by Declan Burke
‘So what’ve you got?’ he says, nodding at my side of the table.
‘You meet the old guy for the first time.’
‘Yeah,’ he says softly. ‘I liked him.’
•
‘Being old is like being hung-over all day, every day,’ the old man says. His voice crackles like a dusty ’78. ‘The worst hangover you’ve ever had. So bad you wanted to do nothing but cry but you were afraid snuffling your snot would split your skull. Imagine that all day, every day,’ he says.
This man is seventy-nine years old. In theory, he should be dead. In Ireland, statistically speaking, men die at seventy-two and women at seventy-five. This is nature’s way of affording women the opportunity of covering every possible conversational gambit vis-a-vis the latest manifestation of male betrayal.
‘People don’t get how someone might want to die,’ the old man says. He has recently had his leg amputated at the knee, lest the gangrene that began with an infected ingrown toenail spread like bushfire through dry kindling. ‘They don’t understand that everything winds down,’ he says. ‘They don’t want to face the fact that all engines wear out.’
The will to live is an invisible engine, with its own pumps and valves and in-built obsolescence.
The old man chooses a peach-flavoured yoghurt and a bar of plain Dairy Milk chocolate from the trolley. ‘You know you’re old when you can’t eat the Fruit ‘n’ Nut anymore,’ he says.
‘The nurse tells me you were a mechanic,’ I say.
His hands shake, so that his fingers can gain no purchase on the chocolate’s gold foil. I take the bar, peel back some of the wrapper, hand it over. He’s nodding his head. ‘That’s right,’ he says, ‘for near on forty years.’ His chest rumbles when he breathes. He begins sucking on a corner of the Dairy Milk. ‘Cars today, who’d be arsed fixing them up?’
I note that he has to buy his own chocolate and yoghurt from my concession cart. That his pyjama collar is grimy. These things tell me that visitors come rarely, if at all. His hair is lush, white as the pillowcase on which it flares. His face is deeply lined, but softly, so he resembles a post-coital Beckett. The eyes are rheumy, red-limned.
‘Something I’ve always wanted to ask a mechanic,’ I say.
The faded blue eyes sparkle. ‘Is that a fact?’ He pats his leg. ‘Fire away, son, I’m going nowhere.’
‘See, in the movies, when someone cuts a brake cable halfway through, so the car only crashes later. Does that really work?’
The bushy eyebrows flicker, then mesh. ‘Is there someone you don’t like, son?’
I laugh, quietly, so as not to disturb the other patients. ‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘I’m a writer, I’m working on a short story where a car crashes. I just want to know if that brake cable thing works. I don’t want any mechanics reading the story and not taking it seriously.’
He doesn’t believe me. But his eyes sparkle. He’s looking at one last opportunity for mischief with no possible repercussions. ‘Tell me the story,’ he says, ‘and I’ll let you know if it sounds wrong.’
I sketch the outline of a story involving a fatal car accident. He sucks on his chocolate. When I’m finished, he nods. ‘That sounds alright,’ he says. ‘I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the actual details. But the story’s rubbish.’
‘That’s what’s wrong with the world today,’ I say. ‘Everyone’s a critic.’
He laughs, but it collapses into a rumbling cough. His whole body shudders. The plastic tubes rattle like a ship’s rigging in a gale. When the spasm passes he gasps, ‘What’s wrong with the world today, son, is mechanics don’t read short stories.’
‘Maybe you’ve a point at that,’ I say. ‘See you tomorrow night.’
I leave the ward, the cart’s wheels squeaking like uppity slave mice. I’m thinking about how the will to live is an invisible engine, with its own pumps and valves. I’m thinking about how engines can be jump-started if only you can pump enough juice through the leads. I’m thinking about how engines can be scuppered with something as simple as a handful of sugar.
I meet Frankie for a coffee in the hospital canteen. We chat football for a bit, talk up the Rovers’ chances against Shams on Friday night, but Frankie seems distracted, irritable.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen Tommo?’ I say. ‘I’ve a couple of books for him in my locker, he was supposed to pick them up yesterday.’
