Lancelot

returned to the pigeonnier cold sober, I took a good look at myself in the mirror, something I hadn’t done for a long time. It was as if I had been avoiding my own eye for the past few years.
    Looking at oneself in a mirror is a self-canceling phenomenon. Eyes looking into eyes make a hole which spreads out and renders one invisible. I had seen more of myself in that single glimpse of a ghostly image in the pier mirror, not knowing it was I.
    What did I see? It is hard to say, but it appeared to be a man gone to seed. Do you remember the picture of Lancelot disgraced, discovered in adultery with the queen, banished, living in the woods, stretched out on a rock, chin cupped in both hands, bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, yellow hair growing down over his brows? But it’s a bad comparison. My bloodshot eyes were staring too but it was not so much the case of my screwing the queen as the queen getting screwed by somebody else.
    I moved closer. The cheek showed the razor track of the morning’s shave; above it, the demarcated swatch of light fuzz on the knoll of the cheekbone. Capillaries were rising to the surface but had not yet turned into spiders. The nose was not broken, despite football and boxing, not red, blackheaded. The eyes showed a broken vessel and a blood spot like a fertile egg. There were grains in the lashes. The hair roots were not quite clean and were dandruff-flaked. The lips were cracked. The fingernails were black. The chin showed patches of beard missed by the razor. I shaved carelessly and washed seldom. More like Ben Gunn than Lancelot.
    Five, six, seven years of unacknowledged idleness (it takes work to be idle and not acknowledge it), drinking and watching TV, working at play, playing at work—what does it do to a man? My hands were open in front of my face. The fingers closed and opened. I felt like Rip van Winkle waking up and testing his bones. Was anything broken? Was I still in one piece?
    Was I still strong? How much abuse will a body take? I looked at my fist. I looked at the plantation desk. Raised chest-high originally so that the busy planter (busy with what?) could write his checks standing up, it had been lowered by Margot to make a regular desk. Good solid inch-thick walnut. I put my fist through the middle of the backboard. It went through. I looked at my fist. The knuckles were bleeding. The pain came through tentatively as if it were not sure it had permission. I thought: It has been a long time since I felt pain. I did ten pushups. My arms trembled; it left me sweating. I tried the Bowie knife test, do you remember? With my right hand I stuck the knife into the soft pecky cypress wall with all my strength. With my left hand I tried to withdraw it without working it to and fro. I could not. Then was my right arm strong or my left arm weak?
    For the first time in years I bathed very carefully, scrubbing every inch of my body, washing my hair, cleaning and paring my nails, shaving every hair on my face. The bathwater was gray-black. I took a cold shower, scrubbed myself with a towel till the skin hurt, combed my hair, put on shorts. I lay down on the bricks and took a deep breath. The cold of the bricks penetrated the skin of my thighs. For years, I realized, I had lived in a state of comfort and abstraction, waiting for the ten o’clock news, and had not allowed myself to feel anything. When the base of my lungs filled with air and my viscera moved, I realized that I had been breathing shallowly for years. Lowering my chin, I could see the wide V-shaped flare of my ribs; the abdomen fell away out of sight. There was a cherry mole on my breastbone I had never noticed before. I had not looked at myself for years.
    Raising my chin as far as it would go, I could see Margot’s painting of Belle Isle upside down. There was a year when Margot painted bayous, Spanish moss, and plantation houses.
    I stood up. Can a man stand alone, naked, and at his ease, wrist flexed at his side like Michelangelo’s David, without assistance, without diversion, without drink, without friends, without a woman, in silence? Yes. It was possible to stand. Nothing happened. I listened. There was no sound: no boats on the river, no trucks on the road, not even cicadas. What if I didn’t listen to the news? I didn’t. Nothing happened. I realized I had been afraid of silence.
    For the past year or so, I had been walking carefully, eyes straight ahead, like a man