by André Alexis
– Some water?
– What would you say if I said I wanted to kill you?
Henry smiled.
– I’d say I was sorry there was no more grappa, he answered.
The three of them sat at the small kitchen table: Henry at one end, Paul at the other, Walter between them. It was quiet. Lights were on all over the house, as if guests were expected or had just left. At the mention of killing, Walter, who’d been looking at the painting on the wall, moved his chair closer to Henry, turned it to face Paul as Paul said
– What if I wanted you to kill me?
– That I couldn’t do, said Henry.
– Why not?
– It isn’t in me.
– It’s in everyone, said Paul.
– I don’t believe it is.
– Haven’t you ever wanted to kill someone?
– No, said Henry. What’s this about, Paul?
Paul rubbed the tip of his tongue with his finger, then said
– We should talk about something else.
Which, being accommodating, Walter and Henry tried to do. The ease they had felt in each other’s company was gone, however. With Paul brooding at one end of the table, it was difficult to think of anything to say. It did not seem appropriate to open the Hypnerotomachia. It did not seem appropriate to speak of books at all, nor to speak of the things that had entertained them for the past, what was it, five hours, six hours?
Paul sat staring at the oven as if it had offended him.
After a bit more of Paul’s silence, Walter rose from the table, annoyed.
– It’s getting late, he said.
He smiled as he shook Henry’s hand.
– We should do this again.
– I’d like that very much, said Henry.
Walter politely said good night to Paul, and then Henry accompanied him to the front door.
– I’m sorry to leave like this but…Do you want me to stay?
– No, no. I understand. We’ll see you again, Walter. Good night.
Henry returned to the kitchen where, at his entrance, Paul said
– I tried to kill my wife.
It was one in the morning. Henry was tired and mildly inebriated. He would have preferred to say a few words to Paul, usher him from the house, and retire for the night, but there was nothing to be done. Paul Dylan, whom he had known for years, whom he did not know at all, looked as if he had suffered but it was of Louise that Henry thought first.
– You failed, I hope.
– Yes.
– And you want to talk about it?
It wasn’t a matter of want, but, yes, he also wanted. From his nightmares and jealousy to his effort to kill Louise and Fredrika, Paul told Henry everything, in detail.
Henry sat quietly and listened. The night deepened. The lights in the house grew more yellow until, as morning approached, they grew wan again and faded into the blue morning light that came in through the kitchen windows. He had no idea why Paul Dylan had chosen him for a confessor. He did not think that Paul respected him particularly, and his most enduring image of Paul, before this night, was of a man with a smirk: agile, but not deep. Yet, as he had listened to a long, alarming, and confused story, the depth of the man’s obsession came through in the telling: repetitious, circling back to Louise’s betrayals, to his knowledge of her betrayals, his regret that he had not killed her, his self-pity…
And it was difficult to know what was expected of him. He was meant to listen, obviously, and he listened, interrupting only once to have Paul repeat the account of his near-collision with Louise. (After which, Henry said, beneath his breath:
– You’ve lost your soul.)
At dawn, the house was cold. Paul stopped speaking. Henry rose from the table.
– Do you really think I’ve lost my soul? Paul asked.
– I don’t know, said Henry.
And he turned away to make breakfast: four eggs, salt, pepper, half a Scotch bonnet. He spoke as he scrambled the eggs and cooked them, his sadness coming as much from a feeling that he had nothing meaningful to say as from the situation.
– If you had lost your soul, you wouldn’t have come here last night. You must have imagined there was some escape from the life you’re leading, don’t you think? Anyway, I don’t believe in damnation. I know how hard it is to be practical, but if you don’t want to feel the way you’re feeling now, Paul, you have to change your life.
(Oh, that was easily said. Could he, Henry, change the way he lived, even if change meant he could keep Katarina? Far from certain.)
