Anderson, Poul - There Will Be Time

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NELSON DOUBLEDAY, INc. Garden City, New York

Published by Arrangement with

THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY INC.

1301 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10019

Printed in the United States of America

FOREWORD

BE AT EASE. I'm not about to pretend this story is true. First, that claim

is a literary convention which went out with Theodore Roosevelt of happy

and I, and ransack official files, old newspapers, yearbooks, journals, and

so on forever. But the effort and expense would be large; the results, even

if positive, would prove little; we have more urgent jobs at hand; our

discoveries could conceivably endanger us.

These pages are merely for the purpose of saying a little about Dr.

Robert Anderson. I do owe the book to him. Many of the sentences are his,

and my aim throughout has been to capture something of his style and

spirit, in memoriam.

You see, I already owed him much more. In what follows, you may

recognize certain things from earlier stories of mine. He gave me those

ideas, those backgrounds and people, in hour after hour while we sat with

sherry and Mozart before a driftwood fire, which is the best kind. I greatly

modified them, in part for literary purposes, in part to make the tales my

own

work. But the core remained his. He would accept no share of payment.

"If you sell it," he laughed, "take Karen out to an extravagant dinner in San

Francisco, and empty a pony of akvavit for me."

Of course, we talked about everything else too. My memories are rich

with our conversations. He had a pawky sense of humor. The chances are

overwhelming that, in leaving me a boxful of material in the form he did, he

was turning his private fantasies into a final, gentle joke.

history's returning to its normal climate here also, and the norm is an ice

age." He tossed off his glass and poured a refill more quickly than was his

wont. "The tough and lucky will survive," he said. "The rest . . . will have

had what happiness was granted them. A medical man ought to be used to

that kind of truth, right?" And he changed the subject.

In his latter years Robert Anderson was tall and spare, a bit stoop-

shouldered but in excellent shape, which he attributed to hiking and

bicycling. His face was likewise lean, eyes blue behind heavy glasses,

clothes and white hair equally rumpled. His speech was slow, punctuated

by gestures of a pipe if he was enjoying his twice-a-day smoke. His manner

was relaxed and amiable. Nevertheless, he was as independent as his cat.

"At my stage of life," he observed, "what was earlier called oddness or

orneriness counts as lovable eccentricity. I take full advantage of the fact."

He grinned. "Come your turn, remember what I've said."

On the surface, his life had been calm. He was born in Philadelphia in

1895, a distant relative of my father. Though our

family is of Scandinavian origin, a branch has been in the States since

the Civil War. But he and I never heard of each other till one of his sons,

who happened to be interested in genealogy, happened to settle down near

me and got in touch. When the old man came visiting, my wife and I were

invited over and at once hit it off with him.

Eventually he returned to Senlac, hung out his shingle, and married his

longtime fiancée.

I think he was always restless. However, the work of general

practitioners was far from dull-before progress condemned them to do little

more than man referral desks-and his marriage was happy. Of four

children, three boys lived to adulthood and are still flourishing.

In 1955 he retired to travel with his wife. I met him soon afterward. She

died in 1958 and he sold their house but bought a cottage nearby. Now his

journeys were less extensive; he remarked quietly that without Kate they

were less fun. Yet he kept a lively interest in life.

He told me of those folk whom I, not he, have called the Maurai, as if it

were a fable which he had invented but lacked the skill to make into a story.

Some ten years later he seemed worried about me, for no reason I could

see, and I in my turn worried about what time might be doing to him. But

presently he came out of this. Though now and then an underlying

grimness showed through, he was mostly himself again. There is no doubt

that he knew what he was doing, for good or ill, when he wrote the clause

into his will concerning me.

I was to use what he left me as I saw fit.

Late last year, unexpectedly and asleep, Robert Anderson took his

death. We miss him.

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NELSONDOUBLEDAY,INc.GardenCity,NewYorkcopyluojrr(c)1972BYPOULANDERSONPublishedbyArrangementwithTHENEWAMERICANLIBRARYINC.1301AvenueoftheAmericasNewYork,NewYork10019PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericaFOREWORDBEATEASE.I'mnotabouttopretendthisstoryistrue.First,thatclaimisaliteraryconventionwhichwentoutwit...

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Anderson, Poul - There Will Be Time

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