Childhood

by André Alexis

  I wondered at being asked for my eyes, but, of course, it wasn’t unusual for Henry to have unusual ideas.

  – Okay, then. I’ll be over tomorrow.

  – Tonight, he said. Please?

  I’ve mentioned that I didn’t often visit Henry once I’d found a place of my own. We spoke on the telephone. We spoke at irregular intervals, but, really, nothing could have prepared me for this Henry or for the state of our house.

  It was evening. There was snow on the ground and the trees were still leafless. I had walked from Main and Hazel, along Elgin. Seventy-seven Cooper was dark, save for the lights in the library and the sitting room. When I knocked at the door, Henry answered.

  – Come in, come in, he said.

  But once I crossed the threshold, I didn’t know where to step or where to look. There were heaps of books against the walls. There were books on the steps of the staircase, most of these were open. There were books in the middle of the floor. In the sitting room, there were books on the sofa, under the sofa, by the fireplace, on the mantel. It was as if a tornado had recently touched the library.

  The only things unencumbered by books were the bookshelves. There was a path through the books, it’s true, but the front of the house was almost unnavigable.

  And then, to the walls, Henry had pinned hundreds and hundreds of pages. On some of these, he’d underlined a sentence or a phrase, a number or an equation. Around others he’d drawn circles in yellow chalk. On others still, he’d written messages to himself in black ink.

  Henry himself was as thin as ever, but he now seemed helplessly bowed.

  – What happened? I asked.

  – I’m so glad you could come, Tom. I’m looking for something by Ramón Lull. I know it’s here somewhere…

  I admit that, once I’d overcome my surprise at the disarray, I was annoyed that he’d called me to find an obscure book lost somewhere in amongst the other obscurities. He didn’t know where the book might be. He didn’t know the book’s name and, actually, he wasn’t certain it had been written by Ramón Lull. If it came to that, we might be looking for something about Mr Lull and, once we found it, its importance could as easily be in what it led to as in what it contained.

  – I know it’s here, though, Henry said.

  Which didn’t help at all.

  – Do you really need it this minute?

  – Oh, Tom. You know I wouldn’t disturb you unless…

  – What’s it for? I asked.

  – To cure cancer, he answered.

  – Cancer? When did you hear you had…?

  Henry smiled.

  – I don’t have, he answered.

  It was one of those moments when reality seems a fragile thing indeed. I’d been summoned to the home of a sixty-eight-year-old man and asked to help find a book by or about a certain Ramón Lull in amongst the heaps of books scattered throughout a three-storey house.

  I began to wonder how it had escaped my notice that Henry was insane.

  – Why didn’t you ask Samuel to help?

  – Samuel’s gone, Henry answered.

  And, I must say, that didn’t reassure me about the state of his mind.

  What calmed me, and almost mitigated my annoyance, was Henry’s demeanour. It’s an odd thing to say, but, after all this time, he was still Henry, and the longer I looked at the old man before me, the more it struck me that this request wasn’t any more peculiar than others he’d made. There was a disconcerting edge to him on this evening in 1995, but, as I followed him into the library, it was a little like following him into the lab for the first time.

  And it was reassuring to know that what I’d taken for disarray was, in fact, ordered. It was a relief to learn that

  a) books placed against a wall were not useful

  b) books in the centre of a room might, or might not, be of use, depending on the room in which they were found: those in the library being most important to his purpose; those in the kitchen, least important

  c) books left open on a stairwell were awaiting judgement, or had received only cursory inspection

  d) pages pinned to a wall were from books in the library

  e) pages circled with chalk were of immediate interest, containing direct references to Lull

  f) pages containing formulae or equations were of moderate interest

  g) pages on which he’d written words or phrases were of little to no interest, but they were “suggestive.”

  And so on…

  The relief I felt had nothing to do with Henry’s project. I didn’t believe there was a cure for cancer hidden in this particular library. It was rather that, having imposed a system to his search, Henry demonstrated clarity of mind. Still…

  – Why do you need me? I asked.

  – I need you to read the footnotes in some of the older books, Tom. My eyesight…

  I followed him to the library. He turned on another lamp and pointed to the Life of Marcellus Stellatus Palingenius by Pier Angelo Manzolli. A number of pages had already been cut from the book; a straight razor lay on the table beside it.

  – I’m sorry, Tommy. I can’t read these footnotes at all.

  He sounded almost as perplexed as I was.

  – Don’t you have a magnifying glass?

  – I do, I do, but it hurts to use it.

  There was no riposte to that.

  – Maybe you could start here? he said.

  I don’t know if I can do justice to this evening with Henry. Its meaning alters whenever I think on it. I do know, however, that the evening is more touching in retrospect than it was at the time.

  I was annoyed with Henry for disrupting my routine, for asking me to read the footnotes in a book that, as it turned out, had nothing to do with cures or Lull. I read him the bits of Latin, Italian, and English, but I did it without enthusiasm.

  What was the point of this frenzied search? Was this just another of Henry’s extravagant ideas?

