They were playing That Was the Night When the Lights Went Out in Georgia. They were playing Bach: Ich Hatte Viel Bekuemmerniss. In the matter of the Irish thing. Do you sometimes wish it was me. Always. Pause.
So it is to be another Christmas, then, and another New Year’s on my own. Well, it is all right. I have grown used to it, have come almost to prefer it. Those days for most adults, it is generally acknowledged, and perhaps for all but the fewest children are so grim. Along with birthdays and of course Thanksgiving, only worse. Why observe them, then, unless one is for the sake of the children, or the office, or someone else’s sake, obliged to. Well, no reason. I remember the years when I used to go, on New Year’s Eve, to the gatherings of that dwindling, aging group of German refugee intellectuals. They drank a little wine, and they ate nuts and those little open sandwiches with anchovy paste or radishes, and like everyone else in the Western world they were looking at the clock. Those occasions were entirely in German, and one year, after several years, Professor Hans Ehrlich turned to me and said, Kate, I didn’t realize you understood German. He said it in German of course, and since I could not recall having spoken a word of English at New Year’s in that room, I was still taking in that word “understood,” when Grete said, Yes, and isn’t it a shame; she used to speak it. Only then did I realize that they were hardly aware that all their conversation, when they were among themselves, was in their native language; and that my command of the language, though still easy and fluent, was becoming more overgrown with error over the years. Over the years, too, I became more and more confirmed in a sort of superstition: that I needed to be in bed, and sound asleep, before midnight on December thirty-first. So I would look at my watch, and at about ten-thirty I would say, I must go home now; you see, I have this silly superstition. And every time, every single time, whoever I was talking to would become, visibly, distrustful. What kind of fool do you take me for, they (too) were much too polite to say; you are younger than we, you are going to meet somebody else, you have something better to do at midnight. And I, I of course could never say, If I had something better to do, if there were something better, why would I have come? Well, but Christmas. This year, as in the years going back some time now, I guess I’ll not join somebody’s Christmas, either some other family’s or that group of strays, situated rather as I am, who now travel together to spend their time in New Delhi or at Vail. From the fact that I seem to have that choice, it is clear that I am not at all one of the neediest cases — though, for years, long ago, I may have been, in at least the sense that I had no friends. No, here I am, not friendless, and the choice is mine. Why mention it, then, why allude to it at all. Because it would be part of what I know, part of what I have to tell, that I understand something, not everything, but something, of what it is to be alone. In this way. And that there must be others who are and have always been alone. In this way.
Those for whom there was, first dimly, then more bright, then dimly again, a possibility. Which, though dimly, perhaps still exists, but which they know, have somehow always known, would never come to anything. They were never, how can I put this, going to be a part of life. It is as though, going through a landscape, through the seasons, in the same general direction as everybody else, they never quite made it to the road. Through the years, humanity, like a tide of refugees or pilgrims, shoeless and in rags, or in Mercedes, station wagons, running shoes, were traveling on, joined by others, falling by the way. And we, joined though we may be, briefly, by other strays, or by road travelers on their little detours, nonetheless never quite joined the continuing procession, of life and birth, never quite found or made it to the road. Whose voice is this? Not here. Not mine.
But in London, no, what happened first is that we arrived, one night, at Heathrow. It was my third flight, that fall and winter, standby, New York/London. A day flight. And on the plane, I met Anne and Matthew, friends whom I had not seen in years, since the day they married. Anne had just been in the hospital; so had I. They were returning to England, where they live. That night, as Anne and I were waiting for Matthew to bring their car from the parking lot, we saw two military men, Americans, climb into the back of a large black limousine. When Matthew drove up, and had put our suitcases in the trunk, the limousine still stood there, blocking our way. Suddenly, there were popping noises; and, out of both its front and back doors, arms extended, holding out frothing bottles of champagne. The arms withdrew; they were clearly celebrating in that limousine. More popping sounds, and again the military sleeves, the frothing bottles. We thought they must be welcoming some beloved officer. But then, Anne said, You don’t suppose they’ve freed Colonel Dozier? Not a chance, we all thought; we assumed he had been dead for months. But when Matthew turned on the car radio, it turned out to be true: Dozier freed from the Italian Red Guard. Well, who now remembers Colonel Dozier. But it seemed to us then, in the car, an omen, good in every way.
Can it be done on friendship? I don’t think so. On intelligence? No. On hope, on love, on fame, on trust, on family, memory, convictions. I don’t know. But if, one day, old, and propped against the pillows, or rocking in chairs together, holding hands perhaps, by the fireside; if, looking back on our lives, older now, looking back on our lives we could say, It was all right, looking back, even the things that looked like mistakes, even the apparent misfortunes at the time, they were not mistakes, they were only part of our lives till now. We have been lucky together. We are drinking, by the fireside, and thinking, why did we worry, what was that remorse. We are here still, and what happened, what we did was right. Then we will have done it. Look here. But can we live this way.