by Ken Grimwood
Linda’s father had ridiculed the concept, dismissing Heyerdahl’s near-success as outright failure, and Jeff had kept quiet his knowledge that the adventurer-anthropologist would triumph with a second expedition one year later. Still, the conversation set him thinking, and that night he had lain awake until dawn, listening to the churning surf beneath his apartment windows and envisioning himself adrift on that dark sea in a flimsy vessel of his own making, a fragile craft that might succumb to this year’s storms but would return to vanquish the ocean that had claimed it.
That same month he and Linda had driven up to the Cape, as they had before, to witness the controlled fury of the massive Saturn V rocket that lifted Apollo 11 to the moon. After the launch, as they’d inched their way back down the already overdeveloped Gold Coast with a hundred thousand other cars full of spectators, Jeff’s mind was filled with thoughts of insularity, of removal from the day-to-day affairs of humankind. Not the sort of seclusion and retreat that he had once sought in Montgomery Creek, but a voyage of isolation, an epic journey of aloneness toward a goal as yet unproven. I
Heyerdahl knew that feeling, Jeff was certain, as did the crew of the mission they had just watched depart, and none among that crew more than Michael Collins. Armstrong, and to a lesser extent Aldrin, would receive the glory, take those historic first step, speak the garbled first words, plant the flag in lunar soil … But for those dramatic hours that his crewmates were on the surface of the moon, Michael Collins would be more alone than anyone had ever been: a quarter of a million miles from earth, in orbit around an alien world, the nearest humans somewhere beneath him on that hostile demi-planet. When his command module took him past the moon’s far side, Collins wouldn’t even have radio contact with his fellow beings, would be unable even to see the faraway blue-and-white globe of his birth. He would face the bleak infinity of space in an utter solitude and silence that only five other human beings would ever experience.
Jeff had known then, as he sat stalled in that thirty-mile traffic jam on U.S. Highway 1 near Melbourne, that he must meet these men, must understand them. Thereby, perhaps, he would come to a better understanding of himself and the solitary voyage through time that he and Pamela had been thrust upon.
The following week he’d begun the first of many trips to Houston. On the strength of his Earl Warren interview the previous year, Jeff persuaded NBC to help him obtain NASA press credentials as a freelance journalist. He interviewed and gradually befriended Stuart Roosa and, through him, Richard Gordon and Alfred Worden and the others. Even Michael Collins proved relatively accessible; the world’s attention and adulation remained focused on the men who had actually set foot on the moon, not on the one who had been, and the others who would be, left behind in lunar orbit.
What had begun as a personal quest for insight into his own state of mind soon grew beyond that. For the first time in many years, Jeff was applying his talents as a journalist, delving skillfully into the thoughts and memories of his subjects, interviewing them best at moments when they had ceased to think of the conversation as an interview, when they had let down their guard in the face of his obviously genuine interest and begun to speak with him on a deeply human level. Pathos, humor, anger, fear: Jeff somehow elicited from these men the fully textured range of emotions that the astronauts had never before revealed. And he knew that their special vision of the universe was part of something he could no longer keep to himself, but had to communicate to the world at large.
He’d written to Heyerdahl that autumn, arranged the first of several meetings with the explorer in Norway, then in Morocco.
As the initial impulse that had led Jeff to seek out these special individuals expanded in his mind, as the images and feelings that he gleaned from them took on a power of their own, he realized at last what he was unconsciously but determinedly developing: a book about himself, using the metaphor of these separate lonely voyagers as a means to grapple with his own unique experience, to explain the marbled tapestry of his accumulated gains and losses and regrets.
A fresh chain of lightning illuminated the far-off storm clouds, its dim white reflection playing across the contours of Linda’s angelic face.
And joys, he thought, tracing his fingertips lightly across her cheek as she smiled up at him. He must communicate the joys, as well.
