Going Down Slow
Page 17
“We’re all alone, Réal,” he whispered.
He felt the tiny tremors of Réal’s fingers on his chest, warm. The Last Supper was a dark shape on the wall, the frame a darker rectangle. The furniture shapes were coming in and out of focus. He held the glass at his lip breathing into it, the dregs lukewarm and flat.
He would phone again.
“Where’s your mummy, Réal?” he whispered.
He looked down at the little coconut head.
Mr. Woods, his name. With big coloured pictures and a pointer.
Up and down the rows. “La table,” Monsieur Woods. “La fenêtre,” Monsieur Woods. “Des livres,” Monsieur.
“Ou est votre maman, Réal?”
The child clutched.
“You don’t want to go, do you, little nubbins? Little shitty drawers. Little pong-poo. Shall I tell you a story? Would you like that?”
Whispering, David began the story of Goldilocks. After he had done the three bear voices the first time, he stopped.
“You don’t understand a word of this,” he said.
His head was throbbing with the effort of talking. The falsetto squeak of Baby Bear had brought him close to retching. But he felt it somehow important to finish the story for the kid. Against Gagnon’s snores, he whispered on.
“. . . and Goldilocks had been so frightened that she never, never, went there again.”
She never went there again, repeated the voice inside his head.
She never went there again.
He forced himself up in the chair and looked at the sleeping child’s face. He worked himself to the edge of the chair and, Réal in his arms, got to his feet. The room reeled. He placed the child back in the armchair and, banging his thigh against the table, made his way round it to the door.
He smashed into the newel post at the foot of the stairs and nearly fell. It hurt his shoulder and chest. A sliding sea of black and white tiles.
She never went there again, said the voice.
I think I’ll phone.
“Stop saying things.”
I think, said the voice, I’ll phone.
His mouth was filling with clear, salty saliva; he knew he was going to he sick. He stumbled against someone’s door on a landing. He fell on the third flight of stairs, raking his head on the bannisters.
It hit me when I got up, said the voice, repeating, repeating.
She had said.
He had said.
And she had said.
And she had said.
He got the door open and lurched along the wall fumbling for the bathroom light. Kneeling over the lavatory, he waited, dribbling and spitting out saliva as it flooded into his mouth. The lavatory bowl smelled, amplified the sounds of his breathing. His shirt was plastered to his back; he could feel sweat running from his armpits; cold sweat starting out on his face. He was shivering. Sparkling dots of light buzzing in the darkness like a snowstorm of interference on a TV. He was only half conscious, swaying. The buzzing dark shifting. His stomach heaved, snatching him forward. A small mouthful of bile and slop splashed into the toilet bowl.
Help me, Jim! cried the voice.
CRAMP!
He shot out his left leg and fell against the wall. His body writhed. The muscles in his neck started to knot and jump. He clutched at the hard lumps, jerked his head in agony. His stomach contracted again and again but nothing came out.
Jim! Jim! I’m dying!
The darkness fading, the screen of prickling light thinned and slowly cleared.
Knotted muscles still jumped in his legs.
He found himself lying on the floor, his head beside the base of the toilet bowl. The unshaded light bulb was burning into his eyes. He looked away and glowing bulbs swam down the walls. He turned his face against the coolness of the white stand, stretching his left leg, straining it straight.
Not drunk. Not drunk. This wasn’t drunk.
Some of the vomit had come down his nose. He snuffled and slimy lumps came into his mouth, his throat. He worked them forward to his lips and tried to spit them out.
The loud breathing was his own.
He struggled up onto his knees. He had smashed in the side of the wicker clothes basket. The water in the bowl was cloudy; the side of the bowl splattered. Where water trickled in at the back of the bowl, a tiny current agitated particles of vomit. Sinking, wavering to the surface again.
A coiled pubic hair on the white rim.
A bottle of Mr. Clean on the floor behind the lavatory.
His temples were wet; his hands glistening with sweat.
He leaned further over and opened his mouth wide. His stomach fought. Saliva. Muscles in his forearm cramping, solid with pain.
Pushing up on the lavatory, hauling on the towel-rail, trembling, he got himself on his feet. He staggered along the passage towards his bedroom, his legs, weakened by cramps, giving way under him. He fell onto his bed. He closed his eyes. The gloom started to shift and lurch. He opened his eyes and put one foot on the floor.
His stomach heaved and he gushed vomit. He had only time to turn his head on the pillow. And again. He forced himself up, vomiting over the sheet, across the sill, and rauking into the night. Again and again like a snowblower gorging an attendant truck. He could hear the spatter of it falling.
Four feet away a window squawked up.
He could not lift his head.
“You dairty bastard!” said the Scots lady. “You’re disgusting! Could you no go to the bathroom!”
The window slammed shut.
“I’ve been poisoned,” he whispered.
Dribble hanging cold on his chin.
His throat scraped raw.
Cold. Shivering cold.
“Poisoned.”
John Metcalf was Senior Editor at the Porcupine’s Quill until 2005, and is now Fiction Editor at Biblioasis. A scintillating writer and an almost magisterial editor and anthologist, he is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction and non-fiction, including Standing Stones: Selected Stories, Adult Entertainment, and Kicking Against the Pricks. Shut Up He Explained, the follow-up volume to An Aesthetic Underground, his literary memoirs, was recently published by Biblioasis. He lives in Ottawa with his wife, Myrna.
COPYRIGHT © 2007 JOHN METCALF
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
BIBLIOASIS RENDITIONS
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Metcalf, John, 1938 –
Going down slow / John Metcalf.
(Biblioasis renditions)
Originally published: Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1972.
eISBN : 978-1-897-23171-5
I. Title. II. Series.
PS8576.E83G65 2007
C813’.54
C2007-904553-7
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the publisher for permission to reprint material from Compton Mackenzie, The Passionate Elopement, 1911, Macdonald & company (Publishers) Ltd.
PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES