dog-ears. Image of myself alone at fifty, sleep fitful due to the niggling inconsistencies of fin de siècle poetry. Here on the threshold, what can possibly come of this. To love is impossible, to articulate, debasing. My own bottomless inadequacy. Literature fails. The novel isn’t. Life ebbs.
Easter lunch at Mahesh’s parents. Traveling down, a cold dry day. Smoke collected on the horizon. After lunch we took a ramble to shoot rabbits, or foxes, I wasn’t clear on which, I didn’t plan to shoot anything. I suggested to Mahesh that he join me in Paris. Throw off the shackles of this timetable nation, said I, Escape the dewlapped old guard frowning upon queue-jumpers. I was in full throttle when Mahesh cut me off, Why leave England, Patrick, when you delight so in being miserable? Now, that’s hardly fair, I said. We walked in silence for a bit. Finally I attempted a joke. Something wrong with fighting a disposition for indolence? Mahesh shrugged, There’s nothing to deplore in a life without literature. Oh no, I contended, There is plenty to deplore. Patrick, he said, his tone cutting, You
do
nothing. Nothing. You conform ideas. You shift this from here to there. And your ideas . . . he trailed off. Mahesh was receiving raves for his Claudius, it appeared to be affecting him for the worse. He strode out in front. I followed, poking the ground with my rifle. So it is better then, I called out, Like you, to parrot? Mahesh stopped violently. Patrick, he said, You should not go to Paris, you should marry. Marriage? I laughed. I think not. A lifetime spent pore to pore? Overhead, a brace of birds burst across the sky. You should take a wife and have a child, he said. Only a man of genius can bear a solitary life. And without further ado, Mahesh turned, brought up his rifle and shot down a mallard.
We spent the night in his boyhood room. I slept on the floor, woke at five, shivering in my bedroll. I watched the sun move a lamp across the ceiling and down one wall. Mahesh slept curled away, feet dropping off the bed. His spine, knuckles against the blanket.
The next day we broke through a thicket of alder, following a stream which snaked across the sparse woodland. Now and again cracks of gunshot reverberated through our valley. Coming upon a clearing where the stream emptied into a pool, we saw that lightning had recently laid waste to several large trees. One alder staggered, caught between his brothers, borne like a drunk. Another spanned the stream, sagging against lichenous rocks, branches splayed. Pinned underwater by one large branch, floating pinkly, was a dead sheep.
She bobbed slightly in the current, jaw contorted in a manic rictus, muzzle pierced by her own mandible. The bone was extraordinarily white, polished by the rushing stream. Foxes had discovered the carcass, the sheep’s belly was ripped open. In the fast water, nettles and leaves swept by her moored innards. Oh girl, Mahesh kneeled. He looked up at me. I turned to vomit.
We were silent on the walk back. I knew. Suddenly Mahesh spoke up. Patrick, you will watch your child as it takes its first tottering steps, you will have ample metaphor for a life. You will run to the encyclopedia for the name of the common Cowslip, you will know what it’s all for. No, I cried out, seeing the sullen wastrel, changeling in an oily anorak, the disdain, come to me in my decrepitude, mocking my malapropisms. No. I resisted. I began to weep. I had nothing. A full stop. To unfasten my skin, to climb out. But there was no one to climb into. I could offer myself a cup of tea or boot myself into the night. Nothing to do but go back in, unnerved by the temperature. Time to admit I had no intention of removing myself to the shadowed nooks of Paris. I was suckled on Fear and not about to renounce an old friend. I was never a genius. I would take a wife stupider than I so as to have a palliative. Alibi for a life of habit.
We stood, Mahesh and I, looking down on the rude
Easter lunch at Mahesh’s parents. Traveling down, a cold dry day. Smoke collected on the horizon. After lunch we took a ramble to shoot rabbits, or foxes, I wasn’t clear on which, I didn’t plan to shoot anything. I suggested to Mahesh that he join me in Paris. Throw off the shackles of this timetable nation, said I, Escape the dewlapped old guard frowning upon queue-jumpers. I was in full throttle when Mahesh cut me off, Why leave England, Patrick, when you delight so in being miserable? Now, that’s hardly fair, I said. We walked in silence for a bit. Finally I attempted a joke. Something wrong with fighting a disposition for indolence? Mahesh shrugged, There’s nothing to deplore in a life without literature. Oh no, I contended, There is plenty to deplore. Patrick, he said, his tone cutting, You
do
nothing. Nothing. You conform ideas. You shift this from here to there. And your ideas . . . he trailed off. Mahesh was receiving raves for his Claudius, it appeared to be affecting him for the worse. He strode out in front. I followed, poking the ground with my rifle. So it is better then, I called out, Like you, to parrot? Mahesh stopped violently. Patrick, he said, You should not go to Paris, you should marry. Marriage? I laughed. I think not. A lifetime spent pore to pore? Overhead, a brace of birds burst across the sky. You should take a wife and have a child, he said. Only a man of genius can bear a solitary life. And without further ado, Mahesh turned, brought up his rifle and shot down a mallard.
We spent the night in his boyhood room. I slept on the floor, woke at five, shivering in my bedroll. I watched the sun move a lamp across the ceiling and down one wall. Mahesh slept curled away, feet dropping off the bed. His spine, knuckles against the blanket.
The next day we broke through a thicket of alder, following a stream which snaked across the sparse woodland. Now and again cracks of gunshot reverberated through our valley. Coming upon a clearing where the stream emptied into a pool, we saw that lightning had recently laid waste to several large trees. One alder staggered, caught between his brothers, borne like a drunk. Another spanned the stream, sagging against lichenous rocks, branches splayed. Pinned underwater by one large branch, floating pinkly, was a dead sheep.
She bobbed slightly in the current, jaw contorted in a manic rictus, muzzle pierced by her own mandible. The bone was extraordinarily white, polished by the rushing stream. Foxes had discovered the carcass, the sheep’s belly was ripped open. In the fast water, nettles and leaves swept by her moored innards. Oh girl, Mahesh kneeled. He looked up at me. I turned to vomit.
We were silent on the walk back. I knew. Suddenly Mahesh spoke up. Patrick, you will watch your child as it takes its first tottering steps, you will have ample metaphor for a life. You will run to the encyclopedia for the name of the common Cowslip, you will know what it’s all for. No, I cried out, seeing the sullen wastrel, changeling in an oily anorak, the disdain, come to me in my decrepitude, mocking my malapropisms. No. I resisted. I began to weep. I had nothing. A full stop. To unfasten my skin, to climb out. But there was no one to climb into. I could offer myself a cup of tea or boot myself into the night. Nothing to do but go back in, unnerved by the temperature. Time to admit I had no intention of removing myself to the shadowed nooks of Paris. I was suckled on Fear and not about to renounce an old friend. I was never a genius. I would take a wife stupider than I so as to have a palliative. Alibi for a life of habit.
We stood, Mahesh and I, looking down on the rude
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