aware that I was entering another region, another geographic zone, unexpectedly cool, with the air so thin that I was filled with a false euphoria, though I knew that this signaled the advent of something horrible.
13
I needed a rest. I informed my office and the hospital that I would be taking a long vacation. Nobody wanted to point out to me that I could have retired years ago; but I knew what they were thinking: a man like me, so reserved and unsociable, married to a woman no more outgoing, needed his work to feel alive. Retiring is almost redundant for a man like me. Besides, Iâm still an excellent surgeon.
Those mornings, I examined myself in the mirror as I shaved, something that I had not done before; I had always shaved mechanically, without really looking at myself. Now I seemed to be seeing myself for the first time with a clarity brought about by my feeling of abandonment, a feeling that might be Constanciaâs way of punishing me for having dared to violate the secret of her friend, Mr. Plotnikov, her friend before I knew her, if the photo in the Spanish room could be believed.
I looked at the old man in the mirror who was finally seeing himself as others saw him. The old man was me.
How often we refuse to recognize the advent of old age, putting off what is not only inevitable but also obvious; with how many lies we reject what others can see perfectly well: these eyelids permanently sagging, the dry, bloodshot eyes, the thinning, graying hair that no longer can even feign a youthful virile balding, the involuntary rictus of disgust with oneself; what has become of me, my neck was never flabby, my cheeks were not covered with a web of veins, my nose didnât used to hang this way. Was I young once?
Was I once Dr. Whitby Hull, native of Atlanta, Georgia, student of medicine at Emory, soldier in the invasion of Sicily and the Italian boot, student at the University of Seville, on the G.I. Bill, husband of a Spanish woman, resident of Savannah on the shores of the Atlantic after my return, surgeon, man of letters, passionate man, secretive man, guilty man? Old man. A man surrounded by mysteries, things he canât understand, trying to see across the ocean to the other shore through a bathroom mirror that repeats its accusation: Old man; trying to look past the steam on the glass to the other side of the Atlantic, a razor in my hand.
Was I once a young Southern doctor doing postgraduate work in Seville? A young man, twenty-eight, with black hair, a strong jaw, tanned and toughened by the campaign in Italy, but revealing his background (his weakness, perhaps) by his baggy blue pinstripe seersucker suit, its pockets stretched out of shape by what I imagined a good American took to Europe in the postwar years: sweets, chocolates, cigarettes. I ended up eating them or smoking them myself. I never even managed to offer them to the Andalusians; the look on their faces stopped me.
As I shaved in front of my mirror, looking at an old face but picturing it young, I felt that I wanted to go back there. The key, if not to the mystery, at least to my life with Constancia, had to be there, in her native country, in the period after the war. A Southerner, a reader of Washington Irving and the Tales of the Alhambra, I decided to go to Andalusia. Thatâs where I met Constancia, when she was twenty and I was twenty-nine or thirty. Thatâs where we fell in love. What did she have when I met her? Nothing. She served tables in a café. She had no family. They had all died in the war, the wars. She lived alone. She tended her room. She went to Mass every day. Was it chance that I met her in the middle of the plaza of El Salvador, sitting with her face to the sun, sunning herself, legs stretched out in front of her on the hot paving stonesânot looking up at me. Why did I feel so attracted to this unusual creature? Was she a symbol of Andalusian youth, this woman sitting in the street, facing the sun
13
I needed a rest. I informed my office and the hospital that I would be taking a long vacation. Nobody wanted to point out to me that I could have retired years ago; but I knew what they were thinking: a man like me, so reserved and unsociable, married to a woman no more outgoing, needed his work to feel alive. Retiring is almost redundant for a man like me. Besides, Iâm still an excellent surgeon.
Those mornings, I examined myself in the mirror as I shaved, something that I had not done before; I had always shaved mechanically, without really looking at myself. Now I seemed to be seeing myself for the first time with a clarity brought about by my feeling of abandonment, a feeling that might be Constanciaâs way of punishing me for having dared to violate the secret of her friend, Mr. Plotnikov, her friend before I knew her, if the photo in the Spanish room could be believed.
I looked at the old man in the mirror who was finally seeing himself as others saw him. The old man was me.
How often we refuse to recognize the advent of old age, putting off what is not only inevitable but also obvious; with how many lies we reject what others can see perfectly well: these eyelids permanently sagging, the dry, bloodshot eyes, the thinning, graying hair that no longer can even feign a youthful virile balding, the involuntary rictus of disgust with oneself; what has become of me, my neck was never flabby, my cheeks were not covered with a web of veins, my nose didnât used to hang this way. Was I young once?
Was I once Dr. Whitby Hull, native of Atlanta, Georgia, student of medicine at Emory, soldier in the invasion of Sicily and the Italian boot, student at the University of Seville, on the G.I. Bill, husband of a Spanish woman, resident of Savannah on the shores of the Atlantic after my return, surgeon, man of letters, passionate man, secretive man, guilty man? Old man. A man surrounded by mysteries, things he canât understand, trying to see across the ocean to the other shore through a bathroom mirror that repeats its accusation: Old man; trying to look past the steam on the glass to the other side of the Atlantic, a razor in my hand.
Was I once a young Southern doctor doing postgraduate work in Seville? A young man, twenty-eight, with black hair, a strong jaw, tanned and toughened by the campaign in Italy, but revealing his background (his weakness, perhaps) by his baggy blue pinstripe seersucker suit, its pockets stretched out of shape by what I imagined a good American took to Europe in the postwar years: sweets, chocolates, cigarettes. I ended up eating them or smoking them myself. I never even managed to offer them to the Andalusians; the look on their faces stopped me.
As I shaved in front of my mirror, looking at an old face but picturing it young, I felt that I wanted to go back there. The key, if not to the mystery, at least to my life with Constancia, had to be there, in her native country, in the period after the war. A Southerner, a reader of Washington Irving and the Tales of the Alhambra, I decided to go to Andalusia. Thatâs where I met Constancia, when she was twenty and I was twenty-nine or thirty. Thatâs where we fell in love. What did she have when I met her? Nothing. She served tables in a café. She had no family. They had all died in the war, the wars. She lived alone. She tended her room. She went to Mass every day. Was it chance that I met her in the middle of the plaza of El Salvador, sitting with her face to the sun, sunning herself, legs stretched out in front of her on the hot paving stonesânot looking up at me. Why did I feel so attracted to this unusual creature? Was she a symbol of Andalusian youth, this woman sitting in the street, facing the sun
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