by Ian Mcewan
In the second or two it took for Logan to reach the ground I had a sense of déjà vu, and I immediately knew its source. What came back to me was a nightmare I had occasionally in my twenties and thirties, from which I used to shout myself awake. The setting varied, but the essentials never did. I found myself in a prominent place watching from far off the unfolding of a disaster—an earthquake, a fire in a skyscraper, a sinking ship, an erupting volcano. I could see helpless people, reduced by distance to an undifferentiated mass, scurrying about in panic, certain to die. The horror was in the contrast between their apparent size and the enormity of their suffering. Life was revealed as cheap; thousands of screaming individuals, no bigger than ants, were about to be annihilated, and I could do nothing to help. I did not think about the dream then so much as experience its emotional wash—terror, guilt, and helplessness were the components—and feel the nausea of a premonition fulfilled.
Down below us, where the escarpment leveled out, was a grassy field used for pasture, bounded by a line of pollarded willows. Beyond them was a larger pasture, where sheep and a few lambs were grazing. It was in the center of this second field, in our full view, that Logan landed. My impression was that at the moment of impact the little stick figure flowed or poured outward across the ground, like a drop of viscous fluid. But what we saw in the stillness, as though reconstituted, was the compact dot of his huddled figure. The nearest sheep, twenty feet away, barely looked up from its chewing.
Joseph Lacey was attending to his friend, Toby Greene, who could not stand. Right next to me was Jed Parry. Some way off behind us was James Gadd. He was less interested than we were in Logan. He was shouting about his grandson, who was being carried away in the balloon across the Vale of Oxford toward the line of pylons. Gadd pushed past us and went a few paces down the hill, as if intending to go in pursuit. Such is his genetic investment, I remember thinking stupidly. Clarissa came up behind me and looped her arms around my waist and pressed her face into my back. What surprised me was that she was already crying—I could feel the wetness on my shirt—whereas to me, sorrow seemed a long way off.
Like a self in a dream, I was both first and third persons. I acted, and saw myself act. I had my thoughts, and I saw them drift across a screen. As in a dream, my emotional responses were nonexistent or inappropriate. Clarissa’s tears were no more than a fact, but I was pleased by the way my feet were anchored to the ground and set well apart, and the way my arms were folded across my chest. I looked out across the fields and the thought scrolled across: That man is dead. I felt a warmth spreading through me, a kind of self-love, and my folded arms hugged me tight. The corollary seemed to be And I am alive. It was a random matter, who was alive or dead at any given time. I happened to be alive. This was when I noticed Jed Parry watching me. His long, bony face was framed around a pained question. He looked wretched, like a dog about to be punished. In the second or so that this stranger’s clear gray-blue eyes held mine, I felt I could include him in the self-congratulatory warmth I felt in being alive. It even crossed my mind to touch him comfortingly on the shoulder. My thoughts were up there on the screen: This man is in shock. He wants me to help him.
Had I known what this glance meant to him at the time, and how he was to construe it later and build around it a mental life, I would not have been so warm. In his pained, interrogative look was that first bloom, of which I was entirely ignorant. The euphoric calm I felt was simply a symptom of my shock. I honored Parry with a friendly nod and, ignoring Clarissa at my back—I was a busy man, I would deal with them all one at a time—I said to him in what I thought was a deep and reassuring voice, “It’s all right.”
This flagrant untruth reverberated so pleasantly between my ribs that I almost said it again. Perhaps I did. I was the first one to have spoken since Logan hit the ground. I reached into my trouser pocket and withdrew, of all things to have out here at this time, a mobile phone. I read the fractional widening of the young man’s eyes as respect. It was what I felt for myself, anyway, as I held the dense little slab in my palm and with the thumb of the same hand jabbed three nines. I was in the world, equipped, capable, connected. When the emergency operator came on, I asked for police and ambulance and gave a lucid, minimal account of the accident and the balloon drifting away with the boy, and our position and the nearest access by road. It was all I could do to hold my excitement in. I wanted to shout something—commands, exhortations, inarticulate vowel sounds. I was brittle, speedy; perhaps I looked happy.
