The astronomer

It was two years after his wife’s death that William decided to throw away all his old things and move into a smaller house, where he could meet with his children and grandchildren without faltering up the stairs. His heart gave him trouble now, beat rapidly when he was doing the most trifling things. No, it did not suit him well, getting old. He remembered being much younger, and staying awake from sunset to near sunrise, traveling across the known world with his telescope. Of late, he no longer had to remind himself that he was old as he had in his fifties. No. The ache in his knees and sciatica were constant companions now. They would see him through his final years.

It was nearing dusk when William finally reached the attic. Neither he nor Caroline had been up the ladder in fifteen years. She, out of her failing health, and he, because he was too busy dispensing medical advice to young men, or medical service to families in need. He had nearly forgotten that the attic existed. The sunlight in the attic was pale, and fell in thin strips across the dusty floor. The attic was rectangular, and had a low sloping roof that caused William to stoop as he searched through old chests and blankets, throwing things that he wanted to keep in a haphazard pile.

He came across a small metallic bike, his first, a bike that he’d ridden down Cross Street fifty years ago with his now dead mother clapping her hands in delight. The contrast between the vivid memory and the fact that he could not remember precisely what his mother looked like when she died, nearly brought tears to his eyes. But now he was behaving as a fool, a doddering old fool. These were the sorts of thoughts that were entertained by idle hands, by idle minds.

The light in the room was near gone, a memory now like everything else. William sat down on an old chest, and wrapped himself in an afghan sewn by Caroline years ago that he’d not known that he’d been missing until now. She had always claimed that the afghan, which he used for years to keep his feet warm, had been sewn improperly, and she’d point to the fringe and nod disapprovingly. Then, one winter, when he’d gone to retrieve the blanket, it had been missing, and Caroline said she may have accidentally given it away. He could see now that she had not given the thing away. She had gotten the best of him again.

As he rose slowly, trying not to disturb the palpitations of his old heart, he noticed that the seam of his pants was caught in the chest’s lock. Not wanting to tear them, William leaned down and opened the catch on the chest, releasing the seam of his pants, and, after a moment’s pause, he opened the top of the chest and peered inside. The sun had given way, and if he had been peering through the small dormer windows William would have seen the moon standing resolutely above the ash trees that lined the street.

The top of the chest had an old sketch book, brown and torn. On the title page, in spidery scrawl he read, “To William, from S.” The book contained sketches of the dusty old acacia trees that had lined the street of his childhood. He saw that towards the back of the book the sketches changed from those of landscapes, trees, mountains, to pictures of the stars. He had drawn the North Star, and a detailed picture of the canals that lined the moon, including the small mast of the ship that he’d seen sailing down them so many winters ago.

The light was pitiful, and William knew that he should go downstairs and light a candle or he was likely to break his neck descending the ladder. He pulled the sketch book close to his face, removing his spectacles and taking in all that he had once known. On the last page he had scrawled a silhouette of a girl, a small waif of a thing, no more than a teenager. The girl was hunched over a telescope, her wraith thin right arm adjusting the magnification of the lens, while with her left she appeared to be guiding it across the sky, making a sweep.

Outside, the light had drained from the sky. And William, almost crying again now, for no particular reason, pulled the afghan to him and lay down. In his dream, he was young again. And he was walking along the surface of the moon hand in hand with a woman who was not quite Caroline. It was everything that he had seen as a young man, shades of silver so delicately parsed that he asked the woman at his side if she would weave him a blanket made from the threads of silver. The woman laughed, and passed a hand across her face. “I don’t think it would amount to much,” she said, taking his hand, and leading him down the silver path, towards the dark waters that ran the length of the moon.

When he awoke it was to the pain in his back and legs. If his body had not willed him up; he would have stayed in that dream for eternity. He was old and sentimental. The two were often wedded, but he could see now that the wedding was not kind. With this thought fresh in his mind he leaned down to put back the sketch book that had brought back so many memories. But upon reaching in, he noticed a metallic gleam, barely illuminated by soft moonlight. His hands felt young for a second time as he pulled the telescope out of the old chest and stood it up against the wall.

He worked in the dark, but he found that his hands, which had been dormant so long remembered the curves of the scope as it were an old lover. He assembled it all in under a half hour and stood it up against the far wall, at the foot of the small window. The construction complete, his age sat heavy on him again. His heart knocked against his rib cage, causing him to grasp the window pane to steady himself. He was almost through.

He could not be sure that the lens still worked. In truth, Scarlett had always been best at adjusting them properly. Or, at least, he had liked to think so. He took a deep breath, gathering his strength, and bent to look through the lens. He swept it to the left just slightly, angling the scope and tilting the lens to try and get a better look at the moon. After a few moments he could see the cavern like shapes that dotted the crust of the moon, and he grew excited, not even bothering to check the rapid beating of his heart. He stared for twenty minutes, and then three hours, waiting for some small ship’s mast, or a light in the sky to reveal to him their presence.

After five hours, his back no longer aching, but bent in such a way that he knew he could not straighten it without the aid of a doctor, he realized that he had been away too long that the people that he had known or seen so long ago were dead or gone. A brief snow started up outside, coating the street and the bare limbs of trees in a sheen of white. It was a perfect night for a viewing. His legs burned now, with the weight of all the standing, and he knelt down at the foot of the telescope, his back half-bent. Perhaps, he thought, he had made a mistake all those years ago, age be damned.