Maud Casey - The Man Who Walked Away

“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.

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.