South of No North

by Charles Bukowski

  5.

  The doctor put me up on a table. “Now, chust relox der bock, ya? relox, relox…”

  Suddenly he jammed a wedge-shaped box into my ass and began unwinding his snake which began to crawl up into my intestine looking for blockage, looking for cancer.

  “Ha! Now if it hurts a bit, nien? den pant like a dog, go, hahaha-hahaaaa!”

  “You dirty motherfucker!”

  “Vot?”

  “Shit, shit, shit! You dog-burner! You swine, sadist…You burned Joan at the stake, you put nails in the hands of Christ, you voted for war, you voted for Goldwater, you voted for Nixon…Mother-ass! What are you DOING to me?”

  “It vill soon be over. You take it vell. You will be good patient.”

  He rolled the snake back in and then I saw him peering into something that looked like a periscope. He slammed some gauze up my bloody ass and I got up and put on my clothes. “And the operation will be for what?”

  He knew what I meant. “Chust der hemorrhoids.”

  I peeked up his nurse’s legs as I walked out. She smiled sweetly.

  6.

  In the waiting room of the hospital a little girl looked at our grey faces, our white faces, our yellow faces…“Everybody is dying!” she proclaimed. Nobody answered her. I turned the page of an old Time magazine.

  After routine filling out of papers…urine specimens…blood, I was taken to a four bed ward on the eighth floor. When the question of religion came up I said “Catholic,” largely to save myself from the stares and questions that usually followed a proclamation of no religion. I was tired of all the arguments and red tape. It was a Catholic hospital—maybe I’d get better service or blessings from the Pope.

  Well, I was locked in with three others. Me, the monk, the loner, gambler, playboy, idiot. It was all over. The beloved solitude, the refrigerator full of beer, the cigars on the dresser, the phone numbers of the big-legged, big-assed women.

  There was one with a yellow face. He looked somehow like a big fat bird dipped in urine and sun-dried. He kept hitting his button. He had a whining, crying, mewing voice. “Nurse, nurse, where’s Dr. Thomas? Dr. Thomas gave me some codeine yesterday. Where’s Dr. Thomas?”

  “I don’t know where Dr. Thomas is.”

  “Can I have a coughdrop?”

  “They are right on your table.”

  “They ain’t stoppin’ my cough, and that cough medicine ain’t any good either.”

  “Nurse!” a whitehaired guy yelled from the northeast bed, “can I have some more coffee? I’d like some more coffee.”

  “I’ll see,” she said and left.

  My window showed hills, a slope of hills rising. I looked at the slopes of hills. It was getting dark. Nothing but houses on the hills. Old houses. I had the strange feeling that they were unoccupied that everybody had died, that everybody had given up. I listened to the three men complain about the food, about the price of the ward, about the doctors and nurses. When one spoke the other two did not seem to be listening, they did not answer. Then another would begin. They took turns. There was nothing else to do. They spoke vaguely, switching subjects. I was in with an Oakie, a movie cameraman, and the yellow piss-bird. Outside of my window a cross turned in the sky—first it was blue, then it was red. It was night and they pulled our curtains around our beds a bit and I felt better, but realized, oddly, that pain or possible death did not bring me closer to humanity. Visitors began arriving. I didn’t have any visitors. I felt like a saint. I looked out of my window and saw a sign near the turning red and blue cross in the sky. MOTEL, it said. Bodies in there in more gentle attunement. Fucking.

  7.

  A poor devil dressed in green came in and shaved my ass. Such terrible jobs in the world! There was one job I had missed.

  They slipped a showercap over my head and pushed me onto a roller. This was it. Surgery. The coward gliding down the halls past the dying. There was a man and a woman. They pushed me and smiled, they seemed very relaxed. They rolled me onto an elevator. There were four women on the elevator.

  “I’m going to surgery. Any of you ladies care to change places with me?”

  They drew up against the wall and refused to answer.

  In the operating room we awaited for the arrival of God. God finally entered: “Vell, vell, vell, dere isss mine friend!”

