Childhood

by André Alexis

  That is, I now assumed his impassioned search for Ramon Lull was motivated by love, that his ransacking of the library was a noble eccentricity. I was sorry that I hadn’t seen it that way from the beginning.

  (It’s not clear to me that Henry knew my mother was dying, nor that he knew he knew, but I accept that, where my mother was concerned, it was possible for Henry to know without knowing. I’m not saying I understand any of this, but I accept it. It is easier that way.)

  * * *

  —

  I’d left Petrolia, in my rental car, at 11:30 in the morning. I was in Ottawa at 6:00 in the evening, as the light of day waned.

  It was cold and my city smelled of wet ground.

  And I was disheartened, as I walked along Cooper, to see that Henry’s house was lit up, all lights on, as if for a soirée. It saddened me to be the bearer of gloomy tidings, but I pressed on.

  The front door was opened by a short man in a double-breasted suit, Mr Van Leuwen.

  – Yes? he asked.

  – Can I speak to Henry, please?

  – No…that you can’t do. You’re late for the reception. A few of the old-timers are still here, though. Come in if you want.

  – You don’t understand, I said. I have very important…

  But he had turned away from me, his right hand making circles in the direction of the sitting room.

  The house was immaculate. There was not a fibre out of place. The walls were white and the panes of glass in the doors were almost invisible. If I hadn’t known, I could not have guessed how recently confusion had prevailed.

  In the sitting room, there were half a dozen older men, all formally dressed. Three of them sat close together on the sofa; two stood by the fireplace. On the mantel two bright-red candles burned. A third man, perhaps the eldest, sat stiffly in an armchair. This one reminded me of Henry, but I knew none of them, and there was something sinister about the gathering.

  As I approached the gentlemen by the fireplace, one of them turned to me and stared.

  – You’re rather young, he said

  and he began to blink.

  – Excuse me, I said

  and moved away before he could take hold of my coat.

  It was at that moment that the manservant, whom I’d met a week before, entered with a platter of banana fritters. I advanced on him as if I were famished.

  – Where’s Henry? I asked

  not quite casually.

  – Mr Wing was buried this morning, he answered.

  He tried to pass by, to serve the fritters, but, in my confusion, I assumed there’d been some mistake.

  –Why? I asked.

  He must have thought I was joking.

  – It’s customary after the embalming, he said.

  I’m not prone to violence, but I saw myself strangling the man; my hands around his neck, his neck in my hands.

  – You’re Thomas, someone said.

  – Yes, I answered.

  – Thomas…Henry died on Sunday.

  The speaker, Mr Van Leuwen, emerged from behind the manservant.

  – How? I asked.

  – Coronary thrombosis while he was working. While he was working. You couldn’t ask for better than that.

  – Wonderful death, murmured one of the men on the sofa.

  –We die like dogs, said the man in the armchair (bitterly).

  – Yes, but quick is good, said Mr Van Leuwen.

  And he added

  – I’m sorry I couldn’t reach you sooner, Thomas. You were not at home, I think.

  –No.

  – Not to worry. Let me introduce you to the stragglers.

  If I’d doubted these were the friends of Henry Wing, their conversation would have convinced me. Once I’d been introduced to

  Mr Turcott (in the armchair)

  Mr…(by the fireplace)

  Mr…(by the fireplace, “rather young”)

  Mr Elliot (on the sofa)

  Mr…(on the sofa, “wonderful death”)

  Mr Chambers (on the sofa)

  they began to speak, intimately, not of Henry exactly, but of the things he adored: Federico da Montefeltro’s library at Urbino, the great library in Alexandria, the letters of Isaac Newton, the music of Couperin, and “Katarina,” whom none but Mr Van Leuwen had met.

  I didn’t know whether to remain or to go, how to remain, how to go.

  When I did leave, an hour or so after I’d arrived, I simply got up and wandered out, leaving my coat and my suitcase behind.

  * * *

  —

  Henry died at 69 years, 7 months, 24 days, only one day after my mother.

  I hope to God there are no more deaths as desolating.

  It wasn’t that my mother’s death affected me less than Henry’s, but with Henry’s passing I lost almost as much of my mother as I did of him. I lost the light his feelings cast on her.

  And, in a way, she and Henry walked into darkness together.

  Henry left all of his earthly possessions, which included his house, thousands of dollars in stocks and bonds, and the money he had in a savings account ($78,999.88), to my mother and me. This is my inheritance; though, of course, it is no compensation for loss, for any loss.

