The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  Gary’s face was serious and handsome, but wizened for his age. He staggered a bit when he moved, but apparently didn’t need a cane these days. To Ben’s relief, he appeared sober.

  The two-room apartment was smaller than he’d imagined, and the smell of paints assailed his nostrils. Half a dozen technical books on art and draftsmanship, some open, most borrowed from the public library, lay scattered on a small coffee table. A dozen paintings in various stages of completion, some already signed “Gary Franklin Smith,” rested upon easels or on the floor.

  Ben was as surprised by this as he would have been to find a sleeping Bengal tiger curled in a corner; until that moment, he had not known that his son was still painting. He didn’t know much about Gary at all, he realized. His own son, and it seemed he didn’t know the slightest bit about him. What had he allowed to become of them?

  Ben had studied art history in college, enough to recognize that Gary had real talent. He wondered what other aptitudes his coldness had locked within his son. Or had the suffering he’d inflicted actually released that talent? He might never know. Some roots could never be unearthed—and perhaps shouldn’t be.

  “These are good.” Even that would have been impossible to say before now.

  “Thanks. It pays the bills. Uh, what are you doing here at four in the morning?”

  Ben stood speechless, feeling the same anxiety he’d always felt around Gary, but at least now he understood. Eventually the words came. “I’ve never told anyone what I’m about to tell you. Not even your mother. It happened during the war, and I’ve suppressed it all these years. Remembered it yesterday for the first time.”

  “I know about the POW camp. Mom told me.”

  “This was before that. It started on the day they sank the Boise…” Ben tried to depict his horrific voyage, the full essence of it, every sight and sound and smell he could remember. And the fear.

  He sat painfully for nearly an hour, purging every morsel of his memory.

  Gary never said a word.

  * * *

  Finally Ben told him why he’d come. “I know I haven’t been much of a father to you.”

  Gary gazed back, looking straight through the man, barely seeing his face. And why should he? His father had never noticed him! Even in medical school, and later when they’d shared the medical practice, not once had Ben asked him how he spent his free time. So his father never knew that Gary could barely wait for his classes or studies or the day’s appointments to end so he could rush home to try some new technique, or a different combination of shading or color, shape or light.

  Now images assaulted Gary; recollections of his father berating him, or worse, ignoring him. Of Ben shouting, “I haven’t got time for your questions right now!” He remembered his own fear on the way to the hospital that day when Grampa Sam died, when he needed comfort: some acknowledgment from his father. And now the tables had turned. But what could he say?

  “You weren’t that bad.”

  Ben answered, “I never gave you the understanding or attention or love your sisters got. I can only imagine how that made you feel.”

  “I’m over it. I’ll be okay. Look around you, so you’ll know it’s true.”

  Ben had once smoked cigarettes, as many as three packs a day, and upon quitting cold turkey in 1964, had felt almost the way he did right now: uncomfortable, restless, mentally and physically blunted. He felt an urge to leave, to get out of that room, but knew he must force himself to continue.

  “Yesterday I figured out why I treated you that way.”

  Gary winced. “You don’t have to do this, Dad.”

  Ben sensed Gary was curious in spite of their mutual discomfort. He latched onto that curiosity as if it were a stairway railing. “Yes I do. I need you to understand, to know where it all came from.”

  “Okay.”

  “When we took you home from the hospital to our tiny apartment, I discovered I couldn’t tolerate a baby who screamed and cried and soiled his diapers and smelled like all infants do. Babies’ emotions and pain and hunger know no reason, and your reactions to that suffering seemed completely beyond my control.

  “And then there was the uncertainty; that was the worst thing about the POW ship. And about you. I never had any brothers or sisters, and you were our first child. So I had no idea what to expect, no inkling of what was waiting for me. By the time your sisters came, I knew what parenthood was like, but you arrived first. When I close my eyes, I can practically relive it. All three of us living in that tiny room, and the anxiety of first-time parenthood, pulling me back to that cramped hellhole of a ship.”

