The Man Who Walked Away A Novel

by Maud Casey

  This will not be the debacle in the great doctor’s amphitheater. This will be something else entirely.

  The Doctor is not entirely sure what it will be. The girl across from him snores gently as the train rattles along.

  Shh, Albert, shh. You are sleeping. You are a good sleeper. The Doctor’s voice sounds foolish, unrecognizable, as he rehearses, whispering into the compartment. You don’t see anything. Your arms and legs are motionless. Someone else’s foolish voice. And now you are asleep, he will say, and it will give the ethereal if a solid spine. And, so, you are better now.

  Outside, the darkness is thick—uniform and endless, except for the smattering of stars. The Doctor’s eyes continue their poignant effort to seek shapes. There, Albert’s silhouette. There, sharper than ever, walking astonished through the night sky.

  He will blow on Albert’s eyelids to wake him. It is said to be the gentlest way.

  And. So. We are better now.

  PART THREE

  Dreaming Together

  The violinist from Leipzig, the coal miner from Liège, the hotel maid in Mulhouse, the baker in Coblenz, they all came forward to say they had seen him. This was years after the Doctor published a paper on his fugueur, after people had started referring to the walking man as le voyageur de Docteur; this was after the small epidemic of fugueurs. Workingmen with homes and families who walked away, who traveled extraordinary distances with no memory of how they got there—the fisherman from Marseille who woke up in Bougie; the wheelwright in Nérac who woke up in Budweis; the blacksmith from Brive, say, who woke up in Danzig. Men who wandered away for reasons mysterious even—perhaps especially—to them.

  When those others came forward, the woman in the lowlands, washing the limestone grit out of her brothers’ clothes, she came forward as well. I saw him too. It was the first time she spoke of him, but not the first time he had crossed her mind. Each year, she and her husband gathered with everyone else in their village to watch the storks fly away. For months the storks nested in the villagers’ chimneys, the clack-clacking of their bills as much a part of their lives as the weather. And then one day the storks unfurled themselves from their enormous nests. Awkward at first on their red stick-legs, they rose up with enormous black-tipped wings. Just when it seemed they might fall out of the sky, an air current lifted them up. It was at that moment that the woman remembered the walking man, his strange grace. How could the storks move her to tears every year? her husband always asked. It became a joke between them. Though she loved her husband dearly, she never explained. It was her secret, too delicate for translation.

  Chapter 16

  “As long as Henri accompanies you,” Nurse Anne says to Marian over the veteran’s shouting.

  “Your secret is no secret. Deserter!” He has been shouting all morning. Even as Claude hauls him down the hall, his voice reaches them. “Shame. Shame.”

  “It is your eavesdropping that is shameful,” Nurse Anne says. She knows he doesn’t hear her. Still, it must be said.

  “Come,” Marian says to Albert and Walter, leading them in the direction of the rough-hewn path to the creek. That suggestion: Follow me! She will!

  “Look,” Henri says, pointing a slender finger in the direction of the blackberry bushes. “I think I see a fox.”

  “Henri,” Marian says, “tell us what you know about—”

  “Marian,” Walter interrupts, “let’s not speak of the veteran and his vibrating, blackened nerves. It significantly decreases the voluptuousness of everything.”

  Albert agrees. He might be a deserter—but what is he supposed to do about it? Anyway, Marian and Walter don’t care. They have not deserted him. The Doctor may be gone—yesterday, which was Friday; the day before, which was Thursday; the day before the day before, which was Wednesday—but Marian and Walter are not. This morning Albert only cares about the breeze, the faint, familiar pudding smell of Walter, the warmth of Walter’s arm and Marian’s arm on his as they keep a steady pace.

  “There is no fox,” Marian says.

