by André Alexis
– Did you ever see him with any women?
Ms. Oswald, uncertain where the conversation was leading, lied.
– Oh yes…Lots.
Then Mr. Dylan lied.
– The only woman I ever saw him with was…
(Here, in a fit of inspiration, he precisely described his own wife.)
– Did you ever see him with her?
Ms. Oswald said
– Yes, I do remember someone like that. Now that you mention it.
– I don’t remember her name. Do you?
Ms. Oswald said
– Lucy?
the name of a woman she knew had slept with Professor Barnes. Nothing to do with Louise at all, and yet…Lucy?
Paul sat at his desk, flustered, as if he’d misheard.
– Louise, you mean?
– Oh yes, said Ms. Oswald, Louise. Definitely.
And anger descended on Paul Dylan, like nightfall at noon.
– Walter’s quite a character, he said.
– Isn’t he, though.
After a bit of feigned commiseration, as if he agreed the world were too mysterious to fathom, they returned to the work at hand: correspondence. Actually, Paul Dylan did not return to it. This “proof” of Louise’s infidelity was something that gave new meaning to everything. It was now possible to see his world in a different light: his wife was not his wife, he was not her husband, their home was not a home. An emotion very like ecstasy accompanied all this. As if his house had burned down, Paul felt unburdened: to think that the worst had happened, that he was living through moments he’d spent so much time living through in his imagination. Yet he was fine.
There was a curiously metaphysical satisfaction as well. The truth had liberated him, it seemed (though his was a truth that was both the truth and not the truth). It was good, finally, to know this about his wife, to know this about Walter. He wasn’t even angry. He was angry, but he was so lucid, he didn’t take it for anger. He made calls. He signed letters. He attended a meeting at which he was calm and composed. The only hint there was something darker on his mind was the irritation provoked by trivial things:
– the pattern on one of the programmer’s shirt was too busy
– the treasurer’s makeup was pasty
– someone was wearing an earring that looked as if it would fall off
Did he think about his wife through all this? Yes, but very little. It was rather that he thought about himself through her: his feelings for her (betrayed), his sacrifices (useless), the unveiling of his deepest self (humiliating). Louise was obscured in him by his own emotions. The one he couldn’t stop thinking about was Walter.
That night, for the first time in their years of marriage, he returned from work late, did not touch the bedsheets, could not speak to her, except to say that he’d brought vital work home, and locked himself in his basement office where he wrote letters to people he hadn’t seen for years. It was, as they say, a dark night of the soul. He slept very little, sinking only briefly into a dream in which, inexplicably, Walter Barnes was the sous-chef in a Carthaginian restaurant that served nothing but salted eel.
Weeks had passed since then. Sitting in the glass porch, staring up at the clouds, it was still as if he were enduring the after-effects of a strong drug. The weeks since Ms. Oswald’s revelation were cloudy. How had he managed to keep from destroying his house? How had he managed to sleep with his wife? Why was Walter Barnes, the man who’d stolen his life, still alive? The answer to the first two questions was simple: Paul Dylan was not a man to act without deliberation. It wasn’t in his nature. He might burn down the house. He might kill himself, but it would take more than a few weeks to bring himself to the act. He was indignant and he was certainly capable of violence, but the time had not yet come. For that reason, he continued to sleep with his wife. To do otherwise would have so changed his environment he might have done something unpredictable. As it was, he slept beside Louise, but he did not kiss her while they were abed. When he had to kiss her at all, which he did, for appearance’s sake, he kissed the back of her head or her hair or the side of her face. Besides, in the weeks he’d had to think all this through, Paul had discovered in himself a genuine, helpless devotion to his wife. It was not his fault and there was nothing he could do: the woman was as important to him now as she’d been on the day they met. It wasn’t as difficult to sleep beside her as he’d first imagined. It was more difficult to avoid her kiss.
There was no suitable answer to the question of Barnes. Walter Barnes was in need of correction. If only to protect other men (and other wives), Paul would have to teach him a lesson. It wasn’t even personal now. It was a sad duty.
{12}
SEPTEMBER
It was a beautiful Saturday in September. In the Glebe, citizens were out in shirtsleeves, tending to their lawns and gardens. There was a light breeze, but it was as warm as calf’s breath.
Paul had risen early. It had been months since he’d discovered his wife’s infidelity. (In that time, he had managed to forgive her, or so he believed. But it was, in any case, an act of secret generosity, since he did not (could not) speak to her of her sins or his forgiveness.) He’d risen early and, after telling Louise he’d forgotten important papers at the office, he’d gone out for breakfast: eggs and bacon in a diner where the patrons looked as if they hadn’t slept in decades.
It was a weekend, so he was at leisure. He left the restaurant at ten o’clock and it was around ten thirty that Paul, angry but self-possessed, knocked at Walter’s door.
