was beginning to drift, his feet hardly touched the floor. He was feverish, his tongue thick. He heard himself saying, ‘Let us go.’
Tiffany stood with his open hands out, as if to prevent Pietro from going anywhere. Pietro stooped down, swaying. The last slick brown dachshund coiled into his arm, like a little soft tire, pink tongue licking.
‘You can’t take that dog,’ said Tiffany, incredulous.
‘Just to the station, just for the ride?’ asked Pietro. He was tired now; tiredness was in each finger, each limb, in his body, in his head.
‘All right,’ said Tiffany. ‘God, you make things tough.’
Pietro moved out of the shop, dog and phonograph under either arm. Tiffany took the key from Pietro. ‘We’ll clean out the animals later,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ said Pietro, ‘for not doing it while I’m here.’
‘Ah, for God’s sake,’ said Tiffany.
Everyone was on the street, watching. Pietro shook his dog at them, like a man who has just won a battle and is holding up clenched hands in victory.
‘Good-bye, good-bye! I don’t know where I’m going but I’m on my way! This is a very sick man. But I’ll be back! Here I go!’ He laughed, and waved.
They climbed into the police car. He held the dog to one side, the phonograph on his lap. He cranked it and started it. The phonograph was playing ‘Tales from the Vienna Woods’ as the car drove away.
On either side of the Manger that night it was quiet at one A.M. and it was quiet at two A.M. and it was quiet at three A.M. and it was such a loud quietness at four A.M. that everyone blinked, sat up in bed, and listened.
Ray Bradbury
October 20, 1984
9:45–10:07
(On reading about a young actor’s death and his heart placed in another man’s body last night.)
She had called and there was to be a visit.
At first the young man had been reluctant, had said no, no thanks, he was sorry, he understood, but no.
But then when he heard her silence on the other end of the telephone, no sound at all, but the kind of grief which keeps to itself, he had waited a long while and then said, yes, all right, come over, but, please, don’t stay too long. This is a strange situation and I don’t know how to handle it.
Nor did she. Going to the young man’s apartment, she wondered what she would say and how she would react, and what he would say. She was terribly afraid of doing something so emotional that he would have to push her out of the apartment and slam the door.
For she didn’t know this young man at all. He was a total and complete stranger. They had never met and only yesterday she had found his name at last, after a desperate search through friends at a local hospital. And now, before it was too late, she simply had to visit a totally unknown person for the most peculiar reasons in all her life or, for that matter, in the lives of all mothers in the world since civilization began.
‘Please wait.’
She gave the cabdriver a twenty-dollar bill to ensure his being there should she come out sooner than she expected, and stood at the entrance to the apartment building for a long moment before she took a deep breath, opened the door, went in, and took the elevator up to the third floor.
She shut her eyes outside his door, and took another deep breath and knocked. There was no answer. With sudden panic, she knocked very hard. This time, at last, the door opened.
The young man, somewhere between twenty and twenty-four, looked timidly out at her and said, ‘You’re Mrs Hadley?’
‘You don’t look like him at all,’ she heard herself say. ‘I mean—’ She caught herself and flushed and almost turned to go away.
‘You didn’t really expect me to, did you?’
He opened the door wider and stepped aside. There was coffee waiting on a small table in the center of the apartment.
‘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
