The red flag is withdrawn from the East Wing window. A phalanx of doctors and nurses—none of whom I’ve seen before—come out of the East Wing doors to shake hands with various personages. All is as well as it could be.
I’m in the rabbitry on my own. Kosho has been tucked away out of sight. When the ladies in their tea hats and the gentlemen with their cigarettes come to tour, they don’t want to find a Jap in charge, even if it’s just of rabbit droppings and hay bales. Despite Japan’s recurring assurances of its peaceful intent, many in the general populace have doubts. It’s only weeks since Japan occupied French Indochina and Roosevelt seized all Japanese assets and placed an embargo on oil supplies. Pete Cooper is pleased about that, but doesn’t think Roosevelt went far enough. As for Canada—well, we’ve done nothing, as always, except talk talk talk. So Pete Cooper reports.
As if I’ve conjured him up, Pete appears. He taps a whip against his leg. “Think you’re pretty smart, eh, Sandy? Think nobody knows it was you. You’re dead, pal.”
I smile over his shoulder at the group of ladies entering the hut. “Shush,” I say to them, and point at the signs I made with Kosho: “Baby Rabbits Sleeping! Mothers Need Their Rest!” The ladies laugh. One whispers, “My, isn’t it clean!” They tiptoe past the hutches; they poke their noses into everything. They ignore Pete Cooper who is fuming.
I lead the party into the room where we deal with the pelts. I shut the door behind me. They cluster near. “The best way to keep skins from spoiling,” I say, tying hides together at the top end to demonstrate, “is to make small bundles and hang them from a beam.” I hang them. “We don’t keep them long. We sort and grade them”—I take down a different bundle and begin the process of separating it into piles—“and then we offer them to market. Most of our skins are ‘firsts.’ ”
A woman wearing a blue felt hat with a peacock feather attached to it puts up her hand. “Will these be made into furs?”
“Some will.” I flip several pelts over and invite her to stroke them. “The thicker and denser the underfur on a skin, the more valuable it is.”
A Board member (he’s wearing a name tag), followed by Pete Cooper, shoulders open the door. “It’s no way to run an institution, Attendant Cooper. These are dangerous men.” Pete Cooper’s face is bright red.
“Can you keep the noise down, gentlemen,” I say, pointing to the still-open door. “We don’t want to upset the babies.”
—
The tour groups are gone. I’m tidying. Each time I pass by the door to the outside, I see patrolmen and dogs. Kosho has tied the slighter bamboo lengths into a crude rake: The dogs have found it and sniffed it up and down, but no one can figure out what it means. I’m at the sink with my back to the door when I smell the scent of cigarettes and Chanel. And gin. Georgina. Before I can turn she’s right behind me, “Will you look at what I’ve found in the dark.”
Her arms come round my waist. She leans her head against my back, her chin sharp between my shoulder blades. “Sorry I’m late, Sandy. I had some business to attend to.” I try to turn round but she won’t let me. “I had to see a man about a dog.” She laughs and the laugh changes to a snort. She’s drunk.
“Georgina!” I pull her hands away.
“Now, don’t you lecture me, Sandy. I’ve had enough for one day.” She stumbles back a step. She’s a picture in an old-fashioned tea dress with slim sleeves that fall in vees over her hands. The neck is cut deep and fringed with lace, the skirt is long. A moth-eaten muskrat wrap winds round her shoulders: Its eyes glare.
“You’re too hot in that stole,” I say strongly. It looks ridiculous. “What are you doing here? Everyone else has gone.”
“Et tu, Brute?” she says. Another step back and there’s enough light to see that one of her eyes has been blackened.
“Oh, George…” I lift my hand to her face. She moves her head so that her cheek slides under my fingers. “Who did this to you?”
“I can’t stay there any longer, Sandy, I hate the old bugger and my sister.”
“Your father?”
“He says terrible things about me. He says it will be my fault if anything happens to Brent. He doesn’t mean it, I’m sure, and he’s old…but…”
“Nothing will happen,” I say, but a cold reptilian hand has pinched me. My spine, and brain stem. Knowing.
