THERE WAS A blue tin jail roof. They were painting the Kingston Penitentiary roof blue up to the sky so that after a while the three men working on it became uncertain of clear boundaries. As if they could climb up further, beyond the tin, into that ocean above the roof. By noon, after four hours, they felt they could walk on the blue air. The prisoners Buck and Lewis and Caravaggio knew this was a trick, a humiliation of the senses. Why an intentional blue roof? They could not move without thinking twice where a surface stopped. There were times when Patrick Lewis, government paintbrush in hand, froze. Taking a seemingly innocent step he would fall through the air and die. They were fifty yards from the ground. The paint pails were joined by rope – one on each slope – so two men could move across the long roof symmetrically. They sat on the crest of the roof during their breaks eating sandwiches, not coming down all day. They leaned the heels of their hands into the wet paint as they worked. They would scratch their noses and realize they became partly invisible. If they painted long enough they would be eradicated, blue birds in a blue sky. Patrick Lewis understood this, painting a bug that would not move away alive onto the blue metal. Demarcation, said the prisoner named Caravaggio. That is all we need to remember. And that was how he escaped – a long double belt strapped under his shoulders attaching him to the cupola so he could hang with his arms free, splayed out, while Buck and Patrick painted him, covering his hands and boots and hair with blue. They daubed his clothes and then, laying a strip of handkerchief over his eyes, painted his face blue, so he was gone – to the guards who looked up and saw nothing there. When the search had died down, and the lights-out whistle had gone off, Caravaggio still remained as he was, unable to see what he knew would be a sliver of new moon that gave off little light. A thief's moon. He could hear Lake Ontario in this new silence after the wind died. The flutter of sailboats. A clatter of owl claw on the tin roof. He began to move in his cocoon of dry paint – at first unable to break free of the stiffness which encased him, feeling his clothes crack as he bent his arm to remove the handkerchief. He saw nothing but the night. He unhooked the belt. Uncoiling the rope hidden around the cupola, he let himself down off the roof. He ran through the township of Bath with the white rectangle over his eyes, looking for a hardware store he could break into. He was an exotic creature who had to escape from his blue skin before daylight. But there was not one hardware or paint shop. He broke into a clothing store and in the darkness stripped and dressed in whatever would fit him from the racks. In the rooms above the store he could hear jazz on the radio, the music a compass for him. His hands felt a mirror but he would not turn on the light. He took gloves. He jumped onto a slow milk-train and climbed onto the roof. It was raining. He removed his belt, tied himselfon safely, and slept. In Trenton he untied himself and rolled off down the embankment just as the train began to move again. He was still blue, unable to see what he looked like. He undressed and laid his clothes out on the grass so he could see them in the daylight in a human shape. He knew nothing about the town of Trenton except that it was three hours from Toronto by train. He slept again. In the late afternoon, walking in the woods that skirted the industrial section, he saw REDICK'S SASH AND DOOR FACTORY. He groomed himself as well as he could and stepped out of the trees – a green sweater, black trousers, blue boots, and a blue head. There was a kid sitting on a pile of lumber behind the store who saw him the moment he stepped into the clearing. The boy didn't move at all, just regarded him as he walked, trying to look casual, the long twenty-five yards to the store. Caravaggio crouched in front of the boy. -What's your name? -Alfred. -Will you go in there, Al, and see if you can find me some turpentine? -Are you from the movie company? -The movie? He nodded. The kid ran off and returned a few minutes later, still alone. That was good. -Your dad own this place? -No, I just like it here. All the doors propped outside, where they don't belong – things where they shouldn't be. While the boy spoke Caravaggio tore off the tail of his shirt. -There is another place in town where you can see outboard motors and car engines hanging off branches. -Yeah? Al, can you help me get this off my face and hair? -Sure. They sat in the late afternoon sunlight by the doors, the boy dipping the shirt-tail into the tin and wiping the colour off Caravaggio's face. The two of them talked quietly about the other place where the engines hung from the trees. When Caravaggio unbuttoned his shirt the boy saw the terrible scars across his neck and gasped. It looked to him as if some giant bird had left claw marks from trying to lift off the man's head. Caravaggio told him to forget the movie, he was not an actor, he was from prison. "I'm Caravaggio – the painter," he laughed. The boy promised never