55

How impossible it is to understand this surface that springs from nowhere, this moment-to-moment. What falls is neither the sparrow nor the night, because those things only appear to descend, called by weight or the roll of earth toward the planet’s core. What falls is what we dreamed of, prayed for, and were always certain would happen in just this way.

Dr. Valfort entered the room briskly. He adjusted his necktie and gave me a knowing smile. I was not as surprised as I should have been. I thought: of course.

Valfort looked for a moment at Rick. I knew that during my hypnotherapy I must have said some interesting things about my family.

Barry was beginning introductions, but Valfort lifted a hand. “I should have flown out on the same plane with Stratton. I was jealous. I sulked.”

“I am very happy to see you,” I said.

“I am a man of moods, and I apologize. Marie scolded me. I realized my responsibilities. Here I am.”

Barry continued to struggle through introductions, and Valfort shook hands all around, but there was an undertone of impatience to his voice. He looked rumpled, but jet lag agreed with him, softening the hawklike glance. “Stratton will understand what I have done. He and I are aware of Nona’s needs.”

“We’ll be able to make some real progress,” said Barry. “And the staff will be delighted to meet with you—”

Valfort spoke sharply. “The staff here is not interesting to me. I did not come here to ‘make progress.’ Nona Lyle has a history of hysterical trances, something that you will not find in her records, but which first encouraged her to study the mind. Please don’t interrupt me, Dr. Montague. I have examined Nona Lyle already. I do beg your pardon. I took a liberty.”

Barry looked pleased, but reserved. “I’m delighted. I look forward to your conclusions.”

Valfort silenced Barry with a wave of his hand. Valfort stepped before me, and although he spoke to Barry and Rick his eyes were on mine. “Stratton made an important decision tonight, I am told.”

“Decision?” said Barry.

“They tell me that you tried to take your life tonight, Stratton.”

I acknowledged, with a nod more than a word, that this was true.

“Did you think that you could exchange your life for hers?”

My voice was husky. “Yes.”

He closed his eyes, then slowly opened them. “It doesn’t work that way. The Powers we enjoin cannot do good. They give us good fortune only through harm. Surely you know that by now.”

“And yet—here you are.”

There was real warmth, and real sadness, in Valfort’s eyes. “You will misunderstand what I have been able to do,” he said.

“It will be an honor to work with you, Doctor,” said Barry.

Valfort studied Barry without a further word for a moment. “Dr. Lyle is very weak. In addition to her emotional trauma there was the physical drain of the probably unnecessary surgery.”

Barry worked to control his temper. “You are late arriving to help us. We’re glad to see you. Of course. Distinguished and colorful. International. Perhaps when you have taken time to review every step we considered—”

“Time is not important, although you are wasting mine. Dr. Lyle is conscious. She is asking to speak with Stratton.”

As I strode with Valfort through the corridors of the hospital I was elated. The institutional colors of the walls and the floors were bright and the air was sweet.

He squeezed himself before me, blocking my way. “I have not given permission,” he said.

I ignored him, squeezing by. He walked fast to keep up with me. “I’m not at all certain what you will do.”

“What sort of person do you think I am?”

“I know one or two things about you, Mr. Fields. That’s why I am worried.” But he seemed to make a decision, relaxing his expression slightly. “Don’t say anything that would trouble her,” Valfort was saying.

I reassured him. The thought was outrageous. I would do nothing to hurt Nona in any way. Besides, I didn’t want to stand there talking.

Valfort took my arm and turned me to face him. I was irritated, tugging myself away, not wanting to waste time with argument.

But there was something urgent in his manner. He held me with one hand, a firm grip on my shoulder. His dignified, weathered face was right before me, his eyes earnest.

“I know you,” he said.

Two white-clothed attendants had appeared, one on either side of me.

“I know what you think must have happened, Mr. Fields,” he was saying. “You think that you have saved Nona by using your powers. This is your belief. But what has happened is not an evil miracle. It is a matter of medicine. Of flesh and blood. If you see her return to life as a pact with your Powers then this is a very bad thing. It would be better for Nona to have stayed as she was.”

