there was a blue tin jail roof. they were painting the kingston penitentiary roof blue up to the sky so that after a while the three men working on it became uncertain of clear boundaries. as if they could climb up further, beyond the tin, into that ocean above the roof. by noon, after four hours, they felt they could walk on the blue air. the prisoners buck and lewis and caravaggio knew this was a trick, a humiliation of the senses. why an intentional blue roof? they could not move without thinking twice where a surface stopped. there were times when patrick lewis, government paintbrush in hand, froze. taking a seemingly innocent step he would fall through the air and die. they were fifty yards from the ground. the paint pails were joined by rope – one on each slope – so two men could move across the long roof symmetrically. they sat on the crest of the roof during their breaks eating sandwiches, not coming down all day. they leaned the heels of their hands into the wet paint as they worked. they would scratch their noses and realize they became partly invisible. if they painted long enough they would be eradicated, blue birds in a blue sky. patrick lewis understood this, painting a bug that would not move away alive onto the blue metal. demarcation, said the prisoner named caravaggio. that is all we need to remember. and that was how he escaped – a long double belt strapped under his shoulders attaching him to the cupola so he could hang with his arms free, splayed out, while buck and patrick painted him, covering his hands and boots and hair with blue. they daubed his clothes and then, laying a strip of handkerchief over his eyes, painted his face blue, so he was gone – to the guards who looked up and saw nothing there. when the search had died down, and the lights-out whistle had gone off, caravaggio still remained as he was, unable to see what he knew would be a sliver of new moon that gave off little light. a thief's moon. he could hear lake ontario in this new silence after the wind died. the flutter of sailboats. a clatter of owl claw on the tin roof. he began to move in his cocoon of dry paint – at first unable to break free of the stiffness which encased him, feeling his clothes crack as he bent his arm to remove the handkerchief. he saw nothing but the night. he unhooked the belt. uncoiling the rope hidden around the cupola, he let himself down off the roof. he ran through the township of bath with the white rectangle over his eyes, looking for a hardware store he could break into. he was an exotic creature who had to escape from his blue skin before daylight. but there was not one hardware or paint shop. he broke into a clothing store and in the darkness stripped and dressed in whatever would fit him from the racks. in the rooms above the store he could hear jazz on the radio, the music a compass for him. his hands felt a mirror but he would not turn on the light. he took gloves. he jumped onto a slow milk-train and climbed onto the roof. it was raining. he removed his belt, tied himselfon safely, and slept. in trenton he untied himself and rolled off down the embankment just as the train began to move again. he was still blue, unable to see what he looked like. he undressed and laid his clothes out on the grass so he could see them in the daylight in a human shape. he knew nothing about the town of trenton except that it was three hours from toronto by train. he slept again. in the late afternoon, walking in the woods that skirted the industrial section, he saw redick's sash and door factory. he groomed himself as well as he could and stepped out of the trees – a green sweater, black trousers, blue boots, and a blue head. there was a kid sitting on a pile of lumber behind the store who saw him the moment he stepped into the clearing. the boy didn't move at all, just regarded him as he walked, trying to look casual, the long twenty-five yards to the store. caravaggio crouched in front of the boy. -what's your name? -alfred. -will you go in there, al, and see if you can find me some turpentine? -are you from the movie company? -the movie? he nodded. the kid ran off and returned a few minutes later, still alone. that was good. -your dad own this place? -no, i just like it here. all the doors propped outside, where they don't belong – things where they shouldn't be. while the boy spoke caravaggio tore off the tail of his shirt. -there is another place in town where you can see outboard motors and car engines hanging off branches. -yeah? al, can you help me get this off my face and hair? -sure. they sat in the late afternoon sunlight by the doors, the boy dipping the shirt-tail into the tin and wiping the colour off caravaggio's face. the two of them talked quietly about the other place where the engines hung from the trees. when caravaggio unbuttoned his shirt the boy saw the terrible scars across his neck and gasped. it looked to him as if some giant bird had left claw marks from trying to lift off the man's head. caravaggio told him to forget the movie, he was not an actor, he was from prison. "i'm caravaggio – the painter," he laughed. the boy promised never to say anything. they decided that his hair should be cut off, so the boy went back into the store and came back giggling and shrugging with some rose shears. soon caravaggio looked almost bald, certainly unrecognizable. when theowner of redick's door factory was busy, caravaggio used the bathroom, soaping and washing the turpentine off his face. he saw his neck for the first time in a mirror, scarred from the prison attack three months earlier. in the yard the boy wrote out his name on a piece of paper. from his pocket he took out an old maple-syrup spile with the year 1882 on it, and he wrapped the paper around it. when the man came back, cleaned up, the boy handed it to him. the man said, "i don't have anything to give you now." the kid grinned, very happy. "i know," he said. "remember my name. " he was running, his boots disappearing into grey bush. away from lake ontario, travelling north where he knew he could find some unopened cottage to stay quietly for a few days. landscape for caravaggio was never calm. a tree bending with difficulty, a flower thrashed by wind, a cloud turning black, a cone falling – everything moved anguished at separate speeds. when he ran he saw it all. the eye splintering into fifteen sentries, watching every approach. he ran with the trent canal system on his right, passing the red lock buildings and their concrete platforms over the water. every few miles he would stop and watch the glassy waters turn chaotic on the other side of the sluice gate, then he was off again. in two days he was as far north as bobcaygeon. he slept that night among the lumber at the boyd sawmill and one evening later he was racing down a road. it was dusk. he had slept out three nights now. the last of the blue paint at his wrist. the first cottages showed too many signs of life, the canoes already hauled out. he retreated back up their driveways. he came to a cottage with a glassed-in porch and green shutters, painted gables, and a double-pitch roof. if the owners arrived he could swing out of the second-floor window and walk along the roof. caravaggio looked at architecture with a perception common to thieves who saw cupboards as having weak backs, who knew fences were easier to go through than over. he stood breathing heavily in the dusk, looking up at the cottage, tired of running, having eaten only bits of chocolate the boy had given him. al. behind him the landscape was darkening down fast. he was inside the cottage in ten seconds. he walked around the rooms, excited, his hand trailing off the sofa top, noticed the magazines stacked on the shelf. he turned left into a kitchen and used a knife to saw open a can. darkness. he wanted no lights on tonight. he dug the knife into the can and gulped down beans, too hungry and tired for a spoon. then he went upstairs and ripped two blankets off a bed and spread them out in the upstairs hall beside the window which led to the roof. he hated the hours of sleep. he was a man who thrived and worked in available light. at night his wife would sleep in his embrace but the room around him continued to be alive, his body porous to every noise, his stare painting out darkness. he would sleep as insecurely as a thief does, which is why they are always tired.

he climbs into black water. a temperature of blood. he sees and feels no horizon, no edge to the liquid he is in. the night air is forensic. an animal slips into the water. this river is not deep, he can walk across it. his boots, laces tied to each other, are hanging around his neck. he doesn't want them wet but he goes deeper and he feels them filling, the extra weight of water in them now. the floor of the river feels secure. mud. sticks. a bridge a hundred yards south of him made of concrete and wood. a tug at his boot beside the collarbone. as caravaggio sleeps, his head thrown back, witnessing a familiar nightmare, three men enter his prison cell in silence. the men enter and patrick in the cell opposite on the next level up watches them and all language dries up. as they raise their hands over caravaggio, patrick breaks into a square-dance call – "allemande left your corners all" screaming it absurdly as warning up into the stone darkness. the three men turn to the sudden noise and caravaggio is on his feet struggling out of his nightmare. the men twist his grey sheet into a rope and wind it around his eyes and nose. caravaggio can just breathe, he can just hear their blows as if delayed against the side of his head. they swing him tied up in the sheet until he is caught in the arms of another. then another blow. patrick's voice continuing to shout out, the other cells alive now and banging too. "birdie fly out and the crow fly in, crow fly out and give birdie a spin." his father's language emerging from somewhere in his past, now a soundtrack for murder. the animal from the nightmare bares its teeth. caravaggio swerves and its mouth rips open the boot to the right of his neck. water is released. he feels himself becoming lighter. being swung from side to side, no vision, no odour, he is ten years old and tilting wildly in a tree. a wall or an arm hits him. "fucking wop! fucking dago!" "honour your partner, dip and dive." his hands are up squabbling with this water creature – sacrificing the hands to protect the body. the inside of his heart feels bloodless. he swallows dry breath. he needs more than anything to get on his knees and lap up water from a saucer. three men who have evolved smug and without race slash out. "hello wop." and the man's kick into his stomach lets free the singer again as if a wurlitzer were nudged, fast and flat tones weaving through a two-step as the men begin to beat the blindfolded caravaggio. what allies with caravaggio is only the singer, otherwise his mind is still caught underwater. then they let him go. he stands there still blindfolded, his hands out. the caller in the cell opposite quietens, knowing caravaggio needs to listen within the silence for any clue as to where the men are. they are dumb beasts. he could steal the teeth out of their mouths. everyone watches but him, eyes covered, hands out. the homemade filed-down razor teeth swing in an arc to his throat, to the right of the ripped-open boot. he drops back against the limestone wall. the other leather boot releases its cup-like hold on the water as if a lung gives up. a vacuum of silence. he realizes the men have gone. the witness, the caller from the upper level, begins to talk quietly to him. "they have cut your neck. do you understand! they have cut your neck. you must staunch it till someonecomes." then patrick screams into the limestone darkness for help. caravaggio finds the bed. he gets to his knees on the mattress – head and elbows propping up his bruised body so nothing touches the pain. the blood flows along his chin into his mouth. he feels as if he has eaten the animal that attacked him and he spits out everything he can, old saliva, blood, spits again and again. everything is escaping. his left hand touches his neck and it is not there. *** the next morning caravaggio explored the shoreline around the cottage in a canoe. he was out on the lake when a woman in another canoe emerged into the bay and hailed him. red hair. the clear creamy skin of a witch. she wore a hat tied with a scarf and she waved to him in absolute confidence that if he was in a canoe on this lake he was acceptable and safe, even though every piece of clothing he wore was stolen from the blue bureau in the cottage. the lavender shirt, the white ducks, the tennis shoes. he stopped paddling. performing intricate strokes, she pulled up alongside him. -you are staying with the neals. -how did you know? she gestured to the canoe. here people recognized canoes. -are they coming up for august? -i think so. they were unsure. -they always are. i'm anne, a neighbour. she pointed to the next property. she had on a bathing suit and a light skirt and was barefoot, the paddle resting on her shoulder. - i'm david. drops of water slid along the brown wood and onto her skin. he looked at her stunningly poreless face that now and then revealed itself out from the shadow of her straw hat. he decided to be direct about his tentative status. -i'm here to get my bearings. -this is a good place for that. he looked up at her again, differently now, past the white creamy face and bare arms. -why did you say it like that? her hand up to shield off the sun. a questioning look.

