Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Before, during, and after, thought Stevey, as he composed himself for sleep on the last night of his life, his mother had been a trial and tribulation to all around her, had made good men weep, had made her son weep. And she lived on.

  But by the time the uncle’s money had run out, Naomi had become a curiosity. And people pay for curiosities. Sometimes.

  Oh, yes, Naomi lives on. And she glows in the night, people say.

  She mumbles, “I’ll kill you!” And then laughs, feebly, toothlessly. As if to say, “I don’t mean it, really.” For Naomi still senses on which side her bread is buttered, knows that without those fuzzy forms which are nurse-forms, which Naomi can barely see, she’d croak, die of thirst and hunger. So Naomi remembers to butter them up a little. But no more than necessary. In fact, she’s as nasty to them as she dares be, tipping her soup over deliberately sometimes. Vaguely, she realizes that the nurses are paid slaves, that they’re obliged to hang around.

  She gives the nurses the creeps.

  The nurses, male and female, laugh, chuckle. But they chuckle defensively. They wonder, in the back of their minds, “Is this crazy Naomi stronger than all of us, than any of us, after all? Is she really going to live forever?—Because she’s sure as hell around two hundred right now!” But they don’t dare utter these questions, these ideas, even when they’re alone with only one other colleague. There’s something about Naomi that gives them the creeps way down deep, inside all of them. It’s as if Naomi, somehow, could show them what life and death is all about. And that picture is not pretty, so they, and everybody, are, is, afraid to look at it.

  They all shiver, the staff, because they know that all over the United States, all over “the civilized world” where they don’t push the old folks over cliffs anymore, that the aged outnumber the young. In fact, it’s the mark of a First World and first-rate country to have cut the birthrate to zero and to take care of its elderly.

  So be it. And maybe it’s the right thing to do. But people like Naomi are a horror. Their children will break themselves financially to keep such people out of their own homes and in some institution, where they don’t have to look at them daily. The people footing the bills know they’re being ripped off by the institutions, if they’re private and not state institutions, because there’s so much money in keeping these elderly alive with vitamins and antibiotics all the time and an oxygen machine when necessary. Not like in the state places, where a window slightly open on a cold winter’s night can carry off half a roomful of non-paying guests with pneumonia—poof ! So much the better, there’re plenty more elderly waiting to take their places, and plenty of younger people heaving a sigh of relief at getting their parents out of the house and out of sight.

  “She’s a horror! I can’t face it!” said one young nurse on Naomiduty, shoulders collapsing from tears and emotional upset.

  Well, the young nurse was given a day off. She recovered after some extra sleep and returned. And, like many others, tried to avoid Naomi, tried to attend the younger inmates, those around a hundred years old. Some of them were still willing to wear their hearing aids and dentures, a blessing to the staff.

  It’s 2090 now, and Naomi’s certainly a little over two hundred years old. She glows pale yellowish-green in the dark, eats and drinks hardly anything worth mentioning, yet pees several times and defecates usually once a day. That’s a sign that Naomi Barton Markham’s alive, isn’t it? Those wet and nasty, stinking diapers! Naomi started life in diapers, like all of us, and she is ending it in diapers, that is if there ever is an end, but there’s no end in sight, really. Her “condition” is unchanged in the last hundred and ten years. Her bill has gone up from about $2,100 a month at the end of the twentieth century to about $6,300 now, but the Old Homestead pays it, because Naomi is such a good advertisement for them.

  The newspapers can ring up and make a date for fresh photos of the old ghost and “an interview” any time they wish, but the articles are getting so old hat, Naomi’s good for a story only once a lustrum now.

  However, Naomi does serve as a symbol of the remodeled Old Homestead’s and other private nursing homes’ competence:

  LOOK WHAT A FINE NURSING HOME CAN DO—KEEP YOUR LOVED ONE ALIVE FOR EVER!

  Never mind that “for ever” might be an exaggeration. Who’s going to point that out? No one dies any more, one passes away. Sounds nicer. Death is a word to be avoided. The old casket spiel goes: buy not only a satin-lined steel casket but a double-steel casket. It’ll keep your loved one longer in a presumably lovely state, with the undertaker’s cosmetic rouge visible on dead cheeks and lips for maybe three, four, five hundred years (or so it is implied, and how long would you ask for right out?), and double-steel will presumably keep the worms out longer too, though of course one mustn’t use the word worms, or even think of, much less mention, the fact that worms come from those old fly eggs already within us, not from outer atmosphere or outer space, so expensive steel isn’t going to help one damn against the fate that’s in store for all of us.

  However, back to America’s private rest homes’ pitch: don’t you want your loved one or ones to live as long as possible? And in the greatest comfort that you can afford? Or even can’t quite afford?

  If other people are looking and listening, you’d better answer, “Yes, of course.”

  But if people aren’t looking and listening, would you really want this? Would you want your mother or father to live “as long as possible?” Don’t you know in your bones that there’s a time for each and every one of us to die?

