Alexis Levitin Fading

Fading

James awoke one morning and could not remember the name of the love of his

life. He could remember the lovely wave of her shoulder-length, ash blond hair, the

nobility of her posture, the elegance of her slender, tapered fingers, the fullness of

her lips, often on the edge of laughter. But her name was gone. He felt a nausea as

he wrestled with the filing cabinet, rusted shut in his aging brain.

He felt as if part of his memory were being sucked down, as if into quicksand.

Of course, he had been forgetting words for some time, especially names. Names of

places, names of people. He had been told this was not uncommon. But the anguish

when a name wouldn’t come was excruciating. And now the most cherished name of

all had disappeared.

He went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Perhaps a cup of tea would bring

back the missing name, or at least would assuage his suffering. He chuckled grimly to

see that he had not yet lost the name of his favorite, simple tea: English Breakfast.

The love of his life he could no longer name, but his familiar morning tea with its

comforting aroma and disarmingly simple designation, that he could evoke from the

tangle of dendrites and synapses that were beginning to fail him. As he waited for the

water to come to a boil, he remembered a phrase from E.M. Forster that had more

resonance now than ever: “Only connect.” He also remembered, as an ironic response

from Yeats: “Things fall apart.”

Later that morning, in a long-distance phone conversation with his adult son,

looking forward towards the summer, they started happily to exchange favorite

vacation spots in Europe. They both remembered Sagres, of course, the southwestern

tip of the continent, with its towering orange cliffs like sentinels above stretches of

sandy beach facing the wild Atlantic billows and the wild wind. “But really my

favorite place,” he started to say, and his heart rose at the memory, “my really

favorite place, you know, son, is…is… that stretch of mountains in the interior of

Spain,” and a cold sweat condensed on his forehead and on the back of his neck,

“that small mountain range, you know what I mean, we went there together perhaps

ten or fifteen years ago, deep gorges with icy clean water rushing over the rocks,

towering granite cliffs, and snow on the peaks above, sheep and goat bells in the

valleys, I can’t believe it, my favorite place, I just can’t remember the name.” Before

the nausea of helplessness could establish itself, his son came to his rescue: “Picos de

Europa, Dad, Picos de Europa.”

“Ah, yes, of course, how could I forget the Picos de Europa. Of course, son, I

haven’t forgotten them at all, the stone huts, the steep green hillsides, the placid

goats and sheep, the great mass of granite rising straight above us, the snow-covered

peaks above it all, of course I haven’t forgotten.” There was a pause and in a

chastened voice he added, “Just the name, son, that’s all I forgot, just the name.”

His son, growing wise in middle-age, said nothing.

James could not deny that he was suffering the in-roads of time, but at least

he could still read and take walks in the woods. Yes, reading gave him pleasure as it

always had, though he ruefully noticed that a fine novel read six months before would

now be mostly obliterated. He remembered a time in his youth when he could call to

mind every character, every scene, in every book he had read. And the books that

loomed large in his youth he still retained in his imagination. But Persuasion, which he

had enjoyed immensely just a few months ago, had left him with the resonance of

excellent writing, and a lingering awareness of the intelligence of the writer, but

nothing more. Yes, a happy marriage in the end, indeed, but what were their names?

For the life of him, they were lost; he couldn’t dig them up, drag them forth, expose

them to the light of day.

However, though he was slower than in the past and walked in the woods now

with the help of sturdy aluminum trekking poles, his forays into nature were still

rewarding, perhaps even more so than before. It seemed to him that the swelling

buds, the unfolding new leaves, the touchingly innocent light green of life reborn, the

occasional red squirrel trembling in outrage or fear, the usual robins, blue jays, and

cardinals returned for another season, all throbbed with a thicker life than ever and

prodded his slowing blood to respond. When he heard a cawing overhead, he was

pleased by the familiar sound, but was also pleased by the familiar old word: crow.

And when he heard the piercing cry of the blue jay, it, too, was a double joy, the

harsh music of that aggressive creature and his memory of its name. So, too, with the

red squirrel. However, as he ambled on through the awakening woodland of early

spring, he startled a large and clumsy bird in the undergrowth that made a great deal

of noise, but, instead of escaping, limped ahead of him on the path, trailing a wing.

He knew the bird and its ploy to lead him away from its nest, but familiar as the

creature and its instinctive cleverness were, he couldn’t find the name. He knew it

was a double name, a something something, an adjective and a proper noun, but they

simply were not available. A door was shut, a cabinet was locked, a file could not be

opened. Only when he had returned to his car half an hour later and was easing

himself into the driver’s seat did it suddenly come back to him, like a gift, a gift he

knew he could never force, but could only accept with gratitude when it came. Like

love itself, he thought. Like love itself. “Ruffed grouse,” he muttered, torn between

chagrin and a sheepish pride.

But this morning’s discovery was a shocker. His first love, his greatest love, the

love he thought would last forever. And now, the very name that had been the

receptacle for all that was precious, the name had disappeared. How vain those

grandiose words like “forever.” How vain the passion that provoked them. He had

lost her as a lover more than fifty years before, but he had only lost her name today.

He wasn’t sure whether he was the betrayer or the betrayed.

He knew things would not get better. He was not surprised when things got

worse. But he still took great pleasure in strolling through the woodlands, occasionally

catching sight of a calm deer on the edge of a field, chewing its cud and staring at

this slow-moving interloper. Somehow, he was certain he would never forget the word

“deer.” And he loved seeing the small brook tumbling its clear water over the brown

pebbles and stones in its bed. Though his joints ached, he would stop beside the

water and, bending down with a sigh, would lean upon the cushioning moss, his

weight settled on the one knee that still had some cartilage. From there, he was able

to touch the cool surface of the stream, able to cup a bit of water and rub it into his

face. That pleasure was still available, and it was profound.

Then there came a day when, to his deep embarrassment, he forgot his

granddaughter’s name, even though he had called just to speak to her, to be bathed

in her four-year-old exuberance of being. He squirmed out of the difficulty by

adopting a tone of high civility, perhaps a touch of self-mockery, as he said to his son:

“And your lovely daughter, the princess, might I speak with her now?”

The conversation went well, as he asked about her paintings, her backyard

garden with its tomatoes, zucchini, peas, and lettuce, her breakfast of yogurt and

raspberries, her new pajamas of pink and blue. But once he had said “Good-bye,

Princess,” he hung up in a kind of panic, for he still could not call forth her name.

Spring turned into summer and summer began to fade into fall. James

continued to visit the woodland almost every day and he felt it gave sustenance to his

soul. And as he walked beneath the pines, the tamarack, the birches and the oaks, he

would visit the brook, still clear, still cool, though not as sharply cold as it had been

in early spring. And one day, laboriously he got down on his left knee, then the right,

and leaned towards the flowing water. He reached out and sank his hand in up to the

wrist and left it there. Then he sprinkled some water on his face, dried himself with

his pocket handkerchief, and sat quietly and thought. Then he reached in again and

grasped a smooth, rounded stone from the bottom, felt its heft in his cupped palm,

and took it dripping from the stream. He squeezed it gently in his fist, gazed at the

worm-like blue veins wriggling across the back of his hand, held the stone firmly, with

reverence, and suddenly was filled with gratitude. For now, at last, he understood

that even as the words disappeared, the reality of this world of miracles would

remain, this world of trickling water, soft moss, and beloved things that he could feel

and weigh, dense, solid, and good, in his gratefully cupped hands.

Alexis Levitin

Alexis Levitin has been a translator, mostly of poetry, for the last half century. His forty-seven books include Clarice Lipsector's Soulstorm and Eugenio de Andrade's Forbidden Words. During the pandemic, he found himself writing short stories, many of which have been accepted for publication.