All the Days and Nights

by Niven Govinden

  – I couldn’t leave him lying there. I didn’t know what to do.

  – MY GOD, THIS ANIMAL! This poor animal! My God!

  – Sit in the studio. You’ll be calmer there. All this shouting isn’t a help.

  Vishni was angry enough to strike me, both for the insult and because she could read the selfishness of my actions where you could not. All you could see was an animal who would not move. Her cries continued but I turned away once I had spoken because our eyes could not meet. We would be brawling over the table otherwise.

  – The heart no longer exists in the people of this world. Oh, this poor animal. Anyone who can leave a dog like this, they have no soul there.

  The dog’s crown and eyes were wet with blood, caked to his fur like a thick cream shampoo that was yet to be washed away. His coat was matted with it. Overcome with your and Vishni’s frenzy, I wondered whether he should be placed in the bath and rinsed under the warm tap; that a spell of water and some vigorous scrubbing would clear the color away. A residual warmth still radiated from the part of his trunk that I could get close to, for you were still clutching him too tightly for either of us to examine him further. The warmth was a trick, as temporal as his last breath. He was clearly dead, and to take him to the bathroom would be to engage in a hopeless ritual that had no place here. You hadn’t moved from where you stood by the kitchen table, oblivious to my presence as I tried once more to examine the dog. You kept him tight within your arms as if he were part of you. Vishni rubbed your shoulder gently, as if to make you give way, but you would not yield. Your body seemed to be shutting down in a phantom response, muscles turning rigid as the animal’s blood cooled then coagulated. Soon the pair of you would be as stone.

  – Come to the studio. Sit in your chair. You don’t have to give him to us, but you could sit down, at least. Make him comfortable.

  – I’m fine as I am.

  But still you followed me to the back of the house.

  – He’s Edwin’s dog. From Ridge Farm.

  You are incapable of giving further information, your mouth, the neurons that carry messages to your mouth, closing down in shock. It is days later before we understand how you found him, walking back from the village. Pleased with yourself because there were pats of fresh apple butter on the store counter, and you bought a couple for Vishni, thinking it would surprise and please her. How there was also a packet of cigarettes for me, so that I wouldn’t see the butter and complain. You’d started to notice how I could get sometimes when you praised Vishni. How you were full of yourself on account of your foresight. Thinking how much of a man you were for being able to put out fires before they were lit – which was when you saw him, pushed under the hedgerows, two miles from where he should have been on Edwin’s farm. Lord knows why he ran so far. Whoever hit him, knowingly or otherwise, settled him in a hurry because his legs were sticking out. It’s what you talked of the most. Mottled paws peeping from under the hedge, thinking that it must be a rabbit shot but uncollected. You had no idea what you would find. The way of the farm was still new to you; not yet understanding that attachments for any of the animals, whether working or livestock, were to be avoided unless you wanted poverty or heartache. Your eyes blazed with this ignorance. You did not want to hear about these rules.

  – Edwin needs to be called. He’ll be wondering.

  – Vishni knows how to reach him. Sit down here. Please, sit down.

  You looked at me as if I had absorbed nothing. Something new in your face: a harking back to your Hudson upbringing, where those who were misunderstood had to find ways to make themselves heard. We were still at the stage where the difference in our ages was obvious and unwelcome in the attention that it could receive. The disdain from a misunderstood child is no reason to fear, but your bulk continued to loom over me and I was scared of you then. Your look set upon me, intending to wither and decay. The same face would radiate a week later when I made the mistake of bringing a farm puppy to the house, arrogantly assuming that such a simple purchase would heal you. There was much you were capable of until I remembered myself, knowing that nothing would happen while you were still unprepared to put down the dog.

  – You’ll be no use to Edwin if you don’t sit down. Please, John. If you want to go over there.

  How wide your eyes were. How quickly your resentment dropped; still so young and so transparent. I could see the blood racing through you.

  – We should go to Edwin’s?