“Why is your father so cruel to you, Georgina?”
“Ah, now, that’s the thing. I’m his favourite, Sandy, can’t you tell? Don’t you always hurt the one you love?” She leans against the wall and starts to slide.
“No, George, stand up!”
“I can’t!” She’s laughing again, great whoops of it.
“You’ve got to be quiet!”
“Who cares? Who the fuck cares?” she cries. Whoop, whoop.
“Georgina, you’ll upset the rabbits!”
“Fuck the rabbits!” she cries. I hear footsteps.
“It’s mothers and babies, George, please! You’ll upset them!”
“Oh! Mothers and babies!” She puts her finger to her lips and tries to stand up straight.
“All right then, shhh. I know all about mothers and babies.” She winks. “Brent’s my baby.”
The thought seems to sober her: Her blue eyes swim with tears.
“It’s a hell of a way to run a battleship,” I hear. A Board member in full naval uniform enters followed by Ron Signet.
“Sandy, here, is one of our most trusted inmates, Admiral…” Ron begins.
“Madame,” says the admiral, taking in Georgina and the situation at a glance, “we’ve met before. Would you do me the honour?” He offers his arm. Georgina snaps to and places her hand in the crook. She’s not from a military family for nothing.
“We’ll be off?” She blinks hard, tries to concentrate.
“Where to, Madame? I’m at your service.”
—
Ron Signet doesn’t bother to escort me back to the building. In fact, I don’t see any of the attendants. Something is very wrong. I’ve been convicted by the courts of attempted murder of my father, but I’m allowed to roam freely. Only a day ago, one of the inmates eloped and now everyone from the West Wing is permitted to wander? It makes no sense. I notice men who aren’t normally allowed outside at all stumbling through the trees, their faces lit by the glow of paper garden-party lanterns, their hands hanging loosely at their sides, or their hands wringing in anxiety. They’re worried: Where should they go when they’re let off leash with no preparation? The guests have dispersed, of course, but the police are still here, not sure why they’re patrolling or what the rules are.
There are no rules.
It’s misrule, late summer madness. This is not how Dr. Frank runs things. What’s happened to him? Could it be that they, his opposition, want something to go wrong—something even worse than harmless Bob gone missing? Have they unlocked the locks and countermanded all Dr. Frank’s orders? Is “Director Throws Party While Madmen Wreak Havoc” the headline they want? Throw in an “Escaped Inmate Terrifies Neighbourhood” or “Innocent Women Menaced by Lunatic” and you have multiple reasons for Dr. Frank’s banishment. Sent into exile, just like Napoleon, who was the best general the French ever had. Able was I ere I saw Elba.
Georgina! I think, suddenly. Is she all right? But even as the thought crosses my mind, I see her stumble down the driveway still with the admiral. He’s a gentleman. His hand remains firmly under her elbow. He laughs with her at whatever she says. He’ll see her home safely, whichever side he’s on.
I enter the building and walk myself up to my room and put myself to bed.
The world is electrified. Humm. I wait for the clock to strike midnight, and for the noise outside to settle down. My skin feels itchy. There’s no Bob or Tom or Winchell in the room. I get out of bed and look out the window. Shadowy figures slip through the grounds. Flashlights flicker. I remember the red flag at the window. What could the flag have meant other than a Communist uprising (where’s Wi
nchell when I need him?). Could it have been a message from Karl? Is he keeping an eye on things? Does he think we’re in danger? Red flag for danger? Does he approve of our freeing Bob? I hold tightly to the windowsill. I’m on edge. Things are slipping from me. I need facts, just the facts, I need Dr. Frank.
—
In the morning, while I drink coffee in the cafeteria, I consider the events of yesterday and try to sort them. I recognize that I’m under extreme pressure—who wouldn’t be, what with Alan Macaulay’s case and Pete Cooper’s antipathy and Georgina’s instability? She told me once how her sister had had her picked up and confined to a clinic, claiming she was addicted to dope and an unfit mother; how the sister then tried to take Brentwood for herself. All out of jealousy and narrow-mindedness. Only Brentwood’s pleadings and her own evident sanity, and the money her husband had left her and that she was able to access through a friendly lawyer, had resulted in her release. “Good girls don’t smoke, Sandy, good girls don’t stay out late or drink.” Georgina knows she walks a fine line: lions and tigers wait for her. She’d gone on, “Smart girls don’t live in the backwoods, Sandy, but what am I to do? This is my home!”
