by James Kelman
as if from nowhere
I reached for the notepad from the back end of the cabinet. Nurse Liddell and colleague had entered the ward. The cabinet was by the side of the bed. I only had to reach, it was very convenient. Of course it was convenient for god sake I was hospitalized, a patient. Awaiting the results of further tests! Oh the drama, the drama!
Yes. One eschewed negativity. To hell with negativity. This is what one uttered, within the sanctity of one’s own brain.
Still and all, still and all. The truth. Yes the truth; breathe in and breathe out: the truth is I knew it was not good, I was not good. Otherwise, otherwise I would not have been there, not like this.
Something less than good.
Good!
What other terms do we have? Pleasant. Nice. Joyous. Smashing. What else? I could not think of many more. Unlike bad. Evil, crappy, unpleasant, shit, horrible, terrible, malevolent, worsening, maleficent, malodorous, pestilent, horrendous. Hell’s bells, a million of them. Thus the human condition. But truly, my condition was not great, otherwise
oh man, man man, man man man
I opened my eyes. I had to. It is good to open the eyes; one’s eyes; mine; my fucking eyes.
I reached again for the notepad, to hell with it man, one reaches for it, grasps. Impaired memory. The lapse into melancholia was to be guarded against and one did. One guarded against it. One exercised oneself, one’s faculties. Yet reaching for the notepad happened prior to the thought itself. A surely remarkable phenomenon. Ergo
Now aware of the intestines. Interrupting the thought, the last thought. Aware of my intestines.
In what respect aware: simply aware, that is all. But overwhelmingly so.
What about them? Clogged tubes. Clogged tubes.
The chart hung on the rail at the foot of the bed. If only I could read it. Telescopes: patients are not supplied with them thus one cannot read from a distance. But for something horrendous why not inform the patient? Patients too are people.
I used a notebook to monitor the situation, noting symptoms, physical changes, thoughts, feelings. Anything at all. Wee doodles and drawings. Any damn thing I pleased. It was my damn notepad and my damn situation; my physicality. Drawings. Any damn thing.
I wanted to draw a face. Why not. Yes. In summation of my plight I would draw a face.
I knew a face. A face. I knew a face. Where was the pencil? My thought of the moment as pictorial representation: set it down set it down set it down. Urgency urgency fucking pencil the nurse had removed the damn thing as per fucking usual stop swearing.
Who is swearing. Okay. Behind the cup. The pencil lay behind the cup. The nurse may have nudged it. I myself, I myself. I reached towards it, towards the pencil.
The tension! My heavens. Absolute – as between the pencil and the urine sample, not to knock them over, the shaky hand, the quivering knuckles.
Knuckles? My fucking knuckles! The knuckles of late middle age. Prehistoric-looking things; tiny clumps of black hair. How in the name of that which aspires to holiness do children consent to hold such a hand!
Even more astonishing, that a woman should allow such a hand to touch her skin, stroke her skin, to trace, these lines and surface of the skin who ever drew the surface of the skin, had any artist ever managed that. The greatest artists are the greatest but who among them had ever succeeded in drawing the surface of the skin oh my merciful heavens, the density of this, this skin. Skin is a surface.
It is. If the thought ever occurred in the past it had gone from my memory, vanished into that internal and all-encompassing ether which maketh manifest one’s internal space. But what does ‘manifest’ mean!
The urine sample. Even here in the hospital bed we surmount obstacles. Was it not crazy? All of it was. See the hand, the pencil, the bottle. Yea though I did reach it without mishap.
If I had gone to the lavatory I would have experienced pain. What about the pain, or pains. Pains growing from my belly or were they in from my belly, its lining. If the cancer was there, cancer of the lining of the belly.
What else could it be! Tell him tell him tell him! he screamed.
I refer to myself. Do not keep the patient in the dark. We have to deal with eternity so give us a break with that which may be known, that can be rendered manifest.
Manifest? There we have it again.
A boulder come to rest. I imagined it wedged there, the cancer entity, unyielding. I would have had to swallow it. How had I managed this! The journey down my gullet. But it had sunk and was at rest until then began its movement. The movement of the cancer entity. Feel my cancer. Touch it. This living thing, a growth that is organic but not organic. But it must feed. Upon what must it feed? Why, one’s entrails, one’s intestines, one’s blood and tissue, one’s bonemarrow; all manner of edible substances. One’s body is a feast, veritably so. Tumours grow and spread. How come? How come I had never learned about the subject? Not properly. Surely it should have been required reading for all. People die of cancer every second. If cancer it was. Of course it was.
So why had I not gone before? Had fate been smiling upon me!
Was I one of the lucky ones. Oy yez oy yez. Read all about it.
What are the statistics? Horrible.
Why had my parents not emigrated from this godforsaken hellhole where death and disease and malformity
Or grandparents! What kind of grandparents were they! Did they even deserve such a nomenclature! Ancient old bastards. No, they were undeserving. They were not grandparents at all. Not-so-grand-parents, this is what they were. Cowards. Why did everybody not emigrate. At an early age. Maybe they preferred to die young. Cowards cowards and again cowards. Them and their fucking off spring. Die die!
