Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [154]
Homer’s Achilles fought bravely for all time against the Trojans. The doctor was reading his story as he did each year since college, touching his wedding ring and with some difficulty, because his digits appeared to have swollen a bit, turning it slowly around and around on his finger. His heart raced as he closed his eyes and imagined the battlefield, the plain of Troy, and eventually his heart slowed a bit and he reached for his notebook and made an entry, and then set that book down.
Homer, this season, he thought to himself. And next would come Shakespeare again. Oh, he had plans, he had plans. Thinking ahead he pictured Hamlet, filled with ghosts and wisps and woes and worries, and swords. And then, a comedy. He would read Midsummer Night’s, or All’s Well. But all was not well, he knew that, and he only hoped that he might read at least one more play before going to that undiscovered country so well put forward in the other play.
Oh, that this too solid flesh…
To be or not…
Once more into the breach…
As it turned out, that year he finished all he had planned to read and still remained alive on this earth, and so he took up the late plays, first A Winter’s Tale and then Pericles, marveling at the sweetness and fluency of the older Shakespeare.
And still he remained!
And so he went back to The Tempest, of his early education.
And then, as the seasons turned, Homer’s time came around again.
That was the volume on his lap on one of those early mornings, birdsong in the air even before the light made its way up out of the sea and across the fields and ponds to his house on the outskirts of the city as he was making an entry in his notebook—“…in the course of human freedom…” the fragment read—and his pen must have fallen from his fingers as caught in the ripple of pain in his chest he grasped himself to himself, and all the possibility of morning light fell away.
A knock at the door returned him to this world.
He mustered all his strength and called for the visitor to enter.
“What a surprise! Come sit…”
The doctor patted the place on the sofa next to where he sat, and Liza, after hesitating a moment, placed herself next to him. She felt awkward, no doubt, in her plain dress, dust on her bare legs, the faintest whiff of horse still clinging to her because of the ride on the bench of the carriage.
“How have you been, my dear?” He cleared his throat, and found his normal voice.
“Been fine,” Liza said.
“No trouble out there…” He dipped his head vaguely in the direction of the plantation. But here, in his house, he might easily have been gesturing toward the river to the north, or to the sand dune islands that bordered on the ocean. This close to the water the breeze sometimes blew in off the water, sometimes it blew out from the farmland west of the city. The doctor had begun to savor these small incidents of life, the daily round of street noises and gulls calling, those visiting breezes, and surprise visitors such as this.
“I am sorry I have not visited…”
“Pay no mind, sir,” Liza said.
“I miss making my rounds…”
“Yes, sir…”
“So many years on my feet, bending toward my patients, trying to comfort them through all the worst…these past few months I have missed it terribly…”
“We have missed you, sir,” Liza said.
“And all’s well? I know I am repeating myself.”
Liza did not hesitate.
“Yes, sir, all is well.”
“You have no problems?”
“No, sir.”
What could she say that he did not know? What good would it have done to have said anything at all? This peaceful room, the breezes blowing through it, the serenity of the moment.
“Would you like some tea?”
“I will make it, sir,” Liza said.
“Would you? It is some ordeal now for me to get up. I have a woman who cooks for me and such. She is out at the market at this moment.”
“I will be happy to, sir,” Liza said.
While she prepared the tea, he talked much more openly than he had ever