by André Alexis
or who discouraged from communing with the Lord.
Having listened to Reverend Crosbie, the atheist in John
Stephens got the better of him. After admitting he did not believe
in God, he suggested he was an atheist precisely because “God”
– as described by theists – was always mysterious or vague or
difficult to interpret. The whole notion of God was vague from
beginning to end, and this vagueness was a sign, at least to him,
that God was a human creation, that God was nothing more than
a sheet of gossamer placed over an abyss.
Stephens imagined Reverend Crosbie would be offended by
his words. But she was not.
– I’ve often felt the same way, she said.
– But you have your faith, said Stephens, and that keeps you
from needing anything real.
– My faith doesn’t always help me, said the reverend, but my
reason sometimes does. I think of us as creatures who are fated
to interpret. We question everything. I believe it’s our fundamental
nature to question. As such, how could our Lord be anything
but unknowable? If we were suddenly certain God existed, if we
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ceased to question God’s existence, God would cease to exist
for us. Do you see what I mean?
Stephens did not see what she meant. It was sophistry, as far
as he could tell. But he was amused. For this reason – such a
small thing! – he accompanied Kit and Reverend Crosbie to the
“sacred clearing,’ as the reverend called it, the following morning.
Each denomination or sect had its own procedure and its own
days of the week when they could go to the place of the Lord. All
agreed, though, that those who approached the clearing should
be clean – no makeup or cologne, watches or jewellery – and
should, as well, wear white robes, so none of the denominations
could distinguish its supplicants from the supplicants of other
sects. The practice of wearing standard white robes was a sad
necessity, as different sects sometimes responded violently to the
presence of members of rival religions. This passion, said Reverend
Crosbie, was to be expected from those who truly loved God. But
it was good to remember that faith, too, could lead you astray.
To support Kit, whom he agreed to accompany, Stephens washed
his clothes for the first time in months, showered for the first time
in weeks, and wore a white robe as if he, too, were a supplicant. As
well, Reverend Crosbie had him read an issue of The Lancet that
contained an article – “The pathophysiology of religious trance:
implications for clinical management” – that she felt would warn
him about the potential dangers of what he might experience.
It was early morning and, with the sound of Hindu chants
behind them, they walked into Feversham gorge along an immac-
ulately kept road made of carefully placed fragments of different-
coloured stones: black, white, red, green, blue. This road went on
for a quarter mile, after which there was only grass and a beaten
path. At the end of the road, almost half the supplicants stopped
and got down on their knees, praying, chanting, singing.
This is where Reverend Crosbie stopped and where Stephens
would have liked to stop as well. It was already wonderful to see
the road and hear the plaintive singing. But the place for those
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who sought communion was farther on. After having a thick
rope tied to his right ankle, Kit walked to the clearing, and
Stephens – also roped at the ankle – dutifully followed.
Around a curve in the beaten path, a row of willows stood like
a shivering wall. Beyond the willows was a clearing, an unremark-
able clearing, save for the bodies lying face down within it. At the
far end of the clearing: water of some sort, a pond maybe, some-
thing that reflected the sky. In front of that: a patch of what looked
like human hands – greyish, severed from bodies, some lying
palms up, some fingers down. Stephens was about to mention
how spooky the hands were when he realized that Kit was no
longer beside him. Kit was gone and there was only silence.
There was silence for a long time. Or so it seemed. He hadn’t
lost consciousness – or didn’t remember losing consciousness
– but after a while he was, somehow, sitting on a chair facing a
red wall. He felt someone touch the back of his head.
– You’re an atheist, a woman’s voice said.
– Yes, he answered.
He turned to look at her, but she would not let him.
– It’s better if you don’t see me, she said.
– Because I’m an atheist?
– No, no. Because you’re a man of a certain type. It wouldn’t
help you to see me. Isn’t the wall beautiful?
And it was beautiful, suggestive of scarlet tanagers and holly
berries.
– You’ve come to this place to help someone who can’t use
your help, she said. Your own soul is in as much pain as his.
Hearing these words, Stephens was suddenly angry.
– What do you know about it? he asked.
– You are in love and love is my domain. Ask me what you’ve
come to ask.
It was a surprise to him that he’d come to ask anything. He
was about to deny it when he felt in his soul how true it was.
From the moment Kit had told him about Feversham, he’d been
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nourishing a question: was there a way for the woman he loved –
the woman who’d once loved him – to love him again?
– There is a way, said the one behind him, but it would be a
violation of your beloved.
