Kleinzeit

by Russell Hoban

‘I,’ said the yellow paper. That’s a joke, that is. ‘I’ can’t write anything that’ll stay on the paper, stupid.

  Who can, then? said Kleinzeit.

  You’re being tiresome, said the yellow paper.

  Goddam it, said Kleinzeit, are you my yellow paper or not?

  Not, said the yellow paper.

  Whose then? said Kleinzeit.

  Word’s.

  What happens now? Whatever can.

  HOW – CAN – I – MAKE – WORDS – STAY – ON – THE – PAPER? said Kleinzeit very slowly, as if talking to a foreigner.

  They’ll stay if you don’t put them there, said the yellow paper.

  How do I do that?

  You don’t do it, it happens.

  How does it happen?

  You simply have to find what’s there and let it be, said the yellow paper.

  Find what’s where? said Kleinzeit.

  Here, said the yellow paper. Now.

  Kleinzeit took a blank sheet, stared at it. Nothing, he said. Absolutely nothing.

  What’s all the fuss about? said Death looking over his shoulder.

  I can’t find anything in this paper, said Kleinzeit.

  Nonsense, said Death. It’s all there. I can see it quite clearly.

  What does it say? said Kleinzeit.

  Death read something aloud very softly.

  What’s that? said Kleinzeit. Speak up, can’t you.

  Death said something a little louder.

  I still can’t understand a word you’re saying, said Kleinzeit. He felt an overpowering regret for the shimmering sea-light and the smile of the china mermaid in the aquarium that was gone. Then he felt suddenly like a glove with the hand inside it slipping away. Quite empty, as everything smoothly disappeared in utter silence.

  Lay-By

  Blip blip blip blip, went Kleinzeit. The curtains were drawn, Sister sat by his bed in her Sister uniform, looking at his face.

  Under the bed Death sat humming to itself while it cleaned its fingernails. I never do get them really clean, it said. It’s a filthy job I’ve got but what’s the use of complaining. All the same I think I’d rather have been Youth or Spring or any number of things rather than what I am. Not Youth, maybe. That’s a little wet and you’d hardly get to know people before they’ve moved on. Spring’s pretty much the same and it’s a lady’s job besides. Action would be nice to be, I should think.

  Elsewhere Action lay in his cell smoking and looking up at the ceiling. What a career, he said. I’ve spent more time in the nick than anywhere else. Why couldn’t I have been Death or something like that. Steady work, security.

  Spring, wrapped up in a quilt in a freezing bedsitter, found her fingers too stiff for sewing, left off trying to mend her gauzy working clothes. She gazed into the unlit fire, picked up the newspaper, read about the gasmen’s strike.

  Youth, slogging through a ditch, heard the bloodhounds baying on his trail, sobbed and slogged on.

  Hospital had no complaints. Hospital, having breakfasted, lit a cigar, puffed out big clouds of smoke. Ahhh! sighed Hospital. Ummmh! Everybody up! Drink tea.

  Everybody upped, drank tea. Kleinzeit opened his eyes, saw Sister. She kissed him. He saw the monitor screen. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Blipping again. What happened?’

  ‘I found you on the floor when I came back from shopping,’ said Sister. ‘So I thought we might as well go on duty together.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I was trying to read what was in the yellow paper.’ He reached weakly under the bed. You there? he said.

  Here, there, everywhere, said Death. Like Puck.

  Why must you be so artful, said Kleinzeit. Why can’t you stand up and fight like a man or at least like a chimp, instead of trying on all those tricks.

  I wasn’t trying on any tricks, said Death. I give you my word.

  That’s precisely what you did, said Kleinzeit. You gave me your word and out went the lights. Dr Bashan’s last remarks popped into his mind, his promise that if the lights went out again he’d wake up minus hypotenuse, asymptotes and stretto. Kleinzeit felt himself all over, couldn’t feel anything missing. ‘Have they operated on me or anything?’ he said to Sister.

  ‘No,’ said Sister. ‘It was a hyperacceleration of the stretto, and Dr Pink wants you to settle down before he decides what to do.’

  ‘Dr Pink’s back!’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Where’s Bashan?’

  ‘Off racing his yacht somewhere,’ said Sister.

