The Disinherited (20 page)

“That’s all,” Simon said. His voice is dry and rasping again, the knife wiped clean on his pants and returned to its handsewn calfskin sheath. And he is hopping about on his good leg with one hand on the counter, lithe and almost dancing. Leah
Thomas coughs deeper, puts her hand to her head, begins to slide down the door jamb, one hand extended towards Richard so that he will not forget to catch her.

In bed again she can’t stop coughing. Blood at the corner of her mouth, light pink flecks coughed up from her lungs. Simon sits in his chair in the corner of the room. Richard standing by the door, his shoulders still sore and strained again from the effort of carrying Leah Thomas upstairs. His brother kneeling by the bed, one hand on his chest, it too stained with blood, this blood dark and thick, seeping out the shirt, the exact triangular hole carved by Simon Thomas. And when Richard goes outside to hitch up the horses and get the doctor, he can see the snow is still falling, soft and large, binding earth to sky with slow wet chains.

Returning with the doctor in the early winter morning and finding Simon and Steven upstairs, in the bedroom of Leah Thomas. Steven still holding his hand to his side, shirt and pants soaked in blood, the doctor prying his hand away and seeing the excised section of cloth and flesh, cut right through to the bone. Simon Thomas now unable to walk, his broken leg swollen to three times its size. Leah Thomas propped up in bed just as Richard left her: died of natural causes, the doctor wrote down.

T
he bedspread beneath his palms; all those threads, twisted cotton fibres loomed and interwoven, pulled tight, kept in shape by habit, discipline, should have a school for bedspreads. Using the tips of his fingers as pivots, Richard can lift his hands enough to break the suction between sweat and thread and flesh, let the air move in along the cross-hatched pores. One hand hurts. The back feels swollen and sore. The other is enclosed from the top, extended indefinitely, something moving on it. Richard turns his head and opens his eyes slowly, realizes he has been sleeping for a long time, the fever is gone now, sees Erik’s hand on top of his, moving in slow circles, vulture, opens his eyes wider and sees Erik looking back, doesn’t move his hand, circles. Turns his head the other way and tries to lift his left arm. Now it does respond; but the back of his hand is swollen and sore, looks, sees a plastic tube coming out of it, sight and pain, leans back and twists up — a bottle suspended above the bed, dripping into him. Erik smiles. Richard looks past him and sees the oxygen tank is beside the bed, beside the window. A nurse sitting at the end of the bed, smiles in turn as she sees him looking at her. He realizes they are happy. No. He realizes this is more than they expected. Closes his eyes. Richard can hear a clock ticking somewhere in the room. Then he thinks that he might only be imagining this. He listens closely and it is still there. The more he concentrates, the louder it gets, each tick with its own half-stated ring, as if it were something that
time could be created by a spring, measured out, paced, like his heart, compulsory time that he must live through, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen. It could be worse, he thinks, already hating himself for this further betrayal of mind: would it be necessary for them to have him entirely connected to machines, great coiled protuberances growing out of his body and ears before they would finally give up on him and pull out the plug? A man gets sick and gets better. You have to share your body. Spades digging into the flesh, taking it out for raw material, recycled protoplasm to be used in further incarnations. Opens his eyes again. Miranda is standing in the doorway, now coming towards the bed, smiling too, they are all smiling, all having the time of their lives.