Jeff’s writing room, like most of the other rooms in the house at Hillsboro Beach, south of Boca Raton, had a view of the ocean. He’d come to rely on the constancy of that sight and the unending sound of the surf, much as he had once been so drawn to the white-peaked vision of Mount Shasta from his place in Montgomery Creek. It soothed him, anchored him, except on the nights when the moon would rise from the ocean, reminding him of a certain film that remained unmade in this world and of a time best left forgotten.
He pressed the foot pedal of the Sony dictating machine, and the deep resonance of the heavily Russian-accented voice on the tape was evident even through the little playback unit’s tinny speaker. Jeff was midway through transcribing this interview, and each time he heard the voice he could picture the man’s surprisingly modest home in Zurich, the plates of blini and caviar, the well-chilled bottle of pepper vodka on the table between them. And the words, the outpouring of eloquent world sorrow interspersed with unexpected gems of wit and even laughter from the husky man with the unmistakable red-fringed beard. Many times during that week of intensely expressed wisdom in Switzerland, Jeff had been tempted to tell the man how fully he shared his grief, how well he understood the sense of impotent rage against the irrecoverable. But he hadn’t, of course. Couldn’t. He’d held his tongue, played the callow if insightful interviewer, and merely recorded the great man’s thoughts; left him alone in his pain, as Jeff was alone in his.
There was a tentative knock on the door, and Linda called to him: "Honey? Want to take a break?"
"Sure," he said, turning off the typewriter and the tape machine. "Come on in."
She opened the door, came in balancing a tray with two slices of Key lime pie and two cups of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. "Sustenance." She grinned.
"Mmmm." Jeff inhaled the dark aroma of the coffee, the cool tang of the fresh lime pie. "More than that. Infinitely more than that."
"How’s the Solzhenitsyn material coming?" Linda asked, sitting cross-legged on the oversized ottoman next to his desk with the tray in her lap.
"Excellent. I’ve got a lot to work with here, and it’s all so good I don’t even know where to start cutting or paraphrasing."
"It’s better than the stuff you got from Thieu?"
"Much better," he said between bites of the excruciatingly delicious pie. "There are enough good quotes in the Thieu material to make it worth including, but this is going to form the backbone of the book. I’m really excited about it."
With good reason, Jeff knew; this new project had been forming in his mind ever since he’d begun writing the first book, the one about Heyerdahl and the lunar-orbit astronauts. That had been a modest critical and commercial success when it was published, two years ago, in 1973. He felt sure that this one, for which his research was almost complete now, would surpass even the best segments of his earlier work.
He would write, this time, of enforced exile, of banishment from home and country and one’s fellow men. In that topic, he felt he could find and convey a core of universal empathy, a spark of understanding rising from that metaphoric exile to which all of us are subject, and that Jeff grasped more than anyone before him: our common and inevitable expulsion from the years that we have lived and put behind us, from the people we have been and known and have forever lost.
The lengthy musings Jeff had elicted from Alexander Solzhenitsyn—about his exile, not about the Gulag—were, as he’d told Linda, unquestionably the most profound of all the observations he had gathered to date. The book would also include material from his correspondence with deposed Cambodian Prince Sihanouk, and his interviews in both Madrid and Buenos Aires with Juan Perôn, as
well as the reflections he had garnered from Nguyen Van Thieu after the fall of Saigon. Jeff had even spoken with the Ayatollah Khomeini at his sanctuary outside Paris. To ensure that the book was fully democratized, he had sought the comments of dozens of ordinary political refugees, men and women who had fled dictatorial regimes of both the right and the left.
The notes and tapes he had amassed overflowed with powerful, deeply moving narratives and sentiments. The task Jeff now faced was to distill the essence of those millions of heartfelt words, to maximize their raw power by paring them to the bone and juxtaposing them in the most effective context. Harps upon the Willows, he planned to call it, from the hundred and thirty-seventh psalm:
By the rivers of Babylon,
there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
We hung our harps upon the
willows in the midst thereof …
How shall we sing the Lord's
song in a strange land?
