by André Alexis
There were other “rules.” He did not knowingly sleep with women younger than sixteen or older than seventy, and he tried very hard to avoid the beds of his colleagues and acquaintances. These were not moral limits as such. They were practical:
1) Sex with young girls was unappealing.
2) Sex with older women was sometimes physically awkward and took a great deal of foreplay.
3) Sex with colleagues was a fouling of the workplace (though, curiously, sex with his students was not).
4) Sex with acquaintances created emotional expectations he would not (or could not) satisfy. (Or, as with Louise, depths of feeling he could not deal with.)
One might have expected joy or at least gratitude in all this philandering, and there was some, but there was mostly release. The small variations (women who wanted to be kissed and women who did not, who liked to be bound or bitten, who took pains to give him pleasure, who kicked him out when they came, who enjoyed cunnilingus, who did not, who wished to have their breasts fondled, who did not, who closed their eyes, who kept them open, who invited him home, who insisted he pay for a room, who had birthmarks, who had scars, who limped, who stuttered), the details that might have brought pleasure or, at least, wonder, were not significant to him.
In his heart of hearts, Walter believed the world was a sad place, a place whose sadness would not wear off, a place so profoundly sad that one could say “the world is joyous” and mean the opposite: it was sad, given how pallid its supposed joys actually were. That he added to its sadness was a thought that did not occur to him.
You can’t salt an ocean, after all.
Paul Dylan’s first impression of Professor Barnes was of a likable academic. Although he was an intensely jealous man, Paul had convinced himself of Walter’s asceticism. To his mind, it was easier to imagine, say, Elwy Yost as a cocksman than it was Professor Barnes (Elwy being, for Paul, perennially avuncular and soft as dumplings). And yet, there is, in a relentlessly sexual being, something like a particular light that is bright to those with experience and cloudedly perceptible to those without. Though none of the other members of the Fortnightly Club had anything like Walter’s libido or experience, he was an unacknowledged object of fascination to them (to me, certainly) and, despite his discretion, most suspected his philandering without being certain of it. The same “light” was perceptible to Paul as it was to the others, but he interpreted it as a kind of saintliness, an almost religious aura that made Walter interesting, yes, but not (“Oh, please…”) sexually suave.
So it was that Paul’s first impression provided a screen for Walter and Louise. And then, in the months following Walter’s affair with Louise, there was little sign that anything had happened between them. Though it hurt to be in each other’s presence, neither stopped attending meetings of the Fortnightly Club. They greeted each other as acquaintances do and tried to ignore each other in the same way, as if their acquaintance were valuable but well within the bounds of decorum.
This was difficult for both of them and, in retrospect, there were a number of signs the two had been intimate. For one thing, Louise was somewhat uneasy around Walter. It was as if she were trying to behave as she had behaved but, because she had been unselfconscious before sleeping with Walter, she was not quite certain she managed to behave unselfconsciously. With Walter, the signs were subtler. Immediately after their breakup, he was fine, his old self even, as he was a man used to moving on. Besides, he had resources to help him through: books, drink, and the company of women. Gradually, however, his resources failed him. The women he slept with all began to remind him of Louise, the only one whose features, body, and voice would not fade. Drink, too much drink, was a ticket to his own childhood, to his memories, and this was as painful as being without Louise. So, drink was not helpful. And, finally, books. The week after leaving Louise, Walter happily read a novel called Lanark. After that, however, the desire to read abandoned him. He picked up any number of books and put them down again, unable to read much beyond titles and the distant promises the titles held: Boethius’ Consolation, Rolle’s Fire of Love, Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum…With the failure of his usual resources, Walter grew progressively helpless before his own longing. It became a struggle to find solace in justification. It had been honourable to stop seeing her, hadn’t it? Well, so much for honour. He had been right to consider Paul’s feelings, hadn’t he? He would do the same again, given the chance, wouldn’t he? So much for right. So much for calculation. None of it eased his longing. And then, worst of all, there were the memories that overcame him at the most unpredictable moments, memories so intensely erotic, it’s a wonder they weren’t perceived by everyone around him: Louise’s hand reaching down to guide him inside her, a trace of her lipstick on his penis that they discovered while washing under warm water, the first time he had looked into her eyes (hazel: light green, golden brown), which was the first time he was conscious of looking into anyone’s eyes. And so, months after his affair with Louise, months after Louise herself had recovered a certain ease in his company, the signs of their relationship were perceptible in Walter’s behaviour: his sudden “hot flashes,” his occasional discomfort while standing, his distraction. All signs that, at first, Paul Dylan completely ignored.
{11}
SAINT MICHAEL
A year after Paul’s trip to Amarillo, his wife had been unfaithful to him, or so he suspected, without knowing the why, the when, or the how often. Of course, being jealous by nature, his suspicions were an aspect of his love for her. He was inevitably jealous, had always been, but jealousy wasn’t the dragon in their relationship, it was the sword. The real problem lay deeper, and the worst of it was that he could figure her in the most compromising scenes, could not keep from figuring her. He could clearly imagine the men to whom she gave herself. They were younger, taller, and they had tousled hair.