  – Not now. When Vishni’s got hold of him. As you say, he might be out with the truck, in which case he won’t be home until late.

  – Finley’s a good, friendly dog. Jumps for apples. Likes his belly tickled. If they knew him, they wouldn’t have left him under the bush like that.

  – Sit. You’ll feel better, I promise you.

  Experience is what makes you bow. Sooner or later you have to trust someone who knows a little more. This is how it was, in the beginning at least. Later there is none of that. You will continue to do as you are told, but the simple way that you acquiesce will be lost; in its place comes something firmer and unknown. If there is a moment to pinpoint, it begins with this day when you sit in your chair and I begin to sketch you and the dog while we wait to hear from Vishni. Flint appears and then retreats in your eyes as the animal stiffens; the glossy blood on his coat mattifying as it dries, turning from crimson to rust as the afternoon passes. Your stink is greater than Finley’s. Your smells are the alive ones: tears, sweat and piss. Nothing comes from Finley bar metallic blood notes. His body is still doing its work before it can settle into rot.

  We stay there until dark. You sit. I draw. This is all we know. The dog dissolving into your arms the harder you hold him. He tucks and folds, his body turning in on itself, as if to tidy himself away is the last thing he can do; a gesture to make your experience easier to bear. Showing a selflessness that I am unable to show, because I am too concerned with finishing what I need to before the light fades.

  I SLEEP MORE; some of this involuntarily. Vishni feeding me things to ensure that I have the energy to work. We no longer sit and talk outside. Days when the only times I see Ben are inside the studio. The understanding that your body is being depleted; that you are a hostage to what will and won’t function is a specter impossible to shake. I have trained to find it in Vishni before I see it in myself. The effort it takes her to complete the stairs; the trips to the village becoming less frequent, even if a taxi is offered to take her; that her sketching has dwindled to nothing. If I look closely I can see that the house is not as clean as it was; sunlight at different times of day showing a patina of dust across furniture and atop frames. A footprint at the bottom of the refrigerator where someone has kicked the door closed; flowers drying in their vases, while the water that holds them grows milky. Every difficulty is understood. Ben has been seen with a mop and bucket, helping Vishni, each of them tackling opposite ends of the room, racing to see who will meet the other first. In the country, our ways of making fun are different. Ben rolls with what he finds here: chores, play, sit for the painting. We are all in bed by eight thirty; dead to the world by nine.

  I worry that I have neglected Vishni; aware of the heaviness in her movements since you left, but helpless to offer anything practical, clumsy in my gestures to make her laugh. How to lighten the mood, when everything that illuminates is extinguished? Ben has been a temporary and welcome salve, but he too has retreated into himself, absorbed into the mechanics of finishing the painting. A feeling of broodiness has infused. They are joined together by this. They whisper softly to each other in the kitchen; snatched moments when it is presumed that I am out of earshot. They make plans, both new to this; having to prepare for events; taking care of something that had long been assumed would be handled by you. This doesn’t excuse their amateurishness, that they are unable to be truly quiet; how certain phrases – She mustn’t know; They’re examining everything, every deed, every file – are expelled from their mouths and trapped i
n bubbles that mingle with the paint fumes. Words captured but rising out of reach. If there were more energy filling each cell, I would tear those bubbles apart. I would scrub the floors and dust cobwebs from every cornice until they caught in my hair and throat. I would hoard all papers out of their reach, burning those that needed to be burned. I would strike those who disrespected or tried to mother me, remembering what I’d been taught as a young woman on the streets of Jersey Heights: you cannot defend yourself if you never look up.

  But what energy I have must go on the painting. This is not the time to divide what reserves I have. In stronger periods, work would always come before the practical and considered: paint before birthdays, funerals, bills.

  – You choose not to celebrate.

  An observation from Vishni, the week before a nearly forgotten birthday had occurred.

  – You don’t know how. It makes you uncomfortable.

  Similarly, you could cut me cold.

