by André Alexis
This success, which meant nothing to Baddeley, was followed by a handful of surreal events that meant even less. He spoke to a thin, freckle-faced man on Radio One. On Radio Two he spoke to a stocky man with a Vandyke. And then he was invited to read at the “Festival of Authors,” the invitation extended by the festival’s artistic director who also invited Baddeley to a reception for a handful of writers who were at the festival that year.
The reception took place at a Korean restaurant on Bloor called Fennel and Rue. Its second floor is where food was served, but its first floor — a few steps down from street-level — was a tea house. To one side of the entrance was a barrel filled with rotting cabbage for kimchee. The tea house itself was predominantly wood — exposed beams, dark brown slats, knots and whorls like maddened veins. It was the kind of room that made you think of splinters until you actually touched the wood of the tables and benches and could feel them, smooth as polished stones. On offer in the tea house was tea: a varied and sometimes unexpected selection of flavours — grapefruit and cranberry; cranberry and walnut; orange and vanilla, etc. — served without any of the ritualistic fervour that sometimes poisoned tea houses.
Had he been alone, Baddeley would almost certainly have been comforted by the elegance of the room. But he was not alone. Little by little, the room filled with those for whom the reception was meant: writers, publishers, editors, and their various consorts. All were polite and all of them seemed kind. He should not have felt the least anxiety, but Baddeley was anxious from the beginning. He simply could not understand the connection between what he had gone through to write Parakeet and this bustle. He was conscious of how little he deserved to be in this place with these people. It seemed to him that everyone else — from the waitresses to the well-known — had better cause than he did to drink tea and eat the anise- flavoured biscuits that were passed around on silver platters.
Baddeley spoke briefly with a writer from the uK. And insulted him (or seemed to, though he hadn’t meant any offense). He spoke even more briefly with an American writer, and seemed to insult him too. In any case, neither of his contemporaries had anything much to say and abandoned him, after politely smiling and turning away. So it was with almost everyone at the reception, even those who approached him first. The only exception was the slightly unwashed André Alexis, a writer whose work Baddeley despised. Alexis would not stop talking until Baddeley himself nodded politely and turned away, waving a hand in the air as if to signal to someone he’d seen on the other side of the room, though there was of course no one.
It occurred to Baddeley, as he turned away from Alexis, that it was possible — that it was perhaps true — that all the writers in the room felt as awkward and fraudulent as he did, that all of them were as unfit for society as he was. He dismissed this thought almost immediately, however. On the evidence, it could not be true that they all felt as he did, because the one thing his contemporaries did most consistently was to congregate at these dinners and launches, celebrations and memorials. Some of them, somewhere, had to be having something like fun. It was perverse to think otherwise.
The reception was, in a word, a damp squib. But the dinner upstairs was worse. The restaurant was not unappealing. It was high ceilinged, the walls above the white wainscoting a light blue. Framed and hanging on the walls were variously patterned, full- sized kimonos; perhaps a dozen of them in all. Tables of all sizes were distributed about the room. Half of the restaurant was reserved for the literary gathering. There were cards at the tables (white cards on which, in silvery, cursive script, names were printed) to indicate where one was supposed to sit. Someone had made a mistake, however, because when he found the card with his name, Baddeley saw that Gil Davidoff’s card was at the place beside his. He was about to discreetly exchange his own card with that at another table when Gil himself appeared.
– Hey! said Davidoff. Where you been, Badds?
Davidoff was in his tenue de chasse: black jeans, a green, crewnecked sweater, a loose-fitting jacket with tweed patches at its elbows. He had new glasses: thick tortoise shelled rims, rectangular frames. His brown hair was boyishly dishevelled, as if he’d just stepped from bed, thrown a few things on and come to the reception at the pleading behest of the reception’s organizers. Perhaps instinctively, Davidoff turned to look about the room thus affording Baddeley a view of what had been, at some point, a vaguely Keatsian profile but which was now a ruined, patrician vista: broken nose, protruding chin, gapped front teeth, greying hair, the face of a blowsy concierge.
