It was one in the morning, and I had fallen asleep in my clothes. I undid my tie and changed, and drank water from the glass on the side table. Before I fell asleep, I had been reading the prologue of Piers Plowman. Of its long, alliterative descriptions, all I now retained was the image of William Langland wandering around the world, seeing the various work and struggle of humanity, then settling on one of the Malvern Hills and looking at a brook. He became drowsy, “slumbered into sleep,” and in his dreams a magical vision of reality appeared to him, and it was just as I began to read that section that I had fallen asleep.
The light of a streetlamp trembled from behind the curtains. I was hungry but had no appetite. There was a pork chop in the fridge and, as I ate it, standing with the fridge door open, the siren of an ambulance went by in the night. I opened the window, and the air entered in a single gust, as though it had been waiting for admission. The pulsing in my mind matched the flickering pattern of the streetlamp against the curtain. Below, the world was bare, and showed little sign of Langland’s “fair field full of folk.” I took two acetaminophen and went back to sleep. The following day was the Saturday of a call-free weekend, and I could sleep in, untroubled by dreams. When I awoke, I decided I would run errands and, if the day was right for it, visit the old professor later in the afternoon.
THE DOORMAN IN HIS BUILDING USHERED ME IN. THE ELEVATOR was humid and smelled of sweat. Mary, heavily pregnant, let me into the apartment. Everything was dark and gray inside. He’s very sick, she said. He’s in the bedroom, come this way, he’ll be happy to see you. But when we got there, I saw a man darken the door and go inside ahead of me. He was the doctor. Mary signaled me to wait. I went into the living room and sat down, under Dr. Saito’s ring of Polynesian masks. I could hear voices from the bedroom. When the doctor came out, he had a genial expression. His face creased in smiles as he nodded at me and left. I went inside to see Professor Saito, who lay huddled on the bed, tiny and white and weaker than I had ever seen him. His eyes, though they were rheumy and almost closed, were the only part of him that seemed fully there. His voice seemed to be coming not from his mouth, which in any case moved little, but from somewhere else in the room. The timbre was pinched, and he took many breaths. Nevertheless, he spoke lucidly.
Ah, yet another doctor is here, he said. I feel popular. But, Julius, I don’t know what you do in Africa, but I must say, I’m ready to go into the forest. I am ready to go in. It is time for me to enter the forest and lie down, and let the lions come for me. I’ve done enough, I think, I’ve had a good life, and I’m in such terrible pain just now. Who might say ninety years is not enough? It is time. I sat down next to him and held his small, cold hand in mine. He was tired, and I left him, so that he could rest. I told him I would return soon.
Later that day, not wishing to be alone with the image of Death hovering in the room with its cheap suit and bad manners, I called my friend, and went over to his place. His daughter, a bright nine-year-old named Clara, who otherwise lived with her mother, was visiting. But she’s out wandering, he said. His living room had two windows, one west, facing onto Amsterdam Avenue, the other south into a small courtyard, boxed in on all four sides by brick, concrete, and by the small windows of his neighbors’ apartments. Those windows lit up one after the other with warm evening lights. There was a tall tree in the middle of the otherwise empty courtyard, bare and with a dense network of branches. I doubted that it got much sunshine, but it looked healthy enough.
That’s a tree of heaven, my friend said. I know because I, too, got curious about it, and looked it up. Botanists call it an invasive species. But aren’t we all? Once, down in the courtyard, I got a smell quite similar to coffee from one of the broken-off branches. The species was first brought over from China a long time ago, in the 1700s, I think, and apparently it liked American soil so much that it grew freely and wildly in almost every state, often displacing native species.
He went into the kitchen, and returned with a bottle of Heineken for me. It’s the shade, you see, he said. It casts shade over other plants, cutting off their sunlight. A tree of heaven will grow anywhere, practically: abandoned lots, back gardens, sidewalks, streets, beaches, unused fields, even right inside boarded-up buildings, even in a sunless courtyard choked with academics. Well, what’s so bad about that? I said. A tree’s a tree, isn’t it? Can’t have too many trees in the city. It’s not so simple, he said. The tree of heaven reduces local biodiversity. It’s thought of as a pest, no good for timber or wildlife, and not even all that great for firewood.
While he spoke, I stood by the facing wall, which had a massive bookcase, and I looked at the endless rows of volumes, including a rich section on African and African-American literature. There was an overflow of books on the floor, and on the coffee table, I noticed a copy of Simone Weil’s essays. I picked it up. My friend turned from the window. She’s wonderful on the Iliad, he said. I think she really gets what force is about, how it motivates action and loses control of what it has motivated. You really should take a look at it sometime.
I had hoped for grace, I said, not for immortality. I had hoped for a graceful, strong exit for this professor of mine. I so badly wanted the old man to give me words of wisdom, I said, not this nonsense about lions. Maybe it’s still possible. Maybe the next time I see him, he’ll recite something from Gawain, or from some Middle English lyric. But maybe I’m being foolish. Instead of being thankful for the relationship, I’m attempting to design it to my own specifications. But, you know, I had hoped that, even as his body broke down, that intricate mind of his, one of the best I’ve ever known, would soldier on.
My friend looked at me, and said, I wonder why so many people view sickness as a moral test. It has nothing to do with morals or grace. It’s a physical test, and usually we lose. Then he clapped his hand on my shoulder, and said, My man, suffering is suffering. You’ve seen what it does, you see it every day. It might not be especially comforting to you now, but what you just said about the graceful and strong exit reminds me again of something I often think about. For many years, I’ve thought that the manner and timing of one’s death should be a matter of choice. And I really don’t think it should be limited to situations when terminal illness has made one’s suffering and death imminent. That it should be extended to seasons of life in which one is healthy. Why wait around for the decline? Why not preempt fate?
My friend had by now gone to stand by the window. I remained on the sofa and watched the low sun cut a black silhouette out of him, so that it almost seemed as if I were being addressed by his shadow, or by his future self. There were sparrows flitting about in the distance, attempting to find a place to rest for the night, darting in and out of the network of coves formed by the bare trees and the interlocking arches of the university’s buildings. As I reflected on the fact that in each of these creatures was a tiny red heart, an engine that without fail provided the means for its exhilarating midair maneuvers, I was reminded of how often people took comfort, whether consciously or not, in the idea that God himself attended to these homeless travelers with something like personal care; that, contrary to the evidence of natural history, he protected each one of them from hunger and hazard and the elements. For many, the birds in flight were proof that we, too, were under heaven’s protection, that there is indeed a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.