Fanon

by John Edgar Wideman

  Oh, Ms. Wyman. Thank you so much. Do my best around here. Surely I do. But I sure ain't growing no wings.

  You're kind, patient, respectful. As good as wings in this mean place.

  Thank you. Like I said I do my best. When I change my mind about that, I'm outta here.

  Stay as long as you're able, please, Nurse Mimi. Can't be easy, is it.

  Know something, Ms. Wyman. This ward the easiest I've worked in a good while. Hands stay plenty busy, but this ward far, far from the worst.

  Where's it hardest, if you wouldn't mind me asking.

  Course I don't mind. It's preemies. The neonatal ward, Ms. Wyman. Doctors keeping newborns alive younger and younger. Means smaller and smaller. Some them poor little things look like they ain't got no business out here in this cold world. So tiny and shivering and shriveled-up, you know. First time I worked the preemie ward I could hardly believe some them was real babies. More like shrunk-up old people dolls. Or little pink mice or puppies. Too tiny and funny-looking for human being babies. But that's what they surely are. Little-bitty people got personalities no different from you or me. Afterwhile you start thinking the big, fat, healthy babies lined up in the nursery window down the hall is the strange ones. But them preemies do take some getting used to. So small and weak. You be halfway scared to touch them. Ain't easy for the parents neither, Ms. Wyman. Can't blame them in a way. Who wants to claim a child look like it from Mars. Some scared the baby ain't gon make it, so they just can't touch. Some the mothers too young and dumb to be mothers. Babies theyselves. Pass on they crack habit and that's about all the preemies gon get from them. Anyway, we gown and glove up the mothers and some would hold the babies all day if we let em. Doctors better and better at keeping the wee-little ones alive but some come here ain't spozed to stay here. No way. So we still lose babies and it's hard. Little things ain't done nothing wrong to nobody but they ain't never had no chance. Me, I always be picking one the worse-off ones and giving it special attention. The little fighters ain't got nothing going for them but fight and your heart's rooting they make it even if your head figures ain't no way. But you hold them and talk to them, keep them fighting breath by breath. You ain't slighting the others. A particular one just plays on your mind all day while you working. When you home you hoping she still be there when you go in for your shift. Stay on an extra shift sometimes trying to keep one breathing. Don't pay to be softhearted if you working with the preemies. Lots the nurses up there don't sleep well. You on double double shift but what good's double days off if you can't sleep. Some the girls get into drugs, you know, to keep theyselves going. I wasn't no better, Ms. Wyman.

  Anyway, it's hardest on the preemie ward. I been on post-op and critical care and cancer but preemies the hardest. Takes the most out a person. Don't know how the girls work there regular stick with it. Did my rotation many a time, then I had to let it go. Never forget the day I walked in there and thought I was in jail. Seem like all the preemies in little cells, tied down with those tubes and wires hooked up to the monitors and alarms. See, you got to have alarms cause they cry so quiet. Can't holler to get your attention. Lungs one the last things grow in right. Lung problems finish most them preemies don't make it. I walked in one morning and seems like all them making that pitiful peep-peep-peep like baby chicks' noise you can barely hear instead of crying and hollering out loud like full-term babies. That quiet little sound got to me, Ms. Wyman. I thought to myself these babies asking me why they locked up in here, in this goddamn slam, excuse my English, Ms. Wyman, and nothing I could do but march my big self on by like some goddamn prison guard.

  The preemie ward on Five, isn't it. Tried to visit the newborns once but the nurses turned me around.

  Uh-huh. Only parents. Sounds like you getting familiar with this place. And getting around better too, ain't you, Ms. Wyman. Good for you.

  Did you know there's a policeman guarding one of the rooms on Three.

