Asylum

by André Alexis

  He had a wife, whom he adored.

  In fact, he had loved Edwina Rotenberg from the moment he saw her: Grade Nine, Western, 1946. He had loved her for the smell of her (grapefruit), for the look of her (plump, flat-nosed, hair tucked behind her ears, green eyes), for the presence of her (she was so discreet, it was as if she were leaving a room when she entered it), and he had known, from his first look, that he would love no other girl, no other adolescent, no other woman. His fate had been decided, nuptially speaking, the moment she asked if she could sit in the desk behind his. He would have no other woman. He wanted no other, and they would, he and Edwina, have laughed at the suggestion that he did.

  And yet, though the contemplation of other women had previously been enough, he began to wonder why he should not go further than contemplation, whether he wanted to or not. Whether he wanted to or not? Was it possible to be unfaithful to Edwina without wanting? Yes, because it wasn’t a matter of want or desire. (Rundstedt certainly knew what it was to desire. He had only to watch Edwina undress, to wonder which she would slip from first, brassiere or panties, her back to him, dark hair falling to the nape of her neck, the sound of her voice calling his name; he had only to think of these moments, however vaguely, to feel the onset of desire.) It was simply that he had never felt real desire for anyone but Edwina. (His infrequent attendance at strip clubs and nudie bars, for instance, aroused little more than a taxonomic curiosity about breasts, hips, hair, and haunches.) So, if he were to be unfaithful, it would be for some reason other than desire. And that reason would be? That a man knows who he is by what he can do. The infidelity he contemplated was not, in the end, an infidelity to his wife, but rather to himself. This was, perhaps, inevitable. He was outgoing, hail-fellow-well-met, goal-oriented, spit and polish, a walking handshake, open to the world. But he was closed to himself. He wouldn’t have recognized his “self” if it had kicked him in the testicles and, as a consequence, he had very little idea there were things noxious to it.

  What has this to do with success? Well, Rundstedt had reached the height of his aspirations. He was a member of Cabinet – with no higher objective. He was respected. His ideas were given due consideration, as a matter of course. He himself was convinced that his commitment to building MacKenzie Bowell Federal Penitentiary was proof he had the aspirations of a great man, an interesting thinker, someone to read about in books. How fortunate he had been to find, in Franklin Dupuis, a man who understood the significance of his, Rundstedt’s, thinking, a man who could be trusted to carry out his wishes or, even, to fulfill wishes he, Rundstedt, was unaware of harbouring. With Franklin as his right hand, Rundstedt was free to concentrate on policy, free to travel about and make speeches, free to meet constituents. So, there was, at least for now, no position to pursue, no voters to win over.

  And yet, if this is what you called “success,” it was, in its way, the end of the road and it disarmed him.

  For the first time in his adult life, Rundstedt looked to other lives for direction and, in looking to other lives, he began to question his own, to wonder about his satisfaction, to mistrust his own happiness. Like an earwig, self-consciousness crept into his being, bringing with it the dreadful notion of failure, the hitherto strange idea that his life might have been lived other than he had lived it. Rundstedt was still quite cheerful, you understand. You could not have told that his soul was in confusion, and he was not the kind of man to drown in darkness.

  But still…

  {23}

  PARALLEL LIVES

  Paul Dylan’s wife had left him. She’d left in April. She had returned, briefly, in May. She had left for good in June. They had last seen each other in August. It was now November. He did not like to speak of her departure, unless he were forced to by circumstance.

  He politely declined invitations to dinner, and he usually answered

  – Fine

  when he was asked how she was. To friends, he admitted the subject was excruciating. She had left him. He was not ready to talk about it.

  His first reaction, in the spring, had been disbelief, a disbelief beyond words. Something had happened. He knew it. He listened to his wife explain why, though she loved him, she could not go on; but it was as if she were telling him the newspaper would not be delivered for a week, or as if she were admitting she could not stand to eat fish on Mondays. She told him in the morning, before he went off to work. Perhaps that was it. His mind was elsewhere. When she had finished, he’d said

  – I understand

  gathered his things, and left for the office. He even managed to drive to work without undue emotion, without any emotion, rather. A switch had been turned off, within. His thoughts were clear.

  – What’s she talking about?

  he thought. And

  – What a strange thing to say to me before work.

  As if her departure had nothing to do with him. Nor, for months, was the switch turned on again. There were moments, certainly, when he was almost himself, moments when (watching her leave, for instance) he felt himself on the verge of anger. What had he done? He had forgiven her her affair with Walter, and was this her thanks? She hadn’t discovered what he’d done to Walter, had she? No. She would have berated him otherwise. So, her behaviour was unmotivated and unfair, and it burned him.