  And yet, as I read Manzolli’s footnotes, looking up occasionally to see if Henry was listening, waiting as he made his own notes, I began to feel pity for him. Yes he was thin, and yes he was bowed, but it was particularly upsetting to watch his efforts to sit still and write.

  We were in the library. Henry sat in the armchair and I sat across from him in a chair beneath a floor lamp. Henry was deep in the mouth of the armchair, so engulfed in his suit he looked womanish. He had a notebook on his lap and in his hand a fountain pen. His hands had curled in on themselves, like snails, and it was clearly painful for him to write. At times his hand shook so much I thought the pen would fall.

  – Go on, Tom. I’m listening.

  – Yes, Henry…

  On this evening in March, leaning over the thought fragments of a man long dead, reading foreign words to a man I loved, I felt a confusion of pity and contempt.

  I couldn’t stand to see Henry this way: ill at ease in his own body, not at all divine.

  * * *

  —

  In the months that followed, Henry often called me to read for him or, when he thought he’d discovered a possible cure, to help set up the lab for his experiments. For a time, it was black hellebore mixed with a certain something that held the key. For a time it was stinking hellebore, then green hellebore, then not hellebore at all but motherwort mixed with something and something or something else.

  He needed my assistance to set up beakers, alembics, and burners, to time reactions, to keep the laboratory spotless.

  He needed my assistance to make the compounds, infusions, and poultices he administered to the rats he bought from the university.

  He needed my assistance and understanding.

  And what was there to inspire understanding? The cure for an infirmity in footnotes on the zodiac? A desperate hope in hellebore, motherwort, pipsissewa, spurge, and st
one-root? An eccentric old man who has pinned hundreds of pages to the walls of his home?

  There was nothing in any of that to inspire confidence.

  For months I was with him often, reading and assisting, but after that I found reasons to avoid what had come to seem an embarrassing duty. I answered the telephone, when I answered at all, as if I were just on my way out, on my way to somewhere so important I couldn’t talk to him for long.

  – Sorry, Henry.

  – Not to worry, Tom.

  I saw him less and less.

  And, of course, when I met you (5 March 1996, almost a year after Henry began looking for Ramón Lull), my thoughts were elsewhere.

  * * *

  —

  On September 1st, 1996, three days before I left to see my mother, I visited Henry to give him news of Katarina’s health, to tell him, in effect, that she was not doing well, though I didn’t yet know why.

  That morning, a young man opened the front door and then took me up to the den, where Henry was reading. The house was in the same state it had been: books everywhere, though those against the walls were now neatly stacked, and pages were pinned not only to the walls but to the banister and to the doors.

  All the lights were on and the floor lamps had been moved to the centre of the rooms they were in.

  I pushed apart the doors to the den and, for a few moments, Henry was unaware of my presence. He sat with his back to me, a lamp on either side of his chair, his body almost bent in half over the book on his knees.

  On the blackboard, there was a drawing of stars:

  La Figure M, de Kepler

  (The drawing is as mysterious to me now as it was then, but, because I assumed it was in Henry’s hand, I left it on the blackboard when I came to live in this house. What wind and dust haven’t obliterated is on the blackboard still. I wouldn’t think of erasing it. It means something to me, the way lemon soap means, the way my gold-dust envelope means…whatever “M” meant to Kepler, whatever it meant to Henry, whatever it means.)

  I saw the back of Henry’s neck. The sinews made a soft canyon. His grey hair prickly and sparse. In one hand he held a magnifying glass close to the page of a book he held open with the other, both hands all knuckle. His lips moved as he read, but, otherwise, he was quite still.

  – Henry, I said.

  He looked up and turned towards me, smiling.

  – Tom, he said

  as if I hadn’t been avoiding him for months.

  – Have you come to visit?

  – No, I answered. I’m on my way to Petrolia. My mother’s ill.

  – And you’ve come to tell me.

  He put his book aside and, awkwardly, stood up.

  – Let me make you some tea, he said.

  I was about to refuse when he put his arm in mine.

  – It seems like yesterday that you and Kata came to me…Did I ever tell you how much you resemble your mother?

  – No, you never did.

  We went slowly down the stairs, Henry holding fast to the banister, and then slowly to the kitchen. The autumn light was warm, the house cool. He pulled the tin of orange pekoe from its shelf in the cupboard.

  – Let me do that, I said.

  – It’s all right, Tom.

  So, I sat at the kitchen table and watched him make tea. He moved as if he were doing all this for the first time, taking a pot from the stove, filling it with water, striking a wooden match and turning on the flame, putting the pot to rest on the burner.

  We waited as the water boiled, and then, when it did, he let a small handful of leaves drop into the pot. The aroma of tea permeated the kitchen.

  When it had steeped, Henry brought out two white porcelain cups and a small sieve. I thought he would spill most of the tea. His hands shook as he poured it through the sieve and into the pot. Even so, there was enough for both of us.

  – Thank you, Henry.

  – You’re welcome, Tom.

