Somewhere East of Life

by Brian W Aldiss

  “You might have been Richard’s friend, you little sod, but you’re not mine!” Then he would mourn his own callousness and wish to make up his quarrel with the bird. Perhaps if he were kind enough, patient enough, it would grow to love him as well. Then when he left this place, if he ever did, it would fly about calling “Burnell! Burnell!” He wasn’t going to have a lousy sparrow using his Christian name.

  Sparrows were smart. Though this one was pretty dim if it hadn’t gathered by now that Richard had handed in his schnitzel ticket. Perhaps the other sparrows would learn his name from this one. It would pass from one bird to another. They would even find his name easier to pronounce than “Chirp! Chirp!” Mother sparrows would teach it to children sparrows. “You want another worm? OK, let’s hear you say it, duckie…”

  Soon the whole park would be full of birds—not sparrows only, but thrushes and starlings and robins—all calling in chorus, “Burnell! Burnell!” On balmy nights the barn owls would shriek the syllables. He watched an old black crow one day. In its harsh voice it appeared to caw his name. A skylark high above the rooftops cried it with delight, “Burnell! Burnell! Dear Burnell!”

  Shit, he said to himself, I really am going around the ruddy twist… Is that all that’s left? Personality gone, just my name remaining.

  But what if migratory birds got hold of it? There’d be an international incident… Geese on their way across Canada, heard honking “Burnell! Burnell!” over Lake Winnipegosis…

  He covered his ears, cringing on the bed.

  “Mr. Burnell. Mr. Burnell!” God, the fucking condors in the Andes… He looked up. The male nurse from Lithuania was standing by his bedside, professionally obsequious in his outsize trainers. “Are you orkay, Mr. Burnell?” He hated the way this chap lengthened the “o” in words. Presumably all Lithuanians did it. Yet another reason not to go to Vilnius.

  “What do you want?”

  “A visitor dornstairs to see you.”

  “I said I didn’t wish to see any visitors.”

  “Or well, there’s a nort frorm this orne.”

  Burnell opened the envelope. The note was brief.

  Mon cher ami,

  Please can we see each other. I know something of your problems and realize you may not be able to remember me. However, we are old and indecent friends. Truly. Maybe you need me as much as I need you.

  Moi, with my knowledge of Spanish and other tricks,

  Your French friend,

  Blanche Bretesche

  He repeated her name to himself. It carried no resonance; or did some faint fragrance drift back to him?

  She rose from a chair under a long window as he entered the visitors’ room in which she was waiting. The light entering the room was green, filtered through the trees outside.

  Her eyes were also green. She wore a gray suit. Her dark hair was swept across her forehead. She smiled rather uncertainly. Neither of them knew exactly what to do. Through her awkwardness he perceived her grace.

  Then Blanche moved determinedly forward and kissed Burnell’s cheek. He held her body to his. “Hello, Roy. I’m your French friend, Blanche. It’s only six weeks since we were last together. You seem to have been in warm water since then. A busy six weeks.”

  He was frustrated. Although he certainly liked the whole appearance of this lady, he hated to ask about what he could not recall. During his time in both hospital and institution, he had fought shy of seeing anyone, in case complete strangers should impose themselves on him in the guise of friends he had forgotten. In that respect, life in Georgia had been easier: everyone was a stranger, and no pretence.

  They attempted to chat inconsequentially. She told him of a strange dream she had had, in which Burnell sailed off for distant shores in a giant shoe.

  When Blanche reminded him that they had last met in Budapest shortly before his ten years were stolen, he saw she was, despite herself, pained that he had no memory of their meeting.

  “We were close then… Blanche?” He offered up her name tentatively.

  “Yes, we were close.”

  The reticence in her answer told him something of her strength of character; he immensely liked the considered warmth of her expression. But finding no way to overcome the abyss in his own mind, he was forced to retreat from her unspoken invitation to ask further; or at least he postponed that moment by asking if she would like coffee, assuring her it was good Bolivian blend. When she assented, he rang for service.