to say anything. They decided that his hair should be cut off, so the boy went back into the store and came back giggling and shrugging with some rose shears. Soon Caravaggio looked almost bald, certainly unrecognizable. When theowner of Redick's Door Factory was busy, Caravaggio used the bathroom, soaping and washing the turpentine off his face. He saw his neck for the first time in a mirror, scarred from the prison attack three months earlier. In the yard the boy wrote out his name on a piece of paper. From his pocket he took out an old maple-syrup spile with the year 1882 on it, and he wrapped the paper around it. When the man came back, cleaned up, the boy handed it to him. The man said, "I don't have anything to give you now." The kid grinned, very happy. "I know," he said. "Remember my name. " He was running, his boots disappearing into grey bush. Away from Lake Ontario, travelling north where he knew he could find some unopened cottage to stay quietly for a few days. Landscape for Caravaggio was never calm. A tree bending with difficulty, a flower thrashed by wind, a cloud turning black, a cone falling – everything moved anguished at separate speeds. When he ran he saw it all. The eye splintering into fifteen sentries, watching every approach. He ran with the Trent canal system on his right, passing the red lock buildings and their concrete platforms over the water. Every few miles he would stop and watch the glassy waters turn chaotic on the other side of the sluice gate, then he was off again. In two days he was as far north as Bobcaygeon. He slept that night among the lumber at the Boyd Sawmill and one evening later he was racing down a road. It was dusk. He had slept out three nights now. The last of the blue paint at his wrist. The first cottages showed too many signs of life, the canoes already hauled out. He retreated back up their driveways. He came to a cottage with a glassed-in porch and green shutters, painted gables, and a double-pitch roof. If the owners arrived he could swing out of the second-floor window and walk along the roof. Caravaggio looked at architecture with a perception common to thieves who saw cupboards as having weak backs, who knew fences were easier to go through than over. He stood breathing heavily in the dusk, looking up at the cottage, tired of running, having eaten only bits of chocolate the boy had given him. Al. Behind him the landscape was darkening down fast. He was inside the cottage in ten seconds. He walked around the rooms, excited, his hand trailing off the sofa top, noticed the magazines stacked on the shelf. He turned left into a kitchen and used a knife to saw open a can. Darkness. He wanted no lights on tonight. He dug the knife into the can and gulped down beans, too hungry and tired for a spoon. Then he went upstairs and ripped two blankets off a bed and spread them out in the upstairs hall beside the window which led to the roof. He hated the hours of sleep. He was a man who thrived and worked in available light. At night his wife would sleep in his embrace but the room around him continued to be alive, his body porous to every noise, his stare painting out darkness. He would sleep as insecurely as a thief does, which is why they are always tired.
He climbs into black water. A temperature of blood. He sees and feels no horizon, no edge to the liquid he is in. The night air is forensic. An animal slips into the water. This river is not deep, he can walk across it. His boots, laces tied to each other, are hanging around his neck. He doesn't want them wet but he goes deeper and he feels them filling, the extra weight of water in them now. The floor of the river feels secure. Mud. Sticks. A bridge a hundred yards south of him made of concrete and wood. A tug at his boot beside the collarbone. As Caravaggio sleeps, his head thrown back, witnessing a familiar nightmare, three men enter his prison cell in silence. The men enter and Patrick in the cell opposite on the next level up watches them and all language dries up. As they raise their hands over Caravaggio, Patrick breaks into a square-dance call – "Allemande left your corners all" screaming it absurdly as warning up into the stone darkness. The three men turn to the sudden noise and Caravaggio is on his feet struggling out of his nightmare. The men twist his grey sheet into a rope and wind it around his eyes and nose. Caravaggio can just breathe, he can just hear their blows as if delayed against the side of his head. They swing him tied up in the sheet until he is caught in the arms of another. Then another blow. Patrick's voice continuing to shout out, the other cells alive now and banging too. "Birdie fly out and the crow fly in, crow fly out and give birdie a spin." His father's language emerging from somewhere in his past, now a soundtrack for murder. The animal from the nightmare bares its teeth. Caravaggio swerves and its mouth rips open the boot to the right of his neck. Water is released. He feels himself becoming lighter. Being swung from side to side, no vision, no odour, he is ten years old and tilting wildly in a tree. A wall or an arm hits him. "Fucking