Man Descending

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  “To hell with you, Ed. You wrecked our marriage. I kept giving and giving -”

  “To anyone who asked,” I interrupt.

  “No, to you. And you kept taking and taking. Well, I’m through giving, and I’m through holding my breath watching you drift, hoping something will happen and that you’ll take your life in hand.” She pauses and says somewhat sadly, “You’re just like one of those goddamn jellyfish, Ed. You just drift along with the tide and when anyone gets within range of your tentacles you sting them. All you know how to do is float and sting.”

  “Old Ed and the great Muhammad Ali,” I say sarcastically, miffed by this unflattering comparison, “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

  “I rest my case.”

  I walk to the window and look out at the patchwork of roofs. I am near the end of my tether but I won’t let go. “I don’t like the way I’m living now,” I manage to say in a voice that is all counterfeit normalcy. “I want us to live together again. I don’t sleep very well. I’ve gained twenty-three pounds.”

  “Ed,” says Victoria, not unkindly, “I’m sorry. But I do sleep well. I’ve lost five pounds. I can make friends without worrying about what you will eventually do or say to them. I haven’t gone to pieces and I won’t go to pieces. You look after yourself now. I’m through begging you to watch your weight and be nice to people. You can eat fudgy-wudgies until you can’t get through the door. You can insult nuns on the street for all I care. Do what you wish. But I’m not going to be there typing your résumés or pressing your suits so that you appear presentable at interviews for jobs you don’t make the slightest effort to land. You’re a big boy, Ed. Sink or swim. I always believed you could make something of yourself. I’m not so sure any more. I don’t think you have the guts it takes.”

  Her tone is not really callous but I am alarmed. Things have come to a dreadful pass. How my wife has changed! And I am in part responsible for what she has become. I feel a great sadness. How I have disappointed her. I remember how, when first married, we lay in one another’s arms and talked about what the rest of our life would be. Sun, shellfish and wine in Spain. The click-clack of my typewriter as I wrote the Big Novel. The click of her camera shutter as she photographed the sober, dignified peasant faces of Spain.

  My throat hurts terribly. Something, maybe my heart, is swelling ominously in my chest.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I ask abruptly, afraid that I might shame myself by beginning to sob in her bright, modern and airy living-room.

  Victoria directs me.

  I discover she has turned the bathroom into a hothouse, surrendering to the female impulse to demurely disguise its basic function. The place is a veritable hanging garden of Babylon. Potted plants suspended from the ceiling, potted plants on the toilet tank, potted plants on the vanity. All are signs that the ancien régime is eclipsed. I would never have tolerated any of this had I been resident.

  My hairy face stares palely and uneasily back at me from the mirror. This tropical atmosphere, this humidity, this rank foliage, awaken in me some primal jungle fear. I am overcome with stark anxiety; I feel watched and hunted. It is all I can do to prevent myself from casting about in search of two yellow cat-eyes blazing behind a fern frond, or prevent myself from surveying the floor for sign of fresh leopard scat.

  I run some cold water into the basin and splash my face. Momentarily and profusely I give way to tears. In a moment it is finished. Perhaps I am more aggrieved than sad. Certainly I am troubled and uneasy. My wife is no longer the woman I had remembered. Or perhaps more correctly, living in isolation from me has made her more of what she was. Independent, collected, realistic.

  A person could give way to paranoia. The two people with whom I once lived, Benny and Victoria, are in league against me. I feel betrayed by the fact that they have changed while I remain faithful to the past and old loyalties. Benny is not the person I once knew, and neither, apparently, is Victoria. They have entered the long, dark tunnel of personal histories from which I am excluded. I feel left behind. A man standing on a tarmac watching my holiday plane lifting off for a brighter, sunnier, more welcoming place.

  And because these people change, because they are in a state of flux, they seem unreal to me. Sam Waters is much more real. I put my faith in him. I think of his example before I go to sleep and when I wake.

