Free I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place by Howard Norman Page B

on rubber rafts on a pond. I told her I had the use of a cottage in Jeffersonville, not far from the festival site, owned by the poet Jerome Rothenberg and his wife, Diane, in dairy farm country.
    When I had finished my recollections, Mathilde, between kissing my ears and mouth with big smacking noises and mussing my hair, all teasing sweetness, interrogated me, hoping to discover to what extent I’d authentically experienced things at Woodstock. “So you probably had a bath every night,” she said, “at your friend’s cozy little cottage, right? Did you have any luck in the fucking-in-the-pond department? Did you get hypnotized by what’s-his-face, the Maharishi-something? Did you get all crazy and slide on your bare ass in the mud? You tell me, but my guess is, no to all of the above.”
    â€œI had a very good time listening to the music,” I said. “Mostly I sat on a hill way back from the stage and looked at the performers through binoculars. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
    â€œOh, I’ve hurt your feelings.”
    â€œNo, it’s just that I thought I’d had a better time than I obviously did.”
    Mathilde attempted a reconciliation. She held my hand in hers and said, “If I were there, I’d have wanted to sit in that bathtub with you. I don’t need a pond. I prefer a bed. I’m glad you had a nice time.”
    â€œIn my own way.”
    â€œYou know what the joke is about Woodstock? Because of all the dope and LSD and stuff? The joke is, if you remember Woodstock, you weren’t really there.”
    â€œSo then, by those lights, I wasn’t there. But still I remember it.”
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    The plane had departed Regina at dusk and lost radio contact somewhere between the airport and Kyle, in north-central Saskatchewan province. The wreckage was found scattered and smoldering. Mathilde had been the only passenger. She always scrupulously worked out a strict budget for her painting sojourns; transportation was always the most difficult part to afford. The pilot’s and her body were incinerated; Mathilde’s identity was forensically verified by dental records. The inventory of possessions in her motel room in Kyle included toiletries, canvases, paintbrushes and tubes of paint, turpentine, postcards, a book of watercolors by Toulouse-Lautrec, and a book of watercolors by Egon Schiele. Her remains and her paintings were sent to London; she was buried there within walking distance of her parents’ townhouse. When I wrote to extend my condolences, Mathilde’s mother’s return note read: “Thank you. Although we did not know any of you, it is a comfort to know that Mathilde had so many Canadian friends.”
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    The trajectory of a life sponsored for any period by unresolved conversations and love, and then abruptly deprived of these things, is something to behold, let alone experience firsthand. In the immediate aftermath of Mathilde’s death I did a number of things without rhyme or reason, but perhaps with what the poet Denise Levertov called, in a lecture I heard her give, “the marionetting of the whole person by an invisible hand, the sorrow dance.” Whoever or whatever was in control of my life over the next six or so months, it wasn’t me. Quite often I’d simply fall off a curb.
    Amid this disorderly order of psychological incidents, as I have come to think of them, I decided to take Isador up on his offer to get me work at the Lord Nelson Hotel. He had given me a magazine article titled “Hold Your Tongue,” which contained advice about how to know when a person should, and shouldn’t, keep his opinion to himself. I had a low opinion of this article. But Isador said, “It’s useful for a bellman.” He had set up an interview with the personnel director of the hotel. I put on my dark brown herringbone sports coat, black trousers, beige shirt, necktie, and black dress