And the infinite time that he and I had felt destined for us, together,
was determined now as ten days. They were not unhappy days. We talked to
each other as if all the years we had lived were stable behind our
comprehension of each other—and as if all the years ahead were ours to
share.
Only once, I spoke to him, of the little time remaining. I said: “I
understand better now, about the French aristos, who died serenely on
the guillotine. I don’t believe they suffered at the last. . . .
Relieved from all concern with the day after tomorrow—they were serene.
Kenneth felt like that, do you remember?”
He said, “Yes. . . . The only problem is whether one adds life to one’s
years or years to one’s life. . . . Or did you tell me that, concerning
something else, Pat?”
I said, “Concerning an Ex-wife, perhaps. . . . Noel, your hair is a
colour destined to shine in my soul.”
But he was thinking of Asiatic cities, where he would live his life—and
I let him talk, about the possibility of learning Chinese, in five
years.
“It is a five-year contract, Pat—with option of renewal for the same
length of time. When I come back—I may be forty-five years old.”
(In ten years, I shall be thirty-seven—and whatever I am spared—I
begged to be spared, meeting Noel next, when I am thirty-seven.)
Noel was still working on the “Times.” On one of his last days, there,
he went to Lakehurst, to do an aviation story. I wrote him a
letter—because I had written him always, when he was on an out-of-town
assignment. (We had agreed, that I was not to write him to Yokohama.
There would be no return-from-Yokohama, in which I would be concerned.
He was to write me only in the stories . . . that the “Times” would run,
about how the years went, in Asia.)