"
Maurice yearns for the olden days, ten years ago, when a woman was a
woman and he was a proper man with eyes to look dames over and legs to
chase them. Maurice isn't good at expressing pain. He prefers to
measure shirts or to ask me to write him letters.
That evening, when I come back from the detail, I find Maurice parked
on his bunk, his ailing leg impossibly extended, weighed down by a
bulky orthopaedic shoe. He avoids me, dejected. And then:
"Vaknin" - he calls - "Come here, Vaknin."
I go and sit by him. At his request, I tie his laces: one cross, one
over, and a butterfly. He shuts his eyes while people fuss around him.
And now, the humiliation and the embarrassment - both mine and his. The
intimate togetherness, a man, shoelaces, man, at dusk, a drafty room,
in prison. The closest two can get - sometimes more than carnal. A kind
of love.
"Vaknin, thank you" - he says, inspecting my endeavours critically -
"Vaknin, what shall I do if someone answers my letters? What will
happen then? I am afraid to post them, not to get a response. I only
have a socket. My beautiful eye hasn't arrived yet. I am crippled,
crippled..."
Maurice breaks into a sob and I move closer and hug him and nestle him
and wait for him to calm down.
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