The Death of Eli Gold

by David Baddiel

  ‘That’s kind of weird, isn’t it?’ she says.

  Harvey looks out of the window. They are at the park, passing Strawberry Fields.

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  * * *

  He looks at his body in the mirror. It is good for his age, he thinks. You can see by his face and his skin that he is not young. But his body is wiry, taut, like Iggy Pop’s. He sees his body and thinks that he is fit, even though he smokes.

  He turns to look, over his left shoulder, at his tattoo. It’s still there, just visible, a faded red and blue rash, now more like a birthmark than a tattoo. He never quite understood Uncle Jimmy’s insistence on having it removed. Should, on the day of judgement, the Gracious Lord choose to resurrect him, He will, at the same time, banish all his wrinkles and stoops and scars – well, then, why could the tattoo not be done away with then, too? Are skin grafts beyond the Lord? he thought, and then felt bad for thinking it.

  He opens the wardrobe. Hanging inside is a white shirt, with a black tie around it. He puts on the shirt, which is crisply laundered. It feels clean but stiff on his chest and arms. He does the shirt up to the neck, where it catches his throat, causing a concern that, on the day, he will be carrying around a sense that he is being strangled. But he does up the tie, flipping up the collar, twisting it round his neck. Even though some men in his community always wear a tie, he never does. He has to remember how to tie it by rote, the fat flap long, the thin one short. He will, on the day, be smart up top. He thinks that is safest, and somehow appropriate. But he has watched the doctors come in and out of Mount Sinai, and, to his surprise, noticed that only a few wear suits or are that smartly dressed and so, beneath, he has stuck with jeans.

  He bends back into the wardrobe and takes out the white coat. He got it at Partydomain, a fancy dress site. It came with a stethoscope and a name tag. On it he has had printed the words Hughie Thomasson, MD, Faculty Physician. He is assuming that no one at Mount Sinai will be a fan of The Outlaws. He has another doctor outfit inside the wardrobe, also from Partydomain, a green surgical one, but it has a mask and a cap, and feels to him too much like a disguise. Also, he is not sure whether someone dressed as if about to go into an operating theatre would be able to walk into The Great Satan’s room unquestioned. So he will wear white and black: white sacred undergarments, white shirt, black tie and white coat.

  He takes the stethoscope out of his pocket. As all non-medical people do, he puts the blocky ends in his ears, and undoes a shirt button in order to place the metal disc on his chest. It is cold but warms quickly. It is a toy, but the disc still communicates sound through the rubber, and after three or four lifts and replacements he finds his heartbeat, faint, but strong enough. He feels it thud; then again; then again. He considers how strange it is that it happens without him; that it just goes on. Wanting to feel that he has control over his body, he decides to quicken the beat, which he does by thinking about his destiny. He imagines, on the day, putting on this shirt and this tie and this coat, and taking the subway to 103rd Street, and walking the six blocks to Mount Sinai; going in through the canopied door to the Fifth Avenue entrance, into the Guggenheim Pavilion, underneath its steel and glass slopes, and into the elevator at the far end. That is as far as his imagination takes him. It is far enough too for the thuds to speed up and get louder. He stops thinking. He lets his mind go blank, which it can do for a few seconds, before the fact of his sister’s death turns it over again. It is in the moment of blankness that he hopes to act.

  Through the stethoscope he hears his heart beat once more. He hears and feels its thud. The thud gets louder and quicker, more like a knock now than a thud. His mind is still blank. He is not thinking. He does not know what is making his heart beat faster.

  Out of the corner of his vision he senses someone watching him. The stethoscope is still on his chest. He feels his heart trip, going through into some new rhythmic zone, more like the whirring beat of an embryo, or a small bird. He turns and realizes that it is Jesus watching him, Jesus who has turned from profile to face him, Jesus from whose face and body light is again pouring. It is too much to look at – his good eye will burn – so he turns back to the mirror, but the light comes again, enveloping him. He absorbs it, he reflects it, he shines in it, like the moon, like headlights on a desert road. He raises his hand to cover his eyes, blinded by the white of the white coat.

  Chapter 13

  I wonder what my Daddy sees in his coma. I know he can hear, but what does he see? Does he dream? I dream every night. Sometimes I dream about Daddy, that he wakes up at the hospital and he says, ‘Hi, Col!’ or ‘Hi, girly!’, which is what he sometimes used to call me before he went into his coma. Sometimes I don’t see him wake up. He just has woken up, and he’s back at our apartment or maybe we’re all at the Lodge in New England, or once I dreamt I came in to school and he was our headmaster!

  They’re the good dreams, of course. Sometimes I dream that I’m at the hospital and he starts getting out of bed but it’s like he hasn’t woken up, so he’s just getting up with his eyes closed, like a zombie. I’ve had this dream a few times. I hate it. He gets up and even though Mommy and Dr G and everyone else is there, it’s like no one notices what’s happening. And then he comes right over to where I am and bends down with his eyes closed and puts his face really close to mine. Then he starts to speak but I can’t hear what he’s saying, or maybe he isn’t saying anything, just moving his mouth. It’s so weird.

