Asylum Read online

  That evening in ’83, the first or second I attended after leaving home, we sat in the yard, in near darkness, telling stories and talking about Aquinas or medieval matters: would the soul of a rat ascend to heaven? No. A bird? No. What about a mermaid, half-woman, half-dolphin? Well, according to Peter of Ghent, only half of her would enter paradise: the half that sang.

  Later, as the conversation gently and irrecoverably lost direction, each of us grew more pensive. Walter thought about his travels. Louise, whose husband was away on business, imagined the tail of an armadillo. François Ricard recalled a night in Positano when he and Michelle had gone out to the stone porch of a house they’d rented, out to see the stars over the Mediterranean. Mr. van Leuwen was reminded of pins shaking in a box as a breeze passed through the trees. And, finally, there was Henry. He’d said little all evening, but he was thinking about Aquinas.

  After a while, Mr. van Leuwen looked at his watch: nine o’clock.

  – It’s getting late, he said.

  The sun was just beneath the horizon and there was a pale blue glimmer at the bottom of the sky. All rose from their chairs.

  – Thank you, Walter, said Henry.

  Walter answered

  – No, no. Thank you for coming.

  Though it wasn’t her place to ask, Louise said

  – Should we have coffee?

  But each of us declined, and we all (Louise included) walked out of the house and into the evening. It had not been a successful gathering where Aquinas was concerned. But, as usual, there was a spirit to the proceedings, a conviviality that came from good humour and, where I was concerned, the hope of belonging to a tradition, however ungainly, of intellectual pursuit. Besides, it was interesting to imagine paradise filled with bits of mermaids and halves of centaurs. How strange, I thought, the Middle Ages must have been.

  * * *

  —

  As she (covertly) returned to Walter’s house, Louise thought about her husband, Paul. He was in Texas, in Amarillo on business, and it suddenly seemed odd to her that she was married, that she had a husband.

  What is a husband, anyway? Is it someone with whom you have a relationship, a relationship that evolves, because time passes and one changes? Certainly. But one could say almost as much of a house or a dog, even when one feels, if only instinctively, that a husband is more than a house, more even than a dog. Is a husband love, then, or desire? Yes, but love and desire are too inconstant to make anything at all. Today, your version of love, your version of desire, may include your husband; tomorrow, it may not. Then they will, and then they will not, and then they will…

  The man you love…a constant presence…a shadow…a version of yourself…an idea you nourish…a habit…a nuisance…a voice, a face, a hand…Or, perhaps, “husband” is a story you tell yourself, a story about a house in which there is another presence, faceless, who moves with you, beside you, strong at times, gentle at others, and you are yourself surprised when, one day, you recognize a man you have never met, a man who holds within him something of your own story.

  Whatever a husband might be, Louise’s was in Texas. What’s more, she would have said, if asked, that he loved her, and he provided for her as unselfishly as he provided for himself. Paul Dylan was love and precision, and so he had been since high school where they first met. He was not perfect, but it wasn’t Paul’s imperfections that tempered her feelings for him. It was, she believed, something in herself, a restlessness.

  She and Walter had been having an affair for months, and she was beginning to think him inexhaustible: not physically so much. It was rather that her own fascination was inexhaustible. It was physical, as well, of course. Walter was tall and broad-shouldered. His skin was smooth as a woman’s, and it was a pleasure to watch the play of his muscles as he sat up in bed or as he undressed by the bedside, illuminated by the candle that burned on his night table. So graceful for a man who spent so much time leaning over books or lecturing on sociology, not what you’d expect beneath the rumpled clothes he wore. (So much about him was unexpected. There was, for instance, a joyous intensity to their lovemaking, a shared adventure. You mightn’t have thought a professor of sociology capable of such abandon, but Walter was that rare thing: a man who actually loved fornication.)

