Come Back (11 page)

If ever any beauty I do see,

That I desire, and seek, it’s but a dream of thee.

—nothing double here, just me—          

Psalm 102

Turn your ear to me, O Lord,

when I am in dark distress.

   Listen to my voice, dearest.

      Let my cry come to you.

I wake up and it is 2:00 a.m. How all this sounds so contrived, so artificial. And why should you care anyway? I think I have a slight fever. To think that we are all dying. The instant one is born you start to die and nothing ever seems to get done or said the way one feels it should happen. You once said aloud at our Aspen Creek cabin, “Who would want to live out here!” I would, and have, and it’s very good there. One reason I went to the cabin so often was to get away, actually to forget you among trees and running water, in four steps one has disappeared into nature, every look up at a night sky carries one away into space, nobody anywhere, except God, maybe—I
realize this sounds silly because I hardly ever saw you in Edmonton, not even weekly, barely monthly when I went to church, and always when I did you were with the boys and/or your parents and as an adult I could really speak only to them and act cool. So much so that maybe you remember you once asked me, “I don’t even know if you like me.” But that kind of close yet untalkable distance is dangerous, a seeming possible that can hardly be endured while doing nothing. And here, far away in Europe where I can’t possibly talk to you, I write words words to/about you like some kind of fool. If you or anybody laughs, you have good reason. But remember we are all dying, and a hundred years from now who will care what I have felt or even acted. Yeah, but I live now. Life goes on and people continue to lay their living room carpets

I have before me a hundred blank pages. I have in my hand a ballpoint pen full of blue ink. I sit at a desk covered with repeating letters, only to stop and begin them again in the very same way, until my thoughts, my writing becomes unreadable. My room, Number 7, Hotel Orpheus, 58 Chalkokondyli Athens, Attica, 104 32, Hellas, is littered with letter attempts, books with quotations ready and underlined, laundry drying on the line I’ve strung up, and food. I have basically stayed in this narrow room since Thursday Sept 6—it is now Tuesday 11. Six days in solitary trying to write the perfect letter to you. Emotionally I have gone full circle so often I have reached my present state: resignation

… The time here in Athens, Hellas is 8:50 in the evening of the 11th day of September 1984 (19 days in Athens, a whole 31-day month since my      ) and therefore according to my second watch, the one always set on Edmonton time, you will shortly be walking home from Rowand School for lunch. Last May one day I deliberately drove past your house. It was getting close to noon and at the school intersection I saw you walking on the wide sidewalk towards the lights. You adjusted the Walkman on your head as you walked home alone for lunch. As soon as I could I turned around and followed you home at a careful distance—now in Athens I follow you home again down the same streets in my mind with the same care. I follow you past the church, past the corner store, past the walk-ups, past the patch of intersection lawn, around every corner and across every intersection—Look both ways!—towards your house. You enter through the back door and run so easily up the four steps into your kitchen where you slide your slim body into the nook and read this very letter. Perhaps one day this will, in fact, happen.

Ailsa, I love and miss you. (I kiss every one of your fingers that touched me so briefly in the Mainz restaurant) (No, confirm love not kiss—restraint) I quote Stendhal’s novel
De l’Amour
(the core of this book is Stendhal’s obsession with Mathilde Viscontini Dembowski—no—cut that—just quote):

“I am trying extremely hard to be dry. My heart has so much to say, but I try to keep it quiet. I am continually beset by the fear that I may have expressed only a sigh when I thought I was stating a truth.”

The other day, Sunday 9th, I went to the National Gardens, Areos Park, frequented by less tourists—I didn’t come to Greece to watch Germans drink beer—my favourite place to sit is the X on the enclosed pc map—and I saw in the distance—the O on the map—a slender girl in a white dress coming towards me. As she drew nearer I made out facial features and easy body movements that were strikingly similar to yours. She even had lively green eyes that looked straight at me. But she was not you. She walked past me so easily …

A couple near me is having a tender moment. They sit on the bench backwards, facing the hedge, however I can see their heads tilted together. The girl is crying and talking and the man is comforting her. He is comforting her with physical tenderness, no words. I sit under great trees in famous Athens

… In my Duino letter I said the theme was my confession of
love
. Here, in Athens, I need to declare that my feelings are much stronger: I am obsessed with you. The only thing that gives me the courage to say so now is the very distance and time that separates us. Mind you, sometimes when I was out at Aspen Creek and you in Edmonton I would go through a similar experience, except there, in Canada just facing it, I felt I was
too close
to even write down words. Only drive past your house, remember every detail of your family moving in …

… your actions in Germany caught me by surprise, the Ailsa who tried to slip her arm around my waist, who twice placed her hand on mine in the restaurant. But what does Ailsa Helen think, now, on late Monday nights
when she can’t sleep, what does she dream now when she’s bored already in her Social Studies classes … o sun of my soul! Write to me, so I know you exist, that you feel. I’ll go to London to seek your response, please write to the Canadian High Commission, London address below. Please, don’t laugh at this awkwardly written letter, if you want to, burn it, but please write a letter now saying you have done this.

