by André Alexis
At eight o’clock, already dark on a dark day, he’d had to be attentive, though not suspiciously attentive, to the few pedestrians who approached and then passed him by. Not a woman among them, though one young man wore a long white raincoat that could have belonged to Louise, and Paul found himself resenting the times in which they lived.
This second vigil had done nothing for him. Having failed to catch sight of Louise, he reproached himself for the effort. He should not have bothered. He would not bother.
His third vigil, days after the second, was, again, in a rented car, parked almost exactly where he had been the first time. It was, again, fruitless. Perry had spoken to her, and she had said that it was now too late to negotiate. She wanted no more talk. The court would speak for her, for them. She was prepared to wait for the word from a judge. Abetted by Perry, Paul had resolved to speak to her himself, but he found himself incapable of leaving the car. What was he to do? Beg? No, his spirit could not be taken from him. He would have nothing more to do with her.
And yet, there was a fourth vigil.
And a fifth.
And a sixth.
And a seventh.
And so on.
It was now autumn. He hadn’t seen Louise since the first night in…April, wasn’t it? He could no longer say why he was on Powell. It seemed he came, these evenings, because he had come in the past. It was frustrating, but the frustration was a strong emotion, almost a drug. The street itself had its charge of bitterness. He could not approach Powell without feeling shame and humiliation along with the need to eradicate shame and humiliation.
Powell Avenue made him feel this way, the house at number 371 even moreso. He knew its façade well: wooden porch (white), short banister (white), front window through which (curtains open) he could see a living room, through which (curtains closed) he occasionally saw a blurred silhouette belonging to God knows whom, and a second floor, with two windows, more opaque, and a third floor, with a gabled window, more mysterious still. He did not know the house’s layout, had no idea what sort of warren it held, but he disliked it anyway.
The street itself was a poison: beginning with this house shared by Fredrika and Louise (371), it infected the street (Powell), which poisoned Bank, which poisoned Bronson, which poisoned the Queensway. He could no longer pass Bank, Bronson, or the Queensway without being reminded of Louise, without being reminded of the emotions he felt at the sight of her, at the thought of her. Eventually, the whole of Ottawa would sicken and wither, and he would have to leave because there would be nowhere left for him to find peace, no sanctuary, nowhere he would not feel her presence, and that was exactly what he wanted now: sanctuary, a place where his murderous feelings would not find him.
Murderous? Yes, because it had suddenly, clearly, become a struggle to the death between himself and his wife.
Murderous, even when he was not dreaming? Yes, because he could not sleep, had not been able to sleep for months.
Travel did no good. He had gone, on business, to San Francisco and Fort Worth, and had returned to the same hatred and misery. Nor did the society of others. There was no going out in Ottawa, no distraction, and though he could be polite in a room of strangers, there was no place in him for friendship.
And then, on this autumn night, when he’d been sitting for an hour, in darkness, thinking only that he had come to the end of a road, that this was the last evening he would spend waiting for the sight of a woman he did not want to see, Fredrika and Louise stepped out the door of 371, stood for a few minutes on the porch, laughing.
Everything about their sudden appearance filled him, suddenly, with loathing.
The women were dressed in dark raincoats.
Fredrika dropped her keys, and stooped to pick them up.
Louise’s hair was in a ponytail.
Both women looked down at the ground as they descended the steps.
They were arm in arm as they walked towards Percy.
It was all just too too, and it seemed as if it were done to him, with him in mind, as if to say
– Your suffering is part of our amusement.
Without forethought, but as if it were what he’d had in mind from the beginning, Paul started the car and drove towards the two, intending to run them over.
No. There was no intending. Paul Dylan ceased to exist. Thought, emotion, and personality were reduced to will and trajectory. The idea of killing the women was so clean, it seemed to have existed before time itself. He would, later, remember that, at the moment he drove towards them, his mind harboured a single question: when should I floor it?
The women had crossed Percy. They were on their way to Lyon when he stepped on the accelerator, pointed the Mustang at them, and drove up onto the curb.
How could he have missed them?
They had been walking quickly, when Fredrika’s keys again fell from her hand. They both stopped, turned back, leaned down, lightly knocked heads, and the Mustang, like a sudden wind, fluttered the back of Fredrika’s raincoat.
And that was it.
November 2, 1986: no harm done, but it was hours before his hands stopped shaking. He had narrowly avoided murder, but his first feeling was disappointment. It seemed to him that, for better or worse, his life would have been simplified by Louise’s death. Now, he had to live on with her and with his failure to do what he should have done on their wedding night: kill her, that is.
And was he the kind of man who could kill?
In the hours following his attempt on Louise’s life, Paul sat in his car by Brown’s Inlet recreating the fateful moment over and over, sometimes hitting her, sometimes hitting both women. Fredrika. Now, there was a woman for whom he felt little. He had never liked her much, yet he could not dismiss the vision of her in a raincoat, fumbling with a set of keys, bending to pick them up. He’d known Fred since high school. He knew her parents, could remember the liver spots on her father’s hands.
Had he really come so close to killing her? Yes.
