The Man Who Walked Away A Novel (27 page)

“What do you see out there?” the Doctor asks

“Do you see the house across the way?” Albert asks. “Upstairs the mother brushes her daughter’s hair and downstairs the father sits alone reading his newspaper. See, through that window? The newspaper spread across his lap. Every day, they are never in the same room.”

The Doctor pours a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table and offers it to Albert but he shakes his head no.

“They are like me,” he says. “I am living in different rooms. But with no doors between them.”

“There are doors. We will find the doors,” the Doctor says, and because he wants more than anything to help Albert find a door, any door, there is something else he wants to say. “Albert, I’m sorry I left in such a hurry to go to Paris. I was in a rush. But that is no excuse. I was careless. I hope you will forgive me.”

The sun’s light frames Albert’s head and his large, sad eyes. The Doctor is reminded of the picture the photographer showed him of the shimmering black cloud hovering over the fierce girl’s head. The light framing Albert creates a similar vibration, a vibration that exceeds his body.

“You came back,” Albert says simply.

Out in the world, it is the end of any other day, but inside the Doctor feels it; the day is about to distinguish itself.

A basin clatters somewhere down the hall. “Give me that,” Nurse Anne says.

The Doctor places his fingers on top of Albert’s head. “Shh, Albert, close your eyes.” If the man reading his newspaper in his separate room, pausing for a moment, looked out his window in their direction, what would
he
see? What would he make, the Doctor wonders, of this peculiar, two-headed shadow?

“Shh, Albert, shh.” The Doctor’s fingers swirl, and Albert’s eyes flutter closed. “You are sleeping. You are such a good sleeper. You will stay in the asylum. You will not walk.”

“I will stay in the asylum. I will not walk.”

“Good, Albert. We only want to keep you safe. Now, Albert, tell me about your travels.”

“I will try.” Albert’s voice sounds strange, as if coming from a great distance, as though he is calling through a long gas pipe.

“That is all I ask.”

And Albert does. The Doctor makes notes of each detail: the shoes buried just outside the city of Limoges; the moon disappearing in a public square with the statue to such-and-such great general as a woman poured milk for cats; the horse thrashing in mud.
Dreaming together—
it’s an expression he has heard used to describe hypnosis, one he didn’t understand until now.

“I’m sorry,” Albert says, interrupting himself. “It is in pieces.”

“Shh, Albert, you are sleeping.”

A gendarme with sparkling buttons on his coat. An angry chambermaid who woke him to catch a train to somewhere else. A child who offered him a potato and a bird that flew out of the holm oak, speared the potato with its beak, and flew away. A hissing woman who threw filthy water on his clean clothes.

The Doctor understands how this must go. Albert is right; he is in pieces. Piece by piece, he will find himself. The Doctor must be patient. He must not be careless. Perhaps if they went back to the beginning.

“Shh, Albert, shh. Do you remember what happened the first time you traveled?”

“I am not sure.”

“Shh, Albert, shh. You are sleeping. You are disappearing.” Albert’s head sways underneath the Doctor’s swirling fingers. For a moment, Albert does not speak, and then a slight tremor moves through the Doctor’s fingers, up his arm, and into his chest.

“My father could not find the words,” Albert says. “Only his hands trembled. His face was so still.
I give you money to buy coke for the gas company
. . . this is where he worked . . .
I give you money . . . a day later . . . where have you been?
Then he was so quiet.”

“Where had you gone?” The Doctor concentrates on moving his fingers in steady circles.

“I discovered myself selling umbrellas for a salesman in the town of La Teste.
Who is this?
my father asked. The umbrella salesman was the very opposite of an umbrella. Not a pointed tip or a sharp edge to him.”

“How did your father find you so far from home?”

“It was a miracle, he said. The lamplighter helped him at first. They asked everyone they saw if they had seen a boy. They went in circles, and then got as far as Cestas before the lamplighter gave up, but my father never did. Marcheprime, Mios, he headed for Arcachon Bay, thinking maybe I wanted to see the water or the Great Dune of Pilat.”

Piece by piece, piece by piece, this is how the story will reveal itself. “How old were you, Albert?”

“Thirteen. When we returned home from La Teste, the neighborhood women who always brought us plates of food whispered. They whispered about us.
Poor man, he will never remarry, with that face and that odd boy
.”

“Where was your mother?”

“
If you climb the Spanish chestnut trees
, she said,
you will surely die from the bite of one of those filthy rats. And if you don’t die, and I discover you, you’ll wish you’d only been bitten by a filthy rat
. She laughed and twisted my ear.”

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Where was your mother, Albert?”

“After she died, I told my father I only climbed that tree to be closer to God but I’d rather not speak of that. When my father and I arrived home, Baptiste ran over and threw his arms around me.”

“Who is Baptiste?”

“He is my friend,” Albert says. “He was my friend.
He must go
, my father said to Baptiste.
He must stay inside. Go to bed
, he told me. He was not angry, though he sounded stern.”

“He wanted to keep you safe. We want to keep you safe.” It’s true. In this moment, all the Doctor wants is to keep Albert safe.

“Yes, he always wanted to keep me safe. He only wanted to keep me safe.”

“Albert, this is very useful. There is no need to cry. This is enough for today. We will do this again tomorrow.”

