Chapman's Odyssey (11 page)

— Was?

— Was. She died in Auschwitz. That was a German concentration camp in Poland, in case you didn’t know.

Innocent, ignorant Harry Chapman knew next to nothing then of Auschwitz, or Belsen, or Dachau or Treblinka or any of the other man-made hells on earth.

— She was gassed. I saw her for the first and last time when I was just over a year old. So Pa told me.

Harry, embarrassed and moved by the sadness in Leo’s voice, stared at the titles on the shelves. Leo was, perhaps, an even more serious reader than his friend, though they had certain favourites in common. Almost by chance, Harry pulled out
Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant
, opened it, and within minutes was wholly captivated by its pictures and its simple text. He turned the pages with increasing delight, once he had recovered from the shock of Babar the little elephant’s mother being killed by a wicked hunter in the third illustration.

— There’s another Babar book, Harry, said Leo, handing him
Le Voyage de Babar
. — I’ve had them since I was five. Take them. They’re yours now.

— But, Leo –

— I’ve outgrown them.

Leo smiled warmly.

— Listen, my pretend-Jew of a pal, it’s clear to me that you’ve had a deprived childhood. You’ve just taught me a lesson. I thought every bright boy and girl had Babar in their lives when they were small. I was wrong. I am happy to pass him on to you.

Harry grasped Leo’s arm and thanked him.

— Have fun with Babar and Céleste, and Arthur and Cornelius, and the kind Old Lady.

Thinking of the gift of Babar now, and the gracious youth who had made it, and of the man whose death, lovingly assisted by the devoted Eleanor, he had read about minutes past, Harry Chapman had no alternative but to weep.

He removed the glasses with his free hand. They were a hindrance in his current state.

He was back with the gasworks and the candle factory and Alice Chapman.

— I was hoping they’d adopted you and I’d seen the last of Harry Chapman for ever.

— You’re out of luck, Mama.

— I can hear that nasty tone in your voice.

Could she? Could she not recognise it as her own?

— ‘Mama’. ‘Mama’? How high and mighty have you become?

— It was a joke, like Dad complaining about the frequency of roast chicken for dinner.

— Anyway, enough of that. What’s their house like?

— Mr and Mrs Duggan’s?

— No, Adam and bloody Eve’s. Who else do you think I mean?

— It’s more of a mansion than a house. It’s huge. Leo has his own rooms. He doesn’t have to study at the front-room table the way I have to.

— Ever so sorry, Your Highness, I’m sure. Go on. Tell me about their furniture.

Harry Chapman described the Duggan family’s possessions in as much detail as he could muster. It was only when he mentioned the chandelier above the dining table that his mother responded.

— A chandelier, did you say?

— Yes.

— Crystal?

— I suppose so.

He could not remember, waking now, what more she said on the subject of Bernard and Sarah Duggan’s chandelier that evening.

Sister Nancy came to feel his pulse and check his blood pressure.

— You were chattering away nineteen to the dozen, Harry. Something about a chandelier.

— Was I really? What’s the time?

— Five minutes to midnight. That’s another day nearly done with.

It occurred to him suddenly that he had never mentioned the tragic fate of Leo’s Aunt Elsa to anybody. He had made it his solemn duty to respect what Leo had told him in earnest.

The face in the photograph appeared to Harry Chapman for a precious instant, and then there was Leo, fifteen again, and then Nancy Driver was tucking him in and praising his courage.

Wednesday

It was the seventeenth-century divine, Jeremy Taylor, who described a hospital as a ‘map of the whole world’, and to judge by the raised voices assailing Harry Chapman’s ears this morning, Taylor was right. What languages were these? Not Latinate ones, that was certain.

— Who are those people screaming?

— Don’t concern yourself, Mr Chapman.

— I want you to tell me who they are.

— It appears we inherited a difficult patient in the middle of the night, Veronica told him. — And now her daughters are here and won’t be removed. They don’t speak much English. Poor Maciek is trying to reason with them in Polish. We’ve sent out for an interpreter.

— Where are they from?

— Somalia.

— And what’s wrong with the difficult lady?

— I can’t answer that. It’s a private matter. You must understand.

— Yes.

The noise increased to an ear-shattering level.

— God Almighty, he said. — If the difficult woman is sick, does she need that racket to contend with?

— Good morning, Harry, said Marybeth Myslawchuk. — I have news for you, Veronica. The interpreter has arrived, and he says they speak two languages in Somalia – Arabic and Somali. He only speaks Arabic, and they only speak Somali. So the farce goes on. We may have to call the police to evict Regan and Goneril.

— You know their names already, Marybeth?

— Marybeth is teasing you, Veronica. Regan and Goneril are the unpleasant daughters of King Lear. That’s a play by Shakespeare.

— I can’t say I’ve ever seen it.

He’d seen it first in the 1950s, in an impossibly bad touring production in which the actor playing Lear seldom strayed from the centre of the stage. The supporting cast, with the solitary exception of a passably convincing Fool, had been chosen for their incompetence, the better for the leading man to shine. And shine he did, beneath a spotlight that followed him everywhere. Young as he was, Harry Chapman understood that he was witnessing a travesty, an exercise in vaingloriousness that verged on the farcical. The actors wore ill-fitting wigs and costumes held in place with safety pins. Regan and Goneril were coarser than the coarsest Ugly Sisters in the crudest production of
Cinderella
, and Gloucester – the pitiful, blinded Gloucester – swallowed his lines behind the dentures he sucked when he wasn’t speaking.