Well, this is my home, and my entire destiny is in the hands of others, none of whom will listen to me.
The heaps of cups and plates still to wash, the limp garlands strung above the stage testify to the actuality of yesterday’s reception and party. Bob—thank God—remains absent. I decide to go over everything.
I know that the rabbitry is real and that the tour groups visited. I remember giving the demonstrations. Pete Cooper and his animosity towards me is certainly verifiable. Others have commented on it. What about Georgina? Did she arrive drunk last night or not? Yes. She put her arms around me. She left with the admiral, a Board member.
Georgina has me particularly worried. Going back to live in her father’s house was a bad idea. But what is one to do when one is lonely and afraid?
Well, Sandy, I say to myself, if all these things are genuine—troubling, but definitely substantive—what are you so concerned about? Nobody’s path runs smoothly.
How I feel. I’m not settled. The strings that hold the world I’m in have loosened. Why?
—
It’s early afternoon and I’m with Dr. Frank in the truth-serum room. To tell the truth, I don’t feel I need the drug, but I submit to the nurse’s ministrations. While she prepares my arm Dr. Frank says, “I’m pleased that you asked to see me, Sandy, I’ve been waiting for this.”
“You have?”
“Yes, I have. You’ll remember that last time we reached an impasse.”
“An impasse? We did?”
“I thought so.” He waits for me to speak, but I’m not sure what he wants so I remain silent.
“You’ll be worried about Bob.”
“Bob?” I say.
Dr. Frank frowns. “Don’t be irritating, Sandy.”
“Bob’s missing,” I say.
“I know Bob is missing,” Dr. Frank says. He throws a sharp glance at the nurse to see if she’s ready. She nods. He holds up his hand indicating that she should wait a minute. “Bob is your roommate. The fact that he’s gone is bound to be upsetting. You don’t want to be upset. You’re ready to change.”
“I don’t like it when things change,” I say.
“Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere. You don’t like it when things change.”
“No. Unless the change is for the better.”
Dr. Frank sighs. I know him well enough by now to understand that he thinks I’m speaking platitudes and being evasive, but I’m not. “Dr. Frank,” I say. “May I be honest?”
“I wish you would be.”
“I want to get to the bottom of this. I want to get out of here.”
“Like Bob?”
“No, not like Bob, sir. I want to walk out the front door a free man.”
Dr. Frank signals the nurse and this time once the drug enters my system I’m on a raft that drifts backwards on a river. The river isn’t unpleasant, even in reverse. I can dip my hand in it and pull out objects—books I’ve read, even toys I played with as a child. These items are real, in their way, as stimulants to my imagination. I drop them back in the water. I want facts.
“Now, Sandy,” Dr. Frank says, “do you remember what you said to me last time about your parents?”
“They’re not my real parents.”
“Exactly. I want you to tell me how you know this.”
I’m outside in the street where I lived as a child. The little girl to whom I’m married is with me. Heather. She says, “Let’s go and find my father.” I tell all this to Dr. Frank.
“Why does she want you to help her find her father?”
“We need his blessing.”
“I see. Then what happens?”
“We look for him up and down the street. We walk to his shoe store, but he’s not there. He’s not at her house for lunch. We go back to the shops and look in them all. We even check inside the beer parlour, but someone shouts at us to get out.”
“You don’t find him?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I say to her, ‘Let’s go and find my father.’ ”
“Why do you do that?”
“The same reason. We want his blessing. We love each other.”
“I see. So you search for him, too?”
“Yes. But we can’t find him either.” I feel myself getting agitated. I try to keep a lid on it, but my heart is hammering. “We look everywhere he should be—he’s not at home, not at my gran’s, not at work.”