– I didn’t know you had a novel in you, Davidoff continued. I even heard it was okay. But you should be writing non-fiction. That’s the thing these days. I’m writing about all the great television I’m making my son watch.
– That sounds interesting, said Baddeley.
– Plus chicks love it when you’re an authority on something, said Davidoff.
Then, pausing for effect and turning to allow Baddeley a view of his hazel eyes, Davidoff said
– I don’t know what I did to make you go all silent, Alexander, but I bet you miss me even more than I miss you, eh?
To Baddeley’s knowledge, this was as close to an apology as Davidoff had ever come: a vague allusion to a vexing incident in which he may have played some part or other, though what that part was, exactly, Davidoff himself did not know.
– Yes, answered Baddeley.
– Well, I forgive you, said Davidoff. Let’s not talk about this fit of yours again, okay buddy?
They sat down at their places. At the table with them were other literary lights. To Baddeley’s left, there was the aging son of a late, great Canadian writer. The son, corpulent, his face as if carved from pink and grey butter, was himself a writer, but not a good one. To the son’s left was his publicist, a woman who wore her hair severely pulled back. Her lipstick was of such a bright red and her face so heavily made up that she looked, to Baddeley, like a Raggedy Ann doll. To her left was a man with a hearing aid who smiled and said nothing. And to the left of the hearing aid was the hearing aid’s wife.
In all the faces around all the tables there was not one that brought comfort to Baddeley. Davidoff’s brought the opposite – a creeping despair at the thought that this man had once been his friend. And it was no doubt this incipient despair that further distorted the small world lodged in the throat of Fennel and Rue. Wherever Baddeley turned, things seemed slightly or even distinctly out of whack. At the table behind his, for instance, Margaret Atwood sat regally, her grey hair an afro of sorts, her cheekbones like half-buried golf balls. Nothing unusual there save that, after a moment, it seemed to Baddeley that there was something of the iguana to her, and no sooner did that thought occur to him than Atwood flicked out her pinkish tongue, the rest of her head as still as if it had not quite escaped from the wax in which it had been carved. Beside her, Graeme Gibson’s neck grew so that he resembled a stork with thick glasses. In fact, all the necks in the room seemed to grow and sway vegetally, save, three tables away, Michael Ondaatje’s. His neck shrank. His head bobbed up and down, looking like that of a strangely tufted raven.
Raggedy Ann’s shrill voice interrupted Baddeley’s reverie.
– There’d be no publishing in this country if it weren’t for people like me, she said.
And it was then that the sounds of the menagerie assaulted him: implements on porcelain, women’s laughter, the low laughter of their consorts and companions, the scraping of wood on wooden floors, and then coughing, shouting, and the clearing of throats. Here, faces came at him: Gowdy, Dewdney, Johnston, Lane. There, they settled back into the mire, anonymous again: Redhill, Crozier, Crosby, Toews. The lighting suddenly seemed sickly, the same colour as the excrescence from a garter snake. The hors d’oeuvres tasted of kerosene, and though the dinner was just starting, Baddeley had to leave.
– I’m going to be sick, he said.
– Well, don’t do it on me, said Davidoff. I just washed this sweater.
Baddeley r
ose from the table and made as casual an exit as he could. He said nothing to anyone, leaving Davidoff to do any explaining that might be needed. He went down the stairs to the tea room, as if he were going out for a quick cigarette or something equally trivial. He imagined each and every patron in Fennel and Rue watching him as he retreated but, of course, not one of them noticed his departure.
