The Death of Eli Gold

by David Baddiel

  ‘What if he died?’

  She looks back, astonished.

  ‘Who? Bill?’

  ‘No, not Bill! Dad! Eli! What if he died, now? Would I be allowed in then? What if he started to go? What then? Would I – I’m his son, remember; his son – not get on the list? Would I still be just the taxi service for your daughter?’

  ‘Harvey, I simply cannot discuss this now!’

  ‘Who’s got more right to be in there? Me or Bill Clinton? Who do you think, Freda?’

  ‘Mrs Gold?’ says John. They look to him. He glances from her to Harvey, just with his eyes, his wide forehead corrugating. The glance means Shall I get rid of him? Once again, for Harvey, that nightclub feeling: here I am, causing a disturbance, and the bouncer is going to kick me out.

  ‘Harvey,’ says Freda, her voice freighted with this-is-your-last-chance patience. ‘Please. This is not the time.’

  ‘It’s not pass the parcel, Freda!’

  ‘What? What is this, now?’

  What is this, now? A memory passes through him of the same phrase, said to him five years ago by his wife, in the shadow of Tower Bridge.

  ‘The one holding the prize at the end does not win! Eli would have left you, just like he left all the others! For fuck’s sake, he’s about to leave you! Only not for another woman, for death!’

  He has said this much more loudly than he had intended. Her face meets Harvey’s. A part of Harvey is calm, removed from his own fury and self-pity, and that part is already wondering what the point is of such an outburst. He is, he knows, doing that thing again; that Eli-inherited, chess thing of trying to win an argument through stepping back from anger and presenting his opponent with a cogent and detached deconstruction of their own unconscious motives. Only he has failed, completely, to present this strategy in a detached way: it is key, for example, not to shout the deconstruction. His stepmother’s eyes, above their fine, fine lines, grow cold as stone.

  ‘Goodbye, Harvey,’ she says, and walks back inside. His fingers slip from her black sleeve as easily as they would have from Lark’s cheek.

  Between him and John, about what to do next, there is a moment of complete inertia, of the purest uncertainty, like God is saying Um. John shrugs, his shoulders moving like little mountains deciding, after all, to come to Mohammed. Then, from Eli’s room, comes Dr Ghundkhali, his manner brisk, friendly.

  ‘Hi. Harvey! I saw you here. I’ve been meaning to say: I’ve fixed up that prostate thing for you.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That prostate examination? We talked about it a while back? You were worried?’

  Americans and their constant questioning. ‘Oh … yeah … I was. I am …’

  ‘OK. Well, no time like the present.’ He takes a black pen, and a note pad, from the top pocket of his white coat, and scribbles something illegible down.

  ‘Take this to Urology. Fourth floor. Diagnostics.’

  ‘What, I can see someone now? Right, now? I don’t have to make an appointment?’

  He rips the note off the pad. ‘Not with this you don’t.’ He slips it into the top pocket of Harvey’s jacket. ‘Enjoy.’

  * * *

  He had three or four other grown-ups around him, but I knew who he was straight away. My mom had shown me a picture, but she said that he was the sort of man who caught your eye as soon as he walked into a room. I didn’t know what caught your eye meant but I worked out it means that you look at him before anyone else. I didn’t know why that should be. He looked OK, I guess. His face was sort of red, and his hair was a bit funny, but I liked his eyes, even though they had big bags under them. They were blue, my favourite colour. Mommy introduced me, once she was done talking to Harvey at the door.

  ‘Mr President,’ she said. (I don’t get that. He isn’t the president, not any more.) ‘This is mine and Eli’s daughter, Colette.’

  He crouched down and took my hand.

  ‘Hi, Colette.’

  ‘Hello Mr President.’

  ‘Your daddy must be very proud to have such a beautiful daughter.’

  That made me blush. He had a funny voice. It sounded like he had a sore throat. I hoped he didn’t, because I know the doctors have said that no one is allowed to come and see Daddy if they are ill, in case he gets their illness and dies. I hoped they hadn’t changed that rule just because he used to be the president.

  ‘Thank you. I’m proud to be his daughter,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘Of course.’

