He felt entirely at peace as the nurse brought food to him. There was no way in which he could outwit these people except by silence. They expected him to ask questions which would indicate that he was mad, but he would not satisfy them. He would remain buried in his deep silence, he would use exile and cunning against them, for he was on his own, there was no one to help him. And of course Linda was behind it all, like a spider. He imagined her with her fat secret lover drinking wine somewhere and talking about him, drawing the web tighter and tighter, inventing new ideas to drive him mad. Her lover must be that taxi driver. All that story about being a Catholic and having a wife and children was an invention. He and Linda and his mother-in-law were laughing behind his back even now, thinking how naive he had been while this immense plot had been spun round him. What he admired almost professionally was the perfection of the detail. They hadn’t forgotten about the trolley. Of course they envied him, all of them, that was why they had decided to play this game on him. They had thought him an élitist and had isolated him. They had resented his ability to sustain himself on his own.
Perhaps that was why Linda had chosen Yugoslavia. She must have known that there would be no English language papers. It was she who had suggested that he hand over all his newspapers and magazines to the people in the hotel. The whole plot was a very intricate one, calculated precisely to deceive him. Every hero must be attacked at his weakest point and his weakness had been his capacity for creating fables, plots, while despising other people. He stared at a vase, blinded by the beauty of it all. Click after click as of the machinery in a safe was heard, elegant, complicated yet sublimely simple. All this had started a long time ago while he had been involved in writing, innocent, naive. Even the visit to the caves, to the colosseum, had been part of it, designed to drive him mad with images of hell and the underground, Orpheus and the icy Eurydice.
The trees outside the window swayed gently in the breeze. There was a world outside, which he would never taste again. It was heartbreakingly beautiful with its blossoms and its innocent rivers and streams. They had certainly locked him in, tricked him brilliantly. How had he survived? They wouldn’t have liked that. On the other hand perhaps they hadn’t wanted him to kill himself, they had wanted him to suffer. It would be too simple, too easy, to let him kill himself, that would be far too easy an exit. They had saved him for their own deep purposes. And then again they could say, How could we have destroyed him if we saved him from the death he tried to inflict on himself? Oh, they were clever, so clever, there was nothing that they hadn’t thought about. They had wanted him to suffer while at the same time they were showing the outer world their concern for him. Even the nurses hated him, he could see that. And the doctor had been laughing at him as he strutted about in his smooth pompous manner, inventing such a silly story, as if it were a parody of one of his novels.
He ate his food quietly, all the time staring at the trolley as if it were an exhibit from a crime of unimaginable subtlety. And had his mother-in-law been deliberately confusing him with her talk about Palma? Was that a test and was she, too, more subtle than he had thought? He had thought her stupid when in fact she was very clever, indeed one of the instruments of the story. And in any case she hated him and hadn’t wanted him to marry her daughter.
He ate as best he could. No, he wouldn’t starve himself, not for anybody. He would survive if he kept quiet, if he watched, if he didn’t speak. They would not catch him by his speech. Silence was his only weapon, he, the hero, who was being systematically and shrewdly destroyed.
Somewhere in the next ward he could hear the hum of a hoover and remembered the woman dressed in blue who had passed through his own ward earlier on. She was another of the happy workers, ensconced in her undemanding job, while he lay there and thought and suffered. She belonged to a world which he could never enter again, the mafia had made sure of that. Even if he confessed his pride, it would do him no good now. There was no appeal from this tribunal. But he would not give in, he was too used to subtleties of plot to be deceived easily. He was a reader of conspiracies. They had picked the wrong man this time. They would know that they were dealing with a real brain even though it was half paralysed by drugs.
He looked again at the pillow and found that the burnt mark was uppermost. The nurse must have done that when she was bringing him his food. There was nothing that they weren’t capable of. There she was standing over by the oxygen machine looking so innocent, so crisp, in her uniform, gazing candidly around the ward, as if it were her own territory. Nurses, he now realized, had an infinite capacity for evil and the power to use it. They could be sadists, their patients were helpless in their hands. They had a terrible desire for power, as his mother-in-law had: they pushed their helpless patients about, pummelling their beds, making them get up in the middle of the night. Their resentful minds burned with a dim yet powerful light.
He took his dressing-gown from the locker and put it on. Then he padded to the bathroom. The white-faced man was standing at the basin washing his face. Ralph looked into the mirror and saw the man staring at him. It seemed to him that the man was mad and would attack him, and so he went into the cubicle and sat down on the seat. As he sat there he noticed that there were yellow strokes of paint on the wall. It looked as if someone had started to paint the cubicle and then had stopped. The strokes however were not in any order, they were like a crazy scrawl of yellow lightning, now here, now there. He stared at them for a long time, frightened, panic-stricken. When he came out of the cubicle the white-faced man was gone as if he had never been.
