The Man Who Wanted to Smell Books

by Elspeth Davie

  The hall is beginning to empty now. The two get up. Neither is noticeably stiff, and the girl is exhilarated by what she has seen. They walk away arm-in-arm through the noisily wrangling crowds.

  Death of a Doctor

  THE DOCTOR’S NURSING assistant comes into the waiting room rather earlier than usual – just before seven o’clock, in order to say a few words to each person sitting there. The room is already half full. It is midwinter, and throats and chest complaints can be expected. Even though the place is warm enough some people are still wearing scarves. The children have on their knitted woollen caps.

  The girl standing in the doorway is an extremely pretty person. In spite of her stiff, white cap and the well-laundered blue overall there is nothing starchy about her. She hesitates for a moment on the threshold, looking about her, then begins to go round the room, saying something quietly to each patient. The words, in fact, are so quiet they can scarcely be heard except by the one person she is speaking to. What she says is: ‘I am very, very sorry. I have to tell you that Dr Sneddon died last night.’ Often she gives a little touch to a shoulder or to a hand as she says this, and occasionally a light tap on a head as if to instil some unbelievable message into the hard skull as gently but firmly as possible.

  Snow is beginning to fall, though the flakes are still so few they can hardly be seen except when they fly suddenly sideways and glitter close to the waiting-room window. Sometimes they are blown backwards and up towards the high wall of the houses opposite. This long, black building has lighted windows in it and now and then a dark figure can be seen – a woman at a sink, an old man pulling a sweater over his head, a dim room behind, sometimes a set table, and always from the corner the flickering blue light of the TV.

  ‘Dead?’ says an elderly man to the assistant. ‘Oh, but I’ve been here a long, long time, and I’ve come a very long way too. I had to leave my work early. And that wasn’t easy, I can tell you.’

  This waiting room is by no means a gloomy place. It could almost be called gay with its brightly coloured posters stuck on every inch of the wall – posters about accidents in the home, about diet, about drink and driving and about exercise – showing swimmers, runners, walkers and people bending and stretching in airy bedrooms. There are posters asking for kidney donors, eye donors and blood donors. There are new posters about AIDS and well-known ones calculated to reduce the fear of cancer. There are posters to encourage cervical check-ups and discourage smoking. There are posters on contraceptives and healthy motherhood, on pre-natal clinics and post-natal clinics, on childcare, on vaccination and immunization. Some of these posters make a dramatic pictorial impact with their flaming frying pans and dizzy drivers steering towards the crash, with their enormously fat and attractively slim people, their mothers with perfect babies and mothers with sad babies. The frenzied businessmen with bulging eyeballs, heading for the heart attack, are hung beside careless people cutting themselves with sharp instruments, or poisoning themselves with badly labelled bottles. Yet whatever these poster-people are doing they are still managing to hang on to life, if only by their fingernails. The elderly man scans them all carefully and seems to feel the lack of something. ‘Well, I’ve been here since six,’ he says again, as if this fact in itself should awaken the dead. He stares fixedly at the door as though awaiting a resurrection.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ says the girl patiently. She had heard often enough what people can utter under shock. ‘And another doctor will be coming tomorrow,’ she adds. Yet the man doesn’t look shocked, simply tired – tired to death, you could say.

  ‘Well, when is the other coming?’ he calls after her as she moves on to speak to four people – a young woman in a red coat with her child, and her father and mother, the child’s grandparents, on either side of her.

  ‘How can that be?’ says the young woman almost brightly when she hears. ‘I saw him two days ago. He looked flourishing. Said he’d been golfing. The best round he’d ever had, he told me.’

  ‘You’ve got to expect anything,’ says her father. ‘I, for one, am ready for anything. That’s how I’ve always gone through life.’

  ‘Well, that’s absolute nonsense,’ says his wife. ‘You’re not ready for anything – never have been as long as I’ve known you. You were never ready when the builders came, never ready for the plumber, always late with the TV licence. When were you ever ready for visitors, even your own grandchildren? How can you be ready for death?’

