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As much as Baddeley feared the madness of others, he was even more terrified of losing his
own
sanity. At the “absorption” of Avery Andrews, he looked away, as if he'd inadvertently seen something taboo. No sooner did he look away, however, than 55
A
turned into a typical ward: a ceiling ten feet above them with four banks of fluorescent lights; four beds, all of them occupied; a window looking out on another wing of the hospital, beyond which he could see more buildings and smoke rising from a tall chimney.

Standing beside the patient in the bed furthest from the door was Avery Andrews. In the bed was a very old man or, perhaps, a young one with a long, white beard. It was difficult to “read” the patient, but something about the man did not feel old. Without moving his lips or at all shifting position, the whitebeard said

– Come closer.

It was as if a statue had spoken. There was no doubt that the “statue” had spoken to
him
, however. So, warily, and still shaken by his vision of Andrews' absorption by the impossible room, Baddeley approached.

– You're interested in poetry, said the patient.

Once again, the patient's lips did not move. It was both uncanny and fascinating.

– It is better if you don't look at me, said the patient. I am not where you see me, but I am close.

– Look out the window, said Andrews.

And Baddeley noticed that Avery Andrews had turned away from the patient, had all the while been observing the smoke as it writhed from the chimney — bringing to Baddeley's mind a thin, old woman struggling out of a stone boot. The world could not be as he was now experiencing it and still be the world. Therefore, he had lost his mind, or some drug — mysteriously administered — had taken it from him.

The patient said

– It wouldn't make any difference if you
did
lose your mind.

Alexander Baddeley felt light-headed. The room spun 290 degrees and the floor politely rose to meet him. What met him first, however, was the laughter of the patient — the last sound he heard before he lost consciousness. No, that's too easily said: “he lost consciousness.” As if something were taken away. In this instance, it would be truer to say that Alexander Baddeley
gained
a consciousness that, manifestly, was not his own. He fell to the floor, but instead of darkness there came ... not voices, exactly, but a presence, something like the soundless manifestation of a collective. There on the floor with him, a knot of red ants were at work carrying off the remnants of a crust of bread, and it seemed to Baddeley that he would have given anything to be one of them. That is, he experienced the purposeful delicacy of “mindlessness.”

How long he spent both inside
and
beside himself, Baddeley never learned. After a time, he woke in Andrews' house on Cowan. Judging by the light coming through the windows, hours or perhaps minutes had passed. There was sunlight but, for some reason, Baddeley imagined it was evening. He was on the living room sofa. Andrews was standing above him.

– What happened? Baddeley asked.

Avery Andrews looked down at him, all sympathy.

– Don't look at Him, he said. And try not to speak. Look out the window or keep your eyes closed. There's nothing to see, anyway.

– But what happened?

– You've been out for a while. I didn't know where you'd gone. I found you here, because He told me you'd be here. It could have been worse. I was gone for three days the first time He spoke to me. But don't think about that. You want to write, don't you?

At that moment, Baddeley had no idea what he wanted and no clear idea how he felt. He was concerned for his state of mind. Had he really met “God”? Or was it, rather, that Andrews had found some way to pull him into a delusion? (What, if it came to that, did “God” mean, in this situation?) Yet, along with the fear and the mistrust, there was exhilaration. Baddeley was in thrall to the depth of feeling he'd experienced while watching the red ants carry crumbs away. If he was capable of feeling anything so deeply — and it was a revelation to him that he
was
capable — it might just be possible for him to write poetry as well, especially if Avery Andrews was guiding him. Insane though the man might be, Baddeley would follow him quite a ways, if it led to such depths.

– Yes, he said. I want to learn to write like you.

Andrews said

– It'll be a short apprenticeship. There isn't much to learn.

You have to prepare yourself, that's all. I'll show you how you do it, then you'll take over from me. If I were you, I'd get my life in order. Pay off your debts. Say goodbye to your friends. Three days from now, meet me at the Western at seven a.m. If you find the room on your own, everything I have will be yours. This house, that sofa you're lying on. Everything.

Andrews held up his hand, as if to ward off conversation.

– Three days, he said. I'll answer the rest of your questions then. Now, please ... I need to get ready.

Although, at that moment, there were a thousand questions on Baddeley's mind, when Andrews asked him to leave, he got up from the sofa and left the house, still in shock. Nor, in the days that followed, could Baddeley grasp why it was important that he “get his life in order.” Neither why nor
how
, for that matter. His life amounted to so little, it was, in a sense, inevitably “in order.”

He did follow one bit of Andrews' advice, though. He spoke with a friend. The day before he was to meet the poet, Baddeley met Gil Davidoff at
The Cobourg
, a bar in Cabbagetown. More than anything, he wanted to tell
someone
about his encounters with Avery Andrews. Davidoff would not give a damn about his experiences and Baddeley knew it. That was why he wanted to tell Davidoff everything. Davidoff's self-regard had a way of turning even the most dire things in Baddeley's life trivial, rendering them less painful.

They were sitting at the front of
The Cobourg
. Their table was in a bay, its tall windows looking out onto Parliament Street. Cabbagetown was not bustling, exactly, but it was
almost
lively.

– I met Avery Andrews, Baddeley said.

– You see? answered Davidoff. I told you chicks can't lie to me.

– You're right, said Baddeley. And he wants me to meet him at the Toronto Western tomorrow morning. He didn't say where.

– The Western's not that big, said Davidoff. I met a couple nurses there once. They're pretty good, nurses. Know their stuff. But I prefer actresses. You can screw an actress for weeks without doing the same woman twice. Know what I mean?

