(Parkdale was on the other side of town from his rooming house, but it was still possible — perhaps even likely — that he had met Andrews on a street somewhere. No, on second thought, it was not likely. He could not have passed a man like Avery Andrews — a poet whose mind and spirit were indissociable from his (that is, Baddeley’s) own soul — without recognizing him at once.)
Then again, had Marva Wilson been telling the truth or had she been saying any old thing in order to impress Gil? That was the question and, when asked, Gil could not say for certain. Marva had sounded sincere, he’d said. But, then, Gil Davidoff did not believe that any woman to whom he’d made love could be insincere, acute sexual gratitude being very like sodium pentothal. Baddeley was skeptical about the “truth-telling” that happens after lovemaking. He himself had managed to lie while talking to women with whom he’d just copulated. Actually, he had not lied. He had, once or twice, avoided speaking the truth in order to spare his lover’s feelings. But the point still stood: Why should a woman not be able to fabricate or stretch a truth in similar circumstances? Worse yet, a host of mitigations occurred to him: Marva was telling the truth about some aspectd of her story (the cardigan, say) but not others; Marva was telling the truth but Andrews had moved from Parkdale; Marva was lying but knew the truth; Marva had been the victim of a man claiming to be Avery Andrews…
Still, thanks to Gil Davidoff, Baddeley had been given a hint, a provocation, somewhere to look or, if Marva proved unreliable, somewhere it was pointless to look.
Two
Parkdale was a two-hour walk from Cabbagetown. (Baddeley could not afford the streetcar.) And though Cowan was not a long street, it was just long enough — almost a kilometre, running from south of Springhurst north to Queen Street — to be difficult for one man to patrol on his own. At which end of Cowan should he begin? Should he walk up and down the street looking for a man in a yellow cardigan? He — that is Baddeley — would almost certainly look suspicious. And what would he do if he actually found Avery Andrews? How would he address him? What would he say? How would Andrews react?
These were all questions to which Baddeley gave himself easy answers. Excited by even the faintest possibility of meeting Andrews, he refused to allow practical concerns to stand between himself and the poet. He would walk up and down Cowan. For one week, beginning at the furthest point south, he would walk the southernmost end of the street: Springhurst to King. The following week, he would walk north between King and Queen. In the event he met a man in a cardigan and reddish oxfords, he would follow him about for a day, watching to see where the man went and to which address he returned. Once he’d found the man’s house, he would — at some later time — break in and leave a copy of Time and Mr. Andrews somewhere prominent: on the kitchen counter, say, or on a living room table. How could Andrews — if it was Andrews — be anything but intrigued by such an intrusion? More: once Andrews had read the manuscript, he would — wouldn’t he? — welcome Baddeley’s company. (And if the man he found was not Andrews? Well, that would be unfortunate, it’s true, but there were worse things in life — weren’t there? — than a home invader who stole nothing but left a manuscript behind.)
Baddeley set out in search of Andrews the day after learning about Marva. He was immediately rewarded. At eleven o’clock on his first morning patrolling Cowan, Baddeley saw a man in reddish oxfords leaving the house at number 29. To be more expansive… it was a cool but sunny day in November. Beyond the highway and the asphalt promenade, the lake was greenish- grey and as placid as a corpse. Baddeley was filled with the spirit of adventure. He was so excited at the thought of meeting Avery Andrews that he did not immediately clock the man coming out of number 29. Of course, but for his oxblood shoes the man was the essence of nondescript.
— That couldn’t be him
was Baddeley’s first thought. But then, as if to mock Baddeley’s disbelief, the man turned towards him, unbuttoned the dark raincoat he was — oddly, given the sunshine — wearing, and revealed the canary yellow cardigan he had on beneath it. The man slid the key to his front door into the pocket of his sweater and then set off along Cowan, heading north.
Immediately, despite the sunshine, it began to rain.
Though he did not (could not) believe that the man walking before him was any kind of poet, Baddeley chose to follow him rather than dawdling in the rain waiting for a more likely candidate. Also, he assumed that pursuit would keep him warm. How true this turned out to be! The man walked quickly, so that it was difficult for Baddeley to keep up. Then, instead of waiting for a streetcar at King the man kept going: from King to Bathurst, and along Bathurst north to Dundas. It was a walk of some four kilometres that left Baddeley out of breath but un- chilled.
Though Baddeley managed to keep up with the stranger, the man finally shook him in the most unusual way. That is, though the stranger seemed entirely unaware that he was being followed, Baddeley lost him in the basement of the Toronto Western Hospital. As quickly as one can say “gone”, the man disappeared. No, it was more mysterious than that. The man took the stairs down. Baddeley followed. The man stepped into a room: Radiography 11A. Baddeley hesitated. What would he say, once inside? How would he justify his intrusion? He stared at the grey door, its shiny metal panel. And after a minute, he hit on the most obvious excuse. He would pretend to have lost his way. Once inside, he would take a close look at the man in the cardigan, then he would apologize and leave.
Baddeley had the words
— I’m so sorry on the tip of his tongue as he pushed the door open. In fact, he said those very words to the empty room.
The room was thirty feet by thirty feet by thirty feet. Its ceiling lights — far above — were banks of fluorescents tubes. It had one door, only one, the one by which Baddeley had entered. There was, in other words, no obvious way for the short man to have left. Not only was the room empty of occupants, but it was also bereft of furniture or any sort of medical equipment. It being a room in radiography, one might have expected a side chamber or alcove in which the controls for an X-ray generator were kept. There was no such alcove, only the empty, white cube.
More peculiar stilclass="underline" the room was not quite empty. Yes, Baddeley was alone, but there seemed to be another world in there with him. As if the room were the aperture of a conch shell, he heard the sound of the sea and, along with it, the tones of familiar voices. The voices belonged to his parents, both of whom were long dead. The effect of hearing his parents’ voices was deeply disturbing and Baddeley left the room at once.
Once outside of 11A, the world was restored to him. He knew exactly where he was: the basement of Toronto Western Hospital. He stood before a door on which the word “Radiography” was stencilled. In fact, the “real” world came back to him with such force that he felt puzzled rather than alarmed at what he’d experienced. The man in the cardigan had eluded him. No doubt about it. And the voices he’d heard? Nothing more than the hum of fluorescence. His imagination had played tricks on him. He was sure of it.
He was less certain about how to proceed. Should he leave a copy of his manuscript in the living room at 29 Cowan? He wasn’t convinced the short man actually was Avery Andrews, but one had to start somewhere. Why not start at the home of this gentleman who, after all, had both the yellow cardigan and the oxblood shoes?