One Station Away

by Olaf Olafsson

  I felt empty after I hung up. I had been like that at the restaurant earlier that evening, only now it was worse. I told myself I was probably tired after the journey; jet lag always affects me. And yet I couldn’t help thinking there might be a deeper problem. Earlier, while Hofsinger was talking, I had started to reflect on patient number twenty-two. We were acting as if we had performed some miracle, and yet there he lay in the hospital ward, where he had lain for the past five years, trapped inside his body, with no hope of change. I tried to tell myself that at least he could listen to music or the radio or news from his friends and family when they visited him, but I wasn’t convinced.

  It came as a shock. I had taken part in one experiment after another, and although some of our patients had pointed us in the right direction, until now there had been no real results. I should have felt proud, optimistic, like my colleagues, in particular Osborne who was over the moon and kept repeating that we had saved patient number twenty-two, who had “practically been buried alive,” as he put it. But instead I was discouraged.

  The hotel wasn’t far from the center of Liège, but when I returned from the restaurant and went back to my room all I saw through the window were deserted streets and, beyond the low-roofed houses, the river. It had started drizzling again, and the streets were slick and the lights in the neighborhood hazy. I knew it was hopeless to try to sleep and I was too agitated to read or watch television, so I grabbed a light jacket and went out.

  Before I knew it, I found myself heading toward the hospital. It was only a short walk, and I had no problem remembering the way from my previous visits.

  The patient was alone in the room, the hum of the ventilator scarcely breaking the silence. A soft lamp glowed in the corner, but around his bed lights from the medical equipment dotted the shadows. I paused in the middle of the room, before walking toward him. There were no personal effects around, nothing that offered any idea of what his life might have been like. Someone had left a newspaper on the chair by the window, one of the nurses, I imagined. On the front page was a picture of a train crash.

  I had been overcome by a sudden urge to see him, and yet I realized now that I had nothing to say to him, nothing that could interest him or make his life easier in any way. He appeared to be sleeping, and I took care not to wake him. I felt drowsy myself and sat down. It was still raining, the drizzle was now a downpour and rain was streaming down the windows. Before I knew it, I was asleep.

  It was past four in the morning when I woke up. The newspaper had vanished and someone had placed a pillow under my head. It took me a moment to realize where I was, but as I stood up and looked at the patient, it suddenly occurred to me how we might try to communicate with him. It was as though I had always known, as though the idea had come to me long ago and was waiting for this moment to reveal itself. My response seemed to confirm this: I didn’t get excited the way I often do when a new idea pops into my head. I simply opened the door quietly and walked into the night.

  Chapter 4

  As I might have expected, Simone heard about my “antics,” as she called them. She didn’t tell me how (“It doesn’t matter,” she replied when I asked), but clearly Anthony had been unable to stop himself from telling her that I had asked for his assistance, not hers. He wouldn’t have used those words, of course, but said enough for her to take offense. She looked at me in silence, with that schoolmarmish expression that shows she is at once disappointed and concerned, then asked me, as she had done more than once during the past few months, whether everything was all right. I said yes, even though “everything” is a big word, hoping she wouldn’t ask further, demand to know what I had been thinking, because my explanation would make no sense to her. And so, I replied:

  “I could hear the sea.”

  I was sitting at my desk; she was standing by the door. It had been open but now she closed it.

  “Magnus,” she said, “what on earth are you talking about?”

  I could barely look her in the eye, but didn’t want to seem evasive.

  “While I lay there paralyzed, I discovered that I could hear the sea. You should try it sometime.”

  “You mean being injected with succs and placed on a ventilator?”

  “Vecuronium bromide,” I corrected, and tried to smile.

  “It doesn’t help them, Magnus. Nor you. You must try to . . .”

  She fell silent. I saw her eye alight on the photograph of me and Malena which I had pinned to the bookshelf above my desk. It had been taken in Florence, on Ponte Vecchio, six months before she died. We were on our way to the Uffizi and had stopped to look down at the river. She had asked a passerby if he would take a photo of us. She has her arms around me and a playful expression on her face.

  I glanced at the photograph, then at Simone. I was keen to end the conversation.

  “You should go out and find a man so you can stop worrying about me,” I said.

  She smiled weakly, and, of course, I regretted what I had said, especially after everything that’s happened between us. But I had the feeling she was going to put her arms around me the way she sometimes had after Malena’s death. I wanted to avoid that.

  The telephone rang. I hurriedly picked it up, but Simone stood still, listening to me go over the results of the latest research with Osborne. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her thrust her hand into the pocket of her white gown while she continued to stare at me, as if she were trying to see into my mind. She must have had a chewing gum wrapper in her pocket; I could hear it rustle. I took notes while Osborne was talking, although I knew he would e-mail me a detailed report.

  The idea I had had that night in Liège proved more complicated to put into practice than I had thought. And yet it couldn’t be simpler. With patients able to imagine playing tennis or walking around their house, we would try to communicate by asking them yes or no questions. For yes, they would be instructed to imagine playing tennis. For no, they would be told to think about walking through their house. I had explained it to the three wise men, as Simone calls them, over breakfast the day after my visit to patient number twenty-two, and they quickly embraced the idea, especially Osborne. Moreau and Hofsinger gave the impression of regretting they hadn’t thought of it themselves, and Hofsinger said in a detached voice: “That seems like a logical next step.”

