3

I didn’t know if he were serious. “Euthanasia?” I repeated, feebly.

“Ethan, it’s no big deal. You told me you approved. So long as no one was abused.”

“But the taking of somebody’s life!”

“Mercifully. He’s ill. He wants to die. You’d be doing him a service.”

“No, I’m not sure.”

“What about?”

“Any of it. It’s too…”

“Way-out?”

“More than way-out. Unknown.”

“Yes, of course. I can understand that. Anybody could.”

Half-mesmerized, I watched a black cat creep along the garden wall towards an unsuspecting sparrow. Zack cried out a warning the second before I did. The bird flew off, the cat glared. It served to break the tension.

“Ethan, think it over. I shan’t exert the slightest pressure.”

He stretched and yawned; reluctantly stood up.

“All this sunshine. It must be tiring. I know it couldn’t be the beer.”

“Do you have to go?”

“Or the good lunch,” he added. “Yes, I think I’d better. Give you a little breathing space.”

“When shall I see you?”

“Whenever you like. A week from now? Two weeks? Longer?”

I, too, had risen. I squatted to pick up the album, heard the click in my left knee joint. “I was thinking more of—say—tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Or isn’t that possible?”

“But what about Ginette? Won’t she be expecting that you spend the evening together?”

“No. We often go our own ways.” Why hadn’t he realized?

“What, even on your birthday?”

“Oh,” I said, “we don’t celebrate birthdays. Not any longer.”

“Well, if you’re sure. I think that’s sad.”

“Back at the pub?” I asked.

“No—you’d better come to my place.”

We went indoors. He wrote down his address.

“Zack? If I really did decide…”

“Yes?”

“To go back…”

He waited; carefully returned the Biro to its place on the worktop.

“Would I have to look the same?”

“Why? What’s the matter with the way you look?”

I hesitated.

“I’m not talking of radical changes. Just a bit more handsome, that’s all. A bit better built.” I watched him playing with an orange, lobbing it from hand to hand. “A lot better built, actually.”

“Isn’t that something you can always work at on your own account?”

“But I couldn’t make myself taller,” I said. I smiled. “I couldn’t increase the size of my penis.”

“You seem to be under the impression you’re placing an order at Harrods. What about the size of your brain?”

But then he held his hand up, fast.

“No, that isn’t on offer. I suppose at a pinch I can agree to those other things. Provided you don’t attempt to add to them.”

In any case a higher IQ might change one’s personality and I wanted—maybe this was arrogant—to remain essentially myself. It was also a paradox. I felt little love for the man I had become. I knew I was often small-minded and stingy and old-maidish.

But these, too, were things which I could work at. And would work at. Oh, my God, given a clean slate, how I would work at them!

“Hair dark instead of indeterminate?” was the one other thing I tried to slip in, hoping it might go unnoticed, yet at the same time subconsciously be taken note of. Verbally, he offered no comment, but in fact it made him laugh.

Before he left I asked what would happen when I had once more reached my present age. I was told I’d go on living until the day appointed for my death. “Which, I can assure you, is a very long way off.” It had been unnecessary for him to add that; and I found it comforting.

But after death?

“I repeat, Ethan. Your soul is not at risk as a result of today’s meeting.”

“And what will happen to Ginette?”

“Ginette? Well, if she never married you, she’ll clearly have travelled a very different path. She could be anywhere. Let’s hope at least she’s happier.”

“Could scarcely fail to be,” I said.

I went with him to the corner, stood in the sunshine watching him walk down the hill. He turned and waved just once before he disappeared. I felt a huge sense of happiness and energy and quiet excitement. All the more potent for its being so unaccustomed.

Ironically, it was only as I re-entered the comparative chill of the house, that I remembered something.

I had agreed to kill a man.