The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  “Now try to imagine yourself in her situation. You are a rational scientist, but your judgment is severely clouded by the distress of a terrible illness, and you have no strength to argue. Your life means far less to you than it would if you felt well. And you’re torn by conflicting counsel—on the one side a doctor who considers you as a ‘case,’ just another adenocarcinoma, and on the other a loving spouse who thinks about your welfare day and night. In such a predicament, mightn’t you blindly accept the opinion of your sweetheart, which is to say, your emotional anchor over that of an impartial expert? You think not; you think logic would prevail, but until you experience the situation yourself, just how sure can you really be? The understandable need to please those who would care for us in what may be our final days can overwhelm the most objective thinker.

  “I tried my damnedest to convince her to have the mastectomy, but by the time I reached her, it was impossible to change her mind.

  “She died less than eight months later at the age of thirty-one. Both husband and physician were devastated.

  “And each bears part of the blame. Please remember that hope is a two-sided coin, with the face of St. Christopher on the obverse and a jackal on the reverse. As it can heal, so can it kill. We doctors must be sensitive to our patients’ need for hope, the right kind of hope, or many of them will seek it elsewhere.”

  An hour later, at the nearby Pier 52 restaurant, the two former shipmates once again found themselves discussing philosophy. “You used to have a friend, an Evangelical Lutheran who became a doctor,” Epstein said. “What was his name again?”

  “Toby Fiske,” Ben said. “Best cardiologist in Boston. But he’s not an Evangelical Lutheran anymore.”

  “Really? Well good for him! What happened?” To this, Ben found himself sorely tempted to answer something like: Oh, he joined the Hare Krishnas.

  “Divorced his first wife,” Ben said, “and accepted the blame for it, so the Church excommunicated him. Not sure he’s religious at all now. He’s still my best friend, so I guess I should know, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  “Ironic he’d be excommunicated over a divorce,” Epstein said. “I asked because a few years ago a lawyer I know told me about one of its ministers who was accused of having sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. Now that, it would seem to me, is a somewhat more serious offense then refusing to remain prisoner of a bad marriage. The Church had to pay her a boatload of money to keep it quiet. My friend handled the family’s side of the negotiations.”

  “What happened to the minister?”

  “Took absolution; agreed to counseling. They moved him to another state. He’s now shepherding the good Evangelical Lutherans in Pennsylvania. Just shows how the Church doesn’t like to eat its own cooking. Reminds me of those TV ministers who say they can cure anything through prayer and the laying on of hands—the lame shall walk and the blind shall see and all that—but if one of those fellows ever feels a lump in his own armpit, he’s on his private jet to the Mayo Clinic in ten minutes flat.”

  Ben laughed. “You think all religions are scams, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do,” Epstein said. “But the religions are mostly scamming themselves. That they scam others is usually a side effect. Such is the nature of that brand of duplicity. Take that minister, for example. Evangelical Lutherans supposedly believe that heaven is superior to any pleasure we can experience on earth, and hell is worse then any misery we can ever imagine.”

  “Most Christian religions support that theory,” Ben said.

  “True. And heaven and hell are both eternal. Eternal. What if this minister had somehow died in flagrante delicto before he could receive absolution for his sin? Or worse, suppose even after absolution, the Heavenly Father were to deem that particular sin as beyond all forgiveness, a genuine possibility according to their dogma. Do you really think that for a piece of ass this minister was willing to risk inescapable, permanent damnation? Can you accept for one minute that such a man could possibly have believed the Church’s doctrine with the same conviction he used to express that doctrine to his flock?”

  “Interesting point,” Ben allowed.

  “Personally, I think most organized religion is no different from medical quackery.”

  “How so?”

  “Its practitioners are either liars or self-deceivers who concoct a worldview that gets them where they want to go. And mostly they play to our innate fear of death.” He glanced at Ben mischievously. “You still want to live forever, Ben?”

  “Been a long time since I’ve thought about that,” he answered, then realized it was a lie. In fact he thought about it daily. “The idea seems more far-fetched for you and me today than it did twenty-eight years ago. Not as much time left to figure out how to do it. But yes, I would if I could. Just to see what happens in this amazing world.”

  “What do you suppose becomes of you when you die?” Epstein prodded, obviously steering the conversation toward a predetermined destination.

  “I don’t imagine anyone knows.”

  “I think I know.”

  “You do? Well, tell me, then.”

  “Nothing becomes of you! The billions of years after you die will seem exactly like the billions of years that happened before you were born. Religion and God, heaven and hell, are all inventions of man—”

  “Which doesn’t explain why so many of us believe in one God,” Ben interrupted, “and why so many religions believe in essentially the same monotheistic deity.”

  “No, but evolution and human nature can explain that part.”

  “Evolution?”

  “Sure,” Epstein said. “Belief in eternal reward, for acts of heroism in war and morality in peace, would tend to preserve societies and therefore the people who comprise them.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Human nature makes its contribution to religion, too. With so much misery and unfairness around us, we refuse to believe that death is the end of it, that it isn’t part of some greater plan where good citizens are eventually rewarded and evil is punished. But we, as scientists, should resist our natural impulse to believe that which we merely wish to be true. Life and awareness are matter and energy directed by molecules in our brain cells, and when those cells die, our identity is permanently lost.”

