The Man Who Walked Away A Novel (15 page)

“I don’t like nature,” Marian, walking on one side of Albert, says.

“Perhaps the veteran could shoot it for you,” says Walter, walking on the other side of Albert.

“I am not thinking that,” says the veteran just up ahead. “That is not something I am thinking.” He points his finger at the ground. “Follow me, I dare you.” He points at some invisible thing, following him already. “That’s right,” he says.

“It has taken too much from me,” Marian says, her lovely curves shrinking as the sun comes out from behind a cloud. “Go on without me.”

And they do. Walter puts his arm through Albert’s, squeezing and squeezing, and they march after the Director, between the creaking birch trees along the courtyard path. Walter pushes aside the branches, leading Albert through the blackberry bushes, down the path after the veteran, after Samuel, who is an exception to all of those who the veteran would like to shoot; after Elizabeth, who would rather be doing her puzzle; and Rachel, who would rather be playing the piano. “Like this,” Walter says to Albert when they arrive at the creek bank, taking off his own shoes and wading into the ankle-deep water.

The veteran bends down to help Samuel with his shoes, concentrating on the laces. “These are his laces. I am undoing his laces.”

For once, Albert discovers himself in the midst of water and he knows why his shoes are left behind on the shore. He knows how he arrived here in the bracing cold water.

The Director, his face red with the excitement of nature, asks them to close their eyes, as he tells them about the Koine Greek word for “beauty” that contains the word for “hour.”

“Close your eyes and listen,” says the Director.

“Yes,” Elizabeth says, “how interested I was the first time you told us this story.”

“Shhh,” the Director says. “
Beauty
means ‘being of one’s hour,’ and you can’t be of your hour if you are talking to me.”

Albert is of this hour, his hour, with that bird and that bird and the smell of the muddy earth and the roots of the trees and the sound of the water pushing its way around the rocks. He stands there in his new pants, in the pocket of which is no train ticket to somewhere else, no train ticket he doesn’t remember purchasing. In his pockets are his hands and that’s all. He is of his hour and beauty is the rope pulling him out of the mud where he has been sinking for so long he doesn’t even know how long.
It is better not to thrash.
He does not thrash. He does not move at all.

“Reverence is a ringing in the soul,” the Director says. “Quiet, you will hear it.”

Albert isn’t sure if the ringing deep inside him is reverence or not. It doesn’t matter; it is as if someone has dropped a stone down into the well of him and there, after all these years, is the faint splash of water.

Ring
(
shadow ring
). And then it is time for lunch. At the long table that anchors them all, Walter’s warm thigh against Albert’s on one side, Marian’s warm thigh against Albert’s on the other. Nurse Anne hovers around the table, encouraging Samuel to at least roll up the sleeves of that ridiculous coat if he refuses to take it off. “Now you’ve got today’s soup on top of this morning’s porridge,” she says. “Congratulations, you are a meal.”

“Stop fiddling with Albert’s soup spoon,” Nurse Anne says to Elizabeth, who wants to show Albert her puzzle of the funicular in Lyon. A fleeting illumination along a pitch-black road: He has been there. Has he been there?

“Lyon,” Albert says. “It seems . . . it appears . . . I once . . .” Hadn’t he walked past the funicular in Lyon and wished that he were the sort of person who might stop and ride it?

“Yes, yes,” Elizabeth says, as though he has completed his sentence. “That’s wonderful. I have a beautiful something to show you later.”

“Samuel, you are fading,” Nurse Anne says.

“
Faded
,” Marian says, as Samuel slumps over his plate.

“I will be done soon. It is a simple test I’m conducting,” says Walter, tapping Albert’s elbow with his spoon. “The evidence is not complete.”

“I cannot hear you,” says Marian, putting her hands over her ears. “I am not hearing you.”

“A soul murder,” Walter says. “This is undoubtedly what you fear.”

“You are not listening at all,” says Marian.