-what you just said . . . -just that i love this place. it can heal you if you are here alone. are you an artist? -what? -you have aquamarine on your neck. he smiled. he had spent so long calling it blue. -i should go, he said. she lifted her paddle forward so it was across her knees, nodding to herself, realizing a wall had just been placed between them. their canoes banged together and she backpaddled. he had never heard anyone speak as generously as she had in that one sentence. this is a good place. -thank you. she turned, puzzled. -for pointing out the aquamarine. -well ... enjoy the lake. -i will. she sensed his withdrawal. alone, not having seen anyone for weeks, she had come too close, spoken too loudly. he watched the frailness of her back as she canoed away from him. caravaggio looked over the body of water as if it were human now, a creature on whose back he shifted. he did not think of approaches or exits, suddenly there could be only descent or companionship. *** the first time caravaggio had noticed patrick lewis gazing down from the opposite cell, he had simply waved and looked elsewhere. most of caravaggio's time in prison was spent in restless sleep. the night light of cells, the constant noise, made him nervous. the prisoner opposite who had tried to burn down the muskoka hotel was worse. he always sat up erect on the bed watching the movements below him. when caravaggio returned from the hospital, his throat sewn up after the attack, patrick was waiting for him. and when caravaggio woke in pain suddenly the next afternoon, he turned to find the man's gaze reassuring him. patrick had sat up there smoking precisely, moving his hand and cigarette fully away from his face when he blew the smoke out. -do you have a red dog? he asked caravaggio a few days later. -russet, he whispered back.

-you're the thief, right? -the best there is; that's why, as you can see, i'm here. -someone let you down, i suppose. -yes. the red dog. he had trained as a thief in unlit rooms, dismantling the legs of a kitchen table, unscrewing the backs of radios and the bottoms of toasters. he would draw the curtains to block out any hint of streetlight and empty the kitchen cupboards, then put everything back, having to remember as he worked where all the objects were on the floor. such pelmanism. while his wife slept he moved the furniture out of her bedroom and brought in the sofa, changed the pictures on the wall, the doilies on the bedside table. in daylight he moved slowly as if conserving remnants of energy – a bat in post-coital flight. he would step into an upholstery shop to pick up a parcel for his wife and read the furniture, displacing in his mind the chairs through that window, the harvest table through the door at a thirty-degree angle veering right. as a thief he had a sense of the world which was limited to what existed for twenty feet around him. during his first robbery caravaggio injured himself leaping from a second-storey window. he lay on his back with a cracked ankle on the whitevale lawn, a jeffreys drawing in his arms. he lay there as the family walked into the house and shrieked when they came upon the chloroformed dog. all the porch lights went on, the shadow of a tree luckily falling across him. two hours later he stumbled on a settlement of long barns, not certain what they were till he was gathered in the smell. a mushroom factory. only the hallways and offices were lit, the long dormitories where the mushrooms were grown were in permanent darkness. he knew what he needed. in the main lobby were the helmets with battery lamps attached to them. now it was almost dawn. a sunday. he had a day without being disturbed. later in the sunlight he cut open his boot and sock. he made a splint and strapped it with electrical tape. worse than the pain was his hunger. he looked at his stolen drawing in the sunlight, the clean lines, the shaky signature. around dusk he hobbled across the road to a vegetable garden, pulled up a few carrots and dropped them into his shirt. he tried to catch a chicken but it sped up its walk and left him behind. he returned to the minimal light in the halls of the mushroom factory. he read the punch cards of the workers. salvatorelli, mascardelli, daquila, pereira, de francesca. most of them italian, some portuguese. shifts from eight to four. he felt safer. in the office he looked through the drawers and cabinets. he knew people who took shits on desks whenever they broke into office buildings but he wasn't one of them. it was, he was told, a formal act. most amateur thieves could not control themselves. with all their discipline focused on the idea of robbery, there was no governor of the body. the act implied grossness, but the professional thief turned from this gesture to a medicinal clarity in his survey of the room. detailed receipts memorized, key pages razor-bladed. at the centre of the symmetrical plot was this false act of madness.

when caravaggio joined the company of thieves he was struck first of all by their courtesy. even the shitters looked refined and wore half-moon glasses; they would have taken snuff but for the fact it would destroy their sense of smell. the cafes in the west end of toronto were full of these men who had no work in the afternoons, who woke at noon and, after shaving, lunched with their friends. caravaggio was welcomed into their midst and lectured with great conservatism on the art of robbery. some were “displacers," some stole animals, some kidnapped dogs and wives, some would deal only in meat products or paper information. they were protective of their style and area of interest. they tried to persuade the young man that what they did was the most significant but at the same time they did not wish to encourage too much competition. he was young. he was in awe of them, wanted to be all of them in their moments of extreme crisis. he hung around them not so much to learn their craft but to study the way they lived when they stepped back into the world of order. he still had that to learn. he was twenty-two at the blue cellar cafe and he was fascinated only by character. he was a young man stepping into a mansion and being overcome with the generosity of envy. he slid his hand down the smoothness of a banister and his palm and fingers luxuriated in it. the intricate light switches! the carpets your feet melted into! he did this with their character he walked away with their mannerisms and their brand names, the rhythm and abstract tone of their musings. later he trailed each of them for a week in order to watch their performances. some of them went into houses and spent three hours and came out with objects so small they fit into a side pocket. some removed every moveable object on the ground floor in half an hour. and now, in the midst of his first robbery, caravaggio read through the finances of the mushroom factory and came across a till of cash. never steal where you sleep. all this inquiry was out of boredom. he wanted a book, he wanted meat. if he was going to have to hole up for a few days he wanted chicken and literature. caravaggio switched on the light attached to the foreman's helmet and stepped into one of the mushroom dormitories he had selected earlier as his. shelves at various levels ran the length of the long room. there were troughs on the shelves which held manure and earth and young growing mushrooms. now he was in a dark prison with millions of them. he snuggled into a space beneath the low shelf at the end farthest away from the door, his jeffreys drawing beside him. he switched off the helmet, breathed in the thick vegetable air. he had not slept for a day and a half, had chloroformed his first dog, jumped out of a window, tried to race down a chicken ... something brushed his face. without opening his eyes he moved back. earlier he had awakened with fragments of light above him as figures leaned over the troughs to select mushrooms. the mushrooms were grown at different stages, a few weeks apart, so there would always be a section ready. he had fallen back to sleep among the sounds of overalls rubbing against the shelves. now the cloth against his face startled him. a woman on his right stood tentatively on one foot. she struggled with a shoe, leaning against the plaster wall in a slip, the upper half of her body naked. her helmet balanced on the top shelf was facing her so she could see what she was doing as she dressed. her black shadow moved parallel to her whiteness. he remained still. raven hair and an angular face, her body reaching up to pull down a blouse from a hook, more secure now with both shoes on.

