Part 64 (1/2)

A cheerful voice said, 'Oh, you're awake, Mr Niles. Feeling better now? I'll brew some tea for you.'

He looked up and felt a sudden sharp pang. She was a nurse -- twenty-two, twenty-three, new at the job perhaps, with a flowing tumble of curling blonde hair and wide, clear blue eyes. She was smiling, and it seemed to Niles it was not merely a professional smile. 'I'm Miss Carroll, your day nurse. Everything okay?'

'Fine.' Niles said hesitantly. 'Where am I?'

'Central County General Hospital. You were brought in late last night -- apparently you'd been beaten up and left by the road out on Route 32. It's a lucky thing Mark McKenzie was walking his dog, Mr Niles.' She looked at him gravely. 'You remember last night, don't you? I mean -- the shock -- amnesia -- '

Niles chuckled. 'That's the last ailment in the world I'd be afraid of,' he said. 'I'm Thomas Richard Niles, and I remember pretty well what happened. How badly am I damaged?'

'Superficial bruises, mild shock and exposure, slight case of frostbite,' she summed up. 'You'll live. Dr Hammond'll give you a full checkup a little later, after you've eaten. Let me bring you some tea.'

Niles watched the trim figure vanish into the hallway.

She was certainly an attractive girl, he thought, fresh-eyed, alert ... _alive._ _Old cliche: patient falling for his nurse. But she's not for me, I'm afraid._ Abruptly the door opened and the nurse reentered, bearing a little enamelled tea tray. 'You'll never guess! I have a surprise for you, Mr Niles. A visitor. Your mother.'

'My moth -- '

She saw the little notice about you in the county paper. She's waiting outside, and she told me she hasn't seen you in seventeen years. Would you like me to send her in now?'

'I guess so,' Niles said, in a dry, feathery voice.

A second time the nurse departed. _My G.o.d_, Niles thought! _If I had known I was this close to home -- _ _I should have stayed out of Ohio altogether._ The last person he wanted to see was his mother. He began to tremble under the covers. The oldest and most terrible of his memories came bursting up from the dark compartment of his mind where he thought he had imprisoned it forever. The sudden emergence from warmth into coolness, from darkness to light, the jarring slap of a heavy hand on his b.u.t.tocks, the searing pain of knowing that his security was ended, that from now on he would be alive, and therefore miserable -- The memory of the agonized birth-shriek sounded in his mind. He could never forget being born. And his mother was, he thought, the one person of all he could never forgive, since she had given him forth into the life he hated. He dreaded the moment when -- 'h.e.l.lo, Tom. It's been a long time.'

Seventeen years had faded her, had carved lines in her face and made the cheeks more baggy, the blue eyes less bright, the brown hair a mousy grey. She was smiling. And to his own astonishment Niles was able to smile back.

'Mother.'

'I read about it in the paper. It said a man of about thirty was found just outside town with papers bearing the name Thomas R. Niles, and he was taken to Central County General Hospital. So I came over, just to make sure -- and it _was_ you.'

A lie drifted to the surface of his mind, but it was a kind lie, and he said it: 'I was on my way back home to see you. Hitchhiking. But I ran into a little trouble en route.'

'I'm glad you decided to come back, Tom. It's been so lonely, ever since your father died, and of course Hank was married, and Marian too -- it's good to see you again. I thought I never would.'

He lay back, perplexed, wondering why the upwelling flood of hatred did not come. He felt only warmth towards her. He was glad to see her.

'How has it been -- all these years, Tom? You haven't had it easy. I can see. I see it all over your face.'

'It hasn't been easy,' he said. 'You know why I ran away?'

She nodded. 'Because of the way you are. That thing about your mind -- never forgetting. I knew. Your grandfather had it too, you know.'

'My grandfather -- but -- '

'You got it from him. I never did tell you, I guess. He didn't get along too well with any of us. He left my mother when I was a little girl, and I never knew where he went. So I always knew you'd go away the way he did. Only you came back. Are you married?'

He shook his head.

'Time you got started, then, Tom. You're near thirty.'

The door opened, and an efficient-looking doctor appeared. 'Afraid your time's up, Mrs Niles. You'll be able to see him again later. I have to check him over, now that he's awake.'

'Of course, doctor.' She smiled at him, then at Niles. 'I'll see you later, Tom.'

'Sure, mother.'

Niles lay back, frowning, as the doctor poked at him here and there. _I didn't hate her._ A growing wonderment rose in him, and he realized he should have come home long ago. He had changed, inside, without even knowing it.

Running away was the first stage in growing up, and a necessary one. But coming back came later, and that was the mark of maturity. He was back. And suddenly he saw he had been terribly foolish all his bitter adult life.

He had a gift, a great gift, an awesome gift. It had been too big for him until now. Self-pitying, self-tormented, he had refused to allow for the shortcomings of the forgetful people about him, and had paid the price of their hatred. But he couldn't keep running away forever. The time would have to come for him to grow big enough to contain his gift, to learn to live with it instead of moaning in dramatic, self-inflicted anguish.

And now was the time. It was long overdue.

His grandfather had had the gift; they had never told him that. So it was genetically transmissible. He could marry, have children, and they, too, would never forget.

