In the Skin of a Lion: Part 3: Chapter 2: Maritime Theatre Summary & Analysis

Patrick is released from prison in 1938, when police units focused on industrial political activity aim to crush any political activity, and thousands of immigrants are being deported out of Canada. Patrick takes the train from Kingston to Toronto’s Union Station, where crucial events in his life have taken place: his arrival at the age of twenty-one and Clara’s departure. Patrick then walks out into the city, noticing the changes in fashion that have taken place during his absence.

When Patrick reaches Geranium Bakery, Nicholas Temelcoff hugs him vigorously. Patrick then asks about Hana and Nicholas tells him that she is packing. Walking up to Nicholas’s apartment, Patrick finds Hana sitting on the bed and notices that she looks a lot like Alice. This makes him suffer, and Hana sees his deep love for Alice in his eyes. Five years earlier, before Patrick left for the Muskoka Hotel, Nicholas offered to take Hana into his family and Patrick had to tell eleven-year-old Hana that they would have to be on their own for a while.

Suddenly, Hana stands up, showing Patrick how tall she is, and hugs him softly. The two of them walk down to have lunch and feel comfortable joking together. In prison, Patrick believed that freedom meant being on his own in silence and keeping himself from thinking about Alice, but his refusal to communicate changed on the night that Caravaggio was attacked.

When Clara left to join Ambrose Small, she realized that Ambrose keeps every aspect of his life—whether economic or romantic—perfectly separate, and only shows the parts of him he wants people to see, even to Clara. When Ambrose was dying, he finally shared with Clara all of his memories, revealing the depth of his knowledge of many woman, financial affairs, and emotions she was not aware of. While Clara tried to figure out what might have become of these women or financial deals, Ambrose proved uninterested. Ultimately, despite Ambrose’s outflow of words and memories, Clara concluded that she would never know him fully.

In their shared apartment, Hana wakes Patrick up to tell him that he needs to answer an urgent phone call from Clara Dickens she forgot to tell him about. When Patrick picks up the phone, feeling that he has not heard from her in a hundred years, Clara asks who the girl was and Patrick says she is a sixteen-year-old friend he is looking after. Clara then asks him to come pick her up in Marmora, Ontario, now that Ambrose has died.

Clara tells Patrick that Marmora is four hours away from Toronto and that she needs his help. Patrick makes ironic comments about the time that has passed, Clara’s sudden reappearance, and Ambrose’s death, but Patrick agrees to come pick her up, even though he has a broken arm. He tells her that Hana will keep him awake and that she has saved his life. When Clara asks if Patrick is her father, he does not initially answer, asking her for precise directions instead, but finally says that he is indeed her father. When they hang up and Patrick tells Hana that they need to go to Marmora, Hana begins asking him many questions. Patrick agrees to tell her about Clara during the trip, which makes Hana feel excited, but asks to take a nap first.

Six months earlier, when Patrick left prison, as the Spanish Civil War was evolving in Spain, the upper class became fearful and began to crack down on workers’ unions. At the waterworks, the police and the army began to guard buildings to protect from attacks. Harris established a security parameter and was the only person inside the building at night. Comfortable around the sound of machines, Harris would dream of his constructions and what he has achieved.

One evening, on another section of the river, the Yacht Club holds a costume ball, in which the wealthy can dance, drink champagne, and try to hit chained monkeys with champagne corks to win a free bottle. That night, Patrick, Caravaggio, and Giannetta step off a motor launch toward the Yacht Club where, thanks to Caravaggio’s confident attitude, they are able to join the party even though they were never invited. The rich accept Caravaggio’s pirate costume and presentation as Randolph Frog, while Giannetta and Patrick stay on the sidelines, pretending to be shy.

Inserting himself perfectly in this social circle, Caravaggio dances with women and jokes with men, before finally finding the couple he is looking for: a flirtatious wife and a domineering husband. He tells the wife that he learned Italian during a vacation in Tuscany and, after flirting with the wife, she invites him to their yacht. When Caravaggio points to Giannetta, explaining that she is his sister, the wife invites her too. Earlier in the evening, before they arrived at the Yacht Club, Caravaggio had made a comment about the rich’s laugh and their obsession with their possessions that reminded Patrick of Alice.

When the group steps onto the couple’s yacht, Caravaggio, already drunk, searches for more bottles of alcohol. After they begin sailing, the wife asks Caravaggio if he is hungry and leads him downstairs, both of them sexually aroused. Beneath the deck, the woman half takes off her dress. The music then stops abruptly and Caravaggio, recognizing the signal, puts a handkerchief with chloroform on the lady’s mouth, at the same time as Patrick chloroforms the husband upstairs.  Caravaggio holds the wife and wonders what she is dreaming of before he puts a blanket over her and heads upstairs. While the husband lies unconscious in the ropes, Patrick, Giannetta, and Caravaggio laugh and head toward the waterworks. Enjoying the atmosphere, not yet thinking of what is to come, Patrick feels relaxed.