  – You hide behind your paintings. They get you out of things you don’t want to do. One of the farmers on the other side of the river missed the birth and death of both his children because the cows needed to be milked, when no milk meant no money. You’re no different.

  Painting is an ongoing act of revelation. There is nothing that I hide behind. If I excuse myself from anything it is only because I know that, if I am taken away from the work, then nothing but that fills my head. I am struck dumb; obtuse by most standards. In the midst of parties it is silence that I most crave. Daylight, silence, the discomfort of my room where the chair has gone years waiting to be reupholstered; the oil burner only giving out half the heat it should do. (To feel truly warm you must step inside the kitchen where the heat from the stove thaws stiff joints and colors pallid lips.) This is what I return to, what is dreamt of and fought over. Arguments about the hours spent in this room taking more time than those requiring that I defend my work. Stating your beliefs to an invisible mass is no act of bravery in this context. Writing a letter to the New York Times to defend Vishni’s picture from hundreds of complaints after its publication took no longer than half an hour. I stated facts. I was firm in my emphasis on the importance of portraiture; that it should be truthful; that the beauty the complainants wished for should be sought elsewhere. No hand-wringing was involved. No blood on the page.

  But a late afternoon one summer, when the light was still strong and bold, when it praised everything it touched, promising growth for all that could be grown, and making true its intent that all that was wounded could be healed. When you stood outside the window and asked me to hike upstream, a rucksack packed with food as a surprise, your trunk pulsing from excitement with the pre-intentioned energy of the young. How long you had studied my routine, planning on the right time to do this, not understanding that to reveal cannot be measured on the factory clock; that what must be wrestled with cannot be left to the next day. You didn’t understand when I shouted at you, sending you away to hike with Vishni, when I could have easily set down my things and changed into my walking shoes. On a beach in Provincetown, you tried to get me to dance by the fire of wood and shingle, only to be pushed away, because something in the movement of fireflies was greater. You were filled with the same impulsiveness then; the desire to pull me out of myself. It was a simplicity I should have allowed.

  Battling with this painting is how I atone. Sitting in the near dark as Vishni and Ben brew tea and have their conversations is what is expected of me. Something must be produced to account for my behavior; something to be shared inevitably comes from a selfish hand.

  – I’M THINKING WE should take her to New York before she gets too frail. There’ll be some colors she’s after. Maybe something in the permanent collection at MoMA or the Guggenheim will call her, if we jog her memory of what is there. She needs to see St John and it will be easier if we pass by his office.

  – He’s never been here. There’s never been a reason for him to be here.

  – That’s why I haven’t invited him down. If we’re just passing by his office en route to somewhere, it’ll seem like a chance thing.

  – She doesn’t believe in chance. Only in what’s planned. She’ll hear it in our voices. See the nervousness in our hands.

  – Possibly. But the city will have much to distract her. The noise and the paintings. A few places to have good food.

  – We’re speaking of a child. This is how you treat a child who cannot be controlled.

  – There is only pragmatism in what we’re doing. There’s business she needs to address in New York. This is the easiest way to get her there.

  Everything spoken in the house comes to me; porous wood and stone; threadbare curtains through which words can escape. Fury, worry, mockery reach this room. All the emotions that cannot be shown.

  The last time Vishni was in the city was when you took her five years ago, as the last series of paintings were close to completion. I was harder on you than I had been previously; frustrated with the pace of the work, ready to strike out at any perceived signs of complacency. Eighteen months of strictness and rages wearing down to a single fiber the loyalty that bound us together.

  – You’ve put both of us through the wringer. Rolled us out until we’re as flat and faded as carbon copies.

  There was scarcely any life between you; eyes that struggled to stay open, muscles fighting the urge to slacken into repose, their memory forcing stringency to your posture when it was clear you were ready to buckle. Twenty minutes of rest, sometimes an hour, was nothing; the torture was returning to the pose, before the creation of another, and another.

