The Universe versus Alex Woods

by Extence, Gavin

  Discounting the salutation and signature, Herr Schäfer’s final statement on this issue – published as a letter in one of the Sunday papers – was only one line long: ‘I understand that you do things differently in the United Kingdom, but in Switzerland, trial by media is not generally supported.’

  This caused a minor diplomatic crisis and prompted a further week of mud-slinging in various editorials. But that really was Herr Schäfer’s last word on the matter. He’d decided to quit while he was ahead.

  And that left only me in the firing line.

  It started as a trickle – the odd question raised here and there concerning my motives – and ever so slowly, perceptions started to change. I wasn’t acting the way a victim should act. My emotional response just didn’t ring true. And soon enough the ‘revelations’ began: the fact that I’d been exposed to occult ceremonies at a very young age, my history of violent and obscene conduct in school, allegations that I’d been involved from the age of fifteen in some sort of strange religious cult. What had previously been deemed social awkwardness was now full-blown sociopathy, and all those speculations about the state of my brain took on a disturbing new light. It was quite possible, some said, that I didn’t even feel emotions in the same sense that regular people with regular brains did.

  Of course, it would have been very difficult to re-brand Mr Peterson as a victim after all those accusations of paedophilia, but luckily there seemed to be a growing consensus that a case like this didn’t necessarily require victims; or if a victim was needed, then Morality itself could take that role. In this new interpretation of events, Mr Peterson and I became co-conspirators. He’d decided to kill himself and for a fee, paid in cash and narcotics, I’d been willing to help him. And this version of events was gaining popularity even before all that stuff about the will came out. But I’m not going to talk about that now. I suppose it will probably be the last thing I talk about. I’ve become a little sidetracked. The point I originally intended to address was as follows.

  At every stage, the media seized upon the fact that I’d helped Mr Peterson die. They called our arrangement a ‘Death Pact’ – but, really, that’s not a phrase that tells you anything important. It’s just the kind of phrase that sells newspapers. For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, and that his suffering was not going to become unendurable, was the one thing that allowed Mr Peterson to go on living, much longer than he would have otherwise wanted. It was the weeks leading up to our pact that were shrouded in darkness and despair; after its inception, life became a meaningful prospect once more.

  Let me tell you something about time: it’s not what you think it is. It’s not a regular pulse beating at the same tempo for every person at every point in the universe. This was something Einstein discovered about a hundred years ago, using his unusually large brain. He came up with some equations that showed that a person on a train travelling close to the speed of light would measure a different value for time than the person waiting for him at the railway station. Similarly, a person sitting on the surface of the Sun would find his watch subtly out of synch with a person floating weightless through interstellar space. Time has different values for different people in different circumstances. Einstein proved this idea mathematically, but, in my experience, it also holds true from a subjective standpoint.

  I know, for example, that Mr Peterson did not experience the flow of time in the same way that I did during those final sixteen months. He told me often, particularly towards the end, that for him time had become a slow, peaceful drift. If I had to guess why this was the case, I’d say that maybe it was because this was time he’d never expected to have. Or maybe it was more that he was now letting time drift. There was a certain type of contentment in his outlook, which never strayed too far into the future. His life had become simple and uncluttered, and when you’re living like that, I think time can seem to stretch out for ever. Matters only change when you start fretting about all the things you need to get done. The more stuff you try to force into it, the less accommodating time becomes.

  Of course, Mr Peterson couldn’t be completely oblivious to the future. There were still certain practicalities to be considered. There were emails and phone calls to the clinic in Switzerland, medical documents that had to be obtained, copied and posted (under the pretext of a consultation with a ‘private specialist’). But once Mr Peterson’s case had been assessed and a provisional green light granted, these matters could recede into the background. As long as he kept his records periodically updated, he knew that his way out had been secured. He’d be able to make his final appointment at relatively short notice, as and when the time came. But until then, it no longer had to be a daily concern. He could concentrate instead on all the other measures that were going to help him in the short and medium term.

  On medical advice, he saw a physiotherapist at the hospital and was taught a regime of simple daily exercises to combat the developing problems with his gait and balance. His house was fitted with a stairlift, and sturdy railings were fixed to the walls in the bathrooms and hallways. He had Meals on Wheels visiting daily and a Lithuanian lady called Krystyn who came round twice a week to clean. In between the dusting and vacuuming and so forth, they spent a lot of time drinking coffee and talking about how peculiar the English were. Strangely, Mr Peterson’s life had become a whole lot more sociable now that he found himself so physically restricted. And it wasn’t just home help and the medical professionals, of course. Once people were aware of his illness, he had a small but dedicated division of weekly visitors. Mrs Griffith brought round cakes and casseroles every three or four days, regular as clockwork. Fiona Fitton and Sophie Haynes took it in turns to come over with various audio books and classical CDs ordered through Glastonbury Library. And since everyone now knew (almost) everything there was to know about Mr Peterson’s situation, there wasn’t much point in his being furtive any longer. He talked openly and frankly about his illness. On the subject of his suicide attempt and hospitalization, he always gave the same concise summary: ‘I didn’t think my life was worth living, but it turned out I was wrong.’ He said that he wanted people to understand the very sane reasoning that had motivated his actions. This may have been a joke. I’m not sure. Ironically, he seemed to find it much easier to be light-hearted now that he’d acknowledged he was dying.