  We get police and paramedics in here when they bring in hurt people off the street. Sometimes they bring an inmate from over the prison for an operation. Usually the poor man's half dead before they bring him in here. And after they cut on him he ain't hardly ready to jump up and run away. Guard on the door kinda silly if you ask me. The man up on Three a different story. Whole hospital talking about him. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Did you know this. Did you hear that. Poor man can't walk, can't talk, barely breathing but they scared to death of him. Guard him night and day. You'd think they got Bin Laden himself with those sad, pretty eyes up on Three. Say he's from another country. Say he's black as me and can't speak no English if he could talk. Say he hates white people and wants to kill them all. Now if he don't speak English what I want somebody to tell me is how any these fools round here know who the man hates and don't hate. A troublemaker big-time, they say—you know, like they say about our Dr. King and Malcolm. Say he was a bad fellow back wherever he came from and he's very sick now, but they must still be scared cause he's locked up in here so they can keep an eye on him till he dies. Heard people say his name but I can't call it to mind. A funny kind of name I ain't never heard of. If he's like our troublemakers, bet somebody somewhere sure knows his name. And ain't gon forget it. Know what I mean, Ms. Wyman.

  So that's how they got together, my mom and Fanon. One likely story anyway. If you need a story to stay on board my story. And now that I've showed you mine, it's your turn to show me yours. Isn't that how it goes. Isn't that only fair.

  One day, though the weather outdoors rainy and dismal, inside the hospital it's dry and bright as artificial illumination can fake, and inside Fanon's head a sudden and from his point of view suspicious clearing. As a psychiatrist he'd been trained not to trust his patients' sudden turnabouts or conversions. Such dramatic swings more likely symptoms of disease, signs of deterioration rather than progress toward a cure. A light bulb flaring up just before it quits. Is he being manipulated by the constant flow of drugs pumped into his body. Truth serum, poisons, placebos, consciousness-altering substances. Is this instant, wonderful clarity a reward the doctors can give and take away. Are these Americans, these lynchers, softening him up, beginning a calculated process of conditioning. Training him like a Pavlov dog. Will they addict him to pleasure, then manipulate him by withholding or administering sweet doses of what he can't bear to live without. Pleasure some argue more persuasive than pain—catch more flies with honey than vinegar the old folks say. Couldn't the simple absence of pain bring pleasure. Especially after an intense, prolonged session of torture. Doesn't this momentary truce, this bright, unbelievable interval of simply being himself, depend upon the threat of pain, pain always there just below the threshold of consciousness crouching in the shadows around the next corner ready to spring. Please, doctor. Don't talk this reprieve to death. Don't waste it. Enjoy yourself, my brother. Fly as high and happy as you can fly.

  Fanon can't remember any stories about torturers extracting information from captives by making them happy. Inflicting pain more efficient than throwing a party. He makes a note to himself to raise these issues with his patients. Do torturers or the ones tortured understand pain better. Whose pain. Are pleasure and pain inseparable. Please, doctor. Stop. Why ask questions. You know damn well there's a difference between pleasure and pain. Don't spoil this gift of clarity. Believe it for as long as it lasts.

  The explosion of gushing water is not a river overflowing its banks, not Mount Pelée erupting, not a black hole swirling open in the sea and sucking down the troop transport Oregon, it's one of the policemen flushing the toilet they share with him. Why are they afraid. Why don't their eyes meet his when they enter and leave. Not they. Though different policemen guarding him, and once a policewoman, it's one, always one at a time ignoring him, fearing him. One at a time in the tiny cubicle just inches from his bed, so he tries to resist they. But they lock the stall behind them. They flush to be certain the toilet clean for their dirt. Then they unroll paper, reams of paper, to wipe the toilet, the sink, line
the seat, cover the floor, wallpaper the walls. They grumble, maneuvering their large bodies in a small space. He thinks of cowboys in American movies, awkward as armored knights in their leather chaps and vests, giant hats and holsters, belts, bandoliers, spurs, and boots, cowboys dismounting, jingle, jangle from snorting broncs. Even for a stand-up piss, the flics can't get at their pissers without unbuckling, lowering the beltful of rattling paraphernalia. A big sigh when finally they plop down. Their giant pillows of ass smothering the hole his shrunken hams would sink into if not for a nurse bracing his arms. Routinely, their shits move the earth. Then they flush again. Or flush twice. Leaving no shit for the prisoner's shit to contaminate. More water running, more paper, more rattling and squeaking, zipping, buckling up. Enough water consumed flushing, washing, and rinsing to quench the thirst of a drought-stricken Algerian village. If famine deprived them, he had no doubt these husky carnivores would devour one another. Imagines himself flat on his back, legs poking up like a roast chicken on a platter, while they big-bellied their way to the dinner table, polite hippos waddling on their back legs, napkins under rolls of chin, knives and forks in their fat hands.

