What It Takes to Be Human

by Marilyn Bowering

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been up to. You’ve broken your mother’s heart. You’re a disgrace, a son of Satan….” I examine these words clinically. A son of Satan, am I? Is this an admission, finally, as to his origins?

  The car smells of horse: It’s the sum total of the body odours of these two creatures. The nerve! To call themselves my parents!

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I say.

  The silence is crushing; but I lean across the heaped plastering buckets and open the far window so that dust clouds—more pure than my father’s poison—rush into this prison. My mother coughs out something about “you’ve no idea of the work to keep things clean” and we reach the east-west fork in the road. We scrape along the eastern shoreline for ten minutes or so and I think it’s over—whatever this is that he’s up to—but he steers the car to the shoulder and stops. “Don’t think you’re going to get away with it,” he says.

  “I’m a grown man. You have no say in my life.”

  “You’ll have no more help from me. It was a mistake to let you leave home.”

  “I’m not going back there anyway.”

  “You bet you’re not. You’ll stay home and help your mother, and pray for repentance.”

  “I’m enlisting in the air force.”

  “You’ll stay home and do what you’re told.”

  “No.”

  He gets out. I wait in the back until he yanks open the door and pulls me out after him. I don’t resist—why should I? The polished chrome that bands the cylinder of the hood shines in the Spackle of moonlight that falls through the trees. The gleam of whitewall tires anchors the car to the night. I can see in the yellow spill of the headlights that his Sunday collar and cuffs are smeared with dirt.

  “I’m not staying home,” I say to him. He stands in front of me, thick and solid and puffed up with his views. “I’m joining up tomorrow. There’s a recruiting office in Duncan.”

  “You’ll walk, then.”

  “I’ll walk.”

  He’s angry and swings his arms in my direction to let me know it, but I duck my head to avoid the blow, and he doesn’t touch me. Then I walk away. There’s nothing he can do to me anymore, nothing.

  I light a cigarette. I hear my mother’s gasp and glance over my shoulder to see her out of the car and standing beside him—my father, so called—with his bull’s body, ape’s shoulders, and simian arms still swaying. He gives a snort. I return to my smoke, and hear, as I inhale, the air part just to the side of my head. I drop and roll, and spring to my feet: The tire iron is on the ground beside me. I pick it up.

  Did you get that nurse, Dr. Love? Is it self-defence?

  The mother—so called—is crying fat grease trails of tears. I throw the burning cigarette to the earth and grind it under my foot. The father and I lock eyes. He gives his great laugh. He’s facing me, not turned decently away, while he unbuttons his flies, pushes the vent of his underwear aside, and pulls out his winkle, stands there, legs planted apart, cradling himself in his hand, and sends an arc of urine that spats the dust at my feet.

  He finishes, grins, keeps still so I can see in the cream headlights of the Studebaker that his fingers hold back the foreskin, then he slides it over the end, gives his member a shake and tucks it back in.

  Christ, I hear the sunburned nurse say. There’s a hush from Dr. Frank.

  So, that’s it, Dr. Love says.

  It’s a classic all right.

  So, Dr. Love repeats, but to me, You, Sandy, understand at that moment, exactly what?

  “The son of a bitch who had me circumcised wasn’t circumcised himself.” There’s a sigh from all three of them: The room deflates.

  You attacked him with the tire iron. Struck him several times over the head. Why?

  “He treated me like a dog all the while he pretended to me and to the world that he was my father and loved me.”

  Are you sorry about what you did? Dr. Love asks. The nurse removes the needle and helps me sit up.

  I rub my arm. I’m buzzing with anger. “No. Only that I didn’t succeed.”

  The remaining implements of therapy are put away. Punctures swabbed, blood dabbed, cold cloths administered.

  Dr. Frank, particularly, keeps busy, he won’t meet my eyes.

  “What happens now?” I ask as I watch him snap his notebook shut with an elastic band. “Will my case go in your book?”

  “There’ll be another Board,” Dr. Love answers. Dr. Frank slips from the room.

