Judith (7 page)

I thought – It is with the drama, or the being needed, that you feel powerful, elect, perfect?

I went up in the lift. On the top floor there was a landing with two doors to flats; a passage went along to another door with glass in it which gave on to what looked like a fire-escape. I rang the bell by the door of Oliver's flat; I knocked; then I used the keys to go in. Inside the flat there was an extraordinary heat; it was like the engine-room of a ship; there was a passage which went past the open door of a sitting-room – this had packing-cases on the floor and dust-sheets over the furniture – then there was a kitchen and a bathroom on the other side of the passage and at the end a door which seemed likely to lead to a bedroom. Through this there came a scraping noise. It was like the creaking of a ship – one of those ships, perhaps, from which the crew have mysteriously disappeared. I went in. Oliver was lying on the bed on his back wearing the white shirt and black trousers he had been wearing the night before; his hands were folded across his chest like those of a crusader. The scraping noise was coming from his mouth, which was open: the noise was his breathing. There were bits of foam and of encrustation at the corners of his mouth; it was as if some sea had gone out and left him. There was an empty pill-bottle on a table by the side of his bed: a glass which smelled as if it had contained whisky. The noise coming from his lungs was as if an iron file were scraping away inside him; something was trying to break free, and then he would be dead. I thought I knew what to do about this: you do, God knows, if you have lived among Europeans in Hong Kong. The telephone was by the bed with the receiver off. I thought – He was gambling with me: playing Russian roulette: what on earth did he think were the odds? it is as if he had put five bullets in and left just one space empty. I dialled 999 and gave the address and said ‘Come quickly, there's someone dying.' I heard myself – so clear and confident – then I realised I had not stipulated ambulance or police. I had put
the receiver down. I did not think it mattered. Then I went through into the bathroom – I do not know why – and on a shelf above the basin there was a piece of paper with some white powder on it and beside it an old-fashioned razor-blade. I thought – Dear God, a razor-blade! do you want to leave clues that are almost jokes for me or the police? I smelled the white powder, which seemed to be some mixture: then I thought – But it is I who have dialled for the police! I screwed up the heroin or cocaine or whatever it was in its paper, but it was dusted about on the shelf; there might be some on the basin, or the floor; and what on earth do you do with an old-fashioned razor-blade? I thought I might telephone again to try to stop the police, but I did not think this would work. There are things that you just do, are there not, when you have been feeling decisive, confident, elect. I went out on to the landing to stand by the door of the lift to try to stop, send away, the police when they came; then the door of Oliver's flat banged shut behind me. I realised I had put down the bunch of keys on the table by Oliver's bed. I thought – I am mad: I have come to save Oliver and I have destroyed him. I felt it vital that I should get back into Oliver's flat before the police or ambulance men arrived: I had left the paper with the dope in it in the bathroom. I went along to the glass door at the end of the landing and it did, yes, give on to the small metal platform of a fire-escape. There was a key to this door in a glass case; I got the key out and unlocked the door and went out on to the fire-escape. There was a parapet along the battlements to the right which went past the windows of what must be Oliver's flat; the third window should be that of Oliver's bedroom. I thought I had to do this because had he not asked me to save him: and had I not accepted responsibility? I set out crawling along the parapet; there was an enormous drop to the street below. When I was going past the windows of the sitting-room there was the siren of a police car or an ambulance in the street. I thought – If I am found like this how can I explain? but then, nothing of importance can ever be explained, can it? I realised it was unlikely that the window into Oliver's
bedroom would be unlatched since the flat had been so airless: so I might fall, and make an end of it. Or I might fly like a bird. When I reached the window I found I could get my fingers underneath the bottom; then it went up; so I thought – Now everything will be all right; thank you! I went in head-first through the window and through the curtains which were still drawn; and in so doing I knocked over a small table. A drawer opened and what looked like an enormous bundle of twenty-pound notes fell out. I was on my hands and knees, staring at this, like a dog above a bone. The police car or ambulance was arriving in the street below. I picked up the table and put the drawer back and closed the window and pushed the bundle of notes into my pocket; then I went into the bathroom and put the piece of paper with the dope in it into another pocket and I wiped the shelf and the basin and the razor-blade and washed my hands. When I had done all this the buzzer went from what I supposed was the downstairs door. I went to the entry-phone and pressed the button and told whoever it was to come up; then I went into the bedroom and stood by Oliver's bed. Oliver's breath was still scraping. I thought – Well, I needed money for the taxi, didn't I? Then I went to the door on to the landing and waited for the lift.

Two policemen arrived, one in uniform and one not. I said ‘I'm so terribly sorry I didn't mean to call the police, I meant to call just an ambulance.' I went ahead of them down the passageway. I was wearing jeans: there was the money, and the dope, in my pockets. I stood by the bed and held Oliver's wrist: I said ‘He's taken an overdose, I don't know why, I hope the ambulance is coming.' I thought – You don't say too much, do you? they make you feel guilty anyway. The policeman in plainclothes picked up the empty bottle of pills and sniffed it and sniffed the glass of whisky; then he spoke to the one in uniform who went into the passage and spoke into his two-way radio. The man in plainclothes moved around the room: he picked up things and put them down again: he opened the drawer in the table where the money had been. I thought – Police are supposed to take money, aren't they? Then –
Everyone is guilty about something. The man in plainclothes said ‘Do you live here?' I said ‘No.' Then – ‘But I've got the keys.' Then – ‘He's only just moved in.' I could hear the man in uniform go into the bathroom: I thought – But Oliver might have dope anywhere! I said to the man in plainclothes ‘I let myself in just now, this morning.' The man had eyes like iron gratings through which fingers sometimes crawled. I thought – He is thinking what it would be like to have a flat like this and this girl who lets herself in with her own keys in the morning. I stood in my jeans with the dope and the money in my pockets. I thought – One knee slightly bent: one foot in front of the other. Then – This will be all right: there may be the smell of dope and money; there is also the smell of sex.

