In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje (1987)
"This is a story a young girl gathers in a car during the early hours of the morning. She listens and asks questions as the vehicle travels through darkness. Outside, the countryside is unbetrayed. THe man who is driving could say, "In that field is a castle," and it would be possible for her to believe him.
She listens to the man as he picks up and brings together carious corners of the story, attempting ot carry it all in his arms. And he is tired, sometimes as elliptical as his concentration on the road, at times overexcited - "Do you see?" He turns to her in the faint light of the speedometer.
Driving the four hours to Marmora under six stars and a moon.
She stays awake to keep him company."
She listens to the man as he picks up and brings together carious corners of the story, attempting ot carry it all in his arms. And he is tired, sometimes as elliptical as his concentration on the road, at times overexcited - "Do you see?" He turns to her in the faint light of the speedometer.
Driving the four hours to Marmora under six stars and a moon.
She stays awake to keep him company."
BOOK ONE
Little Seeds
characters:
Patrick Lewis - protagonist, interested in insects
Hazen Lewis - Patrick's father, worked cutting trees and hay and herding cows for farmers before he becomes a dynamite man for loggers. Quiet and sullen.
loggers - live in temporary shacks behind Bellrock Hotel
cook - brings meals when Hazen is working for the logging company. Returns to camp standing upright on a log.
setting:
Bellrock farmhouse when Patrick is eleven
Depot Lakes when Patrick is fifteen
plot:
A boy (Patrick Lewis) awakes early and sees thirty loggers walking past the farmhouse down First Lake Road. Sometimes the loggers meet the cows being brought in (by Patrick's father) for milking, and they stand politely, sometimes touching the cows to warm their hands. "They must do this gently, without any sense of attack or right. They do not own this land as the owner of the cow does" (7). The loggers are seasonal workers come only in the winter, live in temporary shacks "built each December and dismantled the following Spring" behind the Bellrock Hotel. "No one in the town of Bellrock really knows where the men have come from. It takes someone else, much later, to tell the boy that. The only connection the loggers have with the town is when they emerge to skate along the line of river, on homemade skates, the blades made of old knives" (8).
* * *
The narrator says that the boy longs for summer nights, and then follows with a present tense description of a summer night for the boy. He looks in school geography books in the kitchen where moths collect at the windows because it is the only light. He goes outside and plays his double-ocarina for the insects.
The boys father cuts hay and wood and herds cattle for two or three farms. In the summer the cows go south of the creek for pasture and he rounds them up for milking. In the winter they go to a pasture barn, but once one cow wanders toward the pasture and gets stuck in the creek. The boy and his father go out on the ice and reach into the water under the cow to pass a rope beneath her, then use the horses to pull her out. His father cuts the ropes from the cow when they are difficult to untie, and for a man who always insists on unknotting to save rope, this is an "outrageous, luxurious act" (14). Patrick sleeps in Hazen's bed with him that night to share the heat, and as he falls asleep he remembers finding caterpillar nests with for his father in the summer, and the little flares as his father ignites them with gasoline.
* * *
In the drive-shad Hazen makes a chalk outline of Patrick (still referred to here as "the boy") and blows the head out with explosives. The winter when Patrick is fifteen, Hazenis cutting a hemlock when he stops and comes inside. "At some moment chopping into hemlock, hearnig only the axe and its pivoting echo, he must have imagined the trees and permafrost and maple syrup ovens erupting up in one heave, the snow shaken off every branch in the woods around him" (15). He writes away for books on explosives and travels to Kingston for materials. He practices and before the Spring breakup demonstrates his talent at the Rathbun Timber Company headquarters and is hired. "He had secured a role for himself in the industry that took place along the Depot Lakes and the Napanee River" (16).
The loggers fell trees during the winter, and in the summer float them down the river. Men are stationed at narrow places and obstacles in the river, and when they cannot stop a log jam they send a man for the dynamiter.
Hazen Lewis is the dynamiter who frees up log jams. In difficult cases, Patrick swims out beneath the logs to place the charge.
Hazen is sullen and efficient, focused on is work. He imagines setting a fuse that would blow out the heart of a sleeping man. He doesn't teach Patrick by theory but the boy "learned important things, the way children learn from watching how adults angle a hat or approach a strange dog" (19). Hazen is verbal only when calling square dances during the log drives.
