As the Current Pulls the Fallen Under

by Daryl Sneath

  ‘So. Now that that’s cleared up. What else did the book confirm, as you say?’

  ‘That you are just like her.’

  ‘Just like her.’

  ‘You wanted someone to find out who you were, however unconsciously. It just so happened to be me.’

  He folded his arms, leaned back, and sighed. I could see him thinking.

  He leaned forward again. ‘Presumption, like presentiment, is that long shadow on the lawn.’

  He mimed hitting a chess timer. I spoke the next line and did the same.

  ‘Indicative that suns go down.’

  ‘The notice to the startled grass.’

  ‘That darkness is about to pass.’

  ‘And pass it does. Be certain of that. But a ghost casts no shadow.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t follow.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Listen. The poem means that a shadow is a hint of the darkness to come, but you can’t know what the darkness is—despite feeling like you do, despite seeing the shadow—until you’re in it. What I add—that not everything, like a ghost, casts a shadow—means there are some things that come without warning—and that warning is essential to the understanding—and so it’s impossible to know, to understand certain things, even when you’re in them.’

  CLIPPINGS (22)

  (a selection of jacket blurbs taken from the back cover of Spectre)

  ‘A masterful memoirist.’ (The New York Times)

  ‘Knotold makes the reader question the notion of truth at every turn. In the end we’re left wondering if the whole world is cloaked in deception.’ (O)

  ‘Knotold is a magician of the highest order: think Houdini, think Hemingway, think Jesus.’

  (globeandmail.com/books)

  ‘Part true fairytale, part bionarrative, part existential ­cartography, Spectre is pure spirit.’ (Quill & Quire)

  ~

  The four appraisals that adorn the jacket of the Canadian edition of KK’s memoir demonstrate a thoughtful merger of the popular and the erudite. Cleverly strategical marketing is tantamount in today’s publishing world. The way the jacket designer dresses the front and back covers determines the return—as much (more in some cases) as what is written between them—on the publisher’s investment in a book. Businesswise it is essential for people to want to read a book or to be seen reading a book. Economically speaking it doesn’t matter if they actually read it or not. The number of people who read a book does not determine whether it is a bestseller. How often are books bought only to sit, their spines uncracked, carefully arranged on shelves and coffee tables and desks? The displays that say, Here—see these books?—they represent who I truly am. They are my intellect, my politics, my philosophy. My sense of culture, of humour, of history. They represent for me what it means to be a breathing, thinking human part of this world.

  (A snapshot of the names on my desk on any given week while I was working on this keystone project: Richler. Roth. Sartre. Hitchens. Doyle. DFW. Eggers. The OED. Wheelock’s Latin. Ondaatje. Gaston. Leonard (surname and given). Harvey. McCarthy. MacLeod. McEwan. McCann. Banville. Strunk & White. Winter. Trudeau Sr. Yeats. And Knotold.)

  I don’t know exactly how many copies have been sold worldwide (it’s not the kind of book to advertise copies sold on the front cover) but I know Tutor Karl has done very well with Spectre. It was shortlisted for the Giller, the GG, the Man Booker, controversially taken out of the running for the Charles Taylor prize, and won the International James Frey Memoir Award. It has been translated into thirteen languages and was on the Globe & Mail’s Bestseller list for forty weeks. Sarah Polly has optioned the book for film and asked the author himself to help with the script. In short, Spectre has made Tutor Karl a bit of a rockstar educator and I’m sure Quest is quite pleased to have him on their roster. Everyone—even the strictest STEM students—wants to take his Bionarrative block so that they may learn, as the end of the course description claims, the science behind the art of lying to tell the truth.

  SPECTRE3

  by Karl Knotold

  My name is Karl Knotold and I’m a recovering conjurer.

  I’ve been clean for two years.

  This is the spirit of my story.

  . . .

