by André Alexis
How long this moment lasted, neither man could have said. It was accompanied only by the scritch-scratching of Andrews’ pen on paper, by the shedding of words — a shedding that seemed to Baddeley more an irritation than a gift, though Baddeley had been, and knew he had been, attendant at the creation of a poem by Avery Andrews. The poem was unmistakably Andrews’ but unfamiliar ...
While the Eumenides sharpen their thumbs
To scratch our prophecies, bitter in fall:
The immortal benefits of glorious life,
Resplendence of our everlasting story,
No prayer advances down the shopping mall,
Pure wheat of which is baked the bread of life.
When the spell was broken, when the moment had passed, Baddeley and Andrews stood facing each other, exhilarated, both of them fascinated by the residue that God’s presence had left: poetry, though these — oddly enough — were not the words Baddeley himself would have saved from the listening.
If there had been doubt about the patient’s identity before this moment, there was no doubt left in Baddeley’s mind immediately after it. The illusions, the tricks with time and space, were paltry compared to the vision he and Andrews had shared. Baddeley was ecstatic. Andrews’ exhilaration was short- lived, however. He had been here before, often. He knew this moment well and was tired of it, though he tried to talk it up.
– You see? Said Andrews. It’s wonderful, isn’t it? How could you turn this down, Alexander? Think what it would mean to live your life in His presence!
Every one of Andrews’ words rang hollow.
– All I’m asking, he continued, is this small thing. Please, Alexander. I’m being eaten alive by the sacred! No! I don’t mean it that way. It’s not as bad as that. It’s wonderful. But I’d like to pass it on. For that, I need someone who’ll free me.
– Why don’t you free yourself? asked Baddeley.
– I can’t. I have a duty to ...
Andrews moved his head in the direction of the Being in the hospital bed. Neither man looked at Him directly, but as Andrews completed his ever-so-slight gesture there was a moment of desolation. God’s recession was not gradual or graceful. It was not like a wave receding from the shore. It was immediate, as if all seas had suddenly ceased to be. There was, in Baddeley’s soul, the most complete abandonment he had experienced; so agonizing that, for a moment, it occurred to him that his life was worthless, that the best thing for him, under the circumstances, was death. In fact, he looked towards the window wondering how high up they were.
But there was no window. There was no window, no ward, no God, no beds, no lacustrine vista. He and Avery Andrews were in a darkened room that smelled of disinfectant. At least, he was in a darkened room of some sort. He could not see the person with him. Rather, he heard the muffled sobs of another man, the intake of breath. Baddeley reached out in the dark, meaning only to touch Andrews’ shoulder, but as he did the door to the room opened and there was a flood of light.
– What the hell’s wrong with you people? Can’t you do your nasty business at home? This is a hospital, for Christ’s sake!
Baddeley and Andrews were in a janitor’s closet. Baddeley’s hand was raised. It was in the vicinity of Andrews’ cheek, as if the nurse who’d opened the door had interrupted them in mid caress. Both men stared at her as if she were an apparition.
– Come on, get out of there, the nurse said, or I’ll call the guard.
Still dazed, Andrews and Baddeley left the closet, walking down the hall towards an elevator.
At the entrance to the hospital, Andrews — who had kept quiet and avoided Baddeley’s gaze — suddenly held on to Baddeley’s arm, keeping him from leaving the premises, the sliding doors opening and closing, closing and opening, like Scylla and Charybdis.
– Please, said Andrews.
And he tried to convince Baddeley that, despite the desolation one felt when God turned his back (a thing that happened after every poem), the chance to be His servant was worth all. Wasn’t it better to be Abd Allah than a second-rate reviewer? Wasn’t it worth the personal sacrifice to attain the heights of Art? And why would he — that is, Baddeley — have gone through such trouble to find him — that is, Andrews — if, in the depths of his soul, he wasn’t searching for this very servitude. Yes, it would be inconvenient to do away with Andrews. But Andrews wanted nothing more than release.
– You’d be doing me a kindness, he said. I’ll even take poison, if you administer it.