  Ben clenched his teeth, continuing, undaunted in the face of his son’s silence. “When your sisters were born, we kept moving to bigger places. Until now, I never realized the moves were another way of fleeing memories. Each new home offered more breathing space, you see. I avoided confined surroundings because they took me back to that ship.”

  He gazed at his son, hoping for a spark of understanding. But those blue eyes looked back at him with shock and, perhaps worse, embarrassment.

  “All these years you and I were at war, at least in my mind,” he continued. “Every time I saw you, I felt trapped, almost as if enemy soldiers were trying to recapture me… to bring me back to their ship, that floating death coop I was so determined never to remember again.”

  Gary’s expression remained unchanged, so Ben made one more attempt. “It took me until now to realize what it was between us, and that none of it ever had anything to do with you. You were just unlucky to be my first child is all. Son, I’m so sorry. I only wish there was some way I could make it up to you.

  Gary didn’t seem angry, nor did he appear to take satisfaction in Ben’s predicament. “Okay, Dad,” he said, nodding slowly. “I believe you, or at least I believe you believe it. But what should we do?” Gary’s face was calm, noncommittal, like a parent listening to his child’s I-lost-my-math-homework story.

  “I want to be the kind of father I always should’ve been. I want to understand and be understood. That’s all. I don’t expect you ever to forgive me.” That was Ben’s only lie; forgiveness was exactly what he wanted.

  Gary hesitated. Ben stared at him, and waited. Finally the son opened his arms to the father, shuffled toward him. “I’ll try to understand, Dad, and I do forgive you.”

  They hugged, their first embrace in the three years since Marge’s funeral. But when Ben stepped back, he saw nothing but pity on Gary’s face. Of course! His son would never understand and didn’t forgive him at all; he was just thinking, How can it hurt to be nice to the old man?

  Ben deplored this moment as nothing more than a momentary amity between two well-meaning strangers. Like Longfellow’s ships that pass in the night, he thought, reciting the verse in his mind: “…we pass and speak to one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.”

  Which might be all they could ever have between them. His revelation, he decided, had come far too late. Still, even as the gloom of his failure plagued his heart, Ben Smith’s nature would not permit him to give up.

  Later that day, Ben started to feel an odd weakness, confirming his fears. He dialed Boston Cardiology Associates and asked for Toby.

  There was no better cardiologist in Boston, but even if there were, Ben would have found it difficult to betray their friendship by seeing another doctor. They’d stayed the closest of friends and confidants ever since second grade; Toby had no family; Ben was the only permanent relationship in his life. Over these past twenty years, Ben had served as best man at all three of his friend’s marriages, the most recent of which had ended six years ago, in typical Tobias Fiske fashion. Of course Ben was there to console him through all three bitter, and expensive, divorces. And after Marge died, Toby had canceled his appointments and closed his practice a full week to remain at Ben’s side.

  “I think you should come as soon as poss—” Toby paused. “Ben,” he restarted, “haul your ass
over here right-the-hell now!”

  When Toby stepped into the examination room, Ben marveled at the man Toby had become. Always solid and dark-complexioned, his friend had filled out and matured into almost magazine-cover appearance. He looked like the hero of a Latin American romance novel. Yet for all his physical attributes and apparent robust health, Toby’s relationships were only rarely stable. Ben sighed and awaited his friend’s verdict.

  Toby advised him to check into Massachusetts General Hospital. “You’ve had a mild heart attack,” he explained, very businesslike, though Ben recognized the apparent dispassion as forced. “Too bad you stayed on that airplane. If you’d sought help right away, you might’ve avoided permanent damage to the heart muscle. As it is, the lesions are small, but dangerous. You’ll have to be far more careful from now on.”

  Then he put both hands on Ben’s shoulders and gazed at his face. “Ben, this is serious stuff.”

  Ben realized then that Toby was terrified. Suddenly he was, too. “You better believe I won’t wait next time.”