[new section]
On a winter night when Patrick is eleven (when his father is still working for the farmers), he follows a blue moth outside and thinks he sees lightening bugs in the trees by the river even though it is winter. When he gets to the river, he sees that the light is from skating loggers, each holding a sheaf of cattails with the tops on fire. "To the boy growing into his twelfth year, having lived all his life on that farm where day was work and night was rest, nothing would be the same. But on this night he did not trust either himself of those strangers of another language enough to be able to step forward and join them" (22).
Patrick Lewis - protagonist, interested in insects
Hazen Lewis - Patrick's father, worked cutting trees and hay and herding cows for farmers before he becomes a dynamite man for loggers. Quiet and sullen.
loggers - live in temporary shacks behind Bellrock Hotel
cook - brings meals when Hazen is working for the logging company. Returns to camp standing upright on a log.
setting:
Bellrock farmhouse when Patrick is eleven
Depot Lakes when Patrick is fifteen
plot:
A boy (Patrick Lewis) awakes early and sees thirty loggers walking past the farmhouse down First Lake Road. Sometimes the loggers meet the cows being brought in (by Patrick's father) for milking, and they stand politely, sometimes touching the cows to warm their hands. "They must do this gently, without any sense of attack or right. They do not own this land as the owner of the cow does" (7). The loggers are seasonal workers come only in the winter, live in temporary shacks "built each December and dismantled the following Spring" behind the Bellrock Hotel. "No one in the town of Bellrock really knows where the men have come from. It takes someone else, much later, to tell the boy that. The only connection the loggers have with the town is when they emerge to skate along the line of river, on homemade skates, the blades made of old knives" (8).
* * *
The narrator says that the boy longs for summer nights, and then follows with a present tense description of a summer night for the boy. He looks in school geography books in the kitchen where moths collect at the windows because it is the only light. He goes outside and plays his double-ocarina for the insects.
The boys father cuts hay and wood and herds cattle for two or three farms. In the summer the cows go south of the creek for pasture and he rounds them up for milking. In the winter they go to a pasture barn, but once one cow wanders toward the pasture and gets stuck in the creek. The boy and his father go out on the ice and reach into the water under the cow to pass a rope beneath her, then use the horses to pull her out. His father cuts the ropes from the cow when they are difficult to untie, and for a man who always insists on unknotting to save rope, this is an "outrageous, luxurious act" (14). Patrick sleeps in Hazen's bed with him that night to share the heat, and as he falls asleep he remembers finding caterpillar nests with for his father in the summer, and the little flares as his father ignites them with gasoline.
* * *
In the drive-shad Hazen makes a chalk outline of Patrick (still referred to here as "the boy") and blows the head out with explosives. The winter when Patrick is fifteen, Hazenis cutting a hemlock when he stops and comes inside. "At some moment chopping into hemlock, hearnig only the axe and its pivoting echo, he must have imagined the trees and permafrost and maple syrup ovens erupting up in one heave, the snow shaken off every branch in the woods around him" (15). He writes away for books on explosives and travels to Kingston for materials. He practices and before the Spring breakup demonstrates his talent at the Rathbun Timber Company headquarters and is hired. "He had secured a role for himself in the industry that took place along the Depot Lakes and the Napanee River" (16).
The loggers fell trees during the winter, and in the summer float them down the river. Men are stationed at narrow places and obstacles in the river, and when they cannot stop a log jam they send a man for the dynamiter.
Hazen Lewis is the dynamiter who frees up log jams. In difficult cases, Patrick swims out beneath the logs to place the charge.
Hazen is sullen and efficient, focused on is work. He imagines setting a fuse that would blow out the heart of a sleeping man. He doesn't teach Patrick by theory but the boy "learned important things, the way children learn from watching how adults angle a hat or approach a strange dog" (19). Hazen is verbal only when calling square dances during the log drives.
[new section]
On a winter night when Patrick is eleven (when his father is still working for the farmers), he follows a blue moth outside and thinks he sees lightening bugs in the trees by the river even though it is winter. When he gets to the river, he sees that the light is from skating loggers, each holding a sheaf of cattails with the tops on fire. "To the boy growing into his twelfth year, having lived all his life on that farm where day was work and night was rest, nothing would be the same. But on this night he did not trust either himself of those strangers of another language enough to be able to step forward and join them" (22).