He had spoken in a calm voice, careful to avoid scolding. The world was not his to remake. Paul Dylan was not his charge. Yet, when he turned to give Paul breakfast, he discovered the man was overwhelmed by emotion. Paul Dylan sat with his back to the wall, facing Henry, an apologetic smile on his face, a short man dressed in a blue, pinstriped suit, a cream shirt, a lilac tie. His clothes were slightly rumpled. His face was shaded by a day’s growth of beard. His arms were folded, held close to his chest, as if to make himself more compact. His tears fell, but he did not wipe them away.
Though Henry was a kind man, sympathetic to the full range of human distress, he felt revulsion at the sight. He stood still in the centre of his own kitchen holding two plates, on which there were eggs, rye bread, sliced tomato. The while, Paul sat watching him, or so it seemed, though there was no way to know what it was Paul actually saw.
Finally, Henry said
– You should eat.
and put breakfast on the table beside him.
{33}
A CHANGE OF HEART
For three days, Paul Dylan had trouble eating.
Though Henry Wing assumed he’d said nothing of depth, a handful of his words had sunk to the deepest place in Paul’s being. The words
– You have lost your soul
had sunk and detonated so that Paul heard little thereafter save
– You have to change your life.
In another place, at another time, the words might have been as meaningless to him as they had been before. But in that place (Henry Wing’s kitchen) at that time (six in the morning), they held the charge of perfectly chosen words. And as the days passed, away from work, wandering about a house that was now strange to him, it even seemed as if his life had been tending towards the moment when Henry’s words would make sense.
How he had struggled against the very idea of soul, or at least against the idea that lay behind it: God, the great intruder. You could not have one without the other, no soul without God, and he had always felt disdain for the idea of God, for the idea of divine presence, for the idea of a merciful watchman.
And yet, he had lost his soul.
It wasn’t that Henry had led him to the realization. He had not been persuaded. Rather, he heard the words and knew they were true. The minute he heard them, he felt not only the desolation in their meaning but also the exaltation. The words held him like a mirror. They called out for that which he had never been able to accomplish: surrender.
But what did it mean to change and to whom or what would he surrender?
Of course, this is all said as if he could choose. Could he have chosen, he would have avoided the very idea of soul, the idea of surrender. Could he have chosen, he would have avoided God entirely. God, however, was no longer an idea, for Paul. God, understood as an idea, understood as he had formerly understood it, was no more than an intriguing equation, wonderful, no doubt, but only an aspect of thinking, leaving its imprint on thought and, so, subject to the visions and revisions of thought itself.
He did not surrender to an idea. Rather, soul and change, words almost casually spoken by Henry Wing, were signposts at the border of a world he had avoided. And Paul Dylan was like an amnesiac who, reaching into a coat pocket one day, discovers a passport to
that very world (his photograph on the second page), just the document to jog his memory. Memory recovered, it was baffling to think he had spent so long in exile, that he had, even, denied a provenance that was now so obvious.
That is, as he had recognized himself in Henry’s words
– You have lost your soul
so he came to recognize himself as belonging in God. The recognition was sudden, exhilarating, and irrefutable. The world as he knew it fled before enlightenment. It fled the moment Paul came to himself in God. The life he had lived lost its purpose. It had led him to this point, so it was not to be despised, but had he really spent so many years nurturing an enterprise, gathering money, flying about the world in order to nurture an enterprise, gather money, and fly about the world? It seemed so. But he was not obliged to go on nurturing, gathering, flying.
Paul was ecstatic, but he was also frightened that the joy he felt was the result of a delusion, frightened that it was evanescent, that he would return to himself and the world wherein he had no soul and there was no God. That is, he was frightened of the man he had been. At the root of his fear there was new selfishness. Though he was willing to turn away from all he had coveted, willing to give up the material possessions he had worked so hard to possess, he could not bear the thought he might lose this: God the Father, the keeper of souls. The thought filled him with anguish because, in his desperation, it did not occur to him that God was not his possession, not a thing to lose.
There was also, at the root of his fear, a feeling of unworthiness. He was unworthy because he had wandered so long in the wilderness, because he had betrayed the holy within him and without, because he had sinned and had not known it. He could not see how he merited this sudden dispensation and, there being so little connection between the life he had led and this moment in it, he felt anxious.