  That night, as Jan Smith sat home nursing four-month-old Sarah while her husband Noah tried to determine which bills to pay first and which ones could wait, the telephone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Jan, it’s your old dad.”

  “Hey, Dad,” she answered, delighted as always to hear his voice. “How are you?”

  “Not too good. Apparently I had a mild heart attack yesterday.”

  “My God. No!”

  Noah came into the room. “What’s the matter?”

  Jan shook her head, scowled at him, then focused all attention on the telephone.

  “Now Jan, don’t worry,” Ben said. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Just staying here overnight…”

  “You’re in the hospital?”

  “For observation. I’ll be back home tomorrow.”

  “Can I come visit?”

  “No, really, honey, that’s not why I called. Just wanted to… Look, Jan, I promise I’m not dying, it’s just…”

  “What is it, Dad? Tell me.”

  “Well, this whole thing made me think that maybe I should start planning my estate. For when it happens, you know. Not that it’ll be soon; not likely anyway. But y’know, the two page will you wrote up for me, that must’ve been five, six years ago… Now don’t cry, honey. I’m really okay.”

  “I just don’t know… if I can do it. Write up your will, I mean,” she managed. “Oh, Dad, I’m sorry. Maybe you should find another lawyer…”

  “Yeah, I know, honey. I try to imagine what it might be like for you. And I can’t, because the only way I can do it is to reverse this in my head… and it’s too awful. Besides, my finances are complex. I’ll try to find a specialist. That’ll be better for both of us.”

  “Yes. Good idea. Please, can’t I come visit you in the hospital tonight? I’ll bring Sarah.” The last offer was added in the tone of a parent bribing a child with the promise of ice cream.

  This touched Ben’s ailing heart. “It’s past visiting hours. I’ll drop by tomorrow, as soon as they let me out of this paradise-on-earth. Don’t worry, honey. I’m fine.”

  After Ben hung up, Jan sobbed to her husband, “Dad’s had a heart attack.”

  Noah hugged her, and there was neither passion nor comfort in the embrace. “He’s okay?”

  “So he said. But he wanted me to write up a new will for him.”

  “When’ll you talk to him about it?”

  Jan stared at Noah, who wanted her to write her own father’s dying declaration! Revulsion overwhelming her sadness, she managed to answer, “He’s gonna find a trust and estates specialist instead.”

  “Why?” Noah asked, too sharply.

  “Because I can’t write my own father’s goddamn will, that’s why!”

  “Okay, okay. I was just thinking we could use the business.”

  “I don’t charge him for legal work.”

  “Yeah, I forgot,” Noah said. “Still, we might want to keep an eye on things, don’t you think? It’s not just us anymore. We have a daughter to think about now.”

  “Bullshit.”

  November 5, 1982

  Ben sat at his office desk during a rare lull in his work schedule; no patients in the waiting room, no appointments for the next twenty minutes, no follow-up calls needing to be made right then. He finally had a moment to think, and what he thought was: Ben, that was dumb, dumb, dumb! He was damned lucky he hadn’t died on that airplane.

  Seven days had passed. He felt much better; still a bit sluggish, but okay. He intended to resume his walking that evening, covering shorter distances at a slower pace.

  First he dialed his son’s number, and got the answering machine, as he had for each of the last five days.

  He waited for the beep. “Gary, it’s me again. You out of town or just don’t feel like talking to me? Can’t say as I’d blame you, but some forces of nature won’t be subdued, and I’m one of them. By the way, I happened to notice some of your paintings in a gallery on Newbury Street. Had no idea paintings could be that expensive unless the artist was dead. Or is that why you haven’t called me back? Anyway, a woman of obvious good taste was admiring the big green one with the hummingbirds and that incredible sunset. I told her she’d better put her name on it. Didn’t mention you were my son, of course. She finally did put down a deposit on it. You know how persuasive I can be. Anyway, you might as well call me back, or you’ll have to listen to these messages every goddamn day for the rest of your life. Well, ‘bye for now.”

