Not Quite Dead (8 page)

To make things worse, a feature article in the
Baltimore Clipper
by a professional alarmist named Tibbs (accompanying an advertisement for “safety coffins”), advanced the myth that many corpses were buried who were not really dead. One story had it that two grave robbers had unearthed a female cadaver, and as soon as the coffin was open she began to scream. (Some versions of the tale claimed that she had eaten her fingers.)

Of course there was also a perfectly rational basis for the public antipathy regarding Washington College Hospital—namely, the abysmal cure rate; a tendency for patients to arrive with one malady, stay because of another, and die because they contracted a third. Let it suffice to note that, for a variety of reasons, an institution founded as a wellspring of public health had become an object of terror, and seldom would a person willingly go near it once the sun went down.

Given the almost total lack of visitors, the atmosphere in the hospital at night resembled that of a fire station between alarms. Any sense of tasks being done in the normal way disappeared. Staff who worked a second job during the day took naps. Others formed informal clubs, discussing books and playing cribbage and other games in the kitchen and back rooms while awaiting the ambulance bell.

As for the patients on the wards in their fevered slumber, life ground to a standstill at night, with only the ticking of a clock at the foot of the ward to punctuate the empty hours. The halls and stairways took on an atmosphere of still suspension, with only the faint odor of camphor and infection to distinguish it from an enormous crypt, an empty castle, an architectural ghost.

Though it was by no miracle that we carried out our highly incriminating activities, at the time it felt as though we operated under a spell.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Philadelphia

T
ext of a speech delivered to the Irish-American Literary League, sponsored by the Society for United Irishwomen, Philadelphia:

To appreciate the depth of the imperial conquest of America, let us visit a bookstand near the Marketplace, and let us peruse the titles on display.

How speaks the voice of freedom in the New World? What new American ethic, what American vision of democracy has found expression on the pages of your novels, poetry, and periodicals?

Ah. I see
Vanity Fair
is popular this year: Mr. Thackery’s spiteful vilification of ambition—especially in an ambitious woman.

And in advance of his much-anticipated tour of America, I see that our bookstand is well stocked with the works of the author Charles Dickens, and
his
universe of contented servants and saintly wives. Whose poor bewail their starvation—but not their poverty. Whose servants resent their mistreatment—but not their servitude. Whose villains are bad schoolmasters—not the rulers of the country. And when the well born do go bad, which is seldom, it is because they are corrupted by persons of lesser rank. And of course the worst that can befall a woman is that she might lose her virtue—not that she might be worked to death.

With the spirit of America so infected by submission to imperial authority, do we wonder that Mr. Washington Irving’s headless horseman is a Hessian—a European ghost haunting America? Do we wonder that hardly a single tale by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe takes place in the land in which he lives? What do you expect, in a country whose vice-president, Colonel Aaron Burr, who had fought in the Revolution, attempted to evade a charge of murder by claiming that he was a
British subject?

With the brains of America hostage to Europe, will not the body follow?

According to the
Tain bo Cuailgne
, the warrior Queen Maeve led her army to victory, drowning the opposing army in a flood of urine and menstrual blood. You, the women of Ireland, were removed to these shores by Almighty God for one purpose—to lead the New American Revolution. That is the meaning of your suffering. That is your task.

My associate, Lieutenant O’Reilly, and his able young assistants, will now pass among you. Think upon your homeland and what she has suffered, and give as your heart, your courage, and your patriotism dictate …

CHAPTER
NINE

Baltimore

W
ho among us has not felt out of accord with the universe? By the same token, who has not felt as though the Almighty Himself were at one’s service?

I say this in another attempt to evoke the feeling of ease that surrounded our perilous project like an aura. From one moment to the next it seemed as though every move had been acceded to by some higher power, that we had only to put one foot in front of the other and doors would open of their own accord.

(Does Satan provide an equivalent sense of ease and delight to
his
children? How is one to know what power is at one’s service, and to what end?)

Back in the morgue, the gaslights had been turned down to a mere flicker and the mortician had long gone home for supper, if he ever returned from luncheon. For silence there was nothing to equal it. The cadavers spread along the walls had the presence not of patients but of ruined, discarded overcoats, with no trace of the wearer but bulges and wrinkles in the cloth.

I avoided looking at the sheeted lump containing the toothless young woman. A man can take only so much at one time. Mean-while, Eddie peered down at the bearded young cadaver with a hole in the chest, assessing its suitability.

Physically, the transfer was clumsy but manageable. By placing an empty table next to the cadaver we were able to roll it onto a stretcher; it was surprisingly light due to dehydration. Grasping the poles at opposite ends, we carried the stretcher up the ramp to the first floor—unconcerned with discovery, for if we encountered anyone it would have been two other men with a cadaver on a pair of sticks.

Nor, thanks to the nature of the institution, did there exist any great danger that someone might take note of our man’s absence
from the morgue. As an unaudited clearing-ground for the unnamed dead, there was no way to determine whether an empty table meant that the remains had left for the medical school, or had returned to the hospital for forensic diagnosis, or had been claimed by a member of the public.

As we packed the corpse into the wing for the Agitated Insane, I noted that the surrounding babble had if anything increased, though the patients were supposedly asleep. (Often a patient will undergo greater agitation asleep than awake—another instance of the freed imagination doing its worst.)

As we deposited the body of the young suicide on the cot, our neighbor waxed no less eloquent:
“Twin-devil and specter of crazed and doomed mortals of earth and perdition!
…”

His monologue seemed to require no pause for rest or breath, and when I hear him in my mind I still experience the discomfiting sense that he was cheering us on, as we rolled the cadaver onto the bed and assessed its potential as a substitute.

