Light Years (16 page)

“Somerset Maugham was a doctor,” his wife said. “Also Céline.”

“Yes, my dear, that’s right,” Reinhart said.

“An awful man,” Michael said.

“Nonetheless a great writer.”

“Céline great? What do you mean by great?”

Reinhart hesitated. “I don’t know. Greatness is something which can be regarded in a number of ways,” he said. “It is, of course, the apotheosis, man raised to his highest powers, but it also can be, in a way, like insanity, a certain kind of imbalance, a flaw, in most cases a beneficial flaw, an anomaly, an accident.”

“Well, many great men are eccentric,” Viri said, “even narrow.”

“Not necessarily narrow so much as impatient, intense.”

“The thing I really would like to know is,” Nedra said, “must fame be a part of greatness?”

“Well, that is a difficult question,” Reinhart answered finally. “The answer is, possibly, no, but from a practical point of view there must be some consensus. Sooner or later it must be confirmed.”

“There’s something missing there,” Nedra said.

“Perhaps,” he admitted.

“I think Nedra means that greatness, like virtue, need not be spoken about in order to exist,” Viri suggested.

“It would be nice to believe,” Reinhart said.

It was Michael that his wife was watching. Suddenly she spoke. “You’re right,” she said abruptly. “Céline was an absolute bastard.”

Nights of conversation that has faded, that rises to the ceiling and gathers like smoke. The pleasures of the table, the well-being of those around it. Here in a house in the country, comfortable, discreet, Viri suddenly knew as he poured the wine how foolish his statement had been, how wistful. Reinhart was right: fame was not only part of greatness, it was more. It was the evidence, the only proof. All the rest was nothing, in vain. He who is famous cannot fail; he has already succeeded.

Near the fire, Ada Reinhart was telling Michael where in Germany she came from. She had lived in Berlin. They were apart from the others. The white hair of her husband, his frail hand stirring the coffee, could be seen in the far room.

“I knew a lot then,” she said.

“Did you? What do you mean?”

She did not answer immediately. She was much younger than her husband.

“Do you want me to tell you?” she said. “If I had only done what I thought I should do …”

“What you thought you should do?”

“Instead of what I did.”

“That’s true for everyone, isn’t it?”

“When I fall in love, it’s with a man’s mind, his spiritual qualities.”

“I feel exactly the same.”

“Of course, one is attracted by a body or a look …”

Nedra could see them talking by the fire. At the table, Mrs. Reinhart had said almost nothing. Now she seemed passionately engaged.

“I’m not unattractive, am I?”

“Quite the opposite,” Michael said.

“You don’t find me unattractive?”

She hardly noticed the others entering the room. She continued to talk.

“What are you persuading Mr. Warner of?” Reinhart asked lightly.

“What? Nothing, darling,” she said.

After the Reinharts had gone, Michael sat back and smiled. “Fascinating. Do you know what she said?” he asked.

“Tell us,” Bill said.

“There is something missing in her life.”

“Is there?”

Michael paused. “Do you think I’m attractive?” he imitated huskily.

“My darling!”

“Oh, yes. And more. Do you think I should have taken her seriously?” he said.

“I’d love to have seen it.”

Michael began to peel a piece of fruit, careful not to stain his fingers. The fire was dying among the ashes, cigarettes had lost their taste.

Nights of marriage, conjugal nights, the house still at last, the cushions indented where people had sat, the ashes warm. Nights that ended at two o’clock, the snow falling, the last guest gone. The dinner plates were left unwashed, the bed icy cold.

“Reinhart’s a nice man.”

“He has no pettiness,” Viri said. “I think his book will be interesting.”

“What happens to children—yes, that’s what one longs to know.”

They lay in the dark like two victims. They had nothing to give one another, they were bound by a pure, inexplicable love.

He was asleep, she could tell without looking. He slept like a child, soundlessly, deep. His thinning hair was disheveled, his hand lay extended and soft. If they had been another couple she would have been attracted to them, she would have loved them, even—they were so miserable.

