Not Quite Dead (9 page)

A
NY FEELING OF
satisfaction I might seem to have experienced, any roguish excitement at a boyhood escapade came to an abrupt end with five knocks on my door the next morning.

I had not slept a wink, having spent the night listening to the creaking of my rope bed as I squirmed back and forth, seeking a comfortable position between sandpaper sheets.

I sprang bolt upright. Beads of sweat greased my brow, and more trickled down my rib cage—a fever? I examined the pocket watch on my bedside table: Nine o’clock. I had overslept. Slept? Is it possible that I spent the night in a delirium?

Five more knocks on the door.

More sweat, more blood coursing past the eardrums and a gathering cloud of doom overhead:
What have I done? What am I going to do?

In my mind, the familiar voice of my old friend whispered:
Remain calm, Willie
.

Five more knocks. Whoever they were, they would not go away. I could feel the brass rails hard and cold against my spine like prison bars.

I stumbled to my dressing table, opened my doctor’s bag, and removed Poe’s Salter of cocaine. “Wait, please. I shall be there in a minute,” I called, in a calm, untroubled voice.

What have I done? What am I going to do?

Then came a muffled voice on the other side of the door:
Dr. Chivers! It is nine o’clock and there is an important visitor for Mr. Poe!

I turned the iron knob and opened the door a reticent six inches. I would not have been surprised to see a robed skeleton on the other side—or worse, a policeman. Instead, I faced the scrubbed, merciless, familiar face of Nurse Slatin, fist upraised, about to knock for the third time, her starched uniform a wall of blue with a white collar, cap and cuffs, and that face, with the broad nose and the permanent stony grimace.

“Yes, nurse, what is it?”

“Mr. Neilson Poe, sir. The cousin has come to inquire after your patient.”

For a moment I stood there, tongue-tied. She took this for assent.

“Shall I fetch Mr. Poe then, sir?”

“Nurse Slatin, the patient has congestion of the brain and possibly lesions as well. He is in critical condition. He cannot receive visitors under any circumstance.”

“Mr. Neilson Poe is paying for the room, Doctor. It would be respectful if you would at least speak to him.” Nurse Slatin scarcely moved her lips while talking. Whether in the interest of efficiency or from pure laziness, she uttered words without moving a muscle of her face. Or perhaps it was a result of her calm confidence; for it is a fact of institutional life that minor officials who physically put their hands upon cash, in however small amounts, wield an authority far out of proportion to their station.

“Excuse me, nurse, I should like to get dressed.” I said, and gently closed the door.

“Very good, Doctor,” came the muffled monotone.

I mopped my face with my handkerchief, crossed the floor to the
washbasin, performed my toilet, put on my suit and coat, and checked my pocket watch: ten minutes had passed.

I opened the door. As expected, Nurse Slatin stood rooted to the spot.

“What are your instructions, Doctor?”

“I shall look in on the patient at once. Inform Mr. Neilson Poe that I shall see him shortly in the waiting room. Tell him it must be very quick, for his cousin is a sick man and requires constant supervision.”

I headed downstairs, the picture of a harried, concerned physician, while a hollow voice in my mind shrieked:
What have you done? What are you going to do?

I
N EVERY ENCOUNTER,
there is a time to sit back, and a time to take the initiative. In dealing with Eddie’s cousin Neilson, since there were any number of questions I did not wish to answer, I chose the former approach.

“Sir, am I to understand that you are Mr. Neilson Poe, the patient’s cousin?”

“Second
cousin, as a matter of fact. And you would be Dr. Chivers, sir?”

“I am
,
sir”
we said simultaneously, both sides having failed to establish the upper hand.

I shook hands with a gentleman somewhat older than Eddie, about the same height, with a similar expanse of brow and black eyes that must also run in the family.

There, however, the similarity ended.

