A

by André Alexis

  A

  A

  André Alexis

  BookThug

  2013

  FIRST EDITION

  copyright © André Alexis, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of The Canada Council for the Arts and The Ontario Arts Council.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA

  CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Alexis, André, 1957–, author

  A / André Alexis.

  ISBN 978-1-77166-071-6 (epub.)

  I. Title.

  PS8551.L474A61 2013 C813'.54 C2013-9-3834-5

  About This Book

  A is a work of fiction in which André Alexis presents the compelling narrative of Alexander Baddeley, a Toronto book reviewer obsessed with the work of the elusive and mythical poet Avery Andrews. Baddeley is in awe of Andrews’s ability as a poet – more than anything he wants to understand the inspiration behind his work – so much so that, following in the footsteps of countless pilgrims throughout literary history, Baddeley tracks Andrews down thinking that meeting his literary hero will provide some answers. Their meeting results in a meditation and a revelation about the creative act itself that generates more and more questions about what it means to be “inspired.”

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  About the Author

  For Roo & Kim

  Then things become all at once strange.

  – Margaret Laurence, The Diviners

  There was once a book reviewer named Alexander Baddeley. Though he thought, as reviewers often do, that reviews were meant to be “corrosive” in order to be true, he was too much the lover of words to be cruel or condescending, dismissive or unkind.

  To make up for his “failings,” Baddeley sometimes flaunted his own (wilfully acquired) quirks as if they were the marks of deep feeling. For instance, he inevitably ate a single Brussels sprout and vanilla yoghurt for lunch, and he refused to take the subway because he was “afraid of snakes.” (He was afraid of neither snakes nor subways.) None of this helped his reputation, though. Among the very few who cared about book reviews, Baddeley was known for his bland diction and his so-so mind. In a word, he was unsuccessful.

  Still, at the heart of the man, there was a longing to be better — to be more acute, deeper, more understanding — and this almost palpable longing made his company desirable to others. It inspired sympathy and a certain amount of pity as well. Among those who pitied him was the book editor of the Globe and Mail, Leo Martinson, a man who, once a month, assigned Baddeley a book to review, thus assuring him of the $300 that were the basis of his income. To earn the money he needed for food — because his rent in Cabbagetown was $300 a month — Baddeley reviewed other books elsewhere and sold his review copies to second-hand book shops as soon as he had done with them. In this way, he made a miniscule living, eating little, and going nowhere that cost money.

  As concerns Baddeley’s sensibility, there is one more thing to say, but it is the most important thing. Alexander Baddeley would not sell the books of Avery Andrews. These he kept in a squat, glass-fronted, bookcase in his room at the boarding house. The seven books of poetry Avery Andrews had written shared space with a King James Bible, a complete Shakespeare, a Strunk & White, a Roget’s, and a concise Oxford Dictionary. These books were Baddeley’s valuables, held behind shatterproof glass, secured to his desk, locked against the vagrants who, from time to time, wandered in off the street and ransacked the rooms of the house where Baddeley lived.

  The books of Avery Andrews — First, After First, More, Again More, Still More, More Two and More Three — were, despite their bewilderingly mundane titles, treasured in those circles where poetry had any standing at all. Even among Andrews’ most fervent admirers, however, Baddeley was exceptional. He had memorized every one of the 500 poems Andrews had published. He knew those that were considered “canonical” as well as those that were merely brilliant. Baddeley’s love for Andrews’ verse was an un-dimmable light in his soul and he would have done anything to meet the poet.

  In his desire to meet Avery Andrews, Baddeley was not alone. No one had seen Andrews in a long time. Few could remember him, save for one of his high school classmates who did not so much remember Andrews as he did the blank in his memory where, at some point, Andrews must have been: Avery sitting beside him in class; Avery drinking from a water fountain; Avery winning an award for physics. Whatever the reason for his withdrawal from society, Avery Andrews had not allowed a photograph of himself to be taken in decades, had not granted an interview, had not collected any of the awards his poetry had won.