  He dropped the receiver into the cradle and stared at the oak wall in front of him. Damn! He wondered if Gary was really out, or sitting home listening to that.

  Needing to fill the time with something, anything, possessing some semblance of productivity, Ben looked through a pile of papers. He found the note he’d written to himself after returning from Mack’s burial, and called Arizona directory assistance.

  The Phoenix Life Extension Foundation had a listed phone number. He reached David Perez, the membership administrator. Perez was an articulate fellow and quite personable. It surprised Ben to learn that the place was indeed a cryonics facility. A mild disappointment.

  “You’re like that company in Sacramento I read about a few years ago?” Ben asked.

  “Same concept, better execution.” Perez laughed. “You’re referring to California Cryonics Limited, I assume.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “They made some serious mistakes, but we think their concepts were sound. Think of them as the Titanic; think of us as the Queen Elizabeth Two.”

  “An apt analogy, I hope. Talk to me.”

  “Over time,” Perez began, “scientific progress has allowed people to live longer. Already we estimate that medical science is adding two months to the average life expectancy of each American every year. Eventually science will discover a way for humans to have an indefinite life span. It’s a matter of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’ But few if any people alive today are likely to reach that point before being overcome either by disease or calamity. So for those of us who don’t make it to that time, the only way to survive is to have ourselves frozen after we die. At ultralow temperatures, all metabolic change virtually ceases. Theoretically, a person’s body could be preserved indefinitely.”

  Ben remembered his conversation with Epstein a dozen years earlier, and felt a sudden chill. Even if it were legitimate, he couldn’t see anyone voluntarily submitting to such a thing.

  What if you were actually aware of being frozen—with no hope of escape? He imagined himself lying in a block of ice, unable to move for decades, or centuries, but still alive. Even the hellish bowels of that Jap ship had been a better prospect, he decided. As bad as that was, the journey had been finite. Being frozen alive, trapped in an icy coffin, guaranteed no such redemption.

  “People let you put their bodies on ice?” he asked.

  “We use liquid nitrogen, actually,” Perez explained. “And people don�
�t just let us, they pay us to do it! We have over a dozen people in suspension now, and fifty-six others signed up, including me. Which makes us the largest cryonics facility in the world.”

  The largest in the world? Ben thought. If cryonics were really viable, after being available for twenty years, why hadn’t more people signed up? It couldn’t have just been the money; any possibility of another chance at life should have been priceless to a dying person.

  “Of course,” Perez continued, almost as if he’d read Ben’s mind, “nobody’s ever been revived, and there’s no proof any of us will ever be; it’s purely theoretical. Neither the science nor the requisite technology exists yet. Cryonics is a statement of hope that humankind will ultimately achieve both.”

  Or maybe more like an affidavit of insanity, Ben thought. He figured he might as well listen, though. “When I was younger, much younger,” he prompted, “I used to think we’d be able to stop the aging process during my lifetime. Thought I might live forever.”

  “Still might, you know. We don’t make promises, of course, but since everyone’s going to die anyway, you wouldn’t have much to lose by being frozen, would you? Anyone who’s buried or cremated will never be revived, but if you’re frozen quickly enough at the point of death, before all the information in your brain’s lost, well, who knows what science will be able to do in fifty or a hundred or five hundred years?”

  It was nutty, but at least Perez didn’t seem to be lying about anything—so far. “What happens to your soul when you’re on ice?”

  “People always ask us that,” Perez said. “Nobody knows if there’s really a soul separate and apart from the body. But I gather from your question that you’re a religious man, so let’s assume you have such a soul. And let’s say your suspension lasts even five hundred years. That’s a long time for a body, but if a soul’s eternal, it’s probably not too much to expect it to find its way home.”

  “Interesting. Weird, but interesting.”

  “And in the eyes of God, half a millennium would be insignificant, wouldn’t it? We can’t be sure, but I’d assume your soul won’t mind cooling its heels for a lousy five hundred years.” Perez chuckled, the sincere laugh of a man who believed in his own product.