wop! Fucking dago!" "Honour your partner, dip and dive." His hands are up squabbling with this water creature – sacrificing the hands to protect the body. The inside of his heart feels bloodless. He swallows dry breath. He needs more than anything to get on his knees and lap up water from a saucer. Three men who have evolved smug and without race slash out. "Hello wop." And the man's kick into his stomach lets free the singer again as if a Wurlitzer were nudged, fast and flat tones weaving through a two-step as the men begin to beat the blindfolded Caravaggio. What allies with Caravaggio is only the singer, otherwise his mind is still caught underwater. Then they let him go. He stands there still blindfolded, his hands out. The caller in the cell opposite quietens, knowing Caravaggio needs to listen within the silence for any clue as to where the men are. They are dumb beasts. He could steal the teeth out of their mouths. Everyone watches but him, eyes covered, hands out. The homemade filed-down razor teeth swing in an arc to his throat, to the right of the ripped-open boot. He drops back against the limestone wall. The other leather boot releases its cup-like hold on the water as if a lung gives up. A vacuum of silence. He realizes the men have gone. The witness, the caller from the upper level, begins to talk quietly to him. "They have cut your neck. Do you understand! They have cut your neck. You must staunch it till someonecomes." Then Patrick screams into the limestone darkness for help. Caravaggio finds the bed. He gets to his knees on the mattress – head and elbows propping up his bruised body so nothing touches the pain. The blood flows along his chin into his mouth. He feels as if he has eaten the animal that attacked him and he spits out everything he can, old saliva, blood, spits again and again. Everything is escaping. His left hand touches his neck and it is not there. *** The next morning Caravaggio explored the shoreline around the cottage in a canoe. He was out on the lake when a woman in another canoe emerged into the bay and hailed him. Red hair. The clear creamy skin of a witch. She wore a hat tied with a scarf and she waved to him in absolute confidence that if he was in a canoe on this lake he was acceptable and safe, even though every piece of clothing he wore was stolen from the blue bureau in the cottage. The lavender shirt, the white ducks, the tennis shoes. He stopped paddling. Performing intricate strokes, she pulled up alongside him. -You are staying with the Neals. -How did you know? She gestured to the canoe. Here people recognized canoes. -Are they coming up for August? -I think so. They were unsure. -They always are. I'm Anne, a neighbour. She pointed to the next property. She had on a bathing suit and a light skirt and was barefoot, the paddle resting on her shoulder. - I'm David. Drops of water slid along the brown wood and onto her skin. He looked at her stunningly poreless face that now and then revealed itself out from the shadow of her straw hat. He decided to be direct about his tentative status. -I'm here to get my bearings. -This is a good place for that. He looked up at her again, differently now, past the white creamy face and bare arms. -Why did you say it like that? Her hand up to shield off the sun. A questioning look.
-What you just said . . . -Just that I love this place. It can heal you if you are here alone. Are you an artist? -What? -You have aquamarine on your neck. He smiled. He had spent so long calling it blue. -I should go, he said. She lifted her paddle forward so it was across her knees, nodding to herself, realizing a wall had just been placed between them. Their canoes banged together and she backpaddled. He had never heard anyone speak as generously as she had in that one sentence. This is a good place. -Thank you. She turned, puzzled. -For pointing out the aquamarine. -Well ... enjoy the lake. -I will. She sensed his withdrawal. Alone, not having seen anyone for weeks, she had come too close, spoken too loudly. He watched the frailness of her back as she canoed away from him. Caravaggio looked over the body of water as if it were human now, a creature on whose back he shifted. He did not think of approaches or exits, suddenly there could be only descent or companionship. *** The first time Caravaggio had noticed Patrick Lewis gazing down from the opposite cell, he had simply waved and looked elsewhere. Most of Caravaggio's time in prison was spent in restless sleep. The night light of cells, the constant noise, made him nervous. The prisoner opposite who had tried to burn down the Muskoka Hotel was worse. He always sat up erect on the bed watching the movements below him. When Caravaggio returned from the hospital, his throat sewn up after the attack, Patrick was waiting for him. And when Caravaggio woke in pain suddenly the next afternoon, he turned to find the man's gaze reassuring him. Patrick had sat up there smoking precisely, moving his hand and cigarette fully away from his face when he blew the smoke out. -Do you have a red dog? he asked Caravaggio a few days later. -Russet, he whispered back.