- psst. she looked sternly out into darkness, picked up the helmet, and diverted light across the room through the shelves. - angelica? is that you? she called out. she pulled on her skirt with one hand holding the helmet, stopped, put the helmet on, and did up the buttons. she began singing to herself. he had to get her attention without terrifying her. he started humming along with her. her helmet light came down fast to where he was and she lashed out, kicking his face. after a yell of pain he began to laugh. -please, tomorrow bring me something to eat. -perche? -i'm a thief. i've broken my ankle. she bent down and put her hand out. -tartufi? what are you stealing? mushrooms? her hands were on his foot, felt the ankle strapped up, and believed everything, knowing already he was gentle by his laugh. - i broke it a mile or two from here. i'm very hungry. please bring me some chickentomorrow. he could not see her face at all, just the hem of the skirt at her knees where the light bounced as she crouched. now all he could know of her was a voice, confident, laughing with him. -come si chiama? -giannetta. -i'm caravaggio. -a thief. -sicuro. -i'll bring you some chicken tomorrow. and a bible. -let me see your face. -basta! ha visto abbastanza.

she patted his foot. -do you need anything else? -ask what i should do about my ankle. there was darkness again and he yearned for light. the thin beam from her helmet, the delicate ribs as she reached up for the blouse, her shadow overcoming his memory so he had to begin the scene again, a small loop of film, seven or eight seconds, until she reached for the lamp and put herself in darkness. he repeated it again and again and then turned to her voice. strange how he wanted chicken above all else. it was that useless chase in the yard across the road, itching in his memory. the next morning she arrived and asked him to turn his head while she changed. she told him how each of the workers chose a room or one corner for changing into and out of their overalls. she unwrapped a large cloth and gave him the food. chicken and some salad and milk and banana cake. it was the worst banana cake he had eaten up to that point in his life. - devo partire. pitorner.. in the afternoon giannetta and three other women workers came by to have a look at him. there were the expected jokes, but he enjoyed the company after so much solitude. when they left, noisily, she put her hand out. she touched his mouth gently. then she brought out bandages and restrapped his ankle. -cosi va meglio. -when can i get out of here? -we've planned something for you. -bene. let me see your face. her lamp remained still at his foot. so he reached back for his foreman's helmet and shone it on her. she remained looking down. he realized his right hand was still holding her ankle from when she had removed the electrical tape off him painfully. -thank you for helping me. -i am sorry i kicked you so hard. the next day giannetta crouched beside him, smiling. -we must shave off your moustache. only women work here. -mannaggia! -we have to get you out as a woman.

he reached out his hand and put his fingers into her hair, into that darkness. -giannetta. -you have to put your arm down. her hand rested at his shoulder, holding onto the straight razor. he would not let her go. their faces darkened as they leaned forward, her lamp shining past his head. he could smell her skin. - here comes the first kiss, she whispered. she handed him the dress. -non guardare, please. don't look. he realized he was standing exactly where she had been a few days earlier. he switched on his lamp so it beamed onto her, then began to take off his shirt, paused, but she kept looking at him. he saw his own shadow on the wall. she came forward, smiling, calming his balance as he stood on his good foot. -here, i'll show you how to put on a dress. unbutton this first. she held the cloth bunched over his nakedness. -ahh caravaggio, shall we tell our children how we met? *** this time he did not take the canoe. he had already walked the shoreline before dusk, remembering the swamp patches. now, dressed in dark clothes, he traced his path towards the compound belonging to the woman with the canoe – the main building, outlying cottages, a boathouse, an icehouse. he had no idea what the lake was called. he had passed a sign when he was running that claimed the area was featherstone point. that was when he saw the telephone wires which he knew must come from her group of houses. he came through the last of the trees into the open area and everything was in darkness, as if the owners had packed up and left. he had expected to see rectangles of light. now he lost all perspective and did not know how fully he would have to turn to be aimed back at his cottage. he needed some context of the human. a dog on a chain, a window, a sound. he turned once more and saw moonlight on the lake. but there was no moon. he realized it had to be light from the boathouse. the landscape, the blueprint of the compound, sprang back into his brain. he walked towards the water knowing where the low shrubs were, the stone hedge, the topiary he could not see. he slipped inside the boathouse and listened for sounds of activity. nothing. with a pulley-chain used for hoisting up boat engines he swung up onto the first roof which was like a skirt around the upper cabin. he walked up the slope. the woman named anne was sitting inside at a table.

light from an oil lamp. she faced the water, her night window, and was writing hunched over the table unaware of anything else in the room. a summer skirt, an old shirt of her husband's, sleeves rolled up. she glanced up from the page and peered into the kerosene of the lamp. the mind behind the gaze did not know where it was. caravaggio had never witnessed someone writing before. he saw her put down the fountain pen and later pick it up, try it, and realizing the nib was dry, lift the tail of her shirt to wipe the dry ink off the nib, preening the groove, as if the pause were caused not by the hesitation of her mind but by the atrophy of the pen. now she bent over earnestly, half-smiling, the tongue moving in her mouth. if she had turned to her right she would have seen his head at one of the small panes of glass, the light from the oil lamp just reaching it. he thought of that possible glance and moved back further. he thought of all those libraries he had stepped into in toronto homes, the grand vistas of bookcases that reached the ceiling, the books of pigskin and other leathers that fell into his arms as he climbed up the shelves looking for whatever valuables he imagined were there, his boots pushing in the books to get a toe-hold. and then from up there, his head close to the ceiling, looking down on the rectangle of the rooms, hearing his dog's clear warning bark, not moving. and the door opening below him – a man walking in to pick up the telephone and dialling, while caravaggio hung high up on the bookcases knowing now he should move the second he was seen up there in his dark trousers and singlet, as still as a gargoyle against trollope and h.g. wells. he could land on the leather sofa and bounce into the man's body before he even said a word into the phone. then go through the french doors without opening them, a hunch of his body as he breaks through the glass and thin wood, then a blind leap off the balcony into the garden, where he would curse his dog for the late warning, and take off. but this boathouse had no grandeur. the woman's bare feet rested one on top of the other on the stained-wood floor. a lamp on the desk, a mattress on the floor. in this light, and with all the small panes of glass around her, she was inside a diamond, mothlike on the edge of burning kerosene, caught in the centre of all the facets. he knew there was such intimacy in what he was seeing that not even a husband could get closer than him, a thief who saw this rich woman trying to discover what she was or what she was capable of making. he put his hands up to his face and smelled them. oil and rust. they smelled of the chain. that was always true of thieves, they smelled of what they brushed against. paint, mushrooms, printing machines, yet they never smelled of the rich. he liked people who smelled of their trade – carpenters cutting into cedar, dogcatchers who carried the odour of wet struggling hounds with them. and what did this woman smell of? in this yellow pine room past midnight she was staring into a bowl of kerosene as if seeing right through the skull of a lover. he was anonymous, with never a stillness in his life like this woman's. he stood on the roof outside, an outline of a bear in her subconscious, and she quarried past it to another secret, one of her own, articulated wet and black on the page. the houses in toronto he had helped build or paint or break into were unmarked. he would never leave his name where his skill had been. he was one of those who have a fury or a sadness of only being described by someone else. a tarrer of roads, a housebuilder, a painter, a thief – yet he was invisible to all around him. he leapt through darkness onto the summer grass and then walked up to the main building. without turningon lights he found the telephone in the kitchen and phoned his wife in toronto. -well i got out. -lo so. -how? -the police were here. scomparso. not that you escaped but that you disappeared. -when did they come there? -last week. a couple of days after you got away. -how's august? -he's with me. he misses his night walks. she began to talk about her brother-in-law's house, which she had moved into. this time through a darkness which was distance. -i'll be back when i can, giannetta. -be careful. she was standing in the centre of the living room in the darkness as he came away from the phone. his ear had been focused to giannetta's voice, nothing else. his head imagining her – the alabaster face, the raven head. -non riuscivo a trovarti. -speak english. -i couldn't find you to ask. -you found the cottage, you found the phone, you could have found me. -i could have. it's a habit ... usually i don't ask. -i'm going to light a lamp. -yes, that's always safer. she lifted the glass chimney and held the match to the wick. it lit up the skirt and shirt and her red hair. she moved away from it and leaned against the back of the sofa.

-where were you calling? -toronto. my wife. -i see. -i'll pay for it. she waved the suggestion away. -is that your husband's shirt? -no. my husband's shirts are here, though. you want them? he shook his head, looking around the room. a fireplace, a straight staircase, bedrooms upstairs. -what do you want? you are a thief, right? -with cottages all you can steal is the space or the people. i needed to use your phone. -i'm going to eat something. do you want some food? -thank you. he followed her into the kitchen feeling relaxed with her – as if this was a continuation of his conversation with giannetta. -tell me ... -david. -david, why i am not scared of you? -because you've come back from someplace.... you got something there. or you're still there. -what are you talking about? -i was on the roof of the boathouse. i did find you. -i thought there was a bear around tonight. she sits across from him laughing at the story of his escape, not fully believing it. a fairy tale. she cups her hand over the glass chimney and blows out the lamp. two in the morning. as they go into darkness his mind holds on to the image of her slightness, the poreless skin, the bright hair leaning into the light. the startling colours of her strange beauty. -i can't stand any more light, she says.

