Nightwork - Страница 2

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Didi was a serious and unsmiling child, always with a book in her hands. According to her parents, she started reading as soon as she was strapped into her seat and only stopped when the plane rolled to a halt. On this flight she was engrossed in Wuthering Heights. I had been an omnivorous reader, too, as a boy - when my mother was displeased with me she would say, 'Oh, Douglas, stop acting like a character in a book' - and it amused me to keep track of what Didi was reading from one winter to another.

She was by far the best skier in the family, but her parents made her bring up the rear on all descents. I had skied alone with her one morning, in a snowstorm, when the older Waleses were hung over from a cocktail party, and she had been a changed girl, smiling blissfully and fleeing joyfully down the mountain with me, like a small wild animal suddenly let loose from a cage.

Wales was a generous man and made a point of giving me a gift after each flight - a sweater, a new pair of fancy poles, a wallet, things like that. I certainly made enough money to be able to buy anything I needed, and I didn't like the idea of being tipped, but I knew he would have been insulted if I bad ever refused to take his offerings. He was not an unpleasant man, I had decided. Just too successful.

'Beautiful morning, isn't it, Doug?' Wales said behind me. He was a restless man and even in the small plane seemed always on the prowl. He would have made a terrible pilot. He brought a smell of alcohol into the cockpit. He always traveled with a small, leather-bound flask.

'N ... not bad,' I said. I had stuttered ever since I was a boy and as a result tried to talk as little as possible. Sometimes I couldn't help but speculate about what my life would have been like if I hadn't suffered from this small affliction, but I didn't allow myself to sink into gloom because of it.

'The skiing ought to be marvelous,' Wales said.

'Marvelous,' I agreed. I didn't like to talk while I was at the controls, but I couldn't tell Wales that.

'We're going up to Sugarbush,' Wales said. 'You going to be there this weekend?'

'I... I... b ... believe so,' I said. 'It... told a girl I'd ski with her up ... up there.' The girl was Pat Minot. Her brother worked in the airline office and I had met her through him. She taught history at the high school, and I had arranged to pick her up at three o'clock, when school let out. She was a good skier and very pretty besides, small and dark and intense. I had known her for more than two years and we had had what was a rather desultory affair for fifteen months now. At least it was desultory as far as she was concerned, since for weeks on end she would put me off with one excuse or another and hardly notice me when we met by accident. Then suddenly she would relent and suggest we go off together somewhere. I could tell by the particular kind of smile on her face when, for whatever reason, she was entering into a non-desultory phase.

She was a popular girl, stubbornly unmarried; at one time or another, according to her brother, almost every friend of his had made a pass at her. With what success I never did find out. I have always been shy and uneasy with girls and I could not say that I pursued her. I couldn't say, either, that she had pursued me. It had just, well, happened, when we found each other skiing together on a long weekend at Sugarbush. After the first night, I had said, 'This is the best thing that ever happened to me.'

All she had said was, 'Hush.'

I never made up my mind whether or not I was in love with her. If she hadn't badgered me continually about curing my stutter, I think I would have asked her to marry me. The coming weekend, I felt, was going to rise - or fall - to some sort of climax. I had decided to be cautious, leaving all options open.

'Great,' Wales was saying. 'Let's all have dinner together tonight.'

Thanks, G ... George,' I said. He had insisted from the first time I met him that I call him and his wife by their first names. Th ... that w ... would be very nice.' Dinner with another couple would postpone decisions, give me time to sound out Pat's mood and re-assess my own feelings.

'We're driving up as soon as we land,' Wales said. 'We can get in a few runs this afternoon. How about you? Should we wait for you at the inn?'

‘I ... I'm afraid n ... not. I have my six-m ... month physical checkup at the doc's and ... and I don't know when I c ... can split.' '

'Dinner, then?' Wales said. 'D ... dinner.'

'Doug,' Wales said. 'Do you ever get three weeks off at a time? In the winter, I mean?'

'N .., not really,' I said. 'It's a busy season. Wh ... Why?' 'Beryl and I're going over on a charter flight to Zurich the first of February.' Beryl was his wife. 'We always try to man-" age three weeks in the Alps.... You ever ski in the Alps?'

'I've never b ... been out of the country. Except Canada for a f ... few days.'