Listen.
All day long: the beautiful constancy of the bells.
Ring
(
shadow ring
).
Is it time for exercises?
Yes, it is. After they have returned from the creek and those who needed to have changed out of their muddy clothes—“Every one of you,” according to Nurse Anne—after it is time for lunch, they go out into the asylum courtyard, even Marian, who has decided to be brave.

“I will let the sun have its way with me,” she says.

“That means she likes you,” Walter whispers to Albert.

They line up in two rows: Elizabeth, Rachel, and Marian in the front, Albert and Walter in the back with the veteran. The Director leads and they follow, except for the veteran, who marches behind them, back and forth, back and forth, keeping an eye on the deep hole he dug in the garden until the Doctor comes out, takes him by the elbow, and escorts him inside.

Miraculously, Albert’s body obeys him as he lifts his arms, squats, stands, squats, windmills his arms.

“Not all of you are soldiers,” the Director says. “Pace yourself. You are not all soldiers like the veteran, but fitness is still the key to good citizenship.” Albert feels the muscles in his arms and his legs and his back, good citizens moving through the minutes and the hours.

Ring
(
shadow, ring
). And then it is time to dig in the garden, to gently pull without tearing the kale and the lettuce they will eat later for dinner, to put it in the basket, to smell the tomatoes on the vine for ripeness, to not step on the beans, to spread the manure someone has brought for fertilizer. “This is how it’s done,” says the Director, using his rake, while the veteran, who has returned, digs in his hole. “That is not for eating, Samuel,” as Samuel puts manure on his tongue.

Elizabeth holds up her hands, dirt caking her nails. “Divine,” she says.

“Certainly,” Albert says. He wants to be friendly to this woman who is being friendly to him, but it is also true—her dirt-caked nails, they
are
divine. That he pulls a head of lettuce up from the rich, moist earth and smells its roots; that he does not disappear; that he is here.

“Here,” Elizabeth says. “Look here. This is it. The beautiful thing I wanted to show you.” She points to a bone with feathers pasted on it, lying on a bench. “My wing.”

Sisters have a way of finding their brothers, even brothers who have been turned into birds
, his father said when Albert asked him how the sister found the swan brothers in his father’s story. But even after his father comforted him,
Darling boy, the prince with one swan arm made a life for himself
, Albert felt them. He feels them now, underneath the tick-tock of the day, his beautiful feathers rippling uselessly.

“I will not cry,” he tells Elizabeth, because suddenly he feels certain he will. Looking at the wing, its feathers plucked, suddenly he is afraid again.

“Why would you? I’ve fixed it. I’ve put all the feathers back on,” Elizabeth says, looking as though she might cry too. “It is beautiful.”

“It is,” Albert says.
Darling boy, don’t cry.
“It is beautiful,” he says, but didn’t she see that was the problem? The beauty of one’s hour made the pain of leaving it that much worse. “It is, but . . .”

“Come with me,” Nurse Anne says, though the basket Marian is carrying is not yet filled. She takes Albert by the arm, her voice soft as the moss he put in his shoes.
Here is your room, yes, right here, here you are, right here.
“They can finish without us.”

“Let’s wash your feet,” Nurse Anne whispers, leading him inside, leading him down the hall to his room. She sits him in the chair, then picks up his old mended shoes from the corner, letting them dangle from the tips of her fingers. She reaches inside one of them and pulls out the moss stuffed into the toes. “Very clever,” she says.

“My feet are always clean,” he says, because they are and because he doesn’t want her to think they’re not.

“I would hope so,” she says. “Still, the Director believes in warm baths and your blisters need soaking. Sit. I’ll be right back.” He sits in the chair and she is, as she says she would be, right back. She pours a pail of steaming water into a washbasin. “Ready?” she asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer, and the touch of her knowing hands as she places his feet, his beautiful feet, in the silky soft water and begins to scrubs his toes, brings another glimpse of his forgotten life, a similarly kind woman in a Friedrichsdorf boardinghouse with a hairpin shaped like a sword who once gave him walnuts and cheese.