  – You’ve said this is the end for now – let it be so. Now it’s our turn to do as we please, find some pursuits that will plump us out, shake off what has crushed us.

  Two weeks. I wouldn’t give a day longer, too anxious to allow you to be absent when the final touches to the paintings needed to be made; those last flashes of clarity that only come from a period away from the work. Enlightenment generated from the guilt I feel when I am not using my hands.

  You camped in the Catskills and hiked for several days. Living like boy scouts on cans of franks and chili beans. You chased raccoons away from the campsite, snarky animals whose irritability was as great as their hunger, and swam among the silver-threaded fish that populate the lake at the bottom of the mountains. Each day you hiked fifteen or twenty miles further east toward the road that would eventually lead to New York. You were never happier than on one of these trips. The freedom you felt simply from being away from the house and having mountain dust in your shoes.

  Vishni knows this. She’s always known this. She agrees to travel with you because she understands the darkness of my mood when I am still so encased by paint; that for me to be in an environment where you have mastery is difficult to take. How it makes me wonder where my own mastery lies, and its value. Whether I have accurately captured all the expressions you show outside the studio; the pleasure that’s radiated when a school of silver fish swims between your legs, the satisfaction that fills you when you reach the top of the mountain. The shock on Vishni’s face as the wind rattles past her as you stand on the cliff ledge; the way it pushes against the loose skin on her face. This, the element you both hold in reserve, is what ensures canvas after canvas. Reactions that come from nowhere, needing to be painted; an expression in the eyes and lips hinting at a pain I hadn’t foreseen.

  I am kept company. The house echoes with your failings. The threats I make when you’re unable to sit still. Shards of glass from an upturned beaker, after you were roused from a sleep you did not wish to leave, remain scattered around the sink. I stopped Vishni clearing it – or you, late in your repentance – because the reminder is a sound one: of the paintings I cannot get right. I spend five days drawing the glass before I leave for New York; crumbs atop newspaper; shards that glitter beyond the muck caked across the sink mouth. I am drawing your hand: what it is capable of. Even when you’re not here, what you contribute dominat
es my mindset; maybe more so, because without distractions all I have are habits to fall back on. An old dog that cannot learn anything new.

  Riding the night train; deserted carriages whose smell speaks of the day’s passengers. I think of the darkness of the boxcar that first brought you here: the occupants crammed within it; the rankness that pounded your nose and mouth. Hands that roamed over your body while you slept. Searching for money, liquor and other things. Twenty years old. Looking younger. Were you afraid of what you found there? Was there hope among those riding into the country, or only expectation of the same? A sickening sensation that grew familiar: cars close to knocking into one another as a train in the opposite direction ran by; deafened by the sudden multiplication of steel on steel; the thunder of wheels pushing forward; how the air in the narrow space between the two trains seemed to have been sucked out. You saw the faces of those in other boxcars, those men fleeing the unyielding farmlands for a life in the city, which they were told would promise more. Did they have the same determination as the folk who shouldered you, or the same dread?

  Buffeted by the smoothness of an electric line, and the studious attention of the purser, I am cosseted in comfort and warmth. No night terrors to keep me from sleep, as you may have had; accustomed to the emptiness of my surroundings, and the dark. Yet on seeing my reflection in the glass I understand that I am not quite immune: a ghost floating in the split navy of the countryside speeding past.

  Walking through the city; ten blocks to awaken my senses. Feeling the comfort of the dark. Always the darkness I prefer here. Most shops closed. Diner signs flashing across the street; their beacon clear. Lighthouses in an urban jungle. The sound of my tread as I walk across littered streets. Heels catching on newspaper. Needles on the stairwell as I leave the station. The insulation of a cab ride would feel pacifying when I do not wish it to be so. Something of the native in my steps, as if I was born with the pull of the Hudson rushing through my ears. Channeling the shift in your posture that happens when you return here, but not realizing this until later: the stiffening of your back and jutting of your chin; how your eyes appear sharper, ready to react.