– How could love be a violation? Stephens asked.
– You know the answer to that already. You would be coercing
her to love. But if you’re willing to proceed and if you accept that
the violation of the one who’s left you would have to be met by a
drastic sacrifice on your part, then I will help you.
Without hesitation, he agreed. To be with Carson again, there
were no terms he would not accept, however brief the reunion,
whatever the consequences.
– The consequences, said the one behind him, are these: in
exchange for one day with your beloved, a day during which she
will love you as deeply as she ever did, you will lose the ability to
write poetry and you will take care of the path to this place –
four hours a day, for twenty-one years.
This was an unexpectedly vicious choice. He’d been writing
poetry since childhood. It was his one solace, his way of under-
standing the world or, failing that, himself. It was asking him to
give up not just his identity but an aspect of his being. It would
have been kinder to offer him death. At least, so he felt at that
moment. And he was offended.
– But this is just a transaction, he said. How is any of this
divine?
– I understand, said the one behind him, but you have come
for a transaction. You are willing to have a woman coerced into
loving you. You won’t give up anything in return?
– I choose poetry then, he said
. The price of this love is too high.
And with that, he came out of a trance that had lasted three
days.
The ramifications of this moment were difficult for John
Stephens to describe, to explain. Its tendrils made their way into
every aspect of his life.
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Why had he come out of his trance?
Methodist supplicants who are unresponsive for three days
are taken from the clearing or pulled from it by the rope attached
to their right legs, if there’s no one who dares to go into the
clearing to get them. (Some people are, after all, wary of visions.)
Other sects allowed supplicants to remain in the clearing longer
– up to seven days – on the understanding that communion
with God ought not to be interrupted unless it became a clear
danger to the supplicant. Having come with the Methodists, John
Stephens was pulled out after three days. Kit Ross, who’d gone
with him, never lost consciousness and did not commune with
God, though he was a believer and Stephens was not. In fact, Kit
had walked out of the clearing on his own steam on the first day,
as soon as it had gotten dark, after praying for hours.
Did John Stephens now accept that there is a God?
No, not at all. He believed even less than he had before. The
being he’d spoken with had not been godlike at all. If he believed
anything, it was that he’d been drugged. Not by Reverend Crosbie.
That was inconceivable. Besides, he’d fasted before entering the
field. But something had put him under, and his hallucination
had been as vivid as if he’d done good blotter acid. What he’d
communed with, as far as he was concerned, was himself. He
had searched in his own soul and discovered both his desire and
its resolution.
So, he wasn’t affected by what he’d gone through?
No, that wasn’t true. On coming to consciousness, Stephens
had felt as if the burden of love had been taken from him. He no
longer yearned for Carson Michaels. Knowing that, back against
the wall, he could choose poetry over love, it seemed hollow to
go on mourning the one he’d lost. He still longed for Carson, but
the pain her memory brought dissipated. It was bearable. Unlike
poor Kit – who remained in Feversham for weeks, waiting for a
communion that never came – John Stephens’s question, a ques-
tion he hadn’t known he harboured, had been answered at once.
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So, fortune was with him?
Yes. Beginning with this encounter in Feversham, Stephens’s
life seemed to find its brightest way. He moved to a small town
called Barrow, found part-time work, and – for ten years, under
the name John Skennen – wrote all of the poems for which he
would be known. It was also in Barrow that he fell in love again.
He married Judith’s mother and, at his daughter’s birth, stayed
home to mind their child.
– But then why did you stop writing poetry? Judith asked.
– Poetry stopped writing me, said John Stephens.
The moment that had saved him, the moment that sent him
on to Barrow, was also the moment he was chased from paradise.
Aside from being a man born to write poetry, he had always been
one in need of grandeur. Some poets, like Eliot or Pound, took
enormous pride in belonging to a noble tradition. Take the glori-
ous past away from Eliot and you’d have poems too dry to read.
The same if you took God from Blake, Nature from Wordsworth,
or Death from Emily Dickinson. Every poet has a fount from
which their work springs. And his, like Arnaut Daniel’s, had
been Love. The belief in Love’s omnipotence and grandeur was
what had fed his writing, even when he wasn’t writing about love.
Yet, in that moment at the core of himself, he had chosen
Art, not Love. He had chosen poetry, as if it were enough in and
of itself. And from the moment he’d chosen, his soul had begun
a bricking up, cutting his work off from its source. Choosing
poetry over love began the slow death of poetry within him.