‘Tommo got the boot,’ he says. ‘Austin too.’
‘No way.’
He nods, glum. ‘I got in a load of shit for being away from the desk, covering for those fuckers. So I had to write a report.’
‘What’d you say?’
‘Nothing. Just that the boys were out sick that day, and I had to cover the monitors.’
‘And they got the boot for that?’
‘It wasn’t just that. When they checked the records, they realised the boys were out sick about five days in every forty. So they got sent for a check-up, standard procedure, to make sure they didn’t have some long-term infection that could screw the patients.’
‘So?’
‘So they had to take a pee test.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Fuckin’ A. The guy doing the test got stoned off the whiff of their piss.’
‘Half their luck.’
‘Tell me about it. And with the cutbacks, the non-recruitment of non-essential staff, they’re not taking on any replacements.’
‘So who’s doing their jobs?’
Frankie jabs a thumb into his chest. ‘They’ve given me a promotion,’ he says, ‘made me Divisional Representative. Whatever the fuck that is.’
‘So now you’re a supervisor with no one to supervise.’
‘That’s about it, yeah.’
‘Okay. But if it’s Tommo and Austin’s work you’re doing, you’ll hardly break a sweat.’
‘I know.’ He drains the dregs of his coffee. ‘But still, the boys were mates.’ He glances at his watch, then stands up. ‘C’mon,’ he says, ‘we’d better get back or we’ll be next for the heave-ho.’
‘If you want a pint later on, have a chat, just give me a buzz.’
‘Will do.’
•
‘Is that it?’ I say. ‘You’re dumping Tommo and Austin?’
Billy, nibbling on a hangnail, just shrugs.
‘So how’s it feel?’
‘Not good,’ he says. ‘Like Frankie says, the boys were mates. And the way things are these days, it’s not like they’re going to just waltz into another gig.’
‘It’s tough out there, alright. But look, Billy, it’s not your fault the boys were stoners.’
‘I could’ve had them get their act together, pack in the dope.’
‘Except the object of the exercise was to cut them dead, see if you could face wiping out a whole hospital.’
‘I know, yeah.’
‘So what d’you think?’
‘I dunno. I need to absorb this one first, see how it goes.’
‘Not easy, is it?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Austin, okay, he’s a bit of a dick. Tommo’s a good bloke, though.’
‘Was,’ I say. ‘Past tense.’
He stares. ‘I only got them sacked,’ he says. ‘It’s not like I killed them off or anything.’
‘Same difference, though, isn’t it? I mean, they’re gone now.’
‘Gone from the hospital, yeah.’
‘What,’ I say, ‘you think they’re just going to hang out in their apartment getting blitzed?’
A hunted look in his eye. ‘How’m I supposed to know what they’ll––’
‘They’ve just lost their jobs, Billy. How will they buy weed? How’ll they pay rent? I mean, there’s consequences. Every action an equal and opposite reaction, all that.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Cut off without even a redundancy payment . . .’ I’m enjoying this now, Billy’s hangdog expression. ‘Those boys want to work again, they’ll be off to Canada, Australia. Exce
pt they’re unskilled, they’re hospital porters. Who’s going to want them?’
‘What would you have done?’
‘If I’d wanted them gone?’ I shrug. ‘I don’t know. If I liked them, they just weren’t useful anymore, I’d have taken care of them. Put them in car accident or something, Austin’s driving, he’s bliftered . . . Nothing too serious, mind. Just enough to put them in wheelchairs, get them a disability benefit, so they could sit around toking all day.’
‘Not much of a life, that,’ Billy says.
‘Depends on who you are. I’d say Austin’d be okay with it.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Still,’ I say, ‘at least your way they won’t be going up in flames when the hospital blows.’
‘True enough.’ He straightens up, crumples the sheet of paper, tosses it on the pile. ‘I’ll have another bash at it tonight.’