  Sam Waters made his appearance in that sad time after the failure of the second Big Book, and like Pallas Athene springing fully armed from the forehead of Zeus, he arrived on the scene unaccompanied by the normal pangs of artistic birth. Perhaps it was automatic handwriting. Or, put more poetically, the Muse in her beneficence gave me a sentence. In any case, I don’t know where it came from. There I was, sitting at my kitchen table on a bleak, lonely Sunday afternoon, doodling dispiritedly – mostly hanged men – when I heard this sentence. Actually heard it.

  “Sam Waters had been a plainsman, a buffalo-hunter, a wind-drinker, a free man before he became the sheriff of Constitution.”

  I wrote that down and looked at it very hard. There it was. Yes, I said, nodding to myself, sure he had. And?

  “And because of the long vistas he had looked steadily into and the clean rain he had tasted, he didn’t care much for towns. Sam Waters was too big a man to feel easy in towns. They made him feel pinched and cramped and restless. And worst thing about them was that their smells made it difficult for him to breathe, and no town smelled worse than Constitution, because Constitution stank with the worst smell of all – hypocrisy.”

  I edged forward in my chair and began to scribble in a white heat of composition. No more Flaubertian search for the bon mot. It flew fast and furiously. I was tapping some strange vein in my psyche, and pressing on for the mother lode.

  “The good, honest citizens of Constitution had wanted Sam Waters as sheriff because of his hard fists and big heart and quick draw. They wanted a man tough enough to have undergone the Blackfoot manhood trial, twirling crazily around a lodge pole suspended on bones skewering the muscles of his chest, arms and legs. They wanted a man wily and cunning enough to have stolen ponies from the best horse thieves of all the Plains Indian tribes, the Pawnee. And they wanted a man cool enough to have faced down Doc Holliday in Abilene, relying only on a poker face and a Colt Peacemaker with six empty chambers to make a coldblooded killer who was wasting away with consumption and so didn’t have much to lose anyway, quail when he looked into a certain pair of cold, blue eyes.

  “Such a man, the good, honest citizens of Constitution felt, would be a match for the whiskey-crazed Texan drovers who tore apart Constitution each year when they reached the railhead with their herds and tried to forget all the hard miles with rotgut, Madame Louise’s fancy ladies and general, unbuttoned hell-raising.

  “But at the moment the people of Constitution looked on their sheriff as a liability and a danger. Men stepped aside and looked at the toes of their boots when they met him making his rounds, and women pursed their lips in disapproval when he touched the brim of his Stetson to them. They didn’t want anything to do with him ever since that fateful day when he had eliminated three perils to public safety and content in the space of six short hours.

  “They had applauded the first. On a hot August afternoon, while everyone watched from the safety of their homes and stores, Sam Waters had stepped into the dust of mainstreet toting his Sharps breechloader and drilled a slavering, rabid dog who had lurched toward him, jaws snapping. That had made him a hero. The Mayor had insisted on having his picture taken shaking Sam’s hand beside the carcass of the poor dead brute.

  “But later that evening Sam had been foolish enough to do away with two other mad dogs, far more dangerous than the first. Their names were Rafe and Lucas McMurchy, and Sam, in trying to arrest them, had met with resistance. When the two brothers had hauled iron on him in Madame Louise’s knocking shop, Sam had been forced to cut them down.

  “The problem was that the boys had gotten a bit too frisky with o
ne of the upstairs girls. She had crashed naked out of a third-storey window and fell screaming into the street below. She had died several hours later, and nobody was about to thank Sam Waters for avenging a common whore. And certainly not when she had met her fate at the hands of Rafe and Lucas McMurchy, sons of Chas McMurchy, a man who owned five thousand head of cattle and every soul in Constitution. Every soul save one, and that soul Chas McMurchy had sworn he’d see in hell if he had to take apart Constitution brick by brick and board by board to do it.”

  And that’s where I stopped, although my pen was primed and I knew, as sure as ever I knew anything, that there was plenty more where that came from. And I wasn’t wrong either. In the last month, in odd moments, I’ve written, without effort or reflection, sixty more pages of Sam Waters’ story. Not that I’ve admitted this to anyone else. My goodness no. If the news got around that old Ed was writing a Western, what rejoicing there would be in the camps of the Moabites! How Benny would snigger. Victoria might even brave a comment about the essential banality of my mind. And I must admit, my infatuation with leathery old Sam says something unflattering about his admirer.