Outside, the sun had not quite set. Somewhere in the west — beyond Parkdale, beyond Brown’s Inlet — its reddish flash was almost gone. He was on Bloor Street near Christie. Looking east, the lights were bright and life seemed to quicken around Bathurst. Looking west, various shades of blue accumulated above the world, as if in a layered shot. To clear his mind, Baddeley decided to walk north to Dupont. He walked past Barton, Follis and Yarmouth. On one side of the street, Christie Pits, Fiesta Farms; on the other, Christie Station, and a mile’s complement of modest houses.
It seemed to Baddeley that his soul caught up to him somewhere around Yarmouth. He looked over at the Spin Cycle Coin Laundry — above which, five irregularly spaced windows gave life to the red brick — and felt all of a sudden the solace that comes from being both somewhere and nowhere. He thought of Avery Andrews in the middle of Parkdale, — that is , in the middle of a neighbourhood to which he’d had no evident personal ties. “God,” it seemed, was a drug that made company hard to bear.
The months that followed were a time of unshakable ambivalence. Baddeley did what his publisher expected of him: two readings and a brief interview in which he tried, unsuccessfully, to say what his novel “actually” meant. He tried to use his inspiration to write poetry. But poetry, even bad poetry, was beyond him. No words meant for poetry would come. What came, despite his resistance to it, was yet another novel. To make matters worse, the novel that came seemed little more than a variation on Home is the Parakeet. This one, Over the Dark Hills, was set in the heart of an African conflict, its protagonist called upon to lead a herd of elephants over mine-infested ground to freedom.
There was, of course, compensation. Writing while he was inspired was tonic. The hours would breeze by as he wrote about lands he’d never seen, animals he’d never touched, and people who brightly lived in the recesses of his psyche. While writing, he did not care what he was writing. Novel, fable, poem, recipe ... it was all the same. Disappointment came when he measured what he had written against his own ideals. First of all, there was, as far as Baddeley was concerned, the matter of fiction’s inherent inferiority. When he compared his work to the genuinely sublime (Goethe’s “Metamorphosis of Plants,” say, or “Canto 3” of the Inferno), every word he’d written turned to ash.
Some time during the writing of Over the Dark Hills, at a moment when he was tempted to go back to the Toronto Western, Baddeley tried to reason himself away from his need for inspiration.
– I’m only writing fiction, he thought. I should be able to do this on my own.
It seemed to him that, having been a reviewer, he was familiar with “literature,” familiar with its rules, variations, and tropes. He could push a character through memories and places as well as anyone else, surely. Davidoff had been doing it for years, and a less inspired writer there could not be. But five chapters into Over the Dark Hills, Baddeley no longer knew where to take the story. Should he kill off one of the elephants? Should his protagonist betray his fiancée? And to what terminal was this novel heading? He tried to think his way through his questions, but he simply did not trust his own instincts and reasons. So, he was left with a choice: he could go on writing and re-writing scenes until one of them felt right or he could return to the Toronto Western.
He returned to the hospital and, for the last time in his life, Baddeley found the room he was looking for at once. Anxious that “God” would overtake him before he could speak, Baddeley cried out as he entered the ward.
– Please, he asked, what are you?
– I am, said God, what you cannot imagine that imagines you.
– But are you God?
– That word has a trillion meanings, Alexander. I am and I am not what you mean by it.
– But why use me? asked Baddeley. What am I?
– You’re the peace I seek endlessly, said God.
– But I don’t think I’m as strong as Avery. I don’t think I can ... The Lord interrupted him.
– You’re not Avery Andrews, Alexander. Your voyage is different.
– Do all writers go through this?
– Almost none of them do. Priests are much better at it.
– Did Avery see the kind of things I saw last time?
– Much worse, said God.
And took him to a terrifying place where he witnessed or, more exactly, participated in the murder of a family. Here, he was each of the three men who entered the family’s home just before dawn. He could smell the last of the previous evening’s supper. He experienced the killers’ sense of righteousness, their exhilaration, their fear, their contempt for the ones they slaughtered. But he was also the three members of the family: father, mother, and twelve-year-old boy. His mind was as if partitioned in six and every moment experienced by each of his six selves was inescapable. He could not cry out, neither in righteousness nor fear. He experienced death three times and then found himself in an empty room in Radiography.
