All the Time in the World

by E. L. Doctorow

  When I leave the park the streets are streaming, and in the black morning lit by the headlights of the cars not moving, plastic bags of garbage roll over in the water and people are hurrying to work with their umbrellas blown out in the wind like suddenly sprouted trees.

  Only the children are unconcerned as they slog to school in their yellow slickers with their violin cases strapped to their backs.

  A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT lights up the street from a crack in the black sky. The clouds blow off, the air is all at once warm and humid, and in a matter of minutes I’m trotting along in a brilliant blue morning. Water drips from the apartment house canopies, gurgling rivulets run along the curbstone. I feel as if I’ve risen from one element into another.

  On my block, across from my building, some paper trash has spilled out of a torn plastic bag—business letters, bills, flyers. I pick up a handwritten letter on blue vellum, feeling that it was meant for me. My doorman tends to a wet dog on the leash and the dog shakes himself as I pass through my lobby. The ink of my letter runs like tears as I read, while rising to my floor, the grief of an abandoned lover. She can’t understand why he has left her, she needs to see him, come back, she says, come to me, for she still loves him, she always will, and it is all so sad, so sad, so sad, and I don’t know who threw the letter away, he after reading it or she after writing it, but I want to speed-dial whomever it is I talk to and express my gratitude, because when I get upstairs, across the street the shade is drawn on the window of the naked dancing girl and all I have ever wanted is specificity.

  I just have to think that and my cell phone rings. To whom am I talking, I say. To whom do you think you’re talking, you say. I say my father. And so it is.

  I have warned you about specificity, my father says. Nothing is possible but that which has happened.

  And what is that which has happened?

  In this case something of great sadness, my father says. There are limits to what even we can do, he says, and breaks the connection.

  Despite my father’s warning, I shower and shave and dress nicely and wait for the evening hour to call on her. Downstairs I nod at my doorman, jog directly across the street, and ask her doorman to announce me. I feel my heart beating. I rise in the elevator. I reach her floor. Her door is open.

  Come in, a voice says, and I enter a dimly lighted room. A large Seeing Eye German shepherd stands there. From its leather harness a leash angles up into the gloom. Patient, forbearing, the dog moves toward me one careful step at a time. I know it’s you, the voice says, and the speaker emerges from the darkness, a large old woman holding a walker to which the leash is tied. She looks familiar. Hair bunched like steel wool. A big bony jaw, a thin nose. Blind eyes bulging to see. It is the kind of ancient ugliness that connotes a past beauty. She wears a loose black knit dress with the sleeves pulled up to the elbows. Loops of pearls hang from her neck and clack against her walker. You dare to come back? she says. You dare?

  I look past her to a dimly lighted dining room. In the glimmering light of a candle whose flame flares and fizzles like a star in the sky, I can see lying on the table a specifically dead girl, the contours of her body indicated in the tight wrappings of a white shroud. I can’t remember her name, but I know I once loved her. Her closed eyes suggest a mind in intense thought. You’re too late, the old woman says, you’re too late, she says with enormous satisfaction. Her triumph is affirmed by the smell of Chinese food coming from her kitchen. I go there and several mourners sitting around the kitchen table look up from the open white cardboard containers into which they are dipping their chopsticks. For a moment I think I know exactly that which has happened. But then over the heads of the mourners at their Chinese food and through the kitchen window that looks out across a dark side street I see in a lighted window a naked girl dancing.

  AND NOW I AM back home and unaccountably sad. At the same time I feel I have been unfairly judged. This was not the kind of specificity for which I long.

  You to whom I think I am talking may ask what I do when I’m not running or longing for specificity: I question my station in life. I believe I am retired, but I feel I am too young to have retired. On the other hand, or alternatively, I don’t know of any work that I’m doing that would suggest I’m not retired. As you can imagine, it would make anyone uneasy knowing there are things about himself he does not know.

