The Tiger's Back by David Elliot

Author:David Elliot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gemma Open Door
Published: 2011-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

As Speckled as a Trout

He had known, of course, that all of this would be lost. Known it for months. But he had known it only in a general way. DEATH with capital letters. That kind of thing. Now, suddenly, it was all lowercase.

And Claire.

He saw now that as his illness progressed, it was not only the wholeness of her that he would lose, Claire as Claire. But all the lovely particles of her, too. The wisp of hair that in fifty- some years had not stayed tucked behind her ear. The strawberry mole on her calf. The barely perceptible way she shifted her weight when her knee was hurting her.

And even the space she’d left behind. Devastating as it was, he loved it. Loved it in the way he might have loved an impaired child. Fiercely. Tenderly. But in the winding offices of his memory, it too would have an appointed last hour.

A pain, sharp as a bullet, shot through his stomach. That was the tumor. He had to sit down.

Below the shelf on which the encyclopedias rested, was another shelf, taller than the others. Photo albums. Twenty or more of them. Stacked. Leaning. Some, their cellophane pages loose and falling out. Others, more recent editions, tidy as a new Bible.

Robert had promised himself that he would stay away from these albums. But he saw now it was a promise he could not keep. He grabbed the one closest to his hand, red like the pillows in the dream, and carried it to the maple desk.

He took a moment and breathed into the pain the way the therapist had taught him. Then, he opened the cover. The trip to Japan. Over twenty years ago.

Some of the snapshots had faded into mere ghosts of themselves. But many were still clear, even if the colors were so saturated they looked as if a child had taken crayons to them.

Claire. Feeding the deer at the park in Nara. (They’d practically stampeded her.)

Him. Hamming it up at the Tsukiji Fish Market.

Both of them. Holding hands in front of the Kiyomizu Temple. (He remembered exactly the older man they’d asked to take the picture. Claire had picked him out of the crowd. A Japanese professor of history who spoke perfect English.)

But what was that one? He leaned toward the album, bringing his face closer to the picture. Claire, standing in a shop of some kind. He remembered the skirt she was wearing. Plaid. Blue and yellow. He had always liked it, but she complained it made her hips look wide.

He tried to recall the day the photo had been taken, studying the long, skinny rectangle that was hanging just over her left shoulder in the snapshot. What was it? He opened the desk drawer and took out a large magnifying glass.

It was coming back to him now. The tour guide had planned a trip to a sumo village. But he and Claire had played hookey, wanting to spend some time away from the swarm of schoolmarms the tour had attracted.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.