Maud Casey - The Man Who Walked Away

“Oh, don’t be a fool,” Marian says.

Marian and Walter are still here, and so is Albert. The urgency has not come upon him; it has not obliterated him. They are all here together, walking and walking under the same sky whose ominous smears do not mean the end of him. In fact, the sun is creeping out from behind the clouds; though she is afraid, Marian stays.

He has not disappeared. Their feet are walking him back, back into here , into now. A fleeting illumination through the pitch-dark of his mind: while he was still on the road, those horse’s eyes staring at him— It is better not to thrash —sinking and sinking into the mud. He hears the horse still, squealing until the mud fills its nostrils and its mouth, until the horse is only those eyes above the surface, staring. Albert is not thrashing; he doesn’t need to thrash. Marian and Walter are walking him out of the mud.

“You are making me dizzy,” Nurse Anne calls from the doorway. “Breakfast is getting cold. And what have you done with my seashells, Albert?”

“We won’t stop just yet,” Walter says. “Though perhaps we could slow down.”

“They are on my bedside table,” Albert calls over.

“Well, don’t worry yourself,” Nurse Anne says in a voice that says: Worry . “Don’t worry. I’ll get them. I wouldn’t want to interrupt you.”

Ring ( shadow ring ).

“Never mind her,” Marian says. “Pay attention.”

And Albert does.

Walter whispers something to Marian that Albert cannot quite make out.

“Of course he is,” Marian says, reaching across Albert to thwap Walter on the chest with the back of her hand. “Of course he is. I never doubted it.”

Albert’s waistcoat is damp with sweat, but underneath the hands of Walter and Marian his arms have stopped trembling. The three of them move through the minutes as if the minutes were nothing; their beautiful feet move forward together, having a conversation of their own. Albert’s astonishment fills him until it is spilling over, into Marian, into Walter, until they are walking, astonished, together.

The air in the amphitheater is already electric, but this time the girl is not small or weak or fading. This time, there is no girl at all. All the Doctor can make out from where he sits waiting for the great doctor to appear is a lump of something on a platter. It might be lunch. The Doctor doesn’t want to think about lunch; he doesn’t want to think about food at all. He is not feeling well. Even the murmuring in the amphitheater — a thousand tiny hammers in his head. How could he possibly think about lunch? In the corner, the tall, skinny photographer has appeared, once again magically transported, glasses perched on his pointed head as he unwraps the plates from their cotton swathing, the clunk-clunking a larger pounding hammer that joins the tap, tap, tap of the amphitheater conversation inside the Doctor’s skull. Behind the platter is a large chalkboard on which is scribbled: To force the womb to descend: bitumen, sulfur, and petroleum oils, woodcock feathers, billy goat hairs, gunpowder, old sheets. He doesn’t want to think about billy goat hairs, or old sheets either. What was he thinking when he accepted the bartender’s invitation the night before last— Don’t be a stranger —? He should have remained a stranger.

When he woke up yesterday morning, fully clothed, on top of the covers of his lumpy bed, he had only a vague recollection of making his way up the stairs from the bar underneath his apartment. I’ll be at the top by the end of the week . This is the part he remembers, a hand on either wall for balance. One day for each step. Had one of the men huddled at the bar — the one whose face up close was as lined as the map of Albert’s travels — put a hand on either side of his face? “The good doctor,” the man’s breath thick on the Doctor’s cheek. “You’ll be fine.” The men’s laughter, a streak of sound through the sky of his dreams all night long and again, still, last night in the hotel.

When he walked into the bar the night before last, the bartender cried out gleefully, “A stranger no more!” The Doctor was no longer a stranger, but after several drinks he wasn’t entirely sure what it was he had become. He had only wanted to escape the feeling of riding his bicycle up into his parents’ arms, their forgiveness so sweet he was better off erasing it completely.

“Tell us that story again, sir doctor,” the man with the map-lined face said. “The one about the Greeks and the electric eels.” Had he told them a story? Had he told them he was a doctor?

“I’ve got an electric eel for you,” said the map-lined-face man’s companion, always one drink ahead.

“Come, now,” the man with the map-lined face said, nudging the Doctor with his shoulder. And when the Doctor couldn’t remember the story he wasn’t sure he’d told the first time, the men returned to their banter, the easy hop from one subject to the next — their work at the docks (which drove them to drink), their wives (who drove them to drink), the relentless wind off the river (which drove them to drink).

It was then that they slithered through his mind — the electric eels. Zzzzzz . “The Greeks,” he said, remembering, “treated gout by having the patient stand on an electric eel.”

The men laughed and laughed and the laughter surrounded him. It was funny. Standing on eels to cure gout, but also to be sitting here, with these men whose laughter had always been in another room. This is what his life might be if his ethereal if ever developed a solid spine — a life full of nights in which laughter was in the same room.

“No one cares about your eel,” the man with the map-lined face said, shoving his companion playfully.

“But it is enormous .”

The bartender had retreated to the other end of the bar to rummage through clinking bottles, the novelty of the Doctor’s presence having worn off.

“To the eels!” the drunker man said, clinking glasses first with the map-faced man and then the Doctor.

“To the eels!” Why not?

But he didn’t really care about the eels. Soul murder . Walter’s strange phrase had been stuck in his head and he wanted to chase it out. Soul murderer. Careless man. Those words Albert spoke at the end of his story that wasn’t actually his about being mistaken for the czar’s assassin. Why wouldn’t the man weave himself into history? The Doctor had driven him to it. The drinking had helped for a little while and then he had collapsed into his lumpy bed, dreaming of the amphitheater. He was wearing a new suit and the great doctor was whispering in his ear. What was he whispering? The laughter of the men downstairs became the murmur of the high foreheads and aristocratic noses. Aaaah. Ooooh . “A toast!” the great doctor cried. To what? The Doctor was not yet finished with his case study. He had not even begun. “To Albert!” cried the hairy bear. When the morning finally came, it felt like years later, and the Doctor was drenched in the sweat of envy and failure. Shivering naked over his pail of water he tried to sponge it away, but it clung to his skin in persistent beads.

Careless man. He didn’t want to be one, so he put himself on a train to Paris in order to be less careless, resolving as the train hurtled through the countryside to take more care. And here he is once again, foggy still even after drinking the awful concoction the bartender offered him yesterday morning. Myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, aloe, cardamom, peppermint oil and a number of other ingredients the Doctor was afraid to ask about, including a grape-infused spirit. And on top of it all, here he is once again, enduring this amphitheater full of pointy knees and aristocratic noses and high foreheads, all these waiting bodies, hot and lemony with sweat.