Man Descending

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  But he couldn’t. He ran away instead.

  The house is still. He hears her footsteps, knows that she is watching him from the doorway. As always, she is judging him, calculating her words and responses, planning. Her plots deny him even the illusion of freedom. He decides he will not turn to look at her. But perhaps she knows this will be his reaction? Petulant, childish.

  “I want to be left in peace.” He surprises himself. This giving voice to thought without weighing the consequences is dangerous.

  But she doesn’t catch it. “What?”

  “I don’t chew my words twice,” he says.

  She comes to the side of the chesterfield. “Feeling better now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Truth?”

  He nods.

  “Now mind, you got to be sure. I’m going down to the store. You need the bathroom?”

  “No.”

  “All right then. I’ll just be a few minutes. That’s all. You’ll be okay?”

  He is trying to think. All this talk, these interruptions, annoy him. He burns with impatience. “Fine. That’s fine. Good.” Suddenly, he feels happy. He can steal a little peace. He’ll do it.

  “I must be careful,” he tells himself aloud. How do these things slip out?

  But Mrs. Hax doesn’t understand. “With your blood pressure, I should say so.”

  His luck, his good fortune, make him feel strong and cunning. Following her to the front door, he almost pities this fat woman. He watches her start down the street. It is lined with old and substantial homes, most of them painted modestly white, and their yards flourish tall, rough-barked elms. On this street, Mrs. Hax, in her fluorescent orange rain slicker, appears ridiculous and inappropriate. Like a bird of paradise in an English garden. He waits until he loses sight of her at the first turning of the street.

  He hurries to his business. His hands fumble with the chain on the front door; at last it is fastened. His excitement leaves him breathless, but he shuffles to the back door and draws the bolt. Safe. Mrs. Hax is banished, exiled.

  At first he thinks the noise is caused by the blood pulsing in his temples. But it fades to an insistent, whispering rush. Dieter goes to the window to look out. The rain is falling in a gleaming, thick curtain that obscures the outlines of the nearest house; striking the roadway, it throws up fine silvery plumes of spray. He decides to wait for Mrs. Hax at the front door. He stands there and smells the coco matting, the dust and rubber boots. Somehow, he has forgotten they smell this way, a scent that can be peculiarly comforting when you are dry and warm, with a cold rain slashing against the windows.

  And here is Mrs. Hax trotting stiff-legged up the street with a shredding brown-paper bag huddled to her body. She flees up the walk, past the beaten and dripping caraganas, and around back to the kitchen door. He hears her bumping and rattling it.

  Here she comes again, scurrying along, head bent purposefully, rain glancing off her plastic cap. But as she begins to climb the front steps he withdraws and hides himself in the coat closet. Her key rasps in the chamber, the spring lock snaps free. The door opens several inches but then meets the resistance of the chain, and sticks. She grumbles and curses; some fat, disembodied fingers curl through the gap and pluck at the chain. For a moment he is tempted to slam the door shut on those fingers, but he resists the impulse. The fingers are replaced by a slice of face, an eye and a mouth.

  “Mr. Bethge! Mr. Bethge! Open up!”

  Bethge stumbles out of the closet and lays his face along the door jamb, eye to eye with Mrs. Hax. They stare at each other. At last she breaks the spell.

  “Well, open this door,” she says irritably. “I feel like a drowned cat.”

  “Go away. You’re not wanted here.”

  “What!”

  “Go away.”

  Her one eye winks suspiciously. “You do know who I am? This is Mrs. Hax, your housekeeper. Open up.”

  “I know who you are. I don’t want any part of you. So go away.”

  She shows him the soggy paper bag. “I brought you a Jersey Milk.”

  “Pass it through.”

  Her one eye opens wide in blue disbelief. “You open this door.”

  “No.”

  “It’s the cigarettes, I suppose? All right, I give up. You can have your damn cigarettes.”

  “Go away.”

  “I’m losing my patience,” she says, lowering her voice; “now open this door, you senile old fart.”

  “Old fart yourself. Old fat fart.”

  “You wait until I get in there. There’ll be hell to pay.”