  Henri holds back the tree branch that marks the entrance to the creek path, and though they are forced to walk single file now, though Nurse Anne has forbidden anymore walking around and around the courtyard together, the astonishment of walking with Marian and Walter lingers in Albert still. Maybe love didn’t have to be something from long ago. Love requires staying in one place. Love requires knowing where you were last night and last week and last year, where you would be tomorrow. And so far, Albert is; so far, he does.

  When they reach the creek, they take off their boots—“Socks,” Henri says to Walter—and stand in the cool water under the shadow of the trees.

  “This is quite pleasant,” says Walter. “Masterful, really.”

  “Yes,” says Marian. “Don’t you think so, Albert?”

  “Very,” Albert says.

  “Very of our hour,” says Walter.

  It is as if Albert’s whole lost life has led him here. I am here, I am here, I am here. He closes his eyes to make the moment—the sound of the creek, the birds, the breeze in the trees, the heavy quiet that is Walter, Marian, and Henri nearby—stay, but it is in motion even if he is not. Still, he keeps it in his mind when they walk back up the hill to where the Director demonstrates a series of exercises: windmilling his arms, marching in place, jumping up and down. “Like this!” Elizabeth watches with her vigilant green eyes on the lookout for a miracle, while nearby Rachel smooths and smooths her stomach. When Samuel sees Henri coming, he runs to embrace him.

  “Oh, stop it,” Henri says, though he receives Samuel with open arms.

  This is a life, Albert thinks. Here. This is his life.

  How could he know that what is about to happen would make him willing to give even this up? How could he know that what is about to happen would make him willing to give up all the things he hadn’t known he’d been yearning for—Nurse Anne’s hands pouring silky water over his beautiful feet, the ribbed backs of her seashells rubbed soft, the pleasure of dreams in which he walks with the earth rumbling through his heels but from which he always returns to wake in his bed, not lost at all. His bed.

  How could Albert know that what is about to happen will make him forget both his fear that the Doctor would never be back and the flood of relief he feels now that the Doctor is back, not right back but back all the same, putting an arm over his shoulder and leading him to his room? “I would like to try something new,” he says, clearly having forgiven Albert for his lies. “You will have to trust me. Will you trust me?” When they reach his room, the Doctor says, “Sit here in this chair.” How could Albert know that when the lamp flickers, he will flicker too?

  The noise from the courtyard peppers the quiet as he sits. The Director’s voice booming, “I dare anyone to find me a lovelier day!” Nurse Anne speaking gently, persuasively to Marian, “Your stomach will return. Name me one time that it has not returned,” to which Marian replies, “This time.” Walter pronouncing Elizabeth “a fine specimen of a woman.” Inside, click, click go the cracked billiard balls as the veteran tosses them across the worn felt of the table, reciting his promises, “I will not knock the balls over the side of the table if I like.” Followed by a crash. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, it is better not to think. Better not to think at all. The thanks I get, when all I am doing is keeping peace.” Rachel’s frog has demanded she play anything else, but she insists on playing one of Chopin’s mazurkas; defiant, it rains down on all of them.

  And then the Doctor begins.

  You are sleeping. You are nothing.

  The Doctor’s voice is a different kind of music; different than the music Albert heard when he first arrived—the blur of my stockings have fallen down; bang, bang; Nurse Anne, Nurse Anne, come quick; St. Eloi’s giant clock; ring (shadow ring)—before he became a citizen held by days and then by over a week. The music of the Doctor’s voice fills his body with a new sound. What sound? It doesn’t matter. It sings in harmony with the people milling
around the square outside the Palace of Justice. “Oh, no, not you again,” a man says, laughter in his voice like the snort of a horse, or was that a horse? The scuffle of children’s feet. “Slow down,” says a woman. “I’m not sure that’s fair,” says a man. “Fair?” asks a different woman than the first.

  You are sleeping. You are nothing.

  But he does not sleep. He is not nothing. Everything except the brightness of the Doctor’s voice falls away. His warm whisper is a spark in Albert’s dark forgotten heart, the lit fuse of a gas lamp, illuminating blood and muscle.