-You're the thief, right? -The best there is; that's why, as you can see, I'm here. -Someone let you down, I suppose. -Yes. The red dog. He had trained as a thief in unlit rooms, dismantling the legs of a kitchen table, unscrewing the backs of radios and the bottoms of toasters. He would draw the curtains to block out any hint of streetlight and empty the kitchen cupboards, then put everything back, having to remember as he worked where all the objects were on the floor. Such pelmanism. While his wife slept he moved the furniture out of her bedroom and brought in the sofa, changed the pictures on the wall, the doilies on the bedside table. In daylight he moved slowly as if conserving remnants of energy – a bat in post-coital flight. He would step into an upholstery shop to pick up a parcel for his wife and read the furniture, displacing in his mind the chairs through that window, the harvest table through the door at a thirty-degree angle veering right. As a thief he had a sense of the world which was limited to what existed for twenty feet around him. During his first robbery Caravaggio injured himself leaping from a second-storey window. He lay on his back with a cracked ankle on the Whitevale lawn, a Jeffreys drawing in his arms. He lay there as the family walked into the house and shrieked when they came upon the chloroformed dog. All the porch lights went on, the shadow of a tree luckily falling across him. Two hours later he stumbled on a settlement of long barns, not certain what they were till he was gathered in the smell. A mushroom factory. Only the hallways and offices were lit, the long dormitories where the mushrooms were grown were in permanent darkness. He knew what he needed. In the main lobby were the helmets with battery lamps attached to them. Now it was almost dawn. A Sunday. He had a day without being disturbed. Later in the sunlight he cut open his boot and sock. He made a splint and strapped it with electrical tape. Worse than the pain was his hunger. He looked at his stolen drawing in the sunlight, the clean lines, the shaky signature. Around dusk he hobbled across the road to a vegetable garden, pulled up a few carrots and dropped them into his shirt. He tried to catch a chicken but it sped up its walk and left him behind. He returned to the minimal light in the halls of the mushroom factory. He read the punch cards of the workers. Salvatorelli, Mascardelli, Daquila, Pereira, De Francesca. Most of them Italian, some Portuguese. Shifts from eight to four. He felt safer. In the office he looked through the drawers and cabinets. He knew people who took shits on desks whenever they broke into office buildings but he wasn't one of them. It was, he was told, a formal act. Most amateur thieves could not control themselves. With all their discipline focused on the idea of robbery, there was no governor of the body. The act implied grossness, but the professional thief turned from this gesture to a medicinal clarity in his survey of the room. Detailed receipts memorized, key pages razor-bladed. At the centre of the symmetrical plot was this false act of madness.
When Caravaggio joined the company of thieves he was struck first of all by their courtesy. Even the shitters looked refined and wore half-moon glasses; they would have taken snuff but for the fact it would destroy their sense of smell. The cafes in the west end of Toronto were full of these men who had no work in the afternoons, who woke at noon and, after shaving, lunched with their friends. Caravaggio was welcomed into their midst and lectured with great conservatism on the art of robbery. Some were “displacers," some stole animals, some kidnapped dogs and wives, some would deal only in meat products or paper information. They were protective of their style and area of interest. They tried to persuade the young man that what they did was the most significant but at the same time they did not wish to encourage too much competition. He was young. He was in awe of them, wanted to be all of them in their moments of extreme crisis. He hung around them not so much to learn their craft but to study the way they lived when they stepped back into the world of order. He still had that to learn. He was twenty-two at the Blue Cellar Cafe and he was fascinated only by character. He was a young man stepping into a mansion and being overcome with the generosity of envy. He slid his hand down the smoothness of a banister and his palm and fingers luxuriated in it. The intricate light switches! The carpets your feet melted into! He did this with their character he walked away with their mannerisms and their brand names, the rhythm and abstract tone of their musings. Later he trailed each of them for a week in order to watch their performances. Some of them went into houses and spent three hours and came out with objects so small they fit into a side pocket. Some removed every moveable object on the ground floor in half an hour. And now, in the midst of his first robbery, Caravaggio read through the finances of the mushroom factory and came across a till of cash. Never steal where you sleep. All this inquiry was out of boredom. He wanted a book, he wanted meat. If he was going to have to hole up for a few days he wanted chicken and literature. Caravaggio switched on the light attached to the foreman's helmet and stepped into one of the mushroom dormitories he had selected earlier as his. Shelves at various levels ran the length of the long room. There were troughs on the shelves which held manure and earth and young growing mushrooms. Now he was in a dark prison with millions of them. He snuggled into a space beneath the low shelf at the end farthest away from the door, his Jeffreys drawing beside him. He switched off the helmet, breathed in the thick vegetable air. He had not slept for a day and a half, had chloroformed his first dog, jumped out of a window, tried to race down a chicken ... Something brushed his face. Without opening his eyes he moved back. Earlier he had awakened with fragments of light above him as figures leaned over the troughs to select mushrooms. The mushrooms were grown at different stages, a few weeks apart, so there would always be a section ready. He had fallen back to sleep among the sounds of overalls rubbing against the shelves. Now the cloth against his face startled him. A woman on his right stood tentatively on one foot. She struggled with a shoe, leaning against the plaster wall in a slip, the upper half of her body naked. Her helmet balanced on the top shelf was facing her so she could see what she was doing as she dressed. Her black shadow moved parallel to her whiteness. He remained still. Raven hair and an angular face, her body reaching up to pull down a blouse from a hook, more secure now with both shoes on.
