Asylum

by André Alexis

  After some time in this embrace, after they had cooperated in the removal of his clothes, she throwing them about, he letting them fall, long after they had gone past words, she led him to her bedroom where, pushing the cats (one plush, one real) from the pillow, they lay down on the bed and continued fondling until, with some force, and sounds that sounded urgent, she directed his head to her pudendum, where, it was understood, his tongue was wanted.

  And it was lovely, this, the taste of a woman: familiar, certainly, but specific as well. Some thing like…like…oh, what was it?

  And in no time at all, she held his head in both hands and moved herself on his tongue and came, saying, quite clearly

  – Oh Harry…Harry…

  That was the first surprise. The second was that, as soon as her body recovered from its little quakes, she lay perfectly still. And shortly after that, she began to snore: fast asleep, dead to the world, inert. This had happened to him before, of course, with other women, once or twice. It was a hazard of sex with the inebriated. He should not have been surprised.

  How had he dealt with it in the past?

  In the past, he had carried on, in the belief that he had their tacit assent. Having enthusiastically reached this point together, it seemed a reasonable thing to do, as if the woman’s lack of consciousness were an annoyance to them both. Not on this night, though. On this night, he sighed and got up, moved the covers over her body, because the room was cool, and left, letting himself quietly out of an apartment he would never see again.

  And what, in the end, did it matter?

  Certainly, he was physically frustrated, but he had gone out with no distinct need, so his frustration was easily borne. Besides, he was grateful to have been himself awakened. He had been used but, more important, he had been wanted, and that, mirabile dictu, was an intense pleasure that made the night itself pleasurable.

  He took the long way home.

  Walking across Cooper to the canal, and then along the walkway, beside the black water made blacker by moonlight, facing away from the moon then towards it, towards the university then away from it. Nothing special, no one encountered, the sound of water lapping against concrete, the moon at three-quarters, Aquarius sinking slowly beneath the horizon and taking its oddly named stars with it: Ancha, Sadalmelik, Sadalsuud, Skat, Sadachbia, and all the little Aquarii. The slow movement of the stars. In the half-hour it would take him to walk home, Sadalmelik would sink beneath the skyline, but just try to catch it moving. Like those moments, in childhood, he’d spent staring at the kitchen clock, staring at the minute hand, trying to see it move, knowing it did move, and yet surprised, always, that it had moved from the one to the two to the three, as he sat at the kitchen table, himself forbidden to talk or move until his parents had finished eating. Not a pleasant memory, but that was past, and it did no good to think about such things, because there would never be anyplace to put them where they wouldn’t fall…and how strange to think of memories that way, that these memories were like figurines that fell from a shelf and, unbreakable themselves, broke everything around them…pax tecum, mother, peace on your ashes. Perhaps death wasn’t any more desirable than life, perhaps it wasn’t even less savage – angels and demons, the heavens and an inferno…a relief to be beyond all that, to say, along with Galileo, but with no fear of reprisal, eppur se muove, though, really, it was difficult to believe the Earth moved and not the stars. And what did it matter? Truth? Yes, but Truth was the flower of an instant – only the memory of it kept you going. And if the stars could be made to look down on us, what would they see? The face of Earth moving so fast, it would be impossible to catch what we call a moment, impossible to catch the clock’s hands at rest. There, now: for Ancha and Sadalmelik, he, Walter Barnes, was long dead, as cold as his parents, already gone and nowhere…as was Brigit, whose smell was still on him, mingling with the scent of bushes and flowers along the promenade. To think the world, which had always caused pain when he let it in, could come in to console.

  And then he was home; the house opened to him. A good night out, though his old self might not have said so. And what made it a good night, anyway? Think of all the things that would recede from memory: Brigit, the night, his thoughts, his feelings. All of these things would recede, though of course they would leave whatever it was you called their residue, whatever you called the influence of experience forgotten. What stayed longest, aside from the feeling of having had such a night, was the sensation of stepping into his own home (at 3:35 in the morning, September 29, 1985) and recognizing it for his own. No clutter, two books, two chairs, a table, bare walls, a handful of dishes, a bed, three towels, a small desk. Less than he had owned since he was in his twenties. What made it a good night was that, without thinking he belonged, he did belong.

  Were there many other women, then, after Brigit? Did his relationships change with this change in his world?

  “No” to the first question; “not exactly” to the second. Certainly, he had sex. He was a charming, attractive man. Moreover, though he didn’t entirely abandon the idea of suicide, he began to find his old, desperate self slightly ridiculous. So, in the company of others, he was modestly self-deprecating: an attractive trait in an attractive man. Still, you wouldn’t have said there were “many other women.” There were no more than half a dozen and, of those, none, for one reason or another, was interested in anything more than an evening’s fulfillment. Yet, he was. Without effort, he found he remembered their faces, their faces above all, and sometimes their names. After so much time spent searching for it, a place had opened within him, a place to accommodate the details he had, in the past, despaired of knowing. He was not so much prepared for intimacy as defenceless against it, a vulnerability that was no threat at all, given how little of himself he now thought it necessary to defend.

  And yet, sometime in December, months after Brigit, he’d been in the Market shopping for a Hungarian salami at Saslove’s when he had almost bumped into Louise Dylan. He’d seen her before she saw him and, for a moment, he’d felt elated: recognition, joy at the sight of her. That feeling was followed by a feeling of shame and humiliation, and, naturally, shame and humiliation had stifled his first impulse, which had been to greet her and convey in his greeting regret at how their time had ended. It occurred to him, however, that words were inadequate to deal with the past and, anyway, unnecessary and, perhaps, unwanted (by her). So, instead of saying

  – Louise, how lovely to see you or

  – I’ve missed you

  he had scuttled off.

  He could see himself scuttling.

  This image crossed his mind, months later, as he read Leviticus, sitting at his kitchen table on a snowy night: February 24, one year after his first attempt to die. The memory of his cowardice saddened him. It was as if his old, defensive self had risen from the dead, but the memory was followed by the thought that, at their next meeting, he would say what he felt. He would not avoid her a second time, or so he resolved and, aware of the change in himself this resolution implied, he felt pleasure and relief at the thought of seeing Louise again.

  1 10 rounds of whisky: $80.00.

  2 8 kilometres. Perhaps more drink needed.

  3 1 minute or less. Bring a stop watch.

  4 2 minutes, perhaps less: pile-driving to heaven.

  {26}

  STANLEY AGONISTES

  Now that he thought of it, Stanley had always wondered where his mother’s money had come from. While he lived with her, they had never wanted for anything essential, but he could not remember her either working or talking about work. She would never have spoken to him about anything important and he would not have asked, but the money had come from somewhere. If he’d never dwelt on the matter it was because money was only one of his mother’s many hidden aspects, another of the mysteries of his childhood.

  He had not had an ideal childhood. His mother, Eleanor, ha
d a repugnance for him she would not hide. His father he did not know. So, he was raised, until he was old enough for school, by a succession of old women, all of whom were hired by his mother, most of whom were kind.

  He was not a difficult child. He rarely cried. He slept through the night, from the beginning. And throughout his childhood, he was as entertained by a cigar box or a piece of newspaper as he was by rubber animals and toy soldiers, which was just as well because the cigar box and the old newspaper were what he most often got. It certainly wasn’t the child care that drove the old women from Eleanor’s house, it was the abuse they had to take from his mother.

  As soon as he was old enough for school, Eleanor herself left him, every morning at 8:30 a.m., at the schoolyard, armed with lunch (a peanut butter and lettuce sandwich, a carton of milk). She returned for him at 3:30 p.m. After school, he was left to himself and he could, provided it did not disturb his mother, do whatever he wanted. Of course, as they had no television, and as he was not encouraged to read, “whatever he wanted” consisted mainly of playing on his own or, even better, with other children in the neighbourhood (Ottawa South, breeding ground for criminals).

