Bright Flows the River

  “Tell me what, Emma?” His voice was weak and stifled.

  “That I am dying. Jimmy! Don’t look at me like that! I can’t bear it!”

  He could not have stopped her, for he was too prostrated. She went to her bedroom and brought back a large heavy folder. She put it on his knees. Then she sank beside him on the floor, and laid her head against his thigh. He stared at the thick folder, and his breath wheezed in and out of his lungs with a long moaning. For the first time since his father had been killed he experienced total anguish.

  Everything shimmered and wavered before him as through a heavy veil of rain. The squeezing agony in his chest and temples increased. He fumbled with the folder. X rays, sheafs of typewritten copy, doctors’ signatures, the smell of dry soulless paper. His fingers felt thick and useless, like fingers carved of stone.

  Emma was saying, “My headaches, over the past two months or so. My increasingly bad vision. My oculist sent me to Dr. Brandall on Harley Street. For examination.”

  But James already knew. He fumbled for his glasses. He fumbled at the papers. He held up the X rays to lamplight. But he had already guessed. “Oh, Jimmy, don’t breathe like that!” Emma cried. She was pushing something in his hand and he felt the smoothness of glass. She guided the glass to his lips and he drank in mindless obedience. A fire exploded in his paralyzed middle. He struggled for breath. He felt death in himself, and closed his eyes for a moment.

  At last he was able to focus on the swimming papers. So great was his shock that he began to mouth the frightful words to himself. Emma had cancer of the brain. He could read only slowly, feebly, but he read it all. The oculist’s report. Headaches, nausea, vomiting, choked disks—increased intracranial pressure. Patient referred to Dr. William Brandall, neurologist. Infiltrating glioma. Angiograms. Scanners. Technetium. EEGs. Pressure on brain had caused it to move five millimeters. The cancer had crawled like the silent crab it was, in the frail tissues. It had not yet destroyed the vision nor induced paralysis. Surgery was recommended, though, said Dr. Norton’s report, it would probably only increase life expectancy to a year or less, but would possibly induce immediate vision loss and paralysis. In short, Lady Emma Godwin was doomed either to instant blindness and helplessness, through surgery, or to a quicker death without the operation, and the possibility of retaining her vision and mobility to the very last. Demerol was recommended for the present pain, and morphine tablets for the inevitable final agony.

  James carefully read page after page of reports, slowly, weakly but thoroughly. He had studied neurology also. He knew exactly what all this meant for Emma. He had to blink his eyes frequently to clear away the dark mist from them. There was Dr. Norton’s report, from the Sloan-Kettering Institute, not only confirming what Dr. Brandall had reported, but even more pessimistic. Patient refused surgery, Dr. Brandall wrote, and it was evident, in his most conservative innuendos, that he agreed with Emma even if reluctantly. X ray after X ray. Angiograms, more reports, detailed. Prognosis: negative. The patient, without surgery, had a life expectancy of three to four months, at the most. Chemotherapy was not recommended.

  Slowly, painfully, precisely, James gathered everything together and with a dazed frown put them back into the folder. Then he dropped his hands on his knees and stared into the distance, his chest heaving, his broad full face the color of the gray sky outside. He was facing a loss he could not endure. There was an imperative for him to lie down, for all his muscles had become liquid and unable to support his body properly. He closed his eyes and wished for death. An excruciating pain was twisting in his temples. He was near collapse.

  Sluggishly, as through viscid mud, he fought to return. Slowly, his anguished eyes sought and found Emma. She was seated near him and her fascinating simian face was calm and smiling. She said, “Jimmy, we’ve had twenty blissful years, almost unmarred, which is more than the rest of the world can say. We’ve been blessed. We’ve given to each other, completely. We’ve had joy and health and tenderness and devotion. It is enough, it is more than enough. But we forgot that there is the great inevitable: death. It was bound to happen, sooner or later. It is something we cannot escape. If I had children I would teach them, as soon as they could toddle, that death waits for them and no one knows how soon it will come. So enjoy the present and not strain after tomorrow. It might never come.