  I didn’t even bother to answer such a lie.

  “Turn on der stomach, please.”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess it’s too late to change my mind now.”

  “Ya,” said God, “you are now in our power!”

  I felt the strap go across my back. They spread my legs. The first spinal went in. It felt like he was spreading towels all around my asshole and across my back. Another spinal. A third. I kept giving them lip. The coward, the showman, whistling in the dark.

  “Put him to sleep, ya,” he said. I felt a shot in the elbow, a stinger. No good. Too many drunks behind me.

  “Anybody got a cigar?” I asked.

  Somebody laughed. I was getting corny. Bad form. I decided to be quiet.

  I could feel the knife tugging at my ass. There wasn’t any pain.

  “Now dis,” I heard him say, “dis iss the main obstruction, see? und here…”

  8.

  The recovery room was dull. There were some fine-looking women walking around but they ignored me. I got up on my elbow and looked around. Bodies everywhere. Very very white and still. Real operations. Lungers. Heart cases. Everything. I felt somewhat the amateur and somewhat ashamed. I was glad when they wheeled me out of there. My three roomies really stared when they rolled me in. Bad form. I rolled off the thing onto the bed. I found that my legs were still numb and that I had no control over them. I decided to go to sleep. The whole place was depressing. When I woke up my ass was really hurting. But legs still dull. I reached down for my cock and it felt as if it wasn’t there. I mean, there wasn’t any feeling. Except I wanted to piss and I couldn’t piss. It was horrible and I tried to forget it.

  One of my ex-loves came by and sat there looking at me. I had told her I was going in. Quite what for, I don’t know.

  “Hi! How you doin’?”

  “Fine, only I can’t piss.”

  She smiled.

  We talked a little about something and then she left.

  9.

  It was like in the movies: all the male nurses seemed to be homosexual. One seemed more manly than the others.

  “Hey, buddy!”

  He came over. “I can’t piss. I want to piss but I can’t.”

  “I’ll be right back. I’ll fix you up.”

  I waited quite a while. Then he came back, pulled the curtain around my bed and sat down.

  Jesus, I thought, what’s he gonna do? Gimme a head-job?

  But I looked and he seemed to have some kind of machine with him. I watched as he took a hollow needle and ran it down the piss-hole of my cock. The feeling that I thought was gone from my cock was suddenly back.

  “Shit o baby!” I hissed.

  “Not the most pleasant thing in the world, is it?”

  “Indeed, indeed. I tend to agree. Weeowee! Shit and jesus!”

  “Soon be over.”

  He pressed against my bladder. I could see the little square fishbowl filling with piss. This was one of the parts they left out of the movies.

  “God o mighty, pal, mercy! Let’s call it a good night’s work.”

  “Just a moment. Now.”

  He drew the needle out. Out the window my blue and red cross turned, turned. Christ hung on the wall with a piece of dried palm stuck at his feet. No wonder men turned to gods. It was pretty hard to take it straight.

  “Thanks,” I told the nurse.

  “Any time, any time.” He pulled the curtain back and left with his machine.

  My yellow piss-bird punched his button.

  “Where’s that nurse? O why o why doesn’t that nurse come?”

  He pushed it again.

  “Is my but
ton working? Is something wrong with my button?”

  The nurse came in.

  “My back hurts! O, my back hurts terrible! Nobody has come to visit me! I guess you fellows noticed that! Nobody has come to see me! Not even my wife! Where’s my wife? Nurse, raise my bed, my back hurts! THERE! Higher! No, no, my god, you’ve got it too high! Lower, lower! There. Stop! Where’s my dinner? I haven’t had dinner! Look…”

  The nurse walked out.

  I keep wondering about the little pissmachine. I’ll probably have to buy one, carry it around all my life. Duck into alleys, behind trees, in the back seat of my car.

  The Oakie in bed one hadn’t said much. “It’s my foot,” he suddenly said to the walls, “I can’t understand it, my foot just got all swelled-up overnight and it won’t go down. It hurts, it hurts.”