  She too had her difficulties, trying not to feel affronted that the long pleasant history between them had been destroyed. When she asked if he knew he was at present in an institution in Soss City on the edge of the Niederwald, his laughing assent brought a smile from her.

  “I’m not mad, just lacking… There’s much I want to ask you, of course.” He paused hopefully.

  She replied that she could not face an interrogation. However, she explained who she was, that she lived in Madrid, being head of the Spanish Division of WACH. Karl Leberecht had been in touch with her concerning Burnell; once she could get free of work, she had flown to FAM to see him. She said that he had promised to stay with her in her apartment despite his lack of Spanish.

  His hesitation in replying to this invitation stretched into silence. He cast his gaze down, only too aware of the demons pursuing him: Larry Foot, the broken Madonna, Lazar Kaginovich—and behind those furies, the avenging vacuum, eating up relationships. Blanche rescued him by asking about what she called his adventures.

  “I have to sort myself out. You know.”

  “Is it awful?” she asked, adding swiftly, as if she flinched from a truthful answer, “You look fine.”

  “My ribs have all but healed. Seems that my kidney’s OK.” He forced a laugh. “I exercise every morning. It’s now mainly a morale problem. You may have heard I was beaten up a bit in Georgia.”

  She gave him one of her best smiles. “Roy, honestly, you do let yourself in for these things! I know all about your scrapes in the Caucasus. Everyone knows. Did you know that? Everyone knows! You’re a hero. Your story was carried in all the media. Do they allow you to watch TV in here?”

  Before Burnell could answer, a knock came at the door and an attendant entered with a tray of coffee and biscuits which he set down on a side table. Burnell signed his slip. Blanche rose, moved the table nearer Burnell, and sat down beside him. She began opening her shoulder-bag, but on impulse he reached out and clutched her hand, thanking her in German, French, and English for coming to visit him. When, in response, she made the slightest gesture towards him, he seized her in his arms, clutching her to him, feeling her warmth, burying his face in her dark hair. They remained like that, feeling the life in each other’s bodies.

  “Oh yes, Roy, we were quite close… Hasn’t your father been to see you?”

  He reminded her that his father was confined to a wheelchair. No, his step-mother had not come, but she had phoned. His sister Clem had written. So had Aunt Sheila.

  From her bag Blanche produced a copy of Le Monde, folded to the international news page. As she passed it over, he saw it was dated some days previously. The headlines read: “TEN KILLED IN LIVERPOOL RIOT”; “MORE NICE MURDERS”; “PATAGONIA PAEDOPHILE RING REVEALED”; “BULGARIA EVACUATED.” The Usual kind of thing. Further down the page was Burnell’s photograph, with the headings: “KAGINOVICH KILLED. Architect Praised.” Burnell could read no further.

  As he returned the paper, he told Blanche that Leberecht came to see him every day. His kindness was greatly appreciated, although WACH had not been pleased by the Georgian incident, since their charter forbade operatives to interfere in political matters. A discreet member of the government had also interviewed him.

  Blanche’s expression grew more anxious, as she tried to determine what kind of trouble he might be in. Her presence had seemed to light up the rather sombre room; now she drew back into herself when confronting the problem of violence, which had erupted in a man she had seen at his most tender.<
br />
  She asked, “But you had to kill him? He was threatening you?”

  They had remained touching. At her question, he stood up, busying himself with pouring coffee, his back to her to conceal his anger. “Look… Blanche… I’m undergoing—well, you know, psychotherapy, about all that. I don’t want to go into it. Sorry.” With an effort, he spoke more calmly. “Kaginovich was going to kill me. That’s a puzzle too. I mean, why exactly.”

  He broke off, struggling to contain his emotions. “Blanche—he smashed an irreplaceable twelfth-century ikon. Smashed it to bits! How can anyone understand…” He tried to bury his face in his left hand before speaking more calmly. “He was a violent man.

  He lived by violence. It would have meant nothing to him to shoot me down…”

  “But he didn’t shoot you…”

  He passed her a cup which rattled slightly in its saucer. “You don’t think at such moments. Your mind goes blank. You act. I don’t really remember acting. I know now I… See, I had a pair of wire-cutters in my hip pocket. I had forgotten they were there. But in the moment of crisis… The levels of the mind… We sometimes do things without knowing why.”