'You'd flip,' he said. 'The slopes of Heaven. We've been talking it over and we'd love to have you with us. There's this club I belong to. It's surprisingly cheap. Under three hundred dollars round trip. The Christie Ski Club. It's not just the money, of course. It's the people. The nicest bunch of people you could ever travel with and all the free booze you can drink. And no worrying about a baggage allowance or Swiss customs. They just wave you through with a smile. You're supposed to belong at least six months in advance, but they're not sticky about it. There's a girl in the office I know, her name's Mansfield, and she fixes everything. Just tell her you're a friend of mine. They have nights just about every week in the winter. We made St Moritz last year and we're doing St Anton this year. You'll dazzle the Austrians." I smiled. I b ... bet,' I said.

"Think it over,' Wales said. 'You'd have the time of your life.'

'S ... stop tempting a working man,' I said.

'What the hell,' Wales said. 'Everybody need» a vacation.'

‘I... I'll think it o ... over,' I said.

He went back to his seat, leaving the smell of whiskey in the cockpit. I kept my eyes on the horizon, sharp against the bright blue of the winter sky, trying not to be jealous of a man who was as untalented on the slopes as Wales, but who could take three weeks off from work to spend thousands of dollars to ski in the Alps.

* * *

After I checked into the office and confirmed that there was nothing for me that weekend, I drove into town in my Volkswagen for the biannual ritual of the physical examination. Dr Ryan was an eye-specialist, but kept up a limited general practice on the side. He was a slow-moving, gentle old man who had been listening to my heart, taking my blood pressure, and testing my eyes and reflexes for five years. Except for one occasion when I bad come down with a mild case of grippe, he had never prescribed as much as an aspirin for me. in shape for the Derby.' he would say each time when he finished with me. 'Ready to run for the roses.' He shared my interest in the horses and was an impressive student of form. Every once in a while he would call me at my home when he would discover a horse that was outrageously underpriced or carrying, in his opinion, much too little weight.

The examination followed its usual routine, with the doctor nodding comfortably after each stage. It was only when he came to my eyes that his expression changed. I read the charts all right, but when he used his instruments to look into my eyes, his face became professionally sober. His nurse came into the office twice to tell him that there were patients in the waiting room with appointments, but he brusquely waved her aside. He gave me a whole series of tests that he had never used before, making me stare straight ahead while he kept his hands in his lap, then slowly lifting his hands and asking me to tell him when they came into my field of vision. Finally, he put away his instruments, sat down heavily behind his desk, sighed, and passed his hand wearily across his face.

'Mr. Grimes,' he said finally, 'I'm afraid I have bad new» for you.'

The news old Dr Ryan had for me on that sunny morning in his big, old-fashioned office changed my whole life.

Technically,' he said, 'the name of the disease is retinoschisis. It is a splitting of the ten layers of the retina into two portions, giving rise to the development of a retinal cyst. It is a well-known condition. Most often it does not progress, but as far as it goes it's irreversible. Sometimes we can arrest it by operating by laser beam. One of its manifestations is a blocking out of peripheral vision. In your case downward peripheral vision. For a pilot who has to be alert to a whole array of dials in front of him. below him, around him on all sides, as well as the horizon toward which he is speeding, it is essentially disabling.... Still, for all general purposes, such as reading, sports, et cetera, you can consider yourself normal.'

'Normal,' I said. 'Boy, oh boy, normal. You know the only thing that's normal for me. Doc. Flying. That's all I ever wanted to do, all I ever prepared myself to do....'

'I'm sending the report over today, Mr. Grimes,' Ryan said. 'With the greatest regret. Of course, you can go to another doctor. Other doctors. I don't believe they can do anything to help you, but that's only my opinion. As far as I'm concerned, you're grounded. As of this minute. For good. I'm sorry.'

I fought to hold back the surge of hatred I felt for the neat old man, seated among his shining instruments, signing papers of condemnation with his scrawly doctor's handwriting. I knew I was being unreasonable, but it was not a moment for reason. I lurched out of the office, not shaking Ryan's hand, saying, 'Goddamnit, goddamnit,' aloud over and over to myself, paying no attention to the people in the waiting room and on the street who stared curiously at me as I headed for the nearest bar. I knew I couldn't face going back to the airfield and saying what I would have to say without fortification. Considerable fortification.