-yes, this is the night. allow the darkness in. -i had to stay in a dark room once ... with measles. her voice is exact, crystal clear. he has his eyes closed, listening to her. -i was a kid. my uncle – he's a famous doctor – came to see me. in my room, all the blinds were down, the lights drowned. so i could do nothing. i wasn't allowed to read. he said i've brought you earrings. they are special earrings. he pulled out some cherries. two, joined by their stalks, and he hung them over one ear and took out another pair and hung them over the other ear. that kept me going for days. i couldn't lie down at night without carefully taking them off and laying them on the night table. -do you have any children? -i have a son. he comes up with my husband in a day or so. i have a brother who doesn't speak. this is his shirt. he hasn't spoken for years. caravaggio lies on the carpet. he had, when there was light earlier, been looking up at the tongue and groove, theorizing how one removed such floors. she continues talking. -in a few days all the husbands come to the lake. a strange custom. i've been so happy these last three weeks. listen ... no sound. in the boathouse there is always the noise of the lake. i feel bereaved when the lake is still, mute. there is now a silence in the room. he stands up. -i should go. -you can sleep on the sofa. -no. i should go. -you can sleep here. i'm going up to bed. -i'm a thief, anne, un ladro. -that's right. you broke out of jail. he sees her clearly on the other side of the unlit lamp, her chin on her clenched fist. -i have literally fallen in love with the lake. i dread the day i will have to leave it. tonight i was writing the first love poem i have written in years and the lover was the sound of lakewater. -i've always had a fear of water creatures. -but water is benign ...

-yes, i know. goodbye, anne. *** after his marriage to giannetta, caravaggio had one pit to fall into before his career as a thief became successful – he was overwhelmed suddenly by a self-consciousness. he broke into houses and became certain there was a plot concocted to snare him. giannetta could not stand it. she did not wish to live with a well-trained thief who feared going out. -get a partner! -i can never work with someone else, you know that! -then get a dog! he stole a dark-red fox terrier and named it august. a summer robbery. the dog was his salvation. he had a quick bark, like an exclamation – one announcement, take it or leave it – enough warning for his master as far as the dog was concerned. on a job they behaved like strangers – caravaggio strolling along one side of the street and august aimless on the other. when he entered a house the dog sat on the lawn. if the owners returned early the dog would stand up and give one clear bark. moments later a figure would leap from a window with a carpet or a suitcase in his arms. *** now he pours milk into the tall glass and drinks as he walks through his brother-in-law's house, the coolness of milk filling him on this hot toronto night. he is seated on the stairs, facing the door. he hears the dog's one clear bark and her laugh as she approaches the front door. in the dark hall the whiteness of the milk disappears into his body. her shoulders nestle against his hands. the home of the other. touching her, a wetness passed from her lip to him, his hands in her dark hair. she moves within the shadow of his shoulder. she steps into the half-lit kitchen and her bare arms pick up light. he catches the blink of her earrings. removing one, she drops it to the floor. her hands go up to the other ear – unscrewing the second pin of gold. her laughter with her breast in his mouth. he breaks the necklace and pearls fall around them. he can smell soaps in her hair. her wrist moves up his arm, riding on the sweat. her cheek against the warm tile. her other hand, sweeping out, touches the loose jewel.

giannetta feels the scar on his throat. her soft kiss across it. he carries her, still in her, holding up each thigh, her eyes wide open, crockery behind her crashing from shelf to shelf, as she nudges the corner cupboard. blue plates bounce and come through the lower panes like water and smash on the floor. with each step her bare foot on a pearl or a fragment of plate. she opens the fridge door. in its light she pulls her foot up to her stomach and examines it, brushing something away. he lies back and she sits over him, swallowing the cold wine. he traces the path down her body at the speed he imagines liquid takes. her chin on her knee. planting her foot on his shoulder she leaves blood when she moves it. when she opens her eyes wide he sees glass and crockery and thin china plates tumbling down from shelf to shelf losing their order, their shades of blue and red merging, her fingers on his scar, her fingers on the thumping vein on his forehead. she's a laugher who laughs while they make love, not earnest like a tightrope-walker. her low laugh when they stop, exhausted. his breath is now almost whisper, almost language. she turns, a pearl embedded in her flesh. a violin with stars walking in this house. fridge light sink light street light. at the sink she douses her face and shoulders. she lies beside him. the taste of the other. a bazaar of muscles and flavours. she rubs his semen into his wet hair. her shoulders bang against the blue-stained cupboard. a kitchen being fucked. sexual portage. her body forked off him. she smells him, the animal out of the desert that has stumbled back home, back into oasis. her black hair spreads like a pool over the tiles. she pins the earring her fingers had strayed upon into his arm muscle, beginning a tattoo of blood. there are jewels of every colour he has stolen for her in the past in the false drawers of her new bedroom, which he can find by ripping out the backs of the bureaus. photographs of her relatives in old silver frames. a clock encased in glass which turns its gold stomach from side to side to opposite corners of the room. a wedding ring he can pull off her finger with his teeth. he removes nothing. only the chemise she withdraws from as if skin. he carries nothing but the jewellery pinned to his arm, a footstep of blood on his shoulder. the feather of her lip on his mouth. a last plate tips over to the next shelf. he waits for her eye to open. here comes the first kiss. all she can see as she enters the dark hall is the whiteness of the milk, a sacred stone in his hands, disappearing into his body. he lifts his wife onto his shoulders so her arms ascend into the chandelier. maritime theatre in 1938, when patrick lewis was released from prison, people were crowding together in large dark buildings across north america to see garbo as anna karenina. everyone tried to play the hammond organ. 'red squads' intercepted mail, teargassed political meetings. by now over 10,000 foreign-born workers had been deported out of the country. everyone sang "just one of those things." the longestbridge in the world was being built over the lower zambesi and the great waterworks at the east end of toronto neared completion. at kew park a white horse dove every hour from a great height into lake ontario. t. s. eliot's murder in the cathedral opened in england and a few weeks later dr. carl weiss who had always admired the poetry of the expatriate american – shot huey long to death in the louisiana capitol building. just one of those things. released from prison in january, he took the kingston train to toronto's union station. ten story gang, weird tales, click, judge sheard's best jokes, and look were in the magazine stalls. patrick sat down on the smooth concrete bench facing the ramp down to the gates. this cathedral-like space was the nexus of his life. he had been twenty-one when he arrived in this city. here he had watched clara leave him, walking past that sign to the left of the ramp which said horizon. look up, clara had said when she left him for ambrose, you know what that stone is? he had been lost in their situation, not caring. it's missouri zumbro. remember that. the floors are tennessee marble. he looked up. sitting now on this bench patrick suddenly had no idea what year it was. he brought clara's face directly back into memory – as if it were a quizzical smiling face on a poster advertising a hat to strangers. but alice's face, with its changeability, he could not evoke. a group of redcaps were standing with three large cages full of dogs, all of whom were barking like aristocrats claiming to be wrongly imprisoned. he went up to the cages. they were anxious with noise. he had come from a place where a tin cup against a cell wall was the sole form of protest. he got closer to the cages, looked into the eyes which saw nothing, the way his own face in prison had looked in a metal mirror. he was still crouched when the redcaps wheeled the cages down the ramp. on his knees in union station. he felt like the weight on the end of a plumb-bob hanging from the very centre of the grand rotunda, the absolute focus of the building. slowly his vision began to swing. he turned his head to the left to the right to the left, discovering the horizon. he moved tentatively into the city, standing in front of strangers, studying the new fashions. he felt invisible. outside union station the streets were deep in snowdrifts. he walked towards the east end, along eastern avenue, till he eventually came to the geranium bakery, entering the warm large space where winter sun pierced through the mist of flour in the air. he passed the spotless machines, looking for nicholas. buns moved forward along rollers till they were flipped over into the small lake of sizzling shortening. finally he saw him in his suit covered with white dust at the far end of the bakery, choreographing the movement of food. nicholas temelcoff walked forward and embraced him. a bear's grip. the grip of the world. -welcome back, my friend. -is she here? nicholas nodded. -she has packed her things.

patrick climbed into the service elevator and pulled the rope beside him which took him up to nicholas' living quarters on the next floor. he went in and knocked on the door of the small room. hana was sitting on the bed wearing a frock, her hands on her lap. looking down, then up slowly, the way alice used to glance up, the eyes moving first. so much like alice it was terrible to him. he turned away and looked at the girl's neat room, at the packed suitcase, the light on beside her bed in the daylight. she watched him, understanding what kind of love was behind his stare. his cheek was pressed against the door frame, the new jacket collar rough against his neck. five years earlier, before he had taken the train to the muskokas, they had come to the geranium bakery. and nicholas had offered to look after her. she was welcome to stay with his family. he had suggested this casually and with no hesitation, sitting in his office under the clock hana loved, where each hour was represented by a different style of doughnut. "each of us is on our own for a while now," patrick had said. "i know." she had been eleven years old then. she rose from the bed. "hey, patrick, look how tall i've got!" stepping forward towards him and embracing him quietly, her arms all the way around him, the top of her head just reaching his chin. at the balkan cafe they sat down and ordered sujuk, the sausages with leeks and pork and garlic that he had not eaten for so long. -are you healthy? -oh yes. as a horse. -good. -i'll have to get used to things, though. -that's okay, patrick ... and being in jail's okay too. don't let it go to your head, though. -no. he felt comfortable joking with her, gathering her perspective. in prison when he imagined freedom it was as a solitary. nothing to carry, nothing to fall back into the arms of. this was the image he luxuriated in, awake all night, watching the other prisoners turning like great grey fish in their cells. in prison he had protected himself with silence – as if any sentence would be unsafe territory, as if saying even one word would begin a release of alice out of his body. secrecy kept him powerful. by refusing communication he could hold her within himself, in his arms. but on the night caravaggio was attacked, his father's neutral song slid out as warning. and patrick turned from himself. -did you make any friends in prison? hana asked. -i made one friend. he escaped. -too bad. what did he do?