The Bridge
characters:
Caravaggio: tarrer, cuts the wood blocks from his belt and tosses them into the half-dry tar when he quits
Rowland Harris: Commissioner of Public Works who comes to sit on the edge of the viaduct at night
Pomphrey: an architect from England who sometimes accompanies Harris. Later builds the water filtration plant in the east end
five nuns: dropped off late at night by their bus, they are confused and walk out onto the unfinished bridge
Nicholar Temelcoff: famous worker on the bridge - hangs by ropes to do the most dangerous jobs, and is paid $1/hr to the other workers $.40 with no complaint from anyone.
brown haired nun: falls from the bridge
Kosta: owner of the Ohrida Lake Restaurant
Taylor: bridge engineer
Daniel Stoyanoff: a Macedonian man who returns from America with an arm missing and a compensation payment big enough to buy a farm
setting:
Don Valley, Toronto - Boor Street Viaduct - from Bloor Street on the eest to Danforth on the east
1918 completion
construction
plot:
At 5AM a DOMINION BRIDGE COMPANY truck travels through Toronto picking up workers, tar burning in the back. As the truck enters the unfinished road to the half-built viaduct, the men jump down and outpace it on foot.
The bridge is being built to carry traffic, water and electricity between the east end and the center of the city. It is completed October 18, 1918 and named "Prince Edward."
During the bridge opening ceremony, a bicyclist slips past the police barrier and steals from the officials and show car the privilege of being first to cross the bridge. In reality, the bridge had been travelled the midnight before by workers carrying candles for the bridge dead.
The men who spread the tar are bitumiers, bitumatori or tarrers. They iron the tar with wooden blocks that they keep tied to their belts. One, Caravaggio, whi does not get along with the foreman, cuts his lose when he quits a year later and tosses them into the drying tar. Schoolchildren chew the tar for spitting contests, and workers warm cans of beans in it. On winter nights, workers use flares to locate the bridge's edge and hammer invisible nails through snow.
* * *
At night, Commissioner of Public Works Rowland Harris comes to the bridge, sometimes accompanied by the English architect Pomphrey, to sit at the edge of the viaduct. "For Harris the night allowed scope. Night removed the limitations of detail and concentrated on form . . . Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumors and tall tales were a kind of charting" (29). At eleven o'clock one night Harris and Pomphrey are harnessed in against the winds on the bridge and Pomphrey sees five nuns walking on the bridge. Dropped off by their bus they had walked the wrong way. When the reach the thirty-yard point on the bridge the wind hits the nuns and they are "thrown against the cement mixers and steam shovels, careening from side to side, in danger of going over the edge" (31). Men grab and hold the nuns, pulling leather straps over their shoulders, but one falls over the edge. "Then there was no longer any fear on the bridge. The worst, the incredible, had happened. A nun had fallen off the Prince Edward Viaduct before it was even finished" (31).
Nicholas Temelcoff sees the figure falling toward him and, grabbing a metal pipe so lessen the sudden jerk on the rope, catches her. His shoulder dislocated, he asks her to scream but she does not. He had dislocated his arm and has her hold him by the shoulders to take the weight off his good arm. He swings her to the lower-deck level.
The nun is in shock with veil loose and short hair showing when she pulls Nicholas in and walks with him toward the west end of the bridge. In a cemetery, she relocates his shoulder and wraps her veil around it. He has her knock on the Eastern Avenue door of the Ohrida Lake Restaraunt where the owner Kosta lets them in. He brings her inside and she still has not said a word.
Nicholas Temelcoff is a valuable worker on the bridge, doing difficult jobs with ease on a system of ropes and pulleys, knowing the bridge and his networks with his eyes closed by its height, the length of his ropes and the time each movement takes. He earns a dollar an hour, a quarter more at night, while others earn forty cents.
Nicholas Temelcoff and the nun are inside the Ohrida Lake Restaraunt. He greets the parrot Alicia and pours them each a drink. He puts on the radio and continues drinking. He asks about a small scar on her nose but she does not respond, and he talks about his own scars.
This is the nun's first time in a Macedonian bar and she realizes that the darkness of the interior is supposed to represent the Macedonian night. "So when customers step in at any time, what they are entering is an old courtyard of the Balkans.