He still loved her, but his jealousy was a torment, and its manifestations were in
– the look of him looking at her when she wasn’t looking
– the questions that couldn’t be formulated because the right tone eluded him:
Wouldn’t you…like to sleep with x? Don’t you think you’d be…happier with x?
– the evening inspection of the bedsheets (that he changed every morning, even when she wanted to stay abed): palpating the covers, burying his head in the pillows. (Louise thought him fastidious)
– the random homecomings, midafternoon, to collect some thing he’d purposely forgotten (a chart, a graph, a credit card, always left on the dresser or atop the fridge) (She thought him forgetful)
– the insistence that he alone should do the laundry. (She thought him eccentric but, on the other hand, her clothes were always clean)
But there were no satisfying answers to the questions he wished to ask; the sheets always smelled as fresh in the evening as they had in the morning; and, though she was sometimes absent during his midafternoon homecomings, there was always good reason and, often, witnesses to her excursions. That is, nothing he did helped, if the object were to catch his wife in flagrante delicto. However, it was not as clear as that. He didn’t actually wish to discover proof of Louise’s infidelity. That would have been unbearable. But if he couldn’t stop himself from looking for proof, it was because looking had also become a dimension of his feelings for her. Not that it wasn’t painful each time he inspected their bedsheets or washed her underwear. There was, inevitably, an instant of panic, a fear of finding out and confusion about the consequences. What would he do if the bedsheets were damp or their room smelled faintly of ejaculate? No idea. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.
Strangely, given the torment his doubt occasioned, there was little relief in the proof of Louise’s fidelity. Then again, there was no proof. There was never proof. A spotless bed meant only that he’d been negligent. If he’d come home sooner, spent a few more minutes looking, palpating, as
king. If only he knew exactly where or how to look. If he could only discover the irresistible question, the one whose answer would cure him.
In the end, all of this, which might at least have drawn his attention to Louise, drew attention only to himself, to his (possible) incompetence where proof was concerned. It was tiresome and shameful. He knew himself to be thoughtful, sensitive, and kind, but it was difficult to reconcile his love with his moments of abandon. And that is what they were: moments during which the strange pleasure his rituals afforded him was all that mattered.
Could you really call what he felt for Louise “Love,” given his routine betrayal of her trust? Yes, of course you could. Nothing mortal is flawless, and Love doesn’t need a perfect vessel. (If it did, we would all be loveless and unloving, being imperfect.) Because Love itself is an imperfection. (Technically speaking, it could not be otherwise, what with the imperfect vessel and all.) Because Love is mortal. (Really, if Divine Love were anything like what humans feel for one another, we should have to accept a God who is jealous, unstable, and often delirious – an idea that makes sense of our world, it’s true, but Paul Dylan did not then believe in “God,” except as a rhetorical foil to “humanity” or as the embodiment of Chance.) Because Love is what kept him from doing violence to his wife when he finally “discovered” her affair with Walter Barnes.
He was in the glass-enclosed porch they’d built in 1980. Louise was with friends at the Towne Cinema, or so she’d said.
– I’m going out with Marthe, Fred, and Vé.
– Oh?
– We’re going to Fanny and Alexander. Want to come?
– Not really.
– Okay, then…(kiss on the neck)
When she came home, he would ask about the film.
It was a warm night and cloudy. Through the panes, he could see the clouds and a moon that flickered as the clouds passed. Beyond the clouds, as unaware of his misery as he was unaware of them, stars and constellations took up their places: Virgo and Libra in the sky, Lupus on the horizon.
He sat in the old chesterfield. On the wall behind him was the framed reproduction of a Renaissance painting:
the sky is blue and Saint Michael’s wings are white
in one hand he holds the head of a black serpent
in one hand he holds a sword whose blade is sullied
Saint Michael is impassive
the serpent’s mouth is agape
It was not Paul’s favourite painting. He preferred the work of Raphael or Il Rosso, but this Saint Michael was a memento of time in London: with Louise, on their honeymoon. They’d spent two marvellous weeks in a city filled with lovers. He could not imagine a better time or place, though the pleasure had less to do with London per se than with the sense of wonder the two of them brought to the city. Everything was new, even bridges and bars that were hundreds of years old.
How did he discover Walter had slept with his wife? Through a strange, but irrefutable, chain of moments and logic. The first moment, from some time ago now, was just peculiar enough to have stayed with him. Walter had lent his wife a copy of the Summa Contra Gentiles, Volume 1. She’d asked for it, to prepare for an evening on Aquinas. She’d read quite a bit of it, bringing the book to bed with them for weeks. He’d been surprised that she could keep herself amused with such twaddle, but she’d persisted with the Summa, even reading aloud the objections to water in Heaven, the idea that God can make the Past not to have been, and the proof that God is mercy.