  But if Mr Peterson’s life had become a whole lot more relaxed, for me there were barely enough hours in the day. And it wasn’t just that there were a lot of everyday chores that now had to be undertaken on Mr Peterson’s behalf; there were also the longer-term tasks that I’d decided to complete before our trip to Switzerland.

  First on the list was learn German. Mr Peterson told me that this would not be necessary since everyone at the clinic (and everyone in Switzerland, he suspected) spoke fluent English, but, still, I thought it was better to be safe than sorry. After all, a certain amount of comprehension was bound to be helpful. There’d be road signs and street signs and border control and hoteliers and so on. For my own peace of mind, I wanted to know at least enough to make myself understood. But unfortunately, I’d already settled on GCSEs in French and Spanish, for a mixture of practical and aesthetic reasons. So I had to use my lunch hour.

  I sought out Frau Kampischler, the Asquith Academy’s German teacher, and asked her if she was willing to give up her lunchtimes to act as my private tutor. She was not. But she did signpost me towards an online beginner’s course and agreed to make available to me a selection of textbooks and audio resources so that I could press on alone.

  I spent five solitary hours each week learning how to order Frühstück and ask for directions to the Busbahnhof and tell the immigration officer wir werden vier Tage bleiben and so on. Aside from the fact that it had three genders, verbs that liked to stray to the end of sentences, and monstrously long compound words like Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung (speed limit), German turned out to be structurally similar to English,
and although it doesn’t have the world’s most pleasing accent, it’s at least an accent that most people know how to do – what with The Great Escape and Raiders of the Lost Ark and ‘Neunundneunzig Luftballons’. This made things much easier for me, and within six to eight months, I felt that my Deutsch was coming along nicely.

  Unfortunately, the second goal on my Swiss checklist – passing my driving test – was not something I could so easily pursue. But if I’d been old enough, this would have been my number-one priority.

  I’m not sure of the exact point when we agreed that driving to Zurich would be preferable to flying, but it must have been quite early on in our preparations. It wasn’t that Mr Peterson had any particular fear of engine failure or Islamic extremists or anything like that, but he did have a definite aversion to flying. He claimed it was something to do with being shut up in a cramped space, with such a high density of other people and no means of escape. This was not an appealing scenario for his final journey, especially given that we didn’t know just how bad his mobility and balance would be at that stage. We both agreed that it would be much better to drive. We could take our time and stop when and wherever we needed to and have a constant, restful view of the countryside, soundtracked by Schubert and Chopin. Mr Peterson’s only reservation concerning this plan was that it entailed about twenty-four hours’ worth of driving for me – the second half of which I’d have to complete alone. How was I going to cope with that? The truth was, I didn’t know, but I felt in my gut that it was the right way to go about things. I’d never flown before, so I had no way of saying whether this would be any less stressful for me than driving. At least with driving I knew where I stood.

  Anyway, while I couldn’t take my test until I turned seventeen, there were still some things I could do in preparation. Because of his deteriorating eyesight, Mr Peterson could no longer instruct me properly when we took the car out, but I could still carry out familiar, low-risk routines such as driving him to the shop and back or practising my reverse-parking in his driveway. I also read the Highway Code cover to cover, so from a theoretical standpoint, I certainly knew my stuff. And then there were my other mental preparations as well.

  As I mentioned, the law stipulates that an epileptic is only allowed to drive if he or she has been completely seizure-free for at least a year. Since I was certain that I wouldn’t be able to lie to Dr Enderby about something like that, I knew it was imperative that I kept my boat on an even keel in the months leading up to my seventeenth birthday. This meant that despite all the extra things I now had to cram into my days, I couldn’t afford to deviate too much from my well-worn routines and sleeping cycle. I still had to get to bed by ten thirty at the latest, and I still had to be up before seven for my early morning meditation and mind-calming exercises.

  But, for me, this was what worked. With these adamant structures in place, I managed to stay seizure-free for close to twenty months in total. Dr Enderby was so pleased with my progress that he told me, at the biannual check-up just before my seventeenth birthday, that under normal circumstances he’d be recommending a graded reduction in my carbamazepine, with a view to weaning me entirely in the next six to twelve months. But, of course, he understood that these were not normal circumstances, and if I didn’t feel ready – which I didn’t – then there was really no reason to go tinkering with my medication for the time being.

  I passed my driving theory test on the day I turned seventeen, and a week later, following a few evenings of intensive lessons and a cancellation at the test centre, I passed my practical too, with only one minor fault for undue hesitation while overtaking a horse. The examiner said that I must be a natural.

