Thirteen

Today it's raining, the thin, abstemious rain of early April. Already the blue scilla are beginning to flower, the daffodils have their snouts above ground, the self-seeded forget-me-nots are creeping up, getting ready to hog the light. Here it comes-another year of vegetative hustling and jostling. They never seem to get tired of it: plants have no memories, that's why. They can't remember how many times they've done all this before.

I must admit it's a surprise to find myself still here, still talking to you. I prefer to think of it as talking, although of course it isn't: I'm saying nothing, you're hearing nothing. The only thing between us is this black line: a thread thrown onto the empty page, into the empty air.

The winter's ice in the Louveteau Gorge is almost gone, even in the shaded crevasses of the cliffs. The water, black and then white, hurtles down through the limestone chasms and over the boulders, effortlessly as ever. A violent sound, but soothing; alluring, almost. You can see how people are drawn to it. To waterfalls, to high places, to deserts and deep lakes-places of no return.

Only one corpse in the river so far this year, a drug-ridden young woman from Toronto. Another girl in a hurry. Another waste of time, her own. She had relatives here, an aunt, an uncle. Already they're the objects of narrow sideways looks, as if they had something to do with it; already they've assumed the cornered, angry air of the consciously innocent. I'm sure they're blameless, but they're alive, and whoever's left alive gets blamed. That's the rule in things like this. Unfair, but there it is.

Yesterday morning Walter came round, to see about the spring tune-up. That's what he calls the household fix-it routine he goes through, on my behalf, every year. He brought his toolbox, his handheld electric saw, his electric screwdriver: he likes nothing better than to be whirring away like part of a motor.

He parked all these tools on the back porch, then stomped around outside the house. When he came back in he had a gratified expression. "Garden gate missing a slat," he said. "I can whack her in today, paint her when it's dry."

"Oh, don't bother," I say, as I do every year. "Everything's falling apart, but it will last me out."

Walter ignores this, as always. "Front steps too," he says. "Need paint. One of them should come right off-put a new one on her. You let it go too long, the water gets in and then you get the rot. Maybe a stain though, for the porch, better for the wood. We could put another colour strip along the edges of the steps, so people could see better. The way it is they could miss their footing, hurt themselves." He useswe out of courtesy, andby people he means me. "I can have that new step in later today."

"You'll get all wet," I said. "The weather channel says more of the same."

"Nope, it'll clear up." He didn't even look at the sky.

Walter went off to get the necessities-some planks, I suppose-and I spent the interval reclining on the parlour sofa, like some vaporous novelistic heroine who's been forgotten in the pages of her own book and left to yellow and mildew and crumble away like the book itself.

A morbid image, Myra would say.

What else would you suggest? I would reply.

The fact is that my heart has been acting up again. Acting up, a peculiar phrase. It's what people say to minimise the gravity of their condition. It implies that the offending part (heart, stomach, liver, whatever) is a fractious, bratty child, which can be brought into line with a slap or a sharp word. At the same time, that these symptoms-these tremors and pains, these palpitations-are mere theatrics, and that the organ in question will soon stop capering about and making a spectacle of itself, and resume its placid, off-stage existence.

The doctor isn't pleased. He's been muttering about tests and scans, and trips into Toronto where the specialists lurk, those few who have not fled for greener pastures. He's changed my pills, added another one to the arsenal. He's even suggested the possibility of an operation. What would be involved, I asked, and what would be accomplished? Too much of one, as it turns out, and not enough of the other. He suspects that nothing short of a whole new unit-his term, as if it's a dishwasher we're talking about-will do. Also I would have to stand in line, waiting for someone else's unit, one that's no longer needed. Not to put too fine a gloss on it, someone else's heart, ripped out of some youngster: you wouldn't want to instal an old rickety wizened-up one like the one you intend to throw away. What you want is something fresh and juicy.

But who knows where they get those things? Street children in Latin America is my guess; or so goes the most paranoid rumour. Stolen hearts, black-market hearts, wrenched from between broken ribs, warm and bleeding, offered up to the false god. What is the false god? We are. Us and our money. That's what Laura would say. Don't touch that money, Reenie would say. You don't know where it's been.

Could I live with myself, knowing I was carrying the heart of a dead child?

But if not, then what?

Please don't mistake this rambling angst for stoicism. I take my pills, I take my halting walks, but there's nothing I can do for dread.

After lunch-a piece of hard cheese, a glass of dubious milk, a flabby carrot, Myra having fallen down this week on her self-appointed task of stocking my refrigerator-Walter returned. He measured, sawed, hammered, then knocked on the back door to say he was sorry for the noise but everything was shipshape now.

"I made you some coffee," I said. This is a ritual on these April occasions. Had I burned it this time? No matter. He was used to Myra 's.

"Don't mind if I do." He removed his rubber boots carefully and left them on the back porch-Myra has him well trained, he's not allowed to track what she callshis dirt onto what she callsher carpets -then tiptoed in his mammoth socks across my kitchen floor; which, thanks to the energetic scourings and polishings of Myra's woman, is now as slick and treacherous as a glacier. It used to have a useful adhesive skin on it, an accumulation of dust and grime like a thin coating of glue, but no longer. I really should strew it with grit, or I'll slip on it and do myself an injury.

Watching Walter tiptoe was a treat in itself-an elephant walking on eggs. He reached the kitchen table, setting his yellow leather work gloves down on it, where they lay like giant, extra paws.

"New gloves," I said. They were so new they almost glowed. Not a scratch on them either.

" Myra got those. Guy three streets over, took the ends of his fingers off with a fretsaw and she's all steamed up about it, worried I'll do the same or worse. But that guy's a numbnuts, moved here from Toronto, pardon my French but he shouldn't be allowed to fool with saws, could of took his head off while he was at it, no loss to the world either. I told her, have to be ten bricks short of a load to pull a stunt like that, and anyways I don't own a fretsaw. But she makes me cart the darn things around anyways. Every time I go out the door, it's Yoo-hoo, here's your gloves."

"You could lose them," I said.

"She'd buy others," he said gloomily.

"Leave them here. Say you forgot them and you'll pick them up later. Then just don't pick them up." I had an image of myself, during lonely nights, holding one of Walter's vacated, leathery hands: it would be a companion of sorts. Pathetic. Maybe I should buy a cat, or a small dog. Something warm and uncritical and furry-a fellow creature, helping me to keep watch by night. We need the mammalian huddle: too much solitude is bad for the eyesight. But if I got something like that I'd most likely trip over it and break my neck.

Walter's mouth twitched, the tips of his upper teeth showed: it was a grin. "Great minds think alike, eh?" he said. "Then maybe you could dump the suckers in the trash, accidentally on purpose."

"Walter, you are a rascal," I said. Walter grinned more, added five spoons of sugar to the coffee, downed it, then placed both hands on the table and levered himself into the air, like an obelisk raised by ropes. In that motion I suddenly foresaw what his last action would be, in relation to me: he'll hoist one end of my coffin.

He knows it too. He's standing by. He's not a handyman for nothing. He won't make a fuss, he won't drop me, he'll make sure I travel in level, horizontal safely on this last, short voyage of mine. "Up she goes," he'll say. And up I will go.

Lugubrious. I know it; and sentimental as well. But please bear with me. The dying are allowed a certain latitude, like children on their birthdays.