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Authors: David Macfarlane
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were lovely days. Time never passed the same way again.
I added my own information to hers—a little reluctantly, at first, but she insisted that I contribute to the stories we told. She always thought they were parts of the same history anyway. Arbitrary distinctions—such as the division between the past and the present—were not of much interest to her. They ran counter to her sculptural instincts. If there was no obvious link between a baby abandoned in 1948 in North America and the Italian Renaissance, Anna would figure one out. So, at her request, I told her about growing up in Cathcart. I told her that the path from Pietrabella to her farmhouse reminded me of the trails along the wooded, limestone ridge behind the Hughsons’ house where I played as a child.
Anna found ways—some almost plausible, I admit—to weave our stories together. I was never sure whether this construct was a metaphor, or whether she thought it was close to the truth. In either case, it expressed the same view: she believed the universe had conspired to bring the two of us together.
I am someone who has been described—usually by disappointed women—as unemotional. But the truth is I am too emotional.As a child, flushes of happiness would pass through me like shocks—often during recess in the green washroom of the school I attended.
Actually, there was no green in it. The floor was a blue-grey composite stone and the walls were brown tile. The copper pipes were luscious with condensation, and the full-length porcelain urinals marble-like in dignity. They were white as icebergs.
But somehow the basement air was green. It was like being deep in an ancient sea. The water fountains, the wooden toilet stalls, and the smell of the janitor’s Dustbane created a sub-aquatic effect—clean, cool, dripping, spacious. I would not have been surprised by drifting jellyfish.
Recess was a relief from the blank, thick air of the classrooms above. Don’t read too much into this, but peeing into a urinal the size of a sarcophagus caused a rush of pleasure—a pleasure I couldn’t always manage to conceal. The little seizures of joy that overtook me made me shiver—often with disastrous impact on my aim. I contain sadness no more successfully.
At the end of the summer of 1968 I hid from your mother my decision to leave her until almost the last possible moment. This was because I was selfish and cowardly. But it was also because I have no capacity for unhappiness. I couldn’t imagine being with Anna when we were not happy. So I made our period of being miserable together as brief as possible. And as awful. She did not take the news at all well.
Later that night, after my telling Anna I would be leaving, I came back to her farmhouse alone, returning from a party of foreign artists in town. Anna and I had gone to the party together—in glum silence. She was furious. But once we arrived, her mood appeared to change. Ridding herself of me seemed part of this transformation. But perhaps less important a partthan I might think—or so the coldness of her eyes conveyed the few times our gazes met through the crowd in the smoky, noisy studio. She laughed, and she danced, and she sang “Bella Ciao.” She was dancing quite a lot with a young sculptor from Rotterdam. And it must have been close to midnight when I realized they were both no longer there.
I walked back, alone. And the moment of my arrival at the farmhouse coincided with her climax. One of them, anyway. Anna could wake the dead sometimes.
I’ve always wondered: When Anna was in the Dutchman’s arms, with her back arching off her bed, did she somehow know that I was standing on the path? And was what I heard in the thick, otherwise quiet darkness not at all what I thought it was? Was she wailing some Tuscan
maledizione
through the bedroom window at my humiliated silhouette?
If so, the curse would have been a particularly pointed one. Knowing Anna. My guess is it would have been
I added my own information to hers—a little reluctantly, at first, but she insisted that I contribute to the stories we told. She always thought they were parts of the same history anyway. Arbitrary distinctions—such as the division between the past and the present—were not of much interest to her. They ran counter to her sculptural instincts. If there was no obvious link between a baby abandoned in 1948 in North America and the Italian Renaissance, Anna would figure one out. So, at her request, I told her about growing up in Cathcart. I told her that the path from Pietrabella to her farmhouse reminded me of the trails along the wooded, limestone ridge behind the Hughsons’ house where I played as a child.
Anna found ways—some almost plausible, I admit—to weave our stories together. I was never sure whether this construct was a metaphor, or whether she thought it was close to the truth. In either case, it expressed the same view: she believed the universe had conspired to bring the two of us together.
I am someone who has been described—usually by disappointed women—as unemotional. But the truth is I am too emotional.As a child, flushes of happiness would pass through me like shocks—often during recess in the green washroom of the school I attended.
Actually, there was no green in it. The floor was a blue-grey composite stone and the walls were brown tile. The copper pipes were luscious with condensation, and the full-length porcelain urinals marble-like in dignity. They were white as icebergs.
But somehow the basement air was green. It was like being deep in an ancient sea. The water fountains, the wooden toilet stalls, and the smell of the janitor’s Dustbane created a sub-aquatic effect—clean, cool, dripping, spacious. I would not have been surprised by drifting jellyfish.
Recess was a relief from the blank, thick air of the classrooms above. Don’t read too much into this, but peeing into a urinal the size of a sarcophagus caused a rush of pleasure—a pleasure I couldn’t always manage to conceal. The little seizures of joy that overtook me made me shiver—often with disastrous impact on my aim. I contain sadness no more successfully.
At the end of the summer of 1968 I hid from your mother my decision to leave her until almost the last possible moment. This was because I was selfish and cowardly. But it was also because I have no capacity for unhappiness. I couldn’t imagine being with Anna when we were not happy. So I made our period of being miserable together as brief as possible. And as awful. She did not take the news at all well.
Later that night, after my telling Anna I would be leaving, I came back to her farmhouse alone, returning from a party of foreign artists in town. Anna and I had gone to the party together—in glum silence. She was furious. But once we arrived, her mood appeared to change. Ridding herself of me seemed part of this transformation. But perhaps less important a partthan I might think—or so the coldness of her eyes conveyed the few times our gazes met through the crowd in the smoky, noisy studio. She laughed, and she danced, and she sang “Bella Ciao.” She was dancing quite a lot with a young sculptor from Rotterdam. And it must have been close to midnight when I realized they were both no longer there.
I walked back, alone. And the moment of my arrival at the farmhouse coincided with her climax. One of them, anyway. Anna could wake the dead sometimes.
I’ve always wondered: When Anna was in the Dutchman’s arms, with her back arching off her bed, did she somehow know that I was standing on the path? And was what I heard in the thick, otherwise quiet darkness not at all what I thought it was? Was she wailing some Tuscan
maledizione
through the bedroom window at my humiliated silhouette?
If so, the curse would have been a particularly pointed one. Knowing Anna. My guess is it would have been
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