Nicholas Temelcoff continues talking, then says that he loves her hair, thanks her for her help and falls suddenly asleep.
The woman looks around, listens to the radio, and positions Nicholas so that he will be comfortable. She asks his name and kisses him, and walks around the room.
Nicholas Temelcoff is working on the bridge. He attaches himself only to the permanent structure, not to the "travellers" - derricks that help to build the bridge but have fallen twice already. Once he was rising with a traveller when it fell and he had to avoid both the structure itself and the flailing wires that had already cut one man in half.
The nun walks out from the Ohrida Lake Restaurant to the street. "What she will become she becomes in that minute before she is outside, before she step into the six-A.M. morning" (41). She will remember the work hardness of Nicholas's hands.
* * *
Commissioner Harris never speaks to Nicholas Temelcoff but Harris like others watch him. Nicholas does not seem aware of this - looking at objects rather than people and never catching the eye of the engineer Taylor when he receives orders. Nicholas knows Harris by the timing of his walk and by his tweed coat "that cost more than the combined weeks' salaries of five bridge workers" (43).
Nicholas Temelcoff arrives in Canada without a passport in 1914. "Hanging under the bridge, he describes the adventure to himself, just as he was told a fairy tale of Upper America by those who returned to the Macedonian villages, those first travellers who were the judas goats to the west" (43-4). Daniel Stoyanoff had come home to Macedonia from America missing an arm and with compensation enough to buy a farm, and would tell and retell his story, embellishing it so that he had lost two arms in the slaughterhouse but a tailor had used guts to sow one back on while the second was carried away by scrap dogs.
War in the Balkans begins when Nicholas is 25, and after his village burns he and three friends leave on horseback. They ride to Trikala and jump a train to Athens. There, they bribe a boat captain to carry them to Trieste. They all have fevers and sleep in a deserted factory before trying to enter Switzerland. They continue to France and in LeHavre speak with the captain of a boat carrying animals and take La Siciliana to New Brunswick. Two of the friends die on the trip and Nicholas learns from an Italian how to drink the animals' blood for strength. "He still remembered landing in Sain John and everyone thinking how primitive it looked. How primitive Canada was" (46).
Nicholas takes a train to Toronto because there are many there from his village, but there is no work. He goes to work in a Macedonian bakery in Copper Cliff, near Sudbury. Six months later he moves to Sault Ste. Marie where he works in a Macedonian bakery and goes to school with ten-year-olds to learn English. Like other immigrants, he models his speech after a popular actor.
* * *
When Nicholas wakes up, doctor is there and Kosta tells him that the woman had said until he came down and had asked him to send for the doctor. Nicholas looks around and sees that she has cut away a part of her habit to make a regular skirt.
When he goes out to the street, Nicholas sees everything from the point of view of the woman
Nicholas is back to work after a week. A year later, he will open a bakery with the money he has saved.
Caravaggio: tarrer, cuts the wood blocks from his belt and tosses them into the half-dry tar when he quits
Rowland Harris: Commissioner of Public Works who comes to sit on the edge of the viaduct at night
Pomphrey: an architect from England who sometimes accompanies Harris. Later builds the water filtration plant in the east end
five nuns: dropped off late at night by their bus, they are confused and walk out onto the unfinished bridge
Nicholar Temelcoff: famous worker on the bridge - hangs by ropes to do the most dangerous jobs, and is paid $1/hr to the other workers $.40 with no complaint from anyone.
brown haired nun: falls from the bridge
Kosta: owner of the Ohrida Lake Restaurant
Taylor: bridge engineer
Daniel Stoyanoff: a Macedonian man who returns from America with an arm missing and a compensation payment big enough to buy a farm
setting:
Don Valley, Toronto - Boor Street Viaduct - from Bloor Street on the eest to Danforth on the east
1918 completion
construction
plot:
At 5AM a DOMINION BRIDGE COMPANY truck travels through Toronto picking up workers, tar burning in the back. As the truck enters the unfinished road to the half-built viaduct, the men jump down and outpace it on foot.
The bridge is being built to carry traffic, water and electricity between the east end and the center of the city. It is completed October 18, 1918 and named "Prince Edward."