- Psst. She looked sternly out into darkness, picked up the helmet, and diverted light across the room through the shelves. - Angelica? Is that you? she called out. She pulled on her skirt with one hand holding the helmet, stopped, put the helmet on, and did up the buttons. She began singing to herself. He had to get her attention without terrifying her. He started humming along with her. Her helmet light came down fast to where he was and she lashed out, kicking his face. After a yell of pain he began to laugh. -Please, tomorrow bring me something to eat. -Perche? -I'm a thief. I've broken my ankle. She bent down and put her hand out. -Tartufi? What are you stealing? Mushrooms? Her hands were on his foot, felt the ankle strapped up, and believed everything, knowing already he was gentle by his laugh. - I broke it a mile or two from here. I'm very hungry. Please bring me some chickentomorrow. He could not see her face at all, just the hem of the skirt at her knees where the light bounced as she crouched. Now all he could know of her was a voice, confident, laughing with him. -Come si chiama? -Giannetta. -I'm Caravaggio. -A thief. -Sicuro. -I'll bring you some chicken tomorrow. And a bible. -Let me see your face. -Basta! Ha visto abbastanza.
She patted his foot. -Do you need anything else? -Ask what I should do about my ankle. There was darkness again and he yearned for light. The thin beam from her helmet, the delicate ribs as she reached up for the blouse, her shadow overcoming his memory so he had to begin the scene again, a small loop of film, seven or eight seconds, until she reached for the lamp and put herself in darkness. He repeated it again and again and then turned to her voice. Strange how he wanted chicken above all else. It was that useless chase in the yard across the road, itching in his memory. The next morning she arrived and asked him to turn his head while she changed. She told him how each of the workers chose a room or one corner for changing into and out of their overalls. She unwrapped a large cloth and gave him the food. Chicken and some salad and milk and banana cake. It was the worst banana cake he had eaten up to that point in his life. - Devo partire. Pitorner.. In the afternoon Giannetta and three other women workers came by to have a look at him. There were the expected jokes, but he enjoyed the company after so much solitude. When they left, noisily, she put her hand out. She touched his mouth gently. Then she brought out bandages and restrapped his ankle. -Cosi va meglio. -When can I get out of here? -We've planned something for you. -Bene. Let me see your face. Her lamp remained still at his foot. So he reached back for his foreman's helmet and shone it on her. She remained looking down. He realized his right hand was still holding her ankle from when she had removed the electrical tape off him painfully. -Thank you for helping me. -I am sorry I kicked you so hard. The next day Giannetta crouched beside him, smiling. -We must shave off your moustache. Only women work here. -Mannaggia! -We have to get you out as a woman.
He reached out his hand and put his fingers into her hair, into that darkness. -Giannetta. -You have to put your arm down. Her hand rested at his shoulder, holding onto the straight razor. He would not let her go. Their faces darkened as they leaned forward, her lamp shining past his head. He could smell her skin. - Here comes the first kiss, she whispered. She handed him the dress. -Non guardare, please. Don't look. He realized he was standing exactly where she had been a few days earlier. He switched on his lamp so it beamed onto her, then began to take off his shirt, paused, but she kept looking at him. He saw his own shadow on the wall. She came forward, smiling, calming his balance as he stood on his good foot. -Here, I'll show you how to put on a dress. Unbutton this first. She held the cloth bunched over his nakedness. -Ahh Caravaggio, shall we tell our children how we met? *** This time he did not take the canoe. He had already walked the shoreline before dusk, remembering the swamp patches. Now, dressed in dark clothes, he traced his path towards the compound belonging to the woman with the canoe – the main building, outlying cottages, a boathouse, an icehouse. He had no idea what the lake was called. He had passed a sign when he was running that claimed the area was Featherstone Point. That was when he saw the telephone wires which he knew must come from her group of houses. He came through the last of the trees into the open area and everything was in darkness, as if the owners had packed up and left. He had expected to see rectangles of light. Now he lost all perspective and did not know how fully he would have to turn to be aimed back at his cottage. He needed some context of the human. A dog on a chain, a window, a sound. He turned once more and saw moonlight on the lake. But there was no moon. He realized it had to be light from the boathouse. The landscape, the blueprint of the compound, sprang back into his brain. He walked towards the water knowing where the low shrubs were, the stone hedge, the topiary he could not see. He slipped inside the boathouse and listened for sounds of activity. Nothing. With a pulley-chain used for hoisting up boat engines he swung up onto the first roof which was like a skirt around the upper cabin. He walked up the slope. The woman named Anne was sitting inside at a table.
