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

somehow to be without their mothers she thought, motionless and hypnotized on spindly legs, with cars moving round them yet unafraid, and her father said I promised you a surprise didn’t I, there aren’t a lot of them in the woods around our place anymore, Mai said they’re lost but they’re free, but they weren’t he pointed out, see they’re sheltered, they’re too easy to see she answered with spots of light bouncing off their reddish backs like when we’re too easy to see, then she fell silent because after all maybe her father was right that there would be a new herd tomorrow, which means that foxes will follow, and he, Daniel, would protect the wildlife, he could assure her of that but her father’s faith in the future, she thought, was a bit naïve or else hard-nosed, maybe he was just a gullible intellectual, confirmed ecologist and all that, rocking himself to sleep with theories of this utterly corrupted and exploited earth, this park somehow struggling back to life, we made it ourselves you know, her father went on, look at this, animals running free and drinking from the lagoons, and maybe it was true after all that under his protection it was all beauty and proportion, the reserves, the parks, and he would always have that effect wherever he went, balance and cohesion, whereas in Mai’s world all was too much out in the open, vulnerable and unprotected, too easy to spot, right down to the last animal bareness of fawns along a railway track looking for the first shoots of wheat under the frozen puddles of snow-covered fields, nothing there for them but perhaps the candid offering of their bareness to all, ready to be cut down at the instant their hunger left them defenceless, alone or even in a herd it did not matter, go on living or just surrender as Suzanne did, thought Mai, and Pet ites Cendres saw them once more lined up in the street against the front of the bar whose doors and windows never closed, Yinn, Cobra, Robbie, Santa Fe, all awaiting the last show of the night as if their flowered and feathered selves were for rent for a few hours, decked out for the secret fairy-tale wedding, a melding of sexes and colours, fusing for one memorable moment in the stage glow, soon forgotten like a rented movie, Yinn, Cobra, Robbie, Santa Fe, if these girls lined up in the street were only this one instant of mixed entertainment, thought Petites Cendres, just this and their ephemeral eclectic jumble, so easy to spot with the makeup still fresh under their eyes and so explicitly vulnerable that a contrary old man stumbling in his lofty drunkenness walked across the street toward Robbie saying, huh you’re all just treacherous bitches, treacherous, what the hell are you doing there anyway said the old man, always impeccably dressed, you liar Robbie answered him, cynical as ever though still joking thought Petites Cendres, who recognized the man at once, just waiting for my taxi to take me back to the archipelago and my alligators, my dogs, my wife, and my five kids, ’cause underneath those sick padded bras of yours there’s nothing but treason, all of you have betrayed me the man said, and as for you Robbie, you want to turn me inside out, but I go to church every Sunday and I’m faithful to my woman, I told you that already, I love her and you ain’t gonna change that, so get lost you traitorous bitches, all of you, even Yinn waltzing from the Porte du Baiser to Decadent Fridays, sublime betrayer, yup her too, lucky I only come see you on Sundays, you trash says Robbie, liar with a secret hidden life, your poor wife, I feel sorry for her Robbie said again, you pin those wet eyes of yours on me and just me, don’t you, but for her your heart’s like ice, oh no the man shot back, I love her as much as anything you’ve got, that’s just the way life is, but when you wear that gypsy scarf round your head and over your forehead I could just nibble you, bitch that you are, the hell with coy prudishness, I