What manner of man was he, then?
There had been other dark nights, other harrowing moments during which he’d struggled to maintain a clear sense of himself, his life, his worth. This night was different, though. He could scarcely imagine a darker descent or, rather, he could: himself, bereft of even the smallest things that pointed to who he had been, himself lost to himself, which would leave only death to put an end to annihilation.
What manner of man was he? No answer from Brown’s Inlet. No answer from the stars. No answer within. So, long after any reasonable man would have told him to seek help, Paul Dylan decided that, yes, perhaps, he did, if only for this night, need company. He thought of Henry Wing. He had always respected Henry, and Henry’s discretion.
It was midnight when he left the car on Metcalfe and walked to the house on Cooper, Hercules and Lyra above him. He had no idea if the right words would find their way out, but it was already a relief to see the façade of 77 Cooper, to feel, before he entered, its peculiar stillness of books and banisters, blue rugs and elaborate moulding.
He felt hope as he knocked at the door.
– Oh…hello, Paul.
Paul had so expected to see Henry, it was, for a moment, as if he were hallucinating, as if Henry Wing had become Walter Barnes. But he was not dreaming. It was Walter who opened Henry’s door, Walter who greeted him and asked
– Are you coming in?
{32}
TO DAMASCUS
It was unusual, but not odd, that Walter should be at Henry’s. They were friendly and, as he slowly recovered something of his former conviviality, it was natural Walter should gravitate to Henry Wing, who was, after all, a sympathetic man. It’s true that, for some time after his most recent attempt at death, intellectual matters were of little interest to Walter. He had abandoned the Fortnightly Club at least in part because he would have found it difficult
to feign interest in, say, the difference between the Latin word Natura and the Greek word Phusis.
Intellectually, he was content, when he was not rereading the Bible, to reread King Lear, amused at how suddenly and deeply his allegiances changed, how he could, one week, feel sympathy for Edmund and, the next, revulsion, wishing him dead earlier though it was ridiculous to wish Edmund anything at all, ridiculous but inevitable because his familiarity with Lear had become something like intimacy with a living acquaintance. The book had come to seem a living acquaintance. He had been reading it, once or twice weekly, for a year or so: distractedly, attentively, with disdain, disbelief, admiration, barely able to keep his eyes open, unable to put it down.
Not that he had mastered the work.
– Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?
Here, for instance, he wondered why it should be “dog, horse, rat” as opposed to “horse, dog, rat,” which would have been more orderly, or even “horse, rat, dog,” which would have put the pest in the middle. But it did not trouble him. It was in these unanswerable questions that one felt the presence of another mind, of Shakespeare, if you like, and that was company enough.
As he recovered from his descent, however, pleasures came back to him and became pleasures again. He allowed himself to collect a few things for his home: African violets, Aspidistra, napkins (cloth), ewers (2), Armagnac (1 bottle), pots (cast iron, 2), pans (stainless steel, 2), a delicate wooden egg (Lithuanian), in which there were two grains of corn on which the whole of the Torah had been inscribed.
He permitted himself to walk in the city. He went wherever he liked. There was the walk along the canal: always along the east side, along Colonel By, on the city’s crooked spine, by the houses looking down from Echo Drive, to the Pretoria Bridge, with the university in the distance and Hull beyond. Or through the experimental farm: along Prince of Wales, past the arboretum, to the pavilion at Dow’s Lake. Really, it hardly mattered where he went. The city had its own tone, rhythm, and reason that conflicted or accorded with his own. It was beautiful or wretched from step to step, moment to moment, and he was part of its conversions.
One day, for instance, he had walked along Echo, gone up the stone steps, and wandered in a nest of streets he did not know (McGillivray, Herridge, Drummond, Hazel…). It was evening. The snow was deep and the winter sun turned the rooftops crimson. As he approached Hazel, he heard a melody he knew.
– Mild und leise wie er lächelt…
How odd to hear the Liebestod, here. He stood at the corner of Drummond and Hazel and listened until the final chord faded. No doubt, somewhere someone was pounding on a wall to have the music turned down, but it was momentarily marvellous for Walter to imagine that Isolde also dies here, steps from a pharmacy and a busy street. A vivid moment, but not all that unusual, a moment that needed him, the music and the waning light to come into being and pass away again. It was lovely to feel that one belonged, that one was necessary to the errant and erratic creations of his city, Ottawa, Ontario, 1986; to feel, however briefly, that one would not live anywhere else.
It was on one of these walks that he met Henry Wing. He was walking along Elgin, had passed Mags and Fags, when he bumped elbows with Henry.
– I’m sorry, he said.
– Paul? said Henry.
– Walter, said Walter.
– Yes, yes. I’m sorry, Walter. I’m distracted these days. It’s a pleasure to see you.
It was a pleasure to see him, as well. It had been years. They shook hands, as people passed.
– How are you, Henry?
– I’m a little sad, but I’m well.
He looked older, though, and more frail.
– I was just thinking about you the other day, Walter. I was reading Paracelsus.
– Are you sure you’re okay, Henry?