  Kleinzeit sighed, drank his tea. Things were looking up a little. Not that there was much in it between Pink and Bashan, but at least Pink hadn’t bullied him as a boy and then forgotten him.

  ‘I brought your things,’ said Sister. ‘They’re in your locker. And Thucydides.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘And I’m in my adventurous pyjamas. For the big adventure.’

  Sister shrugged. ‘You never know,’ she said. ‘If you’re not dead yet you may go on living for a while.’

  ‘I’ll give it a try,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Bring some yellow paper and Japanese pens tonight, will you.’

  Sister went off duty, the nurse came round with the medicine trolley. ‘Three 2-Nup, two Zonk, three Angle-Flex, three Fly-Ova, one Lay-By,’ she said.

  ‘I’m the darling of the National Health,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What’s happened to the Greenlite?’

  ‘Dr Pink’s put you on Lay-By instead.’

  ‘That’s life,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘From Greenlite to Lay-By.’ He sighed, swallowed all the tablets. The nurse had pushed back the curtains. Raj was on his left, Schwarzgang on his right.

  ‘Neighbours again,’ said Schwarzgang.

  ‘Who’s gone?’ said Kleinzeit.

  ‘McDougal.’

  ‘Discharged?’

  ‘No.’

  McDougal, thought Kleinzeit. I never even spoke to him. What was he, I wonder. Yellow paper? Rizla? Backs of envelopes?

  Redbeard was still there on the other side of Schwarzgang. Kleinzeit nodded to him. Redbeard nodded back, looking at him through the funfair of Schwarzgang’s machinery. They ought to light the old man up at night, thought Kleinzeit. Then it occurred to him that he too might suddenly find Hospital growing on him like a mechanical man-eating vine. Already two thin tendrils bound him to the monitor. Would Redbeard and Schwarzgang ever break loose from their tubes and pipes and fittings, he wondered. He looked up and down the rows of beds. Drogue too, he noticed, now had scaffolding all over him like an unfinished building. Damprise, he of the funereal connexions, also sported sundry rigging. If the flies don’t come to the web the web comes to the flies, thought Kleinzeit. But of course all of them had come to the web, hadn’t they. Hospital had sat there waiting as one by one they had buzzed into its silky strands and stuck there.

  ‘Well?’ said Redbeard. ‘What’s new?’

  ‘You see what’s new,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Here I am. Blip blip blip blip.’

  ‘You didn’t really try,’ said Redbeard.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ said Kleinzeit. ‘That’s not fair. I went out of here like Prong Studman in a prison-break film. They’d never have brought me back if my chimpanzee friend hadn’t played his usual tricks. They almost didn’t bring me back alive.’

  ‘You’re protesting too much,’ said Redbeard.

  ‘It’s easy for you to talk,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I don’t see you making a break for it.’

  ‘I’m finished, all washed up,’ said Redbeard. ‘You aren’t, and you’re letting the side down.’

  ‘Cobblers,’ said Kleinzeit, feeling proud and guilty at the same time. ‘What do you want me to do? What can I do more than what I’m doing?’

  Redbeard stared at him, said nothing.

  Remember, said Hospital.

  Ah! said Kleinzeit. He’d forgotten about that.

  You see, said Hospital. You’ve forgotten.

  I think I was going to try to remember just before that empty-glove feeling hit me, said Kleinzeit. Anyhow, whose side are yo
u on? Aren’t you going to eat me up the way you’ve eaten up all the others? What’s so special about me?

  I’ve taken time with you, said Hospital. I’ve taken pains with you, you might say.

  You might say, said Kleinzeit.

  But your understanding is still not very strong, said Hospital. Nothing is special about you. Nothing is special about everybody. That’s Nothing’s business, eh?

  Don’t be clever, said Kleinzeit.

  Not clever, said Hospital. Never clever. Am always simply what I am. An example to you, yes?

  How? said Kleinzeit.

  What are you? said Hospital.

  I don’t know, said Kleinzeit.

  Be that, said Hospital. Be I-Don’t-Know.

  HOW? yelled Kleinzeit.

  BY REMEMBERING YOURSELF, roared Hospital.