During the bridge opening ceremony, a bicyclist slips past the police barrier and steals from the officials and show car the privilege of being first to cross the bridge. In reality, the bridge had been travelled the midnight before by workers carrying candles for the bridge dead.
The men who spread the tar are bitumiers, bitumatori or tarrers. They iron the tar with wooden blocks that they keep tied to their belts. One, Caravaggio, whi does not get along with the foreman, cuts his lose when he quits a year later and tosses them into the drying tar. Schoolchildren chew the tar for spitting contests, and workers warm cans of beans in it. On winter nights, workers use flares to locate the bridge's edge and hammer invisible nails through snow.
* * *
At night, Commissioner of Public Works Rowland Harris comes to the bridge, sometimes accompanied by the English architect Pomphrey, to sit at the edge of the viaduct. "For Harris the night allowed scope. Night removed the limitations of detail and concentrated on form . . . Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumors and tall tales were a kind of charting" (29). At eleven o'clock one night Harris and Pomphrey are harnessed in against the winds on the bridge and Pomphrey sees five nuns walking on the bridge. Dropped off by their bus they had walked the wrong way. When the reach the thirty-yard point on the bridge the wind hits the nuns and they are "thrown against the cement mixers and steam shovels, careening from side to side, in danger of going over the edge" (31). Men grab and hold the nuns, pulling leather straps over their shoulders, but one falls over the edge. "Then there was no longer any fear on the bridge. The worst, the incredible, had happened. A nun had fallen off the Prince Edward Viaduct before it was even finished" (31).
Nicholas Temelcoff sees the figure falling toward him and, grabbing a metal pipe so lessen the sudden jerk on the rope, catches her. His shoulder dislocated, he asks her to scream but she does not. He had dislocated his arm and has her hold him by the shoulders to take the weight off his good arm. He swings her to the lower-deck level.
The nun is in shock with veil loose and short hair showing when she pulls Nicholas in and walks with him toward the west end of the bridge. In a cemetery, she relocates his shoulder and wraps her veil around it. He has her knock on the Eastern Avenue door of the Ohrida Lake Restaraunt where the owner Kosta lets them in. He brings her inside and she still has not said a word.
Nicholas Temelcoff is a valuable worker on the bridge, doing difficult jobs with ease on a system of ropes and pulleys, knowing the bridge and his networks with his eyes closed by its height, the length of his ropes and the time each movement takes. He earns a dollar an hour, a quarter more at night, while others earn forty cents.
Nicholas Temelcoff and the nun are inside the Ohrida Lake Restaraunt. He greets the parrot Alicia and pours them each a drink. He puts on the radio and continues drinking. He asks about a small scar on her nose but she does not respond, and he talks about his own scars.
This is the nun's first time in a Macedonian bar and she realizes that the darkness of the interior is supposed to represent the Macedonian night. "So when customers step in at any time, what they are entering is an old courtyard of the Balkans.
Nicholas Temelcoff continues talking, then says that he loves her hair, thanks her for her help and falls suddenly asleep.
The woman looks around, listens to the radio, and positions Nicholas so that he will be comfortable. She asks his name and kisses him, and walks around the room.
Nicholas Temelcoff is working on the bridge. He attaches himself only to the permanent structure, not to the "travellers" - derricks that help to build the bridge but have fallen twice already. Once he was rising with a traveller when it fell and he had to avoid both the structure itself and the flailing wires that had already cut one man in half.
The nun walks out from the Ohrida Lake Restaurant to the street. "What she will become she becomes in that minute before she is outside, before she step into the six-A.M. morning" (41). She will remember the work hardness of Nicholas's hands.
* * *
Commissioner Harris never speaks to Nicholas Temelcoff but Harris like others watch him. Nicholas does not seem aware of this - looking at objects rather than people and never catching the eye of the engineer Taylor when he receives orders. Nicholas knows Harris by the timing of his walk and by his tweed coat "that cost more than the combined weeks' salaries of five bridge workers" (43).
Nicholas Temelcoff arrives in Canada without a passport in 1914. "Hanging under the bridge, he describes the adventure to himself, just as he was told a fairy tale of Upper America by those who returned to the Macedonian villages, those first travellers who were the judas goats to the west" (43-4). Daniel Stoyanoff had come home to Macedonia from America missing an arm and with compensation enough to buy a farm, and would tell and retell his story, embellishing it so that he had lost two arms in the slaughterhouse but a tailor had used guts to sow one back on while the second was carried away by scrap dogs.
