Parallel Rivers Read online

  A great rattling cry wells to fill the tiny room, the convention centre. A lizard stares from the corner of the pad. By the ruined temple an old man and an old woman are packing buckets with red clay. When they turn their heads, their bodies shift in the heat that rises from the sand around them. Cold silk ripples along your fingertips as the indigo sari unwraps. A green housefly, as big and as iridescent as a kingfisher, escapes the folds. The woman’s skin, disclosed as the fabric slides away, appears a reservoir, over whose quiet surface the lizard’s tongue unfurls.

  TRAIN

  ANGELA, AN ONLY CHILD, IS EN route by train to X where her father is in hospital having suffered a number of strokes, the last of which has rendered him bedridden. At this moment she is passing through a sparsely wooded valley just east of Y. On the north ridge of the valley is a bluff intersected by a stock fence running west to east with a single strand of barbed wire on which hang Private Property signs. This is the exact location where, some months before Angela’s birth, her parents say goodbye for the last time.

  They meet, as arranged, beside the penguin pit at the zoo, on the outskirts of Y. From here, they walk to a bluff overlooking the valley and town. The bluff is intersected by a galvanized fence.

  The two figures break from an embrace and I lose my balance. I fall backward against the wire. The early sun catches the right side of your face; your eyes are lowered. You walked down through the trees, sun flashing off the north-facing train windows, and followed the tracks back to the station in the village of Y.

  It is rumoured that he followed her to the station and that they said their last farewell on the steps, or even on the platform itself, or perhaps they took their final parting some months later at the large central station in the city of Z — he had learned she was to leave that night for a distant part of the country. That, amid porters and tired children, he tried one last time to convince her of the importance of their staying together, especially now.

  Coming out of a dream or moving into a tunnel, he hears a voice. Seconds pass before he recognizes the soft say-so of the Haida Indian who pushes his wheelchair through the dead leaves. He’s in North America and it’s autumn or early winter. The Haida is saying, You have a good family, three, four members? As he wheels me through the damp woods, the train begins to wail by. Just before the culminating blast, three faces pose in the window of the sixteenth car, pale young girls. I try to say something about the blitz. It’s not hard: my tongue moves, my lips frame the words, the roar of the train does not drown them.

  The three nurses were watching me from the hospital window, two pretty, and one thin and plain. The former had their arms akimbo; the other pressed her palms against the plate glass which bulged and shone in the sunlight. The Haida gardener was burning a pile of leaves; the right side of his face glowed flame red. Your eyes watch me struggle with the barbed wire; a birthmark covers the right hemisphere of your face, the eyes are bloodshot; it appears you have been crying. We were laughing, the thin nurse pushing me back into my wheelchair, poised for a moment, laughing together. As the barbs dug deeper, a train whistled and the girl with the birthmark says we must go back inside, it’s lunchtime. It happens so. We have said goodbye. She walks down through the trees, into the valley and along the tracks, past the hospital where a gardener is burning leaves. I watch until you pass out of sight and are in my arms again on Platform A. I watch until it gets cold and the nurse comes to fetch me in. I watch until the smoke hides the sun, the trestle, and the train; hides your face, framed by hands against the window of the twenty-third car. Yours is the only face for the whole length of the train: pale and thin, motionless. The late sun catches the left side of your face. She was watching me close my eyes.

  With eyes closed, beside the clattering train, he finds time to notice details: the station dissolves into the wooded valley. (I’m standing on the platform under baskets of blue flowers.) He’s sitting on a high, sparsely treed ridge; far below, the trestle and embankment quake. With wrists behind his back, he is trapped against the fence. Two barbs wound his neck and shoulder. The other barbs grasping the back of his corduroy shirt are at too obtuse an angle to penetrate skin. He has no wheelchair: his own hands grip the outer silver wheels which would, if he could summon the will, drive the rubber wheels crackling over dry leaves on the hard path. He can’t move. At every effort, the barbs dig deeper into his neck and shoulder, tearing the skin a little. Sleep has long been denied him, his eyes are closed, he cannot waken. He has a cycle of nightmares, a child’s dream of a black train coming out of a tunnel.