  Andrews’ “hauteur” appealed to most of his readers. To them, it seemed fitting that the writer of almost glacially perfect work should live beyond the world, inaccessible. Andrews’ attitude was particularly appealing to Baddeley. It was “superb” in a way Baddeley imagined himself emulating if he had half of Andrews’ talent. He revered Andrews’ silence but, like all fervent admirers, there was something behind the reverence. There was the conviction that, should they ever meet, he and Andrews would understand each other.

  Also: Baddeley was working on what he hoped would be a magnum opus, a critical study entitled Time and Mr. Andrews: Chronos in the Poetry of Avery Andrews. (The title alone had cost him a few white nights. He had agonized over its every word and diacritical mark.) Yes, Baddeley wanted Andrew’s approval, but even better would be Andrews’ involvement, an interview, say, something to let his admirer know that Time and Mr Andrews was not wrong-headed.

  Unfortunately, Baddeley had no idea how to go about contacting the poet. Andrews’ publisher refused to pass on the least scrap of correspondence. Nor were they impressed by Baddeley’s credentials as a reviewer. It did not seem to trouble them that they were denying Andrews access to a careful and committed reader. Without the help of Andrews’ publisher, contacting the poet seemed unlikely.

  The key to finding Avery Andrews was nearer to hand than Baddeley imagined, however. It was in the person of his friend, Gilbert “Gil” Davidoff. Davidoff, a mediocre novelist who thought highly of himself, was a compulsive womanizer. Among the women who’d given herself to him (in the misplaced hope that the intensity of his self-love might be matched by his love for another) there was one, a certain Marva Wilson, who’d had a relationship with Avery Andrews. It was a relationship of which she was shyly proud, being herself an admirer of poetry.

  This information had come to Davidoff in an unexpected way. He had finished with Marva Wilson. After fucking, he had thanked her, as if their lovemaking had been a sort of cordiality, like opening a door for someone at a mall. Reaching for his shoes and socks, he’d turned to catch the small, compact woman looking at him.

  — You know the story, Davidoff had said. Rambling man. Got to keep moving.

  — You’re not even that good a writer, said Marva bitterly.

  — Right, said Davidoff. And who’d you say your father was? Northrop Frye?

  — How can you be so cruel? she asked. What did I ever do to you?

  — Now this, said Davidoff to Baddeley some time later, was the moment of truth. Two choices. You either run or you stay and smooth things over. But I like to smooth things over, ’cause if your reputation’s in tatters you don’t get what matters. You know what I mean? I’m sure you’ve been in the same position.

  As a point of fact, Alexander Baddeley had never been in the same position, but he nodded sagely,
inviting his friend to continue. There wasn’t all that much to continue with, however. Davidoff had soothed Marva’s feelings by pretending to care about her literary opinions. Then, just before she fell asleep, she’d let it slip that she had dated Avery Andrews, that they had been in love. Davidoff had — for Baddeley’s sake, you understand — expressed admiration mixed with “just the right touch of incredulity.” So, as she fell asleep, Marva had felt compelled to convince him. She had described the house on Cowan where he lived. And she had described the man himself: he was short; dark-haired but greying; his eyes small, his brow making them seem as if they were recessed; his mouth almost dainty; his skin smooth; his fingers long and elegant. And then there was the way he dressed. He invariably wore a yellow cardigan and oxblood oxfords. Winter, spring, summer and fall. A proper ritual: always the same sweater and shoes.

  — A yellow cardigan and oxblood oxfords? asked Baddeley.

  — I know, said Davidoff. No writer should wear a cardigan, unless he’s dead.

