands to take his leave.
Thanked the old man but the old man did not answer.
23
Night to night the stone city lost its value.
Crosses and recrosses the city until the aimlessness of his walking eventually becomes obvious.
Street seemed absorbed in its own preoccupations.
Building which he passed every day was revealed to him in its reality.
The garbage cans, the stairwells, the door handles, the radiators, the lampshades, the wallpaper.
Four walls of my flat.
Lifted the thin curtain and peered out of the window.
Hazed out-of-focus eyes as though being cooped up in the city and temporarily robbed of their distances had also robbed them of the power of sight.
Time there had
outlived itself.
Northland world was calling to him.
Stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities.
Thing that was not called north but was at the same place.
Spreads out the transcripts on the table.
Oil company road map.
Marking the spot of each sighting or alleged sighting.
Network of meridians and parallels extends from this point across valleys, clearings and marshes.
Patterns that were maps of the world.
Tries again marking only entries that can be corroborated or match the boy in his mind.
Two people saw him as he passed over this ground.
Small ragged figure.
Hollered at him friendly but he went by with his eyes down like he was deef.
Traced the route.
Stared hard at the map.
Not really so much a map as a picture of a voyage.
One long red line.
Es un fantasma, he said.
But isn’t that what he is doing?
Chasing ghosts.
Imaginary lines for which there are no reliable benchmarks.
Measured the road with a piece of string and looked at it and measured again.
Drew stick figures on the map.
Unfolds the page with the boy’s mugshot.
Held up the paper so that the sunlight shone full upon it.
Examined it for some time.
Put his face together in his mind.
Gradually he detaches himself from the photo, comes to life, and I see him walking down a boulevard under the trees.
Roadside just on the edge of town.
See now what I must do.
Slip into overalls and tennis shoes and clamber over the wall.
Go thy way forth.
Accompanying Felix on his voyage.
Channels out of the city.
Open country.
Following him along the winding riverbank, across sand bars, through groves of cottonwood.
Upward into the mountains.
Pursuer and pursued.
Shadow to shadow in his tracks.
Everything has a shadow of some kind. Maybe even a shadow has a shadow.
24
Days were hot, the evenings flushed.
Seeing out his time in the prison.
Making his rounds from wings to workshops.
Quadrangle to the gateshack.
Numbed to everything about human beings except that they pressed close around you all the time.
Mind had begun to dwell on the north for long stretches.
Something inside me stretched as I walked so that at the same time I was walking on the top of those hills.
Nights he would spend in his room.
Looking out the window, waiting for it to be time to leave.
Cars honked along the alley.
Smell of fuel mix, disinfectants, hot railroad tracks.
Thumbing through an old world atlas, studying the maps.
How steep were these mountains, how wide was this river, how thick were these jungles.
In his imagination the damp walls disappeared and the room was a green farm among the fields.
Had already stopped living there.
Disposed of his remaining belongings.
Cartons to the charity shop on the high street.
Pawn the penitentiary suit.
Manuscripts and other documents gathered into a pile.
Contents into the kitchen stove, lighting the paper with a match.
Reduced to ashes.
Intoxication of cutting all ties.
Slipping away without providing an explanation.
Canvas bag in which a few fundamental things were packed.
Shirt and some underclothing.
Packet of biscuits and a can of sardines.
Notebooks and slips of paper.
Grey army blanket.
Time comes to leave.
Earliest risers were just beginning to look sleepily from their windows.
Street lamps throw out a cold light.
Eased the pack on his shoulders.
Locked the round door.
Lightly on my way.
Through the backstreets and across the railroad tracks.
Bridge over the river.
Walking while the sky paled.
Noise and traffic gradually increased.
Shops began to be unclosed and a few scattered people were met.
Groups of labourers going to their work.
Walked on for a long time passing many large gardens and gentlemen’s houses.
Factories of the suburbs.
Outskirts of the town.
City suddenly stopped and you were confronted by open fields.