  When his eyes flutter open, he feels as though he will disappear into the Doctor’s eyes.

  Perhaps because the Doctor says, “You are disappearing.”

  And then the room disappears too.

  Shh, Albert.

  The Doctor’s voice is a tabletop, its surface expanding. Albert could lay his whole body there.

  Shh, Albert. The Doctor’s hand strokes the top of Albert’s head; it smells of pomade and sausage. Your eyelids are warm. He flutters them, and it’s true. They are getting warmer. Everything is warm: the Doctor’s breath on Albert’s face; his swirling fingertips; this body he’s carried with him over the years, or years and years and, oh, he has been so tired. His body grows warmer; it burns off all those lost years. Where did they go? It doesn’t matter. When his eyes flutter open again, the Doctor’s eyes say: I know everything you have forgotten.

  There were times when, not knowing how he got there, Albert would discover himself walking at night. The clang of church bells, a trickle from a nearby stream, the texture of the road underfoot his only guides as he stumbled into woodpiles; on one occasion, he fell over the side of a bridge. The Doctor’s eyes are like the sheep Albert once saw up ahead, tufts of white in the pitch-dark night, the time he discovered himself crawling out of a coal bin: This way, this way.

  Your arms and legs are motionless.

  Where are his arms?

  He swims in a long-ago feeling, not caring where his arms have gone. You are sleeping. Your arms and legs are motionless. You are disappearing. He is a boy playing hide-and-seek with Baptiste and his father. He always had to tug Baptiste’s sleeve because Baptiste was content to stand in the middle of the street, not hidden at all. Even as Albert pulled him into the shadows, even as he pleaded—We must hide!—he understood his friend’s desire. Why hide when all you want is to be found? When he finally managed to drag Baptiste behind a barrel, Baptiste would shuffle his feet, as if to announce, Here we are, over here! When Albert’s father looked over the side, Albert saw himself in his father’s eyes widened in feigned surprise. How beautiful he was to his father. How delighted his father was to find him.

  In the quiet room with the Doctor, Albert is a miracle. He is a beautiful boy.

  Shh, Albert. Shh. You are sinking. You will not worry about anything anymore.

  He is a beautiful boy found instead of lost. He is fascinating. He is magnificent. This is an escapade like no other, no yet another, yet another, yet another.

  Shh, Albert. Shh. You are disappearing.

  But he does not disappear. He does not vanish. The swirl of the Doctor’s fingers spirals through Albert’s scalp into his ears. He swallows the swirl—down his throat, into his chest, his stomach, his groin, his beautiful instrument, his legs, his beloved feet. It swirls the hair on his arms and legs on end. There you are, Albert, there you are, it sings, singing its swirly song.

  Once, on the road, he stopped and a good woman seeing his distress invited him into her house. When he refused because to be rescued again was unbearable, she walked out to him there where he stood and held a glass of sugar water to his lips. The Doctor’s whisper slakes Albert’s thirst. Here, your lost life. Here, your ragged memory.

  You will stay in the asylum.

  “I will stay in the asylum,” Albert says.

  You will not walk.

  “I will not walk.”

  You will not walk. And if you leave again, we will find you. We will bring you back.

  The Doctor blows gently on Albert’s eyelids.

  Ring (shadow ring).

  Does this ring a bell? The sharp, quick sound of love in Albert’s ears.

  Albert, you are a good sleeper.

  Somewhere in the sky, the birds and the Doctor’s voice chirp together: If you walk far away, we will bring you back.

  “Thank you. I’m so glad to hear that.”

  Now it is time to wake up.

  The Doctor blows once more, breathing him back into the world.

  He opens his eyes.

  “May we do that again?” he asks.

  “Tomorrow,” the Doctor says. “We will do it again tomorrow.”

