A by Andre Alexis Read Free Book Online Page B

along with the alligator, the gaminess of the prey, the copper-salt taste of its blood. He shared the creature’s satisfaction at biting down hard, and for what seemed hours, Baddeley felt in equal measure the rightness of terror and the justice of hunger. He enjoyed the sweetness of human flesh. He experienced unspeakable fear and a savage complacency. His soul was torn in two and, finally, he cried out for mercy.
    As soon as he cried out, Baddeley was brought back to himself. He was not brought back to the “real” world, however. He was once again in the ward with the mannequins. The three he could look at with impunity were comfortingly familiar. They were all versions of Anna Akhmatova, young and beautiful, middle-aged and sensual, old and dignified. The mannequin he was not meant to look at spoke.
    â€“ You mustn’t cry out, it said. You must learn to bear it as I do. There was no malice or unkindness. The words were said and then, in an instant, Baddeley was in a service elevator going down to where the ambulances came in.
    To Baddeley’s surprise, the character of his communion did not seem to affect the inspiration that followed. If anything, this disturbing episode was more inspiring than the ones that had preceded it. Baddeley set about writing as soon as he entered his apartment. He spent weeks immersed in the world of Parakeet . He resented anything that took him away from the work: eating, sleeping, washing. And yet, he felt a curious distance from the novel. For all the passion and dedication and inspiration that went into it, Home is the Parakeet seemed not to belong to him. Yes, he recognized the various bits of his life and thinking distributed through the work, but they were not the novel’s raison d’être. Insofar as the work had, for Baddeley, a raison d’être, it was in the images and feelings that flooded from his imagination, a glorious release he could share with no one. In the end, the work was nothing but a shrine to his solitude.
    (Why was he writing a novel, anyway? It had never been his ambition to write fiction.)
    Baddeley began to understand what it was that had driven Avery Andrews to live away from the world. How had Andrews managed to spend so many years — so many decades — with the astounding visions and the inescapable solitude?
    In fact, he came to appreciate Andrews’ plight even more deeply in the year that followed. Home is the Parakeet was published, an event that should have brought him joy. In his previous life — that is, in his life before Avery Andrews — he’d imagined the moments of publication (the launch, the pleasure of meeting other writers, the admiration of strangers) as pure joy. But the launch of Parakeet was nothing like pleasure. It was dull and insignificant. It took place in a room filled with people he did not know, who did not know him. The food on offer was tasteless; his own nerves dulled the acuity of his senses. And beyond all that there was a feeling of fraudulence. He had not written the novel. He did not like novels. The thing had been given to him by a being whose only interest was in the supposed peace the invasion of Baddeley’s psyche brought to it. A more hollow event than a book launch Baddeley could not imagine.
    That is, he could not imagine anything more hollow until reviewers — and, to an extent, the public — decided they liked his book very much. Home is the Parakeet was, for the most part, warmly received. Baddeley had not been known as a novelist, so there were envious critics who would have preferred to knock him down a notch. But none could do so without ignoring the flagrant fact that something interesting was up with the novel. Yes, of course, a handful of reviewers stared down their own doubts, in order to deliver to the public a disdain they assumed, as Baddeley had once assumed, was what the public needed most. But few listened to them, save for readers who