– Not really ..., said Baddeley. But what about Andrews? Do you think I should go? I felt like I was hallucinating when I was with him. I really think he might be crazy.

– So? You should meet him if you want to, said Davidoff. What's the worst a poet can do? Throw up on your shoes? Just remember, Hemingway punched Stevens' lights out. Not the other way ‘round. And that's how poets
should
be treated.

Davidoff turned away to look out at the late-autumn world, lowered his dark-rimmed glasses to get a better look at a woman just then passing on the street.

– You think I should go, then, said Baddeley.

– What? Sure. Are we
still
talking about you? answered Davidoff.

– No, no, said Baddeley. I'll figure it out.

So, despite his trepidation, he went to the hospital on the appointed day, at seven in the morning. Having no idea where in the maze of Toronto Western he was to meet Avery Andrews, he simply followed what might be called “instinct.” It was not a strong “instinct.” He wandered about for an hour before he went up to the sixth floor of the east wing. He felt a certain “curiosity” about a janitor's closet between two wards. The closet was unnumbered. A panel on the door said “Employees Only.” When Baddeley opened the door, however, he found himself in the ward in which he had first encountered the patient, and there the patient was again. Avery Andrews stood near his “God,” looking out the windows.

The room was, of course, astonishing. It could not possibly fit in the closet Baddeley had entered. What's more, this time, the view from the windows was as if from the middle of Lake Ontario looking back on Toronto, looking back, impossibly, on the Toronto Western and on the very window in which Baddeley and Andrews were framed. Looking out the window and raising his right hand, Baddeley saw his own hand rising in the distance. It was, to say the least, disconcerting: an illusion of some sort, obviously, but most confusing.

Without waiting for a question, the patient said

– The answers I could give you would not help. I am here because I too suffer. You remember how peaceful it was for you to share the mind of ants at work? So it is for me when I am in your mind, my son. It is such bliss to find simplicity.

It didn't seem to Baddeley that his thoughts were simple.

– Your thoughts
are
simple, said the patient. You're only worried about what you call your sanity. A negligible matter, Alexander. The boundary is subtle, even for me. But, I understand you'd like to write poetry. There are two obstacles to your writing. One is within you. You must learn to listen to me when I am with you. And that will not always be pleasant. The other obstacle is before you. You'll have to free Mr Andrews, if you'd like to take his place. I don't believe you're capable of it, but Avery is convinced that you are.

Avery Andrews turned to face the man he had, from the moment he'd set eyes on him, assumed to be his killer: Alexander Baddeley.

– I
want
to die, he said.

Nothing about this moment made any sense to Baddeley. For one thing, who could comprehend the trajectory he was expected to make: from admirer of Avery Andrews to Andrews' assassin? How was he supposed to put aside years and years of admiration for Andrews? At this moment, in this place, for this audience, he was to murder a man he loved? There was no question of him doing any such thing. Whatever Andrews' emotional problems, Baddeley could not see himself killing a man who was one of the only sources of beauty and consolation in his life. Someone had misjudged him.

Turning towards the patient, Baddeley asked

– Who are you?

– Don't look at him, said Andrews. Look at me. I'm the one begging for mercy. I've been bound to him for thirty years. I've looked after him for thirty years. Every line of poetry I've written, everything you've admired has come from him, from listening to him. I'm nothing but a vessel for his ramblings. I want to be free. I
want
to die.

– But I'm not a killer, said Baddeley.

– You
must
be, said Andrews, or you wouldn't have found me.

Turning toward the patient but not looking at him directly, Andrews pleaded.

– Tell him, he said

– What should I tell him? asked God.

– Tell him that I'm nothing. There's no poetry in me, except for what you put there. All these years, he's admired a stenographer. It all comes from you. There's nothing of me in it. I'm a fraud. He could do what I do just as well as I do. Better! He's a critic!

His hands shaking, Andrews pulled a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket. Opening the book to a blank page, he held it up for Baddeley to see.

– Look, he said and, then, turning to the hospital bed, he bowed his head and mumbled something or other. Baddeley could not make out Andrews' words. Baddeley himself was thinking of nothing so much as how to escape from the men into whose awful company he'd wandered — the poet and his “God.” But then, a strange “mind” was made manifest to him. Yes, insofar as he could recognize “divinity,” the mind Baddeley experienced was “divine.” In a way, it was the twinned opposite of the red ants' mind. While
there
, with the ants, a purity beyond words had brought peace; here, in this presence, he experienced a peace brought forth from infinite ramification: mind without end, pattern without border, a reachable horizon. For the first time in his life, Alexander Baddeley knew a different order of beauty, an unworldly vision that lay just within the range of words.

How long this moment lasted, neither man could have said. It was accompanied only by the scritch-scratching of Andrews' pen on paper, by the shedding of words — a shedding that seemed to Baddeley more an irritation than a gift, though Baddeley had been, and knew he had been, attendant at the creation of a poem by Avery Andrews. The poem was unmistakably Andrews' but unfamiliar ...

While the Eumenides sharpen their thumbs

To scratch our prophecies, bitter in fall:

The immortal benefits of glorious life,

Resplendence of our everlasting story,

No prayer advances down the shopping mall,

Pure wheat of which is baked the bread of life.

When the spell was broken, when the moment had passed, Baddeley and Andrews stood facing each other, exhilarated, both of them fascinated by the residue that God's presence had left: poetry, though these — oddly enough — were
not
the words Baddeley himself would have saved from the listening.