The Man Who Walked Away A Novel by Maud Casey

Author:Maud Casey [Casey, Maud]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781620403112
Amazon: 1620403110
Barnesnoble: 1620403110
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

The man speaks hundreds of kilometers in a breath: from Montpellier to Narbonne, from Pézenas to Geneva, from Cette to Berlin, from Castelnaudary to Charleroi. From Verviers to Vienna! The place names trip off his tongue, an incantation of bemusement and bafflement, as if he is speaking about the adventures of another man entirely. There is something oddly innocent about his befuddlement, as if he were astonished at his own debilitating condition.

The Doctor finds himself imagining this man as a part of the throngs of pilgrims during the Middle Ages who sought refuge in the asylum when it was on the pilgrimage route of Saint James. If the man had lived then, he might very well have been considered a spiritual pilgrim, but he didn’t, and so he is a patient.

“Where else have you traveled, Albert?”

“Maastricht. Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bonn . . . Kassel, Frankfurt . . . Hanau, Aschaffenburg, Darmstadt . . . Würzburg, Nuremberg. Linz . . . Amstetten! Salzburg, Schaffhausen, Basel, and Delle. Interlaken . . . the canton of Vaud. Bonsecours? Yes, Bonsecours!”

He was here and then he was there. There is nothing in between.

“I found myself in Tours,” Albert says, “but first I was sleeping on a bench in the Orléans station in Paris.” But then he is somewhere else. “Once the Dutch police, because I had no money, sent me to the Belgian frontier.” Then, somewhere else entirely. “In Prague, a group of French students took up a collection for me. Eight florins and a shirt, they gave me.”

As far as the when and where, the if, of his eating or drinking or his sleeping, the Doctor notes, the man has not a clue. If he ate or drank, he doesn’t remember it; if he slept, he cannot recall. In this town, the consul would have nothing to do with him; in that one, he was given a travel warrant to return home on foot. He wakes up and wakes up and wakes up here and here and here, but the journey remains a mystery.

“Arles, or was it Nîmes? I left it abruptly.”

His life is an endless sentence with more ellipses than words, with intermittent and puzzling punctuation.

The smell of burned mushrooms drifts down the hall.

“All of them burned?” the Doctor hears Nurse Anne ask.

“Most,” Henri says.

“Would you like me to go on?” Albert asks. He sits in a chair across from the Doctor. Out the window above Albert’s head, the Doctor watches as the public officials spill onto the steps of the Palace of Justice. The bell of St. Eloi rings, followed by the asylum bell.

“It is time for dinner,” Albert says.

“It is time for dinner,” the Doctor says, “but from the smell of things, dinner will be a little late today. Would you mind if we spoke for a while longer? I’d like to make a map of your travels.”

“Of course,” Albert says. “Whatever you like. I want to do whatever you like.”

“But why?” Elizabeth cries. “I only want to fix the wing.

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