“I am so glad,” Albert says.

The Doctor blows on Albert’s eyelids.

When Albert’s opens his eyes, he looks directly into the Doctor’s eyes.

“My life was not always without love,” Albert says.

“Shh, Albert, shh,” the Doctor says, even though Albert is awake now. He is not sure what else to say. The world has shrunk to those large, sad eyes.

He feels a pressure underneath his hand as Albert presses gently into it. Looking down at the top of Albert’s large head and the soft hair beneath his fingers, his thin neck and its well-scrubbed poignancy, the Doctor’s heart begins to beat quickly; for a moment he believes he is dying. His life—that unruly
there
to
here
, that sequence of minutes and hours and days and months and years of which his father’s watch has kept such careful track—is surely leaving him. But then he understands. It is only rushing out of him in order to make room for the life of this man.

The answer often lurks in unlikely places. In the unexpected words spoken by a ship’s doctor to a young cargo clerk—a young boy lost at sea—on the Bordeaux-Senegal run:
You have a gift.
But there is never only one answer. Or maybe there are only moments. Moments like this one, moments of relief between who we were and who we will be: You are better
now
. We are better
now.
And
now
. And
now.
And
now.

Chapter 18

He will stay in the asylum; he will not walk. He is a citizen held by time; he is a citizen held by a dream.

Ring
(
shadow ring
). It is still time for breakfast; it is still time to walk with Marian and Walter in the courtyard; it is still time to put his hands in the dirt of the garden as the veteran digs his hole deeper and deeper and deeper until it seems he may fall into it and never return, which would be fine with Albert, since the veteran will not look at him without hissing,
Deserter
, even though the Director has told him not to, even though Marian and Walter assure him he is not (“You are the very opposite,” Walter says, squeezing Albert’s shoulder. “How could you be a deserter when you are right here with us?”); it is still time to march behind the Director
to the creek; it is still time for exercises. But now—
ring
(
shadow ring
), there is a new time. Now, each day, there is the time for the Doctor’s voice to whisper its way inside of him.

Albert is a house, and each day the Doctor discovers another door in the mysterious house that is Albert. Turning the knob, he gives it a gentle push, and there, another room.

Here, his ragged memory.

Here, his lost life not lost at all.

Shh, Albert, shh. Your arms and legs are motionless
,
and his whole body is heavy.
You are sleeping
,
but he is not exactly sleeping.
You are disappearing
,
but he does not disappear; he does not vanish.

Instead,
You will stay in the asylum, you will not walk.
In order to hear that voice, he will stay in the asylum, he will not walk.
Tell me about your travels, Albert.
The Doctor’s whisper and the swirling, swirling of his fingertips, and then Albert is
here
and
here
and
here
. He tries to put the
here
into words but always, underneath his words, there is more than he is able to bring to the surface; there is so much he is unable to translate.

He is
here
, that first time, the urge to walk filling him until he fears he will burst. At first that terrible thirst, so he drank water, so much water, but it wasn’t thirst, so he went outside because he thought it was air he needed. He gulped air until he was dizzy, and when the ache filled his groin, he hid himself at the end of the street and played his cock, his beautiful instrument. Though he played it a number of times, it still didn’t bring relief, and then he discovered himself walking through the tight, winding streets of the city, past the ancient amphitheater where the gladiators fought. The urge walked him out of town through the ancient gate of the city, under the giant clock of the church of St. Eloi as it tolled the hour; it walked him until he became a gladiator too.

The inscription underneath the clock read:
J’appelle aux armes
.
J’annonce les jours. Je donne les heures. Je chase l’orage. Je sonne les fêtes. Je crie à l’incendie.
The earth’s tremor rumbled through his shoes and up his shins. He was the whole world and there were the heavens and the angels, there was his mother alive again after being dead for a week that had already lasted years. His bones expanded, making room for it all. He walked until he became ancient; as if he’d always walked, as if all his life his blood had circulated astonishment.

“Where have you been? I have been searching and searching . . .” Albert’s father could not find the words. His face was so still; only his hands trembled. “I give you money to buy coke for the gas company . . . a day later . . . where have you been?” his father said when he discovered Albert, and Albert discovered himself, selling umbrellas for a salesman in the town of La Teste. His father was an even-tempered man, stern but even-tempered, certainly not a man whose hands ever trembled as they did now but he was exhausted—the long walk, the searching, believing he had lost his son forever. “Who is this?” His voice had been rough already from the long, late nights spent caring for Albert’s mother, who’d been sick for months and unable to ever truly sleep until she finally did and never woke up.

That there were years still to go without his mother in them seemed impossible to Albert, and yet there it was, the fact of it, every morning. No mother, no wife, the neighborhood women said. Pity was stronger than the desire to shun; the flip side of the whispering charity was righteousness, and the neighborhood women started to take care of him and his father. They fussed and clucked:
My duck cassoulet is famous. It cured my brother of cholera! And besides, it is delicious. It is how I am known—for that and for my generosity.
And when the wheelwright’s wife was run over by a carriage and the neighborhood women had someone else who needed their attention, Albert and his father were fine because Albert’s father had always been a good cook anyway and it meant he and Albert didn’t have to be endlessly grateful.