I was eighteen when I bought the book. It was at the Antwerp Book Fair, a vast gathering of publishers and readers who annually engage in the blatant commercial exploitation of emotion on the larger scale. These books, thousands, sold like candy to children – and many were actually children. As if alarmed by the smell of sweets, ants gathered and devoured – in exchange for bank bills, evidently.

I have never felt at ease among people, least of all amongst large amounts of people assembled in one space. I lose myself in the mass as I absorb it. Nonetheless, there I was, on impulse. An impulse I regretted somewhat already. I didn’t know why I was there, there were no titles I was dead-set on purchasing. I knew I was looking for something there, and I was hoping to find it, yet hadn’t the faintest clue what it actually was.

 

I browsed stall after stall, until I felt I had to leave. The hall was too spacious for me to tolerate, and there were too many things and people going on. The letters on the pages bulged into wheels of spinning print that I didn’t process. The giant hangar filled with odours of smoke, food and alcohol, books, ink, and bodies, I felt my stomach turn. My heart was racing and I thought to myself, if I don’t make it to the exit quick, they will devour me next.

 

On the way, I stopped. Convinced myself I didn’t want to leave empty-handed, and have this trip turn into something I would want to forget rather than remember. More so, with my having too many things to forget already.

I turned into the stall to my left, and walked towards the middle of the display. Reached impulsively for a book called De Regels Van Het Spel (The Rules Of The Game) – a title, I think, doesn’t exert quite the same gravity as House Rules, in its original title. And, yes, I would have to admit that the latex-wrapped lady in too-high heels on the Dutch cover did have something to do with my being drawn in.

As soon as I read the cover synthesis, I knew that I had found. I opened up the first page, and as clear as I could read, the words sank through. Like rock.

I took it home. Read for two nights and a day, slept only when I was exhausted. Words I did not have at the time, but they were right there on the pages. Where someone else had written them down for me.

 

Nine years ago was when I bought House Rules. I have been living my own turbulent life. I couldn’t be farther away from the life that Heather Lewis lived, not in the least because we lived in a different time and space. Lee, as the character that she is, makes choices that I made, and make, very differently. Yet, there is a similarity that hasn’t stricken me in its full impact until now.

Then was 1998, the year after House Rules was translated into Dutch here. Now is October 2007. The Book Fair takes place next month, and, I realize now, I haven’t been there since that time I bought Heather’s book.

Then, I was not yet able to grasp the full extent of the web of patterns that make up my reality – makes up our reality. Now, I see these patterns in everything I look at. In fact, my only real survival has been in pattern recognition – so much, that I need to recognize them in order to survive. It doesn’t make life easier, on the contrary, only makes it a bit more manageable in the mind – most of the time.

And, gradually, I am transforming into some culmination of these patterns. Ever evolving through life, yet always struggling in some aspect of my existence – eternally breaking and regenerating, as is our human way.

 

The last time I read House Rules, only now dawns on me, was when Heather died. When I was dying. Call it synchronicity?

This past week, I’ve read the novel for the third time. And each time marks a chapter of my own. But none so invasive, circumferring, as this one.

Three nights ago, I picked up the book from the shelf above my bed. I hadn’t thought about it in five years, but it’d been there all this time. I still don’t know why, in that instant, it came into my mind; compelled to open up my own Pandora’s Box. Maybe the answer is quite simple.

I just had to read it.

My eyes have changed. So has my heart. My mind. I am no longer inside the story, like I have been once. No, this time I was outside, looking in. But, I was still drawn in. Resumed my distance and analyzed, scrutinized – not necessarily the book. Despite all my rational distance, I still ended up inside the words, deeper than I ever have. Perhaps because I now have my own; have my own story to no longer deny. Merged, at the end, by hands of time and space, there was no longer any distance between me and Lee, or Heather, at all. No boundaries to keep us apart. No, in that moment, we were all one and the same. The despair became all our despair. The hurt that flowed uncontrollably through my veins was all of ours. And, I longed for what I know I must resist. For what they could not resist.

Is it possible for a stranger to change your life over night? Particularly, when it’s a stranger you know you will never really know, who will never really be present. I still wonder, even when reality has taught me that few things in life are random, yet many strange, and peculiar, in their truth.

 

In this last night and day, I have tried to find out everything I could about both Heather and her work. I ordered her other books, fully knowing the consequences. I had to, something told me to. Verging on acute obsession, I am drawn to her and her words, and I have to tell this story. If not for her, then for me, and for all other women who have fallen. For all who know the Phoenix from the Flames.

 

I recognize and it aches, aches so profoundly. Like the Void we are trying to fill.

 

For all those who couldn’t, and for those still trying, I want to keep the memory and the effort. I want to commemorate the pain and celebrate our strength.

 

Copyright © Arion Wyckman - October 15, 2007

 

  

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