The Abundance of the Infinite by Christopher Canniff Page B

the eyes of my father. And in that realization I can see that my father might have, in fact, been here, with his undiagnosed agoraphobia, his fear of inescapable situations the same as my own, cast out into the night alone and of his own accord as I am, as drunk as I am feeling now; and just as I have made the decision to escape from and to flee the memory of my daughter, I have already, if only subconsciously, chosen to forsake the love of the wife I can no longer love, and can no longer see or interact with, because of the life she has taken.
    I watch the boy’s eyes wander away from me, darting over to one side as though he has abruptly remembered another place he ought to be, or as though he is unexpectedly ashamed for having stared languidly back at this unknown stranger in the darkness, at an image that may or may not be real. As he darts away into the shadows, toward an isolated row of huts seemingly unaffected by the fire but still consumed by smoke, I am inundated by the overwhelming urge to follow. I grab my paddle and row swiftly to shore, rise out of the boat and, pulling the distended maw of the long, thin beast up onto the rocks, I run after him.
    The area he had started toward, away from the men who are occupied in futilely attempting to extinguish the raging and increasing fire with small buckets of water which might as well be thimbles filled to the brim and passed daintily along, is vacant. The boy has disappeared. Looking through each of the huts that is engulfed in smoke I quickly find him inside one of them. He looks up at me and I look into his eyes again, closer this time, seeing in the shadows and fog that they are dark brown, and that he has retrieved what he came into this room, filled with diaphanous smoke, to obtain: a doll made of straw and old rags. I am barring his exit, my arms on either side of the opening, his only way out beneath my arms, and he looks at those areas of escape longingly, as though anticipating that he can dash out, scurrying away from this nonsensical man before him.
    If I were to stay here for a time, continuing to block the way out in a fit of malevolence and wickedness, enough to smite the life out of this boy, my actions would not be any different from what I have done, and in fact what I have subconsciously wanted to do. I am no different from my father, or from the King in my Boccaccio dream. In the boy’s gaze I see that I am again this boy looking up at my father, who chose to view me, for the purposes of his own life, as deceased; and I have the horrifying realization that I wanted my child dead, as I have just contemplated my power over this helpless child in pondering his death, the one who looks up at me now with the appearance of dread. I made it easier to end Annabelle’s life by escaping my responsibilities and running away from my unborn child, I explain to this boy’s stare, either in my thoughts or verbally. I made Yelena’s decision easier because my absence did not preclude her actions except through a verbalized agreement, a contract that perhaps became less important and more easily justifiable to disregard over time. My father chose to have me out of his life, and as such, to have my existence relegated only to a distant and faded memory, just as Annabelle’s will now irrevocably become, my father’s remembrance of me interspersed with random snapshots of a boy’s periodic visits, a boy left to raise himself outside of these visits in light of a mother who was never there, whose alcoholism and desire for the outward appearance of a flawless home and a perfect life seemed not only contradictory but counterintuitive. My father’s kind and gentle treatment of me on my visits to Manta was a ruse of paternal compassion that I now recognize I saw him extend to any and all children he came across. And now, this boy is coughing, slumped on the floor, his eyes closing. I feel that perhaps his fear has overcome him, that he