Aslan Norval

by B. TRAVEN

  The lady opened her purse and rummaged around in it. She only did so in order to not have to constantly look into the face of the young man as he grew increasingly interesting to her.

  The young man, however, interpreted this in his own way.

  Surely she is not going to give me a hundred-dollar bill, he thought. If she were to try that, I’d have to be rude. I don’t need her money. I still have my veteran’s pension for a few weeks and then—

  He wanted to pursue those thoughts, but the lady stood up and closed her purse. Signaling regret with her hand, she remarked: “Unfortunately, I do not have my business card with me. No worries. You will have to be here for at least three days while you’re being thoroughly examined. May I have some books sent to you?”

  The young man hesitated before answering: “As you wish, ma’am. If it is not a great bother, I would be glad to accept.”

  “What kind of books would you like to read?”

  “Well, since I have to abandon my studies so that I won’t be tempted to slay one or two of my professors, I would finally like to learn something about levees, dikes, and canals. Please send me some books about canals. Books that describe how they are built, not with charts of logarithms, but rather with steam shovels, bulldozers, and tons of dynamite.”

  “I understand.” The lady laughed, and she walked to the door. “You will hear from me tomorrow.” With a glib “See you then, young man!” she left his cell, which smelled of carbolic acid.

  2.

  Twenty minutes later, you could not tell the hospital apart from a disturbed anthill. The only difference was that it was human beings and not ants who seemed to have suddenly gone crazy, and, from the perspective of an outsider, for no reason whatsoever. But the doctors, residents, nurses, orderlies, bedpan changers, cleaning ladies, and toilet cleaners, who were all running around with their heads cut off, screaming at each other, were well aware of the cause of this mayhem and of the ensuing consequences. The victim of a well-insured Cadillac had gotten away. The hospital was losing a patient who could have earned it at least two thousand dollars without much effort.

  Instead, the director, the doctors, and the nursing manager were now very worried that this untreated “patient,” might turn up in half a year to score lifelong payments of three hundred dollars a month.

  Anyone wearing a white coat or a white apron was sent on the manhunt by their superiors, also wearing white. They were dashing from one room to the other, from the attic to the basement, from the kitchen to the bathrooms, and from the laboratories to the bedrooms of the residents. But no matter how frantically these ants-in-white ran from place to place, and no matter how many secret torture chambers they crawled into, there was no trace of him. He had disappeared into thin air. There was just no other explanation. Perhaps he had snuck into one of the residents’ rooms, thrown on a white coat, and left the hospital in this disguise with a quick nod to the doorman.

  “Where is the doorman?” yelled the hospital director, while a vein swelled on his forehead. “Where is that gangster? Find him! He is fired.”

  Worried about his job, the doorman swore on the grave of his mother that no one had left the hospital except visitors, and there had only been three of them, since it wasn’t visiting hours at the moment. No one else, not even the cat, had left.

  “But the patient can’t possibly have escaped through the window,” yelled the director. “He must have passed you.”

  “No, he didn’t pass me. Not here. And I haven’t had the time yet to check all the windows.”

  “I didn’t ask you about that. Send me the front door receptionist. I will decide tomorrow whether or not to fire you when this whole matter has been resolved. Understood?”

  The receptionist appeared, also shaking with worry about her precious post. As she was getting married next year, she desperately needed the money that she planned to save from her wages.

  “What is the man’s name? Where does he live? How old is he? How tall is he? What’s his weight?” the director asked, practically attacking her.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You don’t know? What in the world do you do at this hospital if you don’t even know that?”

  The vein on the director’s forehead had grown even larger and now it also turned bluish. “It’s your goddamned job to receive every new patient and to register their personal data.”

  “I didn’t have enough time for that.”

  “You didn’t have enough time? Not enough time? What do you have time for, then? Maybe an affair with one of these amateurs in white I keep getting stuck with. They can’t even do an appendectomy without removing half the liver or who knows what else at the same time. You’re probably busy having affairs instead of doing your job. Where is his personal information, I said?”

  “I had neither the time nor the opportunity to get them. The patient arrived on a stretcher and was rushed upstairs so quickly that I assumed he would have to be operated on immediately.”

  “Well, at least that’s an excuse. But don’t let anything like this happen again!”

  The receptionist returned to her tiny cubicle while one of the older doctors entered the director’s office.

  “In my opinion, this can be remedied easily, very easily. I will just write a report: ‘Unknown man, approximately twenty-six years old, supposedly hit by a car, admitted—here we insert the day and time—ran away immediately after being admitted, before personal information could be collected. His escape was only possible because he was not injured.’”

  “‘Escape was possible since the patient was not injured in any way and was only brought in for a routine medical examination,’” supplemented the director. “It sounds better that way. And since he was able to run away on his own two legs, we are covered.”

  “Covered for today and maybe for the next few weeks,” said Dr. Snyder, “and at least for now the insurance company is covered. But if the guy fakes it, of course, and wants to sue for a large sum, his lawyer and a ruthless doctor can say that the accident, minor as it was, confused him and that’s why he fled, and that the serious consequences only appeared later, after several months.”

  “That may happen,” agreed the director, “it may happen. You know we have that other patient Merquer; every six hours, on the dot, he has a fit of screaming that lasts ten minutes. You know as well as I do that he is a malingerer. But one day, he will walk into a trap set by the insurance company and he will serve several years for his crime. That’s his problem, not ours. So, report the case as we agreed!”

  Dr. Snyder was already at the door and wanted to leave.

  “Snyder”—the director called him back—“did you personally examine the man?”

  “Just briefly.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Tall, about six feet, strong and muscular. Built like a wrestler. I would say, an athlete.”

  “I pray to all the gods I have ever heard of,” said the director, “that he wasn’t a Korean War veteran.”

  “Why?”

  “You know, Snyder, hundreds of veterans who returned from Korea have gone a little bit crazy after serving several years there. The only thing wrong with them is that they received a nervous shock there—and now all kinds of things can happen.”

  “For example?”

  “They run amok and don’t mind at all raping women and girls and strangling them afterward—”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. This guy who escaped may have served his time, but he is not the type to have lasted any amount of time in Korea.”

  “I hope you are right, Snyder.”

  The young man who had inadvertently caused such a ruckus in this very respectable hospital had only wanted to avoid having the residents mess with his body, examining every mole and drawing blood from every wart, just to have it examined by the apprentices of bacteriology in the labs. It seemed idiotic to him that finally, after weeks, he would probably just find out something he had alr
eady known for years. He had an ingrown toenail on his left toe that did not bother him in the least.

  All of the above was completely unnecessary and a waste of time, even though he had plenty of time to waste ever since he had realized that he was wasting his youth calculating logarithms and cubic square roots and tangents.

  By the way, the young athlete was twenty-eight years old and born in Texas, which was not his fault, of course. His name was Beckford and he was just as innocent of having this name as he was of being Methodist, the only religion that led to salvation. When he received this name and religion, he’d been completely defenseless and you could just as easily have labeled him Buddhist, Confucian, a sun or moon worshipper. At the moment, he would have preferred to be a Muslim.

  He had been sent to Korea against his will to fight against Chinese volunteers and others in uniform who had not volunteered. His orders were to kill them with machine guns, hand grenades, and flamethrowers.

  Otherwise, there was nothing special to report about Beckford, at least nothing about his personal information.

  3.

  Five weeks had passed since the fateful day that a rogue Cadillac had crushed Beckford to death. He could almost convince himself that this was what had happened, by reading the story that ran in The Manhattan News on the day of his successful flight from the hospital. To his surprise, the newspaper correctly reported that the accident had occurred on the corner of Thirty-Fourth Street. The truth had also been told about the time and day of the crash.

  The Cadillac, however, had morphed into a Dodge. The license plate was from the state of Idaho. His name was reported as Earl Jones, from Saint Louis, Missouri. According to the media, the elderly, rather shabbily dressed driver of the Dodge had managed to escape before the police—dutiful as always—could catch him. The newspapers claimed that once again, it was a case of a contemptible “hit and run.” What had happened to the body, whether it had been left on the street or had been donated to science, could not be determined from the newspaper article. Not that the reader cared at all about that; he was only concerned with skimming the sports pages to find out whether Thin-as-a-Rake, the horse on which he had bet ten dollars, had won.

  When Beckford crossed the street these days, he did so with the care of a mother who was holding one child in her arms, a second by the hand, and dragging a third attached to her skirt. But one day around noon, a car stopped right in front of his feet without the slightest sound of squealing brakes. He couldn’t say from where it had appeared so unexpectedly. It stopped so close to him that he immediately leaned back, thinking he might lose the tip of his nose.

  It had all happened so fast that he had forgotten to run. He felt the shock sink in, once he realized how close he was to being turned back over to the medical residents waiting to probe and poke his body.

  Then he heard the voice of a woman.

  “Oh, there you are, young man. Finally. Looking for you is like looking for a gold coin in the sand at Atlantic City beach.”

  Beckford was shocked when he recognized the lady. “Don’t take me to the emergency room, ma’am. If you do, I’ll commit suicide, or murder one of those phony residents, just so you know.”

  “Nothing to do with the hospital, young man. I have collected a stack of books that deal with floods, dams, and canals for you. It’s an entire library, and it all has to do with water and how you can channel and control it.”

  “That is all very nice, ma’am,” Beckford answered hesitantly, “but right now I’m not sure whether I have the peace and quiet and the right place to read those books.”

  “I will get you a place where you can study the books in peace.”

  Somewhere they could hear a police whistle. The lady did not know whom it was addressing. Since it was possible that it was meant for her, she said: “Get in my car! I know a quiet café with good food. We can discuss details there. I can’t stop traffic here any longer.” She gestured with her head to the left. “He’s already coming. Get in and let’s go, before he can read my license plate.”

