"Eric Gardiner".
"Any relation to John?"
"Yes, his older brother. That was the way John got to know Miriam, though we’d always vaguely known each other". Leaning across him toward the bedside table again, she said, "You might put that ash-tray where I can reach it, darling".
This time he caught and held her against him, murmuring into her hair, "Why should I? It’s much nicer this way".
When he finally let her go he said reflectively, "You know, Eric, this is one of the best things in life…".
"What is?"
"Just talking. Maybe it’s the only time when it’s really easy to talk, because you’re so mixed up with someone else that you’re not sure which of you is which, and it’s like talking to yourself".
"Is it always like this?"
"No, of course it isn’t. Why?"
"Because I don’t mind the idea of your having made love to other women before you met me-at least, not much-but I would object to your having got mixed up with them so you didn’t know which was you and which was several other people. I mean it sounds sort of collective".
"Yes, it does, doesn’t it? It sounds awful. I think I’m insulted, as a matter of fact, or I would be if there were any truth in it".
"Isn’t there any?" asked Erica hopefully.
"Not an atom of truth. I’ve never been mixed up with anyone but you".
"How do you like it?"
His expression changed as he looked at her and he said under his breath, "You know how much I like it, darling".
"Yes", said Erica faintly, and putting both her arms around him she said, "Well, kiss me, for heaven’s sake".
After a while he said, looking up at the ceiling, "I wasn’t just talking, when I told you that you’d never happened to me before and I know nothing like you will ever happen to me again. Life is pretty average, on the whole, and even when you fall in love, you feel the way most everybody else has felt at some time or other. You only hit perfection by accident. It’s like a sweep-stake, trying doesn’t get you anywhere and the odds are a million to one against the accident taking place. Have you ever been absolutely happy?" he asked suddenly. "I mean as though the whole world were an orchestra and instead of playing more or less off key, for once in your life you managed to be in complete harmony and for one day or just maybe for a couple of hours, everything was exactly right?"
"Yes, once", said Erica.
"Once for me too".
"Tell me about yours first".
He said, "It was four years ago, in October, 1938, when I was staying with David on a fishing trip. At least I was fishing but he wasn’t. Morning after morning we’d start out together and then someone would fall off a horse or decide to have a baby or something and I’d end up by going alone. Finally, the second to last day I was there, by some sort of coincidence nobody needed a doctor for once and off we went. It was early in October, one of those autumn days when everything seems to be standing still, holding its breath and waiting…"
He broke off, trying to remember, with his eyes fixed on the mirror over the chest of drawers. The mirror dissolved into a window through which he could see, not the soft rise and fall of the Laurentians all around them, but the high, clear-cut barrier of the Algoma mountains, guarding the North. He said, "I’ve got it. Listen:
"It was like that. We walked through the bush and fished for a while and then had lunch and fished some more. We came out by a small lake just at sunset, and then we went home. That was all".
His eyes left the mirror and came back to her face and he said, "What about your day?"
"It wasn’t a day, it was an evening in Paris the last time I was there, when Mimi and I were walking down Champs Elysées all the way from the Arc de Triomphe to Place de la Concorde. Every time a car went by it lit up the lower branches of the trees and then it was dark with just the street lamps and the moon again. Mimi was just as happy as I was. We couldn’t even talk".
"Paris will never look like that again, Eric…".
"It wasn’t just Paris, it was the whole world".
"…or the woods back of David’s place in October, 1938". A moment later he said, looking straight ahead of him, "Or anyone else after you".
Days later, when she was trying to locate the exact moment at which she had received the first warning, the moment which marked the beginning of the final stage in their relationship, she was to remember the way he had said, "Or anyone else after you". There was no hope in his voice at that moment, either for a future with Erica or a future without her, only the first indication of his acceptance of a world in which the chances were still a million to one against his ever managing to be in complete harmony again.
The moment went by unnoticed at the time, for immediately after he said, "October, 1938", in a different tone, and after another pause he repeated it a third time, as though the words were the key to another memory of which all he could recall so far was its purely evil associations.
Not October, Erica thought. He was a month out.
She said, "May I have a cigarette, please?" He handed her the package and she took one, and after waiting a little, she asked for a match.
He said absently, "I’m sorry", and gave her the packet of matches.
"Our whippoorwill’s back again". There was another pause and she asked, "Who wrote that poem?"
"Wilfrid Campbell".
It was no use. You could not hope to keep it out, even out of a hotel in the Laurentians at three o’clock in the morning, by talking about whippoorwills and poetry and asking for cigarettes and matches, and at last she said, "I know what you’re thinking of. You’ve got the date wrong; it wasn’t October, it was November, 1938".
"Yes", said Marc. "Yes, of course it was".
He put the ash-tray down on the bed between them and remarked, "I’m glad it wasn’t October, that would have been carrying escapism too far. Besides, I’d hate to have my pet memory go sour on me". He turned his head and smiled at her and said, "I don’t know what I’m talking about".
"You hadn’t any relatives in Germany, had you?"
"Yes, some of my mother’s family, particularly my first cousin. He was about my age, and when I was over there in 1932 I stayed with them and he and I went on a hiking trip in Switzerland together. We were both students then. Afterwards he took a degree in science and another one in law and got a job working on patents in one of the big chemical firms. He was pretty brilliant and I guess the Nazis just decided to overlook him-anyhow, he and his family managed to get along somehow or other until November, ’38".
He said aimlessly, "I was always arguing with them about getting out but they wouldn’t, of course, because even in 1932 there were fewer restrictions in Germany than here. I mean, they were a part of things".
"What happened to him?"
"I don’t know. They said he’d been ’shot trying to escape’ from a concentration camp. My uncle was arrested at the same time and last year my aunt and Hedy, the daughter, were sent to Poland. They were the only ones left".
As soon as she had heard him say "October, 1938" the second time, she had known that there was something more than the fact that November, 1938 had been a black month, by far the blackest until much later, but she had not known that there was a family with whom he had lived and a cousin about his own age with whom he had gone hiking in Switzerland.