For Baddeley, this was a complex moment made even more bewildering by its proximity to the sublime episode he had just lived. It isn’t every day, after all, that one meets “God.” Although, in light of the fact that this “god” seemed to approve of murder, doubt about the Being’s true nature had already begun to dampen Baddeley’s enthusiasm. Yet, there was enthusiasm still. How could a man who had for so long studied the ends of creativity (books and paintings and such) be anything but thrilled by his (admittedly strange) experience of creativity’s origin? Some part of Baddeley’s soul wanted to go on experiencing “inspiration” for ever and ever. But, really, he wanted to go on experiencing it as an observer. The strangeness of Andrews’ attitude (Andrews’ desire for death) frightened him, and he was afraid to be alone in the room with whatever that presence was.
Maybe, if Andrews had allowed him time to think about it, time to consider what it would be like to live without inspiration, time to long for the listening, Baddeley might have more seriously considered his plea for death. (Though, when he did think about it, later, it brought nightmares: pushing Andrews onto subways tracks, throwing him from a bridge or a tall building, stabbing him, shooting him, drowning him, his hands around the poet’s neck, breaking it as one would a bread stick ... ) Instead, feeling rushed and bewildered, Baddeley wanted only to get away from Avery Andrews. He wanted to get away from what Andrews had put him through and from the death Andrews wanted of him.
He pulled the poet’s fingers from his arm and backed towards the sliding doors.
– Find someone else, he said. If you come near me again, I’ll call the police.
– But you came to me, Andrews pleaded. You came to me!
Once out of the hospital, Baddeley looked to see if the man was following him. But, no, Avery Andrews stood rooted to his spot before the door, looking out at him as he looked back. So this was Avery Andrews: a forlorn, psychologically damaged man in reddish shoes. Once Baddeley was far enough away, once he was certain Andrews would not follow him, a sadness welled up to accompany his dismay. Andrews was pathetic, yes, but somewhere within Baddeley’s soul the admiration he’d felt for Avery Andrews guttered but was not extinguished.
It had been a brief episode, nothing more than two (admittedly strange) days.
For as long as he was able, for months, Baddeley tried to suppress the memory, as one tries to suppress the memory of a woman one has loved and broken with in some humiliating way. And like the memory of a lost beloved, his encounters with Avery Andrews recurred to him at unexpected times, bringing confusion, anguish, and longing. Baddeley struggled to understand what had happened to him, and finally began to understand it in his own way. What had he done? He had sought out a poet whose work he’d long admired. He had found the man. And then? And then he had become the victim of an inexplicable and pointless hoax, brought to a ward in Toronto Western to interact with a life-sized puppet. After which, Andrews had pleaded for death.
There was neither sanctity nor mystery behind any of that. There was only a madness whose consequence was that Baddeley could no longer look at the books of Avery Andrews without a feeling of humiliation. (He did not, for all that, throw them out.)
A year passed — a year of fitful forgetting.
Although Baddeley sometimes managed to convince himself that he’d lived through a hoax, something inside of him had truly changed after the encounters at Toronto Western: his attitude, his sensibility, his understanding. Something had changed and deeply. His ap
proach to literature — and so, to life — had shifted without him being conscious of the shifting. However false the apparition may have been, the experience of it had real consequences. Baddeley had participated in the creation of a poem. He had been only a few paces away from where lightning had struck and some of the charged particles had rearranged something in him.
This understanding — this rearrangement — influenced his reviews and, at the same time, poisoned reviewing for him. Even as he wrote his opinions — which were now perceptive, conscientious, and even, at times, brilliant — Baddeley knew his ability for what it was: trivial. The books he judged to be mediocre were not, objectively speaking, mediocre. They were “mediocre” because Baddeley could now clearly and resonantly reveal the particular angle (his own) from which they were “mediocre.” That is, he could vividly express the fixity of his angle on things.
That this was all the ability any good reviewer has ever possessed did not console him.
Worse: as his reputation grew, as he was invited to write for better journals and papers, for American and British venues where a host of well-known critics plied their unvalued trade, he grew tired of his limitations. He grew weary, in other words, of his own perspective.
