by André Alexis
The train was full, but it was not overbooked. The seat in question, which was undoubtedly Perry’s, was not beside a window, not close to an exit, not neighbour to the toilet. There was nothing special about it. There was no clear reason for the old woman’s intransigence. Of course, at some point, the elderly abandon their commitment to reason, don’t they? As if speaking to a foreigner, the steward slowly and clearly said
— May I see your ticket please?
— Why do you want to see my ticket?
— If you don’t show me your ticket, I’ll have to have you taken off the train. Do you understand?
— There’s no need to get shirty, young man. My ticket is right here.
The steward, visibly annoyed at being called shirty, said
— Your seat is 15A. It’s the next row back.
If the steward was unsympathetic, it was because he’d had recent experience with the wilfulness of the aged. The day before, between Kingston and Smiths Falls, an old man had cursed him for handing him a package of “stale peanuts.” This woman was an “old bat,” he thought. And then, suddenly aware of the strangeness of the cliché, he smiled crookedly. Why, after all, should we call old women bats and not, say, flies or snakes or goats? No, “goats” was for old men. And that suddenly seemed amusing too, bats and goats being an odd pairing. So, amused by a will-o’-the-wisp, the steward smiled again, a smile the old woman took for complicity.
— I really am very comfortable here, she said. I don’t want to move.
The steward turned to Perry and shrugged as if to ask
— Is this all right with you? What would you like?
The old woman looked, it seemed to Perry, smug and petulant. He was inclined to insist on his proper seat but, had he discomfited her, he would not have been able to enjoy the journey home.
— It’s fine, he said. I’ll sit in 15.
He picked up his suitcase and put it in the compartment above row 15. 15A was a window seat, an improvement, if you liked window seats. And, in a way, he did, the countryside being, from Port Hope to Kingston, so dull it inevitably put him to sleep.
The place beside Perry’s was occupied by a short man dressed entirely in black: black shoes, pants, shirt, and dinner jacket. He seemed fascinated by a deck of cards he fanned and contracted. He looked up, caught off guard by Perry’s presence.
— Are you sitting by the window? he asked.
— I am, yes, answered Perry.
The man stood up to let him by, and when Perry had settled in his place, the man said
— It’s certainly a lovely day.
He said it without irony, though it was raining and the day was like a grey sheet pulled over the face of Earth.
— A good day for ducks, Perry answered.
But the man was back at his cards, fanning and contracting them, as though his were the only deck to which this could be done. Perry felt immediate dislike, not because there was anything inherently unlikeable about his travelling companion, but because Perry had — had since childhood — an intense dislike for magicians. So, he turned away from the man and kept his mind on the landscape.
The train made its way through Prince Edward County: the lake gunmetal grey, its white furls making it look like peeling wallpaper, the rocky shore wet and brown, the green trees leaning with the wind. The trees leaning . . . the shore obscured by the grey of day . . . the horizon vague, like a half-heard suggestion . . . and him asleep already with the sound of the train in his ears: cocoon in cocoon in cocoon in cocoon . . .
— My name’s Michael. And yours?
In his imagining, Perry turned his head to his neighbour and, on the verge of waking, answered
— Perry.
— Nice to meet you, said Michael. Listen, I wonder if I could impose on you a few minutes? I’ve got an engagement in Ottawa and I’d like to practise a little.
And he held out his deck of cards, black backed with a white skeleton in the centre and a red D on the skeleton’s forehead.
Wearily, unhappily, Perry took a card: queen of diamonds.
— Tear it up, said Michael.
And this, with some difficulty, Perry did.
— Good. Now, look in your breast pocket.
Perry did. There was nothing there but lint and a lime green (and strangely moist) chit from the dry cleaners.
— Christ on a cross! said Michael. I have the worst luck.
Perry searched through every one of his own pockets. Nothing. Michael then searched himself and, after asking the people around them to pat their pockets for a card, found the queen of diamonds in the pocket of the old woman who’d taken Perry’s seat. The woman was frightened when Michael leaned over the top of her seat, and, when his elbow hit her in the forehead, upset.
— I do apologize, said Michael. I’m a magician.
Perry looked at him for the first time: thin verging on emaciated, a charmless, beardless face, blue eyes, large hands with long fingers, the whole of him caught in clothes that were a size too big. As with all magicians, there was something unhealthy about him.
— I know, said Michael. I’m lousy at this, aren’t I?
Perry politely demurred.
— No, no, he said. It was still quite a trick. It just went a little wrong.
— Things like this just seem to happen to me, said Michael. Last year I was at a birthday party. I was supposed to change cake into cream. Pretty good trick, I thought. But I turned the milk into cake and then they had to Heimlich this poor child. It was just dreadful. But, enough about me. What do you do, Perry?
— I manage a department store.
— Really? What’s that like?
— Long hours, but I still have time for my family.
— That’s the spirit. No family, no soul, I always say.
— Do you have a big family?
— No, said Michael. I don’t have a soul, I’m afraid. But let me try this trick again. Do you mind?
