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Yes, this was Avery Andrews and, in a word, the man looked to be on his last legs.

– How strange to see you, Andrews said

or, rather, Andrews
managed
to say. No sooner were the words out than he began to cough, grimacing at each shudder of his chest, struggling to quell his body's insubordination.

– How strange, he said again. I didn't think you'd come. Please forgive me for how I behaved. I wasn't myself.

Again Andrews began to cough. A nurse approached them. – Everything all right? she asked.

– Yes, said Andrews. This is my friend.

– Friend or not, said the nurse, I think it's time you were back in your room.

Andrews held on to Baddeley's wrist. His grip was not strong.

– It isn't good for you to get excited, Mr. Andrews, but visiting hours are still on. You can go on talking in your room.

It was distressing to watch Avery Andrews as he was helped into his hospital bed. His limbs looked as though they might snap under the slightest pressure. It hurt to watch him stand up. (His body was so wasted it was easily supported by the sticks that were his legs.) More distressing still was the ginger hair on the back of his legs. Baddeley turned away until Andrews was tucked under the sheets and the nurse had asked if he wanted morphine and then, having inserted the drip, went off to other beds.

– I don't have much time, said Andrews. I want to tell you something, before the morphine kicks in. I was like you, but not like you. When I went to see Margaret Laurence, she recognized me immediately. And she knew what I was. I loved fiction more than I loved people. I still do. When I pushed her from the ferry, it was because she
wanted
to die and because I knew her art would live on in me. I see, now, that you don't love the art deeply enough, Alexander. You're too attached to me personally. I should have known, when you left that manuscript in my living room.

– Did you read it? asked Baddeley.

– I read as much of it as I could, son. You have everything wrong. You made me sound deep and heroic, but I'm none of the things you admire. I'm nothing. What you really admire is the Master's voice. For years, it's all I wanted to hear, too, but now I've had enough. I wanted you to end my servitude, like I ended Margaret's. I should have gotten to know you first. But I suppose things have worked out as they were meant to.

– What do you mean? asked Baddeley.

– You'll seek Him out, now, won't you?

– I don't think so, said Baddeley. I was looking for you.

Andrews grew visibly upset, but the morphine had begun to work and it was as if his emotions were passing through a kind of screen.

– You must look for him, Andrews said. You must. I can't leave until I know you will. He appears to any number of artists, but
this
identity of His is unique. This line is ... our line is ...

Anxious to calm the poor man, Baddeley said

– All right. I'll look for him. I promise.

– But the thing to remember, said Andrews, the thing is ... He's not always Himself. After all these years, I think I'm entitled to say that. There have been times when I'm
certain
God is not sane. He says there's no difference between sane and insane, but there is. You'll feel the difference, and you'll have to forgive Him. I don't think He can help Himself.

– I'm sorry, said Baddeley. But I don't know what you're talking about.

– You'll see things you don't want to see. He can't help it. Forgive Him or you'll end up as unhappy as I was. As we've all been. Listen, I sold the house. I'm sorry. I thought you were gone for good. You'll need somewhere to live ...

Andrews was now visibly too drug-clouded to go on talking. He could not keep his eyes open. He had spent all his energy on their conversation.

– Come back tomorrow, he managed.

He then grasped at Baddeley's arm, some important thing on his mind.

– I know ..., he said. I know ...

But he could not finish his thought. He fell back onto the bed, mumbling.

As Baddeley looked down at Andrews' face, it occurred to him that, at the best of times, his relations with other people were tricky. Even so, this bond with Avery Andrews was baffling. He had sought Andrews out. He had discovered an unstable man. And now, the man was dying. Why should it be
his
duty to watch the gyroscope fall?

And yet, Baddeley felt compelled to return. He was fascinated by the spectacle of Andrews' death, saddened that (so it seemed) he alone would be with Andrews in this most private of moments. As well, he felt a certain pride that he should have been chosen to be with Andrews at the end. The encounter would almost certainly inform the next draft of
Time and Mr. Andrews
, a book he swore he would finish, despite Andrews' disappointing words.

The following morning, however, all was changed. At the reception desk, Baddeley was told that “Mr. Andrews” had died during the night. He had died peacefully, “in his sleep.”

– I see, said Baddeley. Thank you.

The nurse, struck that her words had been taken with such equanimity, said

– Would you like to see the body? I don't think it's been taken from the room yet.

Not knowing what else to say under the circumstances and feeling that the nurse was doing her best to grant him some sort of favour, Baddeley said “thank you” and was directed to room 88a, the room in which he'd last seen Andrews alive.

It would be difficult to exaggerate Baddeley's confusion as he entered 88
A
. Without transition or warning, he found himself in the ward of Avery Andrews' god. The windows looked back from Lake Ontario at the room in which Baddeley now stood. The perspective made him ill. There were four beds in the room. In each of the beds was what looked to be a brilliant approximation of the human: flesh tones perfect, the postures natural, the eyes glinting as if moistened by tear ducts. But the mannequins — there's no other word for them — were all unmoving. One of them was in the image of Avery Andrews, another looked like Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and a third resembled Saint Teresa as Bernini had fashioned her: ecstatic.

Baddeley heard the word

– Welcome.

It came from the
fourth
mannequin, the one closest to the window. It “came from” the mannequin in the way a ventriloquist's voice “comes from” a dummy. The voice was in Baddeley's mind and his attention was somehow drawn to the mannequin nearest the window.