  It was difficult, in the weeks after his death, to visit Henry’s grave, but I went. I went often. His tombstone, a solid rectangle of polished black granite, is snug against the other stones and statues. His name is carved in elegant letters and, beneath it, in finer characters, are the Latin:

  spatio brevi spem longam reseces

  I’ve had time to think about those five words, but I can’t decide if they mean

  our span is brief; cut back great hopes

  or

  keep your great hopes in a small space.

  The first reading is literal, but it’s utterly un-Henry. I don’t believe he could have curtailed his hopes for an instant. (And, of course, his greatest hope was for my mother’s love.)

  The second reading is wrong, but it is Henry to the letter, the grave being only a more modest place for the quality that was his essence: Hope (again, for Katarina).

  So, I choose to take spatio brevi this second way, as love prolonged.

  And yet, my doubt about the meaning of spatio brevi was one of the things that spurred me to write, to write this.

  I mean, in February, as I brushed the snow from his tombstone, it occurred to me how typical it was that I didn’t really know what Henry had in mind in choosing these particular words. I began to reflect on how little I’d known of his life in general. Who had his close friends been? Mr Van Leuwen? Mr Chambers? Why hadn’t I bothered to ask?

  The cemetery was deep in snow.

  It was cold, but the sun was bright. The sky was blue and, in the snow, I could see the footprints of others who’d come out to visit their dead.

  Was I the only one who knew so little about the deceased?

  Did I know anything at all?

  Can one love what one doesn’t know?

  Strange, isn’t it, that from such small questions so much writing springs.

  XIV

  And so I’ve come full circle, or full spiral, or perhaps only up through the ground. (I mean, Time is the ground, but my analogy is weak.)

  I am sitting in the reading room, at a large wooden desk, before a window that looks out onto the street. It is the 15th of September 1997.

  It is eleven o’clock in the morning and cold.

  On the desk beside me are the things I’ve had with me for six months. In no particular order:

  Poetry (Norton’s Anthology)

  Letters (from Katarina to Edna)

  Treasure Island

  Envelope (with gold dust)

  Della Francesca ou les ébats de l’amour

&
nbsp; Key (to a lost orrery)

  Timetables (1978 to )

  Life of Marcellus Stellatus Palingenius

  Weeds (from Umm Qasr)

  On his perch beside the bookshelves, Alexander the Second moves laterally, from one side of the crossbar to the other, and back. He’s been particularly active these past few days.10

  He senses my anxiety, I think. You’ll be here tomorrow (7:00 PM) and, I confess, the thought is nerve-racking.

  So why did I invite you at all?

  Now that’s a question I can answer.

  There was a night, months ago. I thought it might be our last together. I parted the drapes of your bedroom window, because I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to look out. I saw the corner store, the small houses, the rooftops, all of them whitened by moonlight or white with snow. And I was thinking of words for whiteness (milk, ivory, lily, chalk) when you said

  – Come to bed…

  your back to the window, your body so still it was as if you hadn’t awakened to say the words.

  I almost wondered if you were speaking to me.

  And, again, what do you know of me?

  It’s as you said

  – Tom, you’ve never asked me to your place…

  Yet it was only then, as I stood by the window, it struck me that I’d never invited anyone home, let alone this woman whom, to my dismay, I love.

  And so, these many months later, I have invited you to this home, though it is as much Henry’s as it is mine.

  * * *

  —

  I spent much of the morning housecleaning.

  How strange it is that certain rooms, the ones I don’t often visit, should become untidy.

  I mean, you’d think it was my presence that brought untidiness, and, it’s true, the rooms I visit often are more conspicuously untidy.

  Yet even unfrequented rooms, like those in the basement and those on the third floor, need constant looking into.

  Not that I’m obsessed with cleanliness. Not at all. It hardly matters to me if a room is untidy or not, because I enjoy the physical sensation of cleaning.

  My bedroom, for instance.

  I change the sheets. I make the bed. I sweep the room. I wipe the walls. I clean the windows with newspaper and vinegar.

  Each of these things is a pleasure in itself, but it is also a pleasure to decide which to do first (change, make, sweep, wipe, or clean), to decide on an order in which to do the room.

  In any case, this morning, as I was dusting, thinking of nothing in particular, I remembered an evening decades gone:

  My mother and Henry were in the lab, in near darkness, the only light coming from a low, yellow flame that lit their faces from beneath. An unusually large bell jar was on the table before them, and in the jar were what I took to be two or three brown moths that fluttered and ascended before bursting into bright, white flame.