Reluctantly, Perry picked another card from the deck — ace of diamonds — and ripped it up. Michael tried to have it appear in Perry’s pants pocket only to have it appear (again) on the person of the old woman. Perry refused to pick a third card. In fact, were it not for the embarrassment Michael expressed, he would have taken offence, it being clear that the card could not simply manifest on the old woman without the magician’s will, and he was beginning to feel sorry for the old lady.
— This is all so humiliating, said Michael.
— Do you do something other than magic?
— You mean, given my incompetence? Well, I study theology at St. Michael’s, but I’ve always wanted to be an entertainer. You wouldn’t believe it, but I can usually get things to go where they’re supposed to, you know.
Still unsure if he were being put on in some way, Perry asked a few questions about theology. Why had Michael chosen it? (He was fascinated by the idea of “god.”) Was it difficult? (It was hard to tell Peter of Ghent from Julian the Apostate, or to remember why transubstantiation was a problem for Protestants. But it was endlessly entertaining.) Whom did he admire? (St. Anselm, above all, because he was amusing.) None of this meant anything to Perry, who had studied commerce. But it all sounded like the kind of thing a theology student might enjoy.
Unfortunately, his questions led to tedious conversation. Michael was entranced by the minutiae of God, and his knowledge of minutiae was bewilderingly broad: from Augustine’s assertion that the Lord’s fingernails would not need cutting to John of Antioch’s belief that, a beauty spot being by its nature an imperfection, God could not have one. Who knew that men and women had spent so much time meditating on the particulars of the holy body?
For what seemed hours, Michael talked on and on, and Perry, with decreasing patience, nodded politely, the only interesting moment com
ing when Michael asserted that men were, by their nature, demonic.
— No, said Perry. I don’t agree.
— You haven’t thought it through, said Michael. Men worship the thing they’re not, okay? And since they worship God and the good, it follows they’re neither godly nor good. In my book, that makes them satanic, you follow?
— I don’t know anything about it, said Perry. I wonder if you’d mind if I slept for a little while. I’m tired.
Perry turned to look at the landscape as it flew by: the weeds by the side of the tracks (chicory, goldenrod, purple-headed thistle), the rocks and trees, the fields and farmhouses, and then the lake, somewhere in the distance, its presence palpable. If there had to be a God, he would as soon worship the land itself.
And then came the announcement for Smiths Falls. (So soon? Where had Kingston gone?)
They had stopped in the station. Someone descended from the train. Then they were off again. Beside him, Michael was now doing something with a black handkerchief, pushing it into his left fist with his right index finger, extracting it from his own nostril.
— Say, said Michael, have you seen this trick before? It’s the only one I’ve really mastered. I know it’s a little off-putting pulling it from my nose, but, you know, one of my friends pulls it from his . . . ears, to use an anagram.
It suddenly occurred to Perry that the old woman had known exactly what she was doing when she’d refused to sit by this tiresome little man.
More sharply than he intended, he said
— Look, that’s enough. Just let me read my book, will you?
— But you don’t have a book, said Michael smiling.
And reaching into the pocket of his raincoat where he’d (optimistically) put a Ross Macdonald, Perry found a thick, white card on which was printed, on one side:
Cabeça vazia é oficina do diabo
and, on the other:
An empty head is the devil’s workshop
It had been a mistake to indulge the man. He should have stopped him after the first card trick. With the simple-minded, it was best to get out of the way as soon as possible. And he could see from Michael’s smirk that he was simple-minded. He was either that or malicious. Whichever it was, Perry had had enough.
— Give me back my book, he said.
— Oh, said Michael. I can see you’re annoyed. Let me get it for you. I’m pretty sure the old woman has it.
Without warning, Michael reached over to the old woman’s seat and extracted, without looking, from somewhere on her person, Ross Macdonald’s The Ivory Grin. The old woman gave a strangled cry.
— There you are, said Michael. But, you know, you shouldn’t put so much value in your possessions. What’s a book, or a house, or a car? They’re encumbrances, when you think about it. I remember this one story —
— I don’t want to hear it, said Perry.
— Let me tell it anyway, said Michael. It’s by a Frenchman, and in it a businessman, just like you, comes home one night and there’s no one there. The house is empty: no wife, no kids, all the furniture gone. He’s stunned. What has happened to his world? He goes outside and, out of nowhere, his furniture approaches, moved by God knows what force, and attacks him. Tables, chairs, credenzas . . . they batter the man to death. And that’s it. He’s killed by his belongings. I’m sure there’s religious significance in there somewhere.
Michael smiled in an unpleasant way, and it seemed to Perry that he was one of those men whose essence is the smirk. He thought himself beyond humanity, beyond the day-to-day that bound his fellow men. It may even be, Perry thought, that Michael was neither simple-minded nor clever but, rather, unfathomable and dangerous. He looked into Michael’s face a final time and then took his novel, rose from his seat, gathered his belongings, and, excusing himself, went to the steward.
— I wonder if I could sit somewhere else? he asked. I’m uncomfortable.
— There’s a seat beside mine, answered the steward. Is anything wrong?
— No, said Perry. I’m just uncomfortable. That’s all.