  Blanche clutched her cup.

  After a pause, during which she looked into his face as if searching for his next words there, he forced himself to go on. “I stabbed Kaginovich in the throat with the wire-cutters. At first…that I certainly remember, he didn’t even seem to notice. I kept stabbing. Hit an artery. We were both covered with—well, you can imagine. I kept stabbing till he fell backwards into Jim Irving’s arms.” He laughed. A dry little noise.

  Rising, Blanche clutched him and stroked the back of his head, muttering words of comfort.

  As if she hadn’t spoken, he said, “It was an absolute nightmare. You see—you see, a part of me liked doing it, didn’t mind the blood, didn’t want it to stop. That’s the reason I’m still in here.”

  Blanche returned on the following day. Burnell had shaved and dressed with better care than usual.

  They met in the visitors’ room as before, kissing, holding each other briefly, scrutinizing each other. It was a bright morning: sunlight filtered in through the trees, gleaming as if in a TV shampoo commercial, putting a little color in the cheeks of the sober room. For a while they talked generally but, lacking roots, the talk died. He said he was reading Montaigne. She suggested a stroll in the park.

  At the entrance desk, Burnell had to be signed out. A breeze stirred as they went down the steps, suggesting danger to him; it was the first time he had been outside for a while. Seeing his hesitation, Blanche took his arm. He looked about for Richard’s sparrow, but it was nowhere to be seen. He had offended it. The sun warmed him. Before she had arrived, he had taken a snort of slap and felt buoyant.

  She wore the same gray outfit as before. Catching his glance at it, she explained that it was her FAM outfit; in Madrid she was more outgoing. As she hoped he would soon see. When he asked gratefully why she wanted him in Madrid, she fluttered her eyes, pulled a comic young-girl-dotty-romantic face, and said it was because he was tormented and she just lerved Dostoevskian characters.

  Because it is always difficult to talk to patients without touching on their diseases, he was soon prompted to tell her about his last hours in Bogdanakhi. When the wire-cutters had been prised from his grasp, Ziviad Orpishurda and Jim Irving had driven him in a car to the helicopter pad. Orpishurda had guaranteed to release Father Kadredin and his son from arrest, and had then driven back furiously to break the news of Kaginovich’s death. Irving had seen Burnell on to the helicopter. Burnell was in shock. In Tbilisi, where crowds who had just heard the news of the Dead One’s death waited to cheer him, Burnell was sedated to await the flight back to FAM.

  Blanche said that she had seen on the Madrid news that Orpishurda had taken over the West Georgian army and was suing for peace. She had glimpsed him saying something about restoring democracy.

  “It’s good news. I took him for a decent man—a Christian. So benefit’s come of…my crime.”

  They sat down on a seat commanding a view of the grounds, with the grand gray bulk of the institution at a distance. The low roar of traffic along the Wiesbadener came to them like a technological lullaby, but he was uneasy. The distant building had too many eyes. They found another seat in a small knot of birches—she called it a “designer copse”—where laurustinus bushes were prematurely in flower, and they could not be seen.

  She humors me, he thought, she’s patient with me. That proves I’m an invalid. I can’t put up with this for long. But the glow of the slap was wearing off. Even her beauty made him despair of himself.

  After a while, she asked—not without an edge to her voice—if he had heard from Stephanie. He had to say not. He had not even been able to send her a card from Bogdanakhi. Blanche reminded him that Stephanie would have seen reports of him on TV, and know he was a hero. She sat back and listened, gazing at the bushes, as he became animated, swearing he would retrieve his ten years and discover how he went wrong with his wife.

  She let the outburst die before saying, “I see it may hardly be in my own interest, but I’ve had some enquiries made on your behalf. The étron Antonescu has been arrested in Budapest. The extent of his illegal EMV work is still being investigated, but it seems he shipped all stolen memory bullets eastwards, through a dealer, probably in Istanbul—a Russian who sells to the old Islamic Soviet republics, Uzbekistan and the rest. To be honest, Roy, there’s not much chance that you will ever…”

  She let her voice fade. When he charged her sullenly that she could not understand his feelings, she told him his best plan was to start over again and forget the past.