For a very long time after this, it did not matter to Alexander Baddeley what or who was at the heart of his ritual at Toronto Western: God, his own imagination, the devil, or the errant fumes of anaesthetic and soap. It did not matter whether the places he went were inside of him or not, whether the things he experienced were taking place, had taken place, or would take place. It did not seem to him that the words he dispersed over the pages of his Hilroy notebooks were any sort of compensation for this traumatic empathy.
Although his inspiration waned again towards the end of Over the Dark Hills, Baddeley chose one of the many endings that suggested itself, wrote it as plainly as he could and sent it off to his publisher, more or less unconcerned about the work’s fate. Moreover, his lack of concern went unpunished. It seemed he alone noticed the flaws in the novel’s ending. Those reviewers who actually finished the book assumed that the shift in tone towards the end was part of the novel’s point. And the novel did well, allowing Baddeley to buy a house on Augusta, a house that was a short walk from the Toronto Western, though he hadn’t been mindful of the hospital when he bought the place.
With the success of his novels, Baddeley had the life he wanted, a life of reading and reviewing, a life of seclusion and quiet in the heart of a city he had come to love.
More: it was a life that brought him closer to the work of the poet he still admired. Having been through some of what Avery Andrews had been through, it was now possible for Baddeley to rightly value Andrews’ stamina, his persistence in the service of a “God” who was unstable and wayward. Knowing what Andrews had been through, Baddeley could now accept Andrews’ poetry for what it was: the narrative of a man’s withering in the presence of the sacred. Far from tarnishing Andrews’ work, Baddeley’s knowledge made the poems more precious to him. It also made him, he thought, the only man who knew (who would ever know) the true weight of Andrews’ books.
And yet, this is not how the story of Baddeley’s time with Avery Andrews ends.
Some eight years after the publication of Over the Dark Hills, Alexander Baddeley should have been at peace with himself and the world. He was frugal. The money he made from his books was more than enough to keep him in Brussels sprouts and vanilla yoghurt. A movie was made of Home is the Parakeet — a good one, though it was unhappily named Parakeets are Free! — and there was talk of filming Over the Dark Hills as well. So, as far as anyone (himself included) could tell, Baddeley’s future was not precarious. It was this very fact that began to weigh on him. He was not, he felt, doing enough with himself. Reviewing had become a habit, a reflex almost. It was no longer a proving ground or a necessary marketplace. He had grown comfortable, almost bourgeois and that th
ought troubled him.
Then, too, the pain he had experienced during the creation of his second novel had dissipated into the kind of memory of which one says, “Actually, it wasn’t that bad, now that I think of it.” He remembered, above all, the ecstasy of divine presence, the joy of exploring places in himself to which he did not otherwise have access. And then again, he was still young. Forty. Why should he not again experience the heights of inspiration?
So, one day, he went to the Toronto Western, warily but also hopefully, entering on Bathurst. The hospital was just that — a hospital. Spiritually speaking, there was nothing special about the place. At the entrance, it smelled of antiseptic and coffee and a host of evanescent things: perfume, leather, sweat, bread, urine, nail polish, rubbing alcohol ...
The sheer banality of the place was the most distressing thing about Baddeley’s return. Whereas, in the past, he had gone towards something, towards a feeling, now it was as if he were in a place he’d never been before. The faces around him were, naturally, unfamiliar, but so was the way the light fell on the walls and the sound of shoes on the polished floors. Even the music playing — insistent and soft from somewhere above — was in a language he did not understand
– ... e l’uomo sai chi e? Un certo Alexander che Manzoni fu ...
Nowhere in this building of brick, concrete and glass did he feel anything like inspiration or the presence of “God”. The building was not godless, exactly, but it was no more God-compassing than the Kensington market or the Nova Era bakery.