And that was that. Or no, it wasn’t. When Perry had made himself comfortable, when he had begun to read the Macdonald (the words were strangely unstable and the shape of the letters shifted, an r at the end of “codger” — or was it “roger”? — wriggled as if it were a child in a car seat before becoming an s), Michael approached and, as if chiding him, said
— Here you are. I wondered where you’d gone. You left so quickly, I didn’t have time to get my card back.
— What card?
— The five of diamonds.
— I don’t have it, said Perry.
Brushing a lock of hair from his forehead, Michael said
— You have it. You just can’t find it. But I’ll see you again.
To himself, Perry said, Not likely. He did not say it aloud because, of course, one never knew with the unbalanced. Michael bowed, then bowed again more reverently before backing away, a sarcastic smile on his face.
As he often did when he did not have much to carry, Perry took a taxi to the far end of Arrowsmith Drive and walked the rest of the way. It allowed him to, internally, at least, throw off the concerns of the day as he approached home: his wife, his daughters, the piece of land they owned at the end of the road. Moreover, as he almost inevitably made the walk around sunset, there was the pleasure of the coloured sun (pink, orange, sometimes even crimson or red), the darkening blues of the sky, the yellow of the lights in the houses along the street.
This evening was particularly affecting. There was a handful of clouds in the sky and the houses on Arrowsmith looked old and stately, though they were new and common. It was the kind of evening that naturally suggested something or other about God. Or so it seemed to Perry, who, thanks to Michael, had God on his mind. And it struck him how little he had ever thought of God or the sacred or any such thing. It was possible, wasn’t it, to see the world, the world as it was on this evening, as a kind of sacred anteroom, a place where God had recently been, one that still held his presence. He smiled at his own presumption and then thought of Michael and the opposite of God. If the world this evening was a sacred room, what would demonic space be like?
He shuddered as he pushed open the wrought-iron gate to his home and dismissed thoughts of the sacred, the profane, and the demonic. Or, more exactly, these thoughts faded as he approached his house and imagined the look on his daughters’ faces, the feel of Zelda’s chubby feet, which he would hold as she sat on his shoulders, the smell of his wife’s hair and clothes.
The lights in the house were all on. But there were no sounds save those he made, no voices, no hum of appliances, no other footsteps. It was so quiet, Perry looked at his watch to make sure it wasn’t much later than the seven o’clock he imagined it to be. The numerals of his watch were blurred, but it seemed to be 7:15. He called out and got nothing but the echo of his own call, an inexplicably resonant echo, inexplicable until he entered the living room and saw that there was no furniture. The house had been emptied of furniture. There were only the white walls, polished wooden floors, stuccoed ceilings, light fixtures with their bulbs. He looked again at his watch, instinctively convinced an answer to all this lay there with the time. It was still something:15. No matter how closely he looked at his watch, the numerals would not stay still. It was 7:15, surely.
It briefly occurred to him that Liz might have taken the children and the furniture and fled their marriage without telling him. But the thought was absurd. His and Elizabeth’s marriage had never been contentious. In their twenty years together, they had not exchanged more than, at the outside, five minutes’ worth of unpleasant words. (Honestly, not more than five, and four of those had come during the birth of their eldest, Imogene, whose delivery had been so painful Liz had allowed herself some wounding words about him and his entire sex, words she h
ad taken back hours later.) Besides, he had spoken to his family from the station in Toronto not six hours before. There had been not the slightest tremor of distress in any of their voices.
No, there had to be some other explanation.
Robbery, for instance?
Yes. That was it. They had been robbed by thieves with trucks and enough manpower to strip the house in a few hours flat. Liz and the girls, if they had not been kidnapped, would be hiding at one of the neighbours’, waiting for him to assure them the danger was past.
He went from house to house. But although the lights were on all along the street, no one was home or no one answered. By the time he rang at the Rodinsons’ house at the top of Arrowsmith, the mystery had deepened and he felt something like the despair he’d felt when Zelda, six months old, had had her first attack of asthma. That is, he felt powerless, as if he were himself a child. As he walked back home, it became a dark night. The stars were confident in their places. The stridulations of the crickets were uninterrupted by the shhsh of passing cars.
Perry walked through his house, went out the back door and through the wooden gate that separated their home from the woods into which Arrowsmith jutted. It was ridiculous to look for his family out here at night, but such was his distress that he imagined Liz and the girls hiding behind the trees, waiting for him to give the word that everything was all right. And, at first sight, he thought he had been right. He didn’t see either of his daughters or his wife, but he saw his furniture, dozens of pieces neatly arranged in a semicircle at the edge of the woods. Some of the pieces were well in the woods, just visible by the light from Perry’s backyard. His rolltop desk, for instance, seemed to be hiding behind a thin poplar, a hippo hiding behind a reed.
Two things occurred to Perry almost at once.
First, he thought he saw someone lying on the living-room sofa. The sofa itself was in the woods beyond the first trees, but as he went to it, he saw it was vacant. A bough had cast an oddly wavering shadow on the cushions. He called his daughters’ names and then his wife’s, but there was nothing, save the momentary silence of the crickets.