12

IN SIX YEARS SHE WOULD BE
forty. She saw it from a distance, like a reef, the whitened glimpse of danger. She was frightened by the idea of age, she could too easily imagine it, she searched daily for its signs, first in the harsh light from the window, then, turning her head slightly to erase some of the severity, stepping back a little, saying to herself, this is as close as people come.

Her father in distant Pennsylvania towns already had within him the anarchy of cells that announced itself by a steady cough and a pain in his back. Three packs a day for thirty years; he coughed as he admitted it. He needed something, he decided.

“We’ll take some x-rays,” the doctor had said. “Just to see.”

Neither of them was there when the negatives were thrown up before the wall of light, dealt into place as rippling sheets, and in the ghostly darkness the fatal mass could be seen, as astronomers see a comet.

The doctor was called in; it took only a glance. “That’s it, all right,” he said.

The usual prognosis was eighteen months, but with the new machines, three years, sometimes four. They did not tell him this, of course. His translucent destiny was clear on the wall as subsequent series were displayed, six radiographs in a group, the two specialists working on different cases, side by side, calm as pilots, dictating what they saw, stacks of battered envelopes near their elbows. Their language was handsome, exact. They recited, they discussed, they gave a continued verdict long after Lionel Carnes, sixty-four years old, had begun his visits to the treatment room. Their work never ended. Before them loomed skulls, viscera, galaxy breasts, fingers, hairline fractures, knees, appearing and disappearing in an eternal test, the two of them pouring out answers in a steady monotone.

Sarcoma, they are saying. Well, there are all kinds, there are sarcomas of the muscle, they do occur, even of the heart, but they are very rare, normally they are the result of metastasis. No one really knows why the heart is sacred and inviolable, they say.

The Beta machine made a terrifying whine. The patient lay alone, abandoned, the room sealed, air-conditioned because of the heat. The dose was determined by a distant computer taking into consideration height, weight and so forth. The Beta doesn’t burn the skin like the lower-energy machines, they told him.

“No, just everything else,” he said.

It hung there, dumb, enormous, shooting beams that crushed the honeycomb of tissue like eggshells. The patient lay beneath it, inert, arranged. With the scream of the invisible it began its work. It was either this or the most extreme surgery, radical and hopeless, blood running down from the black stitches, the doomed man served up like a pork roast.

The greatness of technology was focused on him for a moment, the nurses joked with him, the young doctors called him by his first name.

“Am I dying yet?” he asked them.

“Well, not at the moment,” they said.

He was telling them about automobiles, about his three-legged cat.

“Only three legs, eh?”

“His name’s Ernie,” he said.

“Ernie, is that so?”

“Yeah, he’s black. He gets a lot of fun out of life, old Ernie. He climbs up trees and catches birds. Limps when he sees you,” he said.

It was all in his cells, the stain of tobacco, the darkness. He had to give up smoking.

“Dying’s nothing compared with that.”

Easter Sunday. The morning was beautiful, the trees filled with sun. The Verns came out, Larry and Rae. They looked like a young working couple turning up the drive on their motorcycle. She was sitting behind him, her arms around his waist. He was wearing a white Irish sweater, the wind was scattering his hair. The children ran to meet them. They loved the machine, which was lacquered and gleaming. They liked his fine beard.

“You’re just in time to help hide,” Nedra told him.

“Good. Who’s this?”

It was Viri in a hat with two ears sprouting from it, holding a basket of eggs. “Come inside and warm up,” he said. “Are you cold?”

The table was laid in the kitchen:
Kulich
, a sweet, Russian cake, chunks of
feta
, dark bread and butter, fruit. Nedra poured tea. Her nature showed itself in the generosity of her table.

“Eve is coming,” she said.

“Oh, nice,” Rae said.

“And the Paums, do you know him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He’s an actor.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“Well, he may come, he may not.”

“He drinks,” Franca said.

“Ah.”

“And I would think that on a morning like this,” Nedra said, “he might have begun early.”

“That’s sad,” Rae said.

“I understand it more and more.”

Rae was dark, her face lean, intense. It was a face that appeared to have been in an accident; there was a certain contradiction between the halves. Her hair was cut short. She had an awkward smile.

