“Orderly?”
“No.”
“What.”
“Nurse.” He smiled. Then, barely audible: “Is that all right?”
“All right what?”
“All right with you.” He smiled as if he were privately amused—a little wryly but still amused—at some secret slight joke of his own. Nothing to laugh about; just sort of muse over, continually.
Don was too uncomfortable to face him. “What’s the other guy,” he said, looking away.
“That’s Doctor Stevens. Did you like him?”
“Listen. Didn’t he say I could go?”
“Okay, baby. Hold your water. I’ll go get it.”
“My clothes?”
“Your paraldehyde. You’ll love it.” He moved silently away.
When he was at a safe distance, Don turned on the mattress to watch him go. He moved down the ward with a noiseless casual tread as if in carpet-slippers on his way to his own bathroom at home, indescribably nonchalant and at ease. It was infuriating. But you didn’t have to watch him, did you? He lay on the mattress face down, refusing to look further.
Though he couldn’t believe the business about the fractured skull, he began to realize the spot he was in. The alcoholic ward. So here he was at last. Inevitably he would wind up in this place and the only wonder was that he hadn’t been here before. This was your natural home and you might as well take it. Take it and lie low and wait for your chance to get out again—and then forever afterward watch your step. But it wasn’t happening, either—not any of it. You had a bad head but you certainly didn’t feel the pain you knew you had, didn’t shake (no more than usual), didn’t sweat (no more than usual). It was all so unreal that you weren’t even suffering; you were merely biding your time, in a time-out. He began to look about him.
It was a long high-ceilinged room with a concrete floor bare of anything but beds, most of them so low they were little more than pallets. Only three or four were of normal height, and these were boarded up at the sides like babies’ cribs. The idea, he supposed, was to keep you from falling out; or, in the case of the low beds, from hurting yourself if you did fall.
On the mattress next to his, a man who looked like some kind of crank messiah (but only because of the gaunt and hollow face) lay staring at the ceiling. He had a three- or four-days’ growth of beard, his cheeks were sunken, his eyes large and sad. His white legs stuck out below the pathetically short gown like a cadaver in the morgue. He might have been dead, but that his entire frame—all over, all of it at once—quivered. It shook with tiny tremors, regular, precise, constant, as if a fine motor operated somewhere beneath him, in the mattress itself.
Farther off, a middle-aged Negro babbled God knows what at the top of his lungs, and no one paid enough notice to find out what he was complaining about. In the bed across the way another Negro got up on his knees, lifted his gown, and urinated on the floor. No one seemed to notice or mind that, either, least of all the intelligent-looking man who leaned against the wall a few feet away in a stiff faded robe held together by a safety-pin, looking about as casually as he could and being very careful to avoid every returning glance. His self-consciousness was painful to see. Don felt that the man had been looking at him, but by the time he noticed the fellow, he had shifted his gaze an inch or two to the left. You couldn’t have caught his eye if you’d tried. Other men in faded robes or short gowns open at the back moved restlessly up and down the aisle or went in and out of the two rooms at the end where most of the shouting seemed to be coming from. There was a strong smell of disinfectant and dirty feet.
It wasn’t possible that he was here or that he had come to this place in an ambulance, clang-clanging through the streets like the ambulances in the movies or like the one he had seen yesterday tearing in and out among the pillars of the L. You couldn’t ride in one of those things and not know it. But you had. You had been rushed zig-zagging through the city streets while an interne sat at your side taking your pulse or your temperature and bracing himself for the turns. But how had you got into it in the first place? Where had you been picked up—by whom? What or who had given you a fractured skull—if you had one? All he remembered was the bottle left behind on the living room table.
The nurse Bim appeared again, moving down the ward like a cat. He was even cat-like in color: tawny; neither blond nor brunet. From a little distance he smiled at Don and raised his eyebrows, and his head waggled from side to side ever so slightly. There was something contemptuous about his every motion, a carelessness or insolence which yet solicited attention—and got it, Don realized. Damn his eyes, why did you have to notice, why did you look at all? But this kind of coquetry was so bold and mocking that you couldn’t take it seriously, you shouldn’t allow yourself to become exasperated. Maybe the guy was clowning.
He sauntered up to Don’s bed and handed him a small thick glass half-full of a colorless liquid. “Here’s your drink, baby. You can pretend it’s gin. Doesn’t it look like it?”
“Set it down, will you please?” Because of his shaking hand he didn’t trust himself to take the glass under the other’s gaze.
But the nurse, God damn him, always seemed to be two jumps ahead of your own thought. “Go ahead, I won’t look.”
“What’s it for?”
“Your head and your nerves. It will clear you up. No, don’t smell it, just take it.” He pretended to look away and Don picked up the little glass and downed the stuff in one swallow.
It was the foulest tasting liquid he had ever had in his mouth and that was going some; bitterer than anything he’d ever heard of (he’d be tasting and smelling it for weeks); but almost instantly, miraculously, the throbbing in his head died down, his heart quieted, his hands stopped trembling. He felt suddenly clear and normal; all trace of hangover and fright were gone. He couldn’t believe it. He looked up at the nurse in surprise. “What was the name of that stuff?”