  WHICH WAY IS THRACE? screamed Kleinzeit.

  WHY ME? Find it, said Hospital. Because you can.

  Mixed Feelings

  ’You’re looking surprisingly fit,’ said Dr Pink. Dr Pink was deeply tanned, looked as if he’d always look fit, as if everyone could always look fit if only they’d make the effort.

  ‘I feel wonderful,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Except that I can’t sit up or anything.’

  ‘Are you sure it isn’t in your mind?’ said Dr Pink.

  ‘What’re you talking about?’ said Kleinzeit.

  ‘We don’t know an awful lot about the mind, do we?’ said Dr Pink. ‘On my holiday I was reading some books that were lying about in the villa we’d rented. Chap named Freud. Quite amazing stuff, really. Mind, you know, emotions. Mixed feelings about Mum and Dad, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ said Kleinzeit.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dr Pink. ‘I was just wondering whether perhaps you mightn’t be of two minds about sitting up. Wanting to and at the same time not wanting to, perhaps. What they call ambivalence nowadays. Have you tried?’

  ‘Look,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I’m trying.’ His mind sat up, the rest of him stayed lying down.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Dr Pink. ‘You’re still lying down, right enough.’ He picked up Kleinzeit’s chart from the foot of the bed. ‘I’ve put you on the new drugs to see if we can’t give your system some rest,’ he said. ‘The Greenlite, although it seems to have cleared stretto a bit, may have speeded up traffic more than one would like, so I’ve switched you to Lay-By. The Fly-Ova should give you a little less to cope with at the asymptotic intersection, and the Angle-Flex will take some of the strain off hypotenuse.’

  ‘That form the lady keeps bothering me about …’ said Kleinzeit.

  ‘We’ll put that to one side for a bit,’ said Dr Pink. ‘Let’s see where we are in a few days, talk about it then.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Maybe things’ll sort themselves out, eh?’

  ‘We can but try,’ said Dr Pink. ‘As you’ve got your mind so set against surgery. The mind, after all, one can’t separate it from the body. One might almost say it’s an organ in its own right.’

  ‘My mind feels very strong,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘My mind sits up with no trouble.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Dr Pink. ‘We’ll just see how it goes.’ He smiled, walked on peacefully to the next bed, examined Raj. Where were Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna, Kleinzeit wondered.

  He rolled on to his side, his back to Schwarzgang and Redbeard. Raj, buttoning up his pyjama top, smiled. Kleinzeit smiled back.

  ‘You are going away, you are returning,’ said Raj. ‘To and fro you go.’

  ‘I try to keep moving,’ said Kleinzeit.

  ‘You are going back to work soon?’ said Raj. ‘You are going back to your job?’

  ‘Haven’t got a job,’ said Kleinzeit.

  ‘Ah!’ said Raj, passed him the Evening Standard. ‘Best classified adverts,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ said Kleinzeit.

  Beyond Raj Piggle’s bed was empty. Nox, in the next bed, looking over the top of the new All-Star Wank, caught Kleinzeit’s eye. ‘Surgery,’ he said, nodding towards Piggle’s bed. ‘He’s up there now. That’s where Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna are.’

  Ah! said Kleinzeit with his face.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nox. ‘We pretty well have to take what comes, the rest of us here. We’re not all free to come and go like you.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m free to come and go,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘I walk out and I come back in an ambulance. I keep trying but I don’t make it.’

  ‘You will though,’ said Nox, and went back to All-Star Wank.

  Kleinzeit thought briefly of Wanda Udders, Miss Guernsey, who’d always known there were big things ahead of her. Only a photo in a newspaper, but part of his past. For whom did the china mermaid smile now, he wondered. Nobody seemed terribly friendly today. He reached under the bed. You there? he said.

  No answer. No hairy black hand. He rolled over to face Schwarzgang and Redbeard again. Schwarzgang was busy blipping, keeping up with his machinery, had no glance for him. Redbeard nodded, looked away again.

  Piggle didn’t come back.

  More Things

  The smell of clean linen, little fresh breezes from the nurse whipping about making the once-Piggle now empty bed. Another nurse with a wheelchair. ‘Can you stand up? she said to Kleinzeit.