Light from an oil lamp. She faced the water, her night window, and was writing hunched over the table unaware of anything else in the room. A summer skirt, an old shirt of her husband's, sleeves rolled up. She glanced up from the page and peered into the kerosene of the lamp. The mind behind the gaze did not know where it was. Caravaggio had never witnessed someone writing before. He saw her put down the fountain pen and later pick it up, try it, and realizing the nib was dry, lift the tail of her shirt to wipe the dry ink off the nib, preening the groove, as if the pause were caused not by the hesitation of her mind but by the atrophy of the pen. Now she bent over earnestly, half-smiling, the tongue moving in her mouth. If she had turned to her right she would have seen his head at one of the small panes of glass, the light from the oil lamp just reaching it. He thought of that possible glance and moved back further. He thought of all those libraries he had stepped into in Toronto homes, the grand vistas of bookcases that reached the ceiling, the books of pigskin and other leathers that fell into his arms as he climbed up the shelves looking for whatever valuables he imagined were there, his boots pushing in the books to get a toe-hold. And then from up there, his head close to the ceiling, looking down on the rectangle of the rooms, hearing his dog's clear warning bark, not moving. And the door opening below him – a man walking in to pick up the telephone and dialling, while Caravaggio hung high up on the bookcases knowing now he should move the second he was seen up there in his dark trousers and singlet, as still as a gargoyle against Trollope and H.G. Wells. He could land on the leather sofa and bounce into the man's body before he even said a word into the phone. Then go through the French doors without opening them, a hunch of his body as he breaks through the glass and thin wood, then a blind leap off the balcony into the garden, where he would curse his dog for the late warning, and take off. But this boathouse had no grandeur. The woman's bare feet rested one on top of the other on the stained-wood floor. A lamp on the desk, a mattress on the floor. In this light, and with all the small panes of glass around her, she was inside a diamond, mothlike on the edge of burning kerosene, caught in the centre of all the facets. He knew there was such intimacy in what he was seeing that not even a husband could get closer than him, a thief who saw this rich woman trying to discover what she was or what she was capable of making. He put his hands up to his face and smelled them. Oil and rust. They smelled of the chain. That was always true of thieves, they smelled of what they brushed against. Paint, mushrooms, printing machines, yet they never smelled of the rich. He liked people who smelled of their trade – carpenters cutting into cedar, dogcatchers who carried the odour of wet struggling hounds with them. And what did this woman smell of? In this yellow pine room past midnight she was staring into a bowl of kerosene as if seeing right through the skull of a lover. He was anonymous, with never a stillness in his life like this woman's. He stood on the roof outside, an outline of a bear in her subconscious, and she quarried past it to another secret, one of her own, articulated wet and black on the page. The houses in Toronto he had helped build or paint or break into were unmarked. He would never leave his name where his skill had been. He was one of those who have a fury or a sadness of only being described by someone else. A tarrer of roads, a housebuilder, a painter, a thief – yet he was invisible to all around him. He leapt through darkness onto the summer grass and then walked up to the main building. Without turningon lights he found the telephone in the kitchen and phoned his wife in Toronto. -Well I got out. -Lo so. -How? -The police were here. Scomparso. Not that you escaped but that you disappeared. -When did they come there? -Last week. A couple of days after you got away. -How's August? -He's with me. He misses his night walks. She began to talk about her brother-in-law's house, which she had moved into. This time through a darkness which was distance. -I'll be back when I can, Giannetta. -Be careful. She was standing in the centre of the living room in the darkness as he came away from the phone. His ear had been focused to Giannetta's voice, nothing else. His head imagining her – the alabaster face, the raven head. -Non riuscivo a trovarti. -Speak English. -I couldn't find you to ask. -You found the cottage, you found the phone, you could have found me. -I could have. It's a habit ... usually I don't ask. -I'm going to light a lamp. -Yes, that's always safer. She lifted the glass chimney and held the match to the wick. It lit up the skirt and shirt and her red hair. She moved away from it and leaned against the back of the sofa.
-Where were you calling? -Toronto. My wife. -I see. -I'll pay for it. She waved the suggestion away. -Is that your husband's shirt? -No. My husband's shirts are here, though. You want them? He shook his head, looking around the room. A fireplace, a straight staircase, bedrooms upstairs. -What do you want? You are a thief, right? -With cottages all you can steal is the space or the people. I needed to use your phone. -I'm going to eat something. Do you want some food? -Thank you. He followed her into the kitchen feeling relaxed with her – as if this was a continuation of his conversation with Giannetta. -Tell me ... -David. -David, why I am not scared of you? -Because you've come back from someplace.... You got something there. Or you're still there. -What are you talking about? -I was on the roof of the boathouse. I did find you. -I thought there was a bear around tonight. She sits across from him laughing at the story of his escape, not fully believing it. A fairy tale. She cups her hand over the glass chimney and blows out the lamp. Two in the morning. As they go into darkness his mind holds on to the image of her slightness, the poreless skin, the bright hair leaning into the light. The startling colours of her strange beauty. -I can't stand any more light, she says.