After meticulously studying the plans of the waterworks that Caravaggio stole, Patrick knows the specific size of each part of the waterworks. Taking off his shirt, he rubs grease all over his body and Caravaggio helps him attach the dynamite. They have calculated that one tank should be sufficient for Patrick to succeed, although they are not completely certain about this. In addition, Patrick carries a blasting-box small enough for him to pass through the iron bars at the entrance of the intake pipe. He also carries wire-cutters to get through a metal screen, after a second series of iron bars. Finally, Caravaggio wishes Patrick good luck and Patrick dives, holding the mouthpiece in his mouth.

On this night of July 7, 1938, Patrick crawls through the iron bars, but the difficulty of swimming with a heavy tank makes him discard his lamp, to carry less weight. He thus swims in darkness, meanwhile fearing that his tank will run out of air. When Patrick reaches the second row of metal bars, his tank is empty. After crawling through, he finally reaches the metal screen and begins to panic because he does not know what to do without any air in his tank. However, he then realizes that he is actually breathing pure air, as there is space between the water and the screen.

Having lost his wire cutters, hanging onto the screen with one arm, Patrick decides to use a small explosion to break through it, although he is not sure how small it will actually be. After placing the explosive and diving as far as he can, he does not hear the sound of the explosion but feels its effect, as it peels the skin on his chest and back, and he tastes blood in his mouth. Patrick then exits the well and finds himself surrounded by machines. He takes off his dynamite and strips naked, lying down to rest.

When Harris hears a sound that he does not recognize as the machine’s ordinary noise, he walks around the building but does not see anything suspicious. In the meantime, Patrick prepares himself to walk through the puppet-filled hallway where he saw Alice years ago. He knows that he has broken something because his face is in deep pain. After a while, he stands up, dresses, and attaches the blasting caps onto the dynamite, imagining the effect of the explosion as it will make the water burst in the air and will destroy the building entirely. He begins to sing softly to himself as he places charges on the machine, his singing drowned by the sound of the machines.

When Patrick enters Harris’s office some time later, the Commissioner sees him walk in, though Patrick is unrecognizable, covered in black grease as well as in scratches and blood, with a limp arm hanging down his side, while carrying the blasting-box. Patrick then explains that he worked for Harris and, when he runs his finger over Harris’s desk, recognizes the material as feldspar.

After thinking for a while, Harris begins to speak, explaining that he has worked hard to arrive at his current position, Patrick says that Harris has forgotten them. He tells the Commissioner that the tiles he has chosen for the waterworks cost more than half of the men’s salaries and asks if Harris feels ashamed, but Harris replies that he has been building a grandiose work of architecture that will be admired in the years to come. However, Patrick asks him if he knows how many workers have died to achieve this, and Harris replies that “There was no record kept.”

Patrick then asks Harris to turn the light off, because the darkness makes him feel more awake. Harris tells Patrick that he does not understand power and is simply looking for a villain. In order to distract Patrick until morning, when Harris will be able to use the light to grab his gun, he tells Patrick about his dreams for Toronto. He explains that workers are part of these beautiful constructions, but that their marginal role makes them reject power, leaving other people to take responsibility for telling a historical narrative.

Patrick interrupts Harris’s speech to tell him about Alice Gull’s death. When Harris mentions that she was killed by an anarchist, Patrick explains that she was killed because she grabbed the wrong bag: a bag that contained a clock bomb. In a low voice, Patrick says that he does not want to talk about this anymore. However, he explains that people at the tannery told him about the bag and that he ran out to search for Alice, accompanied by Nicholas Temelcoff. When he heard the explosion nearby, he ran to Alice and took her in his arms, where she died from a wound in her side.

When Patrick goes quiet, Harris calls out to him. In the darkness, Harris realizes that Patrick swam all the way here, and wonders what dream kept Patrick going. For an hour, Harris waits for dawn. When some light finally arrives, he sees Patrick, all bloody, sitting silently, in a strange position, and thinks he is dead before realizing he is only sleeping. After reflecting on why Patrick chose him, Harris concluded that it is because Harris has concrete monuments that prove his power, whereas richer, more powerful people are more discrete, because their wealth is more invisible. When an officer walks into Harris’s office at six in the morning, Harris tells him to take the blasting-box away and to find a nurse for Patrick, who is hurt.

After making some coffee, Hana wakes Patrick up from his nap, telling him they have to go to Marmora. While they walk to the car, Hana asks Patrick to tell her about Clara, and he explains that she was Alice’s best friend. He promises to tell her the full story and asks her if she wants to drive, while he handles the gears for a while. While Hana adjusts the rear-view mirror, he makes himself comfortable in the passenger seat, exaggerating the luxury of it, and tells her to turn on the lights.