-he was a thief. some people tried to cut his throat in jail. -then he's lucky he escaped. -he was most clever. ambrose small, as a millionaire, had always kept the landscapes of his world separate, high walls between them. lovers, compatriots, businessmen, were anonymous to each other. as far as they knew there were no others, or they assumed the others lived in far countries. when clara dickens joined ambrose small after he evaporated from the world of financial power she thought she would see the vista of his nature. but during the years that she lived with ambrose she would know him only as he wanted to be known by her. there was no other road towards him. she was too close to him now – to his new daily obsessions, his temporary charm. she wanted to climb above him even once and gaze down, see the horizon that held him together. what she discovered in the end – when he sat on the floor of the emptied room in marmora, nothing else around him but clara and the walls and the wood floor and the curtainless windows so he could sleep at night neatly within the coffin of moonlight – was much worse. in the days before he died, small's mind slipped free of its compartments as if what had kept all his diverse worlds separate had been pulled out of him like a spine. so as he talked and muttered towards clara, events fell against each other – a night with a lover, a negotiation at the grand opera house. strangers and corpses of his past arrived in this sparse room with its one lamp lit during the day, so the shadows were like moon-tides around it. words fell from his mouth and shocked her in the intricacy of his knowledge of so many women, such deep interiors of the financial sea. she heard his varied portraits of her which had gone unspoken for years, his affections and passions and irritations and reversals, his sweet awe at her sense of colour with certain flowers, the memory of her standing in a hall years earlier and smelling each of her armpits when she thought she was alone. clara crouched in front of ambrose and now he could not see her. he was sitting lotus, bare-chested, his hands moving over his face sensuously rubbing the front of his skull, as he revealed the mirrors of himself, his voice slowing as his fingers discovered his right ear. then he bent forward as he sat so his head would touch the floor in a long grace-attempted bow, ascetic. a heron stretching his head further underwater, the eyes open within the cold flow, open for the fish that could then be raised into the air and dropped moving in the tunnel of the heron's blue throat. she sat on the floor, ten feet away from ambrose, the lamp beside her, attacked by all the discontinuous moments of his past. who were these women? where did those destroyed enemies go? ambrose spokeslowly, the uninterested words came from his dark, half-naked shape as if all this was just the emptying of pails to be free of ballast. the theatres, his wife, his sisters, the women, enemies, briffa, even patrick, spilled free. the only clarity for him now was this bare room where clara brought him food. he had imploded, had become a gothic child suddenly full of a language which was aimed nowhere, only out of his body. bitten flesh and manicures and greyhounds and sex and safe combinations and knowledge of suicides. she saw his world as if she were tied to a galloping horse, caught glimpses of faces and argument and there was no horizon. after all these years she would not be satisfied, would not know him. she pulled back. now his face serene. now his upper torso bent forward long and athletic and the mouth of the heron touched the blue wood floor and his head submerged under the water and pivoted and saw in the fading human light a lamp that was the moon. the girl was shaking him from side to side as he slept in the kitchen chair, in the apartment on albany street. fragments of lobster were scattered across the table. -patrick! patrick! you've got to wake up. -what .. . -it's urgent. i don't know how i forgot but i forgot. wake up, patrick, please. she was going to wait. i don't know how i forgot. -what is it? -someone called clara dickens. she's on the phone. -what is this? where am i? -it's important, patrick. -i'm sure it is. -can you get to the phone? -yup. you go to bed. he put his face under the kitchen tap. clara dickens. after a hundred years. he stood there breathing deeply. he walked into the dark room, his face still wet, and got to his knees. one arm was in a cast and he reached out the other hand feeling for the telephone. "don't hang up. don't hangup," he was yelling, hoping she could hear him until he found the telephone. -this is patrick. -i know who it is. he heard her half-laugh at the other end. -who was that who answered the phone? -a friend. you've never met her. -that's good. -she's sixteen, clara, i'm looking after her. -i'm in marmora. will you come and get me? ambrose is dead. he was silent, lying on his back in a dark room. he knew this room well in the dark. he had been here often. -you take highway 7 ... are you there? i need help, patrick. he could see the swirls in the ceiling. -have i been to marmora? -it's four hours from toronto. it's supposedly the sled-dog capital of ontario. i'm calling from a restaurant. i've been here for four hours. -four hours! what year is it? -don't be cynical, patrick. not now, okay? -describe where you are, the place you are standing in. i just need to hear you. -i've been outside, sitting next to one of those artificial negro fishermen you see all over the place nowadays. it was damn cold. i phoned about ten. you were supposed to call back. -she forgot. she got excited because i brought home a lobster. but now we have goddamn deus ex machina. you're on the phone. did ambrose get shot with a silver bullet? -he died of natural causes. -run over by a sled-dog, was he? at this he couldn't stop laughing and turned from the phone. he could hear her voice, tinny in the distance. -i'm sorry, he said.

-no, that's probably funny. want to hear more? -yes. -i've read the marmora herald pretty thoroughly. -you're not carrying a book? -that's right. i forgot you're the man who taught me to always carry a book.... what are you doing? -i'm lying in the dark. i'll come and get you, clara. -will you be okay? the girl said you have a broken arm. -i'll bring her with me. she'll keep me awake. she's very earnest about things like that. -the kind of woman you always wanted. -that's right. she saved my life. -are you her father, patrick? -what's the name of the restaurant? -"heart of marmora. " -give us about five hours or so. i need a short rest ... wait. are you there? -yes. -i am her father. he rose and went to hana's room. he felt exhausted. -who is she, patrick? -hana, i need you to come with me, to drive up to marmora. -the sled-dog capital of ontario? -what? ... what! she was beaming. -she told me, patrick, when i asked her where the call was coming from. we're going all the way there to pick her up? -yeah.