  The thing about my particular addiction is that it’s fairly innocuous, as addictions go. I’m in no danger of dying prematurely because of it and it’s not harmful to others. It affects them, sure, but it doesn’t harm them. Not physically. At any rate, I was clinically addicted. That’s the point. The cerebral, social, and emotional distress I felt was real. I needed help. Which is where my decorously debauched angel—Zelda—comes in, with her irreparably tattered, beautiful wings.

  Before I met Zelda I was a soul sapper. A street junkie. Everywhere I went I tapped into people’s souls and made them appear. Surreptitiously. Overtly. With or without consent. It didn’t matter. I got off on fucking with people’s spirits. Like all addicts I couldn’t get enough. I conjured everywhere I went. In the grocery story, the gym, the library, on the street. Once in class when the prof was coming to the apex of her lecture I tapped my desk with a pencil, muttered an abracadabra, and bam, her spirit was floating right there beside her. She lost it (who wouldn’t?) and I laughed. In the beginning others laughed with me. The thing is I didn’t know when to stop. I couldn’t. It got to the point where it was impossible for me to look at people without making their spirits rise. (Man of God that I am. Hah.) Then it got so the individual wasn’t enough. I’d conjure en masse. Underground when the subway train came rolling in I’d trill both sets of fingers at a particular car and bring out everyone’s inner ghosts, muttering to myself, ‘Who you gonna call?’

  The better I got the lonelier I got, which goes without saying. I was a freak. The tallest man in the world. The bearded lady. The wolf man. Tom Thumb. Frankenstein’s monster. I frightened people. It got so everyone knew who I was. They crossed the street when they saw me coming. When I stepped onto streetcars or subway trains everyone scattered. Like startled birds in a field. I found myself alone. I was forced to conjure the spirits of feral cats and birds in trees. I was a vampire sucking on the blood of rats.

  And so I sought refuge in the underworld. I went places where people wouldn’t know me. Dark places. Places inhabited by other addicts. People who wouldn’t know I was conjuring their spirits because they were too consumed with their own compulsions. The drugged. The drunk. The digitally addicted. I stalked afterhours bars, backstreets, alleyways, tunnels, stripclubs, sexclubs, drugclubs. You name it. I went where the downtrodden went. Where total debauchery was the sought-after norm. And the spirits I conjured there were so intense there was no way I could return to the mainstream even if that sort of return were possible.

  Soon I was spending all my time in a place called The Sun Never Rises. You had to be a special kind of completely devoted addict even to find it. Off the map. Sub subterranean. Sub subcultural. Sub subversive. Sub sublime. Beneath everything. Beneath hell itself. Alcohol that blinds. Drugs that alter God. Digital devices that are irrevocably hardwired to the brain. Absolutely inescapable. Unless you’re saved by the grace of something you no longer or never-in-the-first-place believed in and you wake up one middle-of-the-night-morning in an in-the-country-quiet rehabilitative hospital to find yourself being tended to by what must be angels of a kind and you want to thank the soul who brought you here but at the same time you want to throttle him and yell, What fucking right did you have to pull me from the hellbent spiral I was in? I was nearly there. Holding on only to let go.

  The first few months you spend in this too-bright second chance would-be should-be terra firma haven you do little more than scream, flail, shake, shiver, twitch, and sweat. You mutter unintelligible wishes for the end of pain to come, converse with the incorporeal, jerk fistfuls of hair from your skull, knuckle the bedsheets while rocking on the edge, draw bloodless bony f
ingers down the claylike feeling of your face, and pace around in slippered feet and a pukegreen asscrack-displaying openbacked gown by a window filled with sun and trees and birds and all the unrealistic traits of a dreamt-about earthly paradise. You exist only in the surreality of a body you feel every nerve of and a brain you can’t control. Hell is more welcome than heaven. Hell would be heaven. Which is nearly the same state as the downward spiral you were in that put you here to begin with save the presence of an ungodly (or godly) pain.