“How do you know he’s not at work? I thought he was a plasterer, he could be anywhere, couldn’t he?”
“No! He’s plastering in the apartment building on the corner. He’s been working there for weeks. He comes home every day for lunch and has a nap with mother.”
“So you don’t find him.”
“No.”
“Then what do you do?”
“Heather and I make a nest.”
“You…?”
“We build a nest, like birds do, only it’s bigger and it’s on the ground. We’ve decided to live there together.”
“Didn’t your parents ask the two of you not to play together? Didn’t they punish you?”
“Yes. But our parents aren’t anywhere. We can’t find them and I know what’s happened to them.”
“What’s happened, Sandy?”
“It’s the Rapture.”
“The…?”
“Our parents are gone because they’ve gone to heaven.”
“They’ve died?”
“No, no, they’ve been taken into heaven before Jesus’ return. It’s in the Bible, my father told me. It’s called the Rapture.”
“I see.” There’s a pause while he thinks and writes. Even on my river and in my nest with Heather, I hear his pen scratching. “Has everyone gone? Is there no one left?”
“Bad people are left.”
“That includes you and your little friend?”
“Yes.”
“What do you do after you build your nest?”
“We go to my house.”
“Why do you do that?”
“The nest isn’t warm enough and we need to live somewhere. Our family house has food and beds in it. We’ll be all right if we stay there.”
“Then what, Sandy?”
“We do what mother and father do at lunchtime.”
“That is?”
“I told you. We have a nap.”
“Where do you take your nap, Sandy? I need to hear all of this.”
“In my parents’ bed.”
“You and Heather go to bed in your parents’ room?”
“It’s nice,” I say. “We take our clothes off, hold on to each other and we fall asleep.”
I start to zoom back. I’ve gone as far as I care to. I say to Dr. Frank in my grown-up voice, “That’s all there is, folks.”
A surge of truth serum
jolts through my veins.
“That’s not all, Sandy. Tell me the rest of it.”
I don’t want to tell. I do want to tell. I want it to be over.
The next thing I know is that Heather and I are yanked out of bed. Heather screams, and I scream. A woman who looks a little like my mother, except that I can see as she shouts into my face that she has a moustache, throws me into a closet. I don’t know what happens to Heather. A long time after—a very long time—so long that I pee my pants—the closet door opens.
“You can come out now, Sandy.” At first I think it’s my father who waits there. It smells like him. He’s chewing Sen-Sen. But it isn’t my father because he picks me up roughly. He carries me into the kitchen and stands me on the breadboard. He picks up the bread knife. “Ho, ho!” he says.
Another man—I recognize him as the doctor—yes—he would have been left behind—I’ve heard my parents talk about his drinking, says, “Don’t tease him, Alfred.”
I look at the man holding the knife. My father’s name is Fred, not Alfred. The woman with a moustache says, “Let’s get on with it.”
The doctor says, “Put him on the kitchen table and hold his arms and legs still.”
The woman and man who are pretending to be my parents do this. I try to kick but they grip me tightly. The doctor puts a rag over my face and I can’t breathe. I can hear and see, though, because I rise up out of my body and look down at it, still as ice, on the table.
The doctor takes a pair of scissors, pulls on the foreskin of my penis and snips it off. He uses a scalpel to do some additional cutting. I can’t see much because of the blood. I scream but the boy on the table doesn’t make a sound. The pain makes me faint and sick. I plunge back into my body.
When I come to, the doctor is tying off the stitches. He places a gauze wrap around my genitals. “You should have had this done when he was an infant,” the doctor says.
“I told him,” the woman says. She watches the doctor finish up his work with an expression of satisfaction on her face. She’s a cruel, wicked woman. “I hope this will put an end to the nonsense,” the woman says.
“It will,” the man who pretends to be my father says. He hasn’t been able to watch the operation—he has a weak stomach—but now that the doctor is done, he takes a look at my bandaged privates, my white face and the bundles of bloody rags on the table. “It will do that for some time to come.”
What It Takes to Be Human Page 14