What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  —

  “Well, well,” Dr. Frank says, when I’ve fully returned to the present. “Do you understand what we’ve uncovered?”

  “I understand.”

  “Tell me, Sandy, in your own words.”

  “I was circumcised in a crude way when I was six or seven.”

  “Why were you circumcised?”

  “To stop me and Heather from our sexual explorations. They didn’t understand that we loved each other.”

  “Your parents hated and feared their own sexuality. They took it out on you. You did nothing wrong, Sandy. You have cause—a child’s cause—for hating them. A memory like that, suddenly surfacing under stress could certainly explain the apparently unprovoked attack on your father.”

  “He’s not my father,” I say.

  “At the time, as a child, you believed in—what was it—the Rapture? You thought that people who hurt you couldn’t be your parents. Real parents wouldn’t treat a child like that. Therefore your real parents had been taken up into heaven and these substitutes left behind to do their worst.”

  “They were dressed up to look like my real parents, but they weren’t.”

  “You attacked your father when the memory of his part in the punitive circumcision reappeared. We’ll have to find out why it did, what exactly provoked it.”

  “If you say so, Dr. Frank.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think it matters.” My eyes feel heavy. I’d like to sleep.

  “Why doesn’t it matter? Without that knowledge, you can never be free!”

  “Because he’s still not my father.” How many times do I have to say it?

  “Are you telling me that you still believe they aren’t your real parents?”

  “Yes.”

  We go over it and over it: It’s he who doesn’t want to let it go. He points out that what I’d told him was my childhood means of dealing with intolerable pain. That is true. But it doesn’t explain everything. How can I convey the certainty of my knowledge that the people I loved and knew as my parents disappeared when I was small, and never returned? It isn’t, as Dr. Frank thinks, a notion I made up. It’s a simple fact. Nothing in my experience since that day has contradicted it.

  My one hope is that this “exchange” serves some important purpose; also of note, as I’ve observed, is that occasionally the process is reversed. Not only are the good exchanged for the bad, but an evil person may be changed into good: Take Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for instance, a pacifist (no slur intended against Karl), but who has agreed to Lend-Lease and wants the Americans to help us in the war. These are not the qualities of the same person.

  “Do you believe in God, Dr. Frank?” I finally say.

  “Yes, I’d say I’m a God-fearing man, Sandy. Why?”

  “How do you know there is a God?”

  “I just know, in the same way that thousands have known before me, century after century.”

  “You’re saying that a commonly held belief is equivalent to truth. In the Soviet Union, millions do not believe in God, therefore, according to your own criteria, Dr. Frank, there is no God. Is truth, then, a matter of dogma or politics or fashion?”

  He looks disconcerted. His thinned features harden. Before he can say anything more, I interrupt. “I’m disappointed in you. You’re a doctor, a scientist, you should respect the truth. You shouldn’t buy into all that mumbo-jumbo.”

  “It’s my mumbo-jumbo, Sandy, and if I choose to believe it, that’s up to me.”

  “That’s exactly my point, sir, don’t you see?”

  “Don’t forget who’s in charge here, Sandy, will you?”

  —

  The subject of belief is a large one. I skim through several chapters of The Storehouse of Thought and Expression to see if it offers advice on this subject, but it doesn’t. I wish Karl were here to talk to. The Storehouse is concerned with the nuts and bolts of the writing craft, not with the meaning of life. That subject is the writer’s private concern.

  What I do know is that what is real to me is different to that which is real to Dr. Frank. It is possible that neither of us is in touch with absolute reality since belief lies behind the perceptions of both of us. It could be that a consideration of time past is the only means to bring us both to our senses. Is that not, in fact, the basis of Dr. Frank’s treatment of his patients? To go backwards in time with them until truth becomes apparent? Why, then, does he not apply these principles to himself?