Neilson Poe was obviously the more respectable of the two cousins, albeit with dirty fingernails and a suit that had not seen a brush in some time. However, he had augmented his appearance in a number of odd ways. Whereas Eddie’s chin was clean-shaven, Neilson sported an almost oriental wisp of a goatee. While Eddie grew his dark hair in Byronic curls, the pennant that swept across Neilson’s head with the aid of a good deal of pomade had been dyed a sort of purplish auburn.

For several moments, neither of us spoke. The toe of his highly polished walking shoe began tapping the floor, signaling impatience.
I refused to break the pause, for to do so would be to establish subservience. Instead, I pretended to study my notebook, then reached for my pencil and pretended to make a correction, while arranging my features in an expression that suggested deep thinking on an important matter.

“I am sure you understand that the family is extremely concerned about Edgar,” he said, at length. “What is your prognosis, Doctor?”

I emitted a troubled sigh. “I am afraid that I cannot be overly encouraging, Mr. Poe. Your cousin is not a well man.”

“Second
cousin, don’t you know?” he said, a point he wished to make clear.

“I shall make a note of that,” I replied. “In any case, to be frank, the chances are against him.”

“I see.” Mr. Poe did not seem overly affected by the bad news.

“The patient has a swelling on the brain—a condition we call lobar pneumonia—complicated by transient retardation. I can hardly recommend a visit at this time. Your cousin is not conscious, and there is some risk to yourself, until we know the precise cause of the malady …”

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of it.” he replied quickly, as though I had invited him into a snake pit. “We were never close, my second cousin and I. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“I understand. You are most generous, sir, to accept the burden of his care.”

“It is my duty, sir.”

“Of course. Then what may I do for you? Why have you come to see me? For I should see to the patient at once.”

“I am—I have come—I have come—” The cousin searched for
le mot juste
: either he had no idea why he had come, or else he knew and did not wish to say.

“Out of familial duty, of course,” I said, doing his work for him.

“Indeed so. Well put, sir. I thank you for it.”

“Your devotion is most admirable, sir. I shall convey to the patient your best wishes when—or I should say if—he recovers his reason. I am sure an encouraging word from a blood relative will lift his spirits enormously.”

“Very good, sir. Quite so. Please carry on, then. Be assured that I shall cover all necessary expenses—within reason.”

“If there is a change in his condition, I shall see that Nurse Slatin contacts you at once.”

We shook hands. His palm had become damp during our brief chat, indicating that I had made him more nervous than the other way around. I watched his back recede down the hall, noting a certain lightness of step, as though at any moment he might begin twirling his stick.

Life
,
n
. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

—Ambrose Bierce

I
T IS AN
unusual thing for a doctor to spend time alone with a cadaver; yet it seemed only prudent to allow a half hour to pass before declaring the patient officially dead.

We doctors have little truck with the dead other than as objects of study. Death, even if it is the normal outcome, is not a state that occupies the medical mind. With a patient’s last gasp, the attending physician loses all interest. Following a series of commemorative noises to the relatives he is on to the next patient, the next death, having forgotten the name of the last one.

Not in this case. In my mind the cadaver had
become
Eddie Poe— thanks, I thought at the time, to a remarkably skillful transformation, accomplished by a man with theater in his blood. However, my identification with the corpse may have also been a product of spiritual necessity; to survive this ordeal I was going to have to undertake a number of lies, convincingly—and the most successful lies are the ones we believe ourselves.

Sitting with Eddie’s dead body, I felt the urge to weep—certainly not for him, nor for myself, but for all of us. The loneliness of death. That it comes down to this, this, this
silence
…

I opened my eyes, looked down at the cadaver—and suddenly the illusion burst. It was as though someone had thrown a stone into a mirror. I saw, really saw, what lay before me, and I nearly cried out aloud.

Dear heaven, I had been in a sort of trance!

Whatever I thought I had seen over the past hours, the young man on the bed before me bore no more resemblance to Eddie Poe
than I did. The complexion was darker, the brow narrower, the nose broader; our man was two inches taller, thirty pounds heavier, and a good fifteen years younger than the corpse he was to represent.