And then there was the stain on his conscience: Walter Barnes.
You would think, after all he had done, that Louise would loom in his conscience, but in those moments of revelation, Paul did not think of her. He had wronged her, perhaps, but she had put herself in the line of fire, whereas Walter had been innocent. In attacking Walter, he had put his faith in the very thing that had also kept him from God’s grace: Reason. He had trusted observation, induction, and deduction. It was what he had done to Walter that kept him from deserving, that stood in the path before him. It was this sin he had to expiate before he could live fully in God.
How was he to expiate a sin he had committed so long ago?
There was nothing he could do for the man: no service, no kindness, no deed that would undo what he had done. Nor was there anything to say: no blandishments, no kind words, no words of comfort. Nevertheless, he needed Walter’s forgiveness. He needed this from a man who had no reason to give it, because it seemed to him that, without Walter’s forgiveness, he would be what he suspected himself to be: unforgivable.
He had last seen Walter a few days previously. They had shaken hands in greeting, and then three days had passed, days during which Paul Dylan had come to being in God. Perhaps, now, he had the right to hope that this final thing would be granted him.
And for the first time since his childhood, Paul Dylan prayed.
He went down on his knees, because this is how he had been taught. He prepared a place in himself for God to enter, closing his eyes, listening to the sound of his own breath. And when it seemed the world was only darkness and the sound of his breathing, he prayed for forgiveness.
The following day, Paul set out for Walter’s home. He did not know what he would say, did not know how he would ask forgiveness.
It was Sunday morning. There were few people on the street, not many cars on the road. There was no one about as Paul pushed on Walter’s doorbell.
As it happened, Walter was at home. He had woken early, with the dawn. He had lain in bed for an hour, thinking about a book he would write: a sociological study of table manners. It was an unusual idea, for him. Properly speaking, the work was outside his province. He was no anthropologist. And yet, he found the idea compelling.
He had eaten breakfast, abstained from showering, and he was happily immersed in plans for the book, sheets of paper spread about the kitchen table, when the doorbell sounded.
– Just a minute, he said to himself.
He completed a sentence before going to the door.
– Yes?
Both men were startled at the sight of the other, but Walter was also alarmed. He immediately, instinctively, stepped back. With more dislike than he intended, he said
– What do you want?
– Walter, I just want to talk.
– What do you want to talk about?
– I want to talk about what I did.
– What you did? When?
– When I attacked you. A few years ago.
– Oh. Well, I’d love to reminisce, Paul, but I’m busy.
– Please, Walter.
The man before him looked so wretched, Walter almost regretted his initial hostility. And yet, here was a man who had dragged him from his house, kicked him unconscious, and left him for dead. Now he wanted to talk about it. The idea was bizarre, but Walter entertained it (briefly) before saying
– Some other time
and stepping back to close the door.
– Walter, please.
Dylan was so abject, he reminded Walter of himself. It would have given him no pleasure to shut the door.
– All right, Paul. What is it?
For a moment, Paul struggled with the words, and then he said
– Forgive me.
Not quite hitting it.
– Fine. I forgive you, said Walter.
– No, no. You don’t understand. I mean, I finally realize I was wrong. I was misled. I thought you’d had an affair with Louise. But I was wrong. So I’m asking you: if it’s possible, please forgive me.
Walter’s first thought, on hearing these words, was that he could not imagine a more obscure charade. What did the man expect him to say? Paul knew very well he’d had an affair with his wife. That was why he’d attacked him in the first place. Was this all a prelude to further violence? He put a hand on Paul’s shoulder, to hold him off, and he said
– Paul, I did have an affair with Louise.
And Paul Dylan, who had been unable to look up at Walter, looked up.
How few moments of deep feeling there are in life, yet here he experienced another, a moment almost as devastating as the one following his attempt on Louise’s life. In an effort to spare him pain by making it seem as if he’d deserved a beating, Walter Barnes was lying. Paul now felt the full measure of his own unworthiness.
Falling to his knees on the doorstep, he managed to say
– Forgive me, Walter. Please forgive me
and a lifetime’s anguish came out with every word.