  “Jimmy, love, this is a beautiful world. I want to see as much of it as I can, for the next several months. I want to fill my mind and my heart with the beauty and majesty. I want to have the memory of glory, in the last hours. For you see, that glory is from everlasting to everlasting. And, Jimmy, we’ll meet again, just as we met this time. Of this I’m sure.”

  She held his hands tightly. She was the comforter, he the comforted. But he could only look at that beloved face with the great brave eyes for all they were wet, at the smile which was not forced but open and expectant. Then he said, “We must be married immediately.” She could hardly hear him.

  “No, Jimmy,” and she kissed his hand. “I couldn’t do that to you. When the time—comes—I want to be alone, somewhere. Alone. I don’t want you to see; I don’t want you to remember the final time. I want you to remember only what we have had and be comforted by the memory, and hopeful. I—I couldn’t stand you to be there, Jimmy, when I die.”

  “Emma, I couldn’t stand it, I can’t stand the thought of it even now, if I weren’t there. I want the right to be there, as your husband.”

  She sighed. “Jimmy, you’ve always had the right.”

  But ponderously he shook his head. It was like the headshaking of a dying bull in its last agonies. “No, I haven’t, Emma. True”—and he gasped for breath—“we’ve seen each other at least three times a week. But there was always separation, I to my way and work, you to yours. I want to be with you every night, Emma, beside you. I’m a physician, too, if you’ll remember. I want to watch you, all through the night, and most of the day, too. I want to be there when you need help; I want us to be one, Emma.”

  “We always were one, from the time we met—”

  “But this is different. How could I be parted from you for a single night, a single day? Waiting for the terrible news. Unable to live—until the next time I saw you. And, frightened always, that you might slip away from me, as you intended, to die—alone. No, Emma.”

  She gave a pathetic little laugh. “Jimmy, you’ve become conventional!” But she knew what he meant.

  “Marriage gives me the right to be closer to you, Emma, and I need that closeness, if I am to survive. I have the need to share, constantly.”

  “But, it will be so awful for you, Jimmy.”

  “Not as awful as if we weren’t married.”

  She went on her knees to him and pulled his hands against her breast. Now her own face was anguished. “I’m a coward, Jimmy. Promise me this: That you won’t let me suffer too much. Too long.”

  For a long, long moment they stared fixedly into each other’s eyes. It was an endless moment. They were bared to the soul, completely, as never before had they been bared, not even in the most intimate and joyful hours.

  Then James said, steadily and clearly, “I promise.”

  She laid her head on his knee. He began to stroke that bright chestnut hair and thin cheek. The tears ran down his own cheeks without a sound. But Emma did not cry. She was tired, frightened, undone, terrified. She fell asleep against him, and, sitting there, she slept more peacefully than she had done for several weeks. Occasionally, like a child, she sighed deeply, yet peacefully.

  His numb mind was beginning to accept the appalling inevitable. It shrank, it whimpered, it tried to deny, it tried to say that there was hope when there was no hope. He faced the liar fully, the tortured liar skittering about in his skull, looking for escape, when there was no escape from the inexorable. Nothing could be done to save Emma. He thought of what Socrates had said when he had wept for his dead son and a friend had said, “Why do you weep? Nothing can bring him back.” Socra
tes had replied, “That is why I weep.”

  James said to himself, with agonized bitterness: Why do we try to forget death, when we all begin to die the moment we are conceived? He had been no more realistic than the weakest and most timorous of men. He sat for a long time, unwilling to disturb the exhausted woman in her sleep. He could hear the murmur of traffic, the sound of horns outside, and the battering wind pounding against the windows. He could hear the hiss of the snow. The day darkened.

  Face to face with the death of all that matters to a man, he knew the sadness of humanity, the sadness of living, the unbearable pain, the black resignation. The hopelessness of joy. He had known this professionally; now he knew it as a man, naked, alone, no more and no less than the most abject creature. The companionship of happiness was a fleeting and superficial thing. But the companionship of sorrow made mankind one, bound together, heart to heart, understanding to understanding. For the first time he felt compassion for all that lived, whether good or bad, whether foolish or wise, whether dull or brilliant, whether happy or unhappy, whether beautiful or ugly, whether young or old. This was more than the happy knew. The brotherhood of grief was complete.

