At night the park was his domain.
He covered all the playing fields and hills like a paranoiac squire hunting for poachers. The flower-beds, the terraces of grass had an aspect of formality they did not have by daylight. The trees were taller and older. The high-fenced tennis court looked like a cage for huge wingless creatures which had somehow got away. The ponds were calm and deadly black. Lamps floated in them like multiple moons.
Walking past the Chalet he remembered the masculine smell of hockey equipment and underwear, the thud of skates on wooden planks.
The empty baseball diamond was blurred with spectacular sliding ghosts. He could hear the absence of cheers. With no bikes leaning against them the chestnut tree and wire backstop seemed strangely isolated.
How many leaves have to scrape together to record the rustle of the wind? He tried to distinguish the sound of acacia from the sound of maple.
Just beyond the green rose the large stone houses of Westmount Avenue. In them the baseball players were growing their bodies with sleep, resting their voices. He imagined that he could see them dimly through the walls of the upper storeys, or rather the sheets they were wrapped in, floating row upon row over the street, like a colony of cocoons in a moonlit tree. The young men of his age, Christian and blond, dreaming of Jewish sex and bank careers.
The park nourished all the sleepers in the surrounding houses. It was the green heart. It gave the children dangerous bushes and heroic landscapes so they could imagine bravery. It gave the nurses and maids winding walks so they could imagine beauty. It gave the young merchant-princes leaf-hid necking benches, views of factories so they could imagine power. It gave the retired brokers vignettes of Scottish lanes where loving couples walked, so they could lean on their canes and imagine poetry. It was the best part of everyone’s life. Nobody comes into a park for mean purposes except perhaps a sex maniac and who is to say that he isn’t thinking of eternal roses as he unzips before the skipping-rope Beatrice?
He visited the Japanese pond to ensure the safety of the goldfish. He climbed through the prickly bushes and over the wall to inspect the miniature waterfall. Lisa was not there. He somersaulted down the hill to see if it was still steep enough. Wouldn’t it be funny if Lisa of all people should be waiting at the bottom? He sifted a handful in the sand-box to guard against polio. He did a test run on the slide, surprised that it squeezed him. He looked gravely from the lookout to guarantee the view.
“My city, my river, my bridges, shit on you, no I didn’t mean it.”
The bases had to be run, the upper ponds examined for sail-boat wrecks or abandoned babies or raped white nurses. Touch the tree trunks to encourage them.
He had his duty to the community, to the nation.
At any moment a girl is going to step out of one of the flowerbeds. She will look as though she has just been swimming and she’ll know all about my dedication.
He lay under the lilacs. The flowers were almost gone, they looked like molecular diagrams. Sky was immense. Cover me with black fire. Uncles, why do you look so confident when you pray? Is it because you know the words? When the curtains of the Holy Ark are drawn apart and gold-crowned Torah scrolls revealed, and all the men of the altar wear white clothes, why don’t your eyes let go of the ritual, why don’t you succumb to raving epilepsy? Why are your confessions so easy?
He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren’t going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire.
There were lights on the St. Lawrence the size of stars, and an impatient stillness in the air. Trees as fragile as the legs of listening deer. At any minute the sun would come crashing out of the roofs like a clenched fist, driving out determined workers and one-way cars to jam the streets. He hoped he wouldn’t have to see the herds of traffic on Westmount Avenue. Turning night into day.
“Hello there.”
A stout man of thirty in an Air Force uniform stood above him. He had been the centre of attention in the park a few days before. Several nurses complained that he had been too enthusiastic in the fondling of their male children. A policeman had escorted him to the street and invited him to move along.
“I thought you weren’t allowed in here.”
“Nobody’s around. I just felt like talking.”
His uniform was sharply pressed. Really, he was too clean for that time of the morning or night or whatever it was. Breavman isolated the smell of shaving lotion from the lilac-laden air. He stood up.
“Talk. You have my permission. I’m going home.”
“I just thought …”
Breavman looked back over his shoulder and shouted, “Talk! Why aren’t you talking? It’s all yours – the park’s empty!”
There were gardeners in faded clothes on his street. They called to one another as they swept, all Italian names. Breavman studied their brooms made out of wire-bound branches. It must be nice to use something that real.