They sit for a while, his hand inert in hers except for a faint twitch of his thumb. His chest rises and falls at the puffer’s command. The doctor has tried to set a natural rhythm, but how could it be natural? At last, Natalie manages to say it.
‘Dan, do you remember Assisi?’ Now he does hesitate.
Yes.
‘Do you remember — the tiny little church where St. Francis died — with the vast Renaissance basilica built over it, like—’ she falters. Dan is selecting words with his eyes.
Like an architect’s delusion of grandeur.
She smiles.
‘Yes, like that. Like a fantasy. I was thinking of that place. That great, soaring palace of stone, built to honour one man who lived like a beggar, and died in a — a little shed, smaller than this room.’
Yes.
Natalie’s sobs are coming like shivers, but she keeps going. ‘Dan, I can’t build a palace like that for you. Not out of stone. But I promise I will love and honour you just as much — as much as any of them. I’ll build a palace for you, over you — inside — in my—’
In your thoughts. Yes. I know you will. A tear gathers in the outer corner of his eye, half-reclined as he is, then spills. Instinctively Natalie wipes it away.
‘I’ll build it, and I’ll sit in it and think of you — and us, and all these years we had.’
Yes. But Nat. Build it over me. Not over you. Do you understand me. She nods; cries. Build it with open doors. You’ll want to hear — he stops, looks at her, waits for a lull in the tears — those turtle doves — another long look.
She nods again, kisses his hand, his forehead, smells his hair. There is no need for a full stop.
Mike Vickers stands in a column of dread while the others make their arrangements. If you feel you could do it, Dan wrote last week, it will be a great mercy to Nat. She doesn’t really like the doctor, doesn’t want her to be the one. And she herself — no. The two friends discussed this once before, at the hospice. Conspirators.
‘Afterwards,’ wrote Mike, ‘and in the years to come, I will make sure Nat is alright.’
I know. I’m counting on you.
The doctor nods and Mike steps forward, looking at Dan, not at Natalie. Never at Natalie. Dan’s eyes follow him steadily, encouragingly. He reaches for the clips that secure the life-sustaining mask. Natalie sobs, but with restraint. As for Mike, he finds that he’s not going to cry. He’s going to do this — claim the last of his undeserved victories over his friend, the better man. He’s going to do this and not cry.
The morphine is weaving its sleepy spell. Dan can hear the distant music of Natalie’s voice, but not the words. He remembers — his body remembers — floating in a warm sea. Greece, perhaps. He was naked, the most naked he has ever felt, the sea a womb. Eyes closed, arms and legs gently paddling the void. And then, without warning: an eddy of cold water. A sharp, penetrating chill against which he had no defence. A moment only, before the uterine warmth flooded back.
That momentary chill was the chill of life. Up close, life is a magnum opus. But from a distance, it’s just a cold eddy, fleeting and unheralded, in a warm sea of nothing.
His mind finds time for one last observation. There will be no fear, after alclass="underline" no reverent hush, no chill, no halls of alabaster white. Just a warm sea; a drowsy, forgetful womb of peace.
Dyspnoea. Beautiful, hypnotic word. Sad peony. Pansy ode. Open days. Soapy den. Easy pond.
28. Yours absolutely
‘…even on the greatest subjects too much can be said.’
Natalie Mock drifts from one room to another. Dan is in all of them, and none of them. Oddly, stupidly, it’s her birthday today. He’s not here to. He’s not here.
Mike is coming round in. To help. Now that the funeral is done and. Over. Mike said his few words very well. Couldn’t have asked for. He said Dan was a cautious man. Planned everything, he said, except the best and worst things that ever happened to him. Dan did think that, yes. Their marriage a miraculous accident. Perhaps. Mike hardly mentioned the disease. Said Dan was everything he, Mike, ever wanted to be. His quiet genius an inspiration. No sense of humour, though. He said.
But now it’s over. Maybe it’s time to. Just a bit of tidying up. Sorting out. Putting away.
She perches on the edge of Dan’s reclining chair — the chair in which he died. Died, yes: that’s the word for what Dan did. She switches on his computer and types the password. There is the familiar background picture of a galaxy, but all the icons have disappeared. All except one — a document nestled in one of the galaxy’s spiral arms. For Natalie. She clicks. A document.
Dear Natalie,
How do you say goodbye when it’s forever? I give myself two chances to get it right: in person and in this short letter. If I get it wrong, I’m sorry — I know you will forgive me.
You once suggested I publish a record of my illness, and I refused, saying I would leave public introspection to the artists. But I thought about what you said, and started keeping a private diary. A place to say the things I couldn’t say to you in that stupid electronic voice, I thought. Something for you to remember me by. I didn’t write every day. I often felt better after writing it, but as the months passed and the entries multiplied, it occurred to me that the Dan presented in those pages might not be the Dan I wanted you to remember. The diary had become an outlet for all the self-pity and despair that I was determined to conceal. It was a true likeness, perhaps, but a partial one, and not my better side. I felt I trusted your memories more.
And you wanted us to have a baby. I said no: I gave you my reasons. Then, for no reasons whatsoever, the universe said no too. I thought about what you wanted, and about the steadfast, generous love I couldn’t understand and didn’t deserve, the love that wanted to open a path even beyond my death. I contacted a fertility clinic and discussed the possibility of leaving a sample in storage, a surprise gift for you to use or not use after I was gone. But then I began to change my mind. I sensed an alteration in you, perhaps. A different cord of strength: a possibility that you would, after all, build a future without me, as I’ve always hoped. My little gesture might threaten that, I thought — might send you the wrong message.
These gifts, these parts of myself — the diary and the DNA — I have decided not to give you (I deleted the diary and dismissed the clinic). Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to understand that you already have the best of me, safe and sound. What you have truly lost could not be saved, and what you have saved will not be lost. The rest is nothing.
What can I say of us? I can only thank you for what we had: for our bodies soldered, glued together so snugly that rolling apart must surely tear the skin. For your limitless capacity to surprise me — seeming distracted, uninterested, unsympathetic for a moment, and then looking at me in that way you have, as though you saw right down to the bedrock. For the wise humanity that you placed alongside my pedantic reason. We were a good team. I’m sorry we were so skewed at the end, that you gave so much and I could only take.
Others have given you the support I could not. New bonds have been forged. You know how I feel about my friends: how long I’ve known them, how I rate their strengths and their considerable weaknesses. But what I think doesn’t matter now. The world is yours, not mine. The world and the choice are yours absolutely.