  Patient number twenty-two was occasionally able to respond to those questions, but the same can’t be said of those who came to us subsequently—one here in Connecticut and two in Cambridge. They had more severe brain damage, and in addition the software proved less reliable than we had anticipated. Still, we carried on undaunted, and recently Osborne had told us he had high hopes for a female patient from Dover, who promised to be even more lucid than patient number twenty-two. Or so he thought, until suddenly she stopped responding to the simplest questions.

  I gave Simone an account of the call, going into far more detail than was necessary to try to prevent her from picking up the thread of our own conversation. While she didn’t seem to be paying full attention, I assumed I had succeeded.

  When I thought she was leaving, she paused in the doorway.

  “How could you hear the sea?”

  I looked at her, maybe a little puzzled, and she repeated the question.

  “An hour had gone by,” I replied, “when suddenly I heard the waves.”

  She frowned.

  “I wasn’t imagining it,” I added.

  “Let me know if you get any other weird ideas,” she said as she walked out, “preferably before you act on them.”

  Later that day, when I needed to speak to her about something, I couldn’t find her anywhere. I called her cell phone, but it was switched off. Finally, one of the nurses told me she had seen her go into Mrs. Bentsen’s room a while ago.

  When I opened the door, she was lying on the bed with the windows open. She gave a start when she saw me, but said nothing and decided to lie still. I didn’t leave, and before I knew it I was listening for the
waves as well.

  Chapter 5

  On our last evening in Florence, Malena and I went to a concert in the gardens of a small castle, just outside the city. We were running late, and she asked me to hurry her as she got into the shower. She would often do that. She said she had no sense of time—like all Argentinians. When I alerted her, she would always reply in a playful voice, devoid of anxiety or panic: “Already? Oh my God!” Sometimes, for fun, I would lie and say it was later than it really was, but it always turned out that she knew better. “Really?” she would begin, before adding: “No, that can’t be . . . You’re teasing me.”

  The hotel overlooked the Arno; the building dated back to the Renaissance. The windows were tall, running from floor to ceiling. I opened one and looked down at the men on the riverbank with their fishing rods as I dressed. I could hear her turn off the shower. The sun was setting behind the hills, which turned from red to blue as dusk settled over the city. I walked over to the bathroom to move her along, but paused the instant I saw her. She was standing naked over the washbasin, putting on some facial cream. She was on tiptoe to get closer to the mirror, and I gazed at her pale brown back and hips, her calves, her dark hair, still wet, which fell over her shoulders and always gave off a whiff of spring.

  When we had returned to the hotel that afternoon, I had dozed off for a while in the warm breeze from the river and dreamt that I was walking in a forest. I thought about that forest as I watched her, and couldn’t bring myself to say that it was eight o’clock. I didn’t want the moment to end, but she had sensed my presence, and smiled when she turned around and saw me. She said nothing, simply opened her arms as I went over and embraced her, kneeling to kiss her belly, then moving my head down and kissing her there, too, clasping her to me. She ran her fingers through my hair, and I told myself that as long as I had her I could endure any ordeal or disappointment, any adversity. Before we met, I had been prone to take failure badly, especially in the lab, and was quick to blame myself when things went wrong. I would panic unnecessarily, and occasionally, when I was very low, I imagined that I might have inherited from my mother the traits I feared most.

  I awoke before dawn alone in bed. The concert had finished at about eleven, and we decided to ask the cabdriver who brought us back to drop us off halfway to the hotel so we could walk the rest of the way. It was a starlit night, and the full moon shone on the red rooftops of the city and the squares, where people at outside cafés spoke to each other in half whispers. We were crossing Piazza della Signoria when she came to an abrupt halt. I felt her hand pull on mine and instinctively tugged to prevent her from falling. She clutched her right ankle, then stood up straight and smiled.

  “How clumsy I am.”

  She insisted she had tripped, and I didn’t give it another thought, although the ground looked smooth to me. She was wearing low-heeled shoes and a skirt she had bought earlier that day, and I looked down at her feet, so perfectly formed. We carried on across the square, threading our way through the streets down to the river and back to the hotel.

  When I awoke that night she was standing in the moonlight before the open windows. I watched her raise one leg, stretching out her arm, then lower it again and step to the side, before raising the other, her movements fluid, as if she were standing in water. The moonlight enveloped her, but stopped short of the bed where I lay motionless in the dark watching her.

  In the end I walked over to her. We stood in silence gazing down at the river and the moon reflected in it, seemingly floating idly downstream.

  Chapter 6

  On the phone, Vincent told me my old room was being used for something else now—he didn’t explain what, although I could tell he was hoping I would try to wheedle it out of him—but that if I wanted I could sleep on a mattress on the floor. In fact, I was relieved. I didn’t want to stay with my parents and had already been thinking of excuses. I had reserved a room at a bed-and-breakfast on Tenison Road in Cambridge, halfway between the station and the tennis courts, and rented a small car. I had told my father my flight arrived in the morning, and that I would drive straight from London to the party, which was to start at three thirty. He had urged me not to be late, for I might miss “the big surprise,” which was carefully timed. He paused for a moment, hoping I would ask him to elaborate, but I didn’t. I had discovered long ago that it was better to ignore my father’s antics.