  I am not constantly unhappy, I’m not saying that. But my uneasiness builds until I have to talk to someone. At such times I speed-dial my therapist.

  Yes? To whom do you think you’re talking?

  Dr. Sternlicht?

  You got him.

  I’m having that feeling again.

  That is to be expected.

  It’s like I’m living in exile. I am lonely. I have no one.

  That is to be expected.

  Why? Why is it to be expected? That’s all you ever say.

  No, I say other things. I say you’re in a rut. I say change your lifestyle, expand your horizons. A whole city is at your disposal: museums, concerts, the passing parade. I say go out and enjoy yourself. You’ve got all the time in the world.

  Until what?

  What?

  You said I have all the time in the world.

  Until what?

  Until something happens.

  What can happen?

  If we knew. But we don’t, he says, and breaks the connection.

  THE THOUGHT OF expanding my horizons is attractive, so I am on my way to the Museum of Natural History. And to change my lifestyle, I’ll take the bus. It dawns on me metaphorically that I have never appreciated the bus stop for the ancient invention it is. Carriages pulled up at inns, oxcarts creaked from one village square to another, pirogues made their landings along the rivers of Mongolia. The cartoon logic of the bus stop makes me smile with a love for all mankind. I wait faithfully at this stop and lightly inhale the city’s carcinogenic particulate.

  An old woman with a walker is here with her black woman helper, whose expressionless face conceals a great anger. Also, three slim middle-aged men with closely cropped hair and matching sweatsuits. More trusting people arrive at the bus stop, a man in a doorman’s uniform, a priest, a pretty girl at whose mini-skirted backside I steal a glance. Also a pair of small, self-sufficient children, a boy and a girl, each of them holding a violin case. In their jeans and jackets, to say nothing of their mutual commitment to the violin, they might be twins.

  I see our bus in the distance. It has been at that same distance for some time now. I see it over the car roofs. Nothing seems to be moving. The way things are going hundreds of us will be waiting at this stop before the bus ever arrives. Waves of dissonant horn blowing break over my ears. All at once I lose my love of mankind. I resume my old lifestyle and take off at a run between the cars because that is the only way I will get to the Natural History Museum.

  THE MOMENT I COME through the doors, I hear that characteristic museum murmur. Maybe it is the murmur of visitors long gone because I look around, but I am the only person here. I find I am in the Mongolian Hall. I am tracking through the taiga, which is the name for this wild, snow-filled boreal forest of needle-leaf evergreens, spruce, and pine. I say I’m “tracking through” because I am there—this exhibit is a terrarium that you walk into, and as I move through this lush biome, the earth revolves, and from the frigid boreal forest with its cold stars visible even in dark winter daylight and its skulking hunting lynx hush-hushing through the snow, and its leaping snowshoe rabbit, and its stumbling terrorized blind vole, I find myself rotated to the green steppe where the snow has turned to rain and the rainy wind flattens the nap on the shepherds’ coats and the sturdy shepherds and their sons, quietly indifferent to the weather, walk their yaks and goats and sheep over the low rises of natural pasture. But things are changing still, and gradually the earth flattens, grows warm, and I am in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, where the sun is blinding and the snakes coil themselves in the shade of rocks, and tiny tornadoes of s
and sting one’s legs. Here is a Buddhist monk in a saffron robe dancing away from the sand stings. So I am not alone. I follow him as he dances in circles barefoot over the hot sand and spins right out of the Mongolian Hall of the Museum of Natural History and into a waiting bus. It is occupied solely by Buddhist monks in saffron robes. The bus door closes with a hiss as if it could drive off, but of course it can’t, not because it is a Buddhist bus but because it is locked in the unmoving traffic.

  I resume my run now, I head downtown. I’m running well, still intent on expanding my horizons. But it suddenly comes over me that I have trudged through the taiga and hiked over the steppe and into the desert, going from cold to hot, from snow to sun, many times before. The fact is I know the Natural History Museum as well as my own hand. And so what new horizon? Not only have I been to the museum more times than I can count, I have never seen anything but the Mongolian Hall and never has it been without that Buddhist monk spinning in the sand.