And yet, Harry Chapman remembered, he was moved to tears when the star said, in an anguished whisper, ‘O, let me be not mad, not mad, sweet heaven!’ There was real pain in the voice, real terror at the prospect of madness. He fancied he could hear that whisper now, beneath the screaming and shrieking of the difficult woman’s daughters.

There was a brief silence, a silence so dramatic that it seemed like the lull before a storm, and then the storm duly broke. The women were keening now, wailing, and their cries were wordless.

— The mother’s dead, I think.

He saw that he was talking to himself, for Veronica and Marybeth had rushed away. Regan and Goneril, or whatever their names were, continued howling, and other voices were raised. The doctor they called the Professor was insisting on calm, and his determination to ‘lower the collective temperature’ soon had an effect. The Professor possessed authority, it was clear. You could tell by the steady way he spoke.

Harry Chapman strained to catch what was being said, but he could only make out the odd phrase, such as ‘business as usual’ from Nancy Driver. That business did not concern him, it appeared, because he was left alone for what he reckoned was far too long a time.

— Son?

— Is that you, Dad?

— You’re the only son I fathered.

— You look younger than I recall you.

— You haven’t been born, that’s why.

— Then you’re not my dad yet.

— Not yet. Wait a bit, son-to-be. Wait until 1937, and then give it a few months before you learn to speak. Your first word might be ‘Da-da’, unless your mother-to-be decides otherwise. But one thing is certain, I will have some part in bringing you into the world.

The fresh-faced man in front of him was clearly Frank Chapman’s younger self, but the voice and the sentiments it was expressing belonged to someone more sophisticated than the father of the Sunday walks.

— Da-da, he said, and laughed. — I am a Dadaist.

— Harry?

The reliable, redoubtable Nancy Driver was at his side.

— It’s so quiet, Nancy. Where are the wailing women?

— Gone for good, I hope. I pity the other mourners at their mother’s funeral.

— She died?

— While they were here, screaming their heads off. She’d had two strokes before she was brought in and a massive heart attack when they were in full throttle. It was all very distressing, Harry. God rest her soul.

— Amen to that, he almost said.

— Dr Pereira will be seeing you later this morning. Can we expect a poem after he’s finished with you?

— I think that could be arranged. I have something life-enhancing in mind.

— I’m pleased to hear it. We need some good cheer to compensate for what we’ve been through this morning.

‘Good cheer’? He hadn’t heard the phrase in an eternity: ‘Be of good cheer’ was in the books and plays he read in childhood.

— If good cheer is what you want, I’ll do my best to provide it.

— You’re a sweet man, Harry.

He would take issue with that judgement, if he had the energy. How could she know, and declare unequivocally, that he was sweet?

— I wish I were.

— You’re sweet while you’re in here, and that’s all that concerns me and my staff. So many of our patients are unsweet, if I may coin a word.

— I understand.

It remained a mystery to Harry Chapman, after a lifetime of writing about the curious ways of human beings, why certain people – few, in his experience – were pleasantly and gently disposed towards their fellow creatures. They seemed not to suffer from the usual sins of pride, envy, avarice and sloth as they carried out their daily tasks. Leo was one such, a kindly intellectual, and so was Aunt Rose, who was barely educated. There were others he’d encountered who had shamed him with their selflessness.

— Rosy Glow’s got a dirty secret or two, if you ask me.

— I’m not asking you, Mother. I wouldn’t dream of doing that.

— She’s craftier than she looks.

— She looks fine to me.

— She’s no Virgin Mary –

— If I ask you, which I won’t. Do shut up.

— I suppose you think it’s clever, speaking to your mother as if she was muck on your shoe.

— Shut up. In the name of all that’s decent, shut up.

Marybeth Myslawchuk wondered who it was he was telling to shut up in such an unhappy-sounding voice.

— Oh, someone from my past, Marybeth.

— Someone unpleasant?

— Sometimes.

— Dr Pereira’s on his way to you. Veronica and I will make your bed spick and span.

Which they did, with their customary brisk efficiency. Veronica helped him out of his gown and into a fresh replacement, which smelled of bleach.

—
Eau d’hôpital
, he said. — The latest in perfumes.

— I’ve inhaled worse.

— I’m sure you have, Veronica.

The stench of humanity, Harry Chapman thought. That’s what she’s referring to. Perhaps, in the last three or four days – he was now unsure how many days had passed – he had made his own contribution to the general malodorousness. A resonant, rancid fart had awoken him in the middle of the night – a terrible harbinger of whatever was to be located in his stomach.

— Good morning, Harry. Or should I say ‘afternoon’, as it’s past twelve o’clock?

— Good afternoon, then, Dr Pereira.

— I have spoken to my colleagues and the three of us have decided to operate tomorrow. We want to remove the lump we have detected near your pancreas. You seem fit enough for such an operation, in our considered opinion.

— What time tomorrow?

— Whenever a theatre becomes available. That’s our constant problem. We’ll do our best for you.

The fruitseller smiled at Harry Chapman.

— Our very best.

— I’m sure you will, Dr Pereira.

Once the cherubic physician had left, Marybeth Myslawchuk and Nancy Driver reappeared. They were joined, seconds later, by Philip Warren.

— It’s poetry time, Harry. You promised us something life-enhancing and cheerful.

— I do believe I did.

— We’re waiting, said Nancy, breaking the silence.

— This is an English poem, even though it’s an adaptation from the Latin of Ovid, the great Roman poet. It’s by Christopher Marlowe, better known as a dramatist. You’ve heard of
Doctor Faustus
?

— Sure, honey. I saw it when I was a kid at Stratford, Ontario. I found it spooky.