  ‘It’s all beyond her, poor thing,’ says the old man, appealing to the nurse with a friendly smile. ‘She’s speaking of death as a person, isn’t she? She’s not into the big ideas yet, you see, not into abstractions.’

  But the young nursing assistant goes on quickly to take her message round the room. Two pregnant women sitting together take it very badly indeed. Both weep when they hear it, knowing very well how birth and death can be spoken about in the same breath. For a moment the nurse sits between them and puts an arm around their shoulders, praises their hair, their eyes, their complexion, speaks of the happiness of new life, compares their choice of babies’ names, asks after their other children and reassures them about the other doctor who will be coming in tomorrow. ‘But is he as good, as kind?’ they ask anxiously, their hands laid protectively on their bellies as though around precious, easily damaged jars.

  There is now a feeling in the room, even amongst those who haven’t heard, that something has gone wrong with this place tonight. Several people get up and slowly approach the table where daily and weekly papers are laid out along with certain magazines – romance, beauty, house-keeping for women, with gardening, fishing, engineering and do-it-yourself for men. People are taking a long time to choose. There is a great deal of fussing, rustling and whispering round the table. The women leaf impatiently through those pages devoted to polishes and perfumes for the face and body, polishes and perfumes for the house. Some of the magazines are fearfully old and limp, rough-skinned and dingy. Yet some glamour still remains. Unlike the recent dailies, no tragedy has touched them. Both men and women pick up these newspapers very cautiously tonight, glancing back and forth from the pages to the white-flecked blackness beyond the window as if forcing themselves to relate the innocent white-on-black outside to the sombre, headlined black-on-white within.

  The young assistant leaves the pregnant women and continues on her round. Those who suspect nothing out of the ordinary gratefully watch her coming. She is indeed young and pretty, unlike a harbinger of death. On the other hand it seems just possible that she is coming to tell them some comforting news she has picked up about their ailment. Unlikely but possible. In this building all possible and impossible things have been heard and spoken. ‘Well, when is the other coming?’ shouts the elderly man from the other end of the room. In the silence following a man holding a fishing magazine is heard to remark that fishing has saved him.

  ‘Not drugs,’ he says, ‘not doctors, not diet, not exercise.’

  ‘What was wrong with you then?’ says the man beside him. ‘What was wrong, that only fishing helped?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with the body,’ says the other. ‘Not unless you can talk of a body as strung with nerves as a hung-up puppet. Nerves were what was wrong. Nerves and nothing else.’

  ‘Sounds bad,’ says the one beside him. ‘I’ve never had that. But what have fish got to do with it?’

  ‘Casting a rod over a deep pool is what it is. Flicking the fly over a flowing stream. Not a sound from the bushes on a still day and not a ripple on the pool. The one and only thing that’s cured a bad bout of nerves. No, don’t talk to me about the medicine men, don’t give me the psychiatrists. This is Nature, you understand. Or maybe you don’t. Not many do these days.’

  ‘But there’s the tooth-and-claw bit, of course,’ says the one beside him. ‘How do you square that?’

  ‘I don’t. I’ve seen creatures gobbling one another up while I sat peacefully on the bank, insects biting, tangling to the death with other inse
cts, great bugs chewing up small bugs. I’ve seen cats purring and pawing over mice, grown men forcing poison down rabbit holes. Screams and agony all around on a summer’s day.’

  ‘Funny that doesn’t get on your nerves,’ says the other.

  ‘Well. I count myself one of these animals, of course. Maybe that’s the reason. I’ve got used to my own cruel breed, for better or worse. I’m pretty tough, I daresay. Though I admit I came round here this evening because I didn’t feel so good.’