  Any of this might have made another child unhappy or resentful, but it did no such thing to Stanley. He learned the value of self-reliance, early on. He got such affection as he needed from his nannies, in particular from a monumentally maternal Englishwoman named Mrs. Lemon, who took care of him between the ages of three and five, treated him as lovingly as she might her own son, and who was heartbroken when Stanley reached school-going age and she was dismissed. Her leaving was the deepest wound (by far) of Stanley’s childhood and, in fact, his later affection for his own mother was fortified by his love for Mrs. Lemon, the two of them somewhat mingled in his memory: his mother and the woman he wished she had been.

  As to the other essentials, Stanley was taught the value of silence, caution, and a cheerful disposition by the older boys in the neighbourhood, none of whom hesitated to throttle him when he said the wrong thing, whatever the wrong thing was, or, again, to throttle him whenever he stepped out of line. If there was any lasting ill effect of this childhood, it was in Stanley’s lowered expectations of himself, of life, and of those around him. Many of the boys he knew were sent off to reform school or, later, jail. He himself was careful enough to avoid either, but both were terminals the neighbourhood naturally led to.

  Once he finished high school, where he did well, though not well enough to draw attention to himself, life in his mother’s home ended, more or less, and so ended his childhood. He married. He found work at Canada Post. No, not work, a vocation. He sat in a low-ceilinged room with thirty men and wrote the excessively mathematical exam given to prospective letter carriers, and he passed it easily, in part because he had no idea this was to be his vocation, in part because he didn’t care if it was or not. From the moment he was hired, or from the moment he began carrying letters in Sandy Hill, his life was centred. He knew where he would be five mornings a week, he knew what he would wear, more or less, and he knew who his friends would be. And he took satisfaction from all of it, from the uniforms, the friendship, and the work.

  Stanley Stanley was not, save in his name, an oddity. He was not born without the capacity for pessimism or doubt. He could brood, and he had, in his life, brooded. He had even, once, harboured an idea that tormented him. This was shortly before his marriage when it occurred to him that he was not worthy of his bride. To begin with, he thought Beatrice the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Not to be unkind, but even those who thought her lovely would have adverted to Beatrice’s personality, before, if pressed, moving on to her physical endowments. But, then, she was the third of four sisters, three of whom were striking beauties. (So beautiful were they that her father, Knolly, considered himself cursed. He adored his daughters, but he often and publicly thanked God for this one child, Beatrice, who was not endlessly pestered by the young men of the neighbourhood.) Still, Stanley found Beatrice’s good looks unnerving. And then there was the way she accepted his flaws, both those he had and those he imagined himself having. And finally, there was the strange sensation of being loved, rare enough in his life to be both exhilarating and confusing.

  For weeks, these feelings tormented him, led him to the brink of cancelling his own wedding. He was convinced Beatrice was making a mistake in marrying him and, because he loved her, his deepest inclination was to protect her. How had he escaped from that vicious groove? He hadn’t. Instead, his mother inadvertently saved him from himself. Eleanor hated Beatrice. She thought the girl insipid, plain, and, though worthy of her son, unworthy of her. And, as she genuinely disliked the girl, she allowed herself to tell them, flatly, that she disapproved of their marriage, that she would not meet any of Beatrice’s kin, that she would certainly not attend their wedding. Her only gift to the newlyweds was her assurance that they could go to Hell in the handbasket of their choice.

  Beatrice was devastated, and so was her family. For months, not a day passed without Beatrice’s mother or her father or her sisters trying to dissuade her from marrying Stanley. And Stanley agreed with them. He was on the verge of calling the marriage off when it occurred to him that, no matter how he explained things to Beatrice, no matter how carefully he explained his unworthiness, she might think he would not marry her without Eleanor’s approval; she might think he needed his mother’s go-ahead. That thought, the hint of it, was enough to bring all the resolve he needed.