  The whitehaired guy in the corner pushed his button.

  “Nurse,” he said, “nurse, how about hustling me up a pot of coffee?”

  Really, I though, my main problem is to keep from going insane.

  10.

  The next day old whitehair (the movie cameraman) brought his coffee down and sat in a chair by my bed. “I can’t stand that son of a bitch.” He was speaking of the yellow piss-bird. Well, there was nothing to do with whitehair but talk to him. I told him that drink had brought me pretty much to my present station in life. For kicks I told him some of my wilder drunks and some of the crazy things that had happened. He had some good ones himself.

  “In the old days,” he told me, “they used to have the big red cars that ran between Glendale and Long Beach, I believe it was. They ran all day and most of the night except for an interval of an hour and a half, I think between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m.. Well, I went drinking one night and met a buddy at the bar and after the bar closed we went to his place and finished something he had left there. I left his place and kinda got lost. I turned up a deadend street but I didn’t know it was deadend. I kept driving and I was driving pretty fast. I kept going until I hit the railroad tracks. When I hit the tracks my steering wheel came up and hit me on the chin and knocked me out. There I was across those tracks in my car K.O.’d. Only I was lucky because it was in the hour and a half that no trains were running. I don’t know how long I sat there. But the train horn woke me up. I woke up and saw this train coming down the tracks at me. I just had time to start the car and back off. The train tore on by. I drove the car home, the front wheels all bent under and wobbling.”

  “That’s tight.”

  “Another time I am sitting in the bar. Right across the way is a place where the railroadmen ate. The train stopped and the men got out to eat. I am sitting next to some guy in this bar. He turns to me and he says, ‘I used to drive one of those things and I can drive one again. Come on and watch me start it.’ I walked out with him and we climbed into the engine. Sure enough, he started the thing. We got up good speed. Then I started thinking, what the hell am I doing? I told the guy, ‘I don’t know about you but I’m getting off!’ I knew enough about trains to know where the brake was. I yanked the brake and before the train even stopped I went out the side. He went out the other side and I never saw him again. Pretty soon there is a big crowd around the train, policemen, train investigators, yard dicks, reporters, onlookers. I am standing off to one side with the rest of the crowd, watching. ‘Come on, let’s go up and find out what’s going on!” somebody next to me said. ‘Nah, hell,’ I said, ‘it’s just a train.’ I was scared that maybe somebody had seen me. The next day there was a story in the papers. The headline said, TRAIN GOES TO PACOIMA BY ITSELF. I cut out the story and saved it. I saved that clipping for ten years. My wife used to see it. ‘What the hell you saving this story for?—TRAIN GOES TO PACOIMA BY ITSELF.’ I never told her. I was still scared. You’re the first one I ever told the story to.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told him, “not a single soul will ever hear that story again.”

  Then my ass really began to kick up and whitehair suggested I ask for a shot. I did. The nurse gave me one in the hip. She left the curtain pulled when she left but whitehair continued to sit there. In fact, he had a visitor. A visitor with a voice that carried clear down through my fucked-up bowels. He really sent it out.

  “I’m going to move all the ships around the neck of the bay. We’ll shoot it right there. We’re paying a captain of one of those boats $890 a month and he has two boys under him. We’ve got this fleet right there. Let’s put it to use, I think. The public’s ready for a good sea story. They haven’t had a good sea story since Errol Flynn.”

  “Yeah,” said whitehair, “those things run in cycles. The public’s ready now. They need a good sea story.”

  “Sure, there are lots of kids who have never seen a sea story. And speaking of kids, that’s all I’m gonna use. I’ll run ’em all over the boats. The only old people we’ll use will be for the leads. We just move these ships around the bay and shoot right there. Two of the ships need masts, that’s all that’s wrong with them. We hand them masts and then we begin.”

  “The public is sure ready for a sea story. It’s a cycle and the cycle is due.”

