Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab Read Online Free PDF Page A

spoke slowly yet evenly into the early hours of the morning.
    He insisted on beginning with the winter walk and carried on as if there had been no interruption, and as if it had been an account he had rehearsed: As I was saying, he said, there were cabs coming and going, but I did not avail myself of them. There I was, in the cold, wet whiteness of that snowy morning, struggling against everything. As I walked along Shuter Street, I would have liked to hear a monkey howl. That morning I would have liked to hear the chug of a pirogue, a steel pan being played, cricket commentary coming from another immigrant’s transistor radio balanced on his or her shoulder. As I trudged on the ice in Regent Park that morning, I imagined the blue stillness of the Tucker Valley in the Chaguaramas foothills. I was transported for a moment, thinking I heard kiskadees calling outto one another. And this is how it has always been: over there I thought constantly of here; but now, look—I am lying here in this heat, in this house, the tepid, salty Gulf just yards away from us, sick as a dog, and of what do I speak? Of walking in the snow one dark, frigid morning a quarter century ago. But how it pleases me to do so. I am recalling the rumble of a faraway city, the frenetic howls of ambulances and police cars, of fire trucks roaring down the Don Valley Parkway and heard even in winter when the windows and the balcony door in my third-floor studio apartment on Bergamot Avenue were sealed against cold and wind and wet. In the tropical comfort of a bedroom in Scenery Hills, with the whistles of frogs and cicadas in the background, the sound of boats chugging through the night, how clearly I hear the sizzle and hum that came from the light of the street lamp outside the building on Bergamot Avenue. I can see, in the light’s yellowish pink shaft, exotic downy feathers of snow.
    Then, to my surprise, Sydney began to speak of his friend Zain.
    If I could have asked someone to accompany me to the Irene Samuel, it would have been Zain, he said. But of course, that was impossible. So I did the next best thing, and in the knapsack I wore that day I placed all the letters she had ever written to me. It was as if she were with me.
    My mind, confounded by this turn in his tale, drifted as he spoke, and I recalled the first time Sydney had told me ofthis friend years ago. The sounds of the sea were a constant backdrop whenever Sydney and I were in the garden or here inside the house, and my recollections of first learning of Zain were full of those kinds of sounds—a car gearing up or wheezing on the brake as it went down the hilly road, a lone steel drum tinkling in practice somewhere nearby, a dog, or a chorus of them, barking. But that day I did not hear Lancelot and Rosita’s chatter and bickering coming from inside the house, and I noticed their absence. It was midmorning—perhaps the third or fourth visit I’d made to Trinidad. I knocked on Sydney’s bedroom door. There was no answer so I knocked again, and then opened the door just a crack to make sure that he was all right.
    The windows were wide open, the ends of the tied-back curtains whipping up in the breeze. Coming from the other side of the street was the erratic whirr of a weed trimmer. A cool pleasant light washed the sparse room. Sydney was lying on top of the made-up double bed in red boxer shorts and a teal tank top that hugged his heavy torso, which starkly contrasted with his frail legs. He was reading a letter. I called to him, and finally he acknowledged my presence. He gestured me into the room and folded the letter. A green knapsack lay off to the side. Scattered around Sydney were several greeting cards, letters on formal writing paper, an uneven stack of torn bits of paper held together by a paper clip. He had been shaved and his skin was a light powdery grey. He hadn’t had his midmorning nap, it seemed. I asked how he was feeling, to which he replied, with a tone offutility,