  I was horrified, horrified but amazed that the moths should burn so brightly. They lit up every corner of the small room.

  My mother’s arm was lightly in Henry’s and, looking up at the same moment, both of them smiled.

  They weren’t killing moths, of course. What I’d taken for insects were squares of rice paper dabbed with something and phosphorus. They fluttered and ignited when Henry let air into the jar.

  I was spellbound, and it disturbed me that I’d forgotten this moment until today. I felt, for a queasy instant, as if, in these pages, I’d misrepresented myself to myself.

  Have I been happier than I thought?

  Well, yes and no…

  Time, which isn’t like ground at all, washes things up without regard for order or sense. My life comes back to me in various pieces, from Pablum to tombstones, each piece changing the contour of the life I’ve led.

  I will have thousands of childhoods before time is done.

  But this one has its own necessity.

  Until six months ago, I didn’t think it important to look back. I was content to remain closed to myself.

  And then, a kind of curiosity crept in.

  There was no moment in particular, no reason, or there were moments and reasons.

  * * *

  —

  Last week, I put my hand on your arm as you made to cross Bank Street against the light.

  – Marya, I said

  and a car sped by, not two feet from us.

  – What is it, Tom?

  and I said

  – Nothing.

  Because there were no words for the confusion I felt.

  Watching you step from the curb, I was myself and my mother and my grandmother.

  After all, I come from somewhere.

  * * *

  —

  It has form, the past, but it is distance that makes it something other than wisp. In time I shall see more clearly, and I’ll begin again, another retrospect when I must.

  And that is something I can do; wait, I mean.

  In fact, now that I think of it, it is something I have done from my earliest days: keeping still, looking, waiting.

  I once thought Henry’s patience a little excessive, but I wonder if it isn’t waiting that binds me to him, to a man for whom waiting was love.

  I am not his equal in patience, but, you know, I believe I am able to wait, not without anxiety or sadness, but rather, like Henry, in the hope that…with the faith that…

  Whatever it is time brings.

  10 How seldom I’ve mentioned either of the Alexanders in all this, but how important they’ve been to my life. I feel blessed walking into the sitting room to lift the cowl from the cage, to hear (as I used to hear from the first Alexander)

  – aaawk…gallop apace…gallop apace…

  to hear (nowadays, from Alexander the Second)

  – Dusha moya…aaawk…vyeshchaya dusha…

  Even if they couldn’t speak, my birds would be portals out. I can’t look at Alexander, an African grey, without speculating about the journey he’s made to me, about who it was taught him to speak.

  And I can think of few days as sad as the one when the first Alexander fell from his perch, beating his wings uselessly, spinning about before dying.

  I felt as helpless as a child.

  A NOTE ON THE TEXT

  Parts of this novel appeared in different form in the following journals: Exile and This Magazine.

  * * *

  —

  The poem that appears on this page is from Mandelshtam, Osip: Stone Copyright © 1981 by Princeton University Press, translated by Robert Tracey. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

  Mr. Mataf’s dialogue on this page is a lyric from “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Edward Holland Jr. © 1965 Renewed 1993 Jobete Music Co., Inc. All Rights Controlled and Administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. (BMI) on behalf of Stone Agate Music (A Division of Jobete Music Co., Inc.). All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission.

  * * *

  —

  The lines in French in the epigraph are reprinted from the Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo poem “Ton oeuvre.” The English translation is provided by the author.

  The lines on this page are from the Archibald Lampman poem “Heat.” The lines on this page are from the Archibald Lampman poem “September.”

  The lines on this page and this page are from the John Donne poem “Hymn to God My God, in Sickness,” and the lines on this page are from the Thomas Wyatt poem “The Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbor.”

  The passage on this page is adapted from Roget’s Thesaurus, 1941 edition.

  The image of Kepler’s “Figure M” on this page is adapted from the image found in Alexandre Koyré’s Du monde clos à l’univers infini.

  Sari
Ginsberg

  André Alexis was born in Trinidad in 1957 and grew up in Canada. His debut novel, Childhood (1998), won the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, shared the Trillium Award, and was shortlisted for The Giller Prize and the Rogers Communications Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. It has been published around the world. He is also the author of an internationally acclaimed collection of short stories, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa (1994), which was shortlisted for a Regional Commonwealth Prize, and he has published a play, Lambton Kent (1999).

  André Alexis lives in Toronto, where he is at work on his next novel.