-how the hell did she end up there ... -was she running away from you? -i think so ... with another man anyway. i need a little sleep first. wake me in about forty minutes. -sure. you going to tell me about her on the drive? -yes. -great! she stood by the door, watching him, wanting him to say more. when patrick had come out of prison six months earlier many dissident groups were already voicing themselves within the city. the events in spain, the government's crackdown on unions, made the rich and powerful close ranks. troops were in evidence everywhere. when the last shift left the water-filtration plant the police and the army moved in to guard it. military tents bivouacked on the rolling grounds. there were soldiers on the roofs and searchlights dipped now and then along the waves of the lake, protecting against any possible attack from the direction of the lakeshore. while most public buildings were guarded, the waterworks was obsessively watched – partly because of the warnings of commissioner harris, who reminded officials that the goths could have captured rome by destroying the aqueducts which led into the city. cutting off the water supply or poisoning it would bring the city to its knees. harris saw the new building as a human body. for him there were six locations where it could be seriously crippled – the raw water pumps, the venturi meters, the entrance to the tanks where ferric chloride was poured, the twenty-four-foot-deep settling basins, and any one of the twenty filter pools where an explosion would cause floods and permanently rust all engines and electrical equipment. there was also the intake-pipe tunnel that ran almost a mile and a half out into the lake. no boats were allowed within a half-mile of the shoreline and no one, not even military personnel, was admitted into the building at night. only harris, who now insisted on sleeping there in his office, was allowed in, a pistol kept beside his bed. in his dressing-gown, at two in the morning, commissioner harris was happy in the cocoon of humming machines. he would get up and roam through the palace of water which he had dreamed and desired and built. every electrical outlet blazed, lighting up disappearing corridors as if viennese streets, turning the subterranean filter pools into cloudy ballrooms. the building pulsed all night in the east end of the city on the edge of lake ontario. it was rumoured that people on the south shore in new york state could see the aura from it. the filtration plant was one corner of a triangle of light that seemed to chart the city on this saturday night in the summer of 1938. another was a river of lights moving north up yonge street from the lake. and third was the dazzle from the yacht club on toronto island-holding its summer costume ball, with water taxisferrying bizarrely dressed society across the bay on the one-mile trip over rough water. such dance floors the rich spent their evenings on! strutting like colts in a warm barn, out of the rain. and in bed the following morning they would reconstruct the choreography of temptations which had carried them from the crowded periphery of the hall to the sprung dance floor beneath the thirty-foot coconut palms – clusters of which adorned the ballroom that seemed to have no ceiling, only false stars and false moonlight. in each set of trees was a live monkey, never able to reach the diners because of a frail chain. the animals had to dodge the champagne corks aimed at them – if you hit a monkey you were brought a free bottle. sales of champagne soared and only now and then was there a shriek followed by a cheer. there was a silk canopy over the band. along the walls were dioramas. sometimes cotton snowballs were distributed and a battle broke out promptly, the guests soaking them in champagne or butter before flinging them around the room. the ballroom was lit indirectly; it seemed they were all in a moment of time that resembled the half-hour before the sun comes up over an oasis. there is an image of caravaggio among the rich which patrick will always remember: meticulous, rude, and confident. a parting in his dark hair like yonge street at midnight. dressed as a pirate, he had leapt off the motor launch on that midsummer night with his dog and giannetta and patrick, yelled his greetings to total strangers, and strolled into the false moonlight of the yacht club ballroom claiming to be randolph frog. society women accepted his name with a straight face – the rich, being able to change everything but their names and looks, would defend these characteristics with care. in this circle a man with the face of a pit bull was considered distinguished. they had not been invited. caravaggio was eating canapes with his left hand and patting women on the ass with his right. when the orchestra's playing brought out the couples, caravaggio lifted his dog into his arms and waltzed among them kissing august wildly, exclaiming over the beauty of his moles. for the next hour he danced with women who noted to themselves the odour of hound on his neck. patrick and giannetta meanwhile hung back on the periphery of the ballroom, refusing to leave it as if they might fall into a snakepit. but caravaggio was a man who had traipsed through the gardens and furnishings of the wealthy for many years. he nudged men, told jokes, discussed china and crystal with wives and connoisseurs, complaining about getting louis xiv chairs cleaned, and in the privacy behind his drunkenness cemented away information and addresses. finally he found the couple he wanted. in their early forties, drinking hard, a flirtatious wife and a bully of a husband. he danced with his eyes against hers singing "night and day. " "vicina o lontana da me non importa mia cara, dove sei . . ." she was impressed by his italian, which he claimed to have picked up in tuscany the previous summer. his fingers circled her shoulder blade. she leaned back. -do you see my husband over there near the chandelier propositioning that girl? he's probably suggesting the yacht.

-a yacht here? -yes, we came in one, across the bay. did you? -no. i never sail. -we'll take you. he laughed, dropping a half-smoked cigarette onto the floor. -that's my shy sister over there. -perhaps she could join us too. she glanced across the room to the hollow glare of giannetta, who held on to patrick's arm. taking the bus down to the dock earlier that evening, caravaggio had said, "let me tell you about the rich – they have a way of laughing. " and patrick thought, alice had said that. the exact words. "the only thing that holds the rich to the earth is property," caravaggio continued, "their bureaus, their marble tables, their jewellery. . . ." patrick had been quiet, not even bothering to laugh. there was an image he remembered of caravaggio, waving goodbye with a blue hand as he hung on the prison roof. and when patrick had come out of jail he traced the thief down through his blue cellar compatriots. "mr. wilful destruction of property saved my life," caravaggio had explained to giannetta. they showed him the city, where everything was five years older, and they became his friends. late into those spring nights they had talked about each other's lives. on reconnaissance the week before the yacht club dance, giannetta had watched patrick get drunk, and during the ride back on the ferry she had held him, his head in her lap. she leaned over him in the darkness, her hand in his hair. he looked up. there was a tenderness in this sky of her warm face he hadn't noticed before. then everything had leapt from focus as giannetta and caravaggio lifted him off the ferry and brought him home to sleep on their living-room floor. now they step from the last stages of the costume ball out onto the dock: caravaggio, his two rich friends, his dog, his 'sister,' and patrick, who is supposedly her escort for the evening. ". . . notte e giorno questo ... mmm ... mi segue ovunque io vada" caravaggio sings to the night, a bottle like a pendulum in his fingers, his arm sprawled over the woman's shoulder. he pours out monologues about cut glass and bevelled mirrors and rubs her nipple to the beat of his singing as her husband unlaces the boat from its moorings. patrick walks behind dressed as a thief in black, a red scarf floating behind him and carrying a bag of tools with swag written across it.

boarding the couple's yacht, the annalisa, caravaggio flings himself down the stairs laughing, looking for alcohol. he is beyond order. he and the husband uncork several bottles and climb back up on deck. the wife winds up the gramophone, the silk dress with a thousand sequins fluttering upon her. giannetta leans against the rail receiving the air while the husband unleashes the sails and they break loose out into the bay – from the island towards the city. bunny berigan pierces the air with his trumpet whirling up in scales, leaving the orchestras of the yacht club behind. they are off. rich. caravaggio claims helplessness with ropes and asks the wife to dance. he is charmed by her flippant sexuality. they fumble against each other with the motion of the waves, giannetta and patrick somewhere by the prow. the boat tacks back and forth towards the city a mile away. caravaggio and the husband and the wife drink fast. the wife winds up the gramophone and "i can't get started" emerges again under the hiss of the needle. caravaggio catches patrick's eye and raises his glass. "here's to impatience," he toasts, "here's to h.g. wells," then flings his glass overboard. it is a hot night and he removes his cloak. the woman touches his costume earrings with her fingernails. ting. "ting," she mouths at him. "are you hungry?" down below she opens the fridge door. he sits and swivels in the chair round and round passing the blur of her salmon-coloured dress, the drink spilling from his glass. he rotates to a halt and she is there by the fridge holding ice against her face for the heat, unhooking the brooch at her shoulder so a part of the dress falls revealing a doorway of skin to one side of her. the smell from the gas lamp beside him fills his head. he puts all his effort into his shoulders and bends forward so he can get up out of the chair and stand. now he must be still. music everywhere. he starts laughing. can a man lose his balance with an erection? deep thoughts. he turns to face her. dear salmon. she steps forward to hold him. his cheek on the moist skin under her arm, at the rib, about where they pierced jesus he thinks. he falls drunkenly to his knees. he holds her dress at the thighs as she slips down, slips through the dress so there is a bunched sequin sheath in his hands. the music ceases. a serious pause. they jerk with the swell of waves and he holds her hair from the back. he pulls his handkerchief out of his pocket and in direct light brings it to her face and chloroforms her. patrick's hand comes round the large face in the night air and chloroforms the husband. caravaggio is on the floor of the hold, the unconscious woman in his arms, the dress around her waist. she dreams of what? he wonders. he lies there comfortable against her, in the silence left by giannetta's hand lifting the needle off the record. he slides from under her, looks around, puts a blanket on top of her, and goes up on deck. the husband lies nestled in the ropes. in his tuxedo he looks like a prop, a stolen mannequin. above him, balanced on the rail of the boat, patrick stands and pisses into the waves. caravaggio mans the boat as giannetta turns out the deck lights. "is this the prow?" patrick yells. "am i pissing off the prow? or bow?" giannetta laughs. "i better get you ready." "yes," he says. he walks to the back of the boat, scoops up the gramophone, and flings it overboard.

caravaggio aims the yacht towards the east end of the city, towards the lights of kew park and the waterworks. patrick and giannetta go below deck. he takes some food out of the fridge, steps past the unconscious woman, and sits at the table. he is like a bullet that has been sleeping. that is how he has felt all night, in the slipstream of caravaggio, fully relaxed, calm among his two friends. they have stopped him from thinking ahead. he wants the heart of the place. he wants to step in and destroy meticulously, efficiently. this is not to be a gesture of an egg hurled against a train window. *** throughout the night the giant intake pipe draws water into the filtration plant at a speed faster than during the day. patrick knows that. from the plans caravaggio has stolen for him, he knows its exact length, slightly under two miles, knows its angle and grade, knows the diameter of the pipe and the roughness of the metal inside and the narrower bands where the sections have been riveted together. he knows all the places he should assault once he is in the building. on deck giannetta watches patrick, a small lantern beside them, the only light on the boat. he takes off his shirt and she begins to put grease onto his chest and shoulders. he watches her black hair as she rubs this darkness onto his body. the sweat on her collarbone. her serious face. she suddenly leans forward and he feels her mouth briefly on his cheek. then she pulls her head back into mystery and smiles at him, covering his face with the thick oil. when caravaggio joins them, carrying the heavy swag bag, patrick is ready. giannetta embraces caravaggio. with her fingers she plucks a sequin out of the darkness of his hair. then the men climb down into the rowboat, absolute blackness around them. only the filtration plant blazes on the shore a half-mile away. they pull free as giannetta veers the yacht away, back towards the island. now the two men sit facing each other, knees touching. they are twenty or thirty yards from the floating structure where the intake pipe begins. "this is a charm," caravaggio says, putting a metal spile attached to a leather thong around patrick's neck. caravaggio begins to dress patrick with water-resistant dynamite – wrapping the sticks tightly against his chest under the thin black shirt. they both wear dark trousers. patrick is invisible except by touch, grease covering all unclothed skin, his face, his hands, his bare feet. demarcation. caravaggio can sense his body, can feel and distinguish the belt straps, the button-locks that secure the fuses. the floating structure has sentries. they see lit cigarettes as they row towards them, caravaggio leaning forward to touch patrick's right arm to gesture him right, his left to gesture him left. no words. only caravaggio it seems can see into the weak spots of this absolute. he attaches the tank onto patrick's shoulders. just one tank. they have estimated the speed of the water and the length of the tunnel. he could travel its distance in twelve minutes, but there is one risk. at some point in the night, pump generators are switched and for three minutes there is no suction at all. then the water in the pipe does not move, it lies still. it would be the effect of a moving sidewalk stopping. they both know this could happen, have imagined patrick no longer caught in the speed of the intake but languid, in a shock of stillness. the tank gives him only fifteen minutes of air. if the suction pump is off, the level of water in the normally full pipe might recede for a while and patrick could possibly move to the top and breathe the air there. neither of them is sure about this.