  And then he ruffled my hair and stood up. He moved away to talk to some of the other men. I think they were his friends. I looked at Mommy. She smiled at me: she seemed really pleased about how it had all gone. But I wasn’t.

  ‘Mr President?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Colette?’

  ‘When are you going to do it?’

  He came back over, and crouched down again. Mommy stopped smiling.

  ‘When am I going to do what, darlin’?’ he said.

  His eyes looked really kind. Really blue.

  ‘Wake up Daddy.’

  He blinked, a lot. His eyes got bigger.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘When are you going to say something that makes Daddy wake up?’ He looked at Mommy.

  ‘Colette, darling …’ she said.

  ‘Hey, Colette,’ said Bill Clinton, holding up a hand to Mommy. ‘I’d love to do that. I’d so love to be able to do that. But I can’t. If the good doctors here can’t do it, I don’t see that I can.’

  ‘But you’re really famous!’

  ‘Uh …’

  ‘Colette. Please.’

  ‘It’s OK, Mrs Gold.’

  ‘That’s what wakes people up, when they’re in a coma. If a famous person comes to see them! And because Daddy’s so famous already, only a really famous person could do it! Like you!’

  All the doctors were looking at me by now, and Bill Clinton and Mommy and all Bill Clinton’s friends. I could feel that I was going to cry and I really didn’t want to, because what I was saying was so important.

  ‘I wish that was true, honey.’

  ‘It is true. Harvey said so.’

  ‘Oh, did he,’ I heard Mommy say. ‘Harvey?’

  ‘He’s my half-brother. He’s outside.’

  Bill Clinton turned to Mommy. ‘Is that true? Eli’s son?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mommy said. She’d gone a bit red. ‘We were told – only a certain number allowed in today …’ She didn’t finish her sentence. He turned back to me.

  ‘We can’t have that, can we?’ He nodded at one of his friends, a big man with sunglasses on top of his head. He nodded back and went outside.

  ‘Now, Colette,’ Bill Clinton said, taking my hand. ‘Come with me.’ He took me over to Daddy’s bed. We had to walk through some of the doctors to do that. They moved away really quickly. We stood by Daddy’s bed for a little bit saying nothing. He still held my hand. Daddy looked bad. The oxygen mask looked really tight on his face. I wished I could loosen it a bit.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Colette,’ said Bill Clinton. ‘I really can’t bring your Daddy out of his coma. If I could, I would. Honest to God, I would. But you know what? I think he’s in a really, really deep sleep. He’s at peace, like that. I think he’s OK.’

  I looked at Daddy. Even though Bill Clinton was saying he couldn’t do anything, I thought maybe him saying that would wake him up. If you’re that famous just hearing his voice would do. I didn’t know if that was the kind of thing you were meant to say to wake people up from a coma. I wondered what Justin Bieber would’ve said if it was like a young girl in a coma or something. I guess he would’ve sung ‘Baby’, or ‘Never Let You Go’, which is the only song of his I like by the way.

  I thought that maybe Daddy didn’t realize it was Bill Clinton. He was the ex-President and he hadn’t been on TV for ages. Maybe Daddy didn’t recognize his voice.

  ‘Daddy,’ I said. ‘It’s Bill Clinton.’

&
nbsp; He looked at me. I looked at him.

  ‘Can you tell him? Just tell him you’re here. Please.’

  Bill Clinton looked sad then. He looked over to Mommy, who was looking really worried now. But then he nodded his head.

  ‘Eli,’ he said. ‘It’s Bill Clinton here.’

  I closed my eyes. I could feel Bill Clinton’s hand in mine. It was starting to feel a bit hot. Wake up, Daddy, I told him in my thoughts. Wake up and say hi to Mr President. Please. I kept them shut for a really long time. I could feel some tears start to come out of them but I kept them tight shut even so. I just knew that if I kept them shut for long enough Daddy would be awake and sitting up in bed when I opened them. And then I heard a voice.

  ‘Colette,’ it said, ‘Colette.’

  I opened my eyes. It was Bill Clinton’s friend, the one who had gone out of the room to look for Harvey. He was standing on the other side of the bed. He bent his face down. I could see the reflection of me and Daddy and Bill Clinton in his sunglasses.