Later in the day he is sitting up, feeling better. His left arm is beginning to work again and they took the tube out so now there is only a bandage on his hand. He can use it too; holds his coffee cup with his right hand and uses the left to spoon it out, practising, coffee and chocolate custard. Bruises, blue tinged with yellow, spread out from beneath the bandage, and the small bones of his hand feel violated, as if it were them that had been punctured, marrow injected into the failing passages that keep hollow bones alive. They are all there, watching him, Brian and Nancy on the empty bed and Erik and Miranda in chairs: prize exhibit, number one father rises again; the matador however has not been gored, only stepped to the side for a drink of red wine, wipes his sword clean, describes the coming kill in rhyming couplets to the ladies in the box: parts of the body are assigned as trophies. His arm, moving again, the first time since the walk, feels like it has been asleep. All the somnolent nerves tingle now, go off in tiny clustered explosions just beneath his skin, up and down his arm, never where he expects it, sometimes echoes in other areas of his body, so as he eats he feels continually jerked about, these electric currents re-establishing their equilibrium, not caring who they inhabit. Miranda pulls her chair up closer, waiting to be noticed. But only the food interests him. She sees that he is still hungry and goes out into the hall and gets some more dessert and orange juice from the cart. She sets them in front of him and he begins to eat them
Too, having sudden fantasies of how he will eat until he is better and then go home, a changed man, ruling the house as Simon did, voracious and demanding, having afternoon banquets out on the lawn and then huge midnight snacks, eating endlessly, eating the entire produce of the farm, annexed farms, insatiable as a palm-wine drunkard eating a cow a day, whole gardens served heaped up on wooden plates made by cross-sectioning the largest trees, feasts of mushrooms gathered from the paths near the lakes, all washed down by bottle after bottle of Pat Frank’s worst home-made wine, wine brewed after the exact recipe of his father and his father’s father, both of whom died from it, wine made from every fruit and berry that grew in the area, strengthened by distilled alcohol and all the garbage that was carelessly allowed to fall in, wine to be served not in goblets but in its original bottles, only to be drunk two-thirds empty because of the sediment that could poison you even more quickly, wine to wash down the beef and the fowl and the omelettes which Miranda could cook so well, and as he sat and he ate he would toss the salads with his hands and throw the leftovers to the dogs who surrounded him, waiting all their lives to go hunting but now grown so fat from leftovers they could hardly move, staggering once a day to the other side of the driveway to relieve themselves and then back to surround their master, swishing off flies with their tails and looking up at the table with great brown gorged eyes. There was a tray swung over the bed and he had stopped eating, resting his hand on the tray, then picked up the spoon again. Miranda is still watching him and Richard is perplexed, wondering what he will say to her, how long it has been since he has said anything at all. The tan has faded from his hands and arms, the hair getting darker while the skin returns to its normal colour, but Miranda looks healthy and brown, her eyes bright and concerned. Now he remembers: before supper they were talking about the farm, getting the cows bred in the fall. He looks at the tray and sees the remains: a squeezed lemon with shredded pale fibres still hanging from the skin; bits of bone and fried crumbs from the fish; carrot cubes mixed with some sort of sauce; a small corner of instant mashed potatoes.

“You must have been hungry,” Miranda said. Her voice seemed dry and removed. “Do you want anything else?”

Richard shrugged his shoulders. The movement jogged his stomach and he could feel his bowels announcing that, despite everything, illness and inconvenience taken into account for as long as possible, a rapid accommodation would be necessary. Richard put the palms of his hands on the bed, tried shifting his weight, realized that he really was much better. He pushed away the tray and then, with Miranda holding his arm, stood up. It felt good, not dizzy at all, but his back was stiff and rigid from lying still so he walked bent over, his shoulders bent so low that his housecoat trailed on the floor. Miranda helped him sit down and then left him hunched over on the toilet, stared at the tiny grey curled hairs that grew sparsely on his thighs, relics.

Then leaning forward over the sink and looking at his face in the mirror, he could see the marks of this battle: oases of stubble where the nurse had had trouble shaving him; red blotches on his skin which seemed to have fallen away from the bones, gathering along the lines of his jaw which had gone from square to round. His nose, cheekbones and forehead were all slightly shiny, as if the bones themselves were becoming luminous and would glow through the skin, burn it off, burn it all off when he was dead, creating itself as skeleton by its own energy. His eyes were reduced to pinpoints in the bright light — flesh purple and bagged below them, puffed blue eyelids. Miranda came in and stood beside him. In the fluorescent light her face looked different too, jaundiced. “God,” Richard said, pointing to their heads, side by side in the mirror like two matched trophies, “soon they’ll be taking us away in a wheelbarrow.” But with Miranda supporting his arm he could walk past the bed, to the window overlooking the courtyard, back to the door, and then to the bed again.

Propped up again on the pillows, looking out. At some point in the afternoon, before supper, he must have been feeling well too, when they took the tube out of his arm and let him eat. But he can’t remember the afternoon or how long he was sick. Only Erik in the morning, waiting, and the very beginning, when the nurse took his temperature. Talking seemed like
too much work and Richard was now just waiting for them to go so he could relax, be well, read the newspaper and let the nurse rub his back. Miranda leaned forward to tell him something, putting her hand on the bed and he is suddenly reminded of Katherine Malone, wonders if she would come to the hospital to visit him. The fear again, a movement traversing his nerves, quick like something moving in the corner of his eye and then gone, traceless. Miranda has just finished saying something, he can see by the way her mouth is closing and she is moving away, waiting for him to reply. “I’m sorry,” Richard said, “I didn’t hear you.”