Turn your ear to me, Ailsa,

        let my cry for help come to you     — ugggh —

Sept. 11
/
84

Dear Mother, Father, Brother and (world-travelling) Sister,

It is nine in the evening. I sit on my balcony and experience the city. A writer across the street two floors up is working as usual. He is a very big-bellied, bearded man who is at his typewriter every evening except Sundays. Such discipline. In the hotel beside his apart. two floors down are three men getting ready for a night on the town. Most likely going to Syntagma Square, the local pickup place. I’ve just finished having a snack of one 7up and a roasted corn on the cob. Venders roast and sell them on street corners all over. 50
C
–$1.00 depending on size. Somebody is playing a
sax, somewhere. Last night, or rather, early this morning that sax was also being played. And everyone yelled when it got too loud. However, it’s all Greek to me. It’s a cloudless night, but then it always is here. It is so dry, jeans dry in one night. I am feeling very good this evening, it’s been awhile but … I trust that all you people, whom I so dearly love, are doing extremely fine. I miss you.

Love, Gabe

I have decided
not
to send any of my A letters. She is 13 + not yet 4 months—in no position to understand my writing. Thank you Lord for letting me not make a bigger fool of myself than I already am and for not letting me hurt her with such an obsessive letter of despair     what to do today     open the door     walk out of this room

Countdown. My sentence in the Athens wilderness is done—no letter, not a word, but that should not matter just say you love her. What to do finally today     kill time. Go to Areos Gardens, my habitual retreat, sit, watch. So many people, so much doing, hurry hurry it has to be done! Why God why do I have to feel things so intensely I need     always a movie somewhere     
The Getaway
Sam Peckinpah

Evening: extreme loneliness   when I call, oh, answer me

—off tomorrow, ROMA

Paris, France

Sept.21/84

Dearest Ailsa,

I’ll write a quick note before I leave Paris for London. I waited in Athens
27 days
for a letter from you, any small note or card, I want very much to hear from you; that is, if you care to write.

I mailed you one letter (Saturday, August 11 from Duino, Italy), but have actually started dozens more to you, in many different countries; I cannot mail them. They are too extreme in their loneliness to send. Unfortunately, in many ways I find myself too extreme, too intense in my feelings and moods. I have learned to keep them to myself so others will never know what I go through. Besides, no one where I am knows me.

Ailsa, I have gone to many different places but my heart is not in it right now. I see Athens—beautiful ancient rocks, but lots of shoddy mod city buildings too, then back through Rome, Florence—the only thing that made me feel good in Flor. this time was a young man from Poland a little older than me, Przemyslaw P. He was in the hostel bunk next to mine and speaks perfect English, he studied in England over 10 years and earned the money to now travel around by selling ice cream on the street in London. There are many interesting people travelling but he and I actually
hit it off, he’s the only one I would want to talk to, we may meet in London in October / I didn’t go through southern France, Arles to see the van Gogh places but travelled by train through Bologna, Italia and Montreux, Switzerland—saw the Palace Hotel where Vladimir Nabokov lived his last years (1961–77) writing his books on cards while lying in bed, very classy place, and am now here in Paris which is beautiful—but I can’t really care much for anything I see because you are never there.

Oh, this all may sound quite strange, and I don’t mean to hurt you or make you feel guilty. It’s just that I’m completely alone in Europe. I am not in any way embarrassed of my love for you, but I do have major problems admitting that I need other people. All my life I have been alone, even with my family that I love, and now I am alone in Paris.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the poem “
Einsamkeit
”—“Loneliness”—here, but for me it’s a lot stronger than that, I’d call it
Being All Alone
“Aloneness.” He wrote the poem in Paris while walking these rainy streets September 21, 1902. Well here it is 82 years later, after midnight exact to the day, and I walk Paris streets with rain falling on my bare head, so I changed a few words of one translation (underlined) to show my feelings. I have no reason to inflict you with my sadness, but here, now in this rain under blue streetlamps is just the right distance that gives me the courage to think that perhaps you care: