The Comforts of Madness

by Paul Sayer

  My misery faded and I had new hopes that I might at last have found a permanent retreat. I accommodated myself quickly to my surroundings, compromising the way all human natures must compromise, telling myself it was not such a terrible place and I had known worse. But it was not to be.

  Before the week was out Beckerminster came over to me again before his ward round - an action incredible in itself, since the Head Nurse insisted that all patients were seen by the doctor in the sanctum of his office, and all had to make themselves available during the ward rounds, which were always at the same time of day on the same day each week. However, the kindly doctor made this remarkable exception - the way he had done on my return - and came over to me. ‘Sorry, old chap,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid you can’t stay here.’

  He ambled over to the office to suffer the discontent of the Head Nurse, though I guess he might have dismissed him quite casually for he seemed a capable man.

  His news came as no real surprise to me; I had become so used to upheaval. I saw his words standing on the air in front of me, shimmering before they disappeared into nothingness. What could I do? I could offer no protest or thanks; I could only sit and wait until they came for me, wheeling me out into the dull afternoon and on to my last resting-place.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I have been here . . . ah, but I do not count the years, have no talent for it, that much you must know about me by now. I am yet the youngest, I feel, though there is one not much older than myself. His name is Roger. He has followed me down the short path to this sad destination. No, I must correct myself, not sad, it would never do for me to call this a sad place.

  I was brought from the Admission Ward across the square at the centre of the hospital, past the laundry and Industrial Unit, to this ward which has a name, a woman’s name, though I am constantly apt to forget what it is. Not to worry. They, all uniformed, allotted me a bed, a place at the dining-table, and a chair in the day-room, though they were soon to dispense with the effort of hauling me up to the table for my nutrition. And I waited days, weeks, for word of a new home for me, some new treatment that someone anxious to make a name for himself feels might reverse what they see as my relentless decline. But no one speaks, no one comes, and I am here still, have been for ... if only I knew. If only it were important to know.

  I am not as I was, not in any respect, least of all physically. My arms began crooking up during the nights and became eventually impossible for the nurses to hold down. The palms of my hands now face outwards at about shoulder height, my fingers curling in, the nails cutting my flesh if no one thinks to trim them. I am impossibly shaped. If it were possible to stretch me out they would see how much I had shrunk. My legs are now down to the bone, drawn up and outwards. Soon my knees will reach my ears. And my insides? Souped. All the colours I had imagined the various parts to be must now surely be one plain grey mass. My back has assumed a wetness, the flesh feels raised, and they dress it every now and again with a huge bandage. For this procedure they wear masks since the area apparently exudes a caustic smell they find unpalatable or perhaps dangerous. As a result of my awkward frame I am placed lengthways between the two arms of a reclining chair during the day to help keep my little weight off my burning sacrum. First they tried a rubber ring but this tended to irritate my badly nourished skin, so now they use a battery-powered rippling cushion on which I am seated and gently nudged by its hypnotic waves.

  We are not taken out much, not at all, in fact, but this does not bother me: I would fear for myself these days if I were suddenly exposed to strong sunlight. And there are no daily trips from this place to the Industrial Unit, or anywhere else, since none of the clients here is capable of performing any more than the most animalistic of functions.

  There are both men and women here and all, save Roger and me, are quite ancient. They wander incessantly, the women more so than the men, trying locked doors, picking hopeless fights, though many are remarkably agile. The air is impregnated with the constant smell of faeces and urine. Many talk constantly about their mothers, screaming for them sometimes, their voices seeming to come from crazed souls that have already passed on to the grave in advance of their crumbly old bodies.

  In their wanderings many will pause in front of me and ask me questions, sometimes appearing quite rational and considerate: ‘You poor thing. Can nothing be done to help you? How awful for you.’ And this leads me to believe that my appearance has become shocking beyond the norm I had assumed before - even the demented old ladies see how bad I am. I should not let it concern me.

  There are three large areas central to this ward - the sprawling dormitory, the dining-room, and the day-room. At each meal-time the wanderers are herded from day-room to dining-area, bawled at and pleaded with to stay in their allotted places, and served at lightning speed, since there seem to be no more than three nurses to the thirty or so of us at any time of the day. Some receive visitors who bring sweets, and flowers which are quickly removed after their visit since they may be eaten by one or two of the residents. The behaviour of some of these visitors is often reserved, sometimes extraordinary, as they move about the ward stuffing chocolate into the residents’ mouths, my own included, though this is always met with polite intervention when it is pointed out, wrongly, that I’m prone to choking and am only to be fed under the supervision of qualified staff.

  When it begins to get dark the noise becomes tumultuous and confusion is at its worst. The residents become hopelessly disorientated, inconsolably concerned about where they’ll spend the night, despite the fact that many of them have probably been in here for years. All will die here, that much I now understand.

  Eventually most begin to tire and drop into the bright, plastic-covered chairs, unable to muster more than a jaded irritability. I look at their faces framed by the hard, gaudy chairs – pale, blank, like almonds on a mosaic.

  Later still, all are roused and herded down to the dormitory, the big door being unlocked and swung open to reveal the large bays surrounded by unused curtains. I am taken first since I require the most effort to change - though now they bother little about putting me in pyjamas and settle for simply draping the top about my shoulders to impress some invisible supervisor I have never seen. Another reason for my being taken first is that I won’t fall out of bed as some of the others are prone to do. Some of the beds - usually no more than two or three, sometimes none at all - are occupied by the dying, their rapid, rattling breaths being drowned out by the tramp of slippered feet from the day-room. I sleep little, if at all, and never after the nurses’ round in the early hours of the morning when they come and peel back the covers on everyone’s beds, the various foul perfumes rising in one malodorous miasma with their soap and steaming water, a whiff from my own minuscule offering joining it all as it hangs in the air then is gone, up to the high ceiling, filming on the floor, who knows where? Then the light comes, that quietest of moments punctuated only by the nurses’ giggles and whispers and the occasional screech of a peacock in the hospital grounds, though my blood is no longer stirred by this sound.

  Ah, this place, this huge, solid place. What mind, what hands designed it? These stone arches and pillars thicker than a man’s length, the bolted metal window-frames, the great wide doors that slam like bombs, the awesome weight of this place, holding me in its shiny-white proper angles, a tiny thing now, a little piece of meat cradled in a hard shell -who, what philosophy, what science caused such a monstrous construction? Its space, its honeycombed heavy structure, all that I know of it, have known of it, leaves me quite giddy, excited and yet serene, and I am happy if I dare to think that it’s now in the process of absorbing me for all eternity.

  *

  If I dream these days it’s with my eyes open, the images in my head no longer related to the hard things in front of my eyes, the crazy ones brushing against my feet and the back of my head, the hands that cradle me from chair to bed.

  I remember quite recently dreaming once again of my deat
h, the manner of which I fail to recall - a simple fading away, perhaps? It would seem appropriate that way. A large mouth drew me upwards, pulling me with its mighty breath. This and other things I saw imposed on my mind while in front of my eyes the quivering activity went on, regardless of me and my madness.

  Often I wish I were ill again, genuinely sick. That way I could justify my meanderings and ramblings, negate them somehow, cast them outside of myself, become innocent.

  *

  One day, yesterday, a month ago, I don’t know, in another dream perhaps, one of the staff came to me. She looked down at me, opened her mouth, then seemed to think it more suitable if she knelt down to my level. She appeared different from the person I’d always taken her to be - hard-voiced, authoritarian - and her words were carefully chosen and polite.

  ‘Peter,’ she said, ‘you have a visitor.’

  The chair across which I was spread was carefully trundled through to a quiet little room with plain cream walls and a high window.

  It would, of course, be a terrible mistake, the sort of thing for which I had been made painfully accountable so many times in the past. A comb was passed through what remained of the hair on my sore, wet scalp. The nurse’s fingernail picked something scabbed from the corner of my eye. Then the visitor was brought.

  A chair was hustled in behind this small, straw-haired, murky-complexioned woman. The door of the room was locked behind her.

  ‘Peter,’ she said. ‘Do you remember me? I’m Alison, your sister.’

  A trick, it had to be. What awesome lengths they would go to in these places. Once more I was being pursued. Again I had allowed myself to fall asleep, become complacent, over-confident about the security of my surroundings and the possibilities of my being able at last to rest.

  The woman, whoever she really was, began telling me about herself. I noticed how embarrassed she felt, then how quickly she seemed to warm, become comfortable in my presence, realizing, no doubt, as others inevitably did, that I posed no kind of threat.

  She told me how long she had been searching for me, how many times in her life she had asked herself if I could possibly still be alive. Clever stuff, and no mistake. She showed me photographs she said were of her son, I forget the name she used. She leaned awkwardly forward and placed them close to my nose. She’d got married once, she said, adding, ‘Can you believe it? Me? Married?’ This amused her for a moment, I don’t know why. Then she said that it hadn’t worked out, was doomed from the start or something. She went quiet for a while, looking back over her shoulder to see, I imagine, if the nurses were standing there eavesdropping on her talk. Then she went on.

  It was a long time, she said, before she had been told about Father’s death. She had demanded information about me instantly, she said, but by that time I had been moved about so much that no one really knew where to start searching for me. This she blamed on the aunt who had looked after her, who had always hated our father and for some reason had decided to take equal exception to me. ‘But please, Peter,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t hold it against her, she was very good to me, saw I went to school, worked hard. She died last year. That’s when I thought about trying to find you.’

  I was becoming impressed. No one had ever recounted these details of my past life before, these baubles now formed into words, pouring innocent and enticing from the mouth of this pretty woman. Could it be possible? Might she really be Alison? My blood raced, lightly though, making me feel buoyant and new.

  ‘Do you remember the cottage?’ she said, smiling. ‘That awful place at the coast? The sea? Those dreadful storms at night? Oh God, Peter,’ she said with a giggle, ‘and do you remember that time we cremated a dead cat? Weren’t we terrible? I mean, weren’t we just a dreadful pair? Still,’ she said, firming her lips, ‘I suppose we meant well.’