The damn notepad. Draw a face. Whose face?
Or the urine sample, I reached for that instead of the notepad and would have held it to my lips. Yes. Might one die from drinking urine? Of course not. Especially not one’s own. You would just seem like a pervert. But not if it was your own. Then you would just be mad. Mad! I’m mad I tell you, mad!
Look, the guy’s mad. He has a ghastly expression on his countenance.
Drinking piss. What a life. Cancer is better than that. At least I had my brains, they had not been gnawed. I imagined the movement of the cancer to resemble a gnawing activity.
There are these myriad afflictions we humans experience. All sorts of them. I was fortunate never to have had more than a couple. Not the worst. Not even close to the worst. A quaffer of urine! Oh mercy mercy, mercy me.
But apparently mothers did this of their off spring. They expressed an urge to quaff their babies’ piss and some went ahead and did it. They kissed their babies’ bums! Or was it licked? My god surely not! They held their babies up and rubbed their noses in their wee bums! Incredible behaviour. Yet womanly, motherly. Apparently.
A wee baby’s bum. What is wrong with that, they have had their bath and there they are all nice and clean and laughing away or gurgling. Babies gurgle.
You would hardly describe such behaviour as perverted; not if it pertained to mummy, performed in the maternal spirit. But take some unshaven unkempt middle-aged grandpappy cunt. In other words I myself. I would get fucking lynched man!
Fate.
Or else had one been a murderer, slave to the baser forms of violence; a wild beast, acutely dangerous to other human beings, and that violence was directed against children and very elderly invalids. One of these dirty evil bastards whose testicles one would willingly chop to safeguard others. Damn right. I would wield the axe. I had no compunction. I would shovel the ashes into the chamber, out of the chamber, whatever it took. Slam shut the door sir slam shut the door. It tolleth for you, you.
Along the way I saw Nurse Liddell; she was talking to her colleague, she was telling a tale. That humour in her voice. And most beautiful pair of legs. Nurse Liddell from Ghana, gesturing with her hands and moving on her feet. That old cliché, full of life. Her colleague was also from Africa but an
other country. That was a guess. Maybe it was the same one. She was listening, nodding, grinning; more pal than colleague.
I knew of Nurse Liddell that she was in love with her family and could not contemplate life without them. Her telling of the tales of her life established the fact. Her wider family; cousins and uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews: all interested her, each with a story to tell. Little did she know they told stories of her. She made them all laugh. She made them chuckle with pleasure. Also she was so damnably attractive. One experienced the urge to fling one’s arms about her, around her, her shoulders and just her person, really. There are such women. One marches towards them and there go the arms: I am not responsible! Forgive me forgive me!
But one’s arms are already there, the action performed.
I crave your pardon milady. My physical parts are autonomous. Causation my dear. The action an effect of your presence. You caused the action. You are the mover. Bang. And the action is created.
Whenever Nurse Liddell entered the ward there was movement below and it wasnt no tumour, god damn, no sir. Whenever that movement occurred I knew she was in the vicinity: the penis had raised his head.
Ugly. Ugly ugly. But that too! The pencil, behind the cup. I gulped saliva aware of a tenderness at the back of my throat.
My notepad from the cupboard, I lifted it across. What effort!
Why the exhaustion!
Why the pencil what the thought. Rawness and effort, tenderness at the back of the throat. Ugly ugly. I entered symptoms and feelings, hunger, lust. Lust theoretical. But theoretical or no, lust was crucial lust was life lust was
breathe in breathe out
good
Call the nurse. Excuse me, I believe you are monitoring my condition. I have to advise you, I am experiencing great lust, albeit theoretical.
Insolent bastard. Slap.
How to begin. I had no energy for this. Thoughts and pencils. The penis raised its head. Ugly ugly. I would draw it instead. The drawn penis is not so bad.
I used the pencil. It was not a lung disease. Why had I thought that. Because it was true.
The Nurse with the Beautiful Legs. Beautiful Boobs too. ‘Boobs’ is not my word: ‘tits’ is my word. My wife was coming to visit and if she spotted ‘tits’ she would wonder. She was not a woman for ‘tits’, that sort of word, it spoiled things, life, the life one shares. She would see the notepad, the drawn penis.
Goodness me. Oh well, ’twas her right.
I could have smiled. But a dust mite caught in my throat, I coughed into the top sheet. A dry cough, a rawness. Rawness. I wrote down the word, and noted it from a previous page. The female shape, her head and shoulders again, down her body, sketching fast, her legs. It was the nurse, I was drawing the nurse. She could take the breath away. Othertimes no, no. On the street one could pass her by, pass her by.
I dont believe it, I really dont believe it. Yes. Yes.
But she wore the uniform just right. Appositely. And nothing under it bar skimpy stockings and all of that and when she leaned over to make the bed oh my dear her legs, they went right up her body, as far as her, well now, well now indeed.
What shit. Pathetic.
