The Complete Roderick (64 page)

‘Help! Here, in the bushes.’ There were evergreen bushes by the side of the broad steps; a man crawled out of them and collapsed at Roderick’s feet. His face was covered with blood.

Roderick got him to his feet, and helped him up the steps. ‘What happened?’

‘Mugged,’ said the man. ‘Don’t ask me how, but I was mugged! Me!’

Inside the receptionist haggled about insurance and donor cards, but finally accepted the patient. Roderick waited around while the man was examined, cleaned and bandaged, put to bed.

‘He’s fine,’ said a doctor. ‘He can go home tomorrow.’

‘Good. Good.’

In the lobby there was no one now but two carollers, counting something out in their hands.

‘Hey no fair, you got one more Ultracalm than me. I want the extra Somrepose then, hey?’

‘Okay fine but then I want some Zerone too, heck these are 25 milligram ones and yours are only 5 …’

He went on out on the steps again, and looked for the single lighted window. But now all was dark, and the city slept with its fathers.

‘Look, have some fruit, forget about it.’

‘Forget I got mugged? How do you forget an experience like that? I’m telling you –’

‘Sure, okay, but I’m just wondering how this is gonna look to our people? Frankly, old buddy, you blew it. You had your chance to waste this guy, and you –’

‘I got mugged, that’s all. I got mugged, I got mugged! Don’t ask me how.’

‘I won’t ask you nothing. But you can bet your ass somebody’s gonna ask, and ask hard. That a winesap apple there? Okay if I help myself, I really got a thing about winesaps …. Look, this thing reflects bad on everybody, it reflects bad on the whole Agency, our section even worse, and me worst of all.
¹

‘I know, I
know.
But what can I do? It just happened.’

‘Yeah, but when the people at Orinoco start looking for some balls to stomp on, where do they look first? I mean, who’s really responsible here?’

‘What are you implying?’

‘I’m not implying nothing. I’m just saying, that’s all. Those Concord grapes there? You mind? I’m saying, look at all the trouble everybody took to set this thing up. We traced the customer to where he works, I found out from his co-workers that the boss is driving him to Mercy Hospital to see somebody. We rush over a camera team by helicopter just to take his picture when he gets out of the car, regular and infra-red just so we don’t get the wrong guy –’

‘Again.’

‘All right, our people watch all the damn exits until you can set up in your bush with your snooperscope and your infra-red detector and your laser-aimed sniper rifle

The man in bed rolled over. ‘I know what I had, or are you just
mentioning it all for the benefit of everybody else in here? Tell the whole ward, tell the whole damn world!’ He rolled back again. ‘Any Muscat grapes?’

‘I ate them. No I’m just saying, we took a lot of trouble, we spent a lot of money, and then you let yourself get jumped like that, you not only blow the whole mission, you fix it so some maniac mugger is now running around town with a snooperscope and all the rest of this stuff, how’s that gonna look if he uses it?’

‘He won’t use it, he ripped it off to sell, didn’t he? I mean, that’s what he jumped me for, all that Government equipment.’

‘If you know so much about him now, how come you let him sneak up on you like that?’

‘How did I know I was a mugging target? I mean these guys are everywhere, society’s getting so God-damned violent, is that my fault?’

‘I blame TV myself. Television is definitely – and maybe fast food, kids don’t digest any more. Take your average mugger today – and parental discipline too.’

‘You saying it’s my fault? You implying I should be a child psychologist?’

‘I’m not implying nothing. Honest.’

The man in bed lay back and looked at the curtain until he heard the other agent leave, then turned again to watch (past the basket now containing a heap of banana skins and orange peels topped by the core of a Bartlett pear) other patients being served a Christmas dinner from a mobile microwave oven that passed him and passed the curtained bed.

‘I’m sorry, Mr … Nothing by mouth for you, and nothing by mouth for Mr Franklin either …’

Muttering came from behind the curtain. ‘ “Nothing by mouth”, sounds like a damn subtitle for
À Rebours,
you’d think they’d at least offer me a turkey-and-cranberry enema.’

