The Laboratory of Love, page 35
The candle hisses at me: Look.
A stack of manuscript rests beside my right elbow; next to it are several book contracts, several sets of galley proofs. How much time has passed since I sat here with pad and pen? Has it been several days or several years? In a moment, I will step outside, check the date of a newspaper that it would serve no purpose to read: what occurs upon this planet is as alien to me as events unfolding up on Mars.
“You must leave life to find love,” I mumble, resorting to that ancient mantra as the candle flame steadies.
What are you still doing here? interrupts an indistinct reflection hovering on the glass pane beyond which breathes the bay. Sign, demand the book contracts on this table. Sometimes I suspect that I’ve subverted the publication of words to postpone arriving at the final one. Not anymore. I’ve already stayed too long in this uncertain city beside the sea. If I linger further, the odds increase that my presence will be discovered; social systems might prevent me from proceeding with my purpose. They will intervene with dulling medication, enforced therapy, involuntary treatment: I’m aware that my hégire presents an affront to church and community and state. It offends reason and confronts the status quo. Disturbs, irritates, upsets.
So be it.
Bismillah.
The time has come at last for my final return into the desert, for one more voyage across beckoning waves of dune.
I glance around this nearly bare room. Except for manuscript, little needs to be brought with me. Travel light, travel right. Isn’t the process I’ve undertaken one of letting go? Of becoming increasingly light, sufficiently unburdened to steal into sky?
Yes, I know the shape of the last word.
I’ve almost earned the right to spell it.
The still Sahara will allow my ears to hear the single syllable’s insistent repetition in the pulsing of my blood, in the victorious voice of Allah.
Upon the blank page of a dune, I will trace this last word enough times to fill a final book entirely, to comprise its text completely.
Watch its divine design dissolve beneath hands of burning air, feel it raise me into the current and the rush.
Love.
Patrick Roscoe was born on the Spanish island of Formentera. He is the author of seven previous novels and short-story collections published between 1990 and 2001. His widely published and anthologized fiction has won two Western Magazine Gold Medal Awards and a National Magazine Award, among others; his short fiction has also received a pair of Distinguished Story citations from Best American Stories and is frequently selected for Best Canadian Stories. He currently divides his time between Canada, Spain, Mexico, and North Africa, but makes his home in Vancouver.
Patrick Roscoe, The Laboratory of Love