  I also know that a sense of time can be influenced by emotion. People say, “after the flood” or “before I was married” to indicate a significant experience. Time speeds up or slows down, depending. My time with the sea serpent, for instance, is a long, slow unspooling in my mind, although it may have lasted only a few minutes. I can also say, “before my parents disappeared” or “after I met Georgina” to indicate massive change within my life—not only change, but a revolution of belief as to the nature of reality.

  Does this help with Alan Macaulay, whose story I have yet to finish? Although his version of events is, I believe, the truth, his version was not accepted. An account of events presented by people who disliked him prevailed. Beliefs—in this case, the commonly held belief that Alan Macaulay was guilty—don’t alter truth: They run parallel to it. Sometimes a belief and the truth coincide, but not always. These are big ideas.

  —

  I look out the window. Once again, although it is night and all inmates should be locked indoors, numbers of them roam the grounds. Once again, a red flag hangs from an East Wing window. Sirens sound and searchlights spring up from the town. They crisscross the sky looking for I know not what (not Bob: Bob’s not up there). Are we under attack? Are German or Japanese planes set to bomb us? No one comes to say. We’ve been abandoned.

  If we have indeed been left on our own, it may be time to put our plan, mine and Karl’s, into action. I raise the sash and loosen the bars over the window, then lift them out and put them into a pillowcase. It is not the first time I’ve done this. Karl had the window prepared even before I came along, and we’ve gone through many dry runs. Karl is big on preparation.

  I swing myself out, then feel with my fingers for the gaps in the brick Karl showed me. Before I begin to climb, and while I still have the sill for purchase, I close the window and set the bars back in their holes. The work is treacherous and I’m sweating from the effort and—to be frank—from fear. I can’t jump from here—it’s too high up: if I fall, I die—but even if I could I’d never escape the property. Not to worry, though: Karl has thought of everything.

  It is a truism that people on the ground rarely look up. In this instance, with the building dark and only flashlights illuminating the path of the police patrolling through the trees, and the searchlights sectioning the sky, I have little fear of discovery from below. Nevertheless, I’ve taken care to wear dark clothing. I stuff the pillowcase under my shirt so it can’t be seen. Now I’m at the stepped bricks at the corner and within minutes I’ve spidered myself up them and over the castellation and onto the roof. From there, it’s a jump and scramble to the top of the turret and onto its small roof. I crouch up there and feel with my fingers for the opening, raise the hatch, and edge down the ladder into the room that Karl found.

  There are no openings inside the body of the turret, other than in the ceiling, so it is reasonably safe to light the hooded candle we have left there. Karl stole matches from Ron Signet, and Kosho made the candle for me from beeswax. The attendants’ rounds and our work and meals are normally on such a strict schedule that finding time to work here posed no problem; and with the two of us, one could always keep lookout in the room below while the other laboured above. The distance from floor to ceiling is over twenty feet—thus the need for the ladder which had been left by the original builders. We’ve speculated, but have come to no conclusion as to the room’s original purpose.

  I’ve not been here at all since Karl was taken away.

 
Since I know this is the last time, I take care, as I place the finishing touches, to destroy all evidence of what we’ve been up to. Even though there is little further they can do to Karl, still I do not want to leave a trail that leads back to him. Every scrap of leftover material, I put inside the pillowcase.

  So very little remains to be done: Karl’s drawings are simple but professional—after all, he is an engineer, even if he’d been reduced to working in a steam plant before his incarceration, and I have had glider training at the flying club, where it was taken for granted, not only by me, that I would go on to be an air force pilot. I was praised for my abilities: It was said I had aptitude!

  Let bygones be bygones, Sandy. Onward!

  We’ve constructed a simple monoplane—a single wing shape with a hole in the middle. There’s not much we could do for controls, but they won’t be necessary if the machine is light enough to fly. It only has to carry me from the roof and above the trees and over the wall. We’re sure it can do it: We’ve made the frame from balsa wood stripped from crates, and with sections of Kosho’s bamboo. We’ve glued and stitched canvas mail and laundry bags over the skeleton and then painted the whole with a doping paste made from boiled millet. We fabricated the harness from lengths of electrical wire that Karl took from the worksites to which he had access. The harness is basic: Strictly speaking, I’ll be hanging by my armpits, but it will provide some security.