  I hadn’t lived long at Abbey Court in Allington. The year after we moved there, I went to St. Joseph’s, a boarding school in South Cambridgeshire. I liked it there, made good friends, and went home only at half-term and during the summer holidays. I did well academically and was good at football and swimming. I acted in a few school plays and took part in the science club activities. I think I more or less faked an interest in plants because Murray, the school gardener, used to hire five boys to help him over the summer. I suspect he knew, and guessed my reasons, but I worked hard and grew fond of him and his wife, Beatrice. They lived a stone’s throw from the school, in a small brick house with a fountain in the garden, and when in late July the school closed for the holidays and my coworkers went home, I was allowed to stay with them for two weeks before going back to Allington. I had to get written permission from my parents, but that was never a problem.

  I didn’t sleep much on the plane and had difficulty staying awake at the wheel of the rental car. I pulled over after half an hour to buy coffee and drank it in the parking lot before setting off again. The weather was cloudy but dry, and quite warm. I glimpsed patches of blue sky to the east, but the west was overcast, and here and there veils of rain hung from the clouds, brushing the green hills. I was remembering Murray and Beatrice, both long dead, and their house, and the fountain, when suddenly it occurred to me that I might have time to go there on my way to Cambridge, where I had planned to stop off at the bed-and-breakfast, take a shower, and change before leaving for Allington. It was eleven o’clock, and this detour would take only forty-five minutes, an hour at the most.

  I drove off the motorway at the first opportunity, heading north, first through the suburbs, then through villages and country roads. The drive is prettiest between Stanstead Abbotts and Standon, where the road narrows and disappears for a stretch into a forest. I slowed down when I came to the River Rib, pulled over at the side of the road, and threaded my way along the path until I reached the riverbank. There I sat down, leaning against the trunk of a big tree. The weather had cleared, and every so often the sun would shine through the clouds onto the river and the surrounding fields.

  It wasn’t strange that I ended up dozing off in the calm by the river, but of course it spoiled my plans, including my intended detour to Murray and Beatrice’s house. By the time I woke up, it was almost two o’clock, and huge raindrops were breaking the smooth surface of the river. I couldn’t feel them beneath the thick canopy of the tree overhanging the water, but now I leapt to my feet and sprinted back to the car. It bucketed during the remainder of the journey, and as I drove into Cambridge, the windshield wipers were scarcely able to keep pace.

  At the bed-and-breakfast, I took a quick shower before hurriedly putting on a suit I hadn’t had any reason to wear for months, a blue shirt we had bought in Florence, and a tie. I can’t stand such outfits and loosened my tie with the intention of straightening it again once I arrived at Allington. I still had to buy flowers; I didn’t want to show up empty-handed at the party, but had been unable to think of a gift Margaret might like. I stopped off at a florist’s shop on the way out of town and grabbed a preselected bouquet, as I didn’t have time to wait for the shop assistant to put together anything fancier.

  It was half past three when I drove into Allington. There were few people in the center of town, and most of the shops were shut. I had no feelings about the place, good or bad. All I could think about was the time.

  For some reason, I had been expecting a bigger gathering, and was surprised to see plenty of parking spaces on the street. I pulled up outside Mrs.
Tribble’s old house and turned off the engine. She had moved many years ago and there were children’s toys in her garden now, and a bicycle propped against the fence. I was barely ten minutes late; even so, I felt as if somehow I had let my parents down. I paused for a moment, retrieved the flowers from the passenger seat, and hurried across the street.

  I had to ring twice before Vincent came to the door. He had on a brown suit that looked too big, and a yellow shirt with a brown tie. His gray hair didn’t seem to have thinned much, but the lenses in his square, steel-rimmed spectacles looked thicker than before.

  “I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” he said as he opened the door. “Was your flight late?”

  I was about to say yes, as I would doubtless have done when I was younger, but announced instead, in a louder voice than I had intended:

  “No, I fell asleep.”

  He looked at me, almost startled, and then I saw the corners of his mouth twitch as if he were about to smile.

  “Come in,” he said. “It’s a small gathering. Let me introduce you to our guests.”

  I looked around as I followed him to the living room. Apart from a few wet umbrellas in the stand beside the front door, nothing had changed since I was a boy. The telephone was still on the table in the hallway, Mozart and Chopin on the wall above, the green rug on the floor.

  The living room is double, but not particularly spacious. In the bigger room facing the street there is a three-piece suite, a coffee table, a small fireplace, and against the wall a sideboard with a collection of family photos on it, including some of me as a child. In the smaller room overlooking the back garden, there is the grand piano, and the walls are covered with photographs of Margaret at different times in her life, of Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and Vladimir Horowitz, who according to Vincent was the only twentieth-century pianist, besides Margaret, capable of playing Liszt, especially the sonata in B minor.