  Baddeley was too excited by what he’d heard to be offended by Davidoff’s words. Imagine: Avery Andrews lived in Toronto. All these years wondering where Andrews might be and he was in Baddeley’s own city. And he lived in Parkdale! Now, that was an odd detail. Parkdale was nondescript, filled (in Baddeley’s mind) with would-be artists and sad foreigners, with low-rent criminals and aspiring young professionals. Yet, what better place for a man who sought anonymity? It was just the neighbourhood for a genius like Andrews, when you really thought about it.

  (Parkdale was on the other side of town from his rooming house, but it was still possible — perhaps even likely — that he had met Andrews on a street somewhere. No, on second thought, it was not likely. He could not have passed a man like Avery Andrews — a poet whose mind and spirit were indissociable from his (that is, Baddeley’s) own soul — without recognizing him at once.)

  Then again, had Marva Wilson been telling the truth or had she been saying any old thing in order to impress Gil? That was the question and, when asked, Gil could not say for certain. Marva had sounded sincere, he’d said. But, then, Gil Davidoff did not believe that any woman to whom he’d made love could be insincere, acute sexual gratitude being very like sodium pentothal. Baddeley was skeptical about the “truth-telling” that happens after lovemaking. He himself had managed to lie while talking to women with whom he’d just copulated. Actually, he had not lied. He had, once or twice, avoided speaking the truth in order to spare his lover’s feelings. But the point still stood: Why should a woman not be able to fabricate or stretch a truth in similar circumstances? Worse yet, a host of mitigations occurred to him: Marva was telling the truth about some aspectd of her story (the cardigan, say) but not others; Marva was telling the truth but Andrews had moved from Parkdale; Marva was lying but knew the truth; Marva had been the victim of a man claiming to be Avery Andrews ...

  Still, thanks to Gil Davidoff, Baddeley had been given a hint, a provocation, somewhere to look or, if Marva proved unreliable, somewhere it was pointless to look.

  Parkdale was a two-hour walk from Cabbagetown. (Baddeley could not afford the streetcar.) And though Cowan was not a long street, it was just long enough — almost a kilometre, running from south of Springhurst north to Queen Street — to be difficult for one man to patrol on his own. At which end of Cowan should he begin? Should he walk up and down the street looking for a man in a yellow cardigan? He — that is Baddeley – would almost certainly look suspicious. And what would he do if he actually found Avery Andrews? How would he address him? What would he say? How would Andrews react?

  These were all questions to which Baddeley gave himself easy answers. Excited by even the faintest possibility of meeting Andrews, he refused to allow practical concerns to stand between himself and the poet. He would walk up and down Cowan. For one week, beginning at the furthest point south, he would walk the southernmost end of the street: Springhurst to King. The following week, he would walk north between King and Queen. In the event he met a man in a cardigan and reddish oxfords, he would follow him about for a day, watching to see where the man went and to which address he returned. Once he’d found the man’s house, he would — at some later time — break in and leave a copy of Time and Mr. Andrews somewhere prominent: on the kitchen counter, say, or on a living room table. How could Andrews — if it was Andrews — be anything but intrigued by such an intrusion? More: once Andrews had read the manuscript, he would — wouldn’t he? — welcome Baddeley’s company. (And if the man he found was not Andrews? Well, that would be unfortunate, it’s true, but there were worse things in life — weren’t there? — than a home invader who stole nothing but left a manuscript behind.)

  Baddeley set out in search of Andrews the day after learning about Marva. He was immediately rewarded. At eleven o’clock on his first morning patrolling Cowan, Baddeley saw a man in reddish oxfords leaving the house at number 29. To be more expansive ... it was a cool but sunny day in November. Beyond the highway and the asphalt promenade, the lake was greenish- grey and as placid as a corpse. Baddeley was filled with the spirit of adventure. He was so excited at the thought of meeting Avery Andrews that he did not immediately clock the man coming out of number 29. Of course, but for his oxblood shoes the man was the essence of nondescript.

  – That couldn’t be him

  was Baddeley’s first thought. But then, as if to mock Baddeley’s disbelief, the man turned towards him, unbuttoned the dark raincoat he was — oddly, given the sunshine — wearing, and revealed the canary yellow cardigan he had on beneath it. The man slid the key to his front door into the pocket of his sweater and then set off along Cowan, heading north.

