Free Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje Page A

manoir, clambering over the
low brush, fi nding gaps in the hedges that were clear in the moonlight.
If Anna came any closer to the man with the guitar, she would be encroaching on
his territory. If she remained more than four paces away, it would signal a
fear, though there was none. He seemed a contained man, and he had one arm over
his guitar as if it were a favourite hound.
I interrupted you, I’m sorry. But it was beautiful.
To be truthful, she hadn’t really felt that. It had been just strange music
coming through the trees to where she had been standing. It was something
unexpected. So perhaps beautiful. She had not quite
lied. The musical chords had calmed everything; even the insects had paused
their noisy needle and thread. She looked towards the quiet trees.
I didn’t know you lived here. I was here once before, one night.
The fi ngers of
his right hand swept over the strings, six notes spreading towards her like a
fan. He smiled brie fl y at her, then fell into a melody and seemed to be playing
everything—bells, drums, a missing voice.
This was a fi eld, he told her sometime later, that he had sat in as a boy,
playing alongside his mother ’ s
singing. He would look not at the strings but at his mother ’ s face in order to catch her rapid swerves
of melody; there would be no clue about her voice ’ s
darting, except in her eyes—this starling, that wood thrush—and still he would
be beside her, picking up notes as if counting kilometre stones as she fl ew down a road. As a boy he had always
felt that his musical lessons were a net for holding everything around him—the
insects in the fi eld, the weather shifting in the trees — so
that he could give it as a collected gift, like a hand cupped with cold water
held up to a friend.
When he fi nished,
he said, You did not sing. You did not join me.
No. I ’ d have been the extra
wheel.
Music has many wheels, that ’ s
what makes it joyous.
The other singer...
Anna did not know what to say, whether she should inquire.
She comes from the village for lessons. Once a week I give lessons. You came
from the house with the pigeonnier ?
She nodded.
A bee landed on the neck of the man’s guitar, and he pursed his lips and blew
it off. When it returned after a quick circuit in the air, he fl icked it away with his middle fi nger, and it spun wounded into the grass.
My name is Rafael, if you want to know.
Ah yes, ah yes, I was told about you, by the owner of the manoir. He
said you might be here. She glanced behind. I should go, I suppose.
He said he would accompany her. But then he took no direct path towards the
house. He guided her, stepping over bushes. They had to bend almost double to
walk under the low branches of the trees. He ignored a clear path a few yards
to their right, as if he had the mind of a cow, or a crow in mid-air,
perceiving a more natural route. If anything, going this way, they took longer
to reach the house. The comfort she had felt in that fi eld was replaced by scratches, and some
annoyance towards him.
At the kitchen door she asked if he was thirsty and, under the gush of the tap, fi lled two cups and
invited him to sit down at the table. It was covered with books and papers. His
right arm pushed some of them aside to give himself more space, but he did not
look at what they were. Instead his eyes searched around the room, the way a
thief’s might. You did not invite strangers in for a drink like this, but Anna
hadn’t spoken to anyone for days. He was looking at furniture and pictures,
consuming them, the same way he had looked at her, with either curiosity or
pleasure. That was how he now regarded the red enamel cup he was holding in his
hands.
My father was known by some as a thief, he said, as though he had read her mind
about how he was looking around the room. But he never stole from houses he was
invited into.
That’s civilized, she managed to retort soon enough to
seem at ease with this information.
I think so too. Still, his