Toward the end I was ready for brass tacks. Viz, how much was this going to cost? Had to be something. In the meantime, the flight was almost over. It had been a long, long while. Now and then they had to interrupt with an announcement, as airplanes and their pilots will tend to do. Look up and observe the frosted rectangles at the top of our flight, we were told; yes, there they were, with the light glowing from behind them. Now and then a black man would make himself known to me; a pair of them, really. He, or they, wanted me to know who was calling the shots, that they had their special background and experience for portrayals of Prince Orlofsky in Fledermaus, Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier. All right, nothing to worry about. Opera’s an international tradition.
“Squeeze my hand,” a woman said. “Squeeze it.” Did it hurt? No. Did anything hurt? No. “Squeeze my hand,” she said again.
A night full of rain, like the old Lina Wertmuller film. As long as the rain fell, the flight could go on. The heavens would keep on with the glug-glug-glug and we’d be discussing issues.
“Squeeze my hand,” she said.
Attention to the lit panels again. The two black men and Orlofsky. The bridge and its lights sitting a long, silent way off, set against the mute world of a winter night that has a ways to go before it’s done. The lights—red, blue, green, all miniaturized and tiny—continued to circulate in their doggedly evocative way. I had to smile: I knew what music they were playing to and it was the Coke song (“I’d like to teach the world,” etc.)
“Squeeze my hand,” she said.
The plane was landing. We’d run out of rain, run out of flight; people gathered their luggage. We were on the ground now.
I sat up straight. Brass tacks. “How much is this going to cost me?” I said.
“Does it hurt anywhere?” the nurse asked. “Do you feel any pain?”
I did not. “Is this Canada or America?” I asked. I’m a citizen of both places, but only one will bankrupt you.
But the nurse and a young man in a white lab coat were talking to each other in French. Thank God—Canada.
“Mr. May,” the nurse said. “You’re awake.” I was, and in the right country.
My brother came into the room. He’d been crying.
I don’t know why my kidneys stopped or why I needed a machine to do my breathing. But I spent two weeks with tubes down my throat and my consciousness turned off like a light bulb, and now I’m alive instead of dead and it’s because of Canada. I’ll listen to the bridge sing or the black man being dogmatic about Prince Orlofsky. I’ll listen to the rain and look at the frosted panes, and I’ll remember that I’m the luckiest guy on earth.