  Doctor Fanon, you have a visitor. A lady, doctor.

  He touches his necktie's assumed perfection, the dark knot of it exactly centered bulging from white wings of his collar. He's prepared. This ushering and announcing of visitors a formality. He knows perfectly well the shape of his day, the sequence of appointments and phone calls scheduled between them, the bedside consultations in the wards, evenings observing and interacting with his patients in the therapeutic social activities he arranges for them. As resident psychiatrist at Blida, with endless demands on every thimbleful of his time, he must organize and prepare meticulously. Much of his energy exhausted planning how to execute a thorough yet efficient passage through the maze of his patients' illnesses. Their symptoms create the shape of each working day, working days never-ending it seems, all his waking hours and most of his fitful sleep consumed by his patients' demands, a situation bearable, perhaps, only because the alternative is worse. Anything better than empty time alone when the ever-present sous-conversation, sometimes a barely perceptible murmur, sometimes a roaring in his ears, takes over, that conversation with other voices and himself about the inevitable failure of all undertakings, the cruel setbacks, total crash of cures patient and doctor devise, unspeakable exchanges he cannot ignore whose only theme is futility, a running negative commentary from the world outside the Blida clinic critiquing his efforts inside the Blida clinic. What about the massacres, doctor. Have you heard there's a rebellion in the hills. doctor, doctor, I'm mad, I'm ill, I'm a native, a god, a dog. You could help us defeat them, doctor. You 're one of us. Not one of them. Whose color. Whose skin. Whose flag do you serve, doctor. You 're a doctor, not a soldier, doctor. If you touch me with those black hands, doctor, I'll scream. In the muddle of voices, his often the loudest, mocking the logic of his routines, his plans, the hopeful words passing between patient and physician. Endless hours in clinic and ward dull the sous-conversation, sustain the illusion that all's well, or partly well at least. He's a doctor, after all, performing his duties, ready for the rigors of the day. He knows his name, his trade, he'll be prepared with practiced face to meet the first patient's trepidation or relief or hypocrisy or naive faith or loathing.

  To amuse himself he pretends he's forgotten who he is. Forgotten who waits on the other side of the office door. Plays dumb. Feigns total ignorance of what he's supposed to be doing in the next eighteen or twenty hours. Forgets the consequences of forgetting, forsakes the safety zone where he can pretend to be one kind of man, a doctor in charge, running the show, at least until fatigue and the weight of self-deception, the weight of lying to his patients brings him to his knees again and he hears the rattling of his chains, the moans and screams of the others locked in the hold with him. He plays innocent. Slips the yoke and turns the joke. As if he doesn't know what's come before and coming next. As if he can't look through the wall and see who's being announced when the nurse descends from the sky and pokes her head in the door. You have a visitor, doctor. A lady...

  Good day, madame ... sir ... let's see ... hmmmm ... are you a torturer or one of the tortured. The question he never asks though the mischief-making part of him entertains asking it, goads his professional persona by pointing out the usefulness of such an inquiry. Why not commence each interview with simple questions. Insane or sane. French or Algerian. Black or white. Living or dead. Allow the patients to declare themselves and thereby begin to cure themselves. The physician's job no more nor less than grasping whatever thread the patient offers, holding on, following it through the labyrinth. Saving each other.