  Then one day you wake up and you’re you again. A version at least, remembered from another life, and you don’t feel great about it but you don’t feel bad either. You feel okay. You feel almost thankful which is a feeling you can’t name because it’s been so long since you felt it. Emotional amnesia. All the good things will take relearning which means mistakes again will be made. But at least you’re in your own skin and you know it and all your senses seem recalibrated, however frayed at the edges. What you see is real and you need no convincing. The taste and smell of your first sober sip of coffee is un-fucking-believable. This is what you say: ‘Jesus. This is just coffee? It’s un-fucking-believable.’ Otherworldly. Almost too good. A faint and distant echo of what put you here in the first place. But you don’t think about it. You take everything in like you’ve been born again.

  One day you’re drawn to the common room by the purity of a sound you discover is a piano and the sight of the angel ­sitting at it and the music she plays nearly convert you but then you’re brain kicks in and you feel the familiar feeling of your old self’s well developed cynicism trickle in. You grin, but guardedly, because the music is heavenly. She is heavenly. There’s no other word. And you know you must be fine, you must be okay now, when you realize you’re actually contemplating adjectival appropriateness and not the deathly release from the mind-shearing pain of something you cannot name.

  In a week you’ve all but forgotten why you’re walking around all day in slippers and a front-opening robe (a sure sign of progress) in a place called Whispering Pines and a sense of the immortal sneaks in. You convince yourself you’re in control. Cruising down the oceanside highway of Fully Recovered. An index finger gracing the bottom of the wheel. Straight and clear. Nothing to worry about. A button away from autopilot. Sit back, relax, and breathe in that clean ocean air. Enjoy the ride, Karl. Enjoy the ride.

  Here’s me talking into the mirror a week plus a day after I woke up as a version of myself again: ‘Hey, don’t worry yourself. Don’t fret, Lady Brett. Don’t panic, Yanic. You’re fine. I’m fine. We’re fine. We know what I’m doing. We do. I do. Seriously. Come on. Do you really think I’d jeopardize our recovery? Of course not. No way. Too much work. Too much heartbreaking neckbreaking painstaking work. Too much pain. I remember the pain. Don’t worry. It would kill you—a Hemingway sort of kill you—if you had to do it again. I know that. So no. I’m not going to fuck it up. I promise. Okay? Are we okay? Good. There. So you see. Exactly. Anyway, what could one little spirit do? An icebreaker. One tiny little spirit. Something I know. Something to put a shot of umph into the old chutzpah. Listen, I’ll ask her if she’s interested and if she says no I won’t push it. One time and one time only. I promise. If a man can’t trust himself who can he trust? Am I right? Am I right?’

  So one afternoon I pulled up a chair beside her as she played and I sat there like I was the teacher and listened, elbows on my knees, face in my hands. She was playing Moonlight Sonata.

  ‘Not bad for a deaf guy. You can really sense the lunar illumination he was going for.’

  She didn’t smile. She didn’t look up. She didn’t respond at all. Instead she leaned over the keys, eyes closed, and held the twohanded final chord until it had been drained of all sound, all reverberation.

  ‘Listen, this might not be the place to say it—or it might be the place—but I have to tell you. I’ve been listening to you play for a week now and, Jesus, I think I’m addicted.’

  Ten full seconds after there was no sound coming from the belly of the baby grand she sat up, opened her eyes, and withdrew her hands from the keys. It was ten full seconds. I counted.

  At first she didn’t look at me when she spoke. ‘I can feel his spirit when I play.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘I can feel his hands on me.’

  She bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes. Ran her hands over her arms and shoulders, her neck and face, her breasts, her torso, all the way down to her hips. She made a little moaning sound and opened her eyes.

  ‘Can you feel him?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Sure. I mean, well, not like you can.’

  She giggled. ‘I meant, can you feel his spirit?’

  ‘Oh, right, his spirit. Yeah, I mean, the way you play how could I not?’

  ‘You’re sweet.’

  I gained a little confidence. ‘Tell me you’re not in here for theobromine addiction.’

  Her eyes darted around and she put a finger to her lips. ‘Shh. You’re not supposed to say the word.’

  ‘What word?’

  Averting her eyes she leaned toward me and whispered. ‘Addiction.’