  At times, she felt awkward and vulnerable, but that wasn’t his doing. Walter was playful, considerate, and attentive. No, Louise was intimidated by her own recklessness, and it seemed to her she would have done anything for Walter. In comparison, her feelings for her husband were tame. And that was it, that was the point, for her: she should have felt overwhelmed by her emotions for Paul while feeling real friendship for her lover. In that sense, she had married the wrong man.

  Wasn’t it time to tell her husband so?

  Walter was still in his evening clothes: white shirt, grey tweed jacket (with navy blue elbow patches), beige corduroys.

  – Louise, he said

  and opened the door.

  – Please come in, he said

  and left her in the doorway as he returned to the backyard.

  For a moment, Louise felt ashamed to be left at the front steps. This wasn’t like him at all. Perhaps he was disappointed. Perhaps the evening had not gone as well as he might have liked. She walked through the house. Walter was sitting in a garden chair, his back to her, looking over his shoulder towards the picket fence. He was handsome in profile, distinguished, though his broken nose made her feel as if he had difficulty breathing. It looked more intriguing straight on, when his eyes (blue) and eyelashes (long) were a distraction.

  It was strange to regard him so dispassionately but this, too, gave her pleasure: as if he were a landscape as alluring from afar as at close range.

  – It was a lovely evening, she said.

  She put a hand on his shoulder, the fingers of the other hand played with the hair on the back of his neck.

  – Should we go inside? she asked.

  – No, he answered, it’s a perfect evening. You can see the stars.

  It was still warm, the breeze still played in the branches above, and, from time to time, the smell of pine was so sharp it was as if they’d rubbed their fingers in spruce gum. Louise sat in the chair beside him, and though the evening was beautiful and the sky was soft and it should all have been soothing, she felt uneasy: something of his tone, something in the way he looked.

  Walter interrupted her disquiet.

  – I think we should talk, he said.

  – About what?

  He leaned his head to one side and said

  – I wish there were an easier way to say it. The last few months have been wonderful, but I can’t go on like this.

  – Like what?

  – Lou, please don’t make it more difficult. I just can’t stand the subterfuge.

  – What did I do?

  – You didn’t do anything.

  – Is it Paul? Do you want me to leave him?

  Now that was a surprise, but Walter answered

  – No

  and added

  – I want us to be friends. I’m not sorry about anything, but I can’t do this any more.

  His words were clear. He was resolved, solicitous, melancholy, but Louise felt she must have done something wrong.

  – Was it something I did? she asked.

  – No. You’ve been wonderful.

  For a moment, she panicked. It made no sense to beg, but she considered begging. Then, as if it were all she wanted of him, all she wanted in the world, she said

  – Could you bring me tea?

  – Of course, he answered.

  He stoically rose from the chair and left the yard.

  How clear he’d been, and conscientious. Yet, although he hadn’t lied, Walter had been almost entirely dishonest.

  From the moment he met Louise, he’d felt strange stirrin
gs. His feelings weren’t simply sexual. They were primarily sexual, but, as he was compulsively heterosexual, it would have been strange if this had not been so. In fact, he rarely felt anything more than desire, and most of his relationships had been too brief for him to “get to know” the women with whom he fornicated. But with Louise, there had been, from the beginning, a compulsive curiosity as well. He wanted to know things about her that should not have mattered: where she was born, who her parents had been, what she thought about Byzantine art. What didn’t he want to know? That was bad enough, that and the fact she was married to an acquaintance, but besides the curiosity there was, when he was with her, an inexplicable ease and a longing for another life.

  Most men would have taken these things for premonitions of love, for love itself, or for some version of love. But because he had never felt such things for anyone, Walter was fascinated in an almost scientific way. He tried to isolate what it was in Louise that brought his feelings out: her hair, her voice, her eyes, her long and lovely back? He figured each of these things to himself, trying to see which moved him most. Unfortunately, they moved him equally and, worse, he could not imagine one aspect without imagining the whole. Unlike other women, of whom he retained only fragments, Louise could not be broken down in his imagination.