  You see, Sam has assumed an awesome substantiality in my mind. He has become a yardstick against which I measure my conduct. Good old Sam. Unchanging and solid as the proverbial rock of Gibraltar. Always there when I need him, as I need him now. His figure looms up before me, rangy and slackjointed. His hands are brown, of course, and also sure, strong, and above all, capable. His eyes are blue, a faded blue, washed clean by wind and sun. Sam’s speech is slow and deliberate and his voice never cracks or falters in a tight situation, just as his bowels never loosen nor his hands sweat. The thing about Sam is that he generally knows what the hell is going on. He has no phobias, doesn’t suffer from anxiety attacks, doesn’t suspect he is hypoglycemic, or entertain suspicions of his latent homosexuality.

  Victoria taps softly on the bathroom door. “Ed, are you all right?”

  I don’t want her in here just now so I lock the door. It seems that I have spent a good deal of my time hiding from Victoria behind locked doors.

  She hears the sharp click of the lock turning. She questions me uneasily. “What are you doing in there, Ed?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Ed, don’t do anything crazy. Come out of the bathroom.” Because of some stupid answers I gave to a silly test Dr. Brandt gave me once, Victoria thinks I am capable of doing myself in when depressed. Little chance of that. An exhibitionist, the only way I could go out would be like Yukio Mishima, slicing through my guts with a Samurai sword. But I don’t have that kind of jam or pizzazz.

  “Go away.”

  “Ed, please come out.”

  I ask myself at this juncture in our dialogue, what would Sam Waters do in a situation like this? Why, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He would open the door and, cloaked in the dignity of one of nature’s noblemen, walk away from the woman who could no longer love him. But Ed, well, he presses whatever advantage he has.

  “I want to make a deal,” I say.

  “What deal? What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll come out of here on one condition.”

  “What condition?”

  “The condition that you give me a chance to prove to you that I can change. That I can reform myself.”

  “You’re not moving in here, Ed. That’s final. I’m not taking you back.”

  “Did I say anything about moving in?” I ask indignantly.

  “No.”

  “Well then, just listen. Just listen to me for a minute.” I continue, growing grandiloquent, carried away by my idea. “Like a knight giving proof of his valour to his lady love, I want to face the scaly green dragon of Sloth and the basilisk of Irresponsibility, and, armed only with trusty Self-Discipline, massacre the sons of bitches.”

  “Ed, come out of there.”

  “Listen, Victoria,” I say more earnestly, dropping my oratorical tone, “I’m only asking that if I prove to you that I can carry through with something really difficult – if I prove I can stick to something – that you’ll take me back for a trial period… say six weeks. No strings attached. But if I fall on my face you can have your divorce – uncontested.”

  “Your mind is positively medieval. That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. Come out of the bathroom.”

  “What have you got to lose?” I wheedle.

  “My toe-hold on sanity, that’s what.”

  “A test. Any test. You set it, darling.”

  “Fine. Jump off my balcony. That ought to do it.”

  “Victoria,” I say, “I am serious.”

  “This is stupid and childish, Ed. I don’t want any part of it. It is just another one of your games. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Victoria, don’t you see,” I say seductively, “this is your way out? The easy way to get me out of your life?”

  “Not to mention my bathroom.”

  “I can change, Victoria. I can.”

  “You want a test, do you?” she asks, and there is a touch of both malice and glee in her voice.

  “Yes.”

  “You had your laugh for the past six years, Ed. But he who laughs last laughs best. Okay. I want you to finish the River Run, Ed. All twelve and a half miles.”

  “Good God, Victoria, you don’t want to test me. You want to kill me. What does that have to do with love and fidelity and things like that?”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  I have no choice. Faint hope stirs in my chivalric breast. An ordeal. I fling open the door and attempt to embrace her. I am repulsed.

  “You goddamn madman,” she says, turning on her heel. “I need a drink.”

  “Don’t bother pouring me one,” I call after her. “From this moment henceforward I am in training.”

