L (and Things Come Apart) Read Free Page B

Prime Minister was delivering an emotional speech. His arms waved; he pointed his finger; raised his voice. Whether he was going on about the recent unrest with labour unions and their demands or about any tally of daily disturbances that required his specific attention was unclear. L turned down the volume and was narrating the speech. Henry watched as this infamous politician now pounded his fist, waved his arm, vowing never again to dress in women’s clothing and never again to spend their tax dollars on lipstick and hand cream. Henry judged by her pauses, her upward glances and her arched eyebrows that she expected him to play with her, to fill in the voices of the police chiefs, pundits and angry demonstrators. When he tried, fumbling with the words and timing, she’d continue, assuming the voice of the next person on the screen. “See you next time around. Back to you, Henry,” she would say as reporters stood on screen, concluding their coverage of this event or that event, but he could think of nothing to say, no clever way to continue the game. He would wedge his upper lip beneath the lower, and arch his own eyebrows while L’s lips parted into a smile.
    Henry looked to the ceiling. Above him he could see the dining room table in his house, spinning behind the circular fan above his head, his wife’s colleagues gathered around the table, breaking bread, talking about this event or that event, pouring wine amongst themselves and laughing.
    He could see himself sitting quietly at the table. His eyes met his own, in a body near to hers.

8
    HE SITS IN THE CHAIR AND LISTENS to the long passage of a bow across a viola string, and wonders how it took such little time to arrive at the point in his life where he spent more time within the confines of his mind than in the company of others. Within the confines of a physical world, which enclosed on him with the ferocity of a hunter, music is his only faithful companion. He imagines what it must be like to be deaf and the thought terrifies him. The idea of being incapable of these moments where nothing matters but sound and instrumentation delivers him to such unbearable darkness and loneliness. To go without sight was something he did almost voluntarily now, an act which no longer required closing his eyes. Henry could focus on a single image, the rim of a glass, the contents of a bottle, the black centre of an iris or the wrinkles accumulated over time in the flesh around the eyes. And from the bank of these accumulated images, he could construct what he wished and he allowed the music to bend his loneliness into shapes, at times orchestrating each movement and at other times allowing them to orchestrate him.
    He runs his fingers along the rim of his glass and there is a hollow sound. He knows if someone were to do the same to him, to run their fingers along the edges of his body with a warm finger, he would probably scream. He is aware of the presence of others at the table. It is confirmed in the way they touch each other. Fingers along a wrist. A hand on a shoulder. Each one’s presence confirmed by the touch of another. No one to confirm he is actually there. At the table they speak of a popular work of art. They speak of the colours and the contours using words he doesn’t always understand. But these are words he never felt the need to use. For Henry, the language of visual art was silent and for him to be in a place without language meant being in a place of divinity, if only temporarily. For Henry, the dialogue between the artist and the audience was the arrival at the moment where language no longer mattered. Some things were best understood by leaving them in silence, not skewed and contorted in the coil of a lexicon.
    The woman who had arrived late sits at the end of the table, across from Henry. With her finger she traces the tiled surface on the place mat in front of her over and over. She drags her nail along the white borders of