  I spoke to Jada on the phone yesterday. Her older brother – he’s thirteen – says that my daddy might be having a Near-Death Experience. He says this is when you’re about to die, and your soul leaves the body but you’re not actually dead yet – so you can be on the ceiling watching. And then other times you see this big white light and then at the end of it all the people you’ve loved but who’ve died are there, wearing togas or something and smiling and saying come on it’s lovely like people do when they’re swimming in the sea and trying to get you to dive in. Daddy would have quite a big crowd at the end of the light, because he knows loads of people who have died.

  I wonder if that is what Daddy is seeing. He certainly is near death. But he’s been near death, I guess, for quite a long time. Months. So I don’t know if all that flying on the ceiling and seeing the people you’ve loved and stuff can go on for months. The people would get bored, wouldn’t they? The ones waiting at the end of the light, telling you to come and join them because it’s lovely. If you didn’t come, after a while they would say oh all right then, whatever, and turn away.

  When I was on the phone to Jada, talking about this, Harvey was in the living room tapping away at his laptop like he does all the time. That guy seems to check his email five hundred times a day! I thought, wow, he must get so many, but then I sneaked a peek at his screen one time when he went to the toilet (something else he does, like, a LOT) and there weren’t that many – and no new ones (the new ones are written in blacker letters, that’s how I know). So I guess he must just check it a lot.

  When I put the phone down, he said:

  ‘Maybe I can help …’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Help you understand what’s happening to … your dad.’

  ‘He’s your dad, too.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’

  He looked at me for a while, doing one of those faces that grownups do sometimes after I’ve spoken, all big-eyed and nodding, like I’ve said something which means more than it does.

  ‘Yes, Colette. It kinda is.’

  He does this, too, trying to sound American. He keeps his English voice but says stuff that sounds more American. I was a little pissed (that’s not a word I’m supposed to say but Jada says it and Daddy used to all the time before he started having his Near-Death Experience so I can’t see why not). He had been listening to my conversation while pretending to work at his computer but not really.

  ‘What do you mean, help me
understand?’

  ‘Well …’ He looked confused, like he didn’t really know how he could. ‘Oh! Let’s see!’

  And then he typed something on his laptop. He looked at the screen for a bit.

  ‘Hmm. I don’t get anything for see in a coma.’

  ‘See in a coma?’

  ‘I was searching for it. On the internet. I’ll try it with inverted commas round it.’

  He typed some more. Then he shook his head.

  ‘Nope. No one seems to have any idea what you see while you’re in a coma.’

  ‘Maybe that means you see nothing.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe it means that when you come out of it, you can’t remember what you saw.’

  I thought about this for a bit. ‘Come out of it?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Daddy isn’t going to come out of it. Is he?’

  He made a funny shape with his mouth. ‘Ah. No. I don’t think so. But some people do.’

  ‘Do they? Which people?’

  ‘People who have been hit hard on the head, or have a brain illness, but they get better. Sometimes someone plays them a bit of music that they used to really like and that does it. Makes them wake up, I mean.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It happens a lot in films and stuff, but I think it really does happen in real life. Sometimes they get a celebrity in – like the person in a coma’s favourite footballer or pop star – and when they speak to the person in a coma, they wake up.’

  ‘Wow. Hey. Maybe I should be in a coma! Then I’d get to meet, like, Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber.’ Then I thought that – although I would really, really like to meet Miley Cyrus or Justin Bieber – maybe I should think of someone better. ‘Or President Obama.’

  Harvey smiled. ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Colette. You have to be hurt or really ill to be in a coma. And no one wants you to be hurt or really ill.’ He looked at me very seriously, like grown-ups do when they say stuff like that. But then he smiled again. ‘Although you’re right, it would be a good way to meet superstars.’

  ‘Is there a bit of music we could play to Daddy? Or someone we could bring in to meet him?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think everyone famous has already come in. And anyway … Dad … Daddy … he knew so many famous people anyway.’

  ‘Knows.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Knows. You shouldn’t speak about him like he’s already dead.’

  He looked told off. Then he nodded. ‘Daddy knows so many famous people anyway, I don’t know who it would be – who could come and see him who would …’

  ‘Make him so excited that he would wake up?’

  ‘Yes. I guess.’

  I thought about it. ‘Could we get President Obama?’

  He laughed. ‘I don’t think so. Bush, maybe. Or Clinton. I imagine Clinton would be a fan …’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The one before the one before. You weren’t born when he was president.’

  I nodded, and said the name to myself to remember it – Clinton. He typed something else into his computer. I looked over. He had typed the word coma by itself into Google. He clicked on one of the websites. I read some of the words on it.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That word.’

  ‘Vegetative?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shut the lid. He sniffed.

  ‘It’s what Daddy’s in. What doctors call a permanent vegetative state.’

  ‘Vege-tative?’

  ‘Like … a vegetable.’ He looked away, then back again. ‘Look, Colette, maybe this was a bad idea, talking about this.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how much I’m meant to speak to you about it. I don’t know what Freda – what your mum wants you to know about Daddy’s condition.’

