him to know that. People he can rely on. People to spend time with.
“What are you talking about? You don’t even know who he is. Just stop, please, will you?” He looks as mortified as if the two of us were onstage together naked.
I can see in his eyes how hard he’s trying not to pity me. This is what I do to them. Over and over. And then, like Alec’s face now, their faces become the mask of the beast, used by it to torment me. My voice used to protect Alec, the way I invented stories for him. Protecting him from the ghosts. Now I’m the spirit trapped in his house.
He’s turning to go, upset and fed up. I walk over to him, to put a hand on his shoulder, but he ducks out from under my touch and hurries back up to the street.
The deepest shade is beneath a maple further along the path. I lean up against it, sitting on the grass. The water of the brook is clear to the sandy bed. These beauteous forms / Through a long absence, have not been to me / As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye / But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet… That first time I went into hospital, during university, I remember being glad Mr. Gillies had made us memorize poems at school … that blessed mood / In which the burthen of the mystery / In which the heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world / Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood / In which the affections gently lead us on,— / Until the breath of this corporeal frame / And even the motion of our human blood / Almost suspended, we are laid asleep / In body, and become a living soul. The words meant nothing to me as a boy. They were just a rhythm. Jumbled up with Gilbert and Sullivan and “Onward Christian Soldiers.” But after the treatments, I would come back to my room bruised across the chest from my convulsions against the restraints, and for several days I wouldn’t be able to recall much of anything except passages of music and those stanzas. They became the way I measured time. By bringing back that earlier world, assuring me it had existed, and thus that when more time passed things might be different still. And so I began to piece together the meaning of the phrases. That the motion of our blood could almost stop, our bodies be laid to sleep, but somehow the soul be kept alive. Simply by the things we saw and heard, in any given moment. It was a report from the inside of another person’s head, someone who’d been in lonely rooms, who’d lived through hours of weariness but knew a path back to life. Which is what I found then. Returning to my college, being with friends, having happiness. I’d seen the monster, but I didn’t recognize it because I was young and had never encountered it before. Why should I think I ever would again?
In the Royal Signal Corps, I met Peter Lorian, and when our compulsory service was done we got an apartment in Chelsea together with two other friends and started having our parties. Where a few years later Margaret appeared. In her green satin dress and long dark hair, tall and slender. No woman had ever looked at me as directly as she did. I couldn’t stop trying to charm her because I wanted her to keep looking. And she kept blushing at my attempts, but laughing too, which made the difference, because then I could keep going, and we could acknowledge the game for what it was, and forgive each other for playing. It’s what let us fall in love. That we could laugh together.
These bits of poetry float back to me again now, and they still measure time, but cruelly.
It’s no use resisting this heat. My shirt is soaked, the sweat has seeped into my shoes. But I mind it less. There’s nothing of my person to protect anymore. The simplicity of this is a great relief. An empty stomach and throbbing temples are no more personal than a bank of thriving weeds, or the mirage of asphalt melting in the distance along the
“What are you talking about? You don’t even know who he is. Just stop, please, will you?” He looks as mortified as if the two of us were onstage together naked.
I can see in his eyes how hard he’s trying not to pity me. This is what I do to them. Over and over. And then, like Alec’s face now, their faces become the mask of the beast, used by it to torment me. My voice used to protect Alec, the way I invented stories for him. Protecting him from the ghosts. Now I’m the spirit trapped in his house.
He’s turning to go, upset and fed up. I walk over to him, to put a hand on his shoulder, but he ducks out from under my touch and hurries back up to the street.
The deepest shade is beneath a maple further along the path. I lean up against it, sitting on the grass. The water of the brook is clear to the sandy bed. These beauteous forms / Through a long absence, have not been to me / As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye / But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din / Of towns and cities, I have owed to them / In hours of weariness, sensations sweet… That first time I went into hospital, during university, I remember being glad Mr. Gillies had made us memorize poems at school … that blessed mood / In which the burthen of the mystery / In which the heavy and the weary weight / Of all this unintelligible world / Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood / In which the affections gently lead us on,— / Until the breath of this corporeal frame / And even the motion of our human blood / Almost suspended, we are laid asleep / In body, and become a living soul. The words meant nothing to me as a boy. They were just a rhythm. Jumbled up with Gilbert and Sullivan and “Onward Christian Soldiers.” But after the treatments, I would come back to my room bruised across the chest from my convulsions against the restraints, and for several days I wouldn’t be able to recall much of anything except passages of music and those stanzas. They became the way I measured time. By bringing back that earlier world, assuring me it had existed, and thus that when more time passed things might be different still. And so I began to piece together the meaning of the phrases. That the motion of our blood could almost stop, our bodies be laid to sleep, but somehow the soul be kept alive. Simply by the things we saw and heard, in any given moment. It was a report from the inside of another person’s head, someone who’d been in lonely rooms, who’d lived through hours of weariness but knew a path back to life. Which is what I found then. Returning to my college, being with friends, having happiness. I’d seen the monster, but I didn’t recognize it because I was young and had never encountered it before. Why should I think I ever would again?
In the Royal Signal Corps, I met Peter Lorian, and when our compulsory service was done we got an apartment in Chelsea together with two other friends and started having our parties. Where a few years later Margaret appeared. In her green satin dress and long dark hair, tall and slender. No woman had ever looked at me as directly as she did. I couldn’t stop trying to charm her because I wanted her to keep looking. And she kept blushing at my attempts, but laughing too, which made the difference, because then I could keep going, and we could acknowledge the game for what it was, and forgive each other for playing. It’s what let us fall in love. That we could laugh together.
These bits of poetry float back to me again now, and they still measure time, but cruelly.
It’s no use resisting this heat. My shirt is soaked, the sweat has seeped into my shoes. But I mind it less. There’s nothing of my person to protect anymore. The simplicity of this is a great relief. An empty stomach and throbbing temples are no more personal than a bank of thriving weeds, or the mirage of asphalt melting in the distance along the
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