She rubs her thumb and forefinger together. “Money talks.” Now that she’s whispering into my ear, I can smell the gin.
“I don’t believe it, George.”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t Dr. Frank….” She gazes around hazily.
“You’ve been drinking,” I say.
“Not you, too, Sandy! I thought you’d be glad to see me.” She pouts. There’s a smear of lipstick in one corner of her mouth. I lick my finger and rub it off. “I am glad. But I worry about you.”
Shuffle, shuffle of feet. We’re being observed. Somebody—maybe Bob—says, “Hubba hubba!”
“Worry less, play more,” she says. She lights up a cigarette, takes a few puffs. “Not that there’s much scope here.” She stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray.
“This isn’t very responsible, Georgina!”
“Quiet,” says a man nearby. He keeps pulling at his ear with his fingers. When Georgina sticks out her tongue at him, he wiggles his ears and goes up-down with his eyebrows.
“You’ll have to go if you make a disturbance,” Ron Signet says. He’s a brooding shadow; he looms.
“Did you let her in, Ron?”
“Don’t be such an old maid, I’m here to have fun,” she says. “This place needs brightening up!” Ron doesn’t return her smile, so she subsides. One leg crossed over the other, she swings her foot, shoe partly off. “Oh, pooh. This is no good. Come on, Sandy, let’s get out of here!” She tugs at my arm.
“Georgina, I can’t.” The film continues to unspool, giving more urgent directions, showing evacuations of patients, application of bandages.
“You could if you wanted,” she says. “If you really wanted.” Her eyes have a glaze.
Her smell is sharp and ripe. She puts a hand in my lap.
“Georgina, please!”
Ron is there again. “Miss, I don’t know what you were told, but you’ll have to go.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m writing a cheque.” She opens her bag, takes out a chequebook, flips it open and scrawls a figure. “Is that enough?” She waves the torn-off cheque and it’s caught in the film light, a hand puppet. Now everyone knows that she’s here. Some of the men laugh.
The spool ends. Ron turns on a light so he can see to change it. There’s a different feeling in the room, and I’m afraid for her.
“You’ll have to go, George,” I say.
“Spoilsport!”
Then Karl is standing there too. I introduce them and he takes her hand and kisses it. There’s a stir. I stand up. “Karl is writing a book, Georgina. He’s a serious novelist.”
“Are you?” she says to him. “Then I’ll send you a writing book that belongs to my son.”
Attendant Cooper motions Karl to accompany him and they both go out.
Even Georgina knows now that she has to go. Ron is on the phone, calling for backup. When four attendants come through the doors, Georgina hands the cheque to Ron. “Give this to Dr. Frank, with my compliments. Excellent entertainment. Superb care. I’ll report back to my father.” She gives us a wave—“Ta-ta!”
Then she’s gone. Like the visitation of a spirit, I only half believe that she’s been. But then I start to laugh, and can’t stop, and laugh and laugh until the tears spill.
Ron sends me to my room although the second reel of the movie is still running. “A little time on your own, Sandy, that’s what you need,” he says.
“Take a cold shower, Sandy!” Winchell sings out.
It’s odd, this ability to walk unescorted through the corridors, to pass empty rooms, climb deserted stairways. Being alone, able to walk freely, one might think one were at liberty; although the barred windows, the locked doorways, the double steel door between West and East Wings and the combination of doors, gates, cabinets—like decompression chambers between inside and outside that I can’t see but know are there—tell a different story.
I’m thinking about the form of my day: how it began as usual, with work, and then the nature of my work, the contact with the rabbits, the purity of their breath and being that not even an angry man like Pete Cooper can contaminate; how life manages to exist and co-exist on its own terms; and then the surprise of Georgina’s visit—like a twist in a tale at midpoint. If Karl is right, the twist should lead to something—and I can’t help but think anyway that everything that Georgina does has a consequence.