I stiffened. “How can you say that?” I tore myself away from him.

He took my arm again. “I know what you think you are capable of doing. I know what you think you are.”

My voice was a hard whisper. “I want to see Nona.”

He gave a quiet laugh with little humor. “A man without a soul has nothing to bargain with.”

His words angered me, but they also stirred my doubt. Of course, I was forced to remind myself, the Powers would not have been at all interested in returning Nona to me. And what madness had possessed me all along? A man does not win his lover’s life through suicide.

He perceived the sort of inner questions I was experiencing. “I want to save her life,” he said.

“So do I.”

“Please think of me as a friend. A difficult friend, but a real one. You do not live in the same world the rest of us inhabit.”

The very slight effort it took him to choose the right words in English gave his communication greater weight. “You must hate me,” I said.

“Do not hurt her, Mr. Fields.”

I could hardly speak. “I can’t possibly hurt her.”

“I hope what you are saying is true.”

I wanted to joke, to turn aside his words with a laugh. But I could not. Perhaps I did not know my own nature after all.

She was asleep.

It was so simple—sleep had her now, not unconsciousness. Her skin had a hint of rose, of the old liveliness I recalled.

I can’t wake her, I told myself. I will stand here and watch. I will stay here, in this vigil, without tiring.

She stirred. Her lips parted. Her eyes searched behind their lids. How did this body before me hold within its flesh the spirit of the woman I loved? All the maps wither. The stars vanish. At a time like this there is no north, no south.

She spoke.

It was a breath, only, an exhalation. But that span of air had been a shape I recognized, that airy sound had been a word. I leaned close to her, my ear at her lips.

A vigil.

A long wait, guarding a border, beyond the empty place that is not human, from which humans come when they approach from illness, from sleep.

Valfort had me watched, more carefully than Nona was watched. These attendants were not the usual orderlies. These were alert, and had a more practiced bearing, young and wary of me. They were, however, polite when I commented on the warmth of the room, or on the slow passage of the time.

The time did not matter. It was Nona who had come so far only to linger just beyond us. From time to time a nurse touched Nona’s lips with a moist cloth. Sometimes Valfort came into the room, and when he did it was always to observe me as much as the sleep of his patient. He was not an adversary so much as a man who knew the things about me I had forgotten, or chose to forget.

Sometimes a glass of water, or orange juice, tasting strangely sour, was pressed into my hands. The hours that passed were the great, rolling passage of glaciers, or eras of geological time, but I was steady, there, waiting for her, a man watching the north, peering into the wind for a rider he knew would come.

Someone said: “You must be tired.”

Someone said: “You must be hungry.”

Each breath she took was another step for me, another moment on a climb across the cliff face.

Remember, I told myself, the quick acts of love she committed, the force behind her life. “I can’t stay,” she used to say. “I’m in a hurry.” “I’m due at the hospital in ten minutes.” “There’s a new child. He needs so much.” In that winter that follows loss we feel that we cannot consider the absent person. When we think they are returning, then we allow ourselves the pleasure of remembering.

It is not enough to love. We must enact the love, turn and walk back up the path, swim across the lake, and climb up upon the new outcropping that no one owns and which is never old, another day.

How did we find ourselves so dependent on accomplishment? How was it that we learned the way to believe in the future and ignore the flat, sun-warm soil at our feet? I had that awareness, that sensation that a hospital gives, that what surrounds us, the glossy, thick-painted walls, is the empty vision. What is real is what is gone.

She spoke.

My lips touched her ear. “I’m here.”

She stirred, just barely, a movement too slight to be noticed except for the fact that I was so close to her. Her head rolled, a slow, barely perceptible movement. Her lips, her eyelids, seemed to vibrate from some inner tension, some inner pleasure, like the shimmer of feeling on the features of a skater about to spin across the ice.