However. Finally it happened. Somebody did take pity.
She set down her buckets and her yoke and procured me bread and gave me water and didn’t seem to mind that she almost had to shout at me on account of my poor hearing. I felt so starved of talk, of normal human intercourse. I would have liked to touch her face but didn’t dare request it—my warty fingers, no doubt filthy nails. And anyway. Again it was only sentimental: who cared what she looked like, so long as she delivered?
She wasn’t a witch. She couldn’t deliver. Not directly. But it was she who told me of the wizard who had recently arrived in Jerusalem. “I could take you to visit him,” she offered, “or…”
I pictured her looking first at me and then at the state of my hovel.
“Or perhaps he could visit you here, if you’d be willing to receive him.”
Willing? I’d have been willing to receive King Herod if King Herod could have offered me the least degree of hope.
So he came. Not Herod. The wise man she had spoken of.
“I hear you need assistance.”
What glorious words! To show my gratitude I would have sunk down on my knees if I’d been able.
“You can help me die?” I whispered.
“But haven’t you been doomed to live; to wander over land and sea for all eternity?”
“Wander? Is that what they call it? No, doomed to drag myself along! Inch by painful inch.”
“Nobody can help you die.”
I moaned. My gratitude was short-lived. “How can you ‘assist’ me, then?”
“Through making sure you don’t have to drag yourself along. Inch by painful inch.”
“And how, exactly, do you mean to accomplish that? Foot by painful foot wouldn’t be so much of an improvement.”
He stared at me, severely. “By offering you the chance of a new life. A new life every century.”
Oh, a new life every century? Why, yes, of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that?
This fellow must be mad.
“You are very much straining my patience, Cartophilus—but no, in fact, I am not mad.”
Well, he patently had powers. Possibly it would be foolish to underestimate them; and I shouldn’t have been so quick to let him know I did. Hot-tempered, that’s me. But even if by some outlandish chance he was capable of doing what he claimed…no, I just couldn’t believe it.
“So what can I say,” he murmured, “to make you believe it?”
And then, ironically, I did. It was as simple as that. But it wasn’t the actual question which convinced me—no, of course not—nor the fact he could so clearly intercept what I was thinking…although that, too, was certainly impressive. No, what convinced me was the way he’d put the question. The softness of the voice he’d used. For I had suddenly realized something. I could actually hear him! I could actually see him! The process had been a gradual one, but if he was talking miracles I now had proof that he could do it—well, ears and eyes, at any rate. Which was a persuasive testimonial…especially to somebody as keen to be persuaded as I was.
And from that instant I trusted him. Well—as fully as it was in my nature to trust anyone.
“I’m sorry I was sceptical,” I said. “Born again?”
He nodded. I really saw him nod. It was amazing.
But this might have been simply in acknowledgment of my apology. I had to get it straight. No ambiguity.
“Reborn every century? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
In other words it almost seemed… Well, it almost seemed as if my punishment was about to be suspended. Or lifted. Or evaded. Eternal life—the thing all mortals hungered for. (Especially if, like me, they had their doubts regarding heaven.) No more a punishment at all. A positive reward.
But why? Clearly, there had to be some catch to it. There was always a price tag. Nothing was for nothing.
This time he didn’t respond, though—and I remembered that only ten seconds ago I had apologized for my scepticism. So be it! I let my mind dwell on the sheer restfulness of lying in a crib.
“Good health?” I persisted.
“What? Oh, good health. Yes, certainly. You’ll be a normal child. A normal youth and adult. With everything normality implies except that—”
I laughed. “Except that I’ll still live to be a hundred?”
“That wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“Money?” I asked. “Will I have money?”
“That all depends. If you want to be well-off it’s obviously something you can see to on your own account.”
Slowly, I digested all this information. “Every hundred years…made young again! That’s staggering. Really staggering.”
“Yes. I’m glad you look on it like that.”
“Though on the other hand… Do you mind if I make one small suggestion? A hundred years is a long time. Couldn’t we make it fifty?”
“No,” he said.
“Seventy-five?”
Although he shook his head he didn’t look reproachful. I sensed that with a bit of coaxing I might be able to swing it. “So much sympathy,” I said, “so much compassion! I’m sure the two of us could come to an agreement.”
“Are you?”
“Hugely beneficial to both parties.” I rubbed my hands.
“How so, to me?”
“Oh, I can see you’re a real gentleman. A philanthropist! I can see you’d like to make this world a better place.”
“Aren’t I doing that already? Your own small part of it, anyway?”
“Oh, you are, you are! You’re the kindest person I have ever known!” I could tell he was amused by my flattery—even if I could also tell he didn’t mean to be swayed by it. (Yet the funny thing is, it wasn’t altogether flattery. He was the kindest person I had ever known.) “All right. Not seventy-five. I accept that. But does it have to be a hundred?”
I really felt he might be weakening. “That all depends,” he said.
“Depends on what, O wise one?”
“On how things go.”
What an irritating answer!
