The Last Bullet Is for You Read Online Free PDF Page B

me. Wake up in the dazzling, surreal light that my body resists because it isn’t the right time. Exit the plane. Take the shuttle to the terminal. Get my bag. Take a taxi to the Via Candia. Thirty degrees in the shade. Wait in a café with my first cappuccino. Climb six floors with the girl from the agency who came on a motorbike to give me the keys. Drop my suitcase. Open the windows. Plug in the fridge. Hang up my clothes. Take my computer out of my backpack. Plug it in. Turn it on. Start to write.
    When I arrived in Rome, I emerged from absence. I was transposed. I am luxuriating in the Roman sun, a silken glove upon my skin. The heat soothes me, the green of the plants, the white of the jasmine, the pink of oleander. The rooftop deck is a paradise, and from its height I can hear the rumble of cars, sirens, and horns, children laughing, dogs barking, couples quarrelling, the shouts of merchants and passersby. Close by, the gulls’ cries speak of the sea. From the window, I look across at the other apartments, the teenage girl wearing a cellphone as an earring and opening her blouse to look at her new breasts, the young man throwing open his shutters wide then coming back a moment later with a tiny newborn on his shoulder. The smells of the restaurants and food being cooked rise up to me.
    At the end of the day, the sun sinks over the city, but the wind never sleeps.
    All roads lead to Rome, and ours led me there too. I alighted, with thousands of pilgrims, near the Vatican and its Pope. Priests are served up in every manner possible. You see pictures of them in barbershop windows with their fashionable haircuts, their young sacerdotal style.
    You used to say, in disgust, that Quebec was a place empty of all spirituality, and that was a fatal flaw, and if one day you had to bring up children in this rotten country, you would make sure to give them a god, prayers, and ceremony. Those were the last words I heard you say the day after you went back to the Czech Republic. Sitting in front of your face on the computer screen, I listened to you talk, and it was the coup de grace. I couldn’t listen anymore to the accusations you made against my country, condemning its atheism, I couldn’t listen to all the insults you spat at me. That time was once too many, I couldn’t close my eyes on reality anymore, you were a bastard, you were out of second chances.
    You didn’t understand what happened that day because for you it was perfectly normal, my job was to tolerate everything you said, I owed it to you because you’d crossed the Atlantic to be with me and a sacrifice like that has its price, that’s what you wrote in a text message the summer before you came, you’d make me pay for the hell I put you through by asking you to leave Prague though nothing was keeping you there, nothing outside of the vague idea that something might remain. Asking you to leave Prague to come and live with me, the woman who loved you, and since that had no price, I would pay my whole life through.
    You wore my love like a favourite shirt, worn thin from being washed, like a new garment, its cut attractive, and its pattern, its fabric, but that soon grows pale, unravels until it can’t be repaired, it’s a shame it hadn’t been better looked after.
    Before you went away the last time, you left your clothes, your books, your CDs, everything in its place, your shirts in the closet, your socks in the drawer, your pyjamas under the pillow. It was as though you’d gone out for the day. You claimed your territory the way a wolf does, and in your absence, no one had the right to enter it.
    You never stopped proclaiming that this place wasn’t yours, you weren’t at home and never would be, but once you left, you made sure you remained its sole proprietor. You were the missionary sent to a hostile land to civilize it. Once the mission is accomplished, he returns to his country, leaving behind newly