  “I have forgotten the past! You mean forget Stephanie, don’t you?”

  “So you would have done, so you had, until she popped up in Swindon. Taking a break from that fellow she lives with. I hear he beats her.”

  “I’ve got to get this problem sorted out before you and I can have a good straightforward relationship.” He admitted that Stephanie had told him she would never go back to him. But he had to know what had happened between them. Perhaps mistakes could be remedied. She herself had said they had enjoyed some happy years.

  Blanche stood up, tucking a thumb under the strap of her shoulder-bag. She looked down at him angrily, knees almost touching his.

  “If you are going to spend the rest of your days trying to cling to something you’ve lost, then I can’t help you. I’m not made that way. It’s a dead end. I’m off. It is necessary I catch a flight back to Madrid this evening for a meeting in Toledo tomorrow. I need to attend it. So we may as well say goodbye now.”

  The rumble of the fast nearby traffic sounded more loudly now, as if it would carry them both away. He jumped to his feet, protesting, ignoring the bandages around his ribs, begging her not to go. He was caught at a disadvantage: wasn’t the essence of memory that it provided a guide to a way ahead? He would not describe the pain of not remembering how well he knew her, and asked her humbly to tell him—were they, had they been, lovers?

  Late-summer sunlight played on Blanche’s face with its expression halfway between exasperation and laughter. She came forward and wrapped her arms about him.

  “Darling, doesn’t your body tell you? You old loony, we have been lovers for years. Whenever we meet, we’re between the sheets. Whenever possible. Surely your blood remembers? Mine certainly does.”

  Then they were embracing, bodies against the papery bark of a silver birch. As he took in the warmth of her kisses, he knew that afterwards, back in the ward beside the muttering Finn, he would retrace the footsteps of this scene and the imprint of her words over and over, as if he were an infatuated adolescent again. She was reminding him of things that transformed and excited him, making him forget his convalescence. Much happened in which body was more involved than mind.

  They were walking the grounds again. He told Blanche what he had strongly resisted speaking of in his daily sessions with the p
sychoanalyst.

  He said he felt a need to explain to himself what went on in that foul little room just before he killed Kaginovich.

  He had tried to forge his own character. Between the old arguments about nature versus nurture was a possible third way: one might be able to mold oneself, to follow, at least to some extent, one’s own directives. Having no religious belief forced a man to construct his own morality. His idea of being “good” consisted in trying to ameliorate the suffering of others, even at one’s own expense, and in not giving anyone pain.

  “Do you live up to that?” Blanche asked, though hardly in a questioning tone, as if she thought he was being pretentious.

  “No, but you can keep trying,” was his response. And he had most singularly failed not to give pain in the Kaginovich case.

  “But why look for mysterious explanations? The bastard was going to kill you.”

  Then you had to ask why he was a bastard, why he had smashed the ikon, and so on. So Burnell said, and was promptly told not to feel guilty about reacting to save his own life. He had, after all, made the world a slightly better place as a result, and eudemonism was the creed to live by.

  Ignoring Blanche’s remark, which he well understood was designed more for his consolation than truth, he said, “If only I had all my past behind me, I’d be a better judge. But what strikes me is this. It was not danger or evil which caused his attack on me. It was in some way the ikon itself.”

  “You mean, his smashing it up? Rubbish! Roy, you’re hanging about here thinking yourself into a maze. Forget it. Catch the evening flight to Madrid with me and we’ll invent some cunning methods of therapy to nurse you back to sanity.”

  Although he grinned, he shook his head and raised his eyes as if he would have them disappear into his eyebrows. “Why did he smash it? That’s what I ask myself. Sometimes I get an answer. You’ve seen reproductions of the Madonna of Futurity? In so many Byzantine ikons, the infant Jesus is held more or less at arm’s length by His mother; both figures are stiff, symbolic rather than actual. In Evtihije’s painting, that’s not the case. Mother and Child are portrayed unusually close. She holds Him affectionately to her breast.”