  We didn’t talk about my mother. Henry wouldn’t.

  – My mother’s ill, I said.

  – So you’ve told me, he answered.

  And that was it.

  He spoke of books he was anxious to have, most of them obscure even by Henry’s standards. He spoke of the plants he hoped to receive from overseas, from Alexandria, from Dakar, from Umm Qasr…

  I didn’t really pay attention to him. I thought it strange that he should speak of plants when my mother was ill.

  – I have to go, I said as soon as I’d finished my tea.

  – Please, come and see me as soon as you get back, please?

  – Of course.

  At the front door I turned to shake his hand, but I had walked ahead so quickly I had to wait for him on the doorstep. Henry put his hand on my shoulder. Not knowing what else to do, I put my arms around him. It was like embracing a sack of sticks.

  – See you soon, he said.

  I could see he was upset, but I didn’t understand why exactly. He let me go and went back into the house, muttering

  – Where did I leave the mortar

  as the door closed behind him.

  * * *

  —

  I left Ottawa in a rental car, the car radio for company.

  I left early, in the rainfall, and arrived before evening.

  Petrolia, the town itself, had changed, but only in this world. In my mind it was scarcely different, and I felt a certain nostalgia for it.

  I didn’t feel that way for long, you understand, but I was surprised I felt it at all. I walked along the main street, going out of my way to pass the post office and, from there, the places I’d known. I couldn’t have gotten lost if I’d tried.

  Grove Street was not quite as I remembered it, but I’d have had a time telling you exactly what had changed. I suppose the houses were a little more decrepit, but the field in which I’d picked dandelions was still a field, and that in itself was remarkable.

  My grandmother’s house and the houses around it were now my mother’s house and the houses of people I didn’t know.

  Mr Goodman still lived in the Goodman house, but he wasn’t the man I’d feared in childhood. On my second day in Petrolia, my mother fitfully sleeping in her mother’s bed, I went out for a walk. I heard my name called and there he was, standing unsteadily on his own front steps, motioning me towards him.

  – Tom…Tom…

  And when I approached

  – Good to see you, boy, good to see you.

  He tried to embrace me, but I stepped away. He stumbled.

  – My legs are givin’ out, he said. No feeling in ’em at all most days…but it’s good to see you, boy…recognized you right away.

  His hair was white. He was fat, his stomach like three pillows in a pillowcase. His face was puffed and ruddy, either from exertion or from drink.

  – It’s good to see you, Tom…

  – Thank you, I said.

  – Hasn’t been the same since you kids left home.

  – How’s Mrs Goodman? I asked.

  – Mrs Goodman? I been on my own for goin’ on ten years.

  – I’m sorry.

  – Nothin’ to be sorry for, ’less you were the bitch she left with.

  He was suddenly angry.

  If it had been anyone else, I’d have walked away without another word, but Mr Goodman was still an adult to me. He was still Margaret’s father. The respect I showed him was involuntary.

  – I have to leave now, I said.

  – Your mother’s sick, is she? he asked.

  – Yes.

  – You’re a good boy, Tom. None of my own ever visit.

  He was suddenly sad.

  – Come over for a drink with the old man, he said. I’ll call the girls.

  – Maybe tomorrow, I answered
.

  Though I knew I would not return to that house, to that basement, Margaret or no.

  * * *

  —

  So, Grove Street had scarcely changed, and my grandmother’s house was so much my grandmother’s house, I startled at the sight of it.

  I knocked, but the front door was open.

  The living room was dim, but the house wasn’t quiet.

  –Hello?

  I could hear my mother’s voice, and then a man’s voice.

  – Hold her for me, please.

  I went up the steps and pushed on the door to Grandmother’s bedroom. My mother was on the bed, held by a woman in white as a man withdrew a syringe from her thigh. I knew, of course, that these were a doctor and a nurse, that they were seeing to my mother. For a moment, though, it was as if I’d discovered a shameful intimacy.

  The doctor turned to me.

  – And you are? he asked, not unkindly.

  – I’m Katarina’s son, I answered.

  – Lorraine, will you clean up for me?

  – Yes, doctor.

  And again, to me

  – Could you come with me for a minute?

  – What’s going on? I asked.

  The doctor, a light-skinned black man, some six feet tall, with short hair and a gaunt face, looked at me with surprise and a sort of disappointment.

  – Your mother’s dying, he said.

  – I thought she was sick.

  – Of course she is. She has cancer.

  – Cancer?

  You can imagine my state of mind, or perhaps not.

  I discovered my mother was dying so soon before her death. The morphine the doctor had given was, more or less, an admission of defeat. They’d known for months she was going to die, but a milder drug had taken care of both pain and inflammation. It wasn’t doing a thing by the time I got there, and that was a presage of the end.

  And then, that she should be dying of the thing for which Henry had so idiosyncratically sought a cure.

  My mother herself had been silent on the matter. To what purpose? To hide what from whom? It occurs to me now that she’d called me more often than usual that summer, but I’d carried on as if…promising to visit when…blissfully unaware of…