  “No such thing as a soul?” Ben said, even as he doubted his own words. “I refuse to think of myself as mere atoms. How can you?”

  “If you mean by a soul the essence of an individual’s identity, then yes, there is most definitely such a thing as a soul. But take away the matter housing that soul and it will disappear forever. The concept of a soul sans matter, a unique magic in our corpuscles, is called vitalism. It’s an idea which nearly all biologists now reject. We discover tangible and chemical reasons for every cellular reaction and capability we study: motion, reproduction, growth, excretion, consciousness itself. The whole field of biotechnology is taking root as a result of these discoveries. The soul is a tempting concept, Ben, but wrong beyond earthly terms. Life on this planet is all there is. Once you die, you are dust.”

  Their debates on religion notwithstanding, both were scientists; neither accepted the theory popular among intellectuals that truth was somehow subjective or unknowable, that the human mind manufactured its own reality. If that were the case, Ben understood, all knowledge would be of equal value and therefore worthless. But today he realized that some knowledge was unattainable, like the theological knowledge Epstein—who intentionally pronounced the world as the illogical—claimed to possess.

  “I hope not,” Ben said, biting his tongue.

  “I also think that those of us who love being alive should strive with every fiber of our being never to die.”

  “Now that I can agree with. But it’ll never be possible for us to live forever. Maybe within a few generations, but you and I won’t see it. Medical science isn’t advancing fast enough for us to participate.”

  “I admit it’s unlikely,�
� Epstein said, “but certainly not impossible. I just read a very interesting book called The Prospect of Immortality. Ever hear of it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about freezing people. After their hearts stop beating, but before their cells decompose. The technology is called cryonics.”

  “You mean cryogenics, don’t you?”

  “No. Cryogenics is the entire subdivision of physics dealing with the creation and consequences of very low temperatures. Freezing living organisms in biostasis is called cryonics, a subset of cryogenics. It’s a fairly new term. Anyway, the author speculates that scientists of the future will discover how to revive and rejuvenate our bodies.”

  “Don’t you think you might be speaking out of both sides of your mouth?” Ben asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If faith has such a down side in medicine, doesn’t cryonics have it, too?”

  “I don’t see how,” Epstein answered.

  “Well, cryonics is a longshot, isn’t it? Sort of a grasp at straws.”

  “You bet, but if you’re falling over the edge of forever, would you rather grasp at straws or empty air?”

  “But aren’t you worried that people who think cryonics will give them a second chance might not take care of themselves as diligently? They might not exercise or eat right or follow their doctor’s advice. Cryonics might offer patients the kind of hope which, and I quote, ‘seduces them to abandon other treatments that could save or prolong their lives.’”

  “Oh. You actually listened to my speech. Makes it much harder for me to argue the point with you tonight, doesn’t it?” Epstein said, beaming with delight. At first Ben was confused by his friend’s effervescence, but then he understood: Being caught in a contradiction had reminded Epstein that he was once again talking to someone at his own level, an occurrence to savor. After all, it could be damned lonely up there.

  Then all at once Ben asked himself: Who’s being dogmatic now?

  October 28, 1982

  Had it been a thousand days? As easily a thousand minutes or years. The loss seemed to expand to fill time, losing barely a hint of its bite in the interval’s amorphous growth. His mind’s eye flashed to Marge’s grave and the empty plot beside it. Waiting for him; beckoning him. He elbowed the thought aside as one might desperately shove a schoolyard bully…

  Oh God! Suddenly Ben realized he would rather crawl from his Beacon Hill brownstone to the goddamn Pacific Ocean than trust some unseen pilot on one of those flying death traps. In fact he felt queasy just from thinking about it. But what choice did he have? Herbert “Mack” McGuigan had saved his life thirty-nine years ago; pulled him from those cold Pacific waters in the nick of time. He had to go to Phoenix and pay his last respects; since the funeral was tomorrow afternoon, flying was the only way to get there in time. Unfortunately.

  Death remained Ben’s greatest fear, yet it wasn’t fear of death that caused this anxiety; he knew flying was the safest way to travel. He suspected his fear of flight had more to do with lack of control. In a car, fate was a wheel under his own hands.

  Ben imagined sitting in an airplane—something he hadn’t done since 1945—when suddenly the engines lost power or a wing sheared off or the hydraulics failed, and there he was, strapped in his seat, helplessly pissing and screaming with nothing to be done about it. He assumed his heart would explode in his chest before the plane hit the ground.

  He decided to rent a car in Phoenix, and once Mack’s remains were in the earth, he could drive home. It would only take four days for the return trip, but he’d have to fly there first; no question about that.

  Even though a travel agency was located just a few blocks from his office, he walked the three miles to Crimson Travel in Cambridge; the same Crimson Travel where he’d bought the occasional train ticket back in medical school. At fifty-seven, his health was not perfect—he suffered from arthritis, seasonal allergies, and occasional migraines—but he tried to take care of himself. He walked six miles every day, lifted weights twice a week, performed a daily ten-minute stretching routine, and ate a vitamin- and fiber-rich low-fat diet.

