A Canada of Thought

I always take my trousers off when I visit – why is that? On one level, the answer is quite obvious: I am growing too fat for them, their waistband cutting uncomfortably into the vastness of my belly. But then I never take them off elsewhere, my trousers, W. has noticed. Only with him, with him and Sal. Only in his front room, whether the shutters are open or closed.

Once, when a friend of theirs called round unexpectedly, I leapt up, frantically looking for my trousers, before she entered the room. Too late! He always takes his trousers off when he visits, W. told her. I feel some sense of shame, at least, W. says. He didn't think I did, but there it was: shame over my trouserlessness. My public trouserlessness.

But why am I not ashamed of anything else? My ignorance, for example. My laziness. He thought he'd taught me, W. says. He thought I'd learnt something. But somewhere inside, I'm still an ape on the savannah. Somewhere, I'm still sitting back on my haunches and looking out over the expanse. Ah, food was plentiful back then, and life easy. I wasn't an alpha male, but nor was I an omega one; so long as I refrained from threatening my fellow apes, baring my teeth as apes will, I would not be threatened in turn.

But something was missing. Something marked me out from my fellow apes. Was that why I learnt to walk upright and wear shoes? Was that why I learnt not to holler and whoop? Ah, I still dream of great bunches of bananas and clear pools in the middle of the jungle. Sometimes I remembered how my ape comrades would pick the lice from my thick fur.

He can still tell I'm an ape, W. says. It's the way I hold my pen – the way my hand curls in towards my chest. And there's that distant look I get, W. says, as though I long only to tear open my shirt and whoop, he says. But he sees, too, that my apish spontaneity is long gone, and he wonders whether I am any better off than my miserable comrades in a zoo. My poor eyes burn from monitor glare, and my clumsy fingers miss the keys I want to hit.

And the books I try to read! The thinkers I try to imitate! Ah, there's no point, no point, W. sometimes thinks, and he'd put a stop to it if he didn't see something of himself in my efforts; if he didn't feel, too, as though he were part ape.

Sometimes, W. feels like my captor – as if he were the one who had trapped me on the plains. But it wasn't his fault! I came into his care; I fell into his arms like a foundling. It wasn't his fault … Didn't he tenderly look after me as he was once looked after by older Essex postgraduates? Didn't he suckle me as gently as an orphaned chick?

Ah, he knew very little when he first arrived at Essex, W. says. All he brought with him to the university was his Kafka enthusiasm, which was very great, he says. And a willingness to learn! A great willingness, W. says. As though thought were a way for him to struggle back to Canada. As though he might reach a kind of Canada of thought which paralleled the real Canada he left in order to come to Britain.

And when he saw postgraduates arrive years later, when he'd already won his scholarship for postgraduate study? When he saw them arriving from the four corners of the country? He was tender with them – fatherly, perhaps motherly, never laughing when the newbies mispronounced the words hyperbole and synecdoche, or when they said the last syllables of Derrida to rhyme with breeder, or said Del-ooze when the meant Del-euze?

He understood when the new postgraduates wept into their pillows when they thought of what their lives had been. He stroked their hair during their night sweats and bad dreams. He understood why they ground their teeth at night, why their jaws ached, why their eyes were dull: for wasn't he, too, British? Hadn't he, too, sought to escape his country at the University of Essex?

And he's tender still, W. says. He's tender even as he dreams of his Canada of thought. Once, I was an ape with no idea of trousers. And now, thanks to him? A half-ape, for whom trousers are a tyranny. A half-ape caught between worlds, but who's dreaming, with W., of becoming Canadian in thought.