Ray Bradbury - We’ll Always Have Paris

‘No, no, silly. I didn’t know what I was saying.’

‘Sit down, please. I’m William Robinson. Bill to you, I guess. Black or white?’

‘Black.’ And she watched him pour.

‘How did you find me?’ he said, handing the cup over.

She took it with trembling fingers. ‘I know some people at the hospital. They did some checking.’

‘They shouldn’t have.’

‘Yes, I know. But I kept at them. You see, I’m going away to live in France for a year, maybe more. This was my last chance to visit my – I mean—’

She lapsed into silence and stared into the coffee cup.

‘So they put two and two together, even though the files were supposed to be locked?’ he said quietly.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It all came together. The night my son died was the same night you were brought into the hospital for a heart transplant. It had to be you. There was no other operation like that that night or that week. I knew that when you left the hospital, my son, his heart anyway’ – she had difficulty saying it – ‘went with you.’ She put down the coffee cup.

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ she said.

‘Yes, you do,’ he said.

‘Not really, I don’t. It’s all so strange and sad and terrible and at the same time, I don’t know, God’s gift. Does that make any sense?’

‘To me it does. I’m alive because of the gift.’

Now it was his turn to fall silent, pour himself coffee, stir it and drink.

‘When you leave here,’ said the young man, ‘where will you go?’

‘Go?’ said the woman uncertainly.

‘I mean—’ The young man winced with his own lack of ease. The words simply would not come. ‘I mean, have you other visits to make? Are there other—’

‘I see.’ The woman nodded several times, took hold of herself with a motion of her body, looking at her hands in her lap, and at last shrugged. ‘Yes, there are others. My son, his vision was given to someone in Oregon. There is someone else in Tucson—’

‘You don’t have to continue,’ said the young man. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘No, no. It is all so strange, so ridiculous. It is all so new. Just a few years ago, nothing like this could have happened. Now we’re in a new time. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes I start one and then do the other. I wake up confused. I often wonder if he is confused. But that’s even sillier. He is nowhere.’

‘He is somewhere,’ said the young man. ‘He is here. And I’m alive because he is here at this very moment.’ The woman’s eyes grew very bright, but no tears fell.

‘Yes. Thank you for that.’

‘No, I thank him, and you for allowing me to live.’

The woman jumped up suddenly, as if propelled by an emotion stronger than she knew. She looked around for the perfectly obvious door and seemed not to see it.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I—’ she said.

‘You just got here!’

‘This is stupid!’ she cried. ‘Embarrassing. I’m putting too much of a burden on you, on myself. I’m going now before it all gets so ludicrous I go mad—’

‘Stay,’ said the young man.

Obedient to the command, she almost sat down.

‘Finish your coffee.’

She remained standing, but picked up her coffee cup with shaking hands. The soft rattle of the cup was the only sound for a time as she slaked the coffee with some unquenchable thirst. Then she put the empty cup down and said: ‘I really must go. I feel faint. I feel I might fall down. I am so embarrassed with myself, with coming here. God bless you, young man, and may you have a long life.’

She started toward the door, but he stood in her way.

‘Do what you came to do,’ he said.

‘What, what?’

‘You know. You know very well. I won’t mind it. Do it.’

‘I—’

‘Go on,’ he said gently, and shut his eyes, his hands at his side, waiting.

She stared into his face and then at his chest, where under his shirt there seemed the gentlest stirring.

‘Now,’ he said quietly.

She almost moved.

‘Now,’ he said, for a final time.

She took one step forward. She turned her head and quietly moved her right ear down and then again down, inch by inch, until it touched the young man’s chest.

She might have cried out, but did not. She might have exclaimed something, but did not. Her eyes were also shut now and she was listening. Her lips moved, saying something, perhaps a name, over and over, almost to the rhythm of the pulse she heard under the shirt, under the flesh, within the body of the patient young man.

The heart was beating there.

She listened.

The heart beat with a steady and regular sound.

She listened for a long while. Her breath slowly drained out of her, as color came into her cheeks.

She listened.

The heart beat.

Then she raised her head, looked at the young man’s face for a final time, and very swiftly touched her lips to his cheek, turned, and hurried across the room, with no thanks, for none was needed. At the door she did not even turn around but opened it and went out and closed the door softly.

The young man waited for a long moment. His right hand came up and slid across his shirt, across his chest to feel what lay underneath. His eyes were still shut and his face emotionless.

Then he turned and sat down without looking where he sat and picked up his coffee cup to finish his coffee.

The strong pulse, the great vibration of the life within his chest, traveled along his arm and into the cup and caused it to pulse in a steady rhythm, unending, as he placed it against his lips, and drank the coffee as if it were a medicine, a gift, that would refill the cup again and again through more days than he could possibly guess or see. He drained the cup.

Only then did he open his eyes and see that the room was empty.

It was getting late, but he thought there was just enough sunlight left that he could play a quick nine holes before he had to stop.

But even as he drove toward the golf course twilight came. A high fog had drifted in from the ocean, erasing the light.

He was about to turn away when something caught his eye.

Gazing out at the far meadows, he saw a half dozen or so golfers playing in the shadowed fields.

The players were not in foursomes, but walked singly, carrying their clubs across the grass, moving under the trees.

How strange, he thought. And, instead of leaving, he drove into the lot behind the clubhouse and got out.

Something made him go stand and watch a few men at the driving range, clubbing the golf balls to send them sailing out into the twilight.

But still those lone strollers far out on the fairway made him immensely curious; there was a certain melancholy to the scene.

Almost without thinking, he picked up his bag and carried his golf clubs out to the first tee, where three old men stood as if waiting for him.

Old men, he thought. Well no, not exactly old, but he was only thirty and they were well on into turning gray.

When he arrived they gazed at his suntanned face and his sharp clear eyes.

One of the aging men said hello.

‘What’s going on?’ said the young man, though he wondered why he asked it that way.

He studied the fields and the single golfers moving away in the shadows.

‘I mean,’ he said, nodding toward the fairway, ‘you’d think they’d be heading in. In ten minutes they won’t be able to see.’

‘They’ll see, all right,’ said one of the older men. ‘Fact is, we’re going out. We like the late hour, it’s a chance to be alone and think about things. So we’ll start off in a group and then go our separate ways.’