My room is dark. Winchell and Bob are still downstairs watching the film, and Karl had not returned after leaving with Attendant Cooper: Perhaps he’s gone to bed early? A soft moan drifts from the direction of his bed and I hope I haven’t interrupted him. Although it makes me feel uncomfortable, I can understand the need to take solace however one can, in the dark, where one can imagine it must be the loved one’s hands and warmth on your body and not your own. I stand still, so as not to embarrass him. Another moan, then a soft squished sound, like a sponge being squeezed. I hold my breath. There’s a smell I know.
“Fucking Kraut, that should fix you.” Pete Cooper lurches out from behind Karl’s bed. I smell feces and urine and sweat. And blood.
I back away, but I’m too late: Cooper has seen me. I try to run, but I slip in a wet patch on the floor. “It’s you, you little faggot, you’re next.” Cooper’s heavy breathing: I’ve curled up on my knees, hands protecting my neck.
The light comes on. “What the hell!” It’s Winchell and Bob and behind them is Ron Signet. On the floor, not three feet from me, is Karl’s splintered face, his eyes rolled back in his head.
“Jesus, Pete, what happened?” Ron says. “Bob, Winchell, downstairs, now, call First Aid.” They go without hesitation. They don’t have to look to know it’s bad.
Ron steps over me and peers down at Karl. I unclasp my hands and sit up. Pete Cooper’s shoes and boots are spattered with blood. “I said, what happened, Cooper?” Ron doesn’t try to touch the injured man. He’s gone white. He’s not thinking about me.
“I came in to check the room and the patient became aggressive. He grabbed and held me,” Cooper says. “Being alone, I had to become rough, and in the following scuffle the patient received a knock that caused the discolouration of his face.” It’s textbook stuff, this.
“Is that so, Pete?” Ron Signet says.
“Are you calling me a liar, Ron? The German rushed me, and to protect myself I flung my arms up and pushed him, he must have fallen against the radiator.”
“Christ, Pete, his face looks like a melon.”
“Any marks on his body will have been caused by his hitting the radiator.”
“Jesus,” Ron says and finally kneels beside Karl. Karl is breathing loudly, there’s a whistle from his throat. “What’s that?” he asks. He puts his hand to Karl’s face and turns it slightly. There’s a hole in Karl’s skull and a bulge of glistening gelatinous tissue. Ron scrabbles backwards on his knees, hauls himself up and runs to the door to vomit.
Pete Cooper sits on Karl’s bed. “What did you do that for, Pete?” I ask him. I’m cool, I’m reptilian, I have cold blood. But it’s his eyes that blink, lidless.
“An eye for an eye,” he says softly, just under the sound of Ron’s retching. “My son’s ship was bombed by fucking Germans, he’s missing.”
“I didn’t know he was in the navy,” I say, cool as a cucumber.
“Merchant marine,” Cooper says with a proud lift to his chin. “Europa went down near Liverpool. I just learned.”
“Then he’ll be all right, Pete, they’ll rescue him. It happens all the time.”
Attendant Cooper closes his eyes and yawns: his mouth wide, a maw of brown and broken teeth, and the face of a small red devil on his tongue. I hear running footsteps; others are coming, and I have seen that, just as I suspected, Pete Cooper isn’t human.
SEVEN
June 18 and following, 1941
When I awaken, Karl’s bed, kitty-corner from mine, has been stripped. The black-and-white ticking of the mattress and pillow are folded together at one end. Bare bed spring, the sco
ured bedside table, the empty hooks and shelves inside the cupboard, proclaim his absence. Disinfectant fumes sting my eyes. Someone has done his best to erase him. My stomach, taut with hunger, turns over, but then I find, when I examine the writing table pushed against the wall with Karl’s chair upturned on top of it, that Karl has scratched the silhouette of a dove into the wood. I touch the evidence of my friend’s existence with my fingers. The dove’s wings are spread, and in its beak, it carries a leaf.
I pull on some clothes and step into the hallway, and there’s Ron Signet stuffing a string mop into a pail. He gives it a twist in the wringer before looking up. “Back with us, Sandy?” he says.
I nod and run my tongue over my teeth, feeling fur, tasting vomit, discovering something as I do. “I was sick.”
“Could have been something you ate.” Ron dumps the water bucket into a utility sink. “Or it’s this flu going round. Half the staff is off with it.”