  The golden rule, as Karl said, is never to fly higher than you care to fall.

  Rules, we both said, are made to be broken.

  I’m proud of our glider. The wing stands upright against the wall, one tip near the opening. It is light enough that I should be able to haul it up through the hatch by myself, although in our original plan, one of us would have assisted the other. If there is sufficient wind, and if I pick up enough speed during my run across the roof, I should be able to maintain sufficient height to clear the trees. There’s been no opportunity for a test flight, unfortunately, but I know how to control the dimensions of flight—roll-tipping, pitch and yaw—by adjusting the position of my body. It would help to have a tail and rudder—but, well, you can’t have everything!

  I climb the ladder, haul up the stuffed pillowcase with a length of rope, finish fastening myself and the case into the harness, then ease the wing up and out. When I’m clipped on, and it, and I, are on the biggest section of the roof, I set up a windsock made from a tube of sacking. The wind is light and gusting. When it’s as dark as it’s going to be, and the searchlights play at the far end of the city and the flashlights of the ground patrols are at a distance, I place my head through the hole in the wing, and tie the remaining straps.

  One two three and I run, the wind catching the wing’s edges; I reach the lip and jump.

  —

  The principles of flight are simple: Air flows over the top of a curved, fixed wing, creates lift and opposes the pull of gravity. At first I drop, gain some speed, then I’m supported and carried away from the building and across the gardens beyond the rabbitry. I can see the other outbuildings, dim and quiet, where the larger farm animals are kept and I pass over the Chinese and Japanese quarters with the distinctive smoke of cooking fires rising from each. I adjust my body so that I turn towards the woods and the wall beyond, keeping the wing as level as I can. The strain on my arms is terrific.

  Not far to go, Sandy.

  When I’d flown in a glider before, I’d been towed by an airplane in a steep climb over the prairie, hot air rising from the ploughed fields to make columns of air for support. Once in one, I’d spiral up and up until I reached the top and then level out and head where I wanted to go, looking for more cloud-capped thermals: It was a dance of air, the most delicate of relationships. Nothing like this. I sense the stall the instant before it happens—I’m too slow, and too low, the left wing dips and I’m pitched forward and down into the trees. It is over in seconds.

  The Wright brothers failed many times before they succeeded, I think…I’m not badly hurt, I can try again…but—I hear shouts behind me—the Wright brothers didn’t have to deal with pursuit. Quickly I break what’s left of the wing into pieces and bury them in leaf mould. The pillowcase and harness are another matter—too difficult to hide—so I keep these with me, and move as rapidly as I can on my bruised limbs towards the rabbitry. There I can catch my breath, clean up, appear to be doing something useful if I’m discovered. I wipe my wet nose with my sleeve several times before I realize it’s pouring blood.

  “Now, now, Sandy, what’s this?” It’s Pete Cooper’s voice from right in front of me. He’s materialized out of nothing. I’ve had just enough time to secrete the pillowcase and harness in the straw bales. I squint in the sudden bright light next to the hutches. I hear running footsteps, the sound of heavy breathing—there’s a crowd behind me now, silent, at the door, and in the new light I can see what they see: The walls and floor of the rabbitry are splashed with red; smashed and broken cages lie strewn over the floor, and everywhere I look are pieces torn from the bodies of dead rabbits. I squat and put my head between my knees.

  “Feeling squeamish, Sandy?” Pete Cooper stands over me. “Dear, oh dear.” He points to the splashes of blood on my face, arms and shirt. “Had an accident, have we, Sandy?” He grabs me by the shirtfront and hauls me to my feet. “You stupid little pervert!” He shoves me hard against the wall.

  I feel, as well as hear, Dr. Frank push his shrinking body through the onlookers. “What’s going on, here?” Then, “Ah…” as the shock hits.

