No one, true, turned to look after me, but that was because the passersby, upon seeing my black expression, thought it wise not to test their luck and turn around. If his face looks like that, I imagined them thinking, what might the back of his head look like? Those who did spot me — and what with the crowds they could only have seen me while walking past — would instantly hush all conversation, and having passed me by, would walk on in silence. Just as an icebreaker smashes through ice, so I plowed through all that human cheer. For hours that day I paced the streets of Banff, feeling the whole time as if I were marching over the pages of an album of the animal kingdom. From Fox Street I crossed to Badger; from Otter onto Wolf; Bear took me to Buffalo; Grizzly ran parallel to Otter; Rabbit merged with Moose; Caribou came out to the river. Had someone seen my peregrinations from above, who knows what sort of contours they would have discerned, etched by my movement into the pavements of the town. I went to the riverbank, sat on a bench, smelled the water. Now, I thought, when no one can see my face, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. I bent over, ran my hand through the rippling river surface, winced at the cold. I raised my fist and watched as all the water poured out of it between my fingers, first in little jets and then drip by drip. Once it was all gone, I wiped my hand on my pant leg.
I walked along the river, tripping here and there, as if my feet betrayed me. I came to a bend and saw a bridge. On the grass parkway reaching all the way to the Banff Park Museum, nearly surrounded by crowds of delighted tourists, two elks were grazing. From time to time, they lifted their heads and registered with indifference the clicking of cameras and glaring of flashes. I turned left toward the post office and stepped in bird droppings. My left leg slipped. I stumbled, lost my balance, and caught myself on my right hand and right knee. When I straightened up, there was a green stain. Ah, I thought, now that would be something useful that a good natural history museum could do: provide information on how to get chlorophyll stains out of various kinds of fabric, especially linen, instead of collecting wild animals that have been hunted and shot and the signatures of feckless vagabonds. I was so furious that I could have gone straight into the museum and up to the second floor, smashed the glass of the display case, and ripped out the page with the ornate letters which, lined one up next to the other, spelled the name of Ivan Matulić. A horrible day, I thought while I stood at the congested intersection across from the bank and waited for the light to change. A day stripped of substance, I thought, as I crossed over to the other side of the street: a day with no properties, a day of endings, of defeats. I set out along Buffalo, resolved to take the long way back up the mountain all the way to the Art Centre, but suddenly I felt I wouldn’t be able to. I was sinking; my heart flagged, deflated like a punctured ball, and I probably would have collapsed into the ditch had a gunmetal-gray jeep not pulled over beside me and honked.
The darkened glass window lowered soundlessly, and I saw the director of the Literary Arts Programs inside. Perhaps it would have been better had I slid into the ditch and avoided catching his eye, I thought, but now it was too late, the director of the Literary Arts Programs smiled, beckoned for me to get into a car so capacious that Mark Robinson might have been lurking in there somewhere, which as a possibility at any other time would have been enough to dissuade me from gripping the handle and opening the car door, let alone settling into the leather seat, but my knees were buckling, my mouth was dry, the soles of my feet stung, my thighs were cramping, so with an effort I finally clambered in, as if, I confess, when lifting myself, I were lifting a crate of lead. I think I fell asleep that instant. I must have, for when I opened my eyes again we were parked by the reception building. I couldn’t see the director of the Literary Arts Programs anywhere. The digital clock on the instrument panel indicated that lunchtime was over, though, I thought, no one would say a word if I were to go in, pick up a tray, and serve myself a bowl of soup. There was always leftover soup, I thought, though they’d use up the cold cuts and the steamed vegetables. Nor was there ever, I thought, enough ice cream, though there was always all the pudding you could ask for, and pudding is nicer anyway. I didn’t want any. I got out of the jeep and, going down the slope, made my way slowly toward the studios. I walked gingerly over the pine needles and dry grass, going from one pine tree to the next as if I feared someone might see me. No one could have, I was certain, but at once I remembered that too great a sense of certainty paves the way for a lasting uncertainty, which I had read in an old anthology of practical advice for success in life, and, sure enough, when I looked up, there was a magpie on a tree branch.
Somewhere farther off a door slammed. In the woods, with or without magpies, no one expects to hear a door slam, and it so alarmed me, it was so startling, so much at odds with the surroundings, that for the next few minutes while my heart pounded I was prepared, if need be, to turn and run away at a sprint. A minute later, once I’d come up to the path near the studio fashioned from a fishing boat, I saw that what had slammed was a shutter, which, slapped by wind or a cross draft, was knocking between the wall and the window frame, and this was obviously not the first time, for on the wall where the shutter had banged was a broad swath of scraped wood, pale on the uneven background. I would have liked to show this to Daniel Atijas, to draw his attention to how the pain of the wood was light in color, unlike the pain we feel, which is always dark, often black. In our culture, I wanted to say, pain is never depicted as light except in cases when the pain is seen as a doorway opening to something higher, usually divine. In all other cases, I would have told him, pain opens toward the dark, or, more precisely, pain shuts in with darkness, and from that pain, one is blinded, even when the pain, as with powerful migraines, has to do with light, an abundance of glare, a feeling that the world around the person in pain is turning into tresses of radiance. The eyes are open wide, but the gaze goes nowhere. Looking without seeing, as when staring into darkness.