“But not you?” It’s not usually his job to clean. I suppose it’s an instance of all available shoulders to the wheel.
“You know me, Sandy. I never quit.” He sponges down the sink, straightens, rubs a hand over his jaw and I see that he’s unshaven and tired.
“Where are the others? My roommates? This place is dead.”
He looks wary: There’s a slight tension around the eyes, and his shoulders stiffen. “Now, you haven’t forgotten, have you, Sandy? We went over this.”
“I know Karl is gone. I’m asking about Winchell and Bob.”
“They were moved out when you were ill. Once we swab the room down properly, now that you’re up, they’ll return. We’ve had men sleeping in the cafeteria. They’ve been falling like flies. I tell you. What a business!”
“A fine mess you’ve gotten into?” He’ll like me to say this: We’re both fans of Laurel and Hardy.
“That’s it!”
He still looks cautious: I can tell by his stance, the legs wide apart, the stiff neck. “Ron?” I say. “Is there a problem?”
“You don’t remember?”
I shake my head. Although I do.
“You must have been coming down with the fever. You were delirious. I can’t say that you were easy to handle, Sandy.”
“I didn’t hurt anyone, Ron, please don’t say that I did?”
“No, no,” he says. He relaxes a little. We’re back to being pals. He sighs. “I know you didn’t mean it, lad. It’s just the way you took on. We had to tie you down. I was afraid you’d hurt yourself!”
“Took on? Because of what happened to Karl?”
“I know you don’t much care for Attendant Cooper. He’s a rough diamond, but his intentions are good…. You’ll be glad to hear they found his son.”
“That is good news,” I say. “It’s just that Karl was my friend. I had no idea that Karl could be…”
“Such a dangerous man,” he finishes for me. “Of course you didn’t know. He should never have been in the West Wing to begin with. I blame, well, others. Why on earth Dr. Frank mixed a Kraut in with the rest…. Why, to someone like Winchell, it’s a red flag to a bull.” He shakes his head in disbelief.
But Winchell, our Spanish Civil War veteran, had nothing to do with it. Nor did Dr. Frank, who Ron Signet also wants me to blame. I can see what will happen if this thinking continues—Pete Cooper will go scot-free—so I say, “You know, Ron, I feel so much better in myself these days. The work I’ve done with Dr. Frank is so important. I’ve had a chance to examine what happened to me, and now it all makes sense! The last of it has burned away with the fever.”
He frowns. “You’re bound to feel better with Karl gone. You’re not the only one he caused problems.”
“Will I see him again?”
Attendant Signet returns the mop to the bucket and puts them away in the cleaning cupboard. He bends to the water fountain to drink.
“Ron?”
Ron swallows. Fever spots chancre his cheeks. He splashes water over his burning cheeks and forehead. “Well, Sandy,” he says at last after patting his face dry with a handkerchief, “I certainly hope not.”
—
Ron Signet is a good man, or as good as he can be in the situation. Although most of Karl’s belongings were destroyed or sent to the lockers to await distribution to his family—if they ever turn up looking for them—Ron has saved Karl’s writing materials for me. There are several reams of paper, a handful of pens with changeable nibs, four bottles of good ink, used and fresh blotting paper. Ron helps me tuck the supplies away behind my sweaters. “Out of sight, out of mind,” he says. “No need to put anyone’s back up.”
When Ron has left me to rest, I investigate the leavings thoroughly, but there is no sign of Karl’s manuscript. The Romance of Stanley Park is no more: Karl will never be a published author. I consider this a tragedy only as long as it takes me to realize that it won’t matter to Karl: He won’t know of it, or much of anything—Pete Cooper made sure I understood that—and his family will have had no idea of its existence. I’m the only person alive to bear witness to Karl’s potential.
I close all doors and windows on the subject of Karl. The East Wing is like that. Once in, never out.
(But to whom will I go for counsel now? Who will be my sword and my buckler?)
Still, an afternoon in all its glory awaits me. I’m a free man in my mind and I intend to behave like one.