War in the Balkans begins when Nicholas is 25, and after his village burns he and three friends leave on horseback. They ride to Trikala and jump a train to Athens. There, they bribe a boat captain to carry them to Trieste. They all have fevers and sleep in a deserted factory before trying to enter Switzerland. They continue to France and in LeHavre speak with the captain of a boat carrying animals and take La Siciliana to New Brunswick. Two of the friends die on the trip and Nicholas learns from an Italian how to drink the animals' blood for strength. "He still remembered landing in Sain John and everyone thinking how primitive it looked. How primitive Canada was" (46).
Nicholas takes a train to Toronto because there are many there from his village, but there is no work. He goes to work in a Macedonian bakery in Copper Cliff, near Sudbury. Six months later he moves to Sault Ste. Marie where he works in a Macedonian bakery and goes to school with ten-year-olds to learn English. Like other immigrants, he models his speech after a popular actor.
* * *
When Nicholas wakes up, doctor is there and Kosta tells him that the woman had said until he came down and had asked him to send for the doctor. Nicholas looks around and sees that she has cut away a part of her habit to make a regular skirt.
When he goes out to the street, Nicholas sees everything from the point of view of the woman
Nicholas is back to work after a week. A year later, he will open a bakery with the money he has saved.
The Searcher
characters:
Patrick Lewis: now 21 yrs. old
Ambrose Small: missing millionaire, theatre manager, "jackal of Toronto's business world" 1910-1919
Clara Dickens: actress, becomes Small's lover when she is 21 and he is 35
Briffa: friend of Ambrose, theatre decorator
Ambrose Small's sisters
Theresa Small: Ambrose's prohibitionist wife.
Alice Gull: actress, friend of Clara
setting:
Toronto, Union Station, when Patrick is 21
plot:
At 21, Patrick arrives in Toronto with little money and a piece of feldspar in his pocket.
[section break, new page]
Millionaire Ambrose Small disappears in 1919. The police have his Bertillion record (measurements of certain parts of the body used for identification 1889-1923), and people claiming to be the lost Small have stories that also account for changes in height, the length of an ear, and even sex. In December of 1919, Ambrose Small fails to keep an appointment. He has withdrawn a million dollars from his bank account and gone missing.
A year after Ambrose Small's disappearance, his family puts up an $80,000 reward for his whereabouts, and by 1921 one could find employment as a "searcher" for $4/week.
Patrick Lewis becomes a searcher in 1924 after working various other jobs in Toronto. He is especially interested in some letters that the police had returned to Small's sisters, and the sisters tell him that Clara Dickens knows Ambrose best.
[section break, new page]
Patrick takes the train to Paris, Ontario to meet Clara Dickens. He tries to seduce her and then the next day she finds him at the library and drives him back to the Arlington Hotel where he is staying, and he kisses her goodnight. The next day they leave the library together and fall asleep at Patrick's hotel. Later they make love and when he wakes up again she is gone.
Claire calls Patrick and tells him she's going to take him to her friend Alice's farmhouse in Paris Plains.
At the farmhouse Patrick asks Clara if she was ever in love before Ambrose and she says she was with Stump Jones. Patrick sees a tree frog outside the glass and tells Clara that it wants to see her naked and that it will being its friends the next day. Clara tells him that she will leave soon to go to Ambrose. Patrick dreams that he is Ambrose's friend, that Ambrose asks him to cut off a grey peacock attached to his body, and that the next morning Ambrose is found sliced in two.
Patrick comes in Clara's mouth and they pass it back and forth until it disappears.
The next day they drive around the country in Clara's Packard and she shows him the Wheeler Needle Works where her father had worked, the place where she was first seduced, and more about her growing up. He asks her about Ambrose and she says that they used to have sex on the day ferry Cayuga. She tells him that Ambrose collected around him people like Briffa who had vision and who nobody else would employ. Clara reminds Patrick again that she will leave him soon for Ambrose. At first, Patrick had thought that he had wanted Clara only because she belonged to the enemy, but "now there was her character. This daughter of the foreman at Wheeler Needle Works, who seemed to have entered him like a spirit, bullying his private nature" (72).