  They won’t give me my teeth. I am waiting for someone I love. I’ve not opened my eyes for some time. The nurse says I’m obstinate. Periodically, I’m fed slops and soft fruit by spoon, even the coffee by spoon. Not an appealing sight, I’m sure. I can imagine. My folded wheelchair leans against the wall, under the window, across from the bed. Other, electric chairs, hum by. The bed rises and falls. A paper is pressed into my hand. I’m told it is a letter, but in my hand it’s paper. And yet I cry out, or perhaps just sigh, it’s difficult to tell. I suck my gums and feel large drops of water running down my cheeks. I am shaved and washed. It’s how I recognize a new day.

  You’ve been gone so long that I’ve slept into this room with its large windows; grown used to the various events of the day, subtle changes of light. I used to propel myself, now am propelled, from the door to the windows, from the windows to the door. Sometimes I collide with the bed. Yesterday I was raped. It came as no surprise, like the rain. It always rains. It was raining when I first closed my eyes, or first tried to open them, I forget which. The nurses and doctors chat together. I hear much talk of flooding. But yesterday is nonsense. I was not raped and it never rains. All the banter is of somewhere else.

  Meanwhile, I’m feeding the unreal penguins on the imitation beach, dreaming myself as an object far away. You carry part of me, but it’s none of your business. Until you come back I’m lost, but it’s nothing to do with you. I found this room long ago, with its view of buses, railway ties, moss on trees, flooded fields.

  I remember asking you to hurt me. I said, I must be the one to suffer, since I do it so well. We laughed. I said, I will forget about myself and wait for you and not know how long to wait.

  I must tell you, the suffering didn’t last long. When I first met Angela, I’d been married for years and my wife had been dead for years. We had no children, but now I have a grandson. Angela’s much too old to call me Dad. You’ve got years left, Dad, she tells me. Makes me smile. Well, perhaps I can live for a while, even without my teeth.

  It had begun to rain the night before. We ran through puddles with your luggage up the steps of the central station. In the vast inside, between the trains and the street, we kissed goodbye. I could’ve waited with you for another hour, but you’d made up your mind; prolonging the goodbye, you said, would be miserable. I felt you had already left. At the exit, I turned and waved. I should have run back and at least embraced you again. I thought afterward that I should’ve stayed the hour. But now my eyes open and I can’t see the edge, any edge, so it’s easy to think such things. My fingers on the bed railings are weak; not the fingers that traced light circles round each of your breasts in the cold hotel room that morning while the rain poured outside. We ate honeydew in the bathtub and turned all the burners up on the gas stove to warm the room. I went back to bed and sat smoking while you stood at the window wearing nothing.

  I dream about penguins. Only consciously can I constitute your face, starting with the eyes, lowered. Each added detail brings a memory. I say to the nurse, A long time ago I stopped trying to forget her, now it’s a struggle to remember her. I say to Angela, You’re just like your mother. I remember your eyes.

  We are young and I’m waiting for you at the zoo and it’s stopped raining. We are to meet by the penguins. I’m early and only a few people walk around the cages. A little boy asks if I’ve had a good sleep. My eyes close again against the red sun. When yo
u arrive, we sit together on the bench beside the cement pit. I say I’m thinking of what it would be like to live with you. A penguin raises his wings, tilts back his head, squawks. I’d get used to your body. A father reads the sign to his daughter — Do Not Feed The Penguins — she’s just emptied her popcorn into the pool. I’d dream of our child. Penguins have a special diet, he explains, leading her away.

  She comes to visit me from time to time. She feeds me with a spoon and pushes me about the gardens, trying to make me open my eyes. She tells me about her son and dries my cheeks with the edge of her blouse or a handkerchief before she leaves me on the bench just inside the zoo. Sometimes I remain there all night. In the morning, the keeper finds me and bathes and shaves my face, raises and lowers the bed, dresses me, then lifts me into my wheelchair. Ah, a new day. I sit in the corridor, composing your face and singing “Ich bin die fesche Lola”.