  Emma stirred. He forced his shaking legs to lift him. He took Emma in his arms and then into her bedroom. He laid her down on the bed. He looked heavily and slowly about the large room, with its old-fashioned and weighty furniture of dark red mahogany, all extremely polished. It was very Victorian, and genuinely so. The white lace curtains were stiff and immaculate, under draperies of deep yellow velvet. It seemed quieter here and more restful. James took off Emma’s shoes, and he drew the quilt over her. Her head on the pillow looked as if it had fallen from profound weariness. He lay down beside her and held her hand, and then she turned, murmuring, and lay closely at his side, his hand in hers.

  He began to weep involuntarily, but there was no comfort in weeping. Finally, when he could endure no more, he fell asleep beside the dearest thing in the world to him.

  No matter the cost to him he would not let Emma suffer the final crucifying agonies. He swore a grim promise to himself before he slept.

  25

  When he awoke in the gray dimness he saw that Emma, beside him, was leaning on her elbow and watching him. “Hello, ducks,” he said, and his voice was uncertain and hoarse. She bent her head to kiss him. Though the light was faint he saw the old raffish glint in her eyes. “Emma,” he said.

  “Dear old fat bald Jimmy, I love you,” she answered. Briskly, she threw back her hair. Sometime during his long unconsciousness, she had removed her traveling frock, and she was lying only in her rosy slip, her deep breasts spilling creamily against the silk. At some time she had recovered that remarkable stamina of hers, which met life steadfastly and unafraid. “Jimmy,” she said, and her voice was strong, “we are going to think of only one thing, the lovely spots we are going to visit all over the world, the highways, the byways, in slow comfort, seeing everything. We are going to make this a holiday to remember, never to forget. We are going to laugh and sing, and dance; we are going to be complete fools. In short, we are going to have fun.”

  “After we are married, ducks.”

  She rolled up her eyes in mock despair. “Very well. After we are married. But I warn you, you may regret it.” She lay down and nestled against him, holding him in her arms like a mother. “Now, tell me again,” she whispered, “that you love me.”

  A little later she said to him, “I will marry you only if you promise me something. I want us not to speak of this—thing—all the time. Sometimes, perhaps, but not constantly. It’s there. It won’t go away. But we must not stare at it all the time, as if at a basilisk. We have living to do, together.”

  “I promise,” he said. The dull grinding pain in him could not be denied. “But we must not pretend to each other that it has gone away. That’s childish, stupid, and only makes matters worse.” After this hour he could understand why men and women, frenzied, could couple in streets red with blood, in noxious alleys, in fetid rooms, under the very shadows of guillotines and the rope and murder and holocausts. It was their instinctive affirmation of life, celebration of life, that made them make their life-giving gesture in the very face of death. He did not know precisely why they had done it, nor why he had just completed the same act. Was it defiance? Was it bravado? No. It was something primally profound, a primal knowledge that life did not end in obliteration, and that death was only a beginning. His training, his awareness, wished to dispute that, but his instinct only affirmed it.

  He knew what lay before Emma, and for himself, and he knew his would be the greatest suffering. For him there would be no anodyne as there would be for Emma in drugs. She would not suffer mentally as he would suffer. Her torment would be physical, and there were always palliatives. But what palliatives were there for the living as they watched the beloved one slowly and agonizingly die? Emma, who was stronger than he, had accepted. But he could not accept. He could only pretend, as much as possible in order to spare her, that he had admitted the inevitable into his consciousness and had adjusted to it.

