The Favourite Game & Beautiful Losers

by Leonard Cohen

  “I’ll go back if you want to stay alone.”

  He didn’t answer for a thousand years.

  “No, we both better go.”

  He didn’t move.

  “What’s that?” Anne asked about a noise.

  He began to tell her about swallows, cliff-dwelling swallows, barn-dwelling swallows. He knew everything about swallows. He had disguised himself as a swallow and lived among them to learn their ways.

  He was standing close to her but he received no trace of the radar signal to embrace. He walked swiftly away. He came back. He pulled her braid. It was thick, as he imagined. He strode away again and snatched a stick from the bushes by the side of the road.

  He swung it wildly, smashing the foliage. He beat the ground around her feet. She danced, laughing. He raised the dust knee-high. But the bushes had to be attacked again, the trunks of the trees, the low yellow grass, white in the night. Then more dust, the branch nicking her ankles. He wanted to raise the dust over both of them, slice up their bodies with the sharp switch.

  She ran from him. He ran behind her, whipping the calves of her legs. They were both screaming with laughter. She ran to the lights of the camp.

  18

  Dear Anne

  I’d like

  to watch

  your toes

  when you’re

  naked.

  Which he delivered to her several hundred times with his eyes without even thinking.

  19

  “Fifty cents for a hand on her crotch.”

  Krantz was joking with Breavman about selling Anne to him piece by piece. Breavman didn’t like the joke but he laughed.

  “An almost unused nipple for three bits?”

  Oh, Krantz.

  They had quarrelled over Breavman’s treatment of Martin. Breavman had categorically refused to enjoin the boy to participate in group activities. He had put his job on the line.

  “You know we can’t start looking for replacements at this point in the season.”

  “In that case you’ll have to let me handle him my own way.”

  “I’m not telling you to force him into activities, but I swear you encourage him in the other direction.”

  “I enjoy his madness. He enjoys his madness. He’s the only free person I’ve ever met. Nothing that anybody else does is as important as what he does.”

  “You’re talking a lot of nonsense, Breavman.”

  “Probably.”

  Then Breavman had decided he couldn’t deliver a sermon to the camp on Saturday morning when his turn came around. He had nothing to say to anyone.

  Krantz looked at him squarely.

  “You made a mistake, coming up here, didn’t you?”

  “And you made one asking me. We both wanted to prove different things. So now you know you’re your own man, Krantz.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “I know.”

  It was a moment, this true meeting, and Breavman didn’t try to stretch it into a guarantee. He had trained himself to delight in the fraction. “What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross.”

  “Of course you know that you’re identifying with Martin and are only excluding yourself when you allow him to separate himself from the group.”

  “Not that jargon, Krantz, please.”

  “I remember everything, Breavman. But I can’t live in it.”

  “Good.”

  Therefore Breavman was obliged to laugh when Anne joined them and Krantz said, “Buttocks are going very cheap.”

  20

  In the evening he stayed motionless on the mess hall balcony. Krantz was about to put a record on the PA.

  “Hey, Anne, you want Mozart, the Forty-ninth?” he shouted. She ran towards him.

  Breavman saw clover in the grass, a discovery, and mist drifting across the tops of the low mountains, like the fade in a photo. Ripples on the water moving in the same direction as the mist, from black into silver into black.

  He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t know whether he was at peace or paralysed.

  Steve, the Hungarian tractor driver, passed below the balcony, picking a white flower from a bush. They were levelling out some land for another playing field, filling in a marsh.

  The flute-bird had a needle in its whistle. A broken door down the hill beside the thick-bottomed pines.

  “London Bridge is falling down

  falling down

  falling down”

  sang a file of children.

  Down the pine-needled path stood Martin, motionless as Breavman, his arm stretched out in a Fascist salute, his sleeve rolled up.

  He was waiting for mosquitoes to land.

  Martin had a new obsession. He elected himself to be the Scourge of Mosquitoes, counting them as he killed them. There was nothing frantic about his technique. He extended his arm and invited them. When one landed, wham! up came the other hand. “I hate you,” he told each one individually, and noted the statistic.

  Martin saw his counsellor standing on the balcony.

  “A hundred and eighty,” he called up as greeting.

  Mozart came loud over the pa, sewing together everything that Breavman observed. It wove, it married the two figures bending over the records, whatever the music touched, child trapped in London Bridge, mountain-top dissolving in mist, empty swing rocking like a pendulum, the row of glistening red canoes, the players clustered underneath the basket, leaping for the ball like a stroboscopic photo of a splashing drop of water – whatever it touched was frozen in an immense tapestry. He was in it, a figure by a railing.

  21

  Since his mission against the mosquitoes had begun, Martin’s enjoyment percentages soared. All the days were up around 98 per cent. The other boys delighted in him and made him the ornament of the bunk, to be shown off to visitors and wondered at. Martin remained an innocent performer. He spent most afternoons down at the marsh where the tractors were preparing new fields to run on. His arm was swollen with bites. Breavman applied calamine.