[section break, new page]
When Alice arrives, Clara continues to discuss childhood (like shaving and painting numbers on her father's hunting dogs) "but the friend Alice plucks only details form the present to celebrate" (74). Actresses Alice and Clara impersonate people and discuss mannerisms, and Patrick becomes their audience.
Alice and Clara draw Patrick in crayon on a large piece of paper while he sleeps.
* * *
In the morning, Patrick finds Clara and Alice asleep together and wakes Alice, who has breakfast with him. He tells Alice to tell Clara he will meet her at the hotel that night, and when he leaves Alice goes back to bed.
He thinks of Alice and Clara on the train back.
* * *
In the hotel, Clara shows Patrick the portrait and he likes it.
Patrick has practiced moving around the room blindfolded, and demonstrates this to Clara after a morning of trying to talk her out of going to Ambrose. As he races around the room doing blindfolded acrobatics and talking about his love for her, she moves from the bed and puts her hands over her ears. The blindfolded Patrick rams into her and they are both hurt, and he says that he had told her not to move.
[section break, new page]
After Clara leaves, Patrick cleans his apartment obsessively. He remembers bits about Clara. At Union Station Clara asks Patrick not to follow her and to take her iguana and feed to clover and vetch.
Three letters to Clara describing memories and dreams.
* * *
Alice comes to Patrick's door and sees the things he had broken when Clara left. He had seen her outside the Parrot Theatre the week before and she had called his name. He had left her as soon as he could, wanting to blame her for Clara.
Patrick and Alice sleep together.
* * *
Patrick goes to see Clara's mother in Paris and she says that it has been two years and Patrick should forget her. She also tells him where Clara is, "In a place Small knows you will never look . . . in a place he knows you will never go back to" (91). Patrick "knew then. Knew exactly where they were. He had been the searcher who had gazed across maps and seen every name except the one which was so well-known it had remained, like his childhood, invisible to him" (91).
* * *
Patrick goes to the Arlington Hotel room where he had stayed with Clara and finds the impression of her backbone in the paint of the wall where they had pushed.
[section break, new page]
Ambrose finds Patrick sitting in an armchair at his house. Ambrose is ready to talk about himself but Patrick wants Clara, and Ambrose goes to get her. Patrick goes outside and, feeling an incongruous rain, realizes that Ambrose is pouring kerosine on him. Ambrose lights a match and Patrick runs to the river. Ambrose throws a burning bottle at Patrick in the river and Patrick, blinded in one eye by the explosion, cuts Ambrose in the shoulder then runs toward the Bellrock hotel.
When Patrick wakes up he still can't see out of the eye, and Clara comes to clean him up. Clara shaves Patrick and thinks she should have done this sooner to understand his breakable quality. She tells him that she can't have him but that she doesn't want him lost.
Clara leaves in the dark and doesn't know that Patrick wakes to find that blood had come from under his dressings and she had left a bloody handprint on the wall when they made love.
Patrick Lewis: now 21 yrs. old
Ambrose Small: missing millionaire, theatre manager, "jackal of Toronto's business world" 1910-1919
Clara Dickens: actress, becomes Small's lover when she is 21 and he is 35
Briffa: friend of Ambrose, theatre decorator
Ambrose Small's sisters
Theresa Small: Ambrose's prohibitionist wife.
Alice Gull: actress, friend of Clara
setting:
Toronto, Union Station, when Patrick is 21
plot:
At 21, Patrick arrives in Toronto with little money and a piece of feldspar in his pocket.
[section break, new page]
Millionaire Ambrose Small disappears in 1919. The police have his Bertillion record (measurements of certain parts of the body used for identification 1889-1923), and people claiming to be the lost Small have stories that also account for changes in height, the length of an ear, and even sex. In December of 1919, Ambrose Small fails to keep an appointment. He has withdrawn a million dollars from his bank account and gone missing.
A year after Ambrose Small's disappearance, his family puts up an $80,000 reward for his whereabouts, and by 1921 one could find employment as a "searcher" for $4/week.
Patrick Lewis becomes a searcher in 1924 after working various other jobs in Toronto. He is especially interested in some letters that the police had returned to Small's sisters, and the sisters tell him that Clara Dickens knows Ambrose best.