The cadaver must have been ten years younger than Eddie—not an insurmountable problem, for death has an aging effect, even on small children. A well-bred young man, to judge by the haircut and the quality of the suit. The coat of fine worsted remained untouched by blood or powder burn, though of course the shirt and vest were ruined.

Every suicide is a poet
,
sublime in its melancholy
. So wrote the Frenchman Balzac in a virtual advertisement for the practice— perhaps an inspiration for the poor devil before us. Or perhaps he fell victim to a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

Bones of the dead the skull the skull in Connamorrah!
…

“Willie, please find something to quiet him down.”

“He is Dr. Slan’s patient.”

“How decorous of you.”

“I mean that on his morning call Slan would know something had been administered. The patient has been screaming for days.”

With the cadaver stretched out before us, Eddie produced an ancient gentleman’s traveling case from his valise and, with a surprisingly brisk and businesslike air, took out a throat-cut razor, a strop in a leather case, a pig-bristle shaving brush, a pair of scissors, and even a jar of laurel water: evidently he wished it even to smell like himself.
He then proceeded to cut and shave the beard, and to form a mustache similar to his own.

It is true that a man can groom his own face when blind, but I doubt most men would be able to groom
another
man’s face so efficiently. It seemed to me certain that he had given it previous thought.

Still, in part of my mind, we were fifteen-year-old boys again, as I succumbed to that old spirit of high adventure, while I served as proud second to the strongest swimmer in Richmond.

Mere language cannot tell the gushing well that swells and sweeps tempestlike over me signaling the larm of death
…

He spent a good hour on the job, paying careful attention to the arrangement and disposition of the hair, and I must say I found the result surprisingly convincing—another skill of an actor, by the way.

As he worked, Eddie opined on the process of life and death, describing the former as a proceeding in which human beings gradually become more distinct from one another, and the latter as a proceeding in which we all become alike.

“Is it possible,” he mused, “that a life is but a dream issuing from the endless sleep of death? That every personality is an illusion?”

“I have no comment,” I replied. “I detest idle speculation about life and death.”

Despite my skepticism, I had become fascinated by the transformation of the corpse. To my eye, the likeness went deeper than coloring, shape, and structure; it seemed as if a part of Eddie’s essence had been duplicated somehow, as though the cadaver had become a former Poe—a breathless, voiceless, lifeless Poe, while above him stood the new Poe, newly freed from himself.

It is clear to me now that my eyes saw what my mind desired—a common delusion. Match the gender, part the hair at a certain angle, clip the mustache into a certain shape, turn the lip this way or that, and your best friend will see his best friend—if that is what he wants to see.

Eddie Poe was my best friend
.

I do not know why a sudden panic came over me at that thought. It seemed as though the full weight of my disappointing life suddenly occupied my stomach—the realization that this was the only friend I had ever had, and for that reason alone I was doing this.

Literally, my bowels melted.

“What is it, Willie? Are you having another one of your spells?”

Though I served in the army, under no circumstance was I prepared to use the bedpan under the gaze of Eddie Poe. For that reason, I left for the outdoor privy, where I had time to reflect.

Thinking in private, I reminded myself that the deeds of this night could not be undone. Whether awake or in a dream, life does not travel in reverse. Looking back, I see that my mind had come to a false conclusion. In truth, the situation was entirely reversible. There was nothing to stop me from returning the cadaver to the morgue where it belonged, bidding Eddie good-bye, and calling an end to this absurd and grotesque enterprise.

Nothing to stop me, but myself.

In truth, by then any decision I might have taken was moot. This I discovered upon returning to the room, to see the cadaver dressed in Eddie’s shabby suit and my oldest friend, one foot on the bed, turning up the cadaver’s trouser cuff.

“A bit long in the inseam,” I said.

“It is a necessary step,” he replied, a bit defensively, inspecting the fit of the waist and seat.

All at once I experienced that sense of amused detachment that might well come over a man who has just jumped from a tall building, and can only lie back and enjoy the temporary sense of flying. “I expect the coat could do with an airing. I compliment you for avoiding the vest and shirt.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm, Willie. To pass for me, he must wear my clothes. Surely that is obvious. It is also obvious that I can’t walk through Baltimore in my underwear.”

As he brushed the dead man’s dandruff from his shoulder it occurred to me that he was about to vacate the premises—escape rather, leaving me to deal with the remains.

He slipped on the coat and turned up the sleeves. “How do I look?”

“I do not feel qualified to render an opinion.”

“I’ll not forget what you have done for me, Willie. I swear you will be repaid.”

“I beg you, Eddie, do not even consider repayment.”

“Wish me luck,” he said.

“Good luck to you.”

“You’re a strange, dark fellow, Willie, but you’re the best friend I have in the world.”

“Do you know, Eddie, I am afraid you may be right.”

DICKENS COMING TO AMERICA
by Sanford W. Mitchell,
The Philadelphia Inquirer

America’s reading set is a-twitter over the proposed reading tour of Mr. Charles Dickens. Already appearances by the literary lion have been scheduled in Boston, Worcester, Harvard, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and Washington. The Young Men of Boston have announced a public dinner in his honor, and a “Boz Ball” will take place at the Park Theater in New York, where Mr. Francis Alexander has been engaged to undertake his portrait. In Washington, he will attend a levee with the president.

“Here is a son of a haberdasher with no hereditary title, no military laurels, and no princely fortune,” remarked Dr. William Ellery Fanning. “His approach will surely be hailed by Americans of every age and condition, and his welcome will be all heart.”