Mai at the Predators' Ball by Marie-Claire Blais Read Free Book Online Page A

love you, it’s imprisonment that’s all, it’s the idea of marriage being a life sentence that bothers her, not you, my father wasn’t faithful like you my love, and gently Yinn laid his head on Jason’s shoulder, you sang so beautifully tonight my sweet, domestic life with Jason had a calming effect, if he’d just do the dishes Yinn’s mother would like him a lot more, but he is a musician and such jobs aren’t for him, true though, Yinn’s mother would really like her son-in-law to do his share around the house, at least tidy up a bit, it’s like living in a submarine and it was true, Robbie agreed, without Yinn’s sense of order and cleanliness plus her mother’s, this team would have sunk below the waves long ago, and all the girls would have gone down with the ship, the girls and their wigs plumped on the chairs, their pets, Cobra pushing her little dogs in a baby carriage, Yinn’s place had a passageway to the cabaret that earned them all a living, well barely, some nights it depended, and Yinn’s mother wasn’t putting up with any tricks, how on earth are we going to eat she’d ask him, if those students keep sneaking up the emergency stairs in back without paying, son, we have to eat, don’t we, all she ever made was oriental food but her kids were always well fed, we never go without she said, yup tonight it’ll be the blonde wig Robbie said, there’s a frail thirty-year-old little woman I keep my eye on, fragile as a little girl, her and that frizzy little dog she carries, the first time she came here I thought she was eight and we wanted to turn her away, I’m going to sit her on my knee and let her kiss me and play with my hair said Robbie, she often has this giant of a friend with her, the colossus and the tiny kid, I know it takes all kinds to make a world and maybe even understand it too, I mean if life is a horror story I just weave my way through it like a bunch of elves, as though it’s all nothing but pleasant and tolerant and peaceful where they are, and it’s all just comfy like the blanket that dog’s sitting on in the little girl’s arms and here I am faced with the innocence of these two guileless creatures, no ostentatiously sexual gesticulation, when it’s my turn to dance and sing, it’s just me, Robbie, they admire, and Yinn making himself up in the mirror, eyebrows arching and tapering, lashes expanding, I’m a kabuki actor says Yinn, it’s the strange visage being drawn little by little in the mirror they admire, no longer concerned themselves about being too huge or too little, no blame for their sizes, tonight or tomorrow you’re gonna have to eat says Yinn’s mom, and some smart-ass student has already made it across the passageway, so be on your guard, yup the blonde wig is for tonight Robbie says to Petites Cendres, who replies my how virginal you look, no matter how low you’ve sunk nothing’s beaten and bled you like it has me, you keep your fluttering virginity fresh under those back combed curls, you actually are crisp you know Robbie, blessed in that unabashed virginity of yours and still inexperienced in the sadistic ways of humanity, it turns us all off, the disgusting abuse they pour on us, you don’t even love yourself Robbie, said Petites Cendres, so tell me where we’re going, will you Papa, Mai insisted, all the way to the archipelago he replied, do you want to see Fawn Park and the tiny females we were able to save from the last hurricane, but it’s too foggy for that said Mai, we won’t be able to see a thing, the mothers and fawns were nearly wiped out said Daniel, whatever damage man starts nature finishes, too much fog on the road Papa, Mai said again and I want to go dancing tonight, my friends are waiting for me, then all of a sudden there they were and her father stopped the car, all of them outside the fence and all over the road, lost fawns staring at them through the curtain of fog which outlined them in snowy white, too visible