In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

silver-buckled, into the train. He walked home with the cage banging against his knee, threw in a cabbage, and left the animal alone for a week. It heard his tirades, the broken cups and glasses. The iguana knew Clara Dickens, knowledge of her was there within its medieval body. Patrick believed in archaic words like
befall
and
doomed
. The doom of Patrick Lewis. The doom of Ambrose Small. The words suggested spells and visions, a choreography of fate. A long time ago he had been told never to follow her. If Patrick was a hero he could come down on Small like an arrow. He could lead an iguana on a silver leash to its mistress.
    Dear Clara
    All these strange half-lit lives. Rosedale like an aquarium at night. Underwater trees. You in a long black dress walking without shoes in Ambrose’s long garden while his wife slept upstairs. Howling up to disturb her night. The soft rich.
    Ambrose had class because he had you. That’s what they all knew – those half-formed people who were born with money and who did nothing except keep it like a thermometer up their ass. The mean rich. The soft rich. I know why you went with Ambrose. He was the harbour rat. An immigrant rat. He had to win or he lost everything. The others just had to get their oldest son into Upper Canada College. Crop rotation. The only one who could slide over the wall, skip along the broken glass, was Small. But I don’t want Small, I want you.…
    Dear Clara
    All night the tense and bitter conversations of lovers after they exit from the Greenwood bar across the street from my room. I lie by the window for summer air, and late-night couples assuming privacy seduce or accuse or fight.
No I didn’t. I’m sorry. Goddamn you!
Whispered. The slap, the blow of scorned love, the nails of the other in their rake across his eyes. This battle for territory, Clara, ownership and want, the fast breath of a fuck, human or cat – supernatural moans, moon talk – her hands over the face making him less anonymous, the back of her coat against brick.
You were telling him something, what were you telling him? Damn you! What! Nothing!
    I keep waking to sudden intimacy. Once I heard a strange humming below and looked out. A man with a carpet draped over his shoulder accompanied by a red dog. It wasthe neighbourhood thief, Caravaggio, returning from work. He passed calmly under me absorbed in the eating of Sicilian ice cream.…
    I woke to your voice in danger. You were whispering. I thought at first it was dialogue from the street but it was you and I froze in the darkness – a possible dream I did not wish to let slip. I know your hesitations, your cracking voice when you are lying or getting drunk. These are familiar to me. Clara? I said into the darkness, it’s okay, it’s okay. I was standing on the mattress at the foot of the bed. I could have touched the ceiling with both hands. But you didn’t listen. I was aware of wind coming in off the street. A male voice laughed in your company. I turned and saw the lit cream-yellow of the radio dial. It was Mystery Hour, a replay from two or three years back. I had slept through hours of broadcasting and woke only to the pitch of your breaking voice. You had a bit part. In the plot you had fallen on bad times.
    At Union Station I refused to leave you. Your face angry against the Bedford limestone,
Damn you, Patrick, leave me alone!
Your hair crashes against it as you gesture and break free of me.
    At Gate 5 you stop, pause in the steam, putting your hands up in surrender like a cowboy. A truce. No we did not walk up those steps our fingers locked like cogs. You were escaping the claustrophobia an obsessed lover brings. We placed our arms on each other’s shoulders, panting. Your face poured its look out.
    Dear Clara
    I came up to you and asked for a dance. The man with you punched me in the face. I asked you once more and he punched me in the face. I wiped off the blood below myeye. Five minutes later I came back to your table