The agent turned towards the voice but it said nothing more. He turned back again, lay still watching the fruit debris, the empty bed next to him, the bed beyond that where an old man was being eased on to a bedpan, the curtained bed beyond that whence a priest emerged, kissing a strip of purple ribbon and folding it away as he hurried out the door, a furtive figure pursued by the microwave cart, then two nurses, then a cartload of
uneaten dinners followed by a man in a wheelchair swerving to avoid a man on crutches coming back past a sleeping figure connected to a machine next to an adolescent sitting up in bed with giant headphones and a blank expression, next to an empty bed and another, eight beds, one exit, now blocked by a group of people in surgical green bringing in a cart to collect the man the priest had visited, setting off an argument between the man on the bedpan and the man on crutches as to whether this was routine surgery or getting ready for a heart snatch, the argument continuing until a pitchpipe sounded in the hall and a choir of student nurses looking hungover sang ‘Joy to the World’, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘Christmas in Killarney’ before drifting away to some other ward on their silent feet, all this and more the agent noted and filed, remembering every face, every action, every change until he finally managed to sleep …

Behind him, Ben Franklin opened the curtains, sat up in his sweat-soaked pyjamas, lit a cigarette and reached for his phone.

‘Mr Kratt? Ben here, I’m in Mercy Hospital, that flu I had got worse and – no, two or three days ago, I don’t know, what day is this? … No, I’m not kidding; I was kind of knocked out with this fever … I don’t know, soon as I can sir yes sure only … listen they don’t seem to know what it is, doctor this morning asked me if I had anything to do with cows … Well sure I know you are, I didn’t mean to, yes I know. But what I wanted to tell you, I’ve had a real breakthrough … no,
through,
sir. Listen I, see I’ve been working on the little problem we talked about, the er, learning machine, you know where I was stuck was in the basic pattern-recognition … yes, well I’m not stuck any more, I’ve really broken through. This fever, seems to make me see clearer, clearer and – I know Dan used to get into these fits too, these kind of fits, he would just be glowing with wisdom, with
gnosis,
with holy wis – God damn it, Kratt, for once in your life stop yapping about what you
want
and listen! Because creation, creating life isn’t something you learn or even do, it’s something within us all the time, you know like the secret power these men possess? I mean all my life I’ve been pissing around with half-ass religious ideas, all the time it’s been right there inside me, the complete instructions for building a creature in my own image … are you still there? Yes, it’s inside me, in my genes … No, not
cloning,
God damn it will
you listen? I’m talking about information, information! Man is a learning machine and human genes are blueprints for man so – so all the information has to be packed in there somehow, yet if the machine could only learn itself it, it, we have the answer! I mean we spend our whole lives looking at the edges of the blueprint while the centre is never visible except to madmen, holy madmen – no I am not talking about occultism, will you God damn it stop humouring me, I am talking about information.
Information.
INFORMATION!’

He slammed down the receiver as the agent awoke and turned over, saying, ‘What’s wrong, you can’t even get Information? Phone company gets worse every –’

‘No, nothing like that.’ Ben Franklin picked up the yellow notebook he’d bought in Taipin, opened to a fresh quadrille-ruled page, and began to scribble. After covering a page and heavily underscoring several items, he put down his pen and looked at the phone again.

‘You gonna try Information again?’

‘No I – I just felt like calling somebody. Too bad it’s Christmas, everybody’ll be answering machines today. Except Dan …’

The pure musical tones aroused by numbered buttons chased each other down the line like echoes, reminding him of something from Kafka (Kafkafka): K. phoning the Castle and hearing a buzz ‘like the sound of countless children’s voices’ now adjusted to harmonious bleats but still innocent because ethereal, ringing from Heaven (hello Central) or against Heaven (vox inhumana) or crying out loud for bodies …

At University Hospital a nurse crunched a piece of candy cane as the phone rang, swallowed sherds as she answered. ‘Who? Mr Sonnenschein? I’ll see if we have him today you know a lot of people went home …’

She rose, biting down on another inch of striped sugar and brushing crumbs from her nylon uniform as she pushed past the Christmas tree and through a door into the ward. Most of the other nurses were, like her, here for the day only; no one knew who Mr Sonnenschein was.

Two doctors were conferring over an elderly bedridden patient, now going blue in the face. One of them, Dr D’Eath, suggested Ward D.