“Paraldehyde.”
“What?”
“Paraldehyde.”
He had heard perfectly, but he wanted the name said again, wanted to fix it in his mind forever, wished he had some way of writing it down so that he would never never forget it.
The nurse sat down beside him. “Feel better, baby?” The words were a vibrationless hum, intimate and secret-sounding as the voice of Marlene Dietrich. You had no defense against him. You couldn’t even snub the guy.
But the perpetual slight smile bothered him even more than the voice. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering.”
“What?”
“Ever been here before?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’re right. I would have remembered you. Anybody ever tell you that you look like Ronald Colman?”
If you only had sense enough to laugh, or kid back!
“Little younger, but the same eyes and puzzled forehead. Nice.”
“Listen. I’ve taken that drink. Now what about—”
“Want to bet something?”
“No.”
“I’ll bet this isn’t your last time.” He put his hand on Don’s knee—completely impersonal, oddly enough—and nodded toward the man Don had noticed before, leaning against the wall. “See that one over there? He won’t look at us but he’s listening to every word. He’s a repeater, that one. I’ll bet I’ve seen him six times this year, and it’s only October. Advertising man. Lovely fellow, too.”
Don studied the empty glass, in his embarrassment. “What about my clothes.”
“What’s all the rush? It’s only noon. Sunday at that, don’t forget. You can’t get a drink till afternoon.”
There he was again, knowing your thought. “Listen. Can’t I get my clothes? The doctor said—I heard him say—”
“Now now. Just relax, baby. I’ll get them for you if you’re in such a sweat.” He got up from the mattress and sauntered off through the ward.
Paraldehyde. Was t
hat the word—had he got it right? God this could maybe turn out to be the discovery of your life. As long as there was such a thing as paraldehyde in the world—
Doctor Stevens came into the ward again. He was accompanied by an older man in a business suit. They stood in the middle of the room talking together and looking about. The doctor pointed out first one patient and then another, not troubling to lower his voice. “Now that one over there—” And even as the alarmed patient began to respond in excited fearful apprehension, the two men slowly turned their backs and began to regard and discuss another. They might have been visiting a picture-gallery, or admiring impersonally the various blooms and plants in a hothouse.
They came forward and stood between his mattress and the one next to it. “Now this fellow”—indicating the staring messiah—“came in last night. He says he’d had only one glass of beer.”
As the gaunt skinny man awoke to the fact that he was under study, the invisible motor somewhere within the mattress speeded up at once, accelerating the tremors that rippled throughout the whole body. Sweat began to stand out above the apprehensive eager eyes, eager to please, eager to prove he was master of himself. The sweat broke and ran down his face as the doctor addressed him.
“How many did you have,” the doctor said in a loud voice, as if speaking to some one hard of hearing.
“One, Doctor. Just one.”
“One what?”
“Just one bottle of beer, Doctor.”
“What’s your name?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“What’s your name?”
“John Haspeth.”
“How do you spell it?”
“Haspeth, Doctor.”
“How do you spell it?”
“John Haspeth.” The front of the gown, across his chest, was already dark with sweat.
“You can see,” the doctor said, “how he’s beginning to perspire. The whole bed will be soaked in a minute or two. That’s because we’re talking to him, of course. And notice the feet and legs—well, the whole body, for that matter. The tremors are getting worse. He’ll be shaking himself right off that mattress onto the floor if we stand here long enough. It’s the effort at concentration, plus self-consciousness. If we turned our backs, the shaking would die down very quickly.”
The patient watched and listened with passionate anxious concern, hanging on every word, and the tremors quickened even more as the doctor addressed him again.
“What do you do, John?”
“I’m a painter, Doctor.”
“House-painter?”
“Signs. I paint signs.”
“Where do you live?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“What day is it?”
“Day?”
“What day is it?”
“Wednesday, Doctor.”
“What month?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“What’s the month, what month is it?”
He raised his hand to his mouth but it kept hitting his chin, so he lowered it again and clutched the sides of the mattress to still the shaking. Then, as if a tardy answer would spell ruin, he gasped, breathlessly: “January.”
“What year?”
“Year, Doctor?”
“What’s the year? Is it Nineteen-thirty-four, Thirty-five, -six, -seven?”
“Thirty-six, Doctor.” The shaking had become violent now. The hands and arms pumped up and down, the legs danced like a puppet’s, the entire trunk jumped and bounced on the bed.
The two men watched this in silence for a moment, regarding the struggle almost without interest. “How many drinks did you have?” the doctor went on.
The patient hugged his shoulders to quiet himself. “Just one, Doctor—I only had one. Just one glass.”
“I thought you said bottle.”
“Oh no, Doctor. Just one. Only one small jigger.”
“Jigger of beer?”
“Whisky, Doctor. Only one little glass.”
“Okay.” The doctor turned to speak to his friend.
“Doctor! Doctor!” the patient called out. “Won’t you give me something?”
“No no, not now. You can have all you want of those things in the hall. They’re in the jar on the desk. Go help yourself. You know where they are. Take as many as you like.”
“What does he want?” the man in the business-suit said.
