The Origin of Waves (24 page)

John must have reached the hospital by now. I imagine him sitting on a metal chair, sitting with his shoulders hunched, and his cigar tapping the metal ashtray, waiting for the final tying of the invisible strings that sew up the wound; and he is sitting in his expensive winter coat, with his hat still on, and his tie loosened as men who work in offices loosen their ties to give the impression of work and mental concentration; and his woman, the child’s mother, is pounding the corridor farther along the freshly waxed slippery dangerous tiles; or as a braver parent, she is on another floor over him, listening to her son’s breathing, holding her son’s hand. I imagine her counting each step, counting with each step the risks in the slicing of her son’s body, to find the cancer perhaps … to find the germ, to find the growth that will continue to grow until it devours the entire small body of this child,
Rashid, made from love, if the knife does not cut it out. And I see her, up and down in a continual march, soft and almost silent, and with a cup of coffee in her hand, to stay awake, to see this child pass through the worst. But John is probably stuck to his seat in the strange, large, brightly lit room, waiting beside the ashtrays. This kind of wait is not meant to put a man at ease, or to sleep, even though the silent nurses ignore his anxiety which they are trained to face and detect. How many cigars has he taken out, placed to his lips, sucked on, and then refused to light? How much longer will he have to sit in the untalking Recovery room?

The water here is still green and dirty, and cold. There is no reflection in it now. There are no lights burning, neither from the restaurants nearby nor from the windows of the hotel and the apartments which rise on both my sides like lighthouses in the daytime. There is a speck of light moving across the water. It is like the fishing boat with the red sail, in a slice across the blue waves. And then it is not seen, as I wipe the rheum from the cold wind out of my eyes. I suddenly feel the urge to like this darkened scenery, this dimness, this cold water. I can get to love it, can embrace it like the water in summer or the waves on a beach, coming up to my feet over the sprawling pink sand. I can learn to feel there is no difference between the water, this Lake and that warm water of the blue sea.

Nothing is moving now. There are no cars. There are no trucks. No ambulances cry out. The machine
that cleans the snow is not operating. The security guard who is to watch this unoccupied building cold and strong as granite, and as secure, is sleeping off his waking hours in which he caught no intruders. And the wooden seats are now like slabs of marble in the cemetery where she lies comfortable and asleep with her sprig of flower in her lap, just as she held her left hand in the crux of her thighs. They say it is warmer the farther down you go, even in this cold time; they say there is no difference that the dead can discern between themselves and those who are alive. The lives we live, passing our time in the warmer graves on the face of the land they say are just like death; they say you start to die the moment you reach forty; but I do not know if this is true for I do not any longer know anyone who is only forty. For when she passed away she was thirty and that was not a fair death, not a natural dying. It was a mistake and a tragedy. I have since quarrelled with God about His justice. And I have become mean-spirited over it.

John is standing now, with his arms outstretched and extended, creaking the fatigue out of his body. The colour of the skies is changing from the heavy weight of black to a more bearable dark blue, and I can feel my body getting cold and stiff. I think of John. I find myself imagining he cannot leave. That something has gone wrong. This fills me with hope. I see him sitting there, killing the boredom of waiting and the fear of the results of the knife the surgeon passes
over the diagnosed parts of his son’s body. I have been standing here longer than the time it takes my uncle to pass the knife sharpened on stone across the fat belly of the dolphin where the skin is whiter and less pink than on the flat sides. John is standing again, following the red seconds of the long hand of the electric clock that is moving in endless circles, moving through time. I pray that something will go wrong to keep him always here. I pray, and do not feel the pinch of guiltiness. Death has done this … I can see the shape of trees now, bursting through the greyish skies, across the Lake on the island. I hear the sounds of the breaking dawn, and can remember how they summon life, when once I was in hospital on another island: enamel hitting the iron posts, and screams … A truck stops behind me, and a man walking in the snow with a ballast of fresh bread in a green plastic milk case places it in confidence on the cold front step of the nearby restaurant. He leaves with greater confidence. No one in this city steals this kind of delivery. The light is silver-grey, and the water is still green and oily and not moving. I have been standing here now, with the metal railing guarding me from jumping in. The cold metal has no effect upon my comfort. With the Lake at my feet, at my beck and call, with the face of Lang in my mind, I am still here more hours than I have ever stood in one place.

The light is still not light enough to see too far, and the night is still; and noises – rats returning from the
basement of the restaurant, the pounding of an early jogger foolish at this time, to brave this kind of weather, lands heavy on his heels and his passing resounds and vibrates along the metal rail, and I follow his pilgrim’s progress until his exercise is succeeded by the opening of a garage door.

I hear the footsteps increasing in sound behind me, and I do not move or look to make sure I am safe. It may only be the guard roused by the coming of light. And because it is always so still, so peaceful, and so comfortable by the Lake, I have no need to save myself, or crave trials to find the reason. I can stand at this cold metal bar and watch the Lake, and see described in the dirty water her face that turns the water crystal. An object bobs on the surface, and I see that it is a flower …

Footsteps are behind me, pausing for certainty of courage and for clarity of direction, perhaps for caution, to be sure that the steps are approaching the right victim. I can almost hear the footsteps causing heavy breathing, as a man breathes before he is about to deliver a deadly blow. My body does not echo the anxiety in the approaching steps.

In the middle of the Lake is an inner tube drifting slowly upon the oil-spilled surface, in my direction; and I lean over like a man about to toss crumbs into the water to attract fish and ducks or the ugly birds which squeak and eat anything that is thrown to them.

The footsteps stop. And I can see the vapour from the person behind me come curling to reach the side
of my face, and then come in front of me; and after this warning of attack or of approach, after this warning of arrival, I feel a touch upon my winter coat, as if someone is asking for my attention, or is asking for direction. John is dead in my wish of personal cruelty and selfishness. A light touch. A touch so certain and at the same time so much like a kiss, like Lang’s kiss, that I can wait and relish its ecstasy. I do not have to wish for miracles any more, I have only to wait for the placing of the right hand on my right thigh, in our position of falling asleep without love-making. And then instead of her fragrance, I can smell the heavy, strong smell of cigar smoke, like the rising of smoke from the morning breakfast. The room is warm, and the bed is strewn with flowers, white flowers in the pattern of the cotton sheets; and the corridor is quiet, for the heavy woman is no longer walking outside the room in which a child lies breathing without tubes, for there was accuracy in the surgeon’s knife; and six floors beneath her, as if in the deepness of an unfilled grave, the man who had been sitting beside the pile of smoked and unsmoked cigars can now stretch his limbs in a different manner, for it is success. It has been success, success at the heavy catch which fills the fishing boat, leaving only two inches from its brim before overflowing, and from giving back to the sea the hard-earned bountiful rewards of the sea; and there are voices of women scrambling along the beach, their anxiousness deeper than the marks of crabs which
scamper from such pleasure and laughter; and the old black, patched inner tube, shining in the coming light, swirls and comes in, comes in in a rounding movement; and the hand is on my shoulder for a second time. This time it has more weight.

“He’s alive,” I say.

“Goddamn!”

This is all the voice says.