André Alexis: A

Baddeley’s first thought on finishing his friend’s book was that, the world having a nearly inexhaustible supply of place names, Gil’s novel could be written over and over until cockroaches covered the face of earth. His second, and more charitable thought was that he would write, for friendship’s sake, an anodyne blurb, something that could be taken for raise if it were left unexamined:

I have read a marvellous book!

— Alexander Baddeley

or

Slow Boat to Peru is a real book!

— Alexander Baddeley

or again

Of all the books I have read, this one is by the wonderful Gil Davidoff!

— Alexander Baddeley

But he found he could not write anything dishonest. Something in him was no longer biddable. And when Mr Swann asked him, more and more insistently as the publication deadline approached, for his blurb, Baddeley could only say that, this being the first time he had written a blurb for a friend’s book, he was having difficulty finding words to express his feelings. This answer, delivered with a sigh and a tone of contrition, was enough for Mr. Swann. It was not enough for Gil himself, though. Gilbert “Gil” Davidoff was outraged that his friend, whom he now found he did not much like, could refuse so simple a request. Nor was he fooled by Baddeley’s excuses.

Their breach came when the deadline passed and Baddeley had given Swann nothing. When next Baddeley saw Gil Davidoff, Davidoff allowed him to gaze on his profile while he — that is, Gilbert “Gil” Davidoff — shed increasingly vituperative opinions about reviewers: reviewers in general; reviewers in Toronto; and reviewers who, without reason, thought too highly of themselves. Thereafter, Gilbert Davidoff could not be reached by Alexander Baddeley, no matter how Baddeley tried. And, at first, Baddeley did try. It was more as a matter of habit than anything else, though. Having made four or five calls, having left three or four messages on Gil’s answering machine, it finally occurred to Baddeley that Gil Davidoff was petty, unworthy, and mean, that Davidoff was the literary scene and the literary scene was Davidoff. Disenchanted with one, why should he maintain his friendship with the other?

Another year passed.

Baddeley read books and wrote reviews. He was invited to be on panels devoted to this or that aspect of literature. His insights into the moment of the art work’s conception and creation were particularly appreciated. He was commissioned to write longer essays on Pasternak, Avison, Cavafy, and Langston Hughes. He did not become wealthy but he was able to leave his rooming house for an apartment in the basement of 434 Runnymede. He could afford to take the streetcar when he wanted and there was talk of him writing a book about canadian literature.

All this should have been gratifying. The months should have passed quickly. But, if anything, time slowed. Baddeley became convinced that most of what passed for art was, in reality, an endless re-fashioning of the mire; endless recreations of the moments in the closet after God had forsaken him.

That dark moment in the closet, as well as the enthusiasm that had preceded it, returned vividly to Baddeley with the publication of Avery Andrews’ Yet Again . The fact of the publication was a shock to Baddeley. Avery Andrews had seemed on the verge of suicide. It was scarcely credible that he’d lived long enough to write another collection of poems. And yet, there was the proof, in the pages of the Globe and Mail : a review of Andrews’ collection by Ismail Andersson who quoted from what he called one of the book’s more remarkable poems, “The Eumenides,” the very poem at whose inception Baddeley had been present:

While the Eumenides sharpen their thumbs

To scratch on our windows prophecies, bitter crumbs —

The immortal benefits of glorious life …

Reading those words, seeing them in the pages of the Globe, brought back the majesty at the heart of Andrew’s work and they rekindled Baddeley’s desire to write poetry himself. Baddeley was suddenly convinced that he knew the way to the place Andrews had been and so, along with his reviews, he began to write poetry.

Weeks after he began writing poetry, he stopped.

Not only was poetry difficult to accomplish but, for Baddeley, it was almost impossible even to begin. He had imagined that any word he put down would call out to the other words the poem needed. This was the opposite of what happened. Any word he wrote seemed almost to eradicate the rest of the English language. After three weeks, his “poems” consisted of abandoned stanzas and the occasional phrase, the most coherent of which was

I scale the glacier of your frozen eyes

a line that sounded wonderful as he wrote it, though, when he saw it the following day, he knew it for the doggerel it was.

And so, for the first time, Baddeley had a deeper sense of what it was he’d lost when he had turned Avery Andrews down: certainty, the knowledge that one’s work was good. Two years on, he did not believe that Andrews had a link to God. Nor did he believe that by killing Andrews he would inherit some privileged relation to the poetic. What Baddeley now believed was that he might have learned from Andrews’ derangement as, say, Jacques Prevel had learned at the feet of Antonin Artaud or as Anatoly Naiman had at those of Anna Akhmatova. He had been hasty to turn away from the poet’s gift, however poisoned the gift might be. The memory of Andrews standing (forlorn) at the entrance to the Toronto Western returned to Baddeley with full, melancholy force.

More than that: after reading Andrews’ latest collection, it seemed to Baddeley that Andrews had overcome the mental instability that had had him in its grip. The poems in Yet Again were of a lucidity that suggested peace of mind and acceptance of the world. And having agreed — having agreed with himself, in effect — that Andrews was almost certainly sane, Baddeley decided it would not be wrong to contact the poet again.

It was again November. Parkdale was grey, but it was a soft grey. Its streets were wet; its pedestrians in half-unbuttoned coats. The house at 29 was unchanged but, at the sight of it, Baddeley felt as if he were walking into a recurring dream. He knocked on the door and rang the bell. He heard a woman’s voice, faint and muffled, and then the door was opened as far as the bolted chain would allow. An Asian woman was on the other side: angular face, an ear sticking out from the black curtain that was her hair.

— I’m looking for Mr. Andrews, said Baddeley.

— He not heah, said the woman.

— Can you tell me where I could find him?

— He at hospital.

— At the Toronto Western?

— He at hospital.

The woman looked at him and he looked at her.

— Thank you, he said.

This little scene was repeated half a dozen times over the weeks that followed. Baddeley would knock — early in the morning, mostly, hoping to catch Andrews before he set off to find “inspiration.” The door would be partially opened, and he would be told that Mr. Andrews was “at hospital.” He would then go to the Toronto Western and wander the halls looking for Andrews.

Baddeley expected that, at some point, he would knock at the door and find Andrews at home. He was prepared to be patient. But as it happened, the next time he saw Avery Andrews Baddeley did not recognize the man. Andrews recognized him .

It was the evening of November 22nd and Baddeley was at the Toronto Western. He had walked about the wards with diminishing conviction. He’d been buttonholed by a number of insistently helpful nurses and he was on his way out when, as he passed through a waiting room, a man in a wheelchair caught his attention, held eye contact then signalled to him with the wave of a hand.