One

Some hours before dawn Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, wakes to find
himself already in motion, pushing back the covers from a sitting
position, and then rising to his feet. It's not clear to him when
exactly he became conscious, nor does it seem relevant. He's never
done such a thing before, but he isn't alarmed or even faintly
surprised, for the movement is easy, and pleasurable in his limbs,
and his back and legs feel unusually strong. He stands there, naked
by the bed --- he always sleeps naked --- feeling his full height,
aware of his wife's patient breathing and of the wintry bedroom air
on his skin. That too is a pleasurable sensation. His bedside clock
shows three forty. He has no idea what he's doing out of bed: he
has no need to relieve himself, nor is he disturbed by a dream or
some element of the day before, or even by the state of the world.
It's as if, standing there in the darkness, he's materialised out
of nothing, fully formed, unencumbered. He doesn't feel tired,
despite the hour or his recent labours, nor is his conscience
troubled by any recent case. In fact, he's alert and empty-headed
and inexplicably elated. With no decision made, no motivation at
all, he begins to move towards the nearest of the three bedroom
windows and experiences such ease and lightness in his tread that
he suspects at once he's dreaming or sleepwalking. If it is the
case, he'll be disappointed. Dreams don't interest him; that this
should be real is a richer possibility. And he's entirely himself,
he is certain of it, and he knows that sleep is behind him: to know
the difference between it and waking, to know the boundaries, is
the essence of sanity.

The bedroom is large and uncluttered. As he glides across it with
almost comic facility, the prospect of the experience ending
saddens him briefly, then the thought is gone. He is by the centre
window, pulling back the tall folding wooden shutters with care so
as not to wake Rosalind. In this he's selfish as well as
solicitous. He doesn't wish to be asked what he's about --- what
answer could he give, and why relinquish this moment in the
attempt? He opens the second shutter, letting it concertina into
the casement, and quietly raises the sash window. It is many feet
taller than him, but it slides easily upwards, hoisted by its
concealed lead counterweight. His skin tightens as the February air
pours in around him, but he isn't troubled by the cold. From the
second floor he faces the night, the city in its icy white light,
the skeletal trees in the square, and thirty feet below, the black
arrowhead railings like a row of spears. There's a degree or two of
frost and the air is clear. The streetlamp glare hasn't quite
obliterated all the stars; above the Regency façade on the
other side of the square hang remnants of constellations in the
southern sky. That particular façade is a reconstruction, a
pastiche --- wartime Fitzrovia took some hits from the Luftwaffe
--- and right behind is the Post Office Tower, municipal and seedy
by day, but at night, half-concealed and decently illuminated, a
valiant memorial to more optimistic days.

And now, what days are these? Baffled and fearful, he mostly thinks
when he takes time from his weekly round to consider. But he
doesn't feel that now. He leans forwards, pressing his weight onto
his palms against the sill, exulting in the emptiness and clarity
of the scene. His vision --- always good --- seems to have
sharpened. He sees the paving stone mica glistening in the
pedestrianised square, pigeon excrement hardened by distance and
cold into something almost beautiful, like a scattering of snow. He
likes the symmetry of black cast-iron posts and their even darker
shadows, and the lattice of cobbled gutters. The overfull litter
baskets suggest abundance rather than squalor; the vacant benches
set around the circular gardens look benignly expectant of their
daily traffic --- cheerful lunchtime office crowds, the solemn,
studious boys from the Indian hostel, lovers in quiet raptures or
crisis, the crepuscular drug dealers, the ruined old lady with her
wild, haunting calls. Go away! she'll shout for hours at a time,
and squawk harshly, sounding like some marsh bird or zoo
creature.

Standing here, as immune to the cold as a marble statue, gazing
towards Charlotte Street, towards a foreshortened jumble of
façades, scaffolding and pitched roofs, Henry thinks the city
is a success, a brilliant invention, a biological masterpiece ---
millions teeming around the accumulated and layered achievements of
the centuries, as though around a coral reef, sleeping, working,
entertaining themselves, harmonious for the most part, nearly
everyone wanting it to work. And the Perownes' own corner, a
triumph of congruent proportion; the perfect square laid out by
Robert Adam enclosing a perfect circle of garden --- an
eighteenth-century dream bathed and embraced by modernity, by
street light from above, and from below by fibre-optic cables, and
cool fresh water coursing down pipes, and sewage borne away in an
instant of forgetting.

An habitual observer of his own moods, he wonders about this
sustained, distorting euphoria. Perhaps down at the molecular level
there's been a chemical accident while he slept --- something like
a spilled tray of drinks, prompting dopamine-like receptors to
initiate a kindly cascade of intracellular events; or it's the
prospect of a Saturday, or the paradoxical consequence of extreme
tiredness. It's true, he finished the week in a state of unusual
depletion. He came home to an empty house, and lay in the bath with
a book, content to be talking to no one. It was his literate, too
literate daughter Daisy who sent the biography of Darwin which in
turn has something to do with a Conrad novel she wants him to read
and which he has yet to start --- seafaring, however morally
fraught, doesn't much interest him. For some years now she's been
addressing what she believes is his astounding ignorance, guiding
his literary education, scolding him for poor taste and
insensitivity. She has a point --- straight from school to medical
school to the slavish hours of a junior doctor, then the total
absorption of neurosurgery training spliced with committed
fatherhood --- for fifteen years he barely touched a non-medical
book at all. On the other hand, he thinks he's seen enough death,
fear, courage and suffering to supply half a dozen literatures.
Still, he submits to her reading lists --- they're his means of
remaining in touch as she grows away from her family into
unknowable womanhood in a suburb of Paris; tonight she'll be home
for the first time in six months --- another cause for
euphoria.

Excerpted from SATURDAY © Copyright 2005 by Ian McEwan.
Reprinted with permission by Anchor, a division of Random House,
Inc. All rights reserved.