Walter was moved. No, this was not a charade. Yes, Paul was asking for forgiveness. He helped the man up and said
– I forgive you
surprised at how sincere his words sounded.
Yet, as he said them, he began to resent having had to say them at all. This was a new invasion, a forced intimacy, more insidious than a physical encounter. What business of his was it that Dylan wanted forgiveness? How was it his duty to comfort the man? Were there no bounds to Dylan’s selfishness? Walter felt as if his humanity, his fellow feeling had been drawn from him to serve another, and the more he thought about it the more disgusted he was by his own submission.
He took his hand from Paul’s shoulder.
– I’ve got work to do, he said
and closed the door, leaving Paul to his own conscience.
Walter’s morning was slightly ruined. He blamed himself for having opened the door in the first place, for having listened, for having succumbed to a weakness in himself. He was pertu
rbed until, at noon, having spent hours doodling on his pieces of paper, he finally persuaded himself of his good fortune. He had given Paul Dylan what he wanted and now they were quits. There was no further business between them. In other words, Walter was aggrieved but liberated.
When you thought of it in this light, you could say things had gone in his favour.
Paul, on the other hand…
From the moment Walter said
– I forgive you
Paul felt and accepted forgiveness. He barely noticed Walter had closed his door to him. He had heard the words, and felt humbled. There was no victory, no exultation, only the conviction that he had been right to surrender to the spirit within him.
To Walter’s door, he said
– Thank you
and turned away from Walter’s house, grateful. He’d had a wife. He had behaved badly, but all that was in another country and, besides, the man he had been was dead.
{34}
INSPIRATION
Reinhart hadn’t had peace since his visit to the Gatineaus. At his first view of the land in the Gatineaus, something had ignited in him and he had scarcely been able to think of anything else, save during the relatively brief moments of respite brought on by exhaustion.
This was different from other bouts of inspiration he’d suffered. The paintings he’d done of Christ, for instance. Something in the image of Christ had made itself familiar to him, long before he’d begun to paint Edward on the cross. Something in the image had made itself at home, within him. There was no other way to put it. He had been daydreaming, one day, when it dawned on him that he had a relationship to Christ. No, not the kind of relationship that precedes belief, something a little more banal. It was as if, all his life, he had heard news of someone, had seen his image: a thousand voices, a thousand perspectives. And then, perhaps not surprisingly, voices and images had become solid in him, had taken form and shape. So, Christ, the unknown, was within. His paintings were a way to bring Him out. There was, as far as he could see, no theological significance to his work. He was resolutely atheist and, besides, he had, at times, felt something of the same thing for Elizabeth Taylor, say, or Audrey Hepburn: women about whom one heard others speak, whose images built up to something solid within. But neither of them was, for Reinhart, makeable. Christ was makeable. Christ was not exhaustible. He could imagine painting Christ as an ant, a dunghill, a dog, a cantaloupe, a river, a forest (green), a forest (razed). In fact, he could spend a life painting Christ without coming to the end of Christ. You could, if you wanted, call Christ (as he was within Reinhart) a symbol or a touchstone, but only for convenience. Christ was neither symbol nor touchstone: not symbol, because possessed of no fixed meaning in Reinhart’s psyche; not touchstone, because inconstant. Christ was a kind of mysterious fountain within him. Nor was Christ the only idea, in Reinhart, that could not be exhausted. There were a handful of things or ideas to which he found himself returning, sometimes to his own surprise. For instance, he had finished a still life with two dead rats and a porcelain bowl when he noticed he’d spent most of his time painting the water in the bowl, the blue of the porcelain, the folds of the tablecloth. He hadn’t managed to do the rats any kind of justice, but you couldn’t call the painting a failure, for all that, because there were some things that were roads to other things, and some things that were the things themselves. Meaning: what he wanted from his own work was an avenue to further work. A successful canvas, for Reinhart, either solved a problem or provoked one. It wasn’t a matter of doing something perfectly (or even, at times, well), because he did not begin with an ideal version of the work.