just below the tank caravaggio straps on the blasting-box and plunger. small, brown, the maximum size patrick can carry in order to get through the iron bars at the mouth of the intake pipe, which is there to stop logs and dead bodies from being drawn in. an animate body can squeeze through. in one of patrick's nightmares while waiting for this evening he has imagined that in the pipe somewhere is a dead body which has magically slipped in and that he will clutch it during his journey. at the far end of the tunnel is another barrier of iron bars which he will have to squeeze through. then he will enter a forty-foot well where just above the water level will be a metal screen to keep out small objects and fish when the water is made to rise. he has the wire-cutters to get through this. then he will be among the grey machines of the waterworks. caravaggio straps the battery lamp onto patrick's head, then he embraces him. "auguri, amico mio." patrick nods, puts the mouthpiece of the breathing apparatus between his lips, and rolls out of the boat. he holds on, treading water. caravaggio leans over and switches on the lamp. they have choreographed this carefully for they knew there would be men near the entrance to the intake pipe. as the light goes on patrick drives his head under water and his body follows downwards in an arc. this is july 7, 1938. a night of no moon, a heat-wave in the city. the lemon-coloured glare from the waterworks delineates the east end. caravaggio could lean forward and pluck it like some jewel from the neck of a negress. he rows in a straight line towards the waterworks, knowing patrick is underneath him in the five-foot-diameter pipe racing within the current, his movement under water like a clenching fist, doubling up and releasing to full length, then doubling up, awkward because of the weight he carries. in all of his imagining caravaggio sees patrick move with the light glancing wildly against the sides of the pipe. whereas patrick, having crawled through the iron bars, nearly unable to because of the tank, having done that and begun to swim, has discovered the lamp slows him too much so within seconds he has discarded it and it sinks to the foot of the pipe, the light still on, burning out an hour later. patrick swims in darkness, just the pull of the water to guide him, clenching and releasing like that fist caravaggio imagines, but banging his legs and hands against the sides of the pipe, doing this so often they are already bleeding from the blows and scrapes. grease moves from his hair down his cheeks into his mouth. most of all his body fears no air if the tank runs out, and the danger of silence among the pumps a mile away so he will suddenly move only at human speed. these fears are greater than the fear of no light or the remembered nightmare where he embraces the lost corpse. so his body, moving without thought, listens for silence. if the pumps stop, caravaggio has told him to dynamite the pipe and climb out, leap from the water and yell. he will be there. but both know there is little chance of climbing out of that gashed metal while the whole lake pours in. the searchlights from the filtration plant glance over the water. now caravaggio has to leave patrick. he changes direction and rows towards kew beach a half-mile further west. the lights of the amusement park are slowly being turned off, past midnight. the outline of the ferris wheel disappears.

patrick swallows the first flutter of the dying tank. he heaves faster along with the current and he takes deeper breaths from the tank. in the middle of the third breath he crashes against bars. he is almost there. gasping, the mouthpiece dry, empty, torn out of his mouth. he is almost there with an empty tank. now he needs the light. he slips off the tank, an arm painful from the crash, and dives through the bars and swings up, no air in him, no light, up into the brick of the well, avoiding the suction of the side-screens built into the walls. if these catch his body fully the suction can hold him and never release him. he swims up by feel till he reaches the barrier screen. thinking where should he go, down again? how to get up further? for precious seconds, his chest vacuumed and almost imploded before he realizes he is in air. his shoulders and head and forearms are in the delicious air. this is the screen he is supposed to cut himself through. he can breathe if he opens his mouth. he is in the natural air of the waterworks. he hangs, his fingers hooked through the wires of the screen, everything below his waist in water. the wire-cutters must have fallen in the crash against the bars or when he unstrapped the tank. for a while he doesn't care. he has air now. he knows he can never fight his way back against the current, down to the foot of the well. he is caught. he hangs from one arm. a very small explosion to dislodge the firmly riveted screen and he will be out. he has five detonators. sacrifice one location. how small an explosion can someone make? he attaches a blasting cap to the screen with a clip fuse, sets it off, and dives down as far as he can go. he does not hear the sound at all, he is just picked up and flung hard against the brick and then sucked upwards in a hunched ball with the water towards the buckled screen so his back and face are lacerated. then he falls back down. there has been no sound for him, just movement, sideways and up, skin coming off his cheek and his back. there was, he remembers, temporary light. he can taste blood if he puts his tongue outside his mouth. and he can taste blood which comes down his nose through the roof of his mouth. patrick climbs out of the well and stands on the floor of the screen room among the grey machines, touching them to see if any are hot, a faint light from the main pumping station coming through a high window. he begins unwrapping the sticks of dynamite from his body and lays them in a row on the floor. finding some cloth he wipes them dry. he removes from his pockets fuses, crimpers, timers, and detonator caps, which are wrapped in oil cloth. he unwinds the electrical wire and begins to assemble the blasting-box and plunger. stripping completely naked he squeezes the water out of his clothes and lays his shirt and pants against the hot machines. he lies down now and tries to rest. trying to control his breathing, even now he desires to take large gasps in case this will be his last air. king solomon's mines. he smiles up in the darkness. harris, half-asleep on the makeshift bed in his office, has heard the thump, one thump that didn't fit into the pattern of noises made by the row of water pumps. he walks onto the mezzanine of the pumping station. it is brilliantly lit and stark. in his dressing-gown he descends the stairs to the low-level pumping station, walks twenty-five yards into the venturi tunnels, and then returns slowly, listening again for that false thump. he has seen nothing but the grey-painted machines. on the upper level he looks out of the windows and sees the military patrols. he relaxes and goes back to his room.

patrick rests without closing his eyes, his gaze on the high window that brings light into this dark screen room. soon he will go along the corridor where he had searched for her and found her, bathing beside a candle among all those puppets ... years ago. he cannot touch his own face because of the pain. he has no idea what he has broken. after twenty minutes he gets up, puts on his clothes, and begins to attach the blasting caps onto the dynamite. he walks into the humidity of the pumping station. as he settles and beds the explosives he can see what will occur. a column of water will shoot up seventy feet into the air and break through the glass windows of the roof. the floor buckles, other pumps overload and burn out in seconds. when the settling basins explode, the military tents on the lawn above them will collapse downwards into twenty-four feet of pure water. he picks up the wheel of wire and lines the electrical fuses through the venturi tunnels. "on the golf course i'm under par metro-goldwyn has asked me to star. . ." the machine roar drowns him out as he half mutters half sings, unaware that the song from the boat has attached itself to him like a burr. he wades across the raw water of the filter pools with the wire wheel in his outstretched hand, selecting the key columns on which to lay the dynamite. the water from here will burst through the wired glass into the corridors of rosy marble. "i've got a house – a showplace still i can't get no place – with you . . ." he lays a charge with its electric detonator over the plaque that says dominion centrifugal pump. the last ones he nestles under the ferric chloride tanks, and beside the rose marble tower clock with its code lights. he runs the wires into the blasting-box. barefoot, he walks up the staircase trailing the live wires behind him, around the mezzanine gallery and into harris' office. harris sitting at his desk, the goose-neck lamp on, happens to be watching the door when it opens. even if he had known the man before he would not recognize him now. black thin cotton trousers and shirt, grease-black face – blood in the scrapes and scratches. the man's knuckles bleeding, one arm hanging loose at his side. he notices the shirt ripped open at the back when the intruder turns to close the door. he walks towards harris, the blasting-box carried like a chicken under his right arm. -do you know me? -i worked for you, mr. harris. i helped build the tunnel i just swam through. -who are you? how dare you try to come in here! -i'm not trying this, i've done it. everything is wired. i just press the plunger on this blasting-box.

