can free his forearm or if he can absorb the pain he can surface. Otherwise he will pull her down with him, and he doesn’t intend to go alone—he knows he is selfish but he doesn’t care. Why should he go alone? Why should he have to take all this hatred with him and leave her in the beautiful world? Then she will live without him and forget him and who is she to have the world while he loves her, and while he is gone.
Months ago he had spotted her in a bar, no, it was outside a bar in the Distillery District. Despite its condo reincarnation, the old Gooderham and Worts factory layits 19th-century shadow on their meeting. He was smoking, she was smoking, though it was freezing outside. He wasn’t lonely that he can remember. He was sad, but he is always sad. The kind who has a primeval sadness, before he was born he was sad. No, he doesn’t know why he is sad. When she gave him a light he wanted to speak Dutch to her but he didn’t actually know Dutch. His mother knew Dutch, his father knew Dutch, but he didn’t, he only knew English, so he started off wrong with her. He said, “Hey,” and that was the beginning of misunderstanding. He couldn’t get the right language out of himself, he only had feeling to go on and feeling is all primitive. That night he told her he’d been a peacekeeper, first in Bosnia and then in Haiti and he showed her how to subdue someone. He grabbed her arm and twisted it and then he let her go and laughed. She stayed talking to him after because she was afraid to walk away. And because he said she looked like Hilary Swank, and then he said, “Hit me in the face. See if you can do it.” And she did.
People can’t handle the senses the way animals do. Animals eat, drink, sleep, fuck at a certain time. They don’t kill if they don’t have to kill for food. People have no borders, everything is mixed up, they’re lawless. Both of them were lawless. And it had brought them to thelake. He said she was beautiful and she took his statement as a command and did anything he asked. She had no centre except that word. She had been hanging from that word ever since she was a child. It meant giving other people pleasure, saying “yes” and never “no.”
The woman loves being loved, more than she loves. That the man loves her is more compelling than whether she loves him. But sometimes, as now, she is overwhelmed by this love and breaks off to the lake or to the red underwings of a black bird. The blades cutting into him are spinning deep. He pulls his arm away and is about to hit her. Then the chamber he is enclosed in opens a fraction and he hears “butterflies.”
“What?” he screams at the woman.
“Nothing,” she breathes. She ducks her head and crouches down. He feels someone run up to him. She sees two women run by briskly in an argument. His arm arrests mid-stroke, he brings it down on his head and walks off. He’s sure he heard her say “butterflies.” What butterflies? The woman is still in a crouch on the boardwalk. She’s going to stay there until he’s gone. Then she will find the taxi man if he’s still there and she’ll go home.
That is what Da’uud, the taxi driver, saw, the possibility of violence in the man. He’s seen this possibility in people all over the world. Beginning in Mogadishu during Siad Barre’s time and after he fell. It was there. The lethal tensions in the city. It was no longer important that he was an economist: the economy had tanked and now faith was the engine. He saw the signs: he saw the disrespect from ordinary people, and that it was more important to pray than to think. He had lived his life until then on the falsity of the idea that prayer was all that was necessary, yet he knew how powerful that idea was: it made people irrational and murderous. But then the facts of his profession glared at him: it too was irrational, though disguised as rationality; it too was murderous. How many eventual deaths had he relegated to one side
Months ago he had spotted her in a bar, no, it was outside a bar in the Distillery District. Despite its condo reincarnation, the old Gooderham and Worts factory layits 19th-century shadow on their meeting. He was smoking, she was smoking, though it was freezing outside. He wasn’t lonely that he can remember. He was sad, but he is always sad. The kind who has a primeval sadness, before he was born he was sad. No, he doesn’t know why he is sad. When she gave him a light he wanted to speak Dutch to her but he didn’t actually know Dutch. His mother knew Dutch, his father knew Dutch, but he didn’t, he only knew English, so he started off wrong with her. He said, “Hey,” and that was the beginning of misunderstanding. He couldn’t get the right language out of himself, he only had feeling to go on and feeling is all primitive. That night he told her he’d been a peacekeeper, first in Bosnia and then in Haiti and he showed her how to subdue someone. He grabbed her arm and twisted it and then he let her go and laughed. She stayed talking to him after because she was afraid to walk away. And because he said she looked like Hilary Swank, and then he said, “Hit me in the face. See if you can do it.” And she did.
People can’t handle the senses the way animals do. Animals eat, drink, sleep, fuck at a certain time. They don’t kill if they don’t have to kill for food. People have no borders, everything is mixed up, they’re lawless. Both of them were lawless. And it had brought them to thelake. He said she was beautiful and she took his statement as a command and did anything he asked. She had no centre except that word. She had been hanging from that word ever since she was a child. It meant giving other people pleasure, saying “yes” and never “no.”
The woman loves being loved, more than she loves. That the man loves her is more compelling than whether she loves him. But sometimes, as now, she is overwhelmed by this love and breaks off to the lake or to the red underwings of a black bird. The blades cutting into him are spinning deep. He pulls his arm away and is about to hit her. Then the chamber he is enclosed in opens a fraction and he hears “butterflies.”
“What?” he screams at the woman.
“Nothing,” she breathes. She ducks her head and crouches down. He feels someone run up to him. She sees two women run by briskly in an argument. His arm arrests mid-stroke, he brings it down on his head and walks off. He’s sure he heard her say “butterflies.” What butterflies? The woman is still in a crouch on the boardwalk. She’s going to stay there until he’s gone. Then she will find the taxi man if he’s still there and she’ll go home.
That is what Da’uud, the taxi driver, saw, the possibility of violence in the man. He’s seen this possibility in people all over the world. Beginning in Mogadishu during Siad Barre’s time and after he fell. It was there. The lethal tensions in the city. It was no longer important that he was an economist: the economy had tanked and now faith was the engine. He saw the signs: he saw the disrespect from ordinary people, and that it was more important to pray than to think. He had lived his life until then on the falsity of the idea that prayer was all that was necessary, yet he knew how powerful that idea was: it made people irrational and murderous. But then the facts of his profession glared at him: it too was irrational, though disguised as rationality; it too was murderous. How many eventual deaths had he relegated to one side
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