It didn’t. You can’t stare at the sun for too long—not even the setting, quiet sun. You would have to put your fingers in front of your face to do that. Like Sun-Up Prosser. Hand in front of his face, flying upwards through the thinning air. Thoughtfully, the sky now provided its own hand: four broad fingers of cloud stretched across the horizon, and the sun was slipping down the back of them. Several times it popped into bright view and disappeared again, like a juggler’s coin spinning slowly through the knuckles.
Then it eased from behind the last grey finger. In these final moments, the feeling of movement changed: the earth seemed to rise like slapping water and drag the sun down. The burning circle of a cigarette stubbed out, its smoke hissing off to make cloud.
Jean Serjeant felt the aeroplane begin to climb hard in a left-handed turn. She looked away from the window. She was still holding Gregory’s hand. He was crying.
“No, no,” she murmured, and gripped his large soft hand. You were a mother until the day you died, she thought. She wondered how much Gregory had watched.
After several minutes the pilot flattened out and began a second southward run. Jean turned away from Gregory’s wet face and looked out the window. The fingers of cloud no longer lay between her and the sun. They were face to face. She did not, however, give it any sign of greeting. She did not smile, and she tried very hard not to blink. The sun’s descent seemed quicker this time, a smooth slipping away. The earth did not greedily chase it, but lay flatly back with its mouth open. The big orange sun settled on the horizon, yielded a quarter of its volume to the accepting earth, then a half, then three-quarters, and then, easily, without argument, the final quarter. For some minutes a glow continued from beneath the horizon, and Jean did, at last, smile towards this postmortal phosphorescence. Then the aeroplane turned away, and they began to lose height.
Staring at the Sun Page 21