“Medication. A sedative. I tell him he can help himself to the salt-tablets. We encourage that as much as possible. No sedatives in the daytime. We try to maintain or restore the normal sleep-cycle, you see—make them stay awake during the day. Put them to sleep now and they’ll be raising hell all night. That fellow over there took a running jump at the wall around three-thirty this morning and got a terrible shaking-up. Thought it was the ocean and wanted to jump in. That wouldn’t have happened in the daytime. Delirium is a disease of the night.”
As the two men moved down the ward to the rooms at the end, the staring messiah began gradually to subside in his pool of sweat, a grey oval stain that ringed him completely on the bed.
Delirium is a disease of the night. God what an expression. Beautiful as a line of verse, something to remember and put down sometime—remember in quite a different way and for quite a different reason than he meant to remember paraldehyde.… Besides, it was a good thing to know. Could you bank on it?
Here was the nurse Bim with the clothes. He came along the aisle with a little bouncing step carrying the clothes wadded in a ball against his chest, with his arms around them and his hands folded in front. He set them down on the mattress and undid the rope that tied them together. The clothes rolled out in a messy heap on the bed.
“There they are, baby.”
“Where do I dress?”
“Right here.” He moved away with a smile, leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and began to watch—casual, indifferent, disinterested; but somehow it was intolerable. Nobody in the world could have been more at home anywhere, more at ease, than he was at home and at ease in this place and in himself. It simply wasn’t normal to be that nonchalant.
Don fished in the pile till he found his shorts. Burning with self-consciousness, he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress, and shifted and wriggled till he got his shorts on, under the gown. As he began awkwardly to dress, then, an idiotic picture came into his mind: Pola Negri sitting across the table from a lecherous Prussian officer in some ancient film, and a camera-trick in which the dress seemed to fade away, revealing her naked, as if to indicate that Noah Beery had undressed her with his eyes.
He heard the purring voice. “Three-one-one, did you say?”
He glanced up sharply, to show his anger. It was no use. But the question gave him an idea—under the circumstances, a shameless one. Shameless to take this advantage. “Bim, listen. Is it possible to get some of that paraldehyde?”
The nurse shook his head. “The doctor said one dram. You had yours.”
“Look. Couldn’t you get me a little more? Sneak me some? I mean, to take home. In a little bottle or something?”
“Can’t be done. But I’ll tell you what.”
“What?”
“I could bring some over sometime.”
“No thank you.”
“Are you in the book, baby?”
“No thank you, I said! Forget it.” He found his shoes and put them on. When he stood up, he felt in his pockets for money. There wasn’t a bill. In a vest-pocket he found four nickels, that was all. He wasn’t surprised—nothing about money could surprise him any more. Apparently he was supposed to go on losing it and losing it and losing it every time he got his hands on some. He looked around for his hat. “Where’s my hat?”
“Are you sure you had a hat?”
“Of course I had a hat!”
“They didn’t give me a hat with your clothes, but I’ll go see again.”
Don watched him go, the frame and build of a truck-driver sauntering along softly, insolently, like a dancer. H
e sat back helplessly on the bed and helplessly gazed after the receding offending figure of Bim, accepting him at last, and knowing why.…
Here was the daydream turned inside-out; a projection, in reverse, of the wishful and yearning fancy; the back of the picture, the part always turned to the wall. The flower of the ingrown seed he had in him was here shown in unhealthy bloom, ad terrorem and ad nauseam. It was aspiration in its raw and naked state, aspiration un-ennobled, a lapse of nature as bizarre and undeniable as the figures of his imagined life were deniable, bizarre, beyond reach. All that he wanted to become and, in his fanciful world, became, was here represented in throwback. He himself stood midway between the ideal and this—as far from one as from the other. But oh, too—oh, too!—as far from the other as from the one. If he was uncomfortable in Bim’s stifling presence, did he not also have reason to be comforted? Or was midway, nothing—nothing at all?
Thank Christ he’d be out of here in a minute. He had never belonged here even for the few hours they’d put him away. He couldn’t identify himself with the place or with the guy sitting here on his bed waiting for his hat. It isn’t me, it isn’t happening to me. He looked about the room again, as a spectator.
A young woman had come into the ward, apparently to call on a patient who was ready to go home. The patient sat on the bed waiting for his clothes and the young woman sat in a chair. They were talking together. Don saw the young man quicken with interest and enthusiasm the longer he talked; and though he couldn’t hear a word that was said, he knew what the young man was saying—the plans that were being made, he’d get a job, maybe they’d go to the country, all he needed now was a good job, he felt like it now, he’d learned his lesson, this could never happen again, not possibly, wasn’t it a good thing it had happened really, maybe he’d needed just this to wake him up, he even welcomed the experience, didn’t regret it at all, the way he felt now he’d never touch the stuff again in his life, and he was going to stay that way too, she could watch and see, he’d get that job and she wouldn’t have to go through a thing like this again, ever again, or he either.…
The girl nodded, like Helen.
Doctor Stevens and his guest came back through the ward. They stopped at the end of Don’s bed.
The Lost Weekend Page 14