  When Emma, somewhat rested, had gone into her bathroom to bathe and dress, he lay there in the rumpled bed and let the waves of complete pain roll over him. What would he do without Emma? How could he exist? She had been his emotional life for over twenty years. She had been more than his mistress. She had been his friend, his most trusted friend, his absolute confidante. He forgot all his philosophies, his easy acceptances, his rationalizations, in the knowledge that he could do nothing for Emma, who had done so much for him. To another man in his present situation he would have said, “We are men, and men are superior to circumstance. Yes, you’ll bleed awhile and feel prostrated and believe that life is over. But it is not. Time does go on, a very wise platitude to remember, and one day you’ll have the courage to face life again, to live again. It seems impossible for you to believe it, but I can tell you it is true.”

  He did not believe it. When Emma died, he would not continue living. A great sense of relief came to him then, a reprieve. Death was better than life without Emma. When she came out of the bathroom, steamy and pink of lip, she said, “What, you slug! Are you still in bed? Get up. I demand sustenance, and very shortly.” Her voice was the same round and hearty one he so dearly loved.

  Love had given her strength and tranquillity, and there was no sign of the terror he had first seen in her eyes. He recalled that she had cried only a little, far less than he had cried. He felt ashamed. She playfully took his hand and said, “Up, up with you, Jimmy! And get dressed. Where are you taking me to dinner?”

  His voice was dry and cracked to his own ears. “There’s a storm, ducks. We’ll dine in this inn. Plain heavy food, not the delectable delicacies Simon concocts.”

  “That’s good. There were delicious odors in the lobby when I came in. I could do with something very fattening and forbidden in these health-conscious days. Do they have passable wines?”

  “Not really. But excellent beer.”

  “I prefer it. At heart, I am a rough proletarian with a prole’s greedy appetite. Up with you.” She pulled at his hand and he sat up, feeling feeble and old. “Jimmy, you’re a disgrace. You’ve gained over ten pounds.” She bent and kissed the top of his big bald head and ruffled the red-gray curls which fringed it. “Oh, Jimmy, I’m happy, happy I am here with you. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? ‘This is the day which the Lord has made. Rejoice in it, and be glad.’ One of your favorite quotations. Now I know what it means.”

  He knew that she was not trying to be speciously brave. She was too gallant a woman for that. No matter what frightfulnesses life had had for her, and would have soon again, she would stand victorious over the most terrible of enemies. She had done it before. Once more he was ashamed, for she was braver than he.

  He slowly dressed. His hands trembled as the hands of the very old and ill tremble. She sat near him. “Oh, Jimmy,” she said, “we are going to have such a glorious time!”

/>   “When we are married, Emma.”

  “Oh, dear, how you harp. When we are married, then. It seems you don’t like living in sin, do you?”

  He tried to laugh. It was no use. She stood up to give him a tender kiss, to pet his cheek. He caught her to him and held her fiercely, saying silently to himself: Oh, God, God, God! She murmured, “I know, I know, I know.” Then she gently disengaged herself. “Tell me more about the friends you have made here, about whom you wrote me.” When he could not speak, she said, “Don’t make it harder for me, love.”

  His voice broke. “Forgive me, Emma.” He took her hands, her dear hands, and kissed the palms, and when he looked up at her she was smiling brightly.

  “Wasn’t there some kind lady to console you while you were here alone, Jimmy?”

  He thought of Beth Turner. “I consoled a lady.”

  “Oh, you dog. I can’t trust you out of my sight. Was the lady in need of consolation?”

  “Very.”

  “Then I am glad that she had you for that time.” Was she pleading with him to be courageous? He knew she was. He said, “Would you like to meet Emil Grassner tonight?”

  She hesitated, then apparently decided it would be best for James. She nodded. “You like him so much, don’t you? I want to meet such a man, and thank him.”

  He thought. Then he said, “I’ll go to his room and ask him to join us.” He wanted to be alone with Emil when he told him of this monstrous thing which had entered his life. Before Emma could suggest the telephone he went from the suite and down to Emil’s quarters.

  Emil was surprised, but pleased, to see him. But his smile went away when he saw the haggardness on James’s face, the mortal pain in his eyes. “Come in,” he said, subdued. James fell into a chair. Emil surveyed him, then went for whiskey. “That bad, eh? Drink this. I heard Lady Emma had arrived earlier.”