“The doctor wants you to make your will.”

“Well of course,” Richard said. It was remarkable how easy this was going to be. He would get a bit better, learn to walk again so he could sit in the lounge for a few days. Perhaps they would let him smoke cigarettes. He would settle his affairs in a dignified way and then, on the last evening, telling no one at all, he would simply go to sleep permanently. There was absolutely nothing to fear. He didn’t even feel curious.

“Richard,” Miranda said, “you’re going to have to decide about the farm.” She was leaning forward again, it seemed she was always leaning forward. He wondered if she was beginning to have difficulty with her eyes. Yes, the farm. The others had left the room and had gone to the lounge. With his eyes closed, he could see them sitting there, their legs crossed, chatting about the cows, selling the island so Erik could buy himself a house in the city. “If you don’t decide about the farm …” Miranda was saying, speaking very slowly and shaping her lips carefully, as if she thought he had suddenly become retarded, at his age, God, they wouldn’t even let him into school. She was waiting expectantly again.

“I’m sorry,” Richard said embarrassed. “I didn’t hear that last sentence. Just the last few words.”

“You have to decide about the farm,” Miranda said, this time in a loud whisper, almost hissing. “If you don’t, then I do.”

“Oh death,” Richard said. He was surprised at the resonance and tone of his voice. “Oh death,” he repeated. “How do I fear thy sting. Yes.” He stopped. Miranda was crying. Bitch. Too bad.
“Oh death,” he began again, this time trying to make his voice vibrate, “how do I fear thy sting, where fortune’s end doth ring and little birdies sing.” Miranda was still crying but now looked at him, her mouth open, as if he had slipped over the edge. “Beware the quick brown fox,” Richard said. “I always told you.” He had too, when they were in Toronto and Miranda was taking typing lessons. “Now that I’m dying, I can do anything I want, right?” And to answer his question he swept out his arm, his left arm which now seemed to be working perfectly again, swept it across the tray so the chocolate custard dishes and the coffee cups were pushed onto the adjacent bed. “Damned kids,” Richard said. “Shouldn’t be allowed in places like this.” Miranda had stopped crying and was staring at him, puzzled, as if she was hoping she could hypnotize him into shutting up. “Nope,” Richard said. “It won’t work. Look at your eyebrows, the dimples on your knees, God damn. You won’t believe this but I feel pretty good. What was I saying? Yes. Maybe I’ll just fall out of my bed and, splat, die.” His voice didn’t sound so good there. He tried to remember exactly what it
had
sounded like, repeating the words over in his head, but then forgot them and found he was repeating nothing at all. “Did they get the hay in?”

“Yes,” Miranda said. “And they say if the weather keeps up there’ll be a good second crop.”

“Clover,” Richard said. “Should’ve switched over to corn ten years ago.”

“The farm.”

“Yes, that lollipop of land. God. For did He not make us to go out into the fields?”

“Richard.”

“Listen.” He reached over to the bedside table and took one of the diaries that were stacked there, notebooks of thick yellowing paper, bound three at a time in calfskin and stamped in gold on the outside by Simon Thomas, the gold now mostly worn off, but the impression still clear:
The Diaries of the Reverend William C. Thomas (Volumes I-III);
flourished it in the air the way Simon Thomas used to during his Sunday evening preamble, as if this time, without any hesitation, doubt or further recalcitrance, he was absolutely bound and committed to make
the ultimate revelation, the swallowing of the seventh veil that had been promised from the very beginning but never delivered, the dissemination and clarification that would finally make sense of all that had preceded it in a way that could not possibly have been anticipated, yet once experienced would necessarily be recognized as the absolute only root reality that could ever have existed, supported the whole structure, pierced through the confusion like a needle, his own needle. His Own Needle, in brief The Word that would join man to woman and present to past to future in one last instant and eternal matrimonial victory of the aether over its obsolete and confused constituents, flourished it in the air and then with the absolute certainty of the man who knows that this moment is, for once in his life, the occasion for which he has been rehearsing, opened the book at a marked place and began to read: