The Infinities by John Banville Page B

men walk side by side along the platform. Adam spots on the wall outside the waiting room a faded tin advertisement for Player’s Navy Cut—lifebuoy with rope, stout Jack Tar, and distantly behind him on the rolling main a pair of three-masters under full sail—that he has never noticed until now although it must have been there since before he was born. Time once again brushes him glancingly with its cold wing. As if prompted by the advertisement Roddy pauses to take out of the pocket of his linen jacket a flat silver cigarette case, flips it open and chooses a cigarette and lights it with a petrol lighter of the same antique vintage as the silver case. A waft of rich, exotic smoke reaches Adam’s nostrils. They walk on.
    “Your father,” Roddy says between puffs, “how is he?” He does not look at Adam. Roddy affects always a distracted mien, distracted and faintly gloomy, as if he were in constant anticipation of something that he is certain will displease him. His hands betray a slight tremor.
    “Much the same,” Adam says.
    “The same as what?” Roddy almost snaps. “You forget, I haven’t seen him since he suffered the stroke.”
    They come out on the station steps. Roddy’s sour expression softens when he sees the familiar old Salsol with its lacquered, brown wooden trim waiting for them on the gravel in the sun. Moving forward they pass under a nondescript tree that stands in the heat with its head hanging, and for a second it seems to Adam that Roddy as he enters its shadow fades somehow, becoming a blur, almost transparent, almost vanishing. He blinks, and then Roddy has stepped through into the sunlight again, and is turningback to him, saying something. “Yes,” Adam replies, “yes,” not knowing what he is agreeing to, not listening. He is carrying Roddy’s suitcase, which Roddy set down on the platform when he stopped to light his cigarette and did not bother to pick up again, and now he goes to stow it in the back seat of the station-wagon, and leaning in at the door he pauses and closes his eyes and breathes deep the car’s familiar smells of crusted salt and mildewed leather and human sweat, and at once he catches again faintly a snatch of the melody of that happiness he felt only a little while ago, driving along, and he recalls again too his wife kneeling before him on the bed, her hot hands on his face, her glittering, avid eyes. When he clambers in behind the steering-wheel—even the big station-wagon is too confining for his bulk—he finds Roddy already settled in the passenger seat with his jacket on his lap. He has not finished smoking his cigarette and waves it now airily and says, “You don’t mind, do you?”
    The heat of the latening morning has intensified and as they drive back along the narrow roads the scent of dry grass and baking earth is stronger than ever and stings their nostrils. Roddy has shut his window but the shuddering rush of air from Adam’s side scatters burning specks of ash from the tip of his cigarette and forces him to stub out the last quarter of it in the ashtray under the dashboard.
    “Pete is looking forward to seeing you,” Adam says. “She has been up since dawn, talking about you.”
    “Oh, God,” Roddy murmurs, and looks out at the high hedgerow streaming past. Roddy knows what Petra’s day-long monologues are like. “Is she still collecting diseases?”
    “Still at it,” Adam answers with spiteful cheer. Roddy finds Petra’s projects exasperating. Her latest is an almanac of ailmentsin which she aims to list, complete with clinical definitions, all the illnesses known to afflict mankind. “How far has she got?”
    “Astasia-abasia is the most recent one I heard her mention.” Roddy turns to look at him. “Losing the will to stand up and walk. Rare, but recorded, so she claims.”
    “God,” Roddy moans again.
    I, by the way, in case you have forgotten me, am perched in the middle of the back seat, leaning forward eagerly with my