by Declan Burke
‘Blue.’
‘How many eyes did he have?’
‘Two.’
‘What colour was his hair?’
‘Blond.’
‘Karlsson,’ he says in a chiding tone, ‘had two eyes, both of them brown. His hair was brown too, going a little foxy in the sideburns.’
‘Who gives a fuck,’ I say, ‘if his hair was pink? We’re not writing about Karlsson anymore, we’re writing about you.’
‘Since when?’ he says.
‘Since always. Since you first showed up.’
‘With blond hair,’ he insists, ‘and one blue eye.’ He dips the shades to remind me of the sucked-out prune that used to be his other eye. ‘You’ve never wondered about what happened?’
‘I asked about it, Billy. As I recall, you said I wouldn’t believe you if you told me.’
‘And you just let it lie. For a writer,’ he says, ‘you’re not very curious, are you?’
‘We’d never met before. It would’ve been rude to push it.’
‘And now?’
I shrug. ‘If you want to tell me, just tell me.’
He plays with the cigarette, rolling it between the ball of his thumb and the tips of his fingers. ‘You’re just not getting it,’ he says, ‘are you?’
‘I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, Billy. If you want to tell me how you lost your eye, then go for it. If not, let’s cut the bullshit and just do this.’
‘I didn’t just lose my eye,’ he says. ‘An eye isn’t something that rolls out of its socket some night you’re on the rip. You don’t put your eye down somewhere for a minute, then forget where you––’
‘Yeah, yeah, I get it. So just tell me.’
‘You’re some fucking plank,’ he says, shaking his head. He stares at me for a long moment, then seems to make a decision. He sparks the smoke, exhales from the corner of his mouth, his eye on mine all the while. ‘What happened my eye,’ he says, ‘is totally irrelevant. What matters is, Karlsson had two eyes and I only have one. What matters,’ he says, ‘is somewhere between you writing Karlsson and me turning up, an eye was lost.’
‘Ah. Okay.’
‘You see it?’
‘I think so, yeah.’ I’d been wondering when Billy would make his power-play. ‘You’re saying something happened your eye, it doesn’t really matter what or how. The point being, it wasn’t me who made it happen.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So who did?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘there’s really only two options, both of them totally absurd.’
‘And they are?’
‘Well, either someone other than you or me got their hands on the manuscript and rewrote Karlsson, before you showed up here, or you somehow managed to rewrite yourself.’
‘There’s another option,’ he says.
‘Which is?’
‘I’m the writer. I’m the one writing you.’
And there it is, Billy’s attempt to claim more authority, so that it’s he and not I who decides his ultimate fate.
‘You’re saying,’ I say, ‘that you’re the one who’s really in charge.’
‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. If it wasn’t, it shouldn’t even occur to me, should it? Even as a possibility.’
‘Okay. But what if I’m writing you that way,’ I say, ‘so that you get to believe you’re in control?’
He pats his pockets, then glances around, peering out at the lawn beyond the decking rails. ‘I don’t suppose you saw my straws?’ he says.
‘Straws?’
‘I hate to see a man with nothing left to clutch at.’
As always, his chutzpah borders on genius. ‘You’re a fucking loon,’ I say. ‘You know that?’
‘Maybe I am.’ He smirks again. ‘But then, most writers are.’
‘True enough,’ I say. ‘But at least we’re not poets, eh?’
Oh, how we laugh.
Later that evening, Debs comes over with some takeaway Indian, Inception on DVD.
‘So what’s new with Billy the Kidder?’ she says, popping home a shrimp.
I tell her that Billy reckons he’s the one writing us. ‘Or writing me, at least.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yep.’
She chuckles at that, then says, ‘You know, that mightn’t be such a bad thing. If Billy thinks he has free will, then all you need to do is channel him in the right direction, so that when the hospital blows up he’ll believe that he was the one who decided he should go up with it.’
‘You think he’ll buy that?’