When I turned off the phone, Joseph Lacey said, “He won’t need no ambulance.”
Greene looked up from his ankle. “They’ll need that to take him away.”
I remembered. Of course. This was what I needed: something to do. I was wild by now, ready to fight, run, dance, you name it. “He might not be dead,” I said. “There’s always a chance. We’ll go down and take a look.”
As I was saying this I became aware of a tremor in my legs. I wanted to stride away down the slope, but I did not trust my balance. Uphill would be better. I said to Parry, “You’ll come.” I meant it as a suggestion, but it came out as a request, something I needed from him. He looked at me, unable to speak. Everything, every gesture, every word I spoke, was being stored away, gathered and piled, fuel for the long winter of his obsession.
I unclasped Clarissa’s arms from my waist and turned. It didn’t occur to me that she was trying to hold me steady. “Let’s go down,” I said quietly. “There may be something we can do.” I heard my softening of tone, the artful lowering of volume. I was in a soap opera. Now he’s talking to his woman. It was intimacy, a tight two-shot.
Clarissa put her hand on my shoulder. She told me later that it crossed her mind to slap my face. “Joe,” she whispered. “You’ve got to slow down.”
“What’s up?” I said in a louder voice. A man lay dying in a field and no one was stirring. Clarissa looked at me, and though her mouth looked set to frame the words, she wouldn’t tell me why I should slow down. I turned away and called to the others, who stood about on the grass waiting for me, so I thought, to tell them what to do. “I’m going down to him. Is anyone coming?” I didn’t wait for an answer but set off down the hill, conscious of the watery looseness in my knees and taking short steps. Twenty seconds later I glanced back. No one had moved.
As I carried on down, the mania began to subside and I felt trapped and lonely in my decision. Also there was the fear, not quite in me but there in the field, spread like a mist, and denser at the core. I was walking into it without choice now, because they were watching me, and to turn back would have meant climbing up the hill, a double humiliation. As the euphoria lifted, so the fear seeped in. The dead man I did not want to meet was waiting for me in the middle of the field. Even worse would be finding him alive and dying. Then I’d have to face him alone with my first aid techniques, like so many silly party tricks. He wouldn’t be taken in. He would go ahead and die anyway, and his death would be in and on my hands. I wanted to turn and shout for Clarissa, but they were watching me, I knew, and I had blustered so much up there I was ashamed. This long descent was my punishment.
I reached the line of pollarded willows at the bottom of the hill, crossed a dry ditch, and climbed through a barbed wire fence. By now I was out of their sight and I wanted to be sick. Instead, I urinated against a tree trunk. My hand was trembling badly. Afterward I stood still, delaying the moment when I would have to set out across the field. Being out of view was a physical relief, like being shaded from a desert sun. I was conscious of Logan’s position, but even at this distance I didn’t care to look.
The sheep that had barely glanced up at the impact stared and backed away into faltering runs as I strode among them. I was feeling slightly better. I kept Logan at the periphery of vision, but even so, I knew he was not flat on the ground. Something protruded at the center of the field, some stumpy antenna of his present or previous self. Not until I was twenty yards away did I permit myself to see him. He
was sitting upright, his back to me, as though meditating, or gazing in the direction in which the balloon and Harry had drifted. There was calmness in his posture. I went closer, instinctively troubled to be approaching him unseen from behind but glad I could not yet see his face. I still clung to the possibility that there was a technique, a physical law or process of which I knew nothing, that would permit him to survive. That he should sit there so quietly in the field, as though he were collecting himself after his terrible experience, gave me hope and made me clear my throat stupidly and say, knowing that no one else could hear me, “Do you need help?” It was not so ridiculous at the time. I could see his hair curling over his shirt collar and sunburned skin along the tops of his ears. His tweed jacket was unmarked, though it drooped strangely, for his shoulders were narrower than they should have been. They were narrower than any adult’s could be. From the base of the neck there was no lateral spread. The skeletal structure had collapsed internally to produce a head on a thickened stick. And seeing that, I became aware that what I had taken for calmness was absence. There was no one there. The quietness was that of the inanimate, and I understood again, because I had seen dead bodies before, why a prescientific age would have needed to invent the soul. It was no less clear than the illusion of the evening sun sinking through the sky. The closing down of countless interrelated neural and biochemical exchanges combined to suggest to a naked eye the illusion of the extinguished spark, or the simple departure of a single necessary element. However scientifically informed we count ourselves to be, fear and awe still surprise us in the presence of the dead. Perhaps it’s life we’re really wondering at.
