The trip home was horrible. He was indescribably dejected and I felt as if I were walking beside a zombie. As if his sleep had drained him of his entire substance, of all his resistance. He’d stopped protesting, he’d stopped cursing, he didn’t even seem to realize where we were and what we were doing. This time again, I was the one who took him by the hand and guided him through the streets of Montréal. I didn’t want to take a taxi because I thought the walk would do him good, but I soon regretted it. And when I finally did decide to hail one, of course there wasn’t one to be seen. So we walked down St. Denis, which was empty and dead at this time of night, with me dragging him along like a ball and chain, him following like an obedient little boy.

He was very sick. For several days I took care of him, watched over him, consoled him as best I could. Again and again, I shuttled back and forth between my place on Place Jacques-Cartier and his on St. Rose, worried about Gilbert’s condition, leaving his bedside to go to work or to change my clothes, the rest of the time bending over his bed or fixing light meals that he pushed away, or forcing him to get up and take a few steps while I freshened up his bed. He had a fever, his skin was as icy as a dead man's, at times I think he was even delirious. He refused to see a doctor, claiming it was just an episode a little more severe than usual and that it would pass. He kept apologizing for the state he was in, for having to impose it on me, but never did he tell me to leave him alone or to go home and rest.

Without daring to tell him though, I thought he was overreacting. Not that what was happening to him wasn’t serious, a dream that’s broken always is, but he wasn’t fighting, in fact he didn’t seem to know how, he was letting himself slide into depression because no one had shown him anything else, or else it was easier than trying to resist, and so he was passive when he should have been fighting. And inevitably, at the same time I felt guilty for judging him. Who was I to judge someone else’s unhappiness, or his reactions? The things I’d experienced, even my worst humiliations, were nothing next to the terrible illness that seemed to leave its victims at a loss, no matter how grave or trivial the events that triggered it. I was a fighter, it had saved my life a few times; he wasn't. But I couldn’t be mad at him!

Yet I was mad at him. A little. I wished he’d make an effort, tell them all to screw off as he’d done outside the theatre, instead of his long tearful complaints about what they’d done to him; I wished he’d pull himself up, be aggressive and ready for revenge, I wished he’d buy himself another guitar, hold his head up, and throw himself into his work to prove to them that he could do it and that he was a talented musician. That’s what I would have done. Which was the problem. The significant and inescapable difference between us. The enormous gulf that was impossible to cross. We were more than different from one another, we were opposites who’d been attracted, yes, but who were now at an impasse. At least I was. The image of a babysitter often came to mind. I saw myself being obliged to look after this big adolescent for months, even years, if our relationship lasted, fully aware of leaving him to his own responsibility, his own unconcern, while I was the voice of forced enthusiasm and boring common sense and it got me down.

I would sometimes watch him sleep and tell myself that it might be time to leave him with his problems and his illness if I wanted to save my own skin. If not I ran the risk of sinking with him. Once again I was faced with a double choice that would determine a good chunk of my own life. I nearly did it a number of times – write a quick note on a scrap of paper, slink away, asking him not to get in touch with me, run and shut myself inside my room or throw myself into work as a way of forgetting him. In the end though, that would be no more satisfying than looking after him: between being cooped up with my own selfishness, beneficial though it might be and throwing myself into a boundless devotion whose outcome I couldn’t know, the choice wasn’t too hard. Because Gilbert needed me, and because I didn’t know what would happen to him if I left him to his fate. It was enough to persuade me to carry on.

And the fact that I loved him.