With her touch, his white-webbed calluses and his cracked heels begin to soften; with her touch too comes the memory of disbelief. The people he encountered on the road never believed that he was clean even when he said he was. Even the kindest people doubted him. A tailor’s wife who offered him a straw pallet in the back of the tailor’s shop inspected his hands for dirt only to discover immaculate fingernails; a farmer who, though he had eight children, offered him shoes, was shocked to discover the splendid state of Albert’s impeccable feet; a wool merchant who gave him the scraps from his dinner was startled when Albert pulled back his large ears to reveal shining, clean skin. How could he explain to them that even when the roofs were laced with icicles, in the name of cleanliness he would take off his mud-caked pants to wash in a river? That even so he was never immodest. If there were people walking, even far away, even if they were only specks on the horizon, he would hide himself behind a copse of trees. He was clean as often as he could be; if he was not, there was a twitch in his right eye. Too much dirt, and the blood rushed to a place just above that eye and protested, beating there as if his heart had taken up residence in the wrong place.

“It appears I have misspoken,” Albert says. He wants her to know he is grateful.
We will help you to remember.
She is helping him. “What I meant to say was thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” she says. “But you are welcome.”

There is a scraping and a shuffling at the door.

“What is that?” he asks.

“Only the veteran, eavesdropping,” Nurse Anne says. “Go away, brave man, this is not your room.”

“I was not thinking it was,” a voice says, and then the scraping and shuffling disappear down the hall.

But Albert does not hear. He is as silky as the water. The cleaning of his willing feet he always saved for last; for them he reserved the most special care. He would wait, fighting off the urge to walk as he waited for his shoes to dry by a river or a pond. Only one, or perhaps three, times he discovered himself suddenly in another town without shoes. The first thing he did was run a finger between each toe as if each toe were a tiny loaf of bread, like the ones Albert sometimes discovered left outside behind a bakery to cool; each toe delicious.

The silky water and the caress of Nurse Anne’s hands make him sleepy. But he doesn’t want to wake up in such-and-such a public square or in the cold rubble of the cemetery, so he grips the edges of the chair until his hands ache so he won’t fall asleep and wake up somewhere else entirely. He wants this new life where love isn’t always somewhere else. He wants this new life where he is not merely a man who has appeared out of thin air but a man with a history.

“I am not a vagrant,” he says. Though he had stopped bothering to tell people, it seems necessary to explain to her.

“I never said you were.” The way she doesn’t even look up suggests it was the furthest thing from her mind and then, as if she were a magician, out of her apron pocket she pulls seashells! She places them carefully into his hand. They are still warm from her body and smell of her clean apron and—Albert holds them to his nose—the sea.

“Where did these come from?” he asks.

“My father brought them back to me when I was a child,” she says. “From the Red Sea. He wanted me to see the world.” She leaves out the rest—the way, after he’d shown her all of its wonders, her father had wanted her to leave the world alone; the way he’d insisted she marry her flatulent cousin, shouting, “Who else will have you?” when she refused. How could this be the same father who would joke that she would make a wonderful
flâneur
, her heart ticking like a clock as she wandered Egypt or Algeria? She keeps herself to herself now, always having considered modesty a virtue, always having believed it to be the secret of one’s own truest love for oneself. She never said to her father, for example,
I always thought I would make a fine
flâneur
,
the same way she never said to the Doctor when he once said to her, “You look like my sister,” that she knew he did not mean a woman with a face more beautiful than his. He meant a woman with his face; he meant his unfortunate sister. This unfortunate sister’s face was the last face a handful of dying soldiers ever saw when she ran away from the flatulent cousin to join the front; to them, she was no unfortunate sister. To them, she was
mother
,
darling
,
my heart
.
My heart
is what the man who shares her bed now calls her. “We will make a new life,” he said, but when they drank a toast to their new lives she understood the moment was a pair of scissors, cutting her life in two. Half of it left behind in England, the other half yet to come. Once, she met her mother secretly in Budapest and they rode the funicular up into the Buda Hills, the Danube disappearing below them. They strolled arm in arm, making their way tentatively in their high-heeled boots on the cobbled streets. “Come back home,” her mother said, but it was too late. She was already on the other side of the river, far away, looking back on the moment as it happened.