These were the thoughts with which I tried to protect myself as I began to circle the corpse. It sat within a little indentation in the soil. I didn’t see Logan dead until I saw his face, and what I saw I only glimpsed. Though the skin was intact, it was hardly a face at all, for the bone structure had shattered, and I had the impression, before I looked away, of a radical, Picassoesque violation of perspective. Perhaps I only imagined the vertical arrangement of the eyes. I turned away and saw Parry coming toward me across the field. He must have been following me down closely, for he was already within talking distance. He must have seen when I paused in the shelter of the trees.
I watched him over Logan’s head as he slowed and called out to me, “Don’t touch him, please don’t touch him.”
I hadn’t intended to, but I said nothing. I was looking at Parry as though for the first time. He stood with his hands resting on his hips, staring not at Logan but at me. Even then, he was more interested in me. He had come to tell me something. He was tall and lean, all bone and sinew, and he looked fit. He wore jeans and box-fresh trainers tied with red laces. His bones fairly burst out of him, the way they hadn’t with Logan. His knuckles, brushing against his leather belt, were big and tight-knobbed under the skin, which was white and stretched tight. The cheekbones were also tight and high-ridged and together with the ponytail gave him the look of a pale Indian brave. His appearance was striking, even slightly threatening, but the voice gave it all away. It was feebly hesitant, neutral as to region but carrying a trace, or acknowledgment, of Cockney—a discarded past or an affectation. Parry had his generation’s habit of making a statement on the rising inflection of a question—in humble imitation of Americans or Australians or, as I heard one linguist explain, too mired in relative judgments, too hesitant and apologetic to say how things were in the world.
Of course, I didn’t think of any of this at the time. All I heard was a whine of powerlessness, and I relaxed. What he said was “Clarissa’s really worried about you? I said I’d come down and see if you’re all right?”
My silence was hostile. I was old enough to dislike his presumption of first names and, for that matter, of claiming to know Clarissa’s state of mind. I didn’t even know Parry’s name at this point. Even with a dead man sitting between us, the rules of social engagement prevailed. As I heard it later from Clarissa, Parry had come over to her to introduce himself, then turned away to follow me down the hill. She had said nothing to him about me.
“Are you all right?”
I said, “There’s nothing we can do but wait,” and I gestured in the direction of the road, one field away.
Parry took a couple of steps closer and looked down at Logan, then back to me. The gray-blue eyes gleamed. He was excited, but no one could ever have guessed to what extent. “Actually, I think there is something we can do.”
I looked at my watch. It was fifteen minutes since I had phoned the emergency services. “You go ahead,” I said. “Do what you like.”
“It’s something we can do together?” he said as he looked about for a suitable place on the ground. The wild thought came to me that he was proposing some form of gross indecency with a corpse. He was lowering himself and with a look was inviting me to join him. Then I got it. He was on his knees.
“What we could do,” he said with a seriousness that warned against mockery, “is to pray together?” Before I could object, which for the moment was impossible because I was speechless, Parry added, “I know it’s difficult. But you’ll find it helps. At times like this, you know, it really does help.”
I took a step away from both Logan and Parry. I was embarrassed, and my first thought was not to offend a true believer. But I got a grip on myself. He wasn’t concerned about offending me.