On his return from Amarillo, however, Paul discovered the book in their garbage pail. Some of the Summa’s pages were torn; others appeared to have been ripped out. When he asked Louise
– What happened?
She answered
– It fell under a bus. I’ve got to get Walter a new copy.
– Did you tell him?
– Yes, I did.
And that was that until, speaking to Walter at an evening devoted to Hegel, Paul mentioned the sad ruin of the Summa and Walter blanched. Paul said
– Didn’t you know?
and Walter answered
– Oh yes, of course. Now I remember.
before expatiating on the burnt library at Alexandria.
This encounter was more meaningful in retrospect than it was at the time, but there it is, moment one: proof his wife and Walter were or had been intimate.
Moment two took place on an evening devoted to Nietzsche. They had all been invited to Walter’s house. They had eaten and they were sitting in the living room when Walter brought out a decanter of Newman’s and poured a quantity of port into each of six six-ounce snifters. Nothing unusual about that. Walter was proud of his vessels. He had a cabinet full of them, from snifters and flutes to tumblers, tazzas, noggins, and patellas. As he held out a snifter for Louise, Walter’s hands shook. Paul was thinking about Nietzsche, but he noticed the tremor and smiled to himself. How amusing for a man to be so awkward with women.
– Careful, Wally, he’d said.
Walter, flustered, answered with a disquisition on Machiavelli and virtù. Nothing unusual about that, either. It only confirmed Paul’s view of Walter as a gawky man in desperate need of female companionship. In fact, this might not have been moment two at all, were it not for moment three, which took place later the same night.
As they were all getting ready to leave, and Walter had gone off to get something from somewhere, Paul happened to overhear van Leuwen say
– I’m not like Wally, you know. I don’t have any talent for seduction.
– Hmm, answered François Ricard.
Then, noticing Dylan, van Leuwen said
– How are you, Paul?
– Fine, said Paul.
But he was caught off guard by the (most peculiar) thought of Barnes as a seducer. And, yet, van Leuwen had sounded serious in his suggestion that Walter had talent for seduction.
– Were you just talking about Walter? he asked.
– Yes, I’m afraid I was gossiping, said van Leuwen. Wally’s –
But they were interrupted by the return of the man himself, and Walter looked every inch the retiring academic Paul assumed him to be. No, it was not possible. It was all rumour and…what is the opposite of character assassination? This gossip made Walter seem more interesting than he was in reality. And yet, though Paul could not credit Barnes as Don Juan, something about the idea must have remained with him because…
Moment four, the irrefutable moment, the moment that made all other moments momentous, came months later at his own instigation. He was conducting interviews for a new secretary. He had seen a host of men and women when, finally, he spoke to a young woman who seemed ideally suited to the position: previous experience, good references, a knowledge of computing, personable, and quite elegant. He had decided to offer her the position when, glancing at her curriculum vitae, he noticed she had studied sociology at Carleton.
– So you know Professor Barnes? he asked.
She hesitated, uncertain if it were an advantage to admit the acquaintance.
– Uhm, yes…, she said.
Something in her hesitation aroused his curiosity.
– You studied with him?
– First year, she answered. Is Professor Barnes a friend of yours?
– Not really. An acquaintance. Was he a good teacher?
– Oh, well…Yes, I guess so.
– And?
She looked up at him, and then decided to tell the truth as she herself had heard it.
– He was a little, you know, indiscreet.
– Ahh…, said Mr. Dylan.
And hired her.
And, in the weeks that followed, avoided the matter, though he was unable to get it out of his mind, as if Walter were a word on the tip of his tongue, an obvious answer to a convoluted question, one down in the daily cryptic: a s
even-letter word for one who is hornèd.
Sharon Oswald, the new secretary, had been surprised when Professor Barnes’ name came up during her interview. She hadn’t suspected the man would figure in her life after Carleton, and, following the interview, she’d felt a certain pettiness. After all, she was one of the women Professor Barnes had not propositioned. She did not actually know what kind of man he was, but his reputation…that was well known and she did know one of the women who’d succumbed to him, a woman who’d described Professor Barnes as a night on a broken Ferris wheel: pleasurable but unending. The image of an endless ride had struck Sharon as vivid and not unenticing and, thereafter, she’d found it difficult to look Professor Barnes in the face and had come to think of him with something like disapproval. It was this disapproval she’d expressed at her interview and she regretted it, but when, a few weeks after that, Mr. Dylan returned to the subject, she felt constrained by her initial tack and, of course, the need to please her employer.
– So, he said, Professor Barnes was indiscreet, eh? You don’t mean he slept with his students?
– Yes, he did. He slept with a lot of women.
Ms. Oswald nodded her head and then shook it.
– He’s not my type, she said, but some people aren’t picky.