  Chapter 17

  “I heard about a doctor who told a woman, ‘When you wake up there will be a dog with a monkey on its back doing a dance.’” Nurse Anne dances her fingers across the Director’s desk to illustrate. They are there to discuss the recent problems with the veteran, but the Doctor’s new intervention has proved a distraction. “When she woke,” Nurse Anne says, “There it was, a dog, and a monkey on its back! But there was a bear too. He didn’t know she had that up her sleeve. Still, the woman jumped right into his arms, which is what the doctor wanted all along.”

  “There are a lot of stories,” says the Doctor. “But this isn’t that.” He knows she is teasing him but he doesn’t want to be teased. He wants the Director and Nurse Anne to understand exactly what has happened but he isn’t sure he knows. How could he explain, for example, how surprised he was by the softness of Albert’s hair? That when he was rehearsing on the train, he imagined it would be bristly but it is as soft as the dandelion flowers his mother used to string into a crown for him as a boy. That as he concentrated, making circles with his fingertips on Albert’s head, speaking those words—Shh, Albert, shh. You are sleeping. You are a good sleeper. Your arms and legs are motionless. Shh. You are sinking—only foolish words, there was a subtle, drowsy movement as Albert’s head swayed slightly underneath his fingers? You are disappearing, and the smell of wildflowers through the open window was the smell of disappearing.

  Around and around, his fingers continued to draw circles, circling back to his own boyhood, when his village was the world. What else was there? Until the great Léotard whirred into town, bringing with him that invitation to leap over thousands of heads, there was only his village. Now, in the room with Albert, there was so much to know; so much that was unknowable. It was all so mysterious, what lay inside that skull beneath his fingers. Albert’s eyes flickered underneath his closed eyelids; his neat little mustache twitched; his head tilted the same way it had when the Doctor showed him the map of his travels, as though he were listening to something far away. How could he explain that he could see something stirring beneath Albert’s skin? That it was as though Albert were out on a ship on his own private ocean, a very different ship than the ship where the Doctor had served as a cargo clerk so long ago, so seasick he thought he would die out there, despairing of what would become of him. But Albert seemed neither orphaned nor alone. The sadness vanished from the corners of his big, hooded eyes; his lined forehead smoothed. His large ears were no longer absurd but somehow strangely elegant. Beneath the surface of that long face—almost handsome in the dusky light—there was a slight trembling, and then the trembling slipped beneath the Doctor’s own skin. It rushed through him, and it was as if he were the lady and someone had slipped a tube of brandy down his shirt, whispering softly, Eau de vie. It was he who was drunk. How could he explain that until then his whole life felt as though it were an argument against itself, but in that room there was no argument?

  “I heard of a patient,” the Director says, laughing. “He went to sleep. The doctor had him convinced he was Caesar. Et tu, Brute!”

  “The hypnotized belongs to the hypnotizer as the traveler’s stick belongs to the traveler,” the Doctor says. It is something the great doctor was quoted as saying in a recent journal article.
“All I know is something useful happened. That’s all I know.” He knows only what it is not; what it is has not yet taken shape. “This is not the great doctor pointing to a brain on a table.” The Doctor hears that prickle in his voice. “This is something else entirely.”

  “Oh, come, now, we’re only making fun,” says the Director.

  “Some fun must be allowed,” Nurse Anne says, her hand on his arm. “Especially after you left without telling Albert where you were off to, after you left me to deal with the tribe of walkers.”

  “I . . .” the Doctor begins, but she’s already out the door, headed to the common room. “It is a flaw in your design,” Walter is saying. “I am not a design!” Rachel protests. “I am making the funicular first,” Elizabeth announces. “So that the people won’t walk up the hill before it is done.”

  “That,” Nurse Anne says, looking over her shoulder, “is your fault. You started that. If you hadn’t told her to build that funicular first . . .”

  “We can’t all be perfect like you.”

  “Children,” the Director says. He puts a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder. “If you think this will work, continue.”

  And so he does.