  On his next day off Breavman took a canoe down the lake. Redwing blackbirds rose and plunged into the reeds. He ripped open a stalk of a waterlily. It was veined with purple foam.

  The lake was glass-calm. He could make out sounds of camp from time to time, the pa announcing General Swim; recorded music filtered through the forest and crept over the water.

  He went down the creek as far as he could before sandbars stopped him. The only indication of current was the leaning underwater weeds. Clams black and thickly coated with mud – an unclean food. A snap of water and the green stretched-out body of a frog zoomed under the canoe. The low sun was blinding. As he paddled back to his camp-site it turned the paddle gold.

  He built a fire, spread out his sleeping bag in the moss, and prepared to watch the sky.

  The sun is always part of the sky, but the moon is a splendid and remote stranger. The moon. Your eye keeps coming back to it as it would do to a beautiful woman in a restaurant. He thought about Shell. The same moment he believed he had the confidence to live alone he believed he could live with Shell.

  The mist was riding slowly on the reflection of birch trees; now it was piled like a snowdrift.

  Four hours later he awakened with a start and grabbed his axe.

  “It’s Martin Stark,” said Martin.

  The fire was still giving some light, but not enough. He shone his flash in the boy’s face. One cheek had been badly scratched by branches but the boy grinned widely.

  “What’s your favourite store?”

  “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  “What’s your favourite store?”

  Breavman wrapped the sleeping bag around the boy and ruffled his hair.

  “Dionne’s.”

  “What’s your favourite parking lot?”

  “Dionne’s Parking Lot.”

  When the ritual was finished Breavman packed up, lifted him into the canoe, and shoved off for camp. He didn’t want to think about wha
t would have happened if Martin hadn’t been able to find him. That cheek needed iodine. And it seemed that some of the bites were infected.

  It was beautiful paddling back, reeds scraping the bottom of the canoe and turning it into a big fragile drum. Martin was an Indian chief squatting beside him, bundled in the sleeping bag. The sky displayed continents of fire.

  “When I’m back home,” Martin said loudly, “rats eat me.”

  “I’m sorry, Martin.”

  “Hundreds and hundreds of them.”

  When Breavman saw the lights of the camp he had a wild urge to pass them, to keep paddling up the lake with the boy, make a site somewhere up the shore among the naked birch trees.

  “Keep it down, Martin. They’ll kill us if they hear us.”

  “That would be all right.”

  22

  Green? Beige? Riding in the bus he tried to remember the colour of his mother’s room. In this way he avoided thinking about her lying there. Some careful shade determined at a medical conference.

  In this room she spends her time. It has a good view of the southern slopes of Mount Royal. In the spring you get the smell of lilacs. You want to throw the window open to get more of the perfume, but you can’t. The window slides up only so far. They don’t want any suicides littering the lawn.

  “We haven’t seen you for a while, Mr. Breavman,” said the head nurse.

  “Haven’t we?”

  His mother was staring at the ceiling. He looked up there himself. Maybe something was going on that nobody knew about.

  The walls were clever grey.

  “Are you feeling better, Mother?” He gave the cue.

  “Am I feeling better? better for what? that I should go outside and see what he’s doing with his life? thank you, for that I don’t have to go outside, for that I can lie here, in this room, beside the crazy people, your mother in an insane asylum….”

  “You know it isn’t that, Mother. Just somewhere you can rest –”

  “Rest! How can I rest with what I know? traitor for a son, don’t you think I know where I am? with their needles and their polite manner, a mother like this and he’s away swimming –”

  “But, Mother, nobody’s trying to hurt –”

  What was he doing, trying to argue with her? She flung out one arm and groped for something on the night table, but everything had been taken away.

  “Don’t interrupt your mother, haven’t I suffered enough? a sick man for fifteen years, don’t I know? don’t I know, don’t I know …?”

  “Mother, please, don’t scream –”

  “Oh! he’s ashamed of his mother, his mother will wake up the neighbours, his mother will frighten away his goyish girlfriends, traitor! what all of you have done to me! a mother has to be quiet, I was beautiful, I came from Russia a beauty, people looked at me –”

  “Let me speak to you –”

  “People spoke to me, does my child speak to me? the world knows I lie here like a stone, a beauty, they called me a Russian beauty, but what I gave to my child, to treat a mother, I can’t stand to think of it, you should have it from your own child, like today is Tuesday over the whole world you should have it from your child what I had, rat in my house, I can’t believe my life, that this should happen to me, I was so good to my parents, my mother had cancer, the doctor held her stomach in his hand, does anyone try to help me? does my son lift a finger? Cancer! cancer! I had to see everything, I had to give my life away to sick people, this isn’t my life, to see these things, your father would kill you, my face is old, I don’t know who I am in the mirror, wrinkles where I was beautiful….”

  He sat back, didn’t try to break in again. If she let him speak she wouldn’t hear. He really didn’t know what he would have been able to say had he known she was listening.

  He attempted to let his mind wander, but he hung on every wild detail, waiting for the hour to be up.