  From the podium he sees a brown sea of faces, brown broken here and there by a few islands of whiteness, particularly in the rows closest to the stage and then as his gaze lifts toward the auditorium's rear the faces become one color, no color where the house lights dim and an overhanging balcony sinks all faces in uniform darkness, and out there, just beyond and below the balcony, a busy traffic of delegates through a pair of double doors admitting and expelling light each time they swing open, doors at the ends of the aisles that divide the interior into three sections, a massive wedge of seats in the middle, a narrow band of seats along each wall, the hall's design configuring the audience just like politics divides he thinks or like the divisions of human nature that politics mirror, he thinks, the center squeezed by the margins, the margins squeezed out by the center, and he wonders who will come forward first, someone from the right flank or left flank or center to seize one of the microphones set up for a Q-and-A session scheduled to follow his keynote speech, one mike at the foot of each aisle, just before the pit or apron or moat dividing stage from the first row of seats. Will the conference delegates descend to the mikes with the same urgency and determination they exhibit hustling out of the doors at the back of the auditorium. A steady stream so the doors are blinking eyes or like flashbulbs popping to steal snapshots of each delegate who enters or leaves. Perhaps urgent state business summons the fleeing delegates. Or too much wine at lunch for overworked middle-aged kidneys perhaps. Doubtless these diplomats and bureaucrats and reporters and exiles and spies and intellectuals without portfolios are all extremely busy people, busy men he should say since almost all are men, men who, before they enter rooms where conference business is conducted, shed the young women you see them chatting up in the lobbies, the halls, the streets, the women they escort to bars and restaurants surrounding the conference center. Where do these women disappear when the men are here, Fanon wonders. Wherever the women are, is that where the delegates are running. Running to take care of business. State business. Man business. Woman business. Monkey business. Who knows who's paying whom to do what. Who finances the errands, meetings, exchanges in the city's best downtown hotels where even in this so-called black man's country at least half the guests look white.

  At the swinging doors delegates get in each other's way, no labored courtesies, no bows or handshakes, no you-first-Alphonse-no-you-Gaston comedy, the delegates busy men too much in a hurry to acknowledge one another, unhappy to be caught a naked second in the lobby's glare, rushing away from the glare of this important conference hosting important people. Fanon follows them after they escape through the doors, patting ties, neatening the drape of briefcases, smoothing a rich fabric's invisible wrinkles, brushing dust from immaculate lapels. Delegates wearing the tight-lipped smile of a well-dressed person emerging from a public restroom who avoids the gaze of the next in line, declaring himself or herself innocent of shitting or pissing like an animal on the other side of the door.

  Scanning through the auditorium's walls into its bright lobby, Fanon observes delegates displaying conspicuous lack of interest in whatever might be transpiring inside the hall, there a delegate hovering near the entrance for the next chance to enter unobtrusively as a delegate departs, here a cluster of delegates smoking, chattering a discreet distanc
e from the doors, there delegates forming a second front in the lobby around a bearded, well-known attendee's impromptu lecture, here a pair of delegates, each sneaking peeks over the other's shoulder while nodding vigorous assent to the other's words, words, words—words you might guess, from the concerned, earnest gazes the delegates pass back and forth, at least as significant to humanity's struggle as any speech delivered from the podium. Some delegates pass in or out of the doors and glide through the lobby elegantly, expertly as they shuttle through VIP lounges of international airports.

  Seated on the podium, Fanon despairs. How will anyone hear him, how will he hear himself above the buzz in the lobby, limo doors slammed, helicopters taking off, planes landing, terrorist bombs exploding, the whisper of expensive trousers rubbing well-fed thighs. He watches a hand sliding down a row of plush seatbacks as a delegate extricates himself from a front center seat, excuse me, excuse me, please, thank you, thank you, the delegate guiding himself by the feel of the seats, politely trampling others' feet, battering their knees, then hurrying, almost a sprint on tiptoe up the aisle to the door where his picture is snapped, and he blinks and bumps slightly a delegate entering as he leaves, the newcomer's eyes accustoming themselves to darkness, searching out an empty space to occupy until pressing affairs summon him away.