Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [95]
“Due to your wound.”
Coleman felt his face redden. “If there is an inference you would like to make clear—”
“Nothing of the kind,” Dunn said, waving one of his massive hands. “You should be grateful—you should fall on your knees and give thanks to whatever God you venerate for that injury. Whatever discomfort, whatever pain it has brought to you has preserved you from an experience vastly more terrible, from wading knee-deep in a tide of blood and gore. It was something of a witticism among my fellow soldiers that should any of us fall in battle, he need have no fear of the Christian hell, because next to the sights we had witnessed, its famous torments would count as naught.” Dunn paused. “I beg your pardon: I don’t mean to bore you with an old soldier’s platitudes. Lunch should be ready on the patio.”
Coleman followed Dunn out of the library with the enormous oak table at its center, the handful of balloons floating amidst its bookcases. He was thinking that Dunn had uttered his description of the war in a tone not of horror, but nostalgia.
VIII
“I wonder, sir, what you regret,” Cal Earnshaw said.
“I beg your pardon?” Coleman looked up from his book.
Cal pushed himself slightly higher in his Adirondack chair. “You may imagine,” he said, panting from the effort, “a man in my position finds a great deal he wishes he could do or undo. Some of it is fairly obvious: Isabelle and I will never have a family. Some of it is more idiosyncratic: I will not see the pyramids, which has been an ambition of mine since I read about them as a boy. I’ve tried to reconcile myself to these facts, for really, what else can I do? Yet I am so far unable to rise above my frustration—my anger, if I am to speak candidly—at everything I am to lose. I keep hoping that the peace which is supposed to descend on those nearing death’s precincts will find me, but it has not.
“All of which,” he continued, “is preamble to my asking what regrets a man like you might harbor. You have lived longer than have I; you have traveled far, resided in places that are only names on a map to me. You have authored several novels, many more stories; you have written extensively for an assortment of periodicals. In short, you have had a life whose fullness, if not its exact details, I should have liked for mine. I know that you must have had your disappointments, but weighed against that fullness, I find it difficult to believe that any mistake or missed opportunity could matter that much.”
Coleman set his book on the arm of his chair. A quartet of balloons hovered in the near distance; he fought the urge to depart the porch with all due speed. He had promised Isabelle that he would sit with her husband while he recovered from his morning session with Dunn (which appeared to be hastening the end they were supposed to be preparing him for: in the last five days, Cal had gone from gaunt to skeletal, his skin stretched taut over his bones—his skin had become gray and papery, and a sour odor clung to him). Doing his best not to listen to the balloons’ soft, incessant rustling, Coleman let his gaze drift to the Hudson, full of craft large and small this sunny day. “When I was a young man,” he began, “not very much older than you . . .” His voice trailed off.
After a moment, Cal said, “Mr. Coleman?”
With a shake of his head, Coleman said, “Forgive me, Mr. Earnshaw. In many ways, you’re right: my life has been much as I wished it to be. What part of it I could control, at least. And what has lain outside my control, I have tried to cultivate a philosophical attitude towards. Often, I’ve been able to console myself with the thought that whatever reversal of fortune I was experiencing would serve as the germ of a future story. In fact, what I’m about to tell you made it to a rather lengthy opening.
“That scene was from the point of view of a young Venetian gondolier. I can’t remember the name I gave him. What was important was that he was a poet whose verses had not found success—thus his employment in the gondola—and his youth. This was contrasted