  Immediately, despite the sunshine, it began to rain.

  Though he did not (could not) believe that the man walking before him was any kind of poet, Baddeley chose to follow him rather than dawdling in the rain waiting for a more likely candidate. Also, he assumed that pursuit would keep him warm. How true this turned out to be! The man walked quickly, so that it was difficult for Baddeley to keep up. Then, instead of waiting for a streetcar at King the man kept going: from King to Bathurst, and along Bathurst north to Dundas. It was a walk of some four kilometres that left Baddeley out of breath but un- chilled.

  Though Baddeley managed to keep up with the stranger, the man finally shook him in the most unusual way. That is, though the stranger seemed entirely unaware that he was being followed, Baddeley lost him in the basement of the Toronto Western Hospital. As quickly as one can say “gone”, the man disappeared. No, it was more mysterious than that. The man took the stairs down. Baddeley followed. The man stepped into a room: Radiography 11A. Baddeley hesitated. What would he say, once inside? How would he justify his intrusion? He stared at the grey door, its shiny metal panel. And after a minute, he hit on the most obvious excuse. He would pretend to have lost his way. Once inside, he would take a close look at the man in the cardigan, then he would apologize and leave.

  Baddeley had the words

  – I’m so sorry on the tip of his tongue as he pushed the door open. In fact, he said those very words to the empty room.

  The room was thirty feet by thirty feet by thirty feet. Its ceiling lights — far above — were banks of fluorescents tubes. It had one door, only one, the one by which Baddeley had entered. There was, in other words, no obvious way for the short man to have left. Not only was the room empty of occupants, but it was also bereft of furniture or any sort of medical equipment. It being a room in radiography, one might have expected a side chamber or alcove in which the controls for an X-ray generator were kept. There was no such alcove, only the empty, white cube.

  More peculiar still: the room was not quite empty. Yes, Baddeley was alone, but there seemed to be another world in there with him. As if the room were the aperture of a conch shell, he heard the sound of the sea and, along with it, the tones of familiar voices. The voices belonged to his parents, both of whom were long dead. The effect of hearing his parents’ voices wa
s deeply disturbing and Baddeley left the room at once.

  Once outside of 11A, the world was restored to him. He knew exactly where he was: the basement of Toronto Western Hospital. He stood before a door on which the word “Radiography” was stencilled. In fact, the “real” world came back to him with such force that he felt puzzled rather than alarmed at what he’d experienced. The man in the cardigan had eluded him. No doubt about it. And the voices he’d heard? Nothing more than the hum of fluorescence. His imagination had played tricks on him. He was sure of it.

  He was less certain about how to proceed. Should he leave a copy of his manuscript in the living room at 29 Cowan? He wasn’t convinced the short man actually was Avery Andrews, but one had to start somewhere. Why not start at the home of this gentleman who, after all, had both the yellow cardigan and the oxblood shoes?

  He hadn’t worked out how he would break into the man’s house but, as it happened, this was no problem at all. Though the man in the cardigan had locked his front door, the back door was open. So, Baddeley walked into a spotless kitchen. At least, “spotless” is what he thought on entering. But it was more that the place seemed uninhabited, expectant. There were no cobwebs and not much dust. The rooms were in order, the furniture arranged “just so.” The lamps and wicker wastebaskets, the books in bookcases and the pictures on the walls were all neatly arranged. The place smelled faintly of incense. The further he went into the house, the less likely it seemed that anyone actually lived there.

  Despite his sense that something wasn’t right, Baddeley placed a copy of his manuscript — which he’d optimistically brought with him — on a coffee table in the living room. He left the house by the door he’d come in, resolving to return the following morning. But as Baddeley closed the kitchen door behind him and turned to go, he was confronted by the man in the yellow cardigan.