But no matter how I wheedled I couldn’t get him to expand on it. I heard my tone grow plaintive.
“I don’t want to live so long,” I grumbled. “Not to a hundred! Please! No, never again!”
(Okay, so I was stretching a point. Though only by a few weeks—a few short wretched weeks. No. A few long wretched weeks! He said: “By eight months and four days, if we want to be accurate.” Why did he think that funny?)
But would you believe it? Already I was grumbling. I should have been dancing.
Tomorrow I’d be dancing.
“A newborn baby finds it difficult to dance,” he remarked.
“Besides,” I pointed out. I wished to demonstrate he wasn’t dealing with an idiot. “When I’m newborn I shan’t even know I’ve any reason to dance, shall I?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly,” I agreed.
But then—the very next second—
“I shall?”
“As I was about to tell you a short while ago. You’ll be a normal child and youth and man in every respect save two.”
I felt apprehensive.
“First,” he said, “the matter of age. But you’re aware of that.”
“And second?”
“Memory.”
My apprehension dwindled. “You mean I’ll be forgetful? Hardly to be wondered at over the course of centuries!”
“No. I mean the opposite. Your memory will be excellent.”
So what was the disadvantage there? (Though perhaps I’d only inferred one. Ever the pessimist! Yet—following a life like mine—certainly not without cause!)
“From your own point of view,” he said, “the disadvantage will be this. You’ll remember more than you would want to.”
“Oh, I think I can live with that.”
But suddenly again, on a far less casual note, “More than I would want to? What kind of thing?”
&nbs
p; “Every kind of thing.”
“Every kind of thing?”
“You’ll remember, for instance, how you struck the Saviour. How you repeatedly tried to kill yourself. How you became an animal. How you—”
I was appalled.
“No, stop! All the things I’d most be wanting to forget!”
He ignored my interruption.
“Though undoubtedly you always were an animal! I should have said—how you became an out-and-out grotesque!”
His tone remained pleasant, despite his statement having been as damning, virtually, as any statement could be. But, for the moment, that wasn’t what mattered. What did matter—overwhelmingly—was that even as a newborn I’d be remembering all the horrors I’d assumed I should now be leaving behind. I’d be carrying the full weight of my past even into my cradle. From my cradle I’d be hauling it every interminable step of the way into my grave—and out of my grave—and back into my cradle. It would be unbearable.
Iniquitous. Indescribable. Wouldn’t it almost be better not to—?
“No,” he said, “think straight, man! What—remain as you are? You can’t have forgotten that at the very least now you’ll be able to sleep at night?”
Yet even this was qualified.
“Or if you don’t, it won’t be due any longer to crippling physical discomfort, which—although you didn’t realize it—must often have neutralized the pain of thought.”
He added, “Naturally you won’t be attempting suicide again, now that you’re familiar with the consequences?”
No. At least I had learned that much.
“And you’ll have bread, you’ll have wine, you’ll have all the things you might have thought would give you pleasure. Even sex, Cartophilus, you’ll be able to squirt your juices once again. It’s just that you’ll also have a new ingredient—an ingredient invariably withheld from others. Your memory of past lives.”
I muttered: “Mercifully withheld from others.”
“That all depends—doesn’t it?—on the quality of the past lives.”
I considered this a phrase I could very easily grow to hate. Already had. How many times had he used it? That all depends…
“I’m sorry, Cartophilus. Those have to be my terms.”
“And you let me think there wasn’t any catch. You really let me think there wouldn’t be a catch.”
He hesitated.
“You’re right to point that out. It wasn’t my intention to mislead.”
“Hmm,” I answered, doubtfully.
“Whether you believe me or not is immaterial. But at least I’d like you to forgive me.”
I, too, hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a shame,” he said, “because forgiveness of course—”
I cut him off. “What I meant to say…”
“Yes?”
“What I meant to say was…” I gave a shrug. “That all depends.”
There followed a moment of silence. I wondered if I’d have to explain. But then he laughed.
Properly laughed. Laughed with genuine enjoyment.
Which—I have to admit—did a lot to sweeten things.
Yet even so. Didn’t he understand that there was weariness of spirit—oh, my God, was there not weariness of spirit—at times every bit as burdensome as the greatest weariness of body?
“Remembering things,” I said, “will be to go on experiencing them! To go on reliving them! For ever!”
He offered no reply.
There ensued a further short silence.
“And bearing in mind that you did mislead me,” I observed, “are the terms you’ve mentioned utterly non-negotiable?”
“Utterly.”
Contained in that question had been a degree of humour which he clearly hadn’t recognized. My tears began to well. I fought furiously to stem them.
“Yet if it’s any consolation,” he remarked, “I can add that every thousand years or so you’ll have the slate wiped clean.”
“Oh, thank you!” I said. “Every thousand years? What a remarkable selling point; you should have introduced it earlier!” (My natural aggressiveness…perhaps accentuated, because of those ruddy tears. I knew it wasn’t appropriate. Basically, he was my benefactor. Basically, he was my friend. But all the same… Well, I ask you!) “Every hundred years… Every thousand years… Can’t you think in anything but round figures?”
