“The geese,” Harold said, “and herons! Light on the water—all the willows and flowers! After this swim I’m going to walk to the botanical gardens, have you seen those?”

“I’ve slept in the First Nations part, with the wild raspberries and juniper and birches, on nights when I’m not allowed to sleep at the place where I stay now.”

“At the botanical gardens,” Harold said, “I want to visit a particular flower that begins with B. I intend to go through the whole alphabet.” He spoke with a kind of awe. I sensed he saw a fragile future before him, but a future nonetheless.

After exiting the Y, we drank green tea at Magic Idea in Chinatown while Harold knitted. He said he’d learned to knit when he was blind by the feel of the needles and wool.

I tried not to doubt him.

Had his blindness plunged him into real darkness? Or did neurological blindness mean his eyes worked but his brain refused to decipher what they saw? If the latter was the case, had he really been blind at all?

I confessed to him another secret. “I saw the wraith of my beloved, Eliza Lawson, come to me in a vision at night on the open sea.” This was the kind of thing Sophie refuses to believe. Get on with the now, she says. But the yellow man weighed my statement, unwinding yarn he’d caught around his button. “Eliza wore a gown sequined with herring-scales,” I said. “I wasn’t dreaming.”

“I know you weren’t,” he said, his voice full of confidence, although his eyes appeared to entertain a silent question mark.

“We’d left land far behind. We were in the oceanic night.” He brightened at the word oceanic.

“It’s a well-known fact,” he said, “about seaweeds, they don’t need a stiff backbone like land plants. Or like us!” This fancy seemed to amuse him, while it made me think of alternative humans floating like eels or sea-horses, undulating and without stiff backbones. “The water supports them,” he added.

I told Harold other things. He seemed very interested in the death of my brother, Ned, particularly my recounting of the box of Ned’s things I sent home to our mother, the box containing special amulets, his sash, his gorget, books and maps. Then I told him of my aborted attempt, these past few years, to visit the scene of my own death, to see whether I could possibly make any sense out of what happened in 1759, the thirteenth of September.

“The thirteenth,” he said. “That’s a lucky number. People are far too scared of it. And it’s in exactly a week from now. That’s seven days. Seven and thirteen are wonderful numbers. They make me excited. If you want, I’ll go with you after my trip to the botanical gardens. I know somebody in Quebec City whose couch I can sleep on.”