As he lay on the bed again he began to think of the nurses and then of the woman in Yugoslavia who had sat at the table next to them. She had said, Too much laughing, or words to that effect. She had of course been a German, possibly a Nazi. Nurses too were like Nazis: that was what he had been trying to get hold of. The Yugoslavs had fought against the Nazis but latterly had welcomed them to their country as tourists. They had the biggest cars, the finest and newest luggage. It was curious how they had sold their birthright in this way, accepted the thirty pieces of silver. And then he thought of the women dressed in black he had seen walking along the promenade, these women who had suffered so much in the war, who now walked in a treacherous sunshine. And finally he thought of the girl on the swing composing larger and larger arcs of flight as she soared towards the sky and in particular he thought of the young weeping boy who had been made fun of.
He had followed Linda about all the time in Yugoslavia, he had allowed her to do the leading, to take the decisions. He had been so tired, so exhausted. He had been stalled in his book and had welcomed the holiday. But the holiday had done him no good because he hadn’t been able to read.
That night when she came to visit him she told him what had happened, as she nervously twisted and untwisted her fingers. She looked very pale but not yet as pale as he would have liked.
“They put you under the stomach pump. I don’t know whether you realize it but you were swearing a lot when you came out of it and you wanted the phone all the time. Your language apparently was atrocious, which is odd. They had to give you the phone to quieten you down.”
“What happened to me?” said Ralph in a distant cold voice but at the same time with a sort of pride.
“You ran into the wood. Into the middle of the wood. The taxi driver and I followed you. He was really very good, he could have left you and gone home to Glasgow but he said that he had seen something like this before. Anyway we followed you into the wood. I was going frantic. We couldn’t find you at first and then we did, just in time. Another ten minutes, perhaps five minutes. … There was a very nice policeman and we walked you up and down, up and down.”
“Five minutes,” said Ralph with the same pride.
“That’s right.”
“I might as well tell you,” said Ralph, “I think you’re having an affair with that taxi driver. I was thinking about it, and he looks like the sort of person who knows about bu
gs. Anyway they’re always in touch with their headquarters in these taxis.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Bugs. He looks the mechanical type. Anyway, I don’t believe he’s a taxi driver and I don’t believe he’s married.”
“Where on earth would I have met him?”
“I don’t know. How do I know? How do people meet people?”
“Really,” said Linda. “Do you realize you’re putting me under a lot of strain? How do you like the hospital?”
“I don’t like it at all. It’s not a real hospital. They’re always pushing and pulling furniture about. Beds, trolleys. And the trolleys don’t have wheels on all the legs.”
“What did you say?”
“Look at that one then. It’s only got wheels on two legs.”
“I see that. It’s certainly odd. But they’re all the same, as you can see.”
“What?”
“The trolleys are all the same. Have a look.”
And when he did look he saw that they were indeed all the same. It wasn’t just his trolley that had wheels on two legs only. But he was determined to continue.
“And another thing they’ve got streaks of yellow paint on the lavatory cubicle. As if someone had started and not bothered to finish. It’s very odd.”
Linda didn’t say anything. Now and then she would pass her hand across her eyes. How cunning she was, pretending to be tired.
“I wish you would tell me more about this conspiracy,” he said, “which I admire so much. I really do. I am a professional. I admire technique. Why don’t you just come out into the open and tell me what you’re doing and why you hate me so much.”
“I don’t hate you. I want you to get well. Surely you can see that I love you.”
“Love!”
“Would I have rescued you if I hated you? Would I be coming to see you?”
“That’s the cunning of it all. You want me to suffer.”
“For what?”
“For living in my own world. I discovered that in Yugoslavia. I discovered your world. It was meagre. It frightened me. How can one live without an obsession such as art?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s meagre about it?”
“Nothing. What’s the use? I’ve sent for my lawyer.”
“Oh.”
“That’s right. I want to make a will. I never made a will before.”
“If that’s what you want.”
He was watching her like a hawk but her expression didn’t change.
“Yes. I might leave my money as a prize for a novel.”
“You would need a lot for that, wouldn’t you?”
“It’s what I want to do.”
“That’s all right. If it will relieve your mind. I only want you well.” But in spite of her protestations he sensed a falsity in what she was saying. He was filled with despair. How could you trust anyone in this world? What was going on behind the mask of smooth or wrinkled brows? He was in the middle of a spy story. Spy stories were very ordinary, they were around one all the time, they were about the double agents of the common day, the deaths and resurrections and betrayals. How could one even know who oneself was?
“I brought you fruit,” she said.
“I’ve got fruit already,” he said. “Look.” And then he stared at his locker. “There were four bananas there. Now there are only three. And I didn’t leave my slippers like that.”
“You must have miscounted them.”
“No I didn’t. I definitely counted them.” He felt very insecure as if behind his back all sorts of things were happening, nurses taking bananas when he was lying asleep or in the lavatory. And as for his slippers they must have shifted them too. But he must remain quiet and not say anything that would incriminate him or label him as mad.
“Go away,” he said curtly. “I don’t want you. I don’t trust you. Go away.”
She rose wearily to her feet.