  This made me cross again, just as I thought I was starting to like him.

  ‘Harvey. She wants me to know everything. She doesn’t believe in the innocence of children.’

  He looked at me like I was crazy. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘She doesn’t believe in the innocence of children. That’s what she told me.’

  ‘Did she …’

  I didn’t like the way he said that. ‘Yes. Or … at least she said that Daddy said once that it was overrated.’

  ‘Colette, do you even know what all these words mean?’

  ‘What words?’

  ‘Innocence. Overrated.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I do. Innocence means not knowing about sex and death and money and other grown-up stuff. And overrated means thinking something is great when it isn’t. God: it’s not like any of that is really difficult.

  He shook his head. ‘All right, then. Being in a permanent vegetative state means that Daddy is like a vegetable. Permanently.’

  I screwed up my face. ‘A vegetable?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘No, I’m not joking. That’s what doctors use to describe being in this sort of coma. It’s like a metaphor.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Oh, you know what innocence and overrated means but not metaphor. I see, clever clogs.’

  I looked at him and felt cross again. But I could see from his face that he was teasing me. I wasn’t sure whether I liked him teasing me. I wouldn’t have liked it when I first met him. But now it felt all right.

  ‘Which one?’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Broccoli? Carrot? Potato?’

  He looked at me. I looked at him. He started to laugh. I did, too.

  ‘If he’s a potato, will he grow little green bits like a potato does when you leave it for a long time?’ I said.

  ‘No. And he’s not a potato. Don’t for God’s sake tell your mum that anyone said that Daddy was a potato.’ He stopped and tried to look serious. Then he said: ‘Someone as important as Daddy would be a much more sophisticated vegetable. A butternut squash, maybe. Or asparagus.’

  I laughed. That was a funny idea. ‘Yes. That’s what Daddy would be. An asparagus. ’Cos he is quite thin.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And I love asparagus.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. Good.’ He looked, for a minute, really nice and kind. ‘So do I,’ he said. Then he did something a bit weird. He leant over and kissed me on the cheek. I wasn’t really sure about him doing that – I’m not even sure he was sure about doing it – but it was OK. His face was a bit rough and his breath smelt funny, but I didn’t mind.

  ‘Harvey,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you talk to Daddy?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Why don’t you talk to him? Because even if he can’t see, he can hear. I always talk to him. But you don’t.’

  He scratched his neck, and said: ‘I have to call home.’

  * * *

  There is someone coming to Redcliffe House. Pat Cadogan has begun a rumour that it is a social services investigation. She has hinted, darkly, at abuses that have happened, perhaps to her, perhaps to others close to her. She has suggested that this confirms that Meg Antopolski’s fall ‘was not all it seemed’. Both Joe Hillier and his friend Frank have nodded, knowingly, at the suggestion. Norma Miller has told everyone not to be, as she pronounces it, ridikalus. She has also said that, with a bit of luck, the investigator will be a handsome young man.

  But it is not an investigation. It is an initiative, endorsed by the social services. Violet reads the pamphlet, handed out to all residents at breakfast, by an unsmiling, unexplaining Mandy. It is called Life Story Work in Care Homes: An Occupational Tool. It says:

  Life Story Work is a way of making people enjoy their own history. It uses memory and imagination to build a narrative that helps the individual to find themselves within the larger framework of the history of their family and their culture. It is an interactive collaboration, exploring the person through their story. It is not psychotherapy: it is not an a
ttempt to fix the past, or indeed the present, but to allow the individual to share their experience by presenting it as a story.

  And then on the next page it says:

  In telling us a story about your own life, you do not have to tell us everything that has ever happened to you. Focus on a few key events; a few key relationships; a few key themes. You should highlight material in your own life that you believe to be important in some fundamental way: information about yourself and your life which says something about you and how you have come to be who you are. You can write this material down, or you can talk about it to the Life Story Work interviewer, who will record it, either on camera or on audio.

  Then there are some photographs of smiling old people in groups, talking. Some of them are being filmed, or talking into microphones, or using computers. Some of them are writing on notepads. There is a flow chart in which, out of a central box with the letters L.S.W on it, the words IDENTITY and PURPOSE and MEANING and SELF-KNOWLEDGE sprout. On the last page it says:

  Life Story Work is a method of ordering selfhood developed through work with foster children.

  Violet sits in the room, looking at the pamphlet. Outside her window the sun looks like it has been painted over with clouds, three or four coats thick. The person coming, then, is not going to investigate Redcliffe House, but its residents. They have not been asked about this. No vote has been taken. They have been treated, indeed, like foster children. The children will have been abandoned by their parents, and put in new homes and then removed to other homes for care: yes, she can see the comparison. She can see why the people at the social services might think it would work for them.

  But it makes her feel very anxious. In the photographs, the old people, however much they might be smiling, are sitting around in large groups. She will have to share her life with everybody. She will have to expose herself. She will have to come out with things which she fears will make the other residents hate her.