  Then she seemed to run out of words. She stood and leaned with her back against the wall, pacing the few steps across the room then stopping again to examine me minutely, her now impassive eyes absorbing my obscene shape, my ugly, withered face and my bad, slithery skin. Then she fell to the floor in front of me and took hold of the clenched claw that passed for my hand.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said plaintively, ‘you poor, poor soul. What has happened to you? What is it that’s eaten you away like this? Such a waste, such a dreadful waste.’

  Her face was close to mine. I saw my reflection in her big eyes. Then she let go of my hand and stood, smoothing her skirt. She picked her bag up from the floor, neatly placed the chair to one side, then knocked on the window in the door. The nurse who had let her in came and bounced her key in the lock. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not him,’ said the woman. ‘He may well be called Peter, but I’m afraid that is not my brother. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’

  ‘Oh, not to worry,’ said the nurse. ‘I’ll show you the way out, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said the woman. She turned in the doorway.

  ‘Isn’t it sad,’ she said looking back at me. ‘Can’t anything be done for the poor creature? Anything at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said the nurse.

  The woman, Alison, my sister, sighed.

  ‘Good-bye Peter,’ she said.

  *

  I lose track of the seasons. There seems no point in trying to pin them down. Once I must have thought it worthwhile from the point of view of my own comfort perhaps, but now it seems a quite futile exercise. Every day is just the same as the last, my limbs, all parts of me, becoming more wasted. And my sight, periodically, seems to be failing. The moving shapes in front of me become formless, colourless and hazy, hissing, if that’s the way I can describe a shape. Sometimes, if there’s a sudden noise - a window being broken by one of the patients, or an unusually high-pitched scream - then my sight becomes clear momentarily, though it’s never for long. I confess that I no longer care much about my sight. I no longer care about anything I suppose. The day will come, my last day, and I sense it’s not far away, not far away at all . . .

  *

  For a while they seem to have been concerned about me. I can no longer tolerate food or fluid, I don’t know why. It’s certainly through no conscious effort on my part, for I have always accepted whatever was offered me since the very first day I was brought here. Somehow I can no longer take the stuff into my system. It could be that my tubes and innards have become so dry and congealed that nothing will enter in or pass out. Or it could be that my body has simply given up the ghost; it can’t go on forever, that’s obvious.

  The nurses bend over me, shrug their shoulders and remark how well I’ve done to have lasted so long. And today, this day, they decide to leave me in bed.

  A doctor in a white coat is brought to offer an opinion. He puts his ear against my naked chest, his nose between my parched lips. ‘Fascinating,’ he says. ‘Absolutely fascinating. Never seen the like before. It’s as if he’s in some kind of suspended animation, or hibernating perhaps. God knows what we do in a situation like this. Bring me the notes.’

  He reads my history, that decaying sheaf of papers and notes I once drooled over but could not now care less about.

  ‘Can’t be too careful in a case like this,’ he says. ‘Poor fellow. We must do our best by him. Occasions like this require the very best we can offer by way of our imagination, our compassion. We’ve had our eyes on him for some time, I must admit. And don’t we need the bed? Look at him – does it get any worse? He’s in there, though, we’re certain of it. Oh, he’s there all right, dreaming, thinking, watching us with some terrible, secret eye.’

  He comes closer, kneels at the bedside.

  ‘Are you there, my friend? Can we help?’

  An age passes. I see whole continents in his pink skin, worlds and constellations in the features of his face. Then, though he makes not the slightest movement, he becomes distracted, himself again.

  ‘We shall give you something,’ he says. ‘Something, Peter, to make quick and
light of your suffering.’

  He’s unrecognizable now, crazed with his idea. He beckons the nurse away with him. They talk quietly, conspiratorially. I sense some diplomatic agreement. They leave and I wonder at the failing of day and light, at the night which is about somewhere, outside, its weight pressing on the roof of the building. I can see the cleaving of the darkness by the lights of vehicles that pass beneath the dormitory windows. I dream of the awful sea I once knew, of cold wind in the tree-tops. I am afloat. Their hands reach for me, fix me with wire, suspend me, and set me down into a hollow in the damp earth. I hear the sound of a heavy stone being pulled along the ground. I hear their grunts, I know much of their burden and weariness. They moan about the effort of manipulating the stone until it is in position over me, hard on my back, excluding the light, though I, stiff Peter, Peter the toad, can yet hear the mindless wind at work somewhere, above, below, inside me, I don’t know where . . .

  I wake. The dormitory lights are on. Approaching footsteps get louder, encircle me. I see the two girls, these sweet, rude angels, and their trundling, white trolley, the lid of which they lift to produce a dish tinkling with glass and metal jewellery. Reverently, they draw back the covers that hide me. An afterthought, a little polite laughter: they pull the curtains that surround the bed. And now, impassively, they toy with their brilliant bits and pieces: a syringe, a needle, a phial or two. I wonder at the care they use in preparing for their procedure: thick gloves, checking and counter-checking. Their mixture is precious, I see that. Not to be fooled around with.