‘Right through that door down there and keep going, you can’t miss it,’ he said, and leaned across his patient to tap the electronic Kardiscope as though it were a brass barometer. ‘Not so terrific here, thanks to that ham-handed … think he’d try reading the contraindications before he starts shoving Euphornyl into an eighty-year-old patient with a history of … could have used Hynosate or Geridorm, Narcadone any damn thing but this! Okay then. What we need here is 50 ccs of Elimindin in the i.v., then start the Eudryl when he comes to, okay? Oh, and Dormevade, five milligrams every three

‘Fine sure fine, great idea, Shel, now if uh you got a minute maybe you could look at my girl here, little chemotherapy problem, Nurse wake her up will you, MINNIE … MORNING MINNIE!’

‘Doctor, I believe her name is Mary, Mary Mendez …’

‘Minnie, Mary, what’s the difference? HEY MARY? WAKE UP!’

The false eyelashes parted on large grey eyes that held no expression. Creaking sounds began in the throat.

‘HOW YOU DOING, MARY?’ Dr Coppola proffered to his senior colleague a chart, with the deference of a wine waiter with a list. Both men and the nurse ignored Mary who, having sat up to adjust the large bow that covered a stainless steel plate in her scalp, was trying to speak. The rusty sounds in her throat became more frantic.

‘How long you had her on Actromine with Ananx? No wonder you got a Parkinsonism situation building here, you ought to … and try switching over to Integryl with Doloban, see how that … or wait, how about Dormistran with Kemised? That should do the trick.’

‘CAN YOU HEAR ME, MARY? HOW’S THE HEADACHE? EH?’

‘…
wind me up
…
wind me up …’

‘You could have tried Solacyl with Promoral, but sooner or later you’d have to feed in Thanagrin and

‘Promoral sure sure sure, Shel, only with the old head injury and the labyrinthitis you don’t think …?’

‘…
wind me up
…
I
’
m running down
…’

‘Okay then Lobanal, play it safe. Lobanal with Doloban, why
stick your neck out?’ And as the two doctors passed on, the nurse trailing like a caddy, they talked of Amylpoise and Dexadrone, Disimprine and Equisol, Joviten and Nyctomine …

At the door of Ward D they encountered once more the Christmas substitute nurse, again running on her silent shoes but now looking distressed and holding a hand to her mouth.

‘Probably walked in on the ECT,’ said Dr Coppola as they wheeled past the room where Dan Sonnenschein still arched and twisted on a table, trembling limbs held down by straps and strong assistants as his spine beat like a flagellum, trying to fling his head free of the smoking electrodes. Dr D’Eath paused to watch the body lunge once, twice and lie still, all but the fingers and toes.

‘Well, Jesus, you can’t blame the poor girl. They have to stick this therapy room right out here where anybody can walk by and see it,’ he said. ‘Anyway I hate it myself, it’s so darned crude, like setting fire to a chicken ranch to fry one
egg.
There has to be a better way.’

‘I know, I know, it’s so medieval – they used to burn the body of a heretic for the good of his soul, and now we’ve kind of turned that around. But what are the real alternatives, drugs? How can you trust them to take the pills once they’re out, eh? The old paradox of freedom, eh? What happens when the depressive gets too depressed to take his anti-depressants?’

His boyish laugh drifted back through the open door to be relayed as a scream of nervous laughter from Mary Mendez. Dr D’Eath said, ‘I like this idea of yours about working on self-images with some of these patients, what I’ve heard of it.’

‘I’d like to try a pilot scheme here, very soon. You gotta admit, Shel, it’s about the cheapest damn therapeutic idea in years, all we have to buy is a couple dozen rubber animal masks. See I was reading Levi-Strauss one day on totems and all at once it hit me, we all need to “be” animals once in a while, to restructure our self-images by new rules … become cats and mice or ducks …’

‘Sure, I see …’

‘… easily recognized signs and codes,
I am a pig,
to help communicate in a society grown too large and too …’

‘Sure, sure, sure, sure …’

Mary yelped again, the noise just reaching the nurse who was closing a door and pushing past the tree to the phone:

‘Mr Frankstein? Frankline? I’m sorry but he can’t come to the phone right now, he’s urn, he’s urn –’ Her mind filled with movie images of fluttering lights, lightning, the smoking electrodes, the figure on the long table straining, making Galvanic lunges against the straps, the smoking electrodes, hands gripping the arms of the electric chair, tall shadows, the sputtering arch, the baritone hum of electricity,
vis vitalis
rising on a swell to become a dial tone as she sat, receiver forgotten in her hand, watching the lights on the Christmas tree grow suddenly dim and bright again. Her mouth filled with peppermint bile.