Robert Wilson - The Divide

As time passed, he had traveled to the mainland less often. When he did, he began to attract attention. His Levis were thin and sun-faded; he had grown a beard. He was astonished at his own reflection in the window of the night ferry to Tsawassen. Here was some feral creature, sun-darkened and wild-eyed … where was John Shaw?

What was John Shaw?

But he knew the answer. John Shaw was an invention—the lifework of Dr. Kyriakides.

How strange it must be, he thought, to create a human being—or a facsimile of one.

But I’ve done that, he thought. I do know what it’s like.

He had invented Benjamin.

Waves of memory were triggered by the thought … memory, and the faint, disquieting sensation that something alive had moved inside him.

Coming back to this place now, it seemed as if he had never left.

He bought a week’s rental on an aluminum motor launch from one of the larger islands, and made his way directly to the cabin, avoiding the main docks at the civilized end of the small island and beaching the boat in a rocky inlet. He secured the boat against the incoming tide and followed a crude path to the cabin from the shore.

The cabin hadn’t changed much. The weather had pried up a few boards, and dry rot had taken out a corner of the porch stairs. A window was broken. Hikers had been here—he found a limp condom and the remains of a six-pack discarded in the back room. Forbidden pleasures.

Violation and trespass. He swept all this away, down the back steps into the bushes. There was a small storage closet built into the rear of the cabin, which no one had bothered to loot; it contained mainly maintenance supplies and he was able to mend the broken window with a sheet of polyethylene. Night was falling fast. John moved into the lengthening shadows of the pines beyond the cabin and gathered windfall for a fire. It had been a dry autumn and there was plenty of loose kindling. He startled a deer, which regarded him with wary eyes before it bolted into the bush.

He had a fire blazing in the stone fireplace before the sky was entirely dark, and enough kindling set aside to last the night. Come morning he would chop firewood. The weather was clear but very cold.

He rolled out his sleeping bag in front of the fire.

He was immensely tired.

He gave himself permission to sleep. Now, here, finally. But sleep wouldn’t come. Strange how it was possible to be crazed with fatigue and still wide awake. Too many amphetamines, he thought, for far too long. He was still, on some level, speeding.

He wrapped himself in his down jacket and went outside, walking a few feet down a dark path to a slab of granite overlooking the water. He gazed at the cold, wholly transparent sky and listened to the rustle of dry leaves against the windward wall of the cabin. He felt his aloneness. And he understood—quite suddenly—that it was that once-glimpsed sense of connection that had brought him back here. The need—even if he was dying, especially if he was dying—to feel himself a part of something. If not humanity, then this. This stark, unforgiving, lovely night.

But there was nothing of him in this wilderness. He had expected to find at least an echo of himself, of his isolation, in sky and sea and stone; but the sky swallowed up his voice and the rock rejected his footprints.

He shuffled inside to wait for morning.

Amelie did her best to ignore the note on the kitchen cupboard. Problem was, it refused to go away.

She pretended it didn’t exist. When she came home from the restaurant and found it, that first time, the note was like something washed up in a bottle: indecipherable and strange. Must leave. Try to understand. What did that mean? It didn’t even look like Benjamin’s writing.

He had talked about going away. True. But this —

It was too weird.

She washed the dishes. George had given her the evening off. She watched Entertainment Tonight, followed by a game show and a detective show. The images slid on past, video Valium. One day, she thought, we’ll get cable. Then maybe there’ll be something good to watch.

But the “we” made an odd hollow sound in her head.

She went to bed alone. Deep, brooding, dreamless sleep, and then she woke up—still alone. Well, that happened sometimes.

You couldn’t predict with Benjamin. Obviously, he had problems. It was not as if he could entirely control … what he was.

She forced herself to make the trek to the bathroom, cold these mornings. She looked at herself in the minor, naked and shivering, and she didn’t like what she saw. Small breasts, pinpoint nipples, a mouse-brown thatch of pubic hair. A ratty little body, Amelie thought. Someone, probably Sister Madelaine from the Ecole, had called her that. “Amelie, you are a ratty thing.”

Ratty little me, Amelie thought.

She went to work without thinking about Benjamin.

It was an ordinary day at work, and that was good. She thought maybe she was projecting some kind of aura, because nobody bothered her much. Even her customers were polite—even George was polite. At the door, as she was leaving, he put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Are you okay?”

“Just a little down,” Amelie said … regretting it instantly; because, in a strange way, saying so seemed to make it true.

“Some woman thing,” George diagnosed.

Yeah, she thought, I’m getting my period. George could be such a moron sometimes. But he meant well. “Something like that.”

“So cheer up,” he said.

Thank you a whole lot for that terrific advice, Amelie thought.

She walked home in the cold dark. When she reached the apartment, the note was still attached to the cupboard.

She looked at it harder this time. Forced her eyes to track it. Blue Bic hieroglyphics. Really, what language was this?

And at the back of her head, where impossible thoughts were nevertheless sometimes pronounced, she heard:

I am alone now.

Oh, no.

Screw that He’d be home. He would! It was only a matter of time.

She poked through the dresser drawers looking for something to smoke, something that would soothe her to sleep. This turned out to be a bad move, because she discovered that Benjamin’s clothes had been pretty much cleared out. The vacant space was a signal to her, more comprehensible than the note and more final. This sad empty drawer. She slammed it shut. As it turned out, there was a joint hidden at the bottom of her purse—something she’d bought from Tony Morriseau a while back.

It got her stoned enough to enjoy a William Powell Thin Man movie coming fuzzily over the border from a network affiliate in Buffalo … but not so stoned that she didn’t leap up from the sofa when the telephone rang. Benjamin, she thought, because it was late now and he must be thinking about her and who the hell else would be calling her at this hour?

Her hand trembled on the receiver. “Hello?”

But it wasn’t Benjamin. It was Roch.

She couldn’t understand him at first. He was speaking thick, muddled, obscene French. He’s drunk, she thought. She said, in English, “What do you want?”

There was a long pause. “I need a place to stay.”

“Oh, no … hey, come on, Roch, you know that’s not a good idea.”

“Oh, it isn’t? Isn’t it?”

Amelie wished she hadn’t smoked. She felt suddenly feverish and sweaty. She felt her brother’s attention focused on her like a heat-ray through the telephone.

“They fucking kicked me out of my apartment, Amelie. Nonpayment. Bitch landlady calls me a deadbeat. You know? This … toad, with a dress like a burlap sack. Looks at me like I came out from a crack in the plaster. You are a deadbeat, she says, I’m locking you out. I told her, I have stuff in there. She says, you have trash in there and you can pick it up from the side of the road. I should have fucking killed her.”