– Don't look at me for too long, said the voice. It's best if you look at the floor.

More to himself than not, Baddeley said

– All this is impossible. I must be dreaming.

– Since you don't know where you are, how can it matter if you're awake?

– It matters to
me
, said Baddeley. I don't want to be insane.

– I understand, said the voice. And I sympathize.

And God entered Baddeley's consciousness. Time stood still. The room broke the bounds of the building that held it, expanding to encompass all that Baddeley knew of the world. In an instant, he was “beside himself,” he and his world detached from each other and, alienated, he was filled with the exhilaration that accompanies new or unexpected views. (Baddeley assumed the vantage was God-given or god-like or god-angled. On this occasion, what he experienced was too bright and glorious to be anything but divine.)

While he was inhabited by the sacred — if “sacred” is what it was — Baddeley knew what he wanted to say. That is, he knew what he wanted to
write
. Words tumbled from him in paragraphs; a novel came to being within his imagination. Along with the ecstasy of suddenly knowing the words he needed, however, there was an anxiety that he might not manage to keep
these
words, to remember them when it came time to write them down. So that, at the moment of deepest inspiration, Baddeley also felt anguish at the thought of how much he might lose.

Moments, minutes, hours after the Lord had taken him over, His presence withdrew. It did not vanish entirely but, all the same, the withdrawal brought agony.

– Stay, Baddeley pleaded.

– I cannot, said the Lord.

And He withdrew as time returned and the room retreated into itself, its only bed occupied by the remains of Avery Andrews; the only living presence that of Alexander Baddeley himself.

On first encountering this “being,” Baddeley had assumed it was an aspect of Andrews' madness — a delusion so powerful it could be parcelled and shared. After this communion, he understood why Andrews had come to think it was sacred. What he could not see was how Andrews had thought of the spirit as in any way “insane.” Nothing that could lead a man to such heights could be considered anything but miraculous. Literally miraculous, as far as Baddeley was concerned. He had been mired in a longing to express himself. He had not managed a single good line of poetry. But after this moment in the hospital he was charged with words. Having paid his final respects to Avery Andrews, Baddeley returned to his apartment on Runnymede and began writing. For five days he worked without eating, stopping only for water, coffee or the Allen's apple juice he had in his fridge. He wrote the first chapters of a novel called
Home is the Parakeet
, a novel that existed fully formed in his imagination or, rather,
half
-formed like one of the statues left unfinished by Michelangelo, so that, for Baddeley, all was there. It was now only a matter of helping the thing from its integument.

(
Home is the Parakeet
's macabre first paragraph ...

The black-garbed soldiers, perhaps thirty in all, were preparing for a final assault on what was left of the village: two farms housing three dozen women and children, who were equipped with a couple of hunting rifles and almost no ammunition. One soldier guided a muzzled alligator on a leash. Several others heated their bayonets with acetylene torches. They formed a merry bunch, laughing as they set off.

is now, of course, among the best known passages of Canadian prose.)

And yet, when the first chapters were written, Baddeley was uncertain about how to go on. He was overwhelmed by the number of roads his novel could take. Worse, it no longer seemed to him that his novel meant any
one
thing. No, his narrative of a man who returns from the Second World War traumatized at having witnessed the slaughter for food of exotic birds in a bird sanctuary now meant innumerable things. In his mind,
Home is the Parakeet
was a metaphor for everything from the struggle between man and nature to the nightmare of colonialism.

He went back to the Western.

This visit was much like the previous. Though God was not in 88
A
, Baddeley found the right room easily. Using only an instinct he did not know he possessed, he pushed open a door in the prenatal ward and found himself in what he now thought of as the “customary” place. And God — or whatever it was — overtook him at once. At once he was in the presence of God's vision which was also, for a time, his own: like a single image printed on two transparencies that are then overlaid, one atop the other. And when his time with “God” ended, Baddeley was both exhausted
and
wide awake.

(An unexpected gift: at times like this — after an encounter with “God” — he found himself susceptible to the city. Walking home from the hospital, the city seemed to have awakened
with
him. It was like dawn in the arms of someone he loved. It wasn't just a matter of the usual attractions: the lake, its beaches, the quiet of Mount Pleasant. No, in these moods, Baddeley loved every aspect of Toronto: the light of day, the washed-out blue of its sky, the breath one drew halfway up the hill that lounged against High Park, the sounds of voices echoing voices, the plain streets that led to avenues along which the houses were simple and true, and lanes that led past parks that flared as one passed them, leaving their impression of green and red and grey, the coloured metal of jungle gyms, swings and slides.)

He returned to his basement on Runnymede and, after eating a cheese sandwich, a handful of cherries, and a small container of vanilla-and-honey yoghurt, Baddeley went back to his novel, certain of the path he wanted to take, unconcerned as to whether it was the “right” path or not.
Days passed and he wrote in peace, unafraid of losing his way.

It was on his next visit to the Toronto Western that things grew more complicated. He had no trouble finding the room, and no sooner did he enter than God entered his being. But whereas his previous communions had been a pure ecstasy, this one was disturbing. While under God's influence, Baddeley suddenly experienced — as precisely as if he were actually there — a child being eaten by an alligator. He saw, felt, and heard. He imagined himself splattered with the blood that erupted from the child's mouth, his own shirt wet. He experienced both the child's terror
and
the happy patience of the alligator. He heard the child's last words

– I'll tell mom! I'll tell!