Read Online The Abundance of the Infinite by Christopher Canniff - Free Book Online Page B

right, look at you. You’re too thin. You’re a beach dweller, a nomad. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. No, I’m sorry … I take that back. Maybe I should be ashamed of myself for saying that … but you’ve only been gone, what, a month, or a month and a half, and look at you. You should have some pride in yourself, if you’re going to be chasing after Ecuadorian women. Have you met anyone here? Are you searching for someone? What is your purpose here? Why are you staying here in Manta, because your father lived here before? What was he doing here for so long? Was it a woman? Why did he come here initially? You said before that he never truly acknowledged having had a family, and his escape was through being here in this place and through alcoholism, an extended vacation, one that in his case lasted decades—but why Manta? Was it a manta ray he saw in a dream, like one of those fish that swim above the bottom of the sea, and then he found this place on a map and somehow connected the two? Was he as preposterous as you? Remember, you’re the ridiculous one, not me. His wife, your mother, was she from here? No? He had little money, wanted to live a lifetime on it paying the Señora twenty or thirty dollars a month for rent and food, and found a school that needed English teachers in an obscure and isolated fishing village in an obscure and isolated part of the globe? I’m sorry, I’m rambling, I’ve been drinking a bit, I’m sorry if you don’t think that’s right in my condition, but did you really want to be here, away from all those you love? A place, after all, is only as good as the people who inhabit it. Why did you want to leave? Why do you stay away? How much longer will you remain? You said you would be away for a month, but you’ve already been gone that long and you haven’t returned. You’re going to, you say? Really? Or do you plan to stay here as long as your father did? Is this to become the ultimate egoistical endeavor of your life, your dreams amplified? Dreams are egoistic, you always liked to quote Freud. He said dreams were the ultimate form of egoism, did you know that? Of course, you must know that. You probably even told me that. I can’t tell you anything you don’t know about him. But listen, when were you truly planning on coming back to see us? And what are the demons that have chased you away? Your daughter, look she’s opened her eyes, and she’s looking at you now. She’s telling you that she needs you, look, I’ll unravel her tiny blanket so you can see her clubbed feet. She’s smelling you now. Babies are sensitive, even to the smells of their father.…
    Are you really coming home?

16

    Yelena and Annabelle are in my apartment. Not simply my visual impression of them but their voices, their bodies, their souls. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them sleeping together on my bed, making the same outline as Karen had as I painted her on the couch.
    Yelena is solemn and sweet in her sleep. Annabelle is a symphony of silence.
    Yelena has changed. She is an adventurer, and has followed me here. She has never been far from her homes in Canada and Russia before—except for when I finally convinced her to go to Spain with me. She lived in Russia until she was six, when her family moved to Canada. She described the Russian wheat fields in the region near Moscow where she lived, golden and flowing, with the wind beneath wide expanses of sky, that have produced themselves to me in my sleeping moments.
    She is comfortable in her loneliness, she has told me before. What does this mean? Am I as comfortable in my own as I profess to be?
    My paint brush flicks along the lines of Yelena’s body from the nape of her neck to the small of her back, down to the extent of her polished toenails. After creating a single portrait of Yelena I go on to paint a multitude of different views of