Jeff finished his Key lime pie, set the plate aside, and sipped the heady richness of the fresh-brewed Jamaican coffee.
"How long do you think—" Linda began to ask, but her question was interrupted by the sharp ring of the phone on his desk.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Hello, Jeff," said the voice he’d known through three separate lifetimes.
He didn’t know what to say. He’d thought of this moment so many times in the past eight years, dreaded it, longed for it, come to half-believe it might never arrive. Now that it was here, he found himself temporarily mute, all his carefully rehearsed opening words flown from his mind like vanished wisps of cloud in the wind.
"Are you free to talk?" Pamela asked.
"Not really," Jeff said, looking uncomfortably at Linda. She had seen the change in his expression, he could tell, and was regarding him curiously but without suspicion.
"I understand," Pamela told him. "Should I call back later, or could we meet somewhere?"
"That would be better."
"Which? Calling back later?"
"No. No, I think we ought to get together, sometime soon."
"Can you get to New York?" she asked.
"Yes. Any time. When and where?"
"This Thursday, is that all right?"
"No problem," he said.
"Thursday afternoon, then, at … the Pierre? The bar there?"
"That sounds fine. Two o’clock?"
"Three would be better for me," Pamela said. "I have an appointment on the West Side at one."
"All right. I—I’ll see you Thursday."
Jeff hung up, could sense how pale and shaken he must look. "That was … an old friend from college, Martin Bailey," he lied, hating himself for it.
"Oh, right, your roommate. Is something wrong?" The concern in her voice, on her face, was genuine.
"He and his wife are having bad problems. It looks like they may get a divorce. He’s pretty upset about it, needs somebody to talk to. I’m going up to Atlanta for a couple of days to see if I can help."
Linda smiled, sympathetically, innocently, but Jeff felt no relief that she had so readily believed the impromptu falsehood. He felt only guilt, a sharp, almost physical stab of it. And, intensifying that guilt, a rush of undeniable elation that he would be seeing Pamela again, in only three days' time.
EIGHTEEN
Jeff took the elevator down from his room at the Pierre at 2:20, turned left, and walked past the gray Italian marble with brass inlays that marked the entrance to the Café Pierre. He found a quiet table toward the back of the long, narrow bar, ordered a drink, and waited nervously, watching the entrance. So many memories he had of this hotel: He and Sharla had watched most of that pivotal 1963 World Series from a room here, near the beginning of his first replay, and he’d stayed here frequently in the decades past, most often with Pamela.
She walked in at five minutes before three. Her straight blond hair was just as he’d remembered it, her eyes the same. Her generous lips were set in a familiar expression of seriousness, but without the bitter, downturned tightness he had seen her mouth take on during those final years in Maryland. She was wearing delicate emerald earrings to match her eyes, a white fox fur … and a light gray, stylishly tailored maternity dress. Pamela was five months pregnant, maybe six.
She came to the table, took Jeff’s hands in hers, and held them for a long, quiet moment. He glanced down, saw the plain gold wedding ring.
"Welcome back," he said as she sat down across from him. "You … look lovely."
"Thank you," she said carefully, her eyes on the tabletop. A waiter hovered; she ordered a glass of white wine. The silence lingered until the wine was set before her. She sipped it, then began rubbing the cocktail napkin between her fingers.
Jeff smiled, remembering. "You going to shred that?" he asked lightly.
Pamela looked up at him, smiled back. "Maybe," she said.
"When—" he began, and stopped.
"When what? When did I start replaying again, or when am I due?"
"Both, I guess. However you want to start."
"I’ve been back for two months, Jeff."
"I see." It was he who turned away this time, stared at one of the gold sconces against the satin drapes.
Pamela reached across the table, touched his arm. "I couldn’t bring myself to call, don’t you understand? Not just because of the differences we’d had last time, but … because of this. It was a tremendous emotional shock for me."
