In the Skin of a Lion Page 14

  It must be around midnight. The noise on deck is ceaseless with the orchestra weaving its way through suspicious love, tentative love. The frail music filters down into this large kitchen which he seems to own. He knows he will be caught, probably imprisoned, but for now he thrills to this brief freedom.

  He squeezes out the clothes, turns on the large ovens, spreads his shirt and trousers flat, and slides them in with a baker’s paddle. Then he looks for food. There are some cooked potatoes. He pulls out a slab of raw meat from the fridge and crouches behind the counter. He eats only the potato demurely. He cuts the meat into strips with a sharp knife and eats it, licking the juice that dribbles down his arm. Now and then he gets up to drink from the taps and to keep an eye on his clothes cooking at low heat in the oven.

  3

  CARAVAGGIO

  THERE WAS A blue tin jail roof. They were painting the Kingston Penitentiary roof blue up to the sky so that after a while the three men working on it became uncertain of clear boundaries. As if they could climb up further, beyond the tin, into that ocean above the roof.

  By noon, after four hours, they felt they could walk on the blue air. The prisoners Buck and Lewis and Caravaggio knew this was a trick, a humiliation of the senses. Why an intentional blue roof? They could not move without thinking twice where a surface stopped. There were times when Patrick Lewis, government paintbrush in hand, froze. Taking a seemingly innocent step he would fall through the air and die. They were fifty yards from the ground. The paint pails were joined by rope – one on each slope – so two men could move across the long roof symmetrically. They sat on the crest of the roof during their breaks eating sandwiches, not coming down all day. They leaned the heels of their hands into the wet paint as they worked. They would scratch their noses and realize they became partly invisible. If they painted long enough they would be eradicated, blue birds in a blue sky. Patrick Lewis understood this, painting a bug that would not move away alive onto the blue metal.

  Demarcation, said the prisoner named Caravaggio. That is all we need to remember.

  And that was how he escaped – a long double belt strapped under his shoulders attaching him to the cupola so he could hang with his arms free, splayed out, while Buck and Patrick painted him, covering his hands and boots and hair with blue. They daubed his clothes and then, laying a strip of handkerchief over his eyes, painted his face blue, so he was gone – to the guards who looked up and saw nothing there.

  When the search had died down, and the lights-out whistle had gone off, Caravaggio still remained as he was, unable to see what he knew would be a sliver of new moon that gave off little light. A thief’s moon. He could hear Lake Ontario in this new silence after the wind died. The flutter of sailboats. A clatter of owl claw on the tin roof. He began to move in his cocoon of dry paint – at first unable to break free of the stiffness which encased him, feeling his clothes crack as he bent his arm to remove the handkerchief. He saw nothing but the night. He unhooked the belt. Uncoiling the rope hidden around the cupola, he let himself down off the roof.

  He ran through the township of Bath with the white rectangle over his eyes, looking for a hardware store he could break into. He was an exotic creature who had to escape from his blue skin before daylight. But there was not one hardware or paint shop. He broke into a clothing store and in the darkness stripped and dressed in whatever would fit him from the racks. In the rooms above the store he could hear jazz on the radio, the music a compass for him. His hands felt a mirror but he would not turn on the light. He took gloves. He jumped onto a slow milk-train and climbed onto the roof. It was raining. He removed his belt, tied himself on safely, and slept.

  In Trenton he untied himself and rolled off down the embankment just as the train began to move again. He was still blue, unable to see what he looked like. He undressed and laid his clothes out on the grass so he could see them in the daylight in a human shape. He knew nothing about the town of Trenton except that it was three hours from Toronto by train. He slept again. In the late afternoon, walking in the woods that skirted the industrial section, he saw REDICK’S SASH AND DOOR FACTORY. He groomed himself as well as he could and stepped out of the trees – a green sweater, black trousers, blue boots, and a blue head.

  There was a kid sitting on a pile of lumber behind the store who saw him the moment he stepped into the clearing. The boy didn’t move at all, just regarded him as he walked, trying to look casual, the long twenty-five yards to the store. Caravaggio crouched in front of the boy.

  – What’s your name?

  – Alfred.

  – Will you go in there, Al, and see if you can find me some turpentine?

  – Are you from the movie company?

  – The movie? He nodded.

  The kid ran off and returned a few minutes later, still alone. That was good.

  – Your dad own this place?

  – No, I just like it here. All the doors propped outside, where they don’t belong – things where they shouldn’t be.

  While the boy spoke Caravaggio tore off the tail of his shirt.

  – There is another place in town where you can see outboard motors and car engines hanging off branches.

  – Yeah? Al, can you help me get this off my face and hair?

  – Sure.

  They sat in the late afternoon sunlight by the doors, the boy dipping the shirt-tail into the tin and wiping the colour off Caravaggio’s face. The two of them talked quietly about the other place where the engines hung from the trees. When Caravaggio unbuttoned his shirt the boy saw the terrible scars across his neck and gasped. It looked to him as if some giant bird had left claw marks from trying to lift off the man’s head. Caravaggio told him to forget the movie, he was not an actor, he was from prison. “I’m Caravaggio – the painter,” he laughed. The boy promised never to say anything.

