Augustino and the Choir of Destruction by Marie-Claire Blais Read Free Book Online Page B

during the rites, always the same ending, I lingered over that image of the bull being led to burial, lying on his side in the dust, feet still raised, their sharp cries, oh I remember, where are my hat and gloves, Harriet, I want to go out and not hear those shouts any more, and that summer trip to Italy in 1946, I think, who was it who went with me, was it Jean, what was his name . . . what did he look like, a short while ago, when I wanted to see him, they told me Italy was the last place he went, he was so close to me, wasn’t he, so why has he broken things off, why is he withdrawing, no letter, no nothing, that interference when I phoned him, no connection, no voice, the cries of Charly who really didn’t like him, who was he, when his body had been reduced to ashes, I wanted to keep them near me, but they made me give them up, it was at the Palazzo Vecchio, and I had bought a new camera, you should have seen the flash set-up, the pictures, my fevered longing to capture the energy of those shadows, statues, sculptures, bronze horses and eroded clock-towers, Palazzio Vecchio, just him and me alone, the last place he travelled to, they said, I don’t remember much of him, but they tell me I was there on no one’s Island, The-Island-Nobody-Owns, that’s not true though, my hat and gloves, they say they saw me, and dragged him away from me, but that’s not true, that word him weighed on Caroline’s spirit and was just a pronoun referring to a blank face or a sudden absence of any face, but still I knew him well, she repeated to herself, the lightweight scarves he wore, his citronella colognes, him , what wavering, what dismay at not knowing who he was, didn’t we argue in the Paris museum about the pre-Raphaelites, that assertive male tone of voice when he insisted there were no precursors to Raphael, and my cheeks were purple with anger, I had indeed succeeded in capturing the energy, the firm shadow of Michaelangelo’s sculpture, and there he was next to me, saying, put down that camera dear friend, and let’s talk a bit, look how full the shadow in that statue is, he was fidgeting impatiently next to me, the walk has put me out of shape, he said, no memory-lapse there, he , a hole, an air-pocket, a perforation in the heart, I was holding the little casket, they snatched it away from me, a perforation, open the box where the ashes lie, never mind, I’ll forget him, something Adrien whispered in my ear, Caroline, the boat’s waiting, Caroline, we’ll all slide into that perilous sea, a word, a remark about him , I know how much you’ve loved him, they forcibly took the box from my hands, he was the one who would slip into the ocean waters, unfeeling he , slipping from my hands by accident, and there was nothing I could do, in the summer of 1946, I had left a tiresome husband for him , eyes scarcely find a place in a forehead too vast, how wearisome when everything was so standard and precise, the proportions of shadow in the sculpture, the stimulation of my eye behind the lens, then suddenly this void surrounding a head, was it a beautiful one, off-centre, and here it was bursting out of its frame, fruitless, uprooted, the body and head of him , even his name no longer within my grasp, am I to blame, he had not been accessible for quite some time, perforated brain cells and heart, better to picture Italian Renaissance architecture instead and forget him , think about him no more, for there is no horizon in the gap of a viewfinder, schools and colleagues will study my photographs, I had no assistant to help me to the Tower of Giotto, they had been thinking of all those Renaissance engineers, then once up there, it was as though the light obscured my vision, veiled it, just as now I am losing the ability to register the light from his face and head, what I do know is that he was right to see that shadow, that veil over the face of the young London painter, whereas my