Storm Glass by Jane Urquhart

talk.
    “It would have made a good photo,” I said, “that merry-go-round with that horrible black cloud behind it. And if only you could have got the music too, it would have been terrific.”
    “The trouble is,” he said, “the merry-go-round would have just looked like a merry-go-round with a big black cloud behind it; it wouldn’t have looked like anything else.”
    “No,” I agreed, “I guess it wouldn’t.”
    The pastry cart arrived. We each chose something different so that we could compare and contrast. The light sugary texture was a shock to the palate after the richness of the veal.
    Suddenly every single light went out, all over the restaurant.
    “It’s only the storm,” he explained from somewhere on the other side of the table.
    I just went on eating. Eating and eating in the dark.

Bossu
    LUST
    W hen he was a child his mother must have warmed his flesh in flannel, pressed his mouth to her breast. At that time his skin might have spread smoothly enough over his frame to camouflage his deformity. And because he had not yet learned to walk, he would be unaware that the burden of it would be his to carry, like permanent baggage, forever. Since then, no one could have touched this enormous, bent man who passes, every day, on the street beyond my windows. The surface of his body has been free of contact. Neither handshake nor embrace has visited the crooked landscape of its vast geography. His sweat and his heat have always been his own.
    I have chosen my exile in a foreign village; a place where, knowing little of the language, I’m unable to eavesdrop on the lives of my neighbours. I have brought my anonymity here. He stumbles into my self-absorption, collides with my neutrality. And never knows it. Passing me, passing me by.
    At night, when the villagers turn their lights out, an absolutedarkness fills the air. The atmosphere becomes so thick I want to claw my way through it towards some sparkling surface. So I often move out to the stars at night, let them buzz in my brain until I grow dizzy, my lungs filled with black air and I stagger up the stone stairs to my bed. There I can close my eyes and bring the constellations back to me, allowing my bloodstream to fill with glitter.
    Often I’ve imagined him sitting, alone, on some iron balcony, large and covered in black, almost blending with the night, except for the white of his face, his hands. On his lap he holds a mirror where he can see the stars—my bloodstream—in the sky. The image is framed in glass. Trapped, touchable. The buzz that fills his mind comes from my brain.
    I did not know the language well enough to ask about him. The villagers seem to accept him as part of the fabric of the town. They even nod and say
Bonjour, monsieur
to his downcast face. He shuffles on, perhaps not hearing, perhaps not caring. Dogs, however, are disturbed by his presence. They cannot accept this irregularity, this deviation. Each day their furious barking announces his arrival in the streets. He uses his stick in a vain attempt to disperse them. They travel around him in circles, barking and snapping. The mothers among them are particularly avid. Their teats swing as a result of excessive activity.
    And he goes by, surrounded by this crazy chorus and the soft angry drone of his own voice, which I know is cursing both the dogs at his trousers and the street that moves like a slow conveyor belt under his feet. I swear his brain cracks like a whip over his body, just to move it one more inch. And I sit here, behind window glass,
my
brain sniffing around his ankles.
    By the time I’d been here three months I knew something of his routine. He passed my windows every afternoon at two, returned at three. He was making his way to the monastery at the end of the street for afternoon mass. I moved my chair and desk closer to the window in order to be able to observe him. Now I can sense his arrival without dogs, without bells or wristwatches. His approach and his