  I awake prone, my arms and legs spread wide, a rhythmic pain at the anus. A grunting body thrusts furiously on top of me. Opening my eyes, just a fraction, not struggling, I see moss on a tree outside the window. A train motionless in the station. On Platform A, beside a crowd of commuters, the stationmaster looks at his watch. Three nurses hum by and a boy in Scout uniform asks if I have slept well. I throw the thawed herring into the penguin pit and look up. I recognize you even at this distance. Stuffing your letter back into my pocket, I run to meet you. The paper blows along the platform and falls over the edge. It lands between two ties just this side of the rails. Standing beside your luggage, we embrace; your eyes are lowered; over your shoulder, I see a man with a brown case, hurrying toward us. You turn as the penguins, one by one, dive into the water. Outside the hotel room it’s raining and your body seems slick in the light through the streaming glass: he’s caressing the inside of your thighs with his lips, now with his heavy fingers. As I close my eyes, I’m supine and his weight is the weight of the bed at my back; the bed is raised and a spoon nudges at my lips.

  I do not believe in trains black and rushing beside the ditch into town, far below the fence against which I have fallen.

  The path through the trees where the crows yell gleams in the dawn light. A mist rises where the train rushes. A breeze chills the skin through the rent in my corduroy shirt.

  Farther along, the ditch and the fence stop, the shops and the first sidewalks appear through the fog. The pedestrians ignore the train whistle. In Y each shop window is lit. A bell rings and the sun comes out as I go up the steps into the station; as I go through the station, a Boy Scout passes me. He closes his mouth after saying something I do not quite catch. On the platform blue stars are falling from the hanging baskets.

  I near the station, carry a brown suitcase. Later, my body lies cold on the wood ties, bound with thin cord between the rails. Later still, I pretend to insert myself where I already am: watching you walking the tracks, wearing a white tulle dress.

  I’m blind. The view from the hospital bed is neither the view from the bluff, nor the view from the moving train. The girl on the train has been warned of her father’s condition.

  The train shakes the white linen. The dry leaves scuffle along. The clink of a spoon on the cup’s rim. The old man is raised up in bed; he hears water splash in the basin, presently feels warm fingers along his chin. The young man watches the penguins. The Haida performs his tasks in the large gardens attached to the rich peoples’ houses on the outskirts of Y. The zookeeper stands on the beach looking for his cages. You are not tied to the tracks, but I am lashed between the rails. You wear a white tulle dress with the top buttons undone; I do not wear the corduroy shirt with a rip in the collar and a larger rip at the shoulder, which I tore when I escaped the barbed wire. Because I’m waiting for the train, because the train is always present, I didn’t feel the cold; your breasts were exposed and still not cold.

  Three nurses watched the train pass. Each told me, though not all at the same moment, about the pale face of a young woman in the fourteenth car. The face pressed to the glass seemed to be silent or praying. You do not feel the cold of the rails because you are between them. It’s not at all cold, Dad. It’s quite warm, really. Beautiful outside. The sun’s shining. I feel the grass touch my back where the shirt’s torn open; the wood ties are damp, but I only notice the wet at last, the final addendum. On the bluff the young man falls against the. Fade.

  The barbs dig deeper. Jump.

  Angela watches as I open my eyes. Fade.

  Beside the bed she grasps her father’s hand. A nurse with a birthmark covering the entire right side of her face enters pushing a silver trolley which she places close to the bed. The girl and the nurse exchange the usual remarks concerning the train journey, a grandson, the old man, the condition of his skin, his blood, his refusal to see. His other family never visits, the nurse confides. I try to tell Angela: The nurse says that I’ve been singing Dietrich songs in the corridor, but that may not be true. I dream of firebombs coming for me down the middle of the road. She tells me the zoo has been replaced by mansions. The nurse kneels at the foot of the bed and adjusts the controls: the silver handle on her right four revolutions counterclockwise, the silver handle on her left seven revolutions clockwise then half a turn back.