‘Maybe. A captain’s sinking ship and all that,’ she says. ‘Besides, the last thing you want is to end up writing a series about this guy.’
‘True. Except I’m wondering if he’s not angling for more credit.’
‘How come?’
‘Well, if he stands up on stage and does an adaptation of my story, he pays for the rights. If he gets a co-writing credit, he pays less. If he gets to stand up and say it’s an original piece, loosely based on something I’ve written . . .’
‘Cheeky bastard.’
‘Exactly.’
‘You can’t let him get away with that.’
‘No, but the more work he does, the less I have to do. And I get to walk out of here with Crime Always Pays redrafted and a cheque on the way if Billy ever gets his gig off the ground. He reckons the Arts Council are interested in backing him with some commissioning funding.’
‘So let him do it. You have the original manuscript, right? If there’s any dispute, that’s your trump card.’
‘And Jonathan says he’ll back me up, no problem.’
‘So that’s alright, then.’
‘Hopefully, yeah. Billy’s a sneaky fucker.’
‘And you’re not?’
I get the DVD playing, and we snuggle up on the couch eating off one another’s plates. ‘Is it just me,’ Deborah says, ‘or should Leo DiCaprio just point-blank refuse any script that requires him to run?’
We decide that, in the sprinting thespian stakes, no one holds a candle to Tom Cruise.
Leo is descending into his third or fourth version of reality when Debs’s mobile starts to vibrate.
‘Hello?’ she says. ‘Oh hi, Kathleen. Is everything . . . ?
‘Oh. Right.
‘No, I know. You were right to ring, absolutely . . . What’s that?
‘Yeah, I’ve booked her for an appointment on Thursday morning. It is worrying, yes . . .
‘Okay, I’m on my way. See you soon.’ She hangs up.
‘What’s wrong?’ I say.
‘Rosie’s wheezing again,’ she says, brushing poppadom crumbs off her lap.
‘Shit. Since when?’
‘This morning. I mean, it’s on and off, and mostly when she’s feeding. It’s like she can feed or breathe, not both at the same time.’
‘Fuck.’
‘I know. Listen, she’s due for her jabs on Thursday morning. Can you make it? We can have a good chat with the doctor.’
‘Of course, yeah.’
‘It’d be good if you could. It’s like five injections in one go. She’ll be a mess after.’
‘I’ll be there. Want me to come with you now?’
‘No, there’s no need. I’ll ring later and let you know how she is. But she’ll be fine, she always is.’
‘You’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’ A wan smile. ‘Well, sure as I can be. Who the hell knows anything when it comes to babies?’
That night I dream about Billy rewriting the script for Inception, except I’m Leo DiCaprio, descending through the various levels of hell, in desperate pursuit of Rosie as she flits fairy-like from one demon-filled cavern to the next, the sound of her wheezing drawing me on and ever downwards, a spiral of despair that grows more desolate and lonely the more the caverns narrow. Just like that I find myself in a tiny grotto, dimly lit. A woman dressed in blue silk stands with one hand pressed to h
er heart, the other held up, palm facing me.
It is She.
The Muse, who guides us through Purgatorio to Paradiso, where the pagan Virgil could not go.
‘Beatrice,’ I say.
From beneath her skirts a faint rustling. A wheezing.
‘I am not your illusion,’ Beatrice says. ‘You have not paid the price. Go home,’ she says, with an inflection that makes it both benediction and curse.
‘Not without Rosie,’ I say.
‘Too late,’ she says, and leans back on the altar, her skirts drawn back, so that I can see Rosie crawling up inside her, an upside-down Rosie gone bluey-black for the want of oxygen, her head falling back and her eyes glazed, the wheezing a roar now filling the cavern, a whirlwind reaping.
‘No,’ I say. But neither Rosie nor Beatrice are listening.
•
Today is cold and dry. I slip into the supply room on the fifth floor and steal a syringe. I fill said syringe from a bottle of paint-thinner.
I find my supervisor’s car. From a discreet distance I spray the bonnet with paint-thinner. Pin-pricks appear on the paintwork.
