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air by a diabolical architect. Certain horrors have a strict,
dreadful geometry, and I came to know their angles and
cosines and tangents. Day and night exchanged their fea-
tures. Demons favored me. I felt myself sobbing. I lost all
desire for the things of this world.
At last, from the chair I sat in, I saw the Hudson River in
the distance, and, out of the air of the alcove where I sat, a
voice spoke. The voice reverberated from my childhood. I
could hardly recognize it. On my windowsill stood a small
metallic duck, and from the ceiling hung a little blimp. I
found myself in my own bedroom in my parents apartment
on West End Avenue, and when I turned my head, I saw my
sister, Catherine, sitting close to me and yet far away. She
was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and a black skirt.
The expression on her face was solidly prim, though fierce-
150 charles baxter
ness lay in it somewhere, and, also, beauty, at a distance. She
wore a pair of running shoes.
Her voice emerged from her throat and mouth with a
rusty sound like cold water rising up in an antiquated pump.
In her hands she held a paperback book. Her general
appearance was that of a rather sleek funeral director, but in
fact she had clawed her way back to life, and she was drag-
ging me back with her. She had become a force, my sister, on
a mission.
Is there anything more restorative than the act of one
person reading a beloved book to another person, also
beloved? Slowly I returned to my senses.
The rusty unused voice began another narrative. About
thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with
only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate
Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of
Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a
baronet s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an
handsome house and large income. She took me all the
way through Mansfield Park, and as she did, the Hudson River
acquired a particular color (blue, in sunlight), as did the
buildings on this side of it, in Manhattan, and on that side, in
Jersey. I noticed people coming and going in my room, and I
observed citizens walking to and fro down at ground level,
rushing about their business. On stormy days I heard the
wind panting against the window glass. In that room, voices
became identifiable instead of hallucinatory and generic.
Miss Fanny Price eventually disposed of handsome and shal-
low Henry Crawford and found her match in Edmund. The
book ended; my sister started another.
In M , my sister intoned, an important town in
northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O , a lady of
unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-
the soul thief 151
brought-up children, inserted the following announcement
in the newspapers: that she had, without knowledge of the
cause, come to find herself in a certain situation; that she
would like the father of the child she was expecting to dis-
close his identity to her; and that she was resolved, out of
consideration for her family, to marry him. This was The
Marquise of O , which I d never read. How had my sis-
ter discovered this genius, Heinrich von Kleist? I would
have to ask her.
Her readings restored me to life. Gradually I shed the
residual toxins of where I had been and what I had done. I
moved about in the apartment and prepared my own meals.
I toasted bread and put jam on it. I took showers, washed
myself, shaved: the little miracles of everyday existence. I
tidied up. I avoided reading poetry, and when music came
on the radio, I shut it off. Music and poetry both felt dis-
abling to me, part of a world closed and shuttered. Besides, I
couldn t bear the stuff in any form. My mother took me
down to the shops on Amsterdam Avenue, where I bought
new clothes. She left me at the various doors, knowing bet-
ter than to accompany her adult son into a haberdashery.
From his calm altitudes, my stepfather gazed down at me
with mild benevolent confusion. He had adult children of
his own from his first marriage. He was under no require-
ment to love me, his strange irresolute stepchild. So why
did he?
34
But it was my sister who had become a wonder and
a marvel. When the reports of what had happened to me in
Buffalo made their way to the Milwaukee halfway house
where she lived, she spoke up. Words came from her mouth.
She issued a demand: Take me there. Meaning: to him. To
me. My mother flew out on the next nonstop to get her and
brought her back to West End Avenue. Catherine this was
reported to me later saw me sitting in my room, my per-
sonhood having been drained out, leaving behind this
smeary blotch of nothingness, and, with a cure in mind, she
marched over to the bookshelf in the living room. She chose
a novel. (I learned later that she happened upon Flaubert s
Sentimental Education not where I would have started.) I
don t remember the thread of the story, though I do
remember hearing her voice; for me, the journey was like
coming out of an ether dream, accompanied by a woman
telling a coming-of-age tale of someone named Frédéric.
And somewhere, toward the end of that book, the ether dis-
persed, or, to use another metaphor, the muddlement in my
head began, ever so slightly, to lift, and I saw people and
the soul thief 153
things in the room where I sat, and I heard a story being
told to me, and I could tell the difference between the actual
things and the imaginary ones.
Later, much later, she told me, I just wasn t going to let
both of us go down the drain.
Her recovery was sometimes referred to as a miracle,
more miraculous than mine, but I don t believe in miracles,
just the force of compassion, which under certain circum-
stances can bring the dead to life. Nor do I believe that to
say so is to be a sentimentalist. Though a prejudice exists in
our culture against compassion, there being little profit in it,
the emotion itself is ineradicable.
After I had come to, I made an effort to talk to Catherine,
but she didn t enjoy conversations as much as reading aloud.
In fact, she didn t care for conversations at all. Small talk
irked her and touched her in the site of her wound. She read
to me for another few months, until I was on my feet, where-
upon she returned to Milwaukee, eventually found a job, and
got herself an apartment. By saving me she saved herself. My
stepfather landed me a temp position as a clerk downtown in
an East Village sundry shop, where I shelved and restocked
shampoos and soaps and condoms. Then I applied for a job
at a post office over on Staten Island. I got it. My adult life
began. My parents let me go. They released me to the perils
and rewards of the world. I moved to another city. I went to
work for Amalgamated Gas and Electric, where I met Laura.
She had an innocence that moved me. After she gave me a
quilt as a token of her love, I married her.
Meanwhile, Catherine thrived, if you can call it that, in
Milwaukee, where she resides now. She currently works in a
hospice. She plumps pillows and talks softly and reads and
actively cares for people she hardly knows. She has never
married.
154 charles baxter
I call her sometimes. I have unanswered questions.
Why didn t you speak after the accident?
I couldn t.
But when you came home, and you started reading to
me, you could.
That was different.
How?
I don t know, she said. It just was.
Because I was in such bad shape?
Maybe. I wasn t going to let you go. There was a pause.
Also.
Also what?
You used to call me. Remember? You used to tell me
about your life. Stories. Serials. Another pause. I don t
want to talk about this anymore.
Okay. I had one more question that I had to ask her.
How does the world look to you now?
It looks all right.
You don t think about Dad ever anymore?
Sometimes. But, you know, I did all that.
What was it like, when you weren t speaking?
Nate, I have to go.
All right, I say. Talk to you next week.
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