  As for all the other things that filled my days to bursting point, well, you can probably imagine most of the standard chores I had to undertake on Mr Peterson’s behalf. I ran errands to the post office. I tidied up on those days when Krystyn was off-duty. I took dictation for Amnesty letters. I read aloud – usually for at least an hour or two a day, usually books that Mr Peterson had read before but had never found time to revisit. He said that he found himself less and less inclined to start anything new, preferring to choose books that he thought I should read. After Catch-22, it was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and after that, A Prayer for Owen Meany. In hindsight, he was increasingly drawn to that type of tragicomedy. But he was right to think that these books would appeal to me too. Once I’d got over my initial self-consciousness, reading aloud from these books was one of the only activities in which I found I could lose myself completely. The other was tending to the cannabis factory. But I suppose this isn’t the kind of task that lends itself to a single-paragraph summary. I’ll have to go into a bit more detail.

  The first thing you need to know is this: my attitude to Mr Peterson’s weed changed quite dramatically after his hospitalization. Let’s be clear: I’m not a fan of any substance that messes with your natural brain chemistry. The idea of eating, smoking, sniffing, injecting or inserting any drug that hasn’t been subjected to rigorous triple-blind testing is more or less alien to me. I can’t understand why anyone would want to do that. But they do – that’s the point. People also like dangerous sports like boxing and BASE jumping and big-wave surfing. I don’t understand these things either. But I don’t think I’d ever want to tell anyone that they shouldn’t engage in these activities (except maybe boxing).

  I suppose what I realized, at about the same time I realized that Mr Peterson should have the right to kill himself, was that in most circumstances you really shouldn’t tell other people what they can or can’t do to their own brains and bodies. That Mr Peterson enjoyed smoking cannabis alone, in the privacy of his own home, no longer seemed so wrong. It certainly wasn’t affecting anybody else, and for him, so far as he claimed, it was a whole lot better for his personal well-being than anything a doctor had ever prescribed. Of course, it’s impossible to evaluate the merits of this claim objectively, but really, that’s the point. It was his choice to make. If Mr Peterson thought that smoking dried-up marijuana plants gave him a better quality of life, I felt it was my duty to support him in this. And it was apparent very early on that my role would have to be a proactive one.

  Soon after he was released from psych, it became clear that the steep and narrow attic stairs were now far beyond his capabilities. This was late November, and the last time he’d been up previous to this had been right back at the end of August, when he’d harvested his crop for what he’d assumed would be the final time. After that, he hadn’t replanted. Thinking that this was the end of his botanical career, he’d switched off the high-output lighting, stacked the four-gallon growing tubs neatly in the corner, swept the floor and shut up shop. But now, having decided to live a little longer, he was facing a conundrum.

  Getting up the attic stairs was no longer possible, but relocating the operation was equally unthinkable. There was nothing amateurish about the set-up in Mr Peterson’s loft. In thirty years as a cannabis farmer, he’d amassed a lot of heavy and high-tech equipment. There were the thousand-watt, high-pressure sodium lamps mounted in hooded brackets – kind of like the ones you find above snooker tables – that could be raised or lowered on a pulley system according to the height of the underlying plants. There was the dehumidifier and the large extractor fan, which kept the air circulating and the leaves dry and resinous. There was also the fact that the space could be made ‘light-tight’, and its temperature controlled with a high degree of precision, both of which were crucial in terms of optimizing growth and regulating the plants’ reproductive cycles. And even if it had been possible to relocate the whole set-up to somewhere more accessible, it was clear that soon enough even simple tasks such as watering and re-potting would become impossible for Mr Peterson to carry out on his own. Someone had to take hold of the reins – and that someone had to be me. Although Mr Peterson got on well with Krystyn, we both agreed that asking her if she wouldn’t mind popping up to the attic to water the cannabis might be oversteppi
ng a boundary. And anyway, as I expect you’ve already gathered, growing decent cannabis is not like taking care of houseplants. It’s a surprisingly intricate enterprise.

  The step-by-step manual that Mr Peterson dictated to me on the subject ran to fourteen single-spaced twelve-point Times New Roman pages, and covered every stage of the production process, from germination to drying, curing and storing. The manual (which would eventually end up in a police evidence locker) was my idea. After thirty years in the business, Mr Peterson regarded decent cannabis-growing as something of an art, but this was an outlook I could never really share. For me, cannabis-growing was always a science. It was a science, and I loved it.

  It wasn’t just that the attic looked and felt like a laboratory – with the lights and the pulleys and the constant hum of the extractor fan. In essence, it was a laboratory. It was a perfect, whitewashed environment in which every variable could be monitored and adjusted towards a single, simple outcome. There were thermometers and hygrometers, scales and tape measures. There was a cupboard full of chemicals – chemicals for dechlorinating tap water, ‘rooting hormones’ for the cuttings, nitrogen- and potassium-rich plant foods, chemicals for modifying the soil acidity, which had to be kept as close to the optimum pH of 6.5 as possible. And this was just one of the many technical details that kept me enthralled. There was also the light cycle, set to simulate summer and autumn: eighteen hours of light per day during the fourteen-week vegetative stage, and then twelve per day to trigger and sustain the eight-week reproductive stage. Except, for Mr Peterson’s plants, reproduction was never on the cards. As soon as they’d been sexed, all the male plants had to be culled. This was because unfertilized female plants produced several times more resin, and it was the resin that contained most of the cannabinoids – the psychoactive elements that were the whole point of the enterprise, at least as far as Mr Peterson was concerned.