by Paul Sayer
‘Problems,’ he said. They’ve got problems, I know that. Don’t suppose anyone’s bothered to tell you what goes on round here. Guinea-pigs, that’s us. That’s you and me, Peter my boy. Truth is, I think they’re going too far now, overstepping the mark to get results. I heard about what they did to you the other day. Christ, if a man doesn’t want to eat, he doesn’t want to eat. That stuff they used, illegal now, in fact always has been for humans. Used to use it on cows with some kind of lockjaw or something. Got a brother very big in the pharmaceutical business, he clued me in on that one. I knew Kaufmann, too. They gave him it. Only old Tom got the dose wrong, very nearly blew the fellow’s head off, sure to have done some permanent damage to the man. Still, he’s gone now and that won’t matter. He was a bit like you. You should have met him; maybe you’d have got on together.’
He put the brake on the wheelchair and sat on an old log. He was wearing a sort of jacket with no sleeves under which he had only a shirt, yet the cold didn’t seem to bother him. Or maybe it was me. Not used to it. He took a tin from his pocket and began rolling a cigarette.
‘Yeah, guinea-pigs,’ he said. That’s us.’ He blew smoke on to the chill air. ‘It doesn’t figure,’ he said. ‘We’re all so different. You’d think if they were going in for this specialized treatment lark they would lump people together who all had the same problems. Here we are, all being boiled up in the same pot, yet we’re hardly able to have a decent conversation with one another. Doesn’t make sense. Not to me anyhow. Been here six months myself. I’m OK now. Bastards know I’ve nowhere to go, though. I sometimes think they keep me just for when the inspectors come round. I must look presentable or something. They exaggerate everything of course, tell them the worst about me, how sick I was when they brought me here, what stunning progress I’ve made and all that crap. Truth is, I was never that bad. Bit of trouble with my temper, that’s all. The wife cleared off, took the kids. That can’t have helped, I suppose. Drank a bit too. But not now. They reckon I half-killed a guy. Daft thing to say: you either kill someone or you don’t. Personally I remember nothing. They gave me a drug meant to make me remember but all I saw was nig-nogs hiding in the grass. They could discharge me now but they won’t find me anywhere to live. Bastards. I don’t know what they’ve got planned for you. If I did know, you’d be the first to find out. If I find out I’ll tell you. Did the same for Kaufmann. Didn’t help him though, didn’t stop him going clean out of his mind. They got him out first, clever piece of work. But I could tell he wasn’t right. We all could. Time I put pen to paper. There ought to be some sort of investigation into the things that go on round here. One day we’ll all end up like Kaufmann. Mind, you’re a one, aren’t you? I watched them bring you in. You’re putting up a bloody good show. I bet no one’s ever pulled the wool over your eyes. What’s your secret? I’ve never seen such willpower. Nineteen years in the army, two years in a bin before this place and I’ve never met one like you before. What’s your secret? You can tell me. I’d love to know and I shan’t repeat a word to anyone. Go on, Peter. You tell me.’
He looked at me, chuckled. Then he started to cry.
I often wondered what attracted some people to me, what they saw in me. There was a man at the hospital once, someone not dissimilar to the Major, who moaned and wailed a lot of the short time he was in there. He took to taking me for walks in the hospital grounds, long walks, whole afternoons when he would sit on a bench near the bowling green or by the church telling me his problems, reckoning I was the only one who understood. There’s no accounting for some people. Anyway, one day he just seemed to decide he was better, took his discharge and, to my knowledge, was never seen in the place again. Cured? It happens, they say.
The Major sat with his head in his hands then looked up into the last of the afternoon sun, wiping his cheeks once with his fingertips. ‘We’d better go,’ he said, ‘before the bastards send out a search party.’ He pushed me back through the thicket tunnel where darkness had already collected, even though the ceiling of the sky was yet the same icy blue as before.
When we arrived back at the house there was an air of mystery about those present. Someone nodded to the Major as we entered the front door. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ he said, sounding cheerful again. He wheeled me through to a cloakroom where he went about the awkward procedure of removing the coat I had been loaned, taking his time, relieving himself in the toilet, whistling. Then someone, one of the women, popped her head around the door. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘everything’s ready.’ ‘Good,’ said the Major and he wheeled me out of the gloomy room into the kitchen where all the residents were assembled together with John and Tom. They brought me forward to a table laden with brightly coloured things. In the centre was a cake. There was an awkward silence before someone cleared his throat and said, ‘Happy birthday, Peter.’ ‘Yes,’ chimed another, ‘happy birthday, Peter.’ ‘Happy birthday,’ they all said.
Another contrivance, I was certain of that. I could not really believe they had a record of my date of birth; it would all be guesswork. They began chattering nervously. ‘Cut the cake,’ called the Major. ‘Yes, cut the cake,’ said a triplet. Tom stepped forward and began slicing the yellow thing up. Hands reached for it. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Birthday boy first.’ He brought me a piece on a silver knife and my mouth flapped crazily in anticipation.
‘Thirty-three today,’ someone called.
I couldn’t believe that. I couldn’t believe any of them. You never knew what was going to come out next in the kind of company I kept.
NINE
How nice it would have been to have some kind of order in my head; my mind sectioned off into compartments, little boxes on the dusty floor of my brain, here my grievances, in this one my fears, here the past, here the murky future. I should have visited each at will, or perhaps I should have left them all tightly locked, keeping the key of course, admiring and fussing over their security, pondering how I might make them even more innocuous. I should never have thrown the key away: that would never have done since I should always have been in deepest fear of someone finding it and undoing my work.
Survival, it has to be said, was my chief, no my single, concern. I worried over my health and the changes being brought about in me. Sometimes I thought I would explode with all the stuff Tom poured down my throat. Anxiety breeds anxiety and occasionally I re-entertained one of my oldest fears: that of going blind. And here I give myself away. Oh, I might have claimed I felt I had no influence on those who ministered to me; and yes, I might have believed that I did not care; but I was only flesh and blood, still flesh and blood, just like them. My sight was my life and although unreliable at times it was my distraction from myself for, if left totally to my own devices I should crack, perish, if I were lucky.
Later, a day or two after my ‘birthday’, I enjoyed a short respite from the attentions of John and Anna. Once a week they held some kind of a meeting to which any of the residents might be called to discuss their progress, their personal therapeutic regime, their views on the place - all kinds of things like that. The Major deemed these meetings to be very important but he was rarely called and his own requests for an audience, while being granted, were considered shallow and lost their authenticity in their not being issued from ‘above’. Even I was summoned on one occasion to the dingy office, though the points up for discussion were naturally completely one-sided, and the details were trivial.
After this particular meeting an excitement became apparent in the house. Jackie, one of the residents, had, in John’s terms, ‘achieved social re-alignment status’. That is, she could go home.
Of all the residents at One World she was perhaps the most normal, or the least affected, whichever way you might care to look at it, and as such she was probably the most invisible. A middle-aged, tidy woman she was mild-mannered, shy, and had little to do with me, though I sometimes saw the Major beckon her away to some discussion beyond my earshot. She was mousy, pleasant, not the kind
you might expect in a place like that. She would be leaving the very next day.
We all lined up outside the front door, in the rain, and she hugged people, shook hands, and even kissed me on the forehead. The taxi came and she was gone. Where she was destined for exactly, I never knew, people rarely thought to tell me factual things, just things about themselves and things they seemed to think I should be doing. Wherever it was she was supposed to be going, she didn’t arrive. Instead she went to a canal and drowned herself.
The news returned quickly to One World via a police car and two officers. ‘Drowned?’ whispered one of the triplets standing beside me, cupping her hand to her mouth then drawing her companion away to some place where they might discuss the matter in their oddly detached way, yet without being overheard. The Major became very tight-lipped for a while, his agitation simmering, an electric charge threading its way inside his long thin body. Even Tom appeared put out, and for a day or two his work lacked conviction.
John and Anna seemed to retreat into themselves for a while. The bed was not filled. Quietness, a chilly sort of respect, descended on the household; nobody seemed to have much to say to anyone else, and if they did say anything it was merely polite. It was a while before things returned to the way they had been before and the triplets began charging up and down the stairs again, avoiding any place I was since I seemed to frighten or spook them in some way. Not that I was bothered.
Spring was coming. It was around somewhere, blowing in on fresh, sweet air, sparking life off the way it does. The Director of One World and his assistant needed new inspiration and I, though not directly suffering the blame for Jackie’s death as I might have done at a not-so-distant previous time, became the target for their further inspiration. Why me? Because I was easy to deal with I suppose. I offered little resistance.
The old exercises were elaborated on. A wooden frame, a machine of sorts, was brought into the gym. It filled the room. I was placed on the seat and straps were drawn across my chest and thighs. Tom then positioned himself behind me and began heaving at the protruding bars and levers. The machine shoved me forward, leaned me back, parted my legs if need be, raising and flexing them in complex, excruciating variation, until I was left exhausted, my head spinning. This apparatus cost Tom less in terms of effort than before when he had had only his strength to manipulate my increasing weight through a less sophisticated programme. The machine creaked and groaned, and more than once a support piece would snap and have to be repaired. I could smell the new wood of which the thing was made; undoubtedly it had been put together in one of the workshops behind the house. Often I wondered, as my head was spun through an arc, my mirrored image crashing towards me then receding, whose hands had been at work in the construction of this odd monster, and, perhaps more importantly, who had dreamed up such a design? Based on what principles?
Tom seemed to take to it with some quiet, if reluctant, enthusiasm, and after one protracted session I felt especially weary. Hot pokers were in my back and neck and my legs were cold, promising pain for the next day. Then I began to feel the tiredness outside my body: it lay heavy on my cheekbones, played about my head and heels like static, like one enveloping spirit, like many small spirits pirouetting up my spine, tickling, teasing, seeking entry; a racy, rushing feeling, as though all the momentum put into me by that machine was now after release, hesitant at first, reluctant to leave the shell, then all at once pouring out of me, propelling me headlong out of myself - though my body, of course, remained perfectly still. I became dizzy; my focus on things was bubbled, streamed, unreliable. At the evening meal I was given copious amounts of fluid, enriched fruity drinks and milkshakes, no doubt as the result of some decision that the amount of energy I was burning up had to be replaced with enhanced quantities of foodstuffs. My mouth flapped madly, and I slobbered but tolerated the stuff. When everyone else had gone Tom came back for me and told me that instead of my being taken to the lounge as usual he was taking me straight up to bed. I took this to mean that he had somehow noticed my fatigue, for he had become quite adept at anticipating some of my needs.
He said nothing as he wheeled me into my room, indeed he appeared to have dispensed with many of the old formalities in his dealings with me, tired perhaps of talking to himself, feeling a bit silly, at odds with his superiors. Only a day or two before he had emptied the water jug that stood on the table beside my bed, which had been meant for my use but which had only gathered dust. That evening, as if to imply some kind of conspiracy in which he took my part for granted, he put his forefinger to his lips and pointed to the bed. Drawing back the covers he revealed a black pad, about a yard square, underneath the bottom sheet. He carefully replaced the sheet then drew my attention to a flex running from the pad to a small white box hidden behind the bed. A yellow light gleamed beneath a piece of plaster stuck over it to dull the glow. I had prior experience of such devices: when I wet the bed a contact would be made in the pad and a bell would ring in the box to wake me up and alert me to the fact that I was being incontinent. Simple. I had no fear of this contraption. He helped me into the bed.
I listened to the sounds of the house, the television downstairs, the triplets, the Major’s laughter, the compulsive drinker in the room next to mine gorging herself with water from the washbasin, her vomit padding softly against the walls and door; then my weariness overtook me and I slept.
Sometime later when the house had gone dark and cold, I was awake, in anticipation it seemed, of my pissing the bed. I felt the drips oozing, trickling down my balls and on to the sheet. But there was no bell, only a tape recording crackling into life, gently admonishing me, ‘Dirty Peter. You’re not a child.’
At first this did not seem remarkable, just a variation on the bell technique I had encountered before. Then I realized there was more to the device.