‘That’s the spirit. What else have you got?’
He draws another sheet of paper from his folder. ‘I’ve had another go at the Cassie novel.’
‘I thought we were dumping that.’
‘Bear with me,’ he says. ‘I think I might be on to something.’
•
Sermo Vulgus: A Novel (Excerpt)
Cassie, you said diamonds were stone bewildered, confused and frightened by the glow in their soul. We are machines, you said, churning out rusted flakes of misunderstanding, but diamonds are doubts radiating hope.
Cassie, you said you would never wear diamonds. Diamonds, you said, are smug egos. They are too hard, you said, hard as the bones our yesterdays gnaw. You said only braided lightning would grace your finger; only a garland woven from a re-leafed oak would adorn your head. Can’t we at least try, you said, to draw a straight line through the heart of every sun?
Cassie, you quoted Schoendoerffer on grey eyes: ‘Grey eyes are peculiar in that they betray no emotion, and in its absence one cannot help imagining a world of violence and passion behind their gaze.’ I think you wished your eyes were Schoendoerffer grey, but they were wide and candid and the colour of indecision.
Cassie, you were no reader of French. Thus I challenge the legitimacy of your perceptions. Now, when it is already too late, I dare you to consider that Xan Fielding’s translation of Farewell to the King improved Schoendoerffer’s original text.
Cassie, I beg you to admit possibility. For your approval I posit the hypothesis that nothing is impossible so long as we are prepared to consider its possibility. Only in an infinite universe can hope spring eternal.
Cassie, it is possible to try to braid lightning, to re-leaf your oak, to draw a straight line through the heart of every sun. Cassie, it is possible to try at least. It is still legitimate to hope, even now, when the ash of the Six Million falls with the acid rain.
Cassie, are we really so far gone?
•
‘You’ve read Farewell to the King?’
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘I liked the cover.’
‘Why, what’s it look like?’
‘Your cover, I mean.’
‘Oh.’ My copy of Farewell to the King I found in a second-hand bookshop, crudely covered with a blank sheet of cheap leather binding. A blind orphan, swaddled. A good novel, I think, but my favourite book. A precious artefact excavated from the dross. The idea that someone would go to all that trouble to rebind an old paperback had me blinking back tears, so that the assistant asked me was I okay as I handed over the euro coin it cost to give it a good home.
Billy reaches into his satchel, takes out the book. ‘I borrowed it last week,’ he said. ‘Sorry, I meant to ask, but then Rosie wound up in the shed and, y’know.’
‘No worries.’
It takes everything I have not to punch my pencil into his Newman-blue eye. Because that book isn’t just a book, it’s a touchstone for how much some people love books; and not just books, but the weakest, the most disposable. Whoever bound that book could just as easily have tossed a coverless paperback in the trash, an object that was worthless by any practical assessment. And yet they covered it, crudely it has to be said, but that’s not the point, they took the time and invested the craft to ensure that the words would be protected, the delicacy of it preserved. I can only presume that whoever covered that book had died, and their collection of books sold as a job lot, for why would they go to all that effort just to sell it second-hand, especially as no bookseller in his right mind would pay good money for a ragged paperback bound in cheap blank leather?
I cried that day in the bookshop for the poignancy of it, certainly, out of a lachrymose sentimentality for the blind orphan who found safe haven, but also because I knew I had finally discovered the person I wanted to write for, the one mythical listener every writer needs, my ghost audience and reader eternal.
‘Have you anything else like that?’ he says. ‘That was pretty good.’
‘No, I’ve nothing else like that.’
He nods towards the chalet. ‘What about those Russians you have on the shelf?’
‘It’s a different kind of thing.’
‘Just as well,’ he says. ‘I mean, who can read those Russians? The characters’ names are nearly short stories in themselves.’
‘Being honest, they’re only there for show. Them and Kafka. And Beckett.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ he says. ‘I was worried I might be the only moron around here.’