  They decided that his hair should be cut off, so the boy went back into the store and came back giggling and shrugging with some rose shears. Soon Caravaggio looked almost bald, certainly unrecognizable. When the owner of Redick’s Door Factory was busy, Caravaggio used the bathroom, soaping and washing the turpentine off his face. He saw his neck for the first time in a mirror, scarred from the prison attack three months earlier.

  In the yard the boy wrote out his name on a piece of paper. From his pocket he took out an old maple-syrup spile with the year 1882 on it, and he wrapped the paper around it. When the man came back, cleaned up, the boy handed it to him. The man said, “I don’t have anything to give you now.” The kid grinned, very happy. “I know,” he said. “Remember my name.”

  He was running, his boots disappearing into grey bush. Away from Lake Ontario, travelling north where he knew he could find some unopened cottage to stay quietly for a few days. Landscape for Caravaggio was never calm. A tree bending with difficulty, a flower thrashed by wind, a cloud turning black, a cone falling – everything moved anguished at separate speeds. When he ran he saw it all. The eye splintering into fifteen sentries, watching every approach.

  He ran with the Trent canal system on his right, passing the red lock buildings and their concrete platforms over the water. Every few miles he would stop and watch the glassy waters turn chaotic on the other side of the sluice gate, then he was off again. In two days he was as far north as Bobcaygeon. He slept that night among the lumber at the Boyd Sawmill and one evening later he was racing down a road. It was dusk. He had slept out three nights now. The last of the blue paint at his wrist.

  The first cottages showed too many signs of life, the canoes already hauled out. He retreated back up their driveways. He came to a cottage with a glassed-in porch and green shutters, painted gables, and a double-pitch roof. If the owners arrived he could swing out of the second-floor window and walk along the roof. Caravaggio looked at architecture with a perception common to thieves who saw cupboards as having weak backs, who knew fences were easier to go through than over.

  He stood breathing heavily in the dusk, looking up at the
cottage, tired of running, having eaten only bits of chocolate the boy had given him. Al. Behind him the landscape was darkening down fast. He was inside the cottage in ten seconds.

  He walked around the rooms, excited, his hand trailing off the sofa top, noticed the magazines stacked on the shelf. He turned left into a kitchen and used a knife to saw open a can. Darkness. He wanted no lights on tonight. He dug the knife into the can and gulped down beans, too hungry and tired for a spoon. Then he went upstairs and ripped two blankets off a bed and spread them out in the upstairs hall beside the window which led to the roof.

  He hated the hours of sleep. He was a man who thrived and worked in available light. At night his wife would sleep in his embrace but the room around him continued to be alive, his body porous to every noise, his stare painting out darkness. He would sleep as insecurely as a thief does, which is why they are always tired.

  He climbs into black water. A temperature of blood. He sees and feels no horizon, no edge to the liquid he is in. The night air is forensic. An animal slips into the water.

  This river is not deep, he can walk across it. His boots, laces tied to each other, are hanging around his neck. He doesn’t want them wet but he goes deeper and he feels them filling, the extra weight of water in them now. The floor of the river feels secure. Mud. Sticks. A bridge a hundred yards south of him made of concrete and wood. A tug at his boot beside the collarbone.

  As Caravaggio sleeps, his head thrown back, witnessing a familiar nightmare, three men enter his prison cell in silence. The men enter and Patrick in the cell opposite on the next level up watches them and all language dries up. As they raise their hands over Caravaggio, Patrick breaks into a square-dance call – “Allemand left your corners all” – screaming it absurdly as warning up into the stone darkness. The three men turn to the sudden noise and Caravaggio is on his feet struggling out of his nightmare.

  The men twist his grey sheet into a rope and wind it around his eyes and nose. Caravaggio can just breathe, he can just hear their blows as if delayed against the side of his head. They swing him tied up in the sheet until he is caught in the arms of another. Then another blow. Patrick’s voice continuing to shout out, the other cells alive now and banging too. “Birdie fly out and the crow fly in, crow fly out and give birdie a spin.” His father’s language emerging from somewhere in his past, now a soundtrack for murder.

  The animal from the nightmare bares its teeth. Caravaggio swerves and its mouth rips open the boot to the right of his neck. Water is released. He feels himself becoming lighter. Being swung from side to side, no vision, no odour, he is ten years old and tilting wildly in a tree. A wall or an arm hits him. “Fucking wop! Fucking dago!” “Honour your partner, dip and dive.” His hands are up squabbling with this water creature – sacrificing the hands to protect the body. The inside of his heart feels bloodless. He swallows dry breath. He needs more than anything to get on his knees and lap up water from a saucer.

  Three men who have evolved smug and without race slash out. “Hello wop.” And the man’s kick into his stomach lets free the singer again as if a Wurlitzer were nudged, fast and flat tones weaving through a two-step as the men begin to beat the blindfolded Caravaggio. What allies with Caravaggio is only the singer, otherwise his mind is still caught underwater. Then they let him go.