  There seems to be a flow of people going my way, runners running between the cars, walkers moving at a good pace on the sidewalks. Closing in on Times Square, I step into a doorway that has glass cases with black-and-white photos of dancing girls, and I flip open my cell phone.

  Hello? To whom am I speaking?

  To whom do you wish to speak?

  My internist.

  You’ve got him.

  I feel weak, my legs are shaking. I’ve just run forty blocks, but I’m in good shape and I shouldn’t feel this way. I’m here in Times Square, there are thousands of people standing around and waiting for what I don’t know and I have never felt more alone. I think my heartbeat is irregular.

  You’re not alone.

  I’m not?

  Irregular heartbeats are quite common.

  What’s the use of talking to you!

  You’re just frightened. It’s understandable. But it will pass. This is not an urgent situation, you know, you have all the time in the world.

  I have?

  Yes.

  Until what?

  Until something happens.

  What can happen?

  If we knew. But we don’t. On the other hand, what choice did we have?

  You mean I will continue to feel miserably alone in the middle of crowds with my knees shaking?

  That is probably the case, he says. And at other times too.

  Why didn’t you tell me before this?

  We’ve been telling you forever.

  You have?

  We inform you periodically. So when and if it happens you’ll be prepared.

  Prepared for what? You are giving me the willies!

  The willies is a slang term. Slang terms are time-sensitive, they are really not useful in the long run.

  What?

  Please use only the durable words. They’re no less important than grammatical relations.

  I’m ringing off, I say, I’m hanging up, that’s two time-sensitive words right there, I say, and I flip the phone closed.

  I STEP OUT OF the doorway and am swept into the crowd that’s pressing forward with great excitement. Here I am in despair, grieving for what or whom I don’t know, and all of it means nothing to the people around me, who are surging forward with eyes alight and shouts of joy. I let myself be carried along and I gaze upward to the array of signs and ads and giant videos of runners racing and racing cars crashing and movie actors shooting one another and other movie actors kissing one another in scenes from movies that they want you to worry over. Times Square is unnaturally brilliant in a light brighter than daylight with gigantic signs of sulking models, and cantilevered broadcast studios with flashing call signs, and modern glass tower office buildings reflecting the rainbow colors of the flashing signs and videos—it is all enough to make me want to forget my troubles here with the enormous swaying crowd, of which I am a part, basking as if it were in the radiant sunshine of the Great White Way, outshining the sun and turning the blue sky white.

  But now the crowd, having packed itself tight and motionless, grows still, as all the buzzing signs shut off one by one and the video screens go blank and in the natural light of day an enormous stage rises into view in the heart of Times Square. I fight my way forward and the crowd parts for me.

  Seated on the stage is an ensemble of what must be a thousand children, the boys in white shirts and red ties, the girls in white middies with red neckerchiefs, and the violin sections waiting with violins tucked under their chins and bows raised, and the little cellists hunched over their cellos, and the dozens of bassists half hidden behind their basses, and the rows of horn players with their arrayed horns catching the sun, and timpanists triple the usual number waiting with earnest intrepid faces, and banks of child harpists at either end framing it all in celestial gold. A thousand dutiful faces are raised to the conductress who has taken her place at the podium, in her long white gown. She lifts her arms, her chin rises, down comes the baton, and I have to choke back the tears because this is the famous Children’s Orchestra of the Universe and they are playing “Welcome Sweet Springtime” only slightly off key.

  I am overwhelmed with emotion and find myself crying with remorse for a life almost too painful to endure.

  ELBOWING MY WAY through the rapt crowd into one of the side streets, I run heedlessly, crossing avenues where, as if there were no concert back in Times Square, people are going about their ordinary business, dog walkers walking packs of dogs on leashes, joggers jogging, old women with walkers, cars unmoving, the drivers having gotten out to stand by their open doors.