  He realizes his legs are tired from standing. There is a nagging pain in the small of his back. “I’ve got to go now,” he says. “Goodbye,” and he closes the door in her face.

  He is suddenly very light-headed and tired, but nevertheless exultant. He decides he will have a nap. But the woman has begun to hammer at the door.

  “Stop it,” he shouts. He makes his way to his bedroom on unsteady legs; in fact, one is trailing and he must support himself by leaning against the wall. What is this?

  The bedroom lies in half-light, but he can see the red rubber sheet. It must go. He tugs at it and it resists him like some living thing, like a limpet clinging to a rock. His leg crumples, his mouth falls open in surprise as he falls. He lands loosely like a bundle of sticks, his legs and arms splayed wide, but feels nothing but a prickling sensation in his bladder. No pain, nothing. There are shadows everywhere in the room, they seem to float, and hover, and quiver. He realizes the front of his pants is wet. He tries to get up, but the strength ebbs out of his limbs and is replaced by a sensation of dizzying heaviness. He decides he will rest a minute and then get up.

  But he doesn’t. He sleeps.

  Mrs. Hax waited under the eaves for the rain to abate. It fell for an hour with sodden fury, and then began to slacken into a dispirited drizzle. When it did, she picked her way carefully through the puddles in the garden to where the hoe lay. With it, she broke a basement window and methodically trimmed the glass out of the frame. Then she settled herself onto her haunches and, gasping, wriggled into the opening. She closed her eyes, committed her injuries in advance to Bethge’s head, and then let herself drop. She landed on one leg, which buckled, and sent her headlong against the gas furnace, which set every heat vent and duct in the building vibrating with a deep, atonal ringing. Uninjured, she picked herself up from the floor. Her dignity bruised, her authority wounded, she began to edge her way through the basement clutter toward the stairs.

  Dieter Bethge woke with a start. Some noise had broken into his dream. It had been a good and happy dream. The dancing bear had been performing for him under no compulsion, a gift freely given. It had been a perfect, graceful dance, performed without a hint of the foppishness or studied concentration that mars the dance of humans. As the bear had danced he had seemed to grow, as if fed by the pure, clear notes of the music. He had grown larger and larger, but Dieter had watched this with a feeling of great peace rather than alarm.

  The sun glinted on his cinnamon fur and burnished his coat with red, winking light. And when the music stopped, the bear had opened his arms very wide in a gesture of friendship and welcome. His mouth had opened as if he were about to speak. And that was exactly what Dieter had expected all along. That the bear would confide in him the truth, and prove that under the shagginess that belied it, there was something that only Dieter had recognized.

  But then something had broken the spell of the dream.

  He was confused. Where was he? His hand reached out and touched something smooth and hard and resisting. He gave a startled grunt. This was wrong. His mind slipped backward and forward, easily and smoothly, from dream to the sharp, troubling present.

  He tried to get up. He rose, trembling, swayed, felt the floor shift, and fell, striking his head on a chest of drawers. His mouth filled with something warm and salty. He could hear something moving in the house, and then the sound was lost in the tumult of th
e blood singing in his veins. His pulse beat dimly in his eyelids, his ears, his neck and fingertips.

  He managed to struggle to his feet and beat his way into the roar of the shadows which slipped by like surf, and out into the hallway.

  And then he saw a form in the muted light, patiently waiting. It was the bear.

  “Bear?” he asked, shuffling forward, trailing his leg.

  The bear said something he did not understand. He was waiting.

  Dieter lifted his arms for the expected embrace, the embrace that would fold him into the fragrant, brilliant fur; but, curiously, one arm would not rise. It dangled limply like a rag. Dieter felt something strike the side of his face – a numbing blow. His left eyelid fell like a shutter. He tried to speak but his tongue felt swollen and could only batter noiselessly against his teeth. He felt himself fall but the bear reached out and caught him in the warm embrace he desired above all.

  And so, Dieter Bethge, dead of a stroke, fell gently, gently, like a leaf, into the waiting arms of Mrs. Hax.