They had no children, Rae and Larry. He worked for a toy company. His skin was white. He had the resignation of someone who has passed through many difficulties, the calm of an addict. He went off with Viri to hide the eggs.

“What have you been doing?” Nedra asked. She was warming her face on the cup.

“I don’t know,” Rae said. “You’re so lucky you don’t live in the city. I get up, I make breakfast, the window sills are covered with dirt, it must take me two hours a day just to keep things clean. Yesterday I wrote a letter to my mother. I suppose that took most of the day. I had to walk to the post office; I had no stamps. I went to the laundry. I didn’t cook dinner. We went out for dinner. So what am I really doing?” She smiled helplessly, showing discolored teeth.

Outside they were hiding the eggs in the faded grass, beneath leaves, under stones.

“Don’t make them too easy to find,” Viri called.

“Do you put any up in the branches?”

“Oh, absolutely. There should be some they don’t ever find.”

“Your hat is beautiful,” Larry said as they finished.

“Nedra made it.”

“I took some pictures of you in it.”

“Let me take yours.”

“Later,” Larry said. They had begun to walk back.

“At the house.”

It stood above them, bathed in the light, its gabled roof with chimneys at each end, the rain-washed gray of the slates. Like a huge barn it was stained by weather, like a ship that has crossed. Mice lived along its stone foundation, weeds grew at its ends.

The vastness of the day surrounded them. The ground was warm, the river glinting in the sun.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Larry said. He still had three or four small chocolate eggs. He turned his back to the house and gently scattered them.

“The dog will find them, don’t worry,” Viri said.

Eve had arrived. She was in the kitchen drinking a glass of wine. Her car, its fenders rusted, was parked along the edge of the driveway, wheels half in the drainage ditch.

“Hello, Viri,” she smiled.

She looked older. In a single year she had abandoned her youth. Her eyes had lines around them, her skin showed tiny pores. Still, she could rise to occasions, there were times she was beautiful, even more, unforgettable, given the hour, the right room. And if she was fading, her son was coming into the light. Along the edge of his face, Anthony already gave a hint of the man he would be. He was very good-looking, but there was a risk of even more: a beauty made imminent by a deep, unfathomable silence. He stood near Franca. Larry took their picture, two young faces at once very different yet sharing the same sort of privilege.

“He’ll be absolutely devastating,” Nedra said.

Rae agreed. She watched him through the window, drawn to him. He was too old for her to imagine as a son, he was a youth already; the characteristics which would become pride, impatience, were seeded, germinating day by day.

Booth Paum arrived with his daughter. He had made entrances since the days of Maxwell Anderson. Like all actors he could unfurl long speeches, reciting with a kind of threatening intensity; he could mimic, he could dance.

“I hope we’re not late,” he said. He introduced the friend his daughter had brought.

Four girls and a boy, they were. Viri began explaining the rules. “There are three kinds of eggs,” he said. “There are solid colors, speckled, and there are also twelve gold bees. The bees are worth five, the speckled three, and the solid colors one.”

He pointed out the boundaries.

“It’s now eleven-thirty,” he said. He told them how much time they had. “Are you ready?”

“Yes!”

“Begin.”

They scattered across the sunny ground, Hadji dashing after them, barking. Soon they were far off, separate figures moving slowly, heads down among the trees.

“They’re not all on the ground!” Viri called.

During the long hunt with its distant shouts and cries, the adults sat outside, the women on small, iron benches, the men on a bank. Paum had a glass of tea which he drank Russian style, a cube of sugar between his teeth. Actors were original, actors were vivid. He stood with the river behind him, a confident figure. It was as if all reports were unfounded; he refuted them with his ease, his well-combed hair.

“I heard a funny story,” he told them. “It seems there were two drunks in an elevator …”

The tea was brown in the glass, his fingernails were perfectly shaped, his shoes from Bally were shined.

Dana, his daughter, won the hunt. She found the most eggs, including four of the bees. The prize was a huge cardboard soldier filled with popcorn; second prize was a rosewood pen.

The women brought the food out and arranged a table. There was wine and a bottle of Moët and Chandon. The afternoon was mild, spacious. A slight breeze carried off voices so that twenty feet of separation were mysterious, one saw conversations, the words were lost.