We flopped down on the ground and lay there, panting. The race was won and the house was there.
Finally we sat up and looked at one an9ther. Cynthia said, “You’re a sight. Let me clean you up.” She took a handkerchief out of her jacket pocket and scrubbed my face.
“Thanks,” I said when she was through. We got to our feet and walking side by side, sedately, as if we might have been invited guests, we went up to the house.
As we went through the gate we saw that a man was waiting for us at the door.
“I had feared,” he said, “that you might have changed your mind, that you weren’t coming.”
Cynthia said, “We are truly sorry. We were somewhat delayed.”
“It’s perfectly all right,” said the man. “Lunch just reached the table.”
He was a tall man, slender, dressed in dark slacks and a lighter jacket. He wore a white shirt, open at the throat. His face was deeply tanned, his hair was wavy white, and he wore a grizzled moustache, neat and closely clipped.
We went into the house, the three of us. The place was small, but furnished with a graciousness that would not have been expected. A sideboard stood against one wall and upon it sat a jug. A table stood in the center of the room, covered with a white cloth and set with silver and sparkling crystal. There were three places. There were paintings on the wall and a deep-pile carpet on the floor.
“Miss Lansing, please,” said our host, “if you will sit here. And Mr. Carson opposite you. Now we can begin. The soup’s still hot, I’m sure.”
There was no one else. There were just the three of us. And surely, I thought, someone other than our host must have prepared the luncheon, although there was no evidence of anyone who had, nor of a kitchen, either. But the thought was a fleeting one that passed away almost as soon as it had occurred, for it was the kind of thought that *1 did not fit in with this room or with the tables. -A| The soup was excellent, the salad crisp and green, the* ‘| chops were done to a perfect turn. The wine was a pur<&J delight. '7 ;'-;>! “It may interest you to know,” said our gracious hosf^j “that I have given some very close thought to the possibilK ‘4 ties of the suggestion you made, not entirely flippantly, 11 hope, the last time that we met. I find it a most intriguing , and amusing thing that it might be possible to package the experiences, not only of one’s self, but of other people. Think of the hoard we might then lay up against our later, lonely years when all old friends are gone and the opportunity for new experiences had withered. All we need to. J do then is to reach up to a shelf and take down a package | that we have bottled or preserved or whatever the phrase| might be, say from a hundred years ago, and uncorking it,) enjoy the same experience again, as sharp and fresh as the first time it had happened.”
I heard all this and was surprised, of course, but not as surprised as I should have been, somewhat after the fashion of a man who dreams a fantasy and knows even as he dreams it that it is a fantasy, but one that seems beyond his power to do anything about.
“I have tried to imagine,” said our host, “the various ingredients one might wish to compound in such a package. Beside the bare experience itself, the context of it, one might say, he should want to capture and hold all the
subsidiary factors which might serve as a background for it-the sound, the feel of wind and sun, the cloud floating in the sky, the color and the scent. For such a packaging, to give the desired results, must be as perfect as one can make it. It must have all those elements which would be valuable in invoking the total recall of some event that had taken place many years before. Would you not say so, Mr. Carson?”
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose I would.”
“I have wondered, too,” he went on, “by what criterion one should select the experiences to be packaged. Would it
be wise to pick only the joyful ones or should one mix in a few that are somewhat less than joyful? Perhaps it might be well to preserve a few that carried a keen embarrassment, if for no other reason than to remind one’s self to be humble.”
“I think,” said Cynthia, “that one should select a wide spectrum, being sure, of course, to lay in a large supply of the more satisfactory ones. If there should be no later urge to use some of the less satisfactory ones they could be safely left upon the shelf, untouched.”
“Now, do you know,” said our host, “that had been my thought exactly.”
It was all so fine and comfortable and friendly, so v’ery civilized. Even if it were not true, one wanted to believe it was; I found myself holding my breath, as if, by breathing, I might shatter an illusion.
“There is another thing one must take into consideration also,” he said. “Given such an ability, does one remain satisfied with the harvesting of experiences in the natural course of life or does one attempt to create experiences he has reason to believe may serve him in the future?”
“I believe,” I told him, “that it might be best to gather as one goes along, without making any special effort. It would seem more honest that way.”
“As an auxiliary to all of this,” he said, “I have found myself speculating upon a world in which no one ever grew up. I admit, of course, that it is a rather acrobatic feat of thinking, not entirely consistent, to leap from the one idea to the other. In a world where one was able to package his experiences, he merely would be able to relive at some future time the experiences of the past. But in a world of the eternally young he’d have no need of such packaging.
Each new day would bring the same freshness and the everlasting wonder inherent in the world of children. There
would be no realization of death and no fear born of the knowledge of the future. Life would be eternal and there’d
be no thought of change. One would exist in an everlasting matrix and while there would be little variation from one day to the next, one would not be aware of this and there’d be no boredom. But I think I may have dwelled upon this subject for too great a length of time. I have something here to show you. A recent acquisition.”
He rose from the table and strode over to the sideboard, picking up the jug. He brought it back and handed it to
Cynthia.
“It is a hydria,” he said. “A water jug. Sixth-century Athenian, a fine example of the black-figure style. The potter took the red clay and tamed it a little with an admixture of the yellow and filled out the engravings with a brilliant black glaze. If you’ll look down at the base of it, you’ll see | the potter’s mark.”
Cynthia twisted the jug about. “Here it is,” she said. “In translation,” said our host, “it reads ‘Nicosthenes made me.'”
She handed it across the table to me. It was heavier than I’d thought. Engraved upon its side, inlaid with the glaze, a stricken warrior lay, with his shield still strapped upon his arm, grasping his spear, butt upon the ground, with the blade pointed upward. Twirling the jug, another figure came into view-another warrior leaning dejectedly upon his shield, with his broken spear trailing on the ground. You could see that he was tired and beaten; fatigue and defeat were etched into every line of him. “Athenian, you say?” He nodded. “It was a most lucky find. A prime example of the best of Greek ceramics of the period. You will notice that the figures are stylized. The potters of those days never thought of realistic accuracy. They were concerned with ornament, not with form.”
He took the jug from me and put it back upon the sideboard.
“I fear,” said Cynthia, “that we must leave. It is getting late. It was a lovely lunch.”
It all had been strange before, although quite comfortable, but now the strangeness deepened and reality got foggy and I do not recall much more until we were out the door and going through the gate of the picket fence.
Then the reality came back again and I spun around. The house was there, but it was more weather-beaten, more ruined than it had seemed. The door stood half open, swinging in the gale that swept the hilltop and the ridgepole sagged to give it a swayback look. Panes of glass were broken from the windows. There was no picket fence or roses, no blooming tree beside the door. . “We’ve been had,” I said. *; Cynthia gasped. “It was so real,” she said.