October 1970 Read Free

function of which seems to be to catch the sun when it falls from the sky.
    Once again Samuel has spent most of the night sweating blood in his study, and then remembers that he has a plane to catch today. Fortunately, security at the Maldoror airport is fairly slack. If worse came to worst, he could always run to the end of the runway and stick out his thumb.
    He drags himself downstairs to the kitchen in jockeys and a T-shirt, where he fills a coffee carafe with cold water, dumps the water into the automatic coffee maker’s reservoir, and then drops the carafe directly onto his foot. From there it bounces onto the ceramic-tile floor and explodes. As he wipes up the spill, he notices splotches of blood on the tiles.
    He dabs the blood from his foot with an Enviro-Plus paper towel. Enviro-Plus paper towels employ sponge-pocket technology for maximum absorption, yet contain zero fibres from the planet’s old-growth forests. The pale lips of the gash on his foot are in the vague shape of a cross. The wound is clean, deep, and precision-cut, with a sort of flap formed by a strip of skin and flesh that can be opened and closed at will. Sam sees it as an all-you-can-eat buffet for flesh-eating bacteria and their little microbial friends. He takes it to the shower, where he becomes engrossed in the contemplation of his feet, watching the pink water being flushed out by the flow. Then he washes the wound with soap, dries himself, and applies a gauze pad smeared with disinfectant cream. He affixes the bandage to his foot, which he has propped up on the toilet seat cover. Then he goes back to the kitchen — where he has a visitor  . . .
    Paul Lavoie’s ghost has pulled a chair up to the kitchen table. His left wrist and the thumb and palm of his right hand are roughly bandaged and stained with dried blood. The thin, blood-filled crease made by the wire around his neck is clearly visible. He sports a streak of grape jelly under each nostril, under both corners of his mouth, and in the folds of his ears. His face is blue.
    The visitor lowers his head, rests his chin on his chest, half-closes his eyes. His hands are encrusted with blood. They rest on his thighs, palms up, as though he were offering his wrapped stigmata to the owner of the premises. His chest rises and falls slowly. He is sobbing silently. Sam goes about picking up the crumpled, blood-stained paper towels that he left strewn about the kitchen floor. He doesn’t let his visitant bother him.
    â€œIt’s the blood that brought you, isn’t it?” he asks, looking at the paper towel in his hand. “You’re like those corpses in the Odyssey, in the House of Hades. You look a bit peaked, wouldn’t you say? But don’t expect me to go out and slit the throat of a goat in order to give you your colour back  . . . ”
    â€œYou’re leaving me  . . . ” murmurs the ghost.
    â€œNo, I’m not. I have to make a short trip to France. I have an Air Canada flight at ten o’clock, you-know-who is driving me to the airport. Sorry, but no one in my situation would turn his nose up at a ticket to Paris  . . . ”
    â€œYes, but the problem, you see, is that the longer you take writing your goddamned book, the longer I’m condemned to sitting around on my thumbs! Believe me, this is a lot worse than purgatory,” the visitor adds in that whingeing voice of his, the one he always uses when he haunts the lake house.
    â€œOh? Why’s that? No golf courses up here?”
    Sam calmly considers the apparition, which reminds him of strawberry jam spread on burnt toast.
    â€œAmong other things,” the phantom says politely.
    â€œSitting on your thumbs in your condition can’t be all that comfortable,” Nihilo observes.
    â€œLet me go  . . . ”
    â€œThen go, for Christ’s sake, go!” he says angrily. “What are you waiting for? Me to get the