But true, true. And women also appreciated Nurse Liddell because what an appetite for life this lassie had. This lassie had it definitely. Even her shoes! I liked her shoes. They were maybe uniform shoes but somehow, what the hell had she done? it was like she had acquired the design of the basic uniform shoe and embellished it in some way connected to the design itself, the very lines of a shoe, of any shoe, the leather surface. Leather is skin and skin is surface.
Babble babble. I babbled, babble babble.
Yakking to her colleague and pal; that old saying, nineteen to the dozen. And her colleague and pal delighting in Nurse Liddell’s yarn, acutely aware of how lucky she was, oh how lucky, to be here in Europe instead of back home amid the dust and food shortages, disease and corruption, the political jiggery-pokery. It would have killed me.
Had I been African I would not have sought asylum, I would not have left my country. I would have remained and fought until the last gasp expired from my body.
Why did people not fight? It was the same in Scotland. People didnt fight, not like in the old days. Scots wha hae. Nowadays it was just like whatever it was, acceptance, submission, grovellation, to a bunch of corrupt administrators, lawyers and bureaucrats whose debased self-interest enabled the undead not to colonize the world, but to enslave it. Well not me. Oh no, I would fight. I certainly would fight. I did fight. I still did fight and would fight and continue to do so, indeed I would, though the pain wracked, dried and drained my very soul, aarghh, the last gasp from my spent frame.
There are many ways to fight. Yes there are weapons but also there are penises. Penises! I mean pens, pens. And applied in the correct way there is nothing more powerful than a dame than a pen. Take your sword and shove it, give me a pen.
But the rape and attempted murder of an entire continent, a continent so huge that an airflight across one country takes five hours. Way up north, deserts and nothing: nomad hunters and shimmering shifting sands. I heard an African writer declare on radio that Europe would not be satisfied until the extermination of the last African. Europe demanded Africa. And when I said Europe was I including America? Why certainly. And Australia, and Israel. And the part of Africa that was Europe, what about it? Why, my dear fellow, concealed from the argument. Europe demanded Africa. Its minerals and markets, its coast and sandy beaches, strategic primacy, safari parks, the sun going down and the servant brings one a cocktail, one reclines on a hammock, meek docility, she wears a sarong tied loosely, her hair piled high on her head, she may smile, mysteriously – at her husband who is out of view, hiding to the side of the thatched hut, eyes dead in your direction, well you may tense.
But the word ‘boobs’ is ludicrous. ‘Boobs’.
One charts the mind of a human being, one discovers the absurdity therein. The absurdity of existence as contained within one human frame. Of one human being; examine one and you find absurdity.
Nurse Liddell and colleague moved toward the patient directly across from me. I knew the fellow’s name but could not remember it – old Mister Somebody. He was on his last legs. Middle-aged persons came a-visiting and the young, the grandchildren. They stood beside the bed, trying not to touch the covers lest they too contracted the disease. Joe Smith had visited him regularly. Joe.
Where was Joe? What had happened to Joe? Where the hell was he who forswore his own illness for the good of the hospital?
Actually Joe was a good man and there is no point me being facetious about this. He walked about ‘cheering’ everybody up. Such people exist. Joe was one of them. Some people who do that are horrible evangelical patronizing fucking egotistical bastards. Not Joe. Joe is or was genuine. Probably he had dropped dead.
Hell’s bells.
The notepad and pencil rested between my left leg and the edge of the bed.
I had lain them to rest. Were one to shift position they might tumble to the floor.
Fraught!
I refer to one’s life. Even here, within the confines of the hospital bed, one experienced the existential nightmare of that which we know as the day-to-day.
Nurse Liddell speaking to her colleague, and quietly, the patient might have heard had he not been snoozing, old Mister Somebody, bereft of consciousness. He could not hear, alas. Nineteen twentieths of the old fellow’s life passed in sleep. His body was drained, his lifeforce spent, in defence against the cancer entity. I saw it as a war; a small and well-drilled army takes on a huge, densely populated country. Sooner or later one or more limbs of the well-drilled army will fail. They cannot continue indefinitely
unequal struggle
Compos mentis, however. I remained so, alert. Why then had I sighed? I had sighed. Why had I sighed and so damnably tired so damnably damnably tired so tired so tired
The notepad and pencil, and close to the edge. W
hen had I laid them to rest?
No major event. Nothing was. The nurses were young women. The men they liked were so much younger than me, much younger, very much younger. One saw them on television. Confident young males, they all were confident and boyish. Boyish! They were all so fucking boyish, it made one grue, at their so-called charms, stylish in their disarray. But still the girls smiled upon them. No doubt
No doubt. I had tacked on the ‘no doubt’ as a form of reassurance. The typically pathetic manoeuvre of the older male, pretending a righteous displeasure at the antics of the young, when it was nothing more than the deepest most god-awful jealousy, and bitterness. I could have killed, and I would have, these fuckers.
Whence the anger?
I was not beyond the pale. The nurses were in their mid-twenties, so that made how many years of a difference? countless and countless were a lot, a lot of years, as they say, a vast pressure of water rushing beneath the bridge.