  He knocked on Tamara’s door at about ten o’clock. There were a few whispers exchanged inside. She called out, “Who is it?”

  “Breavman from the north. But you’re busy.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Night.”

  “Night.”

  Good night, Tamara. It’s all right to share your mouth. It belongs to everyone, like a park.

  He wrote two letters to Shell and then phoned her so he could get to sleep.

  23

  Ed’s bunk was expected to win the baseball game.

  The foul-lines were marked with Israeli flags.

  What right did he have to resent their using the symbol? It wasn’t engraved on his shield.

  A child brandished a Pepsi, cheering for his side.

  Breavman passed out hot dogs. He was glad he’d learned to suspect his Gentile neighbours of uncleanliness, not to believe in flags. Now he could apply that training to his own tribe.

  A home run.

  Send your children to the academies in Alexandria. Don’t be surprised if they come back Alexandrians.

  Three cheers. Mazel tov.

  Hello Canada, you big Canada, you dull, beautiful resources. Everybody is Canadian. The Jew’s disguise won’t work.

  When it was Ed’s turn to umpire, Breavman walked across the field to the marsh and watched Martin kill mosquitoes. The tractor man knew him well because he often came to see Martin fulfil his mission.

  The boy had killed over six thousand mosquitoes.

  “I’ll kill some for you, Martin.”

  “That won’t help my score.”

  “Then I’ll start my own score.”

  “I’ll beat you.”

  Martin’s feet were wet. Some of the bites were definitely infected. He should send him back to the bunk, but he seemed to be enjoying himself so thoroughly. All his days were 99 per cent.

  “I dare you to start your own score.”

  As they accompanied their groups back to the campus Ed said, “Not only did you lose the game, Breavman, but you owe me five dollars.”

  “What for?”

  “Wanda. Last night.”

  “Oh, God, the pool. I’d forgotten.”

  He checked his journal and gratefully paid the money.

  24

  All the days were sunny and the bodies bronze. All he watched was the sand and the exposed flesh, marvelling at the softer city white when a strap fell away. He wanted all the strange flesh-shadows.

  He hardly ever looked at the sky. A bird swooping low over the beach surprised him. One of the Brandenburgs was blaring over the PA. He was lying on his back, eyes closed, annihilating himself in the heat and glare and music. Suddenly someone was kneeling over him.

  “Let me squeeze it,” went Anne’s voice.

  He opened his eyes and shivered.

  “No, let me,” Wanda laughed.

  They were trying to get at a blackhead in his forehead.

  “Leave me alone,” he shouted like a maniac.

  The violence of his reaction astonished them.

  He pretended to smile, waited a decent interval, left the beach. The bunk was too cool. The night air hadn’t been cooked away. He looked around the small wooden cubicle. His laundry bag was bulging. He’d forgotten to send it off. That couldn’t be right. Not right for him. There was a box of Ritz crackers on the window-sill. That wasn’t how he was supposed to eat. He pulled out his journal. That wasn’t how he was supposed to write.

  25

  Martin Stark was killed in the first week of August 1958. He was accidentally run over by a bulldozer which was clearing a marshy area. The driver of the bulldozer, the Hungarian named Steve, was not aware that he had hit anything except the usual clumps, roots, stones. Martin was probably hiding in the reeds the better to trap his enemy.

  When he didn’t show for supper Breavman thought he might be up there. He asked a junior counsellor to sit at his table. He walked leisurely to the marsh, glad for an excuse to leave the noisy mess hall.

  He heard a noise from the weeds. He imagined that Martin had seen
him coming and wanted to play a hiding game. He took off his shoes and waded in. He was terribly squashed, a tractor tread right across his back. He was lying face down. Where Breavman turned him over his mouth was full of guts.

  Breavman walked back to the mess hall and told Krantz. His face went white. They agreed that the campers must not find out and that the body be removed secretly. Krantz went up to the marsh and returned in a few minutes.

  “You stay up there until the camp’s asleep. Ed will take your bunk.”

  “I want to go into town with the body,” Breavman said.

  “We’ll see.”

  “No, we won’t see. I’m going in with Martin.”

  “Breavman, get the hell up there now and don’t give me arguments at a time like this. What’s the matter with you?”

  He stood guard for a few hours. Nobody came by. The mosquitoes were very bad. He wondered what they were doing to the body. They’d been all over when he found it. There wasn’t much of a moon. He could hear the seniors singing at their bonfire. At about one in the morning the police and ambulance arrived. They worked under the headlights.

  “I’m going in with him.”

  Krantz had just spoken to Mrs. Stark on the phone. She had been remarkably calm. She had even mentioned that she wouldn’t press charges of criminal negligence. Krantz was very shaken.

  “All right.”

  “And I’m not coming back.”

  “What do you mean you’re not coming back? Don’t start with me now, Breavman.”

  “I’m quitting.”

  “Camp runs another three weeks. I don’t have anybody to replace you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Krantz grabbed his arm.