  Would you want your Mom to live on and on like Naomi, glowing green-yellow in the night, peeing in a diaper, defecating at least once in two days, dependent upon someone to poke food into her mouth, dependent upon someone to change the diaper? And with no end in sight? Would you like to live on like that, unable to watch TV, unable to hear, unable to walk even with a bit of assistance, unable to read a letter that an old friend might send, indeed too far gone in the head to take in anything that someone else might read to you?

  Naomi Barton Markham glows in the night, and peoples her lonely cubicle with figures from the past, people long dead, more ghostly than herself—her own parents, her ill-treated boyfriends, her neglected but faithful-to-the-last son, her kicked around spouses (two). She curses them, mocks them and laughs at them, attempts with her minimal strength to sneer and turn her face away, as in the old days, as she once did to men who loved her, even to friends who tried to be friends.

  You’ll finish us all, Naomi. If not you personally, then your ilk. You’re a triumph of modern medicine, vitamins, antibiotics and all that. Pity you can’t pay for it yourself, but we know you don’t give a moment’s thought to that. You’re light years away from thought, reasoning and economics.

  Lucky you, Naomi! That is, if you’re enjoying yourself. Are you? How does this incubus feel, lying on its back with a rubber ring under the rump to avoid bedsores? What does it think about? Does it go gubbah-gubbah-gubbah with toothless gums, as it did in babyhood, when it was also swathed at the loins in a diaper?

  Naomi Barton Markham, you’ll bury us all, as long as there’s an old Homestead to rake in the shekels, as long as there’s a fool or two to pay them.

  Sixtus VI, Pope of the Red Slipper

  Pope Sixtus VI stubbed his toe badly on the morning of his departure for Central and South America. He had been in sandals on his way to early prayer in a subterranean chapel of the Vatican, climbing the four stone steps that he had climbed a thousand times before, when his right great toe struck the top step, and he would have fallen, if not for Father Stephen darting forward and catching one of his arms firmly. Sixtus had tried to smile, the pain was rather bad, and he and Stephen had gone on to the chapel.

  By 9:30, when the Pope and his entourage were boarding the Vatican jet, the toe had turned bright pink and was throbbing. It was also alarmingly swollen, and Sixtus had made a change of foot-gear at the last minute: roomier black slippers instead of
the snugger white ones that went with his light-colored robe. It was June, and quite warm and muggy in Rome. Sixtus’s physician Dr Franco Maggini had looked at the toe, made Sixtus soak it in what he called “a warm astringent” while he ate his breakfast, but Sixtus failed to see that the soaking had done any good. There was even a purple hue, perhaps caused by bruised capillaries, over the end of the toe.

  But at the door of the aircraft, Sixtus turned and raised an arm and smiled, as he always did, to the few hundred screened and chosen who stood behind a rope at the edge of the tarmac.

  A small roar, cheers, cries of “Santo Sisto!” went up from them. “Buon’ viaggio!”

  “Bless you!” Sixtus VI called back. “God be with you!”

  Then Sixtus settled into his wide and comfortable seat, fastened his seat belt, and accepted a small cup of tea that his waiter Giorgio brought him on a tray, because Giorgio would have been disappointed if he had not accepted it.

  “Your Holiness is looking well today,” said Giorgio.

  Was he? Across the aisle, he exchanged a smile with Stephen, the young Canadian priest who had recently been ordained, and whom the Pope liked to talk with, because Stephen was interested in politics as well as theology. Young Stephen was conservative.

  Now politics. Politics was the reason he was making this trip today, his second trip to South America within nine months, though this time he would be visiting different countries. This time it would be Mexico City, then Colombia, then poverty-stricken Peru, then Chile where the government wore a uniform and people disappeared. Everywhere there was restlessness, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Sixtus VI was very aware of that, aware that it was difficult if not impossible to look a hungry man in the eye and say, “Trust in God and all will be well.” That was nearly as bad as the old admonition, the old cliché, “Bear your hardships on this earth, and if you believe, you will live in heaven for ever after you die.” People were losing faith that a heaven or hell existed, even that there was a life after death.

  The revving engines had begun to roar, the plane moved forward, pressing Sixtus’s back hard against his seat.

  Then they were airborne, and the Pope reached at once for the polished black leather briefcase on the table before him. He unsnapped his seat belt, though the craft still climbed. He pulled out the five-page address which he was to make in Mexico City at high noon Mexican time, a day or so from now.

  “. . . God’s word is unfailing,” Sixtus read, “and He watches us all, neglecting not a soul. But there are elements in our midst today which seek to tear down this great structure of spiritual strength, comfort and truth. They offer instead a diluted and contaminated Christianity, one which tempts and appeals at first glance, but which is deceptive and hollow . . . First and always, absolute faith and absolute obedience . . .”

  Sixtus’s eyelids trembled with the pain of his toe, his own words before him became abstract, hard to hold on to. Yesterday when he had gone over the speech aloud, registered it and played it back to himself it had seemed strong, truthful and also simple. The Pope admired simplicity: he often addressed unlettered people. Simplicity meant truthfulness to Sixtus, which was to say that a dishonest man speaking simple words would not be able to hide his dishonesty. But should he re-think some of what he had written here? He certainly had time, but it was hard to think with the pain in his right great toe, now quite as bad as a toothache.