More: his disappointment deepened the chasm between himself and a world he’d once wished to inhabit — literary Toronto, with its endless book launches and poetry readings and literary festivals run by men whose only talent was, in essence, the ability to read. Here, the mid-listers trying desperately to keep afloat, networking, networking, networking; there, the poets just this side of insane nursing their childhood grudges. Here, the stars in the literary firmament (big teeth, pink palms, regal airs); there, the fresh-faced youth, trying their best not to seem overwhelmed or overjoyed or overawed. All their names began to lose sense: Onwood, Munwood, Mistwood ... Why, he wondered, had he ever wished to belong to such a cloud-cuckoo world?
Whereas, previously, he’d been kept from literary society by his envy and want of self-confidence, Baddeley was now driven from it by a certainty that the society of writers was almost infinitely less interesting than intercourse with books, books in which he could, at times, feel the presence he’d felt at the Toronto Western with Andrews. So, while the esteem in which he was held grew, his commerce with the world was impoverished. In fact, the signal moment in Baddeley’s “year after the hospital” was the end of his friendship with Gil Davidoff.
Yes, Gil was self-absorbed and self-important but his flaws had never put Baddeley off. Speaking with Gil was like watching a bird with a broken wing attempt flight: round and round going nowhere. Davidoff could speak of nothing but himself for long and rarely strayed far from the subject. But Baddeley had always taken comfort in being led from his troubles by a mind that acknowledged no troubles but its own. Whenever he grew tired of himself, spending time with Davidoff allowed Baddeley to grow tired of someone else. It allowed him to return refreshed to his own company. He had enjoyed Gil’s books for the same reason. They were not good but they were “Gil” and that had been enough.
As Baddeley’s standing in the literary community grew, first Gil and then Gil’s publisher, Lance Swann, asked him for a blurb for Gilbert “Gil” Davidoff’s latest novel, Slow Boat to Peru. Baddeley agreed to do it, and if he had not read the book, if, rather, he had written a few words about how wonderful Gil’s company had always been, all would no doubt have been fine between them. But Baddeley read the manuscript. It was, as Gil’s novels always were, a pale, plainly written imitation of Malcolm Lowry: one man, heroically “drunk,” absorbed by the detritus of his deliria. The only thing that ever changed, in Gil’s fiction, was the locale. In the past, his protagonists — never more than stand-ins for Gil himself — had been delirious in Paris, delirious in Mexico, delirious in Bolivia, and delirious in Kuala Lumpur.
Baddeley’s first thought on finishing his friend’s book was that, the world having a nearly inexhaustible supply of place names, Gil’s novel could be written over and over until cockroaches covered the face of earth. His second, and more charitable thought was that he would write, for friendship’s sake, an anodyne blurb, something that could be taken for raise if it were left unexamined:
I have read a marvellous book!
— Alexander Baddeley
or
Slow Boat to Peru is a real book!
— Alexander Baddeley
or again
Of all the books I have read, this one is by the wonderful Gil Davidoff!
— Alexander Baddeley
But he found he could not write anything dishonest. Something in him was no longer biddable. And when Mr Swann asked him, more and more insistently as the publication deadline approached, for his blurb, Baddeley could only say that, this being the first time he had written a blurb for a friend’s book, he was having difficulty finding words to express his feelings. This answer, delivered with a sigh and a tone of contrition, was enough for Mr. Swann. It was not enough for Gil himself, though. Gilbert “Gil” Davidoff was outraged that his friend, whom he now found he did not much like, could refuse so simple a request. Nor was he fooled by Baddeley’s excuses.
Their breach came when the deadline passed and Baddeley had given Swann nothing. When next Baddeley saw Gil Davidoff, Davidoff allowed him to gaze on his profile while he — that is, Gilbert “Gil” Davidoff — shed increasingly vituperative opinions about reviewers: reviewers in general; reviewers in Toronto; and reviewers who, without reason, thought too highly of themselves. Thereafter, Gilbert Davidoff could not be reached by Alexander Baddeley, no matter how Baddeley tried. And, at first, Baddeley did try. It was more as a matter of habit than anything else, though. Having made four or five calls, having left three or four messages on Gil’s answering machine, it finally occurred to Baddeley that Gil Davidoff was petty, unworthy, and mean, that Davidoff was the literary scene and the literary scene was Davidoff. Disenchanted with one, why should he maintain his friendship with the other?
