We often hear or read about the healing power of love. But it doesn't always work -- it can't overcome all obstacles -- and when that happens, perhaps one should consult a psychiatrist.
That appears to one message of "Sleep," a short story by Colm Toibin in the March 23, 2015, edition of "The New Yorker."
I know what you will do when morning comes. I wake before you do and I lie still. Sometimes I doze, but usually I am alert, with my eyes open. I don’t move. I don’t want to disturb you. I can hear your soft, calm breathing and I like that. And then at a certain point you turn toward me without opening your eyes; your hand reaches over, and you touch my shoulder or my back. And then all of you comes close to me. It is as though you were still sleeping—there is no sound from you, just a need, almost urgent but unconscious, to be close to someone. This is how the day begins when you are with me.
That's the opening paragraph of "Sleep." It's a very fine and powerful piece of writing that drew me in. Unfortunately, however, it isn't stylistically equaled by anything that follows, but that is beside the point here.
The lovers in question are both men -- an older Irish novelist and a younger Jewish musician -- but gender hardly matters. What does matter is that both characters have problems in their past that love can't resolve.
With respect to the younger man, there is a year missing in the stories of his life "and this makes everyone who loves you watch you with care."
The older man -- a quasi-autobiographical portrait of Toibin (more on that later) -- suffers bouts of fear, mainly at night, related to the earlier, sudden, lonely death of his brother. Ultimately, the younger man, careful to arrange his life so he will never need to become afraid, can't handle the situation --apparently because of something that happened to him in the "missing year."
"You scared me. There is something wrong with you. I don't know what it is, but it is too much for me," he says, referring to one of the older man's nightmares.
He soon surrenders his keys to the older man's apartment and exits his life.
Earlier, we have been told that the young man is seeing a therapist and thinks the novelist should see one, too. Initially, the novelist scoffs at the idea, but after the loss of his lover, he decides to give it a try. One session of hypnosis leads him to understand that he and his brother were in a sense one person and that he is going to have to work out, presumably over time, just what it meant when part of "him" died.
There is no reconciliation between the two men who initially seemed so close and so in need of each other.
When I first read this story, I found it disappointing. But it stuck with me and I decided to go back and reread it, not just once but a couple of times. That, I suppose, is one mark of good fiction.
In my previous posting, I discussed how fact and fiction sometimes get intermingled and I want to come back to it here. Asked in a "New Yorker" author interview if "Sleep" is autobiographical, Toibin said: "the problem if you write directly and only from experience is that experience is thin and has no shape." Writers need to create illusion and to work with rhythm, image and detail to make what transpired in life a more compelling read, he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment