A dream: of a stand of pole birch straight ahead
that drink into their moon-white trunks what little
light there is, then pose in stark relief to the darkening
beyond. The silence, though, is too complete, not right,
nothing shifts, whistles, or scuttles through the mess
of undergrowth. The effect, not of waking in the midst
of dark woods, the right road lost but the wringing
of phantom hands, a poverty of words, as the mind tries
to flush some authentic response to this charcoal study
by Cézanne. When waking comes it’s to radio voices, a he
and a she, on about slips, snares, the gutting shed, and mason
jars. It’s the cbc, in a town I didn’t catch near Gander, doing
a segment, it seems, on the unusual folk dishes and dietary
habits of the ever-colourful Newfoundlander. “. . .bottled rabbit,”
he’s saying, “today I’ll show you how to make bottled rabbit, or
jarred rabbit, as it’s called in other parts.” And as the host
gives a slowed-down translation that imparts a tut-tut sound
to all the t’s, I’m seeing that reticent, cardiganed man in
the one-act by Pinter hauling up tiny masts on a glassed-in
schooner; only it’s a matchstick bunny now, and he’s trying to
attach the whiskers. “You can see I’ve already skinned, cleaned,
and quartered this one” (the whiskers quiver, fall off, the ears
lie back. The man sighs, lights up, starts in again) “and normally one
rabbit, quartered, ’ll fit into each mason jar.” It’s here the Pinter
set fades, morphs, becomes my great-aunt’s kitchenette twenty
years ago; the margarine-coloured curtains are closed, so
the light takes on a clinical, formaldehyde glow, and two jars
are eased down from a shelved row of preserved I-didn’t-know-
whats. A lid twists, its wax and rubber seal breaks with a sucking
sound, bits of white fatty pulp drop from the lip and she dunks
two fingers and thumb through the film for the pink-brown, naked
oblongs of meat. Perhaps we are what we remember we ate, but
I’ve no memory, now, of what that rabbit tasted like, though I’m
tempted to say it tasted like rabbit. The host, here, pipes in
unbelievably with “Wow, it tastes like chicken . . .” And thusly
a nation is born, I thought, or something fuzzier that meant
that, as I was still barely awake. But you were coming to, just then,
as they descended into clangorous cleanup noises, his water
audibly bubbling in the pan. I touched your forehead: “What’s real?”
Our aloe plant teetered on its chopstick struts, leaned over
its double crawling the bedcover. The word wore down, thinned
to a film on the air in the ear. Morning ate its hinge.