I am writing this column after reading about what has happened to Tony Judt. Tony Judt is a writer on recent world history whom I greatly admire. His latest book is Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century. He suffers from a motor neuron disorder, a variant of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
He is now in an advanced stage of the disease – a disease which is named by doctors, appropriately one is bound to think, “the cruellest disease.” He can no longer move any of his limbs. He cannot move his torso. He can still swallow, speak and move his head. But he is otherwise utterly helpless. He cannot, for instance, scratch an itch. When the desire, still there in all intensity, to stretch , to point, to beckon, to bend, to shift around in any way, to stand or move or exercise comes over him he must suppress the thought and the accompanying muscle memory.
Then there is the night:
“I am sat upright at an angle of some 110° and wedged into place with folded towels and pillows, my left leg in particular turned out ballet-like to compensate for its propensity to collapse inward. This process requires considerable concentration. If I allow a stray limb to be misplaced, or fail to insist on having my midriff carefully aligned with legs and head, I shall suffer the agonies of the damned later in the night.
“I am then covered, my hands placed outside the blanket to afford me the illusion of mobility but wrapped nonetheless since – like the rest of me – they now suffer from a permanent sensation of cold. I am offered a final scratch on any of a dozen itchy spots from hairline to toe; the Bi-Pap breathing device in my nose is adjusted to a necessarily uncomfortable level of tightness to ensure that it does not slip in the night; my glasses are removed… and there I lie: trussed, myopic, and motionless like a modern-day mummy, alone in my corporeal prison, accompanied for the rest of the night only by my thoughts.”
You would have thought that he would be begging his loved ones to find a way to end the unendurable misery of his life. Perhaps he sometimes does so entreat them. But what we know for certain he is doing is dictating a series of memories and reflections of a lucidity and quality which is astonishing. Thus even in extremity does life find extraordinary fulfilment. With his last breath he will be trying to say something beautiful and true.
A few nights ago my wife was baking a ham and the fragrance spread to where I was sitting at my desk reading. I got up to enquire but the ham, stuck with cloves and coated with pineapple jam and golden Demerara sugar, was not quite ready. I took the opportunity, being up, to put on a CD of Sarah Brightman songs and her astonishingly pure and lovely voice singing, ‘I’ve Been This Way Before’ filled the room. How blessed we are in the delights of our five senses each perfectly evolved to allow us to apprehend the infinite variety of the world. Taste, smell, touch, hearing, sight – every minute of every hour they combine to fill our lives with vitality and never-ending wonder. Around and around the lamp on my desk a silvery-winged moth flew.
And so I sat again and read. There are to delight us also the complex activities of the human brain at work and play, discovering truths, dreaming wonders. I was reading about the English mathematician Paul Dirac. In the last century there have been two tremendous scientific revolutions which completely changed our way of thinking. One revolution, contained in the theory of relativity for which Albert Einstein enjoys the credit, changed how we think about space and time. The other revolution was even more profound and changed the way we think about virtually everything in physics – but also in chemistry, in biology and in philosophy. It changed the way we think about cause and effect, past and future, fact and probability. This revolution was contained in the discovery and elucidation of quantum mechanics. And the architect, the purest and boldest thinker in this revolution was Paul Dirac, hardly known at all compared with Einstein.
My mind filled with wonder and intellectual delight as I read of this remarkable man who remained so silent in history yet who by sheer thought transformed the world and all our lives. Enthralled at my desk, how worthwhile life seemed, how marvellous to be able to catch a glimpse of genius and feel a very little bit his insights enter my mind.
Outside my lamp-lit study, beyond the great trees in the garden, there was an absolutely clear sky, the heavens a hive of golden bees on the black branch of the night. And stretching infinitely far beyond the farthest limits of what is known the cascading galaxies collide with nothingness and one becomes entitled to imagine God.
The glory of being alive. I think of Tony Judt signalling to the end from the iron prison of himself. I think of Paul Dirac and the extraordinary equations in his mind. I think of the starry heavens reaching ever outwards, reaching out for what and why? And now my wife calls out – the ham is baked and ready and I can come and get a first, fragrant slice if I want.