-Yes, this is the night. Allow the darkness in. -I had to stay in a dark room once ... with measles. Her voice is exact, crystal clear. He has his eyes closed, listening to her. -I was a kid. My uncle – he's a famous doctor – came to see me. In my room, all the blinds were down, the lights drowned. So I could do nothing. I wasn't allowed to read. He said I've brought you earrings. They are special earrings. He pulled out some cherries. Two, joined by their stalks, and he hung them over one ear and took out another pair and hung them over the other ear. That kept me going for days. I couldn't lie down at night without carefully taking them off and laying them on the night table. -Do you have any children? -I have a son. He comes up with my husband in a day or so. I have a brother who doesn't speak. This is his shirt. He hasn't spoken for years. Caravaggio lies on the carpet. He had, when there was light earlier, been looking up at the tongue and groove, theorizing how one removed such floors. She continues talking. -In a few days all the husbands come to the lake. A strange custom. I've been so happy these last three weeks. Listen ... no sound. In the boathouse there is always the noise of the lake. I feel bereaved when the lake is still, mute. There is now a silence in the room. He stands up. -I should go. -You can sleep on the sofa. -No. I should go. -You can sleep here. I'm going up to bed. -I'm a thief, Anne, un ladro. -That's right. You broke out of jail. He sees her clearly on the other side of the unlit lamp, her chin on her clenched fist. -I have literally fallen in love with the lake. I dread the day I will have to leave it. Tonight I was writing the first love poem I have written in years and the lover was the sound of lakewater. -I've always had a fear of water creatures. -But water is benign ...
-Yes, I know. Goodbye, Anne. *** After his marriage to Giannetta, Caravaggio had one pit to fall into before his career as a thief became successful – he was overwhelmed suddenly by a self-consciousness. He broke into houses and became certain there was a plot concocted to snare him. Giannetta could not stand it. She did not wish to live with a well-trained thief who feared going out. -Get a partner! -I can never work with someone else, you know that! -Then get a dog! He stole a dark-red fox terrier and named it August. A summer robbery. The dog was his salvation. He had a quick bark, like an exclamation – one announcement, take it or leave it – enough warning for his master as far as the dog was concerned. On a job they behaved like strangers – Caravaggio strolling along one side of the street and August aimless on the other. When he entered a house the dog sat on the lawn. If the owners returned early the dog would stand up and give one clear bark. Moments later a figure would leap from a window with a carpet or a suitcase in his arms. *** Now he pours milk into the tall glass and drinks as he walks through his brother-in-law's house, the coolness of milk filling him on this hot Toronto night. He is seated on the stairs, facing the door. He hears the dog's one clear bark and her laugh as she approaches the front door. In the dark hall the whiteness of the milk disappears into his body. Her shoulders nestle against his hands. The home of the other. Touching her, a wetness passed from her lip to him, his hands in her dark hair. She moves within the shadow of his shoulder. She steps into the half-lit kitchen and her bare arms pick up light. He catches the blink of her earrings. Removing one, she drops it to the floor. Her hands go up to the other ear – unscrewing the second pin of gold. Her laughter with her breast in his mouth. He breaks the necklace and pearls fall around them. He can smell soaps in her hair. Her wrist moves up his arm, riding on the sweat. Her cheek against the warm tile. Her other hand, sweeping out, touches the loose jewel.
Giannetta feels the scar on his throat. Her soft kiss across it. He carries her, still in her, holding up each thigh, her eyes wide open, crockery behind her crashing from shelf to shelf, as she nudges the corner cupboard. Blue plates bounce and come through the lower panes like water and smash on the floor. With each step her bare foot on a pearl or a fragment of plate. She opens the fridge door. In its light she pulls her foot up to her stomach and examines it, brushing something away. He lies back and she sits over him, swallowing the cold wine. He traces the path down her body at the speed he imagines liquid takes. Her chin on her knee. Planting her foot on his shoulder she leaves blood when she moves it. When she opens her eyes wide he sees glass and crockery and thin china plates tumbling down from shelf to shelf losing their order, their shades of blue and red merging, her fingers on his scar, her fingers on the thumping vein on his forehead. She's a laugher who laughs while they make love, not earnest like a tightrope-walker. Her low laugh when they stop, exhausted. His breath is now almost whisper, almost language. She turns, a pearl embedded in her flesh. A violin with stars walking in this house. Fridge light sink light street light. At the sink she douses her face and shoulders. She lies beside him. The taste of the other. A bazaar of muscles and flavours. She rubs his semen into his wet hair. Her shoulders bang against the blue-stained cupboard. A kitchen being fucked. Sexual portage. Her body forked off him. She smells him, the animal out of the desert that has stumbled back home, back into oasis. Her black hair spreads like a pool over the tiles. She pins the earring her