  And so, two people who loved each other married, despite the disapproval of their families, despite…well, despite everything and largely because, although he loved her, Stanley did not wish to stand, or be seen to stand, on his mother’s side.

  And now, there was the matter of Eleanor’s will. It had led to the only serious disagreement between Stanley and Beatrice since their wedding.

  A few months after their daughter’s meeting with Mr. Bax, months after Stanley had declined to take on property in England (or elsewhere, for that matter), they had overcome the deep bitterness between them, but the matter lingered there, painful, in part because neither understood what it was the other wanted or feared. Eleanor’s will, in other words, was a broken toe their marriage had to endure.

  Nor did it help when Mary, on her own initiative, tried to appease them. She asked Mr. Bax to sell one of Eleanor’s (Mary’s, actually) holdings, in the hope both her parents would be happy with money, with something tangible. They had looked into the markets and found it was a good time to sell in England. So, Mary put the London property up for sale. Weeks later, it sold.

  Did her decision please anyone?

  Not really. Beatrice was further frustrated by this new turn. She took no comfort in the prospect of money. Her frustration was with Stanley’s refusal to own property, with its implication that they could not do as well as Eleanor had done. This implication, of course, touched on the deepest source of Beatrice’s pain: her resentment at the way Eleanor had treated her and her family, as if they were menials. Beatrice could not bear the suggestion now that they were in any way inferior to the woman. How convenient for Stanley, she thought, that Mary had decided to divest. Now, it seemed, he would not have to deal with Eleanor’s heritage, would not have to assume his responsibilities.

  Stanley was not disappointed by Mary’s decision, but he could see the sale upset his wife, could even see that it looked as if his daughter had liquidated in order to please him. So, on hearing the news, he’d said

  – That’s great, Mare, but you should have asked us first.

  A sentence meant to gratify his daughter while mollifying his wife, a sentence that failed miserably on both counts. Mary began to cry and Beatrice, who thought his words hypocritical, looked at him as if he were low.

  Gil, who, by parental fiat, was cut off from his grandmother’s money until he reached twenty-one, was also unhappy. However, he was a teenaged boy. It was difficult t
o tell this new unhappiness from the unhappiness that was his usual state.

  After Mary’s failed gambit, things grew slightly more tense. Stanley and Beatrice still spoke, but it was easy to see she would have avoided him if she could. He even began to feel uncomfortable with her in bed, and this was devastating. The two had first slept together after their second night out and they had both known, despite their youth, that this was a thing they wished to do endlessly. (Three things, actually: copulating, softly speaking, and sleeping.) And in all their years together, there’d been no end to the mystery that was their pleasure in each other.

  Where was Stanley to sleep, if not with his wife? A good question. And then, after a long, vacationless summer, Stanley himself proposed he sleep in the living room (“just for a night or two, because I’ve got the insomnia”), and Beatrice reluctantly agreed. She took his abandonment of the marriage bed as an admission of defeat, however, and on her first night alone, she began to mourn the loss of her husband. On her second night, she began to wonder if this was divorce: irredeemable solitude.

  The separation worked on Stanley in a way that was more devious. On his first night in the living room, he slept soundly. The following night, he slept just as soundly. It was as if he had rediscovered sleep. On his third night, though, he didn’t fall asleep. He passed into the place between sleep and wakefulness, kept there by a handful of words that settled on him, like aphids:

  “mother…selfish…moon…lake…”

  Some of those words came from Beatrice.

  – You’re as selfish as your mother, she’d said.

  But the rest were from a mysterious sentence that had come to him when she compared him to his mother: “The moon is not a…” What was the word? Lake. “The moon is not a lake.” The sentence returned to him, on his third night in the living room, bringing a particle of the past with it…something about his mother, selfishness, the moon and…not lake, not lake at all…