  Still, those moments when he was closest to his old self were welcome compared to the moments during which he woke from something like a parallel life. One day, for instance, he found himself holding an envelope that looked as if it had been attacked by stamps: neatly, in an ordered way, every inch of the envelope’s surface, front and back, had been covered. He’d had to take the letter out, to see to whom it was destined

  Baroness Beatrice Berg von der Hof

  and have his secretary prepare another envelope in which to send it, “it” being a birthday card to a woman he’d known since university. On another day, he’d had a long, dull conversation with a janitor, concerning the best place to put the black metal dustbin he usually kept under his desk. Or, rather, he’d had no such conversation. He returned to himself, the darkness in his office almost palpable. There was no one at work but him. How long had he been talking to himself about dustbins? How long had it taken him to cover an envelope with stamps? He had no idea, and it was disturbing that his body now did things on its own, without him. No, it was not madness. His wife had left him. It was normal to go through such episodes. They were to be expected, or so he convinced himself. But then, when Louise returned for a week, it was worse. It was the end of May, spring, and she had called to ask how he was. He had answered

  – I’m fine

  and was surprised by his happiness at the sound of her voice. Though she’d left a number where she could be reached, he would never have called her. It simply wasn’t in him to let Louise see even a hint of need. He had managed to work, to feed himself, to keep his house clean. Why should he surrender to the desire to see her, to hear her voice, to beg her to reconsider?

  (– I can change, if that’s what you want. I’ll change…

  In dreams, he’d said such things and done much worse, frightening himself awake because the image of him with his hands around her throat, or of him driving a nail through her shoulder, was so vivid it woke him and took him halfway to the telephone to call her, to make certain she was not hurt, before he realized he’d been dreaming, and there was no need to call.)

  Louise had called to ask if he would mind if she stayed with him for a week, while her new apartment was being painted. His first instinct was to say

  – Yes, I would mind.

  but he said

  – No, I don’t mind.

  – Are you sure?

  – Of course.

  (As if he were the most reasonable man in the world.)

  – Thank you, Paul.

  (As if he were a friend on whom she was lightly imposing.)

&
nbsp; – You’re welcome.

  What was he thinking? How could he have imagined he’d live through her presence as if she weren’t there? Perhaps he hoped she had changed her mind, that these few days would be a first step towards reconciliation. He’d imagined, perhaps, that he had overcome his grief, that he would see her for who she was and, if she were not coming back, bid farewell to his wife. He’d had no good occasion on which to bid farewell. He had been too distant from himself to intone the right words. He would find the right words. (As if farewell were ever a single moment.) He’d wished, almost certainly, for a chance to prove that he was prepared to live out, manfully, the calamity into which she’d thrown them. There would be no begging for forgiveness, on his part. (There is a difference between life and dreams, after all.)

  Whatever it was that had prompted his acquiesence, though, her presence was a disaster. From the moment he saw her, three versions of Louise began their equal co-existence within him. First, there was the woman he no longer loved, the one who’d hurt him, the one towards whom he thought he could be cool.

  – If you like, you can sleep in the guest room. I’ll make the bed for you.

  Then, there was his wife, the woman he did, in fact, as far as he could understand the word, love.

  – Or you can sleep in the bedroom, if you like, and I’ll sleep in the guest room.

  Finally, there was the woman he wanted to murder, the one he had, not often but often enough, dreamed of hurting.

  – Or, if you prefer, you can sleep in the basement.

  After apologizing, again, and making certain her presence would not cause him emotional distress, Louise chose the guest room. They did not, at first, kiss or embrace, though that was strange, and then they did, and that was strange too. (Can there be a moment more awkward than one in which you attempt an intimacy you have achieved countless times, perhaps as recently as days before, an intimacy that was, perhaps only hours ago, unimpeded but is now impossible?) She was to stay for a week.

  On the first night, Paul slept poorly. They had spoken little, the two of them. He had kept silent, for the most part, while his wife spoke of practical matters. She wanted nothing, really. There was nothing she wanted to bring to her new life. She would create no problems for him financially, would not disrupt his daily routine with lawyers and meetings. She blamed herself. She should have spoken sooner of her unhappiness. She hoped he could forgive her, but, no, there was really no way of going on and, though she couldn’t support herself as well as he had supported her, she had money enough to see her through a year, if she were careful and, in any case, she hoped, though he certainly wasn’t obliged, that he might help her out, now and then, until she found a better job. She would certainly repay him, if he did.

  He had heard these things before, and he had his own feelings about them. It all sounded as if she were being magnanimous, as if he should be grateful. He looked at her, as she spoke, and he could not understand how he had given up his life for this, a thin woman who liked to dress in style, who had taken to wearing clothes that hid her neck; the bags under her eyes dark as noonday shadows, her teeth all that were visible of her when she laughed her irritating laugh…like a whinny.

  But then, he hadn’t given up his life for this woman. He had given it up for a woman who’d gone long ago. So, what could he possibly owe this horror in front of him? Nothing. Ah, but it wasn’t so simple. Even if this was not the woman for whom he had done everything to create a home, still the woman he loved was buried in the rubble of this one. And the tragedy, if you could call it that, was that he could still hear the voice of his beloved somewhere in hers.

  On the first night, when it was late and she had no more words to say, they said good night and went off into their separate rooms. At first he couldn’t sleep, because there was an unanswered question on his mind: why had she come here? She had, she said, abandoned any claim to his house. She’d even added that she wanted nothing from this place. Now there was a sharp hook. From all their years together, was there not one thing she regarded as her own? No. She wanted to obliterate their marriage. She had other friends. If she wanted to obliterate him, why return? Could it be that she could not bring herself to leave, that she was still emotionally attached? Or was it, rather, that she was there to mock him, to remind him that she was there by right?