“I’m sorry,” I said pleasantly. “It’s not my thing at all.”
Parry tried to speak reasonably from his diminished height. “Look, we don’t know each other and there’s no reason why you should trust me. Except that God has brought us together in this tragedy and we have to, you know, make whatever sense of it we can?” Then, seeing me make no move, he added, “I think you have a special need for prayer?”
I shrugged and said, “Sorry. But you go right on ahead.” I Americanized my tone to suggest a lightheartedness I did not feel.
Parry wasn’t giving up. He was still on his knees. “I don’t think you understand. You shouldn’t, you know, think of this as some kind of duty. It’s like, your own needs are being answered? It’s got nothing to do with me, really, I’m just the messenger. It’s a gift.”
As he pressed harder, so the last traces of my embarrassment disappeared. “Thanks, but no.”
Parry closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, not praying so much as gathering his strength. I decided to walk back up the hill. When he heard me moving away, he got to his feet and came over. He really didn’t want to let me go. He was desperate to persuade me, but he was not going to drop the patient, understanding manner. So he seemed to smile through a barrier of pain as he said, “Please don’t dismiss this. I know it’s not something you’d normally do. I mean, you don’t have to believe in anything at all, just let yourself do it and I promise you, I promise—”
As he tripped over the terms of his promise, I interrupted him and stepped back. I suspected that at any moment he would be reaching out to touch me. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m going back up to see my friend.” I couldn’t bring myself to share Clarissa’s name with him.
He must have known his only chance of keeping me now was a radical change of tone. I was already several steps away when he called sharply, “Okay, fine. Please just have the courtesy to tell me this.”
It was irresistible. I stopped and turned.
“What is it, exactly, that stands in your way? I mean, are you able to tell me, do you actually know yourself what it is?”
For a moment I thought I wouldn’t answer him—I wanted him to know that his faith laid no obligations on me. But then I changed my mind and said, “Nothing. Nothing’s standing in my way.”
He was coming toward me again, with his arms hanging loose at his side and with the palms turned up and the fingers spread in a little melodrama of the reasonable man perplexed. “Then why don’t you take a chance on it?” he said through a worldly laugh. “You might see the point of it, the strength it can give you. Please
, why don’t you?”
Again, I hesitated and almost said nothing. But I decided he ought to know the truth. “Because, my friend, no one’s listening. There’s no one up there.”
Parry’s head was cocked, and the most joyous of smiles was spreading slowly across his face. I wondered if he had heard me right, because he looked as though I had just told him I was John the Baptist. It was then that I noticed over his shoulder two policemen climbing over a five-barred gate. As they ran across the field toward us, one of them used a hand to keep his hat in place, Keystone Kops style. They were coming to set in motion the official processing of John Logan’s fate and, as I saw it, to deliver me from the radiating power of Jed Parry’s love and pity.
Three
By six that evening we were back home, in our kitchen, and everything looked the same—the railway clock above the door, Clarissa’s library of cookbooks, the flowery copperplate of a note left by the cleaning lady the day before. The unaltered array of my breakfast coffee cup and newspaper seemed blasphemous. While Clarissa carried her luggage into the bedroom, I cleared the table, opened the picnic wine, and set out two glasses. We sat facing each other and began.
We hadn’t said much in the car. It had seemed enough to be coming through the traffic unharmed. Now it came out in a torrent, a postmortem, a reliving, a debriefing, the rehearsal of grief and the exorcism of terror. There was so much repetition that evening of the incidents, and of our perceptions, and of the very phrases and words we honed to accommodate them, that one could only assume that an element of ritual was in play, that these were not only descriptions but incantations also. There was comfort in reiteration, just as there was in the familiar weight of the wineglasses and in the grain of the deal table, which had once belonged to Clarissa’s great-grandmother. There were smooth, shallow indentations in its surface near the knife-scarred edges, worn by elbows like ours, I always thought; many crises and deaths must already have been considered around this table.
