The Sense of the Past (A Lesson from the Master)
Allen Stein

The Sense of the Past (A Lesson from the Master)

“I admire Henry James,” I said, my voice still tight.

Again sounding faintly annoyed and even a bit bored, he said, “Anyone with even the slightest literary taste does.” Then, after the briefest of pauses, he added, “I knew you would, of course,” and slowly raised his head, pushing the hood of his jacket back partway as he did so. The face that looked into mine was lined and wrinkled, its jaws sagging, its eyes bleared and tired behind thick lenses and heavy eyebrows, gray like the thinning hair visible beneath the pushed-back hood. The face was the one I meet in the mirror each morning these days, the face across this small table from you right now. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “I suppose you’re pleased with what you’ve made of us?” And he smiled and rose slowly to offer his hand. He smiled, you see, exactly as I’m smiling at this moment, and he reached his hand, an old man’s hand—spidery, spotted, trembling—exactly like this very one I’m reaching toward you right now. Take it!

Oh, I am sorry. I’ve startled you. Here, my napkin should sponge up your little spill. You’re pale. I of all people shouldn’t forget the force a story can exert. Yes, have a sip of wine.

*

So, you ask, did I take the hand that the hooded figure offered me? Well, what do you think I (or is it merely my protagonist) did? Does an ambiguous ending, simply the description of the extended hand, work for you? Or would you prefer that I smiled and grasped the hand heartily, acknowledging a perfect union of early aspiration and long-term achievement? Or should I have gone dizzy and sunk to the damp pavement? Or even recoiled and then doddered as quickly as I could from the park, from the past, and from all that I was and am?

Ah, there’s so much for one to ponder here, including, of course, my reliability as a narrator, perhaps even the reliability of my words and tone from the very moment I sat down with you this evening—or perhaps not.

You’re smiling now as you ponder my little tale. Good, even if neither smiling at a tale nor pondering it is thoroughly relevant to the arc of a career.

Here, take my hand on that, won’t you?

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Allen Stein

is Professor Emeritus of English at North Carolina State University. His fiction and poetry have appeared in The Hudson Review, Poet Lore, Salmagundi, Southern Poetry Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among other journals. He is the author of two poetry collections, Your Funeral is Very Important to Us (Main Street Rag) and Unsettled Subjects: New Poems on Classic American Literature (Broadstone).