  Man Descending

  IT IS six-thirty; my wife returns home from work. I am shaving when I hear her key scratching at the lock. I keep the door of our apartment locked at all times. The building has been burgled twice since we moved in and I don’t like surprises. My caution annoys my wife; she sees it as proof of a reluctance to approach life with the open-armed camaraderie she expected in a spouse. I can tell that this bit of faithlessness on my part has made her unhappy. Her heels click down our uncarpeted hallway with a lively resonance. So I lock the door of the bathroom to forestall her.

  I do this because the state of the bathroom (and my state) will only make her unhappier. I note that my dead cigarette butt has left a liverish stain of nicotine on the edge of the sink and that it has deposited droppings of ash in the basin. The glass of Scotch standing on the toilet tank is not empty. I have been oiling myself all afternoon in expectation of the New Year’s party that I would rather not attend. Since Scotch is regarded as a fine social lubricant, I have attempted, to the best of my ability, to get lubricated. Somehow I feel it hasn’t worked.

  My wife is rattling the door now. “Ed, are you in there?”

  “None other,” I reply, furiously slicing great swaths in the lather on my cheeks.

  “Goddamn it, Ed,” Victoria says angrily. “I asked you. I asked you please to be done in there before I get home. I have to get ready for the party. I told Helen we’d be there by eight.”

  “I didn’t realize it was so late,” I explain lamely. I can imagine the stance she has assumed on the other side of the door. My wife is a social worker and has to deal with people like me every day. Irresponsible people. By now she has crossed her arms across her breasts and inclined her head with its shining helmet of dark hair ever so slightly to one side. Her mouth has puckered like a drawstring purse, and she has planted her legs defiantly and solidly apart, signifying that she will not be moved.

  “Ed, how long are you going to be in there?”

  I know that tone of voice. Words can never mask its meaning. It is always interrogative, and it always implies that my grievous faults of character could be remedied. So why don’t I make the effort?

  “Five minutes,” I call cheerfully.

  Victoria goes away. Her heels are brisk on the hardwood.

  My thoughts turn to the party and then naturally to civil servants, since almost all of Victoria’s friends are people with whom she works. Civil servants inevitably lead me to think of mandarins, and then Asiatics in general. I settle on Mongols and begin to carefully carve the lather off my face, intent on leaving myself with a shaving-cream Fu Manchu. I do quite a handsome job. I slit my eyes.

  “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” I whisper. “Who’s the fiercest of them all?”

  From the back of my throat I produce a sepulchral tone of reply. “You Genghis Ed, Terror of the World! You who raise cenotaphs of skulls! You who banquet off the backs of your enemies!” I imagine myself sweeping out of Central Asia on a shaggy pony, hard-bitten from years in the saddle, turning almond eyes to fabulous cities that lie pliant under my pitiless gaze.

  Victoria is back at the bathroom door. “Ed!”

  “Yes, dear?” I answer meekly.

  “Ed, explain something to me,” she demands.

  “Anything, lollipop,” I reply. This assures her that I have been alerted to danger. It is now a fair fight and she does not have to labour under the feeling that she has sprung upon her quarry from ambush.

  “Don’t get sarcastic. It’s not called for.”

  I drain my glass of Scotch, rinse it under the tap, and stick a toothbrush in it, rendering it innocuous. The butt is flicked into the toilet, and the nicotine stain scrubbed out with my thumb. “I apologize,” I say, hunting madly in the medicine cabinet for mouthwash to disguise my alcoholic breath.

  “Ed, you have nothing to do all day. Absolutely nothing. Why couldn’t you be done in there before I got home?”

  I rinse my mouth. Then I spot my full, white Fu Manchu and begin scraping. “Well, dear, it’s like this,” I say. “You know how I sweat. And I do get nervous about these little affairs. So I cut the time a little fine. I admit that. But one doesn’t want to appear at these affairs too damp. I like to think that my deodorant’s power is peaking at my entrance. I’m sure you see -”

  “Shut up and get out of there,” Victoria says tiredly.