I am wondering what I have to do to get through to my supervisor. I am wondering what it will take to persuade him to leave his car at home.
I am Sir Lancelot of Ye Ozone Layere, waging a just war on behalf of the environment.
Twice now in the planet’s recent history a meteor large enough to cause significant damage has collided with the earth. When a big rock hits, the impact sets off a violent chain reaction. Volcanoes erupt and keep on spewing. Earthquakes split continents. Tectonic plates bump and grind. A cloud of dust blots out the sun. A nuclear winter sets in that can last for millennia.
The most recent major meteor strike did for 65 percent of all living material, including the dinosaurs. Were it not for these events, Homo sapien would not be the dominant species on the planet. Were it not for these events, mammals would not have adapted to their environment in a particular way. Were it not for the carbon assassins from outer space, Christ, Darwin and Hitler would not have been born.
Who will protest the next meteor? Who will wave placards and demand that the meteors be returned, in lead-lined containers, from whence they came? Who will don white boiler suits and journey alongside the next meteor as it plunges through the vacuum towards our puny pebble?
My line for today is, Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. (Henry David Thoreau)
Suffering is part of the natural order. Pain is as essential as birth and decay. In scientific tests, radishes were proven to scream when ripped from the earth. Can other radishes hear these screams? Who cares for the agony of radishes?
The idea of stealing drugs came to me when an old lady asked one night if I had anything on the cart that might dull the pain that had her doubled up and speaking so quietly I could barely hear her words.
‘No ma’am,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
But it set me thinking. There was a certain symmetrical nobility in the idea of pilfering drugs to help those who need them most, like a Japanese orderly breaking into Red Cross packages to help British POWs. But that would have been a crassly stupid thing to do. Certainly I will plead with a nurse on behalf of a patient who appears to be in pain. I am not an animal, except in the literal sense. But even animals know not to defecate on their own doorstep.
Still, the majority of people who are in pain are not in hospital. Agony cannot always be X-rayed. Anguish cannot always be pumped out. A broken heart cannot be splinted. These people would rather not pay a general practitioner’s fee in order to obtain a simple prescription to cure an ailment they can diagnose themselves. This is where I, yours truly, Karlsson, come in.
The joy of theft is the lack of overheads. I skim from a different hospital storage facility on alternate floors every month. In this way I don’t allow a pattern to build up. This is not difficult to achieve. There is no set schedule to subvert. If the opportunity presents itself – if the nurses’ station is deserted, say, and I have the means to transport the contraband undetected, and I have not targeted that particular facility for some months – I will avail of the opportunity.
Furthermore, I do not skim the same merchandise every time. The range is wide enough to qualify as eclectic. Uppers and downers, anything morphine-based, the deliciously bewildering pick-‘n’-mix of anti-depressants: the Tricyclics (Elavil, Tofranil, Pamelor), the SSRIs (Prozac, Sarafem, Zoloft, Paxil), the MAOIs (Nardil, Parnate), and the atypicals (Desyrel, Zyban, Serzone, Wellbutrin).
These I offload at a competitive rate to P—, my connection in town. P— used to deal weed and E to students until he realised the potential of black market script drugs. Soon he will graduate to heroin. Eventually he will become a TV salesman.
I call P—.
‘My mother-in-law is out of town,’ I say. This is his idea of code. P— is a paranoid who watches too many gritty American cop shows. He has The Wire running on a perpetual loop. His mood-swings give him emotional whiplash.
He says, ‘Usual place, ten bells.’
He hangs up. I ring back.
‘Remind me,’ I say. ‘Where’s the usual place?’
‘The usual, for fuck’s sakes.’
‘I go to a lot of places that are usual.’
‘Strandhill,’ he says. ‘Strandfuckinghill.’
This is code for Rosses Point, the swanky resort across the bay from Strandhill. I like the idea of dealing illicit contraband at the Point. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘See you around ten.’
‘At ten.’ He grinds his teeth. ‘Ten on the fucking dot.’