My cup of bouillon and soaked bread is brought to me by Bob, who slides the tray along the floor from the doorway, so as not to come too close to me. Ron Signet has ordered a coffee with extra cream for the tray, although he “wasn’t supposed to,” but Old Doc Hitchens, still slogging through the worst cases in the cafeteria, let him “because he’s about to send Ron home, though Ron don’t know it.” Bob’s eyes sparkle: He’s the first to carry the news. Then he does something unexpected. He draws out from the large pocket of his student cardigan (leather patches at the elbows, a yellow varsity insignia on the breast) a brown-paper-wrapped package. “For you,” he says, and tosses it so that it skates over the tiles towards me. “Well, it’s for you now—it was sent to Karl.”
“It’s been opened,” I say. It’s not a question. A flutter of anxiety runs through me when I see Georgina’s name and address in the left-hand corner. I outwait Bob, who wants to see what’s in it, by continuing on with my wash and brush-up. When he’s truly gone, I slip off the string. The Storehouse of Thought and Expression: A Course in Creative Writing, published in 1932. The frontispiece shows the Hand of God by Rodin. A large thumb restrains the struggling limbs of several miniature figures as they writhe (it is an active sculpture) out of the lump of rough bronze. The name of the book’s owner, Brentwood Jones-Murray, Georgina’s son, is written in a neat round hand very different from his mother’s.
The note for Karl says: “I hope the book will help you in your endeavours. Please return it after the war, when my son is home, or before that, if you can, to my house in person.”
There’s something different about this Georgina. I can read, between the lines, within the terse politeness, the fears of an anxious matron. The war, her son, the house, her person. What will happen? she’s thinking as she writes to Karl. What will happen to all of us?
Karl. Already. It has happened.
I stand at the window and watch the curl of smoke from the incinerator that could be Karl’s life work, or it could be chicken parts and rabbit fetuses and the bags we carry from the East Wing, burning. Thin white clouds, the kind you could tear into tissue shreds with the wings of an airplane, scud across the face of the sun. I look downward. The life of the soldiers in the garden, the workers at the quarry, the husbanding of all the animals, large and small, in our care continues. The world is as it was and ever will be. All in order. I’m ready.
I seat myself at Karl’s writing table and pick up a pen. Karl said that the idea would appear when it was ready. I wait. But it doesn’t. Not yet. I get up and stretch my legs. I leaf through Georgina’s book. I read: �
��In the mind ideas may grow or rot. Mental health requires that we submit them frequently to a re-examination.” Well, yes. “You have a theme and plenty of ideas. Some of you may be going to describe an apple, to show what a wonderful thing it is in itself. There is no predicting what is about to flow down your pens.” The apple must be specific. I should consider that the apple has form.
I close my eyes in rumination. I recall Ron Signet’s story about the robin building its nest in the supports and thereby halting construction. That was specific (although not specifically true, as it turned out), that nesting robin…and the nest, itself, surely, refers not just to form but to ultimate form: It is a container that contains a container (the egg) that accommodates all the potential of the chicken. But it’s no good. The idea turns in on itself. I feel the pull of its vortex and think about the war news, the piling up of the dead beneath rubble in London and in the German cities. I remember how I want to cover my ears when Winchell speaks of the shooting of priests in Spain—the tender voice in which he describes their blood-stained soutanes….
Is this what Karl had to contend with? This roar in the ears when you open the doors of the storehouse of thought and expression? I turn to the beginning of Georgina’s book, the place to which her son, Brentwood, would have turned without hesitation: This young man who knows right from wrong by instinct, who is an officer in the Royal Air Force, who has already met Churchill and battled German Messerschmidt 109s, as Georgina has told me—yes, he would have begun at page one.
“Our minds are full of ideas as the heavens are full of stars. They are all related in some strange way. We see an apple and think tree.” Quickly I reseat myself and write down stars. I don’t have long to wait.
“Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place later.” (Rev. 1:19)
Prologue
I do not claim to be infallible. I might have made some mistakes in my life story due to witnesses using other people’s names to cause the court to make false decisions and believe lies. In spite of this I have endeavoured to keep to the truth. I pray that God will reveal the true meaning and guide you in your decision what to do and not to do.
What It Takes to Be Human Page 7