  I shrugged. ‘Why not? It’s not the word that’s the problem.’

  ‘It’s like saying Macbeth.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘It’s a curse.’

  I scanned the room. ‘If anyone could handle a curse it’d be the people in here.’

  ‘Hah. What do you know about curses?’

  There was no sarcasm or accusation in her voice. She spoke with genuine interest. A natural, sober curiosity.

  ‘I know I have one.’

  ‘You can’t mean that literally.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’re serious.’

  ‘There’s a hex on me. A blight. A good old-fashioned godgiven curse.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘Anything can be true. If you believe it.’

  She folded her arms. ‘Show me.’

  I checked over both shoulders and leaned towards her. ‘You don’t want me to say the word but you want me to do the thing that put me here.’

  She bit her bottom lip and nodded. ‘Would you?’

  I felt my heart go.

  She took my hands and whispered. ‘We can’t do it here. Come on. I know a place.’

  We stood and left the common room together. We walked slowly, but not too slowly, and did our best not to draw attention to our exit.

  ‘I didn’t get your name.’

  We spoke without looking at each other.

  ‘Zelda.’

  ‘Zelda.’ I nodded. ‘I’m Karl.’

  We were sitting across from each other in the dark. It was quiet. The risk of getting caught heightened the experience. Which wasn’t good. It wasn’t good. I take that back. It was good. It was Platonic Form good.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘That was amazing.’

  ‘You liked it?’

  ‘I don’t know if I liked it. Like is the wrong word.’

  ‘I know. The right word is hard to find. It always is.’

  ‘I mean, how could anyone like the spirit being pulled from her?’

  ‘I know. I told you.’

  ‘That was really me? I mean, my actual spirit? Hovering there?’

  ‘The genuine artefact.’

  ‘I’m shaken. I feel, I feel—’

  ‘Spent.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Spent. It feels like we just—’

  ‘I know. It feels like that for me, too.’

  She sighed and smiled and pulled her platinum blonde hair (a single pink streak down the middle) into a ponytail. She looked over her shoulder at the door and my eyes had adjusted enough to notice the Asian tattoo on her neck. Something like power or control, she told me, when
I asked what it meant.

  I said, ‘Fitting.’

  She said, ‘So I’ve been told.’

  I looked around. ‘What is this place anyway?’

  We were in the basement in a room she somehow had a key for.

  ‘A shooting range.’

  ‘A shooting range.’

  She nodded and pointed behind me. In the darkness I could just make out the partitioned shooting stations and corridors beyond them.

  ‘Why would a place like this have a shooting range?’

  ‘Experimental therapy.’

  ‘They never experimented with me.’

  ‘They use it for agoraphobics and whatnot. The meek. It’s supposed to build confidence.’

  ‘How do you know so much about it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just know.’

  ‘I bet it’s a wicked release.’

  She nodded like she knew from experience. ‘It is. That’s why they don’t let cases like us down here.’

  I crossed my arms. ‘Do I want to know how you got a key?’

  She shook her head.

  I checked the door. ‘When do they use it?’

  ‘Sundays and Thursdays.’

  ‘What day is it today?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘So we’re okay.’

  ‘We’re okay.’

  I checked the door again. ‘Listen. When we get out of here—’

  She put a finger to my lips and closed her eyes.

  ‘Hear that?’

  I didn’t hear anything.

  She stood and started to sway her hips, touched herself as she moved, turned to the inaudible music in her head. She peeled her shirt like a pro and her jeans came off it seemed with the snap of her fingers. A magician in her own right. She danced in front of me. She sat in my lap and moved against me, took me by the wrists, placed my hands on her breasts. She smelled of mango and when I bit the tattoo on her neck she bit her own bottom lip and let out a little moan. She reached into my robe. I stood and turned her against the wall and we stifled each other as we fucked in the darkness. When she whispered she was close I conjured her spirit again and the spectral face, almost like a parody, was openmouthed like the one it copied. The moment she noticed the spirit beside her she shuddered and then fell away from me like a kite with no wind.