  If, in the end, he’d pursued her as concertedly as he knew how, it was, in part, because he was perplexed by his own feelings and, in part, because he assumed his fascination would fade, as fascination had always faded, once they fornicated. Sadly, his emotions would not cooperate. Once they began a relationship in earnest, his desires and longing increased to the point of distraction. He could not stand to be away from her, could not stand himself when she was away, could not think, became forgetful, became someone he did not know.

  And so, having had no previous experience of love, having no idea if he would ever recover himself and his life, feeling like a man whose house is overrun by mice, Walter did the only thing he knew how: he ended the relationship.

  What was it he’d said?

  – I just can’t stand the subterfuge?

  That had a noble ring to it, as if he could no longer bear to be dishonest.

  He prepared a cup of green tea. He avoided Louise’s eyes. He kept his answer brief when, in despair, she asked again what she’d done.

  – Nothing, he said. You’ve been wonderful.

  He watched as she cried, gave her one of his own handkerchiefs, waited until she had calmed down before walking her to his door and wishing her good night. He did everything a man who does not love would do, exactly as if he were not in love. A strange accomplishment, and one he would regret.

  {3}

  TAHAFUT AT-TAHAFUT

  Around the time Walter turned his back to his own feelings, Messrs. van Leuwen, Wing, and myself were looking for a place to drink. We were also, now that we weren’t obliged to, talking about Thomas Aquinas: his belief that manustruption is a form of murder, his misuse of Aristotle, and his dependence on Arabic philosophy, Averroës in particular.

  – What was the name of Averroës’ book about philosophy? asked Henry.

  – The Incoherence of Philosophy? said Mr. van Leuwen.

  – Yes, said Henry. It was something like that, but that doesn’t sound right.

  The three of us were walking south, which, as we all lived north, was inconvenient, but the inconvenience went unremarked because the company was pleasant. The city was lit up against a darkening sky, and the night air was slightly cool. We were on the bridge above the canal when van Leuwen said

  – Is Paddy’s okay?

  And Paddy’s it was: a small tavern, dimly lit, the stench of ale, the fog of cigarette smoke, and not enough tables. There was place at the bar: three stools near the end where the waitress stood, waiting for her orders. Van Leuwen spoke to the waitress.

  – Busy, isn’t it? he asked.

  She answered, coolly

  – Yes. It’s always busy Saturdays.

  She looked up at van Leuwen and was surprised to see him redden: a stocky, pale man in an orange shirt, neat as could be.

  – More money for you then, eh? he said kindly.

  Kindly, but without a hint of encouragement, she answered

  – Maybe

  moving away from the bar with a tray of beer.

  The noise of the tavern, the sound of so many voices chatting in so many registers, was pleasing, but one needed beer (the first mouthful cold enough to rattle your teeth) to bear the smoke, to feel part of the conviviality. So, for a while, we made only sporadic attempts to talk, paying more attention to the beer than to each other.

  (How odd it was, at times, to be in the company of men so much older than I was. They treated me with respect, as if my intelligence made us contemporaries, and this was at the root of my discomfort. My own contemporaries treated me with a certain disdain. I did not often drink, did not often go to movies, did not attend rock concerts or football games. As far as my contemporaries were concerned, my ideas were stale. Men like van Leuwen and Henry Wing – who, perhaps, thought of me as a younger version of themselves – became my contemporaries, and I was not always grateful for the exchange.)

  At last, Henry said

  – Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume…

  Van Leuwen smiled.

  – It’s too early for Horace, he said. Besides, you never quote the good ones, like Quod ut superbo provoces ab inguine ore adlaborandum est tibi.

  – Another round? asked the bartender.

  – Yes please, I answered. Three more Old V.

  – Speaking of Horace, said van Leuwen, did you notice anything…strange between Wally and Louise?

  – Like what? asked Henry.

  – I’m not sure…like he’s doing her.

