Losing Julia (59 page)

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Hey, this is make-believe. I mean, if I were really you I would probably make things even worse. That’s the thing about life: even if we had a second chance we’d probably blow it, right? In fact, I think that’s the only consolation for blowing it the first time, knowing that you’d probably blow it a second and third time too, so why sweat it. It’s just human nature.”

“I’ve often thought about being old, what it will be like,” he said.

“Kind of morbid, huh?”

“Well, I guess I think of it in terms of wanting to be able to look back on my life and feel that I did the right things.”

“Good luck.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said.

“The problem is that while happiness is well within our reach, so is a lot of unhappiness. And frankly, the unhappiness is considerably closer.”

“Naturally.”

“I knew a woman once who thought we should work backward from our deaths to make our lives more fulfilling,” I said.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the less time one has, the more valued that time is, right?”

“Sure.”

“So conversely, the more time one thinks one has, the less each moment is appreciated, right? So maybe death—acceptance of our mortality—can liberate us.”

“I can’t deal with death.”

“Then you can’t deal with life.”

“You really think that way?”

“Let’s just say it’s getting a lot harder to pretend like I’m going to be the one exception who lives forever—though it’s only recently that I’ve conceded this point.”

He bit down hard on another piece of ice. “I don’t know. I just hate the idea that I’m just a worthless sack of cells on a measly little planet circling a sun that”—he pointed his finger in the air—“is just one of three hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of billions of galaxies in the universe, which is itself probably just a mole on God’s great big mushy behind.” He flung himself back against his seat.

“It does take some getting used to.”

“Maybe people my age have unrealistic expectations. I mean, we really expect to be
happy,
and if we aren’t, there is going to be hell to pay.”

“I was every bit as greedy, only I never figured out how to make hell pay. A friend of mine used to say that happiness is like an erection: great while it lasts—especially if you can share it—but unsustainable for any length of time. And boy can it fade fast.”

“Most of the people I work with are too busy to be happy,” he said.

“That’s just the point. They are also too busy to be really unhappy. Ever watch a workaholic—one of those rich, corpulent ones—try to relax on a beach? It’s hysterical. You’d think they were in detox: Day One.”

“That’s why insomnia is so brutal,” he said. “No distractions. Christ, I’m up half the night running worst-case scenarios.”

I leaned back, closed my eyes and whispered:

Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

“You wrote that?”

“I’m flattered. No, that’s Keats. A poem called ‘To Sleep.’”

“I should memorize some poetry.”

“One thing at a time.” I sat back, enjoying the momentary cessation of all physical pain thanks to the Scotch, which was mixing beautifully with my other medications. After years of mounting aches and pains, the absence of any pain is a sensation in itself, like a moment of silence in a huge crowd.

“How do you keep from getting too nostalgic? I think I’ll be terribly nostalgic when I’m old. Hell, I’m already nostalgic about college.”

“You just get crabby instead.”

He raised his glass. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I said.

“What was that?”

“That’s the wheels coming down. Or the engine coming off. You can never be sure.”

“Thanks.” His hands were locked on the armrests, and I noticed that his thumbnails were bitten to the quick so that he’d even begun grazing on the skin running up toward the knuckle.

After a few minutes he asked, “Anyone meeting you at the airport?”

“No, I’m taking a taxi to the Gare de l’Est. Then off to Reims.”

“Tell you what. I’ll have a rental car so why don’t I drive you to the station?”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“I’d be happy to, really.”

“That’s very kind of you, thanks. I’d like that.”

I’M COMING,
Daniel. I’m coming back.

THE YOUNG MAN
pulled up to the curb in a blue SAAB and opened the trunk. “Sorry it took so long,” he said, grabbing my suitcase. “Terrible line at the rental agency.”

“I’m in no rush.”

We were both silent for most of the drive. I looked out the window and watched cars and buildings slide by. Nothing looked familiar.

“Have you ever been to the Louvre?” I asked as we approached the station.

“No, I can’t say that I have. I hear it’s quite something.”

“You should spend a day there. It might do you some good.”

“I’ll see if I can sneak away for a while.” He looked at me, then added, “I’d like to buy you dinner sometime, if you’re ever in New York.”