  As the bombs explode closer, a train whistles and the girl walks down the slope of the hill to where a gardener is raking leaves just inside a low hedge. He now has a pile four feet high. She stops at his side. He says he plans to ignite the leaves shortly. They chat about the usual things: the slow postman, the infrequent buses — not remarkable in a rural place like Y. She says, There used to be a zoo there. The gardener says, You have a good family? Three members, four members? They are silent as the train begins to wail by.

  Angela learned that her father was dying and of his apparent blindness from a piece of paper unfolded on the kitchen table beside the yellow-handled bread knife with which she slits the envelope neatly open, takes out the sheet of typewritten paper, smooths it flat and, as before, appears to read the symbols on the page: the hospital crest, the address in the town of X, the date. Her fingers allow the paper to slip back onto the table, to rest lightly on the wood surface.

  Through the window can be seen a hedge of green leaves, a child’s red tricycle lying on its side.

  At the station, she buys a ticket and prepares to board the train; on the platform, she’s harassed by a man carrying a brown suitcase who insists that he knows she’ll leave, but he’s prepared to stand the torture her departure engenders. Tears stream down his face.

  He explains the dimensions of his love and how he will wait for her. She quickly boards the train. How he has dreamed of the child they will have. You boarded the train and took a seat beside a window overlooking the platform at the precise point about to be crossed by the man who explains the dimensions of his love. The platform empties in preparation; you wave goodbye to the single figure; you note the sign Z Central as the train gathers speed; you pass through a tiny station, Y, approach the sign X. The man is leaning back against the stock fence.

  Angela’s face, framed by her hands pressed to the window of the fourteenth car, is very white.

  I’m not on the platform, not in the ward, with closed eyes, not feeling the spoon nudge my lips.

  BRICK AND RIVET AND LIME

  SIMON CAME TO HIMSELF ON THE McPhillips Street rail pass at the edge of the city, stunned by the multifoliation of tracks west and east. And there he swayed, making a deep study, having trouble breathing, though he loved the bowtie motif.

  He suffered particularly in January, a time when everything had been taken from him. On the street, he couldn’t pass a Model T or a silver Mercedes coupe without feeling his legs slow, bloated with water. Raw-fingered, he violated the gloss with a blade he kept for the purpose. Long scratches carrying messages of love. He’d given up imagining owning or driving such a car. Employment was a mean and faint memory. In crowds, he found God in the formal beauty of transport technology and, at dusk, climbed rickety fire escapes t
o supervise traffic patterns. Lonely and cold, he wandered the skyline, displacing crows and gulls, winged nuns with gentle faces. For hours each night he claimed dominion over those who slept below in the fairy lights while he was free to roam the roofs of condemned buildings, descending only once in a blue fingernail of moon for restaurant scraps from the Italian’s. It pained him, mornings, how the bells of the city echoed in his pounding head the way he’d clanged bars in the joint, though he’d been with pals, working himself into a frenzy for exotic cars, and had dark souls to share the passion with in that low-down brilliance.

  He came to himself and blushed. Nostalgia kindled the camaraderie of his rainy post-war days till they blazed. Blissful weeks on scaffolds setting bricks, gazing down, high-strung, chilled in the feet, and then hypnotized as conveniently as night is by dawn by world travel, nihilism and anarchy, designer wars conceived by the girls in the back room, till it all wound up in the picket fence.

  Exhaling as he fell, nostrils flared, he felt a smaller body falling beside him. “What, are you dead, too?”

  “No, Dad. I’m well enough. No complaints.”

  “Listen, kid, we don’t have much time. Anything I should know?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  Simon deep in thought, and son respectfully quiet, spun down and down toward the snowbanked shoulder below. He felt the graceful change: elegance and peace smoothed out his forehead.

  “Dad? Do fingerprints ever grow in again?”