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Patrick takes the train to Paris, Ontario to meet Clara Dickens. He tries to seduce her and then the next day she finds him at the library and drives him back to the Arlington Hotel where he is staying, and he kisses her goodnight. The next day they leave the library together and fall asleep at Patrick's hotel. Later they make love and when he wakes up again she is gone.
Claire calls Patrick and tells him she's going to take him to her friend Alice's farmhouse in Paris Plains.
At the farmhouse Patrick asks Clara if she was ever in love before Ambrose and she says she was with Stump Jones. Patrick sees a tree frog outside the glass and tells Clara that it wants to see her naked and that it will being its friends the next day. Clara tells him that she will leave soon to go to Ambrose. Patrick dreams that he is Ambrose's friend, that Ambrose asks him to cut off a grey peacock attached to his body, and that the next morning Ambrose is found sliced in two.
Patrick comes in Clara's mouth and they pass it back and forth until it disappears.
The next day they drive around the country in Clara's Packard and she shows him the Wheeler Needle Works where her father had worked, the place where she was first seduced, and more about her growing up. He asks her about Ambrose and she says that they used to have sex on the day ferry Cayuga. She tells him that Ambrose collected around him people like Briffa who had vision and who nobody else would employ. Clara reminds Patrick again that she will leave him soon for Ambrose. At first, Patrick had thought that he had wanted Clara only because she belonged to the enemy, but "now there was her character. This daughter of the foreman at Wheeler Needle Works, who seemed to have entered him like a spirit, bullying his private nature" (72).
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When Alice arrives, Clara continues to discuss childhood (like shaving and painting numbers on her father's hunting dogs) "but the friend Alice plucks only details form the present to celebrate" (74). Actresses Alice and Clara impersonate people and discuss mannerisms, and Patrick becomes their audience.
Alice and Clara draw Patrick in crayon on a large piece of paper while he sleeps.
* * *
In the morning, Patrick finds Clara and Alice asleep together and wakes Alice, who has breakfast with him. He tells Alice to tell Clara he will meet her at the hotel that night, and when he leaves Alice goes back to bed.
He thinks of Alice and Clara on the train back.
* * *
In the hotel, Clara shows Patrick the portrait and he likes it.
Patrick has practiced moving around the room blindfolded, and demonstrates this to Clara after a morning of trying to talk her out of going to Ambrose. As he races around the room doing blindfolded acrobatics and talking about his love for her, she moves from the bed and puts her hands over her ears. The blindfolded Patrick rams into her and they are both hurt, and he says that he had told her not to move.
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After Clara leaves, Patrick cleans his apartment obsessively. He remembers bits about Clara. At Union Station Clara asks Patrick not to follow her and to take her iguana and feed to clover and vetch.
Three letters to Clara describing memories and dreams.
* * *
Alice comes to Patrick's door and sees the things he had broken when Clara left. He had seen her outside the Parrot Theatre the week before and she had called his name. He had left her as soon as he could, wanting to blame her for Clara.
Patrick and Alice sleep together.
* * *
Patrick goes to see Clara's mother in Paris and she says that it has been two years and Patrick should forget her. She also tells him where Clara is, "In a place Small knows you will never look . . . in a place he knows you will never go back to" (91). Patrick "knew then. Knew exactly where they were. He had been the searcher who had gazed across maps and seen every name except the one which was so well-known it had remained, like his childhood, invisible to him" (91).
* * *
Patrick goes to the Arlington Hotel room where he had stayed with Clara and finds the impression of her backbone in the paint of the wall where they had pushed.
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Ambrose finds Patrick sitting in an armchair at his house. Ambrose is ready to talk about himself but Patrick wants Clara, and Ambrose goes to get her. Patrick goes outside and, feeling an incongruous rain, realizes that Ambrose is pouring kerosine on him. Ambrose lights a match and Patrick runs to the river. Ambrose throws a burning bottle at Patrick in the river and Patrick, blinded in one eye by the explosion, cuts Ambrose in the shoulder then runs toward the Bellrock hotel.
When Patrick wakes up he still can't see out of the eye, and Clara comes to clean him up. Clara shaves Patrick and thinks she should have done this sooner to understand his breakable quality. She tells him that she can't have him but that she doesn't want him lost.
Clara leaves in the dark and doesn't know that Patrick wakes to find that blood had come from under his dressings and she had left a bloody handprint on the wall when they made love.