  – Walter’s a good man, said Henry, but he usually does his students.

  – That’s true.

  – Here you are, gentlemen, said the bartender.

  I paid and, enthralled as I was by all things sexual, asked

  – Does he really get so much poon?

  – He has a reputation, said Henry. I don’t know where it comes from, but it’s not incredible. Have you seen him around young women?

  – I have, said van Leuwen. He’s a ferret.

  – A ferret?

  – Yes, a predator. You know, there were so many ferrets around my uncle’s farm, you had to take a rifle with you to the outhouse.

  So began a conversation about the wilds of Ontario, a debate about wilderness, civilization, men, and ferrets. After an hour, Henry went off to the facilities. He stepped down from the stool, leaving his glass at the bar. The tavern was now almost impossibly full. It took some skill to move about, but Henry did it gracefully, vanishing into the Men’s, shrouded in cigarette smoke.

  – Here you go, said the bartender.

  Van Leuwen, who’d ordered the round, paid for the bottles. He was about to thank the bartender when a darkly dressed man took Henry’s place at the bar. He was short and had a distinctive nose: long, with a bump near the bridge.

  – That chair’s taken, I said.

  – Yes, said the man. I’ll get up as soon as Henry’s back.

  – You know Henry?

  – No, but we overheard his name while you were speaking. An interesting conversation it was too. My friend and I…

  He tapped the shoulder of a man beside him.

  – We were really interested. And I’m with Henry: Man and Nature are not the same. If they were, there’d be no ultimate difference between Athens and an anthill. Listen, you don’t mind our butting in, do you?

  – Not at all, said van Leuwen. I’m surprised you could hear us, but we weren’t speaking seriously.

  – I see, said the man. You take your ideas lightly.

  – Yes, said van Leuwen smiling. We’re, uhm…intellectuals. />
  The man smiled politely, but his companion looked glum, as if he might have expressed his dislike for intellectuals but felt constrained.

  – My name’s Franklin Dupuis, said the man. And this is Edward Muir.

  Edward tipped his head forward and back, without looking at anyone in particular, but Franklin shook hands with van Leuwen and me. His handshake was firm, his hand cool, and I liked him immediately.

  When Henry returned, Franklin got down from the stool. By way of introduction, van Leuwen said

  – Henry, these gentlemen don’t like intellectuals.

  – Don’t they? asked Henry.

  Edward said

  – We’ve got too much respect for ideas to respect intellectuals.

  Edward’s hair was black and short. His face was puffy, his lips full, his eyes slightly oversized behind the lenses of his glasses. There was something priestlike about him: a black jacket, a white shirt, top button buttoned, and black pants.

  – Ideas, Edward added, are too important to be thrown around like, like…fish or something.

  – What he means, said Franklin, is that we admire people who mean what they say. Don’t you?

  – Yes, said Henry, but ideas are peculiar things. You can’t really mean an idea until you’ve thought it through, played with it.

  – That sounds like sophistry, said Edward.

  – No, said Franklin, it isn’t sophistry, but the problem is we none of us live forever. Who’s got time to turn ideas over and over? An honest man knows a good idea when he hears it, instinctively, yeah? If the world was run by intellectuals, Henry, we’d still be in caves arguing about the wheel.

  – He’s got you there, Henry, said van Leuwen.

  – Another round, gentlemen? asked the bartender.

  – Allow me, said Franklin.

  He paid for the round. This one was taken slowly, as was the one that followed, but the one after that, which came at eleven, was not so much taken as discovered, because the point had come when one forgets who has ordered what and the tavern itself begins to lose its identity. At least, after five of six pints, Henry and van Leuwen had come to that point. Franklin and Edward seemed unaffected by the draughts they drank. Edward was more personable, perhaps, but Franklin spoke coherently on about ideas and civilizations long after either Henry or van Leuwen could appreciate his wit. So, when Henry got up to leave, pleading somnolence, van Leuwen got up with him and they left the bar together.