  Having got through papers and magazines there is little for the patients to do except watch the girl making the round of the room. Everyone stares at her – the women even more than the men. Their feelings are mixed. Some who have been flicking through romantic stories ask themselves whether the doctor has ever been in love with her. They wonder what the lonely, ageing wives make of such girls – the beautiful attendants of doctors and dentists, the glamorous private secretaries of business executives and politicians, the gorgeous guardian angels of every clergyman, spiritual director and bishop, the comely companions of all-night petrol-pump attendants, the stunning policewomen and the teacher’s pretty helpmate. Tonight the thought of this weakens their resistance more than the flu or the sore throat, more even than the asthma. The awful injustice of it all grabs them in the pit of the stomach like the start of labour pains. True enough, somebody said, the wife is everything at the end of the day. A faithful wife is more precious than rubies. Rubies, was it, or was it emeralds? Emeralds or diamonds or just plain pearls? It is always terribly hard to get these jewel qualities of wives properly sorted out.

  ‘And when is the other coming?’ shouts the old man again from the end of the room.

  ‘Just hold your tongue, you, and show some respect!’ a woman exclaims.

  Some of the children are getting bored now. There are a few toys near the table but they are for the younger ones. The older group ignore the scarlet wagon on wheels, the drum, the yellow truck carrying bricks, the moth-eaten teddy bear. The tired babies, their eyelids a faint blue with sleepiness, have started to wail and are being bounced on their mothers’ knees. The girl in the blue overall watches the older children for a while, then holding a small boy and girl by the hand she takes them to the window and lets them kneel, each on a chair, to watch the flakes blowing outside. Now more people can be seen peering from kitchens across the street. Some there have almost forgotten they are looking into a waiting room. They have stayed so long staring out from darkening, empty rooms it seems they are envying the carefree closeness of the crowd opposite – the lively talk, the table covered with papers and coloured journals, the toys, the children playing, and in their midst this amiable young woman who is exceedingly attentive, who bends and speaks intimately to each person in turn like the good hostess at a party. The food is lacking, certainly, but no doubt there is a laden table somewhere behind the scenes.

  By this time the nursing assistant has reached a very old man sitting close to the gas fire. He is holding a small sporting paper and his hand shakes so wildly the sound of paper is out of all proportion to the size of page. It resembles some gale-swept poster tearing itself off the sea wall. His head is shaking too. To those who watch, it looks as if he is not at all startled by the girl’s message, but rather affirming every word she says with a violent nodding of the head as if – unlike the others – he is agreeing silently but energetically that death is inevitable, not surprising at all and must be continually accepted without question. The girl braces his shoulders firmly for a second and passes on to a youngish couple sitting together by the window. ‘Will he be long over the patients tonight, do you think?’ says the woman glancing over her shoulder. ‘We’ve such a distance to get home. If this goes on we might even be stuck out there. This time last year the car scarcely got through the last two miles on the hill. Of course, I know he can’t help it. But will he be long? My husband’s in pain. It actually took him an age to get down into this chair. He can neither sit down nor stand up, you see. And as for lying! Even a few pills for the night would help. Of course the doctor can’t help it. He’s no say over his time when the surgery’s full. That’s the worst of practices these days.’

  The young assistant is thoughtful for a moment as if considering carefully this question of time. She raises her eyes and looks into a mirror between two posters on the opposite wall – one persuading people to stop smoking, the other discreetly mentioning kidney donation.

  ‘No, they’ll never get a kidney out of me,’ says the grandfather of the child as he follows the direction of the girl’s eyes. ‘Not a kidney, not an eye! I’m keeping every bit of myself to the grave, and every drop of blood to the last. It’s hard enough keeping myself together as it is, and getting harder every day!’

  In the mirror the girl’s face looks smooth and youthful. To the old people it seems she could never be thinking of the passing of time, far less about death. Still she conscientiously gives her news to the once snow-bound couple who lean forward attentively to listen, then grab one another’s hands. This young husband who is supposed to be unable either to sit down or to stand up, gets to his feet in one straight, sudden movement like a dancer who raises his partner with him by force of an unexpected discord in the musical score. The three of them stand together for a moment – the young couple with the nurse. Slowly she presses them down into their chairs again. She takes great care doing this – putting one hand on the woman’s shoulder, supporting the man’s back with the other and making sure their feet are firmly set on the floor – planting them, so it seems, like fragile plants into deep earth before she turns away.