  A last cursory inspection of the bathroom and I spring open the door and present my wife with my best I’m-a-harmless-idiot-don’t-hit-me smile. Since I’ve been unemployed I practise my smiles in the mirror whenever time hangs heavy on my hands. I have one for every occasion. This particular one is a faithful reproduction, Art imitating Life. The other day, while out taking a walk, I saw a large black Labrador taking a crap on somebody’s doorstep. We established instant rapport. He grinned hugely at me while his body trembled with exertion. His smile was a perfect blend of physical relief, mischievousness, and apology for his indiscretion. A perfectly suitable smile for my present situation.

  “Squeaky, pretty-pink clean,” I announce to my wife.

  “Being married to an adolescent is a bore,” Victoria says, pushing past me into the bathroom. “Make me a drink. I need it.”

  I hurry to comply and return in time to see my wife lowering her delightful bottom into a tub of scalding hot, soapy water and ascending wreaths of steam. She lies back and her breasts flatten; she toys with the tap with delicate ivory toes.

  “Christ,” she murmurs, stunned by the heat.

  I sit down on the toilet seat and fondle my drink, rotating the transparent cylinder and its amber contents in my hand. Then I abruptly hand Victoria her glass and as an opening gambit ask, “How’s Howard?”

  My wife does not flinch, but only sighs luxuriantly, steeping herself in the rich heat. I interpret this as hardness of heart. I read in her face the lineaments of a practised and practising adulteress. For some time now I’ve suspected that Howard, a grave and unctuously dignified psychologist who works for the provincial Department of Social Services, is her lover. My wife has taken to working late and several times when I have phoned her office, disguising my voice and playing the irate beneficiary of the government’s largesse, Howard has answered. When we meet socially, Howard treats me with the barely concealed contempt that is due an unsuspecting cuckold.

  “Howard? Oh, he’s fine,” Victoria answers blandly, sipping at her drink. Her body seems to elongate under the water, and for a moment I feel justified in describing her as statuesque.

  “I like Howard,” I say. “We should have him over for dinner some evening.”

  My wife laughs. “Howard doesn’t like you,” she says.

  “Oh?” I feign surprise. “Why?”

  “You know why. Because you’re always pestering him to diagnose you. He’s not stupid, you know. He knows you’re laughing up your sleeve at him. You’re transparent, Ed. When you don’t like someone you belittle their work. I’ve seen
you do it a thousand times.”

  “I refuse,” I say, “to respond to innuendo.”

  This conversation troubles my wife. She begins to splash around in the tub. She cannot go too far in her defence of Howard.

  “He’s not a bad sort,” she says. “A little stuffy, I grant you, but sometimes stuffiness is preferable to complete irresponsibility. You, on the other hand, seem to have the greatest contempt for anyone whose behaviour even remotely approaches sanity.”

  I know my wife is now angling the conversation toward the question of employment. There are two avenues open for examination. She may concentrate on the past, studded as it is with a series of unmitigated disasters, or on the future. On the whole I feel the past is safer ground, at least from my point of view. She knows that I lied about why I was fired from my last job, and six months later still hasn’t got the truth out of me.

  Actually, I was shown the door because of “habitual unco-operativeness.” I was employed in an adult extension program. For the life of me I couldn’t master the terminology, and this created a rather unfavourable impression. All that talk about “terminal learners,” “life skills,” etc., completely unnerved me. Whenever I was sure I understood what a word meant, someone decided it had become charged with nasty connotations and invented a new “value-free term.” The place was a goddamn madhouse and I acted accordingly.

  I have to admit, though, that there was one thing I liked about the job. That was answering the phone whenever the office was deserted, which it frequently was since everyone was always running out into the community “identifying needs.” I greeted every caller with a breezy “College of Knowledge, Mr. Know-It-All here!” Rather juvenile, I admit, but very satisfying. And I was rather sorry I got the boot before I got to meet a real, live, flesh-and-blood terminal learner. Evidently there were thousands of them out in the community and they were a bad thing. At one meeting in which we were trying to decide what should be done about them, I suggested, using a bit of Pentagon jargon I had picked up on the late-night news, that if we ever laid hands on any of them or their ilk, we should have them “terminated with extreme prejudice.”