  Two days later and at last I am determined to sally forth on my adventure. I debated this for a long time. On Tuesday I thought I was coming down with one of those horrible summer colds. Wednesday I devoted to mental preparation. But this morning a zealous Ed awoke.

  I energetically yank on a pair of cutoffs, lace up my dirty sneakers and amble out to be greeted by birdsong from the fine old elm on the boulevard. I begin to run. For two blocks I plod along feeling heavy, ponderous, doughy. I stop and walk for a bit to recover my wind. In a short time I realize that I’m not going to begin to run again. It is a stupid way to prove a point. Twelve and a half miles? She has misunderstood me. That wasn’t what I was talking about. It was love I was speaking of, and in a moment of poetic rhapsody she bound me with mundane specificities. Love is never having to run twelve and a half miles. Love is offering to. But only a piker accepts.

  I sit down on the curb and watch the traffic flow by for half an hour. Victoria’s unfairness angers me. I brood. It feels like it may rain, so I go back to the apartment.

  The minute I step inside the door it hits me. There are dirty dishes crusted with old goop littering the table and kitchen counter. The bedroom smells stale and the bed looks like a rat’s nest. There are long hairs in the bathroom sink and a ring in the tub so substantial that honesty compels me to describe it as a ledge.

  This is my mess. The visible excreta of the life I have led in the last few months. The door to the medicine cabinet hangs carelessly open on its hinges, the way I had left it the night before. I punch it, shatter the mirror and cut my knuckles. Trailing droplets of blood, I go back to the kitchen.

  “Fuck it,” I say. “Fuck this life. Fuck these plates.” Three of which I smash in the sink, shards dancing up to patter on the wall and floor.

  I sit down on a kitchen chair and feel my hand throb and stiffen. It can’t be escaped any more. For months I have held Victoria responsible for the way I live. I have held her responsible because it didn’t take me long to discover that I didn’t manage well on my own.

  But there is no avoiding it. It may seem an obvious point – but those dirty dishes are mine. It is my filth in the bathroom. An
d I am living this crazy goddamn life stuck in neutral. All this is my mess, not Victoria’s.

  And I admit to myself that I am scared because I realized I must sink or swim. I am afraid because Victoria isn’t here to prod and cajole me over the rough spots any longer. This is my rough spot.

  And suddenly, for whatever reason, I think at this minute of my old humpbacked cigar-puffing Dane. Perhaps because my first memories of him are associated with feelings of aggrievement and persecution. My introduction to him was by way of a philosophy professor who was a demanding, half-crazed German who belonged in nineteenth-century Heidelberg rather than a North American university of the sixties. Whenever we malingered or bitched about the work load, he would repeat to us one of Kierkegaard’s entries from his journal.

  “There is nothing everyone is so afraid of as being told how vastly much he is capable of. You are capable of – do you want to know? – you are capable of living in poverty; you are capable of standing almost any kind of maltreatment, abuse, etc. But you do not wish to know about it, isn’t that so? You would be furious with him who told you so, and only call that person your friend who bolsters you in saying: ‘No, this I cannot bear, this is beyond my strength, etc.’ ”

  He would announce this sternly to us and then add with Teutonic glumness, “I refuze to be a valze vriend. I will stretch you.”

  I have one of my rare charitable thoughts. Perhaps Victoria has done me the favour of telling me I can stand alone. Perhaps she has done me the favour of making me bear the stink of my own loneliness.

  And so I get to my feet and go back down into the street. I think of Soren taunted and jeered at in the streets of Copenhagen. I take heart from his observation that “one is tempted to ask whether there is a single man left ready, for once, to commit an outrageous folly.” And Sam too. I don’t forget Sam and what he suffered and how he overcame the odds.

  I begin to shuffle down the street, muttering through my teeth, telling myself the story.

  “After they struck him with coup sticks and quirts they stripped off every bit of his clothing and took away his boots. The old scars on his body, the puckered, ridged hole on his shoulder from a bullet he had caught at Antietam, the sabre scar on his belly, turned blue in the cold April wind.