Another year passed.
Baddeley read books and wrote reviews. He was invited to be on panels devoted to this or that aspect of literature. His insights into the moment of the art work’s conception and creation were particularly appreciated. He was commissioned to write longer essays on Pasternak, Avison, Cavafy, and Langston Hughes. He did not become wealthy but he was able to leave his rooming house for an apartment in the basement of 434 Runnymede. He could afford to take the streetcar when he wanted and there was talk of him writing a book about canadian literature.
All this should have been gratifying. The months should have passed quickly. But, if anything, time slowed. Baddeley became convinced that most of what passed for art was, in reality, an endless re-fashioning of the mire; endless recreations of the moments in the closet after God had forsaken him.
That dark moment in the closet, as well as the enthusiasm that had preceded it, returned vividly to Baddeley with the publication of Avery Andrews’ Yet Again. The fact of the publication was a shock to Baddeley. Avery Andrews had seemed on the verge of suicide. It was scarcely credible that he’d lived long enough to write another collection of poems. And yet, there was the proof, in the pages of the Globe and Mail: a review of Andrews’ collection by Ismail Andersson who quoted from what he called one of the book’s more remarkable poems, “The Eumenides,” the very poem at whose inception Baddeley had been present:
While the Eumenides sharpen their thumbs
To scratch on our windows prophecies, bitter crumbs —
The immortal benefits of glorious life …
Reading those words, seeing them in the pages of the Globe, brought back the majesty at the heart of Andrew’s work and they rekindled Baddeley’s desire to write poetry himself. Baddeley was suddenly convinced that he knew the way to the place Andrews had been and so, along with his reviews, he began to write poetry.
Weeks after he began writing poetry, he stopped.
Not only was poetry difficult to accomplish but, for Baddeley, it was
almost impossible even to begin. He had imagined that any word he put down would call out to the other words the poem needed. This was the opposite of what happened. Any word he wrote seemed almost to eradicate the rest of the English language. After three weeks, his “poems” consisted of abandoned stanzas and the occasional phrase, the most coherent of which was
I scale the glacier of your frozen eyes
a line that sounded wonderful as he wrote it, though, when he saw it the following day, he knew it for the doggerel it was.
And so, for the first time, Baddeley had a deeper sense of what it was he’d lost when he had turned Avery Andrews down: certainty, the knowledge that one’s work was good. Two years on, he did not believe that Andrews had a link to God. Nor did he believe that by killing Andrews he would inherit some privileged relation to the poetic. What Baddeley now believed was that he might have learned from Andrews’ derangement as, say, Jacques Prevel had learned at the feet of Antonin Artaud or as Anatoly Naiman had at those of Anna Akhmatova. He had been hasty to turn away from the poet’s gift, however poisoned the gift might be. The memory of Andrews standing (forlorn) at the entrance to the Toronto Western returned to Baddeley with full, melancholy force.
More than that: after reading Andrews’ latest collection, it seemed to Baddeley that Andrews had overcome the mental instability that had had him in its grip. The poems in Yet Again were of a lucidity that suggested peace of mind and acceptance of the world. And having agreed — having agreed with himself, in effect — that Andrews was almost certainly sane, Baddeley decided it would not be wrong to contact the poet again.
It was again November. Parkdale was grey, but it was a soft grey. Its streets were wet; its pedestrians in half-unbuttoned coats. The house at 29 was unchanged but, at the sight of it, Baddeley felt as if he were walking into a recurring dream. He knocked on the door and rang the bell. He heard a woman’s voice, faint and muffled, and then the door was opened as far as the bolted chain would allow. An Asian woman was on the other side: angular face, an ear sticking out from the black curtain that was her hair.