– What? Oh, yes, I’m fine, Walter. I’m as fine as fifty-nine can be, but how are you? Shall we walk? I need the exercise.
They walked, Henry slightly bowed and stiff-legged, Walter tired but happy for the society of a man with whom he felt at ease. They spoke, moving along the evening streets, the sun sinking through the last of the clouds.
They had met at seven o’clock. It was eight o’clock, and they were approaching Vanier before they realized how far they had gone, how hungry they were.
– I don’t know that I have much to eat at home, said Henry, but you must come and have something with me.
It was odd to enter a house he hadn’t visited in years. It was much as Walter remembered it, but he felt as if he were stepping into a past. The house was neat, clean, and warm. In the kitchen, where they went to eat their chicken and lentils and drink grappa, there was, on the wall beside the table, a vivid print of a mysterious scene: a woman on a balcony was pulling at her hair; a plank from the balcony had fallen and a child had fallen with it; the child was in mid-air; in the street below, spectators were aghast, but from somewhere, from the clouds perhaps, a monk was also in mid-air, falling towards the child. The print was a memento of something or other, but there had always been something mysterious about Henry’s home.
For hours, as their food grew cold, the two men spoke and drank. Neither would have said he had much to say about anything at all, but then communion is always a little surprising. Every so often, Henry would say
– You should eat, Walter. It’s good
and they would both pause for a mouthful of chicken, but it was the company that mattered.
Henry did not often speak of personal matters but, when they had finished eating, he said
– Have you been in love, Walter?
– I’m not sure what the word means, said Walter.
(True, but he knew who it meant. Louise came to him, as if she were part of his instincts.)
– Neither am I, said Henry, but –
– It means so many things, I wonder if we should name it at all.
Henry put his hand on Walter’s arm and smiled.
– Of course, he said, of course. It’s in the nature of these things to be vague. At the end of time, when everyone who has spoken the word is gone, some interested party may finally be able to say what the word love meant to humans, but until then, we give it the meanings we must.
Henry took his hand away and had a sip of grappa.
– I am in love, he said.
– I’m happy for you, said Walter. Is it someone I’ve met?
– No, I don’t think so. In any case, she is leaving Ottawa.
– Does she love you?
– I’ve always thought so, but, you know, Walter, that isn’t so important any more. It gives me pleasure to think Kata loves me, but I find I want what’s best for her. Maybe I’m not selfish enough. When she said she wanted to leave, I could have begged her to stay. I could have offered to go with her, but I don’t think she wants me to, so I’ll stay. Most of the time, I manage to think about other things, but it isn’t always easy.
It occurred to them both, at the same moment, that this was the most Henry Wing had ever spoken of his private life to Walter Barnes. The thought momentarily broke their intimacy. Henry said
– I’m sorry to burden you, Walter.
He looked his fifty-nine years: slightly frail, thin, his face a sharper version of the face he must have had before Walter knew him. Walter felt a deep sympathy for the man.
– More grappa? asked Henry.
After the grappa, their third or fourth, Henry went in search of a book he wanted Walter to see, and it was then that someone knocked at the front door. After waiting to see if Henry would answer, Walter went to the door himself.
He was surprised, and a little displeased, to see Paul Dylan.
– Oh…hello, Paul, he said.
The man looked pale, distraught, and frightened.
– Are you coming in? asked
Walter.
– Yes, said Paul.
He stepped into the foyer, avoiding Walter’s hand, stepping around him.
– Where’s Henry? he asked.
– Aren’t you going to shake my hand? asked Walter.
Paul did, apologizing:
– I’m sorry, Walter. I’m a little distracted.
It is difficult to say for whom the moment was more peculiar. Paul Dylan had distressing things on his mind. There was no room, in his thoughts, for past transgressions. He spoke to Walter as if nothing of significance had transpired between them. Walter was, at first, troubled. His first thought was to throttle Paul Dylan, and as he shook Paul’s hand, it occurred to him that he could easily strangle the man. So, after all, he had not risen above their encounter? No. He resented the humiliation, the time in hospital, the despair? Yes.
– Where’s Henry? Paul asked again.
– He’s gone to find the Hypnerotomachia.
– The…?
Henry came down the stairs, carrying an oversized leather book.
– Paul, he said. How wonderful. An impromptu meeting of the old Fortnightly.
He put a hand on Paul’s shoulder.
– Is everything all right? You don’t look well. Why don’t you have a grappa with us?
It suddenly seemed to Paul he had made a ridiculous mistake. Even if he’d found Henry alone, what would he have said?
– I’ve tried to murder Louise, and I’m afraid I’ll try again?
What was the answer to that? Yet, part of him wanted to say just that, wanted to hear the answer in a voice that was not his. He did not want to stay, but neither could he leave.
– Yes, I’ll have a grappa, he said.
He drank the first one quickly, looking as though he might swallow the delicate shot glass. Henry refilled the glass. Paul drank this one almost as quickly. Henry refilled his glass and, this time, both he and Walter watched as he drank.
– I’m afraid that’s it for the grappa, Paul. Can I get you something else?
– No, said Paul. I have to drive.