  Beckford got in the car sulking. What does this woman want from me? he wondered as he slammed the door and the car drove off. His thoughts were all over the place as the car found its way through the streets congested by lunchtime traffic.

  Does she want an affair? I don’t think so. Too elegant. Too rich. Probably married. Though that may not be the greatest obstacle. Happens all the time. Probably bored to death. Could I fall in love with her? I don’t think so. Not really my type. She is beautiful. But probably most of it enhanced or just makeup. Very elegant perfume. But love? I don’t know. I don’t have the patience to worry about this kind of affair at the moment. I don’t want any headaches. She looks like she is two or three years older than I am. Maybe she’s not even older, just more run down. Maybe she has three or four kids. Where in the world is she taking me? Maybe she wants to use me to get her husband out of the way. His life insurance is probably worth a million or more. But she’s got the wrong guy. I’m not doing that. Maybe she is not even married. One of the arrogant guys from her circle miraculously got her pregnant and now she is looking for someone to marry. I’m not walking on that kind of tightrope with any woman, not even if she has enough money to drown in it. Maybe she snorts cocaine and thinks I can get it for her. After all, she knows that I was in Korea, where you can get snow on every street corner and in every teahouse at ten dollars for half a pound.

  The car had trouble maneuvering the terrible traffic.

  Or maybe she wants me to deal with levees and dams? Why levees and dams? Maybe she owns a ten-thousand-acre ranch that floods often, and the floods make her lose her cotton, her livestock or whatever. That’s a better explanation. And then, as an afterthought, when I’m on this farm in her beautiful house, in the middle of an environment that just screams lust, maybe she thinks I will finally agree to sleep with her—yeah, right! Sounds nice. She has a nice figure. But nevertheless, if she thinks that she can do whatever she wants with me … good grief, you’ve guessed wrong. You’d have to bat your eyes a little more, before I—and anyway, what do I know about her? And if I think about it all calmly, it is all rather bland and normal—

  His circling thoughts were abruptly cut off when the elegant car, which was really more of a boudoir, stopped so suddenly that he was thrown forward.

  At the green light, the lady crossed slowly, drove a few more blocks, stopped the car, pulled the hand brake, turned to him, and said with an inviting smile: “Here we are, young man. Lunch.”

  Beckford followed her into the restaurant.

  A waiter with billowing pants and a fez on his head that was two sizes too big invited them to sit at a particular table. The lady did not bother to acknowledge the man in the fez, ignoring his snarl, and walked toward a different table on which a card leaning against a vase indicated that it was reserved.

  Beckford pulled out her chair and was just about to sit down himself when the waiter rushed over.

  “This table is reserved, ma’am, please.”

  The lady slowly pulled off her gloves and flicked the reservation card with her index finger so skillfully that the waiter was able to catch it. In the sweetest of voices, she said: “As you can see, dear sir, I am sitting here, or do you need a telescope?”

  “Very well, ma’am,” answered the waiter, bowing slightly, which beautifully indicated that leaving less than a three-dollar tip would be an insult to his Arab dignity.

  The lady pulled out a small mirror, smiled at herself, then hid it under her gloves in her purse and said, “I wanted to go to a teahouse, but then I remembered this café. It is Syrian or Turkish or maybe Lebanese—what do I know? The food isn’t boring unless you eat here every day. Have you ever had jocoque? Or have you ever eaten doneraki or quipe? You can get all of that here. And small almond cakes and coffee—you will dream of them.” She played with the menu as she was talking but barely looked at it.

  “Should I choose for you, young man?”

>   “As you wish, ma’am.”

  “The ‘young man’ sounds pretty deadly by now, don’t you think? Didn’t anyone give you a name at birth?”

  “Of course, ma’am. But you haven’t asked my name yet.”

  The lady laughed. “That’s right. It’s my fault. What is your name?”

  “Beckford, ma’am. Clement Beckford.”

  “Okay, Beckford,” she repeated slowly, as if she wanted to make sure to remember the name. “The name sounds good. Beckford.”

  While she spoke, she rummaged in her purse, took out a small notebook and a very thin pencil, wrote something on a small piece of paper, tore it out, and gave it to Beckford.

  “My name and address.”

  Without looking at the paper, Beckford folded it and put it away carelessly. You could bet that later, when he actually wanted to read it, he would barely be able to remember where he had put it.

  “Don’t you want to know my name and address?” the lady asked, surprised.

  “I’ll have plenty of time for that, when I’m alone again.”

  “In some ways, you interest me, Mr. Beckford. Not a lot, not a little, but you do interest me.”

  “As you wish, ma’am.”

  “As you wish, ma’am—just as you like, ma’am—can you say ‘I can’t stand this’ or something like that now and then? Just so you don’t agree with me all the time.”