Elm trees faintly stirring.
Quarter mile down the road he stopped and looked back.
Dark bowl of the town.
Nothing behind me any more.
Gaze now was no longer that of a city dweller.
Existence was no more than what I saw before me.
25
Walked steadily all day.
Sun was well up and felt good on his back.
Air seemed to kiss one’s skin.
Turned off the highway at junction.
Drifted under the bridge, past the quiet railway station, the orchards, the meadows.
Passed people now and then.
Walked with his eyes cast slightly downward.
Road winding in and out, now losing itself from my view, and again, further on, reappearing.
Thin ribbon to the horizon.
Plodded on.
Sun swam across the sky.
Hole in the road suddenly wink like a cyclops.
Few miles further.
Lilac evening.
Looking for a place to spend the night.
Came to a stile at the fence.
Old rabbit-bitten pasture with a foot track wandering across it.
Through a thicket of slender oaks.
Narrow plank bridge.
Tiredness on him like a weight.
Turned aside from the path and went into the shadow of the deeper woods.
Settled his shoulders against the base of a tree.
Roughness of the bark.
Ate cold food and settled down on a bed of leaves.
Head resting on my little bundle of clothes.
Blanket over his shoulders.
Darkness lay around me.
Sting of aloneness.
Woke he judged it to be about three.
Lay on his back and looked at a night sky shot with stars.
Near like spiritual bodies.
Hearing and other senses sharpened.
Rustle of the leaves overhead.
Smell of the wet sod.
Day came pale from the east.
Dove called three lonesome, clear, haunting notes.
Couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me.
Choicest part of a new day is the first of it.
Got up and shook myself.
Biscuit I can eat.
Pursued my journey to the northward.
26
Tramped the edge of the road.
Gravel crunching under the heels of my boots.
Along the hedgerows and borders of coppices.
Back roads of the countryside.
Followed their original tracks, drawn by packhorse or lumbering cartwheel, hugging the curve of a valley.
Cars that came by were farmer cars.
Trucks, tractors.
; Ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees.
Slaked my thirst at the brook.
Slept that night in a wash in the river sand with the cane and willow thick about him.
All day the day following through rolling hill country.
Whole morning working round a hill.
Sleeping village.
Buy two hops bread for a cent apiece.
Dime’s worth of cheese.
Up the lane through dappled light and shade.
Hum of voices.
Under an olive tree a group of girls.
Chattering stopped and they turned their heads all together.
Offered me an unblinking cluster of eyes.
Lipsticked mouths.
Corner of the road a mile further.
Along the fence line.
Pressed two strands of wire apart and eased himself through.
Strike out across the fields.
Glade circled by slim willows and small cottonwoods.
Sat under the shade of the willows and ate.
Sparrows collect the breadcrumbs.
Leaves that fall from the trees serve him as napkins.
Went on again.
Less used roads.
Path across the fields.
Moving according to my gut feel.
Sense of direction that animals possess perfectly also awakes in man under the right conditions.
Hares ran across his path.
Farmer driving hogs down a lane.
Sleeping on piles of fresh bracken.
Hole in a haystack.
Wherever dark fell on ye.
Nights were fine and sleeping out of doors was a pleasure.
Watching the fireflies sparkle.
Dry croaking of frogs.
Trembling sometimes with the thrill of being free.
Once I awoke with an animal sleeping on my legs.
A cat or a rat or a rabbit.
Quick dark shape.
Lay awake till dawn.
Listening to the small noises.
Grasshoppers chawing.
Night speech of plant and stone.
Awoke with a start in broad daylight to see a man standing in front of him.
Farmer with a shotgun.
Get off my land before I put the dog on you.
Dog steaming from the mouth.
Next time this young varmint sets foot on my land you can eat him.
Took my bundle in my hand.
Skirted villages.
Making wide circles around farmhouses.
Sleeping in thickets, in oases of rushes, under tall reeds.
Hollow out of the wind.