The urine stopped dripping from me as I concentrated my attention on the gentle voice whispering to me in the night and the dark, ‘Lazy Peter. What a to-do. What a messy business. Why disgrace yourself this way? This dirty habit, it’s simply not becoming for you. You can do better, don’t you think? Come on, try. Think what you’re doing, why you’re doing it. Think of the trouble it puts other people to. Poor Tom. Poor John. Poor Anna. Selfish Peter.’
There was something beyond the words, a little kingdom hidden among them. At first it was only faintly familiar, but it quickly made itself apparent to me and I was filled with terror. Was there no end to their ghastly ingenuity? The floodgates between my legs gushed open and my intestines retched horribly, making me shit until I thought I was going to die. Dear God. Dear, dear God. That voice, that warm, killing, woman’s voice, belonged to my own mother.
TEN
‘Sex. Could be sex. Or maybe not. Their efforts are too sustained for that. You don’t keep up a front like that just for sex. Besides, Peter, could you imagine the feline Anna coyly baring her razored pussy for that grease-head John? I don’t think so. I don’t really know, but I don’t think so.’
The Major continued pitching stones through the freezing mist, his target a line of bottles at a far edge of the old, wooded quarry he had brought me to. He had lent me a coat, a sheepskin, put it on me himself, and then brought me out without seeking permission. I doubted that it would matter.
‘They’re weird, oddball,’ he said as he winged a white stone to shatter one of the bottles. The noise rang in the trees then was muffled in the close grey beyond. ‘Something’, he said, ‘should be done. There’s an authority somewhere. Has to be. Someone to whom they are accountable. Everybody’s accountable to someone. They just don’t do things right, they overstep the mark. I was better off where I was before. Bet that applies to you too, eh?’
I was beset by depression, it had laid siege to me, coming in waves day after day, a withering possession that had taken hold and wouldn’t let go. Bad times. Sometimes I would ask myself the same questions as the Major: What was in it for them? Where did they find the initiative, this animated de
sire to take me apart, build me up, reinvent me? I had no satisfactory answer, save the recurrent notion that somehow they were really attempting a reconstruction of their own selves, imposing on me an image of the way they thought they were, or should be. But it was not for me really, this odd philosophizing, moralizing and debating; I had enough on my mind. And I could neither condone nor condemn the Major’s sexual theory: I who had never looked with pleasure on any man, woman, or beast. I should have blocked my thoughts altogether, they were dangerous, insoluble, no end to them, best left alone. But the resentment I felt over their incessant interference in my existence, the misery, the despairing idea that there would never be any compromise on their part, led me to brood, thus compounding my hopelessness and faltering faith.
John tended to keep his distance from the residents; it seemed to be his method. I would catch glimpses of him setting off to break the ice on his pond or deposit a new specimen or return with a fresh corpse in an envelope. At mealtimes he would slip into the kitchen when he thought everyone else had gone, to take from the oven the meal which Tom had made him. If I was there he would be taken aback by my unexpected presence and might offer a nod and one of his tight, crooked little smiles in recognition. If he was in a hurry he seemed quite nimble, but there were times when he seemed in some kind of pain, as he shuffled along with the slightest of limps, his footsteps odd on the carpeted, creaking hall floor. I could not fathom him and it would be unwise to try. It would come to no good, do me no good if I tried to slip out of my role of patient, submissive, recipient of his assumedly higher knowledge. I had learned that kind of thing a long time before. I had to behave myself.
Anna was different, younger, more vital. Her instructions came from him of course, but there was much of her own drive in her work. Perhaps, and obviously, she planned one day to have the One World Rehabilitation Centre to herself, and she may well have been in training for that very, suspect, honour, though she was patient and tactful and did nothing to usurp John’s place or show disrespect for his wishes. Much of the programme they inflicted was, I believed, of her design. The tapes, for instance, which lullabied on into the night, sometimes different, often the same repetitive sentences, for ten minutes or more -those could well have been all her idea, for the voice that cajoled and whispered from behind my bed was certainly hers, artistically disguised of course, but most certainly hers. My mother was dead, had been for many years, I came to remember - as I came to remember many things, new baubles rising from the swamp, crashing from the ceiling, no stopping them. Bad times.