  “What will you recommend?”

  “I can only speak for myself, Sandy, not for Dr. Frank and not for the Board. I’ll suggest that you acted while in a state of diminished responsibility brought about by a subconscious memory of your traumatic circumcision as a child. I’ll recommend that you serve the rest of your time in safe custody.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We’ll have to wait and see. Don’t worry. You did well.”

  “Dr. Frank doesn’t think so. I can tell he’s not pleased with me.”

  “You’re wrong there, son.”

  “No, I’m right. He didn’t want to hear the truth.”

  “Truth?” The good doctor sits beside me on the bed. He gazes into his clasped hands. “There’s a kernel of truth here, Sandy. You may even have told the whole truth, as you know it, but you know what I think?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I think a drug is an imperfect tool and that no one knows the entire truth of life in your family, not even you.”

  “Ah.”

  “I also think the world isn’t ready for your kind of truth.”

  “So you do believe me!”

  He rests a hand lightly on my shoulder. “I believe that you believe what you’ve said. I know you did your best for us. That’s as far as I can go. Not just with you, with anyone.

  “The rest is…”

  “Guesswork?”

  He smiles down at me after he stands, his tired face a beacon of light. The nurse has bustled her crisp white uniform out the door, in a hurry, after Dr. Frank. “I was going to say ‘professional opinion.’ You’re not a danger to anyone, Sandy. Not even to your parents any longer as far as I can tell. You’ve kept your opinions but you’re no longer so certain about them. Am I right?”

  I nod. How can one be certain about an opinion that no one else shares? In the end you have to admit doubt. There’s no other way to tell a story. There are many possibilities, but for the sake of simplicity you choose among them. I’ve learned that from Karl.

  “There’s one more thing I’d like you to do, Sandy,” Dr. Love says.

  “What is it, doctor?”

  He tells me.

  —

  There’s no one around. Pete Cooper and the boys are making cheese or grooming cows or disinfecting the stables. Ron Signet has popped his head into my room to say he’s had instructions I’m to be left alone for several hours. “You’re on scout’s honour, Sandy,” he says.

  “Can you do me a favour, Ron?”

  “What’s that, Sandy?”

  “Would you mind feeding the pigeons for me? Just fill the troughs from the bag. I’ll do the cleanup later.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  —

  I’ve been asked to do some funny things in my time, but this one takes the cake. I clear my writing table of all but paper and pen. I take a quick look at the passage on Descriptive Writing in The Storehouse of Thought and Expression. It reminds me that I should first indicate clearly what I see, and to observe very carefully shapes, planes, lines, proportions, colour. And, for the purposes of the exercise, to avoid indicating likes and dislikes. I feel a little funny, but it’s Dr. Love who has asked me to do this. Once it’s done, I’m to bring it to Dr. Frank, with a copy for Dr. Love. I arrange writing paper and carbons. Just before I go ahead, I take the chair at my desk, turn it round, and slip the back of it beneath the doorknob; in case of interruption I’ll have some warning.

  I stan
d at my desk naked from the waist down. If anyone could look in—which I doubt, as the window is too high up—they’d see my head and my shoulders and chest dressed as usual, and the backs of what are now four motorcycle postcards sent by Bob, lined up along the windowsill.

  To begin:

  The shape of my penis is ordinary, as far as I can tell. It’s cylindrical, a dark salmon pink in colour with a little brown mottling here and there. Its size is—well, it grows under my regard—but is nothing different from what I’ve observed in others. You can see, though, the scar line from the circumcision where there was a jagged open wound on the remaining foreskin and on the glans: It healed with some adhesion, as the wound wasn’t well cared for. I’d had to have that dealt with by a doctor when I was thirteen, but he’d assured me that no deeper structures were involved and I was “right as rain.”

  Now to the self-inflicted damage. The attack had been on the penis itself, not on the testicles. I’d hacked with broken glass, but hadn’t succeeded in dismembering myself. There is certainly damage: A lump of diagonal scar tissue remains from where the wound was sutured, and disappears into the pool of the scrotum. Dr. Frank has said that he thought the attempt “symbolic” although I could assure him that there’d been nothing symbolic in my mind at the time! Since the injury, I’d had a minor problem of incontinence, but that has resolved itself.