The man in uniform came in and said ‘They're coming.'

The one in plainclothes said ‘Wait for them on the landing.' Then he said to me – ‘How can we get in touch with you?'

I said ‘You can get in touch with me here.'

He said ‘Will do.'

He looked at me with his hot, imprisoned eyes. He made a note of the number that was on the telephone.

When the ambulance men arrived they were quick and professional: they put Oliver on to a stretcher and strapped him so that he would not fall off in the lift: they asked me if I knew what he had taken, or how much, and I said I did not. When they were going off with him I said – ‘Oh can I come with you?'

I thought it was necessary to get the policemen out of the flat. I said to the one in plainclothes ‘Please!'

He said ‘Come in the car.'

So I got them out of the flat, and locked the door, and then downstairs I found the taxi was still waiting. I thought – You mean taxi-drivers are like fairy godfathers in 1940s films? I thanked the plainclothes policeman with such genuine, grateful eyes! I said I would go to the hospital in the taxi. There was the hint – Well, you can ring me, can't you? But then in the taxi I thought – How extraordinarily everything has worked out! I mean if I had not shut myself out on the landing and had not
had to crawl along that parapet, however would I have got the money to pay for this taxi!

Now there is something I want to put in here – as if it might be another face at a window in one of those spiral staircases –

When I arrived at the hospital they had already taken Oliver off to pump him out or do whatever they had to do: they could not tell me yet whether he would live or die. I gave details to a woman behind a desk of what I knew about Oliver: she asked me whom she should put down as his next of kin. I said that I did not think Oliver would want anyone to know what had happened, so she said should she put me down as next of kin. I said ‘All right'. I thought – After all, I am protecting him; did he not give me his keys? But I did wonder for a moment whether I might be being trapped by Oliver in this; what are people doing when they involve others in games of Russian roulette?

Then in a waiting-room of the hospital (they had told me it might be some time before they knew whether Oliver would live or die) I found an old copy of
Die Flamme
magazine: in it there was one of the strip cartoons about Oliver: it was one showing him in the role of Faust: his bargain with the devil was that he should, at the cost of his soul, be able to get any girl he liked. But there was another story in this number which was to do with one of the more venomous vendettas the
Die Flamme
people had been carrying on for some time: this was against an Indian guru whom they referred to contemptuously as God. Some of the followers of this guru apparently themselves referred to him as God: and when he had been questioned about this (I remembered this story from an earlier number of the magazine) he had said it was a joke; but he had added that of course God liked jokes. When the
Die Flamme
reporter had asked him whether it was he who liked this sort of joke, he had apparently been overcome with laughter; and the
Die Flamme
reporter had felt discomfited, because, it seemed to be being suggested, he did not have a sense of humour.

In this number of the magazine (it was this that seemed to me like a face at a window) there was a story about the guru
that I had not heard before. Two girls who were his acolytes had been caught smuggling drugs in Europe; they had been on their way to his commune, or
ashram
, in India. When their case had come up in court they had said – or rather the lawyers hired by their families had said – that the girls had been doing their smuggling on behalf of the guru who had brainwashed them, so they could not be held morally or legally responsible. The magistrates had had sympathy with this argument, and the girls had been given a suspended sentence. When the
Die Flamme
reporter had questioned God about this he had said that if it would be any help to any of his acolytes in trouble with the authorities to say that he was responsible, then of course he would be delighted to do so. The reporter had said – Yes, but in fact was he or wasn't he responsible? Whereupon the guru had been so overcome with laughter again that he had had to leave the room. This had so incensed the
Die Flamme
people that they had published comments about him that were indeed uncharacteristically humourless – the charges about drugs against the guru might not be able to be proved, but what about his encouragement of sex! and so on. So it did seem that a lack of sense of humour was being visited back on the
Die Flamme
people as some sort of retribution.

I read this story in the waiting-room of the hospital. There was a photograph of the guru who had a bright nut-brown face rather like that of the Professor. I thought I might wave and say – Coo-ee!

After a time a doctor came into the waiting-room and said that they had done all they could for Oliver but that they still would not know for some time whether he would recover. The doctor looked at me with hot, distrustful eyes. I thought – There are these connections, like those of the shadows of a cage, between drugs and death and sex. He told me I could go and sit with Oliver. I thought – But if these people have envy, is it not satisfied by the chance of death?

Have you ever been in the intensive-care unit of a hospital? Figures in white coats stand facing switches and dials. The
switches and dials are on the faces on machines that are connected by wires and tubes to bodies. It is as if the bodies are feeding the machines; and the people in white coats are there to see that the supply of food does not run out.

Oliver was on a bed like a trolley. There was a large tube going down his throat, a smaller one in at the side of his neck, and one coming out from the sheets at the bottom of the bed. There were two pads on his chest from which wires went to a machine with a screen on it like a clock; the numbers became sometimes greater and sometimes less; this was to do with his heartbeat. There was another machine which drew zig-zag lines on a roll of paper and it was as if these were to do with the weather in other bits of Oliver. The pipe down his throat was like some terrible sexual violation.

I sat beside Oliver and I sometimes held my hand on his arm and I watched the numbers on the screen above his head grow greater and sometimes less. I thought – If you can measure a person's life, can you not also alter it? This was, I think, what I had been trying to say to the Professor. I wanted to alter Oliver's life because I felt that he had asked me to; he must have been someone who had come near enough to rock bottom.

I stayed with Oliver through most of that day; I had nowhere else, after all, to go. I thought – People's lives might bounce up from just such moments, mightn't they? when nothing much else seems to be happening.