•
Today is a Red Letter day. Today was worth the wanton massacre of oxygen molecules required to keep me alive.
Early this morning a nurse discovered an old woman dead in her bed. There are suggestions that the death was premature. There are hints that the old woman’s miserable existence, eked out between bouts of excruciating bowel pain, was abruptly terminated.
Mrs McCaffrey’s was the third unusual death in nineteen months. All three suffered from chronic agonies with no hope of reprieve. All three had private rooms. Mrs McCaffrey appears to have been smothered with her own pillow, an embroidered affair she’d brought from her home when she realised she was in for the long haul.
Rumours surge along the corridors. Scandal plummets down elevator shafts. The speed of light is left standing in the traps. There are uninspired whispers about an Angel of Death. The word ‘euthanasia’ enjoys a hushed renaissance.
Despite the best efforts of the hospital’s board of directors, the cops are called in. They are, however, discreet. They are aware of the delicate nature of the situation. People cannot afford to believe that a hospital could be a place where people can die willy-nilly. There are research grants at stake here.
I am called for an interview, held in the office of the director of public relations on the sixth floor. It is a big, airy office. Potted plants feature. I sit in the leather chair and immediately feel my posture improve.
The cops ask if I was working last night. I tell them I was. They already know this.
They ask if I knew Mrs McCaffrey. Yes, I say. They already know this too.
They ask if I visited her last night with my concession cart.
‘Not last night, no.’
‘How come?’ says the cop with the salt-and-pepper hair.
‘She doesn’t like anything on the cart,’ I say. ‘I’ve offered to bring her anything she wants, but she can’t eat normal stuff. I think she has bowel cancer. Or had, rather.’
‘See anything unusual on your rounds last night?’
‘It’s a hospital. Pretty much everything that goes on around here is unusual.’
‘Okay. But was there anyone around who shouldn’t have been? Anything out of the ordinary?’
‘Not that I can think of, no.’
The other cop has florid jowls and porcine eyes. He taps a folder on the desk in front of him. ‘It says here you’ve been the subject of a number of disciplinary procedures.’
‘That’s not exactly a crime.’
He bristles. ‘We’ll decide what is and what’s not a crime.’
‘No, you don�
�t. If you want to criminalise attitude, call a referendum. Then we’ll decide what’s a crime and what isn’t, and you’ll enforce the laws we vote in. That’s the peachy thing about democracy.’
‘How come you’re trying to be difficult?’
The way he says it, I am now officially Public Enemy Number 1. This is a man who needs enemies. This is a man who needs justification for the chip on his shoulder and has found his vocation as a vampire feeding off crime.
‘I’m not trying to be difficult,’ I say. ‘I’m co-operating. Anyway, how would mentioning my rights be making things difficult?’
Salty Pepper says, ‘How long have you worked here?’
‘That’s in the file, along with the disciplinary stuff.’
‘Do you like your job?’
‘It’s a job. And I like meeting new people.’
‘You get to see many people die during the course of your duties?’
‘Some. You?’
He sucks on a discoloured front tooth. ‘How does that make you feel, watching people die? I mean, are you comfortable with seeing people in pain?’
‘Not especially. But you get used to anything if you stick at it long enough.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
Florid Jowls cuts in. ‘Say someone begs you to end their life, to do them a favour and put them out of their misery – what do you do?’
‘I call a nurse. They’re obviously in need of a shot of morphine, something along those lines.’
‘Did Mrs McCaffrey ever talk about wanting to die?’
‘Not that I remember. But I don’t think she had a lot to live for.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘She talked about how no one ever came to visit her. She said her husband died four years ago.’ They already know this. ‘People can die of a broken heart,’ I say. ‘That’s a medical fact. Hearts can actually break.’
‘So you did talk to her.’
‘She talked to me. I listened. Old people who are dying only want one thing, the chance to tell their story. To pass their lives on. All they want to believe is that life hasn’t been a stupid waste of time.’