  Beside them are two men discussing the repair of an old car. The older has his arm encased in plaster from wrist to elbow and he holds it out stiffly in a half-salute towards the middle of the room. Once in a while children come up and tap it curiously with a fingernail. Unlike the drum on the table it makes a dull, heavy sound. These men have already heard what has been said to the couple on their right. The nurse stops beside them only for a moment. ‘Well, that’s the saddest thing,’ says the youngest man, ‘and he can’t have been much older than me. I always liked that doctor – loved isn’t too strong a word. He came once in the middle of the night – when I could hardly breathe, when I was in such a panic I thought it was the finish of me. Believe it or not, I started to breathe again the minute that man came through the door. And when he started to talk to me things were O.K. as if nothing had happened. What did he talk about? I remember something about his mother’s hens. Anyway the sheer stupidity of those hens, clucking and scraping through that night, brought me round. And then the smooth, harmless eggs lying there in the morning straw. Well, the whole thing calmed me. Whenever I have another attack I think of hens. What else he did for me I can’t remember. The poor young man. To tell you the truth I’m terrified to hear that news. I feel bereft. I’m sorry I sound so heartless – talking about myself,’ he says to the nurse.

  ‘Not heartless at all,’ she replies, noticing that he is pale and beginning to gasp a little like a man forcing his head suddenly out of a strong wave. She takes his hand and draws a deep breath. When his colour returns and they are both breathing slowly and regularly together, she moves on. Once again from the far corner of the room the old man shouts louder than ever: ‘When is the other coming?’

  It is snowing heavily now, and with their fingers the children follow the criss-crossing tracks down the window-pane or make sudden, swooping movements with their hands as the flakes blow upwards on a gust of wind. In the windows of the houses opposite several people are still staring across. Some have even left the TV screen to watch. The ghostly blue light still flickers behind them as they peer enviously down into this real, lit room full of flesh-and-blood men, women and children with their genuine fire, their real toys, papers and pictures and all presided over by a friendly girl, prettier than a TV star. This girl has made the full circle of the room and now she reaches the door where she stands in silence. Everyone waits for her to sp
eak, even the children loading the yellow truck with the last brick and the kneeling snowflake-tracers who have now climbed down and are rubbing their red knees. The watchers in the windows opposite, seeing nothing but her moving lips, wonder if she is welcoming the company, promising something better to come, or already on the point of saying goodbye. ‘I am so sorry I had to give you this news tonight,’ says the girl. ‘It’s a terrible shock for all of us. You’ve waited here too long, I know. But I thought it better to tell each one of you.’ She puts her hand on the door and tells them that another doctor will be here early the next day and that meantime any emergency can be seen around the corner in the next street. She gives a name, a street number, a telephone number. And now she waits for the patients to leave. Slowly they get up, one by one, and come across. Some touch her quickly on the arm, in passing, or on the shoulder, as she has done to them. One or two give the crown of her head a quick, light stroke. These are all cautious touches as if to discover if she is truly flesh, blood and bone, to make sure she will still be there for them tomorrow and the day after and all the weeks to come, if need be. Yet all these discreet touches have done something to the girl. Her hard shore-substance is being gradually dissolved by this sea of need. The determination is wavering slightly. The last people to leave see that she is in tears.

  In spite of the movement through the door the waiting room is not yet empty. An old woman, sitting where she has sat for the last half-hour, is still there, knitting. Opposite, on the other side of the table, a serious middle-aged man is still engrossed in his book. Long ago the nurse has spoken to them, but it is as if they had never heard. She approaches the woman. ‘The others are going now,’ she says. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go off as well. You see, I have to close the place in a few minutes.’ For a while the knitting needles click on more rapidly than ever. Then the old woman drops the red, woollen scarf for an instant to remark: