Man Descending by Guy Vanderhaeghe

Author:Guy Vanderhaeghe [Vanderhaeghe, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780773673670
Publisher: Stoddart
Published: 1981-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

Going to Russia

“ANOTHER of your letters arrived at my house yesterday,” the doctor announces. “That makes four now.” He says this in a colourless, insipid voice, in the way he says most things.

It is only the significant pause which follows that alerts me I am expected to respond, and distracts my attention from the scene outside his office window. For several minutes I have been watching two children as they tramp stiffly off into the distance. They lead me to think of my daughter, and to wonder if she misses my visits.

Here, we are on the outskirts of the city, where the new suburbs dwindle into prairie, and prairie into winter sky. The children, stuffed into bulky snowsuits, totter along, their arms stiffly extended like tiny astronauts foraging on the frozen cinder of a spent star.

Suburban tots often come to explore these splendid spaces. I have navigated them too, in my imagination, warm behind a double pane of glass. I find it strange that this blank sweep of land terrifies some of my fellow inmates and that they feel the need to keep their blinds down night and day. I like it. It makes me think of Russia.

“Yes?” I say finally, a little late, but nevertheless meaning to politely encourage him.

“Mr. Caragan, I thought when we met last Wednesday we agreed there would be no more letters.”

The man has me there. But I am an impulsive fellow and that was Wednesday. By Thursday I felt I owed him some kind of explanation as to what had moved me to write the first three letters. “That’s true,” I admit, “that was the understanding.”

“But?”

I shrug.

Dr. Herzl spreads a sheet of paper on his desk. His fingers rub diligently at the fold marks. When he is satisfied everything is shipshape, he begins to read to himself. I note a barely perceptible flicker in his upper lip. When he finishes, he looks up at me sharply. An old tactic that I recognize immediately. “This doesn’t make much sense to me,” he says.

“No?”

“Excuse me,” he says, pausing. “I’m not a critic.…” The doctor smiles to signal me that this is an offering from his store of inexhaustible wit. “But I find your language rather … formal, stilted,” he says at last, finding the words he wants. “As if you are under great strain, as if you are trying to keep a lid on your feelings when you write me these letters.” He searches the page. “For instance, there’s this: ‘I answer in writing because my thought will thus be more fully expressed, and more distinctly perceived, like a sound amid silence.’ Doesn’t that sound a bit unusual to you?”

“There’s quotation marks around that.”

“Pardon?”

“I didn’t write that. There’s quotation marks around that.”

“Oh.” The doctor hesitates. “Who did write it then?”

“Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon.”

A doubtful look passes over his face. He suspects me of pulling his leg. Dr. Herzl considers me a great joker, albeit an unbalanced, a lunatic one.

“It’s true,” I assure him.

“I am not familiar …”

“So who is? But then, you don’t need to be,” I say.

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