  ‘Sorry, sweetheart, but there’s no one outside,’ he said.

  * * *

  The room is very white: Persil-white. Harvey, who is used to the off-white and off-greys of the NHS, is almost blinded by it. He sits behind a white screen, on a white couch, which is covered tight with a white sheet, and considers his own disorientation. He feels like he wants to double-take – he wants to have a moment of saying to himself: Uh? How did I get here? A second ago I was getting on well with my extended family, I was about to meet Bill Clinton, I had access to my dad’s deathbed, and now all that is gone, and I’m about to have a doctor stick their finger up my arse. That doesn’t even make sense. He wants to, but he has a feeling inside that it is not over; that this day may bring an even deeper double-take.

  He waits for the doctor to appear. Dr Ghundkhali’s note has worked the wonders that the flourish with which he handed it over suggested it would. His phone rings. Uncertain whether or not he is allowed to leave it on in this part of the hospital, he looks at the screen.

  ‘Bunce?’

  ‘Hey. What’s happening?’

  ‘What the fuck, Bunce! WHAT THE FUCK!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That fucking package you sent me! What are you fucking thinking about?’

  ‘What’s your fucking problem? No one else was going to open it. You do know it’s a federal offence in this country, opening someone else’s mail?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? There’s a little girl in that apartment! Did you think about that? At all?’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘I expressed interest in your job! That was it! I was being polite!’

  ‘Polite?’

  ‘Well, OK, maybe I was interested. Yes. In your job, man.’ He feels the by now familiar catch of embarrassment at the American vocabulary, but anger overrides it: and after all, this is the stuff the dialect was made for, ‘In your fucking job. Not in the fucking evidence! Not in actual concrete examples of your awful dirty work! Can I make myself any clearer: I didn’t want to be sent something from some fucking cache of child porn!!’

  He hears a cough and looks up. The doctor is looking at him, holding the screen aside. Where has he seen this one before? Oh, yes. Coming out of the toilet. He still doesn’t know whether she is Korean, Chinese or Malaysian. He knows, however, from her intensely shocked expression that she has heard what he has just been saying.

  ‘Well, fuck you, Gold. Fuck you and your fucking great writer dying dad. You can just …’

  He clicks the phone off and tries to smile.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Um … hello.’

  ‘Dr Ghundkhali sent me down here for a check-up. A prostate …’

  ‘Yes, I know why you’re here.’ Just a trace of an accent, through the basic New York: doesn’t help place her. ‘Could you just hold on a moment?’

  She disappears back behind the screen. A second later, he hears her voice, which she is quietening, but hardly. It’s not even a whisper.

  ‘Hi, Dr G? It’s Dr Dahn. Mi-Yong Dahn, from Urulogy? This patient you’ve sent down here … yes, that’s the one … I don’t think I want to do the prostate check on him. I’m sorry.’ Harvey strains to hear, but cannot make out Dr Ghundkhali’s response. ‘Yes, no I realize that. But I don’t feel comfortable doing it. He was saying some very strange things when I came in on the telephone, his trousers are undone, and I saw him a month or so ago when I was coming out of the restroom on your floor, and I did not like the way he looked at me. I am not comfortable giving him the prostate check.’ Harvey sighed and got off the couch: whether she was Korean, Chinese or Malaysian, she clearly had an Oriental straightforwardness about things.

  ‘Yes, I can get someone else to look at him. To do the check. A man, I think, would be more appropriate …’

  But it is too late. Harvey is walking out from behind the screen as she continues to talk, out of the room, out of the hospital, trying to do his trousers up more tightly as he goes.

  * * *

  He walks up Central Park, wheeling his suitcase behind him. It is still early. The sun is shining. He feels good about himself and about this day, come at last. He is walking because he wants to feel it; he wants to live, as Janey used to say we all must, in the moment, in this moment, his destiny. He can feel it better here, with the tall buildings framing the green, than in the subway, where the air is close and people sometimes stared at you like they needed to know your business. And also he has to find a trash can without people around it, and it’s easier at this time in the morning in the park than on the street.