And knocked again.
And knocked a third time.
It may have been his intention merely to talk to Walter, to tongue-lash him. He himself might have said it was. Then again, whatever his intentions may have been, this knocking at the door was irritating. It felt undignified, standing on Barnes’ threshold in full view of the neighbours. He would knock a final time and then wait, but he became angrier each moment he waited.
Walter had also risen early. He’d had coffee and toast in his kitchen and then begun an article for the Queen’s Quarterly: a reevaluation of Seymour Martin Lipset. His dissatisfaction with sociology had become a dissatisfaction with its American proponents, but he was respectful and scrupulous and struggled to write a nuanced critique. At ten thirty, he was washing his hands and he didn’t hear the knocking at his door. Walter did not often reflect on little rituals, but something about the water this morning, as it ran over his palms and fingers, attracted his attention: such a common element, but the sound of it as it sputtered from the spigot and circled the drain…He had shut off the tap and wiped his fingers on a worn hand towel when he heard the third of Mr. Dylan’s forays at his front door.
– Just a minute…, he said
the fingernail on his left thumb having caught a loop of cotton in the towel’s weave.
– Just a minute…, he said
beneath his breath, trying to disengage his thumb without tearing the fabric, going slowly downstairs with the towel hanging, as if by magic, from his left hand.
Walter opened his door, and he was about to express his surprise when Paul Dylan took him by the front of his shirt, pulled him out, and head-butted him, breaking his nose immediately or, rather, rebreaking it.
After that, there wasn’t time to say anything; although, before he lost consciousness, Walter had the strange feeling he and Paul were actually conversing. Among other things, he thought he said
– What are you doing, Paul?
but he said nothing, because his nose was broken and, thereafter, he had difficulty thinking and breathing.
Paul then managed to punch him on the cheek, the neck, and the back of the head before he paused for breath. He fractured Walter’s cheekbone and bruised his neck, but the annoying damage (annoying to Paul) was done to Walter’s shirt, the buttons of which hit th
e concrete like pebbles, and Walter’s glasses, which broke neatly in two but hung from his ears before falling to the ground. Everything about Walter was annoying and fed Paul’s anger: the towel he’d brought to the door, the sound of his buttons falling, the way his glasses had broken, the fact he wouldn’t stand up, the dead weight of him. None of this inspired anything but rage. He hurt his hand when he struck the back of Walter’s head so, when Walter fell to the concrete, Paul began to kick at Walter’s head and ribs.
(Walter’s head hit the pavement at an awkward angle, but it was not until the kick to his ribs that he, temporarily, lost consciousness.)
Though Walter didn’t speak, while imagining he did, Paul spoke without realizing he was speaking, and it was Paul’s loud imprecations that first attracted the attention of Walter’s neighbours. He was using vile language, and this was, initially, as disturbing to the neighbours as the sight of Walter’s agony or the sounds of the beating. By the time Paul began kicking at Walter’s ribs, a half-dozen spectators had timidly approached to see what was going on. They were, of course, horrified by the spectacle. Should they intervene? Yes. A woman went in to call the police. No, it looked to be over. Yes, it would soon be over. But, no, Paul had simply paused, again, for breath and he was kicking again.
All of them were disarmed by the violence. It was astonishing, on such a lovely day. Minutes passed, minutes that would stretch out in their imaginations, before a young woman pushed her husband forward, entreating him to separate the antagonists, if you could call them that, there being so little antagonism: Paul kicked out and his foot was accommodated by Walter’s body. The young husband, a tall, muscular man, was almost certainly stronger than Paul or Walter. He could have picked Paul up by the scruff of the neck, but one never knew when a smaller man, charged with adrenalin, would present more problems than anticipated, and the last thing he wanted was to join the fray, though he felt his own adrenalin rise as he approached.
– Hey you
he said, tapping at Paul’s left shoulder as if it were hot, then stepping back.
– Mister
he said, tapping again.
– What’re you doing?
Paul ignored him, kicking Walter again, though there was no longer any satisfaction in it. The young man, somewhat aggrieved at being ignored, pulled him away from Professor Barnes.
– Listen, buddy, you shouldn’t be doing this. It isn’t right.
It occurred to Paul that this was true. What was he doing? What did all of this mean?
– He slept with my wife, said Paul.
It was a straightforward reply, but the emotion of years came out with the words, and the young husband was unexpectedly moved. He understood entirely.
– Oh, he said.
And, feeling remorse at his untimely intrusion, not knowing what else to do, the man kicked at Walter’s chest, as if to express solidarity for the cuckold, a solidarity that, to his mind, any honest man would admit.
This last assault brought great dismay to the onlookers, dismay and consternation.
The young husband returned to them, thoughtful and contrite at his intrusion.
– Mr. Barnes slept with the man’s wife, he said.
– So what? someone shouted.
