“I am,” Jules answered, and an idea began to form, so he said, “I was born there.”
“But you live here and are an American citizen?”
“For decades.”
This seemed strange to the doctor because Jules’ pronunciation was extremely French for someone who had lived for so long in America. But he wasn’t about to open the question. “Good. That makes it less complicated. We need to know who you are. Did you have identification while you are running, a license, credit cards? From what was described it seems unlikely that anything was stolen, although it does happen.”
“No, I had nothing.”
“Not a problem. The nurse will come in to get what she needs for properly admitting you and contacting your family. She’ll take care of the paperwork. Right away, we’ll need your Medicare and supplemental plan numbers. There are a lot of forms, which you’re certainly able enough to fill out, but you can do it verbally – she’ll have a computer. All you have to do is review and sign. When we return, we’ll do a neurological workup, and if necessary load you back into the MRI once again just to make sure that we’re not overlooking anything and to see if in this short time there’s been a change. Sometimes these procedures take a while to assimilate, especially when you find yourself suddenly in a new environment. Don’t fault yourself for not being quick.”
Jules smiled, because he was already quicker than he would have thought possible.
A LONG TIME BEFORE, he and Fran?ois had ridden almost the whole length of the Boul-Miche. Missing their stops, they engaged in discussion on the open platform at the back of one of the green-and-creme-colored buses that no longer ran beneath overarching trees as once, to the delight of many Parisians, they had. It was June, they were young, unknown, and full of energy. The diesel fumes on the Boul-Miche were actually sweet and so good for the trees that the canopy of thick, glossy leaves dappled the light as if the crowded avenue were under agitated water.
They were discussing the nature of paradox. Fran?ois told Jules that he had lately discovered that the last person to leave the ship is also the last person not to leave the ship. Fran?ois would ask his professors, point-blank, “What is paradox?” They knew, but were not quite able to define it, at least not easily, and they resorted to the dictionary, repeating that a paradox was, “an absurd proposition true on its face, or vice a versa.”
But for Fran?ois and Jules this was insufficient, even inaccurate, and they had agreed that a paradox was more the statement of two contradictory propositions, both of which, nevertheless, were true. That two contending propositions could be correct was for Jules rather easy to accept in that it was an almost ordinary facet of music, and part of what gave music its escape from worldly friction in its ability to embrace even the starkest contradictions.
So now, in a New York hospital bed, Jules understood. Paradox, the reconciliation of opposites within a theater greater than the world, within infinite time and infinite space, was the solution to his dilemma. He understood now that he could never leave Paris, and he would not. But he had to leave Paris, and he would. He had it. It was all locked up, and he was happy. But it was complicated, painful, and would take some doing.
He could die at any moment or he could live to a hundred, which was as it had always been of course, and was for most people. But now, for him, this common condition was as intensified as if he were dreaming or in a movie in which he was strapped to explosives and had to choose to cut either the red or the blue wire. How much easier it would be for heroes if all such contraptions followed a convention similar to the laws of traffic signals worldwide. The red light always means stop. But was it stop the bomb from going off, or stop, don’t cut the red wire?
Jules threw aside the thin blanket, swung his legs out, and left the bed, thinking that this or any movement might be the end – even opening the closet door or reaching to take his running clothes from the shelf, or bending to grasp his running shoes in his left hand. After he shed the hospital gown, he sat down and put on his shorts and shirt. He was afraid to lean forward to lace up his shoes, but he had no choice. Then he stood up and walked out of the room and down the hall. Fit people in running clothes do not excite the same suspicion in a hospital corridor as, say, a limping, drooping, slowly moving and unshaven old man whose behind is visible from the back of his gown as he pushes the IV stand to which he is tethered.
As Jules walked south on Amsterdam Avenue he was tempted to run but didn’t. He had no money, so he walked the three or four miles to the hotel. He was perfectly okay when he got to his room. Contrary to his recent practice of strict economy, he ordered from room service, and his dinner that night – as he watched a million lights blink on in the great palisades of buildings, both close by and at a distance – was consommé, a salad, and grapefruit juice. They even had Badoit. Although he didn’t know why, he thought it would be good to drink water in excess of his thirst.
Alone in his room, he had lost or was losing everything at a faster and faster clip. But he was unafraid, excited by the lights, the form of the room, even the form of the bottle of Badoit, and by masses of lights corruscating through the dusk, like stars. From his tower he looked out at dozens of spires lit in many colors as if they were the jeweled tops of Empire obelisks. Most comforting was the silence. You could hear neither the street below nor even the air that even on a calm day was undoubtedly whistling past the windows.
It was strange to have a bedroom higher up than the top of the Eiffel Tower, and to see great distances across which were scattered buildings lit in white like Christmas trees, the catenaries of bridges like necklaces of blue lights, and immense ships moving silently across the harbor, slow skaters bearing torches across black ice. But there was no breeze and there was no ground, and he ached for home. The value of all the great construction was nothing when weighed against ordinary things that were modest and humane. He thought not of the magnificent towers so terribly out of scale but of people: of Jacqueline, élodi, Cathérine when she was a child and as she was now, and Luc.