The Favourite Game by Leonard Cohen

Author:Leonard Cohen [Cohen, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literary, Coming of Age, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781551995014
Google: ZXKE-Mi39_4C
Amazon: B00640YZ5Q
Publisher: Emblem Editions
Published: 2011-11-16T04:00:00+00:00

19

Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else.

This past is not preserved in the buildings or monuments, which fall easily to profit, but in the minds of her citizens. The clothes they wear, the jobs they perform are only the disguises of fashion. Each man speaks with his father’s tongue.

Just as there are no Canadians, there are no Montrealers. Ask a man who he is and he names a race.

So the streets change swiftly, the skyscrapers climb into silhouettes against the St. Lawrence, but it is somehow unreal and no one believes it, because in Montreal there is no present tense, there is only the past claiming victories.

Breavman fled the city.

His mother was phoning him daily. She was alone, did he know what that meant? Her back was sore, her legs were swollen. People asked about her son and she had to tell them he was a factory worker.

Breavman laid the phone on the bed and let her talk. He had no strength or skill to comfort her. He sat beside the receiver, unable to speak or think, aware only of the monotonous rasp of her voice.

“I looked in the mirror today, I didn’t recognize myself, wrinkles from aggravation, from nights thinking about my son, do I deserve this, fifteen years with a sick man, a son who doesn’t care whether his mother lies like a stone, like a dog, a mother, an only mother should lie like a stone, a prostitute wouldn’t stand from her son what I stand, do I have so much, do I eat chocolate all day, have I got diamonds for all that I gave away, fifteen years, did I ever ask anything for myself, two broken legs from Russia, swollen ankles that the doctor was surprised, but my son is too busy to hear the truth, night after night I lie in front of the TV, does anybody care what I do, I was such a happy person, I was a beauty, now I’m ugly, people on the street don’t recognize me, I gave my life for what, I was so good to everyone, a mother, once in a lifetime you have a mother, do we live forever, a mother is a fragile thing, your best friend, in the whole world does anyone else care what happens to you, you can fall down on the street and people pass you by, and I lie like a stone, all over the world people are running to see their mothers, but to my son it doesn’t matter, he can get another mother, one life we have, everything is a dream, it’s luck …”

And when she was through he said, “I hope you’re feeling better, Mother,” and good-bye.

She was seeing a psychiatrist now. He didn’t seem to be helping her. Was she taking the pills he prescribed? Her voice sounded more hysterical.

He fled his mother and his family.

He had thought that his tall uncles in their dark clothes were princes of an élite brotherhood.

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