– But, Daddy, that doesn’t make sense, said Judith. If you’d
have chosen love, you’d have had to give up poetry on the spot.
And, anyway, it would have been wrong to choose love if it meant
this woman would’ve been forced to love you.
– I know that, sweetie, said John Stephens, but I wasn’t think-
ing about Carson. I didn’t think about how it would affect her.
All I thought about was me, how unfair it was for me to have to
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choose. If there’d been no consequences, if I could’ve had
Carson’s love, even for an hour, without paying, I’d have gone
for it. But in the end, I couldn’t even be faithful to the selfishness
I called “love.” If I’d really loved Carson, instead of loving the way
she made me feel, I’d have chosen neither love nor poetry. I’d
have chosen to go on grieving but knowing I’d chosen grief. At
least that would have been a way of honouring what I’d lost.’
When he wrote his final poem, he knew it was the last, knew
that part of him had closed up shop. He didn’t even resent it. He
told his friends that John Skennen had died and asked them to
help him spread the fact. Which they did, though, admittedly,
some of their stories had got out of hand.
– So, said Professor Bruno, you’re … ambivalent about a
biography?
– I look back on Skennen’s poetry and I’m curious about it.
But it’s got nothing to do with me and I’ve got nothing to do
with it. You might as well ask me to help with a bio of one of
the younger poets, like Karen Solie. I don’t know a thing about
her, either.
– Dad, I wish you’d help Morgan, said Judith. People should
know about your work.
– It’s not my work anymore, sweetie. And there’s no reason
for me to go back there.
He hadn’t quite broken with the past, however. Though John
Stephens did not believe he’d communed with any god, there
was something sacred about his moment in front of the red wall.
Never before or since had he had such clear contact with what
he took to be his own mind. And in commemoration of that irre-
ducible encounter, he spent four hours a day, every day, cleaning
the path to the clearing in Feversham, a path for those who
wished to commune with a god he did not believe in. He’d been
doing this for twenty-one years. Since Judith’s birth. On her
twenty-second birthday, in December, he would be released. He
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didn’t like to think of it this way, but, really, his punishment had
been decided just moments before he committed the infraction
that called for it.
– That does feel spiritual, said Michael.
– But how strange, said Professor Bruno, that you made it so
you couldn’t have escaped punishment one way or the other.
Whatever you’d chosen, you’d have been punished. If you really
were talking to yourself in front of that red wall, you’re a hard
judge, sir, a very hard judge of yours
elf.
– I know what you mean, said John Stephens, but I sometimes
think this task is my reward, not my punishment. It’s liberating
to have a task, one that reminds you how insignificant you are.
People are too touchy about submission. The gardener submits
to the garden, too, no? Anyhow, I like to be in Feversham early in
the morning and it’s getting late. Nice meeting you.
– Do you mind if we come to Feversham with you? asked
Professor Bruno.
– Well, I can’t stop you, said Mr. Stephens.
Though Mr. Stephens was not enthusiastic about our accom-
panying him, I was thrilled that we were going. During Mr.
Stephens’s telling of his story, I worried that Professor Bruno
would forego Feversham, having met the person who’d known
John Skennen best: John Stephens. But from the moment I heard
Mr. Stephens’s description of things on the ground that looked
like hands, I knew he was describing Oniaten grandiflora, or five
fingers, the plant I’d wanted so badly to see.
– Do you think I could visit the clearing you talked about?
I asked.
– I wouldn’t advise you to do it, said Mr. Stephens. But you
can talk to Reverend Crosbie.
– Why do you want to commune with God? asked Michael.
Are you so troubled?
When I explained that I was interested in Oniaten grandiflora,
Michael said
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– I don’t know if that makes you more interesting than you
look, or less.
– Oh, he’s more interesting, said Professor Bruno. He’s full
of unplumbed depths.
Michael touched my arm and smiled, then volunteered to
drive the professor and me to Feversham while Mr. Stephens
and his daughter went in Mr. Stephens’s car. More: Michael
would drive us back when we wished because Michael was not
working that day and was grateful for a reason to drive in lovely
weather, the faintly blue sky full of clouds, the fields green, the
trees in full leaf, though here and there patches of leaves had
already changed colour.
“Sneaky season” is what my father used to call late summer –
a chlorophyll conspiracy, as if one tree hoarded its share, and
then other trees, suddenly aware of putting out more chlorophyll
than they had to, began to hoard theirs as well, one by one until
all the trees in the province were yellow, orange, or red. I felt