“If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
He watched her as she walked away from him and he thought she might be leaving him forever. He despised himself for being so dependent on her, for loving her. He nearly called her back but didn’t. He wouldn’t phone her either. He would show her that he didn’t need her. He thought her bowed back, her weary walk, a beautiful piece of acting. She disappeared through the open doorway and later he heard a car starting. He lay in his bed imagining her going home to a house where her fat lover awaited her and he was filled with despair. But also he had his pride. No, he wouldn’t have anything more to do with her. When he got out of hospital he would leave her and find a flat for himself and live there forever reading his books if he could concentrate. But he was frightened of being left alone and he loved her so much.
He could hardly keep his eyes open. He knew that the nurses must be drugging him just before the visiting hour so that he couldn’t question Linda closely. Oh, they were cunning: nothing they hadn’t thought of. He shut his eyes and fell asleep.
When he woke up there was a harsh light falling about the ward. The nurses were in a frenzy of business shifting beds from one ward to another. In the bed next to him he saw the man who had been suffering a headache before. He was still clutching his head and rocking backwards and forwards. His eyes looked mad. He watched with a bleak understanding as he saw all the other beds being shifted out of the ward apart from his own and the sick man’s. The latter gazed at him unseeingly. Why weren’t they giving him anything for the pain? It must be deliberate on their part. Suddenly there were no nurses at all and the ward was quiet, apart from the moaning of the man in the next bed.
And then he saw the next part of the plot. It too was beautiful. The man was going to go off his head with the pain and attack him and they would say that they didn’t realize he was so bad. It would be put down as an accident. The man’s mad eyes glared through him, past him. In his striped pyjama jacket he was sitting up in bed, a mad tiger. Ralph felt more scared than he had ever done in his life before. The man was a maniac, he had been left alone with a maniac in the falling yellow empty light. What time was it? It must be about midnight. The ward felt eerie and deserted and there were no nurses to be seen. He wanted to speak to the man, to say, “I’m on your side. I hate these nurses too. They should have given you pain killers.” But he couldn’t bring himself to do so. His mouth was dry and he was lying there like a vulnerable effigy. He felt that the scene had been carefully staged. They were deliberately keeping the man in pain waiting to see what would happen. He himself was like a goat tethered in the harsh light waiting for the tiger to see him and attack. Yet why was he so frightened? Why should he be frightened of death, who had tried to kill himself. It was absurd, and yet he was. He didn’t want to die, not here, not in this unintelligible place, which he couldn’t control, without someone knowing, testifying, to what had happened. “Novelist attacked by patient.” Everything of course would be covered: they always looked after their own.
In the distance as if from the kitchen he heard some music playing. ‘Irene Good Night’, it was. Who was playing a radio at this time of night? The man’s head turned towards him like a jaguar’s as if he was scenting a fresh disturbance. Of course they were deliberately doing it. This was a bare barren stage in its helpless yellow light like vomit, it was waiting for something to happen. The nurses were hiding and watching, perhaps laughing and chattering among themselves. They were waiting to see the result of their plan.
Sometimes I live in the country
sometimes I live in the town
sometimes I take a great notion
to jump into the river and drown …
Where had he heard that before? It was on the bus in Yugoslavia sung in a tinny Yugoslavian voice in English. The man was now staring helplessly down at the bed in a world of his own, abstract, cruel. And then he began to weep soundlessly, tears pouring down his face. As he did so he turned away from Ralph. The plot had failed, the tiger
hadn’t struck at all in the middle of the wood. He had escaped their machinations for one more night.
The following day at about eleven o’clock in the morning the lawyer came to visit him, young, brisk, energetic, clutching a briefcase.
“How are you, Ralph?” he said. “Feeling better?”
“Yes,” said Ralph.
“Good, good. What we’ll do is, I’ll take your instructions and then bring you the will to sign. Okay?”
“Fine,” said Ralph, “that will be fine.”
“Okay then,” said the lawyer again. He smiled as a nurse came and drew the curtains around the bed.
“I’ll outwit her,” said Ralph to himself. “I will leave her the money after all. I will do the unexpected.” He thought that this was the best thing to do, to show his contempt, his self-sacrifice. To show a supreme irony. He felt better when he had thought of this plan, it was so unexpected, it had such an odd ending. It would make her ashamed. He felt fulfilled and heroic.
“I want to leave all my possessions to my wife,” he said.
“And after that in the event of …” the lawyer paused, his pen in his hand.
“After her no one.”
“I see.”
How neat and tidy the lawyer was, how finely combed his hair, how well-shaved his cheeks, how efficient he was too. And how young.
“Well, there should be no problem about that,” said the lawyer shutting his briefcase and looking around him with the same calm self-sufficient smile. What was he smiling at?
“I’ll get this drafted out and in a day or two I’ll come back.” He stood up from his chair which was at the side of the bed. Then he glanced round him at the curtains and said, “Reminds me of amateur drama I used to take part in.” Then he smiled again.
Of course, thought Ralph, he has no intention of making a will for me: he thinks I’m mad.
Ralph said hesitantly, “If anything happens to me …”
“Yes,” said the lawyer quickly.
“Anything unusual. Keep your eye on the papers.”
In the Middle of the Wood Page 13