Audi 2008 Annual Report Download - page 129

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Montreal
Mile End
In the early morning, when the streets are bare and still, I walk past Ren’s apart-
ment. This ritual is now fourteen days old. I choose the right-hand side of the
very same roads. Yesterday there was rain. The day before that I felt faint drizzle
like a melting of the air. As I walked, I thought I could hear the taps being turned
on, I could smell coffee grinds. I could hear dreams pacing restlessly across the
hardwood floors. I’m nearly blind now but I know well enough the streets I’m
walking through. Here on Clark, metal staircases spiral up to meet the second
and the third storeys. Balconies perch like little shelves, lost behind the spindly
trees. The leaves are crimson and orange, in my mind they seem to me like after-
images, hanging on after the light itself has burned out.
Last year, my opthamologist told me that all sight is a creation, we take
what the stream of light gives us when it touches the nerve cells of the retina,
when it pulses its way from the optic nerve to the visual cortex. We gather up all
the information contained therein and we read it as best we can. So, each night
for the last fourteen nights, I’ve lain in bed and created my own pictures: Ren in
her high heels winding her way up the staircase, Ren in the day-to-day morning
ritual of opening the curtains and letting the sky in. I imagine the city in superb
detail and when I open my eyes I want the city to look back at me, to meet me
halfway. Instead what I see is the great empty centre of the room pinning me
down, a black centre haloed by fraying edges. Over at the Y on Park Avenue, I’ve
been exercising on the treadmill. I keep my eyes wide open as I stride boldly into
the darkness. Freedom comes in such small spoonfuls, measured out like summer
days in Montreal.
It’s been twenty-two years since Ren left me, left Vancouver and came here
to Montreal, came home. All I can say when I call her is, Can you come and see me
one more time?
Twenty-two years ago she stirred her coffee and said, I’m irrelevant to your life.
She was sitting beside me at our kitchen table, illuminated by the skylight, parti-
cles of dust snowing down on us, she was wearing a blouse with a flower-print
pattern. Sweetie, I said, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. I’m going home, she told
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Montreal
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