I restrained myself from shrieking aloud—unlike the annoying gentleman in the adjoining room.

Too late! too late! I must lift the pall and open to you the secret that sears the heart and daggerlike pierces the soul!

Looking back I sense that I had reached a fork in the road of life, at which one path leads to an uncertain destination and the other leads straight off a cliff. A point where a man must decide whether he intends to proceed with his life, such as it is, or not. I had been considering the question for some time, in the abstract. At the same time, I kept in my alligator bag a sufficient quantity of morphine, should I ever make up my mind.

In that moment, surprisingly, I chose life. Not out of courage, nor hope, nor because life was the path of least resistance. I chose life, that I might live long enough to have a word or two with my dangerous, duplicitous friend Eddie.

N
URSE
S
LATIN,
I need you.”

“Very good, Doctor.” Seated at her station, neither the head nor the lips seemed to move.

“Do you have an address for Mr. Neilson Poe?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Neilson Poe. He is paying for my patient’s room. You called my attention to that fact yourself.”

“Yes. Mr. Neilson Poe left his address with me this morning. He asked not to be contacted except in a crisis.”

“It is not a crisis, but send him a message anyway Tell him that his cousin—rather, his
second
cousin—has passed away. Request instructions regarding disposal of the remains.”

Nurse Slatin paused. A thoughtful expression momentarily swept over her flat features. It was almost as though she were considering the question of life and death.

“Doctor?”

“Yes, nurse?”

“By what time will the room be free? If you can clear the bed by two, there is a brain tumor waiting in the hall.”

A
S
I
EXPECTED,
Neilson Poe replied not in person but by courier. His message contained neither an expression of grief nor an interest in the disposition of his cousin’s cadaver. And to my vast relief, nowhere did he indicate the slightest desire to view his second cousin’s earthly remains for a last farewell.

Accordingly, in our subsequent communication, he was pleased to accept my offer to assign the collection and care of the remains to Mr. Samuel Ripp, an undertaker with a reputation for producing decent burials of the unloved deceased, at minimal cost to the relatives. For my part, I selected Mr. Ripp as a professional who, for a small additional stipend, could be counted on to overlook the rather large hole in the chest of the deceased, and thereby spare the family the disgrace of a suicide.

Later that afternoon, a pair of nonchalant attendants lifted the corpse onto an ice-filled cooling board. For this I was very glad, for the odor of decomposition might have revealed that our man had been dead longer than claimed. As they removed it from the premises in a wicker transport coffin, I pondered the best route to ensuring that the casket remained closed during the funeral. I did not worry overmuch about the undertaker, for Mr. Ripp would not know Eddie from Adam.

Given his evident concern over expenses, Neilson Poe’s invitation to luncheon the next day came as a surprise, and suggested some sort of request might ensue. Less surprising was the venue—the Exchange Hotel, located at the Merchant Exchange. The building, or series of buildings, was an H-shaped monstrosity in the
ramshackle
style, capped by a dome like the pate of a white elephant. Intended as a center for commerce, the venture had to be saved from bankruptcy by renting to an assortment of government offices—including that of the mayor and council. This of course ensured a steady flow of traffic, for every businessman in Baltimore had a reason to bribe a councilman.

In the financial districts of America’s three biggest cities (New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore), building edifices of this sort had
become an obsession. Greek, Roman, anything ancient would do, as long as it was grandiloquent and European. I suppose it was meant to impart a feeling of history and permanence—a solidity lacking in the affairs of the tenants.

The occupants of the Merchant Exchange were of course all men, down to the last merchant. Only in the army or the clergy might one have encountered a more homosexual society, in the sense of including only one gender among its ranks.

Fittingly, in its design and function, the dining room was intended to ape a private men’s club in the City of London—an expensive and painstaking re-creation, thousands having been lavished on mahogany, brass, velvet, gilt and stained glass, with everything, from chandeliers to spittoons, shipped from overseas.