-what do you want? who are you? -i'm patrick lewis. there was silence. patrick leaned forward and rubbed his cut fingers over the smoothness of harris' desk. - feldspar, he murmured. harris watched the eyes darting in the man's dark face. he walked over to the sideboard and returned with a decanter of brandy and glasses. he was thinking. then he began to speak. he talked about how he hated the officials of the city but how he loved city hall. -i was practically born in city hall. my mother was a caretaker. i worked up. -you forgot us. -i hired you. -your goddamn herringbone tiles in the toilets cost more than half our salaries put together. -yes, that's true. -aren't you ashamed of that? -you watch, in fifty years they're going to come here and gape at the herringbone and the copper roofs. we need excess, something to live up to. i fought tooth and nail for that herringbone. -you fought. you fought. think about those who built the intake tunnels. do you know how many of us died in there? -there was no record kept. -turn off the light. -what? -turn your light off. harris pulled the beaded cord on the goose neck lamp. so the room was dark. patrick moved in shadow now, the blasting-box still under his right arm. he needed to stretch, to walk. he had been drowning in harris' eyes and sleepy hand-movements, felt hypnotized by that calm voice, the solitary focus of the lamp. without light he felt more awake, discerning shapes, the smell of a bed somewhere in the room. harris spoke out of the darkness.

-you don't understand power. you don't like power, you don't respect it, you don't want it to exist but you move around it all the time. you're like a messenger. think about it, patrick.... no answer. i'll keep talking. but turn the light on before you decide to plunge that thing. allow me that. -i will. just keep talking, harris. -what you are looking for is a villain. harris knew he had to survive until early morning. then a column of sunlight would fall directly onto his large desk, the pad of grid paper, his fountain pen. his gun was by the bed. he had to survive till the first hint of morning colour came through the oculus above him, eight feet in diameter, made up of eight half-moons of glass. he leaned forward. -one night, i had a dream. i got off the bus at college – it was when we were moving college street so it would hook up to carlton – and i came to this area i had never been to. i saw fountains where there used to be an intersection. what was strange was that i knew my way around. i knew that soon i should turn and see a garden and more fountains. when i woke from the dream the sense of familiarity kept tugging me all day. in my dream the next night i was walking in a mysterious park off spadina avenue. the following day i was lunching with the architect john lyle. i told him of these landscapes and he began to laugh. "these are real," he said. "where?" i asked. "in toronto." it turned out i was dreaming about projects for the city that had been rejected over the years. wonderful things that were said to be too vulgar or expensive, too this, too that. and i was walking through these places, beside the traffic circle at yonge and bloor, down the proposed federal avenue to union station. lyle was right. these were all real places. they could have existed. i mean the bloor street viaduct and this building here are just a hint of what could have been done here. you must realize you are like these places, patrick. you're as much of the fabric as the aldermen and the millionaires. but you're among the dwarfs of enterprise who never get accepted or acknowledged. mongrel company. you're a lost heir. so you stay in the woods. you reject power. and this is how the bland fools – the politicians and press and mayors and their advisers – become the spokesmen for the age. you must realize the trick is to be as serious when you are old as when you are young. -did you know a woman named alice gull? -no ... should i? -yes. -is she dead? -why do you say that? -you said did. -yes. patrick turned the light on and saw harris' eyes looking directly into his.

-have you decided? -not yet. -alice gull, harris said very slowly, was killed by an anarchist. -no. -she was the actress. is that correct? he switched off the light. again they disappeared from each other. in the darkness patrick heard harris sip his brandy and return the glass to the table. patrick sat on the floor, his one good arm resting on the blasting-box. -i think i saw her once, harris said. -she used to perform here. there used to be meetings in your unfinished waterworks. that's where i met her, after many years. -what meetings? what do you mean? -then i lost her.... someone gave her the wrong bag. a simple mistake. picked up the wrong bag. so she was carrying dynamite with a timing device, a clock bomb. she was walking with it through the crowds along the danforth, near broadview, walking towards the centre of the city. who knows what she thought she was carrying? they knew she was in danger as soon as it was discovered. patrick was almost inaudible, whispering. if he were writing this down, harris thought, his handwriting would be getting smaller and smaller. -i don't want to talk of this anymore. -then it will always be a nightmare. -it will always be a nightmare, harris. she had a line, an old saying. "in a rich man's house there is nowhere to spit except in his face. " -diogenes. -i don't know. a silence. -patrick, talk to me. -they found me at the tannery, screaming to me about what had happened. and i ran. i ran north along theedge of the valley, no streetcars, all the demonstrations had caused chaos that day. i passed the geranium bakery and grabbed her friend temelcoff to help find her. and the two of us ran all the way up to the danforth where the crowd was, where she was supposed to be. by the time i got there, i had nothing in me to shout. alice! i couldn't even whisper it. we kept leaping up to look for her over the heads of the crowd. she was carrying the clock bomb, not even knowing what it was, and soon everything she held would rocket out into her. temelcoff and i jumped up and down, the mob around us, now and then seeing each other's frantic faces.... then i heard the explosion. not far away, near enough to have found her and picked up that bag and flung it anywhere else on the street.... then nobody moved, patrick remembered, the whole crowd locked in stillness. there was already a distance between alice bent over, holding her ribs, and the jolted people twenty feet away. as he came towards her she recognized him, her eyes indelible, the wound at her side. he cradled her gently, he could hardly touch her without causing pain. most of all he was holding her eyes with his, terrified they would close, would shut him out. one eye was flickering up and down, then the other, as if stuttering. then the bag ten feet away exploded again. harmless. and when he looked back her eyes were closed. her dead hand gripping the side of his jacket. he got up and ran, her blood on him, along the horrified corridor in the crowd. the groan subconscious, slubbering out of his mouth. he banged into something very tough which brought his eyes back into focus. he looked into the face of temelcoff, who held him and wouldn't let go. not to capture him but to calm him. patrick struggling from side to side. the former bridge-builder's face held together only by the formality of two clear tears. two little silver coaches. then nicholas temelcoff let him go and walked over to the body of alice. - patrick . . . there was a permanent darkness to the room. a permanent silence. harris was still, quiet, unable to see. all he knew now was where the voice had been. on the ceiling high above him was the window with eight half-moons. if he looked up in a while there would be a suggestion of blue. my god, he swam here, harris suddenly realized. that's how he got in, through the tunnel. what vision, what dream was that? he pressed his repeater watch and it struck five. the sound fell clearly into the room. the knowledge it would be daybreak soon kept harris awake. he remained where he was during the next hour and by then the first light was in the room. it nestled in the corners of the ceiling, suggested cupboards, the damn herringbone that seemed to irritate everyone, and then it clarified the alcove where his bed was, where patrick lay strangely – the lower half of his body crouched, knees drawn up, and the top half sprawled out, head back. there was blood across his neck and shirt. he had cut his throat in the darkness. my god. harris got up. then sat down again. no, he was asleep. he was asleep! the cuts old. from the journey here. harris realized that he was relieved. the blasting-box was on the floor. earlier harris had understood whythe man had chosen him, knew he was one of the few in power who had something tangible around him. but those with real power had nothing to show for themselves. they had paper. they didn't carry a cent. harris was an amateur in their midst. he had to sell himself every time. he stood over patrick. "he lay down to sleep, until he was woken from out of a dream. he saw the lions around him glorying in life; then he took his axe in his hand, he drew his sword from his belt, and he fell upon them like an arrow from the string. " there was a knock on the door. six o'clock. he said nothing. a knock again. harris was concerned that patrick would wake suddenly. "come in," he whispered. an officer efficiently stepped in and saluted. harris put his finger to his lips before the man could bark out information. he pointed to the man on the bed. -take that blasting-box and defuse it. let him sleep on. don't talk. just take it away. bring a nurse with some medical supplies here, he's hurt himself. -patrick? he woke slowly, hana's hand on his shoulder. -patrick? we have to go to marmora. -five more minutes, ten more minutes. -no, we have to go. i made a thermos of coffee for us. -thank you. he felt his clothes wet with the sweat of sleep. -i'm awake. marmora. okay. on the balcony in the night air, he peered down into the landlord's long green garden. the last of the previous day's heat was still in the atmosphere. hana locked up and they went down the two flights of metal stairway and then walked along albany street towards the car. the houses at this hour beautiful and large, stray lights on within them, and he could see the faint interiors, their privacy and character revealed, each room a subplot. his good arm was around hana's shoulder while she hugged the thermos to her. -tell me about her. -she was your mother's best friend. i'll tell you the whole story. the second-floor balconies curved out to the street. odours from each hedge. mr. rivera hosing his garden at three a.m. having just returned from a night shift, private as they passed him. a dog's chain hung off a step railing. they were off to guide clara back to this street. he found it most beautiful, felt most comfortable at this hour when they often saw raccoons pausing on steps, seemingly tamed, as if owning the territory of the porch.

they stopped by the ford and unlocked the passenger door. he was about to climb over into the driver's seat. -do you want to drive? he asked. -me? i don't know the gears. -go ahead. i'll talk the gears to you till we are out of town. -i'll try it for a bit. -lights, he said. hana sat upright, adapting the rear-view mirror to her height. he climbed in, pretending to luxuriate in the passenger seat, making animal-like noises of satisfaction.