“Maybe I can,” he conceded—frankly, more gentle than I would ever have expected. “So let’s amend it a little. Every thousand years, more or less. How’s that? One lifetime in ten. But the key factor is…on those occasions you won’t have any memories left at all. It’ll feel as if you’re starting out totally afresh.”
“Just one in ten! I shall go crazy!”
“That’s up to you,” he said. “You might go sane.”
I steadied myself.
Took a deep breath.
“Couldn’t we make it one in seven?”
“No.”
But then he laughed again.
“I can respect the haggling,” he said. “It’s the whining I don’t take to.”
He placed his hand upon my shoulder, gave it a squeeze. Nobody in over half a century had done anything that simple or so suggestive of friendship.
“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right. I wouldn’t take to any of the whining, either. ‘What an ingrate!’ I would say. ‘Doesn’t he know when he’s well off?’”
I added quickly:
“So couldn’t we make it one in three?”
It was a universal wheeze. He was meant to say: One in three; a moment ago it was one in seven! Oh, very well, I suppose we’ll have to split the difference! One in five!
That, anyhow, would have been something.
Because one lifetime in ten! Ridiculous! And every lifetime lasting a hundred years! Ridiculous! Hadn’t he discovered yet that all of human existence was inescapably messy? What about seventy-three-and-a-half, or thirty-nine, or fifty-five, or even eighty-six-and-three-quarters? Eh?
“Well, that all depends,” he said.
16
I remember the night the Regent closed. At least I was more understanding the second time around. About the way my father felt. The end of an era. An era only fourteen years old—for him—but the cinema business was changing: all bingo now, soon to be bowling (soon to be Iceland). For the final week he would have liked to show a selection of classic movies, a fresh double programme for each of the six days, but for some reason it wasn’t possible. He ended up with Carry On Nurse—I think the second in the series—and an Audie Murphy western. Good popular stuff, of course, but even then the last performance wasn’t well attended. As the main feature was approaching its end Dad took up his position in the foyer, just as he’d done for practically every final performance of the day since 1945; only, his demob suit of the first years had been replaced, as soon as coupons allowed, first by one dinner jacket and then by another. My father wasn’t a handsome man but he looked distinguished in his dinner suit, it gave him an air, and he always seemed a little like the squire—no, there was nothing of condescension in it—more like mine host seeing his guests off at the end of what he trusted had been a good evening. He felt personally responsible. If someone occasionally told him he thought the programme had been rotten, a total waste of time, it genuinely distressed my dad, even if it didn’t altogether surprise him; he always hoped, even with the poorest pictures, that some sort of alchemy might be occurring in the darkness and all his patrons would emerge in a glow, feeling that the world was truly a better place. Poor Dad. In some ways it was his whole life, the enjoyment of those groups of people underneath his roof for three or four hours at a time. He hated it whenever the projector broke down or the heating system packed up. He really worried about what records should be played before the house lights faded.
The final night was different in one way from all the others: a table was brought into the lobby, a table then set with glasse
s and bottles of wine and bottles of cream soda. There were cocktail sausages and squares of cheddar cheese, bowls of crisps and nuts, plates of biscuits. He’d hired two hundred wineglasses but realized by the time the main film started that despite all his posters and a message to his patrons in the local press he was going to need hardly a quarter of that number. In the event he didn’t need a tenth. People seemed unexpectedly awkward and in a hurry to get away, like worshippers slipping out of church by a side entrance in order to avoid the vicar. The modest party he’d envisaged (I knew he had prepared a speech) had turned into a mere sprinkling of embarrassed customers and stilted conversation and unhappy silences. Even Doris the usherette and Mrs Wilson at the box office had both made excuses, one to do with her own health, one to do with her mother’s, and the projectionist was a kind man but very shy and he too asked if he could possibly cry off. Both the Shipmans and the Kings had declared that, regretfully, they couldn’t come.
So it fell to my mother and me to help Dad through as best we could. Mum got the giggles.
In fact she was almost drunk. Knowing the quantities of wine which wouldn’t be required she had slipped downstairs much earlier than was necessary.
She looked very pretty in her red dress and black heels. Always much fairer than my father or me, she had recently lightened her hair still more and it suited her. She called it her Grace Kelly look.
Fifty-five years ago I had been as merry as her and giggled every bit as much. I had ended the evening by suddenly being sick and not even getting to the lavatory. (And my father, bless him, had never uttered one single word of reproach.) This time I went easy on the wine and tried to make her do the same. But I proved as unsuccessful here as I’d been in discouraging Dad from holding such a function in the first place. My endeavours to keep her upstairs, entertained by games of gin rummy and silly impersonations and by putting on her favourite records, had only managed to make the matter worse.
“Oh, Ethan, don’t be such a spoilsport! You can see how much your father’s over-ordered.”
“But it’s all on sale or return. We don’t have to polish it off.”
Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart Page 25