“Sure. Maybe we’ll even find some action.” I winked approvingly.

He chuckled that chuckle again.

At the station we shook hands good-bye and then I stood at the curb, watching him drive away. After I could no longer see his car I went looking for a place to sit down so I could familiarize myself with the station and figure out how to buy a ticket for a train to Reims.

I KNOW,
I shouldn’t. But I couldn’t help staring at the young woman sitting two seats down on the left. She boarded the train just after me. I watched her walk slowly down the aisle, searching for just the right spot. Then she tucked her olive-drab canvas suitcase in the overhead before sliding into a seat next to the window. As soon as we pulled out of the station she took a book from her black leather purse, opened it slowly, pressing up and down along the seam with the flat of her hand, then began to read. After no more than a page she turned and looked out the window, sometimes twisting her head to follow some object as the train hurled by.

We were headed east, east toward the front. Did she think of the front? I doubted it. Now we were perhaps ten miles east of Paris. In September 1914 the German Army got within a dozen miles of Paris before French reinforcements shuttled in commandeered taxis held them at the Marne. Did she know that? I looked out my window at the fields and houses and trees streaming by when a sudden stabbing pain in my abdomen caused me to jerk forward. I leaned back again slowly, pulling a white handkerchief from my coat pocket and dabbing my forehead, which was damp. Then I placed one hand on the back of the seat in front of me to steady myself and turned and looked out the window, feeling much too hot.

There was a man marching along the railroad embankment. No, more than that, a soldier; a soldier marching with his head down and a rifle slung over his shoulder. I squinted and stared, then blinked and stared again. Her grandfather. Of course! It was the girl’s grandfather, off to meet the German onslaught; marching off to save Paris and France. How young and handsome he looked, though tired and hungry. I knocked on the glass.

Should I tell the girl? Perhaps she could at least wave or throw him a kiss or shed a tear? No, it’s not something to tell, though I feel certain he won’t come back. But what is she looking at out her window? Does she see something? That field there on the left, does she wonder if that is precisely where her grandfather fell, the grandfather who disappeared somewhere along the front in 1914? What about that brown house up ahead, might not that be where her father was killed twenty-eight years later by another German Army, lined up against the wall with seven others and summarily shot for sabotaging the railroad tracks? Or did her parents resign themselves to the Aryan conquest, even collaborating with the sharply dressed and swaggering occupiers?

She turned back once and looked at me, a brief, point- blank stare. An ancient longing gripped me by the throat. I smiled, trying not to look too eager. Did I look too desperate? Too pathetic? Could she see the tears coming? She smiled and then turned back to look out her window.

I remained perfectly still, hands wrapped tightly around the cane between my knees. Wishing.

MORE PAIN.
Much more, so that I must concentrate on remaining conscious. Keep the eyes open. Breathe slowly. That’s it.

Strange how the pain brings me closer to them: to Giles and Daniel, to Page and Lawton and Tometti; and to the others, to all the forgotten millions, and to all their unspeakable agony.

Just try to imagine it. Even momentarily. Try to imagine the most horrifying, grotesque wound possible and then know with absolute certainty that that precise wound has been sustained exactly so hundreds and even thousands and hundreds of thousands of times, that every possible burning, searing, tearing jagged-edged slice, rip and trauma to the human body has been endured again and again by young men from Germany and England and France and Russia and Italy and Austria-Hungary and Belgium and Portugal and Montenegro and Australia and Canada and New Zealand and India and Ireland and Turkey and Bulgaria and Greece and Serbia and South Africa and Romania and Scotland and everywhere else and they had names like Henry and Karl and George and Sergei and Antonio and Erich and Dominic and Albert and Yuri and Etienne and Alexei and Heinrich and Miklos and Pierre and Janos and Kemal and Dieter and Jean.

Maybe there is a comfort in that, in all that multilingual pain. Maybe in our own final suffering we at least won’t feel so terribly alone, knowing that every possible torment has already been suffered, that even on the most excruciating descent toward our own vile end we are in the company of millions. Millions of people who just like us could not bear the pain for even one minute longer and how could this happen to me I cannot endure it I cannot I cannot.

Millions of them. Can’t you see the faces?