  “Your Holiness—” Dr Maggini appeared at his side, bending, smiling. “And how goes the toe?”

  “I was about to send for you, Franco. It’s awful, my toe. I’ve had only two aspirins, so how about another? Or something stronger?”

  “That bad?” Franco’s heavy brows came together, he rubbed his chin. He was about forty-five, with a neat but full moustache, fond of wearing dark suits even in summer, and now he wore a lightweight, nearly black poplin suit with a white shirt and dark blue tie. “May I see it again?”

  The Pope reached down and pushed off his slipper, his white stocking stopped below the knee with elastic top, and he pushed this down, and the doctor pulled it off. Stephen had got up and was somewhere else in the aircraft, though by now he knew Stephen so well, he would not have minded if Stephen saw his toe.

  “You see, it’s more swollen,” said the Pope. “And look at that touch of purple.—What can that mean?”

  The doctor was frowning at the toe as if he had never seen anything like it.

  “You don’t think it’s broken, perhaps?”

  “Doubt it, if you just stubbed it, Your Holiness.”

  “Or out of joint?”

  “Also unlikely. I believe the flesh—and of course the bone were badly bruised against that stone. Bone bruises take time.”

  “But—” the pain made sweat break out suddenly on Sixtus’s forehead, “—the swelling is so painful, it occurred to me that a lancing wouldn’t be amiss. Couldn’t hurt worse than this does now.”

  The doctor shook his thoughtful head. “But not yet, Your Holiness, a lancing might create complications.—Perhaps an X-ray in Dallas-Fort Worth.”

  To Sixtus’s annoyance, the doctor always spoke of the airport as if it were a single city. “Or New York which is sooner?”

  “New York is for refueling, if you recall, Your Holiness, so security is not arranged. We’re simply stopping at Kennedy for a couple of hours.”

  Sixtus did remember. And the tour had to be on schedule, everywhere.

  Dr. Maggini gave him two aspirins from a box he had in his pocket. “I would recommend that Your Holiness lie down and keep the right foot elevated.”

  Sixtus VI retired to his private compartment. Here he had a wide bed, though not so wide as a matrimoniale, a shower, basin and toilet, a table with seats for two by a window. The bed could be curtained off which Sixtus thought a bit absurd. Was this in case he died in the air? A little privacy for his final moments?

  He lay down, propped his head against pillows, and looked again at his speech. But now, perhaps because of the aspirins, he felt sleepy, and he shut his eyes. The aircraft’s motors made a sedating hum. He awakened from a sharp pain in his toe, as if Franco had indeed lanced it. But no. Franco was not here, and the throbbing was now like a hammer on a nerve. Sixtus blinked with the pain, alarmed. I am mortal after all, were the words that went through his head, but he had always known that, often said it in his speeches. He was but a human bridge between God and man, nothing more. Suppose blood poisoning, somehow, crept up his leg? Amputation? Well and good. Not fatal.

  Why was the pain so awful? Sixtus started to press the bell for Franco, then drew his hand back. He was suffering, this was suffering, and how many times had he enjoined his people to bear sufferings of various kinds? It ill behooved him to whimper about a stubbed toe!

  The Pope lunched with Stephen, Dr. Franco Maggini and Cardinal Ricci. The atmosphere was cheerful, despite polite commiserations from the Cardinal about his toe.

  “Things will go well,” was the attitude at the table, and Cardinal Ricci actually said it.

  There was no X-ray laid on at Dallas or Fort Worth, and the Pope did not complain lest he run into “no security” again. More refueling, then on toward Mexico City. The Pope slept badly, and concentrated on, as he put it in his own mind, making a good show tomorrow. That was to say, doing his duty well.

  Pope Sixtus VI had been born Luciano Emilio Padroni in a poor region of Tuscany. In a curious way, poverty, sadness and deaths in the family, hardship, and his fondness for Padre Basilio in his village had steered him toward the Church. After some youthful escapades, when Luciano had been nineteen and again at twenty-two, he had found his feet, and his feet were firmly in the Church. Luciano believed in God and Christ. He was strong in physique, fond of hiking and skiing, even now in his late fifties. He made friends easily, though he was not gifted with an aptitude for scheming. The public seemed to like his directness and his face. This had been so when he was much younger, but still it had been a surprise for Luciano, just years ago
bishop in an unimportant Tuscan diocese, to be elected Pope. He had telephoned his mother, moments after learning the news. That had been six years ago. It seemed to him that the world had been quieter then, that nations had not everywhere been at one another’s throats, but probably that wasn’t so. The world did not change drastically, just became “more so” in certain departments. Now it was the pro-birth control people again, flaring up in the United States as they had a few years back in Ireland. Bishops and priests in America had come out in their own churches in favor of birth control, in favor of condoning homosexuality and calling it a psychological aberration rather than a vice. Sexual intercourse before marriage was all right with them too. And equal standing in the Church after a second marriage. There was no end to these liberals’ ideas, it seemed, and they did not realize that they were not making the Church any stronger by their new “principles,” but turning the Church into a leaky vessel.