A Ballet of Lepers: A Novel and Stories by Cohen Leonard

Author:Cohen, Leonard [Cohen, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music, poetry, Anthologies, Adult
ISBN: 9780802160478
Amazon: 0802160476
Goodreads: 60707406
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2022-10-11T07:00:00+00:00

Signals

“Drive along Westmount Boulevard, will you, Fred, since we have nowhere special to go.”

“What’s along Westmount Boulevard?”

“A house. A window I used to watch.”

“Whose window? A maiden in a tower? An imprisoned love?”

“That sort of thing. House of the family Greenbell. I told you about Judith.”

“Haven’t we celebrated that tragedy already, Lyon? I recall at least ten toasts drunk to her damnation when you heard she had been married in England last week.”

“That was last week. She’s in town now.”

“With husband?”

“With husband. Her parents are giving them a reception to which I wasn’t invited. Neither was Herson.”

“Do you expect a woman to invite her former lover and his friends to her wedding reception?”

“Yes. I would expect her to invite the closest friends she had in this city. She hasn’t got in touch with us, and I can’t seem to get her on the phone. There was never any bitterness between us. We just drifted apart, that’s all. Too bad you never knew her.”

“She left before I came.”

“You would have been in love with her, like the rest of us.”

“You were in love with her?”

“Well, as close as I come to love.”

“Which isn’t very close, considering the women you’ve gone through in the past year.”

“Close enough for her.”

“Apparently not.”

“She would have married me if I wanted. I was the one who stopped answering letters.”

“Why?”

“What was the use of stretching the affair on and on? She was a woman ready for marriage, needing marriage . . .”

“And you were just a youth, a follower after beauty, the golden boy of a brief episode.”

“That sort of thing. There’s the house. The lighted window is her room. Drive slowly. Slower. Did you see anyone in her room?”

“I was watching the road.”

“I haven’t seen a light in that room for a year.”

“Do you often look?”

“Yes, I often look.”

The two young men drove in silence. Fred found music on the radio. They drove along streets that gave views of the lights of the city and its bridges below. Lyon looked in the windows of the great houses they passed, catching glimpses of family TV here, a solitary reader there.

“I love driving at night,” said Lyon. “You are part of everything and part of nothing at the same time. Driving up and down these streets, we’re like a thick black needle stitching the city into our brains but with no suffering involved. Everything belongs to us, but we own nothing.”

“Do you want to stop at the lookout?”

“No, let’s keep on going. When you stop, you’re just something another passing car can include in its journey.”

“Let’s not get mystical.”

“Judith loved this route.”

“I suppose you told her all about the black needles and being part of everything and nothing?”

“No. She told me.”

“I know the type.”

“What type?”

“The type that sees mystery in everything, the type that is always having mystical relationships with everything, whose vocabulary is full of words like being and becoming and communion.”

“Don’t forget love.”

“Oh, yes, love. Love everything. And suffering. That’s another one of their words. Infinitely suffering.

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