  ‘Not physically,’ he said. The nurse helped him sit up, gave him an earful of freshly laundered bosom as she got him into the chair. Strong girl, smelled good too.

  ‘What’s all this?’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Dr Pink wants these beds for two new patients,’ said the nurse. ‘We’re moving you to a different part of the ward.’

  That’s how it is, thought Kleinzeit. Now that Pink’s not going to operate on me he’s lost interest and I’m to be put away in a dark corner. Here were unknown faces, faces glimpsed only in passing till now. It’s like that point at a cocktail party, thought Kleinzeit, when one gets tired of introducing oneself. At least here we don’t have to stand about with drinks in our hands. He got another earful of bosom, rolled into bed.

  Not another one, said the bed.

  Sorry, said Kleinzeit. I’ll try not to stay long. ‘What about my blip screen?’ he said to the nurse.

  ‘Dr Pink said you don’t need it any more,’ she said, breezed away.

  From the bed on his left an oxygen mask nodded to him. From the bed on his right a pair of horn-rimmed glasses smiled over the top of The Oxford Book of English Verse. That one’s going to be a problem, thought Kleinzeit.

  The horn-rimmed glasses focused on him sociably. ‘I’m Arthur Tede,’ they said. ‘Tede but I hope not tedious, ha ha.’

  Kleinzeit introduced himself, expressed with his face that he was not up to much conversation.

  ‘Hospital’s a great place to study character,’ said Tede. ‘I can tell a lot about a chap just by looking. I’d guess you’re a writer. Am I right?’

  Kleinzeit half nodded, half shrugged.

  ‘Poetry?’

  ‘Little,’ said Kleinzeit, ‘now and then.’

  ‘I’m very keen on poetry,’ said Tede. ‘I do Burns in Scots dialect.’ He gave Kleinzeit a card:

  ARTHUR TEDE COMEDIAN – COMPERE – M.C.POETRY RECITATIONS

  (With Piano Accompaniment)

  ‘My wife does the piano part,’ said Tede. ‘There’s a lot in poetry, “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” ha ha. During the day I’m an electrical engineer, but at night, you know, poetry.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Kleinzeit. He groaned tactfully to show that although interested he was probably enduring more pain than Tede dreamt of.

  ‘You’re looking thoughtful,’ said Tede.‘“Il Penseroso”, the thoughtful one. Keep smiling is my motto. “L’ allegro”. Milton, you know. “Hence loathèd Melancholy, etcetera.”‘

  Kleinzeit closed his eyes, nodded.

  ‘Actually I’m doing that one now,’ said Tede. ‘Memorizing it. I keep adding to my repe
rtoire. Do you mind following in the book while I try it aloud, see if I get it right. I’ve been wanting to do it for several days, but there’s been no one I could ask till now, and one feels foolish reciting poetry alone.’ He gave the book to Kleinzeit. Kleinzeit saw his hands holding it, didn’t know how to let go. Tede was away:

  ‘Hence loathèd Melancholy

  Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,

  In Stygian Cave forlorn

  ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shreiks, and sights unholy,

  Kleinzeit fell asleep, woke up at ‘Orpheus self.’ ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘What’s what?’ said Tede. ‘Have I got it wrong?’

  ‘I’ve lost my place,’ said Kleinzeit.

  ‘Page 333, near the bottom,’ said Tede.

  Kleinzeit read:

  Lap me in soft Lydian Aires,

  Married to immortal verse

  Such as the meeting soul may pierce

  In notes, with many a winding bout

  Of linckèd sweetnes long drawn out,

  With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,

  The melting voice through mazes running;

  Untwisting all the chains that ty

  The hidden soul of harmony.

  That Orpheus self may heave his head

  From golden slumber on a bed

  Of heapt Elysian flowres, and hear

  Such streins as would have won the ear

  Of Pluto, to have quite set free

  His half regain’d Eurydice.

  These delights, if thou canst give,

  Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

  ‘Found it?’ said Tede.

  Kleinzeit nodded. Tede began again where he had left off, Kleinzeit tried to shut out the voice so that he could hear the words he was reading. Tede came to the end, his voice stopped. Kleinzeit read the lines again, heard in his mind