fingers had strayed upon into his arm muscle, beginning a tattoo of blood. There are jewels of every colour he has stolen for her in the past in the false drawers of her new bedroom, which he can find by ripping out the backs of the bureaus. Photographs of her relatives in old silver frames. A clock encased in glass which turns its gold stomach from side to side to opposite corners of the room. A wedding ring he can pull off her finger with his teeth. He removes nothing. Only the chemise she withdraws from as if skin. He carries nothing but the jewellery pinned to his arm, a footstep of blood on his shoulder. The feather of her lip on his mouth. A last plate tips over to the next shelf. He waits for her eye to open. Here comes the first kiss. All she can see as she enters the dark hall is the whiteness of the milk, a sacred stone in his hands, disappearing into his body. He lifts his wife onto his shoulders so her arms ascend into the chandelier. MARITIME THEATRE IN 1938, WHEN Patrick Lewis was released from prison, people were crowding together in large dark buildings across North America to see Garbo as Anna Karenina. Everyone tried to play the Hammond Organ. 'Red Squads' intercepted mail, teargassed political meetings. By now over 10,000 foreign-born workers had been deported out of the country. Everyone sang "Just One of Those Things." The longestbridge in the world was being built over the lower Zambesi and the great waterworks at the east end of Toronto neared completion. At Kew Park a white horse dove every hour from a great height into Lake Ontario. T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral opened in England and a few weeks later Dr. Carl Weiss who had always admired the poetry of the expatriate American – shot Huey Long to death in the Louisiana capitol building. Just one of those things. Released from prison in January, he took the Kingston train to Toronto's union Station. Ten Story Gang, Weird Tales, Click, Judge Sheard's Best Jokes, and Look were in the magazine stalls. Patrick sat down on the smooth concrete bench facing the ramp down to the gates. This cathedral-like space was the nexus of his life. He had been twenty-one when he arrived in this city. Here he had watched Clara leave him, walking past that sign to the left of the ramp which said HORIZON. Look up, Clara had said when she left him for Ambrose, you know what that stone is? He had been lost in their situation, not caring. It's Missouri Zumbro. Remember that. The floors are Tennessee marble. He looked up. Sitting now on this bench Patrick suddenly had no idea what year it was. He brought Clara's face directly back into memory – as if it were a quizzical smiling face on a poster advertising a hat to strangers. But Alice's face, with its changeability, he could not evoke. A group of redcaps were standing with three large cages full of dogs, all of whom were barking like aristocrats claiming to be wrongly imprisoned. He went up to the cages. They were anxious with noise. He had come from a place where a tin cup against a cell wall was the sole form of protest. He got closer to the cages, looked into the eyes which saw nothing, the way his own face in prison had looked in a metal mirror. He was still crouched when the redcaps wheeled the cages down the ramp. On his knees in union Station. He felt like the weight on the end of a plumb-bob hanging from the very centre of the grand rotunda, the absolute focus of the building. Slowly his vision began to swing. He turned his head to the left to the right to the left, discovering the horizon. He moved tentatively into the city, standing in front of strangers, studying the new fashions. He felt invisible. Outside union Station the streets were deep in snowdrifts. He walked towards the east end, along Eastern Avenue, till he eventually came to the Geranium Bakery, entering the warm large space where winter sun pierced through the mist of flour in the air. He passed the spotless machines, looking for Nicholas. Buns moved forward along rollers till they were flipped over into the small lake of sizzling shortening. Finally he saw him in his suit covered with white dust at the far end of the bakery, choreographing the movement of food. Nicholas Temelcoff walked forward and embraced him. A bear's grip. The grip of the world. -Welcome back, my friend. -Is she here? Nicholas nodded. -She has packed her things.
Patrick climbed into the service elevator and pulled the rope beside him which took him up to Nicholas' living quarters on the next floor. He went in and knocked on the door of the small room. Hana was sitting on the bed wearing a frock, her hands on her lap. Looking down, then up slowly, the way Alice used to glance up, the eyes moving first. So much like Alice it was terrible to him. He turned away and looked at the girl's neat room, at the packed suitcase, the light on beside her bed in the daylight. She watched him, understanding what kind of love was behind his stare. His cheek was pressed against the door frame, the new jacket collar rough against his neck. Five years earlier, before he had taken the train to the Muskokas, they had come to the Geranium Bakery. And Nicholas had offered to look after her. She was welcome to stay with his family. He had suggested this casually and with no hesitation, sitting in his office under the clock Hana loved, where each hour was represented by a different style of doughnut. "Each of us is on our own for a while now," Patrick had said. "I know." She had been eleven years old then. She rose from the bed. "Hey, Patrick, look how tall I've got!" Step............