  I get dressed. I read over my notes. It isn’t poetry or The Romance of Stanley Park but it will have to do.

  I have the notes all ready when I get the call to bring them with me to Dr. Frank’s office.

  NINETEEN

  September 21, 1942

  It is always difficult to wait, but it has become more so since Dr. Frank has forbidden me to write. He says I must use this time, while the Board is making up its mind as to what shall be done with me, to think about my life and about the forthcoming meeting with my parents.

  There is certainly much to consider:

  Georgina tells me that I need to straighten out my ideas regarding her and Heather. Winchell’s messages sent through Deceased Property have me increasingly worried about Karl. They’ve stopped the electric shock treatments and he’s soon to appear before a new Board. In the meantime, Pete Cooper has taken to wearing a white towel draped around his neck, and grinning at me like a maniac—an obvious reference to Kosho and the white towel he wore over his shoulders in case an opportunity for suicide might occur. But why is Cooper doing this at this point? Kosho, as far I know, is safely hidden away at “Innisfree” by Georgina. Is the towel wearing meant as a threat to me?

  I look out the window from where my writing table used to be and view the land that slopes towards Kosho’s pond. The long summer and dry Indian summer have turned the fields golden: But I know that only a little farther off, the area surrounding the pond remains green with sphagnum moss and water plants. To keep me busy, Dr. Frank has had Ron Signet set me to preparing the pond for the ducklings we will acquire next spring. We’ll raise mallards, because this species most rapidly becomes accustomed to captivity and is a persistent breeder. The irony of it, particularly when I lift my head from my work with a shovel, dredging mud or digging the foundation for a rock retaining wall, to watch flocks of ducks migrate south, does not escape me. Overhead are free creatures following their inbuilt natures, while down here I, a prisoner, address my efforts to the future imprisonment of their fellows.

  Pinioning ducks is very simple if you snip the wing joint when they are only days old.

  The parallel, Sandy? Your wings clipped long ago? No, not wings!

  The heavy work of digging is making me exceptionally strong.

  I cast an eye at my dismantled writing table: The sanded door, somewhat ink-stained, leans against a wall. The trestles are stowed beside the entrance. Dr. Frank says I may set the table up again once matters are resolved. Which matters? How resolved? I tried to ask him these things at our last meeting, but his mind was on plans for his honeymoon. He and the sunburned nurse have married. “No point in waiting, Sandy” was his comment to me when I offered my congratulations. “There’s a war on.”

  The remark has remained with me. Not that I don’t know about the war, of course I do. But is there a point in my waiting? Is there?

  Although I am not permitted to “write,” Dr. Frank has allowed pens, ink and paper to remain in my room: I’m on my honour. I did manage to smuggle out, by pigeon, the briefest of notes for Georgina to send to Heather, but even the strongest of George’s birds can only carry a snippet, and the sending and receiving require the utmost caution. The watchers on the roof are nearly always at their stations, and even when they aren’t, there’s still Ron Signet or somebody else patrolling with radio and binoculars. Recently, I’ve managed to interest Ron in birdwatching. All I have to say is “Ron, look, a Townsend’s Warbler,” and point to the distance for him to swing his glasses that way. This gives me a moment to let fly the pigeon I’ve tucked into an inner pocket of my jacket—it’s better, if it is seen, that it be flying in the wild rather than from the coop so that the going can’t be traced to me. So far, all such messages have been safely delivered and no one has taken any notice of the pigeons fluttering back and forth over the woods. In the words of the Yeats poem, “And evening full of the linnet’s wings.” Although there are no linnets in our marsh. But I have, in the coop, ready to go, several more of George’s own pigeons. Evening, indeed, is our usual time to “talk.”

