The Case of Lena S.

by David Bergen

  Not long after Mason started reading to Mr. Ferry, Mr. Ferry tried to explain, with many gestures and much looping logic, how to make sense of things. These were the words he used and he said them carefully, as if what he were about to say had great import. He said that in fairy tales and legends a knight perceives a rare bird and he runs after it and almost catches it, may even hold it briefly in his hand, and then it flies off again and night falls and he finds himself lost, separated from his companions, unable to find his way. The knight, Mr. Ferry said, starts out with great hope and then must resign himself to failure.

  At this point, Mr. Ferry paused and touched his chin and then his head and he took a drink from his glass of water and he said that existence was an enormous risk. We can never know whether we have chosen the right path, simply because we cannot go back and try again. He said that both “double” and “doubt” spring from the same root, “duo.” So, consciousness itself, the act of seeing ourselves, was a form of doubt and – here Mr. Ferry was quite emphatic – “We have the potential to doubt ourselves to pieces.”

  “Imagine,” he said, “a man who is unhappy, standing before a mirror and not recognizing himself.”

  It had been early summer and one of the windows on the north side of the house was open and from the outside came the sounds of children calling and cars passing by and in the distance, up by the Misericordia perhaps, a siren started up and then stopped. Mason, whose interest in the psychology of free will was minimal, listened to Mr. Ferry because he was being paid and because it was often easier to listen than it was to read. Still, there were moments when he was aware of something fresh, as if it were a line from a poem, and he liked the sound of “doubting oneself to pieces.” Mr. Ferry said that a person could choose anything. And this was crux of the matter, because when we are aware that we can choose anything, we become frightened by the magnitude of the choice and we disguise it by going about our daily lives: eating toast for breakfast, driving to work every day, cleaning the dirt out from underneath our fingernails, watching TV, listening to music, reading to old men – anything to distract us from our fear.

  When Mr. Ferry said this he was smiling slightly and moving his cane in tiny circles across the floor. He turned to Mason and asked, “Does this sound right?”

  Mason wasn’t sure. And, because he wasn’t sure, he felt that he had failed in some way, and that this bungling somehow proved his own ignorance. But the moment passed and the hours passed and the months passed and nothing, at least not in a direct way, was said of these ideas again.

  Now, a year later, in the middle of summer, Mason went over to Mr. Ferry’s and told him that he wouldn’t be reading to him anymore. When Mr. Ferry asked him why, Mason said that he didn’t really have a reason, at least not something that he would be able to explain. They were standing, the two of them, in the centre of the room where Mason had spent many hours. Mr. Ferry seemed agitated. He asked Mason if he was okay. Did he need anything?

  Mason shook his head, and said, “No.” He hoped that Mr. Ferry would not ask questions about Lena, and he did not. Rather, in his abstracted way, Mr. Ferry said that Mason was young and that that was good, and he said that Mason should not lay blame, either on himself or on others. He apologized for sounding trite. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Perhaps I should tell you a story. One that begins well and pulls you along and ends beautifully. That kind of story.”

  Mason did not answer. He looked around the room, at the bookshelves and the tiny table and the two chairs. He was aware of Mr. Ferry’s head moving back and forth; he was bent forward slightly, near the shoulders, as if on the verge of stooping to retrieve something that he had dropped. Mason stepped backwards and said that he was fine, he really was, and that he had to go. Then he said, “Thank you, Mr. Ferry,” and he turned and he walked out of the house.

  In late August, before school started, Mason moved to his mother’s apartment. She and Aldous had cleaned out a small spare room and his mother came to pick him up when his father was at work and Danny was out.

  “Your father’s not happy about this,” Mrs. Crowe said.

  “It’s not because of him,” Mason said. “I just need to change something.”

  “I told him that but he takes it personally. I’ll talk to him.”

  Together, he and his mother carried several boxes and one suitcase out to the car. As they drove down Wellington Crescent to the condominium, neither of them spoke. The stereo was on and a woman sang in a low voice about the colour of her lover’s hair.

  That night for supper his mother made crepes with cream sauce and boiled asparagus and they ate by the open balcony doors. Aldous was on a business trip, so they were alone. A warm wind entered the room and lifted the corner of the tablecloth. At one point, Mrs. Crowe said, “Do you miss her?” and the question was said so easily that Mason wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly. And then, before he could answer, his mother said, “It’s okay to miss her.”

  Later, he went to unpack, laying his clothes out and placing his books on the shelf by the foot of the bed.

  During the night he woke and she was standing over him. She was part of the shadows though he saw the outline of her head and shoulders and he heard her breathing. She stood and looked down at him and held a hand near his face and then left the room. After she had gone he lay awake and listened for her, but he heard nothing.

  And then, one day, Mason met Mrs. Schellendal on the street. When they first saw each other they both looked away but the corner on which they stood had trapped them and so they made clumsy small talk until Mrs. Schellendal cried out, “We lost her.” She leaned into Mason and he thought that she looked very much like Lena. He had not noticed this before. They shared the same paleness, the downturn of the mouth, a softness at the jaw that made them seem frail but was, Mason knew, deceiving. He felt, briefly, a sharp sadness for the woman who stood before him, but this seemed forced, as if it were expected. He hunted for some words to offer her and said, awkwardly, “I have dreams about her.” Mrs. Schellendal looked at him with horror, sucked in two quick breaths, and said, “I don’t hold it against you.” Then she walked away and he did not see her again.

  And yes, he did dream of Lena. In one recurring dream she was playing a certain piece on the piano, over and over again, and then she turned and said something but he could not understand her. When he woke from these dreams it was with a vague sense of shame and defeat, though the shame, he thought, was not a bad thing. It made him more careful.

  In the fall, when school began again, he worked part-time at the local supermarket and in the evenings he went out to the neighbourhood park and watched the cyclists and the joggers and the dogs with their owners. The days grew shorter. Sometimes he sat on his mother’s balcony in the late afternoons and observed the scene twelve floors below. A taxi boat moving up the river. Two men standing on the bank and fishing, their voices occasionally rising to where Mason sat. Above him, the sky was clear and deep and blue and infinite. As the weather grew colder, the leaves turned colour. Geese and ducks flew in from the north and used the river as their runway. They gathered near the bend in the river and rested in the tall grass along the banks. For several weeks they made this their home. And then they were gone.