– So he deserves what he’s getting, that’s what.
There was a brief, reflective silence before someone else said
– Wait a minute. How do you know he slept with his wife?
A good question.
– Well, he wouldn’t kick him for nothing, said the young husband.
And, from someone else:
– Sleeping with his wife isn’t even a reason.
– It is as far as I’m concerned, said the husband.
And, at that, Walter’s neighbours began to argue with the young man. Most of them were outraged, but a few of the men were unsure just what the “proper” punishment for adultery should be and their respect for Professor Barnes was not unaffected by the thought that he had slept with another man’s wife. That is, from the moment his neighbours saw him beaten and unconscious, Walter Barnes lost much of the standing he’d had on his street.
The young man had added to Walter’s agony, but he had also broken Paul’s resolve. The thrashing had ended. Paul, tired and numb, the little finger of his right hand fractured, wandered away from the scene, spent. Such a futile campaign, and no real battle. He had taken Walter by surprise; so little satisfaction. He did not know how badly he had hurt him, but Walter no longer mattered.
A woman, indignant, said
– Don’t let him get away. The police are coming.
Someone called out
– Hey you! Mister! Come back here.
Though Paul was not a big man, they had all witnessed his frenzy. No one was eager to restrain him, and he was at Bank Street before someone felt, really, that it would be good to go after him, by which point…
– What was he wearing, again?
it seemed best to leave the matter to the police.
Still irritated by her husband’s insensitivity and upset by what she’d seen, the young wife had turned away from her neighbours, unpleasantly surprised by their bickering. She approached Professor Barnes and, kneeling beside him, asked
– Are you all right?
– Thank you, he said.
But he thought he was speaking to someone else entirely, to his father, in fact, and he said again
– Thank you
imagining he’d been asked, as he had always been asked after a caning, what one said to someone who’d done one a favour.
{13}
MR. RUNDSTEDT IN HIS GLORY
The election had gone very well indeed. Not only were the Conservatives elected, but the Liberals, the corrupt machine, were pushed aside. Martin Brian Mulroney had moved them aside as one moves a dead rat: with the tip of one’s shoe. What a man he was: “A runnable Tory, Mr. ‘I’m In,’ ” according to the Calgary Herald, and he was that and more: not tall, but statesmanlike, his light brown hair slicked and neatly parted, his mouth slashed into the noble half-moon of his long face, his ears akimbo.
The Conservatives had won in Quebec, had taken Ontario, and they ruled the West: 211 seats, the largest majority in history, a resounding vote of confidence for the man from Baie-Comeau, Baie-Comeau the beautifully blushing.
The celebrations begun in each riding continued in Ottawa.
The celebration continued for months, it seemed; months of formal wear and alcohol, evening clothes, blue serge, loosened ties, floor-sweeping gowns, lifted skirts, hastily lowered stockings, flimsy panties, and the midnight rummage for a carelessly discarded shoe.
There was a cloud on the horizon, of course. There is always a cloud. Having won in Quebec, where the party was not wont to win, there was some fear Quebec would drive the new agenda. Wonderful though he was, Martin Brian was from Baie-Comeau, splendid though it was. He spoke French and was surrounded by Quebecers. What were the chances of him hearing of Western desires, let alone working to satisfy them?
As it turned out, Martin Brian was shrewd enough to understand he could not be successful without the West. There was, in him, something of the Khan: desire for an epic reunification, a country-binding harmony. He, Martin Brian, would soothe the Trudeau-troubled civic breast, and although he could not do this without Quebec, neither could he do it without the West: the great star-flooded prairies, the dark mountains, the islands looking back on a pine-dense coast. Very poetic, to be sure, but what it meant, in hard terms, was the anointing of a few Westerners; enough of them, so he might be seen to have their interests at heart. That meant, for the anointed, a special status: not close to the prime minister, necessarily, but necessary to him and, necessity being the political equivalent of intimacy, intimate as well.
For his first Cabinet, the largest in our brief history, the Righ
t Honourable Himself chose thirteen Westerners.
Harvie Andre
(Alberta)
Supply and Services
Pat Carney
(British Columbia)
Energy, Mines, Resources
Joe Clark
(Alberta)
External Affairs
Jake Epp
(Manitoba)
Health and Welfare
John Fraser
(British Columbia)
Fisheries and Oceans
Ramon Hnatyshyn
(Saskatchewan)
Government House Leader
Don Mazankowski
(Alberta)
Transport
Bill McKnight
(Saskatchewan)
Labour
Jack Murta
(Manitoba)
Multiculturalism
Erik Nielsen
(Yukon)
Deputy Prime Minister
Duff Roblin
(Manitoba)
Government Leader in the Senate
Albert Rundstedt
(Alberta)
Prisons and Correction
Thomas Siddon
(British Columbia)
Science and Technology