  “They are worried about the budget. Hell, it won’t cost a thing. Why—”

  I pulled the curtain back and spoke to whitehair. “Look, you might think me a bastard, but you guys are right against my bed. Can’t you take your friend over to your bed?”

  “Sure, sure!”

  The producer stood up. “Hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

  He was fat and sordid; content, happy, sickening.

  “O.k.,” I said.

  They moved up to whitehair’s bed and continued to talk about the sea story. All the dying on the eighth floor of the Queen of Angels Hospital could hear the sea story. The producer finally left.

  Whitehair looked over at me. “That’s the world’s greatest producer. He’s produced more great pictures than any man alive. That was John F.”

  “John F.,” said the piss-bird, “yeah, he’s made some great pictures, great pictures!”

  I tried to go to sleep. It was hard to sleep at night because they all snored. At once. Whitehair was the loudest. In the morning he always woke me up to complain that he hadn’t slept. That night the yellow piss-bird hollered all night. First because he couldn’t shit. Unplug me, my god, I gotta crap! Or he hurt. Or where was his doctor? He kept having different doctors. One couldn’t stand him and another would take over. They couldn’t find anything wrong with him. There wasn’t: he wanted his mother but his mother was dead.

  11.

  I finally got them to move me to a semi-private ward. But it was a worse move. His name was Herb and like the male nurse told me, “He’s not sick. There isn’t anything wrong with him at all.” He had on a silk robe, shaved twice a day, had a T.V. set which he never turned off, and visitors all the time. He was head of a fairly large business and had gone the formula of having his grey hair short-cropped to indicate youth, efficiency, intelligence, and brutality.

  The T.V. turned out to be far worse than I could have imagined. I had never owned a T.V. and so was unaccustomed to its fare. The auto races were all right, I could stand the auto races, although they were very dull. But there was some type of Marathon on for some Cause or another and they were collecting money. They started early in the morning and went right on through. Little numbers were posted indicating how much money had been collected. There was somebody in a cook’s hat. I don’t know what the hell he meant. And there was a terrible old woman with a face like a frog. She was terribly ugly. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe these people didn’t know how ugly and naked and meaty and disgusting their faces looked—like rapes of everything decent. And yet they just walked up and calmly put their faces on the screen and spoke to each other and laughed about something. The jokes were very hard to laugh at but they didn’t seem to have any trouble. Those faces, those faces! Herb didn’t say anything about it. He just kept looking as if he were interested. I didn’t know the names
of the people but they were all stars of some sort. They’d announce a name and then everybody would get excited—except me. I couldn’t understand it. I got a little sick. I wished I were back in the other room. Meanwhile, I was trying to have my first bowel movement. Nothing happened. A swath of blood. It was Saturday night. The priest came by. “Would you care for Communion tomorrow?” he asked. “No, thank you, Father, I’m not a very good Catholic. I haven’t been to church in 20 years.” “Were you baptized a Catholic?” “Yes.” “Then you’re still a Catholic. You’re just a bum Catholic.” Just like in the movies—he talks turkey, just like Cagney, or was it Pat O’Brien who sported the white collar? All my movies were dated: the last movie I had seen was The Lost Weekend. He gave me a little booklet. “Read this.” He left.

  PRAYER BOOK, it said. Compiled for use in hospitals and institutions.

  I read.

  O Eternal and ever-blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with all the angels and saints, I adore you.

  My Queen and my Mother, I give myself entirely to you; and to show my devotion to you, I consecrate to you this day my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my heart, my whole being without reserve.

  Agonizing Heart of Jesus, have mercy on the dying.

  O my God, prostrate on my knees, I adore you…

  Join me, you blessed Spirits, in thanking the God of Mercies, who is so bountiful to so unworthy a creature.

  It was my sins, dear Jesus, that caused your bitter anguish…my sins that scourged you, and crowned you with thorns, and nailed you to the cross. I confess that I deserve only punishment.

  I got up and tried to shit. It had been three days. Nothing. Only a swath of blood again and the cuts in my rectum ripping open. Herb had on a comedy show.