Read Online All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews - Free Book Online Page A

thing now. He liked the step-by-stepness of it, the process. He held the record the way people hold records, not with his fingers but with his palms. He blew on it. The music was a soft whisper, one acoustic guitar, no voices. When he came back to the table he asked me to look at his eyes.
    They’re seeping, he said. Like I have an infection or something.
    Pink eye? I asked.
    I don’t know, he said. They always seem to be running, just clear liquid, not pus. I lie in bed and all this liquid dribbles out the sides. Maybe I should see a doctor, or optometrist or something.
    You’re crying, Nic.
    No …
    Yes. That’s what they call crying.
    But all the time? he asked. I’m not even conscious of it then.
    It’s a new kind of crying, I said. For new times. I leaned over and put my hands on his shoulders and then on the sides of his face in the same way that he’d held his record.
    We sat quietly for a while then Nic told me Elf was supposed to be doing a run-through in three weeks, two days before the opening. I said there was no way she would be ready and heagreed because all she talks about is not being able to do the tour, and the sooner concerned parties got the news the better. Then I told him to just call Claudio, he would deal with it, the way he’s always dealt with it.
    I’ll phone Claudio if you want, I said.
    Well, maybe we should hold off a bit.
    I think he needs to know now.
    Listen, I know what Claudio will say, said Nic. He’ll say, let’s wait and see. He’ll think she can come out of it again, like she did last time. He’ll say performing saved her life and that’s what it will do again.
    Maybe.
    And maybe he’s right and she should be pushed a little bit and she’ll be okay.
    Yeah, I said.
    But … she obviously doesn’t have to do the tour if she doesn’t want to do the tour, said Nic. It doesn’t matter in the big picture. I’m just saying that she might suddenly decide she really wants to do it and then …
    Yeah, so we shouldn’t cancel now, I said.
    Nic’s head fell to the table, slowly, like a snowflake. His arm was stretched out beneath it, his empty palm in the shape of a little cup.
    Nic, I said. Hey Nic, you should go to bed.
    We did then what we always did at the end of our talks. We sighed, rubbed our faces, grimaced, smiled, shrugged, and then we talked about a few other things, like the kayak that Nic is building from scratch in his basement, and his plan to finish it soon and in springtime carry it on his head down to the river which is only a block away and paddle upstream to somewhere,that will be the hard part, and then drift downstream all the way home again.
    I left him sitting at his computer, his face lit up like Boris Karloff in the ghostly funnel of the monitor’s light. I wondered what he was looking at. What sorts of things do you google when your favourite person in the world is determined to leave it? I got into my mother’s car and checked my phone. A text from Nora in Toronto:
How’s Elf? I need your permission to get my belly button pierced. Pleeeze???? Love you!
Another one from Radek inviting me over. He’s a sad-eyed Czech violinist that I met when I was walking with Julie on her delivery route the last time I visited Winnipeg. (He was actually the reason
why
I accompanied her on her route. She had mentioned that she delivered mail to a really handsome European guy who also seemed lonely and desperate. Like you, Yoli, she’d said.) He had come to Winnipeg to write a libretto. But who hasn’t? It’s a dark and fecund corner of the world, this confluence of muddy waters, one that begs the question of hey, how
do
we set words to life’s tragic score? Radek and I don’t speak the same language, not really, but he listens to me patiently, comprehending, well, I don’t really know what—that if he sits tight for an hour or two listening to me ramble on about my failings in a language he doesn’t really understand he’ll eventually, inshallah, get