  The question kept him awake until he could feel the coming of dawn: the song of birds, a small chill, a bluish light, through the curtains, that reminded him of the sea. Although, the two or three times he got up to look out at the morning, he was surprised to find the light was only from the streetlamps, and that it was still late. And then, when the question faded somewhat, he couldn’t sleep because he was trying so desperately to sleep, and he would catch himself in the act of falling asleep, as his thoughts grew more peculiar, and the thought that this was sleep and that he was finally sleeping would wake him, because he couldn’t shake the feeling he had forgotten something important.

  And then he did, finally, sleep for a while.

  And then he got up to see if his wife was sleeping.

  He didn’t want to disturb her so, sensibly, he went out the window of his room and walked along the window ledges, unmindful of the neighbours, until he reached the window closest to the guest room through which he re-entered the house. He was careful to make no noise. The moon outside was bright, its light like a torch; so bright, in fact, that he could see a moth on the wall: white wings, with minute green spots, shivering as it made its way. At her door he hesitated, his fingers on the doorknob, until he remembered she was a deep sleeper, that she wasn’t likely to hear anything short of real commotion. (The night was so quiet, he could hear the friction of the moth’s wings.)

  Inside, the guest room was as brightly lit as the hall had been. There was a moth in here as well. This one was larger, with the same minute spots on its wings, and it made its way along one of the black curtains that had been parted to let in the air and the moon. His wife, looking taller and more pale by moonlight, lay on the bed. It was warm, and she had thrown off the sheets, and she lay naked on the bed, her narrow, lovely back towards him, her wide hips. By this extraordinary light, he could clearly see the down that grew along the soft groove between her vagina and her anus.

  No doubt about it, he was enthralled. He forgot why he had come. But when he remembered, he also remembered how much she had hurt him, and in remembering that pain, his anger rose up so suddenly, it was as if a full orchestra had struck up inside him, not just any orchestra, but one intent on playing the overture to Tannhäuser – a music he so loathed, he put a hand over his mouth, lest the sound escape from him and wake her. Not that it helped. She stirred in her sleep, and he wondered what he would say if she turned to him. No, she hadn’t stirred at all. Rather, there was a mouse that moved out from beneath her pillow. Paul was horrified she might think he’d put it there, but he was relieved there was only one, as if one were forgivable.

  Ah, but there was not just one. There never is one mouse, is there? Several moved out from beneath her pillow, and several more climbed onto her shoulder and along her back. (They must have made their nest in the mattress. He so rarely slept in this room himself.) She was an admirably deep sleeper. And he was filled with tenderness for her. He had to do something about the mice. He took up the bedside lamp and he began to strike at them, using the lamp’s metal base. He even managed to hit some of them, though not, apparently, hard enough to do serious damage. And so he began to swing very hard indeed, unmindful of where he struck, because he struck her, her head, her back, her shoulder, accidentally, but with all his force, and she woke, for an instant, or rather she sighed, before passing out again, the bedsheets damp and white.

  He was dreaming, of course. There were no window ledges along which he could have moved. The room he’d imagined her in was a room in his parents’ house, not at all like the guest room. Still, the violence woke him, and he could not
go back to sleep until ten in the morning, when he heard her get up, shower, and leave for the day.

  The following night was made worse by the deepening resentment he felt at her presence. Not only did he wonder why she was there, but he was now slightly fearful of sleep itself. It was one thing to dream of hurting her when she was miles away, God knows where with God knows whom. It was another to do so when she was within reach. How often one heard of sleepwalkers who…

  And so, after another evening of attempted small talk on Louise’s part, they went, at opposite ends of the hall, to their rooms. He intended to sleep. He took with him a late novel by Henry James, chosen almost at random from the bookshelf. (It was The Ambassadors; though, of course, almost anything by James would, under normal circumstances, have anaesthetized him in minutes flat.) He read, without really understanding its interminable sentences with their tortured and, one might say, if one were being unkind, cruel syntax, as much of the book as he could stand before he sat up waiting, listening to the small sounds of night.

  He was not tired. He was not sleepy. He was increasingly anxious, because he began to feel, in earnest, the return of his jealousy. It had been adulterated by despair, guilt, shame, or it had been masked, as all his emotions had been, by what he now took to be shock, plain and simple. On this night, however, it returned to him, pure. It was not a matter of feeling betrayed. He knew he had been. There were no more clues to be ferreted from the little places she kept hidden from him. It was out in the open. (Even more than it had been with Walter Barnes.)

  On this night, he did not believe her capable of leaving him, unless there were someone else. (Walter, perhaps. Walter, still. Walter, always.) All that remained was to have her name him.

  And then?

  And then, he could leave her in peace. There would be no more reason to hold on to even the most cherished version of her he possessed. This idea of liberation filled him with hope for his own release. There was no reason to feel jealous. She was no longer his, but a part of him still needed proof she was not. So, if he could get her to admit her fault, he would be freed. There was an elegance to the idea that thrilled him.