It was his duty not to let his gift die with him. Others of his kind, less sensitive, less thin-skinned, would come after and they, too, would know how to recall a Beethoven symphony or a decade-old wisp of conversation. For the first time since that fourth birthday party he felt a hesitant flicker of happiness. The days of running were ended; he was home again. _If I learn to live with others, maybe they'll be able to live with me._ He saw the things he yet needed: a wife, a home, children -- ' -- a couple of days' rest, plenty of hot liquids, and you'll be as good as new, Mr Niles,' the doctor was saying. 'is there anything you'd like me to bring you now?'

'Yes,' Niles said. 'Just send in the nurse, will you? Miss Carroll, I mean.'

The doctor grinned and left. Niles waited expectantly, exulting in his new self. He switched on Act Three of _Die Meistersinger_ as a kind of jubilant backdrop music in his mind, and let the warmth sweep up over him. When she entered the room he was smiling and wondering how to begin saying what he wanted to say.

OMNI.

Internet.

The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James.

By Robert Silverberg.

Editor's Note:.

Of all the treasures contained in the coffin-shaped wooden sea-chest at Harvard's Widener Library in which those of Henry James's notebooks and journals that survived his death were preserved and in the a.s.sociated James archive at Harvard, only James's account of his bizarre encounter with the Martian invaders in the summer of l900 has gone unpublished until now. The rest of the material the box contained --the diaries and datebooks, the notes for unfinished novels, the variant drafts of his late plays, and so forth--has long since been made available to James scholars, first in the form of selections under the editors.h.i.+p of F.O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock (The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, l947), and then a generation later in the magisterial full text edited by Leon Edel and Lyall H. Powers (The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1987.) Despite the superb latter volume's a.s.sertions, in its t.i.tle and subt.i.tle, of being ”complete,” ”authoritative,” and ”definitive,” one brief text was indeed omitted from it, which was, of course, the invasion journal. Edel and Powers are in no way to be faulted for this, since they could not have been aware of the existence of the Martian papers, which had (apparently accidentally) been sequestered long ago among a group of doc.u.ments at Harvard a.s.sociated with the life of James's sister Alice (1848-1892) and had either gone unnoticed by the biographers of Alice James or else, since the diary had obviously been composed some years after her death, had been dismissed by them as irrelevant to their research. It may also be that they found the little notebook simply illegible, for James had suffered severely from writer's cramp from the winter of l896-97 onward; his handwriting by l900 had become quite erratic, and many of the (largely pencilled) entries in the Martian notebook are extremely challenging even to a reader experienced in Henry James's hand, set down as they were in great haste under intensely strange circ.u.mstances.

The text is contained in a pocket diary book, four and a half inches by six, bound in a green leatherette cover. It appears that James used such books, in those years, in which to jot notes that he would later transcribe into his permanent notebook (Houghton Journal VI, 26 October l896 to l0 February l909); but this is the only one of its kind that has survived. The first entry is undated, but can be specifically identified as belonging to mid-May of l900 by its references to James's visit to London in that month. At that time James made his home at Lamb House in the pleasant Suss.e.x town of Rye, about seventy miles southeast of London. After an absence of nearly two years he had made a brief trip to the capital in March, l900, at which time, he wrote, he was greeted by his friends ”almost as if I had returned from African or Asian exile.” After seventeen days he went home to Lamb House, but he returned to London in May, having suddenly shaven off, a few days before, the beard that he had worn since the l860s, because it had begun to turn white and offended his vanity. (James was then 57.) From internal evidence, then, we can date the first entry in the Martian journals to the period between May 15 and May 25, 1900.

[Undated] Stepped clean-shaven from the train at Charing Cross. Felt clean and light and eerily young: I could have been forty. A miraculous transformation, so simply achieved! Alas, the sad truth of it is that it will always be I, never any younger even without the beard; but this is a good way to greet the new century nevertheless.

Called on Helena De Kay. Gratifying surprise and expressions of pleasure over my rejuvenated physiognomy. Clemens is there, that is, ”Mark Twain.” He has aged greatly in the three years since our last meeting. ”The twentieth century is a stranger to me,” he sadly declares. His health is bad: has been to Sweden for a cure. Not clear what ails him, physically, at least. He is a dark and troubled soul in any case. His best work is behind him and plainly he knows it. I pray whatever G.o.d there be that that is not to be my fate.

To the club in the evening. Tomorrow a full day, the galleries, the booksellers, the customary dismaying conference with the publishers. (The war in South Africa is depressing all trade, publis.h.i.+ng particularly badly hit, though I should think people would read more novels at a time of such tension.) Luncheon and dinner engagements, of course, the usual hosts, no doubt the usual guests. And so on and on the next day and the next and the next. I yearn already for little restful, red-roofed, uncomplicated Rye.

June 7, LH [Lamb House, Rye]: Home again at long last. London tires me: that is the truth of things. I have lost the habit of it, je crois. How I yearned, all the while I was there, for cabless days and dinnerless nights! And of course there is work to do. The Sacred Fount is now finished and ready to go to the agent. A fine flight into the high fantastic, I think--fanciful, fantastic, but very close and sustained. Writing in the first person makes me uneasy--it lends itself so readily to garrulity, to a fluidity of self-revelation--but there is no questioning that such a structure was essential to this tale.