  When he finds one he quickly takes Lisa’s dress out of his suitcase and stuffs it in. He feels bad about it – it dents his sense of righteousness – but he is taking no chances. She was sleeping soundly when he left, but she might still have woken up and rushed after him. Without clothes, however, she cannot easily leave the hotel room, and this knowledge has freed him to have the time for this walk in the park.

  Before he zips up the suitcase his eye flicks over the contents. He could not do a proper last check in his room because she was in his bed, and he did not want to turn the light on. But everything he needs is there.

  Walking across the circle of concrete the trash can sits on the edge of, he notices some kind of memorial at the centre of it. He does not want to be distracted, but is curious enough to walk over. It is a smaller circle, a mosaic. Some flowers have been laid on its patterns. In the middle of it is a word: IMAGINE. He looks up, out of the park. The pointed roofs and high windows of an old apartment building is blocking the sun, throwing him into shadow. He grasps where he is, but, deliberately, does not grasp it fully; he holds off that knowledge, because he does not want it to muddy his purpose, already thrown off by his feelings about Lisa, waking naked and confused at the Condesa Inn. It’s not even a coincidence, he thinks, as he walks out quickly onto West 72nd Street.

  He stops at Hanratty’s and orders steak and eggs for breakfast, as it is the thing that will keep you going whatever happens. This time it does not go cold. It arrives quickly, served rare by a waiter he has not seen before, a Mexican, and he eats every morsel, savouring the soft meat, the mixture in his mouth of blood and yolk. Afterwards, he goes downstairs to the toilets. It is empty in there. He takes his suitcase into a cubicle. Inside, he changes: the black jacket for the white coat. He hangs his jacket up on the hook inside the toilet. He has never known why there are these hooks, but he is glad of it.

  From the suitcase, he takes what he needs. The photograph of his sister. The Amscor. And The Book of Mormon. But there is no room for The Book of Mormon inside any pocket. It is 531 pages long. He has a pocket edition, back in American Fork, but this is not it. He could carry it but he is worried that someone would notice and question him. But he does not feel able to leave it in a toilet. He has always planned to leave the suitcase here, but not The Book. He tries to make it OK by wrapping The Book inside a pair of trousers, and sh
utting the case, but as he begins to unlock the door, he falters. He sits down on the toilet. He does not know what to do. He opens the book. He reads.

  In The Book of Moroni, the last Book of The Book of Mormon, it says:

  For behold, to one is given by the Spirit of God, that he may teach the word of wisdom; and to another that he may teach the word of knowledge by the same Spirit.

  He sees straight away that God and Joseph Smith have given him the answer. He goes out of the toilet, and straight back up the stairs.

  – Excuse me, he says to the waiter, who is standing by his table with the check, I’d like to pay that.

  – OK, sir. It’s $9.99.

  He hands him a ten-dollar bill. It is the last money he has. He left the rest at the reception of the Condesa Inn. The woman who runs the hotel was not up when he went out. He would not like her to think he left without paying. The waiter looks up, expectantly.

  – I can’t give you any money for your service, he says. I’m sorry about that. But instead I’d like to give you this. It is the best tip I can give you.

  He hands him The Book of Mormon. The waiter opens it at a random page, and reads. He feels good that today has also included this small piece of evangelism. He realizes now that his destiny is also, in a way, a Mission.

  The waiter looks up.

  – Can I ask you something?

  He nods.

  – When you came in here, you were like a regular guy. And then you went to the john, and now you’re a doctor. And a Mormon. How come?

  He does his best attempt at a beatific, mysterious smile, such as he has seen the priests and Elders of his church do when children ask questions the answers for which are too complex for them to understand, and walks out.

  * * *

  Then they all left. Bill Clinton, his friends, even the doctors. That normally never happens. There’s usually at least two of them around, plus some nurses, but no nurses had been allowed in the room when Bill Clinton was there. Dr Ghundkhali said something to one of the other doctors about how it would be all right to leave for a little while because their bleepers would go off if one of Daddy’s machines went wrong. I think they all wanted to spend more time with Bill Clinton.