He even sounds like he’s sweating. So I turn up at twenty-past, just to be cuntish. When I get in his car he seems hypnotised by the flicker of the lighthouse beam. His complexion is pasty.
‘You alright, man?’ I say. ‘You don’t look so good.’
But he’s not listening. ‘Gimme the shit,’ he says.
I hand it over. He gives me the money. He starts babbling about an upcoming skiing holiday in Bulgaria, then confuses it with a skiing holiday he took a few years ago, in the Italian Alps. I cut in, make my excuses.
P— drives for home, seemingly unaware that two distinct arcs in time have just intersected. I smoke a cigarette before I follow him back into town. The last place I want to be is behind a driver unaware that he is trapped at a tangent point between then and when.
Today I wheel a six-year-old girl down to the ultrasound department. She is rigid with false courage and understandably fearful. The doctors suspect she has a hole in her heart. This child has learned too soon that the bogeyman is not the real threat. This child has learned too soon that the enemy is always within.
While I wait outside the ultrasound suite I consider that the Spartans threw defective babies off a great height into a rocky gorge. The act was ceremonial. The message was clear. Infirmity would not be tolerated. The gene pool would not be tainted.
There was a time when the Spartans epitomised ruthlessness. One apocryphal tale has a Spartan warrior complaining that his sword is too short. His mother retorts that he might want to think about taking a step closer to his enemy.
Today the Spartan legacy is adjectival shorthand for ‘bleakly minimalist’. The philosophy of the ultimate warrior race, which introduced the concept of utopia through cleaving to the imperatives of natural selection, has been reduced to an adjective most closely associated with Swedish interior design.
This is unfortunate. The Spartans have many things to teach us, if only we are prepared to listen. Today ruthlessness is regarded as anti-social. We cherish the weak, afford the vulnerable a protected position in society, and celebrate their difference.
The irony of my own situation has not escaped me. If I had been born Spartan, my puny frame would have disappeared over the cliff into that rocky gorge. But I am willing to consider the possibility that the world might be a better place had I not lived. Most people are not prepared to consider this possibility.
Most people assume that civilisation is, de facto, A Good Idea. People unthinkingly accept that the mark of a civilised society is a desire to protect the weak, the young, the old and the vulnerable. The right of the infirm to procreate is enshrined in law. Today the blind are encouraged to lead. Today we describe the Spartans’ defectives with the more gentle term ‘challenged’. The dictionary defines ‘challenge’ as: ‘A summons or defiance to fight a duel; an invitation to a contest of any kind; a calling into question’.
The Spartans practiced rudimentary eugenics. The Spartans bred for strength, courage, endurance and purity. Today this is regarded as a crime against humanity, although the racehorses seem to be making out okay. The adjective ‘thoroughbred’ is a positive one. The art of achieving it, however, is restricted to the animal kingdom.
This is an intriguing anomaly. We do not preach what we practice. We do not cull non-contributors. We do not let the weak fall prey. We do not castrate the mentally infirm. We do not let the aged die. In time, this is will result in a shrinking core of healthy human beings, bounded on one side by ever-weakening youth, and on the other by indefinitely extended old age. The doctors and scientists are composing a suicide note to inform an indifferent universe that a species died out through caring too much. Compassion is without doubt A Good Thing, but too much of A Good Thing is not a good thing. A surfeit of compassion becomes a disease. Hospitals become tumours.
In time, wayward meteors may come to be regarded as aggressive chemotherapy. For now we need to think outside the box. We have to target the tumours individually. We need to engage in keyhole surgery. We need to use the system against itself before the system turns on us.
Thus, this: hospitals must become abattoirs.
This is repulsive. Logic often is. Logic doesn’t have to live in the real world. Logic is too busy planning its escape route. Logic has its hands full building fallout shelters and launch-pads. Logic does not admit sentiment. Logic slices through tradition, perceived wisdom, learned responses and self-serving cant. Logic is Occam’s Razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.