  “What’s ‘going on’ is perfectly clear,” Pete Cooper says. “Sandy here has been playing with knives.” He indicates the bloody carcasses, my clothing and the knife—which I notice for the first time—with which I prepare the hides, and that is lying on the floor.

  Dr. Frank looks at me with grief and astonishment. “Has it come to this, Sandy?” His shoulders slump. It’s a mortal blow to the both of us. He turns to leave.

  “No!” I say. “I didn’t! I just came to check on things and found this!”

  “There’s the small matter of the blood on your clothing,” Pete Cooper says, looking smug.

  “I fell! It’s dark out.”

  “Tsk, tsk. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  Dr. Frank seizes on this and turns to Ron Signet who has been keeping out of the way in the shadows. “Ron, you did the bed check, was Sandy there?”

  Sadly, reluctantly, Ron shakes his head.

  “No one’s in bed tonight—everyone’s out, you know that, it’s not just me! Where’s Kosho, he can tell you I’d never do anything like this, I couldn’t!”

  “Couldn’t?” says Pete Cooper. He takes my work apron—which I’d last left at the kitchen door—from a hook on the wall. “Some people just can’t resist a souvenir,” he says, and takes from the pocket the rabbit’s foot I’d placed there earlier. He’d seen me do it, too. Now I know, as if there were any doubt, who’s responsible.

  “Where’s Kosho?” I say again. “He’ll tell you about that, too.”

  Ron Signet gives a discreet cough. “Dr. Frank?” he says. “I can’t find Kosho, either.”

  “Can’t find…?” Dr. Frank takes a step back. There’s no doubt now, it’s out of his hands. “Well go and look, damn you!” He pushes his way out through the onlookers and they close behind him as if he’d never been.

  I hardly notice when the police escort comes. A photographer records the “evidence.” I’m handcuffed and shackled. Before I’m led away, Pete Cooper manages to say to me, “About Kosho, now, I know you were friends. He popped in, Sandy, just before you did and left in a hurry. You know what I think? I think he’s found a use for that white towel.” He winks.

  You know when things have gone too far: You can’t keep up, it’s an overload. Too many details and events in a flood the brain can’t process. There’s no story here, just a great fall. Will anyone pick up the pieces? I should refuse to believe Pete Cooper, but I can’t. I can imagine what Kosho wou
ld do if he saw this room. All this slaughter for nothing.

  “Get the Chinks to clean up,” Cooper calls out to Ron Signet, who is still lounging, uncertain as to his position. “Hop to it, Ron.” Ron goes. Pete goes. My escort and I make our way over the lawns Bob was so proud of to the front door. Why the front door? What’s happening? More police cars idle at the entrance.

  “Take the goddamn shackles off!” Dr. Frank shouts when he sees me hobbling up the steps. A policeman complies and leaves me in Dr. Frank’s hands. He shouts further directions for the roundup of all inmates. He’s asserting some control!

  “My, my, Sandy,” he says to me. “You’d better come in and sit down while we have a chance.” He leads me through the lobby and into his office. He motions me to sit and he remains standing. “You understand how serious this is?”

  I nod.

  “You have an explanation?”

  I nod again. “I would never…I didn’t…”

  “It looks bad, Sandy. There’s little I can do for you at this point. You’ll be taken for examination by other psychiatrists, you understand? There’ll be changes in your treatment.”

  “Changes?” His gaze tells me that this, indeed, is a change point after which things will never be the same. To my great sorrow, I also understand it is a change in belief: Dr. Frank’s belief in me.

  He stares out the window at the cars, the police, at the bands of inmates gathered into neat knots by attendants. We’re still in blackout other than for the flashlights. The blaze of the rabbitry lamps is behind us. “It’s madness, eh, Sandy? Who knows the depths of the human heart?”

  “I swear, sir, I really didn’t…”

  “What were you doing out there, Sandy? Tell me the truth.”

  “Flying, sir.”

  He sighs. “There’s more bad news, Sandy, I’m sorry to tell you, but you’d best have it all now.” He picks up a piece of paper from the desk. “Would you like me to read this to you?”