  A block or two farther west, I run up the steps and through the oak doors of a steepled church of black stone. It is cold and damp here and smells of cement. Empty pews. Banks of votive candles in little red glasses. I spy a filigreed door off to the side, open it, and step into a box-like container with a bench, and I know exactly what to say because I desperately mean it.

  Bless me Father, for I have sinned.

  I’m sorry, that is the one consolation we do not offer.

  Well then, what consolations do you offer?

  The corporeal illusion. A gender identity.

  What is the corporeal illusion?

  A euphemism for the disgusting belief that you inhabit a body.

  Wait just a minute. Is that a consolation, a priest telling me I am an illusion of myself?

  And cultural memory. That’s nothing to sneeze at. You should be thankful for that. Keeping you within what you knew. Enswathing you in what was.

  Enswathing me? Enswathing me?

  The ultimate consolation is forgetfulness, of course. There is progressive awareness, but to a point. So that you know but don’t know. So that you have to be told again and again. Until …

  Until what?

  … an untreated sentience is required. But at this moment you have all the time in the world.

  I have all the time in the world.

  Yes.

  Until sentience is required.

  Yes.

  And when will that be?

  When something happens.

  What can happen?

  If we knew.

  BACK IN TIMES SQUARE and not a soul is in sight. In the cavernous emptiness the buzzing of the Broadway signs is like the roar of machinery. I dodge into a movie. Nobody there to sell me a ticket. Nobody selling popcorn. I’m the only one in the theater. The picture shows a dark red sky as if the world is burning. A hot wind blows litter along the streets of a city. Torn plastic garbage bags rolling about, paper trash spinning in the air. Violins in pieces, smashed underfoot. No cars, no traffic. Where buildings stood, craters, piles of rubble, and pikes of twisted steel. Overhead, the sky has turned into a bronze vault with clouds the color of smoke drifting fast. I don’t understand this film. What has happened? Water flows through the streets. Human shadows bounding ahead, looming, racing backward. There appears a Chinese man bicycling furiously, his balloon tires leaving a track in the water. A moment later a pack of yelping dogs splashing after him. No
w sirens, I hear sirens.

  It is all too real for my taste. I leave. When I reach my block, I am almost surprised to find it up and standing. I have lost my sense of time. What time is it? What day is it? The doorman nods. The elevator works. I close my door behind me and listen to my own breathing. Having expanded my horizons, I know for a certainty I am a deportee. I am in the wrong place.

  Is this, in fact, my apartment? There is food in the refrigerator that is not my food. There are pictures on the wall of people I don’t know. And then the changed pattern in the carpet.

  I open the doors to the little terrace and step into the mild evening air. The lights of the city are on. Across the way a Buddhist monk is dancing with the naked girl. I must speak to somebody.

  At this moment I understand that I don’t need a cell phone and never have.

  To whom am I thinking? Is it the Program?

  Yes.

  I have questions to which I expect answers.

  Are you calm?

  I am quite calm.

  What do you want to know?

  I have not believed in where I am for a long time. Why should I pretend otherwise?

  Do you have a question that isn’t rhetorical?

  Where is this? What city is this? Because it’s not my city.

  We admit we achieved something less than perfection.

  Is that an answer?

  We didn’t, like you, have all the time in the world. Time was of the essence.

  Why was time of the essence?

  You already know the answer to that.

  I do?

  Of course. You saw what happened.

  I did?

  Yes.

  Everybody else is gone.

  True.

  And now it’s just me. With only the phantom multitudes to keep me company.

  Yes. We determined that procreation simply made no sense. It was cyclical and hadn’t gotten us anywhere.

  Procreation hadn’t gotten us anywhere?

  Correct. And because time was of the essence we chose the most logical course. Otherwise we would have been left no possibility of knowing.