  He stands there still blindfolded, his hands out. The caller in the cell opposite quietens knowing Caravaggio needs to listen within the silence for any clue as to where the men are. They are dumb beasts. He could steal the teeth out of their mouths. Everyone watches but him, eyes covered, hands out.

  The homemade filed-down razor teeth swing in an arc to his throat, to the right of the ripped-open boot. He drops back against the limestone wall. The other leather boot releases its cup-like hold on the water as if a lung gives up. A vacuum of silence.

  He realizes the men have gone. The witness, the caller from the upper level, begins to talk quietly to him. “They have cut your neck. Do you understand! They have cut your neck. You must staunch it till someone comes.” Then Patrick screams into the limestone darkness for help.

  Caravaggio finds the bed. He gets to his knees on the mattress – head and elbows propping up his bruised body so nothing touches the pain. The blood flows along his chin into his mouth. He feels as if he has eaten the animal that attacked him and he spits out everything he can, old saliva, blood, spits again and again. Everything is escaping. His left hand touches his neck and it is not there.

  The next morning Caravaggio explored the shoreline around the cottage in a canoe. He was out on the lake when a woman in another canoe emerged into the bay and hailed him. Red hair. The clear creamy skin of a witch. She wore a hat tied with a scarf and she waved to him in absolute confidence that if he was in a canoe on this lake he was acceptable and safe, even though every piece of clothing he wore was stolen from the blue bureau in the cottage. The lavender shirt, the white ducks, the tennis shoes. He stopped paddling. Performing intricate strokes she pulled up alongside him.

  – You are staying with the Neals.

  – How did you know?

  She gestured to the canoe. Here people recognized canoes.

  – Are they coming up for August?

  – I think so. They were unsure.

  – They always are. I’m Anne, a neighbour.

  She pointed to the next property. She had on a bathing suit and a light skirt and was barefoot, the paddle resting on her shoulder.

  – I’m David.

  Drops of water slid along the brown wood and onto her skin. He looked at her stunningly poreless face that now and then revealed itself out from the shadow of her straw hat. He decided to be direct about his tentative status.

  – I’m here to get my bearings.

  – This is a good place for that.

  He looked up at her again, differently now, past the white creamy face and bare arms.

  – Why did you say it like that?

  Her hand up to shield off the sun. A questioning look.

  – What you just said …

  – Just that I love this place. It can heal you if you are here alone. Are you an artist?

  – What?

  – You have aquamarine on your neck.

  He smiled. He had spent so long calling it blue.

  – I should go, he said.

  She lifted her paddle forward so it was across her knees, nodding to herself, realizing a wall had just been placed between them. Their canoes banged together and she backpaddled. He had never heard anyone speak as generously as she had in that one sentence. This is a good place.

  – Thank you.

  She turned, puzzled.

  – For pointing out the aquamarine.

  – Well … enjoy the lake.

  – I will.

  She sensed his withdrawal. Alone, not having seen anyone for weeks, she had come too close, spoken too loudly. He watched the frailness of her back as she canoed away from him.

  Caravaggio looked over the body of water as if it were human now, a creature on whose back he shifted. He did not think of approaches or exits, suddenly there could be only descent or companionship.

  The first time Caravaggio had noticed Patrick Lewis gazing down from the opposite cell, he had simply waved and looked elsewhere. Most of Caravaggio’s time in prison was spent in restless sleep. The night light of cells, the constant noise, made him nervous. The prisoner opposite who had tried to burn down the Muskoka Hotel was worse. He always sat up erect on the bed watching the movements below him. When Caravaggio returned from the hospital, his throat sewn up after the attack, Patrick was waiting for him. And when Caravaggio woke in pain suddenly the next afternoon, he turned to find the man’s gaze reassuring him. Patrick had sat up there smoking precisely, moving his hand and cigarette fully away from his face when he blew the smoke out.

  – Do you have a red dog? he asked Caravaggio a few days later.

  – Russet, he whispered back.

  – You’re the thief, r
ight?

  – The best there is, that’s why, as you can see, I’m here.

  – Someone let you down, I suppose.

  – Yes. The red dog.

  He had trained as a thief in unlit rooms, dismantling the legs of a kitchen table, unscrewing the backs of radios and the bottoms of toasters. He would draw the curtains to block out any hint of streetlight and empty the kitchen cupboards then put everything back, having to remember as he worked where all the objects were on the floor. Such pelmanism. While his wife slept he moved the furniture out of her bedroom and brought in the sofa, changed the pictures on the wall, the doilies on the bedside table.

  In daylight he moved slowly as if conserving remnants of energy – a bat in post-coital flight. He would step into an upholstery shop to pick up a parcel for his wife and read the furniture, displacing in his mind the chairs through that window, the harvest table through the door at a thirty-degree angle veering right.

  As a thief he had a sense of the world which was limited to what existed for twenty feet around him.

  During his first robbery Caravaggio injured himself leaping from a second-storey window. He lay on his back with a cracked ankle on the Whitevale lawn, a Jeffreys drawing in his arms. He lay there as the family walked into the house and shrieked when they came upon the chloroformed dog. All the porch lights went on, the shadow of a tree luckily falling across him.