  He’d experimented with other ways to stave off the Grim Reaper, including yoga, macrobiotics, meditation, homeopathic medicine, vegetarianism, and megadoses of various vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, but concluded that the life-prolonging reputations of these therapies had been sustained either through fallacy or fraud. Everyone wanted a magic pill, it seemed; even scientists like him could be temporarily seduced.

  Although Ben did not pretend to fathom the true nature of his Creator, he considered himself a religious man. Now his struggle against death was based partially on fear of what might await him there, as though God might never absolve his transgressions so long as Gary withheld forgiveness. He pictured the Almighty impatiently tapping His divine foot, awaiting His chance to punish Benjamin Smith’s sins against his own son. Ben knew it was an absurd image, yet there it was.

  But in the end, he simply loved being alive.

  “I know you, don’t I?” the travel agent at the desk said. “Ben, right? You used to come here, must be thirty years ago. You were at the medical school back then.”

  Ben sneaked a look at her name plate. “Ah, Gloria, how could I possibly forget a face as lovely as yours? You’ve hardly aged,” he lied. People liked hearing that; he knew, because he liked it himself. Time was an enemy to every living thing.

  And of course Gloria smiled. For several minutes they talked about the old days. Gloria admitted that she used to have a crush on him; something she’d kept and now wanted to share. An easy thing to understand.

  “Good thing I didn’t know it back then,” he said. “Might’ve wrecked my marriage.”

  Again she beamed.

  It was all he had to give her.

  The one-way coach ticket was $239. The rental car and motels would cost a similar amount. Ben kept careful track of his finances even though he had more money than he could ever spend. When the time arrived to join Marge, he would leave his grandchildren a concrete reminder that their grandfather had once walked this earth. He would also bequeath some funds into a spendthrift trust for Gary: guilt money, pure and simple.

  Walking back to his office, he caressed the locket that dangled from his neck on a slender gold chain. It was the same piece that Toby had borrowed from him before their tours of duty; at their first encounter in 1945 after returning from the war, Toby had returned it in exchange for his lucky rabbit’s foot. For the past three years Ben had worn this antique, containing photographs of Marge at age twenty on one side and of Sam and Alice on the other, with locks of their hair in the center. Since Marge’s burial, he’d never removed it even for a moment, and now imagined he would wear the small heirloom until his own death, perhaps beyond.

  As he gently held it between thumb and forefinger, he thought once again about his wife’s final days. Such remembrances were never farther from him than the locket.

  It was 1979. They’d been married thirty-four years and were as happy as any couple he knew. Then it happened, so damned suddenly. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early August, and gone by mid-September. For six weeks they’d both known she was dying. Ben would not go to work; he rarely left her side. While her body and mind disintegrated before his eyes, he’d felt frozen, scared that if he left, even for a moment, he might miss that single flash of lucidity, that epiphany in which she would reveal to him her mysterious wisdom. He had sat with her every day, all day, holding her hand, talking about the children and reliving their lives together.

  Now he thought of all his cancer patients and their families, and the countless ways spouses and loved ones coped with coming death. Those who would actually do the dying almost had it easier; they only needed to accept their own death. But those who would have to continue often avoided acknowledgment, as though they could somehow conjure up their own reality. “When you get better and come home, my love, the first thing we’ll do is…” Non cogito
, ergo non est.

  Death always brought such pain! It could make survivors renounce God, even hate Him. Some would lose themselves in the company or commiseration of friends, while others found more self-destructive diversions: isolation, alcohol, television, drugs. Widows and widowers who truly loved their spouses would start to remember their most irritating qualities, as if by diminishing the person, they could somehow cut their loss. Conversely, troubled marriages would often blossom into rhapsody when nurtured in the mind’s imperfect recall.

  But always there was evasion. Why? Because only time could heal such wounds; allow a scab to grow. And wasn’t that the ultimate irony? Without enough time to live their own lives, they had to spend this irreplaceable time dying the deaths of others. Others they’d loved so dearly.

  Ben knew them well; his own kind.

  * * *

  Marge’s last rational words, two days before she died, had been, “Ben, look after Gary. He needs you. Please. For me.” Everything she’d said to him after that seemed unintelligible. But Ben remained haunted by the notion that deep insight must have existed, hidden somewhere in Marge’s last ramblings.

  October 29, 1982

  Ben left the house at 7:05 A.M., driving toward nearby Brookline to have breakfast with his mother, as he did almost every day. Alice had the coffee ready and Ben made French toast, which they shared along with the latest family gossip.

  Ben marveled at his mother’s acuity. Over time, the operating speed of every human brain slows. But a well-nurtured brain compensates for the loss of velocity by creating new synapses. This Alice had accomplished. She read through two daily newspapers, several magazines, and three to four books a week on diverse subjects, retaining the useful essence. Ben’s children called her often for advice; her knowledge of their interests, their achievements, and even their problems, was encyclopedic.

  But at seventy-eight, her body was starting to degenerate, especially her knees and spine. Walking, even with a cane, was becoming arduous. Ben wondered how much longer she’d be able to sustain such an independent existence.