He softened, looked back into her eyes. "I’m sorry," he said. "I know it must have been."
"I was in a children’s clothing shop in New Rochelle. Buying baby clothes. My little boy, Christopher—he’s three—was with me. And then I felt my belly and I knew, and … I just broke down. I started sobbing, and of course that frightened Christopher. He started to cry and call out, 'Mommy, Mommy'…"
Pamela’s voice cracked, and she dabbed at her eyes with the napkin. Jeff took her hand, stroked it until she regained her composure.
"This is Kimberly that I’m carrying," she said at last, quietly. "My daughter. She’ll be born in March. March eighteenth, 1976. It’ll be a beautiful day, more like late April or early May, really. Her name means from the royal meadow, and I always used to say she brought the springtime with her."
"Pamela…"
"I never thought I’d see them again. You can’t imagine—not even you can imagine what this has been like for me, what it still is like, and will be for the next eleven, almost twelve, years. Because I love them more than ever, and this time I know I’m going to lose them."
She started to weep again, and Jeff knew there was nothing he could say to make it easier. He thought of what it would be like to hold his daughter Gretchen in his arms again, to watch her playing in the garden of the house in Dutchess County, all the while aware of the very day and hour when she would disappear from his life again. Impossible bliss, incalculable heartbreak, and never a hope of separating one from the other. Pamela was right; the unbearable, ever-constant wrenching of those paired emotions was beyond even his acutely developed empathetic powers.
After a time she excused herself from the table, went to stanch the tears in private. When she returned her face was dry, her light makeup newly applied and immaculate. Jeff had ordered a fresh glass of wine for her, another drink for himself.
"What about you?" she asked dispassionately. "When did you come back this time?"
He hesitated, cleared his throat. "I was in Miami," he said. "In 1968."
Pamela thought that over for a moment, gave him a perceptive look. "With Linda," she said. "Yes." "And now?"
"We’re still together. Not married, not yet, but … we live together."
She smiled a wistful, knowing smile, ran her finger along the rim of the wineglass. "And you’re happy."
"I am," he admitted. "We both are."
"Then I’m glad for you," Pamela said. "I mean that."
"It’s been different this time," he elabo
rated. "I had a vasectomy, so she’ll never have to go through the difficulties she once had with pregnancy. We may adopt a child. I could handle that; I did before, when I was married to Judy, and it wasn’t the same as … You know what I mean." Jeff paused for an instant, regretting having raised the issue of children again, then went on hurriedly. "The financial security has helped our relationship considerably," he said. "I haven’t bothered to go all-out with the investments, but we’re quite comfortable. Very nice house on the ocean; we travel a lot. And I’m writing now, doing some very rewarding work. It’s been a kind of healing process for me, even more so than the time I spent alone in Montgomery Creek."
"I know," she said. "I read your book; it was quite moving. It helped me put away so much of what went wrong between us the last time, all that bitterness."
"You—That’s right, I keep forgetting you’ve been replaying for two months already. Thank you; I’m glad you liked it. The one I’m working on right now is about exile; I’ve interviewed Solzhenitsyn, Peron … I’ll send you an advance copy when it’s done."
She lowered her eyes, put a hand to her chin. "I’m not sure that would be a good idea."
It took Jeff a moment to catch her meaning. "Your husband?"
Pamela nodded. "It’s not that he’s an overly jealous man, but … Oh, God, how can I say this? It would require too many explanations if you and I remained in touch, started writing and phoning and seeing each other. Don’t you see how awkward that would be?"
"Do you love him?" Jeff asked, swallowing hard.
"Not the way you obviously love Linda," she said, her voice steady but cool. "Steve’s a decent man; he cares for me in his own way. But mainly it’s the children I’m thinking of. Christopher’s only three, and Kimberly’s not even born yet. I couldn’t take them away from their father before they even had a chance to know him." A sudden fire of anger flared in her eyes, but then she dampened it. "Even if you wanted me to," she added.