  This morning, with Ron Signet in a meeting and Pete Cooper involved with the cows, I’ve hurried through my work in the loft and pen so that I can make an inventory of the contents of my room. I’ve wanted to do this for some time, since it is clear that there have been alterations in my quarters beyond the dismantling of the table. Today is my earliest opportunity.

  What’s impossible to miss is that all four “Bob” motorcycle postcards are gone from the windowsill. I’ve looked everywhere, in case they were simply knocked aside when the table was shifted, but they aren’t here; and my books and papers are arranged differently. It is vital, considering the feeling I’m having that a story pattern is being made by the intersecting lines of development that concern me (Georgina and Heather, Pete Cooper, Winchell and Karl, Kosho, etc.), and that the pattern is about to reveal itself—or as The Storehouse of Thought and Expression says, I’m near the point at which “the writer must be keen enough to recognize what is indicated and skilful enough to carry it out”—that I know exactly where I stand. The story—whether written or of a life—as I’ve begun to understand, can’t be predicted ahead of time: One has to pay attention to the indications, to see what is.

  I push a trestle against the door to the hallway, fetch the footrest box from beside my chair, and begin the most urgent part of my search by prying loose several of the wooden slats. I remove the top layer of straw and stones and wiggle my fingers through the remaining straw all the way down one side to touch the envelope of letters and addresses entrusted to me by the Russians. Then I extract the wrapped packets of knives, awls, shears, files and Winchell’s revolvers and ammunition. I quickly clean and oil the guns and put everything back. All is well. I take a moment to leave the room and wash my hands before continuing.

  There’s not much else in here besides my clothing and papers. On the top shelf of the cupboard I keep my writings; the more personal of my letters, notes and observations are hidden within the pages of what remains of the reams of Karl’s blank paper. I find the stories and letters, but several pages of my observations of Pete Cooper’s work are gone. I double-check using my system of a knotted measuring string, but no matter how many times I look through the paper stacks, these items remain missing.

  This is worrying. If Cooper has found them, that would explain the white towel. But wasn’t Ron with him? Wouldn’t Ron know?

  I’m thinking this over when I hear the outside door slam. At the same moment a pigeon flutters through the open window and alights on the windowsill. That it is a bird trained to my window and n
ot to the loft is significant. This is no simple social call. George and I have only a few of these “emergency” pigeons. I quickly remove the capsule from the pigeon’s leg, then put the bird and capsule in a sock in my pocket.

  Ron stands at the bottom of the stairs gazing up at me, light reflecting off his spectacles. “You coming down to the pond, now, Sandy?”

  “Not just yet, Ron,” I tell him as I skedaddle down the stairs and past. “I’ve got a couple of other things to do.” He drifts lazily in my wake as I make my way out the door and towards the fly pen. Quickly, before Ron can catch up, I place the messenger pigeon back in its nest and sprinkle out a little extra feed.

  Ron watches as I check the pins in the wire netting and make sure that there are no breaks. Georgina recently found a raccoon prowling near the coop at her father’s house. As I do, I coo softly back to the pigeons which bob their heads and watch.

  “You’d make someone a good mother, Sandy.”

  “Listen, Ron, would you mind if I didn’t work at the pond today? I’m a little tired, and I’m behind with some other things.”

  “What things?” Ron says. His eyes screw up behind the lenses of his spectacles and he looks like he’s trying to see inside my head. “Everything here looks fine to me.” I know that I’m a problem. Nobody knows quite what to do with me. If I’m not crazy, why am I here? If I’m guilty of a vicious attack on my father, why aren’t I behind bars? I’m in limbo, no longer quite one of the loonies, but neither one of “them,” the regular folks. It’s a social problem. It makes nice people like Ron worry about how to do their jobs.

  “Everything’s hunky-dory here, Ron, as you say, but the boxes are piling up in Deceased Property. I realize it’s not high priority these days, but, well, I don’t like to fall too far behind. People are waiting. It might not mean anything to us, Ron, but a memento of a loved one can make all the difference to the peace of mind of a family. Even if the loved one was a nutter.” I hope that Ron won’t remember that the “mementos” are distributed before the boxes come to me.